Sunday, October 18, 2026

Did winged hussars' horses wear some horse armor in the 17th century?

 Salvete Omnes,

a little bit on the winged hussars history and horse armor of their period- 



when studying the history of the Polish Crown forces during the second half of 16th trough early 7th centuries, we can observe that there exists rather very small corpus of iconographic material showing these cavalrymen, especially for the period of 1580 through 1590s. There is more iconography pertaining to the Hungarian lance cavalry or the Ottoman Turkish horsemen of the same period.

During the 16th century the heaviest Polish armored horsemen (gravioris armaturae) also armored, even if not the whole barding but partially with crinet, chamfron & peytral,  their war mounts.



eg the Orsza [Orsha] battle iconography





, the Miechowita's Tractatus de duabus Sarmatiis,  




Bielskis' opus magnum The Universal Chronicle (and up to the 1590s - The Polish Chronicle)



or a drawing showing a detail from the Radziwill's Palace gallery painting depicting 1568 raid by Radziwill and Sieniawski.


when comes to the early 17th century we can see some armored horse in several works

Stanislaw Zolkiewsk's coffin relief - done some time after the death of the Crown grand hetman in 1621,


or drawing by Gembrzewski, published in his winged hussar book in 1938, based on a depiction of winged hussar captain  from the panting in of king Sigismund III Vasa ( coppied by Aleksander Lesser from the  Deutschesmuseum  Nuremberg Gallery in 1883)  .


So perhaps the elements of horse armor - crinet/crinniere and chamfron (with a rondel and a spike) were still being used, albeit sporadically, by the winged hussars and/or some Crown commanders and rotamiesters/captains. 

Valete

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