The bull was fought from horseback with a sword or lance, and encounters of this nature are reported as early as the eleventh century. The Cid is stated to have been a dexterous alanceador.

The sport was thus confined, in general, to the upper classes; but it is possible that some of the menial peones, or footmen, who waited upon the cavaliers in the ring, may also have amused themselves by baiting the animal in one way or another; for if certain chroniclers are to be credited it was the Moors who invented the suerte de banderillas, executed, of course, on foot, though in a form widely different from that of the resent day. They carried a cloak over the m, and used but one weapon at a time, which they threw, not planted. This was a small barb, or dart, called an azagaya. Later, it came to be known as a rehilete, or arpón, and is now the banderilla. A spirited drawing by Goya represents a Moslem practising the feat, duly equipped with his cloak and dart.

By the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the art of bullfighting had become essential to every caballero. When a knight's horse was disabled, when he himself was thrown, or when he dropped his hat, or lance, or glove, he was compelled by the laws of the ring to draw his sword and kill the bull on foot. This mode of prosecuting the combat was called the foot-attack, or empeño de á pié, and must have been most dangerous and protracted.

Always popular, the sport continued to make steady progress, though Isabella the Catholic was violently opposed to it, and Pius the Fifth thundered against it in a Bull of November 20th, 1567, threaten

ing to excommunicate all princes who suffered its exercise within their dominions, and forbidding Christian burial to bullfighters who met their death within the arena. The lance or sword gave place to the rejón, still used upon extraordinary occasions. The rejón is a lance in miniature, some five feet long.. It is of brittle wood, tipped with a rose-leaf shaped spearhead. About ten inches from the point the shaft is deeply nicked, so as to snap with ease. Driving it into the neck of the charging beast, the horseman, by a quick turn of the wrist, breaks the shaft away from the head, depending on his adroitness to save his horse. The feat y be performed in either of two ways. According to first, the rejoneador is accompanied by one or more fighters afoot, who play the bull with their cloaks and work him to the inclination of the rider. But the classical mode of planting the rejones dispenses with the footmen, except that a page accompanies his master at a discreet distance, in order to hand him a new weapon whenever required.

It is pretty to watch the rejoneador as he careers round and round the bull, eyeing his every movement, and waiting for an opportunity to make the fatal thrust; and that the feat is difficult to a degree, requiring admirable horsemanship and nerve, is proved by the fact that there are not a dozen equestrians in Spain and Portugal, I may say in Europe, who can achieve it. I have only seen it irreproachably performed by Señores Heredia, Ledesma, and Grané.

Throughout the seventeenth century the national pastime held its own. A list I have before me of

famed rejoneadores includes an emperor, a king, eight dukes, a marquis, and three counts; and among the commonalty figures the illustrious conqueror of Peru, Fernando de Pizarro.

With the dawn of the eighteenth century, bullfighting by means of the rejón had overpassed its prime. Thenceforward the sport declined, not in popularity, but in dignity, and dropped from the sumptuous recreation of the high and mighty to a lower category altogether. The plebs began to practise it, holding capeas and novilladas, and those who discovered talent exhibited for hire, transgressing the ancient Spanish law which says that "they who fight with wild beasts for money debase themselves. . . but when a man fighteth another, without reward, in order to deliver himself, or his friend, or with a wild animal in order to prove his strength, then shall he not debase himself therefore, but rather be esteemed a valiant man and strong."

*

Roughly, then, it may be said that down to the Catholic Sovereigns or Charles the Fifth was the age of the lance; from then till the close of the Hapsburg dynasty, the age of the rejón, or, as it was also called, the rejoncillo; and from the accession of the Bourbons until the present day, the modern bullfight.

The honour of inventing this latter, more or less as now practised, belongs to the little city of Ronda, high poised among the mountains of southern Andalusia. Here was born, in or about the year 1700, Francisco Romero, the first great exponent of

* Ley IV., Tit. VI., Partida 7a.

the modern toreo. Francisco was destined by his parents for a shoemaker, but his passion for the reses bravas getting the better of him, he quitted his awl and last and became a bullfighter, the pioneer of his profession. We learn that in his early years, in order to witness a corrida he was content to attend upon the gentlemen rejoneadores as their page or auxiliador, and in this subservient capacity he mastered the rudiments of his art. Being plucky and persevering he soon acquired a name for courage and dexterity, and by and by, forsaking the hybrid manner of fighting then in vogue, invented and began to regularly practise the suerte de muleta; so that when you see in the hands of a modern matador the little red rag which caused a revolution in the sport, think of the quondam cobbler. His fame rapidly extended far beyond his native Ronda, and though the details we possess of his life are not many, it is certain that he travelled from place to place, exhibiting his powers in all the principal cities of Andalusia, and reaping a munificent harvest. He met the bull, we are told, face to face as it charged, after playing it into position with the muleta, and killed it with a single thrust of his sword, á pié quieto. After thirty years of admirable fighting, he died tranquilly in his bed, "esteemed and respected by all who knew him."

Francisco Romero, then, was the first of the Ronda school, or rather family, of bullfighters. He communicated the secrets of his art to his son Juan, who had served in his cuadrilla and acted as his segundo espada, or second in command. Of Juan, also, we know little, but he fought at Seville,

Valencia, Murcia, Zaragoza, Pamplona, and elsewhere, and died at the early age of a hundred and two. He had long been succeeded professionally by his firstborn, Pedro, the greatest taurine artist of the family, and to whom I shall presently return.

ness.

In the meantime a rival to Ronda and the sturdy generation of the Romeros was cropping up in Seville, the smiling mother of ninety per cent. of all the Spanish bullfighters. Among the prominent Sevillian toreros of the same era as the Romeros, father, son, and grandchild, we find the Palomos, Juan and Pedro; Manuel Bellón (El Africano); Lorenzo Manuel (Lorencillo), the reputed inventor of the salto del testuz; Joaquín Rodríguez (Costillares); and Pepe-Illo. The schools of Ronda and Seville were entirely distinct. The keynote of the Sevillians. was arrojo, daring; of the Rondeños serenidad, coolThe former fought á pié movido, shifting their feet; the latter á pié quieto, keeping them still. This latter method was undoubtedly the more complete and meritorious. It demanded an equal degree of nerve, and an infinitely greater study of the bull. Where the Sevillians risked, the Rondeños calculated. These latter were artists, who made it their boast to despatch their bulls with elegance and neatness, not to jeopardize their lives in breakneck exploits; although on one occasion, which I shall describe immediately, Pedro Romero committed the exception which is said to prove the rule. The measured coolness of the Rondeños evidently explains the longevity of the Romero clan, and the fact of Pedro's having killed several thousands of bulls, nearly all of them recibiendo.