It was fortunate for Spain that her sceptre, at this crisis, was swayed by a sovereign possessed of sufficient wisdom to devise, and energy to execute the most salutary schemes of reform, and thus to infuse a new principle of vitality into a government fast sinking into premature decrepitude.
The whole plan of reform introduced into the government by Ferdinand and Isabella, or more properly by the latter, to whom the internal administration of Castile was principally referred, was not fully unfolded until the completion of her reign. But the most important modifications were adopted previously to the war of Granada in 1482. These may be embraced under the following heads: (1) the efficient administration of justice; (2) the codification of the laws; (3) the depression of the nobles; (4) the vindication of ecclesiastical rights belonging to the crown, from the usurpation of the papal see; (5) the regulation of trade; (6) the pre-eminence of the royal authority.
In the dismal anarchy which prevailed in Henry IV’s reign, the authority of the monarch and of the royal judges had fallen into such contempt that the law was entirely without force. The cities afforded no better protection than the open country. Every man’s hand seemed to be lifted against his neighbour. Property was plundered; persons were violated; the most holy sanctuaries profaned; and the numerous fortresses scattered throughout the country, instead of sheltering the weak, converted into dens of robbers. Isabella saw no better way of checking this unbounded license than to direct against it that popular engine, the Santa Hermandad, or Holy Brotherhood, which had more than once shaken the Castilian monarchs on their throne. By the activity of this new military police, the country was, in the course of a few years, cleared of its swarms of banditti, as well as of the robber chieftains, whose strength had enabled them to defy the law. The ministers of justice found a sure protection in the independent discharge of their duties; and the blessings of personal security and social order, so long estranged from the nation, were again restored to it. At length, in 1498, the objects for which it was established having been completely obtained, it was deemed advisable to relieve the nation from the heavy charges which its maintenance imposed; and the magnificent apparatus of the Santa Hermandad, stripped of all but the terrors of its name, dwindled into an ordinary police.
Isabella was so intent on the prosecution of her schemes of reform, that even in the minuter details she frequently superintended the execution of them herself. For this she was admirably fitted by her personal address, and presence of mind in danger, and by the influence which a conviction of her integrity gave her over the minds of the people. A remarkable exemplification of this occurred, the year but one after her coronation, at Segovia. The inhabitants, secretly instigated by the bishop of that place and some of the principal citizens, rose against Cabrera, marquis of Moya, to whom the government of the city had been entrusted, and who had made himself generally unpopular by his strict discipline.
The queen, on receiving tidings of the event at Tordesillas, mounted her horse and proceeded with all possible despatch towards Segovia, attended by Cardinal Mendoza, the count of Benavente, and a few others of her court. At some distance from the city she was met by a deputation of the inhabitants, requesting her to leave behind the count of Benavente and the marchioness of Moya (the former of whom as the intimate friend, and the latter as the wife, of the alcalde, were peculiarly obnoxious to the citizens), or they could not answer for the consequences. Isabella haughtily replied that she was queen of Castile; that the city was hers, moreover, by right of inheritance; and that she was not used to receive conditions from rebellious subjects. Then passing forward with her little retinue through one of the gates, which remained in the hands of her friends, she effected her entrance into the citadel.
The populace, in the meanwhile, assembling in greater numbers than before, continued to show the most hostile dispositions, calling out “Death to the alcalde! Attack the castle!” She herself descended into the courtyard, where she ordered the portals to be thrown open for the admission of the people. She stationed herself at the further extremity of the area, and as the populace poured in, calmly demanded the cause of the insurrection. “Tell me,” said she, “what are your grievances, and I will do all in my power to redress them; for I am sure that what is for your interest must be also for mine, and for that of the whole city.” The insurgents, abashed by the unexpected presence of their sovereign, as well as by her cool and dignified demeanour, replied that all they desired was the removal of Cabrera from the government of the city. “He is deposed already,” answered the queen, “and you have my authority to turn out such of his officers as are still in the castle, which I shall entrust to one of my own servants, on whom I can rely.” The people, pacified by these assurances, shouted, “Long live the queen!” and eagerly hastened to obey her mandates. The mob dispersed, and the queen, after a candid examination, having ascertained the groundlessness or gross exaggeration of the charges against Cabrera, and traced the source of the conspiracy to the jealousy of the bishop of Segovia and his associates, reinstated the deposed alcalde in the full possession of his dignities, which his enemies, either convinced of the altered dispositions of the people, or believing that the favourable moment for resistance had escaped, made no further attempts to disturb. Thus by a happy presence of mind, an affair which threatened disastrous consequences was settled without bloodshed, or compromise of the royal dignity.[50]
In the summer of the following year, 1477, Isabella resolved to pay a visit to Estremadura and Andalusia, for the purpose of composing the dissensions and introducing a more efficient police in these unhappy provinces; which, from their proximity to the stormy frontier of Portugal, as well as from the feuds between the great houses of Guzman and Ponce de Leon, were plunged into the most frightful anarchy. Cardinal Mendoza and her other ministers remonstrated against this imprudent exposure of her person, where it was so little likely to be respected. But she replied that it was true there were dangers and inconveniences to be encountered; but her fate was in God’s hands, and she felt a confidence that he would guide to a prosperous issue such designs as were righteous in themselves and resolutely conducted.
