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ffagments of it survive and provide us with reason to suppose that tliis great sword, too big to be car-ried on the hip in a scabbard, just likc the swords in the sculptures, may indeed be a relic of diat bat-tle. Or perhaps it was taken as a trophy fforn one of diose big Schwabian knights? We can never know, but in spite of Acadcmic Rectitude, specularion - even dreaming - may be permissible.

In Fig. 72, I show this huge sword alongside another drawn to the same scalę. This other is a Type X, a big, robust sword which I know very well sińce, for thirteen years, it was in my care. It rests now in a museum in Adelaide, New South Wales. On one side of die blade are the remains of an iron-inlaid Ingelrii inscription; it has a fine, bold, very wide Brazil-nut pommel and a long straight cross, and the core of its odginał grip survives. Its principal interest in the context of this battle of Legnano, however, is the inlaid mark on the reverse side - the once-inlaid mark, I should say, because only the cut-out channels which once held the inlay (probably of silver) survive. This mark is a crude, though unmistakable, representarion of a Carroccio! (Fig. 78.) However, it is not nccessarily the Milanese one, for such sacred banner-bearing cars were often used in the armies of the 12th cen-tury. We hear of one, for instance, in a batde fought in li48 near Northallerton in Yorkshire - a bat-de which ever sińce lias been called The Batde of the Standard, so prominent was it. We find it again in dae army of the Third Crusade of 1192, let by Richard Coeur-de-Lion, very prominent in the only big set-piece batde of that campaign, at Arsuf in 1192. It has been said (not by modern scholars, but by 12th-century contemporaries) that the Carroccio was invented in 1035 by Heribert, Archbishop of Milan.

Thus we see again how it is possible to relate surviving objects of everyday use (like swords) to the events of history, thereby adding much interest to our studies as well as to our pursuit and col-lection of arms.

Fignie 77. Reliefs by Gerardo de Mastagnegna, showing the.Milanese citizens coming home after their victory at Legnano in 1176; once upon the Porta Romana in Milan, now in the Castcllo Sforzesca.