[95] In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries requests for soldiers bombarded the city of Seville as the military needs of the Crown of Castile increased. Seville in 1570 raised 3000 armed men and Triana 500 to help the Crown quell a mutiny of Moors in the southern provinces. ⁽¹⁾ In an effort to preserve his Hapsburg empire, Philip II increased his Army of Flanders from 13,000 in 1572 to 85,000 in 1574. ⁽²⁾ Philip also needed soldiers for Portugal, and Seville sent in 1580 at the king's request 1500 infantrymen and 200 horses to support his claim to the Portuguese throne. In addition, the city had to provide forty pikesmen and sixty soldiers armed with arquebuses for every one hundred foot soldiers, requirements of the tercio method of warfare. In this pattern, pikesmen formed a protective square around swordsmen, and both were supported by the artillery of arquebusiers.

The Spanish army was an awesome military force in Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Its tough professional soldiers marched in precision and fought with discipline. They were well-trained and well-equipped, proudly wearing the uniform of the king's elite. The Spanish soldier in Velazquez' painting "The Lancers" holds his lance with pride. He stands straight, sits tall, and looks any man directly in the eye.

[96] The contrast between this soldier and a thieving, shifty rogue could not be greater. In early modern Seville, however, much to the consternation of city residents, a soldier who entered Seville was as likely to be an antisocial ruffian as a defender of the state. Local citizens complained repeatedly of thefts, murders, and other outrages suffered at the hands of soldiers.

Chronicles and documents from the archives of Seville explain the close relationship between the soldier and the picaro, a, migrant, clever rogue. Military problems and requirements of this period forced the Crown and city government to accept underworld people into an army that became an agency for renewal of the underworld as well as an arm of political authority. Both officials and underworld used the army, and each tolerated the other in an uneasy partnership.

MILITARY REQUIREMENTS AND PROBLEMS

The military needs of Philip II continued, even after he had secured the Portuguese throne. He was particularly concerned with the English, who harassed his coasts and ships on the Atlantic. In 1588 he directed Seville to defend itself and its immediate coastline. The city was to draw up a list of all men between the ages of twenty and fifty years who would be "useful for warfare," and it was to impose this order on all villages within its jurisdiction. Any noncomplying village would be fined 20,000 maravedís. ⁽³⁾

English threats to Cadiz and other parts of the coast near Seville maintained pressure on Seville to obey. When the English attacked Cadiz in 1596, Seville sent twenty-four companies of  infantrymen. One year later the Crown requested that the city send 2500 armed soldiers immediately to man the galleys patrolling the coasts. The Duke of Medina Sidonia, who was captain-general of troops in this area, replied that sending this number of men would leave Seville completely defenseless. The king answered that he understood the hardship, but the need for soldiers to patrol the coast was critical. Grudgingly, the city council [98] agreed to raise 800 more men. When the English again threatened Cadiz in 1625, Seville sent 1700 armed infantrymen. In 1635, the Crown directed Seville to send 200 infantrymen to guard the coasts, and ten years later another royal levy required 400 men from Seville to man the fleet sailing for the New World. ⁽⁴⁾

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Portuguese rebellions in the late 1630's and 1640 also required many soldiers from Seville. In 1637 the king wrote to the city council, directing it to help him in Portugal with "the greatest number of armed men that is possible." ⁽⁵⁾ The head of the city council took three companies of infantrymen and ten companies of cavalrymen to join the Duke of Medina Sidonia in Badajoz, close to the Portuguese border. The soldiers returned to Seville in a few days, after hanging the leaders of a rebellion that had been triggered by new royal impositions on the Portuguese. Evidently Seville frequently maintained a military force in Badajoz, for the city reported in 1643 that it had 150 cavalrymen and 300 infantrymen in the army at Badajoz. By 1657 a city chronicle reported that Seville had raised four tercios of infantrymen for the war against Portugal. ⁽⁶⁾

The growing need for military manpower came at a time when monetary depreciation inflated the costs for keeping arms and a horse and reduced the numbers of nobles available for military service. In 1492 Ferdinand and Isabella had decreed that all subjects with an annual income of 50,000 maravedís were obligated to provide military service. In 1564 the minimum income for obligatory military service was raised to 1000 ducats, and in 1600 it was raised still further to 2000 ducats. The city could not find enough men who were able to support themselves in military service to the Crown, and the cost to the city became staggering. The city council reported that the city had to pay [99] 10,000 ducats to cover expenses of its armed force of 450 men in the army of Badajoz in 1643. ⁽⁷⁾

