Conservation around the Millennium (Hungarian National Museum, 2001)
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3. "Habda", ethnographic legging from Hungary During the 18th century it became the general custom to wear military uniforms. They thought that this way soldiers felt more that they belonged together, and also it was easier to monitor the movements of each troop. There were very strict regulations on every detail of the uniforms, which included footwear as well. The cavalry wore boots, the infantry, artillery and dragoons, who could belong to either the cavalry or the infantry wore shoes, tights and gaiters, which were also part of their uniforms. These types of gaiters first appeared during the 17th century in France (Picture 7.), spreading further all over Western Europe during the 18th century, mainly as accessories of military uniforms, but were even worn in civil life for horse riding. In the Hungarian regiments of the Austrian army, however, the cavalry wore boots and the infantry wore hightop shoes with laces.10 This explains why we couldn’t find any similar Hungarian items in any museums including the National Museum, the Military Museum and the Museum of Applied Arts. Finally we understood why we couldn’t find any trace of gaiters on the price lists of contemporary shoemaker workshops. The fact that the fashion of wearing breeches, tights and shoes didn’t become popular in Hungary and the fact that Hungarian soldiers wore either boots or hightop laced shoes made the use of gaiters unnecessary. In light of what we found out we tried to decrease the circle of people, who could have been buried wearing such footwear. Emil Ráduly museologist11 collected the names men buried without coffins in the crypt according to the death certificates between 1731 and 1789. From the 17 persons we got this way we could exclude all the Hungarians (noblemen and citizens alike). The gaiters were found in a lower layer of the ossarium, which shows that the person was placed here during one of the earliest burials and the gaiters show that he served as a soldier, but not in the cavalry. Based on this information we supposed that from the remaining 4- 5 persons this man was most likely Josephus Choronfeld, who was buried on March 5, 1740. In the death certificate they felt it important to note that the person was a “Bellio[n]s Comissarius”, or in other words an army commissioner. This assumption still has to be proven by further research. DESCRIBING THE OBJECT 4. Men's attire from 18th century Western Europe 5 Men’s attire from 18th century Hungary The gaiters are made of brown vegetable tanned calfskin with an 87
