The capture or death of Ibn-Abu now alone was necessary for the full gratification of Christian vengeance. With trifling difficulty Gonzalo-al-Seniz, who enjoyed his confidence and had shared his tent, was persuaded to betray him. The rewards of treachery were definitely stipulated in advance, the principal inducements being a pension of a hundred thousand maravedis and a promise of amnesty. An attempt to take the unfortunate prince alive failed of success; he was killed in the struggle; of his faithful companions, some were cut to pieces, some implored the doubtful clemency of the Christians, and others, after many perilous adventures, succeeded in escaping to Africa. The body of the Morisco king, strapped like a bale of goods upon a beast of burden, was transported to Granada and deposited at the door of the municipal palace. Then preparations were made for a ceremony unparalleled in the history of civilized nations, and whose character shows to what a depth the base descendants of Castilian chivalry had fallen. Proclamation was issued for the celebration of a travesty of regal authority and the offer of a public insult to the dead. At the appointed time a vast multitude of people, attracted by the novelty of the spectacle from every corner of the city and for a distance of many leagues around, crowded the streets and squares of the picturesque old Moorish capital. The line of march led from the Plaza de la Bab-al-Rambla to the foot of the Alhambra hill, a route which in the glorious days of the emirs had been the scene of many a martial triumph. The procession was headed by the corpse of Ibn-Abu, held erect by a concealed wooden framework, which was fastened upon the back of a mule. To insure its preservation, the body had been opened, the viscera extracted, and the cavity filled with salt; it was dressed in the scarlet and gold habiliments of royalty; upon its head was the turban of the khalifs; the face was uncovered, and the pallid, ghastly features seemed, in their fixed and mournful expression, to gaze reproachfully upon the jeering throng. By the side of the mule walked the traitor Gonzalo-al-Seniz, bearing the splendid arms of the king he had betrayed, a cross-bow and a scimetar embossed and damascened with gold. In the rear marched a company of Moriscoes, exempted from the general proscription for participation in this ceremony, laden with the personal effects and the baggage of the Moslem prince. A numerous escort of arquebusiers enclosed the cortége, which was received with becoming pomp by the captain-general and all the military and civil functionaries of the kingdom. As Gonzalo-al-Seniz delivered to the Duke of Arcos the glittering weapons which he carried, he remarked in the figurative language of the Orient, “The shepherd could not bring the sheep alive, but he has brought the fleece.” In the presence of the assembled dignitaries of the realm the head of Ibn-Abu was cut off, and afterwards, placed in an iron cage, was fixed upon the battlements of the gate of Bab-al-Racha, which faced the Alpujarras. The trunk was abandoned to a mob of children, who amused themselves by hacking and disfiguring it until, wearied of this extraordinary pastime, they consumed it in a bonfire.

Such was the unworthy fate of the last of the imperial line of the Ommeyades. Eight hundred years before, Abd-al-Rahman, hunted like a wild animal through the Libyan Desert, had been summoned from a life of obscurity and danger to found a great and powerful empire. Although it rapidly reached its meridian, that empire required many centuries for its final overthrow. The proud dynasty of the Western Khalifate ended as it had begun, in proscription, in exile, in treachery, in violence. The causes which hastened its maturity also contributed largely to its decay. The aspirations of its sovereigns were, on the main, noble and generous. Their services to humanity were of incalculable value and of far-reaching effect. The fire and sword of tyranny and persecution could not efface the lasting impression made by the ideas they promulgated, the science they developed, the literature they created. These survived the tortures of the Inquisition, the anathemas of the Pope, the turmoil of revolution, the funeral pyres of Ximenes. It is a remarkable fact that while the Hispano-Arabs brought within the sphere of their influence and culture the most remote nations, their nearest neighbors were incapable of appreciating their attainments or profiting by their knowledge. The inveterate prejudice against every phase of Moorish life and manners entertained by the Spanish Christians was fatal to their intellectual development. They regarded the intruders as barbarians, as, indeed, the majority of their descendants do even to this day. They were brought in intimate contact with no other form of civilization, and, rather than adopt what their ignorance and fanaticism prompted them to detest and despise, they chose to rely on their own limited resources. In consequence, their mental and social condition, so far from improving, gradually retrograded. The Goths of the age of Roderick were more polished, more intelligent, actuated by better motives, capable of higher aspirations, susceptible to nobler impulses than the Spaniards governed by Charles and Philip. In their progress from the banks of the Vistula to the shores of the Mediterranean, they had encountered many nations long subject to the civilizing influence of Rome. Not a few of them had visited the Eternal City itself. Some had served in the armies of the decaying empire; all had been impressed by the grand and imposing monuments of its magnificence and power. In the court of the last of the Gothic kings were men not unfamiliar with the masterpieces of classic literature. Its publicists had framed a code of laws which is the foundation of every modern system of jurisprudence. In the mechanical arts Gothic skill and industry had made no inconsiderable progress. While feudalism had retarded the development of society, its privileges, contrary to the practice of subsequent times, had not as yet seriously encroached upon the dignity and prerogatives of the throne. The institution of councils under ecclesiastical influence was not entirely subservient to the interests of superstition, and often exercised a wholesome check upon the arbitrary designs of a tyrannical sovereign.

