“Be it known unto you [they said] that, a report having reached our ears that some declare it is our will that you should be compelled by force to embrace Christianity, and, since it never was, nor is it our will that any Moor should turn Christian under compulsion, we therefore assure and promise you, on our royal word, that we have not consented nor allowed this; and that we wish that the Moors, our vassals, should remain secure and meet with all justice as our vassals and servants.
Given in the City of Seville, in the twenty and sixth day of the month of January.... I the King. I the Queen.”
The matter of the writing was fair enough, but the Moors might be forgiven if they considered the royal word a somewhat dubious safeguard. Ferdinand, despite his pacific protestations, was collecting an army; and the rebels hastened to seize the nearest fortresses and to make raids in the Vega beyond.
The Count of Tendilla, and Gonsalvo de Cordova, who happened at this time to be in Granada, marched against them; and, although the enemy flooded the deep furrows of the ploughland across which the troops must ride until they floundered up to their horses’ girths, yet the Christians succeeded in storming the important stronghold of Guejar. The arrival of Ferdinand and his army led to the reduction of other fortresses, conquests stained by sanguinary deeds of vengeance, as when the Count of Lerin blew up with gunpowder a mosque, in which a number of Moors had taken refuge with their wives and children.
The rebels, realizing at length the futility of resistance, sued for peace; and by the mediation of Gonsalvo de Cordova conditions were arranged, and Ferdinand departed to Seville. He and the Queen were now convinced that Southern Spain would never be quiet or secure so long as its inhabitants remained Mahometans, and were thus more closely allied in sympathy with the tribes of Africa than with Castilians or Aragonese. They therefore sent Franciscan missionaries to Baeza, Guadix, Almeria, and the Alpujarras, arming them with the alternative weapons of concessions or threats; a provision so efficacious that by the close of the year the friars could boast of a wholesale conversion of their flock.
In the meantime the disaffection that had died down or been smothered in the south-east broke out with greater violence in Western Granada, where the Berber race that inhabited Ronda and its mountainous environs suddenly raised the standard of revolt.
Washington Irving, in his legend of The Death of Don Alonso de Aguilar, has left a graphic account of the punitive expedition commanded by that famous warrior. He took with him Don Pedro his son; and, as they rode out of Cordova in March, 1504, the people, punning on the family name so closely resembling the Spanish word for eagle, cried aloud: “Behold the eagle teaching her young to fly! Long live the valiant line of Aguilar!”
Many of the rebels, who knew his reputation, came and surrendered at his approach; while the rest, under the leadership of a certain El Feri Ben Estepar, retreated before him into the fastnesses of the Sierra Vermeja. The Christians pursued hot after them, and coming one evening upon a fortified camp, where the enemy had placed their women and children and stored their possessions, the vanguard recklessly rushed to the assault. The fierceness of their attack, backed up by the speedy reinforcement of Don Alonso and the rest of his army, carried the position in the teeth of far superior numbers; whereupon the besiegers, thinking their victory assured, began to plunder. They were soon punished for their lack of caution, since, through a spark falling on a keg of gunpowder, the whole scene was momentarily lit up, and showed the weakness of the scattered troops to the Moors, still hovering on the mountainside above. With a shout of triumph these returned to renew the combat, and descending from peak and ridge, drove their foes before them in hopeless confusion.
Don Alonso and some few hundred knights alone disdained to escape. “Never,” cried the leader, “did the banner of the House of Aguilar retreat one foot in the field of battle.” His young son was seriously wounded, but would have struggled on still had not his father ordered some of his men to carry him to a place of safety, saying: “Let us not put everything to venture upon one hazard.... Live to comfort and honour thy mother.” He himself remained fighting valiantly till wounded and already exhausted, he met in personal combat with El Feri Ben Estepar, and the latter’s dagger ended his life.
Thus fell Alonso de Aguilar, the mirror of Andalusian chivalry; one of the most powerful grandees of Spain, for person, blood, estate, and office. For forty years he had waged successful war upon the Moors; in childhood, by his household and retainers; in manhood, by the prowess of his arm and the wisdom and valour of his spirit; he had been general of armies, viceroy of Andalusia, and the author of glorious enterprises, in which kings were vanquished and mighty alcaydes and warriors laid low.