Chapter 33 Section VII Military Uniforms

The army of the Song Dynasty often wore battle jackets and robes for defense, patrol or combat.There was such a description in "Xuanhe Legacy" written by an unknown person in the Song Dynasty: "Hurry up and have more than two hundred patrol soldiers, with coarse cloth wrapped around their legs, wearing crow-green napa jackets, light bows and short arrows, holding sap sticks, and hanging on their waists. Huandao." The robe and jacket are only different in length, and they are both tight-fitting and narrow-sleeved convenient attire. Officers and soldiers usually wear armor when fighting.The surface of the armor is embellished with metal flakes to protect the body.According to "Song History Bingzhi", there were 1825 pieces of full armor in the Song Dynasty, which were distributed on the shoulders, armor body, leg skirts, pockets, pocket curtains, etc., and were connected by leather threads.A pair of iron armor, some weighing about 49 jin. "Xu Lian's iron armor is cold to the bone, and there are more than 400,000 frontier soldiers" (Ouyang Xiu's "Yan Taiwei Xiyuan He Xuege") describes hundreds of thousands of officers and soldiers wearing cold armor to perform defense.In addition, leather battle clothes are called leather hats and leather armors.

In the Song Dynasty, there was a special kind of armor—paper armor.In the first year of Kangding (AD 1040), Jiangnan and Huainan prefectures were ordered to make 30,000 pairs of paper armor.It is made of a kind of extremely flexible paper, stacked three inches thick, with four nails placed between the square inches. It becomes stronger after being wet by rain, and it is difficult for guns and arrows to penetrate (see Zhu Guozhen's "Song of Chung Chuang"). The Yiwei army's armor, with thick silk as the face and linen as the lining, is painted with a green paint to form a pattern of nail leaves, with red brocade borders, red leather belts, and a human face with two eyes on the front chest. Brocade, and five-color decoration.