METALS IN THE SERVICE OF MARS: ARMS AND ARMOUR

METALS IN THE SERVICE OF MARS: ARMS AND ARMOURAuthor(s): CLAUDE BLAIRSource: Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, Vol. 129, No. 5304 (NOVEMBER 1981), pp. 764-781Published by: Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and CommerceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41372652 .

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METALS IN THE SERVICE OF MARS:

ARMS AND ARMOUR

I The Chester Beatty Lecture by I

II] CLAUDE BLAIR I

Keeper , Department of Metalwork , Victoria and Albert Museum , delivered to the Society on Wednesday 29th April 1981 ,

with A . Chester Beatty , President , Selection Trust , ш í/zč С/га z r

i'

The Chairman: It is a pleasure to welcome you for the thirteenth of the lectures that bear my name. When we first started these lectures in 1969 we set out to show how widely metals were associated with everyday life. We have tried to keep the balance between the technical and non-technical, between the past and the present, and even the future. Tonight we have Mr. Blair talking about metals in arms and armour.

It is interesting to see how the properties of metals lend themselves peculiarly well to both decorative and utilitarian purposes. If I may for a moment draw from the textbook, you will remember that metals are malleable, ductile, fusible and capable of being joined together by application of heat. Thus at various times man has used metals in the making

1

of jewellery and other articles of personal adorn- ment. By late Roman times iron was used in the making of weapons and utensils. Mr. Blair will show how man devised ways of defending himself, or attacking others, and could not resist developing and refining his techniques as his knowledge of metals grew, introducing the element of design for its own sake in such essential articles as his sword, armour and firearms. I am sure that after hearing what Mr. Blair has to say we shall have reservations about Isaiah's prophecy 'They shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning forks'. It would indeed be a pity if some of the marvellous objects that Mr. Blair is to describe were to end up as agricultural implements.

The following Lecture , which was illustrated , was then delivered.

The naturally man

earliest were

in those their

metals that metallic

to sometimes

be

form:

worked

native occur

by man were those that sometimes occur naturally in their metallic form: native

(or virgin) copper and meteoric iron. There is little doubt that copper has the priority: the generally-accepted view is that it was already being worked in Anatolia in ninth millennium ВС, and was being smelted both there and in the North Balkans by the end of the fifth millennium. A comparatively soft metal, it can be worked by cold forging as well as by hot-forging or casting. For obvious technical reasons the earliest copper arms are simple in design : globu- lar mace-heads, short triangular dagger-blades - derived from flint ones - flat axe-heads without sockets, and leaf-shaped, tanged spear-heads. They were produced either by forging, or by casting in simple open moulds of stone or clay, often being subsequently cold forged to harden 764

them. Another, and superior, way of hardening copper is to mix it with a proportion of tin, to produce the alloy now called bronze. Its dis- covery, which was of enormous metallurgical significance, may again have occurred in the Middle East, and the earliest bronze objects yet recorded - with the very low tin content of 0.0 1 per cent, are tools dating from c.3800 вс found in Iran. From c.3000 вс there was a gradually increasing use of high tin bronzes which was probably the result of better tin supplies becoming available through trade.

Copper and bronze continued in use side by side for the manufacture of arms until well into the third millennium, and it is often difficult without analysis to decide which of them was used on particular objects. The advent of bronze was probably responsible, however, for the introduction of a casting technique - the lost wax



NOVEMBER 1981

Figure i. Copper axe-head from Nahal Mishmar 3 Israel , C.3100 ВС. ( Courtesy Israel Department of Antiquities and Museums. Exhibited at the

Israel Museum)

process - that made production of possible the really fine and complex castings, though the earliest examples recorded are actually of copper. They are a group of objects, dated to c.3100 ВС, found in a cave at Nahal Mishmar, Israel, which include also the earliest known socketed axe-heads (Figure 1). These have blades of much more robust design than those of the earlier flat axes, intended for piercing more than cutting, and are the precursors of a series of such axes from the Middle East. Yigel Yadin has suggested that they were designed to penetrate the earliest metal helmets, but it is perhaps just as likely that the helmets were introduced as a defence against the axes. But whichever came first, both are part of the military revolution that took place in Mesopotamia at this period, with the introduction of the war-chariot and the infantry phalanx armed with spears and shields.

The earliest known helmets - which are also the earliest known true armour - date from C.2800 ВС and come from the Sumerian Royal Tombs at Ur. Made of bronze, they are like deep skull-caps, usually with tongue-shaped ear-protectors. They established a helmet-form that was to be a basic one - though there were many variations on it - until well into the Euro- pean Middle Ages. A developed version closely resembles the most characteristic European helmet of the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, the basnet (Figure 2). No other armour seems to have been worn.

The spear, the mace and the axe were the main arms at this period, and most swords were little more than heavy daggers, something over a foot in length, with leaf-shaped blades. The characteristic form - which has survived in the

METALS IN THE SERVICE OF MARS East almost unchanged - is represented by the famous gold dagger from Ur (Figure 3). This particular weapon must have been designed as a parade-arm, a genus that the Sumerians seem also to have been responsible for inventing. Other parade-weapons come from the same source, as does also the astonishingly sophisti- cated embossed gold wig-helmet, which was almost duplicated some 4000 years later by an iron parade-helmet in the Royal Armoury, Madrid, made for the Emperor Charles V by Filippo Negroli of Milan.

