Page:A History of the Knights of Malta, or the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.djvu/47

 Although the sword was the principal weapon used in close combat, there were many who preferred to wield more ponderous instruments; with these the martel and battle-axe were favourites. The martel was a heavy steel or iron hammer calculated to give a crushing blow, whilst the battle-axe, which was brought to a sharp edge, had more power of penetration. In those times, when the church was often, in a temporal as well as in a spiritual sense, the church militant, and when mitred abbots and other priestly dignitaries sometimes sank the churchman in the warrior, the martel and battle-axe were the only weapons they bore. The canons of the church had strictly forbidden her sons to use the sword, but they, desirous of following their own ambitious tastes, had chosen to read this restriction in a literal rather than in a general sense. They therefore saw, or affected to see, no disobedience in carrying with them to the field of battle the most unecclesiastical of weapons—aye, and in employing them, too, in a most unclerical manner, as many a broken pate and cloven skull could testify. The axe, however, was never a favourite amongst the more refined of the knighthood; possibly the fact that it was the weapon mostly used by the Flemings, and therefore associated with ideas of trade, had something to do with its unpopularity.

The fourth in the list of offensive arms was the dagger, rendered necessary by the extreme strength of the armour then worn, the body of an adversary being covered at every point with plates of steel on which the lance broke, the arrow glanced, and the sword was turned. It became a difficult matter to reach him even after he had been unhorsed. A thin dagger was consequently used which would penetrate between the joints of the harness and administer the coup de grâce.

Any account of knightly equipment would be incomplete without a reference to the horse, which formed so important a part of it. Weighty as was the panoply of steel worn by his rider when fully accoutred, it was necessary that the horse should be an animal of great power. England had not in those days developed that superiority in the breeding of horses that she has since attained, and Spain was the country from whence the most powerful chargers were drawn. After the Crusades had thrown Europe into closer communication with the East,