MOORISH SPAIN
THE LAST OF THE CALIPHS--THE RISE AND FALL OF GRANADA--FERDINAND AND
ISABELLA--THE GREAT CAPTAIN
Moslem rule in Spain may be conveniently summarized as
consisting--first, in the Caliphs of Cordova; second, in the dynasty of
the Almoravides; third, in that of the Almohades; and, finally, the
kings of Granada.
Concerning the first it may be noted that in the long reign of the last
Abdur Rahman were the seeds of its dissolution. Brooking no rival during
his lifetime, at his death he found no successor. Then upon the ruins of
the great Caliphate twenty independent and hostile dynasties surged.
Meanwhile Alfonso was eyeing them from his citadel. At the gates of
Valencia was the Cid. For common safety the Moslem rivals looked for a
common defender. In Africa that defender was found in Yusuf, the Berber
chief of a tribe of religious soldiers known as the Almoravides.
Invited to Spain, he crossed over, and, meeting Alfonso at Zalaca, near
Badajoz, on the 23d of October, 1086, he routed him with great and
historic slaughter.
* * * * *
Yusuf [says Burke] had come as a Moslem defender, but he remained as a
Moslem master. And once more in Spanish history, the over-powerful ally
turned his victorious arms against those who had welcomed him to their
shores. Yet Yusuf was no vulgar traitor. He had sworn to the envoys of
the Spanish Moslems that he would return to Africa, in the event of
victory, without the annexation to his African empire of a field or a
city to the north of the Straits. And his vow was religiously kept.
Retiring empty-handed to Mauritania, after the great battle at Zalaca,
he returned once more to Spain, unfettered on this new expedition by any
vow, and set to work with his usual vigor to make himself master of the
Peninsula. Tarifa fell in December. The next year saw the capture of
Seville, and of all of the principal cities of Andalusia. An army sent
by Alfonso VI., under his famous captain, Alvar Fanez, was completely
defeated, and all Southern Spain lay at the feet of the Berber, save
only Valencia, which remained impregnable so long as the Cid lived to
direct the defense. In 1102, after the hero’s death, Valencia succumbed,
and all Spain to the south of the Tagus became a province of the great
African empire of the Almoravides.
The rule of these hardy bigots was entirely unlike that of the Ommeyad
Caliphs of the West. Moslem Spain had no longer even an independent
existence. The sovereign resided not at Cordova, but at Morocco. The
poets and musicians were banished from court. The beauties of Az Zahra
were forgotten. Jews and Christians were alike persecuted. The kingdom
was governed with an iron hand. But if the rule of the stranger was not
generous, it was just, and for the moment it possessed the crowning
merit that it was efficient. The laws were once more respected. The
people once more dreamed of wealth and happiness. But it was little more
than a dream.
On the death of Yusuf in 1107 the scepter passed into the hands of his
son Ali, a more sympathetic but a far less powerful ruler. In 1118 the
great city of Saragossa, the last bulwark of Islam in the north of the
Peninsula, was taken by Alfonso I. of Aragon, who carried his victorious
arms into Southern Spain, and fulfilled a rash vow by eating a dinner of
fresh fish on the coast of Granada.
Yet it was by no Christian hand that the empire of the Almoravides was
to be overthrown.
Mohammed Ibn Abdullah, a lamplighter in the mosque at Cordova, had made
his way to remote Bagdad to study at the feet of Abu Hamid Algazali, a
celebrated doctor of Moslem law. The strange adventures, so
characteristic of his age and nation, by which the lowly student became
a religious reformer--a Mahdi--and a conqueror in Africa, and at length
overthrew the Almoravides, both to the north and the south of the
Straits of Gibraltar, forms a most curious chapter in the history of
Islam; but in a brief sketch of the fortunes of medieval Spain, it must
suffice to say that having established his religious and military power
among the Berber tribes of Africa, Ibn Abdullah, the Mahdi, landed at
Algeciras in 1145, and possessed himself in less than four years of
Malaga, Seville, Granada, and Cordova. The empire of the Almoravides was
completely destroyed; and, before the close of the year 1149, all Moslem
Spain acknowledged the supremacy of the Almohades.
