RISING IN THE ALPUJARRAS.
Meantime the citizens, thus suddenly startled from their beds, gathered together, with eager looks, and faces white with fear, to learn the cause of the tumult; and their alarm was not diminished by finding that the enemy had been prowling round their dwellings, like a troop of mountain wolves, while they had been buried in slumber. The marquis of Mondejar called his men to horse, and would have instantly given chase to the invaders, but waited until he had learned the actual condition of the Albaicin, where a population of ten thousand Moriscoes, had they been mischievously inclined, might, notwithstanding the timely efforts of the government to disarm them, have proved too strong for the slender Spanish garrison in the Alhambra. All, however, was quiet in the Moorish quarter; and, assured of this, the captain-general sallied out, at the head of his cavalry and a small corps of foot, in quest of the enemy. But he had struck into the mountain-passes south of Granada; and Mendoza, after keeping on his track, as well as the blinding tempest would permit, through the greater part of the day, at nightfall gave up the pursuit as hopeless, and brought back his wayworn cavalcade to the city.[33]
Aben-Farax and his troop, meanwhile, traversing the snowy skirts of the Sierra Nevada, came out on the broad and populous valley of Lecrin, spreading the tidings everywhere, as they went, that the insurrection was begun, that the Albaicin was in movement, and calling on all true believers to take up arms in defence of their faith. The summons did not fall on deaf ears. A train had been fired which ran along the mountain regions to the south of Granada, stretching from Almeria and the Murcian borders on the east to the neighbourhood of Velez Malaga on the west. In three days the whole country was in arms. Then burst forth the fierce passions of the Arab,—all that unquenchable hate which seventy years of oppression had nourished in his bosom, and which now showed itself in one universal cry for vengeance. The bloody drama opened with the massacre of nearly every Christian man within the Moorish borders,—and that too with circumstances of a refined and deliberate cruelty, of which, happily, few examples are to be found in history.
The first step, however, in the revolutionary movement had been a false one, inasmuch as the insurgents had failed to secure possession of the capital, which would have furnished so important a point d'appui for future operations. Yet, if contemporary chroniclers are correct, this failure should rather be imputed to miscalculation than to cowardice. According to them, the persons of most consideration in the Albaicin were many of them wealthy citizens, accustomed to the easy, luxurious way of life so well suited to the Moorish taste. They had never intended to peril their fortunes by engaging personally in so formidable a contest as that with the Castilian crown. They had only proposed to urge their simple countrymen in the Alpujarras to such a show of resistance as should intimidate the Spaniards, and lead them to mitigate, if not indeed to rescind, the hated ordinance.[34] If such was their calculation, as the result showed, it miserably failed.
As the Moriscoes had now proclaimed their independence, it became necessary to choose a sovereign in place of the one whose authority they had cast aside. The leaders in the Albaicin selected for this dangerous pre-eminence a young man who was known to the Spaniards by his Castilian name of Don Fernando de Valor. He was descended in a direct line from the ancient house of the Omeyas,[35] who for nearly four centuries had sat with glory on the throne of Cordova. He was but twenty-two years of age at the time of his election, and, according to a contemporary who had seen him, possessed a comely person and engaging manners. His complexion was of a deep olive; his beard was thin; his eyes were large and dark, with eyebrows well defined, and nearly approaching each other. His deportment was truly royal; and his lofty sentiments were worthy of the princely line from which he was descended.[36] Notwithstanding this flattering portrait from the pen of a Castilian, his best recommendation, to judge from his subsequent career, seems to have been his descent from a line of kings. He had been so prodigal in his way of life that, though so young, he had squandered his patrimony, and was at this very time under arrest for debt. He had the fiery temperament of his nation, and had given evidence of it by murdering, with his own hand, a man who had borne testimony against his father in a criminal prosecution. Amidst his luxurious self-indulgence he must be allowed to have shown some energy of character and an unquestionable courage. He was attached to the institutions of his country; and his ferocious nature was veiled under a bland and plausible exterior, that won him golden opinions from the multitude.[37]
Soon after his election, and just before the irruption of Aben-Farax, the Morisco prince succeeded in making his escape from Granada, and, flying to the mountains, took refuge among his own kindred, the powerful family of the Valoris, in the village of Beznar. Here his countrymen gathered round him, and confirmed by acclamation the choice of the people of Granada. For this the young chieftain was greatly indebted to the efforts of his uncle, Aben-Jahuar, commonly called El Zaguer, a man of much authority among his tribe, who, waiving his own claims to the sceptre, employed his influence in favour of his nephew.
The ceremony of the coronation was of a martial kind, well suited to the rough fortunes of the adventurer. Four standards, emblazoned with the Moslem crescent, were spread upon the ground, with their spear-heads severally turned towards the four points of the compass. The Moorish prince, who had been previously arrayed in a purple robe, with a crimson scarf or shawl, the insignia of royalty, enveloping his shoulders, knelt down on the banners, with his face turned towards Mecca, and, after a brief prayer, solemnly swore to live and die in defence of his crown, his faith, and his subjects. One of the principal attendants, prostrating himself on the ground, kissed the footprints of the newly-elected monarch, in token of the allegiance of the people. He was then raised on the shoulders of four of the assistants, and borne aloft amidst the waving of banners and the loud shouts of the multitude, "Allah exalt Muley-Mohammed-Aben-Humeya, lord of Andalucia and Granada!"[38]
MASSACRE OF THE CHRISTIANS.
Such were the simple forms practised in ancient times by the Spanish-Arabian princes, when their empire, instead of being contracted within the rocky girdle of the mountains, stretched over the fairest portions of the Peninsula.[39]
The first act of Aben-Humeya was to make his appointments to the chief military offices. El Zaguer, his uncle, he made captain-general of his forces. Aben-Farax, who had himself aspired to the diadem, he removed to a distance, by sending him on an expedition to collect such treasures as could be gathered from the Christian churches in the Alpujarras. He appointed officers to take charge of the different tahas, or districts, into which the country was divided. Having completed these arrangements, the new monarch—the reyezuelo, or "little king," of the Alpujarras, as he was contemptuously styled by the Spaniards—transferred his residence to the central part of his dominions, where he repeated the ceremony of his coronation. He made a rapid visit to the most important places in the sierra, everywhere calling on the inhabitants to return to their ancient faith, and to throw off the hated yoke of the Spaniards. He then established himself in the wildest parts of the Alpujarras, where he endeavoured to draw his forces to a head, and formed the plan of his campaign. It was such as was naturally suggested by the character of the country, which, broken and precipitous, intersected by many a deep ravine and dangerous pass, afforded excellent opportunities for harassing an invading foe, and for entangling him in those inextricable defiles, where a few mountaineers acquainted with the ground would he more than a match for an enemy far superior in discipline and numbers.