A gambeson (also known as, or similar to where historic or modern distinctions are made, the acton, aketon, padded jack, pourpoint, paltock, haustement, or arming doublet) is a padded defensive

jacket A jacket is a garment for the upper body, usually extending below the hips. A jacket typically has sleeves and fastens in the front or slightly on the side. Jackets without sleeves are vests. A jacket is generally lighter, tighter-fitting, and ...

, worn as

armour Armour (Commonwealth English) or armor (American English; see American and British English spelling differences#-our, -or, spelling differences) is a covering used to protect an object, individual, or vehicle from physical injury or damage, e ...

separately, or combined with

mail The mail or post is a system for physically transporting postcards, letter (message), letters, and parcel (package), parcels. A postal service can be private or public, though many governments place restrictions on private systems. Since the mid ...

plate armour Plate armour is a historical type of personal body armour made from bronze, iron, or steel plates, culminating in the iconic suit of armour entirely encasing the wearer. Full plate steel armour developed in Europe during the Late Middle Ages, es ...

. Gambesons were produced with a sewing technique called

quilting Quilting is the process of joining a minimum of three layers of textile, fabric together either through stitching manually using a Sewing needle, needle and yarn, thread, or mechanically with a sewing machine or specialised longarm quilting ...

or pourpointing that produced a padded cloth. They were usually constructed of

linen Linen () is a textile made from the fibers of the flax plant. Linen is very strong and absorbent, and it dries faster than cotton. Because of these properties, linen is comfortable to wear in hot weather and is valued for use in garments. Lin ...

wool Wool is the textile fiber obtained from sheep and other mammals, especially goats, rabbits, and camelids. The term may also refer to inorganic materials, such as mineral wool and glass wool, that have some properties similar to animal w ...

; the stuffing varied, and could be, for example, scrap

cloth Textile is an umbrella term that includes various fiber-based materials, including fibers, yarns, filaments, threads, and different types of fabric. At first, the word "textiles" only referred to woven fabrics. However, weaving is n ...

or horse hair. An arming doublet worn under armour, particularly

of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe, contains arming points for attaching plates. Fifteenth-century examples may include mail goussets sewn into the elbows and armpits, to protect the wearer in locations not covered by plate. German gothic armour arming doublets were generally shorter than

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance languag ...

white armour doublets, which could extend to the upper thigh. In late fifteenth-century Italy, this also became a civilian fashion. Men who were not knights wore arming doublets, probably because the garment suggested status and

chivalry Chivalry, or the chivalric language, is an informal and varying code of conduct that developed in Europe between 1170 and 1220. It is associated with the medieval Christianity, Christian institution of knighthood, with knights being members of ...

Etymology

The term ''gambeson'' is a loan from the Old French , , originally , formed after the

Middle High German Middle High German (MHG; or ; , shortened as ''Mhdt.'' or ''Mhd.'') is the term for the form of High German, High German language, German spoken in the High Middle Ages. It is conventionally dated between 1050 and 1350, developing from Old High ...

term , 'doublet', in turn from

Old High German Old High German (OHG; ) is the earliest stage of the German language, conventionally identified as the period from around 500/750 to 1050. Rather than representing a single supra-regional form of German, Old High German encompasses the numerous ...

, 'stomach' (

cognate In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymological ancestor in a common parent language. Because language change can have radical effects on both the s ...

to ''

womb The uterus (from Latin ''uterus'', : uteri or uteruses) or womb () is the organ in the reproductive system of most female mammals, including humans, that accommodates the embryonic and fetal development of one or more fertilized eggs until bi ...

''). The term ''aketon'', originally the

medieval French Old French (, , ; ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France approximately between the late 8th

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

, meaning 'cotton' (definite article – " cotton"). In Old Norse, medieval Norse, the garment was known as , literally 'weapon shirt', or . is a loan from (Middle) Low German. is probably also a loan from Middle Low German, though the word has its likely origin in Italian, and is related to the Latin , meaning 'abdomen', cognate with English ''paunch''.

History

Open, quilted leather jackets and trousers were worn by

Scythian The Scythians ( or ) or Scyths (, but note Scytho- () in composition) and sometimes also referred to as the Pontic Scythians, were an ancient Eastern Iranian equestrian nomadic people who had migrated during the 9th to 8th centuries BC fr ...

horsemen before the 4th century BC, as can be seen on Scythian gold ornaments crafted by Greek goldsmiths. As stand-alone cloth armour, the European gambeson can be traced at least to the late tenth century, but it is likely to have been used in various forms for longer. In the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...

, its use became widespread in the thirteenth century and resembled a

tunic A tunic is a garment for the torso, usually simple in style, reaching from the shoulders to a length somewhere between the hips and the ankles. It might have arm-sleeves, either short or full-length. Most forms have no fastenings. The name deri ...

