Chapter II: A Marauder of the "Bandes de Picardie." Mr. J. F. Sullivan 14 (2)

For suits of Gothic armour which have belonged to known wearers, 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

All the cap-à-pie suits of fluted Maximilian armour resemble each other in their more salient characteristics. They are extremely defensive and well made, with every piece more or less fluted, except the greaves, which are usually perfectly plain. Many of the pieces have turned-over edges worked into cable patterns. The pauldrons and coudières are well developed, the gauntlets mittened, sollerets with very broad and square toes, breast-plate generally globose, but sometimes brought to a blunt point, often with a roundel guarding the left arm-pit. The armet has usually a low central cabled comb with parallel flutes on either side, occasionally there are three or five combs. The visor is usually thrown into three or four horizontal peaks or ridges, often with the underhung look believed to have been introduced in compliment to the House of Hapsburgh. An almost equally common form is the puffed visor, but the form of the head-piece is generally more varied than that of the rest of the suit. The fine Nuremberg suit, Fig. 11, owned by Mr. Percy Macquoid, shows the bellows visor and the rope crest, and in it all the leading characteristics of Maximilian armour are well displayed, especially the duck-bill sollerets, the flutings of which boldly finish in ram's horns. The suit formerly belonged to the King of Prussia, and seems to be perfect, except the collar, an apparent restoration.

Maximilian armour is greatly favoured by collectors. There are cap-à-pie and barded suits in the Tower and the Wallace collections, at Warwick, and in the collections of Mr. Panmure Gordon and Sir Wheatman Pearson. The horse armour, which nearly entirely sheathes the head, neck, and fore- and hind-quarters, is fluted, gracefully curved, and except the crinière, worked in large pieces, the lower margins curving well away from the flanks. Three-quarter and half suits are well represented in the Tower and the Wallace collections, the one figured, Fig. 12, being a finely typical example brought from Strawberry Hill, and now the property of the Duke of Westminster. This armour seems to have been at times partly gilded, and instances exist where small badges are repeated to form bands of raised work between the flutes. It is sometimes engraved with borders of floral design, either edging the different pieces, or more boldly treated as in Fig. 13 from the Burges Collection in the British Museum. Though mainly worn in Germany, fluted armour became everywhere the fashion, the portrait by Piero di Cosimo, Fig. 14, in the National Gallery affording an admirable representation of a breast-plate with delicate flutes on the lower half. An actual specimen resembling this, but engraved, is in the collection from Rhodes at Woolwich. The corselets furnished to the Swiss pike-men by the Milanese appear also to have been of this pattern. Besides the bellows visor, and one puffed out to give breathing space and fluted, the visor was at times embossed into the form of a grotesque face with mustachios. Sometimes the helmets in which this occurs had a pair of fan-like appendages in pierced and fluted steel, forming a dignified and wing-like crest. The remarkable example in the Tower, Fig. 15, once silvered, and presented by Maximilian himself to Henry VIII., has a pair of ram's horns instead of wings. It has since been painted and rendered more absurd by spectacles, and assigned without any reason to the King's jester, Will Somers.

These grotesque helmets were sometimes worn with armour puffed and slashed to imitate civilian dress. A few pieces of this kind are in the Tower, but the Wallace Collection possesses a three-quarter suit, slashed, puffed, engraved, and gilt, the armet having the bellows visor and five-roped comb. The extreme of exaggeration to which German armourers were carried is seen in the suit in the Ambras Collection, figured by Hefner and by Hewett, in which the cloth bases as well as the puffed sleeves of the civilian are carefully imitated in steel. The visor is singularly grotesque, and the whole presents a ludicrous and ungainly appearance, as well as being quite unserviceable.

