As soon as the project of Jaime had been broached to the Cortes, it was received with the acclamations of every class in his dominions. The city of Barcelona equipped the larger portion of the fleet. Among those who thus enthusiastically welcomed hostilities against the Moslem, none evinced a more energetic and liberal disposition than the clergy. The church militant was represented by many distinguished prelates, practised almost from infancy in the art of war. The Archbishop of Tarragona gave a thousand pieces of gold and a hundred loads of wheat, and, completely sheathed in steel, entered the crusaders’ camp at the head of eleven hundred well-armed men. Others responded with equal alacrity. The nobles vied in zeal and prodigality with the dignitaries of the Church. The military orders, whose duty and inclination made such an enterprise the most pious and agreeable of diversions, from far and near sought the standard of Jaime. A number of French and Genoese vessels, whose crews were more eager for Moorish spoil than for the triumph of the Cross, joined the forces of Aragon; and in the autumn of 1229 a flotilla of nearly two hundred ships set sail from the harbor of Salou for the island of Majorca.
Warned of the object of the expedition, the Moors had made extensive preparations for the reception of their enemies. A landing was effected with difficulty at Palomera, and the Christians, constantly harassed by the active mountaineers, were compelled to fight their way to the capital, then known by the name of the island, but familiar to the ancients as Palma, by which appellation it has also been designated since the seventeenth century. Heretofore comparatively free from the attacks of a besieging army, the fortifications of that city were ill-adapted to withstand the effects of the formidable appliances of war. The machines constructed by the Italian engineers at Majorca were among the most ponderous and destructive ever used in Europe. The strongest towers crumbled under the weight and impetus of the immense balls of stone projected against them. The walls were mined in several places. As soon as a breach was opened the Christians rushed to the attack, only to be repulsed by the determined courage of the besieged. In their defence the latter displayed a knowledge of war not inferior to that of their adversaries. The ramparts were equipped with engines that cast showers of missiles into the Christian camp. The destruction caused during the day by projectiles from the enemy’s catapults was repaired at night. The demolished walls were rebuilt with a celerity that awakened the amazement of the enemy. Obstinate and sanguinary encounters took place in the depths of the earth, where the mines, conducted under the walls, were intersected by countermines dug by the besieged. The latter, greatly annoyed by the stones from the tremendous engines, resorted to the strange and inhuman expedient of fastening their prisoners to crosses and raising them upon the battlements, in the hope of checking the fire of the Christians. These victims of Moorish cruelty, however, exhorted their companions not to slacken their efforts; and we are gravely informed by monkish annalists, whose faith was evidently in an inverse ratio to their veracity, that by the miraculous interposition of Heaven these candidates for martyrdom escaped without injury. At all events, the device was a failure, and, after an exposure of several hours, the captives were returned to their dungeons, and the operations of the besiegers continued with renewed and increasing energy. An attempt was next made to cut off the supply of water by diverting the course of a stream which ran through the Christian camp. But the vigilance of the Aragonese sentinels thwarted this plan at its inception. A detachment of Moslems, while engaged in the work, was surprised and put to the sword, and the head of its commander, hurled over the walls from a catapult, proclaimed to the dismayed and astonished garrison the failure of the expedition and the fate of their comrades. The spirit of the Moslems, heretofore apparently indomitable, now began to evince signs of discouragement. Nor was the plight of the Christians much better in comparison. For seven weeks the siege had continued. It was the rainy season; their camp drenched by daily storms became a quagmire, and their efforts were seriously impeded by the unfavorable conditions of their situation and the inclemency of an autumn memorable for an incessant tempest. Despite these drawbacks and the stubborn resistance of the Moors, the constancy of the besiegers remained unshaken. The admirable arrangements of Jaime had secured the establishment of an abundant commissariat. Uninterrupted communication with Barcelona gave encouraging assurance of supplies and reinforcements. The skill of the Jewish surgeons, who served on the medical staff of the Christian army, prevented the outbreak of an epidemic in the camp,—an event more to be dreaded than the weapons or the strategy of a crafty and courageous enemy. Disheartened by their reverses and doubtful of their ability to resist much longer the determined assaults of the invaders, the Moors attempted to negotiate. They agreed to defray all the expenses incurred by the campaign if the King would withdraw his forces and conclude a truce. When this proposal was rejected, they declared their willingness to surrender the capital if transportation to Africa were furnished