CHAPTER XVIII

THE EMPIRE OF THE ALMOHADES

1121–1212

Rise of Abu-Abdallah, the Mahdi--His Character and Talents--He rebels against Ali--His Eventful Career--Abd-al-Mumen succeeds Him--Decline of the Almoravide Power in Spain--Raid of Alfonso of Aragon--Rout of Fraga--Death of Alfonso--Indecisive Character of the Campaigns in the War of the Reconquest--Progress of Abd-al-Mumen in Africa--Victories of the Almohades--Natural Hostility of Moor and Berber--Anarchy in the Peninsula--It is invaded by the Africans--Establishment of the Almohade Empire in Andalusia--Almeria taken by the Christians--Its Recapture by the Berbers--Death of Abd-al-Mumen--His Genius and Greatness--Accession of Yusuf--His Public Works--He organizes a Great Expedition--He dies and is succeeded by Yakub--The Holy War proclaimed--Battle of Alarcos--Effects of African Supremacy--Death of Yakub--The Giralda--Mohammed--He attempts the Subjugation of the Christians--Despair of the Latter--Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa--Utter Rout of the Almohade Army.

The proverbial instability of the tribes of Northern Africa, habitually dominated by the most abject superstition, the prey of successive generations of religious impostors, incapable of systematized civil organization, of moral consistency, of personal loyalty, was now to be again demonstrated by a revolution that, in the principal circumstances of its origin and progress, was almost the counterpart of the one preceding it, which had made the polished and intellectual population of Spain--justly proud of the traditions of the khalifate--tributary subjects of a foreign and barbaric potentate. As with every race brought suddenly in contact with the highest civilization without passing through the intermediate phases incident to the regular and predestined development of nations, the corruption and degeneracy of the Berbers advanced with amazing rapidity. Amidst the hitherto unknown allurements of luxury and vice, the primitive virtues of generosity, courage, and hospitality disappeared. The fetichism of the Desert was replaced by a spurious and absurd Mohammedan belief, which retained, as essential parts of its doctrine, the most objectionable and offensive principles of Paganism. The religious teachers of the people, more deeply contaminated than their disciples and closely allied with the Jews, whose worship and whose dogmas they held up to reprobation in public and connived at in secret, had become monsters of extortion, profligacy, and injustice. The martial tastes of Yusuf had not descended to his son, who daily exhibited, to the delight of the clergy and the astonishment of the people, the abasement of a devotee, an example sufficiently edifying in a saint but strangely unbecoming in a sovereign whose throne was sustained by arms, and whose subjects were accustomed to subsist by conquest and rapine. No faqui desirous of obtaining a reputation for piety prayed and fasted with more persistent regularity than Ali. The greater part of his time was passed in the mosque, and the administration, meanwhile, was usurped by the clergy and the ladies of the court. The direct intervention of women in public affairs was a practice heretofore unknown to the Moslem constitution. During the reign of Ali, however, the wives and concubines of great officials virtually controlled, by favor and purchase, the policy of the government, trafficked in appointments of the civil and military service, capriciously deposed high dignitaries, and pardoned brigands and other malefactors condemned for atrocious crimes. The contradictory mandates, and the uncertain execution of the laws resulting from the conflicting interests and the indecision of ambitious and corrupt females, produced inextricable confusion, and provoked the scorn and resentment of the people. In Spain, far removed from the capital of the empire, the prevalent disorder and oppression reached its culmination; and even constant familiarity with military abuses could not reconcile the citizens of the Andalusian capitals to the intolerable insolence of the Almoravide soldiery.

About this time there appeared in the African dominions of Ali a new reformer, half enthusiast, half charlatan, whose austerities and denunciations of the prevalent luxury and impiety of the age at once attracted the attention and inspired the reverence of the masses. His name was Abu-Abdallah; his origin--designated by an appellation referring to the calling of his father, a lamplighter in the mosque of his native village--was most humble; but nature had endowed him with talents which early marked him as a leader of men. His education, acquired in the famous schools of Cordova, Bagdad, and Cairo, was far superior to his rank, and, by assiduous study and extensive travel in foreign countries, he had amassed a vast fund of knowledge, and had obtained, even in the centres of Moslem learning, the reputation of an accomplished controversialist and theologian. A pupil of the great Al-Ghazzali, he had embraced with eagerness the doctrines of that renowned philosopher, whose work, branded as heterodox and impious by the clergy of Cordova, had been publicly consigned to the flames, and its possession made a cause of relentless persecution by the bigoted religious counsellors of Ali. The subsequent conduct of the reformer might suggest to an observant and unfriendly critic that this unfavorable reception of the dogmas of one of the most famous teachers of Islam had not a little influence in forming the opinions and determining the career of the ambitious young Berber student. His education completed, Abu-Abdallah returned to his home among the tribesmen of Masmoudah in the country of Sus. His travels and his studies, directed by a keen and vigorous intellect, had given him a profound insight into human nature, while the superiority of his literary attainments obtained for him the greatest respect from the simple and ignorant shepherds among whom his lot was cast. From the day of his return, he affected an air of mystery well calculated to impose upon a credulous and highly imaginative people. He assumed the title of Al-Mahdi, or The Leader, a word synonymous with Messiah, a personage whose advent has been predicted by the founders of almost every sect of Oriental origin. He declaimed with audacity and eloquence against the sins of the degenerate Moslems. In common with all reformers whose success demands a real or apparent exhibition of sanctity, his life afforded an edifying example of self-denial and of the practice of the most austere virtue. His garments were scanty and of the coarsest materials. His sole possessions consisted of a staff and a leathern bottle. Subsisting upon alms, and sleeping in the court-yards of the mosques, where, during the day, with impassioned oratory, he exhorted the wayward to repentance, he did not remain long in solitude. Crowds gathered to participate in his devotions and to enjoy the benefit of his prayers. The erratic genius of the Berber, impressed with an exhibition so congenial with its nature and actuated by the love of novelty, soon recognized in the holy man a guide whose inspiration was directly derived from heaven. Among the first of his disciples was a youth of distinguished lineage and unusual personal attractions, named Abd-al-Mumen, whom the Mahdi, as he was now universally called, selected as his councillor, and whose talents for war and executive ability, as soon became evident, were superior to those of any individual of his time. Accompanied by a small band of followers, the Mahdi advanced by easy stages to Morocco, the depravity of whose citizens he constantly represented as worthy of the severest punishment that could be inflicted by the wrath of an outraged Deity. It was not without reason that he denounced the vices of the great Almoravide capital. Although so recently founded, it already ranked with the most opulent, the most splendid, the most dissolute of the cities of the Mohammedan world. Its population had been gathered from three continents; its commerce extended from the frozen zone to countries far south of the equator; its profligate diversions equalled in their shamelessness and monstrous variety the proverbial abominations of ancient Carthage.

The first public act of the Mahdi after his arrival was one whose unparalleled audacity was admirably calculated to establish the sacredness of his pretended mission as far as the most distant frontiers of the empire. On one of the Fridays of the festival of Ramadhan, a great concourse had assembled in the principal mosque of the capital to await the coming of the Sultan. Before the royal cortége appeared, an emaciated figure, meanly clad and intoning in deep and solemn accents verses from the Koran, strode through the assemblage and seated itself, without ceremony, on the throne. The remonstrances of the attendants of the mosque produced no effect on the intruder, and even at the approach of Ali himself he retained his seat, while the entire congregation rose and stood reverently in the presence of their monarch. In the minds of devout Moslems, mental eccentricity and insanity are not infrequently considered evidences of divine inspiration; the most outrageous denunciations are received with humility by the greatest potentates; and, encouraged by impunity, the dervish and the santon, sure of the toleration of the sovereign and the applause of the multitude, do not hesitate to violate every feeling of decency and reverence in the prosecution of their schemes of imposture. The existence of this superstitious prejudice prevented the molestation of the Mahdi, whose reputation had preceded him, but whose person was as yet unknown to the inhabitants of Morocco. Not content with usurping his place, the audacious reformer even ventured, in scathing terms, to reprove the Sultan in the presence of the assembly, and warned him that if he did not correct the faults of his government and the vices of his subjects he would be speedily called upon to render an account of his neglect to God. The amazement and consternation of the Prince were only exceeded by the apprehensions of the people, who awaited, with equal anxiety, the accomplishment of a miracle or the outbreak of a revolution.

