Chapter 190: Cloth-Faced Armor and Lamellar Armor

Sure enough, you should let professionals handle professional matters. More than twenty days after the Cao family sent someone out with the letter, Tajiks with red-and-white checkered headscarves arrived in Polu Prefecture and smoothly took over the high-tech craft of cotton fluffing.

After some contact, Zhang Zhao was surprised to discover that he had actually encountered this maternal clan of the Cao family long ago — the people who called themselves descendants of the Han and the Sun God.

Because they were in fact the former people of the kingdom of Jiepantuo, and the Great Tang had once established the very famous Congling Garrison on Jiepantuo's territory.

The Cao family's maternal clan were the descendants of that Jiepantuo king, Pei Xing, who had been forced to surrender to the Tibetans.

At the same time, the falconry warriors Pei Shengyuan and Pei Tongyuan, whom Prefect Pei of Khotan had recommended to Zhang Zhao, were actually distant relatives of the Cao family. By seniority, Lady Cao was the Pei brothers' cousin-aunt.

And the identity of that big-bearded Prefect Pei was also now clear: he was a descendant of Pei Lengleng, the former king of Shule.

It was just that after Shule fell to the Tibetans, his branch of the family had not withdrawn to Kucha with the Anxi Army, but had instead gone south to Khotan.

Although Khotan was also under Tibetan control at the time, under the protection of the Yuchi family they had still managed to settle down smoothly.

Later they moved onto the territory of the former kingdom of Jiepantuo and lived intermingled with the descendants of King Pei Xing of Jiepantuo.

From then on, both sides abandoned their original Saka surnames and used only the Han surname Pei to signify the union of the two peoples.

However, Prefect Pei also brought Zhang Zhao some unfortunate news: the descendants of Luo Tijie, the Great Tang's last commander of the Congling Garrison, and of the garrison city's soldiers, along with Lu Yang, the Defense Commissioner of Shule who had gone to join them, and the descendants of Bai Huan, king of Kucha, had had their fortress stormed by the Karakhanids as early as sixty years ago. A small number escaped, but the majority were captured and vanished without a trace.

Zhang Zhao let out a long sigh. It was not exactly "without a trace" — hadn't Lu Sanlang, a descendant of the Lu family, become a traitor and betrayed the secret of the Loyalty Vault?

Now, the only Anxi Army remnants that could still be found were the three families of Zheng, Yang, and the Xue family, the kings of Ferghana. He could only hope that the fortresses they held had not been found by the Karakhanids.

With complicated feelings, Zhang Zhao brought Man Xiong and Dunzhu, his two trusty sidekicks, to the completely transformed cotton-processing workshop.

A thick, dense, somewhat stiff cotton-padded mat was brought before Zhang Zhao's eyes. This was the somewhat incomplete golden finger that Zhang Zhao had opened.

Actually, it was much the same as the cotton-padded mats of later ages. Apart from being a bit stiffer, the biggest difference was in the cost.

"Great King, this padded mat has been cut according to your requirements. I tried it myself, and it really can make the kind of padded coat you described.

It's truly quite warm. I never imagined before that cotton could be used this way, besides being woven into layered cloth!"

Lady Cao's face shone with excitement; it seemed she had already walked out of the shadows.

Zhang Zhao also now knew the source of the shadow in her heart: Ahmad, the youngest son of Satuq whom she had raised for over a year after being captured together with him, had died of illness at the beginning of the year.

As for whether this "death by illness" was really death by illness — only heaven knew.

In any case, since the fall of Shule, Lady Cao had never seen Ahmad again, until she learned of his death.

"This padded mat must not be cheap!" Zhang Zhao felt the mat, then picked it up and shook it, and asked.

Lady Cao nodded. "Right! It's just too labor-intensive. The manpower needed to weave one padded mat like this could weave three bolts of layered cloth."

