iron ores in the world, celebrated for its weapons from the time of
the Punic wars, and with the immeasurable advantage of commanding
the services of the Moorish steel-workers who were masters of
the armourer's craft, ought to have maintained the first rank as
armourers of the world. It probably did for centuries supply its own
requirements. We find the Spanish warrior under James of Arragon,
1230, sheathed horse and man in mail, with his quilted _perpunto_ or
pourpoint beneath, and the iron _gonio_ or breast-plate above; the iron
greaves and shoes, helmet and shield. Thus equipped, the Christian
rode down the Moslem by superior weight of man, horse, and arms, the
Moors dispensing with pourpoint and breast-plate, and riding unarmoured
horses. The helmets were of Zaragossa steel, and James's "very good
sword, lucky to those who handled it," was from Monzon and called Tizo,
as the more celebrated sword of the Cid was called Tizona. The most
dreaded weapon, however, at this time, was the windlass cross-bow,
whose bearers were mounted and carried large shields.
Little of the Moorish armourer's work has come down, though they
worked steel extensively in Toledo and Seville. No Hispano-moresque
swords exist of earlier date than the fifteenth century, and these
have richly-worked hilts in the Arab taste. A few Moorish helmets are
preserved, also of the fifteenth century, two of which, attributed
to Boabdil, are in the Madrid armoury, and are also richly decorated
in the Arab manner. The fame of Moorish armour is preserved in the
words Morion and Morris pike. The famed swords of Toledo did not
obtain renown until the Renaissance, and were not produced after the
seventeenth century. Real Spanish armour appears very clumsy, and
probably little, if any, was made much after the accession of Charles
V. One of the latest suits in the armoury at Madrid is late Gothic in
feeling, with a tilting helm of Henry VII., and marked with the poinçon
of the city of Valencia.
France is very much in the same position as England in regard to
armour, for no city in it ever established any permanent reputation as
a seat of manufacture. Louis X. had a Toulouse sword--Louis Hutin's
inventory comprises mail from Chambly. Metz, Pignerol, Abbeville
are mentioned by Brantôme as producing armour inferior to Italian.
Froissart speaks repeatedly of the excellence of Bordeaux weapons, but
at the time when Bordeaux was English. The same is true of the Limoges
steel. But Paris must after all have been the metropolis of French
armourers. The description by Froissart of the battle of Rosebecque,
fought in 1382, where the hammering on the helmets of the combatants
made a noise that could not have been exceeded if all the armourers
of Paris and Brussels had been there working at their trade, shows
that these cities were great centres for the production of armour. The
names of very few French armourers have escaped oblivion, however; and
Italian workmen were employed in France from at least the time of Louis
XI. Some beautifully decorated French armour exists, chiefly early
seventeenth century, but in France, as in England, most of the armour
was probably obtained from Italy and Germany, when once the superiority
of their work was definitely established.
Netherlandish armour was always in high repute, and some of the
Brussels armourers achieved European fame. It even set the fashion,
as we read that Sir Gilbert Talbot, 1353, provided himself with "a
curas complete of Flanderis makyng of the new turn for £20." Very few
specimens that can be identified as Belgian or Flemish exist, however,
in collections.
II
CHAIN MAIL
The immense antiquity of chain mail, and that it originated in the
East, are the two facts beyond dispute in its history. Its fine-linked
structure exposes, however, the maximum surface of the perishable iron
to atmospheric decay, and hence few specimens of great antiquity are
known. The two shapeless masses of iron rust in the British Museum,
brought from Nineveh by Layard, only reveal on close examination that
they were once supple and glittering coats of mail. Whether these
are to be assigned to the Nineveh of Sennacherib or to the Sassanian
period, they equally claim to be the oldest actual relics of chain mail
in existence. The jackets sculptured on the Trajan column are unusually
faithful and realistic renderings of chain-mail armour, for the labour
and difficulty of an exact reproduction of the minute and complicated
repetitions of form into which the links of mail group themselves are
generally evaded by a variety of conventional ways of expressing its
texture.
The wearers of mail were nomadic horse--Persian, Parthian, and
Scythian, and inhabited a belt stretching obliquely from the Caspian
in the direction of Scandinavia, the mysterious and imperfectly known
amber trade perhaps keeping these peoples in touch. The Viking became
acquainted with mail and brought a knowledge of it to Western Europe;
his descendants wore it in their expeditions to the East, completing
the circle when the mail-clad Crusaders under Coeur de Lion met the
mail-clad horse in alliance with the Saracens on the plains of Ascalon.
