arik protected the Christians, his gratitude and policy rewarded the
Jews, to whose secret or open aid he was indebted for his most important
acquisitions. Persecuted by the kings and synods of Spain, who had often
pressed the alternative of banishment or baptism, that outcast nation
embraced the moment of revenge: the comparison of their past and present
state was the pledge of their fidelity; and the alliance between the
disciples of Moses and of Mahomet was maintained till the final aera
of their common expulsion. From the royal seat of Toledo, the Arabian
leader spread his conquests to the north, over the modern realms of
Castille and Leon; but it is needless to enumerate the cities that
yielded on his approach, or again to describe the table of emerald,
transported from the East by the Romans, acquired by the Goths among the
spoils of Rome, and presented by the Arabs to the throne of Damascus.
Beyond the Asturian mountains, the maritime town of Gijon was the
term of the lieutenant of Musa, who had performed, with the speed of a
traveller, his victorious march, of seven hundred miles, from the rock
of Gibraltar to the Bay of Biscay. The failure of land compelled him
to retreat; and he was recalled to Toledo, to excuse his presumption
of subduing a kingdom in the absence of his general. Spain, which, in a
more savage and disorderly state, had resisted, two hundred years,
the arms of the Romans, was overrun in a few months by those of the
Saracens; and such was the eagerness of submission and treaty, that
the governor of Cordova is recorded as the only chief who fell, without
conditions, a prisoner into their hands. The cause of the Goths had been
irrevocably judged in the field of Xeres; and, in the national dismay,
each part of the monarchy declined a contest with the antagonist who
had vanquished the united strength of the whole. That strength had
been wasted by two successive seasons of famine and pestilence; and
the governors, who were impatient to surrender, might exaggerate the
difficulty of collecting the provisions of a siege. To disarm the
Christians, superstition likewise contributed her terrors: and the
subtle Arab encouraged the report of dreams, omens, and prophecies,
and of the portraits of the destined conquerors of Spain, that were
discovered on breaking open an apartment of the royal palace. Yet a
spark of the vital flame was still alive: some invincible fugitives
preferred a life of poverty and freedo