But the ancient valor was aroused too late. Ferdinand, of Aragon, had married Isabella, of Castile. Two of the most powerful crowns and armies were united, and unitedly they marched against the city of Granada.
Granada surrendered. On the second day of January, 1492, the last and ill-fated king of the Moors, Boabdil (Abu Abdillah,) met Ferdinand and his party at the entrance of the Alhambra, and presenting the keys of the city, thus he spoke in a loud voice and in sad accents:
"We are thine, O powerful and exalted king; these are the keys of this paradise. We deliver into thy hands this city and kingdom, for such is the will of Allah: and we trust thou wilt use thy triumph with generosity and clemency."
"We trust thy wilt use thy triumph with generosity and clemency." Did Boabdil have a foreboding of the infamous use the victor would make of his triumph? Did he really expect that his appeal for generosity and clemency would be favorably answered? If so, poor Boabdil, vain is thy hope, foolish thy trust. That hour in which the Christian cross replaced the Mohammedan crescent on the turret of the Alhambra, that hour when Christianity ruled again, and alone, in the peninsula, marked a climax in the history of cruelties and human sufferings. That hour, though the brightest in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, was most fatal for Spain, most pitiful to Europe, most unfortunate for civilization, and most calamitous for the Jews.
During all these unfortunate years of struggle for supremacy between the Mohammedan and Christian hosts the Jews were not forgotten. Sad as was the lot of the Moors, that of the Jews were inexpressibly more miserable. The Moors were conquered by soldiers, the Jews by monks. The Moors fought against the military of Spain, the Jews were inhumanly slaughtered by the "militia of Christ." The Moors suffered the pangs of war, and the Jews writhed in agony under the tortures of the Inquisition.
Inquisition! Who can utter the execrable word without a shudder! Who can think of this blood-thirsty institution without heaving a sigh of relief that it lasts no longer! What Jew can think of it with dry eyes, without lifting his heart to God in thanksgiving that this blood-reeking tribunal is no more!
Inquisition! Who knows its meaning better than the Jews? What people brought greater sacrifice to its bloody altars than they? Who has described it better than the Jew, Samuel Usque, the Jewish poet, whose lyre was silenced, and whose life was tortured out of his body by that very institution which he so eloquently and truthfully describes? "From Rome," he says, "a beast most monstrous, most ferocious, and most foul has come into our midst. Its very appearance strikes terror into every soul. When it raises its piercing, hissing, seething voice all Europe trembles. Its body is made of a composition of the hardest of steel and the deadliest of poison. In strength, in capacity for murder, in size and in speed it excels the fiercest of lions, the most poisonous of serpents, the tallest of elephants, and the speediest of eagles. Its very voice will kill quicker than the bite of the basilisk. Fire issues from its eyes, its jaws breathe forth flames. It lives from human bodies only. Wherever it comes, and though the sunshine in its noontide brightness, the densest darkness will at once set in. In its presence every blade of grass, every flower and blossom and tree, all wither and perish. Wherever it passes its pestiferous stench changes fertile valleys and luxurious fields and laughing meadows into unproductive deserts and howling wastes. Its name is The Inquisition."