Europe in the Sixteenth Century 1494-1598 Part 23

(3) Lastly, Luther had serious scruples on the question of employing force, and although he had finally sanctioned the appeal to arms, the war was to be a defensive one, waged by those in authority, and not in alliance with rebels. Luther had no idea of leading a religious and political crusade, or of promoting missionary enterprise outside Germany. For this the world had to look elsewhere.

The French have always been the most successful interpreters of new ideas to Europe. Their logical acuteness, their mastery of method, their gifts of organisation, as well as their language, with its matchless clearness and elasticity, have well fitted them for this office; and these gifts were now to be ill.u.s.trated in a pre-eminent degree by their great countryman John Calvin.

| John Calvin.

| Condition of Geneva.

This son of the notary in the episcopal court of Noyon in Picardy, was born in the year 1509. At the age of twelve he had been appointed to a chaplaincy in the cathedral, and received the tonsure. But, though he subsequently became a cure, he never proceeded any further in clerical orders; for his father, thinking that the legal profession offered more promise, sent him to Orleans, and then to Bourges to study law, 1529-1531. It was during these years that Calvin fell under the influence of Lutheran teachers, notably of Jacques Lefevre, a man of Picardy like himself, and one of the fathers of French Protestantism. In the year 1534, Calvin was driven from his country by the persecutions inst.i.tuted by Francis I., and retired to Basle. Here at the age of twenty-five he published the first edition of his great work, _The Inst.i.tutes_, a manual of Christian religion, which, although subsequently enlarged, contains a complete outline of his theological system, and which probably has exercised a more profound influence than any other book written by so young a man. In the year 1536, as he pa.s.sed through Geneva, he was induced by the solemn adjurations of William Farel of Dauphine, a French exile himself, to abandon the studies he so dearly loved, and devote himself to missionary effort. The imperial city of Geneva was of importance because it commanded the valley of the Rhone, and the commercial routes which united there; it enjoyed munic.i.p.al self-government, but was under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of its bishop and was threatened by the Duke of Savoy, who held the surrounding country and possessed certain judicial powers within the town itself. To emanc.i.p.ate themselves more completely from this double yoke of ecclesiastical and temporal authority was the constant aim of the patriots of Geneva, and with that view they had made an alliance with the canton of Freibourg in 1519, and that of Bern in 1526. An intermittent struggle had ensued, which was embittered by the adoption of the Lutheran Doctrine by the city in 1535, at the instigation of Farel. In 1536, war had broken out between the Duke and the canton of Bern, when the Swiss succeeded in conquering the whole of the country of Vaud, and thus relieved Geneva of all immediate danger from the Duke.

| Calvin at Geneva, 1536-1538, 1541-1564.

Calvin, induced to stay in Geneva at this moment, commenced forthwith to found a Christian church after the model of the _Inst.i.tutes_; but the severity of his system led to a reaction, and caused his exile, and that of Farel, in 1538. Three years afterwards (September 1541), the city, torn by internal discord, and afraid of being conquered either by the Duke, who was supported by the Catholics within the walls, or by Bern, which courted the Protestants, recalled the Reformer, and accepted his system of church-government. Leaving the munic.i.p.al government of the city intact, he set up by its side an ecclesiastical consistory, consisting of the pastors, and twelve elders elected from the two councils of the town on the nomination of the clergy. The jurisdiction of this consistory was nominally confined to morals, and the regulation of Church matters. It could only punish by penance, and by exclusion from the Sacrament, but as it was the duty of the secular authority to enforce its decisions, every sin became a crime, punished with the utmost severity. All were forced by law to attend public worship, and partake of the Lord's Supper. To wear clothes of a forbidden stuff, to dance at a wedding, to laugh at Calvin's sermons, became an offence punishable at law. Banishment, imprisonment, sometimes death, were the penalties inflicted on unchast.i.ty, and a child was beheaded for having struck his parents. When offences such as these were so severely visited, we cannot wonder that heresy did not escape. In 1547, Gruet was executed, and in 1553, Servetus was burnt. This remorseless tyranny, which reminds one forcibly of the rule of Savonarola, was not established without opposition. A party termed the Libertines was formed, who endeavoured to relax the severity of the discipline, and to vindicate the independence of the secular authority. Nevertheless Calvin, aided by the French exiles who crowded into Geneva and obtained the freedom of the city and a share in the government, successfully maintained his supremacy until his death in 1564, when he was succeeded by his pupil, Theodore Beza.

