It would be very interesting to sketch the history and vicissitudes of the better known of these arsenals and armouries, but it would far outstrip the limits which the greatest indulgence might allow me at the present time; I may, however, be permitted to say something of those collections which were formed when armour was still in actual use. I should much wish to claim Charles V as a collector of armour, for although he collected mostly for his personal use, still he did cause his father's armour and other old pieces to be brought from Flanders. So great was his passion for it, that not only did he continually strive to obtain the finest made in his day, but it is reported that when he abdicated, the only worldly goods that he took with him to the monastery of San Yuste were his suits of armour, so that he might still gaze on the harness in which he had run courses in his youth as Duke of Burgundy, and the suit which he wore when, at the height of his fame, he won the battle of Mühlberg.
We next come to the greatest armour collector of all time, the Archduke Ferdinand Count of the Tyrol, himself a mighty jouster before the Lord. His tilting lance, still preserved at Vienna, is the biggest one known, being 15 inches in circumference at the vamplate, 14 feet 10 inches long, and weighing 39-1/2 lb. He also, and I think greatly to his credit, set an example often followed since in the House of Hapsburg, and married a lady, not a princess, said to be the most beautiful woman of her time, and, from a pretty long experience of collectors, I should say that he was not the only man who has combined a taste for beautiful arms with a love for fair women. It was after the marriage of the Archduke with Philippina Welser, the daughter of a wealthy Augsburg patrician, that his father, the Emperor Ferdinand, presented him with the Castle of Ambras near Innsbruck, and it was there that about 1580 the Count of the Tyrol formed his collection of arms, which after remaining in the castle for more than two centuries was for the most part removed to Vienna. His dominating idea in forming this collection was to unite in it the armour of the most illustrious emperors, kings, princes, and great captains, and his father's and his own influence at the courts of Europe enabled him to obtain a series of surpassing interest. In 1601 a book was published at Innsbruck[1] illustrating the most important suits in the collection, and it is worthy of remark that the attributions there given to each one have with scarcely any exceptions been accepted by modern criticism. No other collection in the world, not even Madrid, possesses so great a number of authentic historic suits, besides which it is unrivalled in the amount of armour of the XVth century, German, Italian, Burgundian, and Spanish which it contains.
Although in many arsenals and armouries historical armour and arms were preserved and shown to the curious who visited them, the next collector of whom I find
- ↑ J. Schrenk, Imperatorum, Regum, etc., imagines . . . quorum arma in Ambrosiane arcis armametario conspiciuntur, fol., Œniponti, 1601.
