Читать книгу Valladolid, Oviedo, Segovia, Zamora, Avila & Zaragoza. An Historical & Descriptive Account онлайн

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Segovia and Avila are towns of the Reconquest, wardens, one might say, against the redoubtable Moor. To the fancy their grass-grown streets still re-echo with the tramp of armed men, with the ring of spears and the word of command. The shadowy warriors of Oviedo and Zamora here give place to the tall knight who stalks across the page of history, ready to do battle with pagan Moor or Christian tyrant. But Avila enshrines the holier memory of the sainted Theresa, greatest of Spanish women, revered not least in the lands for whose conversion to her faith she unceasingly prayed. And so we pass on, each town illustrating a different stage of a great nation’s development.

In Valladolid, which preceded and subsequently nearly supplanted Madrid as the capital of Spain, we are again on holy ground; for Cervantes dwelt here, and here died the immortal Columbus. Zaragoza, the chief city of a kingdom that influenced the destinies of powerful European States when Castile was hardly known to the outside world, has ever been a noble and important capital, boasting a glory which has been brightest perhaps in its later days. To the citizens of Zaragoza was reserved the honour of rejecting the Inquisition, to which other towns reluctantly submitted, and just one hundred years ago she proved to an astonished Europe that within her crumbling walls dwelt the old brood of Numantia—that she was prolific still of heroes and heroines.