The cap-à-pie suit of Henry VIII., Fig. 16, belongs to this group, and though not fluted, is made like the Maximilian armour, the high erect shoulder-piece and large coudières giving it a striking character. The armet is of fine form, with the visor thrown into the series of peaks and ridges common to fluted armour, and known to collectors as the bellows shape. The bridle-hand wears the mainfere (main-de-fer), while the right hand grasping the spear is gauntleted. The horse armour, though so boldly embossed, is of earlier date, not later than Henry VII. The foliated scrolls surround the _cross ragulé_ and steel brickets and fire-stones, so that it probably presents a rare specimen of the Burgundian armourer's craft.

The head-piece for tilting used in Germany and England during the reign of Henry VII. and first years of Henry VIII., and known a century earlier, is represented, Fig. 17, by the remarkably perfect specimen found in the triforium of Westminster Abbey in 1869. It weighs 17½ lbs., the few others known in England weighing, with one exception, considerably over 20 lbs. When fixed, the helm itself was immovable, but as there were quite three inches of space round the head, movement inside was possible. The occularium is placed so that the head must be lowered to see out, the combatants sighting each other like bulls before making their rush, and throwing up the head to escape splinters of the lance.

The abandonment of this heavy helm for a much lighter form may have been due to Henry VIII. himself. Hall narrates that tilting on one occasion in 1524, with his great friend and brother-in-law Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, he had on a helmet of a new fashion, devised by himself, the like of which had not before been seen. It had a visor, which was up and unfastened, leaving the king's face exposed, when by some mischance the word was given to Brandon to start. No doubt in the old helm, and remarking that he could not see, he couched his lance, striking the king on the brow of the skull-piece or main portion of his helmet. Appalled at the narrow escape, he vowed he would never tilt with his sovereign more. One of the lighter forms of tilting helmet, Fig. 18, from Penshurst, shows the small trap-door for speaking or breathing, but now riveted down. A second helmet, Fig. 19, of rather later date, is surmounted by the porcupine crest in wood, removed in the illustration, and is interesting as having belonged to the grandfather of Sir Philip Sidney. Both these helmets perhaps hung in Penshurst Church.

The sallad, the head-piece _par excellence_ of Gothic armour, continued in use, especially in Germany, until far into the sixteenth century. In its simplest form it was the archer's head-piece: but provided with slits for vision, pulled over the brow in time of danger to meet the chin defence or bavier, it became almost a closed helmet; and with the further addition of a visor and other reinforcing pieces, it was used for battle or tilting by the mounted knight. It was never a very safe head-piece, De Commines relating how the Count of Charolois received a sword-wound on the neck at Montlhéry, 1465, for want of his bavier, "which, being slightly fastened in the morning, dropped from his head in the battle--I myself saw it fall." The Venetian form survived during the seventeenth century, though for pageantry rather than use, being covered with red velvet richly ornamented with beaten iron foliage and scrolls, gilded and sometimes surmounted by a swan-like crest. The richness of decoration of the sallad has been alluded to in the former monograph. The battle picture by Paolo Uccello, Fig. 8, shows one covered with red velvet and studded with nails. Elizabeth with her own hands garnished the sallad of Henry VII. with jewels, and in 1513 Erasmus Kirkener received £462:4:2 for "garnishing a salet" and a head-piece, "and mending a shapewe." Pope Pius V. sent Alva a sallad and sword for his brave fights for the Church. Wooden shields covered with painted canvas, embossed leather, or gesso, continued in use in Germany down to about the end of the reign of Maximilian. The magnificent specimen, Plate I., is now in the British Museum. Of late fifteenth century date, it is of wood lined with leather, faced with canvas, over which a layer of gesso has been laid to receive the gilding. Upon the gold ground the design has been painted, a knight in Gothic armour, with armet and poll-axe on the ground before him, kneeling to a lady, with the appropriate legend _Vous ou la mort_. The surfaces are finely curved. In the Tower inventory, quoted by Lord Dillon, among the jewels is a target of the Passion with Our Lady and St. George.