Geneva had been relieved from fear of attack from the Duke of Savoy by the French conquest of his country in 1543, and although, in the October of the year in which Calvin died, the Duke obtained from Bern a restoration of all the country south of the Lake of Geneva which it had seized in 1536, he did not make any attempt on the city itself. Geneva continued to be an independent republic, forming from time to time alliances with some of the Swiss cantons, till 1815, when she finally became a member of the Swiss Confederation.

| Characteristics of Calvinism.

The predominant characteristic of the teaching of Calvin lies in its eclecticism. In his doctrinal views: in his tenets as to Predestination, the Eucharist, and the unquestioned authority of Scripture to the exclusion of tradition, he approached the views of Zwingle rather than those of Luther. But if in so doing he represents the most uncompromising and p.r.o.nounced antagonism to the teaching of Rome, yet in his conviction that outside the Church there is no salvation, and in the overwhelming authority he ascribes to her, he rea.s.serts the most extravagant tenets of Catholicism, and revives the spirit of Hebraism. That the religion he established, if not exactly ascetic, was gloomy beyond measure; that it has inspired no art except, perhaps, certain forms of literature; that his principles of church-government, though founded on a democratic basis, in practice destroyed all individual liberty; that, so far from advancing the spirit of toleration, they necessarily involved persecution--all this must be admitted. His strong predestinarian views, if logically acted up to, ought to have led to a fatalistic spirit most dangerous to morals, and paralysed action, as perhaps they have in a few cases. But few sane men have ever believed themselves to be eternally reprobate, or acted as if they disbelieved in free-will. The practical results of Calvinism have therefore been to produce a type of men like the founder himself, John Knox, and Theodore Beza, men of remarkable strength of will, extraordinary devotion, and indomitable energy, and to furnish a creed for the most uncompromising opponents of Rome.

Henceforth Geneva was to become the citadel of the Reformers; the refuge of those who had to fly from other lands; the home of the printing-press whence innumerable pamphlets were despatched; the school whence missionaries went forth to preach; the representative of the most militant form of Protestantism on a republican basis; the natural and inevitable enemy of the Counter-Reformation which was the ally of the Jesuits, and of the monarchical forces of Catholic Europe, headed by Spain.

CHAPTER VII

PHILIP AND SPAIN

Persecution of the Protestants--The mystery of Don Carlos--Wars against the Moors and Turks--Relief of Malta--Persecution and Rebellion of the Moriscoes--Battle of Lepanto--Conquest of Portugal--Internal Government of Spain and its dependencies under Philip II.

-- 1. _Persecution of the Protestants--The Inquisition._

| Philip lands in Spain. Aug. 29, 1559.

At the date of the Treaty of Cateau Cambresis (April 5, 1559), Philip was in his thirty-second year. He had already wedded and lost two wives. His first, Maria of Portugal, had died, in giving birth to Don Carlos, on July 8, 1545; his second, Mary of England, on 17th November 1558. After having settled the government of the Netherlands (cf.

p. 319 ff.), Philip proceeded to Spain. A furious tempest greeted his arrival; nine vessels of his fleet were lost; and the King himself landed on the sh.o.r.es of his kingdom--which he was never to leave again--in a small boat.

| He devotes himself to the extirpation of | Protestantism.

