The annalists who have mentioned the expeditions undertaken by Alfonso I. have neglected to regulate their order of occurrence, and attribute to the movements of the King a celerity which is almost incredible. In fact, these much-vaunted conquests were nothing more than mere forays. No permanent occupation of the country was possible. The uninterrupted succession of calamities which had descended upon it had transformed a region, never renowned for great productiveness, into a desert. In the few fertile spots where the industry of the Moor had obtained a foothold the fierce squadrons of Alfonso blackened the smiling landscape with the fires of destruction and carnage. Such towns and villages as lay in their path were destroyed; the Moors were condemned to slavery; and the Christians, despite their remonstrances, were compelled to follow in the train of the invader, to accept from him homes in the mountains, and to swear fidelity to the Crown. This policy of increasing the population of his dominions by compulsory immigration possessed at least the merit of originality, and was in the end eminently successful. The reluctant colonists, whose cities had been razed and whose lands had been devastated, were deprived of all incentives to return to a region that could no longer afford them subsistence. The ties of race and the precepts of religion already united them to those whom, despite the violence they had displayed, they could not consider as enemies. Distributed judiciously in the districts most deficient in inhabitants, whose soil, in many instances, was not more sterile than that which they had formerly tilled, the new subjects of Alfonso soon became reconciled to their altered condition of life. Their numbers greatly contributed to the strength of the growing kingdom. Their traditions, prejudices, and aspirations were identical with those of the Asturians. Complete amalgamation was soon accomplished by intermarriage and by the intimacies of commercial and social intercourse.