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Swords found on or nearby the sites of battles can tell us much, but they can also be extremely misleading. There was, for example, a sword found on the site of the Battle of Bosworth (1485), which in the early 19th century was generally accepted as bcing a relic of that battle. It is, in fact, only a rather poor specimen of a mid-17th century English dish-hilt rapier. There are other similar examples.

One large group of swords survives which can give us a positive Terminus Post Quem datę of July 17th, 1453. It is a group of eighty swords dredged up from the bed of the river Dordogne, close to the city of Castillon, in the early 1970s. They were all together, having been rammed vertically, hilts upwards, into a cask. The cask had been in a barge which, for sonie reason we shall never know, had sunk close under the right bank of the river. This point was only approximately four hundred yards from the field upon which the very last battle of the Hundred Years' War was fought - a scorching hot day in July 1453, and at which the English

Figurę 124. Bastard sword German c.1540, in a private collection. cord-bound grip. BL: 44"; OL: 54"; Wt 41b 7oz.