The modern small-arms factory of Toledo, situated on the right bank of the Tagus, a mile from the city walls, had, in fact, been opened in 1783, when the same industry was also reviving at Vitoria, Barcelona, and elsewhere. Toledo worthily maintains to-day her ancient and illustrious reputation for this craft. The Tagus still supplies its magic water for the tempering, while part of the prime material of the steel itself proceeds from Solingen and Styria, and the rest from Trubia and Malaga.
Cutlery continued to be made in Spain all through the eighteenth century. Colmenar says that the knives of Barcelona were considered excellent. According to Laborde, cutlery was made at Solsona and Cardona in Cataluña, at Mora in New Castile, and at Albacete in Murcia. “The cutlery of Solsona is in great repute; but the largest quantity is made at Albacete. In the latter place are about twenty-eight working cutlers, each of whom employs five or six journeymen, who respectively manufacture annually six or seven thousand pieces, amounting in the whole to about one hundred and eighty thousand pieces.”[140]
FIREARMS
Cannon of a primitive kind were used in Spain comparatively early. A large variety of names was given to these pieces, such as cerbatanas, ribadoquines, culebrinas, falconetes, pasavolantes, lombardas or bombardas, and many more; but the oldest, commonest, and most comprehensive name of all was trueno, “thunder,” from the terrifying noise of the discharge. This word was used for both the piece and the projectile. The Count of Clonard quotes Pedro Megía's Silva de Varias Lecciones to show that gunpowder was known in Spain as early as the eleventh century. “Thunders” of some description seem to have been used at the siege of Zaragoza in 1118; and a Moorish author, writing in 1249, describes in fearsome terms “the horrid noise like thunder, vomiting fire in all directions, destroying everything, reducing everything to ashes.” Al-Jattib, the historian of Granada, wrote at the beginning of the fourteenth century that the sultan of that kingdom used at the siege of Baza “a mighty engine, applying fire thereto, prepared with naphtha and with balls.” The Chronicle of Alfonso the Eleventh describes in a quaint and graphic passage the crude artillery of that period, and the panic it occasioned. At the siege of Algeciras in 1342, “the Moors that were within the city threw many ‘thunders’ at the (Christian) host, together with mighty balls of iron, to such a distance that several overpassed the army, and some did damage to our host. Also, by means of ‘thunders’ they threw arrows exceeding great and thick, so that it was as much as a man could do to lift them from the ground. And as for the iron balls these ‘thunders’ hurled, men were exceedingly afraid thereof; for if they chanced to strike a limb they cut it off as clean as with a knife, and though the wound were but a slight one, yet was the man as good as dead; nor was any chirurgery that might avail him, both because the balls came burning hot, like flame, and because the powder which discharged them was of such a kind that any wound it made was surely mortal; and such was the violence of these balls, that they went through a man, together with all his armour.”
Towards the close of the same century the testament of Don Pedro Tenorio (see [p. 256]), the bellicose archbishop of Alcalá de Henares, who ruled that diocese from 1376 to 1399, contains the following passage:—“Item. We bought crossbows and bassinets both for foot and horse, together with shields, pikes, javelins, darts, lombards, hemp, powder, and other munitions for the castles of our Church; of which munitions we stored the greater quantity at Talavera and at Alcalá de Henares, purposing to deposit them at Cazorla and in the castles of Canales and of Alhamin, which we are now repairing after they were thrown down by the King Don Pedro, and for the tower of Cazorla, which we are now erecting. And it is our will that all of these munitions be for the said castles and tower; and that no one lay his hand on them, on pain of excommunication, excepting only the bishop elected and confirmed who shall succeed us; and he shall distribute them as he holds best among the aforesaid castles. And all the best of these munitions shall be for the governorship of Cazorla, as being most needed there to overthrow the enemies of our faith; and we have duly lodged the shields and crossbows, parted from the rest, upon the champaign of Toledo; whither should arrive more shields from Valladolid, that all together may be carried to Cazorla.”
SPANISH SWORDS
(Royal Armoury, Madrid)
The article from which I quote this passage adds that the palace of the archbishop at Alcalá de Henares was fortified with cannon until the beginning of the nineteenth century.[141]