These more sturdy fanatics were still African rather than Spanish
sovereigns. Moslem Spain was administered by a Vali deputed from
Morocco; and Cordova, shorn of much of its former splendor, was the
occasional abode of a royal visitor from Barbary. For seventy years the
Almohades retained their position in Spain. But their rule was not of
glory but of decay. One high feat of arms indeed shed a dying luster on
the name of the Berber prince who reigned for fifteen years (1184-99)
under the auspicious title of Almanzor, and his great Moslem victory
over Alfonso II. at Alarcon in 1195 revived for the time the drooping
fortunes of the Almohades. But their empire was already doomed,
decaying, disintegrated, wasting away. And at length the terrible defeat
of the Moslem forces by the united armies of the three Christian kings
at the Navas do Tolosa in 1212, at once the most crushing and the most
authentic of all the Christian victories of medieval Spain, gave a final
and deadly blow to the Moslem dominion of the Peninsula. Within a few
years of that celebrated battle, Granada alone was subject to the rule
of Islam.
It was in the year 1228 that a descendant of the old Moorish kings of
Saragossa rebelled against the Almohades and succeeded in making himself
master not merely of Granada, but of Cordova, Seville, Algeciras, and
even of Ceuta, and, obtaining a confirmation of his rights from Bagdad,
assumed the title of Amir ul Moslemin--Commander of the Moslems--and Al
Mutawakal--the Protected of God.
But a rival was not slow to appear. Mohammed Al Ahmar, the Fair or the
Ruddy, defeated, dethroned, and slew Al Mutawakal, and reigned in his
stead in Andalusia. Despoiled in his turn of most of his possessions by
St. Ferdinand of Castile, Al Ahmar was fain at length to content
himself with the rich districts in the extreme south of the Peninsula,
which are known to fame, wherever the Spanish or the English language is
spoken, as the Kingdom of Granada. And thus it came to pass that the
city on the banks of the Darro, the home of the proud and highly
cultivated Syrians of Damascus, the flower of the early Arab invaders of
Spain, became also the abiding place of the later Arab civilization,
overmastered year after year, and destroyed, by the Christian armies
ever pressing on to the southern sea. Yet, in the middle of the
thirteenth century, the flood tide of reconquest had for the moment
fairly spent itself. The Christians were not strong enough to conquer,
and above all they were not numerous enough to occupy, the districts
that were still peopled by the Moor; and for once a wise and highly
cultivated Christian shared the supreme power in the Peninsula with a
generous and honorable Moslem. Alfonso X. sought not to extend his
frontiers, but to educate his people, not to slaughter his neighbors,
but to give laws to his subjects, not to plunder frontier cities, but to
make Castile into a kingdom, with a history, a civilization, and a
language of her own. If the reputation of Alfonso is by no means
commensurate with his true greatness, the statesmanship of Mohammed Al
Ahmar, the founder of the ever famous Kingdom of Granada, is
overshadowed by his undying fame as an architect. Yet is Al Ahmar worthy
of remembrance as a king and the parent of kings in Spain. The loyal
friend and ally of his Christian neighbor, the prudent administrator of
his own dominions, he collected at his Arab court a great part of the
wealth, the science, and the intelligence of Spain. His empire has long
ago been broken up; the Moslem has been driven out; there is no king nor
kingdom of Granada. But their memory lives in the great palace fortress
whose red towers still rise over the sparkling Darro, and whose fairy
chambers are still to be seen in what is, perhaps, the most celebrated
of the wonder works of the master builders of the world.
After his long and glorious reign of forty-two years, Mohammed the Fair
was killed by a fall from his horse near Granada, and was succeeded by
his son, Mohammed II., in the last days of the year 1272. Al Ahmar had
ever remained at peace with Alfonso X., but his son, taking advantage of
the king’s absence in quest of an empire in Germany, sought the
assistance of Yusuf, the sovereign or emperor of Morocco, and invaded
the Christian frontiers.
Victory was for some time on the side of the Moors. The Castilians were
defeated at Ecija in 1275, and their leader, the Viceroy Don Nunez de
Lara, was killed in battle, as was also Don Sancho, Infante of Aragon
and Archbishop of Toledo, after the rout of his army at Martos, near
Jaen, on the 21st of October, 1275; and the victorious Yusuf ravaged
Christian Spain to the very gates of Seville.
In the next year, 1276, the Castilian armies were again twice defeated,
in February at Alcoy and in the following July at Lucena. To add to
their troubles, King James of Aragon died at Valencia in 1276. Sancho of
Castile sought to depose his father Alfonso, at Valladolid. All was in
confusion among the Christians; and had it not been for the defection of
Yusuf of Morocco, the tide of fortune might have turned in favor of
Islam. As it was, the African monarch not only abandoned his cousin of
Granada, but he was actually persuaded to send one hundred thousand
ducats to his Christian rival at Seville in 1280.
The value of this assistance was soon felt. Tarifa was taken in 1292,
and the progress of the Moor was checked forever in Southern Spain.
Mohammed II. died in 1302, and was succeeded by his son, Mohammed III.,
who was usually considered by the Moslem historians to have been the
ablest monarch of his house. But he reigned for only seven years, and he
was unable to defend Gibraltar from the assaults of his Christian
rivals.
From this time the court of Granada became a sort of city of refuge for
the disaffected lords and princes of Castile, who sometimes, but rarely,
prevailed upon their Moslem hosts to assist them in expeditions into
Christian Spain, but who were always welcomed with true Arab hospitality
at the Moslem capital. To record their various intrigues would be a vain
and unpleasing task. The general course of history was hardly affected
by passing alliances. The Christian pressed on--with ever-increasing
territory behind him--on his road to the southern sea.
In 1319, Abdul Walid or Ismail I. of Granada defeated and slew Don Pedro
and Don Juan, Infantes of Castile, at a place near Granada, still known
as the Sierra de los Infantes. But no important consequences followed
the victory.
In the reign of Yusuf (1333-54) was fought the great battle of the
Salado (1340), when the Christians, under Alfonso XI., were completely
successful; and the capitulation of Algeciras three years later deprived
the Moslems of an important harbor and seaport. Day by day--almost hour
by hour--the Christians encroached upon Granada, even while cultivating
the political friendship and accepting the private hospitality of the
Moslem. Their treacherous intervention reached its climax in 1362, when
Peter the Cruel decoyed the King Abu Said, under his royal safe-conduct,
to the palace at Seville, and slew him with his own hand.
With Mohammed or Maulai al Aisar, or the Left-handed, the affairs of
Granada became more intimately connected with the serious history of
Spain. Al Hayzari, proclaimed king in 1423, and dethroned soon after by
his cousin, another Mohammed, in 1427 sought and found refuge at the
court of John II., by whose instrumentality he was restored to his
throne at the Alhambra in 1429. Yet within four years a rival sovereign,
Yusuf, had secured the support of the fickle Christian, and Muley the
Left-handed was forced a second time to fly from his capital. Once
again, by the sudden death of the new usurper, he returned to reign at
Granada, and once again for the third time he was supplanted by a more
fortunate rival, who reigned as Mohammed IX. for nearly ten years
(1445-54). At the end of this period, however, another pretender was
dispatched from the Christian court, and after much fighting and
intrigue, Mohammed Ibn Ismail, a nephew of Maulai or Muley the
Left-handed, drove out the reigning sovereign and succeeded him as
Mohammed X.
Yet were the dominions of this Christian ally unceasingly ravaged by his
Christian neighbors. Gibraltar, Archidona, and much surrounding
territory were taken by the forces of Henry IV. and his nobles; and a
treaty was at length concluded in 1464, in which it was agreed that
Mohammed of Granada should hold his kingdom under the protection of
Castile, and should pay an annual subsidy or tribute of twelve thousand
gold ducats. It was thus, on the death, in 1466, of this Mohammed Ismail
of Granada, that a vexed and harassed throne was inherited by his son
Muley Abul Hassan, ever famous in history and romance as “The old
king”--the last independent sovereign of Granada.
Meanwhile, Henry’s only daughter Joanna being regarded as the fruit of
the queen’s adultery, he was deposed, but restored after acknowledging
as his heiress his sister Isabella, who subsequently, through her
marriage with Ferdinand of Aragon, joined the two most powerful of
Spanish kingdoms into one yet more powerful State.
To return now to Muley Abul Hassan.[5] For many years after his
accession he observed with his Christian neighbors the treaties that had
been made, nor did he take advantage of the civil war which arose by
reason of Joanna’s pretensions to add to the difficulties already
existing, and in the spring of 1476 sought a formal renewal of the old
Treaty of Peace.
Ferdinand, however, made his acceptance of the king’s proposal
contingent upon the grant of an annual tribute; and he sent an envoy to
the Moslem court to negotiate the terms of payment. But the reply of
Abul Hassan was decisive. “Steel,” said he, “not gold, was what
Ferdinand should have from Granada!” Disappointed of their subsidy, and
unprepared for war, the Christian sovereigns were content to renew the
treaty, with a mental reservation that as soon as a favorable
opportunity should present itself they would drive every Moslem not
only out of Granada, but out of Spain.
For five years there was peace between Abul Hassan and the Catholic
sovereigns. The commencement of hostilities was the capture of Zahara by
the Moslems at the close of the year 1481; which was followed early in
next year, 1482, by the conquest of the far more important Moorish
stronghold of Alhama, not by the troops of Ferdinand and Isabella, but
by the followers of Ponce de Leon, the celebrated Marquis of Cadiz.
Alhama was not merely a fortress. It was a treasure-house and a
magazine; and it was but five or six leagues from Granada. The town was
sacked with the usual horrors. The Marquis of Cadiz, having made good
his position within the walls, defied all the attacks of Abul Hassan,
and at the same time sent messengers to every Christian lord in
Andalusia to come to his assistance--to all save one, his hereditary
enemy, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, chief of the great family of the
Guzmans. Yet it was this generous rival, who, assembling all his
chivalry and retainers, was the first to appear before the walls of
Alhama, and relieve the Christians from the threatened assault of the
Moslem. The days of civil discord had passed away in Castile; and
against united Christendom, Islam could not long exist in Spain.
Meanwhile, Ferdinand, seeing that war had finally broken out, started
from Medina del Campo, and marched with all speed to Cordova, where he
was joined by Isabella early in April, 1482. The Inquisition had now
been for over a year in full blast at Seville. The fires of persecution
had been fairly lighted. The reign of bigotry had begun, and the king
and queen were encouraged to proceed from the plunder of the Jews or New
Christians to the plunder of the Moslems. Ferdinand accordingly repaired
in person to Alhama, with a large train of prelates and ecclesiastics of
lower degree. The city was solemnly purified. Three mosques were
consecrated by the Cardinal of Spain for Christian worship. Bells,
crosses, plate, altar cloths were furnished without stint; and Alhama
having been thus restored to civilization, Ferdinand descended upon the
fruitful valley or Vega of Granada, destroyed the crops, cut down the
fruit trees, uprooted the vines, and, without having encountered a
single armed enemy in the course of his crusade, returned in triumph to
Cordova. A more arduous enterprise in the following July was not
attended with the same success, when Ferdinand attacked the important
town of Loja, and was repulsed with great loss of Christian life. An
expedition against Malaga, later in the year, undertaken by Alfonso de
Cardenas, Grand Master of Santiago, and the Marquis of Cadiz, was even
more disastrous, for a small body of Moors in the mountain defiles of
the Axarquia fell upon the Christian marauders, and no less than four
hundred “persons of quality” are said to have perished in the retreat,
including thirty commanders of the great military order of Santiago. The
Grand Master, the Marquis of Cadiz, and Don Alfonso de Aguilar escaped
as by a miracle, and the survivors straggled into Loja and Antequera and
Malaga, leaving Abul Hassan and his brother Al Zagal, or the Valiant,
with all the honors of war.
But the successes of the Moor in the field were more than
counterbalanced by treason in the palace. By Zoraya, a lady of Christian
ancestry, Muley Abul Hassan had a son, Abu Abdallah, who has earned a
sad notoriety under the more familiar name of Boabdil. Jealous of some
rival, or ambitious of greater power, the Sultana and her son intrigued
against their sovereign, and having escaped from the State prison, in
which they were at first prudently confined, raised the standard of
revolt, and compelled Abul Hassan, who was thenceforth more usually
spoken of as the Old King, to seek refuge on the sea-coast at Malaga.
Boabdil, jealous of the success of his father and his undo at Loja and
in the Axarquia, and anxious to confirm his power by some striking
victory over the Christians, took the field and confronted the forces of
the Count of Cabra, near Lucena. The battle was hotly contested, but
victory remained with the Christians. Ali Atar, the bravest of the
Moorish generals, was slain by the hand of Alfonso de Aguilar, and
Boabdil himself was taken prisoner by a common soldier, Hurtado by name,
and fell into the hands of the victorious Count of Cabra.
The captivity of Boabdil, the Little King, el Rey Chico, as he was
called by the Castilians, was the turning point in the history of the
Moorish dominion in Spain. Released on payment of a magnificent ransom
provided by his mother Zoraya, and bound to his Christian captors by a
humiliating treaty, he returned to Granada, disgraced and dishonored, as
the ally of the enemies of his country. Driven out of the capital by the
forces of his father, who had returned to occupy the great
palace-fortress of Alhambra, Boabdil and his mother retired to Almeria,
the second city in the kingdom; and the whole country was distracted by
civil war.
Yet for four years the Castilians refrained from any important
expedition against Granada. Their tactics were rather those of Scipio at
Numantia. For Delay was all in favor of Disintegration.
Yet the merciless devastation of fields and crops was carried on with
systematic and dreadful completeness. Thirty thousand destroyers of
peaceful homesteads, granaries, farmhouses, and mills were constantly at
work, and ere long there was scarce a vineyard or an oliveyard, scarce
an orchard or an orange-grove existing within reach of the Christian
borders. Under cover of the treaty with Boabdil, this devilish enginery
of destruction was steadily pushed forward, while the old king and his
more vigorous brother El Zagal were prevented by domestic treason from
making any effectual defense of their fatherland. Some of the border
towns, moreover, fell into the hands of the Christians, and many forays
were undertaken which produced rich booty for the marauders. Ferdinand
in the meantime occupied himself rather with the affairs of the
Inquisition and of foreign policy, while Isabella was personally
superintending the enormous preparations for a final attack on Granada.
Artillery was cast in large quantities, and artificers imported from
France and Italy; large stores of ammunition were procured from
Flanders. Nothing was hurried; nothing was spared; nothing was forgotten
by Isabella. A camp hospital, the first, it is said, in the history of
warfare, was instituted by the queen, whose energy was indefatigable,
whose powers of organization were boundless, and whose determination was
inflexible. To represent her as a tender and a timid princess is to
turn her true greatness into ridicule. But her vigor, her prudence, and
her perseverance are beyond the vulgar praise of history.
Meanwhile, Granada was gradually withering away. The “pomegranate,” as
Ferdinand had foreseen and foretold, was losing one by one the seeds of
which the rich and lovely fruit had once been all compact. The old king,
defeated but not disgraced, blind, infirm, and unfortunate, was
succeeded too late by his more capable brother, El Zagal, a gallant
warrior, a skillful commander, and a resolute ruler. But if “the valiant
one” might hardly have held his own against the enormous resources of
the Christians in Europe, he was powerless against the combination of
foreign vigor and domestic treachery. The true conqueror of Granada is
Boabdil, the rebel and the traitor, who has been euphemistically
surnamed the Unlucky (El Zogoibi). Innocent, perchance, of the massacre
of the brave Abencerrages, he is guilty of the blood of his country.
The capture of Velez Malaga by Ferdinand, already well supplied with a
powerful train of artillery, in April, 1487--while El Zagal was fighting
for his life against Boabdil in Granada--was soon followed by the
reduction, after a most heroic defense, of the far more important city
of Malaga in August, 1487. But the heroism of the Moslem woke no
generous echo in the hearts of either Ferdinand or Isabella. The entire
population of the captured city, men, women, and children--some fifteen
thousand souls--was reduced to slavery, and distributed not only over
Spain, but over Europe.
A hundred choice warriors were sent as a gift to the Pope. Fifty of the
most beautiful girls were presented to the Queen of Naples, thirty more
to the Queen of Portugal, others to the ladies of her court, and the
residue of both sexes were portioned off among the nobles, the knights,
and the common soldiers of the army, according to their rank and
influence.
For the Jews and renegades a more dreadful doom was reserved; and the
flames in which they perished were, in the words of a contemporary
ecclesiastic, “the illuminations most grateful to the Catholic piety of
Ferdinand and Isabella.” The town was repeopled by Christian immigrants,
to whom the lands and houses of the Moslem owners were granted with
royal liberality by the victors. The fall of Malaga, the second seaport
and the third city of the kingdom of Granada, was a grievous loss to the
Moors; and the Christian blockade was drawn closer both by land and by
sea. Yet an invasion of the eastern provinces, undertaken by Ferdinand
himself in 1488, was repulsed by El Zagal; and the Christian army was
disbanded as usual at the close of the year, without having extended the
Christian dominions.
But in the spring of 1489 greater efforts were made. The Castilians sat
down before the town of Baza, not far from Jaen, and after a siege which
lasted until the following December, the city surrendered, not, as in
the case of Malaga, without conditions, but upon honorable terms of
capitulation, which the assailants, who had only been prevented by the
arrival of Isabella from raising the siege, were heartily glad to
accept. The fall of Baza was of more than passing importance, for it was
followed by the capitulation of Almeria, the second city in the kingdom,
and by the submission of El Zagal, who renounced as hopeless the double
task of fighting against his nephew at the Alhambra, and resisting the
Christian sovereigns who had already overrun his borders. The fallen
monarch passed over to Africa, where he died in indigence and misery,
the last of the great Moslem rulers of Spain.
In the spring of 1490, Ferdinand, already master of the greater part of
the Moorish kingdom, sent a formal summons to his bondman, Boabdil, to
surrender to him the city of Granada; and that wretched and most foolish
traitor, who had refrained from action when action might have saved his
country, now defied the victorious Christians, when his defiance could
only lead to further suffering and greater disaster.
Throughout the summer of 1490, Ferdinand, in person, devoted himself to
the odious task of the devastation of the entire Vega of Granada, and
the depopulation of the town of Guadix. But in the spring of the next
year, Isabella, who was ever the life and soul of the war, took up her
position within six miles of the city, and pitched her camp at Ojos de
Huescar at the very gate of Granada.
And here was found assembled, not only all the best blood of Castile,
but volunteers and mercenary troops from various countries in Europe.
France, England, Italy, and even Germany, each provided their
contingent; and a body of Swiss soldiers of fortune showed the gallant
cavaliers of the Christian army the power and the value of a well
disciplined infantry. Among the foreigners who had come over to Spain in
1486 was an English lord, the Earl of Rivers, known by the Spaniards as
El Conde de Escalas, from his family name of Scales, whose magnificence
attracted the admiration of all, even at the magnificent court of
Isabella.
But the destruction of Granada was not brought about by these gilded
strangers, nor even by the brilliant knights and nobles of Spain. It was
not due to skillful engineers nor to irresistible commanders. The gates
were opened by no victory. The walls were scaled by no assault. The
Christian success was due to the patient determination of Isabella, to
the decay and disintegration of the Moorish Commonwealth, and, to some
extent, to the skillful negotiation and diplomatic astuteness of a young
soldier whose early influence upon the fortunes of Spain has been
overshadowed by the greatness of his later achievements.
For among all the splendid knights and nobles who assembled in the camp
of Isabella, the chroniclers wellnigh overlooked a gay cavalier of
modest fortune, the younger brother of Alfonso de Aguilar, distinguished
rather as a fop than a warrior--Gonsalvo Hernandez of Cordova, whose
fame was destined to eclipse that of all his companions in arms, and who
has earned an undying reputation in the history of three countries as
“The Great Captain.”
The life of Gonsalvo de Cordova is interesting as being the history of a
brave soldier and an accomplished general, who flourished at a very
important period of the history of Europe. But it is further and much
more interesting as being the history of a man who united in himself
many of the characteristics of ancient and of modern times. His bravery
was the bravery of an old Castilian knight, and although he had many
splendid rivals, he was pronounced by common consent to be their
superior. Yet his individual courage was the least remarkable of his
qualities. He was a general such as the Western world had not known for
a thousand years, and he was the first diplomatist of modern Europe. In
personal valor, in knightly courtesy, in brave display, he was of his
own time. In astute generalship, and in still more astute diplomacy, he
may be said to have inaugurated a new era; and although greater
commanders have existed after him, as well as before him, he will always
be known as “The Great Captain.”
The conquest of Granada marks an epoch, not only in the history of
Spain, but in the history of Europe; and Gonsalvo was the hero of
Granada. The expedition of Charles VIII. into Italy is a subject of
almost romantic interest, very nearly preferred by Gibbon to his own
immortal theme; and Gonsalvo in Italy was the admired of all French and
Italian admirers. The succeeding expedition of Louis XII. was scarcely
less interesting, and the part played by Gonsalvo was even more
remarkable. At his birth artillery was almost unknown. At his death it
had become the most formidable arm of offense; it had revolutionized the
rules and manner of warfare; and it was employed by The Great Captain in
both his Italian campaigns with marked skill and success.
Gonsalvo Hernandez was born at Montilla, near Cordova, in 1453, of the
noble and ancient family of the Aguilars. After a boyhood and youth
devoted, not only to every manly sport and pursuit, and to the practice
of arms, but to the study of letters, and more especially of the Arabic
language, he made his first appearance in serious warfare on the field
of Olmedo, fighting under the banner of the Marquis of Villena. On the
death of Prince Alfonso, Gonsalvo returned to Cordova. His father had
already died; and according to the Spanish law of primogeniture the
whole of the rich estates of the family of Aguilar passed, on the death
of Don Pedro, to his eldest son Alfonso, while nothing but a little
personal property, a great name, a fine person, and “the hope of what he
might gain by his good fortune or his valor” was inherited by Alfonso’s
younger brother.
Cordova was obviously too small a field for Gonsalvo de Aguilar; and in
the course of the eventful year 1474, having just arrived at man’s
estate, he proceeded to Segovia, and distinguished himself among the
young nobles who crowded to the Court of Isabella, by his prowess at
tournaments and all warlike games and exercises; and he soon became
celebrated for his personal beauty as well as for his valor,
distinguished for his fascinating manners, and, above all, by an
eloquence rarely found in a young soldier of two-and-twenty. He was
generally known as “the Prince of the Youth”; and he supported the
character by an almost royal liberality and ostentatious expenditure
entirely incompatible with his modest fortune.
In the war of succession between Isabella and her niece, Gonsalvo served
under Alfonso de Cardenas, Grand Master of Santiago, in command of a
troop of one hundred and twenty horsemen; and he particularly
distinguished himself at the battle of Albuera.
And now, in the camp before Granada, he was well pleased once more to
sun himself in the smiles of his queen and patroness, whose presence in
the camp inspired every soldier with enthusiasm. Isabella appeared on
the field superbly mounted and dressed in complete armor, and
continually visited the different quarters, and held reviews of the
troops. On one occasion she expressed a desire to have a nearer view of
the city, and a picked body of men, among whom was Gonsalvo de Cordova,
commanded by the Marquis Duke of Cadiz, escorted her to the little
village of Zubia, within a short distance of Granada. The citizens,
indignant at the near approach of so small a force, sallied out and
attacked them. The Christians, however, stood their ground so bravely,
and performed such prodigies of valor under the very eyes of Isabella
herself, that no less than two thousand Moslems are said to have fallen
in that memorable affray.
It happened one night, about the middle of July, that the drapery of the
tent or pavilion in which Isabella was lodged took fire, and the
conflagration was not extinguished until several of the neighboring
tents had been consumed. The queen and her attendants escaped unhurt,
but a general consternation prevailed throughout the camp, until it was
discovered that no more serious loss had been experienced than that of
the queen’s wardrobe.
Gonsalvo, however, who on more than one occasion showed himself at least
as practical a courtier as Sir Walter Raleigh, immediately sent an
express to Illora, and obtained such a supply of fine clothes from his
wife, Doña Maria Manrique, that the queen herself was amazed, as much
at their magnificence as at the rapidity with which they had been
obtained.
But this incident led to even more important results than the amiable
pillage of Doña Maria’s wardrobe; for in order to guard against a
similar disaster, as well as to provide comfortable winter quarters for
the troops, Isabella determined to construct a sufficient number of
houses of solid masonry to provide quarters for the besieging army, a
design which was carried out in less than three months. This martial and
Christian town, which received the appropriate name of Santa Fe, may be
still seen by the traveler in the Vega of Granada, and is pointed out by
good Catholics as the only town in Andalusia that has never been
contaminated by the Moslem.
But in spite of the attractions of all these feats of arms and
exhibitions of magnificence, and of all the personal display and rash
adventure which savors so much more of medieval chivalry than of modern
warfare, Gonsalvo was more seriously engaged in the schemes and
negotiations which contributed almost as much as the prowess of the
Christian arms to the fall of Granada. He had spies everywhere. He knew
what was going on in Granada better than Boabdil. He knew what was going
on in the camp better than Ferdinand. His familiarity with Arabic
enabled him to maintain secret communications with recreant Moors,
without the dangerous intervention of an interpreter. He kept up
constant communications with Illora, and having obtained the allegiance
or friendship of the Moorish chief, Ali Atar, he gained possession of
the neighboring fortress of Mondejar. He sent presents, in truly
Oriental style, to many of the Moorish leaders in Granada who favored
the party of Boabdil, and he was at length chosen by Isabella as the
most proper person to conduct the negotiations that led to the treaty of
capitulation, which was signed on the 25th of November, 1491.
The nature and the effect of this Convention are well known. The
triumphal entry of the Christians into the old Moslem capital; “the last
sigh of the Moor,” and the setting up of the Cross in the palace-citadel
of Alhambra, not only form one of the most glowing pages in the romance
of history, but they mark an epoch in the annals of the world.