Brigandage, the form of organised highway robbery practised by bands of thieves in countries where roads are long and lonely and imperfectly guarded, has been always popular with the Latin races. It suited the tastes and temperament of reckless people who defied the law and laughed at the attempt to protect defenceless wayfarers. Their activity was stimulated by the long wastes of rugged country that separated the towns, giving harbourage and security to the robbers who issued forth to prey upon travellers and easily retired to their rocky fastnesses and escaped pursuit. These Ishmaelites have been especially active in Spain and Italy and the aggressive spirit that moved them is not yet entirely extinct. More settled government has produced a more effective police in these latter days, but acts of brigandage in its latest development, that of "holding up" modern means of conveyance, express trains, bicycles and motor cars, have occurred, and may be reasonably expected to increase. Brigandage is as old as the hills in Spain and some of its earliest phases are well worth describing before they are forgotten or replaced by newer processes. We may look back and gather some idea of those early days in Spain. When Isabella, the Catholic, ascended the throne of Castile, she was called upon to govern a country profoundly demoralised, infested with evil doers and dominated by a turbulent and vicious nobility. The throne was an object of contempt, the treasury empty, the people poverty stricken, and the princes of the Church rebellious and rejoicing in large revenues. A lawless aristocracy hungry for independent authority were fighting for their own lands or conspiring secretly to overawe the Crown. Titled alcaldes, traitors and rebels, openly raised brigandage into a system, exacted tribute by blackmail from the lower classes, and made unceasing war upon the higher. Within the kingdom a rival pretender aimed at the Crown. One near neighbour, Alfonso V of Portugal, menaced the peace of the country and kept an army on the frontier; another, Louis XI of France, crafty and unscrupulous, constantly threatened war and held his army in Guipuscoa.