During the first crusade, barons and knights wore a hauberk of links of iron or steel. Every warrior had a helmet--silver-plated for royalty, of steel for nobles, and of iron for the private soldiers. The crusaders used the lance, the sword, a kind of dagger called _miséricorde_, the club and the battle-axe, the sling and the bow. In the windows which Suger, minister of Louis VII., caused to be painted for the church of the abbey of Saint-Denis, and which represented the principal events of the second crusade, we see the chiefs of the crusaders still clothed in hauberks of links, or _macles_ (plates of iron); the helmet is conical and without the nose-piece (_nasal_); and, lastly, the buckler, formed like a scutcheon, covers the breast, generally suspended from the neck by a leather thong. Towards the middle of the twelfth century, the iron breastplate is said to have been introduced; it was placed over the chest to support the hauberk, the direct pressure of which being found detrimental to health. But no description of it is to be met with in the romances of chivalry, that furnish the best documentary evidence regarding the armour of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. [Illustration: Fig. 51.--Helmet of Don Jaime el Conquistador (Armeria Real, Madrid.)] Under Philip Augustus, who, as we know, was one of the leaders of the third crusade, the conical helmet assumed a cylindrical form; to this was occasionally added a vizor called _ventail_, intended to protect the face. Richard I., King of England, is represented on his seal with this kind of helmet; level with the eyes and also at the height of the mouth are two horizontal slits, which admit of seeing and breathing. Still the use of the conical helmet without vizor or nose-piece was retained even to the thirteenth century in Spain, as is proved by that worn by Jaime I., King of Aragon (Fig. 51), which is preserved in the Armeria Real, Madrid. It is of polished steel, is surmounted by a dragon’s head, and portions of it are richly ornamented. Thus in the third crusade the use of the “coat-of-arms” became general,--a sort of overcoat, if we may so term it, of cloth or of silk stuff, and the purpose of which, at first, was only to mitigate the insupportable effect of the rays of an Eastern sun on metal armour. This new garment soon served, moreover, when made of various colours, to distinguish different nations marching under the standard of the Cross (Fig. 52). It became really a dress of military splendour, was made of the richest stuffs, and embroidered in gold or silver with excessive refinement. [Illustration: Fig. 52.--Knight in his Hauberk (after Meyrick).]