Nobles with a military obligation sometimes resisted royal requests. In 1642 so many nobles failed to respond to the Crown's call to arms against rebels in Portugal and Catalonia that crown officials had to write repeatedly to the city and invoke a fine of 20,000 ducats for noncompliance. Some nobles contributed money or provided infantrymen so that they would be excused from military service. The city council complained that sending all their nobles to serve in the royal army would abandon Seville to the many Portuguese and foreigners who were living here, but the king's military needs deafened him to these complaints. Some nobles were arrested and fined for not providing military service. Other noncomplying nobles were threatened with losing their noble privileges. Any person filing a publicly executed paper in Seville was required to sign an oath that he had remained in Seville because he was not of noble status and was therefore exempt from military service. Many nobles avoided this trap by refusing to execute any public papers, a ploy that caused "much damage" to business in the city. ⁽⁸⁾ When this coercion failed to bring nobles into the army, the royal audiencia listed 57 members of the city council and directed them to form a company to assist the king in Portugal and Catalonia. ⁽⁹⁾

The methods of warfare used by the Spanish Crown in this period also affected the quality and quantity of the military manpower it needed. The wider use of infantry rather than cavalry meant that some soldiers did not need a horse, although infantry tactics often required a greater number of men, particularly in siege warfare. An infantry duel in Flanders tied down [100] 30,000 men to one garrison. ⁽¹⁰⁾ Arming the ships that patrolled the coasts and defended the Spanish fleets tied up thousands of other soldiers. The Crown's wish to secure its claims on the New World kept even more soldiers occupied, far from the arenas of battle in Europe.

While the Crown called for more and more soldiers from Seville, the city lost many people in the eight major epidemics reported in chronicles between 1520 and 1649. ⁽¹¹⁾ It is true that epidemics usually take the very young and very old first, rather than men of military service age; in addition, the estimates of deaths may have been exaggerated. Nevertheless, these demographic crises placed an even greater burden on the city at times when it was ordered to send more of its men to serve in the king's army. In 1657, for example, Seville had to send four tercios of soldiers to fight in Portugal, and this was only seven years after the epidemic of 1649, which was estimated to have taken 300,000 lives ⁽¹²⁾.

At times the city had no difficulty in filling its military quotas. A chronicler wrote that in 1596 the twenty-four companies raised by Seville to defend Cadiz were unpaid soldiers, most of them young and boisterous and quick to respond to the call to arms. Members of the city council volunteered to go as captains, eager to protect the fleet from New Spain that had anchored in Cadiz, as well as to perform a patriotic duty close to home. ⁽¹³⁾

More often, recruiters had to work very hard to fill their lists. The usual procedure was to commission a captain who went from village to village to enlist men. If he had a paymaster with him, he had less difficulty, for there was no shortage of unemployed or dissatisfied men eager to sign up for an instant payday. When the captain entered a village, he ordered the usual public proclamation, placed his banner in the window of the inn where he was [101] staying, and prominently displayed his paymaster. Without the promise of immediate pay, however, the recruiter had to rely on lists of eligible men drawn up by local parishes. In 1580 Francisco Tello of Seville reported the difficulty of raising soldiers through parish lists, and he suggested a drawing of names from a box. Evidently recruiters without paymasters were unpopular. In 1636 Luís de Lazana, who had been sent to register men and arms, was stabbed to death in the parish of San Vicente. ⁽¹⁴⁾

Royal orders to raise a large number of men so often, and frequently on very short notice, led recruiters to accept any able-bodied man, regardless of his background or lack of equipment. Not surprisingly, then, many companies raised by Seville included gamblers, ruffians, and drifters. A chronicler described a company of soldiers from Seville in 1569 which included nobles, naturalized foreigners, and quarrelsome gambling men. Most men recruited into the army in Seville, he said, were people who had come to the city from other regions and had found no other occupation. ⁽¹⁵⁾ The decreasing quality of men enlisted in the army prompted the Duke of Alva to write to Philip II pleading for "men of substance," so that the army would not be left "in the hands of laborers and lackeys." ⁽¹⁶⁾

The city council noted the problems of accepting men of lesser quality into the army. In a letter of August 1640, the council complained to the Council of Castile that it had provided more than 8000 men to serve in Cadiz, Lisbon, and Catalonia, despite the difficulty nobles had in finding substitutes. They paid 150 ducats for each infantry substitute, and 500 ducats for a cavalry substitute. Even when they had paid these amounts, however, the substitutes frequently absconded with the money, forsaking their obligation to military service. ⁽¹⁷⁾

