Legharness

Right legharness and sabaton of an armour made for Charles VI of France as Dauphin.[…]Right legharness and sabaton of an armour in the manner of Jörg Seusenhofer of Innsbruck, dated 1549.

We have little pictorial evidence which can be dated reliably before 1320 of the existence of greaves like this, but there is an item in an inventory I have quoted before, of the arms and effects of Raoul de Nesle, which shows that they were in fact in use before 1302: “Item, ii furbished legharnesses, with closed greaves” (ii harnas de gaumbes fourbis, de coi les greves sont closes). The fact that the legharness is described as furbished has been taken to indicate that it was made of metal, not leather, but it is equally likely to imply that all straps, hinges and fittings were complete and in place.

After the wound treatment business, a number of new pieces of armament began to turn up on the training ground: shields and bucklers, cuirasses and half-armors, legharnesses, pauldrons and vambraces, helms with buffes and low-cut visors.

There were no legharnesses but, instead, special boots modeled after the Roman soldier’s caligae.[…]In the early 1500s German armorers developed a foot-combat armor which had large symmetrical pauldrons with haute-pieces, full closed vambraces with laminated joint defense opposite the cowters, and full legharnesses with closed cuisses and laminated defense opposite the poleyns.

Like Quijada de Reayo before him, Zapata also insists that the jouster wear full legharness which, he says, ‘is fitting and proper so as not to hit the tilt or counter-tilt with your feet and break them and so as to enter safely amidst the kicks of other horses’.[…]It is common on German-made armours of the period for the cuisses on both legs to break down so that the legharness could be used for different functions, be it war, the joust, the tourney or foot combat.

Early fifteenth-century leg defenses (legharnesses) also differed little from their fourteenth-century predecessors. Only two significant changes were made to the legharness and both came about 1430.