Isabella experienced the most loyal and magnificent reception from the inhabitants of Seville, where she established her headquarters. The first days of her residence there were consumed in fêtes, tourneys, tilts of reeds, and other exercises of the Castilian chivalry. After this she devoted her whole time to the great purpose of her visit, the reformation of abuses. She held her court in the saloon of the Alcazar, or royal castle, where she revived the ancient practice of the Castilian sovereigns of presiding in person over the administration of justice. Every Friday she took her seat in her chair of state, on an elevated platform covered with cloth of gold, and surrounded by her council, together with the subordinate functionaries and the insignia of a court of justice. The members of her privy council and of the high court of criminal law sat in their official capacity every day in the week, and the queen herself received such suits as were referred to her adjudication, saving the parties the usual expense and procrastination of justice. By the extraordinary despatch of the queen and her ministers, during the two months that she resided in the city, a vast number of civil and criminal causes were disposed of, a large amount of plundered property was restored to its lawful owners, and so many offenders were brought to condign punishment, that no less than four thousand suspected persons, it is computed, terrified by the prospect of speedy retribution for their crimes, escaped into the neighbouring kingdoms of Portugal and Granada.
The royal audience, or chancery, the supreme and final court of appeal in civil causes, was entirely remodelled. The place of its sittings, before indeterminate, and consequently occasioning much trouble and cost to the litigants, was fixed at Valladolid. Laws were passed to protect the tribunal from the interference of the crown, and the queen was careful to fill the bench with magistrates whose wisdom and integrity would afford the best guarantee for a faithful interpretation of the law. An attorney was provided at the public expense, under the title of “advocate for the poor,” whose duty it was to defend the suits of such as were unable to maintain them at their own cost. The sovereigns testified their respect for the law by reviving the ancient but obsolete practice of presiding personally in the tribunals at least once a week. “I well remember,” says Oviedo,b one of their court, “to have seen the queen, together with the Catholic king her husband, sitting in judgment in the Alcazar of Madrid, every Friday, dispensing justice to all such, great and small, as came to demand it. This was indeed the golden age of justice,” continues the enthusiastic writer, “and since our sainted mistress has been taken from us, it has been more difficult, and far more costly, to transact business with a stripling of a secretary, than it was with the queen and all her ministers.” By the modifications then introduced, the basis was laid of the judiciary system, such as it has been perpetuated to the present age. The law acquired an authority which, in the language of a Spanish writer, “caused a decree, signed by two or three judges, to be more respected since that time than an army before.”[51]
Whatever reforms might have been introduced into the Castilian judicatures, they would have been of little avail without a corresponding improvement in the system of jurisprudence by which their decisions were to be regulated. This was made up of the Visigothic code as the basis, the fueros of the Castilian princes, as far back as the eleventh century, and the Siete Partidas, the famous compilation of Alfonso X, digested chiefly from maxims of the civil law. The deficiencies of these ancient codes had been gradually supplied by such an accumulation of statutes and ordinances as rendered the legislation of Castile in the highest degree complex, and often contradictory. The embarrassment resulting from this may be imagined.
In 1480, Dr. Alfonso Diaz de Montalvo was charged with the commission of revising the laws of Castile, and of compiling a code which should be of general application throughout the kingdom. Although the many innovations which were introduced in that age of reform required the addition of two subsidiary codes in the latter years of Isabella, the Ordenanças of Montalvo continued to be the guide of the tribunals down to the time of Philip II, and may be said to have suggested the idea, as indeed it was the basis, of the comprehensive compilation, Nueva Recopilacion, which has since formed the law of the Spanish monarchy.
Under the profuse reigns of Juan II and Henry IV, the nobles had introduced themselves into every great post of profit or authority. They had ravished from the crown the estates on which it depended for its maintenance as well as dignity. They coined money in their own mints, like sovereign princes; and they covered the country with their fortified castles, whence they defied the law, and desolated the unhappy land with interminable feuds. It was obviously necessary for the new sovereigns to proceed with the greatest caution against this powerful and jealous body, and, above all, to attempt no measure of importance in which they would not be supported by the hearty co-operation of the nation.
