The invasion of Western Europe by a non-White Muslim army after 711 AD, very nearly extinguished modern White Europe - certainly the threat was no less serious than the Hunnish invasion which had earlier created so much chaos. While the Huns were Asiatics, the Moors were a mixed race invasion - part Arabic, part Black and part mixed race, always easily distinguishable from the Visigothic Whites of Spain.
Although the Muslim armies were collectively known as the Moors or Saracens, they were in fact divided up into their own factions. Nonetheless, together they very nearly conquered all of Spain, and were only turned back from occupying all of Western Europe by a desperate White counter attack in France. The story of this seven hundred year long race war is without doubt one of the most arduous ever fought by the Whites in defense of their continent.
By 709 AD, the Muslim armies had conquered all of Northern Africa and stood on the southern side of the Straits of Gibraltar, with only the Visigothic fortress of Ceuta, situated on the African side of the straits of Gibraltar, still remaining in White hands.
Above: The Muslims driven out of Spain: the black portions indicate the extent of non-White Moorish rule.
WHITE SPAIN INVADED
In 711 AD, Ceuta fell to the Moors and immediately a Moorish fleet sailed across the strait and seized a beachhead on Andalusia in Spain, their first territory on the European mainland.
The Spanish Gothic king of the time, Roderic, rushed an army south and engaged the Moors in a three day battle at Xeres. The Moors won, and the Gothic Spaniards were forced to retreat, giving the Moors time to land a seemingly inexhaustible supply of soldiers from the population wells of North Africa.
Soon the Moors had assembled a massive army and within a few months had conquered most of Gothic Spain.
THE TRIBUTE OF 100 WHITE VIRGINS PER YEAR
Only isolated pockets of Gothic resistance held out. In the north an enclave only secured its existence by being forced to enter a treaty with the Moors in terms of which the Goths had to hand over 100 White Gothic virgins a year to the Moorish leaders for use in their harems - a painful tribute which continued until 791 AD, when the Goths once enough became strong enough to break the terms of the treaty.
Above: A dramatic painting - based on actual events - showing Moors celebrating the fall of a White Spanish town, with White females captured alive. For several years the Moors demanded - and received - a yearly tribute of young White girls for use in their harems after the great Moorish victory of 711. This yearly tribute continued until 791 AD when the Whites had recovered their strength enough to break the terms of a treaty with the non-Whites.
THE MOORS ATTACK FRANCE
The Moors did however not rest with the conquest of Spain. Their Holy War, or Jihad, forced them ever on, and in 722, they crossed the Pyrenees and invaded Gothic Gaul (France), seizing several towns in the south of that country.
Ten years later, in 732, they launched what was to be their final bid to overcome all of Western Europe when a massive army under the command of the Moorish governor of Spain, Abd arRahman, began laying waste to large parts of Frankish and Gothic France.
The Goths in Aquitaine, under their leader Eudes, were defeated at Garonne, and they were forced back into central France, carrying with them news of the frightful and merciless Moorish invasion.
CHARLES MARTEL SAVES EUROPE - 732 AD
France had, since the fall of the Roman Empire, been consolidated under a leading Celtic/Indo-European tribe called the Franks, who were based in the region surrounding present day Paris. The Frankish king at the time of the Moorish invasion, Charles Martel, (Charles the Hammer) immediately mobilized a White counter attack.
The armies of Charles Martel and Abd arRahman met in battle between the towns of Tours and Potiers in Central France in October 732. The battle was one of the most momentous in the history of the White race. Defeat would have meant that all of Western Europe might have fallen under the sway of Islam, and the mixed races from the East would have poured into continental Europe.
Left: The non-White Moorish advance into Europe seemed unstoppable when in 732 AD they launched a massive invasion of present day France. The king of the leading White tribe in that country, Charles Martel of the Franks (who had their headquarters in present day Paris) mobilized a counter attack. A great race battle took place between the towns of Tours and Potiers in central France in October 732 AD. The battle was one of the most momentous in the history of the White race. Defeat would have meant that all of Western Europe might have fallen under the sway of Islam, and the mixed races from the East would have poured into continental Europe. Accounts have it that 375,000 Moors were killed - the White army was utterly victorious over the non-White army and the Moorish invasion of Europe was halted in its tracks. Charles Martel earned his name -Martel means 'hammer' - at this battle - he personally bludgeoned to death a large number of non-Whites with his favorite weapon, a mighty hammer.
