These latter lived in frugal fashion. Water was their only drink; bread and the roots of plants their only food. Their clothing, too, was of the slightest, consisting merely of a shirt, high boots, and a kind of net upon the head. They wore no armour, and carried as their only weapons an _azagaya_ and a lance. Their principal value was in skirmishing. The infantry were also of two kinds. The first, collective or stipendiary, was levied by the towns and cities, and from them received its maintenance. The second was the _almogávares_, who served for scouting, like their mounted comrades of the same denomination. The stipendiary or regular troops proceeded chiefly from the northern provinces--Alava, Guipúzcoa, the Asturias, and the mountains of León, and carried commonly the lance, sword, sling, crossbow, and the _azagaya_--this last a dart-shaped missile borrowed from the Berber tribesmen,--the ancient Moorish _azgaya_, the modern _assagai_ or _assegai_ of Zululand.[113] [113] One of these weapons may be seen in the Royal Armoury (No. I. 95). It is made of iron covered with leather, and has a laurel-shaped blade with sharpened edges. The other end consists of two projecting pieces of the metal, shaped to resemble the plumes of an arrow. The length of this arm is 5 feet 8 inches. In a country which was plunged in ruinous and almost unremitting internecine strife; which was (and is) inherently averse to commerce or to agriculture; and where the bulk of all the national wealth was either locked away in churches and in convents, or in the coffers of great nobles who were frequently as wealthy as, or even wealthier than, the Crown, the armour of the common mediæval Spanish soldier consisted of the plain and necessary parts and nothing more. The aristocracy, upon the other hand, often adorned their battle-harness with the finest gold and silver work, and studded it with precious stones. Even the esquires would sometimes imitate their masters in this costly mode. "We command," said Juan the First in one of his pragmatics dating from the end of the fourteenth century, "that no shield-bearer shall carry cloth of gold or any manner of gold ornament upon his trappings, scarf, or saddle; or on his badge or arms, excepting only on the edges of his bassinet and his cuisses, together with the bit and poitral of his horse, which may be gilded." [Illustration: XLIII MOORISH CROSSBOW AND STIRRUP (_Museum of Granada_)]