Laced Mail Chausses: method and construction

[Ernst]

Over on My Armoury, I've recently posted a lot of information on the style of mail chausses popular in the later 12th and early 13th centuries, the ones that are open in the back.
http://www.myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=28008


I've also tagged as many examples as I can find on Manuscript Miniatures and on Armour in Art:
http://manuscriptminiatures.com/search/ ... ew=gallery
http://armourinart.com/248/398/
http://armourinart.com/293/472/

There are a few miniatures which I've collected which haven't made the updates yet, like this example:

UBL BPL76A fo019r-chausses (185x300).jpg (95.55 KiB) Viewed 400 times

Unfortunately, I haven't found any examples in Effigies and Brasses, though the peak years of 1175-1230 or so is a bit early for effigies. If anyone knows of sculptural examples I'd love to see them.

For some contemporary documentary evidence, we have these lines from Chretien de Troyes Erec et Enide from c. 1170. Primary source is BNF 794, folio 07v, near the top of the central column--circa line 715 of the poem. The young girl arms Erec:
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b84272526/f28.item

Lace li les chauces de fer
& q(ue j)ust acorroie de cer
Hauber livest de boene maille
& se li lace la ventaille

Various interpretations of this Chanson exist in modern English, and most seem to agree that the mail chauces de fer are laced with deerskin thongs.

After observing several examples of reenactors trying to mimic this style of chausses, I observed two errors. The first is that the lacing alone is not sufficient to pull the mail into the "teeth" which is shown in the artwork. The second is that all of the examples of 12th century lacing I have found are not cross-laced as used by the reenactors, but spiral lacing, like this bliaut sculpture at Angers Cathedral.

So here is my question.

If I weave the "teeth" into the mail, but use a spiral lace, can the teeth oppose each other point to point, or will they have to be offset, point to valley?

[Mac]

So here is my question.

If I weave the "teeth" into the mail, but use a spiral lace, can the teeth oppose each other point to point, or will they have to be offset, point to valley?

Ernst,

If you don't offset the "teeth", they will come to be offset as soon as you lace the mail up spirally. This may be a "feature" rather than a "bug". Consider the hosen from Herjolfsnes, where the back seam is offset intentionally to give the garment laterality.

Mac

[Ernst]

That's what I suspected, but it disrupted my view of how the mail should be made. Finding images which actually show the laces are difficult to begin with, and the few sculptures of the back of mail chausses which I've seen always seem to be of the enclosed type.

At least one example seems to show each pair of teeth tied off, but I suspect running one long lace, or one above the knee and another below, would be easier. (Oddly, the king's sword-bearer seems to have his kirtle-side spiral laced in this same miniature. I just noticed that.)
http://manuscriptminiatures.com/gloss-o ... -w30/5071/

[Ernst]

I found a second reference to lacing up the chausses in Chretien's Erec et Enide, lines 2637-2638.

Premieremant se sist lacier
Unes chauces de blanc acier.

Unfortunately this doesn't let us know about deerskin laces being used like the earlier passage in lines 711-712, but does note the chauces being made of "white steel" rather than the previously mentioned iron.

Here's the old W.W. Comfort translation of the section:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/erec/erec2.htm

Then he went up into a bower, and had a Limoges rug laid out before him on the floor. Meanwhile, the squire ran to fetch the arms and came back and laid them on the rug. Erec took a seat opposite, on the figure of a leopard which was portrayed on the rug. He prepares and gets ready to put on his arms: first, he had laced on a pair of greaves of polished steel; next, he dons a hauberk, which was so fine that not a mesh could be cut away from it. This hauberk of his was rich, indeed, for neither inside nor outside of it was there enough iron to make a needle, nor could it gather any rust; for it was all made of worked silver in tiny meshes triple-wove; and it was made with such skill that I can assure you that no one who had put it on would have been more uncomfortable or sore because of it, than if he had put on a silk jacket over his undershirt.

And the older, original Old French in type:
http://archive.org/stream/kristianvontr ... 1/mode/2up

[Gerhard von Liebau]

In Tournament David Crouch translates a blurb from Ralph Niger's text on knightly equipment, c. 1187, thus:

"It is the custom for the knights of this world firstly to fix their spurs to their shoes, and then to protect their feet, legs and groin with mail leggings..."

I find it notable because he mentions protection for the groin being offered by the chausses, which mirrors William the Breton's sentiment from his account of mail chausses at Bouvines.

Whether these are the back-laced sorts of chausses or not, clearly some sort of additional lacing must have been done to secure the groin area with typical chausses.

-Gerhard

[Ernst]

If Crouch's translation is accurate, the spurs go on before the chausses. It would be difficult to put fully enclosed chausses on after the spurs, would it not? I guess we'll have to find an online edition of De re militari for the language. The miniatures which show spurs seem to show them over the chausses, even the laced back ones.

Of course all of the lacing mentioned may have been to attach the chausses to the girdle, or cinch them at the ankle and knee, or close a slit at the ankle like the Verona Roland statue shows in detail.

[Gerhard von Liebau]

"It would be difficult to put fully enclosed chausses on after the spurs, would it not?"

Ha. Yeah, that depends on how literally we want to take the information... Yet, if we suspect the order of operations, we may as well suspect the details of the protection offered by the armor.

-Gerhard