The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Volume II Part 4

At no great distance from Almeria, Ferdinand was met, conformably to the previous arrangement, by El Zagal, escorted by a numerous body of Moslem cavaliers. Ferdinand commanded his n.o.bles to ride forward and receive the Moorish prince. "His appearance," says Martyr, who was in the royal retinue, "touched my soul with compa.s.sion; for, although a lawless barbarian, he was a king, and had given signal proofs of heroism." El Zagal, without waiting to receive the courtesies of the Spanish n.o.bles, threw himself from his horse, and advanced towards Ferdinand with the design of kissing his hand; but the latter, rebuking his followers for their "rusticity," in allowing such an act of humiliation in the unfortunate monarch, prevailed on him to remount, and then rode by his side towards Almeria. [21]

This city was one of the most precious jewels in the diadem of Granada. It had ama.s.sed great wealth by its extensive commerce with Syria, Egypt, and Africa; and its corsairs had for ages been the terror of the Catalan and Pisan marine. It might have stood a siege as long as that of Baza, but it was now surrendered without a blow, on conditions similar to those granted to the former city. After allowing some days for the refreshment of their wearied forces in this pleasant region, which, sheltered from the bleak winds of the north by the sierra they had lately traversed, and fanned by the gentle breezes of the Mediterranean, is compared by Martyr to the gardens of the Hesperides, the sovereigns established a strong garrison there, under the commander of Leon, and then, striking again into the recesses of the mountains, marched on Guadix, which, after some opposition on the part of the populace, threw open its gates to them. The surrender of these princ.i.p.al cities was followed by that of all the subordinate dependencies belonging to El Zagal's territory, comprehending a mult.i.tude of hamlets scattered along the green sides of the mountain chain that stretched from Granada to the coast. To all these places the same liberal terms, in regard to personal rights and property, were secured, as to Baza.

As an equivalent for these broad domains, the Moorish chief was placed in possession of the _taha_, or district, of Andaraz, the vale of Alhaurin, and half the salt-pits of Maleha, together with a considerable revenue in money. He was, moreover, to receive the t.i.tle of King of Andaraz, and to render homage for his estates to the crown of Castile.

This shadow of royalty could not long amuse the mind of the unfortunate prince. He pined away amid the scenes of his ancient empire; and, after experiencing some insubordination on the part of his new va.s.sals, he determined to relinquish his petty princ.i.p.ality, and withdraw for ever from his native land. Having received a large sum of money, as an indemnification for the entire cession of his territorial rights and possessions to the Castilian crown, he pa.s.sed over to Africa, where, it is reported, he was plundered of his property by the barbarians, and condemned to starve out the remainder of his days in miserable indigence.

[22]

The suspicious circ.u.mstances attending this prince's accession to the throne throw a dark cloud over his fame, which would otherwise seem, at least as far as his public life is concerned, to be unstained by any opprobrious act. He possessed such energy, talent, and military science, as, had he been fortunate enough to unite the Moorish nation under him by an undisputed t.i.tle, might have postponed the fall of Granada for many years. As it was, these very talents, by dividing the state in his favor, served only to precipitate its ruin.

The Spanish sovereigns, having accomplished the object of the campaign, after stationing part of their forces on such points as would secure the permanence of their conquests, returned with the remainder to Jaen, where they disbanded the army on the 4th of January, 1490. The losses sustained by the troops, during the whole period of their prolonged service, greatly exceeded those of any former year, amounting to not less than twenty thousand men, by far the larger portion of whom are said to have fallen victims to diseases incident to severe and long-continued hards.h.i.+ps and exposure. [23]

Thus terminated the eighth year of the war of Granada, a year more glorious to the Christian arms, and more important in its results, than any of the preceding. During this period, an army of eighty thousand men had kept the field, amid all the inclemencies of winter, for more than seven months; an effort scarcely paralleled in these times, when both the amount of levies, and period of service, were on the limited scale adapted to the exigencies of feudal warfare. [24] Supplies for this immense host, notwithstanding the severe famine of the preceding year, were punctually furnished, in spite of every embarra.s.sment presented by the want of navigable rivers, and the interposition of a precipitous and pathless sierra.

