Then it is likely to end
in sudden collapse, because the fighting quality of the people has
been destroyed. Populations that have lived for centuries in fear of
impalement or crucifixion, and have known no other destination for
the products of their labour than the clutches of the omnipresent
tax-gatherer, are not likely to furnish good soldiers. A handful of
freemen will scatter them like sheep, as the Greeks did twenty-three
centuries ago at Kynaxa, as the English did the other day at Tel
el-Kebir. On the other hand, where the manliness of the vanquished
people is not crushed, the sway of the conquerors who cannot enter into
political union with them is likely to be cast off, as in the case of
the Moors in Spain. There was a civilization in many respects admirable.
It was eminent for industry, science, art, and poetry; its annals are
full of romantic interest; it was in some respects superior to the
Christian system which supplanted it; in many ways it contributed
largely to the progress of the human race; and it was free from some
of the worst vices of Oriental civilizations. Yet because of the
fundamental defect that between the Christian Spaniard and his
Mussulman conqueror there could be no political fusion, this brilliant
civilization was doomed. During eight centuries of more or less
extensive rule in the Spanish peninsula, the Moor was from first to last
an alien, just as after four centuries the Turk is still an alien in
the Balkan peninsula.
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