From the coming of Charles V to the imperial throne, the history of Spain became that of Europe. Events assumed such enormous proportions that the details of interior administration, police, and government lost much of their importance. The fate of the peninsula was no longer to be decided within the peninsula itself. Spain by its position could not be the centre of the vast empire of Charles V; it could only be an annex. Since the suicide of the Castilian communes at Villalar, all life had passed to the outside. Charles became a stranger to his hereditary states; he did not visit them for twenty years except to demand money from them.
Incessant war, which was stifled at one place only to break out in another, weighed heavily on all Spain, which paid the cost without reaping the fruits. Treasure from the New World traversed without stopping in her, and fabulous duties were imposed on all handiwork and provisions. American gold, peninsular revenues, the commerce of the Low Countries, all were swallowed up in this bottomless gulf. Half Europe ruined and exhausted itself to help Charles V to subdue the other half, and after twenty years’ struggle this dream of European dictatorship was no nearer being realised than at the beginning.
Grenada, from the Fountain of Hazelnuts
The Moors, expelled from Granada, or forced by a hypocritical conversion to buy the right of remaining, had ceased to give the government serious anxiety. Religious unity reigned, in appearance at least, in Andalusia, now impoverished by the exile of her most industrious inhabitants. But it was not the same in the kingdom of Valencia. We have seen the sad dénouement of that insurrection, sister to that of the comuneros of Castile. There, also, revolt had been quenched in blood; but deep bitterness rankled in men’s hearts. The people, oppressed by the nobles, leagued against them with the royal power, and impatiently awaited the hour of vengeance. Their hatred fell on the Moors, numerous in this country, who, finding no shelter save on the nobles’ land, had, in the struggle, espoused the cause of their suzerains. Popular irritation left them, to save their lives, no refuge but baptism. The new converts, lip- but not heart-Christians, bought from their overlords the right to renounce this semblance of Christianity, to return to the rites of Islam, which in reality they had never abjured. But the Inquisition watched them keenly. The relapsed were summoned to re-enter the pale of the church within thirty days under penalty of death and confiscation. The Moors, instead of obeying, had recourse to arms and took refuge in the Sierra de Bernia. There they maintained their position for some months, but hunger, threats, and, above all, promises, decided them to submit.
And yet heroic attachment to the faith of their fathers drove this unhappy people again to disobey, at the peril of their lives.
Then the last blow fell. An imperial decree ordered all Moors of both sexes, who had not embraced Christianity, to quit Valencia before the end of December, and Spain before the end of January. The only port designated to them was that of Corunna. This port, the most distant of all, offered a double advantage—that of keeping them far from Africa, and making them spend all their money on the journey.
[1527-1530 A.D.]
Conquered, like their Andalusian brothers, by the iron necessity which bound them, the Valencian Moors resigned themselves to baptism. The neophytes were so numerous that it was found necessary to sprinkle them collectively with the cleansing water. Spain enthusiastically applauded this mockery of baptism. “But,” adds Sandoval,[f] in one of those avowals, good to hear, which he in his candour makes, “there were then at Valencia twenty-two thousand houses inhabited by Christians and twenty-six thousand by Moors, and of these latter, there were not six who received baptism willingly.” The Moors in the country, less broken to the yoke than those of the towns, fortified themselves in the Sierra de Espadan, near Segorbe. There, they defended themselves with success against the troops which attacked them.
But one day, at Chilches, they pillaged the church and carried off with them the holy sacrament. At the rumours of this sacrilege the entire country rose. A crusade was preached by the legate, and indulgences were granted as in the time of the holy wars. Volunteers flocked from all parts eager to gain heaven and plunder. Selim, chief of the Moors, displayed in this little-noted struggle talents worthy of a more vast theatre. The war dragged on, until the emperor brought with him from the Low Countries a corps of 4,000 Germans. The Moors, attacked on four sides at once and driven from every position, were conquered, leaving two thousand men on the field. The rest ended by yielding at discretion. The conquerors had sustained considerable loss, but all was forgotten in the joys of victory. The leaders of the insurrection suffered death; the rest, disarmed, were put under strict surveillance, saw the mosques closed, the holy books burned, and, after a useless and last resistance, their only safety in baptism.