The first Spanish monarch whose name need be mentioned here was Queen Isabella of Castile, who, in 1469, concluded an all-important marriage with Ferdinand, the heir of the crown of Aragon. It is with the resulting union of Castile and Aragon that the great importance of Spain in European history begins. For the next hundred years Spain was to enjoy more military power than any other European state. Ferdinand and Isabella undertook to complete the conquest of the peninsula, and in 1492, after a long siege, the city of Granada fell into their hands, and therewith the last vestige of Moorish domination disappeared.[255] [Illustration: EUROPE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY] [Sidenote: Spain's income from the New World enables her to become a European power.] In the same year that the conquest of the peninsula was completed, the discoveries of Columbus, made under the auspices of Queen Isabella, opened up the sources of undreamed-of wealth beyond the seas. The transient greatness of Spain in the sixteenth century is largely to be attributed to the riches which poured in from her American possessions. The shameless and cruel looting of the Mexican and Peruvian cities by Cortez and Pizarro, and the products of the silver mines of the New World, enabled Spain to assume, for a time, a position in Europe which her internal strength and normal resources would never have permitted. [Sidenote: Persecution of the Jews and Moors.] [Sidenote: The revival of the Inquisition.] Unfortunately, the most industrious, skillful, and thrifty among the inhabitants of Spain, i.e., the Moors and the Jews, who well-nigh supported the whole kingdom with the products of their toil, were bitterly persecuted by the Christians. So anxious was Isabella to rid her kingdom of the infidels that she revived the court of the Inquisition.[256] For several decades its tribunals arrested and condemned innumerable persons who were suspected of heresy, and thousands were burned at the stake during this period. These wholesale executions have served to associate Spain especially with the horrors of the Inquisition. Finally, in 1609, the Moors were driven out of the country altogether. The persecution diminished or disheartened the most useful and enterprising portion of the Spanish people, and speedily and permanently crippled a country which in the sixteenth century was granted an unrivaled opportunity to become a flourishing and powerful monarchy. [Sidenote: Heritage of Charles V.]