History of the Moors of Spain Part 10

Its royal champion, Mulei-Ha.s.sem, was not dismayed, however, even by such an acc.u.mulation of danger. He was the first to break the truce, by taking forcible possession of the city of Zahra, A.D. 1481, Heg.

886. Ferdinand despatched amba.s.sadors to the Moslem court to complain of this breach of faith; with orders, at the same time, to demand the ancient tribute which had been paid by the kings of Grenada to the sovereigns of Castile.

"I know," replied Mulei-Ha.s.sem, when the envoys of the Spanish prince had delivered their message, "I know that some of my predecessors rendered you tribute in pieces of gold; but _this_ is the only metal now coined in the national mint of Grenada!" And, as he spoke, the stern and haughty monarch presented the head of his lance to the Spanish amba.s.sadors.

The army of Ferdinand first marched upon Alhamar, a very strong fortress in the {185} neighbourhood of Grenada, and particularly famous for the magnificent baths with which it had been embellished by the Moorish kings. The place was taken by surprise, and thus a war was lighted up that was destined to be extinguished only with the last expiring sigh of Grenada.

Victory seemed at first to be equally poised between the two contending powers. The King of Grenada possessed ample resources in troops, artillery, and treasure. He might have long maintained the contest, but for an act of imprudence which precipitated him into an abyss of misfortune from which he was never afterward able to extricate himself.

The wife of Mulei-Ha.s.sem, named Aixa, belonged, before her marriage with the king, to one of the most important of the Grenadian tribes.

The offspring of this marriage was a son named Boabdil, whose right it was to succeed to his father's throne. But the reckless Mulei repudiated his wife at the instance of a Christian slave, of whom he became enamoured, and who governed the doting monarch at will. This act of cruelty and injustice was the signal for civil war. The injured Aixa, in concert with her son, excited her relatives and friends, {186} and a large number of the inhabitants of the capital, to throw off their allegiance to their sovereign.

Mulei-Ha.s.sem was eventually driven from the city, and Boabdil a.s.sumed the t.i.tle of king. Thus father and son were involved in a contest for the possession of a crown, of which Ferdinand was seeking to deprive them both.

To add to the misfortunes which were already fast crushing this distracted and miserable country beneath their weight, another aspirant to the throne presented himself, in the person of a brother of Mulei-Ha.s.sem named Zagel. This prince, at the head of a band of Moorish adventurers, had succeeded in obtaining some important advantages over the Spaniards in the defiles of Malaga, A.D. 1483, Heg.

888.

His achievements having won for him the hearts of his countrymen, Zagel now conceived the design of dethroning his brother and nephew, and of appropriating the dominions of both to himself. Thus a third faction arose to increase the dissensions of the state.

Boabdil still held insecure possession of the capital; and, desirous of attempting some action, the brilliancy of which would reanimate the {187} hopes and confidence of a party that was ready to abandon him, he sallied forth at the head of a small force, with the intention of surprising Lucena, a city belonging to the Castilians.

But the ill-fated Boabdil was made a prisoner in this expedition.

He was the first Moorish king who had ever been a captive to the Spaniards. Ferdinand lavished on him the attentions due to misfortune, and caused him to be conducted to Cordova, attended by an escort.

The old king, Mulei-Ha.s.sem, seized this opportunity to repossess himself of the crown of which his rebellious son had deprived him, and, in spite of the party of Zagel, he again became master of his capital.

But the restored monarch could oppose but a feeble resistance to the progress of the Spaniards, who were rapidly reducing his cities and advancing nearer to his devoted capital. Within the walls of that city the wretched inhabitants were madly warring against one another, as if unconscious of the destruction that was fast approaching them from without. To increase the sanguinary feuds which already so surely presaged their destruction, the Catholic sovereigns had become the {188} allies of the captive Boabdil, engaging to a.s.sist him in his efforts against his father on condition that he should pay them a tribute of twelve thousand crowns of gold, acknowledge himself their va.s.sal, and deliver certain strong places into their hands. The base Boabdil acceded to everything; and, aided by the politic Spanish princes, hastened again to take arms against his father.