Philip had not hitherto displayed those bigoted views of which he henceforth became the exponent. During his brief residence in England he had, in the vain attempt to conciliate the English, opposed or pretended to oppose the policy of persecution adopted by his unhappy wife. He had intervened to protect the Princess Elizabeth, and after her accession had first proposed to marry her, and, when that was refused, had continued on friendly terms. He even gave the Calvinists of Scotland his tacit support against Mary of Guise and her daughter. No sooner, however, did he finally settle in Spain than all was changed. Spain was the representative of all that was most fanatical in Europe, and Philip eagerly adopted the views of that country. Henceforth the increase of his own authority, and the advance of Catholicism, became identified; the reformed opinions were in his eyes a gospel of rebellion and of opposition to authority, and to crush out this pernicious heresy under his absolute rule became the principle of his life.

During the early years of Charles V., a few Spaniards abroad had adopted reformed opinions, such as Francis de Enzinas, the translator of the New Testament into Spanish, and subsequently Professor of Greek at Oxford (1520-1522); while in 1553 Servetus the anti-Trinitarian suffered at Geneva. But it was not until the year 1558 that Protestantism seems to have made much head in Spain itself. By that time, however, not only had Spanish translations of the New Testament and various Protestant books been disseminated in Spain, but a considerable congregation of Reformers had been secretly formed, more especially in the towns of Seville, Valladolid, and Zamora, and in the kingdom of Aragon. On receiving intelligence of this new nest of heretics, Pope Paul IV. issued a brief, February 1558, in which he urged the Inquisitor-General to spare no efforts in exterminating this evil; and the dying Emperor, forgetting his dislike of papal interference, besought the Regent Joanna, and Philip himself, to listen to the Pope's exhortations. Philip required no urging. He published an edict, borrowed from the Netherlands, which condemned all to the stake who bought, sold, or read prohibited books, and revived a law by which the accuser was to receive one-fourth of the property of the condemned. Paul enforced the law by his Bull of 1559, commanding all confessors to urge on their penitents the duty of informing against suspected persons. He also authorised the Inquisition to deliver to the secular arm even those who abjured their errors, 'not from conviction, but from fear of punishment,' and made a grant from the ecclesiastical revenues of Spain to defray the expenses of the Inquisition.

| The Inquisition.

| The Inquisition and the Spanish Church.

This terrible tribunal, which had been established in its final form by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1478, and freed from appeal to Rome in 1497, consisted of a Supreme Council formed of lawyers and theologians, mostly Dominicans, an order to which Philip showed especial favour. At the head of this Council stood the Grand Inquisitor, appointed by the king himself, with numerous subordinate tribunals, protected by armed 'familiars.' Their trials were conducted in secret. Persons were tempted or forced by threats to denounce their enemies, their friends, and even their relatives; a system of espionage was resorted to; torture was freely used to extort confessions from the accused; and the most harmless words were often twisted into heterodoxy by the subtle refinements of the Dominican theologians. They punished by forfeiture of goods, by penance, by imprisonment, and in the last resort handed over the condemned to the secular arm, to be burnt at an _Auto da fe_. Supported by this unwonted harmony between Pope and King, the Grand Inquisitor, Don Fernando Valdes, Archbishop of Seville, set vigorously to work. In Seville alone, 800 were arrested on the first day, and on May 21, 1559, the first of the _Autos da fe_ took place in the streets of Valladolid; another was solemnised on the arrival of Philip in Spain, and a third amid the _fetes_ attending his marriage with his third wife, Elizabeth of France, in 1560. Indeed, no great ceremonial was for some years considered complete unless sanctified by an _Auto da fe_, and the Spaniards preferred one to a bull-fight. It may be true that the cruelties of the Inquisition have been exaggerated; yet, at least, opinions, which in other countries would have been tolerated, were ruthlessly suppressed. Not only was all scientific speculation tabooed, and Spanish scholars forbidden to visit other countries, but the slightest deviation from the strictest orthodoxy was severely visited. The Inquisition was even used against the Church. Although the number of the clergy and the monks was very large, and their wealth, especially in Castile, enormous, no Church in Europe was more completely under royal control. The nomination to ecclesiastical offices was exclusively in the hands of the king; papal interference, unless by his leave, was stoutly resisted; and, if the Church was rich, at least one-third of its revenues fell into the royal coffers. The power of the crown was also enhanced by the devotion of the Jesuits to the royal cause. It was, however, on the Dominicans that Philip mostly relied. The ignorance and bigotry of the members of this order of friars in Spain is only equalled by their subservience to the royal will. They dominated the Holy Office of the Inquisition, and subjected to its discipline not only Theresa, one of the most devoted of Spanish saints, but the members of the powerful Society of Jesus, and even the episcopal bench itself. No less than nine bishops were condemned to various acts of penance; even Carranza, Archbishop of Toledo, was attacked. This learned and zealous prelate, who had taken an important part in some of the sessions of the Council of Trent, and in whose arms Charles V. had died, was charged in August, 1559, with heterodox opinions. After his trial had dragged on for more than seven years, Pius V. insisted on the case being transferred to Rome. But the death of the Pope again delayed the matter, and it was not until April 1576 that the papal decision was finally given. The Archbishop was convicted of holding doctrines akin to those of Luther, and was to abjure sixteen propositions found in his writings; he was to do certain acts of penance; to be suspended from his episcopal functions for five years more, and meanwhile to be confined in a convent of the Dominicans, his own order, at Orvieto.

