in 1560 mentions a coursing helmet of Saragossa, a jazeran skirt of Lumberque, and a cabasset of Segovia, and a Barcelona buckler is found in the inventory of Puymolinier in 1564. At Solingen, as at Toledo, the blade industry was carried on by a great number of workmen each working independently in his own workshop, and they went on from father to son down to the beginning of the last century.[1] The output of Solingen was immense. In the XVIIth century it supplied vast quantities of blades to Spain for the cheaper and commoner swords mounted there, made more or less on the Toledan model and with inscriptions more or less incorrectly written in Spanish, but inferior in make and finish to the Spanish ones. Not a few Solingen blades, too, are found in English hilts. Some blades, however, of very fine quality were made at Solingen, those signed by Clemens Horn at the end of the XVIth century being especially remarkable and not unfrequently found in swords mounted for princes and great personages in other countries. In the XVIIIth century Solingen appears to have supplied almost the whole of the small sword blades used in Europe, each country mounting them according to its taste. In France also there were many sword makers, some of whose names have been preserved to us. Jodocus Sincerus in 1549[2] says that very elegant sword hilts were made at Bar-le-Duc, whence it was rare that those who passed there did not buy some, a statement repeated by Du Verdier in 1662.[3] A great number of armourers are known to have lived at Grenoble towards the close of the XVIth[4] and during the XVIIth centuries, and they probably dealt in the weapons which were made at Annecy[5] and at Bordeau in Savoy. Those of Annecy are mentioned as early as 1518. Bayonne was celebrated for its daggers and poinards, and gave its name to the bayonet. In 1655 we read: "A présent on y fait de meilleures dagues qu'on appelle des bayonettes ou des bayonnes simplement."[6] In 1536 Antwerp was doing a great trade in arms, for we learn that when the Emperor Charles V was sending a fleet to Copenhagen at that date, almost all the war material necessary for the crews and the expeditionary force was purchased from four merchants of that city who furnished the armour for the infantry, war swords, the gilt partisan of the Admiral, 25 suits of armour for the officers of his household, 25 suits for the captains, and 1,000 suits for the foot soldiers, each with its secrete or steel skull cap, several thousand pikes and javelins with fine Gorcum heads and 450 haquebuts.[7] Holland, too, produced armour of which some examples can still be identified in collections. As late as 1641 we find Mr. John Evelyn bespeaking a suit of horseman's armour at the Hague, which
- ↑ Rudolf Cronau, Geschichte der Solinger Klingenindustrie (Stuttgart, 1885).
- ↑ Jodocus Sincerus, Itinerarium Galliae (Amsterlodium, 1649).
- ↑ Du Verdier, Le Voyage de France, 1662.
- ↑ Edmond Magnien, Les Artistes Grenoblois (Grenoble, 1887).
- ↑ J. le Saige, Voyage en Terre-Sainte.
- ↑ Borel, Tresor des recherches et antiquités gauloises.
- ↑ E. van Vinkeroy, L'Art ancien à l'Exposition Nationale Belge (Bruxelles, 1881).