With the Spaniards of the sixteenth century, everything was subordinated to a single principle, the exaltation of the Church. Its servants were the chosen confidants of the monarch; its policy guided his movements, controlled his actions, furnished his ideas, inflamed his prejudices. Whatever was worthy of the name of learning the clergy monopolized and perverted. They diligently fostered the ignorance of the masses, until in all the continent of Europe there is not at the present time a more benighted class than the peasantry of the Spanish Peninsula. The treasures of the world were lavished with unparalleled prodigality upon religious institutions and edifices. A tithe of the wealth squandered upon these vast foundations, whose history is tainted with scandal, would have sufficed, under intelligent direction, to have transformed the entire country into a garden and to have rendered Spain one of the richest of nations. Ecclesiasticism promoted crime and idleness by making beggary respectable, and by countenancing the indiscriminate bestowal of alms as a cardinal virtue. The expulsion of the Jews and the Moriscoes were acts entirely consistent with the general scheme of its polity. They were indispensable for the realization of religious unity, to which every consideration of national welfare, public faith, and individual probity were unhesitatingly sacrificed. The atrocities which accompanied these violent and disastrous measures were regarded as peculiarly meritorious and most acceptable to an avenging God. Upon such insecure foundations was the splendid but unsubstantial fabric of Spanish greatness erected. A sad inheritance has descended to the progeny of those stern warriors who founded an empire on the wreck of civilization, the repudiation of treaties, and the obliteration of entire races from the face of the earth.

The war which had effected the conquest and enslavement of the Moriscoes lasted a little more than three years. No period of the same duration in the history of the Peninsula was fraught with more important consequences. The Spaniards lost by the casualties of battle, exposure, and disease sixty thousand men. The losses of the Moors were much greater; twenty thousand were killed with arms in their hands, but no account has survived of those who were massacred in cold blood. The expense involved in the destruction of the most useful element of the population appalled the corrupt and incompetent financiers of the kingdom. Extraordinary and unwise fiscal methods, devised to remedy the evil, only rendered it more aggravated and desperate. Repeated campaigns of desolation had turned the whole country into a waste. Not only was the material wealth annihilated, but the means of recuperation were forever removed. Under the iron hand of remorseless persecution, industry had vanished. In vain the government offered alluring inducements to immigrants and colonists,—fertile lands, moderate rents, nominal taxation. Few accepted these offers and still fewer remained. The provinces of the South continued a prey to the brigands of the mountains and the corsairs of Barbary. Life and property were notoriously insecure. Castilian pride and indolence were unequal to the patient drudgery which had made hill-side and valley blossom with teeming vegetation; and men whose chosen trade for ages had been war were wholly destitute of the agricultural experience and skill necessary to reproduce these marvellous effects. The royal demesnes, in 1592, yielded annually a sum equal to fifteen thousand dollars; during the closing years of Moslem rule, when the kingdom had been exhausted by incessant war and rebellion, the revenues from this source produced by territory of equal area and fertility had been more than ten times as great. Plundered, tortured, expatriated, the Moriscoes were still subjected to innumerable vexations; the curse of their race was ever upon them. But they were at last comparatively exempt from the odious imputation of heresy. After 1595 the most rigid inquisitorial vigilance was unable or unwilling to detect any heterodox opinions or breaches of ecclesiastical discipline among these unpromising proselytes. And yet it was notorious that they were ignorant of the doctrines of the Church, and that competent persons were not appointed to instruct them. Some zealots, indeed, maintained that they should not be permitted to communicate, and that the exposure of the Host in their churches was a desecration; others, on the other hand, refused absolution to such as would not acknowledge apostasy. Their confessions were often regarded as feigned, and the priests who received them did not hesitate to violate the obligations of their order by divulging privileged confidences to the magistrate. The Morisco could not change his residence without permission; he was not allowed the possession of arms; the approach within forty miles of the kingdom of Granada was punishable with death. Notwithstanding these severe regulations, many succeeded in evading the vigilance of the authorities. Some took refuge in Valencia, where the feudal lords still protected their brethren; others concealed themselves in the Alpujarras; many escaped to Africa. In their new homes they were generally treated with far more indulgence than in the old. Prelates and nobles who profited by their industry not infrequently interposed their influence to prevent persecution, interested officials connived at breaches of the law, and it was a common occurrence for the alguazil appointed to prevent the observance of the feast of Ramadhan to pass his time carousing with those whom it was his office to restrain. The condition of the Moriscoes was also rendered less intolerable by the secret employment of both civil and ecclesiastical dignitaries of high rank and extensive influence, at a regular salary, to guard their rights and frustrate the iniquitous designs of their enemies.

