[The The Night Of The Steel Assassin Italian Dubbed Free Download
Everardo Laboy
The field of arms and armor is beset with romantic legends, gory myths, and widely held misconceptions. Their origins usually are to be found in a lack of knowledge of, and experience with, genuine objects and their historical background. Most of them are utter nonsense, devoid of any historical base.
Second, it is wrong to assume that every nobleman was a knight. Knights were not born but created, by other knights, feudal lords, or sometimes priests. And, under certain conditions, people of non-noble birth could be knighted (although the knighting was often regarded as their admission into lower nobility). On some occasions, mercenaries or civilians fighting as ordinary soldiers could be knighted for exceptional displays of courage and valor, while in later times a knighthood could be bought.
Accordingly, not every piece of armor was once worn by a knight, nor can every person depicted in an artwork wearing armor be identified as a knight. A person in armor should more correctly be referred to as a man-at-arms or man in armor.
This idea may stem from the fact that much of the armor on exhibition in institutions like the Metropolitan Museum represents equipment of especially high quality, while much of the plainer arms and armor of the common man and lower nobility has been either relegated to storerooms or lost over the centuries.
At the upper end of the scale, we find examples such as a large garniture (a basic suit of armor that, through the addition of further pieces and plates, could be adapted for various purposes both on the battlefield and in different types of tournament) commissioned in 1546 by a German king (later emperor) for his son. For this commission, the court armorer Jrg Seusenhofer of Innsbruck received on completion a year later the enormous sum of more than 1,200 gold coins, equivalent to twelve times the annual salary of a senior court official.
As outlined above, most armor is neither so heavy nor inflexible as to immobilize the wearer. Most men-at-arms would have been able to simply put one foot in a stirrup and mount their horse without assistance. A stool or perhaps the help of a squire would have made the process even speedier; a crane, however, was absolutely unnecessary.
It is sometimes argued that the military salute originated during the Roman Republic, when assassinations were common and citizens were required to approach public officials with their right hand raised in order to show that they did not conceal a weapon. A more common account is that the modern military salute originated from men in armor raising the visors of their helmets before greeting their lord or comrades. This gesture would have made a person both recognizable as well as vulnerable, at the same time demonstrating that the right hand (i.e., the sword hand) did not carry a weapon, both being signs of trust and good intention.
Although these theories are compelling (and romantic), there is actually little evidence to support either of them as the direct origin of the modern military salute. As for the Roman practice, it would be virtually impossible to prove that it continued through fifteen centuries (or was revived during the Renaissance), leading in a straight line to the modern military salute. There is also no direct evidence for the visor theory, although it is more recent. The majority of helmets for war after around 1600 were increasingly of types not fitted with visors, and helmets became rare on European battlefields after about 1700.
To give a definitive answer to this question is impossible for several reasons. First, hardly any evidence survives that would provide a complete picture for any given period. Scarce evidence is available from the fifteenth century onward as to how armor was ordered, in what time the order was completed, and how much the parts or entire armor cost. Second, a complete armor could comprise elements made by several specialized armorers. Pieces might also be held in stock half-finished and then fitted for a specific commission. Finally, the matter is complicated by regional and national differences. Throughout the German-speaking lands, most armorer workshops were controlled by strict guild regulations, which limited the number of apprentices, and thus had a direct effect on the number of pieces that could be produced by one master and his small workshop. In Italy, on the other hand, no such regulations existed, and workshops could accordingly be much larger, which undoubtedly must have enhanced speed and quantity of production.
The history of the armored codpiece is closely related to its counterpart in civilian male costume. From the mid-fourteenth century onward, male garments for the upper body had occasionally become so short as to almost reveal the crotch. In these times prior to the development of trousers, men wore leggings tied to their undergarment or a belt, and the crotch was hidden with a flap secured to the upper inside edge of each legging. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, this flap began to be padded and thus visually emphasized. As such, the codpiece remained commonplace in European male costume until the end of the sixteenth century. On armor, the codpiece as a separate piece of plate defense for the genitals appeared during the second decade of the sixteenth century and remained in use and fashion until about 1570. Thickly padded on the inside, it is attached to the armor at the center of the lower edge of the skirt. While its early form was rather cuplike, it remained under direct influence of civilian costume, and later examples are somewhat more pointed upward. It was, however, not typically worn with armor for use on horseback; first, because it would get in the way, and second, because the armored front bow of the war saddle usually offered enough protection for the groin area. Thus the codpiece is usually found on armor used for fighting on foot, both in war and tournament, and, although of some protective value, it has always been as much an element of fashion as one of defense.
One of the most enduring and popular images of a medieval warrior is that of a Viking, made immediately recognizable by his helmet adorned with a pair of horns. There is, however, little evidence to suggest that Vikings ever used horns as decoration for their helmets.
The earliest use of a pair of (stylized) horns as a crest appears to be the small group of helmets surviving from the Celtic Bronze Age, particularly in Scandinavia and the area of modern-day France, Germany, and Austria. These crests were embossed out of bronze, and could take the shape of two horns or of a flattened triangular profile, sometimes both. These helmets probably date to the twelfth or eleventh century B.C. Two thousand years later, from about 1250 onward, pairs of horns again became popular throughout Europe and remained one of the most widely used heraldic crests on helmets for battle and tournament alike during the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance. It is easy to see that neither of these periods coincides with the period usually associated with the Scandinavian raids of the late eighth to the late eleventh century.
Helmets used by Viking warriors were usually of conical or hemispherical shape, sometimes made from a single piece of metal, sometimes constructed of segments held together by connecting metal lames (Spangenhelme). A number of them appear to have been fitted with a face defense. The latter could be in the form of a simple metal bar extending over the nose (nasal), or a faceplate comprising a nasal with additional protection for the eyes and upper cheekbones made of plate, or finally, a full protection of the entire face and neck made of mail.
Generally speaking, the above statement is correct as long as it is stressed that it was the ever-increasing efficiency of firearms, not firearms as such, that led to an eventual decline of plate armor on the battlefield. Since the first firearms appear to have been in use in Europe as early as the third decade of the fourteenth century, and the gradual decline of armor is not noticed before the second half of the seventeenth century, firearms and plate armor coexisted for more than 300 years. During the sixteenth century, attempts had been made to render armor bulletproof, either by hardening the steel or, more commonly, by thickening the armor or adding separate reinforcing pieces on top of the normal field armor.
Medical and anthropological research demonstrates that the average height of men and women has gradually increased over the centuries, a process that, for reasons of progressively better diet and public health, has accelerated during the past 150 years or so. The majority of surviving armors from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries appear to confirm these findings.
Although this theory is persuasive, not enough continuous evidence exists to support the notion that modern-day male clothing was directly influenced by such armor. In fact, although the defensive theory may in general be true for medieval and Renaissance armor, a number of genuine helmets and body armor overlap the other way round (right over left).
It is undoubtedly due to such regulations that the sword was transformed into an exclusive symbol of both the warrior class and knightly status. Yet, due to social changes and newly evolved fighting techniques during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, it became gradually acceptable for civilians and noblemen alike to carry the lighter and thinner successor of the sword, the rapier, as an everyday weapon for self-defense in public. Indeed, until the early nineteenth century, rapiers and smallswords became an indispensable dress accessory for the European gentleman.
In mid-April 1821, as Napoleon was feeling his strength decline, he undertook to write his will. Locking himself in a room with the Comte de Montholon, he dictated his last wishes. On the 15th, he recopied them so that the document was entirely in his handwriting, following the requirements of French law in the absence of a notary.
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