[Illustration: Fig. 45.--Ornament of a Dish, Italian ware. (Collection of M. le Baron Alph. de Rothschild.)] ARMS AND ARMOUR. Arms of the Time of Charlemagne.--Arms of the Normans at the Time of the Conquest of England.--Progress of Armoury under the Influence of the Crusades.--The Coat of Mail.--The Crossbow.--The Hauberk and the Hoqueton.--The Helmet, the Hat of Iron, the Cervelière, the Greaves, and the Gauntlet; the Breastplate and the Cuish.--The Casque with Vizor.--Plain Armour and Ribbed Armour.--The Salade Helmet.--Costliness of Armour.--Invention of Gunpowder.--Bombards.--Hand-Cannons.--The Culverin, the Falconet.--The Arquebus with Metal-holder, with Match, and with Wheel.--The Gun and the Pistol. The most ancient and authentic document that presents to us a just and almost perfect idea of the arms in use towards the end of the eleventh century, is the celebrated tapestry of Bayeux, of which we have already spoken. It is sufficient to examine with some attention that complex and illustrated narrative of the conquest of England in 1066, to learn what was the general aspect of war at that period. But any one who has at all studied the ancient historians and the annals of our earliest career as a people, will not fail to recognise, as so many constituent parts combining to form the equipment of war, most of those weapons that were adopted among various races, the contests and the union of which was to give birth to modern nations. If we can rely on the testimony of some miniatures in manuscripts of the time of Charlemagne, Roman customs are constantly recalled in the costume and arms of the warriors of the eighth and ninth centuries (Fig. 46), “but with the modifications necessarily resulting from contemporaneous corrupt taste,” as observed by M. de Saulcy, whom, it may be remarked, we follow step by step, as it were, in the labours which he has conscientiously devoted to the history of warlike arms; “for at that time the helmets, the bucklers, and the swords had assumed forms very unlike the models whereof they were supposed to be an imitation. One can readily imagine that costume had become subjected to the same sort of change as language, corrupted as this was by the admixture of German manners with those of the nations subjected to Rome.” In the middle of the ninth century the Normans disembarking, possessed themselves of Neustria, and introduced among the French nation, with which they at first contended, and at length concluded a peace, an entire series of defensive arms entirely novel in form, if not in their nature. It is then, according to certain learned men, that warriors are seen, in illustrated manuscripts, attired in dresses furnished with small rings or iron scales, wearing pointed helmets, and using shields cut horizontally above, and terminating at the base in a point more or less sharp.