The first measure which may be said to have clearly developed their policy was the organisation of the hermandad, which, although ostensibly directed against offenders of a more humble description, was made to bear indirectly upon the nobility, whom it kept in awe by the number and discipline of its forces, and the promptness with which it could assemble them on the most remote points of the kingdom; while its rights of jurisdiction tended materially to abridge those of the seigniorial tribunals. It was accordingly resisted with the greatest pertinacity by the aristocracy; although, as we have seen, the resolution of the queen, supported by the constancy of the commons, enabled her to triumph over all opposition, until the great objects of the institution were accomplished.
Another measure, which insensibly operated to the depression of the nobility, was making official preferment depend less exclusively on rank, and much more on personal merit, than before. The sovereigns, instead of confining themselves to the grandees, frequently advanced persons of humble origin, and especially those learned in the law, to the most responsible stations, consulting them, and paying great deference to their opinions, on all matters of importance. The nobles, finding that rank was no longer the sole, or indeed the necessary avenue to promotion, sought to secure it by attention to more liberal studies, in which they were greatly encouraged by Isabella, who admitted their children into her palace, where they were reared under her own eye.
A Spanish Noblewoman of the Fifteenth Century
But the boldest assaults on the power of the aristocracy were made in the famous cortes of Toledo, in 1480, which Carbajale enthusiastically styles “cosa divina para reformacion y remedio de las desordenes pasadas.” The first object of its attention was the condition of the exchequer, which Henry IV had so exhausted by his reckless prodigality that the clear annual revenue amounted to no more than 30,000 ducats, a sum much inferior to that enjoyed by many private individuals; so that, stripped of his patrimony, it at last came to be said he was “king only of the highways.” Such had been the royal necessities that blank certificates of annuities assigned on the public rents were hawked about the market, and sold at such a depreciated rate that the price of an annuity did not exceed the amount of one year’s income. The commons saw with alarm the weight of the burdens which must devolve on them for the maintenance of the crown thus impoverished in its resources; and they resolved to meet the difficulty by advising at once a resumption of the grants unconstitutionally made during the latter half of Henry IV’s reign and the commencement of the present. This measure, however violent and repugnant to good faith it may appear at the present time, seems then to have admitted of justification, as far as the nation was concerned; since such alienation of the public revenue was in itself illegal, and contrary to the coronation oath of the sovereign; and those who accepted his obligations held them subject to the liability of their revocation, which had frequently occurred under the preceding reigns.
The plan suggested by Cardinal Mendoza seems to have been partially adopted. It was decided that all whose pensions had been conferred without any corresponding services on their part should forfeit them entirely; that those who had purchased annuities should return their certificates on a reimbursement of the price paid for them; and that the remaining creditors, who composed the largest class, should retain such a proportion only of their pensions as might be judged commensurate with their services to the state. Admiral Enriquez, for instance, resigned 240,000 maravedis of his annual income; the duke of Alva, 575,000; the duke of Medina Sidonia, 180,000. The loyal family of the Mendozas were also great losers, but none forfeited so much as the overgrown favourite of Henry IV, Beltran de la Cueva, duke of Albuquerque, who had uniformly supported the royal cause, and whose retrenchment amounted to 1,400,000 maravedis of yearly rent.[52]
By this important reduction, the final adjustment and execution of which were intrusted to Ferdinand de Talavera, the queen’s confessor, a man of austere probity, the gross amount of 30,000,000 maravedis, a sum equal to three-fourths of the whole revenue on Isabella’s accession, was annually saved to the crown. The retrenchment was conducted with such strict impartiality that the most confidential servants of the queen, and the relatives of her husband, were among those who suffered the most severely. It is worthy of remark that no diminution whatever was made of the stipends settled on literary and charitable establishments. It may be also added that Isabella appropriated the first-fruits of this measure, by distributing the sum of 20,000,000 maravedis among the widows and orphans of those loyalists who had fallen in the war of the Succession. This resumption of grants may be considered as the basis of those economical reforms which, without oppression to the subject, augmented the public revenue more than twelvefold during this auspicious reign.
Several other acts were passed by the same cortes, which had a more exclusive bearing on the nobility. They were prohibited from quartering the royal arms on their escutcheons, from being attended by a mace-bearer and a bodyguard, from imitating the regal style of address in their written correspondence, and other insignia of royalty which they had arrogantly assumed. They were forbidden to erect new fortresses, and they were expressly restrained from duels.
In the earlier stages of the Castilian monarchy, the sovereigns appear to have held a supremacy in spiritual, very similar to that exercised by them in temporal matters. It was comparatively late that the nation submitted its neck to the papal yoke, so closely riveted at a subsequent period; and even the Romish ritual was not admitted into its churches till long after it had been adopted in the rest of Europe. But when the code of the Partidas was promulgated in the thirteenth century, the maxims of the canon law came to be permanently established. The ecclesiastical encroached on the lay tribunals. Appeals were perpetually carried up to the Roman court; and the popes, pretending to regulate the minutest details of church economy, not only disposed of inferior benefices, but gradually converted the right of confirming elections to the episcopal and higher ecclesiastical dignities into that of appointment.
