REBELLION OF THE MORISCOES.
Resistance of the Moriscoes--Night Assault on Granada--Rising in the
Alpujarras--Election of a King--Massacre of the Christians.
1568.
The same day on which the ordinance was published in the capital, it was
proclaimed in every part of the kingdom of Granada. Everywhere it was
received with the same feelings of shame, sorrow, and indignation.
Before giving way to these feelings by any precipitate action, the
Moriscoes of the Alpujarras were discreet enough to confer with their
countrymen in the Albaicin, who advised them to remain quiet until they
should learn the result of the conferences going on at Madrid.
Before these were concluded, the year expired after which it would be
penal for a Morisco to wear garments of silk. By the president's orders
it was proclaimed by the clergy, in the pulpits throughout the city,
that the law would be enforced to the letter. This was followed by more
than one edict relating to other matters, but yet tending to irritate
still further the minds of the Moriscoes.[27]
[Sidenote: RESISTANCE TO THE EDICT.]
All hope of relieving themselves of the detested ordinance having thus
vanished, the leaders of the Albaicin took counsel as to the best mode
of resisting the government. The first step seemed to be to get
possession of the capital. There was at this time in Granada a Morisco
named Farax Aben-Farax, who followed the trade of a dyer. But though he
was engaged in this humble calling, the best blood of the Abencerrages
flowed in his veins. He was a man of a fierce, indeed ferocious nature,
hating the Christians with his whole heart, and longing for the hour
when he could avenge on their heads the calamities of his countrymen. As
his occupation earned him frequently into the Alpujarras, he was
extensively acquainted with the inhabitants. He undertook to raise a
force there of eight thousand men, and bring them down secretly by night
into the _vega_, where, with the aid of his countrymen in the Albaicin,
he might effect an entrance into the city, overpower the garrison in the
Alhambra, put all who resisted to the sword, and make himself master of
the capital. The time fixed upon for the execution of the plan was Holy
Thursday, in the ensuing month of April, when the attention of the
Spaniards would be occupied with their religious solemnities.
A secret known to so many could not be so well kept, and for so long a
time, but that some information of it reached the ears of the
Christians. It seems to have given little uneasiness to Deza, who had
anticipated some such attempt from the turbulent spirit of the
Moriscoes. The captain-general, however, thought it prudent to take
additional precautions against it; and he accordingly distributed arms
among the citizens, strengthened the garrison of the Alhambra, and
visited several of the great towns on the frontiers, which he placed in
a better posture of defence. The Moriscoes, finding their purpose
exposed to the authorities, resolved to defer the execution of it for
the present. They even postponed it to as late a date as the beginning
of the following year, 1569. To this they were led, we are told, by a
prediction found in their religious books, that the year of their
liberation would be one that began on a Saturday. It is probable that
the wiser men of the Albaicin were less influenced by their own belief
in the truth of the prophecy, than by the influence it would exert over
the superstitious minds of the mountaineers, among whom it was
diligently circulated.[28]
Having settled on the first of January for the rising, the Moslems of
Granada strove, by every outward show of loyalty, to quiet the
suspicions of the government. But in this they were thwarted by the
information which the latter obtained through more trustworthy channels.
Still surer evidence of their intentions was found in a letter which
fell by accident into the hands of the marquis of Mondejar. It was
addressed by one of the leaders of the Albaicin to the Moslems of the
Barbary coast, invoking their aid by the ties of consanguinity and of a
common faith. "We are sorely beset," says the writer, "and our enemies
encompass us all around like a consuming fire. Our troubles are too
grievous to be endured. Written," concludes the passionate author of the
epistle, "in nights of tears and anguish, with hope yet lingering,--such
hope as still survives amidst all the bitterness of the soul."[29]
But the Barbary powers were too much occupied by their petty feuds to
give much more than fair words to their unfortunate brethren of Granada.
Perhaps they distrusted the efficacy of any aid they could render in so
unequal a contest as that against the Spanish monarchy. Yet they allowed
their subjects to embark as volunteers in the war; and some good service
was rendered by the Barbary corsairs, who infested the coasts of the
Mediterranean, as well as by the _monfis_,--as the African adventurers
were called,--who took part with their brethren in the Alpujarras,
where they made themselves conspicuous by their implacable ferocity
against the Christians.
