The Horned helmet was presented by Maximilian to English king Henry VIII.Īnother grotesque-looking helm is Morne’s helmet, which looks more like a stone gargoyle head from a Gothic cathedral. This helm is based on the Horned helm by Konrad Seusenhofer, who was an armour smith working for Maximilian I. This armor style is associated with Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I who had several sets of rather unique armors with grotesque mask-visors and helms, and, according to one of the theories, the first armor of this fashion was built for him.Īnd talking about armors of Maximilian I, I guess it’s time to mention one of the most unusual armor designs of Dark Souls I – Helm of the Wise, however, I guess its origins are already well known. However, let’s return from the winged hussars to the winged knights of Dark Souls III. Another interesting part of their equipment are their helmets, which are based on the “Maximilian-style” helms with masked visors, popular in Germany in early 16th century.

Other possibilities included the wings being made to defend the backs of the men against swords and lassos, or that they were worn to make their own horses deaf to the wooden noise-makers used by the Ottoman and the Crimean Tatars. The most common theory is that the hussars wore the wings because they made a loud, clattering noise which made it seem like the cavalry was much larger than in reality and frightened the enemy’s horses.

They were famous for their “wings”, a wooden frame carrying eagle, ostrich, swan or goose feathers.

First introduced by the Serbian and Hungarian mercenary horsemen at the beginning of the 16th century, they served as light cavalry banners in the Polish army, however by the second half of the 16th century hussars had been transformed into heavily armored shock cavalry, eventually they became the elite of the Polish cavalry. The winged hussars were one of the main types of the cavalry in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth between the 16th and 18th centuries.

Elite knight armor dark souls 1