Besagews (also spelled besagues) are a type of roundel designed to protect the armpits within a plate armour harness. The armpits house the axillary arteries, making protection in this area crucial.
Armour without besagews often compensated for this with larger shoulder protection, such as broad pauldrons, or simply left the mail haubergeon or voider beneath the armour unprotected.
A roundel (French: rondelle) is a circular metal plate that was added to a late medieval plate armour harness to seal vulnerable openings or reinforce vulnerable straps and hinges. Roundels were also used in weapons, for example as hand protection in the roundel dagger.
The first roundels appeared at the end of the 14th century, shortly after plate steel breastplates and backplates replaced the earlier coat of plates.
By the middle of the 15th century, their use was widespread throughout Europe, but around the mid-16th century they gradually disappeared from field armour.
In late medieval and Renaissance armour, besagews often protected the armpit. These were typically simple, slightly convex roundels that hung from the pauldron or the upper edge of the gorget, thus covering the otherwise exposed opening at the arm's hinge.
The plate was usually fastened with a short leather belt and buckle, laces, or on some breastplates with a rotating pin.
Armets sometimes wore a small roundel, also called a volet, on the back of the helmet. This was fastened with a short 'steel' and protected the leather strap of the wrapper (a reinforcement for the visor that preceded the bevor) from being cut, and also provided protection to the rear hinge of the cheek pieces.
Early closed helmets, which often mimicked the style of the armet, also made use of roundels at the neck and sometimes at higher points on the helmet.
Roundels were also depicted in illuminated manuscripts, attached to the sides of bascinets and sallets. Sometimes roundels were attached to aventails to protect the throat, similar to a bevor.
Elbow and hand protection
Some armours from the mid-14th century used a simple hemispherical couter, consisting of a roundel on the elbow joint.
In the 15th century, these were largely replaced by wider couterse that enclosed the joint. Small roundels sometimes also reinforced the back of gauntlets, by soldering or riveting them to the gauntlet lining.
This provided extra protection to the metacarpal bones and served as reinforcement. The manifer ("main de fer"), a gauntlet that protected the left hand during the joust, used roundels as extra reinforcement.
Roundels in horse armour
On the shaffron, the front head protection of a horse's armour, a roundel sometimes appeared on the centerline between the horse's eyes.
This was mounted on a pin so it could rotate and thus dampen the impact of blows from blunt weapons. Roundels were often ornate and were part of the stylish armour of the nobility.
