9

9. On the armour of the Parthians

[French knights, thinking more of protecting their bodies than going over to the attack, wore increasingly heavy plate-armour. Montaigne had little trust in armour, not least when worn by men out of training.]

(A] The vile and thoroughly enervating practice of our noblemen today is never to don their armour until the very last second when absolutely necessary, and to throw it off as soon as there is the slightest sign of the danger being past. This results in chaos. What with everyone rushing about calling for his armour at the very moment of the attack, some are still lacing up their breast-plates after their companions have already been routed. Our forebears used to have their helmets, lances and gauntlets carried for them, but kept on the rest of their armour until they had finished their stint. Our cavalry units are in confusion and disorder, all mixed up together with the baggage-train and the batmen who cannot go far from their officers because they are carrying their armour for them [C]. Livy was talking of our soldiers when he said: ‘Intolerantissima laboris corpora vix arma humeris gerebant’ [Their bodies being utterly incapable of toil, their shoulders can hardly bear the weight of their armour.]1

[A] Several peoples used to go to war unprotected or wearing things which afforded no protection; they still do:

[B] Tegmina queis capitum raptus de subere cortex.

[With helmets made of cork stripped from the tree.]2

Alexander, the most daring captain ever, rarely wore armour. [A] And those among us who despise it do not much weaken their bargaining-power! Although we do see a man killed occasionally for want of armour, we hardly find fewer who were killed because they were encumbered by it, slowed down by its weight, rubbed sore or worn out by it, struck by a blow glancing off it, or in some other way. It would seem indeed, given the weight and thickness of our armour, that we have no thought of anything but defending ourselves, [C] and that we are not so much covered as laden with it. [A] Impeded and constrained by it, we have enough to do to support its weight,3 as if fighting merely consisted in receiving blows on our armour [Al] and as if we were not equally beholden to defend it as it is to defend us.

[B] Tacitus amusingly describes the warriors of our Ancient Gaul, armed so as not to yield ground but no more, having no means of striking a blow nor of being struck by one nor of getting up once they were down. When Lucullus saw certain Median men-at-arms, drawn up facing the army of Tigranes clad in heavy awkward armour as though in an iron prison, he formed the opinion that he could easily defeat them and began his victory by charging against them.4 [A] And now that our musketeers are so highly prized, I think that we will discover some new invention to wall us up against them, making us drag ourselves off to war enclosed in little forts such as those which the Ancients made their elephants carry.

Such a humour is far removed from that of Scipio the Younger,5 who harshly rebuked his soldiers for having sown spiked cavalry-traps under water at the spot where the inhabitants of the town under siege could make sorties against him through the moat: he said assailants should have thoughts not of dread but of plans of attack, [C] rightly fearing that their precautions might deaden their vigilance during their guard-duty. [B] And he also said to a young man who was showing off his shield: ‘It is a very fine one, my lad: but a Roman soldier must have more trust in his right arm than his left.’6

[A] Now what makes our armour an intolerable burden to us is want of habit:

L’husbergo in dosso haveano, e l’elmo in testa, Dui di quelli guerrier, de i quali io canto. Ne notte o di, doppo ch’entraro in questa Stanza, gli haveanò mai mesi da canto, Che facile a portar comme la vesta Era lor, perche in uso I’avean tanto.

[The two warriors of whom I sing both were clad in hauberks with helmets on their heads; since entering their redoubt they had never taken them off, night or day, wearing them as easily as their clothing, so accustomed had they grown to them.]7

[C] And the Emperor Caracalla marched in full armour through the countryside at the head of his troops. [A] The Roman foot-soldiers not only bore iron helmets, swords and shields (for, says Cicero, they were so used, where their equipment was concerned, to have it ever on their backs, that it bothered them no more than their limbs did – [C] ‘arma enim membra militis esse dicunt’ [for a soldier’s weapons are called his very limbs] [A] but they also had to carry their rations for a fortnight and a fixed quantity of stakes to make defence-works, [B] weighing up to sixty pounds. And the soldiers of Marius, thus laden,8 were trained to march five leagues in five hours – or six leagues when it was necessary to hurry. [A] Their military training was much tougher than ours and produced very different results. It is wonderfully instructive in this connection that a Spartan soldier was criticized for having been seen sheltering in a house while on a military expedition: they were so trained to hardship that it appeared shameful to be seen sheltering beneath any roof but the sky, no matter what the weather. [C] Scipio the Younger, when he was reforming his army in Spain, commanded his soldiers to eat only on their feet and to eat nothing cooked. [A] We would not get our men to go very far at that rate!9

Moreover Marcellinus, a man brought up in the Roman wars, carefully noted the Parthian way of bearing arms, all the more so as it was very different from that of the Romans.10 ‘They have,’ he said, ‘armour plaited together like fine plumage which did not impede the movements of their bodies; yet it was so strong that our darts bounced off it when they happened to strike it.’ (The armoured scales which our ancestors made much use of were just like that.) Elsewhere he says: ‘They had strong tough horses, clad in thick leather; they themselves were armed from head to foot in thick iron-plating so skilfully arranged that it lent itself to movement at their joints. You could have taken them for iron men; so closely fitted was the armour of their head, reproducing the shape of their facial features, that there was no means of landing a blow except through the tiny round holes which corresponded to their eyes and let in a little light and through the slits where their nostrils were, through which with some difficulty they could breathe’:

[B] Flexilis inductis animatur lamina membris, Horribilis visu; credas simulachra moveri Ferrea, cognatoque viros spirare metallo. Par vestitus equis: ferrata fronte minantur, Ferratosque movent, securi vulneris, armos.

[The flexile iron-plating is brought to life by the limbs it encloses. A sight to strike terror: you could believe that iron statues were moving, the metal incorporate and breathing. Their horses are similarly armed: their iron-clad foreheads threaten, and they move their flanks, safely protected from wounds by iron.]11

[A] There you have a description which strongly resembles the way a French knight is equipped with all his bits of armour. Plutarch12 says that Demetrius had made for himself and for Alcinus, the foremost soldier about him, two complete suits of armour each weighing one hundred and twenty-five pounds, whereas the normal armour weighed only sixty.13