on the Italian model; separatism became a fact during the War of Spanish Succession; and in the wars of the Revolution the sympathies of Barcelona, if not of Catalonia at large, were French.* But the tendency has not been confined to that province, where it might be explained by industrial, linguistic, and racial reasons. During the short-lived Republic (1873-74), federalism prevailed not only in Catalonia but throughout Andalusia, taking, in Cartagena and elsewhere, the extreme form of Parisian Communism. The Carlism of Navarre has been of course monarchical and not theoretically separistic; but, were there no Christinos, Carlism would lose its meaning, while racial divergence would survive. Barcelona, as is well known, is federalist, to say the least, to this day; while, in a general upheaval, the Cantabrian mountains would form an almost inevitable political boundary between the stirring population, industrial and maritime, of well-wooded and well-watered Asturias and Galicia, and the sleepier folk of the cornlands of red-brown León. Democracy in Portugal appears to make the union with Spain even less probable than before, for the two peoples dislike each other, and dynastic fusion has been the only hope for union. The separation of the Central and South American republics may be borne in mind, particularism reaching its climax, to the delight or despair of the philatelist, within the Republic of Colombia. These considerations give a deeper meaning to Mr Merriman's repeated insistence on the invariable spirit of autonomy in medieval Spain, whether Christian or Moslem-a spirit inherited from the most ancient times.

Spanish history cannot be read with any comfort until Castile, Aragon with its co-partners Catalonia and Valencia, Navarre and Portugal take definite shape. The cradle of Castile was the Cave of Covadonga, issuing from which the Christian remnant first beat back the Mussulman. This is one of the greatest historic sites; and, whatever element of legend there may be, no

Cf. Peyron, Le Catalan se considère comme faisant un peuple à part ; il a plus d'une fois formé le projet d'ériger son pays en république.' 'Nouveau Voyage en Espagne, 1777 et 1778,' ii, 141.

traveller can visit it without emotion. The little kingdom of Asturias, which sprang from this with Oviedo as its capital, spread across the Cantabrian mountains, and was swallowed by its own offspring, the kingdom of León. From León two daughter States broke off, Castile to the East and Portugal to the West. The stirring Count of Burgos, Fernán Gonzalez, won autonomy for Castile, mainly by the aid of the Caliph Abd-ar-Rahman III. After many changes of fortune Castile and León were for a moment re-united under a King of Navarre, a Gallo-Iberian State broken off from the Carolingian Empire. Shaking itself loose, Castile absorbed León, and from 1230, in the reign of Saint Ferdinand, the mother and daughter States were never separated. Portugal, meanwhile, under a Burgundian dynasty, which had taken a valorous part in the Crusade, hardened off into an independent State when Affonso Henriquez, the conqueror of Lisbon (1147), obtained the royal title from the Pope. Henceforth Portugal passes out of Mr Merriman's picture until its annexation by Philip II.

The origins of Aragon are quite distinct. Originally a Carolingian county, it fell under the lordship of Navarre, which it afterwards absorbed, just as Castile had overmastered León. Saragossa, its later capital, was conquered from the Moors in 1118, a feat comparable to the capture of Toledo by Castile in 1085. Navarre, after emancipating itself, passed in 1234 to the house of Champagne, and became politically French until its conquest by Ferdinand the Catholic. Aragon meanwhile had secured a magnificent compensation for her loss by the betrothal of her infant heiress to Ramon Berenguer, Count of Barcelona, who became king in 1137. Hitherto the Aragonese aristocracy had been a somewhat sleepy conservative race, clinging to its semi-feudal institutions, having few external ambitions, content with its recent conquests, allowing Castile to creep round its southern borders. Her new kings were to rouse Aragon from her slumbers. They held a gate into France through Cerdagne, were lords of Provence, Millau, and Gévaudan, later of Roussillon, Foix, Nîmes and Béziers, Montpellier and the County of Urgel. Of more permanent importance was it that they had in Barcelona a

port with old traditions of Mediterranean trade, a hive of industry and enterprise, whether by land or sea, and a racial connexion with the whole Ligurian race round the Tuscan gulf to the bay of Spezia.

The 13th century found Castile and Aragon with characters and programmes essentially different. The Castilians were a military race, pushing southwards at intervals against the Moors, averse from labour, concentrated for protection in towns, which were controlled by noble families. Their one maritime enterprise was the partial conquest of the Canaries; and this was the work of a Norman and a Poitevin sailing from La Rochelle, who put their acquisitions under Henry IV's protection in 1402. The history of the reconquest may disappoint readers of a romantic temperament. The Christians advanced spasmodically. During long, dreary stretches little happened, save raids on both sides. Between the fluctuating frontiers was a barren breadth of No Man's land. The Crown, with no standing forces of its own, relied on nobles who fought mainly for their own hand, and on the Church, which received a generous share of spoils, in particular the metropolitan see of Toledo. The nobles had no hesitation in joining the Moors against their king; Spanish and Moorish States alike did not scruple to aid each other against their respective co-religionists. There was little fanaticism or even fervour; a certain tolerance was rather the rule than the exception. Such religious revivals as there were came usually from across the Straits, and caused a corresponding liveliness in one or more of the Christian kingdoms.