These usurpations of the church had been repeatedly the subject of grave remonstrance in cortes. The sovereigns, highly dissatisfied, ordered their subjects, ecclesiastical as well as lay, to quit the papal dominions; an injunction which the former, fearful of the sequestration of their temporalities in Castile, obeyed with as much promptness as the latter. At the same time Ferdinand and Isabella proclaimed their intention of inviting the princes of Christendom to unite with them in convoking a general council for the reformation of the manifold abuses which dishonoured the church. No sound could have grated more unpleasantly on the pontifical ear than the menace of a general council, particularly at this period, when ecclesiastical corruptions had reached a height which could but ill endure its scrutiny. The pope became convinced that he had ventured too far, and that Henry IV was no longer monarch of Castile. He accordingly despatched a legate to Spain, fully empowered to arrange the matter on an amicable basis; but the legate received orders instantly to quit the kingdom, without attempting so much as to disclose the nature of his instructions, since they could not but be derogatory to the dignity of the crown.
Far from resenting this ungracious reception, the legate affected the deepest humility. Cardinal Mendoza, whose influence in the cabinet had gained him the title of “third king of Spain,” at length so far mitigated the resentment of the sovereigns that they consented to open negotiations with the court of Rome. The result was the publication of a bull by Sixtus IV, in which his holiness engaged to provide such natives to the higher dignities of the church in Castile as should be nominated by the monarchs of that kingdom.
It will be readily conceived that trade, agriculture, and every branch of industry must have languished under the misrule of preceding reigns. In addition to pestilences a fatal shock was given to commercial credit by the adulteration of the coin. Under Henry IV it is computed that there were no less than 150 mints openly licensed by the crown, in addition to many others erected by individuals without any legal authority; and the little trade which remained in Castile was carried on by barter, as in the primitive stages of society.
The magnitude of the evil was such as to claim the earliest attention of the cortes under the new monarchs. Acts were passed, fixing the standard and legal value of the different denominations of coin. A new coinage was subsequently made. Five royal mints were alone authorised, afterwards augmented to seven, and severe penalties denounced against the fabrication of money elsewhere. The reform of the currency gradually infused new life into commerce, as the return of the circulations, which have been interrupted for a while, quickens the animal body. This was furthered by salutary laws for the encouragement of domestic industry. Internal communication was facilitated by the construction of roads and bridges. Absurd restrictions on change of residence, as well as the onerous duties which had been imposed on commercial intercourse between Castile and Aragon, were repealed. Public credit was re-established by the punctuality with which the government redeemed the debt contracted during the Portuguese war; and notwithstanding the repeal of various arbitrary imposts which enriched the exchequer under Henry IV, such was the advance of the country, under the wise economy of the present reign, that the revenue was augmented nearly sixfold between the years 1477 and 1482.
Thus released from the heavy burdens imposed on it, the spring of enterprise recovered its former elasticity. The productive capital of the country was made to flow through the various channels of domestic industry. The hills and the valleys again rejoiced in the labour of the husbandman; and the cities were embellished with stately edifices, both public and private, which attracted the gaze and commendation of foreigners. The writers of that day are unbounded in their plaudits of Isabella, to whom they principally ascribe this auspicious revolution in the condition of the country and its inhabitants, which seems almost as magical as one of those transformations in romance wrought by the hands of some benevolent fairy.
This, which, we have seen, appears to have been the natural result of the policy of Ferdinand and Isabella, was derived quite as much from the influence of their private characters as from their public measures. Under such a sovereign, the court, which had been little better than a brothel under the preceding reign, became the nursery of virtue and generous ambition.
Isabella watched assiduously over the nurture of the high-born damsels of her court, whom she received into the royal palace, causing them to be educated under her own eye, and endowing them with liberal portions on their marriage. By these and similar acts of affectionate solicitude she endeared herself to the higher classes of her subjects, while the patriotic tendency of her public conduct established her in the hearts of the people. She possessed, in combination with the feminine qualities which beget love, a masculine energy of character which struck terror into the guilty. She enforced the execution of her own plans, oftentimes even at great personal hazard, with a resolution surpassing that of her husband. Both were singularly temperate, indeed frugal, in their dress, equipage, and general style of living; seeking to affect others less by external pomp than by the silent though more potent influence of personal qualities. On all such occasions as demanded it, however, they displayed a princely magnificence, which dazzled the multitude, and is blazoned with great solemnity in the garrulous chronicles of the day.
Thus laudable objects were gradually achieved by a course of measures equally laudable; and the various orders of the monarchy, brought into harmonious action with each other, were enabled to turn the forces which had before been wasted in civil conflict to the glorious career of discovery and conquest which it was destined to run during the remainder of the century.
