The consequences of these wars in a military aspect are also worthy of notice. Up to this period, war had been carried on by irregular levies, extremely limited in numerical amount and in period of service, under little subordination, except to their own immediate chiefs, and wholly unprovided with the apparatus required for extended operations. The Spaniards were even lower than most of the European nations in military science, as is apparent from the infinite pains of Isabella to avail herself of all foreign resources for their improvement. In the war of Granada, masses of men were brought together far greater than had hitherto been known in modern warfare. They were kept in the field not only through long campaigns, but far into the winter; a thing altogether unprecedented. They were made to act in concert, and the numerous petty chiefs brought into complete subjection to one common head, whose personal character enforced the authority of station. Lastly, they were supplied with all the requisite munitions through the providence of Isabella, who introduced into the service the most skilful engineers from other countries, and kept in pay bodies of mercenaries--as the Swiss, for example, reputed the best disciplined troops of that day. In this admirable school the Spanish soldier was gradually trained to patient endurance, fortitude, and thorough subordination; and those celebrated captains were formed, with that invincible infantry, which in the beginning of the sixteenth century spread the military fame of their country over all Christendom. But, with all our sympathy for the conquerors, it is impossible without a deep feeling of regret to contemplate the decay and final extinction of a race who had made such high advances in civilisation as the Spanish Arabs; to see them driven from the stately palaces reared by their own hands, wandering as exiles over the lands which still blossomed with the fruits of their industry, and wasting away under persecution, until their very name as a nation was blotted out from the map of history. SPANISH EXPLORERS, AND CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS [Sidenote: [1492 A.D.]] While Ferdinand and Isabella were at Santa Fé, the capitulation was signed that opened the way to an extent of empire compared with which their recent conquests, and indeed all their present dominions, were insignificant. The extraordinary intellectual activity of the Europeans in the fifteenth century, after the torpor of ages, carried them forward to high advancement in almost every department of science, but especially nautical, whose surprising results have acquired for the age the glory of being designated as peculiarly that of maritime discovery.