From that day the religious authority of the Mahdi was established throughout the African dominions of Ali. His audiences were numbered by thousands. Proselytes in vast multitudes assented to his doctrines, and his movements began to seriously occupy the attention of the government, whose officials saw with unconcealed dread his fast-increasing popularity and the effect which his harangues and his ostentatious asceticism were producing upon the capricious and easily deluded masses. He was examined by the ministers, some of whom advised his immediate execution, but, as he had hitherto confined himself to religious exhortations and had asserted no pretensions to the exercise of temporal sovereignty, the impolitic clemency of Ali, unmindful of the similar circumstances which had attended the elevation of his own family to power, dismissed, unharmed, the most dangerous enemy of his life and his throne. The lesson he had just been taught was not lost on the wary impostor, who, of all distinctions, coveted least the honors of martyrdom. He left the capital and repaired to Fez, where for a considerable period he kept himself in seclusion, but, through his devoted emissaries, still retaining and indeed increasing his influence over the ignorant populace, deeply impressed with the mystery that surrounded his movements as well as with the oracular messages with which he nourished the curiosity and stimulated the expectations of his followers. At length, without warning, he reappeared in the streets of Morocco. The enthusiastic welcome he received made it apparent that his popularity had been in no respect diminished during his absence. His insolence and his extravagance now became more offensive than ever. He denounced, in epithets conveying the greatest opprobrium, the public and private conduct of the monarch and his court. Assisted by his disciples, he seized the wine vessels in the bazaars and emptied their contents into the streets. The sight of a musical instrument roused him to fury and was the signal for its instant destruction, as well as for the maltreatment of the owner. His piety could not tolerate even the songs of mirth, and those who presumed to enjoy this harmless amusement in his hearing were speedily silenced with a shower of blows. The climax of impudence and outrage was attained when the Mahdi, having one day encountered in one of the public thoroughfares of the capital the sister of Ali, who, in compliance with the prevalent custom of the Moorish ladies of Africa and Spain, had discarded the veil, roundly abused her for this violation of the injunctions of the Prophet, and ended by precipitating her from her saddle into the gutter, to the horror and consternation of her numerous retinue. An offence of this flagrant character committed by any one unprotected by the influence of the grossest superstition would, under Oriental law, have been instantly punishable with death. But the reverence entertained for the sacred profession of the culprit, the general suspicion of his want of responsibility, and a fatal indifference to his rapidly increasing power suggested the imposition of an insignificant penalty, and the bold and reckless innovator was banished from the city. In obedience to the letter, if not to the spirit of his sentence, he betook himself to a neighboring cemetery, erected there a miserable hovel, and, surrounded by the significant memorials of the dead, began anew his prophesies of impending evil and his declamations against the vice and corruption of the dignitaries of the empire. The leniency with which his offences had been treated by the authorities was distorted by fear and fanaticism into persecution and injustice, and the violator of law was at once exalted into a martyr. The passions of the ignorant were then artfully aroused by representations that the life of their leader was threatened, and a bodyguard of fifteen hundred well-armed soldiers was organized to watch constantly over the safety of the self-styled Messenger of God. The Sultan now began to realize, when too late, the effects of his ill-timed indulgence. He sent a peremptory order for the Mahdi to leave the vicinity of the capital. The latter, alleging that he had already complied with the directions of his sovereign as indicated by the sentence of banishment, and feeling secure in the midst of his devoted adherents, at first declined to abandon his position; but, on learning that measures were already taken for his assassination, he fled in haste to the distant town of Tinamal, where he had disclosed his pretended mission. There, in the mosque, he first openly announced his claim to temporal power. A sympathetic audience was excited to frenzy by his mysterious predictions and his fervid eloquence; his claim to universal dominion as the Champion of the Faith and the restorer of the purity of Islam was received with vociferous applause by the multitude, and in the midst of the turmoil Abd-al-Mumen and ten of his companions, rising and drawing their swords, swore eternal fealty to their leader. Their example was followed by the entire congregation; and thus, a second time, in the centre of the Sahara was inaugurated a Mohammedan reformation the precursor of a gigantic but unsubstantial and impermanent empire. This decisive step had no sooner been taken than the Mahdi proceeded to organize his government by the appointment of civil and military officials. Abd-al-Mumen was made vizier; the ten proselytes who had sworn allegiance in the mosque were united in a Supreme Council; and the two subordinate bodies, composed respectively of fifty and seventy disciples, were charged with the management of affairs of inferior moment; the result of their deliberations being subject to the approval or rejection of the Mahdi himself. The revolutionists, whose numbers, daily recruited by accessions from the martial tribes of the Desert, had now become formidable, assumed the name of Almohades, or Unitarians, not only to distinguish them from the Christians, whose trinitarian dogma and adoration of images caused them to be designated by all Moslems as idolaters, but to indicate as well a return to the original simplicity of Islam, long corrupted by the heterodox practices and dissolute manners of their Almoravide rivals. A strange and mysterious fatality seemed to attach to the fortunes of the latter in every field where they encountered the armies of the newly arisen Prophet. In four successive engagements the soldiers of Ali, seized with a panic in the presence of the enemy, yielded almost without resistance to the attack of the Berber cavalry; their standards and baggage were taken, and thousands of fugitives, butchered in headlong flight, expiated with the loss of life and honor their effeminacy and their cowardice.

The opinion generally prevalent in the minds of the illiterate, that military success is an infallible criterion of religious truth, began to produce its effect on the Almoravides. The terror experienced by them at the sight of the enemy--really due to relaxation of discipline and apprehension of the miraculous powers of an audacious charlatan--was universally attributed to supernatural influence. The mission of the Mahdi required no further demonstration of its divine origin. Henceforth his utterances were received by both friend and enemy as the oracles of God. His credit daily increased among the credulous and passionate inhabitants of the Desert. The Almoravide soldiers shrank from an encounter with a foe whose white standard seemed to be invested with the mystic qualities of a talisman. The Mahdi, renouncing in a measure his character of affected humility, now assumed the pomp of a sovereign. He surrounded himself with a splendidly appointed bodyguard. His throne was approached by suppliants for favor with the debasing and complicated ceremonial of Oriental despotism. He demanded, in arrogant and menacing language, submission and tribute from Ali, who, dejected by repeated misfortune, began to share with his ignorant subjects the awe which enveloped the person and the attributes of his triumphant and formidable adversary. The plans of the latter had heretofore been accomplished without an established base of operations, the camps of the Almohades being moved from place to place over the drifting sands of the Desert; but now, the direction of an army of twenty thousand men, the subsistence and shelter of a vast multitude of non-combatants, and the dignity and power of a new and growing political organization urgently demanded a settled habitation and a recognized centre of authority. Among the lofty crags of a mountain spur extending from the range of Tlemcen to the Atlantic stood the village of Tinamal. Its retired situation, its natural defences, its proximity to both the rich cities of the coast and the fertile regions of the interior, the character of its people, who were to a man ardent believers in the mission of the Mahdi, made it an admirable point either for the inauguration of a conquest or the institution of an harassing system of predatory warfare. It was approached by narrow and tortuous paths which, winding along the mountain side, disclosed, on the one hand, an inaccessible cliff, on the other, an abyss whose depths were shrouded in perpetual gloom. From its battlements, almost hidden in the clouds, the progress of a hostile party could be watched for miles as, with slow and uncertain steps, it pursued its hazardous way. In this mountain fastness the Mahdi fixed his residence and established his capital. The natural impediments in the path of an invader were greatly multiplied by the artificial resources of engineering skill. Towers and fortresses were raised at points commanding the various approaches to the mountain stronghold. Drawbridges were thrown across roaring torrents. Walls and gateways obstructed the passage, where an insignificant force might with ease check the progress of a numerous army. The village of Tinamal soon became a city, whose inhabitants, subsisting by the plunder of their neighbors, became the scourge and the terror of the peaceable and defenceless subjects of Ali. After a long sojourn in his seat of power, the Mahdi, about to succumb to a fatal disease, determined to signalize his closing days by an enterprise worthy of the pretensions he had assumed and of the success which had hitherto favored his undertakings. An army of forty thousand men was assembled for the capture of Morocco. In a desperate conflict under the walls of that city, the Almoravides, who outnumbered their opponents two to one, were put to flight and pursued with terrible carnage to its gates. But the fortunes of the Almohades, heretofore invincible, were now destined to receive a serious blow. Unaccustomed to the conduct of a siege, the soldiers of Abd-al-Mumen habitually neglected the precautions which, in the presence of an enemy, are indispensable to the security of a camp. Within the immense circuit of the capital were marshalled for a final struggle the collected resources of the empire. Thousands of fugitives from the recent disastrous battle had found an asylum behind its walls. Reinforcements had been drawn from every African province as well as from the diminished Andalusian armies, their own strength already sorely taxed by repeated incursions of the Christian foe. The constructing and handling of military engines were confided to a body of Byzantine and Sicilian engineers enlisted for that purpose. The soldiery was animated by the presence and the example of the Sultan, who had for the time abandoned the Koran for the sword, and stood ready to perform the part of a valiant and resolute commander. The citizens, moved to desperation by the approach of an enemy whose relentless character had been established by the massacre of fugitives and prisoners, and from whose ferocity, aggravated by prolonged opposition, they could expect no indulgence, co-operated manfully with the garrison in the defence of their homes, their families, their property, and their king. The first sallies of the Almoravides, conducted by leaders trained to partisan encounters in the wars of Spain, were signally disastrous to the besiegers. The latter, suddenly checked in an uninterrupted career of victory, were disconcerted and dismayed, and their confidence was shaken in proportion as the spirits of their adversaries rose. Encouraged by success, the attacks of the latter became more vigorous and determined; a general engagement followed, the Almohades were routed with terrific slaughter, and it was only by the exertion of strenuous effort that Abd-al-Mumen and a handful of survivors were enabled to escape the lances of the Almoravide cavalry. The depression caused by a single disaster was more potent in its effect on the minds of the disciples of the Mahdi than the prestige derived from a score of victories. The influence which had exercised its mysterious sway over the imagination of all who had presumed to dispute the claims of the impostor was perceptibly impaired. The fickle tribesmen deserted his standard by thousands. But in the course of a few years his eloquence and tact were able to repair the losses he had sustained; another army commanded by Abd-al-Mumen issued from the mountains, and a brilliant victory obtained over the followers of Ali retrieved the honor and credit of the Almohade cause. The Mahdi did not long survive his triumph. Overcome with the excitement occasioned by the return of his soldiers with their array of spoil and captives, he died, after having committed to the faithful Abd-al-Mumen the accomplishment of the task of conquest and reformation which he had so successfully begun.

Of all the prophets and reformers, the progenitors of dynasties, the conquerors of kingdoms, the restorers of the Faith, which from its origin have appeared in the domain of Islam, none possess a greater claim to distinction than Abu-Abdallah, surnamed the Mahdi, the founder of the sect of the Almohades. Without the commanding genius and originality of Mohammed, he equalled that remarkable personage in keenness of perception and energy of character, and far surpassed him in education, in eloquence, in practical acquaintance with the foibles and the prejudices of humanity. The suggestive examples of his predecessors, who had attained to supreme power through pretensions to inspiration and martial achievements, incited him to establish for himself a political and religious empire. With more of the charlatan and less of the soldier in his mental composition than had characterized many reformers, he retained to the last his retiring asceticism, but in case of emergency he did not hesitate to boldly risk his life on the field of battle. No scholar was better versed than he in the literature and science of his age. His sagacity was proof against the insinuating arts of the most accomplished negotiator. In the prosecution of his ambitious projects he never considered the comfort or the safety of his followers; in the exaction of his vengeance every sentiment of pity and indulgence was ruthlessly cast aside. His influence over his disciples was maintained by appeals to superstition and by arts of imposture congenial with the temperament of the ignorant and the credulous. To conceal these frauds, the wretched instruments by whom they had been effected were promptly put to death. Such persons as were so unfortunate as to incur the enmity of the false Prophet were buried alive. Such was the extent of his power over the masses, that the crimes perpetrated by his orders or with his sanction were regarded in the light of virtues; that his spurious claims to divinity were accepted by entire nations who revered him even more than his great prototype Mohammed, and who demonstrated their enduring faith in his mission by raising his friend and successor, to whom his authority had descended, to an equality with the greatest potentates of the age.