No sooner had Ferdinand and Isabella restored internal tranquillity to their dominions, and made the strength effective which had been acquired by their union under one government, than they turned their eyes to those fair regions of the peninsula over which the Moslem crescent had reigned triumphant for nearly eight centuries. Fortunately, an act of aggression on the part of the Moors furnished a pretext for entering on their plan of conquest at the moment when it was ripe for execution.
Mulei Abul-Hassan, who succeeded his father in 1466, was of a very different temperament. His fiery character prompted him, when very young, to violate the truce by an unprovoked inroad into Andalusia. When, in 1476, the Spanish sovereigns required, as the condition of a renewal of the truce which he solicited, the payment of the annual tribute imposed on his predecessors, he proudly replied that the mints of Granada coined no longer gold, but steel. His subsequent conduct did not belie the spirit of this Spartan answer.
At length, towards the close of the year 1481, the storm which had been so long gathering burst upon Zahara, a small fortified town on the frontier of Andalusia, crowning a lofty eminence, washed at its base by the river Guadalete, which from its position seemed almost inaccessible. The garrison, trusting to these natural defences, suffered itself to be surprised, on the night of the 26th of December, by the Moorish monarch, who, scaling the walls under favour of a furious tempest, which prevented his approach from being readily heard, put to the sword such of the guard as offered resistance, and swept away the whole population of the place, men, women, and children, into slavery in Granada.
It was not long before the desired opportunity for retaliation presented itself to the Spaniards. One Juan de Ortega, a captain of escaladores, or scalers, so denominated from the peculiar service in which they were employed in besieging cities, reported that the fortress of Alhama, situated in the heart of the Moorish territories, was so negligently guarded that it might be easily carried by an enemy who had skill enough to approach it. Its strength of position lulled its defenders into a security like that which had proved so fatal to Zahara. A sentinel, who was found sleeping on his post, was despatched, and the whole of the little garrison put to the sword after the short and ineffectual resistance that could be opposed by men suddenly roused from slumber. The city in the meantime was alarmed, but it was too late; the citadel was taken. Nearly a quarter of the population is said to have perished in the various conflicts of the day, and the remainder, according to the usage of the time, became the prize of the victors.
The report of this disaster fell like the knell of their own doom on the ears of the inhabitants of Granada. Isabella had been employed in making vigorous preparation for carrying on the war, by enforcing the requisite supplies, and summoning the crown vassals, and the principal nobility of the north, to hold themselves in readiness to join the royal standard in Andalusia. After this, she proceeded by rapid stages to Cordova, notwithstanding the state of pregnancy in which she was then far advanced.
Here the sovereigns received the unwelcome information that the king of Granada, on the retreat of the Spaniards, had again sat down before Alhama; having brought with him artillery, from the want of which he had suffered so much in the preceding siege. It was settled that the king should march to the relief of the besieged, taking with him the most ample supplies of forage and provisions, at the head of a force strong enough to compel the retreat of the Moorish monarch. This was effected without delay; and Abul-Hassan once more breaking up his camp on the rumour of Ferdinand’s approach, the latter took possession of the city, without opposition, on the 14th of May, 1482.
Ferdinand, having strengthened the garrison with new recruits, under the command of Portocarrero, lord of Palma, and victualled it with three months’ provisions, prepared for a foray into the vega of Granada. This he executed in the true spirit of that merciless warfare so repugnant to the more civilised usage of later times, not only by sweeping away the green, unripened crops, but by cutting down the trees and eradicating the vines, and then, without so much as having broken a lance in the expedition, returned in triumph to Cordova.
Isabella in the meanwhile was engaged in active measures for prosecuting the war. She issued orders to the various cities of Castile and Leon, as far as the borders of Biscay and Guipuzcoa, prescribing the repartimiento, or subsidy of provisions, and the quota of troops, to be furnished by each district respectively, together with an adequate supply of ammunition and artillery. The whole were to be in readiness before Loja by the 1st of July, when Ferdinand was to take the field in person at the head of his chivalry, and besiege that strong post. As advices were received that the Moors of Granada were making efforts to obtain the co-operation of their African brethren in support of the Mohammedan empire in Spain, the queen caused a fleet to be manned under the command of her best two admirals, with instructions to sweep the Mediterranean as far as the straits of Gibraltar, and thus effectually cut off all communication with the Barbary coast.
