of which there is a great lake (Bourget), and by this a castle named Bordeau where are made swords of great renown." He was also able to prove that iron mines had been worked in that district at various times, but I hold that he failed entirely to prove that Bordeau in Savoy was the place of manufacture of the Bordeaux steel so famous in the XIVth century. In the first place we have the testimony of Abulfeda that the Bordeaux celebrated for its swords was beyond the territory of Spain, which presumably means over the border. Next, these blades are always described as of Bordeaux with a final x, and M. Giraud could not cite a single text in which Bordeau in Savoy is written with that letter. Again, Bordeaux in Guienne was as familiar to Froissart as Paris or London, and had he meant to speak of another place we should meet with some indication of it in his text. Lastly, M. Giraud could only show that towards the end of the XVIth century swords of repute were made at Bordeau, but not a single mention of them could he find at an earlier date, and we have seen that all references to Bordeaux swords cease with the very first years of the XVth century, and then they only concern the putting in order of weapons that were probably already old. As for the steel used for these weapons, it no doubt came from the Pyrenean forges already described, and was thus very similar to the metal of which two centuries later the world-renowned Toledo blades were made. Bordeaux also produced armour, for in 1358 the Infante Don Luis of Navarre caused Bordeaux workmen to be brought into Navarre to make it.[1]
Armour or arms were made in several other towns in France during the XIVth century. In the inventory of Louis X in 1316 we read of seventeen swords of Bray, two of Verzi, and eight of Toulouse. Swords of Clermont are mentioned in 1370, and in 1383, Hennequin Duvivier mounts a Clermont blade in gold for Charles VI. Chambli, a town in the territory of Beauvais, was celebrated for its mail of various kinds, de haute cloueure, double,[2] and de demi cloueure.[3] "Haubers de Chambelin" are mentioned as early as the XIIIth century.[4] Montauban gave its name to a form of helmet which we meet with from 1302 to 1513. At the first of these dates we read of eight chapeaux de Montauban of fine gold (probably gilt with fine gold), and on each one are two shields with the arms of his Lordship and garnished with straps.[5] Monstrelet tells us that in 1416 the Emperor Sigismund was armed and bore at the pommel of his saddle a chapeau de Montauban, whilst when Henry VIII of England landed in France in 1513, he "wore on his hedd a chapeau Montabyn, with a rich coronal, the fold of the chapeau lined with crimson satin, and on it a rich brooch with the image of St. George."[6]
