begun at once to organize a fresh resistance against the invaders. The
thirty[1] wretched barbarians, whom the Arabs thought it unnecessary to
pursue into their native fastnesses, soon showed that they had power to
sting; and the handful of patriots, who in the cave of Covadonga
gathered round Pelayo, a scion of the old Gothic line, soon swelled into
an army, and the army into a nation. Within six years of the death of
Roderic had begun that onward march of the new Spanish monarchy, which,
with the exception of a disastrous twenty-five years at the close of the
tenth century, was not destined to retrograde, scarcely even to halt,
until it had regained every foot of ground that had once belonged to the
Gothic kings.

Let us turn for a moment to the antecedents of the Arab invaders.
History affords no parallel, whether from a religious or political point
of view, to the sudden rise of Mohammedanism and the wonderful conquests
which it made. "The electric spark[2] had indeed fallen on what seemed
black unnoticeable sand, and lo the sand proved explosive powder and
blazed heaven-high from Delhi to Granada!" Mohammed began his preaching
in 609, and confined himself to persuasion till 622, the year of the
Flight from Mecca. After this a change seems to have come over his
conduct, if not over his character, and the Prophet, foregoing the
peaceful and more glorious mission of a Heaven-sent messenger, appealed
to the human arbitrament of the sword: not with any very marked success,
however, the victory of Bedr in 624 being counterbalanced by the defeat
of Ohud in in the following year. In 631, Arabia being mostly pacified,
the first expedition beyond its boundaries was undertaken under
Mohammed's own leadership, but this abortive attempt gave no indications
of the astonishing successes to be achieved in the near future. Mohammed
himself died in the following year, yet, in spite of this and the
consequent revolt of almost all Arabia, within two years Syria was