The reason for the inadequacy of the bronze and copper swords of this period was, of course, technical, and the problem of producing a long sword that was both resilient and capable of taking a hard edge, so that it could be used effec- tively for striking as well as thrusting, was to exercise weapon-smiths for a very long time. One attempted solution was the bronze khopesh (sickle sword), a kind of sword-axe, which, despite its odd shape, was widely used in the Mid- dle East, and subsequently evolved into such swords as the Greek machaira and the Ghurka kukri. Curiously enough, the type of blade that was to provide the final solution - one made of iron - was tried briefly at the period with which we are concerned at the moment: for example, an iron dagger-blade of the beginning of the third millennium вс was found at Ur, but much more remarkable is the iron-bladed sword of C.2500 вс from Dorak in Anatolia, which is some 30 inches long (Figure 4). Its form, except that it has no guard for the hand, differs little from that of some European swords of the fifteenth century.

It is generally accepted that these early examples of worked iron, like others from the same area, are meteoric in origin, even though some evidence exists of iron smelting there at only a slightly later date. Iron arms, anyway, only started to come into general use at the end of the second millenium, and even then they were adopted slowly. The reason for the delay was no doubt that the earliest blacksmiths had not learned the secret of hardening iron, and their product was inferior in hardness to the good tin bronze that was coming into wide use during the third millennium.

The introduction at this period also of the composite bow - made of glued horn and sinew - which was immensely more powerful than the bow made from a single piece of wood, might have been expected to stimulate the development of body armour but if it did the evidence is lacking for the best part of 1000 years. So far as I am aware, nothing of the sort is to be found earlier than the fifteenth century вс, when we



JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS PROCEEDINGS

Figure 2. ť The Standard of Ur' Sumerian> с .2600 ВС . {British Museum)

not only have several written references to body- armour, but also illustrations and surviving specimens. This sudden relative profusion of evidence suggests that, for some unknown reason - perhaps, in the Near East at least, the general adoption of the light chariot with an archer-driver who could not carry a shield - metal body-armour came into use in the fifteenth century ВС.

In 1479 ВС the Pharoah Thotmose III cap- tured 200 armoured coats from the Canaanites after the Battle of Megiddo, while only a few years later we find detailed descriptions of scale coats on clay inventories from the Mitannian city of Nuzi. There can be little doubt that they would have been of similar form to those represented in the painted decoration of a Theban tomb of the reign of Amenhotep II (1436-1411 вс) (Figure 5) and also shown worn by a Canaanite charioteer depicted on the chariot of 766

his successor Thotmose IV (1411-1397 вс). These are simply short-sleeved shirts covered all over with overlapping metal scales, and we know from actual scales of the period excavated at Nuzi itself and on the site of the palace of Pharaoh Amenhotep III at Thebes,1 that they were of bronze linked to each other, and/or sewn to a textile base. It must be this kind of armour that is referred to in a famous Old Testament passage about the death of Ahab: ť And a certain man drew a bow at a venture, and smote the King of Israel between the joints of the harness' (I Kings, xxii, 34). 1

Scale armour was widely used in Antiquity, and apparently survived in the Eastern Roman Empire until the fifteenth century. Elsewhere it was made intermittently until the seventeenth century, and has even been revived occasionally since then.

True scale armour, however, never achieved



NOVEMBER 1981 METALS IN THE SERVICE OF MARS

Figure 3. Gold dagger from Ur. Sumerian} с. 2600 ВС. ( Baghdad Museum )

Figure 4. Sword with iron blade and hilt of obsidian studded with gold and amber from Dorak, Anatolia , c.2500 ВС. ( The Illustrated London News Picture Library)

the importance of a developed version of it to which the name 'lamellar armour' has been applied in modern times (Figure 6). On this the scales are joined together by a system of con- tinuous lacing without the use of any support- ing material. The date when the construction appeared is uncertain - it may be almost as early as true scale armour - but the earliest definite evidence of its existence appears to be in the famous Assyrian battle-reliefs of the eighth and seventh centuries вс in the British Museum. Thereafter it was disseminated widely over the Eastern world, and survived there in regular use, for instance in Tibet and Siberia, until comparatively recently. Most people probably know it best from the Assyrian reliefs and from Japanese armour, the most elaborate lamellar armour ever produced. In Europe, it was apparently used only where there was Eastern influence, including in the Byzantine Empire.

While scale (and perhaps also lamellar) armour was coming into use in the Middle East in the fifteenth century вс, bronze plate armour of an astonishingly advanced form was being developed in Mycenaean Greece. The best pre- served example comes from a tomb at Dendra, near Mycenae (Figure 7), and consists of one-piece breast and back-plates forming a cuirass that supports a deep hooped skirt, accompanied by large shoulder-defences, a very high collar protecting the lower half of the head, and fragmentary arm and leg defences. With it is a boar's tusk helmet of a kind described by Homer, but apart from this it bears a remarkable superficial resemblance to an Italian foot- combat armour of the late fifteenth century ad.2 For some unknown reason this kind of equipment seems to have had only a short life. The cuirass, however, was taken over by the Bronze Age cultures of Central Europe and was appa-

767




Figure 5. Above: Wall-painting of a scale shirt from the tomb of Kenamon at Thebes , 1436-1411 ВС. Below: Bronze scales found in the Palace of

Amenhotep III at Thebes , fourteenth century BC. ( Metropolitan Museum of Art , New York)

768




Figure 6. Reconstruction of method of lacing iron lamellar armour of the sixth century ВС found at Amathus , Cyprus {Cyprus Collection , Stockholm)

rently revived in Greece in the eighth century ВС as part of the equipment of the famous heavy infantry, the hoplites . From at least as early as the thirteenth century вс it was commonly modelled to represent the nude male torso, and this form survived to become, under the Roman Empire, the distinctive mark of a military leader.

The other major development of the second millenium вс was the long straight sword which, as I have already mentioned, had appeared briefly in Anatolia round about 2600 вс. The bronze-worker of Minoan Crete in the eighteenth century вс produced thrusting swords - so-called 'rapiers' - that were sometimes over 3 feet long. Similar swords were found in the Mycenaean shaft-graves of c.1650 вс, together with two kinds of more robust cut-and-thrust long-sword with tangs for the grips made in one with the blades. One of these, the so-called 'flange-hilted' sword (Figure 8), came to be widely used all over Europe in a variety of forms, at first made of bronze and then copied in iron.