The kingdom of Grenada was now converted into one wide field of carnage, where Mulei-Ha.s.sem, Boabdil, and Zagel were furiously contending for the mournful relics of their country.

The Spaniards, in the mean time, marched rapidly from one conquest to another, sometimes under pretext of sustaining their ally Boabdil, and often in open defiance of the treaty they had formed with that prince; but always carefully feeding the fire of discord, while they were despoiling each of the three rival parties, and leaving to the vanquished inhabitants their laws, their customs, and the free exercise of their religion.

In the midst of these frightful scenes of calamity and crime, old Mulei-Ha.s.sem died, either worn out by grief and misfortune, or through {189} the agency of his ambitious brother. This event occurred A.D.

1485, Heg. 890.

Ferdinand had now rendered himself master of all the western part of the kingdom of Grenada, and Boabdil agreed to divide with Zagel the remnant of this desolated state. The city of Grenada was retained by Boabdil, while Gaudix and Almeria fell to the share of Zagel. The war was not the less vigorously prosecuted in consequence of this arrangement; and the unprincipled Zagel, doubting his ability long to retain the cities in his possession, sold them to King Ferdinand in consideration of an annual pension.

By virtue of this treaty, the Catholic sovereigns took possession of the purchased cities; and the traitor Zagel even lent the aid of his arms to the Christian army, the more speedily to overthrow the royal power of his nephew, and thereby terminate the existence of his expiring country.

All that now remained to the Mussulmans was the single city of Grenada.

There Boabdil still reigned; and, exasperated by misfortune, he vented his rage and despair in acts of barbarous cruelty towards its wretched inhabitants.

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Ferdinand and Isabella, disregarding the conditions of their pretended alliance with this now powerless prince, summoned him to surrender his capital, in compliance, as they said, with the terms of a secret treaty, which they affirmed had been concluded between them. Boabdil protested against this perfidious conduct. But there was no time allowed for complaint: he must successfully defend himself, or cease to reign. The Moorish prince adopted, therefore, to say the least, the most heroic alternative; and resolved to defend to the last what remained to him of his once beautiful and flourishing country.

The Spanish sovereign, at the head of an army of sixty thousand men, the flower and chivalry of the united kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, laid siege to Grenada on the 9th of May, 1491, and in the 897th year of the Hegira.

This great city, as has been already mentioned, was defended by strong ramparts, flanked by a mult.i.tude of towers, and by numerous other fortifications, built one above the other. Notwithstanding the civil wars which had inundated it with blood, Grenada still enclosed within its walls more than two hundred thousand {191} inhabitants. Every brave Moorish cavalier who still remained true to his country, its religion, and its laws, had here taken refuge. Despair redoubled their strength in this last desperate struggle; and had these fierce and intrepid warriors been guided by a more worthy chief than Boabdil, their n.o.ble constancy might still have saved them; but this weak and ferocious monarch hesitated not, on the slightest suspicion, to consign his most faithful defenders to the axe of the executioner. Thus he became daily more and more an object of hatred and contempt to the Grenadians, by whom he was surnamed _Zogoybi_; that is to say, _the Little King_. The different tribes now grew dissatisfied and dispirited, especially the numerous and powerful tribe of the Abencerrages. The alfaquis and the imans, also, loudly predicted the approaching downfall of the Moorish empire; and nothing upheld the sinking courage of the people against the pressure of a foreign foe and the tyranny of their own rulers but their unconquerable horror of the Spanish yoke.

The Catholic soldiers, on the other hand, elated by their past success, regarded themselves as invincible, and never for a moment doubted the {192} certainty of their triumph. They were commanded, also, by leaders to whom they were devotedly attached: Ponce de Leon, marquis of Cadiz, Henry de Guzman, duke of Medina, Mendoza, Aguillar, Villena, and Gonzalvo of Cordova, together with many other famous captains, accompanied their victorious king. Isabella, too, whose virtues excited the highest respect, and whose affability and grace won for her the affectionate regard of all, had repaired to the camp of her husband with the Infant and the Infantas, and attended by the most brilliant court in Europe. This politic princess, though naturally grave and serious, wisely accommodated herself to the existing circ.u.mstances.

