and have been handed down with unbroken pedigree, we must go to the
great collections of Europe, and especially to those which, like the
Viennese, were commenced while armour was still worn. Of sculptured
representations of Gothic armour none surpass the Beauchamp effigy at
Warwick. A no less accurate figure is that by Peter Vischer, also in
gilt bronze, of Count Otto IV. of Henneburg, 1490, from the Church of
Romhild in Thuringia. There is a cast of this in the South Kensington
Museum, as well as one of the gilt bronze effigy of Count Weinsberg
at Munich, in armour which is remarkable in several respects. Italian
Gothic armour of different periods can best be studied in the National
Gallery. A suit (Fig. 7) of about the close of the century is from one
of the compartments of the famous altar-piece by Perugino, removed from
the Certosa at Pavia in 1786, and painted according to Vasari about
1490. It represents St. Michael in full armour, except the head. The
underlying mail shows, as usual in Italian pictures, at the elbows,
the skirt, and below the knees, and has a deep edging of brass rings.
The breast-plate, though in two, is arranged so that the body could
not easily be bent. The shoulder-guards are less exaggerated than in
contemporary French and English armour, but the elbow-guards seem
large, angular, and loosely fitting. The sollerets are well made,
unpointed, and leave the red stocking exposed at the toe and heel. The
sword, on the left hip, is in a velvet scabbard with a beautifully and
simply worked steel hilt and cross quillons slightly curved towards
the blade. The shield is fine in form and typically Italian, bearing a
Medusa's head and other classic ornaments, boldly embossed. The hands
are bare, the right holding a slender staff or wand. In the figure of
St. William by Ercole di Giulio Cesare Grandi of Ferrara, the head
is bare and there are no plate defences to the neck, shoulders, or
forearms. The top of the mail shirt shows as a narrow band round the
throat, and covers the shoulders with short and very wide-open sleeves,
its lower edge appearing between the tuilles over a second skirt of
mail. Mail appears again below the knees and forms the covering of
the feet, all edges being finished with rings of brass as usual. The
breast-plate is large, plain, and of one piece; there are but three
taces, with bold, finely formed, and ridged tuilles. The brassards,
including the large butterfly-shaped coudière, appear from beneath
the widely open sleeves of mail. The leg armour is also plain, but
with the wings of the genouillières exceptionally large. The sword,
unsheathed, is a magnificent weapon with gilt or brass pommel and grip
and horizontally curved quillons. The striking figure of St. George
by Pisano, in the broad-brimmed Tuscan hat, is of earlier date,
as the artist died in 1451 or 1452. The mail shows beneath a thick
quilted surcoat over which the great ill-fitting shoulder and other
body defences are fixed. The limbs are almost completely sheathed in
plate over the mail, but the pieces fit so loosely that the whole has
a shambling appearance and seems ready to fall off. The sollerets
are square-toed with long rowelled spurs. The armour represented in
Boccacino's Procession to Calvary is almost identical, save that the
mail sleeves are less baggy and shoulder pieces are worn. The St.
William in Garofalo's Madonna and Child from Ferrara, though probably
painted in the 16th century, preserves the exaggerated butterfly wings
to the coudières and genouillières, and the Gothic tuilles, but has
fluted sollerets and shows no mail. The St. Demetrius of L'Ortolano,
who painted in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, shows fluted
shoulder pieces and coudières, and half sollerets, leaving the front of
the foot to a defence of mail.
[Illustration: FIG. 8.--_The Battle of Sant' Egidio. By Uccello.
National Gallery._]
The most interesting picture in the National Gallery (Fig. 8) to
the student of armour, however, is that representing the battle of
Sant' Egidio by Uccello, fought in 1416, when Carlo Malatesta, Lord
of Rimini, and his nephew Galeazzo, were taken prisoners by Braccio
di Montone. Uccello was born in 1397 and died in 1475, but there
is no evidence as to the year in which the picture was painted. It
appears to represent an attempt to rescue the Lord of Rimini, by a
knight clothed cap-à-pie in very advanced plate armour and wielding
a horseman's hammer. The breast and back plates are articulated;
tuilles, where worn, are very short; the large pauldrons are of very
varied construction, and either roundels or coudières with butterfly
expansions are worn indifferently; in all cases the figures are
completely cased in plate armour, though some wear mail gorgets, except
that Malatesta has been partly disarmed and is protected by mail alone.
