Kings of three dynasties have made their homes in the Royal Palace of Madrid since the nineteenth century brought in with it so much havoc and disruption to Spain. The Bourbons, Joseph Buonaparte, and Amadeo of Savoy, each ‘abode his hour or two and went his way,’ and in 1873 and 1874 the palace windows looked out upon a city which for the first time since its foundation was the capital of a republic. Nearly all the culminating incidents in the stormy history which has been enacted in Spain since the abdication of Charles IV. occurred in the Royal Palace. From this not too secure eminence Ferdinand the Desired saw his guards slaughtered by the frenzied mob. ‘Serve the fools right,’ he exclaimed; ‘at all events I am inviolable.’ But the king had a fit of terror when he found his palace was left without guards to protect it from the crowd, and Riego, the man he hated, was taken into favour, in order that he might appease the populace. Through the terrible night of 7th October 1841, when Generals Concha and Leon made their determined attempt to kidnap Queen Isabella and her little sister, the Infanta Maria Luisa, the valiant eighteen halberdiers of the guard, commanded by Colonel Dalee, held the grand staircase of the palace against an army of revolutionists until the National Militia arrived to relieve them. Truly that night the halberdiers wrote a magnificent page of fidelity in the records of the guards. After a hopeless struggle to reduce Spanish affairs into something like order, Amadeo of Savoy issued from the Royal Palace his valedictory address to his people, and on the following day, 12th February 1873, he left Madrid, as he had entered it, a chevalier _sans peur et sans reproche_. In the same palace Alfonso XIII. was born and baptized, from the palace he set out to the church of San Jeronimo to be married to Victoria Eugénie of Battenberg, and here was born and baptized the Prince of the Asturias, the heir to the throne of Spain. [Illustration: PLATE 1 ESCORIAL. VIEW OF THE PALACE] [Illustration: PLATE 2 ESCORIAL. VIEW OF THE PALACE] [Illustration: PLATE 3 ESCORIAL. VIEW OF THE PALACE (EAST SIDE)] [Illustration: PLATE 4 ESCORIAL. NORTH-WEST ANGLE OF THE PALACE] [Illustration: PLATE 5 ESCORIAL. PRINCIPAL FAÇADE AND ANGLE OF THE PALACE] [Illustration: PLATE 6 ESCORIAL. VIEW OF THE PRINCIPAL STAIRCASE OF THE PALACE] [Illustration: PLATE 7 ESCORIAL. HALL OF AMBASSADORS] [Illustration: PLATE 8 ESCORIAL. RECEPTION HALL] [Illustration: PLATE 9 ESCORIAL. VIEW OF THE DINING HALL] [Illustration: PLATE 10 ESCORIAL. POMPEIAN HALL] [Illustration: PLATE 11 ESCORIAL. LIBRARY] [Illustration: PLATE 12 ESCORIAL. CHAPTER ROOM] [Illustration: PLATE 13 ESCORIAL. “THE HOLY FAMILY,” BY RAPHAEL] [Illustration: PLATE 14 ESCORIAL. “THE LAST SUPPER,” BY TITIAN] [Illustration: PLATE 15 ESCORIAL. “A SMOKER,” BY TENIERS] [Illustration: PLATE 16 ESCORIAL. “COUNTRY DANCE,” BY GOYA] [Illustration: PLATE 17