Yet it was to supply the needs of no mere dilettante that the forges of Augsburg and Milan were kept glowing, that their anvils re-echoed unceasingly with ringing blows. Charles was a mighty War Lord. He used his armour in the tented field, his keen blade was waved aloft in the van of armies; and in times of peace, he yet loved to surround himself with the pomp and circumstance of glorious war. And when he laid aside the helmet for the monk’s cowl, he left his son the finest martial equipment any monarch had ever boasted before or since. Less of a soldier than his father, Philip II. was not slow to recognise the intrinsic value of the heritage. He ordered a house to be built specially for its reception, thus forming the foundation of a collection, which was added to from year to year by him and his successors. The manufacture of defensive armour practically ceased at the close of the seventeenth century, and the spoils of war became, alas! rarer in the course of the next hundred years. In the uprising against the French in 1808, the Armoury was plundered by the populace in their frantic hunger for weapons against the detested invader, and a year or two later the collection suffered considerably at the hands of the _Rey intruso_. In the forties, a complete re-arrangement took place by order of Queen Isabella II. A catalogue was issued in 1849, which was useful enough in its way, and made the priceless treasures it enumerated known to the world. But it displayed little critical or antiquarian skill, and perpetuated a score of picturesque and grotesquely misleading attributions. Different pieces were labelled as the sword of Bernardo del Carpio, the falchion of the Cid, the bit of Don Roderic, the helmet of Boabdil, the cuirass of Garcilaso de la Vega, etc. Doubtless in course of time the battle axe of Amadis de Gaul, the horn of Roland, and Mambrino’s helmet would have found their way into the catalogue. Luckily King Alfonso XII., soon after his accession, entrusted the collection to an antiquary of the new school, the late Count of Valencia de Don Juan. Years of labour and research, interrupted by a disastrous fire, resulted in a complete and admirable re-organisation and classification, and in the publication in 1898 of a catalogue which has conferred permanent lustre on the reputation of the erudite compiler.