Most pictures about the ottomans in the 16th century show that foot soldiers even the elite ones as the jannisaries...

Most pictures about the ottomans in the 16th century show that foot soldiers even the elite ones as the jannisaries wore no or very little armor.
Was this normal in those times ?
I thought that maybe because of guns armor became obsolete but ottoman cavalrymen usually did wear chainmail and the like.
So Veeky Forums which one is it, was armor still widely used in the 16th century or not ?

Infantry armor in the ottoman empire disappeared due to the sheer numbers they put in the field.

So basically they were pretty much a preview for tiny European states of the time of a future when they too will have bigass armies and begin to prioritize weapons over protection.

>was armor still used in the 16th century?
It definitely was. And I know this primarily because I played Mount and Blade: With Fire and Sword. Literally every faction was a 16th century Eastern European power except for Sweden in there and Sweden being the most advanced out of all of them had sword swinging infantry units that wore heavy armor and even their reiters with guns had heavy armor (or cuirassiers in French).

Also the other factions like Poland, Muscovy, Cossack Hetmanate, Crimean Khanate, also had armaments still and who else... I guess that's all, been awhile since I played it.

16th century was the end of armor>weaponry period that lasted with increased degrees of certainty for 10000 years up to that point, the age of alchemy was enered, offence>defence
and its been like that forever since

also ended steppe dominance of the world which is interesting

castles finally paid off

Did countries like france and spain still use armor for their infrantry because those two countries also had huge armies at the time.

post alch steppe became reserved manchuria as they got BTFOd

Not as big as what the Ottomans were throwing up.

Not as big as what European states will field in the late 17th Century.

And even then they were armoring down. Cavalrynigs and Rich people were still extensively armored. They buy their own shit anyway. As for the rank and file mostly only pike infantry walked around in any kind of armor , and that armor consists of "Half-Armor" munitions grade sets which only give you a helmet and a cuirass & faulds.

The Janissaries were an elite force, but they were not Turkish. None of them were. They were expendable, brainwashed tools taken in their infancy from other nations.

The Ottomans used them to keep the various ethnic groups mad at each other rather than the Ottomans in the background. Why bother giving out armor to tens of thousands of something you consider a tool more than people?

Just send enough at the enemy. They'll eventually all die, flee, or run out of ammunition

Armor was still in use but it was distinctly falling out of style and use. Guns were proving to be far too much for armor to handle, with armor actually becoming super heavy like all those myths say it was to try and compensate.
Traditional plate was most certainly out of style by the 16th century. It was very vulnerable to firearms.

Armor was already on the way out by the end of the 15th century, firearms made it utterly useless, so why try and spend money on it?

>Pic
That Janissary on the left sounds like he's going to my kind of party.

Ottomans didn't care about ethnic background of their units. All Kapikulu soldiers were thought to be valuable and not expendable. Janissary were often reserve and used to strike a decisive blow, with their armoured cavalry, Spahi were used to flank at the same time generally.

Expendable Ottoman units were those paid by the day in the campaign and were thought as mercenaries. They also had other assorted conscripted soldiers they thought as more expendable. Ottoman force was generally diverse with focus on logistics, artillery and decisive blow from janissary and spahi with many types of infantry and cavalry that was used to harass. They saw battlefield as more of an action-reaction sort of ordeal rather than Europeans who later would focus more on tactics as a whole, one of the reasons why they got defeated so decisively by Prince of Eugene, who understood the mechanics of war and Ottomans didn't.

Armours were used with guns and firearms but generally by cavalry in later periods. Cavalry mostly used them because they expected to go into melee and were not expendable or in tight formations so they didn't want to get killed by rogue sword or later bayonet stabs.

They wore armor, but only for actual battle and had to transport it over large distances. The Ottoman war machine was geared towards rapid maneuver and as a consequence armor would have been lighter than what your average knight or well-paid European mercenary would field. This allowed the Ottomans to field a large number of troops, march them quickly into enemy territory despite the large distances they'd travel through their own lands, and force the enemy to battle before they themselves had amassed a force of equal size.

Ottomans used less armor as a rule than say European troops.

In Europe a significant part of the infantry was still marching across the field in partial plate armor for a long while.

Does that mean they had pieces of plate armor like gauntlets and breastplates?

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If it was import or loot. Otherwise mail or mail with plates inserted were common.

Sure a soldiers who had been trained by the state on being effective with different weapons and actually had jobs such as stone masonry,carpentry or building were expendable.

To give an impression

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