Limb protection

Latin armor with large plate brigantine (picture with Saint Michael, beginning of the 15th century)

Knight in latin-brigantine armor

The plate protection of the extremities appeared at the beginning of the XIV century in Spain and Portugal as an improvement of the braces and leggings borrowed by them during the Reconquista from the Arabs .

Initially, leather bracers and leggings were borrowed, as the easiest to manufacture (in the rest of Europe, these leather bracers and leggings did not gain popularity), and then, as soon as they learned to forge metal, which were at first almost flat, weakly-curved plates, they immediately improved them, adding with the same plates covering the hips and shoulders (part of the arm between the elbow and shoulder joint), thereby obtaining a primitive plate protection of the arms and legs. Then, the fragile rectangular ailettes that had appeared earlier, resembling epaulets covered with heraldry and made according to the same technology as the real wooden shields, were used as shoulder pads. Soon, they learned to forge real tubular bracers and leggings , the protection of the hips and shoulders became more perfect, and instead of ailettes they began to use real metal shoulder pads.

Plate hands and legs that appeared at the beginning of the XIV century, right up until the last quarter of the XIV century, were worn along with the brigantine simply because due to the fall of Rome in Europe they forgot to forge the cuirass . In this connection, knights in pot helmets (used from the 14th century, mainly only in tournaments) found in some miniatures and frescoes with obviously plate arms and legs are not dressed in armor at all, but in brigantines dressed with plate protection of hands and feet . And only at the end of the XIV century with the advent of the cuirass , the first plate armor appeared (the first armor , called white armor ), which was a cuirass worn with a plate skirt, plate protection of the limbs and a helmet.