Читать книгу British and Foreign Arms & Armour - Charles Henry Ashdown - Страница 23

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The military equipment of our Saxon and Danish forefathers is of much interest to us as a nation, inasmuch as we are curious to ascertain with what weapons and with what personal defences our ancestors were able, apart from personal courage, to overcome the fierce opposition of the Romanised Britons. That this resistance was of a formidable character we may judge from the extended time occupied in the conquest of England, running into hundreds of years and necessitating waves of invasion. They won the country bit by bit, and the conquered were effectually displaced by the invaders; so thorough was this that practically the Britons disappeared before the warlike Teutons, whereby all their traces of occupation were wiped out and only the great works of engineering or building skill of those “who built for eternity, and not for time,” resisted their devastating march. It is probable that during the many centuries of Roman occupation many of the Britons had learned the method of warfare and the use of the weapons of their conquerors; and we know that British recruits for the Roman armies were in considerable demand. Consequently we may fairly assume that the Saxons were opposed by Roman swords, spears, and javelins, and that a certain amount of Roman armour protected the defenders. To this equipment we may ascribe the fierce and prolonged resistance offered to the invaders, who were only able to found their first petty kingdom, that of Kent, after a struggle of nearly forty years’ duration.

PLATE V*

Italian Rondache, Sixteenth Century

A. F. Calvert

The Saxon Spear.—The chief weapon of offence among the Saxons was undoubtedly the spear, which was of two kinds—the longer, used by the cavalry, or in certain cases to be employed against them, and the shorter, which partook of the dual nature of a spear and of a javelin.

The chief authorities for Saxon arms and armour are (a) the illuminated manuscripts preserved in the British Museum, the Bodleian Library, &c., some of which date back to the eighth century or even earlier; (b) the written description of the equipment of certain warriors of a still more remote period; and (c) the sagas, most of them of a warlike nature, which not only laud the heroic deeds of warriors but constantly refer to the weapons and armour borne by them. But these details, necessarily crude and by themselves to a certain extent unreliable, are fortunately supplemented by actual examples which have been found in Saxon barrows all over the country and preserved in many museums, from which we are enabled to verify the illuminations and descriptions.

A spear is found as a rule in all Saxon interments, or more strictly speaking the iron head, the wooden portion having generally decayed. From numberless references to the latter we find that it was invariably made of ash, and the warrior is often poetically referred to as the “ash-bearer.” The shorter kind is found in barrows, doubtless because of limitation of space, and so commonly do they occur, that probably every Saxon, from freeman upwards, was interred with one. They are sometimes found reversed, with the iron head near the feet, and the hollow shoe or button which protected the end of the shaft near the skull. From many measurements taken from the head of the spear to the shoe, the total length of the shorter kind has been found to be about six feet.

In some places portions of the wood have been found still preserved; these have been tested and proved to be of ash wood, but in no case have these remains demonstrated that the shaft was excessively thin as is represented in illuminations, where as a rule only a narrow ruled line is drawn for the shaft. Judging from the numerous illustrations of mounted horsemen with which the MSS. abound, the length of the longer variety was about nine or ten feet. The accompanying illustration (Fig. 62) represents various forms of spear-heads copied from Saxon MSS. in the British Museum, from which it will be seen that no stereotyped pattern was in vogue, but that almost every variety of possible form was brought into use. That which at once attracts the attention is the form of guard invariably used below the spear-head, and which was doubtless intended to ward off sword-cuts which might possibly sever the shaft. They were of iron, and sometimes as many as three were in use. In two of these examples the barbed form of head is shown, which is the most uncommon, both in illustrations and also in actual finds in barrows. Probably this form was generally in use for javelins, the other variety being easily withdrawn after inflicting a wound. In Fig. 63, which presents examples of actual spear-heads found in Great Britain, we notice that the shaft is fixed in a socket which is always furnished with a longitudinal slit. Nails or rivets were used to fasten it to the shaft. The absence of the cross guards should be noticed; probably they were inserted in the shaft and formed no integral part of the spear-head. In the Tower Collection, however, is a spear-head, with a cross-piece similar to the guards shown in illustrations, which was discovered some time since near Nottingham. The short spear was not carried singly but generally in pairs, and at times three are represented; for instance, in a British Museum MS. the destroying angel is shown with three javelins, one in flight, one poised for throwing in the right hand, and one grasped in the left.