While the victories of the Almohades in Africa were undermining the already crumbling empire of Ali, his Spanish dominions were overrun and wasted by Aragonese and Castilian armies. The supremacy of the clergy which followed the rise of the Almoravide dynasty was the signal for Christian persecution. In Andalusia, and especially throughout the principality of Granada, where the Mozarabes abounded, the Moslem theologians exercised with unrestricted severity the congenial privilege of oppression. Churches and monasteries were confiscated or destroyed under pretext of their construction since the Conquest, acts of encroachment which, although in contravention of the stipulations of Musa, had been tacitly ignored for centuries. Taxes far in excess of those prescribed by Mussulman law were imposed on the Christian tributaries. Under the most frivolous accusations their property was seized. Every indignity which popular envy or religious hatred could contrive was inflicted upon them. Their endurance exhausted, the Mozarabes of Granada, who, through the medium of Jewish merchants, had long held secret communication with their Castilian brethren, an intercourse which had suggested and promoted many a predatory expedition, now began to meditate permanent freedom from conditions scarcely less intolerable than those of servitude. The serious difficulties in which the Almoravide empire was involved; the contemptuous indifference of its ruler to the complaints of his subjects; the succession of Almohade victories; the withdrawal to Africa of the flower of the Andalusian troops for the defence of Morocco; the advance of the Castilian outposts, in the face of whose encroachments the frontier was continually receding; the reconquest of Saragossa, the last important Moslem bulwark in the North, all encouraged the hope that the Christian domination and the Christian faith might now be easily re-established from the Pyrenees to the Mediterranean. Excited by ill-timed dreams of liberty, the Mozarabes brought to bear every resource of solicitation and argument to tempt an invasion by the Christian princes. They despatched secret envoys to the court of Castile. They sent to Alfonso I., King of Aragon, topographical descriptions of the country, enumerations of its armies, information of the locations of its magazines and of the relative position and respective strength of its fortresses, its castles, and its arsenals. They promised their services as guides and pioneers. They pledged the support of the Christian tributaries of Granada, who, through the favor they had enjoyed under Hebrew ministers, exceeded in numbers and wealth those of any other province of the empire. To assurances of success, the Mozarabes enlarged upon the attractions which characterized the most fertile and beautiful valley in Andalusia. It was not strange that the cupidity of the Aragonese cavaliers should have been excited by such a picture, or their sovereign tempted by a prospect so flattering to his ambition. An expedition was hastily organized, and at the head of twelve thousand cavalry Alfonso entered the country of the enemy. But the enterprise which promised such magnificent results terminated in inaction, which was even more discreditable than defeat. The Mozarabes, faithful to their engagements, joined the invader in multitudes. They conducted his forces by unfrequented paths through the perilous defiles of the mountains. They furnished their allies with money, provisions, horses, and beasts of burden. Forty thousand volunteers swelled the ranks of the Aragonese army. But for some inexplicable reason this great force accomplished nothing. The King, whose resolution seemed to have failed him before the bold provincials of Granada, retired discomfited from the walls of Valencia, Xucar, Denia. The citizens of Baeza, whose city was unprovided with defences, repulsed with severe loss the formidable chivalry of the North, fighting under the eye of a sovereign accustomed from boyhood to the perils and the stratagems of war. The time lost by the Christians, who seemed incapable of appreciating the advantages of surprise and attack, was diligently improved by their adversaries. Temim, the brother of the Sultan and the governor of Granada, collected reinforcements from every district of the Peninsula held by the Almoravides. The troops which had been sent to Africa were recalled. The fortifications of the capital, which at that time were far from possessing the finished and impregnable character subsequently imparted to them by the military genius and profuse expenditures of the Alhamares, were improved and perfected as far as time and circumstances would permit. The Mozarabes were placed under rigorous espionage. The most obnoxious were imprisoned. Others were expelled from the city. A large force was encamped on the slopes of the Sierra Nevada, but the proximity of the Christians, whose outposts could be distinctly seen from the battlements of the citadel, and the presence of thousands of secret and implacable enemies, raised the most gloomy apprehensions in the minds of the Moslems. In hourly expectation of an assault, crowds assembled in the mosques, where the imams offered the supplications prescribed by the Koran for seasons of extremity. Although the numbers of the Christian army reached fifty thousand, the great majority of which was composed of Mozarabe rebels, not ignorant of warfare and nerved to despair by the remembrance of recent persecution and the hopelessness of future immunity, it remained idly in its intrenchments. Familiarity with the enemy gradually removed from the minds of the Moors the fears which had been excited by overwhelming odds. The flying Arab cavalry swept the plain of subsistence and forage. Small parties of Christians were cut off. The rainy season arrived; the streams overflowed; the dry ravines became impassable torrents, and disease and want began to invade the hostile camp. Then Alfonso determined to retreat. One way alone was open, for the mountains which separated him from his kingdom were already white with snow, and the active Moslems, anticipating a favorable turn of affairs, had long since occupied the passes in his rear. Abandoning his allies, who had sacrificed honor, allegiance, and liberty in obedience to his summons, the King of Aragon marched southward. Threading the perilous defiles of the Alpujarras, the Christians emerged at length upon the tropical coast of Velez-Malaga. The cavaliers of the inhospitable North were enchanted with the delightful prospect presented by the plantations of cotton and sugar, the groves of oranges and palms, and the profusion of odoriferous shrubs and flowers whose blossoms filled the air with their fragrance. But the pleasures of this paradise could not be long enjoyed by the invaders. Behind them the entire country was in arms. All the forces available for that purpose had been collected throughout the Moslem dominions to intercept their retreat. It was certain death for a straggler to venture beyond the limits of the camp. Provisions could be obtained with the greatest difficulty, owing to the fears of the Mozarabes and the vigilance of the enemy. To add to the embarrassment of the King, his following had been increased by the undesirable presence of a great number of non-combatants, who consumed the supplies while hampering the movements and diminishing the security of the army. Ten thousand Mozarabes, many of whom were accompanied by their families, preferring the doubtful issue of a military campaign and the hardships of a long and tedious march to the certain severities of Moorish vengeance, impeded the march of the Christians. It was hardly consistent with the dictates of humanity to desert these refugees, connected with his race by the double ties of blood and religion; and Alfonso was forced, much against his will, to tolerate their presence and assure them of his protection. After a few days’ sojourn at Velez-Malaga, the army began its homeward march through the mountains of Guadix. From that moment until the boundary of Aragon was reached, its progress was marked by incessant battle. The country swarmed with Moorish horsemen. The camp was repeatedly stormed. The noonday halt, the passage of a stream, the approach to a mountain defile, was certain to provoke a bloody encounter. Hundreds of exhausted women and children, unable to bear the fatigue of the march, were, with the wounded, daily abandoned to the rage of a vindictive enemy. When Alfonso entered his capital, it would have been difficult to recognize in his emaciated and dejected followers, whose ragged garments and battered armor bore evidence of many a hotly contested skirmish, the splendid array of knights which almost a year before had with exultant confidence set forth, as upon a holiday excursion, to capture the city of Granada. No enterprise in the wars of the Peninsula was inaugurated under more brilliant auspices and was more unproductive of results. The indecision with which its operations were conducted was itself a precursor of disaster. The valor of the Aragonese chivalry was expended in a series of fruitless and inglorious contests with Andalusian mountaineers. The accomplishment of the main object of the expedition was never seriously attempted. No victory contributed its lustre to the waning reputation of the Christians. Not a foot of territory had been added to the realms of the invader. No spoil consoled him for the loss of glory, no prisoners swelled his train. Cities unprotected by fortifications had successfully resisted the assaults of his bravest soldiers. No substantial benefit could be derived from indecisive engagements, protracted sieges, difficult marches through a hostile country, forays unrewarded with either captives or plunder. It was true that the Moorish states of Andalusia had been traversed from end to end; that a portion of their territory had been desolated; that the emblem of Christian faith had been displayed, for the second time since the rout of the Guadalete, on the shores of the Mediterranean. These, however, were but evidences of a barren triumph. The vulnerability of the Moslem empire, since the fall of the khalifate, had been repeatedly demonstrated. Predatory expeditions undertaken without the prestige of royalty had often inflicted far more damage on the enemy than that which had accompanied an invasion by picked troops of the Aragonese kingdom. The only real advantage remained with the Moslems of Granada, who were made acquainted with the disaffection of their Mozarabe subjects, and were enabled to provide against future outbreaks by the permanent suppression and removal of a treacherous population, which had long been a menace to public security. The Mozarabes expiated by poverty and chains, by exile and death, their ill-timed effort to escape the vexations of Moslem rule. Their lands were forcibly occupied by their Arab neighbors. Their effects were seized and sold at auction. Hundreds expired amidst the noxious vapors of subterranean dungeons. Such as had openly joined the Christian army were, with their families, condemned to slavery, and were purchased by Jewish traders to be again disposed of in the markets of Asia. The majority of the others, by order of the Sultan, were banished to Africa, where, in the vicinity of Mequinez and Salé, many of them eventually perished by disease and famine. After the lapse of eleven years a final deportation of these troublesome subjects, who seem to have given renewed cause for offence, was effected; and the kingdom of Granada, which formerly possessed the largest number of tributary Christians in the empire, was now almost entirely deprived of this element of its population. The places of the exiles were supplied by African colonists, whose modern descendants, in their swarthy complexions, their curling locks, and their general mental characteristics, have preserved unmistakable tokens of their Mauritanian ancestry.

In the midst of his foreign and domestic tribulations, the death of Temim, the Viceroy of Spain, brought fresh perplexity and sorrow to the heart of Ali. A worthy successor of that able warrior was found, however, in Tashfin, the promising heir of the Almoravide throne. The youth of that prince proved rather an inducement than an objection to his appointment to a responsible command. He gained several victories over the Christians, ravaged the valley of the Tagus as far as the gates of Toledo, and in a few short campaigns added to the possessions of his father more than thirty fortresses and castles. Aragon, long involved in hostilities with Castile, had recently obtained an important accession of territory and power. Saif-al-Daulat, the son of the last Emir of Saragossa, unable to hold the remaining cities of his principality, harassed by Christian and Moslem alike, surrendered them to Alfonso. The latter, desiring communication with the South,--still closed by Moslem occupation,--pushed his advance along the valley of the Ebro. Mequinenza was taken after a short resistance and its garrison massacred. Then the Christian army invested Fraga. This fortress, situated on a lofty and isolated mountain, was considered one of the most impregnable places in the Peninsula, and, commanding the navigation of the Ebro, was the key of Southern Aragon. The Moors, recognizing its value, had removed all persons unable to bear arms; had provided its magazines with provisions sufficient for a long siege, and had manned its fortifications with a force of several thousand veterans, who, warned by the fate of their brethren at Mequinenza, were nerved to an obstinate defence. The siege was signalized by a series of desperate encounters, in which both parties utilized every resource of military stratagem and personal prowess. At the first appearance of the Christians before the principal bulwark of the now contracted Mussulman frontier, a general alarm had been sounded in all the cities of Spain and Africa. The Emir, relieved for the time from apprehensions of the Almohades, despatched a powerful army for the relief of Fraga. With its ranks largely reinforced by Andalusian levies, the Berber host, whose supplies were transported upon hundreds of camels, advanced rapidly along the Ebro until it came in sight of the besiegers’ camp. Contrary to custom, but with a design whose wisdom soon became fatally apparent, the convoy with the baggage preceded the main body on the march. The soldiers of Alfonso, presuming that the camels were loaded with provisions for the garrison, and deceived by the feeble escort which protected them, rushed forward in tumultuous disorder and attacked the guard. The latter retreated, and the Christians, unwarily drawn into the mountain ravines, were surrounded. Almost helpless in their confined situation, with enemies swarming on every side and the air darkened with clouds of missiles, their army was soon annihilated. The situation, which forbade alike successful defence or orderly retreat; the bewildering sensations produced by the unexpected apparition of myriads of ferocious warriors; the repeated charges which by sheer force of numbers overpowered at once the foremost ranks of the Aragonese; the countless stones and arrows which poured down from crag and hillside, soon decided the bloody and unequal contest. Scarcely an hour elapsed before the Christians succumbed to the superior numbers and equal valor of their foes. One after another the bravest knights of Aragon, together with the flower of the French and English chivalry, whom crusading ambition and the love of adventure had allured to the standard of Alfonso, were killed while protecting their king and their commanders. With them were not a few of the highest dignitaries of the church, who, exchanging the mitre for the helmet and the crosier for the sword, had been accustomed, since the Visigothic domination, to share the fortunes of the most arduous campaigns, and to unite in the field and in the camp the duties of their peaceful profession with the stern and merciless demands of war. These martial prelates nobly sustained upon this occasion the reputation for courage which had for centuries distinguished their order above that of any other country in Europe. The bishops of Rosas, of Jaca, and of Urgel fell side by side, sword in hand. The King, supported by fifty devoted followers, resisted with desperate courage and hopeless firmness the assaults of the Moslems, exasperated by the valor of a handful of determined men. His fate, like that of Roderick the Goth, is unknown. The ecclesiastical legends of the time have celebrated, as the most glorious events of his life, his abandonment of the throne and his retirement to the cloisters of a monastery in expiation of the sins for which his defeat was assumed to be a token of divine displeasure. But the monkish annals of the Middle Ages are notoriously unreliable; the minds of their authors were clouded with ignorance and warped by prejudice; the critical faculty, so indispensable to the correctness of historical narration, was unfamiliar to them; and, to accomplish the degradation of an enemy or the exaltation of a friend, they were capable of the most disreputable inventions and the most extravagant perversions of the truth.

