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" We interrupt our regularly scheduled Stupid\u00A0to bring you the following message from the great Hendrik van Loon, author, journalist, confidant of presidents, teacher of America&amp;#039;s young people, and renowned eccentric prose stylist. This week&amp;#039;s lesson comes to us from Van Loon&amp;#039;s masterwork,\u00A0The Story Of Mankind, which he published in 1921, in which we discover that our bending author wasn&amp;#039;t a fan of what happened in Spain after the fall of Napoleon. The poor Spaniards, who had started the great nationalistic revolt against Napoleon, and who had sacrificed the best blood of the country for their king, were punished severely when the Congress allowed His Majesty to return to his domains. This vicious creature, known as Ferdinand VII, had spent the last four years of his life as a prisoner of Napoleon. He had improved his days by knitting garments for the statues of his favourite patron saints. He celebrated his return by re-introducing the Inquisition and the torture-chamber, both of which had been abolished by the Revolution. He was a disgusting person, despised as much by his subjects as by his four wives, but the Holy Alliance maintained him upon his legitimate throne and all efforts of the decent Spaniards to get rid of this curse and make Spain a constitutional kingdom ended in bloodshed and executions. Were all the statues of Ferdinand&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;favourite patron saints&amp;quot; nekkid or something? Wasn&amp;#039;t this something that the Inquisition should have noticed? "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a37601/your-weekly-van-loon-sept-2/>