About the middle of the year 1365 a formidable expedition set out from France for the invasion of Castile. It consisted of the celebrated Free Companies, marauding bands of French and English knights and archers whose allegiance was to the sword, and who, having laid waste France, now sought fresh prey in Spain. Valiant and […]

In the spring succeeding the fall of Granada there came to Spain a glory and renown that made her the envy of all the nations of Europe. During the year before an Italian mariner, Christopher Columbus by name, after long haunting the camp and court of Ferdinand and Isabella, had been sent out with a […]

The golden age of Spain began in 1492, in which year the conquest of Granada extinguished the Arab dominion, and the discovery of America by Columbus opened a new world to the enterprise of the Spanish cavaliers. It continued during the reigns of Charles I. and Philip II., extending over a period of about a […]

On the 16th of September, 1571, there sailed from the harbor of Messina one of the greatest fleets the Mediterranean had ever borne upon its waves. It consisted of more than three hundred vessels, most of them small, but some of great bulk for that day, carrying forty pieces of artillery. On board these ships […]

In 1568 died Don Carlos, Prince of Asturias, the son of Philip II. of Spain; and in the same year died Isabella of Valois, the young and beautiful queen of the Spanish monarch. Legend has connected the names of Carlos and Isabella, and a mystery hangs over them which research has failed to dispel. Their […]

In October of the year 1555 a strange procession passed through a rugged and hilly region of Spain. At its head rode an alcalde with a posse of alguazils. Next came a gouty old man in a horse-litter, like a prisoner in the hands of a convoy of officers of justice. A body of horsemen […]

As Italy was invaded by Gonsalvo de Cordova, the Great Captain, so Africa was invaded by Cardinal Ximenes, the Great Churchman, one of the ablest men who ever appeared in Spain, despite the fact that he made a dreadful bonfire of thousands of Arabian manuscripts in the great square of Granada. The greater part of […]

A Hard-Shell Baptist Sermon (This characteristic effusion first appeared in a New Orleans paper. The locality is supposed to be a village on the bank of the Mississippi River, whither the volunteer parson had brought his flatboat for the purpose of trade.) I may say to you, my brethring, that I am not an edicated […]