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In the year 1507 the Inquisition of Calahorra burned more than thirty women as sorceresses and magicians, and twenty years later, in Navarre, there were similar condemnations.

The marriage was celebrated with great pomp and the king gave Rodrigo four cities as a marriage portion. Rodrigo, vowing that he would not be worthy of his wife until he had won five battles, after a pious pilgrimage to the shrine of the patron saint, hastened off to Calahorra, a frontier town claimed by two kings the kings of Castile and Oregon.

And he ordered them to take up Don Martin Gonzalez, and they carried the body into his own lands, and he went with it, and Calahorra remained in the power of King Don Ferrando.

To oppose it Blake had thirty-two thousand Spaniards at Valmaseda as the left wing of the Spanish army, and La Romana, having disembarked at Santander, soon arrived with eight thousand more; the center, twenty-five thousand strong, lay between Calahorra and Tudela under Castaños; the right seventeen thousand in number, was at and near Saragossa under Palafox.

At that time a monastery surrounded by a few miserable huts seems to have been all that was left of the Roman seaport; this monastery was dedicated to the martyr saints Emeterio and Celedonio, for it was, and still is, believed that they perished here, and not in Calahorra, as will be seen later on.

VIII. Now the history relates that King Don Ferrando contended with King Don Ramiro of Aragon for the city of Calahorra, which each claimed as his own; in such guise that the King of Aragon placed it upon the trial by combat, confiding in the prowess of Don Martin Gonzalez, who was at that time held to be the best knight in all Spain, King Don Ferrando accepted the challenge, and said that Rodrigo of Bivar should do battle on his part, but that he was not then present.

There is no occasion to give a detailed account here of that expedition, which appertains much more to the history of Spain than to that of France. There was a brief or almost no struggle. Henry of Transtamare was crowned king, first at Calahorra, and afterwards at Burgos.

Without a moment's hesitation Ney was now despatched to the southeast in order to fall on Castaños's rear, while Lannes was to unite Moncey's corps with Lagrange's division and attack his front. The Spanish general was posted, as has been said, on the Ebro between Calahorra and Tudela. Before the twentieth the two moves had been executed and all was in readiness.

When the Roman conquerors marched through the stricken city they could discover nothing but "ruin, blood, solitude, and horror." By B. C. 72 practically all of Spain had submitted to the Romans, but Pompey found to his surprise that the old Spanish spirit was not entirely dead when he attempted to take possession of the town of Calahorra on the Ebro. The details of the affair almost pass belief.

The Roman military road from Tarragon to Astorga passed through the Rioja, and Calahorra, a Celtiberian stronghold slightly to the south, was conquered by the invaders after as sturdy a resistance as that of Numantia itself.