De la Noue, an eminent Huguenot officer of the time of Charles IX., says, in his “Discours Militaires”--“The penetrating power of pikes and arquebuses has very naturally led to the adoption of armour stronger and more capable of great resistance than formerly. It is now so heavy that one is laden with anvils rather than protected by armour. Our men-at-arms and light cavalry in Henry II.’s time presented a much finer appearance, with their helmets, their brassarts, tassets,[10] and the morion,[11] carrying the lance with a flag; their armour was not so heavy but that a strong man was able to support its weight for twenty-four hours; but those of the present day are so ponderous that a young knight of thirty has his shoulders quite crippled.” Thus, in endeavouring to make the resistance of armour keep pace with the improvement in new warlike engines, they rendered it useless; because the weight was intolerable, especially in warm weather, during long marches, or in lengthened combats. Having vainly tried to make suits of armour invulnerable, men began to leave off wearing such portions as were of minor importance, which by degrees were entirely discontinued. Under Louis XIII. we see armour undergoing further modifications, but of fashion rather than of utility: finally, there is every reason to think that the magnificent armour presented by the Republic of Venice to Louis XIV., in 1668, and which is now to be seen in the Museum of Artillery in Paris, was one of the latest sets made in Europe. Let us now retrace our steps to examine a series of arms, the gradual adoption of which was destined to completely change the art of warfare. It is now the almost universal opinion that the invention of gunpowder,--assumed to have been discovered in 1256, or at all events its application to artillery, which first dates from 1280,--is due to Berthold Schwartz, an Augustin friar, born at Fribourg. Some writers, however, make these dates a century later, and affirm that powder and cannons were first known from 1330 to 1380. Nevertheless, the employment of artillery only became general during the wars of Charles-Quint and of Francis I., that is, towards 1530, or two centuries after its invention. But perhaps in place of giving, as we have done, the unconditional acceptation to the word _artillery_ which it now has, we ought perhaps to have said artillery used with gunpowder; for long before the invention of gunpowder the word _artillery_ was employed when speaking of all machines or engines of war (Fig. 62). Thus in the middle of the thirteenth century we find among the _personnel_ of the _artillery_ a grand master of the crossbow men, masters of the engines, of the cannoniers (the word _cannon_ was even then applied to the tube forming one of the principal portions of an engine for hurling projectiles), and in 1291 we see Philip the Fair appointing a grand master of the artillery of the Louvre.