[Connor Lynch]

Did cuirassiers always wear their burgonets with a falling buffe? Did the burgonet die out during the TYW because of the lobster tail helmet and one more thing was the burgonet used for infantry aswell because i know pikemen wore morions and musketeers wore normal hats but cuirassiers......and did the cuirassier replace the tradition knight?

[Daniel Staberg]

Cuirassiers seldom wore burgonets at all, preserved cuirassier armours mostly have some sort of closed helmet with various forms of visors. If we look at the German Reiter armours which predated the cuirassier these often came with burgonets but seldom with falling buffe? That piece of armour is mostly associated with armours for lancers and even they did not use if all the time.

The Burgonet was already in decline well before the TYW due to being replaced with closed helmets among the cuirassiers while the lighter cavalry had always used various forms of the morion and cabacete. The introduction of the Zischägge aka "Hungarian Pot" was merely the last nail in a coffin that was alrady pretty much nailed shut.

Burgonets were a a part of infantry armours, particularly those made in Germany were they continued to be made as part of infantry harnesses into the 17th Century. Morions in both the Spanish, Italian and later Dutch forms were worn not only by the pikemen but by musketeers, calivermen and arquebusiers as well.


The traditonal knight had been replaced long before the cuirassiers appeared on the battlefield in the last years of the 16th Century. The knight was first replaced by the professional men-at-arms aka gendarme who foguth together with lighter lancers commonly called 'archers' (because they had started out armed with longbow but evolved into lancers)
The expense of mantaining fully equipped Gendarmes led to the creation of units of lighter lancers known variously as Demi-lancers, Cheavaux-leger and Caballos ligeros. Both these types of lancers in turn evolved into cuirassiers as they abandoned the use of the lance and instead relied on pistol & sword.

[Connor Lynch]

Im so confused most the cuirassier armor i see has a burgonet on it and most of the pikemen i see have morions what about musketeers i heard that they wore a lobster tail helmet under their hat for atleast a little of protection

[Connor Lynch]

And one last thing everytime i go to the burgonet all the pictures of them are dated within the 16th and 17th centuries

[Adam D. Kent-Isaac]

Depends on what kind of burgonet we're talking about. In the heyday of the cuirassiers, which was around 1610 to 1630, you wouldn't see many "classical" type burgonets like the one below. You certainly wouldn't see many falling buffes.


What you would have seen a lot of were "close burgonets," a hybrid of the close helmet and the burgonet. Essentially, a fully enclosing helmet with a brim and a pivoting visor. The visor was sometimes barred, sometimes it would have vertical ventilation slits, sometimes it would have eye holes and a little smiley face (Savoyard), sometimes just very narrow eyeslits. The "munition" type tended to be cruder, like all of the armours in the Zeughaus.