From all that precedes, we can judge of the very great extent and importance of the manufacture of armour and arms in the Middle Ages, and at the time of the Renaissance: what a continual commerce and interchange in them existed between different countries, and also how great was the exportation of them from certain important centres of manufacture, especially from Milan. The names have been preserved of a number of Lombard and other Italian merchants who dealt in them in France; we have seen that Henry VIII bought a thousand Milan swords; Brantome speaks of the purchase of armour in large quantities at Milan for use in France, and a record has been preserved of the arms imported from Italy at Lyons from the 18th of August 1569 to the 21st of November of the same year. They consisted of: 258 dozen sword blades besides 12 bales of blades from Piedmont, 185 pair of pistols, 898 morions, 37 corselets, 22 light suits of armour, and 13 shields, besides arquibus barrels by the case, to be mounted in France, and scabbards and powder flasks in great quantities.[1] If we examine the accounts of royal and princely houses, we find that very large sums indeed were expended on armour and arms, especially on the splendid artistic productions of the XVIth century, and even the commoner forms of armour and weapons, when they had to be purchased by the thousand for the equipment of an army, must have represented what, for those days, was a very large expenditure. It is not astonishing therefore that the most important centres of their production became rich and prosperous, and there is evidence that the great master armourers of Milan and Augsburg became persons of wealth and importance, much as do our merchant princes, great manufacturers, iron masters and shipbuilders in the present day. We have an account of the richness of the paintings which adorned the interior of the Negroli palace near the Porta Cumana at Milan in 1584,[2] and later, when the trade in arms had almost died out in that city, these Negrolis became Marquises, and bore for their arms the very mark which they had stamped on the armour which they made as far back as the XVth century, the cross keys with the bits downwards, instead of upwards as in the Papal arms.[3] Matteo Bandello, the licentious novelist, who died Bishop of Agen, has left us a description of the wealth of Milan at the time when its trade in arms was at its highest. "You must know that Milan is at the present day the most opulent city in Italy, and the one where the table is best furnished and most succulent. Besides its greatness, which equals that of several other cities put together, it boasts a great number of very rich gentlemen, each one of whom would suffice to render another city illustrious, and if a hundred Milanese gentlemen
- ↑ J. B. Giraud, Documents sur l'Importation des armes Italiennes à Lyon (Lyon, 1885), where an immense importation in 1513 and many other smaller ones are mentioned.
- ↑ Discorso di Alessandro Lamo intorno alla Scultura et Pittura, etc., dall' Eccel. e Nobile M. Bernardino Campi Pittore Cremonense, 1584.
- ↑ J. B. Rietstap, Armorial Général, vol. ii, p. 302.