The once flourishing land of Granada was a desert, but the demands of orthodox Christianity at last were satisfied. The devout regarded with unconcealed complacency the fertile territory formerly rich in every variety of agricultural products, and now abandoned to sterility, but which was defiled no longer by the contaminating presence of the heretic and the infidel. But, while the Faith was vindicated by the expulsion of these objects of pious detestation, the secret of prosperity had departed with them. The imported colonists were unable, under new and unfamiliar conditions and heedless of the frugality and patience which insure success, to render their undertakings profitable; indeed, most of them could hardly exist. Their taxes had, in violation of contract and on account of the pressing exigencies of the state, been gradually increased; the demands of importunate creditors and tyrannical officials made them desperate; and these exactions, which exhausted the scanty returns of an ill-conducted cultivation, kept the unfortunate immigrants in a state of hopeless penury. They either abandoned their farms or were forcibly ejected, and in 1597 the royal estates were sold because it was found impossible to operate them at a profit.

While in Granada such discouraging conditions prevailed, those portions of the kingdom which had unwillingly received the banished Moriscoes experienced the beneficial results of their labors. The hitherto barren regions of La Mancha and Estremadura began to exhibit signs of unexampled fertility. The new settlers were peaceable, frugal, industrious. In Castile they were generally farmers; in Aragon, merchants; in Valencia, manufacturers. Not a few attained great distinction in the practice of medicine and surgery; and, like the Jews of former ages, they were frequently employed by the court and the family of the sovereign. The life of Philip III. when a child was saved by the skill of a Moorish physician, a service which was ill-requited by the deeds of his manhood. The exiles practically contributed the funds which supported the monarchy. The insatiable rapacity of adventurers had soon exhausted the available wealth of a magnificent colonial empire. Official corruption constantly drained the ordinary sources of revenue. In all financial difficulties taxation of the Moriscoes afforded an unfailing and profitable means of replenishing the treasury. Their burdens were first doubled, then quadrupled. Every species of imposition was practised upon them. Their debtors paid them in spurious coin, struck for their benefit. False jewels were pledged with them for loans. The chicanery of the law was employed to defraud them with impunity, while the most severe penalties were inflicted upon them for trifling breaches of trust. They were systematically swindled by cheats and usurers. In all possible ways they were made to feel the unmerited degradation of their caste and the utter hopelessness of relief. Yet under this weight of malevolence and injustice they prospered and preserved at least the appearance of equanimity. Nothing could, with truth, be alleged against their morals. They were nominally good Christians. They attended mass. They conformed to the customs of their rulers, wore their dress, participated in their festivals, spoke Castilian. Their regular and temperate lives and their buoyant spirits under misfortune promoted extraordinary longevity. It was by no means unusual to encounter individuals whose age had passed the limit of a century. Early marriages and polygamous unions caused the population to increase with amazing rapidity. The census taken regularly by the Moriscoes to ascertain the proportion of taxes to be levied upon them and to insure its equitable distribution demonstrated conclusively that this growth was in a progressive ratio that was phenomenal in its character. The enumeration made at Valencia in 1602 showed an increase of ten thousand in three years. Modern investigation has established the fact that a population existing under the most favorable economic conditions will double itself every twenty-five years. The Moriscoes were far exceeding that estimate, for their rate of increase was triple. This wonderful augmentation must have been coincident with the highest degree of prosperity, otherwise subsistence could not have been provided for the multitudes of children. This condition was not peculiar to Valencia: it was the same in Aragon, in Castile, in Estremadura, in Andalusia. The Moors who had failed to conquer their enemies by arms now threatened to overwhelm them by sheer force of numbers. The Spaniards, not being sufficiently civilized to take their census regularly or accurately, were ignorant of the numerical strength of their own population, as compared with that of their Moorish subjects; but it was evident that there was a tremendous preponderance in favor of the latter.

