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From:
Subject: Re: Gear at Grunwald
Date: Tue, 06 Mar 2001 00:43:51 GMT
References: <saa37ca0.039@mail.walterhav.com>
In-Reply-To: <saa37ca0.039@mail.walterhav.com>
Where to begin?
The steel bards on the Poles, horses are the type normal in western
Europe at the time and are not ankle length.
The metallic fronts to the coats of the light cavalry are metallic
lace and the hats have silver and gold hatbands. The hats are the
headwear typical of this type of balkan mercenary cavalry and was also
worn by Albanian stradiots in Venetian and other services at the time.
The wing shield was typical of both Ottoman and other Balkan cavalry
of the period.
I see no reason to presume either especial intelligence or especial
poverty among Sixteenth Century Poles.
Why would a Cracow artist of whatever "nationality" be correct, as
he is, in depicting Serbian and Russian costume and yet have to
attribute Western costume to Poles; a costume from his supposed
homeland, which, according to your account, he does not even
understand, viz supposed ankle length skirts?
You seem to have very badly mistaken the date and origin of
Hussars in Poland.
If I may quote Ryszart Brzezinski's excellent work, Polish Armies
1569-1696 (1) (Osprey, London, 1987).
"The hussar originated in Serbia towards the end of the 14th century.
There are references to hussars in Poland in treasury returns of 1500,
though they were probably in Polish service before this date.
These early formations were foreign mercenaries, first known as
Racowie from the term Rascia, 'Serbia', from the original centre of
the Serbian state, Ras. The term 'hussar' probably originates not -
as has been widely published - from any connections with the Hungarian
husz meaning 'twenty', but from gusar, a Slavonic word meaning
'bandit'. This gives a fairly vivid idea of the nature of the early
hussars - they were a light cavalry fighting in the style of bands of
robbers. From surviving pictorial sources of the early hussars we can
see they were dressed in Hungarian fashion, frequently wearing the
magierka (Hungarian cap), and at first no defensive armour. They
fought in a supporting role for the cumbersome Western-style knights
then predominant in Poland. As armoured knights were gradually phased
out the hussars took their place, donning first ring-mail, helmets,
and then plate armour."
The work is still in print, I believe and every self-respecting Pole
should try to own a copy of it and its companion volume... the plug is
in lieu of royalties!
Regards,
John.
(John Rohde).
On Mon, 05 Mar 2001 11:46:10 -0500, you wrote:
>The well-known painting of the Battle of Orsza by an anonymous artist, now hanging in the national museum in Warsaw is peculiar indeed. It was clearly painted by an artist, who had little or no first-hand information about Polish-Lithuanian military culture. He seems to have learned of the battle through sketchy second-hand reports. Judging from the painting's very Western costumes, the painter was likely German, French, Flemish or even English. The Polish light cavalry is shown wearing fur "beefeater"-type hats. No doubt a native had described Lithuanian "kuczma" hats to the artist as "fur hats narrower at the base, than at the top," from which the artist inferred that they must have been the sort worn today by the Vatican's Swiss guards, but made of fur. Unable to imagine, that one would go into battle with such a hat, the hats are given thick protective bands of metal. Polish kontusze (outer coats with split sleeves) often had decorative pieces of braid attached t!
o!
> the breast extending horizontally from the buttons. The artist of the Orsza painting fuses these together with the buttons as if to form a strange metallic vest. Many other knights fill the painting with horses, not only clad in full armor, but with steel skirts extending to the horses' ankles! These same steel-clad knights and horses are pictured successfully fording a river!!! Needless to say, this work of art is pure fantasy. The only detail, which rings true, is the Hungarian "wing" shield born by the Polish hussars. Islamic shields in all periods are either circular or drop-shaped. They are unblazoned but the drop-shaped shields traditionally receive diagonal striped designs. The Hungarian "wing" shield is simply an inverted drop-shaped given much more angularity in Poland. In Poland, as in Hungary, the lack of blazonry was preserved, with perhaps one exception. In the so-called "Stockholm Roll," (a long painting of a Polish military parade, captured by the S!
w!
>edes, but recently returned to Poland) one hussar carries a "wing" shi
>victories at Legnica and Grunwald were triumphs of intelligent poverty. The primary lesson learned was: When confronted by a heavily armored knight on an understandably sluggish heavily armored horse, at a safe distance circle the slow-moving metal hulk, until one of your arrows connects with a horse's foot, at which time the entire "tank" comes crashing to the ground. To prevent this from happening to you, wear only enough armor to protect your head and vital organs, and keep your animal moving.
>
>>>> <> 03/02/01 09:32PM >>>
>Hello Leon,
> I am afraid that you really are barking up the
>wrong tree here. In 1597 Hussar panoply was standard in Poland so the
>artist has depicted Poles as he new them. "German" equipment was
>still at that time the three quarter plate that was to remain in use
>until late in the Seventeenth Century. Contemporary English wooodcuts
>show Elisabethan dress being worn at Agincourt etc. and are equally
>worthless as evidence. The Hussar had not been thought of in Poland
>at the time of Grunwald/Tannenberg. The type has Balkan origins and
>the name was derived from mercenary Serbs of precisely the type
>depicted in the Orsza picture.
> By 1597 the Husaria was distinct from the pistol armed Reiter
>cavalry that had become the German fashion. Both German and Polish
>forces had changed and would continue to change divergently since the
>first third of the Sixteenth Century. Reiter did figure in Polish
>armies but as part of the "Foreign Autorament". Ryszart Brzezinskis
>excellent book takes as its starting date the clear replacement of the
>Knight of the old style by the Husar, Cossack, etc. which was
>confirmed by the accession of the Transylvanian, Bathory. The fashion
>conscious Hussar comrades were highly unlikely to sport out of date
>equipment, a point which Ryszart makes in his books and articles. It
>is something of a bugbear of his, the notion that the Poles turned out
>in random and obsolete paraphenalia. Husar comrades were well off men
>and well able to keep up appearances in "the most beautiful cavalry in
>the World".
> BIelski tells us no more about Polish dress at Grunwald/Tannenberg
>than Holinshed tells us of Scottish dress at the time of Macbeth. I
>still cannot understand how you can explain the knights in maximillian
>style armour who form the native Polish chivalry at the Orsza.
> If you have a copy of Adam Zamoyskis, The Polish Way, to hand you
>can find opposite page 102 a miniature taken from the Ceremonial of
>Erazm Ciolek, Bishop of Plock. In the foreground the banners of
>Poland and Lithuania are held by knights in the normal European armour
>of c.1510 when the thing was painted by a Cracow artist.
> In the c.1500, Punishment of Unfaithful Wives, part of a tryptych
>from Cracow Cathedral, now at the syate Art Collections at Wawel, by a
>artist of the circle of theMaster of the Legend of St. John the
>Almoner, a soldier is depicted in typical harness for a footsoldier
>anywhere in Europe.
> I can see no reason to disregard such evidence except a mistaken
>popular conception that Poles were impoverished compared to their
>Western neighbours. Lithuanians, Ruthenians and Tartars would have
>had their own forms of dress and equipment but the Eastern and South
>Eastern influences that so shaped the then united Polish-Lithuanian
>Commonwealth had not yet come into play in the Poland of 1410, only
>recently and only very tenuously united to the vast Lithuanian empire.
> The evidence you cite for sabres etc. is perfectly correct for the
>period from which it dates but the Polish cavalier of the second half
>of the Sixteenth Century was no more the same as his early Fifteenth
>Century predecessor than was the pistol packing German Reiter of the
>same period.
> Regards,
> John.
> .
>
>
>==============================
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