The success of the Spanish arms under Gonsalvo de Cordova in Italy was but the beginning of a long career of triumph. From the great victory at Seminara, in 1503, to the great defeat of Rocroy, in 1643, the Spanish infantry remained unconquered in Europe. The armies of Castile had been, indeed, as Prescott has it, “cooped up within the narrow limits of the Peninsula, uninstructed and taking little interest in the concerns of the rest of Europe.” But the soldiers and sailors of Aragon and Catalonia had fought with distinction, not only in Italy and in Sicily, but in the furthest east of Europe, for two hundred years before the Great Captain of the United Kingdom set foot on the shores of Calabria. Yet the victories of Gonsalvo were the beginning of a new era, and his life is interesting, not only as that of a brave soldier and an accomplished general, who flourished at a very important period of the history of Europe; but it is further and much more interesting as being the history of a man who united in himself many of the characteristics of ancient and modern civilization, and who himself appears as a sort of middle term between medieval and modern times. In personal valor, in knightly courtesy, in gaudy display, he was of his own time. In astute generalship, and in still more astute diplomacy, an envoy not an adventurer, the servant and not the rival of kings, he belongs to a succeeding age, when the leader of a victorious army is prouder to be a loyal subject than a rash rebel. The Castilian lords of earlier days had ever been brave knights; their followers had ever been hardy and untiring combatants. But Gonsalvo was not only a tactician, but a strategist. The men whom he commanded were soldiers. Newly armed and admirably disciplined, the regiments were no longer the followers of some powerful nobleman; they formed a part of the national army of Spain. The short sword of their Celtiberian ancestors was once more found in their hands. The long lances of the Swiss mercenaries were adopted with conspicuous success. The drill-sergeant took the place of the minstrel in the camp.