| The Inquisition used to punish political offences.

The efforts of the Inquisition succeeded in crushing out Protestantism in Spain; and its success unfortunately refutes the comforting doctrine that persecution is powerless against strong convictions. But the success involved the destruction of all intellectual independence; Spain soon became one of the most backward countries in Europe, and, if we except Cervantes the author of _Don Quixote_, and Calderon the poet, she gave birth to no writer of eminence. Nor did the Holy Office confine itself to the extirpation of heresy, or to the vigorous control of the clergy. Formed exclusively of nominees of the crown,[59] it became an instrument in the royal hands for financial extortion and for the pursuit of political offenders. Thus, custom-house officers were dragged before the Inquisition for having allowed horses to cross the frontier, on the pretext that they were for the service of the Huguenots; Antonio Perez, the notorious secretary of Philip, was arraigned before the Inquisition of Aragon; and foreign amba.s.sadors were enjoined to obey its orders. At times the Pope remonstrated against these abuses of the Holy Office, which trenched upon the papal claims. But Philip answered 'that with his scruples his Holiness would destroy religion'; and long after the reign of Philip the Inquisition, as well as the Church, continued the humble servant of royal prerogative.

-- 2. _The Mystery of Don Carlos._[60]

| Don Carlos. 1545-1568.

According to some authorities the zeal of Philip did not spare his own son and heir, Don Carlos. The history of this unfortunate Prince was so distorted by the enemies of his father Philip during his own lifetime, and since then has become such a favourite subject of romance, that on some points it is difficult to arrive at the truth. Some declare that the estrangement between father and son was caused by the suspicion of a guilty pa.s.sion between the Prince and his stepmother, Elizabeth of France, and this is the view which has been adopted by those, like Schiller, who have made Don Carlos the hero of a romantic tragedy.

| Reasons for his imprisonment. Jan. 1568.

We find that in the negotiations for the Treaty of Cateau Cambresis it had been suggested that Don Carlos should wed the French Princess. The idea was dropped, and the hand of Elizabeth was subsequently bestowed on Philip, the father of the Prince. Nevertheless, it is a.s.serted that Elizabeth had learnt to love the son; that Don Carlos never forgave his father for having robbed him of his bride; and that the jealous husband threw his son into prison out of revenge, and finally procured the death by poison not only of his son, but of his unfaithful wife. This tragic tale must, however, be rejected. Don Carlos was only twelve years old at the date of the Treaty of Cateau Cambresis, and the story is not supported by any contemporary authority. Even William of Orange, who in his 'Apology' accuses Philip of poisoning both, is silent as to the motive.

