Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/541

MILITARY POLICY OF THE SOVEREIGNS. 395 grateful to the nobility of a court, circumscribed chapter XI. bejond every other in Europe by stately and cere- '- — monious etiquette. ^^ The duration of the war of Granada was such as to raise the militia throughout the kingdom nearly to a level with regular troops. Many of these levies, indeed, at the breaking out of the war, might pretend to this character. Such were those fur- nished by the Andalusian cities, which had been long accustomed to skirmishes with their Moslem neighbours. Such too was the well-appointed chiv- alry of the military orders, and the organized militia of the hermandad, which we find sometimes supply- ing a body of ten thousand men for the service. To these may be added the splendid throng of cavaliers and hidalgos, who swelled the retinues of the sovereigns and the great nobility. The king was attended in battle by a body-guard of a thousand knights, one half light, and the other half heavy armed, all superbly equipped and mounted, and trained to arms from childhood, under the royal eye. Although the burden of the war bore most composi. ~ tion of the heavily on Andalusia, from its contiguity to the ^™^" scene of action, yet recruits were drawn in abun- dance from the most remote provinces, as Galicia, Biscay, and the Asturias, from Aragon, and even the transmarine dominions of Sicily. The sove- reigns did not disdain to swell their ranks with 25 Abarca, Reyes de Aragon, dez, Reyes Catolicos, MS., cap. ubi supra. — Peter Martyr, Opus 68. — Zurita, Anales, torn, iv, cap. Epist. lib. 1, epist. 41. — Bernal- 58.