with the traditional epic invocation to the muse. A fine example is The most beautiful history of the life and death of Pietro Mancino, chief of Banditi, which begins: In the Kingdom of Naples, every successive revolutionary disturbance saw a recrudescence of brigandage down to the unification of 1860–1861. The source of the trouble was the supporters of brigands (like Carmine Crocco from Basilicata, the most famous outlaw during the Italian unification) received from various kinds of manuténgoli (maintainers) – great men, corrupt officials, political parties, and the peasants who were terrorized, or who profited by selling the brigands food and clothes. In the Campagna in 1866, two English travellers, William John Charles Möens and the Rev. John Cruger Murray Aynsley, were captured and held for ransom; Aynsley was released shortly thereafter. Möens found that the manuténgoli of the brigands among the peasants charged famine prices for food, and extortionate prices for clothes and cartridges. Mexico The Mexican brigand Juan Cortina made incursions into Texas before the American Civil War. In Mexico the "Rurales" ended brigandage. Slovenia In Slovenia the brigands (called Rokovnjači) were active especially in the mountainous Upper Carniola region in the 18th and 19th century. They were suppressed by the army in 1853. Spain In Spain brigandage was common in and south of the Sierra Morena. It reached its greatest heights in Andalusia. 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) greatly stimulated Catalan brigandage. 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. Since the organization of Guardia Civil by the Duke of Ahumada, about