De Commines observes that it was the law of arms in Italy to strip
those taken to their shirts and dismiss them. The chief interest lies
in the head-pieces, which, except in the cases of the prisoners and
some trumpeters, are closed armets with baviers and visors hinged at
the side, of varied form, the occularia being in all cases notched out
at the upper margin of the visor and forming either round or half-round
holes or slits. These armets are provided with most fantastic crests
and plumes, the crown of the helmet being in several cases covered
with velvet, overlaid with goldsmith's work and merging into the
crest. All have the roundels at the back of the neck.
[Illustration: FIG. 9.--_Carved Relief for the Visconti Tomb in the
Certosa at Pavia. South Kensington Museum._]
Another notable representation of an Italian battle (Fig. 9), in which
the mounted combatants are clothed in complete typical Gothic armour,
is to be seen in the cast from the Visconti Tomb of the Certosa, Pavia,
in the South Kensington Museum. The armour is of the most beautiful
type, and the figures are singularly supple and full of action. The
armet is more fully developed and almost uniform in type. The visor
works on pivots, the occularium is a slit above it, and the bavier is
a separate piece fastened by straps at the back. The event represented
is the battle before Brescia in 1402. As a full-sized representation of
the latest Italian Gothic armour nothing can perhaps be finer than the
fifteenth century effigy of Guidarello Guidarelli surnamed Braccioforte
from Ravenna, of which there is also a cast in the South Kensington
Museum. The tuilles are flexible and pointed, formed of narrow
horizontal plates; the shoulder-plates are bossed into lions' heads;
and the armet has a double visor without bavier.
The statue of St. George, made by Donatello for the Florentine
corporation of armourers in 1416, is almost Roman in costume and of
little interest.
The account of the almost contemporary battle of Fornovo, 1495, by
Philip de Commines bears testimony to the excellence of this Italian
armour, especially of the close armets. The flower of the allied forces
of Italy consisted of 2500 men-at-arms under the Marquis of Mantua,
Count di Cajazzo, and Signor John Bentivoglio of Bologna, with other
nobles, all well barded, with fine plumes of feathers and bourdonasses,
or hollow lances, brightly painted, and used in tournaments. Great
bodies of men-at-arms were in reserve. The French van contained 350
men-at-arms, 200 mounted crossbow-men of the king's guard--who fought
on foot, however--300 archers and 3000 Swiss foot, several of the
highest nobility dismounting to fight amongst them. In the main body
were the king's guards, pensioners, 100 Scottish archers, about 900
men-at-arms, and 2500 Swiss, the whole army not exceeding 9000 men.
The Italian men-at-arms delivered a charge, with lances couched, at
a gentle gallop; the Estradiots, who should have supported them with
their scimitars, retired to plunder the sumpter-horses; whereupon the
men-at-arms who had charged and broken their lances fled, and their
infantry gave ground. Those who had not charged also threw away their
lances and fled, sword in hand, and were pursued and cut up. With the
French were "a great number of grooms and servants, who flocked about
the Italian men-at-arms, when they were dismounted, and knocked most of
them on the head. The greatest part of them had their hatchets (which
they cut their wood with) in their hands, and with them they broke up
their head-pieces, and then knocked out their brains, otherwise they
could not easily have killed them, they were so very well armed;
and to be sure there were three or four of our men to attack one
man-at-arms. The long swords also which our archers and servants wore
did very good execution." The losses on the French side were but three
gentlemen, nine Scottish archers, twenty horse of the vanguard, and
some servants. The Italians lost 3500 men on the field, of whom 350
were men-at-arms, including six or eight of the Marquis of Mantua's
relatives and other persons of quality. The lances "lay very thick upon
the field, and especially the bourdonasses; but they were good for
nothing, for they were hollow and light, and weighed no more than a
javelin, yet they were finely painted."
