Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 1, 2025
Hail to you, beggars of La Mancha! men and women, who, wrapped in coarse blankets, demand charity indifferently at the gate of the palace or the prison. Hail to you, valets from the mountains, mayordomos and secretaries from Biscay and Guipuscoa, toreros from Andalusia, riposteros from Galicia, shopkeepers from Catalonia! Hail to ye, Castilians, Estremenians and Aragonese, of whatever calling!
The traditions of medieval Lombardy and Normandy, and the French aristocratic influences which followed, all tended in this direction; and the Aragonese government, which was established by the middle of the fifteenth century, completed the work, and accomplished in Naples what followed a hundred years later in the rest of Italy a social transformation in obedience to Spanish ideas, of which the chief features were the contempt for work and the passion for titles.
It was besieged by the Aragonese Alfonso el Batallador, whose army advanced to the attack behind its prisoners, sons of Avila. Brothers, fathers, and relatives were thus obliged to fire upon their own kin if they wished to save their city.
Baffled in this and I can imagine his fury, which has since been vented on the Aragonese Philip sent his representatives and his jurists to accuse me before the Court of the Grand Justiciary and to conduct my prosecution. The trial began, exciting the most profound interest, not only in Aragon, but also in Castile, which, as I afterwards learnt, had openly rejoiced at my escape.
In Milan, Ludovico il Moro celebrated the event with public festivals; he now hoped to become, through the influence of his brother Ascanio, a "half pope." While the Medici expected much from Alexander, the Aragonese of Naples looked for little. Bitterly did Venice express herself.
The inhabitants of this borderland are, to judge by appearance, superior to the people of the plains, who certainly strike the casual observer as being dirty and somewhat dull. The Castilian and Aragonese, however, may be said to constitute the heart of the nation. Leon and Estremadura form a part of the same raised plateau, but their people are very different.
In San Juan de los Reyes, the Mudejar style left a unique specimen of what it might have developed into had it not been murdered by the Renaissance fresh from Italy, where Aragonese troops had conquered the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. With the first Philips and even earlier foreign workmen came over to Toledo in shoals from Germany, France, Flanders, and Italy.
And thereupon I instantly withdrew from Madrid and went to Alcala. Diego engaged five men to assist him in the task; these were a young officer named Enriquez, a lackey named Rubio, the two Aragonese Mesa and Insausti and another whose name was Bosque. He clearly meant to take no chances, but I incline to think that he overdid precaution, and employed more hands than were necessary for the job.
Savoy, which held the passage into the peninsula, was then thoroughly French in sympathy; Milan, under Lodovico Sforza, "il Moro," was in alliance with Charles; Genoa preferred the French to the Aragonese claimants for influence over Italy; the popular feeling in the cities, especially in Florence, was opposed to the despotism of the Medici, and turned to France for deliverance; the misrule of the Spanish Kings of Naples had made Naples thoroughly discontented; Venice was, as of old, the friend of France.
At almost the same time the French fleet had been beaten by the Aragonese; moreover, the battle of the Taro, though a complete defeat for the confederates, was another victory for the pope, because its result was to open a return to France for that man whom he regarded as his deadliest foe.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking