Husaria, the winged hussars

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The wings varied greatly among each other, a.o. because of the production reasons, as there were no armor factories like recently. Also some hussars wore only one wing at the middle of the back.

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Also there are two ways to settle the wings - in the times of Sigismund III Vasa they were sticked mainly to the saddle, while under the rules of his son Wladyslaw IV, to the back of the armor. What's very important, in the late 17th century a lot of of hussars stopped using the back side of the plate armor in order to make it lighter, so the wings couldn't be sticked to it anymore - they could go back to the saddles. At the end of 17th century they were also used at the helmets.

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At the same time the most popular kind of armor, that replaced the plate armor, looked like at the photo below. We simply can't expect an armor like that to have any wings at the back anymore.

enter image description here

Still they were used on the back in 18th century. The rulebook for Lithuanian cavalry from 1746 speaks of the wings sticked to the back of the armor.

Another big difference was in length of the wings - they became so tall as at the provided illustration in 18th century, when hussars were used mainly during parades, because of the rapid development of firearms, which finally started to take their modern role on the battlefields.

Unfortunately I don't have time today to provide more facts and sources, but I'll go back to the question when I find it.

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