The history of this campaign is, indeed, most honorable to the courage, constancy, and thorough discipline of the Spanish soldier, and to the patriotism and general resources of the nation; but most of all to Isabella. She it was, who fortified the timid councils of the leaders, after the disasters of the garden, and encouraged them to persevere in the siege. She procured all the supplies, constructed the roads, took charge of the sick, and furnished, at no little personal sacrifice, the immense sums demanded for carrying on the war; and when at last the hearts of the soldiers were fainting under long-protracted sufferings, she appeared among them, like some celestial visitant, to cheer their faltering spirits, and inspire them with her own energy. The attachment to Isabella seemed to be a pervading principle, which animated the whole nation by one common impulse, impressing a unity of design on all its movements. This attachment was imputable to her s.e.x as well as character. The sympathy and tender care, with which she regarded her people, naturally raised a reciprocal sentiment in their bosoms. But when they beheld her directing their counsels, sharing their fatigues and dangers, and displaying all the comprehensive intellectual powers of the other s.e.x, they looked up to her as to some superior being, with feelings far more exalted than those of mere loyalty. The chivalrous heart of the Spaniard did homage to her, as to his tutelar saint; and she held a control over her people, such as no man could have acquired in any age,--and probably no woman, in an age and country less romantic.

Pietro Martire, or, as he is called in English, Peter Martyr, so often quoted in the present chapter, and who will const.i.tute one of our best authorities during the remainder of the history, was a native of Arona (not of Anghiera, as commonly supposed), a place situated on the borders of Lake Maggiore in Italy. (Mazzuch.e.l.li, Scrittori d'ltalia, (Brescia, 1753-63,) tom. ii. _voce_ Anghiera.) He was of n.o.ble Milanese extraction.

In 1477, at twenty-two years of age, he was sent to complete his education at Rome, where he continued ten years, and formed an intimacy with the most distinguished literary characters of that cultivated capital. In 1487, he was persuaded by the Castilian amba.s.sador, the count of Tendilla, to accompany him to Spain, where he was received with marked distinction by the queen, who would have at once engaged him in the tuition of the young n.o.bility of the court, but, Martyr having expressed a preference of a military life, she, with her usual delicacy, declined to press him on the point. He was present, as we have seen, at the siege of Baza, and continued with the army during the subsequent campaigns of the Moorish war. Many pa.s.sages of his correspondence, at this period, show a whimsical mixture of self-complacency with a consciousness of the ludicrous figure which he made in "exchanging the Muses for Mars."

At the close of the war, he entered the ecclesiastical profession, for which he had been originally destined, and was persuaded to resume his literary vocation. He opened his school at Valladolid, Saragossa, Barcelona, Alcala de Henares, and other places; and it was thronged with the princ.i.p.al young n.o.bility from all parts of Spain, who, as he boasts in one of his letters, drew their literary nourishment from him. "Suxerunt mea literalia ubera Castellae principes fere omnes." His important services were fully estimated by the queen, and, after her death, by Ferdinand and Charles V., and he was recompensed with high ecclesiastical preferment as well as civil dignities. He died about the year 1525, at the age of seventy, and his remains were interred beneath a monument in the cathedral church of Granada, of which he was prior.

Among Martyr's princ.i.p.al works is a treatise "De Legatione Babylonica,"

being an account of a visit to the sultan of Egypt, in 1501, for the purpose of deprecating the retaliation with which he had menaced the Christian residents in Palestine, for the injuries inflicted on the Spanish Moslems. Peter Martyr conducted his negotiation with such address, that he not only appeased the sultan's resentment, but obtained several important immunities for his Christian subjects, in addition to those previously enjoyed by them.

He also wrote an account of the discoveries of the New World, ent.i.tled "De Rebus Oceanicis et Novo Orbe," (Coloniae, 1574,) a book largely consulted and commended by subsequent historians. But the work of princ.i.p.al value in our researches is his "Opus Epistolarum," being a collection of his multifarious correspondence with the most considerable persons of his time, whether in political or literary life. The letters are in Latin, and extend from the year 1488 to the time of his death. Although not conspicuous for elegance of diction, they are most valuable to the historian, from the fidelity and general accuracy of the details, as well as for the intelligent criticism in which they abound, for all which, uncommon facilities were afforded by the writer's intimacy with the leading actors, and the most recondite sources of information of the period.

This high character is fully authorized by the judgments of those best qualified to p.r.o.nounce on their merits,--Martyr's own contemporaries.

