Robert Brigandine

(About): A Fantastic Simulation Brigandine for Roleplay and Re-Enactment

Our Robert Brigandine is, at essence, a leather brigandine made from a handsome leather tunic, studded with metal rivets and secured at the sides with tough leather straps. It is hand-made by Mytholon, Germany’s foremost supplier of roleplaying and re-enactment equipment, who are celebrating their 25th anniversary this year! Every shred of this experience and expertise is embodied in their pieces, which are lovingly made with a critical eye for detail. Our Robert Brigandine cannot fail to impress – whether from afar in the melee of re-enactment, or up close in a roleplay setting.

Authentic Historical Design

The main body of our Robert Brigandine is made from rugged suede strips approximately an inch wide, that are all interwoven together to form a tough leather armor, hand-riveted with a solid metal rivet at each overlap. The format of the armor itself is a single-piece open-fronted tunic, with an opening down the front, and openings from each armpit to the lower hem. Each of these openings is securely buckled with tough leather straps, again all hand-riveted in place, secured by antiqued metal buckles. There are four at the front, and four at each side for a total of twelve points – each of these is fully adjustable with multiple strap holes, meaning that it can be adjusted for a precise fit on a wide variety of body-types.

Attention to Detail for Modern Wearers

It is a piece of armor that has been designed to be thoroughly wearable in roleplay and re-enactment settings: the whole garment has been hemmed in rough suede so that it will neither unravel nor catch on other armor or clothing. Its neck opening, arm holes and centre slit are all generous, giving maximum possible freedom of movement. It is a perfect light armor for use in the same manner as the historical original: by lighter troops such as archers, skirmishers or light infantry – if you are portraying such a character, you could pair the Robert Brigandine with an open-faced helmet and simple light clothing, as would have been worn by these historical soldiers. The master leatherworkers at Mytholon have designed this leather brigandine to go with other items of armor, since more heavily-armed men-at-arms would wear a brigandine with knee-cops, chainmail gorgets and padded gambesons. It’s a fantastically flexible piece of torso armor: it can be used to represent a medieval brigandine in a re-enactment context, it would fit brilliantly into a whole range of fantasy roleplay outfits – in short, it’s a no-brainer for any LARP armory.

(History): Brigands and Brigandines

The brigandine is the workhorse of the Late Middle Ages armor. The High Middle Ages (c. 1000 CE – 1250 CE) saw the development of terrifying and powerful weaponry that began to render the armor of the era increasingly inadequate. Stout cloth, leather and chainmail could no longer defend consistently against the enormous crushing and piercing forces of the longbow, the crossbow, the pole-axe and the hammer. Thus, armor-makers (and soldiers in the field) scrambled to develop new forms of armor capable of frustrating these new threats. The brigandine emerged out of the experimental milieu of ‘transitional armor’ around the beginning of the 13th-century CE. Historians theorise that soldiers began simply sewing plates of iron into their surcotes to make a ‘coat of plates’. Fantastically well-preserved examples of these have been excavated from the mass graves at the Battle of Visby on the Swedish island of Gotland, dating from 1361. These ad-hoc solutions to inadequate armor began to spur new garments: in one direction, the plates became larger, eventually doing away with the mounting garment entirely to become the metal breastplates and cuirasses of the Late Middle Ages. In the other, the metal plates were formalised into narrow overlapping strips (or lames) that would be securely riveted into the interior of a stout cloth or leather doublet. Thus, the brigandine was born. It was a cheap, easily maintained form of plate armor that became near ubiquitous amongst light infantry by the end of the medieval period. Almost all of the surviving historical brigandines are mounted on cloth doublets (some of which are extremely fine), although there is one surviving 15th-century leather brigandine at the Musée de l’Armée in Paris.

Technical Specifications:

• • Material: Suede
  • Secondary material: Leather, metal rivets, metal buckles
  • Color: Brown / Black / Green

• Sizing:

Small/Medium:

Chest – 41-43.3 Inches

Large/X-Large:

Chest – 43-45.3 Inches