Less improbable is the story that Don Carlos had secret sympathy with the Flemish malcontents, or at least some leaning towards the Protestant heresy. This, it is said, explains the wish of Don Carlos to be intrusted with the administration of the Netherlands, the unwillingness of Philip to publish the reason of his treatment of his son, and his letter to his aunt the Queen of Portugal, in which he spoke of 'sacrificing to G.o.d his own flesh and blood, preferring G.o.d's service and the welfare of his people to all human considerations.' These expressions are, however, quite compatible with the third, and far more probable, hypothesis that Don Carlos was mad. Two of his brothers had died of epilepsy. Don Carlos, who was born in July, 1545, was a sickly child, subject to serious feverish and bilious attacks; that as he grew in years he became, in spite of a certain reckless generosity and an extravagant attachment to a few, arrogant, violent, and unmanageable. A fall down a staircase on his head, in April, 1562, which necessitated an operation of trepanning, increased his violence, and from this moment his actions were those of a crazy man. He insulted women of position with opprobrious epithets. Twice he swallowed costly jewels. He forced a shoemaker to eat stewed strips of a pair of boots because they did not fit. He violently a.s.saulted the Duke of Alva, because the Duke was sent to the Netherlands instead of himself, and even Don John, to whom he was much attached. He declared that he meditated killing a man whom he hated, and sought for absolution beforehand. He attempted to fly from Spain, and probably to rebel against his father. Of his insanity the Venetian amba.s.sador was convinced, and that this is the explanation of the mystery gains confirmation from a secret letter of Philip to the Pope, of which, although the original has disappeared, a translation has been preserved, and in which insanity is pleaded as the justification for the treatment of the Prince; while surely we cannot wonder that Philip should be anxious to keep secret the fact that the insanity of Joanna was reappearing in her great-grandson? Nor, as far as we can see, does the actual treatment of Don Carlos, while in prison, appear to have been exactly cruel. No doubt, he was most carefully watched. He was not to be allowed to talk on politics, or to have any news of the outer world; he was only allowed books of a devotional character; but his guardians were men of good birth, they were enjoined to lighten his captivity by conversation, and he was not tortured or starved.

| Was he poisoned?

We have yet to deal with the accusation that the unfortunate Prince was poisoned by the order of his father. This was plainly a.s.serted by William of Orange, and by Antonio Perez, who was at the time of the death of Don Carlos in the service of King Philip, and the story was believed by many contemporaries. Yet both William the Silent and Perez were, when they wrote, the mortal enemies of the King, and although Philip was unfortunately not above resorting to murder to attain his ends, we may at least allow that the charge in this case is not proven.

| Death of Don Carlos, 24th July 1568; and of Isabella, | Oct. 3, 1568.

Don Carlos died on the 24th of July, 1568, and in less than three months he was followed to the grave by Elizabeth, his stepmother, who died in childbed, October 3, 1568. Two years later Philip married his fourth wife, Anne of Austria, his niece, and daughter of the Emperor Maximilian. She died on the 26th of October 1580. Of her children, all died young except Philip, who succeeded his father.

-- 3. _Wars against the Moors and Turks.

The Rebellion of the Moriscoes._

| Condition of the Moriscoes.