Meanwhile the hot blood of the mountaineers was too much inflamed by the
prospect of regaining their independence to allow them to wait patiently
for the day fixed upon for the outbreak. Before that time arrived,
several acts of violence were perpetrated,--forerunners of the bloody
work that was at hand. In the month of December, 1568, a body of Spanish
alguazils, with some other officers of justice, were cut off in the
neighbourhood of Granada, on their way to that city. A party of fifty
soldiers, as they were bearing to the capital a considerable quantity of
muskets,--a tempting prize to the unarmed Moriscoes,--were all murdered,
most of them in their beds, in a little village among the mountains
where they had halted for the night.[30] After this outrage Aben-Farax,
the bold dyer of Granada, aware of the excitement it must create in the
capital, became convinced it would not be safe for him to postpone his
intended assault a day longer.
At the head of only a hundred and eighty followers, without waiting to
collect a larger force, he made his descent, on the night of the
twenty-sixth of December, a week before the appointed time, into the
_vega_ of Granada. It was a dreadful night. A snow-storm was raging
wildly among the mountains, and sweeping down in pitiless fury on the
plains below.[31] Favoured by the commotion of the elements, Aben-Farax
succeeded, without attracting observation, in forcing an entrance
through the dilapidated walls of the city, penetrated at once into the
Albaicin, and endeavoured to rouse the inhabitants from their slumbers.
Some few came to their windows, it is said, but, on learning the nature
of the summons, hastily closed the casements and withdrew, telling
Aben-Farax that "it was madness to undertake the enterprise with so
small a force, and that he had come before his time."[32] It was in vain
that the enraged chief poured forth imprecations on their perfidy and
cowardice, in vain that he marched through the deserted streets,
demolishing crucifixes and other symbols of Christian worship which he
found in his way, or that he shouted out the watchword of the faithful,
"There is but one God, and Mahomet is the prophet of God!" The uproar of
the tempest, fortunately for him, drowned every other noise; and no
alarm was given till he stumbled on a guard of some five or six
soldiers, who were huddled round a fire in one of the public squares.
One of these Farax despatched; the others made their escape, raising the
cry that the enemy was upon them. The great bell of St. Salvador rang
violently, calling the inhabitants to arms. Dawn was fast approaching;
and the Moorish chief, who felt himself unequal to an encounter in which
he was not to be supported by his brethren in the Albaicin, thought it
prudent to make his retreat. This he did with colours flying and music
playing, all in as cool and orderly a manner as if it had been only a
holiday parade.
[Sidenote: RISING IN THE ALPUJARRAS.]
Meantime the citizens, thus suddenly startled from their beds, gathered
together, with eager looks, and faces white with fear, to learn the
cause of the tumult; and their alarm was not diminished by finding that
the enemy had been prowling round their dwellings, like a troop of
mountain wolves, while they had been buried in slumber. The marquis of
Mondejar called his men to horse, and would have instantly given chase
to the invaders, but waited until he had learned the actual condition of
the Albaicin, where a population of ten thousand Moriscoes, had they
been mischievously inclined, might, notwithstanding the timely efforts
of the government to disarm them, have proved too strong for the slender
Spanish garrison in the Alhambra. All, however, was quiet in the Moorish
quarter; and, assured of this, the captain-general sallied out, at the
head of his cavalry and a small corps of foot, in quest of the enemy.