The other form of Mycenaean sword - the 'cruciform' type - has a blade that expands at the base into two triangular lugs that guard the hand. Probably originating in Crete, it seems to have had a comparatively short life, but has become particularly well known because of the number of specimens found in the shaft-graves at Mycenae with blades inlaid with scenes in

gold, silver and niello (Figure 9). This decorative technique - which is one of those to which the name damascening is commonly applied - has remained in use intermittently ever since.

There was a long period, which varied in dif- ferent parts of the world, during which bronze slowly went out of use and iron came in. It tended to be used first for edged weapons, and some of the finest bronze armour was actually made in the Early Iron Age. As I have already indicated, the first iron objects - like the first copper ones - seem to have been made from metal found in its natural state. The smelting of iron is a much more complicated process than the smelting of copper and it is still not certain when and where it was first carried out. The earliest evidence comes from Anatolia and Mesopotamia in the middle of the third millennium вс, and it is generally accepted that it was the Hittites in Anatolia who, from about 2000 вс, first smelted and worked iron consis- tently. By about 1200 вс the techniques were known in Syria and Palestine and they slowly spread from there to the rest of the Old World, though iron objects do not start to appear in quantity until after c.iooo вс.

Iron is of three main kinds : (1) Wrought irony containing less than 0.03

per cent carbon, is highly malleable and does not harden greatly when cooled sud-

769




Figure 7. Bronze armour with boar's tusk helmet found at Dendra , Greece , Mycenaean , c.1400 ВС,

(Nauplion Museum )

denly. Its melting point is 15400 Centi- grade.

(2) Cast irony containing 2.2-5 Per cent carbon. Its melting point is 11500 Centigrade and it is very hard and brittle when it has cooled. It was used in China from the fifth century ВС, but its only general early application to arms there was as a material for bronze-casting moulds. In Europe it was not apparently produced deliberately until the second half of the fourteenth century.

(3) Steel . This is intermediate between cast and wrought iron, and contains from 0.3 per cent to 2.2 per cent carbon. It is malleable and hardens when cooled, and the more rapidly (within limits) the cooling is done the harder it becomes. The produc-

770

tion of homogeneous steel requires special technical skills, but a competent smith can very easily convert the external surfaces of a wrought-iron object into steel by heating them in contact with a source of carbon. This process of carburization (or case-

Figure 8. Bronze sword, Mycenaean , twelfth century ВС, ( Patras Museum)




Figure 9. Nineteenth-century electrotype reconstructions of daggers with damascened blades found in the shaft-graves at Mycenae , с .1600 ВС. ( Victoria and Albert Museum ; the originals in the

National Museum^ Athens )

hardening) is one that has been much used by makers of arms, armour, cutlery and edged tools, both directly on their almost- finished products, and as a means of making a more or less homogeneous steel-like mixture by the method known as piling . This involves carburizing a number of small pieces of iron, piling them on top of each other and forging them together, so producing a kind of club-sandwich of iron and steel. If this is folded over and forged again the carburization will be mixed even more thoroughly through the metal, and repetition of the process will produce a homogeneous steel. An elementary form of piling was being carried out in Egypt as early as c.1200 вс, and it had become an established technique by the eighth century вс.

The best way of hardening steel, or carburized iron, is to quench it suddenly when red hot in some suitable liquid. If the reduction in temperature is very rapid - as when cold water is used - the resultant hardening is too great (unless the carbon content is very low) to be suitable for such objects as sword-blades, which need to have resilience. This must therefore be reduced by tempering, a process which involves reheating the metal to a fairly low temperature

(not more than 700°C) and cooling it again. An alternative method - and probably the only one known before the end of the Middle Ages - is to carry out the initial quench in a way that does not cool the blade so rapidly. This can be achieved by using a less drastic medium - such as oil or boiling water - or else by an interrupted quench, that is immersing the blade for a few seconds, then withdrawing it, and repeating the process. This 'slack quenching', as it is called, obviates the need for tempering unless the metal has a very high carbon content.

The earliest important iron swords found in quantity date from the twelfth to eighth centuries вс and come from Luristan. The hilts are sometimes of iron but more commonly are of bronze cast on to the blades, a somewhat awkward solution to the problem of attachment which must be the result of lack of complete technical mastery of the iron. The blades are sometimes of inhomogeneous low-carbon steel, though, so far as I am aware, none has yet been found to show signs of quench hardening. They are, nevertheless, harder than bronze and, of course, more malleable. The earliest certain evidence of quenching and tempering - or more, probably, some form of slack quenching - comes from an Egyptian axe-head of c.900 вс.3 Thereafter the process was used regularly, if at

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Figure io. Iron Age {La Tène ) sword and scabbard from Lindholmgardy Denmark . Celtic , Q.300 ВС.

(. National Museum , Copenhagen)

first erratically, but did not become standard practice until well into the Middle Ages.

Iron swords were being made in Crete and Athens as early as the eleventh century вс, and thereafter came gradually into general use in the Mediterranean. The first iron-working culture North of the Alps is the famous Celtic Halstatt one, which takes its name from a place near Salzburg where iron objects were being produced by the seventh century вс. The first arms were swords and daggers copied directly from bronze ones. Then, as it was realized that less iron was needed to produce the same practical effect, thinner blades began to be produced. Fairly short stabbing swords were used by the Greeks (along with the curved machaera) and it is probably from these that the famous Roman gladius was derived. This merely continued in the tradition of the Bronze Age short-sword and, despite its importance to the Roman army, had no long-term effect on sword-design. The future lay with a long sword that could be used from a chariot or on horseback, partly for thrusting, but mainly for cutting, and the prototype of this appeared in or before the second century вс in the Celtic Iron Age Culture known as La Tène, after the site on Lake Neuchâtel, Switzerland, where it was first identified (Figure 10).

