The parish priest of Palacios has left us a vivid picture of this emigration.[244] It is a picture over which Christianity must weep in shame.
On foot, on horseback, on donkeys, in carts, young and old, stalwart and feeble, healthy and ailing, some dying and some being born, and many falling by the way, they formed forlorn processions toiling onwards in the heat and dust of that July. On every road that led out of the country—on those that went southwards to the sea, or westwards to Portugal, or eastwards to Navarre—these straggling human droves were to be met, and they presented a spectacle so desolate that there was no Christian who did not pity them.
Succour them none dared, by virtue of the decree of the Grand Inquisitor; but on every hand they were exhorted to accept baptism and thus set a term upon their tribulations. And some, unable to endure more in their utter exhaustion and hopelessness, gave way and forswore the God of Israel.
But these were comparatively few. The Rabbis were at hand to encourage and stimulate them. The women and the young men were bidden to sing as they marched, and timbrels were sounded to hearten these wretched multitudes.
The Andalusians made for Cadiz, where it was their intention to take ship. Those of Aragon also turned towards the coast, repairing to Cartagena; whilst many Catalans sailed for Italy, where—singular anomaly!—a Catalan Pope (Roderigo Borgia) was to afford them shelter and protection in the very heart of the system that was oppressing and persecuting them.
Of those who arrived at Cadiz, Bernaldez says that at sight of the sea there was great clamour amongst them. Their imaginations fired by the recent sermons of the Rabbis, in which they had been likened to their forefathers departing out of the Egyptian captivity, they confidently expected to behold here a repetition of the miracle of the Red Sea, and that the waters would separate to allow them a dry-shod passage into Barbary.
Those who went westwards were permitted by King John of Portugal to enter his kingdom and abide there for six months upon payment of a small tax of one cruzado each.[245] Of these many settled in Portugal and engaged there in trade, which they were permitted to do subject to a tribute of 100 cruzados levied on each family.
It is no part of our present task to follow the Israelites into exile and observe the miserable fate that overtook so many of them, alike at the hands of the followers of the gentle Christ and at those of the Children of the Prophet. Many sages and rabbis were amongst those who abandoned Spain, and in their number was Isahak Aboab, the last Prince of the Castilian Jews, and Isaac Abarbanel, the sometime farmer of the royal taxes.
“The expulsion,” writes this last, “was accompanied by pillage on land and sea; and amongst those who, stricken and sorrowful, set out for foreign lands, was I. With great trouble I contrived to reach Naples, but I was unable to find any repose there in consequence of the French invasion. The French were masters of the city, the very inhabitants having abandoned their Government. All rose against our congregation, expelling rich and poor, men and women, fathers and sons of the Children of Zion, and reducing them to the greatest ruin and misery. Several abandoned their religion, fearing lest their blood should be shed as water, or that they might be sold into slavery; for men and women, young and old, were being carried off in ships without pity for their lamentations, compelled to abandon their Law and continue in captivity.”
France and England received some of the exiles, others went to settle in the Far East. Most wretched, perhaps, were those who landed on the coast of Africa and attempted by way of the desert to reach Fez, where there was a Jewish colony. They were beset by a horde of plundering tribesmen, who pillaged them of their belongings, treated them with the utmost cruelty and inhumanity, ravished their women under their very eyes, and left them stripped and utterly broken. Their sufferings had reached the limit of their endurance. The survivors sought baptism at the first Christian settlement they reached, and many of these returned to their native Spain, having thus qualified themselves for readmission.