such as desired to depart and security were guaranteed to all who chose to remain. Jaime again refused to consider a suggestion evidently dictated by a consciousness of declining strength. The pathetic significance of an indisposition to entertain favorable terms of submission was unmistakable by those familiar with the shocking enormities of mediæval warfare. It was now apparent that the city was destined to pillage. The hardships of the siege induced by the intrepidity of a people in defence of their homes were to be expiated by the awful scenes exhibited by a place taken by storm. Many of the citizens were refugees from the conquered provinces of the Peninsula; had witnessed or participated in the sack of cities, and well understood the dreadful fate that was in store for them. Nerved by the consciousness of their desperate situation, they redoubled their efforts to repel the enemy, whose engines had almost ruined a large part of the fortifications, which in several places already offered vulnerable points of attack. The besiegers began to suffer from exposure, and the King, fearful that the enthusiasm of his troops might abate if a decided advantage was not soon obtained, ordered a general assault. On the last day of the year, before dawn, the Christian camp was under arms. With all the impressive solemnities of the Catholic ritual mass was said, the sacrament was administered, and the soldiers were earnestly exhorted to fight bravely for the Faith. Before an altar erected for that purpose, the King and the nobles, drawing their swords, swore to enter the city or perish. The combined influence of cupidity and fanaticism was too strong to be successfully withstood; the assailants poured into the breach, and their weight and impetuosity overwhelmed the garrison, driving it back into the city. The conflict raged with unremitting fury in the winding streets. The women on the housetops cast down missiles of every description upon the heads of the struggling Christians. From the minaret of every mosque came the stentorian voice of the muezzin, encouraging the Moslems to renewed action and invoking the curse of Allah upon the infidel. The narrow thoroughfares and the houses solidly constructed of stone retarded the progress of the assailants. The Moors fought with desperation for their homes and their liberty; but animated by the example of their sovereign and urged on by the presence and the appeals of the ecclesiastics, who, like their antagonists, the faquis and the muezzins, took a prominent part in the battle, the Aragonese ultimately prevailed. Fifty thousand persons perished; thirty thousand were sold as slaves, and a great number found a temporary asylum in the mountains among the hospitable and sympathetic peasantry.
As the capital was the centre of a flourishing maritime trade, had been enriched with the spoils of innumerable piratical excursions, and had become the residence of many wealthy refugees from Africa, the victors obtained a magnificent booty. So great was it, indeed, that the horrors of pillage continued without cessation for eight consecutive days. Their avarice satiated, the first duty imposed upon the Christians was the purification of the city. The immense number of dead bodies, putrefying under a tropical sun, made this an unwelcome and onerous task; but the labors of the workmen were cheered and accelerated by the pious assurance of the clergy that a thousand days of pardon would be accorded them for the head of every misbeliever. The streets were cleared of the repulsive encumbrances which offended the senses and impeded traffic; the corpses of the victims of war and brutality were consumed by fire outside the walls; and the soldiers proceeded to indemnify themselves for past privations by indulgence in every kind of debauchery.
Their excesses produced a contagious and fatal distemper, whose ravages, baffling the skill of the best physicians, completed the havoc of the sword, and the army became so reduced in numbers and efficiency that operations were suspended until reinforcements could be obtained. Fourteen months in all were required for the subjugation of the island. The native population was enslaved, and the fruits of conquest were equitably apportioned among the victors. The conquered territory, especially exempted from the burden of taxation, became the property of those by whose valor it had been acquired; and Majorca passed forever from the jurisdiction of the Successors of Mohammed. Its favorable situation and delightful climate attracted many colonists from the kingdoms of Southern Europe, and before many years the losses in population it had sustained by war were repaired; the preponderance of Moorish characteristics gradually disappeared; and a quarter of a century had not elapsed before Majorca, in ignorance and orthodoxy, could challenge competition with the most bigoted state in Christendom. The island was erected into a fief of the crown, and twelve years after its occupation Minorca and Ivica, profiting by the example of their more powerful neighbor, yielded, after a show of resistance, to the fame and influence of the King of Aragon. The conquest of the Balearic Isles, preceding that of Valencia—of which, indeed, it was the necessary prelude, when their dangerous proximity to the African coast is considered,—was the first and one of the most brilliant of the many exploits which reflected renown upon the career of Jaime el Conquistador.
