HOW THE CASTILIAN SOVEREIGNS TOOK POSSESSION OF THE CITY OF MALAGA, AND
HOW KING FERDINAND SIGNALIZED HIMSELF BY HIS SKILL IN BARGAINING WITH
THE INHABITANTS FOR THEIR RANSOM.
One of the first cares of the conquerors on entering Malaga was to
search for Christian captives. Nearly sixteen hundred men and women were
found, and among them were persons of distinction. Some of them had been
ten, fifteen, and twenty years in captivity. Many had been servants to
the Moors or laborers on public works, and some had passed their time
in chains and dungeons. Preparations were made to celebrate their
deliverance as a Christian triumph. A tent was erected not far from the
city, and furnished with an altar and all the solemn decorations of
a chapel. Here the king and queen waited to receive the Christian
captives. They were assembled in the city and marshalled forth in
piteous procession. Many of them had still the chains and shackles
on their legs; they were wasted with famine, their hair and beards
overgrown and matted, and their faces pale and haggard from long
confinement. When they found themselves restored to liberty and
surrounded by their countrymen, some stared wildly about as if in a
dream, others gave way to frantic transports, but most of them wept for
joy. All present were moved to tears by so touching a spectacle. When
the procession arrived at what is called the Gate of Granada, it was met
by a great concourse from the camp with crosses and pennons, who turned
and followed the captives, singing hymns of praise and thanksgiving.
When they came in presence of the king and queen, they threw themselves
on their knees, and would have kissed their feet as their saviors and
deliverers, but the sovereigns prevented such humiliation and graciously
extended to them their hands. They then prostrated themselves before
the altar, and all present joined them in giving thanks to God for their
liberation from this cruel bondage. By orders of the king and queen
their chains were then taken off, and they were clad in decent raiment
and food was set before them. After they had ate and drunk, and were
refreshed and invigorated, they were provided with money and all things
necessary for their journey, and sent joyfully to their homes.
While the old chroniclers dwell with becoming enthusiasm on this pure
and affecting triumph of humanity, they go on in a strain of equal
eulogy to describe a spectacle of a far different nature. It so happened
that there were found in the city twelve of those renegado Christians
who had deserted to the Moors and conveyed false intelligence during
the siege: a barbarous species of punishment was inflicted upon them,
borrowed, it is said, from the Moors and peculiar to these wars. They
were tied to stakes in a public place, and horsemen exercised their
skill in transpiercing them with pointed reeds, hurled at them while
careering at full speed, until the miserable victims expired beneath
their wounds. Several apostate Moors also, who, having embraced
Christianity, had afterward relapsed into their early faith, and had
taken refuge in Malaga from the vengeance of the Inquisition,
were publicly burnt. “These,” says an old Jesuit historian
exultingly,--“these were the tilts of reeds and the illuminations most
pleasing for this victorious festival and for the Catholic piety of our
sovereigns.” *
* “Los renegados fuernon acanavareados: y los conversos quemados;
y estos fueron las canas, y luminarias mas alegres, por la fiesta de la
vitoria, para la piedad Catholica de nuestros Reyes.”--Abarca, “Anales
de Aragon,” tom. 2, Rey xxx. c. 3.
When the city was cleansed from the impurities and offensive odors
which had collected during the siege, the bishops and other clergy who
accompanied the court, and the choir of the royal chapel, walked in
procession to the principal mosque, which was consecrated and entitled
Santa Maria de la Incarnacion. This done, the king and queen entered
the city, accompanied by the grand cardinal of Spain and the principal
nobles and cavaliers of the army, and heard a solemn mass. The church
was then elevated into a cathedral, and Malaga was made a bishopric,
and many of the neighboring towns were comprehended in its diocese. The
queen took up her residence in the Alcazaba, in the apartments of her
valiant treasurer, Ruy Lopez, whence she had a view of the whole
city, but the king established his quarters in the warrior castle of
Gibralfaro.
And now came to be considered the disposition of the Moorish prisoners.
All those who were strangers in the city, and had either taken refuge
there or had entered to defend it, were at once considered slaves. They
were divided into three lots: one was set apart for the service of God
in redeeming Christian captives from bondage, either in the kingdom of
Granada or in Africa; the second lot was divided among those who had
aided either in field or cabinet in the present siege, according to
their rank; the third was appropriated to defray by their sale the
great expenses incurred in the reduction of the place. A hundred of the
Gomeres were sent as presents to Pope Innocent VIII., and were led
in triumph through the streets of Rome, and afterward converted to
Christianity. Fifty Moorish maidens were sent to the queen Joanna of
Naples, sister to King Ferdinand, and thirty to the queen of Portugal.
Isabella made presents of others to the ladies of her household and of
the noble families of Spain.
Among the inhabitants of Malaga were four hundred and fifty Moorish
Jews, for the most part women, speaking the Arabic language and dressed
in the Moresco fashion. These were ransomed by a wealthy Jew of Castile,
farmer-general of the royal revenues derived from the Jews of Spain.