An epic seven day battle for Europe followed. One medieval account states that 375,000 Moors were killed. Although this is probably an exaggeration, it does indicate the way the battle went - the non-White army was utterly defeated by the White army.
In the first six days of the battle, the archers and cavalry of the Moors seemed to have the advantage, but on the seventh day, the main body of fighting closed to hand to hand combat. Here the greater physical stature of the Germanics counted for more - with the Frankish King Charles earning the name "hammer" at this battle in recognition of the mighty and fatal strokes with which he personally killed dozens, if not hundreds, of Moors.
Having failed to break the Germanic lines in the hand to hand combat, the Moorish alliance retreated, and their multi-racial and ethnic origin showed up its weakest point - the units, comprising men made up from Arabia, Africa, and parts of Asia, were stunned by their first major defeat and broke up in disarray, each blaming the other, giving victory to the Germanics who never actually pierced the Moorish lines.
The Moors fled south of the Pyrenees back into Spain, and awaited the Frankish drive south which would drive them back into Africa.
This did not come - Charles Martel had exhausted the wealth of the Frankish empire in drawing together an army big enough to defeat the Moors. He was forced to seize a portion of the Church's wealth, an act for which the Christians condemned him strongly, even though if he had failed, Christianity would have been replaced by Islam.
Charles Martel's greatest achievement was the defeat of the Muslim invasion of France. This single act prevented the mixed race Arabs and North Africans from penetrating right into Western Europe and turning it into another Middle East - Charles Martel can truly be credited with saving the Whites of Western Europe from destruction at that point in history.
FURTHER FRANKISH CAMPAIGNS AGAINST THE MOORS
In 755, a local invasion by Franks conquered the town of Narbonne from the Moors, and after a further six years the last Moors were driven out of all of modern France.
In 778, Charles the Great (also known as Charlemagne, Charles Martel's grandson), undertook a campaign in Northern Spain which recaptured much of the territory north of the Ebo river.
It was during the withdrawal of the Frankish army at the successful conclusion of this campaign that a rear guard unit of Franks under the command of Charlemagne's nephew, Roland, was ambushed and slaughtered by the Basques (who opposed the Arabs, Goths and Franks with equal vigor).
The desperate fight to the death became part of French folklore, today reflected in the famous Chanson de Roland - the Song of Roland.
THE WHITE RECONQUEST
During the period of Muslim dominance in Spain, a few regions managed to hold out against the Arabs even at their height. In this way Barcelona was never occupied by the Arabs, as were some northern regions.
These regions banded together in a broad anti-Muslim alliance, and began pushing south, slowly but surely driving the Muslims back.
This was a painfully slow process and lasted many hundreds of years - more than enough time for a certain amount of mixing between parts of the White population and the Arab rulers to have taken place, helping to create the "dark" Spanish look which can be seen amongst many inhabitants of Spain today.
This mixing process in Spain was, as in Greece and Rome, not as complete as in the regions of North Africa or the Middle East, and large numbers of Whites remained intact on the European side of the Mediterranean.
However, enough Arabic blood was mixed with the locals in the southernmost parts of Europe that the distinctive dark look, which is today mistakenly called the "Mediterranean" look, is the lasting evidence of the Muslim invasion.
ISABELLA AND FERDINAND - VANQUISHED THE MOORS
The White reconquest of Spain had however only been carried on in fits and starts. In a great battle fought on the plains of Toledo in July 1212, the non-Whites were defeated by a great White army, and the Moors were then restricted to the southern parts of Spain. The north was given time to recuperate and rebuild its strength.
