To the Jews he owed his easy conquest of Toledo, and the Goths alone were to blame for this. It was only natural the unhappy and persecuted Jews should welcome any foreign invasion that helped to deliver them and sweep their brutal oppressors into obscurity. Witiza's clemency was too isolated a fact in Gothic rule to be remembered by them or to inspire the faintest hope for continued tolerance. The next monarch might even prove worse than Sisebuth or Egica. It was safer to rely on the Moor, who would probably remember their good-will, and would hardly maintain a prejudice against them in favour of the Christians. As for the nobles and prelates, they lost their heads and flew northward. The city was speedily emptied of all the Goths who had the means of flight. Most of the patricians emigrated to Galicià; the archbishop retreated to Rome, and in payment for their treachery, Witiza's sons claimed land to the extent of three thousand farms, which Tarik granted them. Oppas, Witiza's brother, was named governor of Toledo, until Tarik's splendid victory brought over from Africa Musa, infuriated and jealous. Instead of thanking his lieutenant, he acknowledged his services by publicly horsewhipping him when the dismayed victor came submissively to meet him at the city gates. CHAPTER III _Toledo under Moslem Rule_ "It must not be supposed that the Moors," writes Mr Lane Poole in his "History of the Moors in Spain," "like the barbarian hordes who preceded them, brought desolation and tyranny in their wake. On the contrary, never was Andalusia so mildly, justly, and wisely governed as by her Arab conquerors.... All the administrative talent of Spain had not sufficed to make the Gothic domination tolerable to its subjects. Under the Moors, on the other hand, the people were on the whole contented--as contented as any people can be whose rulers are of a separate race and creed--and far better pleased than they had been when their sovereigns belonged to the same religion as that which they nominally professed.... What they wanted was not a creed, but the power to live their lives in peace and prosperity. This their Moorish masters gave them.... The Christians were satisfied with the new regime, and openly admitted that they preferred the rule of the Moors to that of the Franks or the Goths."