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Imagine the following situation: a late 16th century knight loses his horse in a battle and is forced to flee into a forest to escape capture. He lost all his weapons but still has his plate on (a full set from head to feet). Will this aspect save him from an animal attack?
(For the sake of keeping this narrow, let's consider that only the following will attack him: A pack of wolves, a bear, a snake.)
First of all, a note: 16th century is a bit late for full plate. By then, high-end armor was made with firearms in mind, with a thick cuirass with reduced limb coverage to save weight. Plate was also widely available to infantry, not just cavalry.
Plate armor is designed to protect you from sharp things coming from the usual directions in combat. Where protection is not necessary, comfort takes priority, so it's not a solid second skin.
A pack of wolves will surround the victim and keep biting the limbs - which have limited armor coverage. The back of the legs, in 16th century plate armor, would be at best covered by leather, which is difficult but possible to bite through.
However, plate armor was commonly worn as an addition to mail (chainmail), especially by cavalry, and older mail chausses with total coverage would still be found in the 16th century. Mail is so effective against bites that it's used to this day for shark filming.
If the knight is actually fighting back, he will be able to fight off the wolves, and be almost invincible if wearing a mail layer. The plate armor will mostly just make him sweat more.
Bear claws and teeth can also be resisted by mail and plate, but bears can be quite large. Medieval armor offers limited resistance against full-body crushing blows. The bear will be able to break the knight's limbs, crush his chest, damage muscle with bites even through mail, and cause death through internal bleeding. Unless the bear is scared away or killed, armor is not sufficient protection.
Finally, a venomous snake has little respect for chivalry. Snake attacks are unlikely, and persistence even less likely. But most venomous snakes are small and hard to notice, and there's plenty of holes in the armor. There are multiple ancient tales of mighty knights and kings falling to a snake.
That is, if exhaustion and thirst don't get him first.
P.S. Regarding exhaustion, infantry armor was designed to support marching in it for weeks. Modern weight-accurate reproductions are very comfortable to spend days in. A knight's armor is less comfortable for long walks, but a forest offers some shade. So it's possible and likely that one would keep their armor, since it wasn't easily replaceable, unless doing so was an immediate threat to their life.
P.P.S. This answer implies that the specified animals attack and persist in their attack. In reality, a walk in a European forest wouldn't present much danger. Most predators don't wake up with "Attack another predator, preferably an elite fighter of their species" on their to-do list for the day. Now, stranded in the Taiga or the Amazon... but the real danger would be mosquitoes and other insects, not large predators.
IMHO an unarmored man, let alone a armored man, would be rather safe, but not totally, walking through a forest in Europe. There were people too poor to afford any armor who worked in forests and spent all their time there, after all. And a man would be less safe walking through some forests in other continents.
Wolf attacks are rare in Europe and even more so in America, but they do happen and wolves do kill and eat humans. But even the Beast of Gevadaun supposedly killed only one unarmored man, the rest of the victims being women and children, and some unarmored women and children managed to fight it off. Most of the victims were children, guarding flocks of sheep, who were used to chasing off ordinary wolves with dogs and stones, and weren't prepared for a child-eating wolf at first.
An armored man should be able to kick or strangle a wolf to death. There are lots of dead branches lying around in most forests so the armored man could pick up a branch and club a wolf. Thus an armored man could probably beat off a lone wolf attack.
A rabid wolf would run around biting animals and objects and would attack an armored man. The armored man could probably kill or drive off a rabid wolf as easily as a normal wolf, but might possibly get rabies from touching any saliva on the armor later.
When really hungry, a wolf pack will attack large and dangerous and/or unfamiliar prey, so wolf packs can, and sometimes do, attack men. The wolves would find an armored man to be really hard to bite. Would they give up or keep trying to kill him?
Wolf hunting was a sport for European nobility and royalty. Louis the Grand Dauphin (1661-1711), son of Louis XIV, is credited with killing over a thousand wolves in his lifetime. His relatives, including women and children, also hunted wolves.
Bear attacks are rare, but do happen sometimes.
