Full Leg Harnesses Full Articulated means a comprehensive leg harness including a cuisse and knee joined with articulation as well as greaves and sabatons. Mail means legs defended entirely with mail. |
Full Arm Harnesses Full Articulated means a comprehensive arm harness including vambrace, elbow, rerebrace and typically an integrated shoulder defense all joined together with articulated lames. |
Knee Defenses Articulated means a knee that is joined to the cuisse via lames. |
Elbow Defenses Integrated means elbow defenses that are incorporated into the vambrace.
Roundel means a roundel supplementing the mail to defend
the elbow |
Thigh Armour
Plate means a solid, smooth plate thigh defense. |
Upper Arm Defenses Plate means a solid, smooth plate upper arm defense. |
Greaves Closed greaves are those that encase both the front and rear of the calves. |
Lower Arm Defenses Plate means a solid, smooth plate lower arm defense. |
Sabatons Full means sabatons consisting of multiple lames that cover the tops and down the sides of the feet. |
Gauntlets Important Note: This data may be misleading. French effigies rarely show the wearer with his gauntlets. THe exception to this comes early on where mail mittens attached to the ends of the sleeves may be seen hanging down but not worn by the figure. Consequently the dataset is small and highly biased. Solid means gauntlets that typically do not have any of the embossing associated with hourglass gauntlet metacarpal regions. These typically extend forward to cover some of the fingers with a mitten-like plate. |
Hip Defenses Important Note: This data may be misleading. I have listed mail as the hip defense unless it is patently obvious from the profile that there is some sort of fauld. This conservative approach was taken because I beleave that AT LEAST mail (possibly with a rigid defense over it) was being worn at this time. This has the unfortunate effect of making mail look like a primary defense for much longer than in reality it probably was. Those listed as "rounded & mail" probably had some form of rigid hip defense but this was hidden beneath a surcoat. Tassets means a fauld that ends in a pair of attached tassets. Mail means hips defended entirely by mail. |
Shoulder Defenses Pauldrons are shoulder defenses that are fully encompassing of the front and back of the shoulders. Scale means a shoulder defended by small scales. |
Body Defenses Important Note: This data may be misleading. I have listed mail as the body defense unless it is patently obvious from the profile that there is some sort of breastplate or coat of plates. This conservative approach was taken because I beleave that AT LEAST mail (possibly with a rigid defense over it) was being worn at this time. This has the unfortunate effect of making mail look like a primary defense for much longer than in reality it probably was. |
Secondary Head Defenses Jousting means a head defense made from multiple plates riveted together with a recurved face plate. A jousting helm was sometimes worn with the bascinet. There are numbers of effigies that had a great helm represented in addition to the bascinet they were wearing. The reason they don't appear upon the head is probably because they would block the wearer's face. One can reasonably assume that all listed as mail and most listed as bascinet had great helms. Their presence here is a fashion of effigy carving rather than a reflection of what was worn. That is why I represented them separately. |
Head Defenses Worn by Figure Important Note: This data may be misleading. French effigies often do not show the wearer with his head defense in place. Consequently the dataset is small and somewhat biased. Great Bascinet means a pointed or rounded head defense with solid plate neck defenses either replacing or supplementing the mail aventail.
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All Head Defenses
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Number Although the sample size is reasonably large the individual number in each decade is fairly small. As more effigies become available to me I will increase the dataset. |
Notes: