Plate IV.—Grand-guard of the suit of George, Earl of Cumberland, in the possession of Lord Hothfield. This is a part of the 20th suit in the Armourer’s Album in the South Kensington Museum. From a photograph communicated by Baron de Cosson.
The casing of plate-armour, which had been so long elaborating, having at last become complete, the work of the armourer was directed to further perfecting its parts, and to disencumbering the wearer, with the least risk, of his weighty underlying chain-mail, quilted gambesons, and padded surcoats. This process had not proceeded far when Agincourt was fought, if we may credit the testimony of a French knight, who was present and describes the armour as consisting of the long hauberk of chain-mail reaching below the knee, and very heavy, with the leg-armour beneath, and over this the plate or white armour with the bassinet and camail. One Allbright, noted particularly as “mail-maker,” and twelve other armourers, were in the suite of the king on this expedition. The weight of armour would, therefore, have rendered a repetition advisable, on the part of the English, of the tactics of Cressy or Poitiers in this battle, had not the French disconcerted us by dismounting and seating themselves, and refusing to advance. They had also, copying the English, brought a large force of archers and cross-bowmen into the field, and, in addition, kept bodies of men-at-arms in the saddle on either wing, to make flank attacks when opportunities occurred. The English having in vain endeavoured to provoke the enemy to advance by sending out archers to fire a house and barn, posted an ambuscade and moved forward, the archers in front as usual and the men-at-arms behind. The archers thus gave up the shelter of their pointed stakes, and the men-at-arms suffered the fatigue of an advance in armour of an almost insupportable weight to men on foot. They advanced, however, with repeated huzzas, but, as the Chroniclers inform us, “often stopping to take breath.” The French, stooping their visors under the amazing hail of arrows that began to fall upon them, gave way a few paces, and the English, coming close up, pressed them soon afterwards so hardly, “that only the front ranks with shortened lances could raise their hands.” Our archers, flinging away their bows, fought lustily with swords, hatchets, mallets, or bill-hooks, supported manfully by King Henry and his men-at-arms. Pressing on and slaying all before them, they routed the van and reached the main body, which was also quickly destroyed. The rear battalion of the French, which had remained mounted, then fled panic-struck, and the battle terminated in some desultory charges made by a few parties of nobles and their men-at-arms, which were easily repulsed; 10,000 French perished, all but 1600 being gentlemen! many in the massacre of prisoners consequent on a false alarm. The battle of Verneuil, so fatal nine years later to the Scots, who lost the Earls of Douglas, Murray, and Buchan, with the flower of their army, was fought on precisely the same lines; the main French battalion with their Scottish allies on foot being first shaken by the storm of arrows, and then destroyed at close quarters by the advance of the archers with the usual “loud shouts,” supported by the Duke of Bedford and the men-at-arms. These defeats caused the French to again waver in their plan for meeting the enemy, for at the battle of Herrings, and the skirmish at Beauvais in 1430, they made their attack mounted, the English archers receiving the first charge behind their palisade of pointed stakes, and defeating the enemy by the clouds of arrows taking their usual deadly effect on the horses. These stakes, six feet long and sharpened at both ends, formed an important item of the archers’ equipment, and were planted in the ground by the front rank, sloping towards the enemy, the next rank fixing theirs intermediately to affright the enemy’s horse. Throughout the Anglo-Burgundian alliance, the Burgundians of all arms were often compelled “under pain of death” to fight dismounted, the Picards especially adopting the tactics and perhaps equalling the English. A little later, as at the battle of Montlhéry, 1465, both Burgundian and English archers are armed with the formidable long-handled leaden mauls or mallets, which the armour of the men-at-arms was incapable of resisting. In the account of one of these battles we learn incidentally that the duty of the varlets who invariably formed part of the retinue of each man-at-arms was to succour and refresh their masters during the heat of the engagement, and to carry the prisoners they took to the rear.
As the various hauberks of mail, brigandines, gambesons, and other defences became more or less obsolete and discarded by men-at-arms armed cap-à-pied, they were relegated to a lighter-armed cavalry and the infantry; but so long as a suit of mail continued to be worn by the man-at-arms as a defence underlying the armour of plate, flexibility in the latter was of paramount importance.
