the same laws as the Christian population would, little by little, lose their distinctive character, and conform to the habits, and be won over to the religion, of their conquerors. This hope, which in so many similar instances has been disappointed, was not destined to fruition in Spain. The Arabs, though peaceable and loyal subjects, in their dress, language, manners, and religion, remained Arabs still.
The Inquisition was established about the time of the conquest of Granada; and its eyes, as one can well understand, were turned with extreme jealousy on a race who, privileged to live under Christian ascendancy, were insensible to the truths and beauties of the Christian religion. This jealousy was the cause of the Morisco rebellion, and finally of the expulsion of the great body of the Moors from Spain. Churchmen, finding that Arab converts were excessively tardy in coming in, were urgent that pressure should be used to bring these heathens into the Christian fold. Such pressure was a gross and cruel violation of a solemn treaty: nevertheless, the importunity of the clergy succeeded in inducing the Government to exert it, gently at first, but more and more insolently as the Moriscoes continued firm in their faith, until the oppression was more than the goaded people could bear, and they broke into revolts of which racial and religious hatreds were the causes and the fuel.
At first the Government found itself able to cope with the complaints and the resistance of the Moors. From the days of Ferdinand and Isabella to the last days of the Emperor Charles V., there had been in the dealings with the Moriscoes some regard for safe policy, notwithstanding the concessions that were made to intolerance and the injustice with which treaties were overridden. But under Philip II. bigotry was allowed to take its unbridled will, prudential considerations were cast to the winds, and the Arabs were exasperated into a rebellion which it taxed the power of Spain to overcome, which desolated some of her fairest provinces, and which deprived her of an ingenious and industrious body of subjects, who, in every art except that of war, far excelled her Christian population. The treacheries and intrigues of this war, in which either side was impelled by the fiercest passions, almost exceed belief; and the cruelties of which both Christians and infidels were guilty, raise the greatest horror and loathing in the reader's mind. Burnings, massacres, torturings, were of constant occurrence; capitulations were violated and prisoners destroyed by wholesale butchery; women and children were sold into slavery; and pillage was everywhere permitted. It is true that deeds of great valour were frequently performed; but as for generosity, pity, or common humanity, these sentiments seem to have been altogether banished from the region in which the Morisco revolt was acted.
The King's Government was slow to recognise the magnitude of the insurrection which it had provoked; consequently, its attempts at suppression, though successful in places, proved often abortive. The rebels, though they suffered severely in many encounters, had enough of good fortune not only to keep their resistance alive, but to make it spread. When it had been maintained with vigour for three months that is to say, from the commencement of the year 1569 till April of that year – Don