Polybius, in an account of a battle between the Romans and the Italian Gauls in 223 вс, says that the edge of the Gallic sword was blun- ted after the first blow - 'and the blade so twis- 772

ted and bent that unless the wielder was given time to straighten it out with his foot against the ground, the second stroke was entirely useless'.4 The small amount of modern analytical work that has been done on La Tène swords tends to confirm that they were very soft, but at least two Classical authors give quite contrary opinions. Diodorus Siculus, writing in the second half of the first century вс about the Celtiberians says : 'They bury plates of iron in the ground, and leave them until in the course of time the rust eats out the weak part of the iron, and the strongest element remains, from which they fasten excellent swords and other military gear.'5 It has been suggested that the rusting process described would have had the effect of leaving the parts of the iron containing the most carbon : in other words, those made of steel.

The other Classical author to extol the quali- ties of the Celtiberian sword was Philon of Byzantion, who flourished towards the end of the third century вс. In his book on missile weapons ( Belopoiika ) he describes the construction of a siege-catapult powered by bronze leaf- springs.® It is, incidentally, perfectly possible to make serviceable leaf-springs from bronze partly by cold-hammering the metal, and even bronze bows are recorded.7 Philon compares his springs to 'the so-called Celtic and Spanish swords' which he claims were tested by bending the blade in an arc and allowing it to spring back rapidly into shape. He goes on to say that inquiries about the method of making these blades revealed that the iron from which they were made was extraordinarily pure, was 'so processed in the fire that there remained in it neither seam nor flaw', was neither too hard nor too soft, and became elastic when hammered cold. Apart from the last characteristic, which I understand is not scientifically possible for iron except to a minor degree, it is easy to interpret this description as one of spring-tempered steel. The reference to cold-hammering - which of course would have worked for bronze - can only be regarded as a mistake since iron springs of the quality described are produced only by highly skilled heat treatment.

As I mentioned earlier, iron was adopted more slowly for making armour than for edged weapons. The earliest examples of this use appear to be Assyrian iron helmets of the seventh century вс from Nineveh, and for a long period it was employed more frequently for helmets than for body armour. Both iron and bronze continued to be used side by side for armour until well into the Christian era, and the introduction of iron does not in itself seem to have produced any revolutionary changes in design.



NOVEMBER IQ8I METALS IN THE SERVICE OF MARS

Figure II. Reconstruction of the equipment of a Roman legionary of the first century AD showing the lorica segmentata. {After J. Warry , Warfare in the Classical World, 1981; by courtesy of Salamander

Books , London )

I must, however, mention two innovations. The first of these is the lorica segmentata (to give it its modern name) (Figure n), the body defence made of horizontal hoops mounted on internal leathers which is the one employed most frequently in modern representation of Roman soldiers. Its origins are unknown, but it was introduced into the Roman army in the first century ad, and does not seem to have survived the third century.

The other, much more significant, innovation was mail (modern 'chain' mail) armour. This is, of course, armour made of interlinked rings and, according to Varro writing in the second century ВС (De Lingua Latina ), was Celtic (Gaulish)

in origin. The mail shirts dating from c.200 вс found at Hjortspring in Denmark seem to be the earliest examples recorded, but from this period onwards it was used extensively, finally spread- ing all over Europe and the Middle East. It is possible that the invention of mail had some connection with the invention of wire drawing. This method was used to produce gold wire as early as the fourth century вс, but it is not known certainly to have been applied to harder metals until much later. The manufacture of mail garments, I should mention, was basically a little like knitting, rings being added or sub- tracted to produce changes in shape.

Mail armour (as well as scale) was used by the Romans both for the infantry and cavalry, but it was the equipment of the latter under the later Empire that was to set the pattern of European armour for the best part of a thousand years. Its own origins are to be found in the equipment of the Persian fully-armoured cavalry the clibonarii (Roman cataphractarii ), which was introduced into the Roman army, at first via Eastern auxi- liaries, but finally by the military reforms of ad C.275 and c. 363. It survived almost unchanged in the Eastern Empire until the end of the Mid- dle Ages, and in Persia, Turkey and India until much later. In the West, after the fall of the Empire, the long sword and mail shirt of the cataphract remained in use as the standard equipment of the heavily-armoured soldier until the early fourteenth century, with or without a plate helmet. An early post-Roman example is the sixth-century armour found in the Sutton Hoo ship-burial (Figure 12), which I mention particularly because the helmet provides the first known instance of tinned iron.

The sword of the Roman cavalry, the long spatha , was derived directly from the La Tène long sword. It is the first one to be found with blade made by the technique to which the modern term 'pattern-welding' is applied (Figure 13). This is a developed version of the piling process, in which the component plates or bars of iron are twisted or otherwise manipulated during forging to produce patterns that are finally brought out by light etching. It is first clearly identifiable on fragments of two swords found c. ad 200 at South Shields, which are almost certainly Gaulish in origin, as are probably also the better known spathae blades found in fourth-century deposits in Nydam Moss, Schleswig. It is possible, therefore, that the technique was a Celtic invention.

