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.

Military History Photo Friday: Medieval Handgonnes in Slovenia

When I started researching my book Medieval Handgonnes: The First Black Powder Infantry Weapons, I discovered the Balkans were early adopters of the earliest handheld firearm technology. Many of the photos for the book, for example, come from Croatia.

Just north of Croatia is Slovenia, the subject of my current travel series for Gadling. While in the National History Museum in the capital Ljubljana I came across two examples of early firearms.

This top one of from the early 15th century. It's of the earliest of the three main types I outlined in my book. It's only a little more than a foot long with a touch hole at one end. The hook at the bottom was for hooking over a wall or shield in order to steady it. The handgonne may have been fixed to a wooden shaft but I couldn't see any evidence for that.

This is from the late 15th century and as you can see it's a much more advanced model. Well, hopefully you can see. It's really hard to take good photos through glass! Anyway, it's about three feet long and has the familiar hook. It also has a pair of gunsights and a pan for the gunpowder that was originally fitted with a swiveling top in order to secure the loose powder.

Here's a closeup of the back end, showing the pan, maker's mark, and rear sight.

As you can see, there's no trigger on either of these pieces. Triggers of the matchlock type only came into use slowly near the end of the 15th century.

You might also want to check out a guest post I did about the accuracy of medieval handgonnes.

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.

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.

Lancers in the American Civil War

I recently did a guest post over at Genre Author about Medieval Weapons in the American Civil War. Space limitations didn't allow me to include all examples of "primitive" weapons used in the war, so here are some more.

Some Texas cavalry units had lances. These weren't the huge lances of the medieval jousting era, rather the slim lances used in the Napoleonic era. The Texans' lance blades were 3 inches wide and 12 long, mounted on a 9 foot shaft. Each sported a red guidon with a white star to "drink the blood" of the Yankees.

At the Battle of Valverde, New Mexico Territory,  on 21 February 1862, Texas lancers under Capt. W.L. Lang, Fifth Texas Regiment, formed three columns and charged the Union left flank. Facing them were the Second Colorado Volunteer Infantry. The infantry waited until the horsemen were only 20 yards away and then gave them a volley. At that range it was hard to miss. At least 20 fell and the Coloradans quickly reloaded and gave them some more of the same.

Some Texans managed to close with the infantry. The Colorado troops didn't break, instead fighting back effectively with their bayonets. At this point the Texans should have been able to destroy the infantry. They had longer reach, after all. That a lancer should be beaten by a bayonet hints that the Texans hadn't trained with their weapons much. A fellow history buff over at the RenWars Yahoo group told me the Texans, disgusted at their performance in battle, ended up using their lances as firewood!

Another RenWars user pointed out an interesting article on pikes used by soldiers in Georgia. None actually saw combat, which was probably a good thing as far as the Georgians were concerned.

I couldn't find a public domain image of the Texan lancers. There's a good modern painting of them here. 

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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