The well-known custom mentioned by Plot, of the inhabitants of Burford, in Oxfordshire, carrying the figure of a dragon yearly "up and down the town in great Jollity, to which they added the Picture of a Giant," in memory of a victory over Ethelbald, king of Mercia, in which this prince lost his "Banner, whereon was depicted a Golden Dragon;" seems entitled to greater consideration than most of the customs of old times. The Dragon Standard of the Anglo-Saxons is a fact substantiated by many monuments; and the portraying a vanquished enemy under the lineaments of a hideous giant, is a practice which has had the sanction of all times and all nations.
A very curious kind of flag occurs in the Anglo-Saxon manuscript of Prudentius in the Tenison Library. It is suspended from a horizontal bar near the spear-head, after the manner of a sail looped up to its yard, and from the side hangs a kind of fringe. It decreases below, presenting altogether a triangular form, and seems to be the same object as that figured by Mr. Worsaae, from a coin of Anlaf, in his "Danes in England."
The celebrated Carrocio or Car Standard of the Italians appears to have been invented during the war between the Milanese and the Emperor Conrad, about 1035, by Heribert, the archbishop of Milan. This car had four wheels, and was drawn by four yoke of oxen, caparisoned in red. The chariot itself was red: in the midst of it was a tall red mast, surmounted by a golden globe, and bearing the banner of the city: beneath the banner was a large crucifix, of which "the extended arms appeared to bless the troops." A kind of platform in front of the carrocium was occupied by a company of chosen heroes, elected for its especial defence; while, on a similar platform behind, the trumpets of the army contributed by their inspiriting strains to give confidence to all around. Before leaving the city, mass was solemnised upon the platform of the chariot, and not unfrequently a chaplain was assigned to accompany it into the field of battle, and to give absolution to the wounded. This device of the Milanese was soon imitated by others of the Italian cities, and with all it was held to be in the last degree humiliating to abandon the carrocio to the enemy[147]. Other origins have, however, been given to the Car Standard. It has been attributed to the Saracens; and the monk Egidius ascribes its invention to the Duke of Louvain, who caused the banner which had been embroidered by the Queen of England to be placed in a superb chariot drawn by four oxen. The Italians have a large balance of evidence on their side.
Of the various kinds of "gyns" in use, the notices are not very distinct. And a chief source of the vagueness arises from the circumstance that, as the earliest chroniclers wrote in Latin, they applied the names of Roman engines to instruments which probably differed both in form and principle from their ancient prototypes. Tacitus, indeed, tells us that the barbarians borrowed these engines from those of the Romans; deserters or prisoners from whose ranks taught to the Northmen the art of their construction. But there seems good reason to believe that the motive principle of the classic periers, torsion, was no longer in use among the middle-age engineers: their instruments consisting of a lever furnished at one extremity with a sling and at the other with a heavy weight; the sudden liberation of the latter contributing the force necessary to propel the stone from the sling. See this subject fully discussed in the second volume of the Études sur l'Artillerie of the Emperor of the French; and compare the evidences furnished by monuments of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, given in later pages of this work.
In 585, we learn from Gregory of Tours, that the Battering Ram and the Testudo were employed by the Burgundians in the siege of Comminges[148]. This Tortoise, or screen for the propellers of the Ram, is described by the translator of Vegecius in 1408 under the name of the "Snayle or Welke[149]:" "For, righte as the snaile hath his hous over hym where he walkethe or resteth, and oute of his hous he shetethe his hede whan he wolle, and draweth hym inne a-yene, so doth this gynne." In the ninth century we obtain considerable light on this subject from the curious description of the Siege of Paris, written in Latin verse by Abbo, a monk of St. Germain-des-Prez, who was an eye-witness of the events he records. He names the Musculus and the Pluteus, both of which were contrivances to shelter the besiegers while at work; the Balista and Mangana, machines for casting large stones; the Catapulta, which cast both stones and darts; the Terebra, a spiked beam for boring into the walls; and the Falarica, a gyn throwing darts to which burning substances were affixed; a terrible instrument in those days, when the roofs of houses were almost invariably covered with thatch.
The Moveable Towers formed of wood, in imitation of those of the Romans, and placed by the walls of city or castle in order to bring the assailants to a level with the defenders, are first mentioned in medieval annals under the eleventh century; but they play no conspicuous part in the military history of these days till the succeeding century, when their employment appears to have been frequent. In 1025, Eudes, comte de Chartres, is said to have used the Moveable Tower in besieging the Castle of Montbrol, near Tours; and so high was it, that it overtopped the keep-tower of the fortress[150].
In the east of Europe, the Greek Fire had been known as early as the year 673; when, according to the historians of the Lower Empire, Callinicus, the philosopher, taught the use of it to the Greeks. He himself had probably derived the knowledge of this composition from the Arabians; for, though powder acting by detonation (and consequently cannon) appears to have been first produced in Europe, and that not earlier than the beginning of the fourteenth century, the Asiatics had the use of powder that would fuse at a very early date. The Greek Fire was discharged from tubes, which could be turned in any direction. The Princess Anna Comnena, in the Alexiad, describes its use, as it was employed by the Emperor Alexis against the Pisans, from tubes fixed at the prow of his vessels:—"They (the Pisans) were astonished to see fire, which by its nature ascends, directed against them, at the will of their enemy, downwards and on each side." The receipt for the composition of the Greek Fire may be found in the Treatise of Marcus Grecus. The terrors of these early fire-mixtures were enhanced by the belief that not only they, but the flames kindled by them, were inextinguishable by water: "de quibus fit incendarium quod ab aqua non extinguitur[151]." The Greek Fire did not, however, reach the west of Europe till a much later period. It was objected against its use, that such an agent was contrary to the spirit of religion and the nobleness of chivalry: it was felt that a weapon which could be used alike by the weak and the strong, by the humble and the powerful, might become a dangerous rival to the knightly lance and panoply.
No. 24.