While these events were transpiring, the Kings of Aragon and Portugal had wrested from the grasp of the Moslems, enfeebled by internal dissensions and constant defeat, the last fragments of the empire of the khalifs; and there remained of the extensive territory once ruled by the mighty potentates of Cordova but a single district, designated in the enumeration of their states as a province, but now daily increasing in renown as the tributary but powerful kingdom of Granada.
The character of Ferdinand III., like that of so many of his successors, was largely formed by the monitions of ecclesiastical counsellors. He was most emphatically the creature of his age,—an age of romantic undertakings, of mistaken piety, of religious intolerance. Like the King of Aragon, his contemporary, the early years of his reign were disturbed by domestic discord. Like him, also, he triumphed by the aid of the clergy. Profoundly sagacious, he was ever ready to profit by the factional quarrels of his infidel enemies. He made large additions to his power by furnishing Castilian troops to aid the ambition or the enmity of Saracen partisans in return for the cession of important castles and fertile territory. As a pretended neutral, alternately supporting the pretensions and promoting the feuds of rival Moslem princes, the Crown of Castile was always the gainer. King Ferdinand was a worthy representative of the proselyting spirit which characterized his royal line from the very institution of the monarchy. Popular with the masses, his subjects had declared him worthy of canonization even in his lifetime. To the ecclesiastical order he was an ideal sovereign. His donations to the Church were frequent and prodigal. In the occupation of conquered cities he always permitted the crucifix to take precedence of the sceptre. When the wretched Albigenses, fleeing from the tortures of Montfort and the swords of his bravos, attempted to find an asylum beyond the Pyrenees, the pious King of Castile burned all who fell into his hands, and even performed the highly meritorious duty of personally assisting at the sacrifice and of heaping fagots upon the funeral pyres which consumed those obstinate and abominable heretics.
The conqueror of Andalusia fixed his final residence in the largest of the provincial capitals which had bowed before the invincible efforts of his arms. A few hours before his death, on the thirtieth of May, 1252, in abasing humility he received the last sacrament, kneeling upon the bare earth, with a rope about his neck, in the guise and the attitude of a convicted malefactor.
In the great cathedral of Seville, the most incomparable monument of ecclesiastical architecture in Europe, a magnificent chapel has been raised to his memory. Before the high altar the venerated monarch lies enshrined in a casket of massy silver. Mounted effigies, encased in the armor of the thirteenth century, tower above the kneeling worshippers. On the walls, carved in stone, are the historic escutcheons of Castile and Leon. The royal sepulchre bears an inscription in four languages—Latin, Spanish, Hebrew, and Arabic—the respective idioms of the clergy, the people, the tributary, and the conquered race. Around it, on each anniversary of his death, a detachment of Granadan Moors, with lighted tapers in their hands, once stood motionless and in silence. To-day, three times in every year, the body of Castile’s most famous sovereign is exposed to public view adorned with all the pomp of royalty,—with the crown, the sceptre, the robes; mass is said, and a regiment of soldiers salute the mouldering remains of one of the most eminent and successful commanders of his time.
CHAPTER XX
PROSECUTION OF THE RECONQUEST
1252–1475
Condition of Moorish Spain after the Death of Ferdinand III.—Invasion of Ibn-Yusuf—Vast Wealth and Power of the Spanish Clergy—Public Disorder—-Energy of Mohammed I.—His Achievements—Mohammed II.—Peace with Castile—Character of Alfonso X.—Siege of Tarifa—Mohammed III.—Al-Nazer—Ismail—Baza taken—Mohammed IV.—The Empire of Fez—Defeat of the Africans in the Plain of Pagana—-Yusuf—Rout of the Salado—Alfonso XI. captures Algeziras—Splendid Public Works of the Kings of Granada—Mohammed V.—Ismail II.—Abu-Said—He repairs to the Court of Pedro el Cruel, and is murdered—Yusuf II.—Mohammed VI.—Yusuf III.—Mohammed VII.—Mohammed VIII.—Ibn-Ismail—Gibraltar taken by the Castilians—Character of Muley Hassan—Critical Condition of the Spanish Arabs—Impending Destruction of the Kingdom of Granada.
The capture of Seville terminates an important epoch of the Reconquest. The narrative of the events relating to the condition and conduct of the subjugated Moors during the long period which intervened between the reigns of Ferdinand the Saint and Ferdinand the Catholic presents a melancholy and repulsive picture of unblushing extortion and successful treason, of violated pledges and sanguinary revenge. Oppressed by the exactions and cruelty of their lords, the unhappy sectaries of Islam more than once sought relief in hopeless rebellion. The Moslem population of Valencia, numbering three hundred thousand, made a desperate but ineffectual attempt to regain their independence. As a penalty for this, their expulsion was resolved upon by the King of Aragon,—a measure suggested and promoted by the clergy. The nobles, unwilling to sacrifice their revenues, encouraged the resistance of their vassals; and such was the influence of the aristocracy that a monarch, in order to punish treason, was forced to purchase the concurrence of his too powerful subjects by the donation of large sums of money. The train of exiles filled the highway for a distance of five leagues, and the great sum of a hundred thousand pieces of gold was collected as toll from those alone who obtained the expensive privilege of crossing the Castilian frontier.
Seventy thousand others, resolved to try the fortune of the sword, contended for three years with heroic but unavailing courage against the entire resources of the Aragonese monarchy. At length they were overpowered and compelled to evacuate the kingdom; many of their vacant lands were seized by the Crown; the most desirable estates were absorbed by the Church; the chapel replaced the mosque, the begging friar the laborer; agriculture was neglected; mechanical industry declined, and the vagrants and outlaws of every contiguous state, whose descendants now enjoy a reputation for ferocity, vindictiveness, and treachery, which has spread to the remotest corners of Europe, hastened to occupy the abandoned habitations of what had been appropriately designated a terrestrial paradise.
The Moslem tributaries of the various Christian princes participated in the endless conflicts of every disputed succession, always to their disadvantage, often to their ruin. During this age of political transition, where the lines separating the great powers of the country were so faintly drawn as to be sometimes undiscernible, and where the oldest ties of kindred were constantly broken in the gratification of vengeance or the pursuit of empire, a condition of chaotic disorder prevailed in every kingdom, state, and city of the Spanish Peninsula.
The brilliant campaigns of Ferdinand III. had extended far beyond its original limits the once insignificant realm of the Castilian monarchy. His exploits had confirmed the faith and inflamed the enthusiasm of his subjects. The trophies won from the Moslem, the almost unbroken series of triumphs, the vast and ever-increasing acquisition of territory indicated to the devout the special and indulgent protection of God. In the mind of a populace dominated by the pride of victory and the hope of conquest, there was no room for the gentle and prosaic avocations of peace. The humanizing benefits of commerce were considered beneath the dignity of a nation devoted to the profession of arms, and its practice was abandoned to the states of the Adriatic, at once despised and envied for their intelligence, their acuteness, and their prosperity. The universal prevalence of ecclesiastical legends, whose authenticity was proclaimed from every pulpit, had destroyed all taste for historical composition. The story of earthly heroes, the recital of the rise and fall of great empires and kingdoms, the progress of the arts, the triumphs of civilization were contemptuously cast aside for the miracles of fictitious saints and the absurd prodigies of superstition.