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⌠Knights in shining armour■

In late 2006, a new exposition opened in the oldest military museum of Russia, in the Military Historical Museum of Artillery, Engineer and Signal Corps (Artillery Museum). The exposition is devoted to the cold arms and firearms as well as the protective armour of the West European countries manufactured in the 15th√17th centuries.

In the hall of the Artillery Museum one can inspect broadswords and daggers of knights, panzerstechers, rapiers, zweihander swords, a cross╛bow and ⌠pavise■ shields of the 15th Century, various maces and warhammers, as well as pole weapons of infantry (halberds, pole axes and partisans). The exposition features a morgenstern, a Zhizhka▓s stern, a gisarme, a ⌠winged■ lance, a matchlock shotgun from 1420 used for shooting from fortress walls, a Saxony 1589 musket with a wheellock mechanism, pistols and many other medieval weapons, in all, more than 100 items.

Full knight harness. Germany. Early 17th Century [zoom (46k)]

The exposition is compiled exclusively by the Artillery Museum items. The collection was started as early as in the 18th century. In that period, ⌠The Knights▓ Room■ was founded as a part of the Memorial Hall (ancestor of the Artillery Museum). It included medieval chain mails, cuirasses, helmets, English flags from the times of Elisabeth I and Jacob I, armours of Teutonic knights (some of them were used in the equipment of the ⌠sad■ and the ⌠jolly■ knights of the ceremonies of burial of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna and later of Emperors Alexander I and Nicholas I). The collection was enlarged in the 19th century and in the 1920s√1930s confiscated private collections were added to it.

The most of the items of the exposition pertain to the weapons of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The crossbow (arbalest, armbrust) was rather widespread in this period. It is a shooting weapon of both military and hunting purpose, combining a bow and a drawing device using levers, ratchets and pulleys of various kinds. The crossbow with a system of pulleys emerged rather early, most likely in the second half of the 12th Century.

In spite of its complexity and uneasy operation, it was rather popular. The steel bows of the arbmbrusts came into use not earlier than in the 14th and early 15th Centuries. The time was needed for drawing the string, so high wooden leather-covered shields, the ⌠pavise■, were used for the protection against the hostile arrows. One of these shields presented in the exposition stems from the town of Konstanz (15th Century), for it bears the coat of arms of this city, the another shield came from the Lower Austria. The warhammers presented in the exposition served for penetrating the armour plates.

Knight swords were the main weapons of nobility for a number of centuries. Magic qualities often were attributed to swords. The life of the owner often depended on the quality of the blade. That▓s why the swords from good steel were expensive, and the craftsmen producing the high quality swords gained international popularity. The swords produced in the German town of Passau were of particular quality. Their brand sign of ⌠the Wolf of Passau■ was widely known and very famous through all the Europe. Often the clients refused to buy the sword without that ⌠Wolf■ and the other countries craftsmen had to forge this hallmark putting it alongside their own mark.

The blades of two swords from the museum collection bear the ⌠King▓s Head■, the brand mark of the famous Solingen craftsmen Johannes Wundes, who worked in the period 1560√1620. The mark survived on the wall above the door of his house in Solingen together with the ⌠I.W■ initials, his motto and following rhymes: ⌠The King▓s Head is my crest, the one envied so much■. His sons and grandsons of the craftsman failed to maintain the same high level of the brand name popularity and sold the rights for the brand. The huge zweihander swords of the length up to two meters and weight up to 4.5 kilo with straight, wavy and curved blades are presented in the exposition. Theswe swords were used by ⌠landsknecht■ soldiers in infantry fighting. An execution sword with a flat end from the 17th century is also present.

By the mid 15th century, the full plate harness emerged, the one facilitating the unrestricted moving of a knight combined with the maximal protection from the hewing and stubbing strikes of the enemy. The armour produced in the Southern Germany and Northern Italy was considered to be the best. The so-called ⌠maximilian■ type of armour, the one featuring the wave-formed surface of the plates, became widespread in that epoch. This form permitted to decrease the weight of the harness without harming its protective qualities. It was called after Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire Maximillian I Habsburg (1493√1519).

The equestrian composition featuring the knight▓s armour of the 16th century. The gala harness of the horse was produced by Kuntz Lochner of Nuremberg (1510√1567) in 1552 and in 1556√1560. For Duke Johann-Wilhelm of Saxen-Weimar-Coburg and Johann Friedrich II, Elector of Saxony, Lochner was held to be the king of the armourers and worked on orders from royalties of the European countries and from important landlords. Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire Maximilian II, the Spanish Royal House, as well as German electors and Polish-Lithuanian magnates were among his clients. The contemporaries compared his engraving on steel with the work of a silversmith.

Gilded jousting helmet (armet). 16th Century. ⌠Pine cone■ city hallmark of Augsburg [zoom (36k)]

Among the most valuable exhibits are the parts of the magnificent gilded armour (shoulder plates ≈ ⌠pauldrons■ and knee plates), bearing Russian eagles and the images of the Big State Seal of Russia. The armour was produced in Germany for Tsar False Dmitriy I (reigned in 1605√1606). A rifle with a wheellock mechanism, also belonging to that Tsar, bears the sign ⌠Dometrius Imperator■ on the base of its barrel. In total, five full knight harnesses by Italian and German craftsmen are presented.