From the character and the life of Alfonso, it is probable that he perished with his attendants, and that his body, stripped and unrecognized, was confounded with the thousands of other corpses which encumbered the field of battle. The King of Aragon, who had won the proud appellation of El Batallador, was not the man to retire in the face of the enemy, even had it been possible. Still less would he have been willing to surrender, that the captivity of the most formidable of Christian champions should contribute to the glory of a Moslem triumph. The temper of the age was pre-eminently favorable to the exercise of imposture; an escape, procured through the miraculous intervention of saints and angels, was perfectly congenial with the superstitious ideas of the masses; and the selection of a religious house as a place of refuge and voluntary penance by an humiliated and contrite monarch could not fail to enhance the importance and extend the influence of the ecclesiastical order, already becoming intolerable for its arrogance and power. But, whatever may have been the ultimate fate of Alfonso, it is certain that his disappearance dates from the battle of Fraga. The most exhaustive historical research has failed to establish his existence subsequent to that melancholy and eventful day. His loss was a great but not an irreparable misfortune to the cause of the Reconquest. Although at the time of his death he was the most conspicuous figure in the Christian armies, others were soon found capable of prosecuting the work he had so gallantly begun, and of carrying to a successful issue the fierce and relentless crusade which only ended under the walls of the Alhambra.

As in former ages the progress of the Moslems was retarded and the stability of their empire endangered and finally undermined by intestine quarrels, so now, on the other hand, the jealousies and contentions of the rival kingdoms of Castile and Aragon were destined to prolong for centuries their struggle for national and religious supremacy. The intrigues of hostile chieftains, the greed and ambition of the clergy, the passions of dissolute and unprincipled women, the unnatural aversion of two nations identical in origin, proud of the same traditions, professing the same theological dogmas; the prejudices of the fanatical masses, absolutely controlled by a despotic and ignorant priesthood, were all-important factors in determining the policy of the as yet unorganized Christian states of the Peninsula. The mutual hostility of the kingdoms subsequently united under Ferdinand and Isabella insured the continuance of Moorish dominion far more effectually than the levying of contributions, the forming of alliances, the enlistment of armies. Bodies of Moslem mercenaries served alternately with the troops of both contending parties, and those who fought side by side to-day might meet as enemies to-morrow. Not infrequently impoverished and unscrupulous vassals of the Christian monarchs were induced to revolt before a projected invasion by the judicious employment of Moorish gold. Thus arrayed against each other, with treachery in their camps and foes in their rear, the Spanish princes were constantly hampered in the execution of their plans of conquest. Other causes contributed to their want of success. The Christian generals could often win, but were seldom disposed to improve a victory. Feudal independence, now first interposed as a disturbing force, was implacably hostile to discipline; the vassal obeyed his suzerain; but the noble whose origin was often as illustrious as that of his king was only too ready to question, or even to defy, the regal authority. The incapacity to appreciate the resultant advantages of military success was also a characteristic of the Moors. A great battle usually ended a campaign. But the enemy was rarely pursued beyond the field; his camp was overrun by a disorganized mob in search of plunder; his baggage was ransacked; his seraglio appropriated; his wounded massacred. The dispersed remnants of his army were afforded abundant time to reorganize and to again become formidable. The ability of the Moslems to profit by the discomfiture of an adversary disappeared with the great soldier Al-Mansur. Generations were to elapse before the Spanish commanders, recognizing untiring energy as an indispensable requisite of permanent success, were enabled to plant their banners on the towers of Cordova and Seville. In no great contest described in history were such fierce battles fought, such bodies of men dispersed, such losses of life sustained, and such paltry results accomplished. On more than one occasion a sovereign, the moral effect of whose capture would have been almost equivalent to a great victory, was suffered to escape from the very hands of the enemy. In a few weeks a force which had been apparently destroyed confronted the victor as defiantly as ever. The defenceless condition of the Moslem states had been thoroughly established. Their territory had been penetrated in every direction by squadrons of Christian cavalry, whose numbers, when compared with the inhabitants of the provinces they despoiled, were insignificant. The invaders dispersed with ease large bodies of the effeminate Andalusian horsemen. They encamped with impunity in the vicinity of populous cities. But these expeditions accomplished but little more than the destruction of a few harvests and the burning of a few villages. The campaigns on both sides were ordinarily distinguished by fraternal discord, military incapacity, and fatal indecision.

The correctness of these observations may be established by recurring to the consequences of the battle of Fraga. The rout of the Christians and the death of their king would certainly seem to have demanded a vigorous prosecution of hostilities by the victors before the popular demoralization resulting from such a catastrophe subsided. But nothing of the kind took place. The few survivors of the defeat which had wrecked the hopes of a nation spread dismay through the realms of the Christians. In Aragon, part of whose territory had recently been ceded by a degenerate prince to his hereditary enemies, and none of which was in sympathy with the usurpation of their detested masters, the people expected, with eager but fallacious hopes, the appearance of the deliverer. The merchants lounged idly in their shops. The peasantry, with sullen patience, submitted to the extortions of the Jewish farmers of the revenue. Saragossa was still, in all but name and government, a Moslem city. The muezzin still announced from her minarets the hour of prayer. The imam still read the Koran from the pulpits of her mosques. Her occupation by the Aragonese had only served to intensify the hatred entertained by her citizens against those who had profited by their betrayal. The noble recalled with mingled sorrow and exultation the military fame and intellectual pursuits of the royal House of Ibn-Hud; the husbandman viewed with unconcealed resentment the encroachments of the Church and the Crown upon his small but valuable inheritance. The valley of the Ebro still possessed many fortresses defended by natural impediments and Moslem valor. All these considerations invited the intervention of the victors, but the Moorish commander, satisfied with the barren laurels acquired at Fraga, neglected an opportunity which might have restored to the Almoravide Sultan one of the most important provinces of his empire. For several years the frontier was wasted by implacable partisan warfare; the Moslems carried into slavery the populations of entire communities; the Christians, harassed by the enemy and encumbered with their prisoners, frequently put these defenceless victims of their hostility to the sword; in the heat of battle quarter was neither asked nor given, and the struggle assumed more than ever the character of a war of extermination. The country devastated by these incessant and destructive inroads never recovered its prosperity. The once beautiful regions of the Ebro and the Pisuerga now present to the eye the sombre and monotonous aspect of a desert, and portions of the valley of the Guadalquivir, which under Moorish rule were clothed with extensive orchards and luxuriant harvests, have lapsed into primeval desolation. The ruthlessness with which these wars were prosecuted bears ample testimony to the savage inhumanity of that age. Considerations of mercy seldom influenced the conduct of the victor. Engagements contracted under circumstances of peculiar solemnity were violated without provocation and without excuse. In the perpetration of these enormities the Christians, encouraged and absolved by their spiritual advisers, far surpassed their antagonists. No attention was paid to the pitiful appeals of enemies stricken in the heat of battle. The heads of rebellious princes were fixed on the battlements of cities; their limbs, embalmed with campher, were exhibited as trophies in the palace of the conqueror. When a place was taken by storm, neither age, nor sex, nor infirmity were regarded by the infuriated assailants. The discovery of hidden gold by the application of torture was a favorite amusement of the Christian soldiery. If the number of captives became inconveniently large, the least valuable were butchered. The licentious passions of the Castilians were exercised without restraint upon the weak and the defenceless. Women were violated before the eyes of their husbands and fathers. The mansions of Christian nobles rivalled in their treasures of Moorish beauty the harems of the most voluptuous Andalusian princes. In the alluring diversions of sensuality, unsanctioned by law and prohibited by religion, the dignitaries of the Church were as ever pre-eminently conspicuous; and their lovely concubines, attired with a magnificence only to be procured by the use of ecclesiastical wealth, appeared at court with their lords, equally careless of unfavorable comment or of public scandal.

In Africa the movements of Abd-al-Mumen, who had been the general of the Almohades and was now their sovereign, began to excite the alarm of Ali. The successor of the Mahdi began his reign with an expedition whose destructive course extended to the city of Morocco. Tashfin, the ablest of the Almoravide captains, was recalled from Spain; but, despite his reputation and the skilful disposition of his forces, the battalions of Ali, dominated by a craven and superstitious fear, instinctively recoiled from the presence of the enemy. All the experience and resolution of the youthful prince, who had redeemed the Moslem cause in the Peninsula, were insufficient to counteract the evil influence emanating from religious fraud, which, by the force of a distempered imagination, could transform a bold and courageous people into a race of poltroons and slaves. His continual reverses preyed upon the mind of Ali, and his moments were distracted by the signs of the imminent and apparently inevitable collapse of his power. The memory of his early grandeur offered a distressing contrast to the misfortunes of his declining years; and, overcome with mortification and sorrow, he passed from life, bequeathing to his son Tashfin a disheartened army, an exhausted treasury, and a royal inheritance of diminished jurisdiction and doubtful value.

The ill-fortune of Tashfin followed him upon the throne. Defeated by Abd-al-Mumen, he collected all his resources for a supreme and final effort. Such of the Desert tribes as had held aloof from the Mahdi were enlisted. Every available soldier in Africa was called to arms. The garrisons of Andalusia were almost denuded of troops. With the Moorish squadrons of Spain came also a body of four thousand Mozarabes, who, accustomed to long service under Moslem standards, had almost forgotten their ancestry, their traditions, and their faith. These auxiliaries, amenable to discipline and experienced in border warfare, were far more formidable than their scanty numbers would denote.

On the plains of Tlemcen the two armies whose valor was to decide the fate of an empire faced each other. The Almoravides far outnumbered their foes, but the mystic spell of superstition more than compensated for numerical superiority; the soldiers of Tashfin were terrified by imaginary apparitions and supernatural voices, and after a brief but sanguinary contest Abd-al-Mumen remained master of the field. Tashfin was soon afterwards killed in the vicinity of Oran by a fall from a precipice, and with his death vanished the last hope of the Almoravide monarchy.

During the year 1145 a famous landmark of the Mediterranean, of unknown antiquity, but most probably of Phœnician origin, was destroyed. Near the city of Cadiz, and built in the waters of the bay, had long stood a structure composed of a series of columns, rising above each other to the height of one hundred and eighty feet and surmounted by a colossal statue of bronze. The latter represented a man with his right arm extended towards the Strait of Gibraltar and grasping in his hand a key. The entire statue was heavily plated with gold, and was a conspicuous object for a distance of many leagues. Its origin was not less mysterious than the reason for its preservation for nearly four centuries and a half after the Moslem conquest. The well-known iconoclastic propensities of the followers of Mohammed were indulged with every opportunity and against every symbol of idolatrous worship. There was probably no souvenir of Pagan antiquity in Africa or Spain so prominent and so well known as the effigy which, for a period unrecorded even by tradition, indicated to the mariner the gateway of the Mediterranean. The Romans and the Goths, confounding it with the two historic promontories of Europe and Africa, called the imposing structure that supported it the Pillars of Hercules. But it certainly had no connection with that divinity. His temple stood some miles away upon an island, and it was the distinctive peculiarity of his worship among the Phœnicians that he was never represented under a physical form. To the Arabs the statue was known as “The Idol of Cadiz.” A singular fatality had preserved it from the zeal and fury of early sectaries of Islam. It had, no doubt, often awakened the pious horror of devout pilgrims on their way to the shrine of the western Mecca. It had stimulated the curiosity of the antiquary during the scientific period of the khalifate. It had pointed the way to many an invading squadron. It had witnessed the success or the failure of many revolutions. The truculent Norman pirates had viewed its gigantic dimensions with superstitious terror. In the sagas of Scandinavia is preserved the tradition that St. Olaf and his freebooters were, during the eleventh century, deterred from further prosecution of their ravages on the coast of the Peninsula by a vision which its presence inspired. Its immunity from the effects of fanaticism is not less remarkable than its long exemption from the violence of rapacious marauders. A great treasure was said to be concealed beneath the foundations of the tower. It was also the general belief--not confined to the Peninsula, but prevalent throughout Europe--that this famous statue was of solid gold. Its brilliancy, which had remained untarnished by exposure for so many centuries, tended to confirm, if not to absolutely establish, this opinion.

At last, in the twelfth century, the Admiral Ibn-Mamun, having revolted against the Almoravides, caused the statue to be overthrown and broken to pieces. The material was then discovered to be bronze, but the gold with which it was covered brought twelve thousand dinars, a sum now equal to a hundred and ninety-two thousand dollars.

Relieved of all apprehensions from his most dangerous adversary, Abd-al-Mumen attacked and captured in succession the great cities of Africa. Fez offered a desperate resistance, but was taken by damming the river by which it was traversed, until the pent-up waters, bursting their bounds, swept away a large portion of the walls. Mequinez, Aghmat, Salé capitulated. Then the siege of Morocco was begun. To convince the inhabitants of his inflexible purpose, the Almohade general caused a permanent encampment, which resembled, in the regular and substantial character of its edifices, a handsome and well-built city, to be constructed before its walls. The enterprise was prosecuted with unusual pertinacity and vigor. In a sally a large detachment of the Almoravides was decoyed into an ambuscade and cut to pieces, and, with numbers sensibly reduced by this catastrophe, the garrison confined itself for the future to repelling the scaling parties of the enemy. The complete investment of the city was soon followed by famine. The dead lay everywhere in ghastly heaps. The living drew lots to decide who should be sacrificed to provide a horrible repast for his perishing companions. Such was the awful mortality that two hundred thousand persons died of starvation and disease. Aware of the inevitable consequences of surrendering to barbarians without faith or mercy, the garrison contended bravely against hope and fortune. Finally, some Mozarabe soldiers entered into communication with Abd-al-Mumen, and it was agreed that a gate should be opened during the disorder attending a general attack. At daybreak the Almohades, eager for revenge and booty, swarmed into the city. The scimetar and the lance completed the work which famine had not had time to finish. Seventy thousand defenceless persons were massacred. Even this frightful sacrifice did not satiate the besiegers’ desire for blood. For three days such scenes were enacted as could only be tolerated among men insensible to motives of humanity and ignorant of the laws of war. Abd-al-Mumen decapitated with his own hand Abu-Ishak, the son and successor of Tashfin. The command then went forth that not one of the hated sect should be spared. Great numbers of women and children were slaughtered by the savage conquerors and the survivors sold into slavery. Every mosque was levelled with the ground as the only way to purify the houses of God from the abominations of the heretical Almoravides. Preparations were immediately made to erect upon their sites others more extensive and magnificent, and Abd-al-Mumen, who all the while had remained outside the gates, marched away to other scenes of conquest.

A century had elapsed since Abdallah-Ibn-Jahsim had announced to the tribesmen of Lamtounah his mission as the apostle of political integrity and religious reformation. Based upon his teachings, and supported by his military genius and the prowess of his followers, a mighty empire had arisen. With incredible rapidity it had combined in apparently indissoluble union contending nationalities, hostile dogmas, antagonistic temporal interests. It had subjugated a great part of the continent of Africa. It had reconciled the discordant social and political elements which for generations had disturbed the peace and diminished the power of the Moslem states of Spain. It had checked the progress of Christian conquest. By its sweeping victories it had revived the memory of the splendid achievements of the Western Khalifate. The largest armies that had ever trodden the soil of the Peninsula had marched under its banners. Its chiefs were, without exception, men of signal ability. Some, it is true, were destitute of experience in the art of government, but endowed with rare executive talents; others were warriors of established renown; all had exhibited in the exalted post to which they had been called by fortune the qualities of great generals, diplomatists, legislators. The genius of the last of that princely race, had his designs not been frustrated by the Almohade revolution, promised the eventual restoration of Moorish rule over much, if not all, of the territory included in the kingdoms of Aragon and Castile. The rise and progress of no dynasty to boundless power had been so rapid; the decline of none had been more decided or its extinction more destructive and fatal. Mohammedan Spain, still the most civilized and polished of countries, whose court had once dictated the policy of Western Europe; whose alliance had been assiduously courted by Christian kings and emperors; whose armies marched each year to victory; whose fleets monopolized the trade of the seas; whose capital was the literary centre of the world, had been degraded to a dependency of the most ignorant, the most superstitious, the most brutal of nations. The hazardous experiment of establishing a peaceable union between such incongruous and inimical populations must have resulted in failure. Still less could such an undertaking have succeeded when attempted by force. The ethnical elements of Spain and Africa could never have coalesced into a single people. Their enmity was irreconcilable. Their tastes were dissimilar. The Hispano-Arab was a scholar, a philosopher, a gentleman. In spite of the evils which afflicted his country, his colleges and academies were still largely attended by the ambitious youth of distant, often of hostile, nations. He still had access to the fragmentary remains of the great libraries of the khalifs. The architectural monuments of his ancestors still graced, in all their splendor and beauty, the esplanades and thoroughfares of his capitals. Pilgrims still admired with astonishment and rapture the most magnificent temple of Islam. The sacred volume ascribed to the martyred Othman, enshrined in its embossed and jewel-studded casket, still received, amidst the lavish sculpture and sparkling enamels of the Mihrab, the reverential homage of the Faithful. The diminished but not unimportant commerce of his seaports; the manufacturing establishments, whose products were largely exported to foreign countries; the contracted but marvellously fertile area of his agricultural territory, daily reminded the Spanish Moslem of the wisdom and the enterprise developed by the subjects of that glorious empire whose institutions, whose traditions, whose refined tastes, whose intellectual pre-eminence he had inherited.

Far different was it with the conqueror who had appropriated and abused the inestimable remains of all this greatness. From first to last his movements seemed to have been inspired by the genius of disorganization and ruin. The noble attributes of piety and magnanimity were absolutely foreign to his nature. He spared no foe. He forgave no injury. The essential doctrines of the religion he nominally professed were in reality unknown to him. He was wholly ignorant of letters. In the gratification of his savage passions the shedding of blood took precedence of the grovelling instinct of avarice or the more gentle allurements of licentious pleasures. His stolid nature could not appreciate the charms of art, the benefits of science, the delights and the consolations of literature, the advantages of philosophy. All that did not contribute to sensual enjoyment he turned from with disdain. Descended from a race of brigands, who had from time immemorial exercised on the caravans of the Desert the stratagems and the violence of their nefarious calling, he considered the menial and sedentary occupations of agricultural and manufacturing industry as only fit for the hireling and the slave. Ever accustomed to individual freedom, he obeyed only the orders of his sheik, who owed his promotion to the suffrage of the tribe, and who was often elected or deposed with equal haste and facility. The monarch was frequently as unlettered as his meanest subject. Yusuf could neither read nor write, and understood but imperfectly the copious and polished idiom spoken in many provinces of his dominions. Ali was less intelligent than many a youth in the primary schools of Cordova. This wide-spread and deplorable contempt for learning virtually placed the power of the state in the hands of a class least qualified to wield it; and the intrigues and exactions of the Mohammedan clergy, supplemented with African barbarism and rapacity, contributed more than domestic convulsions or Christian valor to finally subvert the unstable but still majestic fabric of the Saracen power.

The Moslem factions of the Peninsula joined in precarious union under the sceptre of the Almoravides beheld with dismal forebodings the successive and crushing misfortunes which preceded the extinction of that dynasty. Neither religious accord nor political necessity would have reconciled them to the domination of a race between whose members and themselves there existed an irreconcilable antipathy. But on many points of theological controversy the liberal views of the most learned Moorish doctors shocked the strict disciplinarians of Islam. These accomplished polemical scholars had imbibed in the Universities of Seville and Cordova ideas highly offensive to the severely orthodox; they had indulged their wit at the expense of hypocrisy and ignorance in the intellectual atmosphere of the court, and the vengeance of those who were recently the objects of their satire had now descended with redoubled force upon the thoughtless aggressors. All books except the Koran and the Sunnah fell under the royal displeasure. The study of philosophy, although prohibited in the schools, was, as is usual under such circumstances, diligently pursued in secret. The intellectual habits of centuries were not to be abolished by an imperial edict, and the reprobation of a band of hypocrites and zealots who preached self-denial and abstemiousness, and were notoriously guilty of the grossest offences against morality, was unable to entirely suppress the accumulation and the diffusion of knowledge. No country in Europe, however, was more exclusively and disastrously controlled by ecclesiastical influence than was Moorish Spain under the rule of the Almoravides.

Aside from theological considerations, as has been previously stated, universal dissatisfaction with the dominant race existed. The Africans were regarded as foreigners, invaders, oppressors. They had, even in their moments of leisure, contributed nothing to the material wealth of the country. They were unacquainted with the simplest principles of engineering or the adaptation of the mechanical arts to the ordinary concerns of life. No structure worthy of notice had risen under their auspices. Their native ferocity remained unmitigated in the midst of the humanizing influences of civilization. They discouraged manual labor and despised the occupations by which that labor was employed and maintained. Thus harassed by theological intolerance and barbarian tyranny, every sect and party in the Peninsula, except the one in power, received with secret exultation intelligence of the serious disasters to the Almoravide cause. Public feeling was already aroused to a point which almost defied restraint, when news arrived of the defeat and death of Tashfin, whose well-known abilities and courage had heretofore alone prevented a revolt. It was then that the long suppressed and furious passions of an outraged people found expression. In every Moslem community the mob rose against their African tyrants. Ibn-Gamia, the lieutenant of Tashfin, fled to the Balearic Isles. Complete anarchy prevailed. Governors of provinces and commanders of fortresses aspired to independence. Each city became the capital of a miniature kingdom, each castle the seat of a principality. Forgetting the imminent peril in which they stood, environed as they were by powerful enemies, these petty sovereigns immediately turned against each other. Civil war of the most sanguinary and vindictive character was inaugurated. Cordova deposed her governor, installed another, and, after eight days, recalled the first to power. At Granada the Almoravide garrison was besieged for months in the citadel. In some provinces the inconstant temper of the multitude, which selected and murdered their rulers with equal alacrity, made the promotion to supreme authority, usually so coveted by ambitious men, a distinction of the most doubtful and invidious character. The Kadi of Cordova, whose office retained to a considerable extent the dignity and importance with which it was invested under the khalifs as the first judicial employment in the empire, was assassinated while at prayer in the mosque. The appearance of an African in the streets of any Andalusian city immediately provoked a riot. The obligations of hospitality were forgotten in the gratification of vengeance. Obnoxious ministers were poisoned amidst the festivities of the banquet. Military officers whose loyalty interposed obstacles to the ambition of obscure and unprincipled adventurers were murdered while asleep. The dangerous aid of the Christian princes, only too willing to contribute to the mutual embarrassment and enmity of their Mussulman neighbors, was invoked. Ibn-Gamia had succeeded in organizing a considerable party of adherents, and had obtained from Alfonso VII., King of Castile, a body of troops on condition of the acknowledgment of the latter as suzerain. Baeza was the first place to submit to Ibn-Gamia, and its surrender was immediately followed by the siege of Cordova. In this singular warfare, Moslems and Christians, although their efforts were directed against a common enemy, fought and encamped apart, serving independently under their respective commanders. The Castilians, conscious of their power, treated their allies with undisguised contempt, and haughtily ascribed to Christian valor alone the achievement of every successful enterprise. The venerable capital, incapable of prolonged resistance, soon opened its gates to the besiegers. The entry of the Christians was rendered memorable by the commission of a sacrilege in comparison with which the profanations of former conquerors were trivial. The Great Mosque of Abd-al-Rahman, one of the holy places of Islam, which since its foundation had never been profaned by the presence of an infidel, was invaded by the rude Castilian soldiery. They rode through its court, fragrant with the odors of innumerable orange blossoms. They tethered their war-horses in its arcades. They bathed in the basins whose waters had hitherto been sacred to the ablutions of the Moslem ceremonial. Inside the edifice raised by the tribute of Christian cities and the spoils of a hundred victorious campaigns, they sauntered through the colonnades and gazed with wonder upon the Mihrab blazing with all the gorgeous magnificence of the East. The religious sentiments and prejudices of their allies received no consideration at the hands of these scoffing mercenaries. Despite the remonstrances of the Moslems, they desecrated the precincts of the sanctuary. Some mounted the pulpit and derided with indecent mockery the postures and genuflexions of the Mussulman worship. Their eyes glared with unrestrained cupidity upon the casket of sandal-wood and ebony enriched with gems which contained the Koran of Othman. With flippant and sneering comments they examined that volume, venerated by the Moslems of every age and nation with all the superstitious reverence of idolatry. They removed it from its receptacle, turned over its leaves, and gazed with incredulity and contempt on the mysterious stains which tradition and faith attributed to the blood of the murdered Khalif. In their intercourse with the citizens their overbearing demeanor and insatiable rapacity caused the encroachments of Moslem tyranny to be almost forgotten. Their leaders, assuming all the credit of a conquest in which they had figured in a subordinate capacity, demanded that Cordova be added to the realms of Castile. This proposition, repugnant to every sense of justice, was promptly rejected by the Moslems. A serious altercation followed; the rival captains mutually refused to yield, and a collision seemed imminent, when through the adoption of prudent counsels matters were adjusted by the cession of Baeza, which was immediately occupied by a detachment of Christian troops.

The subjection of Africa by the Almohades had scarcely been effected when Abd-al-Mumen began to take measures for the establishment of his power in the Peninsula. An army of thirty thousand soldiers, commanded by Abu-Amrah-Musa, landed at Algeziras. The march of this formidable army resembled a triumphal progress rather than the cautious movements of a hostile force. The people, with characteristic inconstancy, welcomed the savage invaders as the deliverers of their country. Algeziras, with its ample port and well-provided magazines and arsenals; Tarifa, with its impregnable defences; Xeres, with its wealth of orange groves and vineyards, opened their gates to the enemy. Then Abu-Amrah, flushed with success, pushed on to Seville. On the march his ranks were swelled by numerous accessions from the peasantry, actuated by the prospect of plunder and the hope of retribution. To these undisciplined but serviceable recruits was added a considerable and well-equipped reinforcement from the province of Badajoz. Seville had remained nominally loyal to the Almoravides; but her population was divided by faction, and thousands of citizens cherished in secret implacable resentment against their cruel and avaricious masters. Warning was conveyed to the garrison of the treasonable intentions of the populace, which had promised to deliver the city to the Africans, and it escaped to Carmona before the appearance of the enemy. Seville was no sooner occupied than Malaga, always susceptible to African influence, and whose inhabitants had probably long been cognizant of the projected invasion, voluntarily submitted to the Almohades and added another to their list of bloodless but decisive triumphs.

The memory of the exploits of the Almoravide generals, and the appearance of a new and victorious enemy in the South, had reconciled the quarrels of the Christian states far more effectually than all the concessions of diplomacy or the exhortations and anathemas of the Church. Envoys from the Italian republics of Venice, Pisa, and Genoa had recently visited the Castilian court and represented to the King the important service he could confer upon Christendom by the suppression of the pirates who, from their stronghold at Almeria, threatened the destruction of commerce on the Mediterranean. The depredations of these adventurous rovers carried terror into every part of Southern Europe. Their vessels swept the coast from Bayonne to Constantinople, defied the combined navies of Italy and the Empire of the East, and had already materially reduced the wealth and disturbed the trade of many populous and important cities. It seems extraordinary that under such circumstances application for relief should have been made to the remote kingdom of Castile. It was separated from Almeria by the entire length of the Spanish Peninsula. Vast tracts of barren lands, provinces swarming with a hostile and warlike population, were interposed between its plains and the tropical coast of Andalusia. A formidable enemy had just established himself in the most fertile districts of the South. The port of Malaga, in close proximity to the destination of the expedition, was in his power. It is true that the republics of Italy, united by a common faith and sympathizers in a common cause, had long been allies of the Christian kingdoms of Northern Spain. But something more than hatred of the Moslem and devotion to the interests of the Church must have impelled Alfonso VII. to undertake an enterprise of certain difficulty and of doubtful success. A foe that had vanquished a dynasty whose armies had repeatedly desolated his kingdom and insulted his capital already menaced his borders. It is highly probable that the Pope, influenced by temporal far more than by spiritual considerations, may have proposed or even dictated the terms of this alliance. It was no unusual thing for the Holy Father, whose vow of poverty, like many other moral obligations, gave him little concern, to share in the profits of commerce. The private revenues of His Holiness, often inadequate to the prodigal expenditures required for the pomp and luxury of the Vatican, could easily be increased by mercantile speculations, and the Moorish corsair in his indiscriminate depredations would certainly not respect the property of the highest dignitary of a hostile faith. The character of Eugenius III. gives color to this hypothesis. His court, under the threadbare cloak of asceticism, was shockingly corrupt. The institution of begging friars, the imposition of frequent penances, the observation of fasts, the performance of pilgrimage, could not conceal from the eyes of the least discerning the universal and notorious profligacy which infected every profession and every class of society in Rome. The avarice of the Pope himself was proverbial. Blessings, indulgences, and absolutions, whose prices were regulated by an established tariff, were sold by the clergy, and wealthy or repentant sinners in multitudes availed themselves of the facilities for wickedness or of the immunity from ecclesiastical censure afforded by traffic in this spiritual merchandise. The mercenary and grasping disposition of Eugenius was also subsequently confirmed by his sale of Portugal to Alfonso Henriquez, in flagrant contravention of the rights of the King of Castile. These circumstances serve to explain the unprofitable siege of a distant seaport by a power having no immediate interest in its subjugation, when a vigorous campaign by the united Christians would in all probability have prevented the renewed calamities of African invasion and have materially accelerated the progress of the Reconquest.

