The sad accident which resulted in the death of Henri II, of France, at a fête d’armes held at Paris in 1559, was in a joust at the tilt with the Comte de Montgomeri. It was caused by the Comte failing to drop his splintered lance in good time.
The drawings of Hans Burgmaier in the Triumph of Maximilian afford illustrations of some of the varieties of the German jousting of the period.
Plate 45 illustrates the Welsch Gestech (Italian Joust) or Joust at the Tilt. The head-piece is the jousting-helm and the reinforcing pieces are in their places. The lance, tipped with a coronal, is lighter than that employed in the German Gestech and in Scharfrennen and the vamplate is circular in form. Feather plumes are worn.
Plate 46 pictures the Gestech or German joust (Das gemeine deutsche Gestech). The head-piece is the same as that on Plate 45. A cushion is worn over the horse’s chest, and a Rasthaken, or queue, and a Rüsthaken, or lance-rest, are on the flattened right side of the cuirass. The lance is heavy and tipped with a coronal. The crests shown are very fanciful.
Plate 47 illustrates Hohenzeuggestech. The jousters are seated on the high saddles (im hohen Zeug) peculiar to the course. The jousting-helm is worn. Lances are tipped with coronals, as is the case with all varieties of the Gestech.
Plate 48. Das Gestech im Beinharnisch. This is a variety of Gestech in which leg-armour is worn, as the name implies.
Plates 50 and 55 picture Bundrennen, the peculiarity of the course being that no beaver is worn beneath the disrupting shield. This makes it the most dangerous of all the courses, and injuries to the face were frequent. The vamplate is large and formed like a truncated cone.
Plate 51 depicts Geschifttartscherennen, in which course the shield, when struck by the lance on a certain spot, dissolves in fragments over the jouster’s head.
Plate 52. It pictures Geschiftscheibenrennen, a course similar in principle to the last-named, the difference being that the shield is a disk which, when properly struck, flies into the air, or the shield remains in its place but the plug in the centre flies out.
Plate 53. The cavaliers are here accoutred for the pan joust (Pfannenrennen). There are one or two other varieties of the joust depicted.