Except for the rare finds just mentioned, we know little about the armor
and arms of the period from the fall of Rome to about the twelfth
century. The paintings, drawings, and statues which have survived
suggest, but give no clear information. We have reason to believe that
armor was made of small plates of iron attached to cloth or leather
garments, or of chain mail, a fabric made of interlinked rings of iron
wire. Towards the end of this period we know that chain mail was
extensively employed, for it often appears, especially in England, on
the engraved brass plates attached to the tombs of important people of
the time (Fig. 7). The Museum has a small collection of paper
impressions of these “brasses” which are well worthy of study by anyone
interested in early armor. Some are exhibited on the walls of the armor
gallery.
Chain mail is more interesting than it appears at first glance, and the
Museum’s specimens deserve to be looked at carefully. In the first
place, it was made of wire. Nowadays wire is so common that we think
nothing of it; it is produced by the mile with automatic machinery. But
in medieval times wire was scarce and valuable, for every bit of it had
to be made by hand. At first this was done with the hammer: a billet of
iron was pounded with a hammer held in one hand, while the other kept
the billet rotating so that its diameter became less and less until it
was small enough to be made up into links of mail. Of course, only short
bits of wire could be made in this way and the diameter was naturally
irregular. It was slow and tedious work, but the earliest mail was so
made. Later it was found that a rod of iron could be pulled by tongs
through a hole in a hardened steel plate, thus reducing its diameter and
giving it a uniform thickness. By drawing it through a number of holes
of progressively smaller diameter, the wire could be made quite thin and
entirely uniform. Then such wire could be wound in a coil around an iron
rod, and the coil then cut lengthwise with a chisel or saw giving a
large number of links all of the same size. All later chain mail was so
made. Such links were interlaced, each link with four others, to form a
fabric much like that of a lady’s mesh bag. However, if the ends of the
links were simply brought together the fabric would not be very strong.
An arrow or dagger point could easily spread open a link, and penetrate
to the wearer’s body. So all good chain mail was strengthened by having
the ends of every link overlapped, slightly flattened, and then riveted.
In that part of the world we now call “Middle East”—where the Mohammedan
and Hindu cultures flourished—the rivet was a separate piece of fine
wire. European chain mail is more of a mystery—principally because there
is so very little old European chain mail still in existence. The
probability is that a separate rivet was used as in the Eastern mail,
but that its insertion was more skillfully performed. However, some
scholars feel that European chain mail was welded or was riveted by a
swaging process, that a special tool in the form of tongs or a pair of
dies forced a small part of the lower end of the link of chain mail
through a slit in the upper end and then riveted it over. Careful
microscopical research on sections of links of mail could doubtless
solve this problems, but who wants to cut off links from a rare and
precious genuine, documented piece? As yet it may be said that no such
ingenious swaging tool has been discovered, nor have we any
unquestionably contemporary illustrations which would prove this theory.
In places where special strength was required, as around the throat, the
rings were made of the same size but of heavier wire, which was
flattened by hammering in the neighborhood of the rivet. In this way the
overlapping of the rings became so close that not even a needle could
penetrate the fabric (Fig. 8). In other cases, unflattened rings were
used, but strands of leather were drawn through the rows, giving
additional rigidity and protection. It is believed that this practice
accounts for the appearance of what is known as “banded mail” in
numerous monuments and engraved brasses.
Chain mail was a good protection against cuts and stabs, but it had a
number of serious disadvantages. In the first place, it was expensive.
Even the most skillful armorer could make it but slowly. The mail cape
of Fig. 8 contains about 44,235 links, each separately forged and
riveted; some complete coats of mail contain over 200,000! Forgeries of
antique chain mail are practically non-existent, for they would cost
more to make than genuine specimens, rare as they are, would be worth
today.
Again, chain mail was very easily attacked by rust, and, once it was
rusted, was most difficult to clean. (The usual way was to put a rusted
mail shirt in a barrel with some oily sawdust and to set an apprentice
to rolling the barrel around for hour after hour.) Consequently very
little early mail is left—most of it just rusted away to nothing. It was
heavy and uncomfortable, for the whole weight hung from the shoulders.
But its worst disadvantage lay in its flexibility. It would resist a
cut, but was of little protection against a blow. To make it of any use
in battle against heavy swords, maces, and battle axes it was necessary
to wear beneath it a very heavily padded garment which, of course, was
hot. How the Crusaders in their chain mail must have sweated in the hot
sun of the Holy Land! And how many mail-clad knights must have been
pounded to death without necessarily losing one drop of blood!