[102] In times of military urgencies, prison sentences for "non-heinous" offenses were commuted to military service. When the English attacked Cadiz in 1596, the chief justice of the audiencia in Seville ordered that many prisoners from the Royal Prison be pardoned and sent to defend Cadiz. Even the famous Diego Lopez, a thug with a cut-off nose, was sent to the army, and the notorious highwayman Gonzalo Xenis marched at the head of one of the companies sent to Cadiz. Extreme military necessity in 1647 prompted the royal government to advise army captains: "If there are any men in the prisons of the Kingdom of a suitable age for service, provided that they are not there for heinous offenses, they may be set free, commuting their sentences to service in these companies for a limited period." ⁽¹⁸⁾ Underworld people must have sensed the irony of receiving arms and a commutation from a royal government that at other times vigorously tried to impose its own justice on them and monopolize all use of violence.

One key military job unsuitable to nobles was the backbreaking job of rowing the galleys, a task left to slaves or convicts. Since the numbers of galley rowers depended on the Crown's military needs, prison officials were often asked to transport their prisoners and increase the numbers sentenced to the galleys. In May of 1633, for example, the head of Seville's city council was directed to transport 170 galley slaves from the prison of Toledo to the Port of Santa Maria, and another noble was ordered to gather all available galley slaves from the prisons in the province of Seville. Galley needs were so urgent that royal directives in both 1637 and 1639 ordered all slaves within twelve leagues of the sea to be taken to the prisons for transfer to galley service. Owners resisted the orders and tried to hide their slaves, but many were found and taken in chains. ⁽¹⁹⁾

[103] Military levies provided only intermittent employment, and this further reinforced the connection between underworld and military. Local military leaders sometimes spent time and money to raise a company for a military campaign only to find the campaign had ended before their men had left for active military duty. What happened to the men who were discharged? The social and economic dislocations of frequent military levies were enormous, but the cost and problems of maintaining a large permanent army seemed even greater. In 1598 the city council wrote to the king asking permission to dismantle its militia. There were no pressing enemies, the council wrote. Moreover, members of the militia had indulged in gambling and had committed murders and robberies, in addition to costing the city a large sum in expenses. ⁽²⁰⁾

Few soldiers dismissed with the thanks of their commanders at the end of a campaign had a secure job awaiting them in the civilian world. Many had joined in the first place because they had no other livelihood. Unemployed soldiers were often left to their own devices to return to civilian life as best they could, and they frequently found their way to cities like Seville which promised quick money or opportunity. The Marquis of Aytona described the plight of discharged soldiers in the mid-seventeenth century:

Some return indignant to their lands, trusting to a relative, resolved to put up with the most abject poverty rather than re-enlist. Others go back in despair to the army, and not only do they become trouble-makers in the ranks since they have so little inclination to serve, but I have been assured that this caused more than one and a half thousand veterans and 200 men relieved of duty to go off to serve in Venice and in Florence, and elsewhere in the years 1644, 1645, and 1646; and many take sides with our enemies. Others fall by the wayside and take menial jobs to live. Many have recourse to vice. Others seek alms in the convents, even in the streets, and others perish of want. ⁽²¹⁾

The most common solution to the problem of provisioning soldiers was for the military commander of the area to direct the city government to provide his soldiers with bed and board, and sometimes with arms. In 1580 the city council was directed to pay half the expenses of the soldiers it was required to send to the Portuguese campaign. When the city replied that it lacked enough money to pay these expenses, the king granted the city council permission to take out a loan of 20,000 ducats. Through his captain-general, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, the king repeated a few months later the order that the city was to provide for the soldiers they had raised for the Portuguese campaign. The expenses of provisioning soldiers provoked conflicts between military leaders and the city government of Seville, but the city council usually acquiesced. In 1643 the council agreed not only to pay for the soldiers sent to Badajoz, but also to pay two reales each day to wives of these men, or three reales each day to wives who had children. ⁽²³⁾