. Eventually, it made way for the pourpoint (jack or paltock) in the 14th century and had surplanted the gambeson in Henry III's Assize of Arms (1242). The gambeson was used both as a complete armour unto itself and underneath mail and plate to cushion the body and prevent chafing. Evidence for its use under armour does not appear in iconography until the mid-twelfth century. Although they are thought to have been used in Europe much earlier, gambesons underwent a revolution from their first proven use (in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries) as an independent item of armour to one that facilitated the wearing of mail. They remained popular amongst infantry as cloth armour. Although quilted armour survived into the

English Civil War The English Civil War or Great Rebellion was a series of civil wars and political machinations between Cavaliers, Royalists and Roundhead, Parliamentarians in the Kingdom of England from 1642 to 1651. Part of the wider 1639 to 1653 Wars of th ...

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

as a "poor man's

cuirass A cuirass ( ; ; ) is a piece of armour that covers the torso, formed of one or more pieces of metal or other rigid material. The term probably originates from the original material, leather, from the Old French word and the Latin word . The us ...

" and as an item to be worn beneath the few remaining suits of full plate, it was increasingly replaced by the buff coat–a leather jacket of rough suede. There are two distinctive designs of gambeson: those designed to be worn beneath armour, and those designed to be worn as independent armour. The latter tend to be thicker and higher in the collar and faced with other materials, such as leather or heavy canvas. This variant is usually referred to as "padded jack" and made of several (some say around 18, some even 30) layers of cotton, linen or wool. These jacks were known to stop even heavy arrows, and their design of multiple layers bears a striking resemblance to modern-day

body armour Body armour, personal armour (also spelled ''armor''), armoured suit (''armored'') or coat of armour, among others, is armour for human body, a person's body: protective clothing or close-fitting hands-free shields designed to absorb or deflect ...

, which used at first

silk Silk is a natural fiber, natural protein fiber, some forms of which can be weaving, woven into textiles. The protein fiber of silk is composed mainly of fibroin and is most commonly produced by certain insect larvae to form cocoon (silk), c ...

, then ballistic nylon, and later,

Kevlar Kevlar (para-aramid) is a strong, heat-resistant synthetic fiber, related to other aramids such as Nomex and Technora. Developed by Stephanie Kwolek at DuPont in 1965, the high-strength material was first used commercially in the early 1970s as ...

as its fabric. For common soldiers who could not afford mail or plate armour, the gambeson, combined with a helmet as the only additional protection, remained a common sight on European battlefields during the entire Middle Ages. Its decline—paralleling that of plate armour—came only with the

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...

, as the use of firearms became more widespread. By the eighteenth century, it was no longer in military use. While the use of linen in these jackets has been proven by archaeological evidence, the use of cotton – and cotton-based canvas – is disputed since large amounts of cotton cloth were not widely available in Northern Europe. It is probable that Egypt (and

Asia Minor Anatolia (), also known as Asia Minor, is a peninsula in West Asia that makes up the majority of the land area of Turkey. It is the westernmost protrusion of Asia and is geographically bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Aegean ...

generally) still produced cotton well after the 7th and 8th centuries, and knowledge (and samples) of this cloth was brought to Europe by the returning

Crusaders The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and at times directed by the Papacy during the Middle Ages. The most prominent of these were the campaigns to the Holy Land aimed at reclaiming Jerusalem and its surrounding ...

; however, the logistics and expense of equipping a town militia or army with large numbers of cotton-based garments make its usage doubtful when flax-based textiles (linen) were in widespread use. Rytter fra Bagirmi

Linothorax The ''linothorax'' (, from the , ) is a type of upper body armor that was used throughout the ancient Mediterranean world. The term ''linothorax'' is a modern term based on the Greek , which means "wearing a breastplate of linen"; a number of anc ...

was a type of armour similar to gambeson, used by

ancient Greeks Ancient Greece () was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity (), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically re ...

. Meanwhile, the Mesoamericans were known to have used a kind of quilted textile armour called

ichcahuipilli The ichcahuīpīlli, known in Spanish as ''escaupil'', was a Mesoamerican military soft body armor similar to the European gambeson that was commonly used by the Aztecs and the Tlaxcaltecs. It was constructed of densely packed, unspun cotton stitc ...

before the arrival of the

conquistadors Conquistadors (, ) or conquistadores (; ; ) were Spanish Empire, Spanish and Portuguese Empire, Portuguese colonizers who explored, traded with and colonized parts of the Americas, Africa, Oceania and Asia during the Age of Discovery. Sailing ...

, who loaned this word as . Another example is the bullet-resistant Myeonje baegab created during Joseon Korea to confront the effects of Western rifles.

References

External links

*
How a man shall be armed for his ease when he shall fight on foot
a translation of the mid-fifteenth century treatise on armour, translated into modern English and accompanied by pictorial references. * {{Elements of Medieval armour 13th-century fashion 14th-century fashion Medieval armour Western plate armour Quilting Body armor

Etymology

History

See also

References

External links