Aragon is the poorest portion of this fair land, and Saragossa is its capital. In every age this little kingdom has been torn by war and has suffered heavily, but its people have never wavered in their faith, and are still among the most pious and superstitious of the many different races that people the Iberian Peninsula. They possess that strong attachment for their sterile plains and barren mountains so common to those who wring from Nature a bare existence. The Emperor Augustus, in the year 25 B.C., vastly improved "Salduba," and gave it the title of Cæsarea Augusta. When in the occupation of Rome it was a free city and had a coinage of its own. The first place in Spain to renounce Paganism, Saragossa has always been a city of great holiness. When besieged by the French under Childebert in 540, the inhabitants carried the stole of San Vicente round the walls--and the invader fled. The Infidel, however, proved less susceptible to a Christian relic, and the city fell to the weight of his arms in the eighth century. Being a Berber Infidel he recognised no Kalif of Cordova, and between the two there soon began one of those internecine conflicts that in the end led to the termination of Moorish rule. It was in this connection that Charlemagne was implored to assist the Northern Moor against the Andalusian and crossed the Pyrenees with an eye, no doubt, in the long run, to the acquisition of new territory. No sooner had he reached the plains of Aragon than he was recalled to quell a rising in his own dominions. His back turned, and he being presumably in retreat, the ungrateful people, eager for plunder, followed and inflicted on his rearguard a terrible defeat in the most famous Pyrenean Pass, the Pass of Roncesvalles, a disaster in which Roland, that hero of romance, lost his life. Thence onward, as the centuries went by, Saragossa was the scene of many a fight. Alfonso I. in 1118 recovered it from the Moor after a long siege, and Moslem rule was ended. [Illustration: SARAGOSSA. LA SEO] Saragossa is best known in the annals of its warfare for the heroic defence, immortalised by Byron, in the war with France. In the month of May 1808, the invader was close at hand, and the citizens organised themselves for defence. A young aristocrat, José Palafox, was chosen as the nominal leader, and had at his right hand the redoubtable peasant, Tio Jorge Ibort--Gaffer George. His two lieutenants were Mariano Cerezo and Tio Marin, while the courageous priest Santiago Sas assisted greatly, through his influence with the populace, to keep things together and prevent petty squabbles. One hundred _duros_ supplied the sinews of war! Sixteen cannon, a few old muskets and two hundred and twenty fighting men were all that the leaders could count upon to repel the army of Lefebvre.