If it were not that these enactments were followed up by the most barbarous and insatiable cruelties, it would be difficult to read this extraordinary catalogue of offences without a smile. But all disposition to mirth vanishes when we remember what ensued. Great numbers of arrests, we are told, were made—the practice of keeping the accuser’s name a profound secret rendering it easy to indulge malevolence without the risk of exposure. The accused, not being told the exact nature or details of the charges against them, were unable to disprove them; and, not being confronted with the witnesses, could not expose their falsehood. Both witnesses and accused, again, were frequently put to the severest tortures, under the pressure of which they made confessions which they were not allowed to retract. In short, it was wholly impossible for any one to escape condemnation when it was the wish or the interest of the inquisitors to condemn him; and it is no wonder that the list of their victims should have extended to a length so fearful. Fearful indeed it is to read. During the eighteen years of Torquemada’s inquisitorship, more than ten thousand persons were burned alive; more than six thousand corpses, of persons found guilty after their deaths, were dragged from their graves and fastened to the stakes, along with the living victims; while nearly one hundred thousand were stripped of all their possessions, and sentenced to life-long imprisonment.[155] All classes of men were shocked and alarmed at these dreadful scenes. The Cortes appealed to the Pope, who made a feeble attempt to interfere, but soon desisted; while, in Saragossa, a conspiracy was organized, and Arbues d’Avila, one of the three inquisitors, was assassinated in the cathedral. But this did not benefit the unhappy Jews. Whether guilty or not of the act, all men considered them so, and left them to what they regarded as the just penalty of their crime.