Nothing now remained but to complete the overthrow of the Moorish power by the conquest of Granada. In virtue of the preceding convention, Ferdinand summoned Abu Abdallah to receive a Castilian garrison. The poor shadow of a king in vain appealed to the magnanimity of his ally, whom he besought to remain satisfied with the rich spoils already acquired. The bare mention of such a proposal would have cost him his head in the then excited state of feeling. The disastrous position of Mohammedan affairs, which they imputed, not without some justice, to his ambition and his subsequent inactivity, roused their wrath so much, that they rose against him, and would doubtless have been satisfied with nothing less than his blood, had he not fled precipitately into the Alhambra. Erelong, however, the violence of the commotion ceased, as everyone perceived the necessity of combining to save the capital. Its fate was for a time suspended by the arrival of numerous volunteers from the neighbouring towns, especially from the villages of the Alpujarras, which had not yet acknowledged the Christian sway; and from several other places, which now openly revolted. Abu Abdallah endeavoured to regain the good will of his people by vigorously preparing for their defence, and even by making incursions on the new possessions of the Christians. But neither the revolt nor his own efforts were of much avail. The inhabitants of Adra were signally punished for their want of faith; the king was compelled to seek shelter within his walls, from the summit of which he soon perceived the advancing cross of his enemies.
A Spanish Merchant, Fifteenth Century
[1491-1492 A.D.]
In the spring of 1491 Ferdinand invested this great city with fifty thousand foot and ten thousand horse. That the siege would be long and bloody was to be expected from the strength of the fortifications and the fanaticism of the people. Some time, indeed, elapsed before the place could be effectually invested; convoys of provisions were frequently received, in spite of Ferdinand’s vigilance; and in the sorties which from time to time took place, the advantage was not always on the side of the assailants. These partial actions so thinned the Christian host, that the king at length forbade them; and to protect his camp against the daring irruptions of the Moors, he surrounded it with thick walls and deep ditches. The enemy now saw that he was resolute in the reduction of the place, however tardy that reduction might prove. His own soldiers, whether in the camp or in the newly erected city of Santa Fé,[54] which he built and fortified both as a security against the possible despair of the Moors, and for the greater comfort of his army and court, were abundantly supplied with every necessary. The privations to which they were now subject, caused the besieged inhabitants first to murmur, and next to threaten their imbecile ruler with destruction. In this emergency, Abu Abdallah hastily summoned a council, to hear the sentiments of his chief subjects on the deplorable posture of affairs. All agreed that the camp, the city, and policy of Ferdinand were but too indicative of his unalterable determination, and of the fate which ultimately, nay soon, awaited them; that the people were worn out by abstinence and fatigue; and that, as the necessity was imperative, an attempt should be made to procure favourable terms of capitulation from the Castilian.
It was on the fourth day of the moon Rabia I [January 2nd, 1492], at the dawn of day, that Abu Abdallah sent his family and treasures into the Alpujarras, while he himself, accompanied by fifty horsemen, rode out to meet Ferdinand, whom he saluted as his liege lord. The keys of the city were delivered to the latter by Abul-Kassim: the Christians entered, and their standards were speedily hoisted on the towers of the Alhambra, and all the fortresses in the place. The fourth day following, Ferdinand and his royal consort made a solemn entry into the city, which they made the seat of an archbishopric, and in which they abode several months. As for the feeble Abu Abdallah, he had not courage to re-enter it. As he disconsolately took the road to the Alpujarras, and from time to time cast back his weeping eyes on the magnificent towers behind him, his mother, the sultana Zoraya, is said to have observed, “Thy womanly tears for the loss of thy kingdom become one who had not courage to defend it like a man!”[j] “Alas!” exclaimed the unhappy exile, “when were woes ever equal to mine!” The scene of this event is still pointed out to the traveller by the people of the district; and the rocky height from which the Moorish chief took his sad farewell of the princely abodes of his youth is commemorated by the poetical title of El ultimo Sospiro del Moro—“the last sigh of the Moor.”
The sequel of Abdallah’s history is soon told. Like his uncle, El Zagal, he pined away in his barren domain of the Alpujarras, under the shadow, as it were, of his ancient palaces. In the following year he passed over to Fez with his family, having commuted his petty sovereignty for a considerable sum of money paid him by Ferdinand and Isabella, and soon after fell in battle in the service of an African prince, his kinsman. “Wretched man,” exclaims a caustic chronicler of his nation, “who could lose his life in another’s cause, though he did not dare to die in his own!”
END OF MOSLEM SWAY IN SPAIN
The fall of Granada excited a general sensation throughout Christendom, where it was received as counterbalancing, in a manner, the loss of Constantinople nearly half a century before. The war of Granada is often compared by the Castilian chroniclers to that of Troy in its duration, and certainly fully equalled the latter in variety of picturesque and romantic incidents, and in circumstances of poetical interest. With the surrender of its capital terminated the Arabian empire in the peninsula, after an existence of seven hundred and forty-one years from the date of the original conquest. The consequences of this closing war were of the highest moment to Spain. The most obvious was the recovery of an extensive territory, hitherto held by a people whose difference of religion, language, and general habits made them not only incapable of assimilating with their Christian neighbours, but almost their natural enemies; while their local position was a matter of just concern, as interposed between the great divisions of the Spanish monarchy, and opening an obvious avenue to invasion from Africa.
By the new conquest, moreover, the Spaniards gained a large extent of country, possessing the highest capacities for production, in its natural fruitfulness of soil, the temperature of climate, and the state of cultivation to which it had been brought by its ancient occupants; while its shores were lined with commodious havens that afforded every facility for commerce. The scattered fragments of the ancient Visigothic empire were now again, with the exception of the little state of Navarre, combined into one great monarchy, as originally destined by nature; and Christian Spain gradually rose, by means of her new acquisitions, from a subordinate situation to the level of a first-rate European power.