A desperate struggle ensued. Province after province the Moor was forced to yield to the relentless foe. At last all was lost. The Mohammedan power in Spain was crushed. The Moors and Jews were given the choice between baptism and expulsion. Hundreds of thousands of them feigned allegiance to the Church of Christ, and remained. Hundreds of thousands of them, true to their faith, parted heart-broken from the land that was dearer to them than their own life. The remaining baptized Jews and Moors were soon suspected of relapsing into their old faith, and the Inquisition was brought and burned them by the thousands, and thinned the ranks of the exile Jews. By far the greater number perished from cruelty, exposure, starvation, disease, in their search for a quiet spot where they might live or die in peace. Wherever the remainder of them was permitted to settle, thither they brought blessings[43] verifying the promise of God: "They that bless thee will be blest.[44] [43] Cf. Lecky's "Rationalism in Europe", vol i. chap. vi. [44] Genesis xii: 3. And so, too, was verified the other half of that promise: "They that curse thee will be cursed." The curse of God has hung heavily upon Spain, ever since she had dared to lay violent hand upon God's anointed, ever since she cruelly massacred, burned and exiled the most thrifty, the most industrious, the most intellectual people that ever trod her soil, and made her the glory of Europe and the pride of the world. For a short time only, lingered her prosperity after the expulsion of the people that had created that prosperity. The New World, the discovery of which the Jews and Moors had made possible, poured into the mother country a prodigious wealth, which hastened the ruin of Spain. It intoxicated the Spaniards, and when the sobering came, the effect was terrible. Had they had the skillful, and industrious and intelligent Jews and Moors to turn the vast treasures, which poured into Spain with every vessel, into useful channels, Spain would have maintained her position as leader in the commercial world, and Italy, and France, and the Netherlands, the new homes of the Jews, would never have seized it from her, and Spain would not have been to-day what she is. But, instead, it flowed into the coffers of the greedy and insatiable Church, and the richer the Church became the more terrible became its tyranny, and the greater the inducement for laymen to enter it. Convents and Churches multiplied with such vast speed, that early in the Seventeenth Century the Spanish historian enumerates upwards of 9,000 monasteries, besides nunneries, 32,000 Dominican and Franciscan friars, 14,000 chaplains in the diocese of Seville, and 18,000 in the diocese of Calahorra.