One of these, Isabel’s confessor Fra Fernando de Talavera, while making her a last offer of the hand of the Prince of Asturias, assured her that she had chosen the better part, from which no true friend or adviser would tempt her to turn aside. To this the Princess answered that her decision had been given willingly and without reward; and thus passed for the time being from the pages of history. CHAPTER V ORGANIZATION AND REFORM Isabel and Ferdinand had emerged victorious from the Portuguese war; but the wounds their power had received were to be long in healing; and one at least, the poverty of their exchequer, remained a constant sore and vexation. A certain Canon of Toledo, in an oration made to the Catholic sovereigns at the height of their power, recalls the opening of their reign: You received your sceptre [he said] from the hands of the Most High God ... at a time when the flames of civil war burned fiercely and the rights of the community were well-nigh lost. Then were our swords employed, not to defend the boundaries of Christendom, but to rip up the entrails of our country. Enemies at home drank greedily the blood of our citizens; he was the most esteemed among us who was the strongest in violence; justice and peace were far removed. Murder, rape, and robbery! These, according to the Sicilian historian Lucio Marineo, were hourly crimes, perpetrated without fear of punishment by the marauding bands, who haunted the highways, and even commandeered royal fortresses and strongholds as bases of operations for their raids. “Many a man was taken prisoner,” says Marineo, “whose relations ransomed him no less dearly than if he had been a captive of the Moors or of some other enemy of the Holy Catholic Faith.” In a letter, written in the autumn of 1473, Hernando de Pulgar portrays no less clearly the absolute negation of government in Southern Spain. Andalusia is the prey of rival families; for the moment they have consented to a truce, but none knows whether the exhausted land will bear, nor who will reap the harvest. As to the neighbouring province of Murcia, “I dare swear, Señor,” adds Pulgar, “that we look on it as a country more alien than Navarre, seeing that it is now over five years since letter, messenger, procurador, or magistrate, either went or came from thence.” Amid such scenes of anarchy, the mass of the people made what shift they could to protect their lives and goods. In their despair, “God,” in the words of the chronicler, “inspired them,” so that they endeavoured to take the justice that had been denied them into their own hands. Here and there throughout the country troops of armed men were raised who, under the title of “La Santa Hermandad,” or “Holy Brotherhood,” bound themselves to maintain the peace of their district and to punish evildoers.