Fig. 38.—Inlaid Ivory Cross-bow. Tower of London.
Until the introduction of the Spanish rapier the sword used with the buckler was short and heavy in the blade, though with handles sometimes richly worked and inlaid with silver. The rapier appeared about 1570 to 1580, the slender tapering blade being relatively of great length, rendering it difficult to sheathe. The guards to the hilts were generally of open work, the variety of form, though endless, falling into three leading groups, the swept-hilted, shell-guard, and cup-hilted, the finest workmanship being as a rule found on the latter. The quillons, generally very long, are either straight or curved. With the rapier, a long dagger held in the left hand and called the main-gauche was used to parry, the blade being notched near the base to entangle and break the opponent’s weapon. Two varieties are figured, both with superbly chased hilts; the one of steel belonging to Mr. Percy Macquoid ([Fig. 35]), and one with silver guard ([Fig. 36]), belonging to Her Majesty. The cup-hilted rapier ([Fig. 37]), reproduced on a slightly smaller scale, is the companion to the latter dagger and is also partly silver-hilted and chased with representations of combats. The quillons are engraved with flowers, and the blade is signed Heinrich Coell, Solingen. The blades and hilts were frequently, perhaps usually, made in different workshops. Many of those in Vienna have German hilts and Italian blades, others have Solingen blades and Milanese hilts. Toledo blades were, however, preferred, and their marks were frequently imitated by German makers. The first ship of the ill-fated Spanish Armada to fall a prey to Drake and Howard was the Capitana of the Andalusian squadron, which among its treasures carried a chest of swords, richly mounted, and intended for presentation to the English Catholic peers. Frequent reference is made in Elizabethan plays to Bilbao and Toledo blades, but more especially to “Foxes,” so called from the Nuremberg mark. Certain passages show that these were used with the buckler, in this country at least; and in the engraving of the funeral of Sir Philip Sidney, targets both round and oval are carried.
The staves, bills, pikes, morris-pikes, holy-water sprinklers, etc., played a very important part in war at this period. The halberds and partisans carried by officers of the harquebusiers, royal guards, and officials were the vehicles for an immense amount of decoration, especially throughout the seventeenth century. Albert Dürer, writing from Venice to Pirkheimer, mentions that the Italian lansquenets “have roncoins with 218 points, and if they pink a man with any of these, the man is dead, as they are all poisoned.” This could hardly have been serious, but a sheet of drawings by Leonardo da Vinci shows some very extraordinary forms. Most of the varieties of staves were no doubt originally developments of the peasant scythes, bill-hooks, pitch-forks, and the poll-axe; each country preserving some peculiar form. The cross-bow had long ceased to be a military weapon, but was, owing to its silent fire, still in great repute for sport. It was usually inlaid with ivory, engraved, sometimes stained and heightened with pearl. A fine specimen in the Tower is illustrated ([Fig. 38]).
[V]
FIREARMS AND GUNLOCKS
By Major V. A. FARQUHARSON
The actual date of the first employment of portable firearms is uncertain, but representations of them are frequently met with in the illustrated MSS. of the early part of the fifteenth century, their form at first being simply a tube fastened to a wooden stock, and, according to the coloured drawings, the tube was either of brass or iron. The manner of firing was to apply a match by hand to a touch-hole situated on the upper part of the barrel. The first improvement was to drill the touch-hole in the side of the barrel, with the priming held in a pan formed in a projection also on the side of the barrel, which had a cover, moving on a pivot, thus protecting the powder from the wet or wind till the moment of firing, when it was pushed back by hand. This was the general kind of firearm used during the first half of the fifteenth century. For some time after their introduction, hand firearms were viewed with disfavour, and it was considered more or less unfair to employ them, seeing that the Gothic armour worn by the knights had power to resist the ordinary weapons of the field, but took no account of the effects of missiles from the clumsy “gonner.” That they were in use in 1453 is evident, as the great Talbot, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury, buried at Whitchurch, came to his end from this cause. “Though at first with manfull courage and sore fighting the Earle wanne the entre of their camp, yet at length they compassed him about, and, shooting him through the thigh with an hand-gonne, slew his horse and finally killed him lying on the ground, whom they never durst look in the face, while he stood on his feet” (Hollinshed’s Chronicle). This was at Chatillon, 20th July 1453.
