There had been closer and earlier and longer ties than those of the campaigns against the French between Spain and Ireland. According to the annals of the Four Masters (translated by the father of the late Edmond O'Donovan), the Clanna-Milidh set sail from Galicia and invaded the Emerald Isle in the year 1698 before the Christian era. They established the Milesian dynasty, which lasted two thousand eight hundred and seventy years--rather a better record than we meet in Bulgaria, modern Greece, and sometimes even in Spain itself. Galway, _teste_ Kohl, carries the imagination to Granada and Valencia. At the beginning of the eighteenth century there were six Irish regiments at least in the Spanish service, namely, those of Hibernia, Irlanda, Limerick, Ultonia, and Waterford (all infantry), and the Dragoons of Dublin. There was also an infantry regiment called Conacia, or Wauchop, after its commander, one of a fighting family well known in the Lothians. There were officers of my name in the Limerick and Ultonia corps, as there are in the Spanish army still.[B] Most of these Irish organizations were disbanded at the close of the last century, and all had lost their purely Irish character, although the titles, Hibernia, Ultonia, and Irlanda, were retained on the list till 1833. Naturally, and because of profession and certain associations, I took an interest in soldiers, and, at the risk of offending the lady-reader who is waiting for the romantic part of this book, I intend to devote a chapter to the Spanish army. Such judgment as I have to offer is formed not alone upon what I saw at Madrid, but afterwards, when I had opportunity of watching the troops at work. Before going any further, I may unreservedly confess that I hold a high opinion of the Spanish soldier. He is sober, enduring, brave, and an indefatigable marcher. Better raw material for warfare, I am sure, could not readily be come at, and I am equally sure that if more attention were paid to drill, and if the curse of morbid aspirations for promotion amongst the lower grades were more rigidly repressed, the Spanish army would regain its ancient renown. This restless and diseased ambition is not to be traced to the rank and file, but to those immediately above them, the men with a puffed-up idea of themselves, and a smattering of education, and is often developed by the connivance of their immediate superiors. Let us take an example. In 1866 there was an uprising in favour of Prim, headed by the sergeants of artillery at the San Gil barracks, in Madrid. Captain Hidalgo was privy to the plot, which eventuated in a fiasco, but not before sundry officers of the regiment had lost their lives. A large number of the sergeants were summarily shot a few days afterwards. Hidalgo escaped. In the November of 1872, Hidalgo, then a General, was appointed Master-General of the Ordnance by Amadeus. Amongst the artillery there is a strong _esprit de corps_, and the officers in a