The Moorish prince sent his brother, Mohammed-al-Galipa, an experienced captain, to direct the insurrection in the Serrania de Ronda. Betrayed by a Christian guide, who led him within the Spanish lines, he was killed, and his escort of two hundred picked soldiers destroyed. In Valencia, a conspiracy formed in collusion with the Moriscoes of the Alpujarras was detected before it had time to mature, and its instigators were punished with merciless cruelty. Encompassed by a numerous and powerful foe, Ibn-Abu recognized the impossibility of resistance and disbanded his army. A few of his adherents took refuge among their kindred in Barbary. The majority, however, unable to escape and disdaining submission, which implied a slavery worse than death or inquisitorial torture, remained with their sovereign. All were scattered through the mountains and found shelter in the caves of that region, which were known only to shepherds and to those whose haunts were in the wildest and most rugged parts of the sierra. The march of the Spaniards was accomplished amidst the silence of desolation. In the distance at times could be seen flying parties of scouts, but no resistance was encountered. Whatever had escaped the destructive progress of former expeditions was now annihilated. Soldiers wandering in quest of plunder occasionally stumbled upon an inhabited cavern; its inmates were driven out by fire, and the infliction of torture soon disclosed the location of others. In one of these the wife and daughters of Ibn-Abu were suffocated, while he, with two companions, escaped through a secret opening in the mountain. The insatiable thirst of blood and booty which urged on the invaders rendered protracted concealment impossible. With each new discovery, other places of refuge were successively revealed through the unsparing and diabolical torments devised by the Castilians. The women were spared and condemned to slavery. Male captives under twenty, as a rule, shared a similar fate; all over that age were put to death, some amidst prolonged and frightful sufferings. Rank, innocence, the helplessness of age, the touching infirmity of disease, important services previously rendered to the royal cause, the prospect of future loyalty which might result from clemency judiciously bestowed, considerations of public welfare, dependent upon the preservation of an industrious people, afforded no exemption from the inexorable decree of destruction, enforced with every circumstance of savage malignity. The tracking of fugitive Moriscoes was as exciting and far more profitable than the chase of wild beasts. It was no unusual occurrence for a party of these terrified wretches to be pursued for a distance of fifty miles. No obstacles were sufficient to deter the Spaniards in the tireless search for their prey; the more arduous the hardships undergone, the greater the enjoyment when the victims, vainly suppliant for mercy, were put to the sword or burned at the stake. This time no organized enemy was left in the Alpujarras to disturb in future the peace of the monarchy. More than ten thousand insurgents were murdered or enslaved in the space of a month. Wherever the soldiery could penetrate, every vestige of human life and artificial vegetation were alike swept away. The terraced slopes of the mountains, reclaimed by infinite toil to profitable culture, the once smiling and fertile valleys, were restored to their native wildness. No voice remained in that infinite solitude to dispute the dogmas of the Church or to offend the scruples of the orthodox by the celebration of the profane and detested rites of Islam.
In the Serrania de Ronda the rebels still continued active, but the ambition of rival chieftains aiming at supreme power frustrated each other’s plans and eventually caused the discomfiture of all. The reputation for valor which the mountaineers of Ronda had attained was national; military operations in that locality were not prosecuted with the same energy as elsewhere, but the irreconcilable spirit of faction, ever so fatal to the progress and stability of the Arab race, again interposed as a potent factor of disorganization. A sharp campaign directed by the Duke of Arcos scattered the forces of the rebels, and the Serrania de Ronda, while not actually conquered, no longer contained a force capable of even temporary resistance.