She mingled fetes and amus.e.m.e.nts with warlike toil: jousts and tournaments delighted at intervals the war-worn soldiery; and dances, games, and illuminations filled up the delicious summer evenings.

Queen Isabella was the animating genius that directed everything; a gracious word from her was a sufficient recompense for the most gallant achievement; and her look alone had power to transform the meanest soldier into a hero.

Abundance reigned in the Christian camp; {193} while joy and hope animated every heart. But within the beleaguered city, mutual distrust, universal consternation, and the prospect of inevitable destruction, had damped the courage and almost annihilated the hopes of the wretched inhabitants.

The siege, nevertheless, lasted for nine months. The cautious commander of the Christian army did not attempt to carry by a.s.sault a place so admirably fortified. After having laid waste the environs, therefore, he waited patiently until famine should deliver the city into his hands. Satisfied with battering the ramparts and repelling the frequent sorties of the Moors, he never engaged in any decisive action, but daily hemmed in more closely the chafed lion that could not now escape his toils.

Accident one night set fire to the pavilion of Isabella, and the spreading conflagration consumed every tent in the camp. But Boabdil derived no advantage from this disaster. The queen directed that a city should supply the place of the ruined camp, to convince the enemies of the cross that the siege would never be raised until Grenada should come into possession of the conquering Spaniards. This great and {194} extraordinary design, so worthy the genius of Isabella, was executed in eighty days. The Christian camp thus became a walled city; and Santa Fe still exists as a monument of the piety and perseverance of the heroic Queen of Castile.

At last, oppressed by famine, less frequently successful than at first in the partial engagements that were constantly taking place under the walls, and abandoned by Africa, from which there were no attempts made to relieve them, the Moors now felt the necessity of a surrender.

Gonzalvo of Cordova was empowered by the conquerors to arrange the articles of capitulation. These provided that the people of Grenada should recognise Ferdinand and Isabella, and their royal successors, as their rightful sovereigns; that all their Christian captives should be released without ransom; that the Moors should continue to be governed by their own laws; should retain their national customs, their judges, half the number of their mosques, and the free exercise of their faith; that they should be permitted either to keep or sell their property, and to retire to Africa, or to any other country they might choose, while, at the same time, they should not be compelled to leave their {195} native land. It was also agreed that Boabdil should have a.s.signed to him a rich and ample domain in the Alpuxares, of which he should possess the entire command.

Such were the terms of capitulation, and but ill were they observed by the Spaniards. Boabdil fulfilled his part of the stipulations some days before the time specified, in consequence of being informed that his people, roused by the representations of the imans, wished to break off the negotiations, and to bury themselves beneath the ruins of the city rather than suffer their desolate and deserted homes to be profaned by the intruding foot of the spoiler.

The wretched Moslem prince hastened therefore to deliver the keys of the city, and of the fortresses of the Albazin and the Alhambra, into the hands of Ferdinand.

Entering no more, after this mournful ceremony, within the walls where he no longer retained any authority, Boabdil took his melancholy journey, accompanied by his family and a small number of followers, to the petty dominions which were now all that remained to him of the once powerful and extensive empire of his ancestors.

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When the cavalcade reached an eminence from which the towers of Grenada might still be discerned, the wretched exile turned his last sad regards upon the distant city, amid ill-suppressed tears and groans.

"_You do well_," said Aixa, his mother, "_to weep like a woman for the throne you could not defend like a man!_"

But the now powerless Boabdil could not long endure existence as a subject in a country where he had reigned as a sovereign: he crossed the Mediterranean to Africa, and there he ended his days on the battle-field.

Ferdinand and Isabella made their public entrance into Grenada on the 1st of January, 1492, through double ranks of soldiers, and amid the thunder of artillery. The city seemed deserted; the inhabitants fled from the presence of the conquerors, and concealed their tears and their despair within the innermost recesses of their habitations.

