Should you ever find yourself in the Middle East battling Saracens, in the mid 13th century then you'll probably be wearing one of the three crusader helmets. These medieval helmets defined a generation of Christian warriors by becoming an inseparable part of their medieval armor.
The crusader helmet evolved a lot between the 10th and 14th centuries leading to three distinct style medieval helmets we shall be looking at today. To spice things up, we will tell you what it felt like putting one of these big boys on during a sweaty battle. Let's get going.
The Iron Hat
This first and earliest known crusader helmet is known as a Chappelle de faire which is old French for 'iron hat'. Although the earlier style didn't have the faceplate there was just a top part often with the nose guard and the faceplate got added later. Certainly most pictures we have seen of church fighting in these helmets have made the crusaders look scary and ghost like.
Putting a crusader helmet on today, you would discover inside the head that you can hear yourself really amazingly well though it's awful to have a lot of your own voice just going straight into faceplate and not in the direction that you would prefer it. You can see pretty well and the amount of vision that's blocked by the eye slits is not too bad and you can see straight ahead fine.
But the downside of this crusader helmet is that while you can definitely see straight, at about some sort of angle the view is restricted. You can probably dodge things that come in the way 180 degrees in front of you but when you are running up a flight of stairs you can't make out as far as your eye swivels. How the hell did crusaders see through the tiny slots? One can only imagine.
This style of crusader helmet went out of favor not so much due to the restricted view but because hitting the top of the helmet - which would be quite common in those days- would make the helmet buckle.
Hitting the very strong part of the helmet is ok but one right on top is like hitting a weaker part of the helmet and even if the helmet doesn't give away, your neck might give away to the strike. That blow is going straight down on top of your head and it's not glancing off and that could break your neck.
Flat Top Helmet
This flat-topped style of crusader helmet didn't last for very long but it lasted a couple of generations so it couldn't have been completely rubbish. By the 13th century, they started to get bigger helmets. These were actually pretty much the same thing but the faceplate now extended all the way around the back. This medieval helmet would be worn over the top like the last one with a padded coif.
Upon wearing the flat top crusader helmet, you would feel considerably less comfortable because the eye slits are quite a bit narrower and you would have a big problem now looking down. You can see through these if lighting conditions were very good but if the ground was very pale you would perhaps be able to see a little bit of the ground but not much.
One of the most deadly blows to aim against this crusader helmet would be starting low and coming up which was a very popular type of blow and under the best of circumstances that sort of blow is rather difficult to parry. If you can't see it because you're down with vision that is really hampered then it's going to be very difficult indeed to see the attack coming.
Again you'll notice the flat top crusader helmet has the same problem as the last helmet which perhaps explains why this was superseded by the following style we are raving about below.
Norman Style Helmet
This crusader helmet is pretty much the same but it's got the sugarloaf top which is a pointed arched top very similar to the Norman helmet.
You may realize that the early Crusaders went to the Middle East with Norman helmets so this wasn't a new technology. The arched topped helmet had been around for many many centuries and crusaders went back to it somewhere in the 14th century.
The flat-topped helmet seems like a temporary experiment (why did they ever try it in the first place?) but since the experiment lasted a fair while so it couldn't have been an absolute failure but they went back to this style of crusader helmet which this shape which causes blows to glance off as opposed to break your neck.
This proved a lot more popular with the warriors but while you could see well through this crusader helmet, it was quite heavy and awkward and soldiers found it difficult to breath in it.
But with proper neck armor and padding, the helmet provided excellent protection from all strikes. We would not like to fight in this for any length of time but then again we aren't the rough and tough crusaders.
So here was our foray into medieval armor history. Hope you found the journey of crusader helmets fascinating.