When the city was unable to pay expenses for its soldiers in 1653, the Crown proposed that it raise this money through a sales tax on wine and live cattle. ⁽²⁴⁾ Most residents would have [105] tolerated this sales tax if they had not been forced, in addition, to provide for soldiers who were quartered with them. Soldiers frequently spent their daily allowance on gambling and carousing and then expected local residents to feed and board them without charge. When the city council complained of this practice to the Duke of Medina Sidonia in 1582, he defended the army, pointing out that it gave one real to each soldier every day to pay for his food. Nevertheless, he agreed to quarter soldiers on both sides of the river in Seville and thus relieve some of the pressure of boarding and feeding soldiers. Eight years later the king issued new rules to correct "disorders and excesses that some captains, officers, and soldiers . . . have committed against the people." The daily allowance was raised to one and one-half reales for each soldier, and they were to move in groups of 25, led by one who was charged with keeping order and discipline. ⁽²⁵⁾

A sixteenth-century resident of Triana, the suburb across the river from Seville, described one of the incidents that turned townspeople against soldiers. A shipmaster came to get bread in Triana for the soldiers and sailors on his ship, and he asked a baker for twenty loaves. When the baker gave him the bread and asked him to pay, he asked how much. "Six reales," answered the baker. The shipmaster, who felt that the baker was trying to get more than his usual price, pretended to look in his sack for the money. Suddenly he rushed the baker, shouting, "This stick is your money." He whacked the baker in the ribs and fled with the bread. Many people from the neighborhood and a sheriff who had been nearby pursued the shipmaster. Shielding himself with a large earthenware jar, he lunged and thrust so well with his sword that no one could arrest him. Although wounded in the arm, he escaped to the ship, still without paying for the bread. ⁽²⁶⁾

Local residents not only had to pay to feed and board these soldiers; they also had to endure violence and insults from them. Their trees were cut and their fruit stolen. Citizens complained repeatedly of "great vexations," robberies, and murders at the [106] hands of undisciplined soldiers. In 1631 they asked that all soldiers be quartered in quartels "where they be contained in military discipline, in view of their superiors, and having there the necessary provisions." ⁽²⁷⁾ Despite attempts to improve the provisioning and discipline of soldiers, these problems remained a sore point between the military and the people.

The mobility of the army also promoted a close association between the underworld and the military, If the men enlisted in Seville had been kept as a local militia in the immediate area, they would have been recognizable to the citizens, who could have held them more accountable for their behavior. In most cases, however, soldiers were sent to Portugal, Catalonia, Flanders, or even the New World. They looked upon the army as a means to escape the law or obligations at home. Far from home, they treated civilians with less respect and felt less restraint about exploiting them.

The particular military needs of the Crown for a large army raised in haste and for short periods of time to serve in many different places increased the likelihood that underworld people would serve in the military. At the same time, these requirements diminished the possibility that the military could promote a cultural unity favorable to the Crown. An unemployed farm laborer who was conscripted to defend Cadiz in 1596 would scarcely have had time to learn a few rudiments of military discipline before he was discharged. He would meet men from other parts of Spain, and they all fought together against a common enemy, but their military experience promoted an underworld view toward life rather than a deep loyalty to the Spanish Crown. The army could promote cultural identity, but it was a two-edged sword that could help or hinder political authority.

Even though the Crown had to protect its citizens from the outrages of its soldiers, conflicts between soldiers and citizens could not destroy the mutually beneficial government-underworld partnership in the army. The underworld provided the Crown with the necessary manpower, and it helped nobles fill their military quotas. The local noble commissioned as a captain [107] to enlist soldiers looked upon gamblers, pimps, and petty thieves not as dangerous enemies so much as cannon fodder. The noble called to military service was often glad to pay an unemployed drifter to take his place in the army. On the other hand, underworld people welcomed military service as a livelihood and license to survive. They also found in it an hospitable breeding ground for their own culture.

CULTURAL RENEWAL OF THE UNDERWORLD

The underworld could not depend on biological propagation to replace its constantly moving members, nor on family socialization to preserve its culture, for it was hardly noted for its high birth rate or strong family structure. The army, however, was one of the institutions that served to transmit the culture of the underworld, for it promoted the qualities most characteristic of underworld people.

Idleness characterized both the soldier and the picaro. Soldiers for the most part were temporarily employed. Even when they were on active duty, there were long, boring hours of guard duty or idle periods on standby. Tradition permitted them to have gambling tables in their garrisons, and gambling became the most common way to fill idle hours. ⁽²⁸⁾ Soldiers who had known nothing of the tricks of cards and games before they joined the army quickly learned from their comrades in arms. They also learned to survive the bloody quarrels that punctuated gambling sessions.

