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After this battle, the Mohammedan general, profiting by his victory, penetrated into Estremadura, Andalusia, and the two Castiles, and took possession of the city of Toledo.
In the following six months one hundred and fifty thousand Moors were hounded out of the land which their ancestors had possessed and enriched for centuries. Murcia, Andalucia, Aragon, Cataluña, Castile, La Mancha, and Estremadura were next taken in hand.
On the decease of Ferdinand I declared for Isabella, esteeming it the duty of every good cavalier and Irishman in the Spanish service to do so. You have all heard of my exploits, and permit me to tell you they would have been yet more glorious had not jealousy been at work and cramped my means. Two years ago I was despatched to Estremadura, to organize the militias.
It is even said that Pizarro would have found it difficult to raise the necessary funds, but for the seasonable aid of Cortes, a native of Estremadura like himself, his companion in arms in early days, and, according to report, his kinsman.9 No one was in a better condition to hold out a helping hand to a brother adventurer, and, probably, no one felt greater sympathy in Pizarro's fortunes, or greater confidence in his eventual success, than the man who had so lately trod the same career with renown.
In truth, however, there is more than irrigation needed to bring the lands of Castile and Estremadura into profitable cultivation, and it cannot be done without the expenditure of large sums of money at the outset in manures, and good implements in place of the obsolete old implements with which the ground is now scratched rather than ploughed.
Soult meanwhile had advanced on the southern frontier of Portugal from Estremadura, and obtained possession of Badajos, under circumstances which Lord Wellington considered as highly disgraceful to the Spanish garrison of that important place, and the armies which ought to have been ready to cover it.
Ever since the expulsion of the Moors from Castile and Estremadura, the land has been allowed gradually to go almost out of cultivation for want of water, the wholesale devastation of forests, in combination with the lapse of all irrigation, acting as a constantly accelerating cause for the arid and unproductive condition of the once genial soil.
To-night the diligence will arrive from Estremadura, on its way to Madrid. Deposit yourself therein; it is the safest and most speedy mode of travelling. As for your animal, I will myself purchase her. My servant is here, and has informed me that she will be of service to us. Let us, therefore, pass the day together in communion, like brothers, and then proceed on our separate journeys."
Portugal was now to be divided into three very unequal parts: the largest portion, comprising Estremadura, Beira, and Tras-os Montes, was reserved for a future arrangement at the general peace, but meanwhile was to be held by France: Algarve and Alemtejo were handed over to Godoy; while the diminutive province of Entre Minho e Douro was flung as a sop to the young King of Etruria and his mother, a princess of the House of Spain, to console them for the loss of Etruria.
Mme. la Princesse passed from her carriage to her own morning room and sank down on a couch, a little listless and weary with her search among the treasures of the Algerine bazaars. It was purposeless work, after all. Had she not bronzes, and porcelains, and bric-a-brac, and objets d'art in profusion in her Roman villa, her Parisian hotel, her great, grim palace in Estremadura.
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