The national love of the sword and buckler was encouraged in the Spaniards by many of their sovereigns, foremost among whom was the warrior-King, Charles V. In the beginning of the sixteenth century the crown of Spain passed to this prince, the grandson and heir of Maximilian of Germany, in whose veins flowed the blood of the martial Dukes of Burgundy. Maximilian had done more than any other monarch to encourage and advance the armourer’s art, and Charles V.’s passion for the practice and perfecting of arms, and all that pertained to military equipment, was even greater than that evinced by his grandfather. By a fortunate combination of circumstances, supplemented by his lust of conquest, he found himself the monarch of three realms, in one of which (Spain) the love of arms was almost a mania, while in the other two (Germany and Italy) the armourer’s craft had attained a degree of perfection that has not been approached in any other age or country. The sovereign that could command the services of the Colmans of Augsburg and the Negrolis of Milan was in an unequalled position for one who desired to gratify a taste for armour, and Charles did not neglect his opportunity. He patronised liberally the master-craftsmen of Italy and Germany, sedulously stimulating their rivalry the while, and at his death left to Spain--the worthiest of his realms to inherit it--the finest collection of knightly harnesses that any monarch had ever possessed. It will be gathered from the following brief sketch that Spain has achieved distinction both as a manufactory and a storehouse of arms. Aragon, and, to a less marked extent, Castile, were always in the van where the improvement of armour was concerned; and although experts consider that Italy set the fashion in the craft during the Middle Ages, it is by no means certain that Barcelona did not, at some periods, assume the lead. Swords, as in the days of the Cæsars, continued to be exported to Italy from Catalonia through the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, the traffic, curiously enough, being chiefly in the hands of that unwarlike race, the Jews.