Military life fostered a collective identity that underworld people used to distinguish themselves from outsiders. Because soldiers were usually on the move with their company, they felt very separate from landholders or city residents. Encouraged by the tradition of a separate military justice, they considered themselves outside the formal laws and informal sanctions of the villages and cities they passed through. Soldiers also felt the hostility of civilians who had to board and feed them. When conflict erupted between a soldier and a civilian, other soldiers invariably ran to the defense of their comrade. Soldiers from the [108] ships that came to port in Seville sometimes rushed into the city carrying flags from their ships and causing all kinds of "inconvenience," as the city council complained. ⁽²⁹⁾

City chronicles report many cases of soldiers acting together against the residents of Seville. When ships' soldiers caused trouble in the city in 1525, the city council asked the king to help restore order and control the crews of his ships. The rough soldiers, it pointed out, were a bad example to the rest of the toughs in the city. The city's complaint was repeated some seventy years later when the council passed a resolution referring to the "insults, aggravations, murders, robberies, scandals, and disrespect that the soldiers of the galleys cause in this city." ⁽³⁰⁾

Strong group identification among soldiers is evident in one account of a city-military conflict in 1595. Eleven ships had anchored in Seville at one time, and their crews had put gambling tables out on the river banks. When a violent quarrel erupted among the gambling soldiers, the sheriff of Triana intervened to make an arrest. A crowd formed, and people of Triana and the soldiers began to throw rocks at one another. The sheriff had to retreat without his prisoner. The next day the scene was repeated, but several sheriffs rushed a soldier and took him prisoner. Soldiers poured into the Plaza de San Francisco and everyone, including city officials, fled behind closed doors. The soldiers wanted to break into the prison to rescue their comrade, but their commanding officer negotiated with city officials, who agreed to release him if all soldiers returned to their ships. That night the head of the city council posted many guards on the city streets, locked the city gates, and hanged the imprisoned soldier in the Royal Prison. When a small group of his comrades came for him in the morning, they found his corpse. ⁽³¹⁾

Although the king agreed in 1618 that galleys needing provision in Seville should be anchored farther from the city, uproars continued between soldiers and city residents. In one ruckus a [109] sheriff of the city was killed, one soldier was hanged in the windows of the audiencia, and two others were hanged in the windows of the city council chambers. The commander of the fleet came marching into the city with his soldiers and artillery ready to defend his men. The archbishop went out to meet him and pacify him before he confronted city officials. He convinced the commander to return his men to the ships, but the quarrels continued and more townspeople and soldiers died, "as always happens when ships arrive in Seville." ⁽³²⁾

Military life encouraged violence and justified the use of weapons. Weapons manufacture in Seville increased as the city was directed to send arms to defend Cadiz and the ships patrolling the Atlantic coast. Sevillian sword-making had been well-known for centuries, and in ancient times the Calle Sierpes had been called the street of the sword-makers. By the sixteenth century, arquebus-makers also had shops on this street. One reason for Crown interest in rebuilding the gunpowder factory after its explosions in 1579, 1613, and 1667, was its concern for providing the artillery to defend Cadiz and the fleets of New Spain. City residents scrambled wildly for arms when the English appeared off Cadiz in 1596. Some 400 rusty arquebuses were found in the armory, but few other weapons were available to send to Cadiz. No one responded to a call for arms in 1619, so the city council repeated the public announcement calling for bids to provide 600 sets of complete armor, 2100 iron pikes, 660 arquebuses, 2100 powder flasks, 260 halberds, 1400 helmets, 67 bucklers, and 900 forked spears. In 1626 Philip IV directed Seville to maintain an armory to manufacture and store arms and ammunition. The city council named a warden to keep careful records of the people who checked out arms from the city armory. ⁽³³⁾

[110] Despite the care of city officials to control the distribution of weapons, all kinds of ruffians received arms and a lesson in violence when they enlisted in the army. The right to carry arms, in fact, was one privilege that distinguished soldiers from lesser civilians. Three hundred years later a national military force would stamp out the very qualities of swaggerer and bully in Spain that the military seemed to encourage in the early modern period. ⁽³⁴⁾ The tightly disciplined Guardia Civil was not possible in this period, for the central government could not control the raggle-taggle thugs whom it had licensed to use violence and arms.

