Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 2).djvu/117

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they were thrown aside as needing repairs or as being past repairing. For Hefner's statement that they were found in a cistern, there is no authority. Buchon, too, only mentions their having been found and gives no details beyond those we have mentioned. On its discovery the armour was first removed to Athens and placed in the museum of the Acropolis; but at a later date it was removed to the Ethnological Museum, where it was, until quite recently, labelled Casques Normands, Croisades du XII^e Siècle. Buchon in his notes dealing with the Chalcis collection in La Grèce et la Morée (page 134) connects this group of helmets and other armour with the battle of Lake Copais, where in 1311 the chivalry of the Morea was defeated by the Catalan Grand Company. This, from the nature of the armaments discovered, is, on the face of it, impossible. It is probable, however, as the castle of Chalcis was captured by the Turks from the Venetians in 1470, that this hoard was part of the armour of the captured Venetians, and that owing to its fragmentary nature it was thrown aside as useless by the Turks. It has been rather vaguely stated that the group dates from the middle of the XIVth century, until the defeat of the Venetians in 1470; but we have no hesitation in saying that no single piece can be assigned to a date earlier than the closing years of the XIVth century, not even the bascinet helmets, all of which are of a very late type, even if crude in workmanship.

Fig. 429. Armet from Chalcis

First half of XVth century. Now in the Ethnographical Museum, Athens

(a) Profile view; (b) Back view

But we are more particularly interested in the three armets of this group, for, associated as they are with the bascinets and early salades found at Chalcis, they confirm the Baron de Cosson's theory of the mid-XVth century existence of this particular class of head-piece. Two of the armets are illus-