The splendid decoration of the sword-hilts used with Gothic armour has already been noticed. By the kindness of Sir Noël Paton an exquisite specimen in the finest preservation is illustrated in Fig. 20. The pommel and cross-hilt are plated with silver gilt, and the former bears a shield with the arms of Battle Abbey and the initials T. L. of Abbot Thomas de Lodelowe, 1417-1434. It came into the possession of Sir John Gage, K.G., on the suppression of the monasteries, his descendant presenting it to the Meyrick Collection. Few existing swords, except those used as municipal insignia, are in equal preservation, but richly worked hilts are represented in brasses and monuments. Swords abounded in churches, but few are left besides the royal swords at Westminster, Canterbury, and Windsor. Part of the glamour surrounding Joan of Arc was due to the consecrated sword taken by her from St. Catherine's Church at Tours. The sword of Guy, Earl of Warwick, was specially mentioned in a will of the time of Henry IV., and its custody confirmed to the family after the accession of Henry VIII. It is curious to note that in 1319 the wearing of swords in London was forbidden, and those confiscated were hung up beneath Ludgate, within and without.

The interesting sword, Fig. 21, from Her Majesty's collection at Windsor, dates from about the end of the fourteenth or early in the fifteenth century. Its peculiarity is the semicircular guard for the forefinger growing out of one of the quillons, the first step, as Baron de Cosson remarks, "towards the evolution of the beautiful and complicated rapier of the sixteenth century." "The pommel and guard are of iron fully gilt, the grip of wood." The blade is gilt and engraved for a few inches where it shows dark in the illustration, and is inscribed with the name of the Cid Marchio Rodericus Bivar and a shield of arms, these having been added, in the Baron's opinion, in the sixteenth or seventeenth century. Only four swords with the little semicircular guard or "half pas d'ane" were known when he described them, being introduced owing to the Italian custom of bending the forefinger round the quillon when slashing.

IV

ENRICHED ARMOUR

Armour was enriched in almost all ages, sometimes ostentatiously so, and at other times left affectedly plain. It was, however, only when wearing it in battle ceased to be a paramount necessity, that armour definitely became little more than a mere vehicle for lavish display. Lightly armed and easily manoeuvred troops and artillery were steadily becoming increasingly important factors in deciding the fortunes of battle, and at last men could with difficulty be brought to undergo the fatigue of carrying weighty armour which they regarded as no efficient protection. Sir James Smith's complaint in 1530 puts the matter clearly: "But that which is more strange, these our new fantasied men of warre doo despise and scorne our auncient arming of ourselves, both on horseback and on foot, saying that wee armed ourselves in times past with too much armour, or peeces of yron (as they terme it). And therefore their footmen piqueurs they do allow for very well armed when they weare their burgonets, their collars, their cuirasses, and their backs, without either pouldrons, vambraces, gauntlets, or tasses." This arming is even lighter than Mr. J. F. Sullivan's picturesque Marauder of Picardie (Plate II.). The Battle of the Spurs perhaps did much to break the prestige of men-at-arms, who were routed by one-tenth their number of English horse. The French chivalry, armed cap-à-pie, came on in three ranks thirty-six deep, and were targets as usual for the English archers, who lined a hedge, "and shotte apace and galled the French horse." The English horse, and a few mounted archers who had gone forward with spears, "set on freshly crying St. George," whereupon the French fled, throwing away "speres, swordes, and mases," and cutting the bards of their horses. The Estradiots coming down in front of the French host caught sight of the English horse, and mistaking the king's battaille of foot for horse also, turned and fled, chased by the Burgundians and Walloons; the main body of English, on foot with the king, having no opportunity of engaging.

