History of the Reign of Philip the Second King of Spain, Vol. 3 / And Biographical & Critical Miscellanies

DON JOHN OF AUSTRIA FROM THE ORIGINAL IN THE ROYAL MUSEUM AT MADRID. London: George Routledge & Sons, Broadway, Ludgate Hill.
VOLUME THE THIRD
AND BIOGRAPHICAL & CRITICAL MISCELLANIES
BY WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT
LONDON GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL NEW YORK: 416, BROOME STREET

Conquest of Spain by the Arabs.—Slow Recovery by the Spaniards.—Efforts to convert the Moslems.—Their Homes in the Alpujarras.—Their Treatment by the Government.—The Minister Espinosa.—Edict against the Moriscoes.—Their ineffectual Remonstrance.
1566, 1567.
It was in the beginning of the eighth century, in the year 711, that the Arabs, filled with the spirit of conquest which had been breathed into them by their warlike apostle, after traversing the southern shores of the Mediterranean, reached the borders of those straits that separate Africa from Europe. Here they paused for a moment, before carrying their banners into a strange and unknown quarter of the globe. It was but for a moment, however, when, with accumulated strength, they descended on the sunny fields of Andalusia, met the whole Gothic array on the banks of the Guadalete, and, after that fatal battle, in which King Roderick fell with the flower of his nobility, spread themselves, like an army of locusts, over every part of the Peninsula. Three years sufficed for the conquest of the country,—except that small corner in the north, where a remnant of the Goths contrived to maintain a savage independence, and where the rudeness of the soil held out to the Saracens no temptation to follow them.
It was much the same story that was repeated, more than three centuries later, by the Norman conquerors in England. The battle of Hastings was to that kingdom what the battle of the Guadalete was to Spain; though the Norman barons, as they rode over the prostrate land, dictated terms to the vanquished of a sterner character than those granted by the Saracens.
But whatever resemblance there may be in the general outlines of the two conquests, there is none in the results that followed. In England the Norman and the Saxon, sprung from a common stock, could not permanently be kept asunder by the barrier which at first was naturally interposed between the conqueror and the conquered; and in less, probably, than three centuries after the invasion, the two nations had imperceptibly melted into one; so that the Englishman of that day might trace the current that flowed through his veins to both a Norman and a Saxon origin.