The long sword remained in use after the fall of the Western Empire and soon developed into the earliest form of the cross-hilted sword that was to be the most characteristic weapon of the

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Figure 12. Suggested reconstruction of the military equipment from the sixth-century Anglo-Saxon ship-burial at Sutton Hoo {after Ortwin Gamber)

European Middle Ages. Until the;eleventh or twelfth century this was commonly fitted with a pattern-welded blade and examples are dis- persed so widely over Europe as to suggest that they emanated from a major centre of production, perhaps in the Rhineland. The sagas and other early northern literary sources contain many references to swords with patterned blades which must have been pattern- welded ones, and they were clearly much esteemed. Despite this, they seem to have had no advantage over blades made well by the straight-forward piling process or of a single bar of carburized iron, apart from being very much more decorative. It was perhaps the realization of this that led to the dis- appearance of the pattern-welded sword from Europe in the tenth or eleventh century. The technique was, however, revived in the seventeenth century (probably first in Spain) for the manufacture of what later came to be known as 'Damascus' or ťstub-twisť gun barrels, which were regularly produced until the present century.

In the East, above all in Malaysia and Japan, the pattern-welding technique has remained in use without a break from at least as early as the 774

eighth century. The blade of a modern Javanese sword ( keris ) is produced in much the same manner, and bears similar patterns to that of a Viking sword.8 Both are coarse and clumsy in comparison with the products of the Japanese sword-smiths, who developed the pattern-welding and piling techniques to an extraordinary degree, and so produced the most subtly beauti- ful and efficient cutting swords known. The basis of the Japanese method was the repeated folding and hammering out of the welded com- ponents of the blade until it consisted of many thousand - sometimes several million - layers. The forged blade was finally quenched in a way that left a hardened edge, capable of being sharpened like a razor, and a tempered body.

In early medieval Europe blades continued to be made also by carburization and piling. Since pattern-welded blades are not very flexible, this must have been the method used to produce the swords, mentioned occasionally in contemporary literature, that would spring back into shape after being bent into a hoop. This appears to be confirmed by references to the blades of famous swords being refined for long periods, if we accept that refining can only have




Figure 13. Modern demonstration of the production of a simple pattern-welded bar. At the top , two iron bars twisted in opposite directions and laid side by side. Below , the same bars

after being welded , slightly ground and etched

meant carburizing. The sword of Alexander the Great, according to one medieval poem, took 100 years to make, while the brother of the legendary Weland the Smith, Denis, in forging a sword, 'Refined it 30 times so that it should not break and tempered it 23 times . . Л 9

There are a number of stories about blades made by Weland (Velant). One about the forging of the sword Mimming throws a rather bizarre light on his production methods. First of all Weland made a sword that could cut a piece of felt floating in the river, but he said: ťIt will have to be better before I have finished'. . . . Then Velant went to the smithy and took a file and filed the sword down to dust. He took the filings and mixed them with meal, and then he took poultry, starved them for three days, and took the meal and gave it to the birds to eat. Then he took the birds' droppings and brought them to the forge and worked out all the soft part s of the iron ; and from it he made a sword which was not as big as the first one.

Weland was still not satisfied and went through the whole process again, and after

three weeks 'made a shining sword, inlaid with gold'. Then, according to some versions, the armourer of King Nidung, Amilias, sat down on a stool wearing a mail shirt and helmet he had made and invited Weland to try the sword on him. Weland did so, but, to Amilias's delight, without any apparent effect. Weland asked him if he had felt anything, and he replied that he had had the sensation of cold water passing through his bowels. Weland then said 'Shake yourself', which he did, and instantly fell dead in two halves!10

Rather surprisingly, the story of the poultry and the iron filings seems to be based on fact. The practice is mentioned in other sources, both literary and, more important, historical. Various reasons have been suggested for it: that it was a method of adding nitrogen to the metal; that fowls like to peck at bright particles of a certain size and so would have sorted out the more steely bits ; or that it had the effect of free- ing the filings from slag.11

Patterned iron and steel of the kind I have

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Figure 14. Detail of a Damascus sword-blade, Persian , late sixteenth century. ( Victoria and Albert Museum , London (No. 614-1876))

been describing is often called 'Damascus'. The name, however, should properly be confined to steel produced from iron heated strongly in a sealed crucible with carbonaceous material. This process produces a high carbon steel with an internal structure that, when forged, polished and etched, produces the watered patterns that were so prized. The steel (later known as wootz) was produced, in India first, as early as the sixth century ВС, and subsequently in Persia, and was exported to the West sporadically from Roman times onwards. It was used maiitfy in the East, however, and, since its high carbon content made it particularly suitable for cutting weapons, it is best known as the material from which the finest Indo-Persian sabre-blades were made (Figure 14).

From the fall of the Roman Empire until the early fourteenth century the heaviest armour used in the West was normally of mail, with or without a plate helmet. There is literary evidence for the introduction of plate reinforce- ments in the late twelfth century, and they were very slowly adopted during the thirteenth. It was not however until after c.1300 that plate armour came generally back into use, and for much of the fourteenth century it was covered and held together by textiles. Only during the second decade of the fifteenth century did the polished steel 'suit of armour' with which most people are familiar make its appearance, and during the period C.1440-C.1510 it reached its peak of perfection, especially in Milan (Figure 15) and Augsburg. Comparatively light and easy to wear, it was designed to enable its wearer to move easily, and to present surfaces that were not only stronger at the most vulnerable points, but also shaped to guide blows away. It was 776

Figure 15. Milanese armour of c.i 45 5. ( Glasgow Museums and Art Galleries (reg. no. y 39-6 5e))




Figure 16. The two earliest-known illustrations of guns, both from manuscripts by the English royal clerk Walter de Milemete, the upper one dated 1 327. {Christ Church , Oxford , MS. 92 (above),

and British Library , Additional MS. 47680)

made of carburized iron or low carbon steel which was normally hardened, especially on the better quality piece, though Dr. A. R. Williams's researches have revealed a surprising lack of uniformity in this respect.

After the early sixteenth century a very slow decline in armour design began, which accele- rated after c.i 550 when its functional value started to become less, and by the second half of the seventeenth century it was rapidly going out of use. The reason for all this was, of course, the development of firearms.

