Pizarro’s sword is marked G35 (plate 170). The blade is rigid and diamond shaped, with strong ricasso, on which is stamped the name of the Valencian swordsmith, Mateo Duarte. The hilt is of blued steel, richly decorated with leaves and ornaments in inlaid gold; with straight arms, _pas d’ane_ with branches to the ricasso, a hand-guard to the pommel, and disc-like pommel. This sword in 1809 came into the possession of a Scotch soldier of fortune, Sir John Downie, who used it against the French, and died a Spanish Marshal and Governor of the Alcazar in 1826. In August 1813, Sir John was wounded and taken prisoner; yet he contrived to throw back to his followers this famous weapon, that its honour might remain unsullied.
Charles V.’s son and successor, Philip II., was more a statesman than a soldier. In his youth, however, remarks the learned compiler of the Catalogue, he was accounted a clever tilter, and jousts were frequently organised on the occasions of his visits to Italy, Germany, and Flanders. The Conde de Valencia indignantly rebuts the allegation that this Monarch was opposed to martial exercises and even physically deformed. “The truth of the latter statement may be judged by examining his armour, the lines of which are a model of proportion and regularity.”
To Philip are ascribed six harnesses, arranged like those of his father, each on two or more figures.
The first suit (A189-A216) is styled the _arnés de lacerías_, from the tracery of its decorative lengths. It was made at Augsburg in 1545, by Desiderius Colman, a year before that artificer turned out the Mühlberg suit for Charles V. We extract the following particulars from the Catalogue of 1898:
“It is the young prince’s first armour on becoming a man (18), as stated in the Inventory of the Royal Armoury of 1594. From childhood the Colmans had made his armour, as they had done for his august father, and when it ceased to fit him he distributed it among the youths of the Court. This armour, then, was ordered of Desiderius Colman; but the decoration was doubtless by a Spanish artist in the service of the Prince, named Diego de Arroyo; clear proof of this we find in a note in the Chamberlain’s book, dated Feb. 3rd, 1544 (a date which also appears on the left cuisse of the equestrian figure A190), reading thus: ‘Firstly, Diego de Arroyo designed all the pieces of a suit of armour to be engraved, to send to Germany, so that by it a suit of armour might be made for His Highness--three ducats are given him.’”