FULFILMENT OF THE PROPHECY OF THE DERVISE.--FATE OF HAMET EL ZEGRI.
No sooner was the city delivered up than the wretched inhabitants
implored permission to purchase bread for themselves and their children
from the heaps of grain which they had so often gazed at wistfully from
their walls. Their prayer was granted, and they issued forth with
the famished eagerness of starving men. It was piteous to behold the
struggles of those unhappy people as they contended who first should
have their necessities relieved.
“Thus,” says the pious Fray Antonio Agapida,--“thus are the predictions
of false prophets sometimes permitted to be verified, but always to
the confusion of those who trust in them; for the words of the Moorish
nigromancer came to pass that the people of Malaga should eat of those
heaps of bread, but they ate in humiliation and defeat and with sorrow
and bitterness of heart.”
Dark and fierce were the feelings of Hamet el Zegri as he looked down
from the castle of Gibralfaro and beheld the Christian legions pouring
into the city and the standard of the cross supplanting the crescent on
the citadel. “The people of Malaga,” said he, “have trusted to a man of
trade, and he has trafficked them away; but let us not suffer ourselves
to be bound hand and foot and delivered up as part of his bargain. We
have yet strong walls around us and trusty weapons in our hands. Let us
fight until buried beneath the last tumbling tower of Gibralfaro, or,
rushing down from among its ruins, carry havoc among the unbelievers as
they throng the streets of Malaga.”
The fierceness of the Gomeres, however, was broken. They could have died
in the breach had their castle been assailed, but the slow advances of
famine subdued their strength without rousing their passions, and
sapped the force of both soul and body. They were almost unanimous for a
surrender.
It was a hard struggle for the proud spirit of Hamet to bow itself to
ask for terms. Still, he trusted that the valor of his defence would
gain him respect in the eyes of a chivalrous foe. “Ali,” said he, “has
negotiated like a merchant; I will capitulate as a soldier.” He sent a
herald, therefore, to Ferdinand, offering to yield up his castle, but
demanding a separate treaty. (15) The Castilian sovereign made a laconic
and stern reply: “He shall receive no terms but such as have been
granted to the community of Malaga.”
For two days Hamet el Zegri remained brooding in his castle after the
city was in possession of the Christians; at length the clamors of his
followers compelled him to surrender. When the remnant of this fierce
African garrison descended from their cragged fortress, they were so
worn by watchfulness, famine, and battle, yet carried such a lurking
fury in their eyes, that they looked more like fiends than men. They
were all condemned to slavery, excepting Ibrahim Zenete. The instance of
clemency which he had shown in refraining to harm the Spanish striplings
on the last sally from Malaga won him favorable terms. It was cited as a
magnanimous act by the Spanish cavaliers, and all admitted that,
though a Moor in blood, he possessed the Christian heart of a Castilian
hidalgo.*
* Cura de los Palacios, cap. 84.
As to Hamet el Zegri, on being asked what moved him to such hardened
obstinacy, he replied, “When I undertook my command, I pledged myself to
fight in defence of my faith, my city, and my sovereign until slain
or made prisoner; and, depend upon it, had I had men to stand by me, I
should have died fighting, instead of thus tamely surrendering myself
without a weapon in my hand.”
“Such,” says the pious Fray Antonio Agapida, “was the diabolical hatred
and stiff-necked opposition of this infidel to our holy cause. But he
was justly served by our most Catholic and high-minded sovereign for his
pertinacious defence of the city, for Ferdinand ordered that he should
be loaded with chains and thrown into a dungeon.” He was subsequently
retained in rigorous confinement at Carmona.*
* Pulgar, part 3, cap. 93; Pietro Martyr, lib. 1, cap. 69; Alcantara,
Hist. Granada, vol. 4, c. 18.