Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 1).djvu/50

 the less carburized or milder portions of the laminated bar; thus equalising the temper of the whole mass, and conferring on it a far greater uniformity of texture than at first sight would appear possible. It was clearly to the skill of the operator, and the exercise of an empirical knowledge acquired by long practice, that the world was in those days indebted for the excellent blades produced. Each piece of steel thus produced had its own special degree of strength and elasticity. The artisan continually tested it again and again, and if he found it too hard, he exposed the blade in the open air for many months to rust and get milder, or he buried some parts of it in charcoal powder on his forge hearth, and patiently waited many hours while he kept up a gentle fire under it, so as further to carburize the edge or the point as he deemed advisable, but without affecting the general temper of the whole blade; he had also his own special and peculiar mode of hardening and tempering, and, in fact, he impressed his own individuality upon a blade that might either save the life of a prince or change the destiny of a kingdom."

I quote at length this great authority on all that relates to steel, because his account of the method used in the Catalan forges appears to me completely to explain many of the peculiarities which I have observed in the metal of which the armour and weapons of the XVth or early XVIth century were made, during a long experience of cleaning and putting them in order. The great requirements in the steel for armour and weapons were, hardness combined with elasticity and extreme toughness, and those qualities, united in a very remarkable degree, exist in the finer examples of the XVth or early XVIth centuries which I have handled. Occasionally, however, one meets with a piece in which there is a distinct difference of hardness and elasticity in its various parts. This is a defect originating in a lesser carburation of some part of the metal of which it was made, and would be easily accounted for by the process of manufacture described above. It might be very advisable that the blade of a hafted weapon or a sword should be somewhat milder towards the haft or the hilt than at the point, and this could be easily attained by the process described by Sir Henry, but a breast- or back-plate should be of uniform texture, and it is in these that I have sometimes found defects of homogeneity. On the other hand I possess an Italian armet, the surface of which is so intensely hard that neither file nor emery will touch it, and the same intense hardness was observed in the English XIVth century helm of Sir Richard Pembridge, when it was exhibited at the Royal Archaeological Institute in 1880. Indeed, a study of the actual metal of which the best armour and weapons were made is a very interesting and instructive one, and it is strange that the later the armour, the poorer the material employed, until, in that used during the Civil Wars in England, it is sometimes little better than common iron.

There is a curious account of how to make a suit of armour in the rare little book by Juan Quijada de Reayo, to which I have already referred, and which internal