The Almohade monarchy, following the example of almost every government established under the Moslem polity, was now rapidly hastening to its end. Its territory had been dismembered. Its prestige, founded upon a successful career in arms, had vanished. The polygamous families of the Sultans of Africa furnished, at the decease of every monarch, a formidable number of pretenders to the vacant throne. In Morocco a crowd of hostile claimants, many of whom were not allied to the descendants of Abd-al-Mumen, and whose only titles to sovereignty were military genius and personal popularity, contended with indifferent and varying success for the possession of imperial power. Independent emirates arose at Mequinez and Tlemcen. Al-Maghreb was distracted with sedition, massacre, civil war. The contagion of strife infected every class of the hot-blooded population of Northern Africa. An opportunity for rapine, so congenial to the tastes of the Bedouin and the Berber, was not long neglected by the predatory tribes of the Desert, and the Sahara was again made the scene of organized brigandage and guerilla warfare. The fragments of the great empire founded by the Mahdi were no longer capable of reunion. Their cohesive power, dependent on superstitious awe, individual merit, and popular admiration, was destroyed; the fatal conflicts which for years exhausted the energies of antagonistic factions had extirpated every vestige of national ambition and religious zeal; the noble sentiment of patriotism, always weak in the breast of a barbarian, even when accustomed to civilized life, was now completely subordinated to private enmity; universal discord rendered effective resistance to an enemy impossible; and the last of the Almohades, Edris-Abu-Dibus, perished, a century and a half after the advent of the Mahdi, in a skirmish with the troops of an obscure adventurer.
Conditions similar to those prevailing in Africa occupied the attention and destroyed the efficiency of the Mussulmans of Spain. With every year, with the inauguration of each successive potentate of magnificent pretensions and insignificant following, factional hatred was intensified. The Christians, by cession, by purchase, by conquest, were rapidly acquiring the territory once embraced by the khalifate of Cordova, which had been the prize of Moslem valor and the seat of Moslem faith. The authority of the representative of the Almohades was confined to a narrow district which scarcely extended beyond the environs of Seville. The enemies of Islam pressed daily upon the shrunken confines of the rich and extensive domain conquered by the soldiers of Tarik and Musa, made illustrious by three centuries of military success and intellectual progress under the Ommeyades, and degraded by the African sultans to humiliating dependence on a barbarian monarchy. In the West, the rich provinces of Lusitania and the Algarves had been absorbed by Portugal. In the East, the steady progress of the King of Aragon portended the approaching extinction of the Mussulman power. The principality of Guadix had assumed the dignity of a kingdom under the first prince of the Alhamares, a dynasty eventually destined to revive the departed glories of Cordova in the new metropolis of Granada. That entire region of the Peninsula which was still subject to Moslem rule was distracted by the implacable feuds of aspirants to the disrupted empire of the Almohades. The impracticability of again uniting the discordant constituents of that empire was not understood, or even considered. The rival contestants sacrificed every consideration of patriotic and religious duty to the gratification of their revenge or the furtherance of their ambition. Their subjects beheld with apprehension and disgust the purchase of Christian aid against their brethren by the payment of extravagant subsidies and the surrender of the bulwarks of the frontier. They saw the resources wasted which, if properly employed, might have redeemed from infidel occupation vast tracts of territory whose fertility had once been the pride of the industrious people of Andalusia. They saw their own arms turned upon their neighbors, when the combined efforts of both would have sufficed, if not to successfully resist, at least to check the progress of the common foe. Three princes indiscriminately arrayed against each other occupied an unenviable prominence in this suicidal conflict. In the West, Yahya, the former Almohade sovereign, held Seville. In the East, his nephew Mohammed-al-Ahmar and the celebrated partisan Mohammed-Ibn-Hud contended for the possession of the provinces of Murcia and Granada. The latter, in the ignoble desire to satiate his vengeance, had secured from the Castilians temporary immunity from molestation by the daily payment of a thousand pieces of gold. This ignominious contract was at length rescinded on account of the remonstrances and threats of the Andalusians, whose fields were ravaged in security by Christian marauders, while Moslem partisans were cutting each others’ throats under the walls of Murcia. Ibn-Hud, after a campaign which terminated with little glory and still less honor for either party, succeeded in compelling the Christians to retreat,—a step which they anticipated by the slaughter