The next firebrand to project itself into the inflammatory fabric of Toledan discontent was the fanatical martyr, Eulogius. In Cordova this frenzied religionist had fired the Christians into reviling Mohammed, and thereby exasperating the Moslems into persecution. To the tolerant and broad-minded Moors, religious observances were prejudices to be respected. They permitted, to Christians and Jews, the fullest licence in the matter of worship; they only demanded that a similar respect should be observed towards their own faith. The Christians were not asked to reverence the Prophet of Islam, but the Moslems could not allow him to be openly blasphemed by the infidels. It was against the articles of their creed, and it was contrary to human nature. To-day the Christian who rebelled against such a reasonable restriction would be accounted a bigot, undeserving of sympathy; in the days of Eulogius, the revilers of Moorish religious prejudices were regarded as saints. Toledo jumped at their rulers’ resentment of the Christians’ wanton insult to their faith as an excuse for an outburst of religious indignation, and Sindola seized the city and declared war against the khalifate by way of protesting against the execution of Eulogius’s disciples. Ordoño, king of Leon, sent reinforcements to Sindola, and the allied armies were caught in an ambush by the Moors, who struck off 8,000 Christian heads for public exhibition in the various disaffected towns. This reverse had the desired effect, and the Toledans made no further move until the death of Wistremir afforded them an opportunity of exasperating the sultan Mohammed by electing Eulogius to the vacant archbishopric of Toledo. The sultan, who retaliated by investing the city, had the bridge undermined while it was in the occupation of his troops, and, by making a feigned retreat, enticed the impetuous Spaniards to give chase. The depleted structure collapsed beneath the sudden burden of the pursuing army, and hundreds of men met their death in the sullen depths of the Tagus.
But neither massacre nor misfortune could shake the dogged Toledans from their purpose. With the king of Leon at their back, they put forth new efforts, and in 873 they forced Mohammed to acknowledge their independence as a Republic in return for the payment of an annual tribute. The treaty made with Mohammed was ratified by his successors, Mundhir and Abdallah. Even the Great Khalif, Abd-er-Rahman, was at first content to send from Cordova a royal proclamation, commanding Toledo to surrender her independence to the khalifate, and acknowledge him as liege lord, and it was not until 930, or eighteen years after he had ascended the throne, that he went up with his army against the arrogant and rebellious city. The siege of Toledo by Abd-er-Rahman lasted for eight years. The Moorish king built the city, which he called “Victory,” on a mountain commanding Toledo, and here he quartered his troops until famine and privation should open the gates for him. The long years of waiting culminated in a swift assault, and, at the close of a day’s fighting, the emaciated heads of the insurgent chiefs were impaled on spears to keep their last sightless watch from the walls of the city they had defended with such heroic fortitude.
After the death of the Great Khalif, and, thenceforth until the Christian conquest, Toledo maintained a partial independence, tolerating the rule of Moslem princes, but paying no allegiance to Cordova. And in the end she was recovered to the Christians by a piece of picturesque treachery. Alfonso of Leon (Alfonso VI.) had fled from the monastery of Sagahun, and sought the protection of King Almamon of Toledo, from whom he received the most generous hospitality, including gifts of palaces, farms, and orchards, and the government of the Christian section of the inhabitants. The Moorish king demanded only the subscription of his guest’s allegiance, and, in return, he gave a sincere affection, and promises of faithful protection. Almamon, whose one vague but ever present concern was the possibility of Toledo ever falling again into the hands of the Christians, was discussing the subject one day with his courtiers in the garden of Alfonso’s palace, and engrossed in the consideration of the possible misfortune, he described minutely the only plan by which, in his opinion, the city might be taken. Alfonso, who was one of the company, affected to be asleep while this dissertation was in progress, and the courtiers, who were unable to restrain the eloquence of the king, endeavoured to obtain Almamon’s consent to the execution of his Christian guest. But the king refused to listen to this inhospitable proposition, and on the death of Sancho of Castile (who was murdered by Bellido, under the walls of Zamora), his brother, Alfonso of Leon, returned to his own kingdom, loaded with honours, and carrying with him the secret of Toledo’s vincibility. Before he departed the two kings swore eternal amity, and entered into an offensive and defensive alliance against the enemies of either, and the enemies of Almamon’s son, Yahya. But after the death of Almamon, Alfonso, forgetting his oath to his friend, and remembering only the plan of siege he had overheard in the garden of Toledo, adopted the principles invented by the Moorish theorist, and, in 1085, entered the city as its conqueror.
What has Toledo to show to-day for the three and a-half centuries of the artistic influence of Morisco culture and influence? Surprisingly little! And yet it would be an even greater surprise if she had more to show. The village that climbs the bosom of a mountain does not alter the contour of its impassive resting-place; the etchings traced upon a Toledo blade does not affect the temper of the steel. The city is still “Moorish in appearance,” to employ the guide-book phrase, but it is gradually divesting itself of the marks which at one time, and then only in part, disguised its Gothic ancestry. Since Alfonso, the tyrant of the Galicians, seized the town of Toledo, “that pearl of the necklace, that highest tower of the empire in this Peninsula”
TOLEDO
ANCIENT GATE OF VISAGRA.