But he had struck into the mountain-passes south of Granada; and
Mendoza, after keeping on his track, as well as the blinding tempest
would permit, through the greater part of the day, at nightfall gave up
the pursuit as hopeless, and brought back his wayworn cavalcade to the
city.[33]
Aben-Farax and his troop, meanwhile, traversing the snowy skirts of the
Sierra Nevada, came out on the broad and populous valley of Lecrin,
spreading the tidings everywhere, as they went, that the insurrection
was begun, that the Albaicin was in movement, and calling on all true
believers to take up arms in defence of their faith. The summons did not
fall on deaf ears. A train had been fired which ran along the mountain
regions to the south of Granada, stretching from Almeria and the Murcian
borders on the east to the neighbourhood of Velez Malaga on the west. In
three days the whole country was in arms. Then burst forth the fierce
passions of the Arab,--all that unquenchable hate which seventy years of
oppression had nourished in his bosom, and which now showed itself in
one universal cry for vengeance. The bloody drama opened with the
massacre of nearly every Christian man within the Moorish borders,--and
that too with circumstances of a refined and deliberate cruelty, of
which, happily, few examples are to be found in history.
The first step, however, in the revolutionary movement had been a false
one, inasmuch as the insurgents had failed to secure possession of the
capital, which would have furnished so important a _point d'appui_ for
future operations. Yet, if contemporary chroniclers are correct, this
failure should rather be imputed to miscalculation than to cowardice.
According to them, the persons of most consideration in the Albaicin
were many of them wealthy citizens, accustomed to the easy, luxurious
way of life so well suited to the Moorish taste. They had never intended
to peril their fortunes by engaging personally in so formidable a
contest as that with the Castilian crown. They had only proposed to urge
their simple countrymen in the Alpujarras to such a show of resistance
as should intimidate the Spaniards, and lead them to mitigate, if not
indeed to rescind, the hated ordinance.[34] If such was their
calculation, as the result showed, it miserably failed.
As the Moriscoes had now proclaimed their independence, it became
necessary to choose a sovereign in place of the one whose authority they
had cast aside. The leaders in the Albaicin selected for this dangerous
pre-eminence a young man who was known to the Spaniards by his Castilian
name of Don Fernando de Valor. He was descended in a direct line from
the ancient house of the Omeyas,[35] who for nearly four centuries had
sat with glory on the throne of Cordova. He was but twenty-two years of
age at the time of his election, and, according to a contemporary who
had seen him, possessed a comely person and engaging manners. His
complexion was of a deep olive; his beard was thin; his eyes were large
and dark, with eyebrows well defined, and nearly approaching each other.
His deportment was truly royal; and his lofty sentiments were worthy of
the princely line from which he was descended.[36] Notwithstanding this
flattering portrait from the pen of a Castilian, his best
recommendation, to judge from his subsequent career, seems to have been
his descent from a line of kings. He had been so prodigal in his way of
life that, though so young, he had squandered his patrimony, and was at
this very time under arrest for debt. He had the fiery temperament of
his nation, and had given evidence of it by murdering, with his own
hand, a man who had borne testimony against his father in a criminal
prosecution. Amidst his luxurious self-indulgence he must be allowed to
have shown some energy of character and an unquestionable courage. He
was attached to the institutions of his country; and his ferocious
nature was veiled under a bland and plausible exterior, that won him
golden opinions from the multitude.[37]
Soon after his election, and just before the irruption of Aben-Farax,
the Morisco prince succeeded in making his escape from Granada, and,
flying to the mountains, took refuge among his own kindred, the powerful
family of the Valoris, in the village of Beznar. Here his countrymen
gathered round him, and confirmed by acclamation the choice of the
people of Granada. For this the young chieftain was greatly indebted to
the efforts of his uncle, Aben-Jahuar, commonly called El Zaguer, a man
of much authority among his tribe, who, waiving his own claims to the
sceptre, employed his influence in favour of his nephew.
The ceremony of the coronation was of a martial kind, well suited to the
rough fortunes of the adventurer. Four standards, emblazoned with the
Moslem crescent, were spread upon the ground, with their spear-heads
severally turned towards the four points of the compass. The Moorish
prince, who had been previously arrayed in a purple robe, with a crimson
scarf or shawl, the insignia of royalty, enveloping his shoulders, knelt
down on the banners, with his face turned towards Mecca, and, after a
brief prayer, solemnly swore to live and die in defence of his crown,
his faith, and his subjects. One of the principal attendants,
prostrating himself on the ground, kissed the footprints of the
newly-elected monarch, in token of the allegiance of the people. He was
then raised on the shoulders of four of the assistants, and borne aloft
amidst the waving of banners and the loud shouts of the multitude,
"Allah exalt Muley-Mohammed-Aben-Humeya, lord of Andalucia and
Granada!"[38]
[Sidenote: MASSACRE OF THE CHRISTIANS.]
