The more the peasants rebelled, the crueler were the methods of Alva.  Men were tortured, beheaded, roasted before slow fires, pinched to death with hot tongs, broken on the wheel, flayed alive.  On one occasion the skins of leaders were stripped from their living bodies, and stretched upon drums for beating the funeral march of brethren to the gallows.  During the course of six years Alva brought charges of heresy and treason against 30,000 inhabitants, and made the infamous boast that, in addition to the multitudes killed in battle and massacred after victory, he had consigned 18,000 persons to the executioner.

This unholy war with the Netherlands lasted with occasional cessations of hostilities for eighty years, and during its progress Spain buried 350,000 of her sons and allies in Holland, spent untold millions in the attempted destruction of freedom, and sunk from the first power in Europe, an empire whose proud boast it had been that upon her possessions the sun never set, to the level of a fourth-rate country, cruel in government, superstitious in religion, and ever an enemy to progress.

Expulsion of the Moors.

In addition to the terrible drain upon the country from losses in war, the expulsion of the Jews and the Moors was productive of the direst results.  In 1609 all the Moriscoes were ordered to depart from the Peninsula within three days.  The penalty of death was declared against all who failed to obey, and against any Christians who should shelter the recalcitrant.  The edict was obeyed, but it was a blow from which Spain never recovered.  The Moriscoes were the back-bone of the industrial population, not only in trade and manufactures, but also in agriculture.  The haughty and indolent Spaniards had willingly left what they considered degrading employment to their inferiors.  The Moors had introduced into Spain the cultivation of sugar, cotton, rice and silk.  In manufactures and commerce they had shown superiority to the Christian inhabitants, and many of their products were eagerly sought for by other countries.  All these advantages were sacrificed to an insane desire for religious unity.

The reigns of Philip III. and Philip IV. witnessed a fearful acceleration in the decline of Spain by the contests with the Dutch and with the German Protestants in the Thirty Years’ War, the wars with France, and the rebellion of Portugal in 1640, which had been united to Spain by Philip II.  The reign of Charles II. was still more unfortunate, and his death was the occasion of the war of the Spanish succession.