It depopulated Spain by the extermination and banishment of at least three million industrious subjects during the first 139 years of its existence.

It attacked princes of the blood,[85] archbishops, fathers of the Tridentine Council.

It filled every city in the kingdom, the convents of the religious, and the palaces of the nobility, with spies.

The Familiars, or lay brethren devoted to its service, lived at charges of the communes, and debauched society by crimes of rapine, lust, and violence.[86] Ignorant and bloodthirsty monks composed its provincial tribunals, who, like the horrible Lucero el Tenebroso at Cordova, paralyzed whole provinces with a veritable reign of terror.[87] Hated and worshiped, its officers swept through the realm in the guise of powerful _condottieri_.

The Grand Inquisitor maintained a bodyguard of fifty mounted Familiars and two hundred infantry; his subordinates were allowed ten horsemen and fifty archers apiece.