It was only with the rise of two great leaders - the red-haired Isabella I (1451-1504), Queen of Castile, and Ferdinand V, King of Aragon, that the Moors were finally driven from Europe. Castile was one of the territories never occupied by the Moors, and Aragon had been liberated in one of the localized wars between the Visigoths and the Moors.
Isabella, who won renown for not only liberating Spain from the last of the Moors, but for being one of the main sponsors of the voyages of discoveries of Christopher Columbus, was the product of a marriage between Spanish and Portuguese nobility who had, along with a substantial amount of Spaniards, avoided the mixing caused by centuries of Moorish rule. In 1469, Isabella married Ferdinand - due to intertwining royal family connections and personal conquest, he was not only King of Aragon, but also was king of Sicily (1468-1516); and king of Naples (1504-1516).
Above: The great White King and Queen of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella, who drove the non-White Muslims out of Spain, expelled the Jews and started the exploration of America by financing Christopher Columbus - all in the same year, 1492.
When Isabella's brother died, she and her husband jointly succeeded (1474) to the throne of Castile. This union of the two main Spanish kingdoms laid the foundation of Spain's future greatness. Isabella became Queen of Castile when she was 23 years old. No sooner had she become queen when her kingdom was invaded by Alfonso V, King of Portugal, who was hoping to capitalize upon the weakness of the Spaniards in the confusion following the Moorish invasion. Castile was very nearly overrun, and it was only with a near superhuman effort that Isabella and Ferdinand were able to raise a strong enough army to defeat Alfonso in 1475. With the Portuguese threat settled, Isabella and Ferdinand then turned their attention to their real enemy - the Moors.
THE MOORS RENEW THEIR ATTACK UPON EUROPE
In the interim, the Muslims were renewing their assault on Europe. In 1479, Mohammed II, the Grand Turk, attacked the Island of Rhodes off Greece, only being repulsed by a White invasion under the Knights of St. John in 1480.
THE HILL OF MARTYRS - ITALY INVADED
Undeterred, Mohammed II then invaded Italy itself, seizing the city of Otranto in the Kingdom of Naples. Of the 22,000 inhabitants the Muslims captured, 12,000 were bound with ropes and tortured to death outside the city walls. The Muslims also killed all the Christian priests they could find. On a hill outside the city, known to this day as Martyr's Hill, they killed many captives who refused to convert to Islam.
THE TEN YEARS WAR - ISABELLA SELLS HER JEWELRY
It was not long before the Muslims renewed their assault on Spain. On 25 December 1482, the Muslims from Granada seized the town of Zahara, only 15 miles from Seville. The Ten Years War had started.
Isabella and Ferdinand then used a substantial amount of the money and riches they had confiscated from Spain's Jewish population (many of whom had become falsely converted to Christianity in order to avoid rising anti-Jewish feeling resulting from the Moorish occupation) and bought large quantities of new cannons and weapons from France, Germany and Northern Italy.
Even this was not enough, and finally Isabella sold all her own royal and personal gold, silver, pearls and jewels, to raise money for the liberation of her country from the non-Whites.
Supported by the new armaments obtained from elsewhere in Europe, Isabella and Ferdinand waged a demanding and extremely costly - in terms of lives and material - war to drive the Moors out of Europe for once and for all.
THE WHITE RECONQUEST STARTS
The reconquest of Spain from the Moors started with the seizure of Alhama in 1482, here described by an eyewitness, the Castilian Diego of Valera:
"While Count Rodrigo Ponce of Leon, Marquis of Cadiz, was in Marchena, several leaders came to him and they said that , if the Marquis wanted, they could tell him of a way in which the city of Alhama could be taken without any risk. . . .this was because the Moors took their safety for granted, as their city was so strong and situated so deep within their kingdom, on top of a high summit, completely surrounded by a river and accessible only by a single route up a very rough and steep hill.
"Before dawn, on Tuesday 10 February 1482, the Marquis' troops arrived outside the city of Alhama, Those who carried the scaling equipment quietly set it up.
"They were not seen until they were well inside the city. As daylight was breaking, a commotion arose and the Christians who lived in the city, as well as the other inhabitants, came running.