Even the smallest species of bears is large enough to kill a man, though many people survive bear attacks with various amounts of wounds. The brown bears in Europe are larger and stronger than American black bears, being Ursus arctos, the same species as the dreaded grizzly bear in North America.
Nobles in Europe often hunted bears for sport, and probably worn less than full plate armor for protection. For example, Emperor Louis IV (1282-1347) died of a stroke during a bear hunt aged 65.
Even though the largest European brown bears should be as strong as grizzly bears I find it hard to believe that they could break or dent steel armor. But a brown bear could knock an armored man around a lot and he could get really banged up inside his armor if his padding wasn't good enough. So a bear attack could injure or kill an armored man even though the claws would never touch his flesh. But I don't know what the odds would be.
A venomous snake would bite if stepped on or startled, but would only strike once or a few times, and its fangs would be unlikely to penetrate a chink in the armor. If the armored knight noticed the snake he could stomp on it, kick it away, or jump out of reach of the snake.
A giant tropical constrictor snake wouldn't be able to suffocate the armored knight and might cut itself on the sharper edges some armor had. In the worse case, the snake could die wrapped around the armored knight and the knight might be trapped there and starve to death.
The largest herbivores found in some, repeat some, European forests in your time frame could knock around an armored man a lot, more than a bear could, and might injure or kill him from being banged around inside the armor.
But all in all, a typical European forest in your time frame would be fairly - but not completely - safe for a man without armor to walk through, especially if he was being hunted by human enemies outside, and even safer - but not completely safe - for an armored man.
Interesting question.
As has already been mentioned, 16th Century armour was quite different from that seen in the 15th Century, primarily due to the advent of increasingly effective firearms and secondly due to the increased mobility of warfare as history moved into the modern age.
Early 16th Century battles like Flodden (1513) were one of the last instances where fully armoured men would have faced each other. However, fully armoured infantry were becoming replaced by partly armoured as is seen in the Landsknecht (spelling!) mercenaries found in 1500s Germany and Switzerland.
I suspect you are referring more to the type of armour seen on battlefields in the 1400's, at Bosworth field and Towton.
Yes, it would be, in the extent that it would stop you getting bitten however, armour is not designed to be worn for long periods of time, certainly not by infantry.
I own a set of infantry armour of the type that would have been worn at Towton (1461) by a well to do gentleman-at-arms. This is far from the custom sets of tightly fitting armour worn by the super rich aristocrats at the time. By the 1400s, armies in England and those opposing English armies were fighting mostly on foot, horses were used to transport the army (as during the Agincourt Campaign) and for scouting or for pursuing a broken foe but were never used against infantry. Bannockburn (1314) had shown what a small, well trained army of phalanxed pikemen could do to armoured horse; by the time Edward III and his son the Black Prince had perfected the longbow armed mounted archer (mount used to transport archer) using mounted men against formed longbow archers supported by armoured men at arms (infantry) was shown to be utter folly.
The main problem using the type of armour I own is weight. TV gives us the impression that it is relatively easy to move and function wearing armour. This may be the case with the thin aluminum worn by modern actors but, speaking from experience, you have to be in peak physical condition to wear real armour and function in it, let alone fight, for longer than a few hours.
Multiple period historical chronicles of the aftermath of battles describe beaten and fleeing troops stripping off their armour to escape. To the modern reader, unschooled or with no experience of actually wearing armour, this seems like a rash thing to do, but the reality is, if you need to run very quickly then your best bet is to ditch the armour as quickly as possible because you will certainly be able to outrun those who are still armoured - i.e. the victors, unless they are able to mount to pursue you.
Running is critical to surviving wild animal attacks. OK you can't outrun a pack of wolves or a bear but you could feasibly run somewhere safe.
