John Malcolm Mitchell, Oswald Barron, and Charles Francis Atkinson

“ The note of the 15th century in armour is that of fantastically elaborate forms boldly outlined and a splendour of colour which gained much from the custom of wearing over the full harness short cloaks or rich coats turned up with furs, or from another fashion of covering the body plates or brigandines with rich velvets studded with gold. The details of the harness take a thousand curious shapes, and even amongst the simpler jacks and steel caps of the archers the same glorious variety is seen. ”

“ The long, sleeveless surcoat seen over King John’s mail on his broad seal goes through the century and is often embroidered with arms. The shield becomes flat-topped the better to receive armorial charges. The great helm is common, although many knights on the day of battle like better the freedom of the mail hood with a steel cap worn over or under its crown, keeping for the tourney-yard the great helm which towards the century-end begins to carry its towering crest. ”

“ We find that weapons and war gear have advanced little or nothing beyond the age which saw the Dacian warrior armed from crown to foot. A knight is reckoned fully armed if he have helmet, hawberk and shield; his weapons are sword and lance, although he sometimes carries axe or mace and, more rarely, a bow. The coat of fence, which the Norman called hawberk and the English byrnie, hangs from neck to knee, the sleeves loose and covering the elbow only, the skirt slit before and behind for ease in the saddle. ”

“ Ringed hawberks, in a damp northern climate, will not survive long neglect, and many of them must have been cut in pieces for burnishers or for the mail skirts and gussets attached to the later arming doublets. As the fashion of plate armour changed, the smith might adapt an old harness to the new taste, but more often it would be cast aside. Men to whom the sight of a steel coat called up the business of their daily life wasted no sentimentality over an obsolete piece. ”

“ The shining plates of the Guards are parade pieces only, but a curious revival of an old defence was carried by English cavalry in the field at the end of the 19th century, when small gussets of chain mail were attached to the shoulders of certain cavalrymen as a defence against sword cuts. Through all the age of modern warfare inventors have pressed the claims of various bullet-proof breastplates, but where they have been effective against rifle fire their weight has made them too heavy an addition to the soldier’s burden. (See, however, Armour Plates, ad fin.) ”

“ The history of the development of arms and armour begins with that of the human race; indeed, combined with domestic implements, the most primitive weapons which have been found constitute the most important, if not the only, tangible evidence on which the history of primitive man is based. It is largely from the materials and characteristics of the weapons and utensils found in caves, tombs and various strata of the earth’s crust, coupled with geological considerations, that the ethnological and chronological classifications of prehistoric man have been deduced. ”

“ Arms and legs and feet become cased in plate of steel or studded leather, and before the mid-century the shoulder-plates, like the steel shoes, are of overlapping pieces and the elbow also moves easily under the same defence. (See fig. 7.)
Such harness, ever growing more beautiful in its rich details, serves our champions until the beginning of the 15th century, when the fashion begins to turn. The scanty surcoat tends to disappear. ”

“ Before 1350 the long surcoat of the 13th century was still further shortened, the tails being cut off squarely with the front. The fate of Sir John Chandos, who in 1369 stumbled on a slippery road, his long coat “armed with his arms” becoming tangled with his legs, points to the fact that an old soldier might cling to an old fashion.
The desire for a better defence than a steel cap and camail and a less cumbrous one than the great helm, in which the knight rode half stifled and half blind, brought in as a fighting headpiece the basinet with a movable viser. ”

“ At the end of the century a sugar-loaf type is the established form. The knight’s hawberk is worn over a gambeson of linen, quilted linen or cotton, which lesser men wear with a steel cap for all defence. Breast and back plates also are sometimes borne under the hawberk, and the first plates in sight at last appear in those knee-cops which protect the joining of the upper and lower hose, and in a few examples of bainbergs or greaves of metal or leather. ”

“ On the whole we must conclude that the Mycenaean age is by no means a single homogeneous whole (see Aegean Civilization) , and that the weapons are not exclusively of bronze, nor of any single type.
The Homeric warrior in full armour, according to the Homeric poems, wore: (1) shield (ἀσπίς, σάκος) , (2) greaves (κνημῖδες) , (3) band (ζῶμα) , (4) belt (ζωστήρ) and mitrē, (5) tunic (χιτών) , (6) helmet (κορύς) , (7) breastplate (θώρηξ) , (8) sword (ξίφος) . The λαισήΐον was a protection worn by the archers in place of a shield. ”

“ The supply is assisted by the efforts of many forgers of false pieces, the most cunning of whom bring all archaeological skill to their aid, and few great Collections.national or private collections are free from some example of this industry. For the genuine pieces competition runs high. Suits of plate of the earliest period may be sought in vain, and the greatest collectors may hardly hope for such a panoply of the late Gothic period as that which is the ornament of the Wallace collection. Even this famous harness is not wholly free from suspicion of restoration. ”

“ The gussets of chain mail sewn into the leathern or fustian doublet worn below the body armour are unseen even at the gap at the hollow of the arm where the plates must be allowed to move freely, for a little plate, round, oval or oblong, is tagged to each side to fence the weak point. These plates often differ in size and shape one from the other, the sword-arm side carrying the smaller one. ”

“ The early antiquaries might have saved us many priceless things, but it was not until a few virtuosi of the 18th century were taken with the Gothic fancy that popular archaeology dealt with aught but Greek statuary and Roman inscriptions. The 19th century was well advanced before an interest in medieval antiquities became common amongst educated men, and for most contemporaries of Dr Johnson a medieval helm was a barbarous curiosity exciting the same measure of mild interest as does the Zulu knobkerry seen by us as we pass a pawnbroker’s window. ”