The large proportion of mercenaries retained on either side contributed more perhaps than anything else to the disuse of armour. Nicander Nucius relates that in Henry VII.'s expedition to Scotland there were "Italians in no small number, and of Spaniards, and also moreover of Argives from Peloponnesus." In 1546 Lord Grey de Wilton brought his "Bullenoyes and Italian harquebuziers" from Boulogne. In invading Scotland two years later he divided "his menne of armes, demilaunces, and light horsemenne into troops, appointing the Spanish and Italian hagbutters on horsebacke to keepe on a wing." Captain Gambo, a Spaniard, and others held command, and, "being backed by the Almayne footmen, entered againe into Scotland."

In proceeding to quell the insurrection in Devonshire, Lord Grey's forces included, among other strangers, a band of horsemen "most part Albanoyses and Italians," and a band of Italian footmen under Captain Paule Baptist Spinola of Genoa. These mercenaries armed themselves in their own fashion and were not to be controlled. Nor does it appear that the Tudor kings were anxious to put even their body-guards in anything like complete armour. Henry VII.'s guard consisted "of fifty yeomen, tall personable men, good archers, and divers others." A little later, on the marriage of Prince Arthur, the guard consisted of 300 carrying halberts, in white and green damask, with garlands of vine embroidered back and front, richly spangled in front and enclosing a red rose worked in bullion and goldsmith's work. Nicander Nucius says that "they consisted of halberdmen and swordsmen who used bucklers and Italian swords, so that resting the bucklers on the ground, they could discharge arrows." Perkin Warbeck, posing as the "Whyte Rose Prince of England," had a guard of thirty in "Murray and blewe." Henry VIII. appointed a guard of fifty "speeres" in the first year of his reign, each to be attended by an archer, demilaunce, and a custrell, on great horses. They were so extravagantly dressed, "trapped in cloth of golde, silver, and goldsmithes woorke, and their servants richly appareled also," that "they endured not long the apparell and charges were so greate." They were not reinstated until the thirty-first year of his reign. Edward VI.'s guard was 400 strong, all very tall, and dressed in crimson velvet doublets embroidered with golden roses. In meeting Philip of Spain on his way to Winchester in 1554, Lord Arundel took 100 archers in yellow cloth striped with red velvet with their bows ready, Mary's colours, however, being white and green.

The taste for sumptuous armour became definitely fixed on the accession of Henry VIII. in 1509. Harding relates that, at the Coronation jousts, Brandon "turneyed in harneyes all over gylte from the heade-peece to the Sabattons." Hall devotes scores of pages to descriptions of the magnificence of Henry, especially in presence of rival potentates or their ambassadors. Before Terouenne, the weather being very foul, Maximilian and his retinue came to the rendezvous in black cloth, but Henry was attended by a large retinue extravagantly dressed, comprising his usual "nine henxmen" in white and crimson cloth of gold richly embroidered with goldsmith's work, on great coursers as richly caparisoned, with the addition of many gold bells, and "tassels of fyne gold in bullion"--these bore his helm; "the two grangardes," his spears, axe, etc. He entered Terouenne as a conqueror in "armure gilt and graven"; and Maximilian set out on his return "toward Almaine in gilte harness, and his nobles in white harness and rich cotes." On the occasion of the French ambassador's visit to Greenwich, the king disported himself at the "tilte in a newe harnesse all gilte of a strange fashion that had not been seen." No less than 286 spears were broken. Charles V. is often represented in very richly embossed armour, and some of the suits made for him, such as by the Colmans of Augsburg, show that these sculptured and pictorial representations were not wholly imaginary.

It is not, however, until the reigns of Mary and Elizabeth that the culminating point of richness in armour is attained, when poems abound in allusions to it. In Spenser's _Faerie Queen_ armour always glitters with gold, and in Camoens' _Lusiad_ there are "breast-plates flaming with a thousand dyes."

Little sumptuously decorated armour was made in England, the finest that can claim to have been made here being five existing suits out of the twenty-nine in the Jacobe album. One only of these belongs to the nation, Lord Bucarte's bequeathed with the Wallace Collection; the opportunity of acquiring Sir Christopher Hatton's, notwithstanding its historic interest, being hitherto neglected.