Gunpowder - a mixture of charcoal, sulphur and saltpetre - seems to have been invented in

China. The earliest unambiguous pieces of evidence for the existence of guns, however, comes from Europe. These are a Florentine ordnance of 1326, ordering guns for the use of the com- mune, and two illustrations of similar cannon in two manuscripts, one dated 1327, by an English royal clerk, Walter de Milemete (Figure 16). These cannon, which would certainly have been made of brass, fire arrows, and are shaped like vases. This last characteristic is perhaps a reflec- tion of the fact that the earliest cannon-founders seem to have been the brasiers, whose main trade was making brass pots. For obvious reasons, though, the interiors of their guns must

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Figure 17. Designs for mechanical fire-making devices by Leonardo da Vinci , that on the right a wheel-lock for a gun ( shown inverted and with the wheel sectioned ). (. Ambrosiana , Milan, Codex Atlanticus, f. $6v)

have been tubular. Iron cannon are first recorded (in England) in 1369-71, and were presum- ably built up from welded wrought-iron bars like Möns Meg (1449) at Edinburgh Castle, and some of the cannon found in the wreck of the Mary Rose (1545). Cast iron cannon - and, indeed, European iron-casting - are recorded for the first time in Frankfurt in 1391,12 but they do not seem to have been manufactured in any quantity for another 100 years, and did not sup- plant bronze ones until the eighteenth century. Lead pellets - which had been used for slings in Classical times - are first recorded for guns in the 1340S, while hand-guns appeared in the third quarter of the fourteenth century.

All practical firearms from the fourteenth to the early nineteenth century were loaded down the muzzle and had to be ignited through a touch hole at the rear, at first with a hot iron or a piece of smouldering slow-match held in the hand. This method of ignition, though it remained normal for cannon until the nineteenth century, was obviously very inconvenient for 778

hand-held weapons, and much of the early history of hand fire-arms was taken up with the problem of devising a satisfactory mechanical system. The earliest device - which appeared in a simple form in the early fifteenth century - was the matchlock, in which the smouldering match is lowered on to the touch hole by a trig- ger-operated lever. This, because of its cheap- ness and simplicity, survived on infantry firearms until the late seventeenth century.

The first purely mechanical means of igniting guns was made possible as a result of the realization by some unknown genius that springs can be used to provide motive power for mechanical devices. I have already drawn attention to the fact that references to flexible sword-blades indicate that a knowledge of the manufacture of spring steel has existed since at least the third century ВС. The knowledge does not, however, seem to have been applied to anything other than minor springs for locks and jewellery until the early fourteenth century. At this period - in 13 16 to be exact13 - we have the first reference




to a steel crossbow, and such references become common from the early fifteenth century onwards. At this date also we have the first evidence of the existence of spring-driven clocks. It may, therefore, have been the invention of the steel crossbow that made possible all kinds of clockwork.

Leonardo da Vinci was interested in springs and their application, and amongst his mechanical drawings in the Codex Atlanticus at Milan are two showing devices for striking a spark from a piece of pyrites by means of a spring- actuated wheel, like a modern cigarette lighter (Figure 17). One is merely for fire-making, but the other is clearly a gun-lock. There is contro- versy about whether Leonardo actually invented the wheel lock or merely sketched devices he had seen, but, whichever it was, wheel locks started to come into use in the early sixteenth century, and to become widely established in the 1 520s and '30s.

The invention had a revolutionary effect since it made possible the development of guns - including an important new form, the pistol - which could be carried ready for instant use for indefinite periods, and which did not give war- ning to enemies or game by glowing or smoking. The effect on cavalry tactics and on hunting, as also on the gunmaker's craft, was revolutionary, while, because it stimulated other develop- ments, it had a profound long-term effect on warfare. It also, incidentally, made possible armed robbery of a kind that is now ail-too familiar. One major subsequent development was the snaplock, which had appeared by the middle of ¿he sixteenth century, though its effect was not felt until the seventeenth century. This produced sparks by striking a piece of flint against a pivoted steel plate, and eventually became the seventeenth and eighteenth-century flintlock.

From the sixteenth to the early nineteenth century no important metallurgical develop- ments connected with arms took place, though there were, of cour se, improvements in existing manufacturing and, above all, metal-producing techniques. One small innovation was the introduction in the second quarter of the seventeenth century of the practice of sometimes lining the pans and touch-holes of good-quality snaplocks with gold to prevent corrosion: from about 1805 platinum was occasionally substituted.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century appeared a device of absolutely major significance, the percussion lock. Invented by the Reverend Alexander Forsyth, minister of Belhelvie in Aberdeenshire, and patented in 1807, it used the flash from a metallic fulminate,

struck by a hammer, to ignite the gunpowder. On the first locks fulminate-powder - initially fulminate of mercury - was used loose, but later the idea of placing it in a tiny thimble- shaped copper cap was introduced. This was placed on a pierced steel nipple communicating with the charge in the gun-barrel and struck by the hammer of the lock. Its invention made possible the development later in the century of centre-fire, breech-loading and repeating cartridge systems, the ancestors of all modern firearms of conventional design.

The nineteenth-century technical revolution affected arms - mainly firearms - as much as it did everything else, and produced a prolifera- tion of inventions and, of course, new production methods. But none, so far as I am aware, involved new uses for metals, apart from the introduction of electronickel-plating after 1840 and, later, of nickel- jacketed bullets. The twen- tieth century, on the other hand, has produced many, commencing with the use of aluminium for airships and aeroplanes, and continuing more recently with a whole group of 'new' metals about which I am not competent to speak.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS CONSULTED

Blair, C., European Armour , London, 1958. Buttin, C., 'La forge des lames', Revue Général de la Coutellerie ,

Nos. 101-112, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 1928-29. Coghlan, H. H., Notes on Prehistoric and Early Iron in the Old

World , Oxford, 1956; Notes on the Prehistoric Metallurgy of Copper and Bronze in the Old Worlds 2nd edn., Oxford 1975.

