Note 734 — Chapter XXIV
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The bitterness of this unchristian and barbarous hatred of the Moors, that constituted not a little of the foundation on which rested the intolerance that afterwards did so much to break down the intellectual independence of the Spanish people, can hardly be credited at the present day, when stated in general terms. An instance of its operation, must, therefore, be given to illustrate its intensity. When the Spaniards made one of those forays into the territories of the Moors that were so common for centuries, the Christian knights, on their return, often brought, dangling at their saddle-bows, the heads of the Moors they had slain, and threw them to the boys in the streets of the villages, to exasperate their young hatred against the enemies of their faith;—a practice which, we are told on good authority, was continued as late as the war of the Alpuxarras, under Don John of Austria, in the reign of Philip II. (Clemencin, in Memorias de la Acad. de Hist., Tom. VI. p. 390.) But any body who will read the “Historia de la Rebelion y Castigo de los Moriscos del Reyno de Granada,” by Luis del Marmol Carvajal, (Málaga, 1600, fol.,) will see how complacently an eyewitness, not so much disposed as most of his countrymen to look with hatred on the Moors, regarded cruelties which it is not possible now to read without shuddering. See his account of the murder, by order of the chivalrous Don John of Austria, (f. 192,) of four hundred women and children, his captives at Galera;—“muchos en su presencia,” says the historian, who was there. Similar remarks might be made about the second volume of Hita’s “Guerras de Granada,” which will be noticed hereafter. Indeed, it is only by reading such books that it is possible to learn how much the Spanish character was impaired and degraded by this hatred, inculcated, during the nine centuries that elapsed between the age of Roderic the Goth and that of Philip III., not only as a part of the loyalty of which all Spaniards were so proud, but as a religious duty of every Christian in the kingdom.