Arsenal And Armory In The Medieval And Modern Period

Today I went to visit a museum that I've visited a couple of times, but they have some new and temporary exhibitions and I did not want to miss them. The exhibition is called: "The Arsenal And Armory Of Sibiu In The Medieval And Modern Period" and it is hosted by the the Mediaș municipal museum.

The exhibition was brought to Mediaș from Sibiu. The original exhibition is way bigger, it contains around 3000 pieces, but the size of this one had to be adapted to the available space, thus there were only 80 pieces here.

Unlike in other parts of the country, description here was only in Romanian. For me it wasn't a problem but foreigners would be in trouble. I hope this can change in the near future as they need to be ready for welcoming foreigners in a proper way.

Weapons from the 15th - 17th century.

Weapon parts used in the 13th - 17th century.

There were some really cool drawings, illustrating the old face of the city, with entry and exit points. The historical city center of Sibiu is surrounded by fortification walls, which was a necessary thing to do, to protect the city. However, as the further drawing will show you, there were some parts demolished in the 19th century. It's a shame really as it would have been nice to have those parts today. Unfortunately I met my biggest enemy here too, reflections made my life difficult, but what can you do.

From the 15th - 17th century. For those of you who are not familiar with those times, battles were fought ace to face, so you have to either kill your enemy with what you had, or be killed. This equipment served to protect them and was heavy as hell.

As far as I know, this part of the wall still exists today and it's beautiful too. The difference is that people are dressed differently and chariots have been replaced by cars :)

This image was printed on a canvas and most likely this is how the armory looked like back in those times.

Looking at these swords made me think of how could they fight with these heavy swords as these are not of light weight. But then again, the weapons we have today, machine guns and all that, are not light weight either. The difference is the fighting technique is different.

An old gate of the city, that got demolished in 1856. Kind of sad as it would have been nice to have it today.

The other side of the gate. My apology for the photo though.

I'd love to see a comparison between the weight of the equipment in those times and what we have now. I've been told a combat equipment can weight 35 - 40kg. What about these armors?

From the 14th - 17th century.

Can you imagine yourself dressed like this?
Can you imagine yourself fighting dressed like this?

An iron shirt that meant to protect their body where the armor could not cover. Looking at it I remembered that butchers have similar gloves these days to protect their hand.

Which one would you choose? I wouldn't honestly :) Imagine these had to be loaded after each shot. Compare these with the machine gun we have today. Efficiency?

These are pistols from the 18th century. Most likely you've seen similar ones in the movies. I suppose these were the ones, or similar ones used for dueling.

I think the best solution back then was to use one man to load the guns and the other to keep shooting. Must have been difficult.

Today I've learnt that this gun is called arquebus.

An arquebus is a form of long gun that appeared in Europe and the Ottoman Empire during the 15th century. An infantryman armed with an arquebus is called an arquebusier.

The term arquebus is derived from the Dutch word Haakbus ("hook gun"). The term arquebus was applied to many different forms of firearms from the 15th to 17th centuries, but it originally referred to "a hand-gun with a hook-like projection or lug on its under surface, useful for steadying it against battlements or other objects when firing". These "hook guns" were in their earliest forms of defensive weapons mounted on German city walls in the early 15th century. The addition of a shoulder stock, priming pan, and matchlock mechanism in the late 15th century turned the arquebus into a handheld firearm and also the first firearm equipped with a trigger. source

These were more recent ones, from the 19th century.

Overall it was a nice exhibition, a walk back in the past.

Now let me know what would you choose from here? Would you like to try out some of these? Not that it would be possible, just asking 😁

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