Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 5).djvu/85

 The centre of the knuckle-guard and the ends of the quillons are chiselled in the form of monsters' heads. The cup is circular and convex in section, shaped as eight scroll-shaped shields joined side by side. The enrichment of the whole is composed of spiral bands chiselled in low relief, with conventional vine foliage which is very English in its method of decorative adaptation. The blade is of flattened hexagonal section, grooved and inscribed on either side,, denoting it was made by a member of a family of bladesmiths who called themselves Sahagun after a small town in Spain. The most famous of the house was Alonzo da Sahagun, called the "Raphael of bladesmiths"—as he worked in the third quarter of the XVIth century it is probable that the blade is by Luiz II, grandson of Alonzo. Hilts of this type are constantly met with in that large group of weapons which we claim to have been in common use in England until well into the reign of Charles I. It has been suggested that, although they are the popular and are of the most ordinary form of English rapier hilt, they were seldom of actual English make, and that nearly all of them were imported from Holland. This at least may be said, that even in the case of the finest examples the workmanship is of the roughest description; while the art of their adornment, if such almost savage treatment of the ornamentation can be called art, is of the poorest possible quality. But although we contend that this type of hilt was popular in England, we do not claim that this country monopolized its use. The contemporary French duelling rapier, the flamberge, was closely allied to it in form; though in the true line of evolution it appears to be little more than the prototype of all the so-called dress swords of the latter part of the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries. We illustrate (Fig. 1468) such a French duelling rapier of the period of Louis XIII: it has a circular cup-like guard, short quillons, and knuckle-guard, the whole coarsely chiselled with floral ornaments. In this case the blade made for the hilt is slender and four-sided, of exaggerated length, and widening towards the point for the purpose of delivering the stramazone or slashing cut across the face, and for the "hamstringing" cut known as the coup de Jarnac. Blades of this type were known in France as the lame à spatule, and in Italy as the foglia d'olivo. Next we illustrate (Fig. 1469) an even simpler form of the flamberge hilt which, devoid of knuckle-guard, provides a large though shallow cup as the sole protection for the hand. From certain technical indications we are inclined to think that this example is English, and dates from the end of the first quarter of the XVIIth century. In the case of our next specimen (Fig. 1470) another form of flamberge hilt may be noted where the cup, though smaller