Plate II.—A Marauder of the “Bandes de Picardie.” In the possession of Mr. J. F. Sullivan.
Florence became later a great rival of Milan, and we find Wolsey negotiating with a Florentine for “2000 complete harness of Almayne rivettes at 16s. per set.” Brescia was famed for its steel, and probably supplied the vast requirements of Venice, whose arsenals contained, in the seventeenth century, arms for 800,000 combatants. Henry VIII. requested permission from the Doge of Venice, in 1544, to purchase 1500 Brescian harquebuses, and over 1000 suits of horse and foot-armour. Pisa, Lucca, Mantua, Verona, Pistoja also produced armour and weapons of high quality.
Spain, with the most abundant and accessible supplies of the finest iron ores in the world, celebrated for its weapons from the time of the Punic wars, and with the immeasurable advantage of commanding the services of the Moorish steel-workers who were masters of the armourer’s craft, ought to have maintained the first rank as armourers of the world. It probably did for centuries supply its own requirements. We find the Spanish warrior under James of Arragon, 1230, sheathed horse and man in mail, with his quilted perpunto or pourpoint beneath, and the iron gonio or breast-plate above; the iron greaves and shoes, helmet and shield. Thus equipped, the Christian rode down the Moslem by superior weight of man, horse, and arms, the Moors dispensing with pourpoint and breast-plate, and riding unarmoured horses. The helmets were of Zaragossa steel, and James’s “very good sword, lucky to those who handled it,” was from Monzon and called Tizo, as the more celebrated sword of the Cid was called Tizona. The most dreaded weapon, however, at this time, was the windlass cross-bow, whose bearers were mounted and carried large shields.
Little of the Moorish armourer’s work has come down, though they worked steel extensively in Toledo and Seville. No Hispano-moresque swords exist of earlier date than the fifteenth century, and these have richly-worked hilts in the Arab taste. A few Moorish helmets are preserved, also of the fifteenth century, two of which, attributed to Boabdil, are in the Madrid armoury, and are also richly decorated in the Arab manner. The fame of Moorish armour is preserved in the words Morion and Morris pike. The famed swords of Toledo did not obtain renown until the Renaissance, and were not produced after the seventeenth century. Real Spanish armour appears very clumsy, and probably little, if any, was made much after the accession of Charles V. One of the latest suits in the armoury at Madrid is late Gothic in feeling, with a tilting helm of Henry VII., and marked with the poinçon of the city of Valencia.
France is very much in the same position as England in regard to armour, for no city in it ever established any permanent reputation as a seat of manufacture. Louis X. had a Toulouse sword—Louis Hutin’s inventory comprises mail from Chambly. Metz, Pignerol, Abbeville are mentioned by Brantôme as producing armour inferior to Italian. Froissart speaks repeatedly of the excellence of Bordeaux weapons, but at the time when Bordeaux was English. The same is true of the Limoges steel. But Paris must after all have been the metropolis of French armourers. The description by Froissart of the battle of Rosebecque, fought in 1382, where the hammering on the helmets of the combatants made a noise that could not have been exceeded if all the armourers of Paris and Brussels had been there working at their trade, shows that these cities were great centres for the production of armour. The names of very few French armourers have escaped oblivion, however; and Italian workmen were employed in France from at least the time of Louis XI. Some beautifully decorated French armour exists, chiefly early seventeenth century, but in France, as in England, most of the armour was probably obtained from Italy and Germany, when once the superiority of their work was definitely established.
Netherlandish armour was always in high repute, and some of the Brussels armourers achieved European fame. It even set the fashion, as we read that Sir Gilbert Talbot, 1353, provided himself with “a curas complete of Flanderis makyng of the new turn for £20.” Very few specimens that can be identified as Belgian or Flemish exist, however, in collections.