The war now substantially ended, it was announced by royal proclamation that every Morisco, without a single exception, should be forever expelled from the kingdom of Granada. The order was carried out to the letter, under the supervision of Don John of Austria. The number of the exiles was from fifty to a hundred thousand. Superior discipline and the personal attention of the prince prevented the horrors that had attended the banishment of the residents of the Albaycin. Some were sent to Seville and Murcia, others to Estremadura, La Mancha, and Navarre. The Castilian peasantry resented their appearance among good Christians and resisted the soldiers, whose presence alone prevented a massacre. As usual, the lands which the Moriscoes possessed were seized for the benefit of the crown; their personal property was sacrificed for much less than its value, and many hitherto accustomed to luxury, plundered of the little they had saved from Spanish rapacity, reached their new homes in a state of absolute destitution. The remote fastnesses of the Alpujarras still concealed a number of fugitives, who cherished the fallacious hope that amidst the rejoicings incident to victory they might remain unnoticed and forgotten. Among them was Ibn-Abu, whose followers, the infamous monfis, alike inaccessible to honor or pity, were ready for every act of treachery, and some of whom had already discussed the expediency of obtaining pardon by the sacrifice of the King. These homeless wanderers soon realized that they were still the objects of Spanish animosity. The establishment of regular garrisons and the disbanding of the rest of the army were coincident with the formation of bands of scouts, whose duty it was to scour the country and capture every Morisco that could be found. In order to stimulate their activity, a reward of twenty ducats was offered for each insurgent. The chase of Moriscoes now became a more lucrative diversion than ever. The wildest portion of the sierra was examined foot by foot. Large numbers of fugitives were taken, and the prisons soon became too small to contain the multitudes that crowded them to suffocation. The utmost diligence of the authorities was unequal to the task of providing quarters for the new-comers, even by the wholesale execution of the old. The most distinguished prisoners were hung. Others were tortured. Many were handed over to the Inquisition, which, while never unsupplied with victims, was glad of the opportunity to make a signal example of such troublesome heretics. The majority were condemned to the galleys, which, all things being taken into account, was perhaps the most severe punishment that a prisoner could undergo. To be considered a mere machine, almost without identity and destitute of feeling, chained for days to the oar, exposed alike to the burning sun and the tempest, subject to hourly laceration by the scourge of a brutal overseer; ill-fed and unprotected from the weapons of an enemy, no fate to which unfortunate humanity is liable would not seem preferable to the lot of the galley-slave. Finally, the available facilities of Granada proved totally inadequate for the disposition of captive Moriscoes; extraordinary powers were conferred upon the commanders of the fortresses and outposts; the scenes of carnage were transferred from the capital to every accessible point of the Alpujarras, and the objects of national hatred and intolerance daily paid by hundreds the extreme penalty of misfortune and defeat.
The capture or death of Ibn-Abu now alone was necessary for the full gratification of Christian vengeance. With trifling difficulty Gonzalo-al-Seniz, who enjoyed his confidence and had shared his tent, was persuaded to betray him. The rewards of treachery were definitely stipulated in advance, the principal inducements being a pension of a hundred thousand maravedis and a promise of amnesty. An attempt to take the unfortunate prince alive failed of success; he was killed in the struggle; of his faithful companions, some were cut to pieces, some implored the doubtful clemency of the Christians, and others, after many perilous adventures, succeeded in escaping to Africa. The body of the Morisco king, strapped like a bale of goods upon a beast of burden, was transported to Granada and deposited at the door of the municipal palace. Then preparations were made for a ceremony unparalleled in the history of civilized nations, and whose character shows to what a depth the base descendants of Castilian chivalry had fallen. Proclamation was issued for the celebration of a travesty of regal authority and the offer of a public insult to the dead. At the appointed time a vast multitude of people, attracted by the novelty of the spectacle from every corner of the city and for a distance of many leagues around, crowded the streets and squares of the picturesque old Moorish capital. The line of march led from the Plaza de la Bab-al-Rambla to the foot of the Alhambra hill, a route which in the glorious days of the emirs had been the scene of many a martial triumph. The procession was headed by the corpse of Ibn-Abu, held erect by a concealed wooden framework, which was fastened upon the back of a mule. To insure its preservation, the body had been opened, the viscera extracted, and the cavity filled with salt; it was dressed in the scarlet and gold habiliments of royalty; upon its head was the turban of the khalifs; the face was uncovered, and the pallid, ghastly features seemed, in their fixed and mournful expression, to gaze reproachfully upon the jeering throng. By the side of the mule walked the traitor Gonzalo-al-Seniz, bearing the splendid arms of the king he had betrayed, a cross-bow and a scimetar embossed and damascened with gold. In the rear marched a company of Moriscoes, exempted from the general proscription for participation in this ceremony, laden with the personal effects and the baggage of the Moslem prince. A numerous escort of arquebusiers enclosed the cortége, which was received with becoming pomp by the captain-general and all the military and civil functionaries of the kingdom. As Gonzalo-al-Seniz delivered to the Duke of Arcos the glittering weapons which he carried, he remarked in the figurative language of the Orient, “The shepherd could not bring the sheep alive, but he has brought the fleece.” In the presence of the assembled dignitaries of the realm the head of Ibn-Abu was cut off, and afterwards, placed in an iron cage, was fixed upon the battlements of the gate of Bab-al-Racha, which faced the Alpujarras. The trunk was abandoned to a mob of children, who amused themselves by hacking and disfiguring it until, wearied of this extraordinary pastime, they consumed it in a bonfire.