The officials became so alarmed that just before the death of Philip II. he was requested to prohibit any further enumeration of the Moriscoes, because it acquainted them with their power and must eventually prove prejudicial to the interests of the monarchy. Besides their menacing increase, which no supervision, however effective, could prevent, they possessed qualities that made them highly obnoxious to their masters. Their frugality and thrift, their shrewdness and enterprise, rendered competition with them impossible. There was no profitable occupation in which they did not excel. In agriculture they had no rivals. They monopolized every industrial employment; all of the most useful trades were under their control. They undersold the Castilian peasantry in their own markets. Even the most opulent, instructed by previous experience, sedulously avoided every exhibition of luxury; but the Moorish artisan had not lost the taste and dexterity of his ancestors, and the splendid products of the loom and the armory still commanded high prices in the metropolitan cities of Europe. It was known that the Moriscoes were wealthy, and popular opinion, as is invariably the case, delighted in exaggerating the value of their possessions. While they sold much, they consumed comparatively little and purchased even less. Although the offence of heresy could no longer be consistently imputed to them, specious considerations of public policy, as well as deference to ineradicable national prejudice, demanded their suppression. Their prosperity, secured at the expense of their neighbors, and a standing reproach to the idleness and incapacity of the latter, was the measure of Spanish decay. In the existing state of the public mind, and under the direction of the statesmen who controlled the actions of the King, a pretext could readily be found for the perpetration of any injustice. The Moriscoes of Valencia, the most numerous, wealthy, and influential body of their race, protected by the nobles, had always shown less alacrity in the observance of the duties of the Church than their brethren, and had thus rendered themselves liable to the suspicion of apostasy. It was declared that after a generation of espionage, prayer, and religious instruction they were still secret Mussulmans. This opinion, perhaps in some instances not without foundation, amounted to absolute certainty in the narrow mind of Don Juan de Ribera, Archbishop of Valencia, a prelate of vindictive temper, arbitrary disposition, limited abilities, and violent prejudices. He owed much of his reputation for piety to the fact that he had denounced to the Inquisition more than four thousand alleged Moorish apostates. Knowing his feelings towards them, the Moriscoes generally turned a deaf ear to his admonitions and threats, and thus further incurred his displeasure. The energy of Ribera was incessantly exerted for the ruin of these supposed heretics, either by exile or by extermination. With this end in view he addressed several memorials to Philip III., who had now ascended the throne, in which the objects of his wrath were accused of every crime against the civil and the moral law,—treason, murder, kidnapping, blasphemy, sacrilege. In these appeals the Moriscoes were called “the sponge that absorbed the riches of Spain.” He enforced his arguments by the extraordinary statement that the destruction of the Armada was a divine judgment for the indulgence exhibited towards these enemies of the Faith, and that Philip II. was aware of it, for he himself had informed him of that fact. The recent occurrence of earthquakes, tempests, and comets was also sagely attributed to the same cause. The Moriscoes were not ignorant of the designs which the Archbishop was prosecuting to their injury, and endeavored to obtain the assistance of France and England, both of which countries were then hostile to Spain. They offered King Henry IV. the services of a hundred thousand well-armed soldiers if he would invade the Peninsula. The Duke of Sully says they even signalized their willingness to embrace Protestantism in consideration of support, it being a form of worship not tainted with idolatry, like that of Rome. Negotiations were privately opened with the courts of Paris and London, and commissions were even appointed by the latter to verify the claims of the Moriscoes; but no conclusion was arrived at, and the plot was eventually betrayed by the very sovereigns whose honor was pledged to the maintenance of secrecy. An embassy was also sent to the Sultan of Turkey by the Moors, soliciting his aid and tendering him their allegiance. No plan which promised relief was neglected. The furious Ribera again urged upon the King the dangers that the toleration of such a numerous and perfidious people implied; he alleged their prosperity and their superior intelligence as crimes against the state; and as absolute extermination did not seem to be feasible, he suggested expulsion as of greater inconvenience, but of equal efficacy. Once more the nobles interposed in behalf of their vassals, and while the King was hesitating the Moriscoes endeavored to anticipate his decision by the formation of an extensive conspiracy. Again they were betrayed, this time by one of their own number. Public opinion, aroused by these occurrences, and further inflamed by ecclesiastical malice and by the pernicious influence of the Duke of Lerma, the all-powerful minister of Philip III., now imperatively demanded their banishment. This nobleman, of base antecedents and unprincipled character, and whose dominating passion was avarice, was Viceroy of Valencia. His brother was the Grand Inquisitor Their influence easily overweighed the remonstrances of the Pope, whose voice was raised on the side of mercy.

