CHAPTER LIV

Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada

by Washington Irving

CHAPTER LIV, CHRONICLE OF THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA by Washington Irving

SIEGE OF MALAGA.


The attack on Malaga by sea and land was kept up for several
days with tremendous violence, but without producing any great
impression, so strong were the ancient bulwarks of the city. The
count de Cifuentes was the first to signalize himself by any noted
achievement. A main tower, protecting what is at present called the
suburb of Santa Ana, had been shattered by the ordnance and the
battlements demolished, so as to yield no shelter to its defenders.
Seeing this, the count assembled a gallant band of cavaliers of the
royal household and advanced to take it by storm. They applied
scaling-ladders and mounted sword in hand. The Moors, having no
longer battlements to protect them, descended to a lower floor, and
made furious resistance from the windows and loopholes. They poured
down boiling pitch and rosin, and hurled stones and darts and arrows
on the assailants. Many of the Christians were slain, their ladders
were destroyed by flaming combustibles, and the count was obliged
to retreat from before the tower. On the following day he renewed
the attack with superior force, and after a severe combat succeeded
in planting his victorious banner on the tower.

The Moors now assailed the tower in their turn. They undermined the
part toward the city, placed props of wood under the foundation, and,
setting fire to them, drew off to a distance. In a little while the props
gave way, the foundation sunk, and the tower was rent; part of its
wall fell with a tremendous noise; many of the Christians were thrown
out headlong, and the rest were laid open to the missiles of the enemy.

By this time, however, a breach had been made in the wall of the
suburb adjoining the tower, and troops poured in to the assistance
of their comrades. A continued battle was kept up for two days and
a night by reinforcements from camp and city. The parties fought
backward and forward through the breach of the wall and in the
narrow and winding streets adjacent with alternate success, and
the vicinity of the tower was strewn with the dead and wounded.
At length the Moors gradually gave way, disputing every inch of
ground, until they were driven into the city, and the Christians
remained masters of the greater part of the suburb.

This partial success, though gained with great toil and bloodshed,
gave temporary animation to the Christians; they soon found,
however, that the attack on the main works of the city was a much
more arduous task. The garrison contained veterans who had served
in many of the towns captured by the Christians. They were no longer
confounded and dismayed by the battering ordnance and other strange
engines of foreign invention, and had become expert in parrying their
effects, in repairing breaches, and erecting counter-works.

The Christians, accustomed of late to speedy conquests of Moorish
fortresses, became impatient of the slow progress of the siege. Many
were apprehensive of a scarcity of provisions from the difficulty of
subsisting so numerous a host in the heart of the enemy's country,
where it was necessary to transport supplies across rugged and
hostile mountains or subjected to the uncertainties of the sea. Many
also were alarmed at a pestilence which broke out in the neighboring
villages, and some were so overcome by these apprehensions as to
abandon the camp and return to their homes.

Several of the loose and worthless hangers-on that infest all great
armies, hearing these murmurs, thought that the siege would soon
be raised, and deserted to the enemy, hoping to make their fortunes.
They gave exaggerated accounts of the alarms and discontents of
the army, and represented the troops as daily returning home in
bands. Above all, they declared that the gunpowder was nearly
exhausted, so that the artillery would soon be useless. They
assured the Moors, therefore, that if they persisted a little longer
in their defence, the king would be obliged to draw off his forces
and abandon the siege.

The reports of these renegados gave fresh courage to the garrison;
they made vigorous sallies upon the camp, harassing it by night and
day, and obliging every part to be guarded with the most painful
vigilance. They fortified the weak parts of their walls with ditches
and palisadoes, and gave every manifestation of a determined and
unyielding spirit.

Ferdinand soon received intelligence of the reports which had been
carried to the Moors: he understood that they had been informed,
likewise, that the queen was alarmed for the safety of the camp, and
had written repeatedly urging him to abandon the siege. As the best
means of disproving all these falsehoods and destroying the vain
hopes of the enemy, he wrote to the queen entreating her to come
and take up her residence in the camp.