[Gerald Fa.]

How & why did the Sallet fell out of use? (The Sallet is a very good helmet.) Or did it just simply evolved? Like we see in WWI and WWII German helmet & later American and most others Kevlar helmets?





How the Burgonet and the Morion became the main use over the Sallet? I can see why someone want a Burgonet, but the Morion over a long tail sellat? Was there Sallets still being used in the late 1500s?

[Christopher Treichel]

The Sallet only went out of style for a few years... fads like fashion ment that whatever army was winning was copied by everyone else... When the Spanish musqueteers ruled the field everyone needed a morion and cabaset...

The Current and last US military helmet are sallets as was the German WWI and WWII steel helmet, and the East German Helmet.

[Michael Wiethop]

I've seen some examples of helmets that look like sallets but are combined with the sort of hinged gorget or neck-guard that encases the neck, as with the armet:

http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2010/100/9/...errano.jpg
^A reproduction, possibly based on this:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons...._1495.jpg

Additionally, this sallet of Philip I of Spain has a visor that's remarkably similar to an armet's:
http://www.bladeturner.com/picture/creampuff_salet.jpg

Is it possible that the sallet evolved into the armet?

[Gerald Fa.]

[Michael Parker]

I suppose there's an element of speculation about how one or more helmet types evolved into others, but the interpretation I prefer to follow is that the armet evolved out of the great bascinet and that the sallet evolved from kettle-hats and bascinets. Arms and Armor of the Medieval Knight proposes this chronology: that the sallet first appeared in about 1407 in Italy as the celeta, having been derived from the bascinet and usually not equipped with a visor. By 1420 it was in France and Burgundy and by 1420 in England and the rest of Europe. It got a kind of Franco-Burgundian reinterpretation in the process and took on its conventional form. German of the middle 1400s tend to have a deep round bowl for the skull, a short tail, and protect the face above the mouth when the brim or visor is down. Here's our typical mid-15th century visored sallet and bevor. http://www.myArmoury.com/othr_sallet.html

Some of them look very similar to eisenhuts, almost like a war hat with an ocularia slit between the skull and the brim, and I suspect that this design was partly favored because it was a very easy shape for an armorer to raise from metal sheets: the bottom naturally flares out as you're working the crown of the helmet. In Italy the armet was most popular with fully armored and mounted knights and the celeta or barbuta types were used by the other troops, but the North Italian armorers made armor and helmets in a German-influenced style for export. After 1460, deeper sallets with longer tails became the fashion in Germany, and actually the authors assert that sallets were rare in Germany before that year.

In the late 15th century we see the high point of the sallet's use in Germany, but really it looks to me as if the armet style made the jump into the early 16th century while the sallet did not and mutated into something else. Sallets with articulated tails and fancy visors seem to me like a foreshadowing of the Maximillian-style close helm, which is shaped more closely to the head and neck and incorporates a gorget instead of a bevor. Armets changed in style, generally becoming fancier, but it was the same fundamental design as it was in the mid-15th century, with opening cheek pieces and the distinctive pointed visor. I suppose the main difference was that the gorget eventually made the wrapper less necessary as a defense for the neck. As far as I know, past 1500 the sallet was not being significantly used anymore except in the Rennen or joust with sharp lances, which was not done in the armor you would use for war. Then again, I'm not very knowledgeable about late 15th century or early 16th century armor at all so it could be that I'm making the wrong conclusion.

[Harri Kyllönen]

Morion offers superior visibility and makes you look taller and more "grandeur". When helmets fell out of use musketeers started wearing very impractical and large but fashionable hats.