Emperor Maximilian I liked to say he invented the joust of the exploding shields. When a knight charged and his lance struck the opposing shield — bam! — the shield shattered and the shrapnel went up like fireworks. It’s almost impossible to turn the pages of Freydal. Medieval Games. The Book of Tournaments of Emperor Maximilian I and not imagine Batman-style captions. Clank! Thwack! Kapow! The knights and princes of the painted miniatures are all-awl, all-action iron men. Their horses are hooded to stop them bolting and every harness is stitched with bells. All the horse would have heard was the jangling, not the thunder of hooves or the roar of the tiltyard crowds.
The editors of this splendid facsimile of Maximilian’s Freydal (1512–15), published by Taschen, suggest that the impact of two galloping knights in steel armour was equivalent to two small cars crashing at 40 miles per hour. What’s more extraordinary is that the knights who were knocked down generally got up again.
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