The royal victors repaired first to the grand mosque, which was consecrated as a Christian church, and where they rendered thanks to God for the brilliant success that had crowned their arms. While the sovereigns fulfilled this pious duty, the Count de Tendilla, the new governor {197} of Grenada, elevated the triumphant cross, and the standards of Castile and St. James, on the highest towers of the Alhambra. Thus fell this famous city, and thus perished the power of the Moors of Spain, after an existence of seven hundred and eighty-two years from the first conquest of the country by Tarik. It may now be proper briefly to remark upon the principal causes of the extinction of the national independence of the kingdom of Grenada. The first of these arose from the peculiar character of the Moors: from that spirit of inconstancy, that love of novelty, and that unceasing inquietude, which prompted them to such frequent change of their rulers; which multiplied factions among them, and constantly convulsed the empire with internal discords, expending its strength and power in dissensions at home, and thus leaving it defenceless against foreign enemies. The Moors may also be reproached with an extravagant fondness for architectural magnificence, splendid fetes, and other expensive entertainments, which aided in exhausting the national treasury at times when protracted warfare scarcely ever permitted this most fertile region of the earth to reproduce the {198} crops the Spaniards had destroyed. But, more than all, they were a people without an established code of laws, that only permanent basis of the prosperity of nations. And then, too, a despotic form of government, which deprives men of patriotism, induced each individual to regard his virtues and attainments merely as affording the means of personal consideration, and not, as they should be considered, the property of his country.