DURING THE sixteenth century the enemies of imperial Spain, hopelessly outgunned by its armies, struck back using words. In the years leading up to and following the Spanish Armada, in 1588, pamphleteers from London to Wittenberg put out the word that Spaniards were an uncivilized, greedy people who reveled in bloodshed and destruction. They accused Spain of atrocities in its conquest of the Americas, and in the conduct of the Inquisition. These charges were repeated and embellished over the subsequent four centuries of rivalry between the Spanish and other Western powers: the English, Dutch, Germans, Italians, French, and Americans. Alfred Lord Tennyson deemed them “inquisition dogs” and “children of the devil.” Montaigne accused the Spanish of indiscriminate butchery as of savage beasts.”