lear the Romagna about 1820, though at a heavy cost of life to his
soldiers--mostly Bohemian Jaegers--from the malaria.

The history of brigandage in Spain is very similar. It may be said to have
been endemic in and south of the Sierra Morena. In the north it has
flourished when government was weak, and after foreign invasion and civil
wars. But it has always been put down easily by a capable administration.
It reached its greatest heights in Catalonia, where it began in the strife
of the peasants against the feudal exactions of the landlords. It had its
traditional hero, Roque Guinart, who figures in the second part of Don
Quixote. The revolt against the house of Austria in 1640, and the War of
the Succession (1700-1714), gave a great stimulus to Catalan brigandage.
But it was then put down in a way for which Italy offers no precedent. A
country gentleman named Pedro Veciana, hereditary _balio_ (military and
civil lieutenant) of the archbishop of Tarragona in the town of Valls,
armed his farm-servants, and resisted the attacks of the brigands. With the
help of neighbouring country gentlemen he formed a strong band, known as
the Mozos (Boys) of Veciana. The brigands combined to get rid of him by
making an attack on the town of Valls, but were repulsed with great loss.
The government of Philip V. then commissioned Veciana to raise a special
corps of police, the "escuadra de Cataluna," which still exists. For five
generations the colonel of the escuadra was always a Veciana. At all times
in central and northern Spain the country population has supported the
police when the government would act firmly. Since the organization of the
excellent constabulary called "La Guardia Civil" by the duke of Ahumada,
about 1844, brigandage has been well kept down. At the close of the Carlist
War in 1874 a few bands infested Catalonia, but one of the worst was
surprised, and all its members battered to death with boxwood cudgels by a
gang of charcoal-burners on the ruins of the castle of San Martin de
Centellas. In such conditions as these brigandage cannot last. More
sympathy is felt for "bandoleros" in the south, and there also they find
Spanish equivalents for the "manutengoli" of Italy. The tobacco smuggling
from Gibraltar keeps alive a lawless class which sinks easily into pure
brigandage. Perhaps the influence of the Berber blood in the population
helps to prolong this barbarism. The Sierra Morena, and the Serrania de
Ronda, have pro