EVOLUTION OF ARMS AND ARMOR 
pounded through the plates of gothic 
armor, but became long and slender, 
needle-like in form. By such a point, 
chain mail could be pierced, that is, 
because of the length and shape of the 
weapon it was best equipped mechani- 
cally to break a single ring in the knight’s 
collar of chain mail, which otherwise was 
“proof.” The fact that this type of bill 
did not long survive is_ interestingly 
accounted for by the changes which soon 
took place in knightly armor, for the 
collar of mail was subordinated to plate, 
and the huge elbow and knee pieces of 
gothic armor, which were easily “caught” 
by the incurved and inslipping blade, 
appeared in use only for a few years. 
If we study progressive changes in 
helmets, again we see generalized forms 
in the earliest times. Thus at the very 
beginning, the helmet was built of many 
pieces of iron and was a form much 
easier to make than a casque beaten 
out of a single piece of metal!'— the 
latter type of headpiece appearing only 
after armorers’ experiments had stretched 
through several hundred years. In our 
present series we see again highly special- 
ized forms as in the terminal members of 
the “lines”? of war hats (chapel-de-fer), 
barbutes and fifteenth century heaumes. 
In the first of these the brim of the hat 
became so wide that the headpiece could 
not be kept safely in place; in the second 
the expense of making it was extreme 
and it proved troublesome in the neck 
region; in the third the weight and size 
became excessive, and it disappeared 
as speedily as a highly developed variety 
in jousting went out of style. 
An advancing line in an evolutional 
series of helmets is seen in the closed 
helmet, or armet, which arose from the 
1JIn all these cases we leave out of account 
armor and arms of Classical Antiquity: these 
were, with so much else of early culture, lost from 
the sight of the Middle Ages. 
361 
bowl-shaped helmet or salade and gave 
rise to many kinds of burganets, morions 
and cabassets. The evolutional fertil- 
ity of the armet appears to have been 
based upon several factors, such as the 
close modeling of the helmet to the head, 
enabling it to be kept readily in place, 
with the that a 
separate visor and a separate chinpiece 
coupled invention 
could be made to rotate from single 
lateral pivots — the latter adjustment 
of a great advantage since it made the 
headpiece easy to put on and take off. 
As a case of “ convergence,” or “ parallel- 
b 
ism’ in an evolutional series of helmets 
we may mention the form of closed hel- 
met called armet-d-rondelle which sug- 
gests the usual armet but which was not 
closely kin to it, and did not survive 
because it lacked convenience in manipu- 
lation. Thus in order to remove this 
casque the visor had first to be raised, 
then the cheek plates had to be separated 
By 
the time the wearer, cumbered with his 
from a peg at the point of the chin. 
mitten-shaped gauntlets succeeded in 
detaching the cheek flaps below, he 
might find that his visor would fall and 
cause him annoying delay. Another 
parallel to the closed helmet of the six- 
teenth century was the basinet in the 
late fourteenth century. It never led 
directly to the armet however, and had 
evident defects in its mechanism which 
cause it to be ranked as a “terminal”’ 
rather than a progressive form. 
In a series of helmets we have, again, 
decadent or degenerate forms. Thus 
in the line of closed helmets the latest 
examples have lost their tall crests, their 
modeling, the separate plates in the neck 
region, even the catch which clamps the 
chinpiece down (in the place of the last 
we find merely a strap and a buckle). 
Also in siege burganets one finds obvious 
eases of degeneration: crest vanishes, 
visor and umbrel disappear and their 
