Were the English soldiers in Braveheart (1995) an accurate depiction of High Middle Age soldiers?

by Wittobeast

The soldiers in that movie had a pretty cool design, but I don't think they were entirely accurate.

They seemed to have plate mail, which would be odd for a levy soldier.

Here are some pics, but these don't tell the full picture, so browse for more if you want.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b4/44/a6/b444a63f43db257ccb1dee082a845ff0.jpg

http://www.frockflicks.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Braveheart_English.jpg

http://www.hotflick.net/flicks/1995_Braveheart/big/fhd995BHT_Paul_Ticker_001.jpg

EDIT: Technically the film actually takes place in Late Middle Ages (around the start of the 14th century). My bad!

This applies primarily to Western European nations, like England (obviously), France, the Holy Roman Empire states, etc. etc.

LooksatAnimals

No. Like most things in Braveheart, the armour worn by the English soldiers is complete nonsense.

It isn't 'plate mail'. There are two main sorts of armour which might get called 'plate mail' and it doesn't really look like either of them or any other historical armour.

Plate-over-mail or 'transitional armour' could have been seen in late 13th century Scotland, but it was a full coat of mail with an armoured surcoat or 'coat of plates' and maybe some stuff like spaulders (the arm plates shown on the cavalry in your third image). This differs from the armour shown on the English infantry in many ways; the arm protection would have been articulated hoops, the body plates would have been sewn behind cloth and crucially all the plates would have been overlapping and worn over mail. The gaps in the film armour would have seriously compromised it's ability to stop sharp objects going into the man wearing it, which is kind of the entire point of armour.

The other kind of 'plate mail' would be plates joined together with mail. This would look a bit like the film armour, but instead of being sewn onto a cloth backing the plates would be linked together with metal rings. However, this kind of armour was almost unheard of in Western Europe.

Other kinds of armour which might possibly have 'inspired' the costume designers could be scale and lamellar. Neither of these looked very much like what you see in the film and would not be common in the time and place that it is set.

Actual armour likely to have been worn by English infantry at the time would have been:

A heavy gambeson or padded jack. This is a very thick coat of very tightly woven cloth, quilted together with substantial stitching. It would have been sturdy enough to stand up on it's own and could stop blows from swords, arrows, etc. The outer layer might have been leather or finer cloth.

Mail. This would probably be the most common armour for the time and place. A typical hauberk would cover the entire arms and torso, but not the neck and only the upper thigh. It was worn over a lighter version of the gambeson.

Transitional / plate-over-mail. This was mail with extra stuff on top. The torso was covered by more-or-less flat plates which were riveted or stitched between two layers of cloth or leather. The arms might have spaulders (shoulder guards), vambraces (forearms) and/or couters (elbows).

All of these would have been worn with a helmet. The helmets shown in the film aren't actually that bad, being mostly bascinets and kettle hats which would have been common. They do weirdly seem to have scale aventails protecting the neck rather than mail ones, which would have been standard.

Another notable feature of the English soldiers in the film is that they seem to have some kind of uniform. They all wear orange tabards, either with chevrons or lions on them. At the time, soldiers mostly supplied their own kit and there was no standardisation of appearance (although there were strict rules about what kind of gear you were expected to show up with). It's just about possible that a group of soldiers from the same family or village might choose to colour-coordinate for some reason, the army as a whole would not wear matching colours.