The royal victors repaired first to the grand mosque, which was consecrated as a Christian church, and where they rendered thanks to G.o.d for the brilliant success that had crowned their arms. While the sovereigns fulfilled this pious duty, the Count de Tendilla, the new governor {197} of Grenada, elevated the triumphant cross, and the standards of Castile and St. James, on the highest towers of the Alhambra.

Thus fell this famous city, and thus perished the power of the Moors of Spain, after an existence of seven hundred and eighty-two years from the first conquest of the country by Tarik.

It may now be proper briefly to remark upon the princ.i.p.al causes of the extinction of the national independence of the kingdom of Grenada.

The first of these arose from the peculiar character of the Moors: from that spirit of inconstancy, that love of novelty, and that unceasing inquietude, which prompted them to such frequent change of their rulers; which multiplied factions among them, and constantly convulsed the empire with internal discords, expending its strength and power in dissensions at home, and thus leaving it defenceless against foreign enemies. The Moors may also be reproached with an extravagant fondness for architectural magnificence, splendid fetes, and other expensive entertainments, which aided in exhausting the national treasury at times when protracted warfare scarcely ever permitted this most fertile region of the earth to reproduce the {198} crops the Spaniards had destroyed. But, more than all, they were a people without an established code of laws, that only permanent basis of the prosperity of nations. And then, too, a despotic form of government, which deprives men of patriotism, induced each individual to regard his virtues and attainments merely as affording the means of personal consideration, and not, as they should be considered, the property of his country.

These grave defects in the national character of the Moors were redeemed by many excellent qualities, which even the Spaniards admitted them to possess. In battle they were no less brave and prudent than their Christian antagonists, though inferior in skill and discipline.

They excelled them, however, in the art of attack. Adversity never long overwhelmed them; they saw in misfortune the will of Heaven, and without a murmur submitted to it. Their favourite dogma of fatalism doubtless contributed to this result. Fervently devoted to the laws of Mohammed, they obeyed with great exactness his humane injunctions respecting almsgiving:[19] they bestowed on the poor not only food and {199} money, but a portion of their grain, fruit, and flocks, and of every kind of merchandise. In the towns and throughout the country, the indigent sick were collected, attended, and nursed with the most a.s.siduous care. Hospitality, so sacred from the remotest time among the Arabs, was not less carefully observed among the people of Grenada, who seemed to take peculiar pleasure in its exercise. The following touching anecdote is told in ill.u.s.tration of the powerful influence of this principle. A stranger, bathed in blood, sought refuge from the officers of justice under the roof of an aged Moor. The old man concealed him in his house. But he had scarcely done so before a guard arrived to demand possession of the murderer, and, at the same time, to deliver to the horror-stricken Mussulman the dead body of his son, whom the stranger had just a.s.sa.s.sinated. Still the aged father would not give up his guest. When the guard, however, were gone, he entreated the a.s.sa.s.sin to leave him. "_Depart from me_," he cried, "_that I may be at liberty to pursue thee!_"

These Moslems were but little known to the historians by whom they have been so often calumniated. Polished, enthusiastic, hospitable, {200} brave, and chivalrous, but haughty, pa.s.sionate, inconstant, and vindictive, their unfortunate fate ent.i.tles them, at least, to compa.s.sion and sympathy, while their virtues may well excite respect and interest.

After their final defeat, many of the followers of the Prophet retired to Africa. Those who remained in Grenada suffered greatly from the persecution and oppression to which they were subjected by their new masters. The article in their last treaty with the Spaniards, which formally ensured their religious freedom, was grossly violated by the Catholics, who compelled the Mussulmans to abjure their national faith by force, terror, and every other unworthy means.

At last, outraged beyond endurance by this want of good faith, and wrought to desperation by the cruelties they were compelled to endure, in the year 1500 the Moors attempted to revolt against their oppressors. Their efforts were, however, unavailing: Ferdinand marched in person against them, repressed by force of arms the struggles of a people whom he designated as rebels, and, sword in hand, administered the rite of baptism to more than fifty thousand captive Moslems.

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