Those Europes, where another war has just begun, play a far greater part, and from what one can ascertain, which is not very much in a land of such ignorance, so removed from the rest of the world, Spain is in such a state of ruin it would break your heart. But any war is a war too many, that would surely be the view of those who died in a war they never wanted. When Lamberto Horques took charge of the lands in Monte Lavre and environs, the soil was still fresh with the blood of Castilians, although as to freshness, that is merely a rather bloodthirsty image when set beside the far more ancient blood spilled by Lusitanians and Romans, or by the confusing tumult of Alanis, Vandals and Swabians, if they got this far, as the Visigoths certainly did, followed later by the infernal, swarthy caravan of Moors, and then the Burgundians arrived to spill their blood and that of others, and a few crusaders, not all of them heroes like Osberno,* and then more Arabs, how much death these lands have seen, and the only reason we haven’t mentioned Portuguese blood is because all the blood spilled was Portuguese, or came to be, once enough time had passed for it to be naturalized, which is why we haven’t mentioned the French or the English, for they truly are foreigners.
