On the whole it may be said that the Saracen conquest was accomplished with wonderfully little bloodshed, and with few or none of those atrocities which generally characterize the subjugation of a whole people by men of an alien race and an alien creed. It cannot, however, be denied that the only contemporary Christian chronicler is at variance on this point with all the Arab accounts. "Who," says Isidore of Beja, "can describe such horrors! If every limb in my body became a tongue, even then would human nature fail in depicting this wholesale ruin of Spain, all its countless and immeasurable woes. But that the reader may hear in brief the whole story of sorrow--not to speak of all the disastrous ills which in innumerable ages past from Adam even till now in various states and regions of the earth a cruel and foul foe has caused to a fair world--whatever Troy in Homer's tale endured, whatever Jerusalem suffered that the prophets' words might come to pass, whatever Babylon underwent that the Scripture might be fulfilled--all this, and more, has Spain experienced--Spain once full of delights, but now of misery, once so exalted in glory, but now brought low in shame and dishonour."[1] [1] Cp. also Isidore, sec 36. Dunham, ii. p. 121, note, curiously remarks: "Both Isidore and Roderic may exaggerate, but the exaggeration proves the fact." This is evidently mere rhapsody, of the same character as the ravings of the British monk Gildas, though far less justified as it seems by the actual facts. Rodrigo of Toledo, following Isidore after an interval of 500 years, improves upon him by entering into details, which being in many particulars demonstrably false, may in others be reasonably looked upon with suspicion as exaggerated, if not entirely imaginary. His words are: Children are dashed on the ground, young men beheaded, their fathers fall in battle, the old men are massacred, the women reserved for greater misfortune; every cathedral burnt or destroyed, the national substance plundered, oaths and treaties uniformly broken.[1] To appreciate the mildness and generosity of the Arabs, we need only compare their conquest of Spain with the conquest of England by the Saxons, the Danes, and even by the Christian Normans. The comparison will be all in favour of the Arabs. It is not impossible that, if the invaders had been Franks instead of Moors, the country would have suffered even more, as we can see from the actual results effected by the invasion of Charles the Great in 777. Placed as they were between the devil and the deep sea, the Spaniards would perhaps have preferred (had the choice been theirs) to be subject to the Saracens rather than to the Franks.[2] [1] Dunham, ii. p. 121, note. [2] Dozy, ii. p. 41, note, quotes Ermold Nigel on Barcelona: "Urbs erat interea Francorum inhospita turnis, Maurorum votis adsociata magis."