I came across this toy knight in my copy of Karl Gröber’s 1932 edition of Children’s Toys of Bygone Days, which has introduced me to several other discoveries, including the toy guillotine.

This knight is at the Musée de Cluny, though the black and white photograph included in Gröber’s book [see here] shows the side with the shield, whereas the image on the museum website shows the other side. As I am writing this, I am looking at Gröber’s book and have noticed that the title page includes an illustration of this particular toy, with an added St. George’s flag to his lance [see here]. The book, which is almost 100 years old itself, tells us:

On the bridges over the Seine in Paris there used to stand, after the fashion of the Middle Ages, little booths and stalls, at many of which small objects of devotion and other things made of tin and lead were offered for sale to the passers-by. Whether one of these shops was destroyed, or whether the little pendants and figures fell into the river through a crack in the floor, we cannot tell; but there were found during the dredging of the Seine a large number of such objects, of which some can safely be classed as toys, among these a little tin knight in armour, which can claim to be the forefather of all later tin soldiers. It is quite certain that this was not a pilgrim’s token, as many of these finds were. It is a real, true tin soldier to play with, with a solid base to stand on like those of his brothers of a later age.

Then Gröber goes on to say:

That little horses of brass were used as toys we know from a scene in an old North German saga in which a youngster of six years lends his little four-year-old friend his brazen horse to play with.

I tried to find this reference, and with a little digging, found he was referring to the Icelandic saga of Víga-Glúms, believed to have been written in the first half of the 13th C (see here). This is the paragraph he alludes to, in Chapter 12 (1866 translation by Edmund Head):

Arngrim was two winters older than Steinolf; there was not in the whole of the Eyjafirth any boys of a better disposition or greater promise, and they were very fond of each other. When one was four years old and the other six, they were one day playing together, and Steinolf asked Arngrim to lend him the little brass horse which he had. Arngrim answered, I will give it you, for looking to my age, it is more fit for your plaything than mine. Steinolf went and told his foster-mother what a fair gift he had got, and she said it was quite right that they should be on such good terms with one another.

This lovely bronze toy mounted knight at The Walters Art Museum (dated 13th-14th C, provenance ‘Europe’) gives us a little idea of what 6-year-old Arngrim and 4-year-old Steinolf might have been playing with. The museum has inserted a replacement jousting lance to illustrate what it could have looked like, and the site states it is one of the earliest existing examples of toy soldiers. There is something rather lovely about it having a removable lance and, looking at my son’s Playmobil figures, it really brings home how certain elements have really remained unchanged for centuries.

The Museum of London collection includes a wonderful toy knight (look at its feet-like hooves!) which may be around 70 years older than our French friend and, unlike him, is not flat. The website tells us it is “the earliest hollow-cast pewter figure known in England, and one of the earliest examples of a mass-produced medieval metal toy” and goes on to say that there is evidence of a thriving mass market in children’s playthings in the medieval period.

When Gröber writes of medieval pilgrims’ tokens, he is referring to objects such as badges made of metal alloys that were cast in moulds and sold at stalls. Some of these also depict knights very similar to ours, so it is not far-fetched to imagine that children sometimes ended up playing with these tokens, and perhaps craftsmen eventually used the same method to make toys and simply added bases on them so they could stand.

For instance, take a look at this figure of a jousting knight dating to the early-mid 14th century, also at the Museum of London. Like our toy, he carries a shield with the cross of St George, who became patron saint of England during the Hundred Year War with France. I found this interesting, given that our toy was found in France, and it made me wonder whether the subject of this portrait was meant to represent an English soldier/knight – perfect for children who wanted to enact battles of the French against the English –, or whether this is entirely coincidental. The flower motif on the saddle looks a little like an English rose, but instead of 5 petals it has 6.

The Museum of London website tells us that several badges showing jousting knights like this have been found in London and might have been worn “by young men hoping to be knights or by people who enjoyed these glamourous events.” Another pilgrim’s badge in its collection seems to depict St George himself – apparently he gained popularity after prayers to him appeared to ensure success in battles such as the siege of Calais in 1349.

The date of this siege stood out for me especially, as I had just been reading about the Black Death, which took place from 1346 to 1353. That means the siege of Calais took place when the plague was in full swing – it is not hard to imagine how brave, heroic knights would have easily captured the imagination of people who were trying to grasp onto anything that would give them hope. It’s also fascinating to see the extent to which the imagery of knights as heroes, and legends such as King Arthur are still embraced and loved today.

While looking through museum collections in search of toy soldiers and knights, I also came across some wonderful examples of medieval aquamanile water jugs – see this beautifully crafted copper one of a knight on a horse, dating from 1275-1300 England, or another knight, with a handle on its back, this time from c. 1350 Lower Saxony. I was not previously acquainted with aquamanilia and they are a wonderful rabbit hole to get into, full of funny shapes and characters, and very often showing stunning medieval artisanship.

There are earlier toys of horse-mounted figures (see for instance this lovely toy from Coptic Egypt, 6th-8th century AD; there are also some wonderful Boeotian terracotta figures dating from as far back as 6th century BC, but they are mostly referred to in literature as symbolic or ritual, often associated with burials), but looking at this one, it would seem that the figure of a tin soldier or a knight (especially with armour, shield and a lance) has remained pretty much the same for over 600 years. The fashion for flat tin figures really took off in the 18th and 19th centuries, and I have come across references stating they started to be produced in the 18th C in Germany as a tribute to Frederick the Great. Now flats, as they are known, are not really played with by children but instead are mostly collected by adults, which is an interesting phenomenon in itself.

Our knight looks like he might get on well with the Viking berserker. He looks fairly calm and composed, which is reassuring given his job, but I am slightly concerned about his short-legged horse. Will it take all that weight, I wonder?  There’s only one way to find out. Charge!