The course of the government in reference to the Moriscoes was clearly a failure. It was as impolitic as it was barbarous. Nothing but the blindest fanaticism could have prevented the Spaniards from perceiving this. The object of the government had been to destroy every vestige of nationality in the conquered race. They were compelled to repudiate their ancient usages, their festivals, their religion, their language,—all that gave them a separate existence as a nation. But this served only to strengthen in secret the sentiment of nationality. They were to be divorced for ever from the past. But it was the mistake of the government that it opened to them no future. Having destroyed their independence as a nation, it should have offered them the rights of citizenship, and raised them to an equality with the rest of the community. Such was the policy of ancient Rome towards the nations which she conquered; and such has been that of our own country towards the countless emigrants who have thronged to our shores from so many distant lands. The Moriscoes, on the contrary, under the policy of Spain, were condemned to exist as foreigners in the country,—as enemies in the midst of the community into which they were thrown. Experience had taught them prudence and dissimulation; and in all outward observances they conformed to the exactions of the law. But in secret they were as much attached to their national institutions as were their ancestors when the caliphs of Cordova ruled over half the Peninsula. The Inquisition rarely gleaned an apostate from among them to swell the horrors of an auto da fé; but whoever recalls the facility with which, in the late rebellion, the whole population had relapsed into their ancient faith, will hardly doubt that they must have still continued to be Mahometans at heart.
Thus the gulf which separated the two races grew wider and wider every day. The Moriscoes hated the Spaniards for the wrongs which they had received from them. The Spaniards hated the Moriscoes the more, that they had themselves inflicted these wrongs. Their hatred was further embittered by the feeling of jealousy caused by the successful competition of their rivals in the various pursuits of gain,—a circumstance which forms a fruitful theme of complaint in the petition of the Cortes above noticed.[288] The feeling of hate became in time mingled with that of fear, as the Moriscoes increased in opulence and numbers; and men are not apt to be over scrupulous in their policy towards those whom they both hate and fear.
With these evil passions rankling in their bosoms, the Spaniards were gradually prepared for the consummation of their long train of persecutions by that last act, reserved for the reign of the imbecile Philip the Third,—the expulsion of the Moriscoes from the Peninsula,—an act which deprived Spain of the most industrious and ingenious portion of her population, and which must be regarded as one of the principal causes of the subsequent decline of the monarchy.
MARMOL—CIRCOURT.
An historian less renowned than Mendoza, but of more importance to one who would acquaint himself with the story of the Morisco rebellion, is Luis del Marmol Carbajal. Little is known of him but what is to be gathered from brief notices of himself in his works. He was a native of Granada, but we are not informed of the date of his birth. He was of a good family, and followed the profession of arms. When a mere youth, as he tells us, he was present at the famous siege of Tunis, in 1535. He continued in the imperial service two-and-twenty years. Seven years he was a captive, and followed the victorious banner of Mohammed, Scherif of Morocco, in his campaigns in the west of Africa. His various fortunes and his long residence in different parts of the African continent, especially in Barbary and Egypt, supplied him with abundant information in respect to the subjects of his historical inquiries; and, as he knew the Arabic, he made himself acquainted with such facts as were to be gleaned from books in that language. The fruits of his study and observation he gave to the world in his "Descripcion General de Africa," a work in three volumes folio, the first part of which appeared at Granada in 1573. The remainder was not published till the close of the century.
The book obtained a high reputation for its author, who was much commended for the fidelity and diligence with which he had pushed his researches in a field of letters into which the European scholar had as yet rarely ventured to penetrate.
In the year 1600 appeared, at Malaga, his second work, the "Historia del Rebelion y Castigo de los Moriscos del Reyno de Granada," in one volume, folio. For the composition of this history the author was admirably qualified, not only by his familiarity with all that related to the character and condition of the Moriscoes, but by the part which he had personally taken in the war of the insurrection. He held the office of commissary in the royal army, and served in that capacity from the commencement of the war to its close. In the warm colouring of the narrative, and in the minuteness of its details, we feel that we are reading the report of one who has himself beheld the scenes which he describes. Indeed, the interest which, as an actor, he naturally takes in the operations of the war, leads to an amount of detail which may well be condemned as a blemish by those who do not feel a similar interest in the particulars of the struggle. But if his style have somewhat of the rambling, discursive manner of the old Castilian chronicler, it has a certain elegance in the execution, which brings it much nearer to the standard of a classic author. Far from being chargeable with the obscurity of Mendoza, Marmol is uncommonly perspicuous. With a general facility of expression, his language takes the varied character suited to the theme, sometimes kindled into eloquence and occasionally softened into pathos, for which the melancholy character of his story afforded too many occasions. Though loyal to his country and his faith, yet he shows but few gleams of the fiery intolerance that belonged to his nation, and especially to that portion of it which came into collision with the Moslems. Indeed, in more than one passage of his work we may discern gleams of that Christian charity which, in Castile was the rarest, as it was, unhappily, the least precious of virtues, in the age in which he lived.
In the extensive plan adopted by Marmol, his history of the rebellion embraces a preliminary notice of the conquest of Granada, and of that cruel policy of the conquerors which led to the insurrection. The narrative, thus complete, supplied a most important hiatus in the annals of the country. Yet notwithstanding its importance in this view, and its acknowledged merit as a literary composition, such was the indifference of the Spaniards to their national history, that it was not till the close of the last century, in 1797, that a second edition of Marmol's work was permitted to appear. This was in two volumes, octavo, from the press of Sancha, at Madrid,—the edition used in the preparation of these pages.
The most comprehensive, and by far the most able history of the Moors of Spain with which I am acquainted, is that of the Count Albert de Circourt,—"Histoire des Arabes en Espagne." Beginning with the beginning, the author opens his narrative with the conquest of the Peninsula by the Moslems. He paints in glowing colours the magnificent empire of the Spanish caliphs. He dwells with sufficient minuteness on those interminable feuds which, growing out of a diversity of races and tribes, baffled every attempt at a permanent consolidation under one government. Then comes the famous war of Granada, with the conquest of the country by the "Catholic Kings;" and the work closes with the sad tale of the subsequent fortunes of the conquered races until their final expulsion from the Peninsula. Thus the rapidly shifting scenes of this most picturesque drama, sketched by a master's hand, are brought in regular succession before the eye of the reader.