The Jews had brought commerce and manufactures, they were skilled agriculturists, some of them learned for their time; the Moors had brought into Spain, or had developed there, a glorious architecture, schools, and colleges, renowned throughout Europe, arts, and even sciences, and had reclaimed from the desert vast areas of waste lands; they had built beautiful cities and towns, castles and palaces, which are the admiration of all who see them to–day; yet both Jews and Moors were driven from Spain as though they were its deadly enemies. Those who drove them forth were not capable of creating a tithe of what the Moors and Jews had done; to their credit is not one work of art, not one beautiful structure of renown; but they were through force of circumstance and skill at arms the conquerors, and the lives of these vastly superior peoples were at their mercy. Had they but treated them with leniency, had they encouraged them in their peculiar industries and pursuits, Spain would probably have become the grandest nation in Europe, instead of merely rising to temporary greatness and ultimately sinking to insignificant proportions. As with the Jews, so the Castilian sovereigns dealt with the Moors. Though they had stipulated on oath that they should be protected in the observances of their own religion, yet not long after, urged thereto by the inquisitors of the Holy Office, they broke their sacred pledges and turned them over to their enemies. Many professed to become converted, to escape persecution, but others were driven to rebellion, fled to the mountains and waged a bloody war until overcome by force. Says a learned historian of that time, when the Inquisition claimed its innocent victims by hundreds and thousands: “Now a scene of persecution and cruelty began which far exceeds in atrocity anything which history has related. Every tie of nature and society was broken, every duty and every relation violated, and torture forced from all alike false accusations, betrayal of friends, confession of impossible crimes; while the actors in these horrible tragedies were shielded by impenetrable secrecy from the revenge of their victims and the detestation of society.” Were it not for such acts as these, and had Isabella and Ferdinand inclined to mercy rather than listened to the advice of bigoted counsellors, their reign might have earned the distinction of being, what many have claimed for it, the greatest that Spain ever knew. They built wisely in many things, they advanced Spain from obscurity to become a power among nations; they earned the love and regard of their Christian subjects by works promoting their welfare; but at the same time they vitiated the good deeds by their barbarous treatment of “heretics.”