[Illustration: _Fig. 7. An ink rubbing taken from the engraved brass
plate on the tomb of Sir Roger de Trumpington, an English knight who
died in 1289. Note the complete suit of chain mail, the
supplementary knee defenses and big pot helmet attached by a chain,
the cloth surcoat, and the shield with his punning badge of a
trumpet._]
[Illustration: _Fig. 8. Cape of chain mail, with extra wide links at
the collar, and ornamental links of brass around the lower edge._]
To protect against blows, therefore, it became necessary to produce a
rigid protection. The primitive state of iron metallurgy did not permit
the making of more than small pieces of iron at a time. Nevertheless,
iron head coverings were already in use by the eleventh century, and
from that time on pieces of plate armor increased in size and number.
After the head defense, the most vulnerable part of a rider’s body (for
remember that only knights could afford mail, and knights fought on
horseback) was the knees. Have you ever had a really hard bump on the
kneecap, and, if you remember one, should you have liked to go on
fighting just after receiving it? The knight represented in the brass of
Fig. 7, who died in 1289, wears knee-guards, and rests his head on his
great “pot-helm”, which was normally attached to his body by a chain, so
that it could not easily be lost if he took it off to get a breath of
air. The City Art Museum has no specimens of plate armor of this early
period.
“GOTHIC” ARMOR
[Illustration: _Fig. 9. A helmet called a salade: made like a deep
salad bowl, with a slit to see through._]
During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries it became the fashion to
wear a long cloth garment, called a _surcoat_, over armor. Pictures and
statues of this period show armored figures only with such surcoats, and
it is, therefore, impracticable to follow the exact development of the
pieces of plate armor which were added to reinforce the chain mail. By
the beginning of the fifteenth century complete outfits of plate armor
were in use, but the earliest surviving suits of the so-called “Gothic”
armor date from about 1460. They are exceedingly rare. The City Art
Museum possesses only a gauntlet of about 1450 and a helmet (Fig. 9)
from about 1475, yet we feel lucky to have these two pieces, for
“Gothic” armor is not only rare: it is very beautiful. It was at this
period that armorers did their best work, from every standpoint. It was
best metallurgically, with inner surfaces of pure soft iron, but with
outer surfaces skillfully converted into almost glass-hard steel. It was
best functionally, for its simple clean curved lines were admirably
designed to turn a blow harmlessly aside, with no unnecessary decorative
forms to catch descending edge or point. It was best artistically (as is
usually the case with things that function perfectly), depending for
beauty on its own pure sculptural lines rather than on extraneous
ornament.
The helmet of Fig. 9 is of a type called _salade_. It is a simple steel
hat, like that of a modern soldier, and originally had a padded lining.
Unlike the modern military helmet, however, it covers the head down to
the end of the nose; there is a narrow slit in front of the eyes which
permits surprisingly good vision while leaving the eyes quite well
protected. The lines of this helmet are clean and elegant, typical of
the “Gothic” style. This type of helmet was often worn in combination
with an upstanding guard for the lower part of the face which was
attached to the top of the neck-defense. The lower edge of the helmet
overlapped the upper edge of this face-guard; thus the entire face was
protected, yet the wearer had reasonable ventilation and could obtain
more when circumstances permitted by taking off his helmet.
“MAXIMILIAN” ARMOR
At the beginning of the sixteenth century the most important single
personality in Europe was probably King (later Emperor) Maximilian I of
Germany and Austria. A contemporary of Leonardo da Vinci, he lived at a
time when versatility was one of the characteristics of an educated man,
and as sovereign he set his subjects a good example in this respect. He
wrote books on genealogy, hunting and woodsmanship, horse breeding,
architecture, and landscape gardening. He was greatly interested in arms
and armor, and frequently visited his court armorer in his workshop. It
is not surprising, therefore, that he had a great influence on the
design of armor, and that the new and sharply different fashion which
appeared at this time became known as the “Maximilian”. It was
characterized by parallel, or almost parallel, fluting, especially on
breastplate and thigh guards, by broad-toed foot guards (_sollerets_) as
compared with the long pointed toes of the Gothic period, and by
strongly roped edges of the plates. The City Art Museum has an excellent
suit of Maximilian armor (Fig. 10). The breastplate, thigh guards
(_tassets_) and main shell of the helmet illustrate the characteristic
flutings, while the sollerets are fully developed Maximilian style. The
suit was made in Nuremberg in the first quarter of the sixteenth
century, and was formerly in the armory of Prince Liechtenstein.
[Illustration: _Fig. 10. A full suit of Maximilian armor from the
early sixteenth century._]