of their captives. Repeated raids into the southern provinces were gradually but surely preparing the way for Christian supremacy. Relying upon the additional prestige acquired by his recent advantage over the Castilians, Ibn-Hud negotiated a treaty with Ferdinand, which stipulated for a cessation of hostilities for four years. The results of this negotiation indicate the slight regard for the most sacred agreements entertained by a prince whose services to the Church have procured for him the questionable honor of canonization. No engagement could have been assumed under more solemn circumstances. The treaty was ratified by the signatures, by the oaths, by the pledges of regularly authorized representatives of the contracting parties. An enormous sum of gold was paid by the Moslem as a preliminary consideration. But priestly casuistry and royal ambition had little respect in times of universal ignorance for the maintenance of national honor or the observance of public faith. The prelates whispered in the ear of the King that it was an established principle of the ecclesiastical polity that no contract was binding which was entered into with an enemy of Christ. The suggestion was in thorough accordance with the views of Ferdinand, accustomed, moreover, to implicit obedience to the directions of his spiritual counsellors. A rare and tempting opportunity was offered to violate the agreement entered into with the Saracens, for which the price had already been received. The attention of the latter—who fancied themselves secure from foreign hostility—had been diverted from their hereditary foe, and was now concentrated on each other. Civil war was raging on the borders of Granada, where Mohammed-Ibn-Hud and Mohammed-al-Ahmar were engaged in a desperate struggle for the possession of Eastern Andalusia. In consequence of this, as well as of the presumed inviolability of the treaty, the entire valley of the Guadalquivir had been stripped of troops. The open country was practically defenceless. The garrisons of the great cities were insufficient to resist a siege. Exhausted by a long series of inroads, the peasants were beginning to again cultivate their farms and rebuild their desolate homes. No one suspected that the storm was about to break forth more furiously than ever. Repeated examples of Christian perfidiousness had been insufficient to teach the Moslems to what depths ecclesiastical infamy, in the prosecution of schemes of worldly advantage, was ready to descend.
Some Moorish prisoners, whom the commander of a small detachment of freebooters was about to send to execution as the most convenient way of disposing of them, promised, in return for their lives, to place the eastern suburb of Cordova, which virtually commanded the city, in the hands of the Christians. The proposal was too alluring to be declined; the risk of failure was not considered; and, in an age characterized by the most foolhardy and romantic exploits, the greater the danger the more fascinating it appeared to the audacious spirits who lived upon the excitements of border warfare. During a stormy night in the month of January, 1236, the assailing party, numbering but a few hundred, advanced in silence to scale the walls of one of the largest Moslem cities of the. Peninsula, which, although greatly diminished in population since the era of the khalifate, still contained more than a hundred thousand inhabitants. A few agile soldiers succeeded in reaching the ramparts; the guard was surprised and despatched, and the gate was at once thrown open to their comrades. The suburb thus entered by the Christians was one of the five principal quarters or wards into which the metropolis of Moorish Spain had been originally divided. Completely isolated from the remainder of the capital by a line of fortifications, it gave an enemy far greater facilities for defence than the mere penetration into a walled town of ordinary character would have afforded. The first intimation of their misfortune was communicated to the citizens at daybreak by the tumult which accompanied the inauguration of pillage and murder. Taken completely by surprise and hemmed in on every side, there was no possibility of effectual resistance and but little hope of escape. The garrison issued from the citadel, but were unable to dislodge the Christians, who, inured by long practice to similar encounters, and favored by the tortuous streets and by the towers occupied by the cross-bowmen, easily held their ground against overwhelming odds. But notwithstanding their temporary success, their situation was desperate. It was hardly possible that so small a force would be able to maintain itself in the centre of a hostile community until reinforcements could arrive. Yet such was the undaunted resolve of the assailants, who, now besieged in turn, were subjected to the harassing effects of unremitting conflict. Messengers requesting aid had been early sent to Alvar Perez, the commandant of the frontier, and to King Ferdinand at Leon. The knights of Calatrava and Alcantara responded with eagerness to the call to arms, and with these and a considerable body of militia, to whom were confided the patrol and defence of the border, the Castilian general hastened to Cordova.
