and civil wars. But it has always been put down easily by a capable administration. It reached its greatest heights in Catalonia, where it began in the strife of the peasants against the feudal exactions of the landlords. It had its traditional hero, Roque Guinart, who figures in the second part of Don Quixote. The revolt against the house of Austria in 1640, and the War of the Succession (1700-1714), gave a great stimulus to Catalan brigandage. But it was then put down in a way for which Italy offers no precedent. A country gentleman named Pedro Veciana, hereditary
balio (military and civil lieutenant) of the archbishop of Tarragona in the town of Valls, armed his farm-servants, and resisted the attacks of the brigands. With the help of neighbouring country gentlemen he formed a strong band, known as the Mozos (Boys) of Veciana. The brigands combined to get rid of him by making an attack on the town of Valls, but were repulsed with great loss. The government of Philip V. then commissioned Veciana to raise a special corps of police, the "escuadra de Cataluna," which still exists. For five generations the colonel of the escuadra was always a Veciana. At all times in central and northern Spain the country population has supported the police when the government would act firmly. Since the organization of the excellent constabulary called "La Guardia Civil" by the duke of Ahumada, about 1844, brigandage has been well kept down. At the close of the Carlist War in 1874 a few bands infested Catalonia, but one of the worst was surprised, and all its members battered to death with boxwood cudgels by a gang of charcoal-burners on the ruins of the castle of San Martin de Centellas. In such conditions as these brigandage cannot last. More sympathy is felt for "bandoleros" in the south, and there also they find Spanish equivalents for the "manuténgoli" of Italy. The tobacco smuggling from Gibraltar keeps alive a lawless class which sinks easily into pure brigandage. Perhaps the influence of the Berber blood in the population helps to prolong this barbarism. The Sierra Morena, and the Serrania de Ronda, have produced the bandits whose achievements form the subject of popular ballads, such as Francisco Esteban El Guapo (Francis Stephen, the Buck or Dandy), Don Juan de Serralonga, Pedranza, &c. The name of José Maria has been made familiar to all the world by Merimée's story,
Carmen, and by Bizet's opera. José Maria, called El Tempranillo (the early bird), was a historical personage, a liberal in the rising against Ferdinand VII., 1820-1823, then a smuggler, then a "bandolero." He was finally bought off by the government, and took a commission to suppress the other brigands. Jose Maria was at last shot by one of them, whom he was endeavouring to arrest. The civil guard prevents brigandage from reaching any great height in normal times, but in 1905 a bandit of the old stamp, popularly known as "El Vivillo" (the Vital Spark), haunted the Serrania de Ronda.
The brigand life has been made the subject of much romance. But when stripped of fiction it appears that the bands have been mostly recruited by men who had been guilty of homicide, out of jealousy or in a gambling quarrel, and who remained in them not from love of the life, but from fear of the gallows. A reformed brigand, known as Passo di Lupo (Wolf's Step), confessed to Mr McFarlane about 1820 that the weaker members of the band were terrorized and robbed by the bullies, and that murderous conflicts were constant among them.
The "dacoits" or brigands of India were of the same stamp as their European colleagues. The Pindaris were more than brigands, and the Thugs were a religious sect.
Authorities.?The literature of brigandage, apart from pure romances, or official reports of trials, is naturally extensive. Mr McFarlane's Lives and Exploits of Banditti and Robbers (London, 1837) is a useful introduction to the subject. The author saw a part of what he wrote about, and gives many references, particularly for Italy. A good bibliography of Spanish brigandage will be found in the Reseña Historica de la Guardia Civil of Eugenio de la Iglesia (Madrid, 1898). For actual pictures of the life, nothing is better than the English Travellers and Italian Brigands of W.J.C. Moens (London, 1866), and The Brigands of the Morea, by S. Soteropoulos, translated by the Rev. J.O. Bagdon (London, 1868).
(D. H.)
BRIGANDINE, a French word meaning the armour for the brigandi or brigantes, light-armed foot soldiers; part of the armour of a foot soldier in the middle ages, consisting of a padded tunic of canvas, leather, &c., and lined with closely sewn scales or rings of iron.
BRIGANTES (Celtic for "mountaineers" or "free, privileged"), a people of northern Britain, who inhabited the
