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Untitled Article
but it ended in his triumph , " by means of base attd unmanly violence . " The wretched Florinda , in the first paroxysm of her grief , wrote to lier father to revenge her wrongs . Her message reached him just after he had successfully repulsed the Arabs , who had attempted to take Ceuta by siege . Count Julian
repaired to the camp of Muza , the Arabian Emir . " Hitherto " said he , we have been enemies , but I come to thee in peace , and it rests with thee to make me the most devoted of thy friends . I have no longer country or king . Roderick the Goth is an usurper , and my deadly foe ; he has wounded my
honour in the tenderest point , and my country affords me no redress . Aid me in my vengeance , and I will deliver all Spain into thy hands—a land far exceeding in fertility and wealth all the vaunted regions thou hast conquered in lingitania . " It was about the year 712 that this offer , so important in its
consequences , was made . The Arabians , op Saracens as they are often called , raised by Mahomet to the dignity of a people , had at this period "become the powerful conquerors of Persia , Syria , Egypt , and all the north of Africa , where they finally acquired the common appellation of Moors . They had often cast wistful eyes towards the mountains of Spain . The offer of Count Julian was speedily accepted . Their armies , admitted b y him to his fortresses , and supported by his powerful party , poured into the country . Roderick was conquered in the moody
battle of the Guadalete ( the river of death ) , and was never seen more . He was supposed by some to have perished in the field , by others to have fled , and to have been carried away by the rapid waters of the river , attempting to ford it in his flight —by others , to have reached some place of concealment among
the mountains . In less than three years the whole country was subdued by Muza . Many are the direful portents and warnings that are related to have preceded and accompanied these events . The Arabs were not cruel conquerors . Resistance , indeed , entailed pillage and all the horrors of war on the conquered ,
hut , on submission and payment of tribute , complete toleration and protection were granted them . Spain saw her most prosperous days under the Moorish rule , and she has never recovered the bigoted and mistaken policy which expelled their whole people from her shores , when in time they ia their turn were subdued .
Grave and authentic history , weighing the detail of events b y the evidences of their truth , seems to present us with but a bald and unsatisfactory outline , after the imagination has dwelt on ( til this . But even history is obliged to rest very frequently on conjecture , and conjecture too of a kind which is apt to be witler of the mark than that which is based on moral and traditional poetry .
Untitled Article
8 & legend * of the Coiupxtl of Spain *
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1836, page 82, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2654/page/18/
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