Of foreign armour the suits of the Dukes of Bourbon and Montmorency at Wilton are spoils of victory, and others in the Tower and at Windsor were royal presents. The vast bulk of foreign armour in the country, however, has been acquired by purchase, and of late years. Of small collections one of the least known is that made by the grandfather of the Duke of Westminster, who purchased it from Sir Horace Walpole. The light peascod breast-plate and tassets (Fig. 22), richly engraved and gilt in bands, are probably German of about 1570, and the gauntlets of approximately the same date, while the close helmet is about twenty years earlier. The finely engraved and parcel-gilt breast-plate and tassets (Plate III.) are probably Italian, dating from about 1540. A deep peascod breast-plate and tassets richly arabesqued with dolphins on a blue ground, bears an engraved escutcheon with the figure of a porcupine, motto and date.

One of the most sumptuously decorated suits in the Tower, for long described as that of the Black Prince, is reproduced in Fig. 23. It is late Italian, much of it embossed with lions' heads, etc., while the plainer surfaces are entirely covered with very delicate gold ornament on russet ground. Detail of the damascening is shown in Plate IV.

Several of our illustrations are taken from Mr. David Currie's magnificent collection, part of which is deposited in the South Kensington Museum. Very little armour is finer in its way than the breast-plate (Fig. 24) formerly in the Bernal and Londesborough collections. The repoussé work, designed in the best Italian taste of the sixteenth century, is enhanced by gold damascening on backgrounds gilt and inlaid with silver. It is said to have been worn by Philip of Spain, the steel gauntlets (Fig. 25), of similar work, having perhaps formed part of the same suit. It recalls one in Madrid presented to the Infant Philip III. by the Duke of Terranova. The finely embossed breast-plate (Plate V.), and gorget (Fig. 26), are French, but unfortunately no history attaches to them.

This extremely costly armour, with no defensive quality, was intended for parade rather than use, and an appropriate head-piece was also especially devised for triumphal display. This was the casque, based on classic models, which left the face entirely uncovered. Artists of high renown, like Verrocchio and Pollajuolo, designed and worked upon these _casques d'honneur_, and the Negrolis, Colmans, and other famous armourers vied with each other in their production. Superb examples exist in the great national collections of Europe, but rarely find their way into private hands. Plate VI., not one of the finest examples, was formerly in Lord Londesborough's, and now in Mr. Currie's collection. It has a triple comb and plume-holder, and is believed to have formed part of the armour of an officer of the guard to Cosmo de' Medici.

The casque passes almost insensibly into the more serviceable burgonet, a classic-looking helmet with ear-pieces and neck-covering, dear to Salvator Rosa and his contemporaries. This developed into the spider helmet with bars to protect the face, and the open and barred helmets of Charles I. and the Commonwealth. Fig. 27 represents an extremely rich example of the latter, made with cuirass and gorget in repoussé silver for Charles II. when prince. The defensive quality of the armet, not being so purely consecrated to parade, was rarely impaired by embossing, and even when made for monarchs, the decoration was mainly confined to etching and gilding. A rare form with double visor, five rope-like combs, and bands of engraving, is illustrated (Fig. 28) from the collection of Mr. Cozens Smith of Benyeo. The armet continued to be used by mounted officers until the middle of the seventeenth century, a picture of Rocroy, 1643, showing Condé in a hat, but his staff in visored helmets. One of the latest cap-à-pie suits, probably never worn, is that in the Tower, richly worked and gilded all over, presented to Charles I. by the City of London.

The high-combed morions and cabassets of the pikemen and musketeers are generally richly etched in vertical bands, or covered with interlacing arabesques, which we gather, from numerous passages in Brantôme's works, were usually gilt. Thus 4000 harquebuziers stepped out of the ranks as _enfans perdus_, at the call of Mons. d'Andelet "tous morions gravez et dorez en teste."

