Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 2).djvu/274



Late XVth century Imperial Armoury, Vienna

I 7, Musée d'Artillerie, Paris

in Great Britain," one of its interior armloops was then shown in position. Gough describes it as follows: "The shield which is small, and has lost one of its handfasts." Other shields of the XVth century that have resisted the ravages of time show so many varieties of shape that they cannot be classed together. Returning, however, once more to the rectangular shapes we will give illustrations (Figs. 597 and 598) of two shields, now in the Imperial Armoury, Vienna, which show a distinct evolution in form from those rectangular shields which we have already described. In the official guide to the collection they are catalogued as having belonged to the Hungarian Guard of the great Maximilian and as dating towards the close of the XVth century. In the late XVIth century they were at the Schloss Ambras, and in an inventory of that date they are quoted as being of Turkish fashion; but in the present writer's opinion they appear to have been evolved from a form