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MEDIEVAL ARMORS

 

 

 

 

Next to the shield the helmet is the oldest defensive arm.  It was made of hammered and also of cast iron.
 
The cap, which is the oldest form of the helmet, received afterwards a projection which extended over the nose, but left the eyes and cheeks free.
 
Such helmets appear in the 10th and 11th centuries.  The first visor we find in the year 1155, and at the time of the third crusade  they had become common.
 
The first visors were immovable, and consisted of cross-bars riveted to the helmet. From the middle of the 13th century the helmet was rounded above, and in the 14th and 15th centuries forms as in  figs. 1, 2, and 3, are general. To the upper helm iron plates were added to protect the throat and back of the neck ; the visor, however, was very differently shaped and contrived to raise and lower.   It consisted either of several small iron bars (fig. 3), or of plates with openings opposite the eyes and mouth only (fig. 2), or of plates cut or pierced like a grate or sieve (fig. 1).  Besides these knights' helmets, however, the simple, close-fitting head-piece, pot, or skull-cap remained in use for the attendants, grooms, footmen, and men-at-arms (figs. 4-7).   Even the knights when not expecting immediate combat, yet wishing to be protected, wore such, but of much more elegant forms.

 As to the decorations of the helmet and the material of which it was made, we find it sometimes of iron and sometimes of steel, or even, for state occasions, of gold and silver.  The steel ones were either painted entirely black, or the steel was blued and variously ornamented, engraved, inlaid with gold and silver, striped and studded, or even set with precious stones.

Kings wore crowns upon their helmets ; counts and barons also often wore the coronets of pearl belonging to their rank upon their helms.  In the 13th and 14th centuries horse-tails were worn on the helmet-crest, afterwards plumes of feathers took the place of them.  In later years, when heraldic bearings became common, symbols proper to the bearing were often placed upon the helm, as animals, horns, wings, human figures) &c.   These decorations became general in the 15th century.  The oldest form of the cuirass is represented in fig. 8, where the scales are secured upon a leathern under-coat.  This harness, from the Dresden armory, is' said to have belonged to King John Sobiesky of Poland.  The form of the helmet is like-wise the very oldest of all, that of a round cap fitting over the head-piece of the cuirass, by which the cheeks were protected.  The feather-plumes and Maltese cross are doubtless additions of alater time; the feathers, indeed, were most probably added only to give the harness a better appearance when it was setup.  In the 10th and 11th centuries the ring-cuirass (hauberk, fig. 16) became common.

The horses also were provided with such ring and scale mail, and carried on the head a plate of iron with a spike projecting from it in front (charfron).  The ring and scale mail was gradually displaced by that composed of plates, in which the upper arm, for instance, was covered with a single plate, and the divisions were only at the joints, where still other plates were fitted over these divisions, so as to give the power of motion.  At first the upper part of the body was clad in the ring or scale mail, and only the lower part covered with the plate, as shown by the corresponding parts of a knights harness in  figs. 16 and 17. 

By the end of the 15th century, however, the plate or iron band armor had become general, although light ring-cuirasses were still worn under the plate harness in the 16th century (figs. 9,  10, and  12).   At the same time with their riders, the horses also were provided with mail, which on the head, breast, and hind-quarters consisted of plates, but on the neck of iron bands (fig. 23) ; frequently, however, the croup and hind-quarters were protected against cuts by separate bands only . Ffigs. 9,10, and 11, show mail composed chiefly of iron bands such as was used in and after the fifteenth century, the armor represented being that of the Elector Joachim II, of Brandenburg.   Figs. 12,13, 14, and 15, belong to this kind also.

 

 

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