Probably a few months too late for Daniel's history exam, in fact, but if the Battle of Agincourt comes round again he might like to have a look at some recent research by Leeds University which suggests that the armour worn by the French knights was so heavy that by the time they closed with the English lines they would have been too exhausted to actually fight:
...people wearing armour expended up to 2.3 times as much energy while walking and 1.9 times as much energy while running compared with wearing no armour ... The doubling effect was greater than could be accounted for by the extra weight of the armour alone. The researchers worked out that if the knights had carried the total weight of the armour in a backpack, they would have experienced just 1.7 times their unloaded energy expenditure.
"Carrying a load of about 30kg spread around the body requires more energy than carrying the same load in a backpack ... because, in a suit of armour, the limbs are loaded with weight which means it takes more effort to swing them with each stride" ... In addition, the armour constricts breathing. "Being wrapped up in a tight shell of thick steel makes one feel invincible, but also unable to take a deep breath," said Federico Formenti of the University of Auckland, who was a co-author of the research. "You feel breathless as soon as you move around in medieval armour."
The news report (with video of a volunteer running on a treadmill in armour to measure his respiration rate) is here, with a link to the abstract of the scientific report here.
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