Since hunger and not goodwill prompts you to the surrender of your city [said the Chief Commander, of Leon, replying to an embassy from Malaga], either defend yourselves or submit to whatever sentence shall be pleasing to the King and Queen;—to wit, death to those for whom it is destined, slavery to those for whom slavery.
It was a bitter answer; and only sheer necessity drove Malaga to a submission from which she could hope so little. Amid fear and wailing, the capitulation was signed, and on August 20th, the sovereigns made their triumphal entry into the city. Hamet “El Zegri” still withstood their power in the Gibralfaro, but treachery amongst his garrison at length led to his betrayal, and the whole of Malaga lay at the Christian mercy. Its renegades, where they were discovered, were put to death, and on the rest of the inhabitants the sovereigns passed the sentence of perpetual slavery;—so many to be distributed amongst the Castilian nobles, so many to be sold for the benefit of the treasury, so many apportioned for the ransom of Christian slaves in Africa. A picked group of one hundred and eighty warriors were dispatched to the Pope as fruits of the crusade, while the Queen of Portugal and the Queen of Naples each received fifty of the fairest maidens.
MALAGA TO-DAY
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY LACOSTE, MADRID
“The fate of Malaga,” says Prescott, “may be said to have decided that of Granada.” Cut off entirely from the western part of the kingdom, that had proved so valuable a storehouse of men and the necessaries of life, she lay ringed round by enemies, who only awaited the moment to strike her death-blow. Yet for this low estate to which she had fallen she could not hold herself blameless. In her passionate distrust of failure she had made and unmade her rulers, regardless of the handicap thus placed upon their actions. “El Zagal” had been right in his fears for his throne, when he sallied forth to the relief of Velez-Malaga. The dread of the fickle populace he had left behind him had hung over his wild encounters with the chivalry of Spain; and when he returned, beaten but patriotic and valorous as of old, it was to find the gates of the capital closed against him, and his rival Sultan, not only of the Albaycin, but the Alhambra. In bitterness of spirit he marched eastwards to protect the cities of Guadix, Baeza, and Almeria, that still remained loyal to his cause; and it was against these that the Catholic sovereigns planned their next campaign.
The early part of the year 1488 they spent in Aragon, settling the affairs of that kingdom, and receiving the acknowledgment by the national Cortes of Prince John, now a boy of ten as heir to the Spanish throne. By June, however, Ferdinand arrived in Murcia and soon pushed southwards with a large army; but the campaign was not destined to follow the glorious lines of its predecessor. El Zagal, from his headquarters at Guadix, and his brother-in-law Cid Haya at Baeza knew the country well, and were on the watch for the least rash or mistaken move that their opponents might commit. Several of the smaller fortresses succumbed to Castilian lombards; but such gains were fully counterbalanced by a repulse from Almeria, and a well-planned ambush, from which the Marquis-Duke of Cadiz only extricated himself and his troops with considerable difficulty and loss.
Ferdinand, despairing of further efforts at the moment, withdrew to winter at Valladolid; but in the next spring he and Queen Isabel appeared in Jaen, determined on the reduction of Baeza, the most important town in eastern Granada. The preparations were on a scale that surpassed all former efforts of the kind; for the neighbouring country with its thick orchards and easily flooded rivers was difficult and treacherous; while the inhabitants were even more hostile to the Christians than their western compatriots.
The cornfields of Baeza had not ripened at the time of the enemy’s advance; but the grain was already cut and stored within the city lest the hated unbelievers should reap it for their own consumption. The supply of food was but one of the many pressing problems that the sovereigns were called on to solve; and, as the time passed, Ferdinand was almost tempted to raise his camp and retire until he should have made himself master of the surrounding district. To this policy he was urged by the majority of his generals, who contrasted the massive fortifications of Baeza, her hardy soldiers, and her stores of provisions, with the Christian lines, then threatened by inundations of water and decimated by disease.
Don Gutierre de Cardenas, Commander of Leon, alone protested against a retreat that would represent the waste of so much labour and money; and he was to find a staunch supporter in the Queen, who from Jaen implored her husband not to listen to advice as cowardly as it was mistaken. If he would continue the campaign, she on her part pledged herself to keep a line of communication open, pouring daily into the camp all that it should require in the way of food or ammunition.
The chroniclers have left us minute accounts of her labours to this end, carried through with the characteristic thoroughness that had so often brought her success. The purchase of the crops of Andalusia and the lands belonging to the Military Orders; the transference of this grain and hay by a procession of fourteen thousand mules to the seat of war and the outposts already in Christian hands; the repair of the roads, worn by traffic and the heavy rains, by the vigilance of an army of engineers, kept ever at hand for the purpose; the enrollment of fresh troops and workmen to replace those lives lost in the great crusade; most arduous of all the continual disbursement of the money that came so slowly again into the royal treasury. At times the attempt to adjust the balance between demand and supply appeared impossible; and rents and subsidies failed as expenses grew, but Isabel’s hand on the helm of affairs never wavered. The crown jewels were pawned to the merchants of Valencia and Barcelona, but the campaign against Baeza did not slacken.