Among these, Dr. Galindez de Carbajal, a counsellor of King Ferdinand, and constantly employed in the highest concerns of state, commends these epistles as "the work of a learned and upright man, well calculated to throw light on the transactions of the period." (a.n.a.les, MS., prologo.) Alvaro Gomez, another contemporary who survived Martyr, in the Life of Ximenes, which he was selected to write by the University of Alcala, declares, that "Martyr's Letters abundantly compensate by their fidelity for the unpolished style in which they are written." (De Rebus Gestis, fol. 6.) And John de Vergara, a name of the highest celebrity in the literary annals of the period, expresses himself in the following emphatic terms. "I know no record of the time more accurate and valuable. I myself have often witnessed the promptness with which he put down things the moment they occurred. I have sometimes seen him write one or two letters, while they were setting the table. For, as he did not pay much attention to style and mere finish of expression, his composition required but little time, and experienced no interruption from his ordinary avocations." (See his letter to Florian de Ocampo, apud Quintanilla y Mendoza, Archetypo de Virtudes, Espejo de Prelados, el Venerable Padre y Siervo de Dios, F. Francisco Ximenez de Cisneros, (Palermo, 1653,) Archivo, p. 4.) This account of the precipitate manner in which the epistles were composed, may help to explain the cause of the occasional inconsistencies and anachronisms, that are to be found in them; and which their author, had he been more patient of the labor of revision, would doubtless have corrected. But he seems to have had little relish for this, even in his more elaborate works, composed with a view to publication.

(See his own honest confessions in his book "De Rebus Oceanicis," dec. 8, cap. 8, 9.) After all, the errors, such as they are, in his Epistles, may probably be chiefly charged on the publisher. The first edition appeared at Alcala de Henares, in 1530, about four years after the author's death.

It has now become exceedingly rare. The second and last, being the one used in the present History, came out in a more beautiful form from the Elzevir press, Amsterdam, in 1670, folio. Of this also but a small number of copies were struck off. The learned editor takes much credit to himself for having purified the work from many errors, which had flowed from the heedlessness of his predecessor. It will not be difficult to detect several yet remaining. Such, for example, as a memorable letter on the _lues venerea_, (No. 68,) obviously misplaced, even according to its own date; and that numbered 168, in which two letters are evidently blended into one. But it is unnecessary to multiply examples.--It is very desirable, that an edition of this valuable correspondence should be published, under the care of some one qualified to ill.u.s.trate it by his intimacy with the history of the period, as well as to correct the various inaccuracies which have crept into it, whether through the carelessness of the author or of his editors.

I have been led into this length of remark by some strictures which met my eye in the recent work of Mr. Hallam; who intimates his belief, that the Epistles of Martyr, instead of being written at their respective dates, were produced by him at some later period; (Introduction to the Literature of Europe, (London, 1837,) vol. i. pp. 439-441;) a conclusion which I suspect this acute and candid critic would have been slow to adopt, had he perused the correspondence in connection with the history of the times, or weighed the unqualified testimony borne by contemporaries to its minute accuracy.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Zurita, a.n.a.les, tom. iv. fol. 351, 352, 356.--Mariana, Hist. de Espana, tom. ii. lib. 25, cap. 12.--Pulgar, Reyes Catolicos, part. 3, cap. 95.

[2] Ferreras, Hist. d'Espagne, tom. viii. p. 76.--Pulgar, Reyes Catolicos, cap. 98.--Zuniga, Annales de Sevilla, p. 402.--Cardonne, Hist. d'Afrique et d'Espagne, tom. iii. pp. 298, 299.--Carbajal, a.n.a.les, MS., ano 1488.

[3] Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. iii. pp. 239, 240.--Pulgar, Reyes Catolicos, cap. 100, 101.--During the preceding year, while the court was at Murcia, we find one of the examples of prompt and severe exercise of justice, which sometimes occur in this reign. One of the royal collectors having been resisted and personally maltreated by the alcayde of Salvatierra, a place belonging to the crown, and by the alcalde of a territorial court of the duke of Alva, the queen caused one of the royal judges privately to enter into the place, and take cognizance of the affair. The latter, after a brief investigation, commanded the alcayde to be hung up over his fortress, and the alcalde to be delivered over to the court of chancery at Valladolid, who ordered his right hand to be amputated, and banished him the realm. This summary justice was perhaps necessary in a community, that might be said to be in transition from a state of barbarism to that of civilization, and had a salutary effect in proving to the people that no rank was elevated enough to raise the offender above the law. Pulgar, cap. 99.

[4] Ialigny, Hist. de Charles VIII., pp. 92, 94.--Sismondi, Hist. des Francais, tom. xv. p. 77.--Aleson, Annales de Navarra, tom. v. p. 61.-- Histoire du Royaume de Navarre, pp. 578, 579.--Pulgar, Reyes Catolicos, cap. 102.

