Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 1).djvu/39

 without intermission. The progress and perfecting of various forms of armour and weapons had also on more than one occasion a considerable influence on the fate of peoples and the making of history. The longbow of the English in the Hundred Years' War, and the pikes and two-handed swords of the Swiss in their struggles with Austria and Burgundy are examples of the influence of weapons on historical events, and, in recent times, the rifled cannon of Napoleon in the Italian campaign of 1859 and the needle gun of the Prussians in the Danish one in 1864, are considered to have aided in deciding the fortunes of those wars.

Arms were not only the serious business of the Middle Ages, but also its sport. Men prepared themselves for the strenuous labours of war by jousts, tournaments, and courteous combats of various kinds. The training needed for the use of the heavy armour and weapons then in vogue was a very arduous matter. Men trained for it in the Middle Ages as we now train for a boat race, a football match, or any other form of athletics. If a man's career was to be that of arms, he began this training as a child, and it was continued without interruption until it was perfected. Juan Quijada de Reayo, in a very rare little book, written apparently in the first years of the XVIth century and addressed to his son, says that it is necessary to begin the training of a man-at-arms as a child is taught to read by learning the A B C. We are now astonished when we read that a young esquire could vault over his horse in the complete armour of the XIVth century, but there is no valid reason for doubting the statement.

We learn also from various treatises on the subject, that the relative merits of different forms of armour and weapons must have been a fertile source of conversation and discussion in mediaeval times, when men's lives in war so greatly depended on them. The old chroniclers frequently refer to the perfection of arms made in one place or another, and amusing questions of warlike armament are sometimes the theme of the novels then in vogue.

Franco Sachetti, writing in the second half of the XIVth century, tells how a certain knight of the great Florentine banking house of the Bardi, being appointed Podestà of Padua, had to supply himself with the armour and equipment needful for him to enter on his office with due solemnity. Now he was an exceedingly little man, not expert in horsemanship, nor used to warlike exercises. Lacking a crest for his helmet, he consulted his friends what he should choose for it. They, putting their heads together said, "he is very stumpy and unimposing looking and we cannot give him height as the women do by putting it under his feet, so let us add to his stature by putting it on the top of his head." They therefore went out and found him a very tall crest representing a demi-bear rampant, with its claws raised, and beneath a motto