History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic, vol 1 | Page 8

seemed to threaten
their total extinction,--the great Saracen invasion at the beginning of

the eighth century. The religious, as well as the political institutions of
the Arabs, were too dissimilar to those of the conquered nation, to
allow the former to exercise any very sensible influence over the latter
in these particulars. In the Spirit of toleration, which distinguished the
early followers of Mahomet, they conceded to such of the Goths, as
were willing to continue among them after the conquest, the free
enjoyment of their religious, as well as of many of the civil privileges
which they possessed under the ancient monarchy. [6] Under this
liberal dispensation it cannot be doubted, that many preferred
remaining in the pleasant regions of their ancestors, to quitting them for
a life of poverty and toil. These, however, appear to have been chiefly
of the lower order; [7] and the men of higher rank, or of more generous
sentiments, who refused to accept a nominal and precarious
independence at the hands of their oppressors, escaped from the
overwhelming inundation into the neighboring countries of France,
Italy, and Britain, or retreated behind those natural fortresses of the
north, the Asturian hills and the Pyrenees, whither the victorious
Saracen disdained to pursue them. [8]
Here the broken remnant of the nation endeavored to revive the forms,
at least, of the ancient government. But it may well be conceived, how
imperfect these must have been under a calamity, which, breaking up
all the artificial distinctions of society, seemed to resolve it at once into
its primitive equality. The monarch, once master of the whole
Peninsula, now beheld his empire contracted to a few barren,
inhospitable rocks. The noble, instead of the broad lands and thronged
halls of his ancestors, saw himself at best but the chief of some
wandering horde, seeking a doubtful subsistence, like himself, by
rapine. The peasantry, indeed, may be said to have gained by the
exchange; and, in a situation, in which all factitious distinctions were of
less worth than individual prowess and efficiency, they rose in political
consequence. Even slavery, a sore evil among the Visigoths, as indeed
among all the barbarians of German origin, though not effaced, lost
many of its most revolting features, under the more generous
legislation of later times. [9]
A sensible and salutary influence, at the same time, was exerted on the
moral energies of the nation, which had been corrupted in the long
enjoyment of uninterrupted prosperity. Indeed, so relaxed were the

morals of the court, as well as of the clergy, and so enervated had all
classes become, in the general diffusion of luxury, that some authors
have not scrupled to refer to these causes principally the perdition of
the Gothic monarchy. An entire reformation in these habits was
necessarily effected in a situation, where a scanty subsistence could
only be earned by a life of extreme temperance and toil, and where it
was often to be sought, sword in hand, from an enemy far superior in
numbers. Whatever may have been the vices of the Spaniards, they
cannot have been those of effeminate sloth. Thus a sober, hardy, and
independent race was gradually formed, prepared to assert their ancient
inheritance, and to lay the foundations of far more liberal and equitable
forms of government, than were known to their ancestors.
At first, their progress was slow and almost imperceptible. The
Saracens, indeed, reposing under the sunny skies of Andalusia, so
congenial with their own, seemed willing to relinquish the sterile
regions of the north to an enemy whom they despised. But, when the
Spaniards, quitting the shelter of their mountains, descended into the
open plains of Leon and Castile, they found themselves exposed to the
predatory incursions of the Arab cavalry, who, sweeping over the face
of the country, carried off in a single foray the hard-earned produce of a
summer's toil. It was not until they had reached some natural boundary,
as the river Douro, or the chain of the Guadarrama, that they were
enabled, by constructing a line of fortifications along these primitive
bulwarks, to secure their conquests, and oppose an effectual resistance
to the destructive inroads of their enemies.
Their own dissensions were another cause of their tardy progress. The
numerous petty states, which rose from the ruins of the ancient
monarchy, seemed to regard each other with even a fiercer hatred than
that with which they viewed the enemies of their faith; a circumstance
that more than once brought the nation to the verge of ruin. More
Christian blood was wasted in these national feuds, than in all their
encounters with the infidel. The soldiers of Fernan Gonçalez, a
chieftain of the tenth century, complained that their master made them
lead the life of very devils, keeping them in the harness