In the first of these expeditions, more than a thousand Spaniards were slain or taken at the disastrous battle of St. Aubin, in 1488, being the same in which Lord Rivers, the English n.o.ble, who made such a gallant figure at the siege of Loja, lost his life. In the spring of 1489, the levies sent into France amounted to two thousand in number. These efforts abroad, simultaneous with the great operations of the Moorish war, show the resources as well as energy of the sovereigns.

[5] Pulgar, Reyes Catolicos, ubi supra.

[6] Bernaldez, Reyes Catolicos, MS., cap. 91.--Zurita, a.n.a.les, tom. iv.

fol. 354.--Bleda, Coronica, fol. 607.--Abarca, Reyes de Aragon, tom. ii.

fol. 307.

Such was the scarcity of grain that the prices in 1489, quoted by Bernaldez, are double those of the preceding year.--Both Abarca and Zurita mention the report, that four-fifths of the whole population were swept away by the pestilence of 1488. Zurita finds more difficulty in swallowing this monstrous statement than Father Abarca, whose appet.i.te for the marvellous appears to have been fully equal to that of most of his calling in Spain.

[7] Peter Martyr, Opus Epist., lib. 2, epist. 70.--Pulgar, Reyes Catolicos, cap. 104.

It may not be amiss to specify the names of the most distinguished cavaliers who usually attended the king in these Moorish wars; the heroic ancestors of many a n.o.ble house still extant in Spain.

Alonso de Cardenas, master of Saint Jago.

Juan de Zuniga, master of Alcantara.

Juan Garcia de Padilla, master of Calatrava.

Rodrigo Ponce de Leon, marquis duke of Cadiz.

Enrique de Guzman, duke of Medina Sidonia.

Pedro Manrique, duke of Najera.

Juan Pacheco, duke of Escalona, marquis of Villena.

Juan Pimentel, count of Benavente.

Fadrique de Toledo, son of the duke of Alva.

Diego Fernandez de Cordova, count of Cabra.

Gomez Alvarez de Figueroa, count of Feria.

Alvaro Tellez Giron, count of Urena.

Juan de Silva, count of Cifuentes.

Fadrique Enriquez, adelantado of Andalusia.

Alonso Fernandez de Cordova, lord of Aguilar.

Gonsalvo de Cordova, brother of the last, known afterwards as the Great Captain.

Luis Porto-Carrero, lord of Palma.

Gutierre de Cardenas, first commander of Leon.

Pedro Fernandez de Velasco, count of Haro, constable of Castile.

Beltran de la Cueva, duke of Albuquerque.

Diego Fernandez de Cordova, alcayde of the royal pages, afterwards marquis of Comaras.

Alvaro de Zuniga, duke of Bejar.

Inigo Lopez de Mendoza, count of Tendilla, afterwards marquis of Mondejar.

Luis de Cerda, duke of Medina Celi.

Inigo Lopez de Mendoza, marquis of Santillana, second duke of Infantado.

Garcila.s.so de la Vega, lord of Batras.

[8] Zurita, a.n.a.les, tom. iv. fol. 360.--Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. iii. p. 241.--Peter Martyr, Opus Epist., lib. 2, epist. 70.--Estrada, Poblacion de Espana, tom. ii. fol. 239.--Marmol, Rebelion de Moriscos, lib. 1, cap. 16.

[9] Pulgar, Reyes Catolicos, cap. 106, 107.--Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. iii. cap. 40.--Peter Martyr, Opus Epist., epist. 71. Pulgar relates these particulars with a perspicuity very different from his entangled narrative of some of the preceding operations in this war. Both he and Martyr were present during the whole siege of Baza.

[10] Bernaldez, Reyes Catolicos, MS., cap. 92.--Cardonne, Hist. d'Afrique et d'Espagne, tom. iii. pp. 299, 300.--Bleda, Coronica, p. 611.--Garibay, Compendio, tom. ii. p. 664.

Don Gutierre de Cardenas, who possessed so high a place in the confidence of the sovereigns, occupied a station in the queen's household, as we have seen, at the time of her marriage with Ferdinand. His discretion and general ability enabled him to retain the influence which he had early acquired, as is shown by a popular distich of that time.

"Cardenas, y el Cardenal, y Chacon, y Fray Mortero, Traen la Corte al retortero."

Fray Mortero was Don Alonso de Burgos, bishop of Palencia, confessor of the sovereigns. Don Juan Chacon was the son of Gonsalvo, who had the care of Don Alfonso and the queen during her minority, when he was induced by the liberal largesses of John II., of Aragon, to promote her marriage with his son Ferdinand. The elder Chacon was treated by the sovereigns with the greatest deference and respect, being usually called by them "father."