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INFANTRYMEN, 13th CENTURY
An extract from Armies of Feudal Europe 1066-1300
by Ian Heath
26, 27, 28, 29 & 30. INFANTRYMEN, 13th CENTURY
Some of the best-known and most widely reproduced ms. illustrations of this era belong to the mid-13th century French 'Maciejowski Bible', from which most of this selection comes.
Their armour is characteristic of that to be found in most pictorial sources of this date, though this particular ms. gives a far clearer picture of quilted armour than most.
Figures 26, 27 and 28 all wear aketons and/or gambesons, which were quilted leather, linen or woollen tunics stuffed with wool, cotton, tow and old rags.
In contemporary sources they are usually depicted coloured in pastel shades of red, blue, green, yellow and buff, with red clearly the most popular colour.
The Byzantine chronicler Niketas Choniates, describing the quilted armour of Conrad de Montferrat, commander of the Byzantine army's Latinikon regiment in 1187,
records it to have been made of as many as 18 layers of red linen, treated with a mixture of salt and rough wine so that it was allegedly impervious to sword or lance blows.
Geoffrey de Visnauf, a chronicler of the Third Crusade, likewise refers to quilted armour as 'difficult to pierce'; he describes pourpoint
(an alternative name for such armour, often decoratively embroidered) as armour 'of many folds of linen'.
Its thickness obviously varied, but quilted corselets of a later date are recorded being up to 2″ thick.
Such quilted body-armour had already been in existence in various forms for hundreds of years,
but its use in Western Europe seems to have become more widespread as a direct result of the Crusades because of its popularity amongst the Saracens,
who called it al-qutun (literally 'cotton'), which term was corrupted by Europeans to become 'aketon'.
Significantly contemporary sources tend to make a clear distinction between the gambeson and the aketon,
the former undoubtedly being the older variety of such armour since -
though its name only seems to first appear in a 'Roman de Perceval' of c.1160 and Wace's 'Roman de Rou' of c.1160-74 -
the term 'gambeson' is derived ultimately from the Old Frankish wamba (belly), and in some older texts the word wambais is actually substituted.
Nevertheless, what differences there were must have been minimal, except that the aketon was usually sleeveless whereas gambeson sleeves are mentioned frequently.
Both 26 and 27 are each clearly wearing two different quilted tunics,
the inner one with long sleeves (terminating in quilted mittens in the case of figure 27) and the outer one with a stiff upright collar;
these are presumably gambeson and aketon respectively.
Headwear in each case consists of a padded arming cap and either a kettle-helmet or a simple hemispherical bascinet.
Figure 30, the odd man out in this group, comes from another mid-13th century ms., this time English,
very similar figures also appearing in French and Spanish sources (compare him to
figure 82,
for instance).
In most cases the scale corselet, undoubtedly based on a leather foundation, is sleeveless as here, with an upstanding collar similar to that of an aketon,
and it is normally worn over a mail haubergeon as if the scale corselet itself was not regarded as sufficient protection.
Nevertheless, scale armour seems to have remained an occasional substitute for mail during this era throughout much of Western Europe,
though it is encountered only rarely thereafter except in Eastern Europe.
The scales were now most commonly of iron but (here is literary and illustrative evidence to indicate that horn was still very much in use in the West,
certainly in the 12th century and possibly even in the 13th; far example, Emperor Henry V (1111-25) had a body of knights equipped in horn scale armour in 1115.
These figures are armed with a typical infantry assortment of spears, swords, bows and axes.
The nasty-looking device wielded by 28 is probably a faus or faussal
(see note to figure 38)
and is sometimes depicted in the 'Maciejowski Bible' with its grip shaped like an umbrella-handle.
Figure 27 has a falchion girded at the waist, a one-edged weapon which first appeared in the late-12th century and seems to have evolved ultimately from the seax,
which itself remained in use until about the same date.
Its Western European name derived from the French fauchon and the Latin falx, meaning a scythe,
while in Eastern Europe it was later known as a tesak or tasak ('cleaver').
During the 13th century was to be found in widespread use amongst both knights and foot-soldiers.
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