Ironically, military life encouraged mutiny more effectively than discipline. One soldier described a common pattern of mutiny in the Spanish armies of the seventeenth century:

These mutinies usually take place on campaign, and the men get the name of the 'squadron of the disaffected.' Their first concern is to occupy some stronghold from which they can roam the surrounding countryside, the which, to avoid worse trouble, agrees to pay them tribute. And then they elect a leader, whom they call the electo, who has several counselors. The infantry is commanded by a sargento mayor and the cavalry by a gobernador. Offices are bestowed and decisions taken by a show of hands. The quarters of the electo overlook the square, and from a window he makes his proposals to the squadron. When they are fed up with him, they pass from words to bullets. For this reason the electo has always a sentinel to watch over him. He cannot receive or transmit correspondence without notifying the squadron which in all respects maintains strict military discipline, for they impale on their pikes or shoot down anyone who commits an offence. Most of their rules are savage, therefore, though some are just and legitimate. ⁽³⁵⁾

Parasitism thrived in the army. With a provisioning system that was no more formal than a daily allowance and an order to civilians to feed and shelter soldiers, the men of the army usually had to fend for themselves. They often lived off the land, learning to survive by their wits. When they actually spent their food allowance on food, they used other tricks to make money in the villages. One of the dogs in Cervantes' story, "The Dogs' Colloquy," joined a company of soldiers that was "full of ruffians and leadswingers who used to get up to some fine tricks in the villages we went through." His master presented him as "the Wise Dog" and charged a fee from everyone in the village who came to see his "marvellous tricks and accomplishments." ⁽³⁷⁾ In underworld jargon, a golondrero (wandering parasite) was a thief who made himself into a soldier so he could steal more securely, protected by uniform, weapon, mobility, and a special legal status. ⁽³⁸⁾

The army was a fertile ground for underworld culture not only among soldiers, but also among all the many nonmilitary people associated with it. An army in this period included servants, boatmen, stable boys, and any women and children who could tag along for a while. In his study of the Spanish army in Flanders, Geoffrey Parker estimated that the 5300 Spanish veterans who left the Netherlands in 1577 were accompanied by 2000 lackeys. ⁽³⁹⁾ These people also learned the parasitical, violent, distinctive life-style of the soldier. Many of them, to be sure, had already become acquainted with underworld ideology before they followed the army. Whether military service introduced people to underworld values or simply reinforced them, it was a powerful preserver and transmitter of underworld culture.

[112] MOBILITY AND THE NEW WORLD

The mobility of military service promoted a constant renewal of the underworld. As a parasitical culture, the underworld depended upon both geographical and intercultural movement to provide it with a ready supply of exploitable hosts. It could not survive as a closed caste. When one host dried up or resisted exploitation, the underworld character had to find another. Through military service, he was able to move geographically and socially. The army was his bridge to other cities and people, professions and trades.

Emigration to the New World was one of the best escapes for men in early modern Spain, but the Crown had attempted to control it so that the New World would be settled and governed only by royal license. Captains of ships sailing for the New World were closely questioned about their passengers, and they were required to list them and their licenses. ⁽⁴⁰⁾ Some nonlicensed people were able to bribe a ship's officer or otherwise escape royal scrutiny. For most, however, military service was the best means to emigrate. Continuing attacks by English, Dutch, and French corsairs increased the need for armed soldiers on the Spanish ships that sailed between Seville and the New World. That many of these soldiers brought an underworld culture with them is evident in the many proceedings against them found in the documents of the Casa de Contratación in the Archive of the Indies. One soldier, for example, was prosecuted and punished on board his ship, the San Juan Dios, for blasphemy and hitting another soldier in 'his face with his open hand. Another shipboard case involved a bloody quarrel of soldiers over a gambling game. ⁽⁴¹⁾

[113] The great numbers of soldiers who came to the New World  may help to explain why the crown received so many complaints about the people of mal vivir who came to the New World and abused the Indians. One observer in Potosí, Peru, wrote in 1595: "There are 3000 Europeans, including Spanish, Portuguese, and other nationalities, 2000 of them idle delinquents who have no other occupation than gambling, drinking, fornication, robbery and assassination." ⁽⁴²⁾ Contemporaries frequently regarded the New World as a Babylon,

the refuge and shelter of all desperate folk in Spain, the sanctuary of bankrupts, the safe-conduct of murderers, the protection and cover of those gamblers known by the experts in the craft as sharpers, the general decoy for loose women, where many go to be deceived, and few find a way out of their difficulties. ⁽⁴³⁾

