mention was the Grand Condé. Alain Manesson Mallet, writing in 1672,[1] says: "I have not seen a magazine of arms so well furnished with every kind of sword as that of the Château de Chantilly, the maison de plaisance of Monsieur le Prince, for besides a vast number of very ancient swords, are many of all nations." Père Daniel also speaks of this cabinet d'armes in his Histoire de la Milice Française published in 1721, the first book which treated of the history of mediaeval armour and weapons.
I do not know of any collection of armour and arms formed during the XVIIIth century. The cultured connoisseur only sought for the remains of classical art, all things mediaeval were regarded as barbarous and gothic. But there was also a fashion for what were called curiosities, and in catalogues of collections of these things we sometimes find traces of fine pieces of armour. The passion was for anything odd and out of the way, and a helmet or breastplate of great merit might be found side by side with a Chinese idol, a unicorn's horn, or the skull of an extinct animal. In England, Walpole's novel, The Castle of Otranto, and his own pale attempt at a Gothic revival in the construction of Strawberry Hill, began to direct public taste to the relics of mediaeval times, whilst Grose's book on ancient armour and weapons,[2] excellent for the time when it was written, caused connoisseurs to turn their attention to them. Somewhat later we find several of the generals and officers of Napoleon collecting, or annexing, fine armour and arms for their military interest, but it was Sir Walter Scott's splendid series of historic novels and the subsequent romantic movement to which they led in many countries in Europe, that fostered the great passion for collecting the remains of mediaeval art which characterized the first half of the XIXth century and the consequent formation of numerous most important collections of arms and armour. It would be interesting to sketch the formation and vicissitudes of many of these, but the subject would need much more space than could possibly be conceded to me here.
The great quantity of armour and weapons used, spoilt, and lost during the wars of the Middle Ages in every part of Europe was so immense, that every country, nay almost every city must have produced them, but of all these but little remains to us anterior to the middle of the XVth century, indeed not a single complete suit of armour dating before that epoch is in existence. Froissart delights in telling us how, on the morning of a battle, the sun glistened on the serried rows of burnished bascinets and lance heads, a description that makes the collector sick at heart when he reflects that of the thousands of burnished bascinets in use in the XIVth century, he may at best only meet with one in a woefully corroded and ruined state. Of course some places were especially famous for the armour and arms produced in them, and the names of
