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The French, under pressure at every point, had already been compelled to abandon Madrid, the two Castiles, and to recross the Ebro, to concentrate their main forces round the town of Vittoria.
Suero de Quiñones did not select Orbigo with reference to convenience of access from the Castiles, but because it must be passed by pilgrims to Santiago; and that year was especially sacred to the saint, whose festival, on the 25th of July, has always been celebrated with great pomp.
On every road of Spain, particularly those north of the mountains which divide the two Castiles, may be seen gangs of fives and sixes of these people lolling or sleeping beneath the broiling sun, on gigantic and heavily laden mutes and mules.
Arriving in Spain sometime during the summer of 1710, Vendôme displayed an activity which did not seem to comport with his habits, in order to reunite and arm the volunteers, who, from the summit of the Sierras, descended in swarms upon the plains of the two Castiles at the summons of a monarch become the personification of a patriot.
The Romans sought gradually to reduce to subjection the interior corresponding nearly to the two Castiles, which they comprehended under the general name of Celtiberia, while they were content with checking the incursions of the inhabitants of the western provinces, more especially those of the Lusitanians in the modern Portugal and the Spanish Estremadura, into the Roman territory; with the tribes on the north coast, the Callaecians, Asturians, and Cantabrians, they did not as yet come into contact at all.
An' off wint th' brave pathrite to do his jooty. He done it, too. Whin Cousin George was pastin' th' former hated Castiles, who was it stood on th' shore shootin' his bow-an-arrow into th' sky but Aggynaldoo?
So much was said and so much thought upon the subject, that at her departure the Queen of all Marguerites was charged, by these good Christians, to kiss the captive heartily for all the ladies of the realm; and if it had been permissible to prepare pleasure like mustard, the queen would have been laden with enough to sell to the two Castiles.
Where these now rose and sank with the long ground-swell of the plains in our own West, a thin gray stubble covered them from the feeble culture which leaves Spain, for all their extent in both the Castiles, in Estremadura, in Andalusia, still without bread enough to feed herself, and obliges her to import alien wheat.
We quitted without regret the elevated plain of the two Castiles, which is everywhere devoid of vegetation, and where the severity of the winter's cold is followed by the overwhelming heat of summer. The climate of the Castiles is much colder than that of Toulon and Genoa; its mean temperature scarcely rises to 15 degrees of the centigrade thermometer.
The French have been too long in the valley here, and are too strong in the Castiles for their operations. It is different in Navarre, Aragon, and Catalonia; and in Valencia and Mercia. There the French have never had a firm footing, and most of the strong places are still in Spanish hands. In all the mountainous parts, in fact, there are guerillas; but here it is too dangerous.
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