Coats of Eastern mail called gasigans, as told by Geoffrey de Vinsauf,
formed part of the spoils of victory taken by Richard, especially on
the capture of the great caravan near Galatin in 1192.
Although an immense quantity of mail exists in collections at home and
abroad, it can as yet neither be dated nor located upon its intrinsic
structure. The links of the Viking suits discovered in the peat
morasses of Denmark are as carefully formed as those from Persia or
India of the present century. The fashion of the garment is the only
guide, but whether the mail is of the period of the garment, or older
material made up, cannot be determined. It continued to be used in the
West until the seventeenth century, and to a much later time in Eastern
Europe; and it is probable that no scrap of such a costly material was
ever discarded. It was not passed on and absorbed by foot soldiers, who
seem rarely to have cared to use it.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.--_Mail hauberk from Sinigaglia. Sir Noël Paton's
Collection._]
The Norman hauberk did not open down the front, but was drawn over
the head by the attendants just before the engagement commenced. Wace
relates that Duke William's mail was drawn on wrong side in front in
sight of the English. The Norman Duke is the only person represented
with leggings of mail in the Bayeux tapestry, and to the absence of
these Harold's death and the fate of the day were directly due. His
first wound was the turning-point of the battle, twenty Norman knights
breaking in and securing the standard. An armed man, says Wace, struck
him on the ventaille of the helmet and beat him to the ground, and as
he sought to recover himself a knight beat him down again, cutting him
on the thick of the thigh to the bone. Girth and Leofwine fell in this
onset. The manner of a death which sealed the fate of England must have
made a deep impression on the victors, and thenceforth mail chausses
became an essential part of the knight's equipment. That any genuine
specimens of either the sleeveless or the long-sleeved hauberks of the
eleventh or twelfth or even the thirteenth century have been handed
down, is improbable. Many mail suits, however, have been acquired in
the belief that they were European, and of great antiquity, to the
disappointment of their owners, like those adorning the Hall of the
Middle Temple, which are modern Persian. One of the oldest, perhaps,
is that said to have been found in making a road in Phoenix Park in
1876, and alluded to in _Armour in England_. The oft-repeated statement
that it was found associated with a silver badge of the O'Neills has
been ascertained by Mr. T. H. Longfield, F.S.A., to be baseless, the
badge having been purloined from the ancient harp in Trinity College,
Dublin, on which it is now replaced. The hauberk, now in the writer's
possession, is of large size and reaches to the middle of the thighs,
with short sleeves, and is exquisitely made. Mail shirts, sleeves,
etc., of later date than the fourteenth century are far from uncommon,
and are represented in every collection. By the kindness of Sir Noël
Paton a most perfect fourteenth century specimen is illustrated. It
is close fitting, and was exhibited in 1880, and described by Burgess
as "one of the few coats of mail which have any decided history." In
Meyrick's _Critical Enquiry_ we are told that "it had been purchased
by a Jew from an ancient family at Sinigaglia, near Bologna, in whose
possession it had been beyond any of their records." A note further
informs us that "the Jew bought it by the ounce and paid for it forty
guineas." Sir Samuel Meyrick observes that it corresponds to the
coat of mail on the statue of Bernabo Visconti at Milan. It may be
described as a single coat of mail with no slits and no reinforcement.
It measures 2 feet 9 inches from the top of the collar, and has sleeves
which are 10 inches long from the armpit. "It is wider at the bottom
than at the waist, two gussets being inserted for this purpose. The
rings average a good half-inch in their interior diameter; half are
riveted and half are continuous, the latter have a pear-like section,
the rounded parts being on the inside circumference. The riveted rings
appear to have been made of circular wire, but have become rather
flattened, probably by wear. The rivets are of the pyramid shape, like
those of the Dublin coat of mail, but much bolder and larger. There
is a row of brass rings round the neck, and the bottom of the edge
and sleeves are finished by vandykes, also in brass rings, riveted
with iron. This is probably the finest coat of mail that has come down
to us." One of the figures guarding the Maximilian cenotaph wears a
precisely similar hauberk. Italian pictures in the National Gallery
show that the custom of finishing off mail defences with several rows
of brass links, to form some sort of scolloped edging, was universal in
Italy during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. French and English
monuments and manuscripts prove that this custom extended to Western
Europe, the scolloped edge commonly showing over the tassets from
beneath the pourpoint.
