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Ancient armour and weapons in Europe: from the iron period of the northern nations to the end of the seventeenth century: with illustrations from contemporary monuments, Volume 3 by Hewitt, John, 1807-1878
PLATE 105.
We have here the prototypes of a kind of troop and of a military implement which at a later time came into general employment :
of the Dragoon, or horse-soldier acting with a fire-arm ; and of the Rest, which, allied with the arquebus and musqueto,
was in common use during the sixteenth century.
Not that the names “dragoon” and “rest” are to be found in the writings of the period now under examination, but the objects themselves are clearly before us.
The miniature is from a manuscript in the Bibliothèque de Bourgogne (at Brussels),
engraved in De Vigne’s Vade-mecum du peintre,
vol. ii., Appendix, Armes à feu.
On comparing the weapon with that figured on our plate 88,
and with the earlier example in Hefner’s Tannenberg volume, it will be seen that the form is in all nearly identical.
This differs chiefly in being provided with a ring for suspension.
The Rest also has a ring, and it is clear that when the fire has been given, the “gonne” would be let fall with its muzzle downwards at the side or back of the soldier,
while the rest would at the same time fall upon the horse’s shoulder in front of the saddle.
In his hand the horseman holds the lighted match-cord for exploding his piece.
The gonne, it will be observed, is still without lock. The body-armour in this subject presents nothing new to us.
The earliest recorded employment of mounted arquebusiers is in a combat in the Abruzzi, where Camillo Vitelli, an Italian captain in the service of France,
used them against Ferdinand of Naples
o See our plates 119 and 120.
and his Spanish troops.
“Ea die sclopettarios equites quos Camillus suopte militari ingenio nuper instituerat, tum primum in aciem et felici quidem periculo productos fuisse constat.”
[On that day it is certain that the horse musketeers, whom Camillus had lately instituted by his own military genius, was then for the first time brought into line of battle, and indeed, by a fortunate experiment.]
(Paolo Giovio, Historia, lib, iv. p. 71, ed. 1553.)
The fashion soon spread: in 1510, the Swiss acting in Italy had five hundred horsemen, of which half carried fire-arms. (See Guicciardini, lib. ix.)
It was not, however, till the second half of the sixteenth century that hand fire-arms made any serious progress as an armament for the field of battle.
In the caparison of the horse, as it is here represented to us, it is not easy to discover if any defence of metal is borne by the animal.
And this is a difficulty which, it seems, is not confined to the modem student, but was sometimes felt by those who shared in the scenes which we are considering.
Thus, when Lord Scales had overthrown his antagonist in the jousts at Smithfield in 1467,
it was affirmed that his success was owing to some “falseness in the furniture of his horse.”
The gallant Wydeville therefore hastened to shew that his steed not only had no provision of “advantage or malingyne,”
but that it was not even defended by chanfrein or peytrel of steel.
“Then the Lorde Scales rode straight and light before the Kyng, and made take of his trapper, shewyng that his hors had no chamfron nor peser of steele.” (Excerpta Historica, p. 209.)
Source: pp. 554-557, Ancient armour and weapons in Europe: from the iron period of the northern nations to the end of the seventeenth century: with illustrations from contemporary monuments, Volume 3 by Hewitt, John, 1807-1878
See also 71. MOUNTED HANDGUNNER in Armies of the Middle Ages, Volume 1 by Ian Heath
Other 15th Century Illustrations of Costume and Soldiers