Now my armour consists of this - skin up:
You can add up the weight yourself - when wearing the above for reenactment or for fighting full contact with blunt weapons I typically lose about 1 kg in sweat. It is literally exhausting. Now yes, a mid 40s modern man like me, even a fit one does not have the sheer physical strength of a 20 something 1440s man at arms who would have been trained to wear such form an early age, but even so, would not have worn it for anything other than combat or training for combat. Indeed historical chronicles frequently stress the size of baggage trains and going back to even 1066 we know that Harald Hardrada was beaten at Stamford Bridge by Harold Godwinson's Saxon army because his force was surprised and was unable to don its armour (in those days maille) which had been left on board the longships whilst Hardrada and his men feasted.
Indeed, one of the only accounts of armoured incursion was Henry V's small mounted force of men at arms and archers who marched across Normandy and Picardy to the Pas de Calais during the Agincourt campaign. The fact that Henry ordered his archers and men-at-arms to ride in their armour, and not to take it off for the duration of the (forecast) 5 day ride was unusual enough to have been cause for comment by the chroniclers of the time. The purpose was to move very fast, with no baggage train and no tents. It poured with rain for most of the march and the men were suffering from dysentery. Most slept in hedges or on the open ground. On top of this, wearing steel plate either makes you overheat or it makes you very cold indeed, especially if you are wet. Your body heat is conducted through the wet arming jack to the steel - a brilliant radiator of heat. Having worn armour for one single day in the wet, without dysentery, I have nothing but huge admiration for the discomfort and fortitude of the men who won Agincourt. By the time the battle was fought they had been on the road, in torrential cold rain for several days and their armour would have been pretty rusted. Armour being carbon steel which, unlike stainless steel, does not shatter.
Would I fancy being in the woods wearing armour of this type when trying to escape wild animals? Not on your nelly!
Would I fancy being in the woods wearing the sort of armour an archer of the period would have been wearing? Absolutely.
Archer armour of the period was usually:
The armoured infantry attack of the time would have been a bit like the tactic you see forwards use on the rugby pitch or the offensive line on an American Football pitch when they make a closely packed formation to protect the ball - it is effective because they keep their formation cohesion and use united strength. Imagine 4,000 men at arms, all armoured as above, all holding either pole axes or bill hooks, with hammers and rondels on their belts packed in tightly together, moving towards you at a rolling pace - about as fast as you can go in armour - shoulders hunched and heads down to present the strongest part of the armour to archers (the shield was out of use by the mid 1300s due to the improvements in armour). They key to their effectiveness was their momentum. They would smash through any line of unarmored troops. Provided they kept on their feet, they were the tank of the age. However, when off their feet, bogged down in mud - they were hugely vulnerable and when this happens we see men shedding their armour as quickly as they can, they would often keep a small, accessible and very sharp knife to hand so they could quickly cut the straps and the points (strings) which held the armour to their bodies. When such a formation was fought to a standstill or, worse, fell over and piled up on top of itself, lightly armoured men like archers, with suitable tin opener type weapons would have them at their mercy.
Whilst this doesn't directly answer your question, I wanted to give you some feeling to what period armour was actually like for the vast majority of armoured men and knights. It was only the super rich who could afford the Milanese or German customised plate which was designed to distribute the weight across the body and made from the most super hardened carbon steel possible with period technology. The vast majority wore a collection of bits and bobs, antique suits adapted and remodeled and pieces captured and adapted from other men. Even the customised suits restrict movement to some extent and also make it difficult to cover ground quickly.
*** - in response to the 'modern soldier has 100lbs of kit twice the weight of a medieval knight's kit' and Heavy 'plate mail' being a Hollywood myth.
Both these statements are incorrect.
Full armour from around 1450 weights at least 100lbs on its own. There is no such thing as 'plate mail' there is plate armour and there is maille (chainmail does not exist). They were frequently worn in combination which was the most affordable protection for most armoured men from 1330-1485.
A modern soldier's kit is about twice the weight of what an archer between 1330 and 1530 would have carried onto a battlefield. It is certainly not twice the weight of what 99% of armoured men would have carried, if anything, it is lighter.
Yes, there were some very wealthy men with customised suits of armour which weighed as little as 60lbs but these were extremely rare and vastly expensive, being custom made from the finest steel possible.
Anyone who doubts this is very welcome to come to my house on the Anglo Scottish border and try wearing my armour - a faithful reproduction of an averagely wealthy landed gentleman at the time of the Wars of the Roses!
