Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 3).djvu/141

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

evidence of this in Vittore Carpaccio's series, "The History of St. Ursula," in the Accademia, Venice, in one of the episodes of which the soldiery of Cologne can be seen armed with such weapons (Fig. 893). It is in accounts of those judicial combats which often terminated some personal quarrel that we find constant reference to the knightly use of this weapon. En champ clos and in those hand-to-hand fights under le jugement de Dieu the opposing combatants within the barrier were armed in a very complete manner, and fought on foot. The Hastings MS. gives an illustration of "How a man schall be armyd at his ese when he schal fighte on foote "—an illustration in which we are able to see the laborious process of preparing for these foot combats. The knight, whose legs are armed with plate up to his cuisses, is being equipped for the fight by his esquire, who is lacing on him a body under-garment which is in places reinforced with chain-mail. The final step will be to array him in the breastplate and brassards, which are placed on a trestle-table at his side, near which are his pole-axe and a kind of Aalspeiss (Fig. 894). We may take it that the actual fight with the pole-hammer or -axe was very similar to that with the quarter-staff.

Fig. 892. Douce MS., Bodleian, No. 271

In the illuminated manuscript executed in the third quarter of the XVth century, and known as the Pageant of the Birth, Life, and Death of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, K.G., we see a drawing of