The story of Aragon has much more variety and life. It was, perhaps, no disadvantage that, as an indirect consequence of the Albigensian wars, she lost all her French possessions except Roussillon and Montpellier. Her paths were on the great waters. Her very Crusade

* The contrast between the town life of Spanish nobles and that of the country-loving aristocracy of England, France and Germany is marked by the ironical expression Châteaux d'Espagne,' which is much older than is usually supposed. Don John of Austria perhaps misunderstood its significance when in a letter of Nov. 24, 1571, he wrote:-'I ramble on, building a thousand castillos en Francia; and finally all they and I collapse in the wind without any hope of sounder structure.'-'Lettere di D. Giovanni d'Austria a D. Giovanni Andrea Doria I.' Ed. by Principe D. Alfonso Doria Pamphili, 1896.

was primarily maritime, for James I conquered the Moors in Majorca before he won Valencia. James I's successor, Pedro III, carried his sails yet further. Taking up, on behalf of his Hohenstaufen wife, the glove thrown down by Conradin before his execution in the market-place at Naples, he accepted the call of the revolted Sicilians, surely the bravest challenge ever made by so small a kingdom. Pedro withstood not only the power of the Angevin King of Naples, but all the force of France and the Papal thunderbolts. His two eldest sons, Alfonso III and James II, forsook indeed their Sicilian subjects on promotion to the Crown of Aragon, but the third, Frederick, manfully took up the fight, though James himself was added to his enemies. Thus Sicily, though an Aragonese State, was separated from the Crown, to return to it in 1409, a year before Martin's decease.

James II received from Boniface VIII the lordship of Corsica and Sardinia, as a bribe for betraying Sicily. This was a gift-horse whose mouth would not bear inspection, for Corsica belonged to Genoa, while Sardinia was disputed by Pisans, Genoese and the islanders under their four chiefs called Judges. By the end of his reign James, by playing off Genoese against Pisans, conquered Sardinia, though the Aragonese hold was never secure until a century later, when Alfonso V stamped out Genoese influence, all but conquered Corsica, and at his death was blockading Genoa herself.

For pure adventure Mr Merriman's most fascinating theme is the tale of the Catalan Company, which may be read at greater length in Mr W. Miller's 'The Latins in the Levant.' These mercenaries, disbanded by Frederick II of Sicily after the peace of Caltabellotta (1302), took service under the Greek Emperor Andronicus, and at once became a terror to their foes and still more to their friends. Having marched through Asia Minor to the Cilician Gates and back, they settled on the Gallipoli Peninsula, which was, according to their chronicler Muntaner, the most delightful cape in the world, with good bread, good wine, and all the fruits in plenty. Thence they marched, fighting and plundering, through Thrace, Macedonia and the Thessalian cornlands to Bocotia, and here in the marshes of the Kephissos broke

for ever the power of the Frankish nobility of the Morea and Northern Greece, who had gathered round Walter of Brienne, Duke of Athens. Married to the widows of the slain, they became a settled dominant power, treating the Greeks as later the Conquistadores treated the natives of the Indies. Not content with Athens, they again extended northwards, and annexed Neo-Patras, the territory of Salonika. Greeks, Franks, Venetians, Turks were now all their enemies; so, to give their duchies some diplomatic status, they did homage to Frederick II of Sicily, and later to Pedro IV of Aragon, and so brought themselves within the scope of Mr Merriman.

Weakened by two generations of idleness, the Catalans fell at length before the Florentine house of Acciaiuoli, which pounced upon them from the vantage-post of Corinth. They left scarcely a trace on Greece except a bad name among the native population, which lasted, according to Mr Miller, till a century ago, when Catalan' was a term of abuse, just as 'A regular Hanoverian' is among old Norfolk peasants to this day. The Catalans, indeed, were nowhere popular. On Alfonso V's death, Neapolitan hatred of his Catalan mercenaries determined the populace to support the illegitimate Ferrante, the rè Taliano, against his legitimate nephew Don Carlos, whom the nobles backed. When Calixtus III died, the Romans massacred all the Catalans they could find, and would so have served their master, the Pope's nephew Joffré, had they caught him. French travellers of the 18th century describe Catalans as the rudest and least sober of all Spaniards, but also the most industrious, for drunkenness, says one, is both cause and effect of industry.

Confusion, usual in Spanish kingdoms, was worse confounded in the period which preceded the union of the Crowns. Both Mr Merriman and Miss Plunket, in her attractive study of Isabella, devote much space to this, for, without some knowledge of it, the vital importance of the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella cannot be understood. In Castile, Aragon and Navarre there were disputed successions and concomitant rebellions. If Spain were left to herself, and if Iberian unity were to emerge from the welter, the prize would probably fall to Aragon. She had been ruled by three exceptionally clever kings of the Castilian house of