Such were the simple forms practised in ancient times by the
Spanish-Arabian princes, when their empire, instead of being contracted
within the rocky girdle of the mountains, stretched over the fairest
portions of the Peninsula.[39]
The first act of Aben-Humeya was to make his appointments to the chief
military offices. El Zaguer, his uncle, he made captain-general of his
forces. Aben-Farax, who had himself aspired to the diadem, he removed to
a distance, by sending him on an expedition to collect such treasures as
could be gathered from the Christian churches in the Alpujarras. He
appointed officers to take charge of the different _tahas_, or
districts, into which the country was divided. Having completed these
arrangements, the new monarch--the _reyezuelo_, or "little king," of the
Alpujarras, as he was contemptuously styled by the
Spaniards--transferred his residence to the central part of his
dominions, where he repeated the ceremony of his coronation. He made a
rapid visit to the most important places in the sierra, everywhere
calling on the inhabitants to return to their ancient faith, and to
throw off the hated yoke of the Spaniards. He then established himself
in the wildest parts of the Alpujarras, where he endeavoured to draw his
forces to a head, and formed the plan of his campaign. It was such as
was naturally suggested by the character of the country, which, broken
and precipitous, intersected by many a deep ravine and dangerous pass,
afforded excellent opportunities for harassing an invading foe, and for
entangling him in those inextricable defiles, where a few mountaineers
acquainted with the ground would he more than a match for an enemy far
superior in discipline and numbers.
While Aben-Humeya was thus occupied in preparing for the struggle, the
work of death had already begun among the Spanish population of the
Alpujarras; and Spaniards were to be found, in greater or less numbers,
in all the Moorish towns and hamlets that dotted the dark sides of the
sierras, or nestled in the green valleys at their base. Here they dwelt
side by side with the Moriscoes, employed probably less in the labours
of the loom, for which the natives of this region had long been famous,
than in that careful husbandry which they might readily have learned
from their Moorish neighbours, and which, under their hands, had clothed
every spot with verdure, making the wilderness to blossom like the
rose.[40] Thus living in the midst of those who professed the same
religion with themselves, and in the occasional interchange, at least,
of the kind offices of social intercourse, which sometimes led to nearer
domestic ties, the Christians of the Alpujarras dwelt in blind security,
little dreaming of the mine beneath their feet.
But no sooner was the first note of insurrection sounded, than the scene
changed as if by magic. Every Morisco threw away his mask, and, turning
on the Christians, showed himself in his true aspect, as their avowed
and mortal enemy.
A simultaneous movement of this kind, through so wide an extent of
country, intimates a well-concerted plan of operations; and we may share
in the astonishment of the Castillan writers, that a secret of such a
nature, and known to so many individuals, should have been so long and
faithfully kept,--in the midst, too, of those who had the greatest
interest in detecting it,[41]--some of them, it may be added, spies of
the Inquisition, endowed, as they seem to have been, with almost
supernatural powers for scenting out the taint of heresy.[42] It argues
an intense feeling of hatred in the Morisco, that he could have been so
long proof against the garrulity that loosens the tongue, and against
the sympathy that so often, in similar situations, unlocks the heart, to
save some friend from the doom of his companions. But no such instance,
either of levity or lenity, occurred among this extraordinary people.
And when the hour arrived, and the Christians discerned their danger in
the menacing looks and gestures of their Moslem neighbours, they were as
much astounded by it as the unsuspecting traveller on whom, as he
heedlessly journeys through some pleasant country, the highwayman has
darted from his covert by the roadside.
The first impulse of the Christians seems to have been very generally to
take refuge in the churches; and every village, however small, had at
least one church, where the two races met together to join in the forms
of Christian worship. The fugitives thought to find protection in their
holy places and in the presence of their venerated pastors, whose
spiritual authority had extended over all the inhabitants. But the wild
animal of the forest, now that he had regained his freedom, gave little
heed to the call of his former keeper,--unless it were to turn and rend
him.
