The 1492 conquest of Granada in southern Spain is crucial to a proper understanding of the development of Western European warfare. The culmination of a long struggle between the Muslim and Christian cultures in Western Europe, it was the training ground for the armed forces that were to make Spain the dominant military power in Europe throughout the sixteenth century. It also set the stage for the discovery of the New World - it was the war that had to be won before Ferdinand and Isabella would agree to sponsor Columbus's momentous voyage. William Prescott's absorbing account of the War of Granada is now set in context by Albert D. McJoynt, who examines the role of the conquest of Granada in Spanish warfare and its influence on Western Europe. Military histories in English have tended to neglect Spain's experience in Granada, causing a critical gap in awareness of the factors that led to its military strength in Europe after the Italian Wars of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Far from merely copying their adversaries' techniques during these wars, as has often been assumed, the Spanish armed forces had already adopted most of the advances that took Spanish warfare from the medieval to early modern stage.