Ferdinand, crossing the Jenil at Ecija, arrived again on its banks before Loja on the 1st of July. The army encamped among the hills, whose deep ravines obstructed communication between its different quarters; while the level plains below were intersected by numerous canals, equally unfavourable to the manœuvres of the men at arms. Ali Atar made a sortie from the town, for the purpose of dislodging his enemies. The latter poured out from their works to encounter him; but the Moslem general, scarcely waiting to receive the shock, wheeled his squadrons round, and began a precipitate retreat. The Spaniards eagerly pursued; but when they had been drawn to a sufficient distance from the redoubt, a party of Moorish ginetes, or light cavalry, who had crossed the river unobserved during the night and lain in ambush, after the wily fashion of Arabian tactics, darted from their place of concealment, and, galloping into the deserted camp, plundered it of its contents, including the lombards, or small pieces of artillery, with which it was garnished. The Castilians, too late perceiving their error, halted from the pursuit, and returned with as much speed as possible to the defence of their camp. Ali Atar, turning also, hung close on their rear, so that when the Christians arrived at the summit of the hill they found themselves hemmed in between the two divisions of the Moorish army.
Ferdinand resolved to fall back as far as Rio Frio, and await there patiently the arrival of such fresh reinforcements as might put him in condition to enforce a more rigorous blockade. An alarm spread through the whole camp. Instead of standing to the defence, each one thought only of saving himself by as speedy a flight as possible. In vain did Ferdinand, riding along their broken files, endeavour to reanimate their spirits and restore order. Ali Atar’s practised eye speedily discerned the confusion which prevailed through the Christian camp. Without delay, he rushed forth impetuously at the head of his whole array from the gates of Loja.
A Spanish Nobleman of the Fifteenth Century
At this perilous moment nothing but Ferdinand’s coolness could have saved the army from total destruction; he was repeatedly exposed to imminent peril, and narrowly escaped with his own life, his horse being shot under him at the very moment when he had lost his lance in the body of a Moor. Never did the Spanish chivalry shed its blood more freely.
The Moors, finding it so difficult to make an impression on this iron band of warriors, began at length to slacken their efforts, and finally allowed Ferdinand to draw off the remnant of his forces without further opposition. The king continued his retreat, without halting, as far as the romantic site of the Peña de los Enamorados, about seven leagues distant from Loja, and, abandoning all thoughts of offensive operations for the present, soon after returned to Cordova. Mulei Abul-Hassan arrived the following day with a powerful reinforcement from Granada, and swept the country as far as Rio Frio. Had he come but a few hours sooner, there would have been few Spaniards left to tell the tale of the rout of Loja.
The loss of the Christians must have been very considerable, including the greater part of the baggage and the artillery. It occasioned deep mortification to the queen; but, though a severe, it proved a salutary lesson. It showed the importance of more extensive preparations for a war which must of necessity be a war of posts; and it taught the nation to entertain greater respect for an enemy who, whatever might be his natural strength, must become formidable when armed with the energy of despair.
Information being soon after received that Louis XI was taking measures to make himself master of the strong places in Navarre, Isabella transferred her residence to the frontier town of Logroño, prepared to resist by arms, if necessary, the occupation of that country by her insidious and powerful neighbour.
There is probably no period in which the princes of Europe felt so sensibly their own penury as at the close of the fifteenth century; when, the demesnes of the crown having been very generally wasted by the lavishness or imbecility of their proprietors, no substitute had as yet been found in that searching and well-arranged system of taxation which prevails at the present day. The Spanish sovereigns, notwithstanding the economy which they had introduced into the finances, felt the pressure of these embarrassments peculiarly at the present juncture. The maintenance of the royal guard and of the vast national police of the hermandad, the incessant military operations of the late campaign, together with the equipment of a navy, not merely for war, but for maritime discovery, were so many copious drains on the exchequer. Under these circumstances, they obtained from the pope a grant of 100,000 ducats, to be raised out of the ecclesiastical revenues in Castile and Aragon. A bull of crusade was also published by his holiness, containing numerous indulgences for such as should bear arms against the infidel, as well as those who should prefer to commute their military service for the payment of a sum of money. In addition to these resources, the government was enabled on its own credit to negotiate considerable loans.
With these funds the sovereigns entered into extensive arrangements for the ensuing campaign; causing cannon, after the rude construction of that age, to be fabricated at Huesca, and a large quantity of stone balls, then principally used, to be manufactured in the Sierra de Constantina; while the magazines were carefully provided with ammunition and military stores.
An event not unworthy of notice is recorded by Pulgar as happening about this time. A common soldier, named Juan de Corral, contrived, under false pretences, to obtain from the king of Granada a number of Christian captives, together with a large sum of money, with which he escaped into Andalusia. The man was apprehended by the warden of the frontier of Jaen; and the transaction being reported to the sovereigns, they compelled an entire restitution of the money, and consented to such a ransom for the liberated Christians as the king of Granada should demand. This act of justice, it should be remembered, occurred in an age when the church itself stood ready to sanction any breach of faith, however glaring, towards heretics and infidels.
