At the death of Philip, which occurred on September 13, 1598, he left to his son and successor, Philip III., an empire nominally undiminished, but unwieldy and internally exhausted. Resources had been squandered. The attention of the masses had been turned from industry to war. The soldiery once regarded as invincible had lost their prestige in the Netherland swamps. Enormous taxes, from which nobles and clergy were exempt, were multiplied on the people. That being insufficient, Philip III. proved his orthodoxy by completing the work. In 1609 the Moors, or Moriscoes, as they were called, were ordered to quit the Peninsula within three days, and the penalty of death was decreed against all who failed to obey, and against any Christians who should shelter the recalcitrants. The edict was obeyed, but it was the ruin of Spain. The Moriscoes were the backbone of the industrial population, not only in trade and manufactures, but also in agriculture. The haughty and indolent Spaniards had willingly left what they considered degrading employments to their inferiors. The Moors had introduced into Spain the cultivation of sugar, cotton, rice and silk. They had established a system of irrigation which had given fertility to the soil. The province of Valencia in their hands had become a model of agriculture to the rest of Europe. In manufactures and commerce they had shown equal superiority to the Christian inhabitants, and many of the products of Spain were eagerly sought for by other countries. All these advantages were sacrificed to an insane desire for religious unity. The resources of Spain, already exhausted, never recovered from this terrible blow. Philip III. died in March, 1621. His reign had not been glorious or advantageous to Spain, but it contrasts favorably with those of his successors. Spanish literature and art, which had received a great impulse from the intercourse with foreign countries under previous rulers, reached their zenith during his lifetime. Three writers have obtained European fame--Cervantes, who produced the immortal “Don Quixote” between 1605 and 1613, and two of the most fertile of romantic dramatists, Lope de Vega and Calderon. In the domain of art, Spain produced two of the greatest masters of the seventeenth century, Velasquez and Murillo.