On the fourth of August, 1609, the royal decree which announced the fate of the Moriscoes of Valencia was signed at Segovia. No precaution which prudence could suggest was neglected to prevent disaster consequent upon its enforcement. Great bodies of troops were placed under arms. The frontiers of the kingdom were patrolled by cavalry. Seventy-seven ships of war, the largest in the navy, were assembled on the coast. In every town the garrison was doubled. Several thousand veterans disembarked from the fleet and were distributed at those points where the Morisco population was most numerous. Such preparations left no alternative but submission, and the Valencians, anticipating the final movement which would deliver the unhappy Moors into their hands, began to rob and persecute them without pity. Even after all had been arranged for the removal, the nobles urged Philip to revoke an order which must cause incalculable injury to his kingdom. The most solemn and binding guarantees were offered for the public safety and for the peaceable behavior of the Moriscoes. It was demonstrated that the manufacturing and agricultural interests of the entire monarchy were involved; that a population of a million souls, whose industry represented of itself a source of wealth which could not be replaced, would be practically exterminated; that the educational and religious foundations of the realm alone received from Moorish tributaries an annual sum exceeding a million doubloons of gold. It was also shown that the vassals of the Valencian nobles paid them each year four million ducats, nearly thirty-two million dollars. The alleged conspiracies were imputed to the malice of the monks, who invented them in the cloister; the heresies to ignorance of the clergy, too idle or too negligent to afford their parishioners instruction. The evil results of the iniquitous decree had already begun to manifest themselves. The cultivation of the soil had almost ceased. The markets were deserted. Commerce languished, and the Moriscoes, to avoid the insults of the populace to which they were now subjected, only appeared in the streets when impelled to do so by absolute necessity. The Archiepiscopal See of Valencia, which derived its revenues almost entirely from Morisco taxation, was threatened with bankruptcy, and Don Juan de Ribera, realizing when too late the disastrous consequences of the project he had so sedulously advocated, now in vain endeavored to stem the tide of public bigotry and official madness. While bewailing his unhappy condition to his clerical subordinates, he was heard to plaintively remark, “My brethren, hereafter we shall be compelled to live upon herbs and to mend our own shoes.”

Philip refused to reconsider his determination, and the nobility manifested their loyalty by the unflinching support of a measure running directly counter to their interests. On the twenty-second of September, 1609, the edict of expulsion was proclaimed by heralds throughout the kingdom of Valencia. It represented that by a special act of royal clemency “the heretics, apostates, traitors, criminals guilty of lése-majesté human and divine,” were punished with exile rather than with death, to which the strict construction of the laws condemned them. It permitted the removal of such effects as could be carried, and as much of their harvests as was necessary for subsistence during their journey; all else was to be forfeited to their suzerains. They were forbidden to sell their lands or houses. Three days of preparation were granted; after that they were declared the legitimate prey of every assailant. Dire penalties were denounced against all who should conceal them or in any way assist in the evasion of the edict. Those who had intermarried with Christians could remain, if they desired; and six per cent. of the families were to be reserved by the lords, that the horticultural and mechanical dexterity which had enriched the country might not be absolutely extinguished. These subjects of interested clemency refused to accept this invidious concession, however, and hastened to join their countrymen beyond the sea.