Davidson, H. R. E., The Sword in Anglo-Saxon England , Oxford, 1962.

Gamber, O., Waffe und Rüstung Eurasiens. Frühzeit und Antike , Brunswick, 1978.

Greener, W. W., The Gun , 8th edn., London, 1907. Hewitt, J., Ancient Armour and Weapons in Europe , I, London,

1855. Hoff, A., Feuerwaffen , 2 vols., Brunswick, 1969- Maryon, H., Tattern- welding and Damascening of Sword-

blades', Studies in Conservation , (i960), pp. 25-37, 52-60. Meilach, D. Z., Decorative and Sculptural Ironwork , New

York, 1977. Panseri, C., La tecnica di fabbricazione delle lame di acciaio

presso gli antichi , Milan, I957Í 'Damascus Steel in Legend and in Reality', Gladius , IV (1963), pp. 5-66.

Rathgen, В., Das Geschütz im Mittelalter , Berlin, 1928. Robinson, H. R., Oriental Armour , London, 1967; The Armour

of Imperial Rome , London, 1975- Salin, E., La civilisation mérovingienne. 3. Les Techniques, Paris,

1957. Sandars, H., The Weapons of the Iberians. Reprinted from

Archaeologia , LXIV (191 3) (PP- 295-94) with the addition of a supplement giving the classical texts quoted in the original lansuaees and in English.

Seitz, H., Blankwaffen, 2 vols., Brunswick, 1965, 1968. Smith, C. S., A History of Metallography , Chicago, i960.

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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS PROCEEDINGS Snodgrass, A., Early Greek Armour and Weaponsy Edinburgh, 1964; Arms arid Armour of the Greeks , London, 1967. Solyom, G. В., The World of the Javanese Keris, Honolulu, 1978. Thordemann, В., Armour from the Battle of Wisby, 1361 , 2 vols.

Stockholm, 1939. Tout, T. F., 'Firearms in England in the Fourteenth Century', English Historical Reviewy XXVI (191 1), pp. 666-702. Re-

printed, London, 1968. Tylecote, R. F., A History of Metallurgy , London, 1976. Warry, J., Warfare in the Classical World , London, 1980. Wells, H. В., 'A Problem in the Technique of the Medieval

European Swordsmith'; 'Contributions to the History of the Heat Treatment of Steel (largely from the Evidence of Sword Blades)' ; 'Knowledge of Spring Steel in Hellenis- tic Times'. Journal of the Arms and Armour Society , IV (1962-4), pp. 217-30; VI (1968-70), pp. 217-38; VII (I97I-3), PP- 249-65.

Wever F., & Schulz, E. H., 'Das Schwert in Mythos and Handwerk' & 'Uber die Ergebnisse neurer metallkund- licher Untersuchungen and ihre Bedeutung für die Tech- nik und die Archäologie', Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Forschung des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen , 91, Cologne, 1961.

Williams, A. R., The Metallurgy of Muslim Armour , Manches- ter University, 1978. Articles on the composition of armour and sword-blades in: Gladius , XIII & XIV (i977 & 1978); Metropolitan Museum Journal , 13 (1979); Archaeologia , 106 (1979); Journal of the Arms and Armour Society , X (1980-82).

Yadin, Y., The Art of Warfare in Biblical Lands , London, 1963. NOTES i. Yadin, pp. 196-7. 2. For example, that of the Emperor Maximilian I by Francesco da Merate in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

4. Tvlecote. nn. aa- d. Sandars. о. оч. S. Ibid., p. ioi. 6. Wells, 'Knowledge of Spring Steel', passim. 7. Ibid., p. 256, n.5. 8. Sol vom, Passim. 9. Buttin, II, p. 544. 10. Davidson, on. KQ-60: Hewitt, d. ai : Salin, d. юг Ii. Davidson, pp. 160-1 ; Šalin, p. 96. See also G. Martin and V. Foley, 'Weyland the Smith: Some Findings', Historical

Metallurgy , Vol. 13, no. 1, Metals Society, London, 1979, pp. 38-9. I am grateful to Dr. A. R. Williams for sending this last reference to me since mv lecture. 12. Rathgen, pp. 27-9. 13. Wells, 'A Problem in the Technique of the Medieval

European Swordsmith', p. 229.

DISCUSSION Mr. Raymond F. H. Stignant, riba: I understand that in the development of armour the complete covering of the body by plate would have caused the weight to become critical and that armour had therefore to be as thin as possible. However, the only way of achieving such thinness consistent with the necessary strength was by an enormous amount of tempering. For example, I remember reading an historical novel about the fourteenth-century border wars with Scotland, one of whose nobles, it stated, wore a suit of armour which had taken a year to harden and temper.

The Lecturer: There is a famous sixteenth- century armour by Bartolommeo Campi of Pesaro made for King Philip II of Spain and now in the Royal Armoury, Madrid, which is very elaborate. It is embossed in imitation of Roman armour and decorated with gold and silver and is signed by the maker to the effect that it was made in, I think, two months. This was something rather special and the armourer was obviously rather proud of having made it so quickly. To produce an ordinary armour would probably have taken only a week or so.

Mr. Stignant: In other words, your implica- tion is that it is not true to say that the thinner you can get it the better ?

The Lecturer: I am not sure that is true. It was not all that heavy, comparatively speaking.

Professor Robert W. Cahn (School of Engineering & Applied Sciences, Sussex Univer- sity): You were indicating that the high point of armour manufacture came in the fifteenth century at just about the same time as the development of firearms. I should have thought that such a very solid mass of iron would have withstood a primitive musket ball. I am surprised that the armourers gave up so early in the face of what must have been very primitive firearms.