The buckler or target appears an archaic defence, but survived with us, sometimes in high favour like the sword, at others nearly obsolete, until the reign of James I., and in Scotland till recent times. It was banished while the Spanish rapier and left-handed dagger were in use.

The most magnificent targets were made solely for parade, and were borne in front of princely personages by their esquires. The broad surfaces they presented for decoration, and the esteem they were held in, induced even very great artists, like Giulio Romano, not only to design them, but actually to work upon them. It is far from rare to find in collections of drawings by old masters, designs for shields, like those signed Polydore and B. Franco hanging in the corridors at Chatsworth. Under the Tudor and later Valois kings they were usually round and of steel, but sometimes elliptical, obovate, vesica-shaped, rectangular, and even heater-shaped, with painted arms. One of the finest ever produced is the Milanese buckler at Windsor, believed to have been in England since the time of Francis I. The repoussé work is of most exquisite finish and the gold damascening of extraordinary delicacy. Others not inferior to it are at Dresden, Turin, and Madrid, the latter by Colman of Augsburg. The shield of Charles IX. in the Louvre is also superbly damascened. Magnificent specimens are known from the hands of the Negrolis and Picinino of Milan, Gasparo Mola of Florence, Giorgio Ghisi of Mantua. A description of one, now lost, by Hieronymus Spacini of Milan, states that it comprised forty-eight engravings in gold upon niello. Hans Mielich has left several designs, some of which were carried out by Colman. The finely-embossed target in the Kensington Museum is signed by Georgius Sigman of Augsburg. The Bernal, Meyrick, Soltykoff, and other collections now dispersed, included examples illustrating the story of Coriolanus, Siege of Troy, Judgment of Paris, etc.

Those intended to receive the hard knocks of active service must have presented unembossed surfaces, though perhaps richly etched and gilded like the morions. The specimen (Fig. 30) belonging to Mr. Currie is rich enough for parade, with its bands of embossing and fine damascening, while the second illustration (Fig. 31) might have been the war target of an Italian or Spanish Captain under Philip II. It is remarkable that the first Greenwich inventory only contains eight bucklers, "of steele, seven guilte and wroughte." They were probably somewhat like Fig. 31. Another among the jewels was of silver gilt, with the arms of England, roses, castles, and pomegranates. This, like the quaint little roundel belonging to Lord Kenyon (Fig. 32), was probably English. It appears that London bucklers acquired some celebrity in the time of Elizabeth, who limited the length of their steel points to two inches, for the young King of Scots greatly desired to possess one. George Brownfelde, Roger Morgan, Tothill Street, and Richard Hamkyn, King Street, Westminster, were buckler-makers to Henry VIII.; and Peter Lovat, a Frenchman, supplied steel pavices at the sign of the cock in Fleet Street at eight shillings each. They are seldom mentioned as playing a part in actual warfare, though when Lord Grey de Wilton called for forlorn hopes at the siege of Guynes, fifty stept out "with swordes and roondelles to view and essaye the breatches." The celebrated Jarnac duel, witnessed by Henri II., was fought with sword and target.

The chanfron or head-piece to the horse's armour, originally called the chevron, received as much attention as the helmet or buckler of its rider. It was the pride of the noble, when Monstrelet wrote, to make the horse's head-front blaze with jewels. Designs for horse-armour by Hans Mielich, and that actually executed for Christian II. at Dresden, are as rich as the suits themselves. The latter illustrates the labours of Hercules, and is the one for which Colman received 14,000 crowns. The chanfron bears a spike, an appendage dating back to the time of Edward III. In the _Anturs of Arthur_ we read--

Opon his chèveronne be-forn
Stode as a unicorn
Als scharpe as a thorn,
An nanlas of stele.

