Picadores

Salvete Omnes,
some more images of the violent world of the picadores in paint, drawing and print & one old photo

all images are from Wiki Commons
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Romeyn de Hooghe - Haarlem Ad 1689

Salvete Omnes,
a quick peek into the XVII century Netherlands through the keen eye and engraving hand  of Romeyn de Hooghe.
Carriages, wagons and horsemen, also horses at a pasture around Haarlem as seen from northwest.

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Pepe Hillo

title page of Pepe's book on bull fighting

Salvete Omnes,
 let us travel a bit in time and space - to the sunny Spain during the rule of the Bourbon kings, before the armies of Progress arrived with Napoleonic standards and left Spanish lands in shambles for the most part of the XIX century.

It is the story of one famously popular  Spanish XVIII century torero  who had fought the bulls in the Spain's bull rings, wrote a book, published in 1796, about the art of la tauromaquia (corrida de toros) and then they said a 'toro bravo' he himself had chosen killed him in the 'plaza de toros' in Madrid.
And  Francisco Goya  created several print showing this torero (above and below el torero in death and in the link Pepe Hillo in action) - part  of a series of prints known as La Tauromaquia.
Pepe-Hillo or  rather José Delgado Guerra is considered as one of the creators of the modern Spanish bull-fighting, along with Pedro Romero and Costillares.
He was killed by a brave bull called Barbudo in front of many spectators including Her Majesty the Queen Maria Louisa on May 11, 1801 in Madrid.
two Spanish prints showing his actions and untimely demise
 
Prints from his book La Tauromaquia o Arte de Torear - showing horses, picadores and the removal of the killed toro bravo

                                                                    ..  vae victis
 

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Soviet-German invasion of Poland 17 Sept 1939

Salvete Omnes,
the forgotten war and forgotten alliance - for Poland it meant annihilation while the good Polish allies France and UK stood by. War could have ended in 1939...
Soviet entry into the war in photos below


Untold massacres of Polish soldier and civilians,  and then planned genocide ( Intelligenzaktion & AB Aktion) followed - the Germans killing Polish intelligentsia and upper levels of Polish society in German occupied Poland and merciless ethnic cleansing by  deporting the millions of ethnic Poles from the Polish territories annexed to Germany into  the GG,. The genocide carried in the Lasy Piasnickie in Pomorze was  as huge as the Soviet massacres  of the police and soldier prisoners in 1940-41.

While the Soviets were killing the Polish upper strata of society,  they also killed policemen, veterans,  farmers and merchants, they did lots of ethnic cleansing deporting more than a million Poles to Soviet Kazakhstan and Siberia. Soviet genocide of upper strata of Polish society is best exemplified by the Katyn Forest Massacre. (sadly the Jewish-American mayor of Jersey City wants to put away the finest monument to the  victims of Katyn Forest Massacre, allegedly standing in path of Progress and too gruesome)

 All this 1939-41 well before the killing of Polish Jews became a genocide ( after the German invasion of USSR). Germans created KL Auschwitz for Polish prisoners in 1940.

Not to mention looting of Polish art (more than 500,000 objects), Polish economy, including the finest Arabian horses in the world from Polish stud farms.

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