Here crowded together, like a herd of panic-stricken deer with the
hounds upon their track, the terrified people soon found the church was
no place of security, and they took refuge in the adjoining tower, as a
place of greater strength, and affording a better means of defence
against an enemy. The mob of their pursuers then broke into the church,
which they speedily despoiled of its ornaments, trampling the crucifixes
and other religious symbols under their feet, rolling the sacred images
in the dust, and desecrating the altars by the sacrifice of swine, or by
some other act denoting their scorn and hatred of the Christian
worship.[43]
They next assailed the towers, the entrances to which the Spaniards had
barricaded as strongly as they could; though, unprovided as they were
with means of defence, except such arms as they had snatched in the
hurry of their flight, they could have little hope of standing a siege.
Unfortunately, these towers were built more or less of wood, which the
assailants readily set on fire, and thus compelled the miserable inmates
either to surrender or to perish in the flames. In some instances they
chose the latter; and the little garrison--men, women, and
children--were consumed together on one common funeral pile. More
frequently they shrank from this fearful death, and surrendered at the
mercy of their conquerors,--such mercy as made them soon regret that
they had not stayed by the blazing rafters.
[Sidenote: MASSACRE OF THE CHRISTIANS]
The men were speedily separated from the women, and driven with blows
and imprecations, like so many cattle, to a place of confinement. From
this loathsome prison they were dragged out, three or four at a time,
day after day, the longer to protract their sufferings; then, with their
arms pinioned behind them, and stripped of their clothing, they were
thrown into the midst of an infuriated mob, consisting of both sexes,
who, armed with swords, hatchets, and bludgeons, soon felled their
victims to the ground, and completed the bloody work.
The mode of death was often varied to suit the capricious cruelty of the
executioners. At Guecija, where the olive grew abundantly, there was a
convent of Augustine monks, who were all murdered by being thrown into
caldrons of boiling oil.[44] Sometimes the death of the victim was
attended with circumstances of diabolical cruelty, not surpassed by
anything recorded of our North-American savages. At a place called
Pitres de Ferreyra, the priest of the village was raised by means of a
pulley to a beam that projected from the tower, and was then allowed to
drop from a great height upon the ground. The act was repeated more than
once in the presence of his aged mother, who, in an agony of grief,
embracing her dying son, besought him "to trust in God and the blessed
Virgin, who through these torments would bring him into eternal life."
The mangled carcase of the poor victim, broken and dislocated in every
limb, was then turned over to the Moorish women, who, with their
scissors, bodkins, and other feminine implements, speedily despatched
him.[45]
The women, indeed, throughout this persecution, seem to have had as
rabid a thirst for vengeance as the men. Even the children were
encouraged to play their part in the bloody drama; and many a miserable
captive was set up as a target to be shot at with the arrows of the
Moorish boys.
The rage of the barbarians was especially directed against the priests,
who had so often poured forth anathemas against the religion which the
Moslems loved, and who, as their spiritual directors, had so often
called them to account for offences against the religion which they
abhorred. At Coadba the priest was stretched out before a brazier of
live coals until his feet, which had been smeared with pitch and oil,
were burned to a cinder. His two sisters were compelled to witness the
agonies of their brother, which were still further heightened by the
brutal treatment which he saw them endure from their tormentors.[46]
Fire was employed as a common mode of torture, by way of retaliation, it
may be, for similar sufferings inflicted on the Infidel by the
Inquisition. Sometimes the punishments seemed to be contrived so as to
form a fiendish parody on the exercises of the Roman Catholic religion.
