The Husaria, the Polish heavy cavalry, were the elite military unit of the Eastern European battlefields, especially in the 17th century. The hussar armour consisted of a helmet, cuirass, metal collar, shoulder and upper arm protection, forearm protectors and in some cases, a canvas leg covering from the waist to the knees.
The cuirass of the hussars’ armour consisted of a breastplate and backplate. The backplate was sometimes not worn. The breastplate was forged from an iron plate, and its lower part consisted of four or five movable iron plates, fastened with rivets and leather straps.
The cuirass was decorated with strips of gilded brass plate around the collar, armholes and its lower edge. The rivets at the bottom of the plate were also decorated with brass rosettes. The movable plates used to have a decorative scalloping on the upper edge. The main decorative elements were the cavalier cross on the left side (from the frontal view) and a relief medallion of the Immaculate Conception on the right side.
Height 480 mm, width 360 mm, weight 6 676 g.