The Moors, waked from their sleep, fought desperately to preserve the town itself from the fate of the citadel, throwing up barriers in the streets, and maintaining a heavy cross-bow fire upon their assailants, whenever they tried to emerge from the shelter of the gates. It seemed for a time as if the Christian forces could make no headway; and some of the captains counselled that the citadel and all the houses within reach should be fired and the order for retreat should be sounded.
To this the Marquis replied with a stern negative. They had not made such a splendid capture merely to reduce it to ashes; and he promised his soldiers that once the city was taken he would allow them to put it to the sack and keep what booty fell to their swords. Encouraged by this prospect his troops made a breach in the wall of the citadel on the side towards Alhama, and swarming through this opening and the main gateway in great numbers, they succeeded in beating back their enemies and destroying the barriers.
SPANISH CROSSBOWMAN, FIFTEENTH CENTURY
FROM “SPANISH ARMS AND ARMOUR”
REPRODUCED BY COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR, MR. A. F. CALVERT
Ay de mi Alhama! “Woe is me Alhama!” was the cry in Granada, when wounded fugitives brought news of the fate that had overtaken their town. Muley Abul Hacen said little, but, putting himself at the head of some 3000 horse and 50,000 infantry, advanced on Alhama to exact vengeance on the Christians who had so daringly crossed his frontier. As he approached the walls, his troops uttered groans of mingled fury and horror, for the ground lay strewn with the dead bodies of their countrymen, thrown out by those within the walls to the mercy of vultures and pariah dogs.
The Marquis had made what preparations for defence he could, but he had begun to realize that his situation was rather desperate. Not only was he separated from his country by a wide stretch of hostile territory, from which he could expect no provisions, but the food stored within the town had been much of it squandered or destroyed during the sack. Large quantities of grain had been deliberately burned by the Castilian soldiery who, hearing it rumoured that they were about to retreat, determined to leave nothing intact for their enemies. In the weeks that followed, when the forces of Muley Hacen ranged themselves round the walls, and his engineers turned aside the stream that supplied Alhama with water, the Christians, fighting by day and night, half-starved and tortured with thirst, were to pay dearly for their recklessness.
Messengers had been dispatched at once to Andalusia and Medina del Campo, bearing news of the victory but demanding instant succour, lest glory should be dimmed in even more signal defeat. Leaving Isabel to send out letters and enroll captains and troops throughout Castile, Ferdinand hastened south to Cordova; but it was only to find that he came too late, and that help was already well on its way to the beleaguered city. This prompt action was due to no less a person than the Duke of Medina-Sidonia who, having received a piteous letter from the Marquesa de Cadiz in which she described her husband’s plight, generously put his old enmity aside and went to his rival’s assistance.
Bernaldez the chronicler, more often called the Curate of Los Palacios, who was an eye-witness of much of the Moorish war and knew Andalusia well, once described the Duke and Marquis as “the two columns on which the province rested.” Their combined retinues provided an army that Muley Hacen, with his hastily collected troops, dared not face; and the Duke arrived before the gates of Alhama, as the last of the Moorish banners dipped below the far horizon. It was a meeting worthy of a chronicler’s pen, when with hands clasped the gallant young Marquis and his former enemy pledged eternal friendship amid the applause and shouting of their troops. Alhama was saved.
Its maintenance was a different matter, for hardly had the Duke and the Marquis of Cadiz, leaving Diego de Merlo and a strong garrison behind them, departed for Cordova, than Muley Abul Hacen made a new and more strenuous attack on his old fortress. From every side the Moors swarmed up by ladders or projecting masonry and hurled themselves upon the ramparts. The Christians thrust them back only to face a fresh avalanche; and when at length, after a prolonged struggle, some seventy warriors who had made their entrance unnoticed were hemmed in and cut down, the garrison although victorious was both exhausted and dismayed. Fresh help must come from Cordova or they were lost.
The advisability of burning and deserting Alhama, as a too costly capture, was warmly advocated in the royal councils; but Isabel who had arrived at Cordova would not hear of it. Every war, she declared, must have its heavy expenses; and, since she and the King were determined on the conquest of Granada at all costs, the surrender of the first city they had gained could appear nothing but cowardice.