In the town of Filix the pastor was made to take his seat before the
altar, with his two sacristans, one on either side of him. The bell was
rung, as if to call the people together to worship. The sacristans were
each provided with a roll containing the names of the congregation,
which they were required to call over, as usual, before the services, in
order to see that no one was absent. As each Morisco answered to his
name, he passed before the priest, and dealt him a blow with his fist,
or the women plucked his beard and hair, accompanying the act with some
bitter taunt expressive of their mortal hate. When every one had thus
had the opportunity of gratifying his personal grudge against his
ancient pastor, the executioner stepped forward, armed with a razor,
with which he scored the face of the ecclesiastic in the detested form
of the cross, and then, beginning with the fingers, deliberately
proceeded to sever each of the joints of his wretched victim![47]
But it is unnecessary to shock the reader with more of these loathsome
details, enough of which have already been given, not merely to prove
the vindictive temper of the Morisco, but to suggest the inference that
it could only have been a long course of cruelty and oppression that
stimulated him to such an awful exhibition of it.[48] The whole number
of Christians who, in the course of a week, thus perished in these
massacres--if we are to receive the accounts of Castilian writers--was
not less than three thousand![49] Considering the social relations which
must to some extent have been established between those who had lived so
long in the neighbourhood of one another, it might be thought that, on
some occasions, sympathy would have been shown for the sufferers, or
that some protecting arm would have been stretched out to save a friend
or a companion from the general doom. But the nearest approach to such
an act of humanity was given by a Morisco, who plunged his sword in the
body of a Spaniard in order to save him from the lingering death that
otherwise would await him.[50]
Of the whole Christian population very few of the men who fell into the
hands of the Moslems escaped with life. The women were not always
spared. The Morisco women, especially, who had married Christian
husbands and embraced Christianity, which they refused to abjure, became
the objects of vengeance to their own sex. Sad to say, even the
innocence and helplessness of childhood proved no protection against the
fury of persecution. The historians record the names of several boys,
from ten to twelve or thirteen years of age, who were barbarously
murdered because they would not renounce the religion in which they had
been nurtured for that of Mahomet. If they were too young to give a
reason for their faith, they had at least learned the lesson that to
renounce it was a great sin; and, when led out like lambs to the
slaughter, their mothers, we are told, stifling the suggestions of
natural affection in obedience to a higher law, urged their children not
to shrink from the trial, nor to purchase a few years of life at the
price of their own souls.[51] It is a matter of no little gratulation to
a Catholic historian, that, amongst all those who perished in these
frightful massacres, there was not one of any age or either sex who
could be tempted to secure personal safety by the sacrifice of religious
convictions.[52] On the contrary, they employed the brief respite that
was left them in fortifying one another's courage, and in bearing
testimony to the truth in so earnest a manner that they might almost
seem to have courted the crown of martyrdom. Yet among these martyrs
there were more than one, it is admitted, whose previous way of life
showed but a dim perception of the value of that religion for which,
they were thus prepared to lay down their lives.[53]
[Sidenote: MASSACRE OF THE CHRISTIANS.]
The chief blame of these indiscriminate proscriptions has been laid on
Aben-Farax, the famous dyer of Granada, whose appetite for blood seems
to have been as insatiable as that of any wild beast in the Alpujarras.
In executing the commission assigned to him by Aben-Humeya, he was
obliged to visit all parts of the country. Wherever he came, impatient
of the slower movements of his countrymen in the work of destruction, he
caused the prisons to be emptied, and the wretched inmates to be
butchered before his eyes. At Ugijar he thus directed the execution of
no less than two hundred and forty Christians, laymen and
ecclesiastics.[54] His progress through the land was literally over the
dead bodies of his victims.
Fierce as he was, Aben-Humeya had some touches of humanity in his
nature, which made him revolt at the wholesale murders perpetrated by
his lieutenant. He was the more indignant when, on hastening to Ugijar
to save the lives of some of the captives, his friends, he found that he
had come too late, for the man of blood had been there before him. He
soon after summoned his officer into his presence, not with the
impolitic design of taxing him with his cruelties, but to call him to a
reckoning for the treasure he had pillaged from the churches; and
dissatisfied, or affecting to be so, with his report, he at once deposed
Aben-Farax from his command. The ferocious chief submitted without a
murmur. He descended into the common file, and no more appears on the
scene. He was one of those miscreants who are thrown on the surface by
the turmoil of a revolution, and, after floating there for a while,
disappear from sight, and the wave of history closes over them for
ever.