Three bolts of layered cloth — that is, the stuff later ages called Gaochang white cotton cloth. At this time, the lower-quality kind was called layered cloth, and the good-quality kind was fine cotton cloth.

In the Hexi region at this time, under the Guiyi Army's rule, a small landlord with one hundred twenty mu of land paid about one bolt of fine cotton cloth in taxes per year.

One bolt of fine cotton cloth could be exchanged for two and a half bolts of layered cloth. Converted, that meant the time and labor cost of making this six- or seven-jin padded mat was roughly enough to pay the taxes on fifty mu of dry farmland.

Expensive! Truly damn expensive! But worth it.

Because cloth-faced armor — that is, cotton armor — had an incomparable advantage over the current Tang-style lamellar armor.

The term "cloth-faced armor" sounds like some kind of cloth armor with surely very poor defense, or many people think cloth-faced armor was for defending against firearms and not necessarily useful against cold weapons.

First of all, this thing is not cloth armor. It is made from fine cotton cloth plus repeatedly pounded cotton, lined inside with large pieces of refined iron armor plates.

That is to say, on the surface it looks like a padded jacket, but inside it is actually an iron-armored garment lined with hard iron plates.

Its defensive power might be somewhat weaker than the integrated plate armor of medieval Europe, but if not stronger than Tang-style lamellar armor, it is absolutely not worse.

Secondly, the talk about defending against firearms is complete nonsense. First, cloth-faced armor is not very effective at defending against firearms, unless we are talking about the shoddy government-made guns of the late Ming.

And even if it were made to defend against firearms, just think: how much kinetic energy does a firearm have? How much does a bow and arrow have? If it can defend against firearms, defending against bows and arrows is a piece of cake.

Whether in the age of cold weapons or hot weapons, the greatest casualties come from ranged attacks. If this armor can stop arrows, then it is good armor.

Then there is the weight. With Tang-style lamellar armor, no matter how you reduce the weight, if you want full-body defense, it will be at least sixty jin or more.

But cloth-faced armor — take, for example, a Qing dynasty suit of armor collected by the Jinzhou Municipal Museum.

The helmet has a remaining weight of 1.875 kilograms, the garment a remaining weight of 13.025 kilograms, for a total weight of 14.9 kilograms — about thirty jin. And this is the large-coverage type that protects the arms, armpits, and torso.

The reason for this lies in the difference in the armor plates. Cloth-faced armor can use copper rivets together with cotton to secure the armor plates, which allows the plates to be made larger, increasing defense while also reducing weight.

Lamellar armor, on the other hand, requires small, dense armor plates strung together with cords, using the method of overlapping and stacking to form regional defensive capability.

Historically, Qing dynasty cloth-faced armor generally had fewer than six hundred armor plates, while lamellar armor generally required at least two thousand or more. The cords for stringing the plates alone weighed several jin.

Compared with lamellar armor, cloth-faced armor is fully half the weight. This is absolutely a leap forward in development. A simpleton like Man Xiong can still run while wearing sixty jin of lamellar armor; put him in cloth-faced armor and he'd probably take off flying.

At critical moments, he could even be made to wear two layers of cloth-faced armor. With that kind of protection, Zhang Zhao believed that even if a mace smashed down on him, the damage would be cut in half.

From the perspective of saving money, although cotton was a bit expensive at this time, as cotton seeds and techniques kept improving, it would certainly get cheaper and cheaper. But lamellar armor required forging more than two thousand small armor plates, and the smelting and forging cost was extraordinarily high.

Production was about the same. The method of using copper rivets with cotton to secure the armor plates was countless times simpler and cheaper than lamellar armor.

You have to understand that making lamellar armor requires punching two holes in each iron armor plate, then binding them one by one with ox-sinew mixed cord.

More than two thousand armor plates! Just punching the horseshoe-shaped holes means punching more than four thousand holes, and then they have to be slowly threaded. The manpower consumed is simply terrifying.