By the ordinance of 1502, published by Ferdinand after the suppression of the Moorish rebellion in Granada (cf. p. 96), the alternative of baptism or exile had been offered to the Moors, and this had been extended to Aragon, and its subordinate kingdoms Valencia and Catalonia, in the early part of the reign of the Emperor Charles. To further the work of conversion churches had been built in the districts most occupied by the Moors, and missionaries despatched thither. The attempt, however, met with scant success. The bitter memories of the past, the deep racial hatreds, the imperfect acquaintance of the preachers with the language of the Moors, the differences of usage and of customs, presented insurmountable difficulties. Accordingly, in 1526, coercion was attempted. An edict was issued ordering the Moors to renounce their national usages, dress, and language, and the Inquisition was intrusted with the enforcement of the edict. Wiser counsels, however, for the time prevailed. The edict was not enforced; and the government was fain to rest content with an outward conformity, which was all that could, under the circ.u.mstances, be looked for. The 'New Christians,' or Moriscoes, as the Moors were called, at least did not disturb the peace. Taking advantage of a strange clause in the Treaty of Granada, which exempted them from certain duties paid by the Christians in their trade with the Barbary coast, they devoted themselves to commerce with that country. But it was as artisans and in agriculture that they especially excelled. As artisans their skill was displayed in many a handicraft; while by their irrigation and by their husbandry they turned the slopes and uplands of the Sierras in Granada into one of the most fertile parts of Spain. The fig, the pomegranate, the orange, and the grape grew side by side with corn and hemp; their flocks of merino sheep were famous; the mulberry tree formed the basis of an extensive manufacture of silk. We may well deplore the fact that this policy was abandoned; and yet amid the fanaticism aroused by the crusade against the Protestants, the wonder perhaps is that it continued so long. Moreover, at this moment, a renewal of the struggle with the Moors of Africa and with the Turk in the Mediterranean naturally revived the national antipathy to the Moriscoes.

| Expeditions against the Barbary Corsairs. 1560-1564.

| The relief of Malta. Sept. 1565.

| The Edicts of 1560-1567.

| Revolt of the Moriscoes. Dec. 1568.