The wretched Moriscoes received the tidings of their expatriation with almost the despair with which they would have listened to a sentence of death. Astonishment, arising from the suddenness of the notice and the inadequate time allotted them for preparation, was mingled with their dismay. The traditions of centuries, the souvenirs of national glory, the memory of their ancestors, contributed to endear them to their native land. There were centred the most cherished associations of a numerous and cultivated race. All around were the visible signs of thrift and opulence and their results, won by laborious exertion from the soil. The disfigured but still magnificent monuments of fallen dynasties recalled the departed glory of Arab genius and Moslem power. The loss of their wealth, the sacrifice of their possessions, portended the endurance of calamities for which they were ill-prepared, and of whose dreadful character their most gloomy apprehensions could convey no adequate conception. In every Moorish community appeared the signs of unutterable misery and woe. The shrieks of frenzied women pierced the air. Old men sobbed upon the hearthstones where had been passed the happy days of infancy and youth. Overcome with grief, life-long friends met in the streets without notice or salutation. Even little children, unable to comprehend, yet awed by the prevailing sorrow, ceased their play to mingle their tears with those of their parents.

As the disconsolate and sobbing multitude, urged on by the ferocious soldiery taught by their religion to regard these victims of national prejudice as the enemies of Christ, left their homes behind forever, their trials and sufferings increased with their progress. The government provided them with neither food, shelter, nor transportation. The difficulties of the march were aggravated by clouds of dust and by the pitiless heat of summer. Many were born on the highway. Great numbers fell from exhaustion. Some, in desperation, committed suicide. Every straggler was butchered by the armed rabble which, equally ravenous for plunder or blood, constantly hung on the flanks of the slowly moving column. Many were assassinated by Old Christians, men of Moorish ancestry, the conversion of whose forefathers dated before the Conquest, and who told their beads and muttered prayers after each murder, as if they had committed an action acceptable to God. The armed brigands who composed the escort vied with the mob in their atrocities. The men were openly killed, the women violated. Their property was appropriated by force. Some died of hunger. Parents, in their extremity, became so oblivious of the instincts of nature as to barter their children for a morsel of bread. When they embarked for Africa they fared even worse than they had done on land. On the sea the opportunities for outrage were multiplied, the means of escape and detection diminished. No pen can portray the horrors visited upon the unhappy Moriscoes, helpless in the midst of savage enemies who were insensible to pity, hardened by cruelty, and dominated by the furious lust of beauty and gold.

The decree was not received everywhere with the same submission as at the city of Valencia. There the exiles, overawed by the large military force, yielded without disturbance. Half-crazed by misfortune, they even feigned exultation, marched on board the ships dressed in holiday costume and headed by bands of music, and in token of delight gave themselves up to the most extravagant exhibitions of joy. Some kissed the shore, others plunged into the sea, others again quaffed the briny water as if it were a delicious beverage. Before embarking they sold much of their property, and articles of great elegance and beauty—curiously wrought vessels of gold and enamel, silken veils embroidered with silver, magnificent garments—were disposed of for a small fraction of their value. During these transactions, and in settlement of their passage to Africa, the Moriscoes succeeded in placing in circulation an immense amount of counterfeit money which they had obtained in Catalonia, thus literally paying the Spaniards in their own coin. The portable wealth of which the kingdom was deprived by their banishment cannot be estimated. It amounted, however, to many millions of ducats. Some of the exiles were known to possess a hundred thousand pieces of gold, an enormous fortune in those times. It was ascertained after their departure that their lords, in defiance of law, had purchased many of their estates, and had connived at the sale or concealment of a great amount of their personal property. Those who succeeded in reaching the cities were received with courteous hospitality, but the desert tribes showed scant mercy to the multitudes that fell into their hands.

