REREBRACE, COUDIÈRES, AND VAMBRACE (FRENCH BRASSARD, ITAL. BRACCIALE).
These pieces are the armguards—the rerebrace for the upper arm, the vambrace for the lower; they first appear in plate in the second quarter of the fourteenth century, and became general a quarter of a century later. Coudières for the elbows first appeared in the thirteenth century in the disc form, about the same time as genouillières for the knees; and these pieces exhibit one of the earliest applications of plate to body armour. Both may be seen on an effigy of William Longespee the younger (1233) in Salisbury Cathedral. Coudières are elementary in the early stages, with rondelle, then cup-formed and laminated both above and below the elbow, with shell-like side expansions to protect the inner bend of the arm, and later going all round the elbow joint. This was the completed form, but all these improvements did not come at once. The De Bohun effigy exhibits the second-mentioned form. The outer guard assumes many forms, fan-shaped, bivalve, escalloped, etc., and is sometimes preposterously large. The rerebrace and vambrace do not appear in England before the fourteenth century. The effigy of the Black Prince at Canterbury exhibits these pieces. The armour for the arm, that is the three pieces dealt with, is termed brassards or brassarts. The garde-de-bras, an additional protection for the left arm for tilting, attachable to the elbow plate by a screw, was introduced in the fifteenth century.