Such was the unworthy fate of the last of the imperial line of the Ommeyades. Eight hundred years before, Abd-al-Rahman, hunted like a wild animal through the Libyan Desert, had been summoned from a life of obscurity and danger to found a great and powerful empire. Although it rapidly reached its meridian, that empire required many centuries for its final overthrow. The proud dynasty of the Western Khalifate ended as it had begun, in proscription, in exile, in treachery, in violence. The causes which hastened its maturity also contributed largely to its decay. The aspirations of its sovereigns were, on the main, noble and generous. Their services to humanity were of incalculable value and of far-reaching effect. The fire and sword of tyranny and persecution could not efface the lasting impression made by the ideas they promulgated, the science they developed, the literature they created. These survived the tortures of the Inquisition, the anathemas of the Pope, the turmoil of revolution, the funeral pyres of Ximenes. It is a remarkable fact that while the Hispano-Arabs brought within the sphere of their influence and culture the most remote nations, their nearest neighbors were incapable of appreciating their attainments or profiting by their knowledge. The inveterate prejudice against every phase of Moorish life and manners entertained by the Spanish Christians was fatal to their intellectual development. They regarded the intruders as barbarians, as, indeed, the majority of their descendants do even to this day. They were brought in intimate contact with no other form of civilization, and, rather than adopt what their ignorance and fanaticism prompted them to detest and despise, they chose to rely on their own limited resources. In consequence, their mental and social condition, so far from improving, gradually retrograded. The Goths of the age of Roderick were more polished, more intelligent, actuated by better motives, capable of higher aspirations, susceptible to nobler impulses than the Spaniards governed by Charles and Philip. In their progress from the banks of the Vistula to the shores of the Mediterranean, they had encountered many nations long subject to the civilizing influence of Rome. Not a few of them had visited the Eternal City itself. Some had served in the armies of the decaying empire; all had been impressed by the grand and imposing monuments of its magnificence and power. In the court of the last of the Gothic kings were men not unfamiliar with the masterpieces of classic literature. Its publicists had framed a code of laws which is the foundation of every modern system of jurisprudence. In the mechanical arts Gothic skill and industry had made no inconsiderable progress. While feudalism had retarded the development of society, its privileges, contrary to the practice of subsequent times, had not as yet seriously encroached upon the dignity and prerogatives of the throne. The institution of councils under ecclesiastical influence was not entirely subservient to the interests of superstition, and often exercised a wholesome check upon the arbitrary designs of a tyrannical sovereign.
With the Spaniards of the sixteenth century, everything was subordinated to a single principle, the exaltation of the Church. Its servants were the chosen confidants of the monarch; its policy guided his movements, controlled his actions, furnished his ideas, inflamed his prejudices. Whatever was worthy of the name of learning the clergy monopolized and perverted. They diligently fostered the ignorance of the masses, until in all the continent of Europe there is not at the present time a more benighted class than the peasantry of the Spanish Peninsula. The treasures of the world were lavished with unparalleled prodigality upon religious institutions and edifices. A tithe of the wealth squandered upon these vast foundations, whose history is tainted with scandal, would have sufficed, under intelligent direction, to have transformed the entire country into a garden and to have rendered Spain one of the richest of nations. Ecclesiasticism promoted crime and idleness by making beggary respectable, and by countenancing the indiscriminate bestowal of alms as a cardinal virtue. The expulsion of the Jews and the Moriscoes were acts entirely consistent with the general scheme of its polity. They were indispensable for the realization of religious unity, to which every consideration of national welfare, public faith, and individual probity were unhesitatingly sacrificed. The atrocities which accompanied these violent and disastrous measures were regarded as peculiarly meritorious and most acceptable to an avenging God. Upon such insecure foundations was the splendid but unsubstantial fabric of Spanish greatness erected. A sad inheritance has descended to the progeny of those stern warriors who founded an empire on the wreck of civilization, the repudiation of treaties, and the obliteration of entire races from the face of the earth.