Battles in England were much more serious affairs and were stubbornly
contested. Those of the Wars of the Roses opened with a cannonade,
after which the archers engaged and the billmen followed, nobles
fighting on foot in their ranks to encourage them. Lord Richard Herbert
"twice by fine force passed through the battaill of his adversaries,"
at Banbury, "polle axe in hand": at the battle of Towcester many were
taken because they left their horses and decided to fight on foot. The
Earl of Warwick dismounted at Barnet to "try the extremity of hand
strokes"; but penetrating too far among the enemy to encourage his men,
and not being properly supported, he was slain.
At Bosworth the archers formed the forward on both sides. Richard's
archers "with a sodein clamour lette arrowes flee at theim. On the
other syde they paied theim home manfully again with the same. But when
they came nere together, they laied on valeauntly with swordes." The
Earl of Oxford, however, kept his men in close order, and the enemy
gave way, wholesale desertion sealing the fate of the battle. Henry was
not engaged, but kept afar off "with a fewe companye of armed menne."
Richard on horseback made a desperate attempt to get at him, but was
unsupported and slain.
The English costume is described in the Plumpton Correspondence, when
the Archbishop of York, having dues to collect in 1441, quartered
200 men-at-arms in Ripon and held it "like a towne of warre." These
borderers wore "breast-plate, vambrace, rerebrace, greves and guischers,
gorgett and salett, long spears and lancegayes." English levies were
not always so well armed. The 5000 men who came down from the north in
the reign of Richard III. were "evell apparelled and worsse harneysed
in rustic harneys." Under Henry VII. the Duke of Bedford took out "3000
mene which were harneysed but barely, for theyr breste plates were for
the most parte lether." The array taken to Calais by Edward IV. in
1475 is in striking contrast to this. Hall relates that "the men were
so well armed and so surely in all things appoynted and provided that
the Frenche naciõ were not onely amased to behold them, but much more
praysed them and there order. In this army were 1500 men of armes well
horsed, of the which the moste parte were barded and rychely trapped,
after the most galiard fashion, havyng many horses decked in one suyte.
There were farther 15,000 archers beryng bowes and arrowes, of the
which a greate parte were on horsebacke. There were also a great number
of fighting men and others, as well to set up Tentes and Pavillions,
as to serve their Artilarie." De Commines adds that the men-at-arms,
comprising the flower of the English nobility, were richly accoutred
after the French fashion, well mounted, most of them barded, and each
one with several persons in his retinue.
This Gothic armour, the lightest and most graceful ever produced,
was ideal so long as it was customary for men-at-arms to fight
indifferently on foot or mounted. The mixed tourney was still in vogue,
fought the first day with sharp spears, the second day with swords,
the third on foot with poll-axes. The Lord Scales and the Bastard
of Burgundy, and the Duke of Albany and Duke of Orleans fought such
tourneys, the latter having the misfortune to kill his antagonist by a
spear-thrust. It was, in battle too, most honourable to fight on foot
among the archers, and there was always a large number of gentlemen
volunteering among them to "encourage the infantry" and make them
fight the better. "The Burgundians had learnt this custom from the
English when Duke Philip made war upon France during his youth for
two-and-thirty years together without any truce." De Commines adds
that at Montlhéry the order was given to the Burgundians that every
man should alight without any exception. Knights equipped by the most
renowned of the armourers of Italy and Germany were almost invulnerable
until overthrown; but English and Burgundian armour was not an equal
protection, as the rash Duke of Burgundy, who seems to have had all
his armour home-made at Dijon or Hesdin, discovered to his cost on the
field of Nancy, when his skull was cloven by a halberd, and two
pike-thrusts penetrated the lower part of his body.
[Illustration: PLATE V.--Breastplate, embossed and parcel-gilt. French.
Collection of Mr. David Currie.]
