“Cometh sir Launcelot du Lake,
Ridand right into the hall;
His steed and armour all was blake
His visere over his eyen falle,”[114]
Now if the romance whence the above lines are extracted is to be considered as a picture of the earliest days of chivalry it is certainly incorrect, for it was not before the middle age of knighthood that the face was concealed by a vizor, the earlier defence of the nasal piece certainly not serving as a mask. The romances are unexceptionable witnesses for the general customs of chivalry, but we cannot fix their statements to any particular time, for they were varied and improved by successive repetitions and transcriptions, and when they were rendered into prose still further changes were made in order to please the taste of the age. Thus, in an old Danish romance, a knight fighting for his lady remains on his horse; but when in the fifteenth century the tale was translated into the idioms of most chivalric countries, he is represented as alighting from his milk-white steed and giving it to his fair companion to hold; and the reason of this departure from the old ballad was, that the translators, wishing to make their work popular, adapted it to the manners of the age; and it was the general fashion then for the knights to dismount when they fought.
Its general features interesting
In spite of all our attempts at chronological accuracy, something or other is perpetually baffling us. We commonly think that mixed armour was the defensive harness in the days of our Edward the Third; but in Chaucer’s portrait of the knightly character of that time, only the haubergeon is assigned to the cavalier. Plate-armour seems to have been the general costume of the fifteenth century; and in any pictorial exhibition of the murder of John Duke of Burgundy in the year 1419, the artist who should represent the Duke as harnessed in chain-mail, would be condemned by a synod of archæologists as guilty of an unpardonable anachronism; yet we know, on the unquestionable authority of Monstrelet, that when the Duke lay on the ground, Olivier Layet, assisted by Pierre Frotier, thrust a sword under the haubergeon into his belly; and that after he had been thus cruelly murdered, the Dauphin’s people stripped from him his coat of mail.[115] But though it is difficult to determine the fashion of any part of armour in any particular century, and life may afford nobler occupations than considering the precise year and month when the Normans gave up the clumsy expedient of inserting the sword through a hole in the hauberk, and adopted the more graceful and convenient form of a belt[116], yet viewing the subject of armour in some of its broad features, matter of no slight interest may be found. We may not regard the precise form and fashion of a warrior’s scarf, or care to enquire whether the embroidery were worked with gold or silver, but the general fact itself involves the state of manners and feelings among our ancestors: it carries us to the lady’s bower where she was working this token of love; our fancy paints the time and mode of bestowing it; and we follow it through all the subsequent career of the knight as his silent monitor to courage and loyalty.
The broad lines of the subject.
It is curious also to mark the perpetual efforts of defensive armour to meet the improvements in the art of destruction. Chain-mail was found an inadequate protection; plates of steel were added, and still this mixed harness did not render the body invulnerable. The covering of steel alone at length became complete, and defensive harness reached its perfection. It is utterly impossible for us to state with accuracy the year when plate-armour began to be mixed with chain-mail in any particular country, or to determine what particular part of the body the first plate that was used defended; but the general features of the subject are known well enough to enable us to sketch to our imagination the military costume of some of the most remarkable events in the warfare of the middle ages. In the first crusade, the armour was in the rude state of mail worn on the tunic. There was the emblazoned surcoat, for that part of dress was of very early use; the hood was the common covering of the head, and when the helmet was worn it was of the simplest form, and occasionally had a nasal piece. The crusades began at the close of the eleventh century, and before the end of the thirteenth, not only was the hauberk composed of twisted mail, but mixed armour of plate and mail was common. The English wars in France during the reign of our Edward III. are the next subject to which our chivalric recollections recur. By that time plate had attained a general predominance over chain-mail. Perhaps, at no period of chivalry was armour more beautiful than in those days when France was one vast tilting ground for the culled and choice-drawn cavaliers of the two mighty monarchies of Europe. It was equally removed from the gloomy sternness of chain-mail, and the elaborate foppery of embossed steel: its solid plates satisfied the judicious eye by showing that the great principle of armour was chiefly attended to, and the surcoat and scarf gave the warrior’s harness a character of neat and simple elegance. The horses, too, were barded in the most vulnerable parts; the symmetry of the form not being obscured, as it was in after-times by a casing of steel which left only part of the legs free of action. The helmet had its crest and silken ornament; the former being the sign of nobility, the latter of love: and no warriors were so justly entitled to those graceful tokens of ladies’ favour, as the warriors of Edward III., for love was the inspiring soul of their chivalry.[117]
In the second series of our French wars complete plate-armour was in general fashion. Gradually, as armour became more and more ponderous, the knights preferred to fight on foot with their lances. That mode of encounter was found best fitted for the display of skill, for in the rude encounter of the horses many cavaliers were thrown, and the field presented a ludicrous spectacle of rolling knights.[118] Some traces of the custom of cavalry dismounting may be found in the twelfth century. The practice grew as plate-armour became mixed with mail; and when complete suits of steel were worn, knights sought every occasion of dismounting; and they were wont to break their lances short for the convenience of the close conflict.
As the spirit of chivalry died away, the military costume of chivalry increased in brilliancy and splendour. Ingenuity and taste were perpetually varying decorations: the steel was sometimes studded with ornaments of gold and silver, and sometimes the luxury of the age was displayed in a complete suit of golden armour.
“In arms they stood
Of golden panoply, refulgent host.”
But such splendour was only exhibited in the courteous tournament; less costly armour sheathed the warrior of the working day. Armour gradually fell out of use as infantry began to be considered and felt as the principal force in war. It was not, however, till the beginning of the seventeenth century that the proud nobility of Europe would abandon the mode of combat of their ancestors, and no longer hope that their iron armour of proof should hang up in their halls as an incentive to their children’s valour. “They first laid aside the jambes or steel boots; then the shield was abandoned, and next the covering for the arms. When the cavalry disused the lance, the cuisses were no longer worn to guard against its thrust, and the stout leathern or buff coat hung down from beneath the body armour to the knees, and supplied the place of the discarded steel. The helmet was later deprived of its useless vizor; but before the middle of the seventeenth century nothing remained of the ancient harness but the open cap and the breasts and backs of steel, which the heavy cavalry of the Continent have more or less worn to our times. In our service these have been but lately revived for the equipment of the finest cavalry in Europe, the British Life-guards, who, unaided by such defences, tore the laurels of Waterloo from the cuirassiers of France.”[119]