Under Fernando I. the city’s privileges were further curtailed. But as licence and disorder showed no signs of abating, a kind of vigilance committee was formed in 1454, headed by Jimeno Gordo. This worthy put down all disturbances with iron hand, and waged war on the neighbouring barons. His career was cut short in 1474 by Ferdinand the Catholic, who caused him to be publicly executed. All the disorderly elements of the city rejoiced at his death.
The introduction of the Inquisition met with much opposition in several Spanish towns, but nowhere more than at Zaragoza. Deputations were sent from the states of Aragon to wait on the king at Valladolid, to urge upon him the withdrawal of the obnoxious tribunal, without avail. Such contemptuous indifference to the laws and wishes of the people of Aragon roused the Zaragozans to a dangerous pitch of exasperation. About midnight, September 14, 1485, a party of six men entered the cathedral, and found the Inquisitor, Pedro de Arbues of Epila, in prayer before the altar. They at once transfixed him with their swords and knives, but only a few of the blows struck home, thanks to the shirt of mail which the victim, like most of the Inquisitors, wore beneath his cassock. The deed, of course, only riveted the chains of the Holy Office more firmly upon the Aragonese.
Most of the assassins were captured, and perished in the flames. De Arbues was canonised in 1664. There can be no question that the Inquisition was established contrary to the laws of the country, and that the man met his death through presuming to discharge unlawful functions. He died for having broken the law, his executioners for having vindicated it.
The persistent encroachments of the Crown upon their constitutional rights during the next century met with strenuous resistance from the people of Aragon. The long-impending storm burst in 1590. Antonio Pérez, having incurred the anger of Philip II., fled to Zaragoza, and invoked the protection of the states. According to the fueros, he was then confined in the prison of the Manifestacion pending his trial. But the Holy Office impudently removed him from the custody of the law, and threw him into their prison of the Aljaferia. A popular tumult followed. Pérez was released and taken back to his first prison. The Viceroy, the Marqués de Almenara, died of chagrin, it is said, at the insults he had received from the crowd. Four months later a fresh riot broke out, and enabled Pérez to make good his escape to France.
Philip now sent an army of 14,000 men into Aragon to re-establish his authority on the ruins of the constitution. The Justiciary, Juan de Lanuza, summoned the people to defend their country. But the Castilians dispersed this hastily collected force at the first encounter, and entered Zaragoza unopposed on December 12. Juan de Lanuza and many other persons of note were judicially murdered; the leaders of the aristocracy were imprisoned, and the city sacked from end to end.
Never again did Zaragoza raise its head in defiance of the King of Spain. The fueros continued nominally in force till 1707, when they were formally abrogated by Philip V. in revenge perhaps for the defeat sustained before the walls at the hands of Stanhope and Stahremberg. But the spirit of the people was far from being crushed. They might bow before their own king, but they would not bend the knee to a foreigner. Zaragoza’s defence in 1808 is one of the most glorious episodes in the history of the nation. When the revolution broke out at Madrid on May 2, the citizens expelled the Governor, Guillelmi, and elected as leader Don Jose Palafox, a young noble of great personal courage and charm. He was assisted by a priest named Santiago Sas, his secretary Boggiero, who is said to have penned all his proclamations, and by three peasant leaders, ‘Tio’ Jorge, ‘Tio’ Marin, and Mariano Cerezo. All their equipment for war consisted at the outset of 220 men, a few muskets, and sixteen guns; yet when Lefebvre Desnouettes arrived before the place on June 15, he met with so stubborn a resistance that he was compelled to proceed cautiously. He reduced the city indeed to a heap of ruins, but he had not taken it when Dupont’s surrender at Bailen obliged him, on August 15, to raise the siege.
The French reappeared in December 1808, to the number of 18,000 men, under the command of Marshals Lannes, Moncey, Mortier, and Junot. The city was attacked on two sides at once, but more especially from the Jesuit convent on the left bank of the Ebro, which the Spaniards had neglected to secure. What followed may be read in the pages of Napier. The besiegers breached the wall near the convent of Santa Engracia, and the combat was continued day after day in the streets of the town. Every house was held as a fortress, every few yards of street was defended by a barricade. In answer to the summons to surrender rang Palafox’s defiant ‘War to the knife and to the last ditch!’ The women in many cases fought beside the men. When Maria Agustin saw her sweetheart fall at his post, she took the linstock from his hand and fired the gun herself. The fame of this ‘Maid of Saragossa’ has penetrated every land. For twenty-one days the fighting continued in the streets. Finally, on February 21, 1809, the defenders capitulated on honourable terms. The town was a smoking heap of ruins and of dead. Zaragoza had shown an astonished world that the spirit of Saguntum and Numantia yet lived in Spaniards. And, we doubt not, it still lives.
The city soon arose from the ashes. It rapidly recovered its prosperity, which took a fresh impetus on the opening of the four railways, east, west, north, and south. Here you see both the Old and the New Spain—the one with its heroic, glorious memories, the other with its promise of things as great and happier.
THE CITY
Zaragoza stands on the right bank of the Ebro in an oasis in the desert of Aragon. Nothing could be more attractive than the immediate environs, or more desolate than the country a few miles farther out. Such a situation was familiar to the Berber conquerors, who made themselves at home here and left their mark on the architecture of the city long after the last ‘Tagarin’ Moor had been expelled. Not, of course, that Zaragoza is to be compared as regards Musulman architecture with Seville, Cordova, Granada, and Toledo; but the Moor has left behind him unmistakable evidences of his presence, and an interesting monument called the Aljaferia, which endures, though oft and oft restored, to this day.