Among the trophies are the sword of the Duke of Weimar, taken at Nordlingen in 1634, the arms taken from Francis I. at Pavia, Moorish arms from Tunis, the breastplate of the Elector of Saxony, taken at Mühlberg, swords and standards from Lepanto, and flags taken by the famous Admiral Alvaro de Bazán. The arms belonging to his late Catholic Majesty, Alfonso XII., have also been added to the collection by the Queen Dowager, who well knew the profound interest her august husband took in this superb military museum.
No one visits Madrid without making an excursion to the Escorial, which is to the Spanish capital what the Pyramids are to Cairo. Indeed, there is more than one point of resemblance between these buildings. Both impress mainly by their size, both produce no sensations of pleasure in the beholder, both embody the solemn and crushing conception of the majesty of death entertained by great and despotic kings.
The thoughts of Philip II., like those of the Pharaohs, turned perpetually graveward, and it is perhaps doing no injustice to a genuinely devout character to say that he pondered as much on the abode of the body after death as on the post-mortem vicissitudes of his soul. The pomp of death which, according to the sage, is to most men more terrible than death itself, had a rare fascination for the Pharaohs and the King of Spain. Philip in his tomb seemed a finer figure to Philip living than Philip on his throne. Death as a catastrophe is attractive, of course, to all manner of people, not otherwise morbid. But it was death in its most generally repugnant aspect that appealed to this strange, sombre sovereign of the Spains, and it was that predominating conception that inspired him in the erection of the Escorial. The building is his idea of the majesty and finality of Death expressed in stone.
The story which immediately accounts for the founding of the Escorial is well known. On the 16th August 1557, the Spaniards commanded by Emmanuele Filiberto, Duke of Savoy, totally defeated the French under the walls of St Quentin. Philip arrived in time to assist at the taking of the town itself, to effect which it became necessary to demolish a convent dedicated to St Lawrence. By way of reparation to that saint, in thanksgiving for the victory, and in fulfilment of his father’s instructions to create a royal mausoleum, Philip determined to erect a vast monastery and palace under the invocation of St Lawrence. The present site having been chosen by a commission, the work was begun in the presence of the King himself, in the first week of April 1562. The plans were drawn by Juan Bautista de Toledo, an architect of distinction, who had studied at Rome and Naples. He died, however, in 1563, a few days after the laying of the first stone and the work was then entrusted to his assistant, the more celebrated Juan de Herrera (born in Asturias 1530, died at Madrid 1597). Villacastin, the Master of the Works, on being invited to assist at the ceremony of laying the first stone, replied, “Let others lay the first, I will place the last!” His words came true, for he laid on June 23rd, 1582, the last stone, which may be seen marked with a black cross on entering the Patio de los Reyes.