The authorities which throughout the last division of our inquiry have served us as guides—seals, vellum-paintings, metal-chasings, ivory-carvings, and the writings of chroniclers and poets—are still available to us: but in the thirteenth century a new and most valuable source of information is offered by the numerous knightly effigies which are found in cathedral and chantry, in wayside chapel and lofty monastery. These sepulchral figures, of the proportions of life, are of especial value to the student of military costume, permitting him to follow his inquiry into the minutest detail. Not a belt nor a lace, not a buckle nor a strap, but he can trace the exact form and assign the particular purpose of it. Whether the effigy be a statue or "a brass," he finds in it abundant material for furthering his inquiry; and while from the illuminations of cotemporary manuscripts he obtains precise information on the point of colour, in the effigy he sees the exact moulding of each knightly adjunct, and the smallest pattern that adorns the smallest ornament of the knightly equipment. The military brasses of this century are but few; but the statues, in stone, in wood, or in Purbeck marble, are scattered through our English counties in surprising numbers. The value of these national memorials is beginning to be understood: the crumbling figure is no longer permitted to perish in the open churchyard, to lie in fragments among the rubbish of the belfry corner, to form the ridiculous ornament of the churchwarden's grotto or the squire's glyptotheck. With pious care it is restored to the sacred fane from which it had been abstracted; it again becomes part of the chancel or chantry beneath whose pavement lie the bones of him of whom church, chantry, and statue are alike the monuments. But from the very consideration which has been newly accorded to these memorials, has arisen a fresh danger: it has, in some cases, been thought expedient to submit them to a so-called restoration. They have been patched up with Roman cement, eked out with supplementary limbs, plastered over with mock Purbeck marble. The mistakes that have been committed in costume, equipment, and art-treatment, are more fit for the pages of a jest-book than those of a sober treatise; and it is scarcely necessary to say that, for any purpose of the historian, the archæologist, or even in the more narrow view of ancestral portraiture, the statue has become, under such a treatment, utterly valueless. Yet our task is so simple. We have only to preserve. Inheritors of the finest series of national ancestral memorials that Europe can boast, let us at least transmit to after-days, in all their integrity, the admirable works that have come down to us through the troubles and turmoils of seven centuries[265].
Throughout the thirteenth century the feudal and mercenary troops continued to be employed together. But towards the middle of this period, the Italian cities, combating for their liberties, began to levy their men-at-arms from the non-noble class as well as from the knightly; a force which, under the name of Conduttitij Soldati, obtained in the next age a very wide celebrity.
No. 47.
Besides the mounted men-at-arms or heavy cavalry, there were light-horse troops formed by the mounted archers and cross-bowmen, and the esquires attending upon the knights. The example here given is from Roy. MS. 20, D. 1, fol. 127, a work of the close of the thirteenth century[266].
The foot-troops or Sergents de pied consisted principally of archers, cross-bowmen and spearmen. There were also the Sergens d'armes or heavy-armed body-guard, Coustillers, Slingers, Bidaux, and Brigands or Ribauds; to which may be added the varlets or pages, who followed their knightly masters into the field, now fighting lustily in the mêlée, now bearing off the wounded body of their lord to some place of solace and safety. Clientes and Satellites were general names given to the inferior troops of the feudal and communal levy, including both horse and foot. There was nothing approaching to a uniform costume for the soldiery, though occasionally we find a leader seeking to identify his men by some addition to their dress, as a cross, a scarf, or other similar token. In 1264, Simon de Montford "ordered his troops to fasten white crosses on their breasts and backs, above their armour, in order that they might be known by their enemies, and to shew that they were fighting for justice[267]." In this case, however, the motive seems to have been, less the desire of a mark of recognition among friends, than the assumption, so common in warlike undertakings, of a holy motive for manslaughter. In the following passage from Guiart relating to the battle of Mons-en-Puelle, the object is more distinctly that of friendly recognition:—
"Pour estre au ferrir reconnuz,
Vilains, courtois, larges et chiches,
Sont de laz blans et de ceintures
Escharpés sur leurs armures.
Neis li ribaut les ont mises,
Faites de leurs propres chemises."—Vers 11,059.
Of the Man-at-arms and his barded charger we obtain an admirable definition from the Chronicon Colmariense under the year 1298: "Armati reputabantur qui galeas ferreas in capitibus habebant, et qui wambasia, id est, tunicam spissam ex lino et stuppa, vel veteribus pannis consutam, et desuper camisiam ferream, id est, vestem ex circulis ferreis contextam, per quæ nulla sagitta poterat hominem vulnerare. Ex his Armatis centum inermes mille lædi potuerunt: habebant et multos qui habebant dextrarios, id est, equos magnos, qui inter equos communes quasi Bucephalus Alexandri, inter alios eminebat. Hi equi cooperti fuerunt coopertoriis ferreis, id est, veste ex circulis ferreis, contexta. Assessores dextrariorum habebant loricas ferreas: habebant et caligas, manipulos ferreos, et in capitibus galeas ferreas splendidas et ornatas, et alia multa quæ me tæduit enarrare." The armour of these sturdy warriors we shall presently examine piece by piece.