close-fitting hemispherical bascinet, which emerged ca. 1220. The great helm survived
with little further structural change from 1220 to 1400, and from ca. 1300 its apex was
often provided with a distinctive heraldic “crest” (cimier) of wood or boiled leather, worn
primarily in the tournaments to which, by 1380, the helm was restricted. The bascinet
was at first worn under the helm and over the coif of the mail hood, but from ca. 1260 the
hood was increasingly replaced with a mail curtain (the camail or aventail) suspended
from the outside of the bascinet, and the bascinet thus augmented gradually replaced the
clumsy great helm as the principal defense for the head in real warfare. In consequence,
the bascinet became steadily larger and more pointed, and acquired in the last decade of
the 13th century a movable “visor” (vissere) to protect the face.
The eight decades between ca. 1250 and ca. 1330 witnessed a major change in the
history of European ar-mor, stimulated in large part by the development of weapons
capable of piercing mail: the gradual introduction of pieces of plate (at first of
whalebone, horn, and boiled leather, as well as of the iron and steel that ultimately
prevailed) to cover an ever larger part of the mail. By 1330, every part of the body of a
knight was normally protected by one or several plates, including a poncholike “coat of
plates” concealed by the surcoat. By 1410, the various pieces of plate, including a
breastplate and backplate instead of the earlier coat of plates, were all connected by straps
and rivets in an articulated suit, or “harness,” of polished steel. After ca. 1425, this
“white” armor was usually worn without a surcoat or any other covering.
The adoption of elements of plate to protect the body steadily reduced the importance
of the shield, which between 1250 and 1350 diminished steadily in size until it was only
about 16 inches in height. Even this diminished shield was finally abandoned between
1380 and 1400. A new form of shield called the targe, of similar size and structure but
roughly rectangular in outline, concave rather than convex, often deeply fluted and
cusped, and provided with a notch, or bouche, for the lance, was introduced in the same
two decades, but it was used primarily in tournaments, and knights of the 15th century
seem to have done without any shield in battle.
The only offensive weapons commonly borne by the Frankish warriors who seized
power in Gaul in the 5th century were the lance, or framea, of sharpened ash; the barbed
javelin, or ango; and the throwing ax, or frankisca. The lance or spear, whose more
expansive form, equipped with an iron head, was destined to displace the sharpened form
and survived with little basic change until the end of the Middle Ages and beyond—for
many centuries the only weapon generally available to ignoble as well as noble warriors.
Kings and the leaders of war bands also carried swords, usually of the long, straight,
double-edged type called in Latin spatha, first developed by the Celts of Gaul ca. 400
B.C. and later borrowed by Germans and Romans. As the Old French use of espee for
“sword” suggests, the spatha (whose blade was ca. 30 inches long) was ancestral to most
of the later forms of sword developed in western Europe, of which some thirty-three
types and subtypes have been recognized by scholars, four of them antedating A.D. 600.
Around 600, the Frankish king and nobles temporarily abandoned both spatha and
frankisca in favor of a machetelike single-edged sword called a saxo, whose 18inch blade
permitted it to be used for stabbing and even throwing as well as slashing; but under
Viking influence the spatha, which the Scandinavians had continued to use and develop,
was reintroduced into Frankish lands and quickly became the principal weapon not only
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