Vestiges of the camail are found on fourteenth century bassinets just
as they are seen in the conical helmets from Nineveh and on the Trajan
column. The standing collar or gorget superseded it. Fig. 2 reproduces
a perfect specimen belonging to the Royal Artillery Institution at
Woolwich, of exquisite work, with the links round the throat reinforced
or doubled. Though gorgets of plate were introduced as early as 1330,
many still preferred to wear the mail, so that they continued more or
less in use for two centuries longer. Mail was generally worn bright.
In the fourteenth century _Anturs of Arthur_ we read:
His mayles were mylke quyte, enclawet full clene
His stede trappet with that ilke, as true men me told.
An early fourteenth century stanza, the 39th of the "Armynge of King
Arthur," suggests that the surcoat over mail was to keep off rain and
not sun. The colour green was almost universally used from the reign of
King John.
With scharfe weppun and schene
Gay gownes of grene
To hold theyr armour clene
And werre it from the wette.
For a brief period in the sixteenth century, mail was again worn
without plate armour. The custom was revived in Italy when assassination
was rife, and is seen in portraits of Italian noblemen in the
National Gallery.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.--_Standard Collar of Mail. Royal Artillery
Institution._]
The costume of the unfortunate Wyatt on his rebellion is described in
the chronicles of Jane and Queen Mary as "a shert of mayll with sleves,
very fayre and thereon a velvet cassoke and an yellowe lace with the
windelesse of his dag hanging thereon, and a paire of botes and spurres
on his legges; on his hedd he had a faire hat of velvet with broade
bonne-work lace about it." Soon after a "shippe laden with shertes of
mayll" was brought in by Strangwyshe the Rover, "who came from the
French king and submitted to the Queen's mercy." The celebrated duel
between Jarnac and La Chateigneraye was fought in shirts of mail.
In the Scottish wars of Edward I. it was a common saying that "arrows
can penetrate the hardest mail"; and more efficient armour had to be
devised. Simon de Montfort, standing like a tower and wielding his
sword with both hands, was pierced in the back by a foot soldier who
lifted up his mail. The hero died with "Dieu merci" on his lips; not
the only victim who met his death in this manner. The change in the
fashion of armour was hastened by such events. The process has already
been traced: it began at the knee-caps, which were covered by plates
called poleyns. Three actual and perfectly unique specimens of these,
belonging to Sir Noël Paton, show that they were not laid upon or over
the mail, but replaced it, as represented in monumental effigies. One
pair with parallel sides is finely embossed and vandyked, closely
resembling those of some early fourteenth century effigies. A globose
example formed of three articulated plates is still more interesting,
having been richly damascened with an arabesque design worked in thin
brass lines, the field being delicately and closely cross-hatched with
incised lines. The really remarkable and unexpected surface decoration
this discloses explains the nature, and confirms the accuracy, of
certain fourteenth century representations of black armour covered with
fine gold arabesques. The cross-hatching served to retain the black
pigment, and gave a dark cast to the steel surface, enhancing the value
of the delicate brass inlay.
The process of reinforcing the mail defence was continued, as we have
seen, until it was entirely cased with an outer shell of plate. A
quilted coat was worn beneath the mail, if not a second one between the
mail and plate armour. These multiplied defences must have made active
fighting difficult and most fatiguing, and were discarded so soon
as a light armour of fine steely quality, and without crevices, was
procurable.
III
GOTHIC ARMOUR
Plate armour reached the perfection of workmanship in the second half
of the fifteenth century. At no period was it so light, yet impervious,
with curves and angles so admirably directed to deflect the impact of
sword or lance, and articulations so skilfully devised to mitigate the
restraint on freedom of movement necessarily imposed by a sheathing of
steel. Never was armour so closely fitted to the contour of the body,
and thus so elegant, so easily and therefore so constantly worn. This,
the so-called "Gothic Armour," is the cynosure of collectors, and is so
rarely to be obtained that a fairly perfect cap-à-pie suit may command
some £2000.