The war which had effected the conquest and enslavement of the Moriscoes lasted a little more than three years. No period of the same duration in the history of the Peninsula was fraught with more important consequences. The Spaniards lost by the casualties of battle, exposure, and disease sixty thousand men. The losses of the Moors were much greater; twenty thousand were killed with arms in their hands, but no account has survived of those who were massacred in cold blood. The expense involved in the destruction of the most useful element of the population appalled the corrupt and incompetent financiers of the kingdom. Extraordinary and unwise fiscal methods, devised to remedy the evil, only rendered it more aggravated and desperate. Repeated campaigns of desolation had turned the whole country into a waste. Not only was the material wealth annihilated, but the means of recuperation were forever removed. Under the iron hand of remorseless persecution, industry had vanished. In vain the government offered alluring inducements to immigrants and colonists,—fertile lands, moderate rents, nominal taxation. Few accepted these offers and still fewer remained. The provinces of the South continued a prey to the brigands of the mountains and the corsairs of Barbary. Life and property were notoriously insecure. Castilian pride and indolence were unequal to the patient drudgery which had made hill-side and valley blossom with teeming vegetation; and men whose chosen trade for ages had been war were wholly destitute of the agricultural experience and skill necessary to reproduce these marvellous effects. The royal demesnes, in 1592, yielded annually a sum equal to fifteen thousand dollars; during the closing years of Moslem rule, when the kingdom had been exhausted by incessant war and rebellion, the revenues from this source produced by territory of equal area and fertility had been more than ten times as great. Plundered, tortured, expatriated, the Moriscoes were still subjected to innumerable vexations; the curse of their race was ever upon them. But they were at last comparatively exempt from the odious imputation of heresy. After 1595 the most rigid inquisitorial vigilance was unable or unwilling to detect any heterodox opinions or breaches of ecclesiastical discipline among these unpromising proselytes. And yet it was notorious that they were ignorant of the doctrines of the Church, and that competent persons were not appointed to instruct them. Some zealots, indeed, maintained that they should not be permitted to communicate, and that the exposure of the Host in their churches was a desecration; others, on the other hand, refused absolution to such as would not acknowledge apostasy. Their confessions were often regarded as feigned, and the priests who received them did not hesitate to violate the obligations of their order by divulging privileged confidences to the magistrate. The Morisco could not change his residence without permission; he was not allowed the possession of arms; the approach within forty miles of the kingdom of Granada was punishable with death. Notwithstanding these severe regulations, many succeeded in evading the vigilance of the authorities. Some took refuge in Valencia, where the feudal lords still protected their brethren; others concealed themselves in the Alpujarras; many escaped to Africa. In their new homes they were generally treated with far more indulgence than in the old. Prelates and nobles who profited by their industry not infrequently interposed their influence to prevent persecution, interested officials connived at breaches of the law, and it was a common occurrence for the alguazil appointed to prevent the observance of the feast of Ramadhan to pass his time carousing with those whom it was his office to restrain. The condition of the Moriscoes was also rendered less intolerable by the secret employment of both civil and ecclesiastical dignitaries of high rank and extensive influence, at a regular salary, to guard their rights and frustrate the iniquitous designs of their enemies.
