It is idle now to ask what is true in all these conflicting accounts, or stop to ask which statement is the right one, that Rodrigo was a gallant prince in the prime of life when he began his short reign of one year, or, as an Arabian historian has asserted, a sick and feeble old man of over eighty.
His defection or disappearance completed the catastrophy, the most fatal and final in the record of any land, and Tarik profited by the circumstance. Both malcontents and Jews joyfully received him and threw wide open the gates of Toledo to his advance. Hither he came with fresh laurels gathered at Ecija, surrounded with the flower of his army, while he sent around detachments against Cordova, Archidme, and Elvira.
To the Jews he owed his easy conquest of Toledo, and the Goths alone were to blame for this. It was only natural the unhappy and persecuted Jews should welcome any foreign invasion that helped to deliver them and sweep their brutal oppressors into obscurity. Witiza’s clemency was too isolated a fact in Gothic rule to be remembered by them or to inspire the faintest hope for continued tolerance. The next monarch might even prove worse than Sisebuth or Egica. It was safer to rely on the Moor, who would probably remember their good-will, and would hardly maintain a prejudice against them in favour of the Christians. As for the nobles and prelates, they lost their heads and flew northward. The city was speedily emptied of all the Goths who had the means of flight. Most of the patricians emigrated to Galicià; the archbishop retreated to Rome, and in payment for their treachery, Witiza’s sons claimed land to the extent of three thousand farms, which Tarik granted them. Oppas, Witiza’s brother, was named governor of Toledo, until Tarik’s splendid victory brought over from Africa Musa, infuriated and jealous. Instead of thanking his lieutenant, he acknowledged his services by publicly horsewhipping him when the dismayed victor came submissively to meet him at the city gates.
CHAPTER III
Toledo under Moslem Rule
“IT must not be supposed that the Moors,” writes Mr Lane Poole in his “History of the Moors in Spain,” “like the barbarian hordes who preceded them, brought desolation and tyranny in their wake. On the contrary, never was Andalusia so mildly, justly, and wisely governed as by her Arab conquerors.... All the administrative talent of Spain had not sufficed to make the Gothic domination tolerable to its subjects. Under the Moors, on the other hand, the people were on the whole contented—as contented as any people can be whose rulers are of a separate race and creed—and far better pleased than they had been when their sovereigns belonged to the same religion as that which they nominally professed.... What they wanted was not a creed, but the power to live their lives in peace and prosperity. This their Moorish masters gave them.... The Christians were satisfied with the new regime, and openly admitted that they preferred the rule of the Moors to that of the Franks or the Goths.”
Toledo alone, true to its character of rebel, met the Moors in an attitude of violent resistance. The Jews had opened her gates to the invaders, but the exact date of the fall of Toledo into Saracen hands is unknown. Historians differ, but keep within the dates 712 and 719. The town capitulated with considerable advantages. She maintained her right to hold arms and horses, and all the citizens who remained were secured perfect freedom, but those who left the city forfeited their property and rights. The citizens were inviolable in their houses, their orchards, and farms, and the annual tribute levied by the Moors was a very moderate one. The free exercise of religion was permitted, and the Christians were allowed seven churches by the State, Santa Justa, Santa Eulalia, San Sebastian, San Marcos, San Lucas, San Torcuato, and Santa Maria de Alficin. But they were not allowed to build others without permission, nor were processions or public ceremonies allowed. They were left to the observance of their own laws and customs, subject to sentence at the hands of their own judges, but were exempted of Christian punishment if they chose to accept their conqueror’s creed.
Tarik, entering Toledo, found it almost empty, but for the Jewish colony. Most of the inhabitants had taken refuge among the steep and rocky mountain-passes outside the city. Only a few noble families had decided to remain and make the best of Moslem rule. In the royal palace Tarik seized twenty-five golden and jewelled crowns, and amongst the vast Gothic treasure, the psalms of David, written upon gold leaf in water made of dissolved rubies, and Solomon’s emerald table wrought in burnished silver and gold, which the Arabian chronicler describes as “the most beautiful thing ever seen, with its golden vases and plates of a precious green stone, and three collars of rubies, emerald, and pearls.” This sumptuous table is said to have been one of the causes of quarrel between Tarik and Mûsa, the latter holding his brilliant lieutenant as responsible for the missing golden leg. Whither have this emerald table and the psalms of David written in dissolved rubies on gold leaf been spirited? We have the crowns of the Gothic kings still; why not the table of Solomon fashioned of material just as enduring?
The first quaint episode after the conquest of Toledo is the marriage of Mûsa’s son, Belacin, with King Roderick’s widow, Blanche. Mûsa decided upon the marriage in his high-handed way, and Doña Blanche bitterly complained in Belacin’s presence of the indignity offered her in this incongruous union. “Good mistress,” said Belacin, in protesting affability, “do not fret, for by the law we are permitted to have seven wives. If it can be settled, I would have you for my wife as each one of these; and all the things that your law commands a man to do to his wife, will I do unto you. And for this, do not lift your voice in complaint, for it will be to my honour that all who wish me well shall serve you well if you will consent to be the lady of all my wives.”[9] The poor wives, we may imagine, had the worst of the bargain. Blanche naturally could not forget that she had been sole Christian queen, the president of the greatest tourney of the age, and her first exaction was that the Moorish Court should kneel to her. Belacin yielded to her every wish, and bade his nobles cheerfully humble themselves. He went so far as to order the palace gates to be closed to those who refused to prostrate themselves before Doña Blanche as she sat in foolish state awaiting their obedience in a lofty chamber, with a crown on her head and a royal mantle about her. How wild and strange this must have seemed to the Moorish wives in their latticed harem, fugitive and hidden articles of pleasure, and what a preposterous innovation in the eyes of the astounded courtiers! This haughty attitude on the part of a captive Christian raised to the Moorish throne by the good nature and affection of a Moor, who might have condemned her to servitude and indignity, so angered the Moors that Isyed, the ruler’s son-in-law, spread the report that Belacin had become a Christian, and then murdered the unfortunate as he knelt to pray in the Mezquita.
