Cavalry armour of Prince Maurits of Orange,1998
Gotscha, 1998. Collection of the Royal Netherlands Army and Arms Museum Delft, Inv.nr. 114926. Creation after the personal armour of Prince Maurice, c.1590, preserved at the Hofjagd-und Rüstkammer des Kunst-historisches Museum in the Hofburg at Vienna, Austria, Inv.nr A 1654. This suit of armour is considered a prototype of 17th century Northern Dutch cavalry armour. Like the original, the suit or armour has no back-plate, and no right index finger, Breastplate with musket proof at front side right. The dent of a musket ball in the breastplate very often appears on quality armour and despite the fact that is was rather disfiguring, it was not to be removed. It did indicate unmistakably that the cuirass had shown itself to be impenetrable by musket balls at proof. Therefore plates having such a dent can be confidently called bullet-proof or, in contemporary parlance, ‘musket-proof’. Forged in 1998 in ‘s-Hertogenbosch. Height 168 cm, weight 40 kg. Material: iron from Hoogovens, surfaces highly polished and blued fire’. The rivets, hinges, eyes and hooks, and the plume holder, gilt. Comprising: helmet collar, breastplate, arm defenses, gauntlets, loin-guard and long tassets with knee-cops. Decorated with double engraved lines parallel to all vertical and horizontal edges as well as around the sights of the brow reinforce, all turned edges are finely cabled. Lining, including that underneath the pauldrons and inside the cuffs, as well as all internal connecting straps, of leather. Iron plates of different thick nesses (1, 1.2, 1.5, 2 and 3 mm) were used to make the 169 separate parts which form the suit of armour. Just like the original breast plate and helm are bullet proof and the thickest sheets have been used for this. The sheets of metal were forged cold as well as hot. The suit of armour contains about 450 iron rivets, clasps, hinges, hooks and eyes, each one of them made by hand. Excluding 400 hours of preparation, the work on the suit of armour took 1600 hours.