The once flourishing land of Granada was a desert, but the demands of orthodox Christianity at last were satisfied. The devout regarded with unconcealed complacency the fertile territory formerly rich in every variety of agricultural products, and now abandoned to sterility, but which was defiled no longer by the contaminating presence of the heretic and the infidel. But, while the Faith was vindicated by the expulsion of these objects of pious detestation, the secret of prosperity had departed with them. The imported colonists were unable, under new and unfamiliar conditions and heedless of the frugality and patience which insure success, to render their undertakings profitable; indeed, most of them could hardly exist. Their taxes had, in violation of contract and on account of the pressing exigencies of the state, been gradually increased; the demands of importunate creditors and tyrannical officials made them desperate; and these exactions, which exhausted the scanty returns of an ill-conducted cultivation, kept the unfortunate immigrants in a state of hopeless penury. They either abandoned their farms or were forcibly ejected, and in 1597 the royal estates were sold because it was found impossible to operate them at a profit.
While in Granada such discouraging conditions prevailed, those portions of the kingdom which had unwillingly received the banished Moriscoes experienced the beneficial results of their labors. The hitherto barren regions of La Mancha and Estremadura began to exhibit signs of unexampled fertility. The new settlers were peaceable, frugal, industrious. In Castile they were generally farmers; in Aragon, merchants; in Valencia, manufacturers. Not a few attained great distinction in the practice of medicine and surgery; and, like the Jews of former ages, they were frequently employed by the court and the family of the sovereign. The life of Philip III. when a child was saved by the skill of a Moorish physician, a service which was ill-requited by the deeds of his manhood. The exiles practically contributed the funds which supported the monarchy. The insatiable rapacity of adventurers had soon exhausted the available wealth of a magnificent colonial empire. Official corruption constantly drained the ordinary sources of revenue. In all financial difficulties taxation of the Moriscoes afforded an unfailing and profitable means of replenishing the treasury. Their burdens were first doubled, then quadrupled. Every species of imposition was practised upon them. Their debtors paid them in spurious coin, struck for their benefit. False jewels were pledged with them for loans. The chicanery of the law was employed to defraud them with impunity, while the most severe penalties were inflicted upon them for trifling breaches of trust. They were systematically swindled by cheats and usurers. In all possible ways they were made to feel the unmerited degradation of their caste and the utter hopelessness of relief. Yet under this weight of malevolence and injustice they prospered and preserved at least the appearance of equanimity. Nothing could, with truth, be alleged against their morals. They were nominally good Christians. They attended mass. They conformed to the customs of their rulers, wore their dress, participated in their festivals, spoke Castilian. Their regular and temperate lives and their buoyant spirits under misfortune promoted extraordinary longevity. It was by no means unusual to encounter individuals whose age had passed the limit of a century. Early marriages and polygamous unions caused the population to increase with amazing rapidity. The census taken regularly by the Moriscoes to ascertain the proportion of taxes to be levied upon them and to insure its equitable distribution demonstrated conclusively that this growth was in a progressive ratio that was phenomenal in its character. The enumeration made at Valencia in 1602 showed an increase of ten thousand in three years. Modern investigation has established the fact that a population existing under the most favorable economic conditions will double itself every twenty-five years. The Moriscoes were far exceeding that estimate, for their rate of increase was triple. This wonderful augmentation must have been coincident with the highest degree of prosperity, otherwise subsistence could not have been provided for the multitudes of children. This condition was not peculiar to Valencia: it was the same in Aragon, in Castile, in Estremadura, in Andalusia. The Moors who had failed to conquer their enemies by arms now threatened to overwhelm them by sheer force of numbers. The Spaniards, not being sufficiently civilized to take their census regularly or accurately, were ignorant of the numerical strength of their own population, as compared with that of their Moorish subjects; but it was evident that there was a tremendous preponderance in favor of the latter.