The sacred character of an enterprise openly patronized by the Holy See, and directed by some of the greatest princes of Europe, attracted volunteers from every country in Christendom. As usual, the prospect of booty was a much more potent incentive than the punishment of infidels or the propagation of the Faith. Almeria, which, aided by its geographical situation, had had the good fortune to escape the evils of conquest and anarchy that afflicted other Andalusian cities, was still the seat of affluence and power. Under the khalifate it had been the most populous and flourishing emporium of Spain. Civil war, so far from impairing its prosperity, had actually contributed to it. It still retained the manufacturing establishments whose products were exported to the limits of the civilized world. Many of the latter, such as pottery and silk, were unequalled in quality and finish, and could nowhere else be obtained. The proficiency of the artisans of Almeria in their respective avocations was proverbial, and had been acquired by experience and inheritance through many generations. The city exhibited the political phenomenon of a Moslem republic; its affairs were directed by a council presided over by a magistrate who, without openly claiming them, exercised the prerogatives of an absolute ruler. Its naval force could vie in numbers and strength with that of the most formidable commercial state of the Mediterranean. The practice of piracy had been so lucrative that the wealth and population of Almeria had greatly increased, and the ancient walls no longer sufficed to contain the innumerable houses of the citizens and the villas of the aristocracy, which, environed by plantations of tropical trees, extended for miles beyond the fortifications. The citadel was one of the largest and strongest in Europe. While closely connected by blood and sympathy with the nations of Africa, the inhabitants of the city were independent of all factions, recognized the pretensions of no dynasty, and acknowledged the authority of no government save that of their own. A force not unworthy of an Oriental crusade assembled for the conquest of this piratical stronghold. The armies of Castile, of Leon, of Aragon, of Navarre, the Counts of Montpellier and Catalonia, the combined navies of Genoa, Pisa, and Venice, and thousands of soldiers of fortune, serving in bands under their respective commanders, but without a standard and without a country, responded to the crusading appeal. No estimate of the allied host has come down to us, but its numbers were so overwhelming that not a single Moslem prince dared to assist his countrymen; and the Almerians, closely invested, without means of defence and destitute of all hope of relief, after a two months’ blockade surrendered. By the terms of capitulation, safety of their persons was assured; an unusual concession in those times, and one which indicates the introduction of a spirit of good faith and humanity into the hitherto barbarous usages of war. The Italians, by superior dexterity or assurance, obtained the larger share of the spoil; the city itself, the most valuable prize, was allotted to the Count of Barcelona, the proximity of whose dominions afforded the best security for its retention as a Christian possession; and the King of Castile, who had been the soul of the undertaking, and whose followers had been over-reached in the division of booty, was forced to be content with the conscious satisfaction of success and the profuse but empty congratulations of the Holy See. The enterprise achieved, the allied army dispersed with the unceremonious haste characteristic of enlistments under feudal institutions. Deficiency of experience and absence of discipline; impatience of the delay and inaction implied by a lengthy campaign; the want of cohesion exhibited by a force consisting of different nationalities and divided by conflicting interests; apprehension of the storms of winter in an unknown climate, dissipated in a day a force capable of the greatest military exploits.

The thirty thousand Almohades who had occupied, almost without bloodshed, much of the Andalusian territory, and were forced to remain in inactivity behind the walls of the cities which had fallen into their hands, viewed with surprise the vast preparations of the Christians and the insignificant results of their campaign. The numbers of the Africans, insufficient in themselves and distributed among a score of garrisons, were unable to cope with the enemy, and the present embarrassment of Abd-al-Mumen precluded the hope of pecuniary aid or effective reinforcements. A new Mahdi had arisen among the sands of Al-Maghreb. Of plebeian origin and menial employment,--for he earned a livelihood washing garments in the environs of Salé,--without learning or personal attractions, his rude eloquence soon collected around him a numerous body of disciples. The remains of the Almoravide faction, all those who were dissatisfied with the present government, individuals allured by the charm of novelty, thousands of proselytes, sincerely convinced of the mission of the new prophet, repaired to the hostile camp. Before Abd-al-Mumen fully realized his peril his armies had been beaten and scattered, his ablest lieutenants killed, his dominions, acquired with so much difficulty, seized by his rival, and his authority confined to the cities of Fez and Morocco, whose populace, habituated to revolt and disorder, could not be trusted. He was now enabled to appreciate the inconstant and treacherous character of the nations over whom he had established a nominal empire. Fortune, however, proved in the end propitious to the chief of the Almohades; his rival was defeated in a pitched battle and killed, and his fickle subjects returned to their allegiance with the same enthusiasm with which they had so recently renounced it.

In the mean time, after the capture of Almeria, the Christians began again to exert their power in every Moslem province of the Peninsula. The Count of Barcelona, supported by the Italian fleets, invested and took Tortosa, which commanded the mouth of the Ebro. Its submission was followed by the conquest of Lerida, Fraga, and Mequinenza, and the great river of Aragon, now open to the sea, marked for a brief period the gradually contracting boundary of the Moorish possessions of Eastern Spain. The rising monarchy of Portugal, for the first time beginning to assert itself among nations, acquired renewed prestige by the capture of Cintra and Lisbon. The movements of Ibn-Gamia, whose valor and activity still sustained the sinking fortunes of the Almoravide cause, stimulated the Almohades to exertion. Worsted in several encounters, he retired to Cordova, but, unable to maintain his ground, he placed his lieutenant Yahya in command and effected a retreat by night after the Almohades had encamped before the city. Yahya, by a prompt submission, averted the carnage which in these wars inevitably followed a protracted defence, and the ancient metropolis of the khalifate once more submitted to the rule of a foreign master. In the Great Mosque, the scene of so many triumphs and humiliations, which had witnessed the installation of a long succession of Moslem princes, the public exhibition of the trophies of conquest, the murder of magistrates, the tumults of revolution, Abd-al-Mumen was proclaimed Emir of the Mussulmans of Spain. The fierce spirit of the invaders seems to have been restrained by the dangers of the situation, the uncertainty of support, and the activity of the Christians, considerations which rendered leniency towards the vanquished not only politic but necessary. Carmona was soon added to the Almohade conquests and Ibn-Gamia fled to Granada, where he afterwards fell in battle. His partisans then espoused in a body the cause of Alfonso of Castile. With this open defection the condition of the Spanish Moslems became more desperate. Divided among themselves, with half of their best soldiers fighting under the banners of their hereditary foe, apparently abandoned by the prince raised to imperial power in the religious centre of the kingdom, without resources, without prospect of assistance, nothing but the presence of the Almohades preserved the relics of the khalifate from immediate absorption by the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon. Finally, Abd-al-Mumen, having consolidated his empire in Africa, and moved by the entreaties of his Andalusian subjects, who sent a deputation of five hundred citizens to invoke his aid, despatched an army under his son Abu-Said to the Peninsula. The city of Almeria, whose situation, in a strategic point of view, commanded the coast of Africa, was the object of the expedition. The siege having been formed, an ineffectual attempt was made by Alfonso for the relief of the garrison, after which it was abandoned to its fate. The forces of Abd-al-Mumen not being able to blockade the port, it was found impossible to reduce the place by famine, and the strength of the fortifications precluded all hope of taking it by storm. The patience and endurance of the garrison, however, were exhausted by constant alarms and by the indefatigable perseverance of the enemy, and the Moslems, after an exclusion of ten years, regained possession of the most formidable stronghold of Andalusia.

This decisive success was supplemented by other and scarcely less important achievements. The populous city of Niebla, a dependency of Seville, was stormed by Abu-Zacaria, who had been one of the Almohade commanders during the former invasion. Its stubborn resistance provoked the commission of the greatest barbarities in the hour of triumph. No male of mature years survived the carnage of the assault. In compliance with the customs of Berber warfare, the children were destined for the slave market, the women for the seraglio. Such was the unbridled fury of the conqueror that in a single suburb of the ill-fated city eight thousand victims of African savagery paid the last penalty of defeat. The arms of the Almohades were now turned against Granada. That capital, after a short and bloody resistance, was carried by the troops of Abu-Said, and the horrors of Niebla were repeated upon the Christian garrison, who atoned with their lives for the ill-advised alliance of the last representatives of the Almoravides with the sovereign of Castile. The capture of Granada marks the final descent from power of that party whose tyranny and depredations had for almost a generation disturbed the peace of the Peninsula.

The experience of Abd-al-Mumen with treacherous vassals and daring impostors made him reluctant to leave his capital, constantly exposed to revolution, for the sake of confirming his power over the Moslem states of Spain. And, indeed, there seemed to be but little necessity for his personal appearance in Andalusia. In addition to the native auxiliaries there were now fifty thousand Almohade veterans in that country. His generals had demonstrated their ability for command on many fields of battle. The principal cities of the South--Cordova, Seville, Carmona, Granada, Malaga, Almeria, Badajoz--were garrisoned by his troops. His armies had as yet sustained no repulse; the most fertile districts furnished them with abundant subsistence; a considerable tribute was collected from the Jews and Mozarabes, who were compelled to pay liberally for privileges and protection which they did not enjoy; Alfonso VII., the most redoubtable enemy of the Moslems, had recently died, and the other Christian princes, doubtful of their strength, hesitated to confront the victorious Almohade squadrons. Although determined not to imperil his crown by a prolonged absence from his capital, Abd-al-Mumen paid a visit to Gibraltar, which he strongly fortified, and where he received the homage of the various officials of his recently acquired dominions.

Almost simultaneously with the disappearance of the Almoravides a new champion of Hispano-Arab independence arose in the east of the Peninsula. Mohammed-Ibn-Saad, Prince of Valencia, attempted, but without success, to oppose the authority of the hated Africans. Routed before Granada, he organized another army in the Alpujarras and, reinforced by a body of Christians from Toledo, again tried the fortunes of war under the walls of Cordova. The bravery of the Andalusians availed little in the presence of the invincible veterans of Abd-al-Mumen. They were cut to pieces, and their leader, Ibn-Saad, escaping with difficulty, fled to Murcia.

The martial spirit of Abd-al-Mumen was not enfeebled either by increasing physical infirmities or by the accumulated weight of years. The unsettled state of affairs in Spain and the unsatisfactory results accomplished by his generals, whose victories, however brilliant, seemed to inflict but trifling injury on the enemy, convinced him of the necessity for an aggressive and decisive campaign. The innumerable tribes, provinces, and kingdoms of Africa united under his sceptre had submitted without murmur or hesitation to the exercise of despotic power. The wisdom of his administration, the severity with which rebels and outlaws were punished, diffused a wholesome dread of his anger throughout the vast Almohade monarchy, more extensive even than that ruled by any of his predecessors and reaching from the Mediterranean to the south of the Sahara, from the Atlantic to the valley of the Nile. Supplies sufficient for the maintenance of an immense army were collected at Tangier, Algeziras, Gibraltar. Then the proclamation of the Holy War was issued. There responded to that welcome summons nearly half a million men. But before they could be assembled and organized for action, Abd-al-Mumen expired, bequeathing his throne and the execution of his projects of ambition to his third and favorite son, Abu-Yakub-Yusuf, a prince eminently worthy of the responsibilities imposed upon him by paternal favor and the caprice of fortune.

