How Could Janissaries Fight Well in Such Ridiculous Outfits?

[NedimNapoleon]

Not just Janissaries, Winged Hussars

 

[civ_king]

Dunno about Janissaries, but IIRC Winged Hussars only wore the wings during parade

 

[NedimNapoleon]

My history teacher says that the Jannisaries actually wore the headgear in battle

 

[North King]

Seems a little odd, but not THAT odd. All it does is make you look taller and make some BOOM HEADSHOTS go through your hat instead of your skull. It's not like they put lead weights in there.

*cue source saying they put lead weights inside their headgear*

 

[Whiskey_Lord]

Well, it's easier to kill people when they are laughing uncontrollably.

 

[Leoreth]

Dunno about Janissaries, but IIRC Winged Hussars only wore the wings during parade

I thought they were using the clatter of their wings to intimidate their enemies? Or does that belong to the history myth thread?

 

[Kentharu]

They kept their ammo and stuff in that hat. It also makes a great bowl for soup.

 

[NovaKart]

I've seen some photos where they had even more ridiculous outfits. I think the answer is just that the outfits didn't seem so ridiculous to them. I think the man in the first photo is Ataturk. The Janissaries didn't exist at that time but maybe some of the soldiers afterwards still wore their outfits or something similar.

Look at how the men in France used to dress. They wore really long wigs and tights. They looked totally feminine. They must have thought it was really fashionable but to us it looks really stupid.

 

[Ajidica]

Bigger hats look awsome in battle because it makes the enemy think you are bigger and stronger.

 

[NovaKart]

I propose we start a most bizarre outfits in history thread.

 

[ParkCungHee]

I'm not seeing anything in that outfit that actually looks difficult to fight in.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Yeah, it's not really very different from Hessian hats. Tall hats were common with infantry.

 

[Whiskey_Lord]

I was so depressed when they got rid of the hats in AoK.

 

[r16]

ı would guess the hats are usually about increasing the physical size but while working at the museum ı was told the felt product would protect the neck from swinging swords . Considering it was a feat to cut layers of felt by a single stroke during training it might make sense

 

[Plotinus]

Look at how the men in France used to dress. They wore really long wigs and tights. They looked totally feminine. They must have thought it was really fashionable but to us it looks really stupid.

If you're talking about the late seventeenth century, all European gentlemen dressed like that, not just the French. They also wore high heels and make-up. I wouldn't say it looks stupid - on the contrary, it was quite a flattering look. It's just that we associate these things with women, but there's no particular reason why they should be. No doubt the average Restoration dandy, if brought back to life today, would wonder why all the women look so masculine.

A splendid passage from Quicksilver on this topic:

...now that Louis Anglesey, Earl of Upnor, was in London, freed from the monastic constraints of Cambridge, and a full twenty-two years of age, he was able to live, and dress, as he pleased. Today, walking across Charing Cross, he was wearing a suit that appeared to've been constructed by (1) dressing him in a blouse with twenty-foot-long sleeves of the most expensive linen; (2) bunching the sleeves up in numerous overlapping gathers on his arms; (3) painting most of him in glue; (4) shaking and rolling him in a bin containing thousands of black silk doilies; and (5) (because King Charles II, who'd mandated, a few years earlier, that all courtiers wear black and white, was getting bored with it, but had not formally rescinded the order) adding dashes of color here and there, primarily in the form of clusters of elaborately gathered and knotted ribbons - enough ribbon, all told, to stretch all the way to whatever shop in Paris where the Earl had bought all of this stuff. The Earl also had a white silk scarf tied round his throat in such a way as to show off its lacy ends. Louis XIV's Croatian mercenaries, les Cravates, had made a practice of tying their giant, flapping lace collars down so that gusts of wind would not blow them up over their faces in the middle of a battle or duel, and this had become a fashion in Paris, and the Earl of Upnor, always pushing the envelope, was now doing the cravate thing with a scarf instead of an (as of ten minutes ago) outmoded collar. He had a wig that was actually wider than his shoulders, and a pair of boots that contained enough really good snow-white leather that, if pulled on straight, they would have reached all the way to his groin, at which point each one of them would have been larger in circumference than his waist; but he had of course folded the tops down and then (since they were so long) folded them back up again to keep them from dragging on the ground, so that around each knee was a complex of white leather folds about as wide as a bushel-basket, filled with a froth of lace. Gold spurs, beset with jewels, curved back from each heel to a distance of perhaps eight inches. The heels themselves were cherry-red, four inches high, and protected from the muck of Charing Cross by loose slippers whose flat soles dragged on the ground and made clacking noises with each step. Because of the width of his boot-tops, the Earl had to swing his legs around each other with each step, toes pointed, rolling so violently from side to side that he could only maintain balance with a long, encrusted, beribboned walking-stick.

I think when it comes to daft fashions, the biscuit is really taken by the long pointy shoes that were in vogue at the end of the fourteenth century. Some of these really were so long that the points of the shoes were held up by strings attached to the wearer's knees, and it was impossible to walk up stairs in them. However, neither these nor the courtly fashions of the seventeenth century were worn for combat, of course.

 

[Optical]

I propose we start a most bizarre outfits in history thread.

Done. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=417996

EDIT: My 200th Post

 

[de Maistre]

I don't know, maybe the powdered wig wasn't such a bad idea. What a bald paradise that must have been. Nobody knew. I was also enamoured of early ninteenth century clothing after watching The Duellists; the costume design in that movie was superb, for anyone who's interested.

 

[Japanrocks12]

The Dachs answer would be that they couldn't

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Russian fusiliers famously wore their shakos into battle.

 

[Dachs]

The Dachs answer would be that they couldn't

I wonder what I have to do to get my reputation for Greekery to wear off.