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 sebster wrote:
Seeing the full range of kits in the original blog is well worth it. It's interesting to see how much kit lightened up from the Bosworth field to Tilbury, before slowly becoming heavier again over time. The obvious reason is the introduction of blackpowder weapons, but the steady increase in kit over the blackpowder era indicates other factors are at play as well.

Well, as we get into the black powder era, and you look at some of the new kit that comes with it, we certainly see more stuff, but it's also more specialized stuff. I mean, an ax can be used to kill people, chop wood, put a tent peg in the ground, roughly dress an animal (and I really do mean roughly) etc... Whereas a powderhorn can be used as.... a powderhorn. Obviously my examples are a simplification of things, but there is some level of specialization in gear once we're talking about boomsticks.

I understand why guys carry a lot of gear nowadays - NODs, "mission-essential" equipment like GPS, laptops, cameras, thermal, sapper equipment, etc. It's kinda crazy though that before PPE and all of that stuff even existed, we loaded guys down hard with simple things like E-tools and ammo.

I heard a quote...and I'm probably butchering it here...but it went something like "The Mule has always done better than the man in war, because we always made sure never to load the mule with more than 25% bodyweight."

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Well, as we get into the black powder era, and you look at some of the new kit that comes with it, we certainly see more stuff, but it's also more specialized stuff. I mean, an ax can be used to kill people, chop wood, put a tent peg in the ground, roughly dress an animal (and I really do mean roughly) etc... Whereas a powderhorn can be used as.... a powderhorn. Obviously my examples are a simplification of things, but there is some level of specialization in gear once we're talking about boomsticks.

Sure, but I’d have thought having more specialist gear would mean an increase in load, not a decrease. That is – if you use to carry a multi-purpose tool like an axe to chop wood and to chop faces, and now you have a powder horn, well the need to chop wood hasn’t gone away so I’d have thought you would now carry a powder horn and an axe.

I wonder part of the difference might be the different between campaigns with England and campaigns abroad. Tilbury troops were expecting to fight on homesoil, and if you compare to Waterloo a lot of the extra crap is stuff maybe required because they're away from regular sources of supply.

I guess what had me puzzled was that the gear at Bosworth Field was so heavy, but taking another look most of that was armour and weapons - there's little extra logistics type stuff.

 sebster wrote:

Sure, but I’d have thought having more specialist gear would mean an increase in load, not a decrease. That is – if you use to carry a multi-purpose tool like an axe to chop wood and to chop faces, and now you have a powder horn, well the need to chop wood hasn’t gone away so I’d have thought you would now carry a powder horn and an axe.

I wonder part of the difference might be the different between campaigns with England and campaigns abroad. Tilbury troops were expecting to fight on homesoil, and if you compare to Waterloo a lot of the extra crap is stuff maybe required because they're away from regular sources of supply.

I guess what had me puzzled was that the gear at Bosworth Field was so heavy, but taking another look most of that was armour and weapons - there's little extra logistics type stuff.

While this is all true, if you look at the inventory for the Siege of Jerusalem, and even to an extent the Bosworth field, they are carrying a lighter, yet more cumbersome load. By this I mean that they have a polearm, sword, mace, ax, dagger/dirk and a (presumably) paring knife.

Once you get into the gunpowder age, most of those weapons are removed in favor of the musket/rifle and bayonet. Which is obviously a heavier object than a sword is. However, they combine this added weight with an arguably more ergonomic way to carry all of it. Especially the Waterloo kit, seems to me that most of the kit is cleaning supplies for the firearm, as well as a sort of "carrying case" with specific packing instructions/order for the bags that were carried. And I suppose we can add in a bit of the specific examples that the photographer is using and the type of engagement we're talking about... For instance, Bosworth fields being on English soil, fighting men would not have necessarily needed as much "campaign" gear when compared with the Siege of Jerusalem, or WW1/Waterloo, all of which were fought well away from home.

I'd guess you could say it's a rather fascinating combination of technological advances combined with what the pragmatic soldier would/will put up with

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
For instance, Bosworth fields being on English soil, fighting men would not have necessarily needed as much "campaign" gear when compared with the Siege of Jerusalem, or WW1/Waterloo, all of which were fought well away from home.

Yeah, that’s what I was getting at as well – that the reduction in kit might in the middle images might not just be the blackpowder thing, but also that those soldiers were fighting in their own country again. As time moved on and the English were once again doing all their fighting in someone else’s country the amount of kit increased again.

Good points on the distinction between weight and bulk, and especially on the ergonomic advances that might have made carrying more gear practical again. Looking back over the photos

I'd guess you could say it's a rather fascinating combination of technological advances combined with what the pragmatic soldier would/will put up with

Good point. “What soldiers can put up with” is one of those practical parts of the military that often gets missed in the analysis.

One of my favourite little stories of WWII was the gas masks given to German soldiers. They were perfectly designed units provided in little water tight containers… problem being that they were the only water tight containers given to the troops. So the masks were thrown out pretty much straight away, and the containers used to store cigarettes, photos and all the other stuff that soldiers really didn’t want to get wet.

That all probably looks heavier than it is.

 BrotherGecko wrote:
I think it is surprising just how small your average knight actually was. Whenever I see armor from the medieval periods they look like they were designed for 12-15 year olds. Your average modern American or European soldier would struggle to get those suits on.

That is actually fairly inaccurate, for a variety of reasons. Some of that armor was in fact built for 12-15 year olds. Some of it was display pieces never intended to be worn. Sometimes it is made of mismatched pieces and regardless it is hard to figure just exactly how it fit on an individual centuries dead. While average height is higher now than then, that is also a fact that seems to have fluctuated over the years.

http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/medimen.htm

for example.