"When the Moors heard this . . .they gathered in the square and divided up among the men all the places from which they could best defend their walls. The Marquis of Cadiz and the other knights entered the city through the back gate on order to force the Moors to come out to fight.
"As the street was very narrow it did not allow for more than two men abreast to go through the gate, while the square where the Moors stood was very wide. So when the Marquis' men entered the square the Moors killed them as they came in two by two, and began to shoot so many cannon and arrows and stones that no one else dared to enter through the narrow street.
"Although the Christians received many blows in the narrow alleyways, they finally, by the grace of our Lord, drove the Moors fleeing from the square down towards the gates to Granada: there stood a mosque, very secure, where the Moors were surrounded: many were left dead or wounded.
"Then the Marquis of Cadiz ordered that the city gates be opened; his men entered killing and taking prisoner any enemies they found. They took many Moors . . . one soldier took thirty heads . . .
"The Moors stayed in the Mosque all day on Wednesday, defending it bravely. They were still there on Thursday, so the Marquis ordered his men to set fire to it. So many Moors were hurt that finally out of fear they told the Marquis that they would do as he wished; the Marquis then divided them up amongst his knights (as prisoners).
"On the morning of the following day, 13 February 1482, the Muslim king of Grenada, Abul Hassan, arrived near Alhama with a powerful army, seven thousand on horseback and one hundred thousand on foot and surrounded the city. The siege lasted several days, and since it took place during Lent, the Christians ate nothing but boiled wheat, chick-peas and beans. When the Moors saw that the Christians were not weakening, they worked to redirect the water supply away from the city; a few times the Marquis waded into the water up to his knees to cut down and burn the barricades the Moors had set up. When the Moors saw the great effort of the Christians to defend the city, they decided to break camp (giving the marquis the city)."
Between 1483 and 1486, the Spanish drove the Moors out of the western half of the kingdom of Granada. With the capture of the city of Malaga in 1487, followed in quick succession by the fall of the towns of Baza, Almeria and Gaudix in campaigns during 1488 to 1489, the White noose tightened round the last non-White stronghold - the citadel of Grenada.
THE FALL OF GRENADA
The White armies gathered their strength for one last mighty push against the Moors. Isabella hired, at her own expense, 40,000 mules to carry the provisions needed by the army which she and Ferdinand had gathered together.
At last, by July 1491, the great White army stood outside the gates of the city of Granada itself. The Moors took refuge in the fort known as the Alhambra. Outside Ferdinand and Isabella personally took command of the siege army.
July, August, September, October, November and December passed. The besieged Moors became desperate, their food supplies ran low and disease started to spread within the closed walls.
Finally on 30 December 1491, the Moorish king, Abu Abd-Allah, opened negotiations for surrender. The final surrender was recorded by an eyewitness, the priest Bernaldez, who was the chaplain of the archbishop of Seville:
"On Monday 2 January (1492) they (Isabella and Ferdinand) left the camp with their army duly drawn up. As they came near to the Alhambra, Abu Abd-Allah rode out, accompanied by many of his knights, with the keys of the city in his hand. He tried to dismount in order to kiss the king's hand, but the king would not allow it.
"The Moor kissed Ferdinand on the arm and gave him the keys, saying 'Take the keys of your city, for I, and the men who are within, are your vassals.' King Ferdinand took the keys and gave them to the queen . . ."
The surrender of Granada in 1492 was the first time in 770 years the White Goths once again ruled all of Spain.
Above: Monday 2 January 1492: The last non-White stronghold in Spain, the citadel of Grenada, surrenders to the victorious White army, led personally by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. It was the first time in 770 years that all of Spain was once again under White control.
FURTHER CAMPAIGNS
Ferdinand became involved in an internal dispute in Italy, and was part of a force which conquered the Republic of Venice in 1508. This force went on in 1509 to conquer Oran and Tripoli on the North African coast from the Moors. Finally Ferdinand annexed the kingdom of Navarre in 1512. These conquests extended the borders of Spain to the Straits of Gibraltar, a border it has kept to this day.
