The Moorish conquerors recognised the importance of Toledo as the capital of the Gothic empire, but these art-adoring, sun-worshipping warriors, who found their Eden in Andalusia, lavished their affection and culture on Cordova and Seville, and, for a time, Toledo became a secondary town. Musa’s son, Abdelasis, or Balacin, as Rasis el Moro calls him, married the widow of King Roderick, who has been variously styled Egilona, Exilona, and Blanche, and insisted upon every noble of the Moorish Court paying her extravagant homage; but the sultan held his Court at Cordova, and the Toledans never forgave this affront to their honour and dignity. They brooded in their stormy sullenness and independence. Their revolutionary instincts were never crushed; their discontent was never appeased through the three and a-half centuries of the Arab occupation of the city. Cassin, the Moorish ruler, became impregnated with the principles of independence, and threw off the yoke of Cordova, only to be betrayed in his turn by the Toledans, who, wearied of his tyranny, welcomed Abd-er-Rahman to the city, and submitted their allegiance to his throne. But throughout his reign the turbulent Toledans proved uncertain and prone to revolution, and his son, Hakam, who succeeded him, sought to conciliate them by appointing as governor a renegade Christian, one Amron, of Huesca. “By a condescension which proves our extreme solicitude for your interests,” the sultan wrote to his disaffected subjects, “instead of sending you one of our own subjects, we have chosen one of your compatriots.” Hakam’s error of judgment resulted in one of the most terrible deeds in the history of Toledo, perhaps the most disgraceful blot on the Moslem domination of Spain. Amron was entrusted with the mission of humbling his fellow countrymen to the rule of the sultan, and he achieved his object by the practice of a fiendish policy of perfidious cunning.
By affecting an aversion to the sultan, and preaching the gospel of the independence of Toledo, he won the confidence of the nobles, and concerted with them in plots to reconquer the city. In furtherance of their plans, the people consented to have soldiers quartered upon them; they welcomed the building of a fortress commanded by a strong guard at the extremity of the city; and it was at their own suggestion that a castle was erected in the middle of the town as a stronghold for the valiant governor. Then, having fortified himself with the trust of the people, and packed the city with troops, Amron secretly advised the sultan that the Toledans were ready for the lesson that was
TOLEDO
GATE OF THE SUN.
to be read to them. Abd-er-Rahman, the son of Hakam, advanced towards the city at the head of a great army. The governor proposed that the nobles should go out to meet the young prince, and historians record that these implacable Gothic revolutionists were infatuated by the courtesy and cordiality with which they were received. The future sultan conquered their aversion by his grace and charm, and they loudly applauded Amron’s suggestion that he should be invited to accept the hospitality of the city. Abd-er-Rahman, instated in the castle of the governor, invited the nobles and representative men of Toledo to a great feast. They came in crowds, they were admitted to the castle singly, and not a single invited guest returned to his home. As each man crossed the courtyard of the castle he walked past an executioner, who stood in the shadow with uplifted blade awaiting his approach. No guest passed him. The nobles entered, the blade fell, and ready hands rolled the body into a ditch. In Spanish history that bloody day is known as the “Day of the Foss.”
“Only conceive,” writes Hannah Lynch, “the horrible picture in all its brutal nakedness! The gaily-apparelled guest, scented, jewelled, smiling, alights from his carriage, looking forward to pleasure in varied forms, brilliant lights, delicate viands, exquisite wines, lute, song, flowers, sparkling speech. Then the quick entrance into a dim courtyard, a step forward, perhaps in the act of unclasping a silken mantle, the soundless movement of a fatal arm in the shadowy silence, the invisible executioner’s form probably hidden by a profusion of tall plants or an Oriental bush, and body after body, head upon head, roll into the common grave till the ditch is filled with nigh upon five thousand corpses. Not even the famous St. Bartholomew can compete with this, in horror, in gruesomeness. Compared with it, that night of Paris was honourable and open warfare. It is the stillness of the hour, the quickness of doing, the unflinching and awful personality of the executioners, who so remarkably struck down life as ever it advanced with smiling lips and brightly-glancing eye, that lend this scene its matchless colours of cruelty and savagery. Beside it, few shocking hours in history will seem deprived of all sense of mitigation and humanity.”