When he received the message, Ferdinand was at a banquet. His martial followers learned with exultation of the prospect of a new campaign, and the scene of mirth and festivity was at once exchanged for the stern and serious preparations for war. The season was most unpropitious to military operations. The winter rains had flooded the country, raised the streams far beyond their banks, and rendered the roads impassable. A long and toilsome journey separated the capitals of Leon and Andalusia. But nothing could daunt the spirit of the Castilian and Leonese chivalry, whose religious fervor and martial enthusiasm were augmented and stimulated by the example of their king. The exigencies of the situation would not tolerate delay. Communication with remote districts was difficult, and but three hundred horsemen could be raised to follow Ferdinand in an expedition which promised far more danger than glory. The Christians surrounded at Cordova formed but an insignificant force, wholly inadequate, it would at first appear, to the conquest of a strong and populous capital. But fortune, which had so frequently aided in promoting the designs of Spanish audacity, again interposed in favor of the champions of the Cross. In their extremity, the Cordovans had repeatedly implored Mohammed-Ibn-Hud, whose army was encamped at Ecija, to raise the siege before more Castilian troops arrived. Had these requests been heeded, the utter destruction of the Castilians could hardly have been prevented. That cautious leader, however, entertained a wholesome dread of the prowess of his enemies, and hesitated to confront in battle, even when the conditions were all in his favor, the redoubtable warriors of the North. He delayed, he temporized, he sent renegade spies into the Christian camp, who, having been detected, seized the opportunity to stipulate for pardon on condition of their return of false reports to the Moorish general. Their representations of the exaggerated numbers of and hourly increasing accessions to the Castilian army were believed; Ibn-Hud declined to risk his power upon the event of a single engagement, and the Cordovans beheld with sorrow and indignation the disappearance of their only hope of escape. Retribution soon overtook the vacillating and too credulous Moslem prince. The siege of Valencia had been formed by the King of Aragon, and the entreaties of its Emir had more weight with Ibn-Hud than the plaintive appeals of his other imperilled countrymen. While on his march to reinforce that monarch he halted at Almeria. That city was governed by a secret partisan of Mohammed-al-Ahmar, who saw in this unexpected visit a convenient opportunity to increase his favor with his patron. A magnificent banquet was prepared, and the noble and wealthy merchants of Almeria contended with each other in honoring the distinguished guest. The choicest wines of Spain were provided in the greatest variety and profusion for the canonically prohibited, but none the less acceptable, entertainment of the assembled Moslems. At a late hour Ibn-Hud was conducted to his chamber and drowned in the basin of a fountain by slaves who had received their instructions from the governor himself. His death was officially attributed to apoplexy resulting from intoxication; but popular suspicion was not slow in tracing to its true origin the sudden end of the victim of broken faith and perfidious hospitality.
By the assassination of Mohammed-Ibn-Hud was removed the greatest remaining obstacle to Castilian conquest. He alone, of all the Moorish potentates of Spain, had refused to barter Moslem territory for Christian aid. When his political necessities required the co-operation of the infidel power, that power was reluctantly purchased with gold, and not with the surrender of fortresses to be used as a basis for hostile operations, and which could never be regained. He was the most prominent representative of Hispano-Arab nationality that had appeared for generations in the Peninsula. In opposition to him were arrayed the various elements which, in many respects mutually inimical, combined either purposely or unconsciously for the subversion of the Saracen empire, the greed and brutality of the Berbers, the fanaticism of the theologians, the hopeless aspirations of a horde of princely adventurers, the indomitable energy and perseverance of the Christian sovereigns. Against these destructive agencies Ibn-Hud conducted a brave but hopeless struggle. Prejudice against African domination had been aggravated by centuries of crime and oppression. But Berber influence was still potent in many communities, and in some predominantly so. Immigration and intermarriage had contributed largely to consolidate and preserve the power originally obtained by violence. Ibn-Hud was in no sense the champion of the clergy. He was accused of atheism; his speech was often blasphemous, and he was habitually addicted to immoderate indulgence in wine. But these faults would have been readily condoned by ecclesiastical indulgence if their possessor had exhibited an edifying subserviency to the ministers of religion. Instead of this, however, he lost no opportunity of turning the hypocritical professions of the faquis into ridicule, a course which, by alienating a numerous and influential sect, materially accelerated the hour of Christian triumph. The suicidal behavior of the petty rulers and soldiers of fortune who indulged the fallacious hope of empire has already been repeatedly alluded to in this work. United, they might have deferred for a time the inevitable day of reckoning for official misconduct and national corruption; separated and hostile, they destroyed the basis of all power and social organization, and the stability of none so quickly as their own.
The murder of Ibn-Hud caused the immediate disbanding of his troops, and the investment of Cordova proceeded without fear of interference from an army which, properly commanded, could easily have raised the siege. Ali-Ibn-Yusuf, the brother of the dead prince, obtained the Emirate of Murcia, of which, however, he was soon deprived by assassination through the instrumentality of Mohammed-al-Ahmar, and, together with the principality of Almeria, it was added to the territory of the rising kingdom of Granada.