Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 5).djvu/129

 *sionally on English made examples there are roughly chiselled monsters combating; but the form of decoration most usually met with is a rough but effective arrangement of incrusted silver dots. We illustrate an example of the chiselled type (Fig. 1524) from the collection of Mr. W. H. Fenton. We also represent a foreign variety of the hanger hilt (Fig. 1525), and a very much finer hilt of the same family, which was formerly in the de Cosson Collection (Fig. 1526). This latter example is wholly fashioned of steel, and is well made, and, for the period, tastefully chiselled. On the interior of the shell is a portrait bust of an electoral prince of Germany; while on the exterior is an oval panel containing a horseman beneath the words,. The hilt is signed with script initials of the maker, Pietro Ancino—Reggio, proving it to be an Italian made hilt manufactured for the German market. There is in the Musée d'Artillerie another such hilt—bearing the same signature in full—. All the cutlasses or hangers we have illustrated may be considered to date from about 1630 to the close of the century. We need not describe the daggers of the XVIIth century; for they present no great varieties of form in the matter either of hilt or of blade except, perhaps, those parrying daggers (main gauche) made for use in the left hand in conjunction with the rapier (see pages 68-74). We cannot help feeling, however, that in our illustrations of this particular form of dagger we have not done justice to the great variety of shapes assumed by the guards and the blades; we therefore illustrate two very fine examples from the Musée d'Artillerie of Paris, J 850 and J 857 (Fig. 1527, ), and another example with a different type of hilt from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of New York (Fig. 1527 ). In the case of the two Paris examples the broad triangular knuckle-guard has the edge of the plate flanged strongly outward in order to catch the point of the adversary's rapier, a purpose for which the two circular apertures in the wide thumb-plate of the blade were also intended. It can be imagined that if by chance the point of the rapier passed through one of these holes, by an upward twist of the wrist, a vice-*like hold could be obtained of an adversary's blade. Collectors will find, too, that the blade is generally back-edged, though not always on the same side; for instance, in the case of these two parrying daggers illustrated, one has it on one side, the other has it on the other. Both the Paris daggers are of Italian workmanship of about 1640-50; but the example chosen from the Metropolitan Museum would appear to be purely Spanish and of somewhat earlier date. Though these daggers were of course capable of inflicting a mortal wound, they were not looked upon so much as weapons of offence as