For a time, Toledo was a secondary town under the Saracens, infatuated as they were with Seville and Cordova. The latter town was chosen as the Khalif’s residence and thus became one of the wonders of the world. Meanwhile Toledo stormily sulked. Abandoned to herself, she grew to be a thorn in the Moslem side. No sooner conquered by one chief, she rose up furiously against the next, and in 763, we find Cassim, her Moorish ruler, so far impregnated with Toledan principles of independence, that he declined to recognise the sovereignty of Cordova. So that Abderraman, when he came to rule over the Spanish Arabs, found himself confronted with the necessity of conquering Toledo anew, and was compelled to send a fresh army to besiege it. The old city was by this wearied of Cassim’s tyranny and gladly capitulated to the more distant sovereign in 766. When Abderraman came to visit the town in person, he left behind him as wali, his son, Suleiman. But his conquest was an unstable one. Toledo’s history at this time is a monotonous tale of broken peace and futile revolt. She yielded to one Moor only to rise up against the next. An Arabian chronicler has asserted that no subjects were ever so mutinous and unruly. But the Moors respected her, not only for her formidable strength, for her ramparts and fortresses, but also for her renown and prestige, for the learning of her prelates and the kingly authority of her great archbishops. And so the old Gothic capital remained for them “the royal city.” The popular poet, Gharbib, kept the new Sultan in awe and terror, and was careful to maintain the revolutionary fires blazing in constant menace. As long as he lived, the Sultan did not dare to complain of the haughty and intolerable Toledans, but when he died Hakam summoned up courage to address them as their sovereign, and try a policy of conciliation. He chose for their governor a renegade Christian, one Amron of Huesca, the worst choice he could have made. “You alone can help me to punish these rebels who refuse to acknowledge a Moor for their chief, but who will perhaps submit to one of their own race,” he said to Amron, who was officially recognised as governor of Toledo in 807. The Sultan wrote to the Toledans: “By a condescension which proves our extreme solicitude for your interests, instead of sending you one of our own subjects, we have chosen one of your compatriots.” The Toledans were speedily to receive immortal proof of the special delicacy of this attention. There exists no more shameless and inconceivable barbarity in the blood-stained pages of history than this same Amron’s horrible method of cowing a haughty people. He began with the arts of beguilement, and left nothing undone to win the confidence and affection of the Toledan nobles. He feigned with them an implacable hatred of the Sultan and their conquerors, mysteriously asserted his faith in the national cause—that is Toledo’s independence—and by this was able, without exciting suspicion, to quarter soldiers in private houses. Without difficulty he obtained the town’s consent to build a strong castle at its extremity as a barrack for his troops, and then, to show their confidence in him, the nobles suggested the very thing he wanted, that the castle should be raised in the middle of the town. When the fortress was built, Amron installed himself therein with a strong guard, and then sent word to the Sultan, whose heart by this was well hardened against the sullen and untameable Toledans. Troops were speedily gathered from other towns, and set marching upon the royal city. The young prince, Abderraman, commanded one wing, and the others were commanded by three vizirs. Amron then persuaded the unfortunate nobles to accompany him to meet the Sultan’s son outside the walls. The nobles plumed themselves on their power and value, and gaily set out to visit the young prince, who received them splendidly. After a private consultation with the vizirs, Amron came back to the nobles, whom he found enchanted with the prince’s kindness and courtesy, and proposed that they should invite Abderraman to honour the town with his visit. The Toledans applauded the proposition to entertain a prince with whom they were so satisfied in every way. They had a governor of their own nationality, they enjoyed perfect freedom, and Abderraman had personally won them. In their innocence they besought an honour now desired. Abderraman acted the part of coy visitor, delicately apprehensive of giving trouble, but finally yielded to the persuasion of such genial hospitality. He came to the fortified castle, and ordered a great feast to which all the nobles and wealthy citizens of Toledo were invited. The guests came in crowds, but they were only permitted to enter the castle one by one. The order was that they should enter by one gate, and the carriages should round the fortress to await them at another. In the courtyard there was a ditch, and beside it stood the executioners, hatchet in hand, and as each guest advanced, he was felled and rolled into the ditch. The butchery lasted several hours, and the fatal day is ever since known in Spanish history as the Day of the Foss. In Toledan legends it has given rise to the proverb una noche Toledana, which is lightly enough now applied to any contrariety that produces sleeplessness, headache, or heartache. But only conceive 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 form; 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 remorselessly struck down life as ever it advanced with smiling lip 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.
The place of this monstrous episode is said to have been the famous Taller del Mora, now a degraded ruin. Suspicion was first aroused by a doctor, who had strolled out to watch the arrival of all these distinguished citizens come to the feast of the Moorish prince. Having time to kill, he decided to stay and see the departure, but as the hours went by, and no one came out by the door so many had gone in by, while report carried him the fact that the other door had not yet opened for the exit of a single guest, he began to express his fears to the loungers gathered round him to watch for the end of the entertainment. Alarm was quickly spread. Who, after all, were these brilliant strangers but the enemy armed, unscrupulous and powerful? Apprehension was strained to its utmost tension, when the doctor shouted, as all began to perceive the rising of a heavy vapour: “Unfortunates, I swear to you that that vapour is never the smoke of a feast, but that of the blood of our butchered brethren.”