The officials became so alarmed that just before the death of Philip II. he was requested to prohibit any further enumeration of the Moriscoes, because it acquainted them with their power and must eventually prove prejudicial to the interests of the monarchy. Besides their menacing increase, which no supervision, however effective, could prevent, they possessed qualities that made them highly obnoxious to their masters. Their frugality and thrift, their shrewdness and enterprise, rendered competition with them impossible. There was no profitable occupation in which they did not excel. In agriculture they had no rivals. They monopolized every industrial employment; all of the most useful trades were under their control. They undersold the Castilian peasantry in their own markets. Even the most opulent, instructed by previous experience, sedulously avoided every exhibition of luxury; but the Moorish artisan had not lost the taste and dexterity of his ancestors, and the splendid products of the loom and the armory still commanded high prices in the metropolitan cities of Europe. It was known that the Moriscoes were wealthy, and popular opinion, as is invariably the case, delighted in exaggerating the value of their possessions. While they sold much, they consumed comparatively little and purchased even less. Although the offence of heresy could no longer be consistently imputed to them, specious considerations of public policy, as well as deference to ineradicable national prejudice, demanded their suppression. Their prosperity, secured at the expense of their neighbors, and a standing reproach to the idleness and incapacity of the latter, was the measure of Spanish decay. In the existing state of the public mind, and under the direction of the statesmen who controlled the actions of the King, a pretext could readily be found for the perpetration of any injustice. The Moriscoes of Valencia, the most numerous, wealthy, and influential body of their race, protected by the nobles, had always shown less alacrity in the observance of the duties of the Church than their brethren, and had thus rendered themselves liable to the suspicion of apostasy. It was declared that after a generation of espionage, prayer, and religious instruction they were still secret Mussulmans. This opinion, perhaps in some instances not without foundation, amounted to absolute certainty in the narrow mind of Don Juan de Ribera, Archbishop of Valencia, a prelate of vindictive temper, arbitrary disposition, limited abilities, and violent prejudices. He owed much of his reputation for piety to the fact that he had denounced to the Inquisition more than four thousand alleged Moorish apostates. Knowing his feelings towards them, the Moriscoes generally turned a deaf ear to his admonitions and threats, and thus further incurred his displeasure. The energy of Ribera was incessantly exerted for the ruin of these supposed heretics, either by exile or by extermination. With this end in view he addressed several memorials to Philip III., who had now ascended the throne, in which the objects of his wrath were accused of every crime against the civil and the moral law,—treason, murder, kidnapping, blasphemy, sacrilege. In these appeals the Moriscoes were called “the sponge that absorbed the riches of Spain.” He enforced his arguments by the extraordinary statement that the destruction of the Armada was a divine judgment for the indulgence exhibited towards these enemies of the Faith, and that Philip II. was aware of it, for he himself had informed him of that fact. The recent occurrence of earthquakes, tempests, and comets was also sagely attributed to the same cause. The Moriscoes were not ignorant of the designs which the Archbishop was prosecuting to their injury, and endeavored to obtain the assistance of France and England, both of which countries were then hostile to Spain. They offered King Henry IV. the services of a hundred thousand well-armed soldiers if he would invade the Peninsula. The Duke of Sully says they even signalized their willingness to embrace Protestantism in consideration of support, it being a form of worship not tainted with idolatry, like that of Rome. Negotiations were privately opened with the courts of Paris and London, and commissions were even appointed by the latter to verify the claims of the Moriscoes; but no conclusion was arrived at, and the plot was eventually betrayed by the very sovereigns whose honor was pledged to the maintenance of secrecy. An embassy was also sent to the Sultan of Turkey by the Moors, soliciting his aid and tendering him their allegiance. No plan which promised relief was neglected. The furious Ribera again urged upon the King the dangers that the toleration of such a numerous and perfidious people implied; he alleged their prosperity and their superior intelligence as crimes against the state; and as absolute extermination did not seem to be feasible, he suggested expulsion as of greater inconvenience, but of equal efficacy. Once more the nobles interposed in behalf of their vassals, and while the King was hesitating the Moriscoes endeavored to anticipate his decision by the formation of an extensive conspiracy. Again they were betrayed, this time by one of their own number. Public opinion, aroused by these occurrences, and further inflamed by ecclesiastical malice and by the pernicious influence of the Duke of Lerma, the all-powerful minister of Philip III., now imperatively demanded their banishment. This nobleman, of base antecedents and unprincipled character, and whose dominating passion was avarice, was Viceroy of Valencia. His brother was the Grand Inquisitor Their influence easily overweighed the remonstrances of the Pope, whose voice was raised on the side of mercy.