Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 5, 2025
The insurrection spread far and wide through the Sierra Nevada, and the Spanish army, now led by Don John of Austria, the king’s brother, found itself confronted by a most serious task. The weak point in the organization of the Moriscos lay in the character of their king. Aben-Humeya, at first popular, soon displayed traits of character which lost him the support of his followers.
During almost the whole reign of Philip II. the army of Spain was kept busily engaged, now with the Turks and the Barbary states, now with the revolted Moriscos, or descendants of the Moors of Granada, now in the conquest of Portugal, now with the heretics of the Netherlands. All this was not enough for the ambition of the Spanish king.
Her policy towards the Moriscos banished the most active agriculturists from the land, and large districts became desert, population declined, and the resources of the kingdom diminished yearly.
She exhausted her resources in unwise or hopeless foreign struggles, like the war of conquest of Italy and the effort to reconquer the Netherlands; she wasted her peculiar opportunities by driving from her borders the enterprising Jews and industrious Moriscos, and by allowing commerce and finance to fall into the hands of foreigners.
This bold stroke brought to Algiers, besides the Moriscos, who had watched the battle anxiously from the island, many valuable captives of rank, and released hundreds of Moslem galley-slaves from irons and the lash.
But, not more to his talents, which were great, than to the policy of religious persecution which he had supported and enforced, Roderigo Calderon owed his promotion. The King and the Inquisition had, some years before our story opens, resolved upon the general expulsion of the Moriscos the wealthiest, the most active, the most industrious portion of the population.
In addition to the causes of decline named, others of importance were her treatment of the Jews and the Moriscos, though the banishment of the former took place at an earlier date.
But Spaniards and Germans came as mere greedy and besotten and savage mercenaries: the scum of their countries, careless of Italian sights and deeds, thinking only of torturing for hidden treasure, or swilling southern wines; and they returned to Spain and to Germany, to persecutions of Moriscos and plundering of abbeys, as savage and as dull as they had arrived.
The Moriscos were soon in arms again, Aben-Humeya at their head, and the war blazed throughout the length and breadth of the mountains. Even from Barbary came a considerable body of Moors, who entered the service of the Morisco chief.
As France half-ruined herself by expelling the Huguenots, the most industrious of her population, Spain did the same in expelling the Moriscos, to whose skill and industry she owed so much of her prosperity. So it ever must be when bigotry is allowed to control the policy of states. France recovered from the evil effects of her mad act. Spain never did.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking