The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Volume II Part 2

The fate of Malaga may be said to have decided that of Granada. The latter was now shut out from the most important ports along her coast; and she was environed on every point of her territory by her warlike foe, so that she could hardly hope more from subsequent efforts, however strenuous and united, than to postpone the inevitable hour of dissolution. The cruel treatment of Malaga was the prelude to the long series of persecutions, which awaited the wretched Moslems in the land of their ancestors; in that land, over which the "star of Islamism," to borrow their own metaphor, had shone in full brightness for nearly eight centuries, but where it was now fast descending amid clouds and tempests to the horizon.

The first care of the sovereigns was directed towards repeopling the depopulated city with their own subjects. Houses and lands were freely granted to such as would settle there. Numerous towns and villages with a wide circuit of territory were placed under its civil jurisdiction, and it was made the head of a diocese embracing most of the recent conquests in the south and west of Granada. These inducements, combined with the natural advantages of position and climate, soon caused the tide of Christian population to flow into the deserted city; but it was very long before it again reached the degree of commercial consequence to which it had been raised by the Moors. [32]

After these salutary arrangements, the Spanish sovereigns led back their victorious legions in triumph to Cordova, whence dispersing to their various homes, they prepared, by a winter's repose, for new campaigns and more brilliant conquests.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Vedmar, Antiguedad y Grandezas de la Ciudad de Velez, (Granada, 1652,) fol. 148.--Mariana, Hist. de Espana, tom. ii. lib. 27, cap. 10.--Pulgar, Reyes Catolicos, part. iii. cap. 70.--Carbajal, a.n.a.les, MS., ano 1487.-- Bleda, Coronica, lib. 5, cap. 14.

[2] Cardonne, Hist. d'Afrique et d'Espagne, tom. iii. pp. 292-294.-- Pulgar, Reyes Catolicos, ubi supra.--Vedmar, Antiguedad de Velez, fol.

151.

[3] L. Marineo, Cosas Memorables, fol. 175.--Vedmar, Antiguedad.--de Velez, fol. 150, 151.--Marmol, Rebelion de Moriscos, lib. 1, cap. 14.

In commemoration of this event, the city incorporated into its escutcheon the figure of a king on horseback, in the act of piercing a Moor with his javelin. Vedmar, Antiguedad de Velez, fol. 12.

[4] Bernaldez, Reyes Catolicos, MS., cap. 52.--Marmol, Rebelion de Moriscos, lib. 1, cap. 14.

[5] Conde doubts whether the name of Malaga is derived from the Greek _malake_, signifying "agreeable," or the Arabic _malka_, meaning "royal."

Either etymology is sufficiently pertinent. (See El Nubiense, Descripcion de Espana, p. 186, not.) For notices of sovereigns who swayed the sceptre of Malaga, see Casiri, Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. ii. pp. 41, 56, 99, et alibi.

[6] Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. iii. p. 237.--Pulgar, Reyes Catolicos, cap. 74.--El Nubiense, Descripcion de Espana, not., p. 144.

[7] Bernaldez, Reyes Catolicos, MS., cap. 82.--Vedmar, Antiguedad de Velez, fol. 154.--Pulgar, Reyes Catolicos, cap. 74.

[8] This cavalier, who took a conspicuous part both in the military and civil transactions of this reign, was descended from one of the most ancient and honorable houses in Castile. Hyta, (Guerras Civiles de Granada, tom. i. p. 399,) with more effrontery than usual, has imputed to him a chivalrous rencontre with a Saracen, which is recorded of an ancestor, in the ancient Chronicle of Alonso XI.

"Garcilaso de la Vega desde alli se ha int.i.tulado, porque en la Vega hiciera campo con aquel pagano."

Oviedo, however, with good reason, distrusts the etymology and the story, as he traces both the cognomen and the peculiar device of the family to a much older date than the period a.s.signed in the Chronicle. Quincuagenas, MS., bat. 1, quinc. 3, dial. 43.

[9] Pulgar, Reyes Catolicos, cap. 75.--Salazar de Mendoza, Cron. del Gran Cardenal, lib. 1, cap. 64.

[10] Bernaldez, Reyes Catolicos, MS., cap. 83.--Pulgar, Reyes Catolicos, cap. 76.--Carbajal, a.n.a.les, MS., ano 1487.

[11] Pulgar, Reyes Catolicos, ubi supra.--Bernaldez, Reyes Catolicos, MS., ubi supra.

[12] Peter Martyr, Opus Epist., lib. 1, epist. 83--Pulgar, Reyes Catolicos, cap. 76.--Bernaldez, Reyes Catolicos, cap. 83.--Oviedo, Quincuagenas, MS., bat. 1, quinc. 1, dial. 36.

[13] Pulgar, Reyes Catolicos, cap. 76.

[14] Salazar de Mendoza, Cron. del Gran Cardenal, lib. 1, cap. 64.-- Zurita, a.n.a.les, tom. iv. cap. 70.--Bernaldez, Reyes Catolicos, MS., cap.

83.

[15] Bleda, Coronica, lib. 5, cap. 15.--Conde, Dominacion, tom. iv. pp.

237, 238.--Bernaldez, Reyes Catolicos, MS., cap. 83.--Pulgar, Reyes Catolicos, cap. 79.

[16] Pulgar, Reyes Catolicos, ubi supra.

During the siege, amba.s.sadors arrived from an African potentate, the king of Tremecen, bearing a magnificent present to the Castilian sovereigns, interceding for the Malagans, and at the same time asking protection for his subjects from the Spanish cruisers in the Mediterranean. The sovereigns graciously complied with the latter request, and complimented the African monarch with a plate of gold, on which the royal arms were curiously embossed, says Bernaldez, Reyes Catolicos, cap. 84.

[17] This n.o.bleman, Don Alvaro de Portugal, had fled his native country, and sought an asylum in Castile from the vindictive enmity of John II, who had been put to death by the duke of Braganza, his elder brother. He was kindly received by Isabella, to whom he was nearly related, and subsequently preferred to several important offices of state. His son, the count of Gelves, married a granddaughter of Christopher Columbus. Oviedo, Quincuagenas, MS.

[18] Oviedo, Quincuagenas, MS., bat. 1, quinc. 1, dial. 23.--Peter Martyr, Opus Epist., lib. 1, epist. 63.--Bernaldez, Reyes Catolicos, MS., cap.

84.--Bleda, Coronica de los Moros, lib. 5, cap. 15.--L. Marineo, Cosas Memorables, fol. 175, 176.

[19] Pulgar, Reyes Catolicos, cap. 87-89.--Bernaldez, Reyes Catolicos, MS., cap. 84.

[20] Bernaldez, Reyes Catolicos, MS., cap. 87.--Pulgar, Reyes Catolicos, cap. 71.

[21] Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. iii. pp. 237, 238.--Pulgar, Reyes Catolicos, cap. 80.--Caro de Torres, Ordenes Militares, fol. 82, 83.

[22] Pulgar, Reyes Catolicos, cap. 9l.--Bernaldez, Reyes Catolicos, MS., cap. 84. The honest exclamation of the Curate brings to mind the similar encomium of the old Moorish ballad,

"Caballeros Granadinos, Aunque Moros, hijosdalgo."

Hyta, Guerras de Granada, tom. i., p. 257.

[23] There is no older well-authenticated account of the employment of gunpowder in mining in European warfare, so far as I am aware, than this by Ramirez. Tiraboschi, indeed, refers, on the authority of another writer, to a work in the library of the Academy of Siena, composed by one Francesco Giorgio, architect of the duke of Urbino, about 1480, in which that person claims the merit of the invention. (Letteratura Italiana, tom.

vi. p. 370.) The whole statement is obviously too loose to warrant any such conclusion. The Italian historians notice the use of gunpowder mines at the siege of the little town of Serezanello in Tuscany, by the Genoese, in 1487, precisely contemporaneous with the siege of Malaga. (Machiavelli, Istorie Fiorentine, lib. 8.--Guicciardini, Istoria d'Italia, (Milano, 1803,) tom. iii. lib. 6.) This singular coincidence, in nations having then but little intercourse, would seem to infer some common origin of greater antiquity. However this may be, the writers of both nations are agreed in ascribing the first successful use of such mines on any extended scale to the celebrated Spanish engineer, Pedro Navarro, when serving under Gonsalvo of Cordova, in his Italian campaigns at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Guicciardini, ubi supra.--Paolo Giovio, de Vita Magni Gonsalvi, (Vitae Ill.u.s.trium Virorum, Basiliae, 1578,) lib. 2.-- Aleson, Annales de Navarra, tom. v. lib. 35, cap. 12.

[24] Cardonne, Hist. d'Afrique et d'Espagne, tom. iii. p. 296.--L.

Marineo, Cosas Memorables, fol. 175.--Rades y Andrada, Las Tres Ordenes, fol. 54.--Pulgar, Reyes Catolicos, cap. 92.--Bernaldez, Reyes Catolicos, MS., cap. 85.

[25] Pulgar, Reyes Catolicos, cap. 93.--Cardonne, Hist. d'Afrique et d'Espagne, tom. iii. p. 296.

The Arabic historians state that Malaga was betrayed by Ali Dordux, who admitted the Spaniards into the castle, while the citizens were debating on Ferdinand's terms. (See Conde, Domination de los Arabes, tom. iii. cap.

39.) The letter of the inhabitants, quoted at length by Pulgar, would seem to be a refutation of this. And yet there are good grounds for suspecting false play on the part of the amba.s.sador Dordux, since the Castilian writers admit that he was exempted, with forty of his friends, from the doom of slavery and forfeiture of property, pa.s.sed upon his fellow- citizens.

[26] Bernaldez, Reyes Catolicos, MS., cap. 85.

[27] Carbajal, whose meagre annals have scarcely any merit beyond that of a mere chronological table, postpones the surrender till September.

a.n.a.les, ano 1487.--Marmol, Rebelion de Moriscos, lib. 1, cap. 14.

[28] Bleda, Coronica, lib. 5, cap. 15.

As a counterpart to the above scene, twelve Christian renegades, found in the city, were transfixed with canes, _acanavereados_, a barbarous punishment derived from the Moors, which was inflicted by hors.e.m.e.n at full gallop, who discharged pointed reeds at the criminal, until he expired under repeated wounds. A number of relapsed Jews were at the same time condemned to the flames. "These," says Father Abarca, "were the _fetes_ and illuminations most grateful to the Catholic piety of our sovereigns"!

Abarca, Reyes de Aragon, tom. ii. rey 30, cap. 3.

[29] Pulgar, Reyes Catolicos, ubi supra.--Bernaldez, Reyes Catolicos, MS., ubi supra.--Peter Martyr, Opus Epist., epist. 62.

[30] Bernaldez, Reyes Catolicos, MS., cap. 87.--L. Marineo, Cosas Memorables, fol. 176.--Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. iii. p. 238.

--Cardonne, Hist. d'Afrique et d'Espagne, tom. iii. p. 296.--Carbajal, a.n.a.les, MS., ano 1487.

Not a word of comment escapes the Castilian historians on this merciless rigor of the conqueror towards the vanquished. It is evident that Ferdinand did no violence to the feelings of his orthodox subjects.

_Tacendo clamant._