Military History Photo Friday: Elaborate Renaissance Arms and Armor

Here are a couple of fine pieces from The Wallace Collection, one of the best private collections of art in London. They have an especially good arms and armor gallery. It's well worth checking out if you're in London.

On the top we have, according to the signage, "a mace of the morning star type, damascened in gold with arabesques and emblematical figures within cartouches of silver piqué." Well that clears that up. It's from Milan c.1560.

Below are some fine parade helmets from the same century, also made in Italy and of the type known as "antique armor", which imitated the styles of parade armor from ancient Rome.

Guest blogging about Spanish castles over at Black Gate

I've done another guest post for the blog of Black Gate fantasy magazine. It's the first in a series about Spanish castles; this one is about the Alcázar in Segovia.

Not only is it a fascinating castle, but it has an excellent collection of medieval artillery that helped me when I was writing my book Medieval Handgonnes: the first Black Powder Infantry Weapons.

For more on that subject, you might also want to look at a guest post I did over at Genre Author on the accuracy of Medieval handgonnes.

Ned Kelly meets Tupac Shakur

You're getting a double dose of my A to Z Challenge contributions today. Yesterday I was too busy with an article about English castles that's now live on Gadling. Researching it took up way more time and energy than expected!

I did play hookey for part of yesterday, however, in order to watch The Story of the Kelly Gang on Archive.org. Ned Kelly was an outlaw in late-nineteenth-century Australia and was most famous for his gunfight against the police while wearing homemade armor. The law saw him as a brutal killer and thief, while many regular folk saw him as a hero who robbed from the rich and gave to the poor. He became the Australian equivalent of Jesse James, larger than life.

This film was made in 1906 in Australia and at 60 minutes, was the longest film yet made. It proved hugely successful in Australia and played in theaters for 20 years. Sadly, most of the film has been lost. Back then people thought of films as disposable and most films from the first three decades of motion pictures are gone. It's only by luck that 20 minutes of the film have survived.

The guy who posted the film on Archive.org did a good job splicing the various surviving bits together. He didn't add a soundtrack, though, and not liking my silent films to be totally silent I decided to put on some music. Hmmm. . .what would go with a bandit movie? Tupac Shakur, of course! His music is about gangsters defying the police, after all.

As strange as it sounds, the music fit perfectly. Just goes to show that once art is in the public space, it can take on some strange and unanticipated forms. I bet Tupac never dreamed his music would be used to accompany a hundred-year-old movie, and I'm sure Ned Kelly never anticipated someone like Tupac!

Photos courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Civil War Photo Friday: Civil War Body Armor

This photo, courtesy the Pitt-Rivers Museum, shows some personal armor used in the Civil War. While never officially issued by either army, a fair number of these bulletproof vests were sold by private companies to troops in the North and the South.

It was common for soldiers to supplement their equipment with privately purchased items. Vests were made of two or more steel plates and weighed up to 12 pounds. They cost $5 or $7 depending on the quality. Considering that a private in the Union army made $13 a month, this was a significant investment.

Did they work? There are a couple of accounts of them working, but they may have been stories made up by advertisers. Much of the equipment sold to the troops was of low quality and there's no reason to believe the "bulletproof" vests were any exception. On the other hand, Civil War bullets were made of soft lead and had a low velocity. The probably could be deflected by even a relatively thin piece of steel. As far as I know, none have ever been scientifically tested.

The vests were snapped up by soldiers in the early months of the war but soon declined in popularity. They were expensive, not always reliable, and the extra weight on long marches proved tiresome. The same situation happened during World War One. Soldiers ended up having to rely on luck and pluck to survive battle.

Book review: A Glossary of the Construction, Decoration and Use of Arms and Armor in All Countries and in All Times

A Glossary of the Construction, Decoration and Use of Arms and Armor in All Countries and in All Times by George Cameron Stone

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


A flawed but classic study.
My high school library had a copy of this book and I spent many hours poring over the descriptions of odd weapons and staring at the hundreds of photographs. When I grew up and started researching and writing military history, I consulted it again. What a disappointment! This book is filled with mistakes. Stone was an expert on Asian arms and armor but makes countless errors when he writes outside his area of expertise. He should have had a coauthor!

That said, you can still learn a lot about Asian militaria from this book, and the photos are a goldmine of information no matter what region you study. I suggest buying The Complete Encyclopaedia of Arms and Weapons, edited by Tarassuk and Blair, instead of Stone's work. If you have deep pockets, buy both.

NOTE: This review is of the original 1961 edition. I haven't seen the later facsimile edition. Another reviewer said the photos are poor quality in the facsimile. They weren't too good in the original, although they were clear enough. I suppose they may have lost some quality in the reprint.

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