Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 3.djvu/179

 ISABELLA OF CASTILE 119 was re-established by the Church during that age of intolerance to which the reign of Isabella belongs. Yet these are still named to the dishonor of Isabella. But the discovery of America, with all its lasting benefits to mankind, is the immortal crown which the world has woven out of her proffered " Jewels ; " and with this crown it has crowned Isabella of Castile. In the marriage contract of the youthful prince and princess it was agreed that Ferdinand should lead the armies of Castile against the Moors as soon as the affairs of the kingdom would permit. The opportunity and the provocation came after twelve years, when the sovereigns sent to demand of the Moors the long unpaid-tribute, and received only the defiant answer, " Tell your masters that the Moors who paid tribute to Castile are dead. Our mints no longer coin gold, but steel ! " And to prove the efficacy of their steel they sallied forth and took Zahara, one of the strongholds which the father of Ferdinand had taken from the Moors. The chivalry of Spain sprang quickly into well-girt saddles, and the ten years' siege of Granada, " the last stronghold of the Moors in Spain," began in 1481. The Iliad of the reconquest of Spain from the Arab-Moors has yet to be written ; the Homer of its Iliad has yet to appear. But the clos- ing year of the struggle between Christian knight and turbaned Moor would furnish as stirring incidents, and immortalize the names of its heroes as succ^ss- fully, as has the Greek Homer the Trojan war. Those of us who have read the story of the Arab-Moors in Spain, the quick- witted, light-footed, brave-hearted Moors, who coveted the land " flowing with milk and honey " that lay across a narrow strait ; who conquered it, redeemed its barren wastes, and made them to blossom as the rose ; who, in their quick flight from the Arabian deserts through civilized lands, gathered seeds of knowl- edge and planted them so freely in the land of their adoption that their planting overspread the earth ; who, like the Goths, became enervated when they became stationary, and were no longer able to resist the powerful foe who had from their entrance into Spain sworn their expulsion or their extermination, will be ready to weep when the final retribution comes. Yet come it did, when Ferdinand and Isabella pitched their tents and planted their banners of Castile and Aragon upon the verdant vega, or plain, around Granada. And yet we as readily accept the inevitable. We have known that it was im- possible for Isabella to allow any portion of her dominions to be possessed by a people alien in race, language, customs, and religion ; to see the Crescent trium- phant over any site that had been hallowed by the Cross. To the Spanish Chris- tian the fall of Granada was only the final victory of a righteous war. It was the triumph of his race, his nation, and his creed. And, looking back over the long march from Asturias to Granada, he claimed to have invaded no man's right ; every victory but won back what was his own ; every step retraced by the Moors but left him in possession of another portion of his inheritance from his forefathers. The Arab-Moors claimed also hereditary rights. For nearly eight hundred years the Moors had held possession of that strip of land between the " Snow Mountains " and the blue sea, in Southern Spain. One cannot but feel respect