This fashion of armour appears to have been devised in the ateliers of
the Missaglias of Milan. A work by Wendelin Böheim, custodian of the
Imperial collections of armour in Vienna, published last year in Berlin
(_Meister der Waffenschmiedekunst vom xiv bis im xviii Jahrhundert_),
gives a short biographical sketch of this renowned family of armourers,
who migrated to Milan towards the middle of the fourteenth century,
from Ello, a village not distant from Asti and Lake Lecco. Petrajolo da
Missaglia, the founder of the family, settled in Milan as an armourer
towards the middle of the fourteenth century, and built the house in
the Via degli Spadari where his sculptured poinçon or armourer's mark
is still to be seen. The work of his son Tomaso da Missaglia greatly
augmented the already world-wide reputation of the armour of Milan, and
deserved in 1435 the recognition of Filipo Maria Visconti, who freed
him in 1450 from taxes until his death somewhere about 1469. The armour
by him is plain, the best known being that at Vienna of the Palsgrave
Frederick the Victorious about 1450, with closed helm, roundels,
unfingered gauntlets, and pointed sollerets over 13 inches in length.
The suit is less graceful than German Gothic armour. The equally
renowned son of Tomaso, Antonio, was born about 1430, assisting in his
father's extensive business at the age of twenty. Large commissions
were received, such as that in 1466, of the value of 20,000 lire, for
100 harness for the ducal mercenaries, and others from Duke Francesco,
the Pope, Don Alfonso of Arragon, afterwards King of Naples, etc. On
his father's death in 1469, their great patron the Duke presented him
with an estate and mill, and in 1470 he added the iron mines near Canzo
to his patrimony. Soon after, in 1492, a Venetian envoy sent home an
account of Missaglia's works, finding finished harness to the value
of many thousand ducats. His death took place near the end of the
century; the exact date being unknown, like the name of his immediate
successor. There are mentions of several Missaglias about whom little
is known, one working in 1466 for Louis XI. Antonio was the last to
bear the name of Missaglia, succeeding members of the family assuming
that of Negroli, a name first met with about 1515, when a Giovanni
Negroli appears as master of the works. The tomb in St. Satyro,
Milan, preserves the inscription _Negroli da Ello qualunque detto
Missaglia_. Few examples of Antonio's work are known. One of these,
a plain suit made for the Neapolitan Count Cajazzo about 1480, is in
the Vienna Imperial collections. The breast and back plates are not
articulated, the pauldrons and tuilles are large and massive, coudières
elegant, only the right gauntlet fingered, the leg-pieces with few
articulations, and the suit, as so often seen in illustrations, is
minus the sollerets. The head-piece is a sallad singularly painted
in oils with the Count's armorial bearings, reminding us of the
beautifully painted armour of Pisano's St. George published by the
Arundel Society, which must have been executed prior to 1450. A
jousting suit by him of much later date is engraved and partly gilded,
apparently made in 1498 for an envoy of Ludovico Moro to the Emperor
Maximilian.
Italian Gothic armour is very much rarer than German. Thoroughness is a
German characteristic, and once embarked on a given course the German
pursues it until, as is so apparent in their general iron-work, the
result becomes exaggeration verging on the grotesque. The Missaglias
introduced a certain grace of line into Milanese armour, and the German
armourers pursued this vein, making the figures erect and slender and
imbuing the waist and bust with womanly elegance. The Italians probably
kept to much the same lines, for most representations of armour towards
the third quarter of the fifteenth century display the same graceful
characteristics, brought to a pitch, however, but little consonant with
the stern realities of war, and brusquely set aside before the close of
this century.
One of the most formidable of Missaglia's competitors north of the
Alps was Hans Grünewalt, born about 1440 and died 1503, regarded by
Böheim as one of the foremost armourers of his day. The founder of
the bells of St. Sebaldus in 1396, Heinrich Grünewalt, appears to
have been the grandfather of a family which became considerable in
Nuremberg, building the still standing Pilatus House, properly the
"Zum geharnischten Mann." Hans was employed by Maximilian when King of
the Romans, and no armourer in Germany was more sought after. While
he flourished Nuremberg was the most renowned of any city of Germany
for the production of armour, but on his death Augsburg was allowed to
entirely supplant it.
The Colman family migrated from Bâle to Augsburg about 1377, to again
quote from Böheim. Georg, the father of Lorenz, was well established
as an armourer when he was joined in 1467 by his famous son. In 1477
they were honoured with a commission from Maximilian, then King of the
Romans, for a complete harness for horse and man, which was executed
to his entire satisfaction. Georg died two years later. In 1490 Lorenz
was appointed Court Armourer, and he had prospered so far as to be
able to afford pecuniary assistance to the ever-needy Maximilian.