Elsewhere in the kingdom the Moriscoes stubbornly resisted the decree of expatriation. The Sierra de Bernia and the Vale of Alahuar were the scene of the most serious disturbances, and at one time twenty thousand insurgents were in the field. Armed for the most part with clubs, their valor was ineffectual in the presence of veteran troops. The women alone were spared; the men were butchered; the brains of children were beaten out against the walls. The garrison of the castle of Pop, which for a few weeks defied the Spanish army, alone obtained advantageous terms. Of the one hundred and fifty thousand Moors exiled from Valencia, at least two-thirds perished. A large number had previously succumbed to persecution or had escaped, and including these the total number of victims of the inauguration of the insane policy of Philip III. was at least two hundred thousand. The continuance of that policy until its aim had been fully accomplished had already been determined on by the councillors of the King. The secrecy which concealed their design did not impose upon those who were the objects of it. They began by tens of thousands to emigrate quietly to Africa. Then the decree, which had been signed a month before, was published, with an attempt to give the impression that it had been provoked by a circumstance of which it was really the cause, namely, the agitation of the Moriscoes. The latter were peremptorily commanded to leave the kingdom within eight days. They were forbidden to take with them money, gold, jewels, bills of exchange, or merchandise. They were not permitted to dispose of their estates. In Catalonia their property was confiscated, “in satisfaction of debts which they might have owed to Christians,” and three days only were allowed them in which to prepare for departure. Their little children were to be left behind to the tender mercies of their oppressors, in order that their salvation might be assured. Those of the northern provinces were prohibited from moving southward; those of Andalusia were directed to emigrate by sea. Within the allotted time all were in motion. The embarkation of the exiles destined for Africa was effected without difficulty. But their brethren of Castile and Aragon were refused admission into France, by the direct order of Henry IV., to whose agency was largely attributable their deplorable condition. His opportune death somewhat relaxed official severity, and a great number entered Provence. Although they were peaceable and inoffensive, the French were anxious to be rid of their unwelcome guests. Free transportation was furnished them by the city of Marseilles, and they were distributed through Turkey, Italy, and Africa. So many died during the passage by sea that their dead bodies encumbered the beach, and the peasants refused for a long time to eat fish, declaring that it had the taste of human flesh. The progress of the unfortunates driven northward was marked by daily scenes of persecution and agony. The commissioners appointed to supervise the emigration connived at the evasion of the decree for their own profit. They extorted enormous sums for protection, which their duty required them to afford without compensation, and which, even after these impositions, was insolently denied. Those things which the ordinary dictates of humanity delight to bestow were sold to the hapless wanderers at fabulous prices. For the shade of the trees on the highway the grasping and unprincipled peasant exacted a rental; and the water dipped from the streams in the trembling hands of the sufferers commanded a higher price than that usually paid for the wine of the country. The little which the commissioners overlooked was seized by rapacious French officials, and the condition of the Moriscoes was still further aggravated by the absconding of those of their number to whom the common purse had been intrusted.

In the merciless proscription thus imposed upon an entire people, an insignificant number temporarily escaped. In the latter were included young children torn from their parents to be educated by the Church, and such persons “of good life and religion” as the clergy, through interested or generous motives, chose to recommend to royal indulgence. In 1611 the exemption enjoyed by these classes was removed; searching inquiry was instituted throughout the kingdom, and every individual of Moorish blood who could be discovered was inexorably condemned to banishment or slavery. By the persecution of the Moriscoes and the losses by war, assassination, voluntary emigration, and enforced exile, Spain was deprived of the services of more than a million of the most intelligent, laborious, and skilful subjects in Christendom. Those who were finally excluded were probably not more than half of the entire Moorish population. No statistics are accessible in our day from which an estimate can be formed of the vast number that perished by famine, by torture, by massacre. Their trials were not at an end even in Africa; they were pursued for sectarian differences, and some who were sincere Christians returned to Spain, where they were at once sentenced to the galleys. The skill and thrift of the Moriscoes, qualities which should have made them desirable, rendered them everywhere unpopular; they monopolized the trade of the Barbary coast, even driving out the Jews; in Algiers the populace rose against them, all were expelled, and large numbers were remorselessly butchered. Hatred of their oppressors induced many of hitherto peaceful occupations to embrace the trade of piracy, and the southern coast of the Peninsula had reason to long remember the exploits of the Morisco corsairs.

The ruthless barbarity, the blind and reckless folly of this measure, was followed by an everlasting curse of barrenness, ignorance, and penury. The sudden removal of enormous amounts of portable wealth deranged every kind of trade. The circulation of counterfeit money impaired public confidence. In Valencia four hundred and fifty villages were abandoned. The absence of the most industrious and prosperous class of its inhabitants was apparent in every community of Castile. Catalonia lost three-quarters of its population. The districts of Aragon rendered desolate by Moorish expulsion have never been repeopled. Agricultural science and mechanical skill disappeared. The hatred and disdain entertained by the Spaniards for the conquered race had never permitted them to profit by the experience and ingenuity of the latter. Intercourse with a Moor brought moral and social contamination. Still less could the admission of inferiority, which the adoption of his methods implied, be tolerated by the haughty, the vainglorious, the impecunious hidalgo.