While the court was detained in the north, tidings were received of a reverse sustained by the Spanish arms, which plunged the nation in sorrow far deeper than that occasioned by the rout at Loja.g
A plundering expedition had been organised against Malaga and it included the flower of Spanish chivalry. After some conflicts the force turned back, laden with plunder. In the mountainous passes of the Axarquia it met such treatment as Pelayo had once meted out to the Moslem invaders. From every height the Moors poured down volleys of arrows, shot, and stones. At night great fires were built to reveal their hiding places. Panic, fatigue, and famine made chaos of resistance and in two days over eight hundred were killed and sixteen hundred made prisoners. But of these a large proportion were the choice youth of Spain, and the grief at court was excessive.
In the meanwhile there had occurred a feud among the Moors that served the Christians a better turn than many victories. The old king of Granada, Mulei Abul-Hassan, had for Queen Ayesha; in his harem he had a Greek concubine and also a Christian woman of Andalusia, Isabella de Solis, daughter of the governor of Martos. She was called Zoraya by the Moors and she bore the king a son named Abu Abdallah, more famously called Boabdil. Mother and son, eager for power, planned intrigues which were punished with imprisonment. But they escaped and stirred up a revolution so successfully that the old king was dethroned and driven to Malaga, where he defeated the Christian foray just described.
So great was the enthusiasm among the Moors that Abu Abdallah saw it would be necessary to make some military success to counteract the prestige of his old father. He secured the aid of Ali Atar and with a force of some ten thousand raided the Christian territory and besieged Lucena about April 21st, 1483. The count of Cabra coming to relieve Lucena, Abdallah was caught between two armies. When Ali Atar fell, the Moors fled; but Abdallah’s horse giving out, he was captured—the first royal Moorish prisoner in Christian hands. His mother immediately sought to ransom him, and finally secured his release at the cost of an annual tribute, and a subservience to Spain. Thus the Christians not only divided the Moors among themselves, but gained a large faction as ally.a
Notwithstanding the importance of the results in the war of Granada, a detail of the successive steps by which they were achieved would be most tedious and trifling. No siege or single military achievement of great moment occurred until nearly four years from this period, in 1487; although in the intervening time a large number of fortresses and petty towns, together with a very extensive tract of territory, were recovered from the enemy. Without pursuing the chronological order of events, it is probable that the end of history will be best attained by presenting a concise view of the general policy pursued by the sovereigns in the conduct of the war.
The Moorish wars under preceding monarchs had consisted of little else than cavalgadas, or inroads into the enemy’s territory, which, pouring like a torrent over the land, swept away whatever was upon the surface, but left it in its essential resources wholly unimpaired. The bounty of nature soon repaired the ravages of man, and the ensuing harvest seemed to shoot up more abundantly from the soil enriched by the blood of the husbandman. A more vigorous system of spoliation was now introduced. Instead of one campaign, the army took the field in spring and autumn, intermitting its efforts only during the intolerable heats of summer, so that the green crop had no time to ripen, ere it was trodden down under the iron heel of war.
The apparatus for devastation was also on a much greater scale than had ever before been witnessed. From the second year of the war, thirty thousand foragers were reserved for this service, which they effected by demolishing farm-houses, granaries, and mills (which last were exceedingly numerous in a land watered by many small streams), by eradicating the vines and laying waste the olive gardens and plantations of oranges, almonds, mulberries, and all the rich varieties that grew luxuriant in this highly favoured region. This merciless devastation extended for more than two leagues on either side of the line of march. At the same time, the Mediterranean fleet cut off all supplies from the Barbary coast, so that the whole kingdom might be said to be in a state of perpetual blockade. Such and so general was the scarcity occasioned by this system, that the Moors were glad to exchange their Christian captives for provisions, until such ransom was interdicted by the sovereigns as tending to defeat their own measures.
Ferdinand, who appeared at the head of his armies throughout the whole of this war, pursued a sagacious policy in reference to the beleaguered cities. He was ever ready to meet the first overtures to surrender in the most liberal spirit; granting protection of person, and such property as the besieged could transport with them, and assigning them a residence, if they preferred it, in his own dominions. Many, in consequence of this, migrated to Seville and other cities of Andalusia, where they were settled on estates which had been confiscated by the inquisitors, who looked forward, no doubt with satisfaction, to the time when they should be permitted to thrust their sickle into the new crop of heresy whose seeds were thus sown amid the ashes of the old one. Those who preferred to remain in the conquered Moorish territory, as Castilian subjects, were permitted the free enjoyment of personal rights and property, as well as of their religion; and such was the fidelity with which Ferdinand redeemed his engagements during the war, by the punishment of the least infraction of them by his own people, that many, particularly of the Moorish peasantry, preferred abiding in their early homes to removing to Granada or other places of the Moslem dominion.