The Lecturer: There is very little evidence about the effectiveness of armour against the very earliest firearms. There is a lot of information about the proving of armour. Until the sixteenth century it was proved with crossbows, which were regarded as being the most powerful hand weapon. It is only from the middle of the sixteenth century that you begin to get references to - first of all - reinforcing plates being added because of firearms, and then to armours of musket-proof, pistol-proof, caliver- proof and so forth. Some experiments carried out by Dr. Alan Williams with modern reconstructions of fourteenth-century firearms and modern iron plates suggested that the former would penetrate them, but it is so difficult to reconstruct the precise conditions.

Mr. P. N.Jones (Royal Armament & Research Establishment) : When assessing the effectiveness of weapon systems it is important to define the means of attack, the nature of the target and the criterion for lethal damage. Some work done a few years ago suggested that our forebears had a very clear idea of which pieces of the body should be protected most. Generally the head armour was three millimetres thick, the chest armour two millimetres, and the leg armour one millimetre. Experiments suggest that a longbow would perforate one and two millimetres but not three millimetres.

The Lecturer: There is the question of range, and also, one of the problems about carrying out modern tests is that the kind of fifteenth-century armour I showed is extremely valuable - far too valuable to be subjected to deliberate damage. There have been a number of tests. There were some in America a few years ago which showed that a bow-shot at fairly close range would penetrate a sixteenth-century helmet, but for the reason I have given the helmet used was a cheap one, so the test was not conclusive.



NOVEMBER 1981 The fact that people continued wearing armour

indicates that they thought it worth while, but within a hundred years of firearms proving effective armour had gone out. In the 1550s you begin to get real evidence that firearms were becoming powerful. People were throwing off their armour in the late sixteenth century, and in England the last heavily armed cavalry did not survive the first battles of the Civil War. They were an exception. Their armour was heavier than in the middle ages or renaissance. Edward Ludlow in his Civil War memoirs wrote that if he fell off he could get back on to his horse only with difficulty, but he did not say that he could not remount at all. The idea that the medieval knight in armour had to be lifted on to his horse with a crane before battle is nonsense.

Miss Maysie Webb: I wonder if we might be told something about the modern bullet-proof vest. One hears about them, of course, but I for one have no idea what they are like.

The Lecturer: There was a report that when the Pope went to America he wore a robe of some new plastic fabric which was bullet-proof. But this is a subject about which I am unable to speak.

Dr. W. E. Duckworth (Fulmer Research Institute) : The modern personal armour is made of a very strong fibre named Kevlar, because the modern concept of personal protection is not to resist impact as the old-fashioned armour did, but to absorb it. I would suspect that if the old- fashioned armour did receive hits from a crossbow that although the armour might resist the blow, the person underneath the armour would suffer injury.

May I as a metallurgist suggest that Mr. Blair glossed over the metallurgical aspects of both the Japanese Samurai swords and the genuine Dama- scened swords. The technique used for the Japanese swords was possibly the earliest example of the technique now in use to-day for strengthening metals known as ausforming. So this shows that the Japanese possibly knew more about metals than is generally realized.

The Lecturer: I am well aware of the technical importance of the Japanese blade, as I thought I had made clear. It was impossible, however, to go into much detail in an hour's lecture.

Mr. A. R. E. North, ama (Victoria & Albert Museum): As the Japanese had such technical mastery of steel, why did they use brass springs ?

The Lecturer: It is strange. Guns are sup- posed to have been introduced into Japan by the Portuguese in the 1540s. Their matchlocks are fitted with little brass coiled springs. I have no idea why that should be so.

metals in the service of mars Mr. P. Hawkins, ma (Christie's): I am

interested in Napoleon's armour. Do you know whether it survived ?

The Lecturer: It was exhibited in London just after Waterloo, and I thought that it was now in the Musée Carnavalet, Paris, but I could not find any reference to it in the notes I made on the museum a few years ago.

Professor Robert Cahn: If people wear bullet-proof vests to-day they fear that they may get shot in the head. Has that been overcome ?

The Lecturer: I suppose that if you are somehow involved in a shooting as a bystander with a number of people, the bullet may not be aimed at you but a stray bullet may hit you in the chest, so it probably would be quite a good idea to wear such a vest.

The Chairman: Can anyone explain the strengthening produced in iron powder that has been consolidated after it has been fed to chickens, referred to by Mr. Blair in his story of Weland the Smith ?

Dr. J. E. Hughes: An explanation might be found in the principle of dispersion strengthening of metals. Traditionally, metals were strengthened by mechanical working or by alloying, but a third alternative exists : that is, to incorporate an array of inert particles, or even holes, throughout the metal matrix - preferably of a few angstrongs diameter and at an interparticle spacing of some 100 angstrongs.

For example, if one takes lead powder and ball mills it extensively, the normally soft and ductile metal is rendered hard and springy. The repeated exposure of new surfaces to oxidation which then become incorporated into the metal is responsible.

In the case of iron filings fed to hens, the particles might very well have oxide and nitride surface layers produced on them during the ingestion process which later become incorporated in the matrix.

The Chairman: Thank you. Could you add something about the commercial significance of dispersion strengthening?

Dr. Hughes: For some decades conventional tungsten lamp filaments have incorporated a degree of particle strengthening. Dispersion-strengthened metals based on aluminium, nickel, copper and special steels were marketed, but with no significant success. However, dispersion-strengthened platinum is available as a commercial product and has proved itself over recent years to be cost-effective for many high-temperature applications.

The Chairman: Mr. Blair, thank you very much for three thousand years covered so skilfully. We are far better instructed than we were.

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METALS IN THE SERVICE OF MARS: ARMS AND ARMOUR