The effects of the discouragement of all forms of art and industry consequent upon war and persecution had been felt long previous to the expulsion of the Moriscoes in every part of the Peninsula. For many years after the capture of Cordova by Ferdinand III., it was found necessary to bring provisions from the North, not only for the support of the army, but to rescue from famine the sparse and thriftless population of a province which under the Ommeyade khalifs maintained with ease the great capital, as well as twelve thousand villages and hamlets.

The decline in the number of inhabitants under Spanish rule indicates the utter stagnation of trade and agriculture. In 1492 the population of Castile was six and three-quarter million; in 1700 there were in the entire kingdom of Spain but six million souls—such had been the significant retrogression in two hundred years.

The combined revenues of the Spanish Crown at the close of the fifteenth century amounted to a sum equal to three hundred thousand dollars, about one-thousandth of the annual receipts of the imperial treasury at the death of Abd-al-Rahman III., seven hundred years before.

Fifty years after the banishment of the Moors, the combined population of the cities of Cordova, Seville, Toledo, Granada, had decreased by more than four-fifths; it is now about one-tenth of its amount during the Moslem domination. In 1788 there were fifteen hundred and eleven deserted towns in the Peninsula. Toledo, celebrated for its silken fabrics, in the latter part of the fifteenth century had sixty thousand looms; in 1651 it had five thousand; to-day it has none. The same industry was pursued with great success at Seville; in the seventeenth century the number of its looms had decreased from sixteen thousand to sixteen. All other branches of manufactures declined in the same proportion. Even a large part of the kingdom of Valencia, the garden of Europe, was for years an uninhabited wilderness. With the Moslem expulsion the knowledge of many arts, once the source of great profit, was hopelessly lost.

To the pious Spaniard all these sacrifices were as nothing when compared with the triumph of the Faith. The ports were unoccupied, the quays grass-grown, but the armies of the Cross had conquered. The manufactories had fallen into decay, the streets were silent, the highways were deserted except by the timorous traveller and the lurking robber, but not a Moslem or a Jewish heretic was to be encountered in His Most Catholic Majesty’s dominions. At the close of the seventeenth century, throughout the entire Peninsula, once the centre of learning in Europe, the resort of scholars of every land, the seat of the greatest educational institutions of the Middle Ages, not a single academy existed where instruction could be obtained in astronomy, natural philosophy, or any branch of mathematics. A hundred years later no one could be found who understood even the rudiments of chemistry. To-day, among the inhabitants of Spain, according to the published tables of statistics, only one person in every four can read. But what mattered the destruction of commerce, the decay of production, the dearth of intelligence, if the land was purged of false doctrines?, Was it not a source of national congratulation that ecclesiastical authority was once more paramount; that half of the able-bodied population, male and female, were devoted to monastic life; that magnificent religious foundations, such as the world had never before seen, arose on every side; that, though the royal treasury was bankrupt, the annual revenues of the Church amounted to nearly fifty-three million dollars? Surely these manifold divine blessings were not to be weighed with the transitory benefits derived from the labors of a mass of perverse and unregenerate heretics!

The results, both immediate and remote, of this crime against civilization thus proved fatal to Spain. Its principal sources of subsistence removed, the kingdom was desolated by famine. It became necessary to extend public aid to many noble families, once affluent, but now impoverished by the suicidal course of the crown. Popular sentiment, exasperated by distress, denounced in unsparing terms the authors of the national calamity. The Archbishop of Valencia, unable to endure the daily reproaches to which he was subjected, and overcome by the sufferings for which he was responsible, died of remorse. Silence and gloom occupied vast tracts formerly covered by exuberant vegetation. In the place of the farmer and the mechanic appeared the brigand and the outlaw. Deprived of protection, the open country was abandoned; the peasantry sought the security of fortified places, and all occupations whose pursuit implied exposure to the danger of violence were necessarily suspended. The conditions controlling every rank of society which were established in the Peninsula by the blind and savage prejudices of the seventeenth century are largely prevalent to-day. A dreadful retribution has followed a tragedy whose example happily no other nation has ventured to imitate; and which, from the hour of its occurrence, has afflicted with every misfortune to the last generation the people responsible for its hideous atrocities.