Until the Transition, the mounted knight, cap-à-pied in mail over the quilted gambeson, with the steel cap, and the great helm for the supreme moment of combat, seemed completely invulnerable unless to missile weapons mechanically projected. Few men-at-arms fell in actual battle on the winning side, and great slaughters were only consequent on the complete rout of one of the parties. Under the warlike Edward I. the powers of attack must have gathered renewed force, for a long period of tentative changes set in which finally ended in the suit of mail being completely hidden beneath an outer shell of steel plates. The qualities of steel for offensive weapons must also at this same time have undergone marked improvements, and we now begin to hear of definite seats of manufacture attaining world-wide celebrity. Cologne, Lorraine, Poitou produced weapons which are said to have pierced mail and quilted armour with ease. The heavy blows given by the battle-axe and mace, used by horse and foot, must, however, have been chiefly instrumental in introducing extra means of defence. These were by no means at first universally of steel, for cuir-bouilli or boiled leather, a very impervious substance when properly prepared, seemed at one time likely to rival it for general use; and trial was made of every other kind of material that could be used for defence, such as horn, whalebone, ivory, padded wool, leather, either alone or strengthened with metal studs or splints, brass, and small plates of iron fixed to textiles. It is almost certain that for a time the moulded surface of cuir-bouilli, with its gilded and perhaps coloured surfaces, was preferred to steel. During this tentative period every combination of these materials with chain-mail is to be met with, and the triumph of steel-plate armour only became definite after every possible substitute, combined in every practicable way, had been tried either at home or abroad and found wanting. It is at least improbable that any armour pictured with enriched designs at this date was of steel. [Illustration: PLATE II.--Second suit of Sir Henry Lee, master of the armoury, reduced fac-simile of No. 19 in the Armourer's Album, in the South Kensington Museum.]