The unceasing raids of the corsairs of the Barbary coast had not only rendered the sea unsafe, but devastated the sh.o.r.es of Italy and Spain. Accordingly, two expeditions were despatched against them from Naples, which did not meet with much success. The first, under the Duke of Medina Sidonia, Viceroy of Naples, was directed against Tripoli, then held by a Greek named Dragut, who had been taken prisoner by the corsairs in early life, and had turned Mahometan. The Duke was forced to put back by stress of weather; his ships were subsequently put to flight by a Turkish fleet under Piali, another renegade, who sailed to the a.s.sistance of Dragut, and the island of Jerbah (Gelves), which had been occupied, was retaken by the Turks (June 29, 1560). The second expedition, which started in 1562, was almost annihilated by a storm. In the following year (April 1563), the Dey of Algiers, encouraged by these disasters of the Spaniards, attempted to drive them from Oran and the neighbouring fortress of Mazarquivir (Mers-el-Kebir), two of the conquests of Cardinal Ximenes, which, with Goletta near Tunis and Melilla in Morocco, were the only remaining Spanish possessions on the African coast. Mazarquivir was nearly lost, when, at the last moment, it was relieved by a Spanish fleet on June 8, and in the two succeeding years (1564 and 1565), the efforts of the Spaniards were somewhat more successful. In September 1564, the island fortress of Penon de Velez, which lay to the west of the Spanish possessions, was taken by Don Garcia de Toledo, who had succeeded Medina Sidonia as Viceroy of Naples; and in the following year the estuary of the Tetuan, another stronghold of the corsairs, was blocked up and rendered useless. Further enterprise on the coast of Africa was now stopped by the news that Malta was hard beset by the Turks. On the loss of Rhodes, in 1522, the Knights of St. John had received the grant of the island of Malta from Charles V. (1530); from that time forward they had formed a bulwark against the Turk from the east, and had joined in most of the late expeditions against the Barbary coast. Solyman I., often urged to reduce this important place, at last despatched a powerful fleet against it in May, 1565. Piali, the renegade, who had already distinguished himself in 1560, shared the command with Mustapha, a tried veteran of seventy, while Dragut of Tripoli also added his contingent. In vain did the Grand Master, Jean de la Valette, appeal for aid to repel the attack. Catherine de Medici was at this moment intriguing with the Turks, and Venice was afraid to arouse the anger of the Sultan. Even Philip did not seem inclined to listen; the affairs in the Netherlands and in France demanded his attention; perhaps he did not care to help an Order which, as it happened at that time, was largely composed of Frenchmen. Finally, however, he listened to the warning of Don Garcia de Toledo that Malta, if once in Turkish hands, could never be recovered, and would give the Sultan the command of that part of the Mediterranean; and on September 8, 1565, Malta was relieved by Don Garcia when reduced to the last gasp. That these events should have awakened the dislike of the Spaniards for the Moriscoes at home, and that suspicions were aroused of some correspondence between them and the Moors of Africa, is not surprising. Nor under these circ.u.mstances can any serious objection be brought against the first two ordinances; that of 1560, forbade the Moriscoes to acquire negro slaves, on the reasonable ground that thereby the number of the infidels was constantly increased; that of 1563, prohibited the Moriscoes from possessing arms without the licence of the captain-general. These measures, however, did not satisfy Don Pedro Guerrero, the Archbishop of Granada, nor the clergy of his diocese, and in pursuance of a memorial which they presented, the government issued the following astounding edict. The provisions of the ill-advised edict of 1526 were revived; the national songs and dances of the Moriscoes were proscribed; their weddings were to be conducted in public according to the Christian ritual, and their houses were to be kept open during the day of the ceremony, so that all could enter and see that no unhallowed rites were solemnised; their women were to appear in public with their faces uncovered; and lastly, the baths in which the Moriscoes delighted were ordered to be destroyed on the ground that they were turned to licentious purposes. Still further, as if to outrage the feelings of the Moriscoes, the edict was published on January 1, the anniversary of the capture of the capital of Granada. It appears that many of the local n.o.bility protested against the execution of this atrocious edict, and that the Marquis de Mondejar, the captain-general of Granada, and even Alva himself, were opposed to it. To expect that the Moriscoes would submit to such interference with their most cherished customs--an interference which did not even respect the domestic privacy of their homes--was absurd, and if it was intended to seize upon disobedience as a pretext for expelling them, the army should at least have been increased. The Grand Inquisitor Espinosa was, however, above such considerations, and the execution of the order was intrusted to Diego Deza, auditor of the Holy Office, who was appointed President of the Chancery of Granada. Finding all remonstrance vain, the Moriscoes made preparations to revolt in June, 1569. Unfortunately some of the more hot-headed, led by a dyer of the name of Aben-Farax, could not brook delay, and in December, 1568, attempted a premature rising in the Moorish quarter (the Albaicin) of Granada. 'You are too few, and you come too soon,' said the Moriscoes of Granada, and refused to move. Disappointed in seizing the city, the rebels retreated to the country, where they met with more response, and signalised their success by horrible ferocity. Neither s.e.x nor age were spared; and Christians, we are told, were sold as slaves to the Algerian corsairs for a carbine a piece.

| Aben-Humeya elected King.

| Limits of the rebellion.

The Moriscoes now elected as their King Aben-Humeya, a young man of twenty-two, a descendant of the ancient house that once had ruled in Spain. The young King indeed dismissed Aben-Farax, and did something to check the cruelties of his followers. The revolt was confined to a somewhat limited area. Its chief stronghold was in the Alpujarras, a low range of hills which lies between the higher peaks of the Sierra Nevada and the sea; thence it spread to the neighbourhood of Almeria on the east, and that of Velez-Malaga on the west. The Moriscoes held no large towns, and only ventured on occasional raids upon the rich plain of La Vega, in which the town of Granada lay, and upon the towns on the sea-coast. Had the Sultan, Selim II., listened to the appeals of Aben-Humeya, and thrown himself with energy into the struggle, the rule of the Mahometans might have been re-established in Granada. The Turks, however, were at this time too much engaged in the war of Cyprus, and the Moriscoes only obtained some Turkish mercenaries and some insufficient help from the Barbary corsairs; they were but poorly armed, and their cause was ever weakened by internal feuds and personal rivalries.