This was however not the end of Spanish wars against Islam. In 1535, the Spanish King Charles V mounted expeditions against Muslim held Tunis and Algiers in 1541, preventing another incipient Muslim invasion of Europe from North Africa, and in 1571, Spain played a leading role in putting together a powerful White navy which defeated the non-White Ottoman navy at the Battle of Lepanto, permanently weakening Turkish maritime power.
EXPULSION OF 250,000 MIXED RACE MOORS
Finally in 1609, the Spanish king Philip III ordered the physical expulsion of some 250,000 "Moriscos" or Christianized Moors from the country. The Moriscos were in fact of mixed White/Moorish ancestry and in this way a large number of mixed race inhabitants of Southern Spain were forcibly expelled from that country.
THE EXPULSION OF THE JEWS
The Spanish Jews were amongst the first to feel the full effects of the fall of the Moors from power in Spain. In 1492 Isabella and Ferdinand formally expelled all Jews from that country, punishing the Spanish Jews for having actively collaborated with the Moors during their 780 year long occupation. The victorious Moors (who, because of their common Semitic ancestry with the Spanish Jews and the already poor relations between the Jews and the Goths) employed several Spanish Jews in their administration of Spain in some of the highest posts, even though there were occasional outbursts of anti-Jewish feeling amongst the Arabs themselves.
In the city of Grenada, the last to fall to the White armies, the Spanish were enraged to learn that the Moorish king's prime minister and most of his leading advisors were Jews. A massacre of Jews in the city followed that discovery. This alliance between a number of Spanish Jews and the Moors inflamed the anti-Semitic feeling amongst the subdued Goths even further; a sentiment which would later flare up in the form of the Spanish Inquisition and the expulsion of the Jews from Spain.
THE INQUISITION
When Spain was finally liberated from the non-White Moors, the long suppressed anti-Jewish sentiment broke out in full fury. In that year all unbaptized Jews were expelled en masse from Spain, and the infamous Spanish Inquisition, set up to enforce Christendom, was used to persecute Jews, who, because of their collaboration with the Moors, were regarded as the implacable enemies of White Spain.
Earlier Isabella had obtained from the Pope in Rome a dispensation to establish the Inquisition in Spain, which soon turned into a fully fledged anti-Jewish campaign under the name of Christianity. The first hearings against the Conversos were held in February 1481 in Castile - it combined with the outbreak of the "Black Plague" - bubonic plague. Many Christian fanatics linked the outbreak of the plague to the start of proceedings against the Conversos, and the Jews were blamed for the plague as well as their other real or imagined crimes, which included accusations that they had betrayed the city of Toledo to the invading Moors by opening the city gates at a crucial junction in the siege of that city.
The leading Conversos held a secret meeting to resist the Inquisition with force. Isabella's spies however found out about the planned rebellion and arrested the ringleaders, most prominent amongst them a rabbi named Diego de Susan. He, along with six other Jews, was tried for subversion, found guilty and executed by burning at the stake in late 1481.
The Conversos then broke rank in panic, and starting fleeing Spain in large numbers, some going to Italy, but many going to Muslim held Turkey, where they once again enjoyed special status. Much property belonging to the Converso Jews - who by some estimates made up as much as 20 per cent of Spain's pre-Inquisition population - was seized by Isabella and added to the state treasury.
Above: Captured White prisoners about to be decapitated by Saracens: note how the Spaniards are depicted with blond hair.
SPAIN'S GOLDEN AGE
After the expulsion of the Moors and the Jews, Spain entered its Golden Age. It created a huge empire, and along with Portugal, became one of the most powerful nations in Europe. Unfortunately for Spain and Portugal, both countries declined soon afterwards due to a change in their population make-up, as detailed in the previous chapter.
Nonetheless, the liberation of Spain from Moorish rule saved Western Europe from complete Arabic domination, and as a result the Visigothic warriors who undertook this 700 year war, will always be remembered for their great feat of arms.
