When it comes to armor riding gear, many people will think of the armor map in the Northern Song Dynasty's "General Outline of the Martial Classics".
However, this illustration only has a decomposition of the harness and no assembly drawing, so the present person draws several schematic diagrams of the assembly:
Such a schematic diagram has basically become a modern film and television drama and museum restoration armor riding gear assembly illustration: that is, first put on the armor and then saddle. Not only is the restoration of the Song Ming harness suit, but even the harness assembly of the Southern and Northern Dynasties is also restored in this way, but only the "parasitism" is added.
Such a natural restoration assembly, if made into a physical posture to see completely no problem, but if there is a knight riding a war horse wearing such armor, it will definitely fall to the head and bleed, and the bones will be broken. Friends who have ridden horses know that you should check the belly belt before getting on the horse, and after riding for a period of time or after the horse is left behind, you should also tighten the belly belt. Even if you have never ridden a horse, the commentators have always heard the words "the saddle does not go, the saddle is not returned", which means to check the firmness of the saddle on the back of the horse. The saddle can not be too tight or too loose on the horse's back, the saddle should match the horse's back, the saddle is too small and too narrow to hit the horse's back, too large and too wide is easy to turn the saddle. Adjusting the firmness of the saddle mainly depends on the matching degree of the belly belt and the saddle and the back of the horse, if the true image is assembled like this, how is the belly belt connected? Most of the excavated figurines are very general depictions, but you can also see some of the ends, as if the saddle in the statue is integrated into the harness suit?
"Eighteen Beats of Hu Di" is a Song painting collected by the National Palace Museum in Taipei and made by Li Tang. The facsimile of Qiu Ying's work in the Ming Dynasty is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the United States, and has a comprehensive and detailed depiction of the assembly of the actual horse harness.
From the painting, it can be seen that the process of armor on the war horse is as follows: first the horse is built, including the assembly of the horse's braid and saddle, and the belly belt is fastened, and then the harness armor is put on. After the armor is put on, the gilet covers part of the saddle wing, and most of the saddle body is exposed, and the stirrup is taken out of the square hole in the back of the body armor and placed outside the armor. See the crossed rope in the middle of the armored saddle? That's the armored lanyard.
Part of the saddle wing, weed belt and mud of the armored saddle are placed on the inside of the vest, and if the gilet piece is afraid of rubbing the inner thigh, the overall saddle cover can be covered on the exposed saddle, just like the right three-colored horse.
The end result is something like this, right?
The visual effect of draping the armor and then saddle covering, as if the saddle as a whole is placed outside the body armor, can be seen in the painting drawing of the rolled up semi-truncated saddle cover placed on the saddle.
Unearthed ancient harness armor lacks complete physical objects. Only some of the nail plates of the metal horse face and body armor remain. The age of the popularity of armor and riding gear is also too far away from us, and we can only restore the original appearance of things through accurate ancient paintings.
So is there an instance of placing a saddle directly outside the harness armor? Of course, there are also such horses, which are neither used to drive nor ride, but are honor guards, and this is not discussed in this article. The following picture shows the stone carved horse in front of the tomb of Chen Zheng in Yunxiao, Zhangzhou, Fujian Province:
The writing of this article is mainly from the tips of Brother Ma You Wu, and I would like to thank you for it.
This article is the original manuscript of the Cold Weapons Research Institute. The original outline of the editor-in-chief and the author Leng Yan saw, any media or public account without written authorization shall not be reproduced, and the offender will be investigated for legal responsibility.