In course of the history, the knights▓ helmets passed different stages of development, and different types of the knight helmets are presented in the exposition. The pot-like helms worn by the Crusaders in the 13th century were the heaviest among them. The lighter ⌠bascinet■ helmet succeeded it. The ⌠salade■ (sallat) helmet was also popular, especially in Germany, and easy to wear. However, the ⌠armet■ helmets are held to be the most perfect pieces, the ones featuring the separte ⌠visor■, the piece protecting the eyes, and the ⌠bevor■, the piece defending the lower part of the face and the chin. An open helmet, ⌠morion■, appeared in the 16th century. It was handy, because it did not hindered the process of aiming a shooting arm. Infantrymen, archers and, later, musketeers wore it.

The special jousting (tournament) helmets are also presented in the exposition. One of the best of them, a gilded ⌠armet■ is marked with the ⌠pine cone■ city hallmark of Augsburg. The helmet was produced by Anthon Peffenhauser and possibly was decorated by Jorg Sorg. This gala helmet is a real masterpiece of armourer craftsmanship.

The jousting harness for knightly spear-running tournaments is also worth a particular interest. The knightly jousting tournaments started as early as in the 9th century. At first, the same combat arms and armament were used for the purpose. Though the first recorded tournament was staged in 1066, jousting did not gain in widespread popularity until the 14th century. It maintained its status as a popular European sport until the late 16th century. Jousting ⌠au plaisance■ indicates that the combat was for the pleasure of the combatants and audience at the tournament, where a blunted lance tip was used. Jousting ⌠a l▓ out-rance■ was typically performed during wartime on battlefields and was ⌠to the death■ using sharpened lance tips. The greatest danger was that the visor of the protective helmet of the knight accidentally opened during a run, making it possible for the opponents lance or debris from a breaking lance to hit the unprotected face of the knight. At the end of the 13th century, more strict rules of jousting tournaments were adopted. These rules were specified in ⌠Status Armarium■ having the aim to protect the participants.

However, serious injury and even death could and did result from jousting ⌠au plaisance■, and it was impossible to evade single accidents like the one resulting in the death of the French king Henry II Valouis in 1559 killed by a splinter of the shattered spear of his competitor, Gabriel Montgomery, captain of his Scottish guard, who failed to incline the broken immediately after the impact. The shard of his opponent▓s broken lance went through his visor and into his eye, penetrated the brain and came out via his ear. He suffered terribly, and, despite the efforts of royal surgeon Ambroise Pare, died on July 10, 1959. Hunting was the beloved activity of the aristocracy. Each kind of hunting had

The early samples of the medieval artillery in the exposition are those of the bombard, harquebus, modfa and shotgun. They were forged from the metal stripes secured by constraining steel cross-rings. The bombard and harquebus were loaded from the rear. They were not very reliable and often were burst by the explosion of gunpowder by shooting. A 15th century harquebus with such burst barrel is presented in the exposition.

The muzzle-loaded field canons of the late 16th √ early 17th centuries looks totally different. They features the superb artistic casting, elaborate work of details and the highest quality finish

Pistol with a wheellock mechanism. Germany Nuremberg. Late 16th Century [zoom (33k)]

The cannons were produced in the foundry works of the Niasvizh castle, which was the family residence of the biggest Polish-Lithuanian magnate, Radziwill.

The Radziwill family stems from the Lithuanian noble family. After the Union of Horodlo, when Lithuania and Poland merged in form of a commonwealth and till 1939, Radziwill family possessed vast estates on the territories of Lithuania, Poland and Byelorussia. Some of its representatives occupied the throne of the Polish kings. A rare title of a reichsfuerst (Prince of the Empire) was awarded to the family by Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire Maximilian I, in 1515. The German craftsmen, Hermann Molzsfeld (Molzer) supervised the process of casting these cannons.

One of the guns is called ⌠Grapes■ (or the ⌠The Cup of Plenty■). The surface of another gun, ⌠Cerberus■, is covered by the images of the three-headed dogs. The images are supplied with a motto: ⌠I, Cerberus, bark ferociously, while providing thousands to Dit■. Dit was another name of Pluto, the mythological lord of Hades, the ancient Greek underworld.

The unusual items are of particular interest. They include a combination pistol-mace with an axe and portable blade from the Hohenzollern collection, a pistol-sword, a partisan with two wheellock mechanism pistols (with triggers on the pole) and a seven-barreled canon from Riga.

Generally speaking, the Military Historical Museum of Artillery, Engineer and Signal Corps possesses the biggest in Russia collection of West Europe arms and armour of the 15th√17th centuries. It can be compared only with the collections of the State Hermitage, the Armoury of the Moscow Kremlin and the State Museum of History.