Ancient Armour and Weapons in Europe: From the Iron Period of the Northern Nations to the End of the Thirteenth Century — John Shaqi
Ancient Armour and Weapons in Europe: From the Iron Period of the Northern Nations to the End of the Thirteenth CenturyHewitt, John
History
Ancient Armour and Weapons in Europe: From the Iron Period of the Northern Nations to the End of the Thirteenth Century
Hewitt, John
Armor; Weapons
some unlucky error would at last creep in, the mistake was always
rectified with new engraving.
The chief evidences for the military equipment and usages of the
Teutonic conquerors of Europe, from the period of the dismemberment
of the Roman empire to the great triumphs achieved by the Normans in
the eleventh century, are the writers of those times, the miniatures
which decorate their works, and the graves of these ancient races;
which last have of late years yielded a wondrous harvest of valuable
memorials, illustrating as well the domestic practices of their
occupants, as their warlike array. If these three classes of
monuments are useful in supplying each other's deficiencies, still
more valuable do they become to the archæologist and the historian,
by the confirmation which they mutually afford to each other's
testimony. A few discrepancies indeed occasionally appear on points
of minute detail; and it is in the pages of the historians and
chroniclers that these are generally found: but when we consider the
difficulty of the transmission of knowledge in those days, and the
errors that may have crept in from the negligence of book-copyists
through so many successive generations, the wonder is, not that
something has been left obscure, but that so much has been faithfully
transmitted to our times.
The various sons of Odin, whether settled in Germany, in Gaul, in
Iberia, in Scandinavia, or in Britain, bore a strong resemblance to
each other, both in their military equipment, and in such tactics as
they possessed. If we find one branch of this vast family combating
the Romans with more than usual art, or conducting a campaign with
larger strategical views than their fellows, we must attribute it
rather to the superior skill of a particular leader, or to their
having borrowed some valuable hints from the practice of their
opponents, than to any essential difference between this or that
tribe of Teutons,--between the dwellers on the right bank of the
Rhine and the dwellers on the left bank,--between those whose
huts were on the flats of the Waal, and those who had built their
cabins in the valleys of the Loire. Such differences as have been
observed, we shall point out in our progress; but we are inclined to
believe that, as collections are augmented and comparisons extended,
resemblances will be found to increase, and differences to diminish.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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