Excerpt from Spanish Arms and Armour: Being a Historical and Descriptive Account of the Royal Armoury of Madrid IN compiling this volume I believe I can claim, in a sense, to have broken new ground, for although a description of the Spanish Royal Armoury finds a place in every Guide and Hand book to Madrid, no exhaustive survey Of the contents of this priceless treasure-house, apart from the official catalogue, is in existence. The present work is based on the admirable catalogue prepared in 1898 at the instigation of Queen Maria Cristina by the Conde de Valencia de San Juan, to whom, with peculiar pleasure, I desire to make full acknowledgment of my indebtedness. To the formal descriptions of the exhibits, which the Conde de San Juan has collated with invariable accuracy, I have prefixed a brief sketch of the historical develop ment of Spanish arms and armour, which, I venture to hope, will make the book more acceptable, both to the Specialist in armour, and to those who visit the Armoury without any particular knowledge of the subject. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.