History of the Reign of Philip the Second King of Spain, Vol. 3 by William Hickling Prescott

Author:William Hickling Prescott [Prescott, William Hickling]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783337230357
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Bod Third Party Titles
Published: 2019-04-14T00:00:00+00:00

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An historian less renowned than Mendoza, but of more importance to one who would acquaint himself with the story of the Morisco rebellion, is Luis del Marmol Carbajal. Little is known of him but what is to be gathered from brief notices of himself in his works. He was a native of Granada, but we are not informed of the date of his birth. He was of a good family, and followed the profession of arms. When a mere youth, as he tells us, he was present at the famous siege of Tunis, in 1535. He continued in the imperial service two-and-twenty years. Seven years he was a captive, and followed the victorious banner of Mohammed, Scherif of Morocco, in his campaigns in the west of Africa. His various fortunes and his long residence in different parts of the African continent, especially in Barbary and Egypt, supplied him with abundant information in respect to the subjects of his historical inquiries; and, as he knew the Arabic, he made himself acquainted with such facts as were to be gleaned from books in that language. The fruits of his study and observation he gave to the world in his "Descripcion General de Africa," a work in three volumes folio, the first part of which appeared at Granada in 1573. The remainder was not published till the close of the century.

The book obtained a high reputation for its author, who was much commended for the fidelity and diligence with which he had pushed his researches in a field of letters into which the European scholar had as yet rarely ventured to penetrate.

In the year 1600 appeared, at Malaga, his second work, the "Historia del Rebelion y Castigo de los Moriscos del Reyno de Granada," in one volume, folio. For the composition of this history the author was admirably qualified, not only by his familiarity with all that related to the character and condition of the Moriscoes, but by the part which he had personally taken in the war of the insurrection. He held the office of commissary in the royal army, and served in that capacity from the commencement of the war to its close. In the warm colouring of the narrative, and in the minuteness of its details, we feel that we are reading the report of one who has himself beheld the scenes which he describes. Indeed, the interest which, as an actor, he naturally takes in the operations of the war, leads to an amount of detail which may well be condemned as a blemish by those who do not feel a similar interest in the particulars of the struggle. But if his style have somewhat of the rambling, discursive manner of the old Castilian chronicler, it has a certain elegance in the execution, which brings it much nearer to the standard of a classic author. Far from being chargeable with the obscurity of Mendoza, Marmol is uncommonly perspicuous. With a general facility of expression, his language takes

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