[114] And when some of them could not walk, the Spaniards, to prevent their remaining behind to make war, killed them by burying their swords in their sides or their breasts. It was really a most distressing thing to see the way in which these wretched creatures, naked, tired, and lame were treated; exhausted with hunger, sick, and despairing. The unfortunate mothers, with two or three children on their shoulders or clinging around their necks, overwhelmed with tears and grief, all tied with cords or with iron chains around their necks or their arms, or their hands. Nor was there a girl but had been violated by the depredators, wherefore, from too much indulgence, many Spaniards entirely lost their health. ⁽⁴⁶⁾

This is the God of the Christians; for this they have come from Castile to our countries, and have subjugated us, tormented us, and sold us as slaves, besides doing us many other injuries. For this they make war and kill each other; for this it is that they are never at rest; that they gamble, swear, tell lies, quarrel, rob, tear the women from each other; and finally, for this they commit every sort of wickedness. ⁽⁴⁷⁾

The hardships which must be endured in these countries are so terrible, that the men who come to them, in order that they may not yield up their spirits, nor lose all their flesh, nor despair of the divine clemency, must not be over dainty, nor, to say truth, over wise; they must be hardy and vigorous, and not made of flesh and blood, but of iron and steel. O sinner that I am! to have come here to damage my conscience, waste my time, and lose my teeth. While one is seeking for riches, it is necessary to pass such an infernal life that, when they are attained, one has neither teeth to eat with, nor stomach to digest. ⁽⁴⁹⁾

1. Guichot y Parody, 2:73.

2. Geoffrey Parker, The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road 1567-1659; The Logistics of Spanish Victory and Defeat in the Low Countries' War (Cambridge, 1972), p. 27.

3. AMS, Sigle XVI, Sección 3, Escribanías de Cabildo, Tomo 17, No. 20.

4. Ortiz de Zuñiga, 4:581-582. Pablo Anton Sole, "El saqueo de Cádiz por los Ingleses," Archivo Hispalense, Series 2, 54 (1971-72), 219. Ariño, pp. 169-173. Guichot y Parody, 2:193. AMS, Siglo XVII, Sección 4, Escribanías de Cabildo, Tomo 21, No. 4.

5. Guichot y Parody, 2:238.

6. Ibid., pp. 238-239, 252-253. Ortiz de Zuñiga, 4:757.

7. Domínguez Ortiz, Orto, p. 56. Nicholas Tenorio, "Las milicias de Sevilla," Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos, Series 2, 17 (1907), 243. Guichot y Parody, 2:252-253.

8. "Diferentes casos," Memorias eclesiásticas, BC, 84-7-19, folio 220^V. "Algunas memorias, Memorias de diferentes cosas, BC, 84-7-21, folios 258-259^V.

9. "Diferentes casos," Memorias eclesiásticas, BC, 84-7-19, folio 220^V. "Algunas memorias, Memorias de diferentes cosas, BC, 84-7-21, folios 258-259^V.

10. Parker, p. 11.

11. AMS, Efemérides, "Noticias y casos," No. 1. Ignacio de Góngora, "Relacion del contagio de 1649," Memorias de diferentes cosas, BC 84-7-21. AMS, Siglo XVI, Sección 3, Escribanías de Cabildo, Tomo 7, No. 16, 17.

12. Góngora, Guichot y Parody, 2:266.

13. Ortiz de Zuñiga, 4:581-582.

14. Rodríguez Marín, Miscelánea, p. 52. Parker, p. 37. AMS, Siglo XVI, Sección 3, Escribanías de Cabildo, Tomo 17, No. 17. Memorias eclesiásticas, BC, 84-7-19, folio 206^V.

15. Ortiz de Zuñiga, 4:534.

16. Quoted in Parker, p. 41.

17. Quoted in Antonio Domínguez Ortiz, "Documentos para la historia de Sevilla y su Antiguo Reino," Archivo Hispalense, Series 2, 44-45 (1966), 265-266.

18. Quoted in Parker, p. 46. Ariño, p. 38.

19. Domínguez Ortiz, Orto, p. 64. "Diferentes casos sucedidos en Sevilla en diversas mate^as," Memorias eclesiásticas, BC, 84-7-19, folio 207^V. AMS, Siglo XVII, Sección 4, Escribanías de Cabildo, Tomo 16, No. 38. Eugene L. Asher, The Resistance to the Maritime Classes: The Survival of Feudalism in the France of Colbert (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1960), p. 7, discusses galley slaves in seventeenth-century France. I. A. A. Thompson gives a more complete description of galley slaves in Spain.