Then from the maintenance side, once lamellar armor is damaged, even if only a few armor plates are damaged, a large surrounding area must be repaired to ensure protective power.

If the plates are strung with ox-sinew mixed cord, it is somewhat better, since that is much sturdier. But if they are strung purely with red cord, then it is troublesome — the cords break easily, and it constantly needs mending and patching.

And cloth-faced armor? This thing is about like putting a patch on a torn garment. You patch wherever it is damaged, which is quite convenient.

Finally, the advantage of cloth-faced armor comes from actual battlefield practice. In this era, battles could not be decided quickly.

The scene of both sides howling and charging in, with victory decided in an hour or so, does not exist — at least not in decisive battles between elite troops.

Under normal circumstances, even within a single day there would be three or four fierce engagements, so the core armored soldiers in an army had to constantly put on armor, then take it off, then put it on again throughout the day.

Such fighting could last two or three days, until one side ran out of strength and could no longer hold on — only then would the rout begin.

This is even more true of battles against steppe peoples. Steppe peoples are mostly light cavalry, and most of the time their method of fighting is to surround, constantly intimidate, and wear down the stamina of the Han troops before pouncing.

This also led to the Central Plains' mounted heavy infantry, when fighting steppe cavalry, frequently needing to remove their armor to conserve strength. Otherwise, wearing fifty or sixty jin of armor, no one could hold out for long.

Overall, in the great battles of this time, putting on and taking off armor was extremely frequent. And the wrap-around style of wearing infantry armor, primarily lamellar armor, was very troublesome. Whether putting it on or taking it off, it required the help of auxiliary soldiers, and it was slow.

Many times in history, armored soldiers took off their armor to rest, but then the steppe enemy cavalry suddenly attacked. In the panic, the armored soldiers had no time to put on their armor, or did not put it on completely, and in the end, wearing only their thin clothes, they were directly shattered.

But the cloth-faced armor is different. This thing is essentially a padded cotton jacket lined with fine iron plates. Whether putting it on or taking it off, one person can do it alone. If you don't come, I'll just take it off; if you do come, I can be armored in a minute or two at most. It's simply too broken.

And it's not only practical in pitched-battle formations — it's also very convenient on the march. If ambushed, you can be fully armored in a minute or two, which is enough to greatly reduce losses from surprise attacks.

It's also useful when pursuing the enemy. Against troops that are routed but not scattered, heavy mounted infantry wearing cloth-faced armor can simply strip off the armor to chase, then put it back on to fight once they catch up.

If the enemy runs in armor, they definitely can't outrun you and will be harried to death. If they want to run fast, their only choice is to throw away helmet and armor. Well! Then it's simple — just slaughter them from behind.

Besides all this, cloth-faced armor has one final advantage: it's especially suited for use in an era when the weather is turning cold.

Because cloth-faced armor uses a great deal of cotton, it greatly enhances warmth. The late Ming was a Little Ice Age period with bitter cold, which is why the Qing army, massively equipped with cloth-faced armor, could march in severe cold.

This era is the same. The late Tang was also a wave of falling temperatures — an ice age period. With cloth-faced armor's excellent warmth, Zhang Zhao could deliberately choose to fight decisive battles with the enemy in late autumn or winter.

That way, with one side wearing warm cloth-faced armor and the other wearing iron lamellar armor cold enough to freeze a man to death, in many battles the balance of victory would begin to tilt after the two sides simply stood in formation facing each other for an hour or two.

With so many advantages, even if one cotton mattress were worth three bolts of layered cloth — even if it were worth three bolts of fine white cotton cloth — Zhang Zhao would still make the cloth-faced armor.

Moreover, cotton mattresses are expensive because of labor costs, not because of the value of the materials.

Heh! What kind of man is Great King Zhang? A feudal lord of feudal society! Would he care about labor? With all those captured prisoners and such, not using them would be a waste.

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