Queen Berengaria, Spain
(From an effigy)
Ferdinand’s mother, Berengaria [who died in 1246], was one of those rare beings who seem to have been born to do right, and to have done it. From her earliest youth she was a leading figure, a happy and noble influence in one of the most contemptible and detestable societies of mediæval Christendom. Married of her own free will to a stranger and an enemy, that she might bring peace to two kingdoms, she was ever a true and loyal wife; unwedded by ecclesiastical tyranny in the very flower of her young womanhood, she was ever a faithful daughter of the church; inheriting a crown when she had proved her own capacity for royal dominion, she bestowed it on a strange and absent son, with no thought but for the good of her country and of Christendom; and, finally, as queen-mother and ever-faithful counsellor, she accepted all the difficulties of government, while the glory of royalty was reserved for the king whom she had created. Berengaria was ever present in the right place and at the proper time, and her name is associated only with what is good, and worthy, and noble, in an age of violence, and wrong, and robbery—when good faith was well-nigh unknown, when bad men were all-powerful, when murder was but an incident in family life, and treason the chief feature in politics.[d]
FERDINAND’S CONQUESTS
[1246-1247 A.D.]
In the following campaigns the king took possession of the kingdom of Cordova, of all the passes of Sierra Morena on the side of Estremadura, and finally of Jaen (1246) which was ceded after a siege of more than a year by its lord, Muhammed al-Akhmar, who in the first place was king of Arjona, of which he was a native, and afterwards of Granada when he acknowledged himself the vassal of Ferdinand.
This enterprise being so successfully terminated, Ferdinand resolved to employ the great military resources now at his disposal in the conquest of the town and kingdom of Seville, the richest and most powerful of the remaining Mussulman possessions, but almost entirely dependent on its own strength. The Christians were well aware that Seville could expect but little assistance from Africa, and therefore undertook the enterprise with celerity. Immediately on the fall of Jaen, Ferdinand set out for Seville with his whole army, accompanied by the king of Granada and his troops, as vassal of Castile. He laid waste to the territory of Carmona, and took possession of Alcalá de Guadaira, which he made into his arsenal; he also commanded the country surrounding the capital and Xeres to be devastated.
The following year (1247) commenced the celebrated siege of Seville, in which a fleet, which had been constructed in Santander and Biscay, took part commanded by the admiral Boniface, penetrating by San Lucar on the Guadalquivir. The Moors could receive provisions and relief solely from Nieblo and Algarve by means of a bridge of boats uniting the fortress with Triana. This was destroyed by the admiral, who got ready two of the strongest ships of his fleet and awaited a violent sea wind, when, with all the sails of both ships set, he weighed anchor at the moment the full tide was strongest, and let the ships be hurled against the bridge of boats, which was broken by the force of the shock, thus well-nigh destroying the only hope of the besieged. From that day a scarcity of food was experienced in the thickly populated town, but the stores laid in were sufficiently abundant to enable the town to hold out for another six months.
[1247-1252 A.D.]
Eventually, driven by hunger, the besieged proposed terms, which were rejected, King Ferdinand desiring that all the Moors should leave the town, taking with them only such of their property as they could carry. Three hundred thousand of them left Seville, and on the evacuation of the town Don Ferdinand entered with his army and took up his residence in the palace of the Moorish kings. There he devoted himself to organising his new court, summoning settlers to the country, and granting them licenses and privileges. After settling matters in Seville, Ferdinand marched with his army to the maritime towns of the kingdom, taking possession of Xeres (1250), Medina Sidonia, Cadiz, Puerto de Santa Maria, and other places. Master of the maritime towns, and unable to make war on the Mohammedans of Granada, his vassals, he resolved to cross to Africa and overthrow the empire of the Almohads, leaving instructions to the admiral Boniface to assemble a large fleet in the ports of northern Spain. Such were the plans of this great monarch, in spite of his suffering from dropsy, which disease was slowly sapping his vitality, and of which he finally died in 1252, his death being most exemplary.