With these suits the Cardinal sent another for his boy-nephew, Prince Baltasar Carlos (1629-1646). This armour is little more than a toy, and preserves its blackening and gilding almost unimpaired.
The magnificently engraved collar and gorget numbered A434-A441 (plates 93, 94) are now known to represent the siege of Ostend (1601-1604) and the Battle of Nieuport (1600). The details are executed with marvellous clearness, and the chiselling reflects the greatest credit on the unknown artist. The horseman in the centre group on the gorget is probably the Archduke Albrecht, who distinguished himself by his valour at the Battle of Nieuport. These pieces were worn over a buff jerkin, such as was used by Cromwell’s Ironsides.
This brief survey of the principal objects of interest in the Royal Armoury at Madrid may be fittingly concluded with some account of the origin and vicissitudes of that establishment. Its nucleus was the armour accumulated by the Emperor Charles V., not with a view to a collection, but for his personal use. Philip II. was not slow to recognise the value of the treasure bequeathed him by his father. On his return to Madrid, upon the death of his wife, Mary Tudor, Philip deposited all the Emperor’s armour in a building specially designed for its reception, and added to it from time to time trophies won from the enemies of Spain, and such antiquities of national and military interest as he could procure. His good example was followed by his successors till the manufacture of defensive armour altogether ceased at the end of the seventeenth century, while the spoils of war became every year rarer towards the close of the eighteenth.
A calamity befell the collection at the outbreak of the War of Independence. The people of Madrid, in their eagerness to procure arms, invaded the building on December 1st, 1808, and carried off more than three hundred swords and other weapons with which to attack the French. And three years later Joseph Buonaparte foolishly piled the contents of the Armoury in the garrets, in order to make room for the dancers in the hall.
In the reign of Isabel II. the collection was re-installed and re-arranged. A catalogue was issued for the first time in 1849, the author being Don Antonio Martinez del Romero—a work displaying considerable research and industry, but full of errors, and completely superseded by the catalogue published in 1898 by the Conde de Valencia de San Juan.
It was to that gentleman that the late King Alfonso XII., soon after his accession, entrusted the complete re-organisation of the collection. This was a work presenting extraordinary difficulties, and after three years of incessant labour, the Conde had the mortification of seeing a fierce fire break out, which in the night of July 9th, 1884, reduced to ashes sixty-two flags taken from the enemy, twenty leather shields, and all the wooden figures prepared for the arrangement of the armour.
Without hesitation the work was begun all over again. The King added new and priceless acquisitions to the collection, among these being eleven examples of fifteenth-century brigandine armour (quilted jackets with the additional protection of plates of iron secured among the pads) discovered in Aragon, and several of the finest pieces in the armouries of the Dukes of Osuna and del Infantado.
Her Majesty Queen Cristina, during her regency, was not forgetful of the interest taken by her lamented husband in this magnificent Museum of Arms; and, thanks to her, the number of its treasures has been materially increased. Nor is it likely that any opportunity of adding to the value and usefulness of the collection will be neglected during the reign of a young Monarch devoted, like so many of his illustrious ancestors, to manly exercises and chivalrous traditions.