Introduction of brigandine to China
It is generally accepted that Chinese armies adopted brigandine armour due to Mongol influence, although curiously this appears to have occurred only after the fall of the Mongol-ruled Yuan Dynasty. To elaborate, there are very few records suggesting that the Yuan army made use of brigandine armour at all, and most 'evidence' seems to stem from Qing- and Joseon-era brigandines in Japan’s Mongolian Invasion Historical Museum being erroneously attributed to the Yuan period. Moreover, written records and a few armour finds from the early Ming period also indicate that the early Ming army was still predominantly equipped with lamellar armour.
The earliest written record that explicitly mentions brigandine armour comes from an armour regulation found in the Collected Statutes of the Ming Dynasty (《大明會典》), dated to the ninth year of the reign of the Hongzhi Emperor (1496 A.D.). However, the wording of the statute suggests that brigandine armour was already known in China for some time—albeit probably only in the not-too-distant past.
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| Ming soldiers wearing brigandines, from 'Zhen Wu Ling Ying Tu Ce (《真武靈應圖冊》)'. |
Another possible piece of evidence for early Ming brigandine comes from its depictions in Zhen Wu Ling Ying Tu Ce (《真武靈應圖冊》), a collection of Daoist painted scrolls. Historians remain undecided on whether this scroll collection should be dated to the reign of the Yongle Emperor (i.e. early 15th century) or to the twilight years of the Ming Dynasty (i.e. 17th century). Nevertheless, since it is known that Ming brigandine underwent significant style changes during the Ming–Qing transition period, yet the armours depicted here do not reflect those changes, an earlier date is more likely to be the correct one.
Thus, given the available evidence, at best an informed guess can be made that brigandine armour was introduced to China some time in the fifteenth century.
Styles and designs of Ming brigandines
1. Brigandine coat
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| Many variations in designs found on Ming brigandines (click to enlarge). |
A Ming brigandine was a suit of armour with iron (or low-carbon steel) plates fixed to a cloth cover from the inside using copper rivets. All Ming brigandines took the form of a loose-fitting, single-breasted coat that somewhat resembled a modern gilet, albeit with considerable variations in collar designs, sleeve designs, coat lengths, rivet patterns, and, of course, colours.
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| Ming infantry kitted in various types of brigandines. |
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| Ming cavalry kitted in various types of brigandines. |
Nearly all variations of Ming brigandines were used by infantry and cavalry alike, although naturally foot soldiers would have had different preferences and requirements from their mounted counterparts, causing some styles of brigandine to be more prevalent than others among certain troop types. Broadly speaking, for much of the Ming period foot soldiers preferred to wear short-sleeved, hip-length to knee-length armours alone, whereas mounted troops preferred sleeveless or cap-sleeved brigandines of either waist length or ankle length, often combined with additional armour items such as Bi Fu (臂縛) and armoured skirts.
1.1 Auxiliary armour
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| Common Ming period auxiliary armours of brigandine construction (click to enlarge). |
Brigandine also replaced lamellar in the construction of various auxiliary armours during the Ming period. The most common brigandine auxiliary armour was the aventail of a helmet, which came in two main varieties: with or without separate cheek pieces. By the twilight years of the Ming Dynasty, brigandine throat guards, underarm protectors, and front armour attachments also came into widespread use, owing to the introduction of a new style of brigandine armour (see below).
There is also some pictorial evidence suggesting that the rectangular brigandine throat guard—of the type commonly associated with Qing armour—was actually already in use during the Ming period.
2. Composite armour
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| Ming cavalry kitted in composite brigandine armours. |
A rarer form of Ming brigandine, seemingly reserved for mounted elite troops and guards, was the so-called 'composite armour'. It appeared to be a sleeveless, ankle-length brigandine coat reinforced with a different type of armour at the upper torso, which may have been of scale, lamellar, brigandine, or possibly mail construction. It remains unknown whether the upper-torso armour was directly integrated into the brigandine coat or was simply a separate partial armour worn over a common brigandine coat.
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| Various forms of armours in use during late Ming period, from 'Bing Lu (《兵錄》)'. Third and fourth armour from the left are composite brigandines. |
The late Ming period military treatise Bing Lu (《兵錄》) also contains two illustrations of ankle-length composite brigandines. One depicts a brigandine coat with a lamellar skirt, while the other shows a lamellar coat with a brigandine skirt.
3. Late Ming period two-piece brigandine
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| Several Ming cavalry in two-piece brigandines, image cropped from 'Xing Jun Tu (《行軍圖》)', a late Ming copy of an earlier painting. |
A new style of Ming brigandine largely supplanted (but likely did not completely phase out) older styles of armour during the twilight years of the Ming Dynasty. The new style consisted of a helmet with assorted brigandine aventail and a curved triangular throat guard, a sleeveless hip-length coat and an enlarged armoured skirt (often in mismatched colours), a pair of large underarm protectors, a square-shaped front armour attachment, as well as a pair of segmented Bi Fu armguards to make a whole set.
After the downfall of the Ming Dynasty, the ascendant Qing Dynasty inherited the armour design, and the style eventually evolved into the iconic Qing brigandine upon further modifications.
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