Cannon are mentioned with increasing frequency throughout the fifteenth century; and in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella we read of lombards of enormous size, which had to be dragged across the Andalusian hills and plains by many scores of men and beasts; which frequently stuck fast and had to be abandoned on the march; and which, even in the best of circumstances, could only be discharged some twice or thrice a day.
In reading documents and chronicles of older Spain, it is easy to confound the early forms of cannon with the engines similar to those employed by the Crusaders in the Holy Land, and built for hurling stones or arrows of large size. Such engines were the trabuco, the almajanech or almojaneque, the algarrada, and the fundíbalo or Catalan fonevol. Beuter, in his Chronicle of Spain and of Valencia, describes the latter as “a certain instrument which has a sling made fast to an extremity of wood … made to revolve so rapidly that the arm, on being released, projects the stone with such a force as to inflict much harm, even in distant places, whither could reach no missile slung by the hand of man.”
Turning to portable Spanish firearms, we find that the precursor of the arquebus, musket, and rifle seems to have been a weapon which was introduced about the middle of the fifteenth century, and called the espingarda. Alfonso de Palencia says it was employed against the rebels of Toledo in 1467; and the Chronicle of Don Alvaro de Luna relates that when this nobleman was standing beside Don Iñigo d'Estúñiga, upon a certain occasion in 1453, “a man came out in his shirt and set fire to an espingarda, discharging the shot thereof above the heads of Don Alvaro and of Iñigo d'Estúñiga, but wounding an esquire.”
MARKS OF TOLEDAN ARMOURERS (15TH–17TH CENTURIES), FROM SWORDS IN THE ROYAL ARMOURY AT MADRID
As time advanced, portable firearms of first-rate quality were made throughout the northern Spanish provinces, and also in Navarra, Cataluña, Aragon, and Andalusia. The inventory of the Dukes of Alburquerque mentions, in 1560, “four flint arquebuses of Zaragoza make … another arquebus of Zaragoza, together with its fuse,” and “arquebuses of those that are made within this province” (i.e. of Segovia). Cristóbal Frisleva, of Ricla in Aragon, and Micerguillo of Seville were celebrated makers of this arm; but probably these and all the other Spanish masters of this craft derived their skill from foreign teaching, such as that of the brothers Simon and Peter Marckwart (in Spanish the name is spelt Marcuarte,) who were brought to Spain by Charles the Fifth.[142]
The Royal Armoury contains some finely decorated guns, made for the kings of Spain at the close of the seventeenth century and early in the eighteenth, by Juan Belen, Juan Fernandez, Francisco Baeza y Bis, and Nicolás Bis. The last-named, pupil of Juan Belen, was a German; but all these gunsmiths lived and worked at Madrid. Nicolás was arquebus-maker to Charles the Second from 1691, and afterwards held the same post from Philip the Fifth. He died in 1726, and the Count of Valencia de Don Juan says that in 1808—that is, before it was plundered by the mob—the Royal Armoury contained no fewer than fifty-three weapons of his manufacture. One of the guns which bear his mark, and still exist, is inscribed with the words, “I belong to the Queen our lady” (Isabel Farnese, first wife of Philip the Fifth), combined with the arms of León and Castile, and of the Bourbon family. This weapon was used, or intended to be used, for hunting.
Diego Esquivel, another gunsmith of Madrid, was also famous early in the eighteenth century, as, later on, were Manuel Sutil, José Cano, Francisco Lopez, Salvador Cenarro, Isidro Soler (author of a Compendious History of the Arquebus-makers of Madrid), Juan de Soto, and Sebastián Santos.
