The fall of Granada excited a general sensation throughout Christendom, where it was received as counterbalancing, in a manner, the loss of Constantinople nearly half a century before. The war of Granada is often compared by the Castilian chroniclers to that of Troy in its duration, and certainly fully equalled the latter in variety of picturesque and romantic incidents, and in circumstances of poetical interest. With the surrender of its capital terminated the Arabian empire in the peninsula, after an existence of seven hundred and forty-one years from the date of the original conquest. The consequences of this closing war were of the highest moment to Spain. The most obvious was the recovery of an extensive territory, hitherto held by a people whose difference of religion, language, and general habits made them not only incapable of assimilating with their Christian neighbours, but almost their natural enemies; while their local position was a matter of just concern, as interposed between the great divisions of the Spanish monarchy, and opening an obvious avenue to invasion from Africa. By the new conquest, moreover, the Spaniards gained a large extent of country, possessing the highest capacities for production, in its natural fruitfulness of soil, the temperature of climate, and the state of cultivation to which it had been brought by its ancient occupants; while its shores were lined with commodious havens that afforded every facility for commerce. The scattered fragments of the ancient Visigothic empire were now again, with the exception of the little state of Navarre, combined into one great monarchy, as originally destined by nature; and Christian Spain gradually rose, by means of her new acquisitions, from a subordinate situation to the level of a first-rate European power. [Illustration: THE SURRENDER OF GRANADA] The moral influence of the Moorish war, its influence on the Spanish character, was highly important. The inhabitants of the great divisions of the country, as in most countries during the feudal ages, had been brought too frequently into collision with each other to allow the existence of a pervading national feeling. The war of Granada subjected all the various sections of the country to one common action, under the influence of common motives of the most exciting interest; while it brought them in conflict with a race the extreme repugnance of whose institutions and character to their own served greatly to nourish the nationality of sentiment. In this way the spark of patriotism was kindled throughout the whole nation, and the most distant provinces of the peninsula were knit together by a bond of union which has remained indissoluble.