THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
and were the royal gunsmiths till after 1620, and other hardly less 
distinguished gunsmiths succeeded them. Spanish iron, especially that 
from Biscay, was considered to be incomparable. Spanish blades had long 
been famous; Spanish gun barrels now became so, and retained their pre- 
eminence for more than 200 years. De Espinar speaks of one Juan Salado, 
as having worked, among other places, at Salamanca; he was famous for 
his skill in rifling, boring, and straightening barrels, and also as a maker 
of wheel locks ; for in those days the armourer made every part of the 
weapon. Salado’s pupil and son-in-law, Juan Sanchez de Mirvena, gun- 
smith to Philip HI, introduced an improvement in the forging of gun 
barrels. Up to his time the method seems to have been to beat out a flat 
bar, and then to bend it over a steel mandril until its edges met, when 
they were butted together and welded. This could not but leave a continu- 
ous line of weakness along the whole length of the barrel. Even the improve- 
ment made by an overlap of the two edges did not entirely remove the 
objection. De Mirvena was the first to forge barrels otherwise than in a 
single piece. He shaped six or seven lumps of iron according to the part 
of the barrel for which they were intended, and welded them one to the 
other. If in forging a flaw appeared in one, then another could be sub- 
stituted, and as the joints were transverse, no flaw could extend any 
distance in the length of the barrel. De Mirvena’s barrels are stated to 
have resisted very heavy proof charges, and to have been acknowledged 
to be the best of their day. The standard proof charge in Spain at the time 
when de Espinar wrote was a load of powder equal to the weight of the 
ball which fitted the calibre, and four times this weight of shot; this proof 
being repeated three times. The usual calibre at this time appears to have 
been 22 or 24, and the weight of a barrel 4 feet long at least 4J lb. In the 
eighteenth century, the Spanish gunmakers twisted the iron of the barrel 
twice round upon itself, thus gaining great strength. 
The most famous of the Madrid gunmakers of the eighteenth century 
was Nicholas Biz, who died in 1724. We are told, half a century later, 
that barrels made by him and by his contemporaries, Juan Belen and 
Juan Fernandez, were worth in France as much as 1,000 livres, or £44. 
Biz was followed by many other famous makers, both in Madrid and in 
the provinces; in 1789 the barrels of the best contemporary artists of 
Madrid used to sell for 300 French livres, or over £13. The barrels made 
by the Spanish masters were in great demand in other countries, and, 
naturally enough, were largely counterfeited. The French gunmakers were 
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