“ No warlike weapon of any period is more graceful in form or more beautifully finished. The finish seems to have been given in the mould without the aid of hammer or file, the edge being formed by suddenly reducing the thickness of the metal, so as to produce a narrow border of extreme thinness along both sides of the blade from hilt to point. The handle-plate and blade were cast in one piece, and the handle itself was formed by side plates of bone, horn or wood, riveted through the handle-plates. ”

“ The weapons in (2) and (3) are designed to avoid hand-to-hand fighting.
Weapons are also classified in a variety of other ways. Thus we have small-arms, i.e. all weapons in classes (1) and (2) with those in (3) which do not require carriages. Side-arms are those which, when not in use, are worn at the side, e.g. daggers, swords, bayonets. Armes blanches is a term used for offensive weapons of iron and steel which are used at close quarters.
Defensive armour consists of body armour, protections for the head and the limbs, and various types of shield. ”

“ Before the end of the 16th century the full suit of war harness is an antique survival. Long boots take the place of greaves and steel shoes, and early in the 16th century the military pedants are heard to bewail the common laying aside of other pieces. ”

“ The many monumental brasses of the last half of the 14th century show us for the most part knights in basinet and camail with the face exposed, but their heads are commonly pillowed on the great helm and in any case the viser would hinder the artist’s desire to show the knight’s features.
The fully-armed man of the latter half of the 14th century seems to have worn a rounded breastplate and a back-plate over his chain hawberk. ”

“ Stone Age.—One of the chief problems which have perplexed archaeologists is that of finding a criterion which will enable them to distinguish the most primitive products of human skill from similar objects whose form is dueto the forces of nature. ”

“ Monuments and brasses also show these fully armed men, but here again we must recognize the tendency which made the last of the cheap miniaturists endow their clients lavishly with heavy watch-chains and rings. As late as the 18th century the portrait painters drew their military or naval sitters in the breastplates and pauldrons, vambraces and rerebraces of an earlier age. Ancient wills and inventories, save those of great folk or military adventurers, have scanty reference to complete harnesses. ”

“ The Macedonian cavalry had a σάρισσα. The light-armed (γυμνῆτες, ψιλοί) were (1) ἀκοντισταί, armed with a javelin (3 to 5 ft. long) and a small shield; (2) τοξόται, archers; and (3) σφενδονῆται, slingers, whose missiles were balls of lead, stones and hardened clay pellets. Between the heavy and the light armed were the peltasts. The pelta, from which they took the name, was a light shield or target, made of skin or leather on a wooden or wickerwork frame. The Athenian Iphicrates armed them with linen corslet and a larger spear and sword than those of the hoplites ”

“ The stone weapon perseveres alongside the bronze, and there exist stone axes which, by their shape, suggest that they have been copied from metal axes. In the earliest interments in which the weapons deposited with the dead are of other materials than stone, a peculiar form of bronze dagger occurs. It consists of a well-finished, thin, knife-like blade, usually about 6 in. in length, broad at the hilt and tapering to the point, and attached to the handle by massive rivets of bronze. ”

“ Surcoat, shield and trapper have the arms of their owner. The rowel-spur makes a rare appearance. Weapons change little, although the sword is often longer and heavier. Richard I. had favoured the cross-bow, in spite of papal denunciations of that weapon hateful to God, and its use is common through all the 13th century, after which it makes way for the national weapon of the long-bow. ”

“ This hood was soon to lose its crown, the later basinets having the camail, a defence of mail covering neck, cheeks and chin and secured to the basinet with eyelet holes and loops through which a lace was passed. A rerebrace of plate defends the outer side of the upper arm, plain elbow-cops the elbow, and round bosses in the form of leopard heads guard the shoulder and the crook of the elbow. The fore-arm is covered with the plates of a vambrace which appears from under the hawberk sleeve. ”

“ W. Ridgeway, Early Age of Greece, i. chap. 3) , that the Homeric Achaeans (whom he regards as the descendants of the central European peoples, the makers of the Hallstatt iron swords) were far advanced into the Iron Age, and that the use of bronze weapons is merely another instance of the fact that the introduction of a new element does not necessarily banish the older. This theory would separate the Homeric from the Mycenaean altogether, and is part of a much more comprehensive ethnological hypothesis. ”

“ Passing over these doubtful cases, we come first to indubitable examples of weapons deliberately fashioned in stone for offensive purposes. The use of stone weapons appears to have been universally characteristic of the earliest races of mankind, as it is still distinctive of those savage races which are most nearly allied to primitive man. These weapons were naturally simple in form and structure. ”

“ The body armour consisted of breast and back plates fastened together by thongs or straps and buckles; sometimes poverty compelled a man to be content with a leather jerkin (σπολάς) partly strengthened by metal plates, or even a quilted linen or stuffed shirt. Greaves were of pliant bronze fastened at the back above the ankle and below the knee. ”

“ Both the arquebus and the musket had a touch-hole on the right side of the barrel, with a pan for the priming, with which a lighted quick match was brought in contact by pressing a trigger. The musket, on account of its weight, was provided with a long rest, forked in the upper part and furnished with a spike to stick in the ground. The matchlock (long-barrelled matchlocks are still used by various uncivilized peoples, notably in India) was the typical weapon of the soldier for two centuries. ”