This Gothic armour is the armour of the Van Eycks and Memling, of
Perugino and Leonardo, and of the earlier works of Albert Dürer. The
sumptuously illuminated French and English manuscripts of the fifteenth
century depict it in use in every vicissitude of war or combat, by sea
and land, on horse and foot, and testify how little it impeded the
freedom of action of the wearer. They show that it was rarely concealed
in campaigning by any textile garment, and also that when worn by
prince or noble, it might be gilded, entirely or partially, even almost
fantastically. Thus the upper half may be gilt, and the nether limbs
left burnished steel; or these gilt and the body steel; but more often
the alternate plates of the articulated breast and back defences, the
arms, or the elbow and knee pieces, are gilt, while the rest presents
the normal sheeny surface of steel.
The general characteristics of Gothic armour have been described
in _Armour in England_, illustrated in Fig. 19, by the fine and
accurately modelled suit of the Beauchamp effigy at Warwick. Though
many fine suits have been brought to this country from abroad, none are
in any way connected with English wearers, and none could therefore be
illustrated in the former monograph. It seems incredible that nothing
should have been preserved either of the weapons or armour with which
the long struggle for supremacy in France was maintained during the
minority and rule of a king, too studious and placable for days when
his turbulent subjects cared only for war. Of the armour and weapons of
the thousands of men-at-arms who fell victims to the Wars of the Roses,
the direct outcome of the disappointing issue of the French Wars, and
so annihilating to English art, perhaps but a helmet and a few weapons
remain. The extermination of the old nobility; the completeness of
the change in habit and thought introduced into this country by the
Renaissance, affecting alike art, literature, and costume; the change
in religion, the revolution in the science of warfare, and the absolute
centralisation of the ambitious and luxurious nobility in the court
or camp of Henry VIII., together with that vainglorious and wealthy
despot's passion for extravagant dress, novelty and pomp, combined
to break most effectually with the past and to render all Gothic
armour mere obsolete lumber. Contemporary pictures of Henry VIII.'s
proceedings, especially of his meeting with Maximilian, in which the
English retinue is equipped in the new closed armet while Germans wear
the old visored sallad, as well as the accounts of his forces and his
purchases of arms, convince us that out-of-date armour and weapons,
even if still serviceable, were no longer, as heretofore, passed on
to the lower ranks of retainers. Hall relates of the muster of the
city bands in the thirty-first year of Henry VIII. that "all were put
aside who had Jackes, coates of plate, coates of mail, and bryganders,
and appointed none but such as had whyte harness, except such as
should bear the morish pykes, which had no harness but skulles." The
destruction of obsolete armour in this reign must have been very
complete, for no suits of the Gothic armour worn down to this date
by the fathers and grandfathers of the courtiers of Henry have been
preserved.
[Illustration: PLATE III.--Half Suit, engraved and parcel-gilt.
Collection of the Duke of Westminster.]
France and the Low Countries have been swept nearly as bare, anything
that might have been spared by former ages having been finally
destroyed when the houses of the nobility were gutted during the
Revolution. In more conservative Italy and Spain a few Gothic suits
have escaped destruction, and though the Art Renaissance of the one,
and wealth and pride of the other, were inimical to the preservation
of obsolete arms, yet probably some few specimens have passed from
the hands of private possessors into those of wealthy amateurs of
France and England. Germany, however, has ever been the inexhaustible
treasure-house whence Gothic arms and armour have leaked from the
hands of private possessors into those of collectors. In Germany even
the trading towns had clung to their ancient buildings, walls, and
traditions, and in many of the old Town Halls the furniture, arms, and
weapons of the civic guards, and the old implements of punishment and
torture, are still preserved. The innumerable feudal castles of the
lesser nobility have to a yet greater extent preserved the belongings
of their ancient occupants, who clung to their titles, heraldry, arms,
and weapons as symbols of vanishing rights and power, and of ancient
pretensions and privileges, so out of harmony with the world beyond.
The ubiquitous and assiduous dealer has long found in them a happy
hunting-ground for arms and weapons, whence to obtain the bulk of those
he disposed of.
In addition, some important stores of Gothic armour have been disgorged
from the Levant, trophies of the incessant wars maintained by the
Turks against Christendom. A large quantity existed at Constantinople,
and the story goes that a ship, some fifty years ago, was actually
freighted to Genoa with old armour as ballast. The indefatigable dealer
Pratt of New Bond Street became possessed of some of this armour,
which he made up into suits in the best way he could, restoring but
too liberally the parts that were missing. The suit illustrated, Fig.
