Page:1902 Encyclopædia Britannica - Volume 25 - A-AUS.pdf/723

 ARM OUR which belonged to Henry VIII. Most high-class armour up to this time was made on the European Continent; that represented in the Warwick effigy is Italian, while the armour of Henry VIII. is chiefly German. Eig. 2, however, show's a beautiful suit or half-suit, still extant, which belonged to Sir Christopher Hatton, and was the work of a celebrated English armourer, Jacob Topf. The different classes of armour may be broadly distinguished as follows(1) War harness was seldom complete for the rider, and little wus used on the horse in actual war. On foot, little armour could be worn below the knee—Sir Christopher Hatton’s is an example of a very handsome suit for a mounted knight in war. (2) Tournament armour.—In the lists, not only would complete armour be used, but additional pieces of special weight. For jousting, the rider required to be quite rigid, in order to deliver the impetus of horse and man in a sharp blow through the end of the lance, so as to strike the adversary out of his saddle, or break the lance. Aim was generally taken at the helm (see a paper by Lord Dillon in the Archaeological Journal). The rider sat against the cantle of the saddle with straight knees and stirrups home. Hence the helm in the 15th century was a rigid steel case resting on the shoulder. In the 16th this was superseded by extra pieces, chiefly one termed the grand guard or volant piece, protecting the chest and part of the face. (3) For fighting in the lists on foot, the armour was eventually carried inside the legs and arms, and under the seat, in plates fitting so closely that a penknife would scarcely find entrance. Of this an admirable example may be seen at the Tower in a suit made for Henry VIII. The following examples of armour may be specially noted :— The Tower of London.—The above-mentioned suits of Henry VIII., mounted and dismounted, especially that made by Conrad Seusenhofer; also, Leicester’s suit; a German tilting saddle in which the rider sat, or rather stood, with his legs in sockets ; a few samples of jacks or brigandines, consisting of plates sewn to texture, one on an Elizabethan archer ; also, two long bow staves recovered from the Mary Rose sunk at Spithead. The Wallace Collection.—The Gothic suit above mentioned, and many suits possessing their original appearance in unusual measure, owing to careful preservation and gentle cleaning. The Rotunda Museum, Woolwich.—Armour left behind in a guard-room at Ehodes by the knights on their evacuation in 1522, which constitutes the greatest recent “find.” It consists chiefly of salades and 15th-century pieces. The Brocas tilting helm, unsurpassed by any, is also at Woolwich. Windsor Castle.—Tilting pieces and armour about the close of the 15th century. Warwick Castle.—Curious old closed chamfron. Canterbury Cathedral.—Tilting helm, a short surcoat termed a jupon or cyclas, and gauntlets of the Black Prince ; the last are perhaps the earliest extant. Westminster Abbey.—Saddle and shield of Henry V. In the Chapter House is the only known sample of an old English arrow. Most of the armour placed over tombs and in churches is “mortuary,” i.e., made specially for the purpose and generally good for nothing, but some beautiful pieces have been thus deposited Armour ceased to be used by combatants generally in the 17th century, but it has never been entirely given up, and has in exceptional cases been used up to the present day. The cuirasses worn by heavy cavalry are undoubtedly only used for display—the Life Guards left them behind wrhen they went on active service to Egypt and South Africa; but helmets are retained for protection against sword cuts in hand-to-hand fighting, and it seems unlikely that anything can supersede them. The growing power of fire-arms, however, drove out armour. First, it was given up for the limbs, and thickened so as to be bullet-proof for the breast; when horsemen engaged hand to hand, with pistol and sword, bullet-proof armour must continually have saved life. Breastplates of the 17th century frequently have indentations made by bullets. Some of these are no doubt proof marks, but by no means

669

all. One pair of plates at Dover Castle has three bullet marks. In the siege of Athlone in 1691, complete armour was worn by a special body of men. Very heavy helmets and back plates wTere worn by sappers. A picture of the siege of Rome in 1848 shows a sapper in a special helmet worn for protection under fire. Hard steel breastplates were produced by Dowe, Maxim, and others in 1894. They stopped modern bullets, but weighed over ten pounds, which is too heavy for wear. Still, portable shields might be used in siege works, and steel shields are employed on gun-carriages and mountings. Against sword cuts, especially the sharp draw-cuts of an Eastern blade, mail is an efficient protection. Dervish warriors wore mail in the battle of Omdurman in 1898. Mail has been recently applied to the shoulders of the British cavalry, and one incident showing the value of mail may be recorded. In Egypt in 1885 an officer’s wife purchased a patch of chain mail, which she insisted in sewing inside the breast of the uniform worn by her husband, a lieutenant of the 5th Bengal Cavalry. This regiment was engaged hand to hand shortly afterwards, and a spear-thrust aimed at his breast was stopped by the mail; he came out unharmed, with the spear-head broken off and hanging in it. Lastly, mail has been specially made of hard steel rings for golddiggers, and the English detective department possesses such mail for wearing, if needed, inside a coat. II. Ships and Forts. The fact that armour for the defence of the soldier’s body had failed to resist musket balls, and had gone out of use, probably tended to prevent its being proposed and tried on a larger scale for the protection of ships and forts. Nevertheless experiments were made with regard to both in the United States in 1812, 1841, and 1853, and in England in 1827 and 1840. In 1855 the French employed floating batteries at Kinburn; and before the end of the Prussian war both France and Great Britain had iron-plated batteries afloat. The British Warrior and French Glob e classes were ordered in 1858, and the United States coast vessels, termed monitors, were begun in 1861. The future use of armoured ships was indeed assured by the havoc wrought among unarmoured vessels by the Confederate ship Merrimac, protected by impromptu armour made of railway iron rails. The application of armour plates to vessels is dealt with under Ship Construction, the object of the present article being to trace the development of the actual armour itself, whether intended for ships, coast defences, or inland forts. For many years after the introduction of armour neither plate nor shot gave promise of the powers since attained. The shock of impact shattered or flattened the shot, and the harder plates wrere fractured to such an extent that wrought iron was adopted. For many years the only improvements made consisted in rolling plates of increased thickness and size, and in employing with them such bolts and backing as best enabled them to bear attack. Thus plates were applied in several thicknesses, sandwiched with thin layers of wood between them, and the so-called “ Palliser English ” bolt was introduced, ingeniously devised to avoid nipping and local strain, with a spherical head which accommodated itself to any slight displacement of the plate. This soft armour encouraged the development of hardness rather than toughness of shot; consequently, although steel projectiles held together better than those of cast iron, the latter, when made on Palliser’s system with points and heads hardened by chilling, penetrated so well that they were largely adopted by all Powers, and no fundamental change either in shot or armour took place in naval armaments till 1876. In 1868, however, an entirely new form of armour for land defences had been devised,.