CHAPTER LXVI

Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada

by Washington Irving

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

HOW THE CASTILIAN SOVEREIGNS TOOK POSSESION OF THE CITY OF
MALAGA, AND HOW KING FERDINAND SIGNALIZED HIMSELF BY HIS
SKILL IN BARGAINING WITH THE INHABITANTS FOR THEIR RANSOM.


One of the first cares of the conquerors on entering Malaga was to
search for Christian captives. Nearly sixteen hundred men and women
were found, and among them were persons of distinction. Some of them
had been ten, fifteen, and twenty years in captivity. Many had been
servants to the Moors or laborers on public works, and some had
passed their time in chains and dungeons. Preparations were made
to celebrate their deliverance as a Christian triumph. A tent was
erected not far from the city, and furnished with an altar and all
the solemn decorations of a chapel. Here the king and queen waited
to receive the Christian captives. They were assembled in the city
and marshalled forth in piteous procession. Many of them had still
the chains and shackles on their legs; they were wasted with famine,
their hair and beards overgrown and matted, and their faces pale and
haggard from long confinement. When they found themselves restored
to liberty and surrounded by their countrymen, some stared wildly
about as if in a dream, others gave way to frantic transports, but
most of them wept for joy. All present were moved to tears by so
touching a spectacle. When the procession arrived at what is called
the Gate of Granada, it was met by a great concourse from the camp
with crosses and pennons, who turned and followed the captives,
singing hymns of praise and thanksgiving. When they came in presence
of the king and queen, they threw themselves on their knees, and
would have kissed their feet as their saviors and deliverers, but the
sovereigns prevented such humiliation and graciously extended to
them their hands. They then prostrated themselves before the altar,
and all present joined them in giving thanks to God for their liberation
from this cruel bondage. By orders of the king and queen their chains
were then taken off, and they were clad in decent raiment and food
was set before them. After they had ate and drunk, and were
refreshed and invigorated, they were provided with money and all
things necessary for their journey, and sent joyfully to their homes.

While the old chroniclers dwell with becoming enthusiasm on this
pure and affecting triumph of humanity, they go on in a strain of
equal eulogy to describe a spectacle of a far different nature. It
so happened that there were found in the city twelve of those
renegado Christians who had deserted to the Moors and conveyed
false intelligence during the siege: a barbarous species of punishment
was inflicted upon them, borrowed, it is said, from the Moors and
peculiar to these wars. They were tied to stakes in a public place,
and horsemen exercised their skill in transpiercing them with
pointed reeds, hurled at them while careering at full speed, until
the miserable victims expired beneath their wounds. Several
apostate Moors also, who, having embraced Christianity, had
afterward relapsed into their early faith, and had taken refuge in
Malaga from the vengeance of the Inquisition, were publicly burnt.
"These," says an old Jesuit historian exultingly,--"these were the
tilts of reeds and the illuminations most pleasing for this victorious
festival and for the Catholic piety of our sovereigns."*

*"Los renegados fuernon acanavareados: y los conversos quemados;
y estos fueron las canas, y luminarias mas alegres, por la fiesta
de la vitoria, para la piedad Catholica de nuestros Reyes."--Abarca,
"Anales de Aragon," tom. 2, Rey xxx. c. 3.


When the city was cleansed from the impurities and offensive
odors which had collected during the siege, the bishops and other
clergy who accompanied the court, and the choir of the royal chapel,
walked in procession to the principal mosque, which was consecrated
and entitled Santa Maria de la Incarnacion. This done, the king and
queen entered the city, accompanied by the grand cardinal of Spain
and the principal nobles and cavaliers of the army, and heard a
solemn mass. The church was then elevated into a cathedral, and
Malaga was made a bishopric, and many of the neighboring towns were
comprehended in its diocese. The queen took up her residence in the
Alcazaba, in the apartments of her valiant treasurer, Ruy Lopez,
whence she had a view of the whole city, but the king established
his quarters in the warrior castle of Gibralfaro.

And now came to be considered the disposition of the Moorish
prisoners. All those who were strangers in the city, and had either
taken refuge there or had entered to defend it, were at once
considered slaves. They were divided into three lots: one was set
apart for the service of God in redeeming Christian captives from
bondage, either in the kingdom of Granada or in Africa; the second
lot was divided among those who had aided either in field or cabinet
in the present siege, according to their rank; the third was
appropriated to defray by their sale the great expenses incurred in
the reduction of the place. A hundred of the Gomeres were sent as
presents to Pope Innocent VIII., and were led in triumph through the
streets of Rome, and afterward converted to Christianity. Fifty
Moorish maidens were sent to the queen Joanna of Naples, sister to
King Ferdinand, and thirty to the queen of Portugal. Isabella made
presents of others to the ladies of her household and of the noble
families of Spain.

Among the inhabitants of Malaga were four hundred and fifty Moorish
Jews, for the most part women, speaking the Arabic language and
dressed in the Moresco fashion. These were ransomed by a
wealthy Jew of Castile, farmer-general of the royal revenues derived
from the Jews of Spain. He agreed to make up within a certain time
the sum of twenty thousand doblas, or pistoles of gold, all the money
and jewels of the captives being taken in part payment. They were
sent to Castile in two armed galleys. As to Ali Dordux, such favors
and honors were heaped upon him by the Spanish sovereigns for
his considerate mediation in the surrender that the disinterestedness
of his conduct has often been called in question. He was appointed
chief justice and alcayde of the[10]mudexares or Moorish subjects,
and was presented with twenty houses, one public bakery, and
several orchards, vineyards, and tracts of open country. He retired to
Antiquera, where he died several years afterward, leaving his estate
and name to his son, Mohamed Dordux. The latter embraced the
Christian faith, as did his wife, the daughter of a Moorish noble. On
being baptized he received the name of Don Fernando de Malaga,
his wife that of Isabella, after the queen. They were incorporated
with the nobility of Castile, and their descendants still bear the
name of Malaga.*

*Conversaciones Malaguenas, 26, as cited by Alcantara in his
History of Granada, vol. 4, c. 18.