He agreed to make up within a certain time the sum of twenty thousand
doblas, or pistoles of gold, all the money and jewels of the captives
being taken in part payment. They were sent to Castile in two armed
galleys. As to Ali Dordux, such favors and honors were heaped upon him
by the Spanish sovereigns for his considerate mediation in the surrender
that the disinterestedness of his conduct has often been called in
question. He was appointed chief justice and alcayde of the (10) mudexares
or Moorish subjects, and was presented with twenty houses, one public
bakery, and several orchards, vineyards, and tracts of open country. He
retired to Antiquera, where he died several years afterward, leaving
his estate and name to his son, Mohamed Dordux. The latter embraced the
Christian faith, as did his wife, the daughter of a Moorish noble. On
being baptized he received the name of Don Fernando de Malaga, his
wife that of Isabella, after the queen. They were incorporated with
the nobility of Castile, and their descendants still bear the name of
Malaga.*
* Conversaciones Malaguenas, 26, as cited by Alcantara in his
History of Granada, vol. 4, c. 18.
As to the great mass of Moorish inhabitants, they implored that they
might not be scattered and sold into captivity, but might be permitted
to ransom themselves by an amount paid within a certain time. Upon this
King Ferdinand took the advice of certain of his ablest counsellors.
They said to him: “If you hold out a prospect of hopeless captivity, the
infidels will throw all their gold and jewels into wells and pits, and
you will lose the greater part of the spoil; but if you fix a general
rate of ransom, and receive their money and jewels in part payment,
nothing will be destroyed.” The king relished greatly this advice,
and it was arranged that all the inhabitants should be ransomed at the
general rate of thirty doblas or pistoles in gold for each individual,
male or female, large or small; that all their gold, jewels, and other
valuables should be received immediately in part payment of the general
amount, and that the residue should be paid within eight months--that
if any of the number, actually living, should die in the interim, their
ransom should nevertheless be paid. If, however, the whole of the amount
were not paid at the expiration of the eight months, they should all be
considered and treated as slaves.
The unfortunate Moors were eager to catch at the least hope of future
liberty, and consented to these hard conditions. The most rigorous
precautions were taken to exact them to the uttermost. The inhabitants
were numbered by houses and families, and their names taken down;
their most precious effects were made up into parcels, and sealed and
inscribed with their names, and they were ordered to repair with them to
certain large corrales or enclosures adjoining the Alcazaba, which were
surrounded by high walls and overlooked by watch-towers, to which places
the cavalgadas of Christian captives had usually been driven to be
confined until the time of sale like cattle in a market. The Moors were
obliged to leave their houses one by one: all their money, necklaces,
bracelets, and anklets of gold, pearl, coral, and precious stones
were taken from them at the threshold, and their persons so rigorously
searched that they carried off nothing concealed.
Then might be seen old men and helpless women and tender maidens, some
of high birth and gentle condition, passing through the streets, heavily
burdened, toward the Alcazaba. As they left their homes they smote their
breasts and wrung their hands, and raised their weeping eyes to heaven
in anguish; and this is recorded as their plaint: “O Malaga! city so
renowned and beautiful! where now is the strength of thy castle, where
the grandeur of thy towers? Of what avail have been thy mighty walls
for the protection of thy children? Behold them driven from thy pleasant
abodes, doomed to drag out a life of bondage in a foreign land, and to
die far from the home of their infancy! What will become of thy old men
and matrons when their gray hairs shall be no longer reverenced? What
will become of thy maidens, so delicately reared and tenderly cherished,
when reduced to hard and menial servitude? Behold thy once happy
families scattered asunder, never again to be united--sons separated
from their fathers, husbands from their wives, and tender children from
their mothers: they will bewail each other in foreign lands, but their
lamentations will be the scoff of the stranger. O Malaga! city of our
birth! who can behold thy desolation and not shed tears of bitterness?” *
* Pulgar, Reyes Catolicos, c. 93.
When Malaga was completely secured a detachment was sent against two
fortresses near the sea, called Mixas and Osuna, which had frequently
harassed the Christian camp. The inhabitants were threatened with the
sword unless they instantly surrendered. They claimed the same terms
that had been granted to Malaga, imagining them to be freedom of person
and security of property. Their claim was granted: they were transported
to Malaga with all their riches, and on arriving there were overwhelmed
with consternation at finding themselves captives. “Ferdinand,” observes
Fray Antonio Agapida, “was a man of his word; they were shut up in the
enclosure at the Alcazaba with the people of Malaga and shared their
fate.”
The unhappy captives remained thus crowded in the courtyards of the
Alcazaba, like sheep in a fold, until they could be sent by sea and land
to Seville. They were then distributed about in city and country, each
Christian family having one or more to feed and maintain as servants
until the term fixed for the payment of the residue of the ransom should
expire. The captives had obtained permission that several of their
number should go about among the Moorish towns of the kingdom of Granada
collecting contributions to aid in the purchase of their liberties, but
these towns were too much impoverished by the war and engrossed by their
own distresses to lend a listening ear; so the time expired without the
residue of the ransom being paid, and all the captives of Malaga, to the
number, as some say, of eleven, and others of fifteen, thousand, became
slaves. “Never,” exclaims the worthy Fray Antonio Agapida in one of his
usual bursts of zeal and loyalty,--“never has there been recorded a more
adroit and sagacious arrangement than this made by the Catholic monarch,
by which he not only secured all the property and half of the ransom
of these infidels, but finally got possession of their persons into the
bargain. This truly may be considered one of the greatest triumphs of
the pious and politic Ferdinand, and as raising him above the generality
of conquerors, who have merely the valor to gain victories, but lack the
prudence and management necessary to turn them to account.” *
* The detestable policy of Ferdinand in regard to the Moorish
captives of Malaga is recorded at length by the curate of Los Palacios
(c. 87), a contemporary, a zealous admirer of the king, and one of
the most honest of chroniclers, who really thought he was recording a
notable instance of sagacious piety.