Here was exposed the imbecility of the supposition that Islamism was propagated by the sword. It was Islamism that aided the conquests of the Saracens. Its force lay in applying the dictates of religion directly as a restraint upon the conduct of government, rendering the king, as well as his humblest vassal, equally subjects of the law. Within a few months from the battle of Guadalete, the Moorish troops had passed beyond the Pyrenees, and were encamped at Carcassone. There the tide of victory was arrested, not by the hammer of Martel, but by orders from Damascus. It was the project of the Saracen chief to conquer France, and thence to march to the attack of the Greek empire in the rear. When the Saracens did invade France, it was after the generation of conquerors had passed away--when France was recovering from the lethargy of her Merovingian race, and when a schism had been established between Spain and the Caliphate. The empire established by this victory is the most remarkable instance of prosperity that the world has ever seen. The town of Corduba contained 200,000 houses; in its public library there were 600,000 volumes. It had 900 public baths. On the banks of the Guadalquivir there were 12,000 villages; and such were the fruits they drew from the soil, such the profits of their industry, which furnished to the East luxuries and arms, that the public revenue of Spain in the tenth century was equal to the collective revenues of all the other kings of Europe. Twelve millions of dinars--a sum of gold which, calculating the dinar at 10s., and multiplying by ten, to give the difference of the value of gold, is equal to £60,000,000 of our present money. Five centuries and a half later, this plain was again the theatre of great events: the Christian principalities had again regained strength, the Mussulmans expending themselves in internal wars in Spain, and between the Peninsula and Morocco. The battle of Las Navas de Tolosa had taken place. St. Ferdinand had entered their capital and taken Seville, when the elevation of his son Alfonso the Sage--but in his early years designated _the Brave_--to the crown of Castile, gave promise of a speedy emancipation of the Peninsula, aided as he was by the valiant James of Aragon, who had successfully contested against them no less than thirty fields.