Such was the prophecy: but bitter its fulfilment. With the expulsion of the Jews and Moors large bodies of industrious and expert agriculturists and skilled mechanics were suddenly withdrawn, and there was no one to fill their place. The cultivation of rice, cotton and sugar, and the manufacture of silk and paper was destroyed at a blow, and most of it was destroyed forever, for the Spanish Christians, still intoxicated with their military and financial and social greatness, considered such pursuits beneath their dignity. To fight for the king and to enter the Church was honorable, but everything else was mean and sordid. Whole districts were deserted and have never been repeopled to the present day. The brigands soon occupied the places formerly so beneficially filled by honest toilers. In less than fifty years 16,000 looms of Seville, giving employment to 130,000 persons, had dwindled away to less than 300, and its population to one quarter of its former number. The mines stood idle until foreigners took pity of some of them. The others are idle still. A little over one hundred years ago the Spanish government being determined to have a navy, found it necessary to send to England for shipwrights; and they were obliged to apply to the same quarter for persons who could make ropes and canvas, the skill of the natives being unequal to such arduous achievements; and early in the eighteenth century they were obliged to import laborers from Holland to teach the Spaniards the art of making wool, an art for which in their glorious past they were especially famous. The consequences of this industrial and agricultural standstill could not fail. Famine set in. The grandees murmured aloud against the State for expelling the Jews and Moors. The citizens of Madrid fell down in the streets famished and perished where they fell--so had famished and died the Jewish exiles--anarchy prevailed. Peaceful citizens organized themselves into bands and going in search of bread, broke open private houses, and robbed and murdered the inhabitants in the face of day--thus had been murdered the Jewish exiles. Verily God's prophecy was fulfilled: "And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse them that curse thee, in thee shall the families of the earth be blessed."[45] [45] Gen. xii:3.