Isabella, solicitous for everything that concerned the welfare of her people, sometimes visited the camp in person, encouraging the soldiers to endure the hardships of war, and relieving their necessities by liberal donations of clothes and money. She caused also a number of large tents, known as “the queen’s hospitals,” to be always reserved for the sick and wounded, and furnished them with the requisite attendants and medicines at her own charge. This is considered the earliest attempt at the formation of a regular camp hospital on record.
Isabella may be regarded as the soul of this war. She engaged in it with the most exalted views, less to acquire territory than to re-establish the empire of the cross over the ancient domain of Christendom. On this point she concentrated all the energies of her powerful mind, never suffering herself to be diverted by any subordinate interest from this one great and glorious object. When the king, in 1484, would have paused a while from the Granadine war, in order to prosecute his claims to Roussillon against the French after the death of Louis XI, Isabella strongly objected to it; but, finding her remonstrance ineffectual, she left her husband in Aragon, and repaired to Cordova, where she placed the cardinal of Spain at the head of the army, and prepared to open the campaign in the usual vigorous manner. Here, however, she was soon joined by Ferdinand, who, on a cooler revision of the subject, deemed it prudent to postpone his projected enterprise.
Ever since the victory of Lucena, the sovereigns had made it a capital point of their policy to foment the dissensions of their enemies. The young king Abdallah, after his humiliating treaty with Ferdinand, lost whatever consideration he had previously possessed. Although the sultana Zoraya, by her personal address and the lavish distribution of the royal treasures, contrived to maintain a faction for her son, the better classes of his countrymen despised him as a renegade and a vassal of the Christian king. As their old monarch had become incompetent, from increasing age and blindness, to the duties of his station in these perilous times, they turned their eyes on his brother Abdallah, surnamed El Zagal, or “the valiant,” who had borne so conspicuous a part in the rout of the Axarquia. The Castilians depict this chief in the darkest colours of ambition and cruelty; but the Moslem writers afford no such intimation, and his advancement to the throne at that crisis seems to be in some measure justified by his eminent talents as a military leader.
On his way to Granada he encountered and cut to pieces a body of Calatrava knights from Alhama, and signalised his entrance into his new capital by bearing along the bloody trophies of heads dangling from his saddle-bow, after the barbarous fashion long practised in these wars. It was observed that the old king Abul-Hassan did not long survive his brother’s accession. The young king Abdallah sought the protection of the Castilian sovereigns in Seville, who, true to their policy, sent him back into his own dominions with the means of making headway against his rival.
Notwithstanding these auxiliary circumstances, the progress of the Christians was comparatively slow. Every cliff seemed to be crowned with a fortress; and every fortress was defended with the desperation of men willing to bury themselves under its ruins. The old men, women, and children, on occasion of a siege, were frequently despatched to Granada. Such was the resolution, or rather ferocity, of the Moors, that Malaga closed its gates against the fugitives from Alora, after its surrender, and even massacred some of them in cold blood. The eagle eye of El Zagal seemed to take in at a glance the whole extent of his little territory, and to detect every vulnerable point in his antagonist, whom he encountered where he least expected it, cutting off his convoys, surprising his foraging parties, and retaliating by a devastating inroad on the borders.
No effectual and permanent resistance, however, could be opposed to the tremendous enginery of the Christians. Tower and town fell before it. Besides the principal towns of Cartama, Coin, Setenil, Ronda, Marbella, Illora, termed by the Moors, “the right eye,” Moclin, “the shield” of Granada, and Loja, after a second and desperate siege in the spring of 1486, Bernáldezh enumerates more than seventy subordinate places in the Val de Cartama, and thirteen others after the fall of Marbella. Thus the Spaniards advanced their line of conquest more than twenty leagues beyond the western frontier of Granada. This extensive tract they strongly fortified, and peopled partly with Christian subjects and partly with Moorish, the original occupants of the soil, who were secured in the possession of their ancient lands, under their own law.
Thus the strong posts which might be regarded as the exterior defences of the city of Granada were successively carried. A few positions alone remained of sufficient strength to keep the enemy at bay. The most considerable of these was Malaga. Before commencing operations against Malaga, it was thought expedient by the Spanish council of war to obtain possession of Velez Malaga, situated about five leagues distant from the former.
The sensation excited in Granada by the tidings of its danger was so strong, that the old chief, El Zagal, found it necessary to make an effort to relieve the beleaguered city, notwithstanding the critical posture in which his absence would leave his affairs in the capital. But having been foiled in a well-concerted attempt to surprise the Christian quarters by night, he was driven across the mountains by the marquis of Cadiz, and compelled to retreat on his capital, completely baffled in his enterprise. There the tidings of his disaster had preceded him. The fickle populace, with whom misfortune passes for misconduct, unmindful of his former successes, now hastened to transfer their allegiance to his rival, Abdallah, and closed the gates against him; and the unfortunate chief withdrew to Guadix, which, with Almeria, Baza, and some less considerable places, still remained faithful.