The Autobiography of a Spanish Adventurer (Classic Reprint)

Angebote / Angebote:

Excerpt from The Autobiography of a Spanish AdventurerStanding in the midst of a tide of collectivism such as the world has never before seen, most of us still feel a warm thrill of pleasure when we read of some foot-loose, red blooded human animal whose energy was equalled only by his social freedom. The blond beast in our town is a wretched neighbor, but let him be transplanted to a distant century and clime, and we experience a clandestine admira tion for his spirit and his works that bears no relation to our twentieth century standard of private behavior. Today only nations as a whole dare to be thoroughly mean, and they are slowly nearing the point of circumspection. So it is when we wish to stir the Adam in our blood by the contemplation of some splendid explosion of human force, we turn to Cort¿ Cellini, or even Casanova. The unsought alliteration seems to suggest that the letter C may be the natural initial of an adventurous Spirit crossed with an itch for publicity.I cite as witness Alonso de Contreras, whose autobio graphy has been unearthed and published, after reposing nearly four centuries under the dust of a Madrid library. Contreras was a professional fighter on land and sea, who rose from nothing to be a Commander of. The Knights of. Malta, no slight achievement in itself. Not one of the shrewd climbers, he never thought large and never reachedhigh diplomatic posts. He looked but a short distance in advance, he was an insubordinate swashbuckler, a dread nought captain, afraid neither of man nor devil, yet with a code of honor of his own, and a dash of piety that would cause wonder were it not so common in that age. He arrived too late to form one of the band of conquistadores, but their spirit ran in his blood entire. Of such men were the armies of Spain in her great days, and such a type explains many victories. His life-story, told with the utmost frankness, is to a degree a mirror of the time. More completely, it is a mirror of a soldier's life in the continual wars of the Renaissance, and that a soldier in those days missed little of experience, be you the judge.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.