Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 5).djvu/75

 front and back. The front plate extends for a depth of 10-1/2 inches over the chest. The border is turned under and engraved to a rope pattern; inside this is a narrow band plated with gold, the contour of which is followed by a row of hemispherically-headed steel rivets. The surface decoration consists of embossing in high relief, in engraving, in gold and silver-plating, and in russeting. The design represents the siege of a town. On the front plate a town is seen in the distance, by the walls of which flows a broad river spanned by two stone bridges; a besieging army is landing by the help of small coracles and storming ladders. On the bridge on the right the contending forces meet in a fierce mêlée. In the extreme distance are companies of infantry and of cavalry. In the foreground is seen mounted a commander, holding in his left hand a baton. Companies of soldiers, fully armed, and musketeers hurry towards the contested bridge. Near the bridge to the left, seen beyond the hillocks, are pieces of artillery. The whole composition is as though viewed from the top of a hill. The same battle occupies the back plate, but seen from a different standpoint, the town being on the left, and the river (viewed in perspective) being crossed in the middle distance by the bridge. On the left a large party of cavaliers charges down the hill-side, at the base of which pass, at right angles, waggons loaded with arms, and guarded by Orientals; on the right a large party of horsemen appears in the distance. In the front centre of the composition is the equestrian figure of an Oriental wearing a mail shirt, and holding in his right hand a javelin. There can be little doubt that the workmanship of this gorget is French, and that it probably dates within the second quarter of the XVIIth century. But, despite the wonderful elaboration of the ornamentation, how "tight" and "line-y" is the method of its execution, and how dependent on the graver's tool is that effect of sumptuousness which in the previous century would have been obtained by the simpler and broader method of embossing and damascening. Yet within the author's recollection this piece of late gala armour was passed by one of the foremost French experts of the day as the "hausse col de François premier"! We could quote other pieces of armour of almost equal importance as samples of the armourer-goldsmith's work of the day, for example, the fine gorget preserved in the Musée d'Artillerie of Paris, G 249 (Fig. 1459), once the property of Louis XIII, and another, an excellent specimen of embossing in the medium in which it is made—silver, or its equivalent in bronze gilt—now in a well-known English collection, and formerly in the Bateman Collection (Fig. 1460). But these products are not really armour, and must be classed with the minute gorget plates worn