3, is in Lord Zouche's collection at Parham, where it is catalogued as
from the Church of Irene at Constantinople: it no doubt formed part of
this consignment. The head-piece, an Italian sallad, is of later date,
while the remainder, though so beautiful in form, does not appear to be
either entirely homogeneous or complete. Other suits in Lord Zouche's
extensive collection are from the same source. Another much smaller
series of Gothic armour was brought to England from the Isle of Rhodes
and most fortunately did not pass through the hands of any dealer,
and is thus in an absolutely trustworthy condition, the very rust not
having been removed. It consists of a number of pieces, approximately
of one date, many of particular elegance and interest, both on account
of the armourer's marks, and the examples of engraving they present.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.--_Gothic Armour, said to be from the Church of
Irene at Constantinople. At Parham._]
By the kindness of Sir Noel Paton two of his four fine Gothic
cap-à-pie suits are illustrated. The first, Figs. 4 and 5, is German
work of the second half of the fourteenth century.
[Illustration: FIGS. 4 AND 5.--_Gothic Armour. Said to be from an
old mansion in the Tyrol. Front and Back views. Sir Noël Paton's
Collection._]
Sir Noël observes that "the upper part of the suit especially is
remarkable for its perfect condition, the original straps being intact,
and the inner and outer surface of the metal having been scarcely
touched by rust." The graceful and doubly articulated and engrailed
breast and back-plates are beautifully designed, and finished in the
manner of the great master armourer Lorenz Colman of Augsburg. The
curiously plain collar is attached to the pectoral by a bolt and
staple, and there is a fixed lance-rest, these appliances adapting
the suit for tilting rather than war. There are no tuilles, one of
the most persistent features of Gothic suits, and no pauldrons or
shoulder-guards. The brassards, coudières, genouillières, formed of an
unusual number of plates, and especially the gauntlets, are of great
beauty, and resemble those of Lorenz Colman's suits. These and the
_solerets à la poulaine retroussé_, to quote Sir Noël's description,
"are exceptionally beautiful and artistic in design. Of the sollerets,
however, unfortunately only the left, with its fine, long-necked
spur silvered and thickly patinated, is genuine." "The head-piece
is a strong bassinet of the type styled barbute by Viollet le Duc,
and possibly of somewhat earlier date, and bears on either side the
armourer's mark." The fine preservation of the metal "is due no doubt
to the fact that the suit had remained for many generations in one
place--an old mansion in the northern Tyrol, whence so late as 1872
or 1873 it was obtained by a well-known Parisian dealer, from whom it
passed to Pratt of New Bond Street; after whose death it came into my
hands."
The second of Sir Noël's suits (Fig. 6), of about the same date,
resembles more the armour of Italian pictures and actual Italian suits.
The articulated and channelled breast-plate is remarkably bold and
graceful in its lines, as are the entire brassards, more especially
the coudières. "The spiked rondelles and the gauntlets have much
picturesque character, and the tuilles are exceptionally fine in form.
The sollerets are of the kind called _arc tiers point_. The head-piece
is a close helmet of good design and apparently contemporary."
In general effect the armour is light but dignified: though the
breast-plate bears a Gothic R, no history attaches to it.
The great interest and beauty of the Parham suit, Fig. 3, lies in
the particularly elegant and finely laminated and engrailed breast
and back-plates. Like Sir Noël's German suit, it has no tuilles and
retains the staple for fastening the collar and the lance-rest. The
sollerets and perhaps some other pieces are restorations. It is without
armourer's marks, but resembles Nuremberg work in general form and
detail.
[Illustration: FIG. 6.--_Gothic Armour. Probably Italian. Sir Noël
Paton's Collection._]
Two magnificent Nuremberg Gothic cap-à-pie suits are in the Wallace
Collection, at present inaccessible. One is on foot, partly fluted,
consisting of sallad with movable visor, mentonnière, jointed breast
and back-plate, and quite complete body armour with pointed-toed
sollerettes, and skirt of riveted mail. The other, for man and horse,
is equally complete and ornamented with brass bands, the sallad with
visor and mentonnière being of fine form and contemporary.
[Illustration: PLATE IV.--Gold damascening on russet ground. Late
Italian suit. Tower of London.]
[Illustration: FIG. 7.--_St. Michael. By Perugino. National Gallery._]