oak sih5

127

127

Figurę 109. A XVIA of a distinctive Danish style. National Museum, Copcnhagen, c. 1350.

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sharp median rib; various kinds of hilt were favoured, most of them extremely handsome. I can have space to illus-trate only two of them here (Figs. 113 and 114), but they show what I mean.

There are a good many examples surviving, which could well be taken for Type XV's (whose edges, you will remember, run straight from shoulder to point). A well-used XVIII, the nicks in whose blade have been honed away, looks like - indeed, becomes, a XV, so one has to be cautious in placing a sword in this type.

I have callcd this chapter "The Age of Froissart" quite deliberately because he was the recorder par excel-lence of knightly deeds of arms during the first part of wiiat, in modern times, has been callcd The Hundred Years'

War. For perhaps the first time sińce an

Icelander WTOte dowm the orally-trans-

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mitted Sagas of the Norse people (this was Snorri Sturlason, c. 1230) a "chronicler" of military and political events was not a monk - a monk whose recording of events was inevitably deeply

coloured by churchly prejudices. Jean Froissart, though he was a priest, was of knightly stock and had personal access to all the great princes and war-leaders of his time, which was from 1360 or so (he was born in 1337) until he stopped writing (and presumably, therefore died), in 1401. This is what he says of himself in a dedicatory preface to one of his volumes -and I put this in here quite deliberately because, in describing the next sword-types and recounting tales of rheir usage, I shall be calling upon Froissart very often. He wTOte:

"At the reguesty wish and pleasure of that most high and noble prince, my very dear lord and master Gity de Castillon, Count of Blois, Lord of Averne, ofChimay, and of Beaumonty /, Jean Froissart, priest, chaplain to my very dear lord and treasurer ofChimay and of Lille, ani again in my stu dy to work at the grand and noble matters which have engaged my attention before, which disenss thefeats of arms and the events of the wars be twe en France and England.

Now you who read may wonder how I could have known so many of the matters I write ab out, in so many dif ferent places. So I must tell you that I was born into the times at which these events were taking place, in tlje knowledge of which / havc always taken morę pleasure than in anything else. God has been so gracious to mc that I have been well in with all parties, and with the households of Kings, morę especially with King Edward and of the noble lady his Queen, Madame Phillippa of Hainault (to whom in my youtb 1 was seeretary, and amused her with handsome ditties and madrigals oflove); and because of this, I was well loved by all lhosc great Lords, Dukes, Earls, Barons and Knights, of all nations.

Thus, under the protection of this great lady as well as these lords, I have scarchcd in my time the greater part of Christ en dom, (and truły, he who seeks will jind). And wherever I went I sought out lhosc knights and sguires who had