Fig. 18.—Helm from the tomb of Henry V. in Westminster Abbey, date 1400-1420. From a photograph lent by Baron de Cosson.
Regarding the armour of Henry V. as the earliest complete cap-à-pied plate-armour, we find it thus composed. The breast and back plates are each of one piece, the gorget is usually in one, though a standard of mail sometimes replaces it; the limb-defences are of few pieces and rigid, except at the joints, which are guarded by caps or roundels; while the armour of the fingers, toes, and upper surfaces of the shoulders is articulated or protected by narrow laminar plates. The introduction of the gussets, and more particularly of the horizontal bands of plate forming a short petticoat below the waist, materially altered the appearance of the armour of the fifteenth century from that of the fourteenth. The plates of the petticoat, called the tassets, are first seen in the brass of Nicholas Hawberk, at Cobham, who died in 1406, and they gradually increase in number till about 1420. At Agincourt, where the fighting was on foot, the visored bassinet would have been worn by the king and his men-at-arms, and not the great helm. The example of the latter suspended in the chantry of Henry V. in Westminster Abbey, though a real helm, was only purchased from Thomas Daunt, for 33s. 4d., according to Rymer, with the crest, for the funeral. The bassinet was probably plumed with ostrich feathers, which were taking the place of crests, and was encircled by a coronet, damaged in the melée by a blow from the Duke of Alençon, which among its jewels comprised the ruby of the Black Prince, now in the regalia. The diamond-hilted sword was not taken into the fray, unfortunately, as it happened, and fell a prey to the baggage-looters. The king is generally represented wearing a tabard of arms on this occasion, a garment differing from the surcoat in being loose and cut like the modern herald’s tabard, emblazoned before and behind and on the broad flaps which do duty for sleeves. The horses, borrowing the custom of Lombardy, wore a heavy chamfron or headpiece of plate, of which a specimen still exists in Warwick Castle, and an articulated crinet or neck-defence of overlapping plates, put together on the same plan as the tassets, and probably some mail defences concealed by the emblazoned caparisons. The ostentatious magnificence which had hitherto covered the body armour of the knight with silks and satins, velvet and bullion and gems, especially among the Burgundian French, was now in process of being transferred to the horse. The housings are described as of silks and satins of every colour, or velvet crimson and blue, or cloth of gold, and sweeping the ground, besprinkled with escutcheons of arms, and loaded with silversmith’s work, or raised work of solid gold. We read of trappings of white silver fringed with cloth of gold, and of cloth of gold interwrought with solid silver; and it appears that no materials were too rich to deck out the favourite destrier or war-horse. It is unlikely that the English were at this time behind the French in display, for so early as 1409, of the six pages of Sir John de Cornewall, two rode horses covered with ermine, and four horses with cloth of gold; and in 1414 the English embassy carried themselves so magnificently that the French, and especially the Parisians, were astonished. Splendid, however, as were the housings, the headpieces of the horses eclipsed them. The horse of the Count de Foix at the entry into Bayonne had a headpiece of steel enriched with gold work and precious stones to the value of 15,000 crowns. The Count de St. Pol’s horse’s headpiece on leaving Rouen was estimated to be worth 30,000 francs, while those of the Dukes of Burgundy and Cleves on the entry of Louis XI. into Paris were still more magnificent. That of the king, however, was on this occasion merely of fine gold with ostrich plumes of various colours. As with the armour in the fourteenth century, the rich trappings of the horse naturally led at times to the pursuit and capture of the owner. It is difficult to believe, in days of such magnificence, that the pay of the Duke of York under Henry V. was only 13s. 4d. per day, an earl received but 6s. 8d., a baron or banneret 4s., a knight 2s., an esquire 1s., and an archer 6d.
Though Henry V. wore royal armour at Agincourt it does not appear that he followed the prudent custom, first noticed in the battle of Viterbo, 1243, of dressing several knights in an identical manner with himself. At Viterbo, on a knight dressed like the emperor being slain, the result was a panic, and the emperor himself had to press with his trumpets into the thickest of the fight to restore confidence. At Poitiers, though nineteen knights were dressed like the king, it did not preserve him from capture. In England, however, the king was saved on many a field by this precaution, as at the battle of Shrewsbury, when the earl, Sir Walter Blount and two others in royal armour were slain. The passages in Shakespeare will be present to the mind of all:—