THE prominence which Spain has enjoyed from the earliest times as a manufactory of armour and a school of arms is attributable, in the first instance, to its mineralogical richness, and, subsequently, to the part it played in the military history of Europe. In the days of Rome’s greatness, Spain became the chief mineral-producing tributary of the Empire. Its mines contained in perfection all the metals then applied to warlike uses, and its rivers were believed to possess peculiar properties for the tempering of blades. Bilbilis was as much a name to conjure with among the Roman warriors as was the “Bilbo” among the gallants and swashbucklers of Shakespeare’s day. Toledo and the sword are indissolubly associated in the literature of arms; it is impossible to mention the name of the city without recalling the unchallenged excellence of the blades it has given to the world. And if Toledo is the city of the sword, Spain is the land of swordsmanship. It was in Spain that the muscular sweep of the broadsword was refined into the scientific point-play of the rapier; it was there that the art of fence originated; and to-day it is claimed that there are more books on fencing in Spanish than in any other language.

From the highest in the land to the lowest the love of arms is seen to have been inherent in the Spaniard from time immemorial, and he has ever shown himself quick to adopt foreign methods and innovations that promised to lend greater efficacy to his blow and sterner resistance to his defensive armour. Francis I. beheld the youth of Spain stoutly accoutred and armed to the teeth, and exclaimed, “Oh, happy land, which brings forth and rears armed men.” The profession of arms was the avocation of every Spaniard; he left his mother’s breast to take his place at his father’s side; he was a soldier by birth, breeding, and training. Only a nation of soldiers could have successfully withstood an invasion so overwhelming as that of the Saracens. Only a race imbued with the traditions and love of war and its arts could have persevered so long against enormous odds to the final and glorious triumph of the closing years of the fifteenth century.

The Spaniards of the days of Pizarro and Cortes, like their contemporaries, the English admirals, courted war as a mistress, and strove to meet her in their bravest array. The devoted attention they paid to their armour and the temper of their weapons excited the regretful admiration of their determined foe, old sea-dog Hawkins. The Castilian loved the glint of shimmering steel and the ring of a true forged blade on stout harness; his was a land of iron, and so long as the issue of the battle depended on the sword and the lance, he could defy Europe, and hold two Continents in fee. But the age of iron passed; with it passed that grand old craftsman, the armourer; and the day of Spain also, passed, for a while, into the grey evening of nations. For Spain, so faithfully wedded to its native arms, and so pre-eminent in their use, was slow to embrace the faith of explosives. Cervantes, in the following passage, which he puts into the mouth of Don Quixote, has left on record the aversion of his countrymen to the levelling-up influence of the rifle, and their exaggerated attachment to the weapons of chivalry:

“Blessed be those happy ages that were strangers to the dreadful fury of those devilish instruments of artillery which is the cause that very often a cowardly base hind takes away the life of the bravest gentleman, and in the midst of that rigour and resolution which animates and inflames the bold, a chance bullet (shot perhaps by one that fled, and was frighted at the very flash the mischievous piece gave when it went off), coming nobody knows how or from whence, in a moment puts a period to the brave designs and the life of one that deserved to have survived many years. This considered, I could almost say I am sorry at heart for having taken on me this profession of a knight-errant in so detestable an age: for though no danger daunts me, yet it affects me to think that powder and lead may deprive me of the opportunity of becoming famous, and making myself known throughout the world by the strength of my arm and the dint of my sword.”

The national love of the sword and buckler was encouraged in the Spaniards by many of their sovereigns, foremost among whom was the warrior-King, Charles V. In the beginning of the sixteenth century the crown of Spain passed to this prince, the grandson and heir of Maximilian of Germany, in whose veins flowed the blood of the martial Dukes of Burgundy. Maximilian had done more than any other monarch to encourage and advance the armourer’s art, and Charles V.’s passion for the practice and perfecting of arms, and all that pertained to military equipment, was even greater than that evinced by his grandfather. By a fortunate combination of circumstances, supplemented by his lust of conquest, he found himself the monarch of three realms, in one of which (Spain) the love of arms was almost a mania, while in the other two (Germany and Italy) the armourer’s craft had attained a degree of perfection that has not been approached in any other age or country. The sovereign that could command the services of the Colmans of Augsburg and the Negrolis of Milan was in an unequalled position for one who desired to gratify a taste for armour, and Charles did not neglect his opportunity. He patronised liberally the master-craftsmen of Italy and Germany, sedulously stimulating their rivalry the while, and at his death left to Spain—the worthiest of his realms to inherit it—the finest collection of knightly harnesses that any monarch had ever possessed.

It will be gathered from the following brief sketch that Spain has achieved distinction both as a manufactory and a storehouse of arms. Aragon, and, to a less marked extent, Castile, were always in the van where the improvement of armour was concerned; and although experts consider that Italy set the fashion in the craft during the Middle Ages, it is by no means certain that Barcelona did not, at some periods, assume the lead. Swords, as in the days of the CÆsars, continued to be exported to Italy from Catalonia through the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, the traffic, curiously enough, being chiefly in the hands of that unwarlike race, the Jews.

But while arms and armour have ever been a study in the Peninsula which has engaged the closest attention of Kings, soldiers, and artificers, no distinct style, no essentially national type of armour was, or could be, evolved. Nor is this fact calculated to cause surprise, for it is obvious that there can be no Spanish school of armoury in the sense that there is a Spanish school of painting, or of music. Weapons and means of defence must vary according to periods rather than localities, and thus it follows that while the armour of one century may be easily distinguished from that of another, to differentiate between a German and a French suit of the same period is always a difficult, frequently an impossible, task. The warrior could not permit himself to be swayed by fanciful or patriotic prejudice in the fashion or make of his arms; his life depended on the stoutness and quality of his weapons, and he secured the best that his means could command wherever they were obtainable. If the enemy were possessed of stronger, more pliant, or better tempered weapons or accoutrements, the soldier had no choice but to learn the methods of his foeman. The secrets of improvements in the science of armoury could only be preserved in times of peace, for, once the weapons were used in the tented field, the riddle of their superiority was solved. The harness of a vanquished knight became, according to the laws of chivalry, the property of his conqueror. In this manner a constant interchange of arms and armour went on through the Iron Ages, and the equipment and methods of victorious and vanquished nations were sooner or later divulged and adopted.

There is, therefore, as has been said, no national school of Spanish arms; and the Royal Armoury itself, although admittedly the finest collection of its kind in the world, is not a gallery of Spanish workmanship. Thanks to the range and extent of the dominion of its founder, Charles V., the Armoury, from its institution, has assumed an international character. Here are suits of harness, the choicest product of native craft, executed at the Emperor’s command, interspersed with the finest works of Germany, of Flanders, and of Italy—gifts, purchases, and the spoils of war. In no other collection of a like nature can be seen so many chefs d’oeuvres of the greatest masters of Europe; but while so many of the most important exhibits are of foreign origin, the museum remains essentially the Royal Armoury of Spain—the repository of the armour of its kings, the swords of its captains, and the trophies of its victorious armies.