As to the great mass of Moorish inhabitants, they implored that
they might not be scattered and sold into captivity, but might be
permitted to ransom themselves by an amount paid within a certain
time. Upon this King Ferdinand took the advice of certain of his
ablest counsellors. They said to him: "If you hold out a prospect
of hopeless captivity, the infidels will throw all their gold and
jewels into wells and pits, and you will lose the greater part of
the spoil; but if you fix a general rate of ransom, and receive
their money and jewels in part payment, nothing will be destroyed."
The king relished greatly this advice, and it was arranged that all
the inhabitants should be ransomed at the general rate of thirty
doblas or pistoles in gold for each individual, male or female,
large or small; that all their gold, jewels, and other valuables
should be received immediately in part payment of the general
amount, and that the residue should be paid within eight months--
that if any of the number, actually living, should die in the interim,
their ransom should nevertheless be paid. If, however, the whole
of the amount were not paid at the expiration of the eight months,
they should all be considered and treated as slaves.

The unfortunate Moors were eager to catch at the least hope of
future liberty, and consented to these hard conditions. The most
rigorous precautions were taken to exact them to the uttermost. The
inhabitants were numbered by houses and families, and their names
taken down; their most precious effects were made up into parcels,
and sealed and inscribed with their names, and they were ordered to
repair with them to certain large corrales or enclosures adjoining
the Alcazaba, which were surrounded by high walls and overlooked by
watch-towers, to which places the cavalgadas of Christian captives
had usually been driven to be confined until the time of sale like
cattle in a market. The Moors were obliged to leave their houses one
by one: all their money, necklaces, bracelets, and anklets of gold,
pearl, coral, and precious stones were taken from them at the
threshold, and their persons so rigorously searched that they
carried off nothing concealed.

Then might be seen old men and helpless women and tender maidens,
some of high birth and gentle condition, passing through the
streets, heavily burdened, toward the Alcazaba. As they left their
homes they smote their breasts and wrung their hands, and raised
their weeping eyes to heaven in anguish; and this is recorded as
their plaint: "O Malaga! city so renowned and beautiful! where now
is the strength of thy castle, where the grandeur of thy towers? Of
what avail have been thy mighty walls for the protection of thy
children? Behold them driven from thy pleasant abodes, doomed
to drag out a life of bondage in a foreign land, and to die far from
the home of their infancy! What will become of thy old men and
matrons when their gray hairs shall be no longer reverenced? What
will become of thy maidens, so delicately reared and tenderly
cherished, when reduced to hard and menial servitude? Behold
thy once happy families scattered asunder, never again to be
united--sons separated from their fathers, husbands from their
wives, and tender children from their mothers: they will bewail each
other in foreign lands, but their lamentations will be the scoff of
the stranger. O Malaga! city of our birth! who can behold thy
desolation and not shed tears of bitterness?"*

*Pulgar, Reyes Catolicos, c. 93.


When Malaga was completely secured a detachment was sent against
two fortresses near the sea, called Mixas and Osuna, which had
frequently harassed the Christian camp. The inhabitants were
threatened with the sword unless they instantly surrendered. They
claimed the same terms that had been granted to Malaga, imagining
them to be freedom of person and security of property. Their claim
was granted: they were transported to Malaga with all their riches,
and on arriving there were overwhelmed with consternation at finding
themselves captives. "Ferdinand," observes Fray Antonio Agapida,
"was a man of his word; they were shut up in the enclosure at the
Alcazaba with the people of Malaga and shared their fate."

The unhappy captives remained thus crowded in the courtyards of
the Alcazaba, like sheep in a fold, until they could be sent by sea
and land to Seville. They were then distributed about in city and
country, each Christian family having one or more to feed and
maintain as servants until the term fixed for the payment of the
residue of the ransom should expire. The captives had obtained
permission that several of their number should go about among
the Moorish towns of the kingdom of Granada collecting contributions
to aid in the purchase of their liberties, but these towns were too
much impoverished by the war and engrossed by their own distresses
to lend a listening ear; so the time expired without the residue of
the ransom being paid, and all the captives of Malaga, to the
number, as some say, of eleven, and others of fifteen, thousand,
became slaves. "Never," exclaims the worthy Fray Antonio Agapida in
one of his usual bursts of zeal and loyalty,--"never has there been
recorded a more adroit and sagacious arrangement than this made by
the Catholic monarch, by which he not only secured all the property
and half of the ransom of these infidels, but finally got possession
of their persons into the bargain. This truly may be considered one
of the greatest triumphs of the pious and politic Ferdinand, and as
raising him above the generality of conquerors, who have merely the
valor to gain victories, but lack the prudence and management
necessary to turn them to account."*

*The detestable policy of Ferdinand in regard to the Moorish
captives of Malaga is recorded at length by the curate of Los
Palacios (c. 87), a contemporary, a zealous admirer of the king,
and one of the most honest of chroniclers, who really thought
he was recording a notable instance of sagacious piety.