20. AMS, Siglo XVI, Sección 3, Escribanías de Cabildo, Tomo 5, No. 12. Guichot y Parody, 2:131-132.

21. Quoted in Domínguez Ortiz, Golden Age, p. 37.

22. This is a central theme of Parker; see esp. his discussion of provisions by contract, pp. 162-164.

23. Guichot y Parody, 2:96-97, 213. AMS, Siglo XVI, Sección 3, Escribanías de Cabildo, Tomo 2, No. 38. AMS, Siglo XVII, Sección 4, Escribanías de Cabildo, Tomo 4, No. 16. "Diferentes casos," Memorias eclesiásticas, BC, 84-7-19, folio 230.

24. AMS, Siglo XVII, Sección 4, Escribanías de Cabildo, Tomo 36, No. 40.

25. AMS, Siglo XVI, Sección 3, Escribanías de Cabildo, Tomo 17, No. 14; AMS, Papeles Importantes, Siglo XVI, Tomo 9, No. 50.

26. Ariño, pp. 28-29. Ambrosias de la Cuesta y Saavedra, Memorias historicas sevillanas, BC, 82-5-21, folios 198ff.

27. Cuesta y Saavedra, folios 198 ff. AMS, Siglo XVII, Sección 4, Escribanías de Cabildo, Tomo 36, Nos. 37, 44.

28. Deleito y Piñuela, Mala, p. 225.

29. AMS, Siglo XVII, Sección 4, Escribanías de Cabildo, Tomo 5, No, 22.

30. AMS, Papeles Importantes. Siglo XVI, Tomo 12, No. 25. Also quoted in Guichot y Parody, 2:118.

31. Ariño, pp. 30-31. Guichot y Parody, 2:116-117. Pedro de León, appendix 1 to Part II, Case 208.

32. "Desde el año de 1616 asta el de 1634," Papeles varios, BC, 85-4-11. AMS, Efemérides, "Noticias y casos," cuaderno 1.

33. AMS, Siglo XVI, Sección 3, Escribanías de Cabildo, Tomo 3, Nos. 6, 7. José Gestoso y Perez, Curiosidades antiguas sevillanas; estudios arqueológicos (Sevilla, 1885), pp. 68-71. Ariño, pp. 33-34. AMS, Archivo General, Sección 1, Carpeta 9, No. 157. AMS, Siglo XVII, Sección 4, Escribanías de Cabildo, Tomo 5, No. 36.

34. Caro Baroja in Peristiany, ed., pp. 110-111, 116-117.

35. Quoted in Domínguez Ortiz, Golden Age, p. 319, note 6.

36. Pedro de León, appendix 1 to Part II, Cases 112, 235, 239, 246.

37. Cervantes, "The Dogs' Colloquy," p. 225.

38. Hill, p. 115.

39. Parker, p. 176.

40. Royal ordinances on the discovery and populating of New Spain are in Collección de documentos ineditos . . . del Real Archivo de Indias (Madrid, 1865), 8:486. AI, Indiferente General, Sección 5, Legajos 2003 and 2162, contains examples of captains' testimonies and passenger lists.

41. AI, Indiferente General, Sección 5, Legajo 2676, has evidence of extra soldiers hired to defend the Spanish fleet. The two criminal cases cited are in AI, Casa de Contratación, Sección 2, Legajo 58.

42. Quoted in Lynch, 2:218-2 19. Colección . . . Indias, Tomo 19, pp.

123-124.The picaresque life of Spanish soldiers in the New World described in Girolamo Benzoni, History of the New World, 1565, trans. W.H. Smyth, (New York, 1857).

43. Cervantes, Exemplary Stories, "The Jealous Extremaduran," p. 147.

44. James Lockhart, in The Men of Cajamarca: A Social and Biographical Study of the First Conquerors of Peru, (Austin and London, 1972), develops this point very clearly; see esp. pp. 17-22.

45. Benzoni, pp. 11-12.

46. Ibid., p. 8.

47. Ibid., p. 162.

48. Ibid., pp. 131-132.

49. Don Alonso Enriquez de Guzmán, The Life and Acts of Don Alonso Enriquez de Guzmán, a Knight of Seville, of the Order of Santiago, A.D. 1518 to 1543, Trans. Clements R. Markham (London, 1862), p. 119.