SIEGE OF MALAGA.
The attack on Malaga by sea and land was kept up for several days with
tremendous violence, but without producing any great impression, so
strong were the ancient bulwarks of the city. The count de Cifuentes was
the first to signalize himself by any noted achievement. A main tower,
protecting what is at present called the suburb of Santa Ana, had been
shattered by the ordnance and the battlements demolished, so as to yield
no shelter to its defenders. Seeing this, the count assembled a gallant
band of cavaliers of the royal household and advanced to take it by
storm. They applied scaling-ladders and mounted sword in hand. The
Moors, having no longer battlements to protect them, descended to a
lower floor, and made furious resistance from the windows and loopholes.
They poured down boiling pitch and rosin, and hurled stones and darts
and arrows on the assailants. Many of the Christians were slain, their
ladders were destroyed by flaming combustibles, and the count was
obliged to retreat from before the tower. On the following day he
renewed the attack with superior force, and after a severe combat
succeeded in planting his victorious banner on the tower.
The Moors now assailed the tower in their turn. They undermined the part
toward the city, placed props of wood under the foundation, and, setting
fire to them, drew off to a distance. In a little while the props gave
way, the foundation sunk, and the tower was rent; part of its wall
fell with a tremendous noise; many of the Christians were thrown out
headlong, and the rest were laid open to the missiles of the enemy.
By this time, however, a breach had been made in the wall of the suburb
adjoining the tower, and troops poured in to the assistance of their
comrades. A continued battle was kept up for two days and a night by
reinforcements from camp and city. The parties fought backward and
forward through the breach of the wall and in the narrow and winding
streets adjacent with alternate success, and the vicinity of the tower
was strewn with the dead and wounded. At length the Moors gradually gave
way, disputing every inch of ground, until they were driven into the
city, and the Christians remained masters of the greater part of the
suburb.
This partial success, though gained with great toil and bloodshed, gave
temporary animation to the Christians; they soon found, however, that
the attack on the main works of the city was a much more arduous task.
The garrison contained veterans who had served in many of the towns
captured by the Christians. They were no longer confounded and
dismayed by the battering ordnance and other strange engines of foreign
invention, and had become expert in parrying their effects, in repairing
breaches, and erecting counter-works.
The Christians, accustomed of late to speedy conquests of Moorish
fortresses, became impatient of the slow progress of the siege. Many
were apprehensive of a scarcity of provisions from the difficulty of
subsisting so numerous a host in the heart of the enemy’s country,
where it was necessary to transport supplies across rugged and hostile
mountains or subjected to the uncertainties of the sea. Many also were
alarmed at a pestilence which broke out in the neighboring villages, and
some were so overcome by these apprehensions as to abandon the camp and
return to their homes.
Several of the loose and worthless hangers-on that infest all great
armies, hearing these murmurs, thought that the siege would soon be
raised, and deserted to the enemy, hoping to make their fortunes. They
gave exaggerated accounts of the alarms and discontents of the army, and
represented the troops as daily returning home in bands. Above all, they
declared that the gunpowder was nearly exhausted, so that the artillery
would soon be useless. They assured the Moors, therefore, that if they
persisted a little longer in their defence, the king would be obliged to
draw off his forces and abandon the siege.
The reports of these renegados gave fresh courage to the garrison; they
made vigorous sallies upon the camp, harassing it by night and day, and
obliging every part to be guarded with the most painful vigilance. They
fortified the weak parts of their walls with ditches and palisadoes, and
gave every manifestation of a determined and unyielding spirit.
Ferdinand soon received intelligence of the reports which had been
carried to the Moors: he understood that they had been informed,
likewise, that the queen was alarmed for the safety of the camp, and had
written repeatedly urging him to abandon the siege. As the best means
of disproving all these falsehoods and destroying the vain hopes of
the enemy, he wrote to the queen entreating her to come and take up her
residence in the camp.