Towards 1506 he worked for the Court of Mantua, receiving through the
house of Fugger a payment of no less than 4000 florins for a harness
which gave such satisfaction that a further sum was sent him as a
present. In 1507 Maximilian again employed him, and in 1508 begged him
to repair personally to Court, when probably the important change in
the fashion of armour, resulting in the Maximilian fluted armour, was
devised personally between Lorenz and himself. The first edition of
Hans Burgkmair's woodcut engraving of the Emperor in a full suit of
this armour for horse and man appeared in this same year. Lorenz died
in 1516. The only authentic suits by him known to Böheim are in the
Imperial collections of Vienna. One is the magnificent Gothic suit made
in 1493 for Maximilian, a far more complete and defensive suit than
those we have figured, but with similar fleur-de-lis pattern engrailing
to the margins of the plates, while some of the upper edges on the limb
pieces are rolled over and finished with a cable border. The suit is
graceful and of exquisite workmanship, slightly fluted in the arms,
with fingered gauntlets and moderately long and pointed sollerets.
Three other tilting suits bear the Colman mark, the close-helmet
surmounted by a cross, with the Augsburg badge and guild mark.
[Illustration: FIG. 10.--_German late Gothic Suit. Collection of Mr.
Morgan Williams._]
The Germans, however, as a race were not all lithe and supple men,
and the burly high-living barons could not follow, and hence must
have detested the elegancies of Gothic armour. They soon affected an
opposite extreme, the clumsy sturdiness seen in so many of the portrait
statues of the contemporaries of Maximilian round his cenotaph in
Innsbrück. Fig. 10 represents a complete and characteristic suit of
this kind belonging to Mr. Morgan Williams. It greatly resembles one
figured by Böheim, made for Count Andreas von Sonnenberg about 1508,
by Koloman Colman, and now in Vienna. Our suit, preserved in a Rhenish
Castle, bears evidence, however, of being considerably earlier, and is
regarded by its owner as of about 1495. It is perfectly plain except
for some slight fluting on the mittened gauntlets, made to look as if
fingered, and on the square-toed sollerets. The tuilles are still an
important feature, but wide and plain. Some German suits of this date
look affectedly ungainly; such as a mounted suit attributed to Duke
John of Saxony, which is slightly fluted and bears the great tilting
helm.
[Illustration: FIG. 11.--_Suit of Maximilian Fluted Armour. Belonging
to Mr. Percy Macquoid._]
The Maximilian fluted armour is a development of this, belonging,
however, rather to Renaissance than Gothic times. With its introduction
the elegance so distinctive of late Gothic armour passed definitely
out of fashion and gave place to armour in which the opposite
characteristics were sought. The flutings which invest the Maximilian
suits with so much character must have been suggested more or less
by the shell-like ridgings and flutes of Gothic armour. The leading
idea was the substitution of a stiff unyielding defence for one that
was supple and pliable. The articulations of the breast and back
plates--except in rare instances, such as the magnificent Nuremberg
suit formerly worn by Lord Stafford, in which the breast-plate
was formed of two pieces and decorated with graceful open-work
tracery--were wholly abolished, and replaced by a stout and rigid
pectoral more adapted to receive the shock of the lance in the
tilt-yard. The form of tourney had changed, and was now chiefly tilting
with a light and hollow lance, calculated to shiver at the impact, as
may be seen in specimens still preserved in the Tower. The pliable
Gothic suits adapted for mixed tourneys and for actual warfare were
out of place in the tilt as now practised; and the heavy man-at-arms
in full cap-à-pie armour had ceased to play the preponderating part in
war and was shortly destined to disappear from the field. No longer was
his function, as hitherto, to engage in the melée, and bear the brunt
of the battle: this was sustained by the pike, arquebus, light-armed
cavalry and artillery; the heavy-armed cavalry being reserved for
charges in which the weight of man and horse sheathed in steel might
ride down the opposing force.
[Illustration: PLATE VI.--Casque of an Officer of the Guard of Cosmo
de' Medici. Collection of Mr. David Currie.]
[Illustration: FIG. 12.--_Maximilian Armour from Eaton Hall. In the
possession of the Duke of Westminster, K.G._]