The charger ridden by Lord Scales in his tourney with the Bastard of Burgundy had a "schaffrõ with a large sharpe pyke of stele," which, penetrating the nostrils of the Bastard's steed, caused it to rear and throw him. The oldest chanfron handed down is that in Warwick Castle, which was there when visited by Sir William Dugdale. The lower part of one belonging to the suit, Fig. 29, is seen in Plate VII.

Swords varied considerably in the sixteenth century, the extremes sometimes meeting in the same army, the two-handed sword, scimitar, rapier, sabre, cinquedea, falchion, and malchus, being borne perhaps simultaneously by the mercenary bands comprised in it. The two-handed sword represents the largest dimensions ever attained by this weapon, perhaps originating in the sword of state, like that of Edward III. in Westminster Abbey. It was used in Scotland at an early period; if not wielded by whole clans, certainly by champions of exceptional vigour. Thus Froissart relates that Sir Archibald Douglas fought on foot and wielded an immense sword, the blade of which was two ells long, and so heavy that scarcely any other man could have lifted it from the ground. This great sword is the real claymore, though the name has been misappropriated to the Scottish basket-hilted broadsword of the last century. The Swiss and Germans were the only people who made it an offensive weapon for large disciplined bodies of troops, and in the sixteenth century it had become an essentially Teutonic weapon. Henry VIII.'s great personal strength and agility enabled him to wield it, as a young man, and to withstand all-comers. The fine hilt illustrated (Fig. 33) from Penshurst, with the pommel and quillons carved and chased out of the solid steel into the bears and ragged staff of the Leicesters, is undoubtedly the most beautiful in the country. The blade has been shortened, perhaps under the edict of Queen Elizabeth, who posted guards at the City Gates to break all swords that were too long.

In striking contrast to this is the well-known Cinquedea, the Italian translation of the French _Sang de dez_. The name of a spear, _langue-de-boeuf_, has been improperly applied to it since the eighteenth century. The handles were frequently ivory with pierced brass insertions, like the illustration (Fig. 34), belonging to the Duke of Norfolk; but the finest examples are of chased steel, exquisitely worked and silvered. The Cinquedea was highly esteemed in Venice.

Until the introduction of the Spanish rapier the sword used with the buckler was short and heavy in the blade, though with handles sometimes richly worked and inlaid with silver. The rapier appeared about 1570 to 1580, the slender tapering blade being relatively of great length, rendering it difficult to sheathe. The guards to the hilts were generally of open work, the variety of form, though endless, falling into three leading groups, the swept-hilted, shell-guard, and cup-hilted, the finest workmanship being as a rule found on the latter. The quillons, generally very long, are either straight or curved. With the rapier, a long dagger held in the left hand and called the _main-gauche_ was used to parry, the blade being notched near the base to entangle and break the opponent's weapon. Two varieties are figured, both with superbly chased hilts; the one of steel belonging to Mr. Percy Macquoid (Fig. 35), and one with silver guard (Fig. 36), belonging to Her Majesty. The cup-hilted rapier (Fig. 37), reproduced on a slightly smaller scale, is the companion to the latter dagger and is also partly silver-hilted and chased with representations of combats. The quillons are engraved with flowers, and the blade is signed Heinrich Coell, Solingen. The blades and hilts were frequently, perhaps usually, made in different workshops. Many of those in Vienna have German hilts and Italian blades, others have Solingen blades and Milanese hilts. Toledo blades were, however, preferred, and their marks were frequently imitated by German makers. The first ship of the ill-fated Spanish Armada to fall a prey to Drake and Howard was the _Capitana_ of the Andalusian squadron, which among its treasures carried a chest of swords, richly mounted, and intended for presentation to the English Catholic peers. Frequent reference is made in Elizabethan plays to Bilbao and Toledo blades, but more especially to "Foxes," so called from the Nuremberg mark. Certain passages show that these were used with the buckler, in this country at least; and in the engraving of the funeral of Sir Philip Sidney, targets both round and oval are carried.