Regarding the weight of the armor argument, no its weight won't kill you, modern day soldiers have a very similar equipment weight when marching and in combat, and have a worse distribution. The ultra heavy plate and chain mail is a Hollywood myth. You can do gymnastics and run an obstacle course.
Against the wild animals, it depends. As Therac said, the wolves would probably not penetrate the the plate, the mail, or the padding, which is used today to train police dogs. But the bear probably is strong enough just to crush you and the snake will find a hole.
I thought I remembered something.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MEUOW7cERI
And several other such vids about the same guy. He developed a suit of armor intended to protect him from a grizzly. Eventually he got a thing that could protect him from getting hit by a truck, by a thrown log, and from rolling down a fairly steep hill. Combination of padding and armor. Plus, I suspect, a certain tolerance for pain.
After all, if a bear throws a log at you from a truck at the top of a hill...
I have not delved deep into armor myself, but I have spent countless hours on Shadiversity's youtube channel.
I believe the knight would be able to pull through in all 3 situations, for the following reasons:
Knights were rich people (a plate mail would cost the equivelant of 5-10 million of todays dollars) who devoted their entire time in training their fighting skill. This is very important, and I agree that improvisation tactics such as fighting with a piece of wood would come easily to such a fighter.
I disagree with the most voted answer about holes in full plate. The way to really beat an armored knight is to incapacitate them somehow, maybe by tiring them/stunning them with a strong crashing blow to the helm, and then quickly use a dagger on a gap. That's why crafters would do their utmost to avoid gaps in the armor. Could a snake find such a small gap within a towering metal giant? Not fast enough, if the latter is an experienced fighter on their guard.
Bears are dangerous opponents, sure, but teeth do not beat metal. Also, in order to bite, they would have to do it on a small body piece, ie a limb. They might crash it alright, but I don't think they would be "allright" with the material being steel. Even worse, if they don't bite-and-run, which I don't think bears are used to, they are putting their most vulnerable part, their face, in reach for the knights gauntlet fist. This would be enough to scare them.
All in all, the combination of a proved piece of armor along with considerable skill would beat such opponents.
When my grandfather was a boy there was a $20 bounty on wolves. Which, at the time, was close to a month's pay for a lot of people.
The blacksmith in his little town used to hunt them for supplemental income.
Now, wolves are smart. The bounty was so high because it was hard to get them. They learn about traps quickly, and they'll run from anyone they even think might have a gun.
So the blacksmith made a suit of leather armor with large metal studs so that the wolves wouldn't be able to bite down very well and then he'd go wander through a pack's territory until somebeast got bold enough to attack this unarmed, defenseless target. Then he'd strangle it with his bare hands.
He said two or three weren't generally a problem. Four or five and things started to get a bit dicey. Six or more and you'd better be looking for a way to get out of this situation.
Plate armor is a bit more impenetrable, but it's held on with straps and a determinedly hungry wolf could probably rip it off eventually. Plus it doesn't have the studs so it would be considerably easier for the pack to grab arms and legs and drag somebody to the ground and pin them. Once they do that then it's just a matter of time. The straps will break eventually, and that's assuming the particular set doesn't have any easy gaps to get into.
Protection against a bear? A little blackbear maybe. Definitely not a grizzly. There's a documentary running around somewhere about some researcher who wanted to study grizzlies and the suit of armor he was working on so he could do it safely... Modern materials and engineering, considerably tougher than a suit of full plate... And when he put it up against a simulated paw swipe? Well, he lived... But it picked him up off his feet and tossed him on his back like a rag doll. The bear probably couldn't eat him, but kill him? Sure. You can scramble an egg without breaking the shell if you just shake it hard enough, which a big bear can definitely do if it wants.
Snakes, spiders, and other venomous things? The main threat time from those is going to be in the mornings when you're putting your boots on... The plate will offer some protection the rest of the time as long as the strike doesn't happen at one of the joints or against the face. But a good set of leathers will do almost as well at a fraction of the weight.