The character of Abd-al-Mumen presents an epitome of the homely virtues and ferocious vices of the Desert. In the attainment of his ends he was seldom swayed by considerations of pity, honor, or benevolence. He never shrank from indiscriminate butchery in the heat of battle. He seldom hesitated to pardon a defeated and submissive foe. In the dispensation of justice the culprit promptly underwent the extreme penalty of violated law. The attention of the founder of a stupendous empire was not entirely engrossed by schemes of war and conquest. He established schools and colleges in the larger cities of his dominions, fostered literature, encouraged art. The most talented and accomplished teachers in the entire realm of Islam were attracted to his court, where, honored with the friendship and enriched by the liberality of their royal patron, their efforts were directed to the education of youth. Three thousand of the latter, selected from the most distinguished families, were assembled in a university at the capital, where they not only profited by the instruction of learned professors, but were daily exercised in the military evolutions essential to a competent knowledge of the art of war--the manœuvring, the encampment, and the discipline of armies. Under the care of such a monarch the city of Morocco became a metropolis worthy of an empire which comprehended an hundred distinct tribes and nations, and whose opposite boundaries were separated by a four months’ journey. The royal residence and its gardens enclosed a vast area beautified by every resource of art and luxury. The inventive genius of skilful foreign artisans had provided both palace and mosque with many appliances of wonderful ingenuity,--doors which opened and closed apparently without human agency; pulpits and tribunes which, acting automatically, moved to and fro impelled by hidden mechanism; fountains whose jets, mysteriously controlled by valves and springs, were the perpetual delight and wonder of the people.

Under his administration hundreds of vessels were constructed; the navy-yards were enlarged and increased in number, and powerful fleets bearing the white standard of the Almohades maintained the dignity of the Sultan of Africa and Spain in every quarter of the Mediterranean.

The long reign of Abd-al-Mumen, who governed Spain entirely through his viceroys, was not less injurious to the interests of that country than the domination of the Almoravides had been. The plague of civil war, the menace of Christian conquest, the evils of revolution and anarchy, the ferocity of the remorseless conqueror, with whom resistance was an offence only to be expiated by death or slavery, were conditions fatal to agricultural and commercial prosperity. Moorish Spain, once the proud mistress of the Occident, the seat of learning and the arts, now the sport of fortune and the prey of savage hordes nurtured amidst the African deserts, was, with the passage of each decade, rapidly descending in the scale of civilization. Her political influence and the prestige of her name had disappeared. The wealth accumulated under the beneficent rule of the Ommeyade dynasty had either been dissipated in luxury or been borne away by barbarian invaders. The time was almost at hand when a religious tyranny, more grievous in its burdens, more cruel in the inexorable severity of its decrees, than the worst examples of African despotism, was to be imposed on the descendants of a people which had made the Western Khalifate the seat of the most opulent, the most intellectual, the most powerful of nations.

Yusuf, the new Sultan of the Almohades, distrusting the loyalty of his subjects, and apprehensive of a disputed succession, had no sooner ascended the throne than he disbanded the great army collected by his father for the subjection of the Peninsula. A well-balanced and discriminating mind, an excellent education acquired under the direction of the most learned doctors of the age, unusual proficiency in the martial exercises practised with such assiduity by the Mauritanian youth, considerable experience in the arts of policy and in the conduct of campaigns, admirably fitted Yusuf for the cares of government. The summary measures adopted by his father to maintain public security, and his own well-established reputation for ability and resolution, preserved his accession from the dangers of revolt. A few insignificant demonstrations by the restless tribes of the Atlas, which were speedily and mercilessly repressed, disturbed the first few months of his reign. But no pretender rose to dispute his claims to sovereignty; no prophet ventured to arouse the credulous and fanatical swarms of the Desert; no concerted movement of discontented chieftains threatened the permanence of a monarchy which had been founded on revolution, and whose history had been marked by incessant turmoil and sedition. Satisfied with the peaceful condition of his African possessions, Yusuf, having sent to Spain twenty thousand of his choicest troops, after a short delay followed them, and, assuming the supreme command, established his residence at Seville. The discord existing between the petty rulers of the Moslem states, whose enmity was the more decided in proportion to their incapacity to indulge it, operated in the most signal manner to the advantage of his cause. Ibn-Saad, lord of Eastern Spain, whose kingdom included the cities of Murcia, Valencia, Alicante, Xativa, Denia, Lorca, many flourishing villages, and the most fertile portion of the Peninsula, was killed in an expedition to Minorca, and his sons, unable to defend their rich inheritance against both the Aragonese and the Almohades at once, entered into negotiations with Yusuf for the exchange of their territories for others less valuable, perhaps, but more secure, on the shores of Northern Africa. The bargain was soon concluded. The Murcian princes, eager to dispose of what they must otherwise inevitably lose, embarked for their new dominions; the daughter of Ibn-Saad, a pledge of the contract, became the wife of Yusuf, and the most valuable district in Spain--when the productiveness of the soil, the wealth and commercial advantages of the cities, and the density and industrious character of the population are considered--passed, without the hazards of a campaign or the loss of a single drop of blood, under the control of the Sultan of the Almohades.

It was not, however, by the peaceable arts of diplomacy alone that additions were made to the empire of Yusuf. In the west, Badajoz, repeatedly captured and retaken by Christian and Moslem, was occupied by his troops. At the head of a column of several thousand cavalry he ravaged the valley of the Tagus as far as the suburbs of Toledo. The border stronghold of Alcantara, long vaunted as impregnable, submitted to his arms. Nor was it on account of his military exploits that the name of Yusuf has been transmitted to the admiration of posterity. Although he passed but a year in the most enchanting of Andalusian cities, the evidences of his presence are to-day the principal, almost the sole, attractions of that beautiful capital. The memory of his genius and munificence have been perpetuated by the erection of quays, palaces, towers, whose stupendous dimensions are now the wonder of the modern engineer, and of mosques whose minarets were once incomparable models of architectural symmetry and elegance. He repaired and enlarged the Roman aqueduct, which still conducts from the springs of Alcalá the purest water for the use of Seville. He spanned the Guadalquivir with a bridge of boats, the counterpart and predecessor of the one which until within a century united the opposite banks of that broad and rapid stream. Its inundations, which had previously damaged property and imperilled life, were partially controlled by the construction of gigantic walls, which arrested the destructive torrent and turned it again into its proper channel. These structures served as quays, which, approached from the river-side by broad and easy stairways, greatly facilitated the unloading and shipment of merchandise. Near at hand were warehouses and magazines designed and erected by Yusuf, and whose convenience and capacity were not surpassed by those of any Mediterranean seaport. The defences of the city also claimed the attention of this wise and indefatigable monarch, whose care and vigilance no detail, however insignificant, seemed to escape. The ancient walls were repaired and new ones constructed. Numerous towers were added to command the river, among them the peculiar one now known as the Tower of Gold, where was once kept the royal treasure. In the heart of the city, and on the site of an ancient Christian church, a great mosque was founded. The plan was a rectangle of four hundred and fourteen by two hundred and seventy feet, and, although it could not in justice be considered a rival of that noble edifice, it was in many respects not far inferior to the peerless Djalma of Cordova. Its walls were fringed with Persian battlements and painted with many colors. Its arcades looked upon a court supplied with ever-murmuring fountains and fragrant with the odor of orange blossoms. Its hundreds of marble columns suggested the spoliation of many a Pagan temple. The ceiling was formed by domes of wood and stucco, whose geometrical patterns disclosed the correctness of taste and inexhaustible fertility of fancy characteristic of the labors of the Arab artist and gilder. Its mosaic pavements, its alabaster lattices, its curious arabesques presented finished types of Moorish decorative splendor nowhere more conspicuous than in his places of religious worship. At one corner of the building rose a minaret of moderate height but elaborate ornamentation, and diagonally opposite were laid the foundations of that famous tower now known as the Giralda, which, completed during the reign of the successor of Yusuf, still remains the finest specimen of Moslem architecture of its class in the world.

It was not alone in the improvement of his Spanish capital that the time and energy of the Almohade Sultan were expended. The military and naval advantages of Gibraltar had been early appreciated by the sovereigns of Africa. Its fortifications were now greatly extended and strengthened by the provident foresight of Yusuf, who recognized in its peculiar and impregnable situation the security of the Strait and the key of the Peninsula.

Summoned to Africa by the ravages of a pestilence which decimated the population of his kingdom, ignorant of medical knowledge, and abandoned to fatalism and the ministrations of charlatans, Yusuf was compelled to suspend the public works which had already produced such beneficial results amidst the decaying commerce and diminishing resources of Andalusia. The absence of the monarch became, as usual, the pretext for anarchy. With his departure the quarrels of ambitious governors of provinces and the harassing forays of the Christians were renewed. For the long period of eight years this condition of incessant and ruinous hostility continued. Then Yusuf resolved to accomplish the design matured by his father, but whose execution had been prevented by death. The Holy War was proclaimed. The forces of Africa were assembled at Ceuta, and Spain was invaded by one of the largest armies that had ever been marshalled on her soil. It is with interest that we read of the orderly but undisciplined progress of this great array. The tribes marched separately under their several sheiks. Each tribe carried its distinctive standard--the ensign of that which constituted the vanguard, the post of honor, was of blue and white silk spangled with golden crescents. In the centre of the host rode the monarch, surrounded by his negro guard, in whose equipment had been lavished all the wealth of barbaric magnificence. Before him was carried, as a talisman to insure success, the great Koran of Othman, which, having escaped the perils of many revolutions, had been sent to Morocco by the Almohades after their capture of Cordova. It was escorted by a company of a hundred Berber nobles, mounted upon superb Arabian horses whose velvet housings were embroidered with gold. This guard of honor carried lances inlaid with ivory and silver, from which fluttered pennons of many-colored silk. The casket in which was deposited the most priceless relic of Islam was the same which had been adorned by the emulous devotion and prodigality of many generations of Moslem princes. Its material of ebony and sandal-wood was entirely concealed by the multitude of jewels with which it was encrusted. The greater part of these were emeralds and rubies, and were kept in place by heavy settings of gold. They were arranged in arabesques, and in the centre of each design sparkled a magnificent ruby cut in horseshoe form. The casket was lined with green silk and cloth-of-gold, and a covering of the same material sowed with pearls and other precious stones concealed the treasure from the eyes of the multitude. Its weight, which was far from inconsiderable, was supported by a stately camel, whose burden was sheltered by a canopy on which were emblazoned in golden letters appropriate legends from the Koran. In the rear of the Sultan came the princes of the blood, the royal tributaries, and the grand officials of the empire. Seventy thousand infantry and thirty thousand cavalry composed the available force of the invaders, whose ranks were further augmented by at least a hundred thousand slaves and dependents. The army moved in four divisions, a day’s journey apart; at each halting-place provisions and forage had been collected, and the perfection of these arrangements, as well as the order maintained on the march, attested the military skill and executive ability of the Moslem general.

At Seville, designated as the rendezvous of the Spanish contingent, Yusuf was joined by several thousand Berber troops, who had served through many campaigns in the Peninsula. He then crossed the frontier of Portugal and besieged Santarem. This city, situated about fifty miles from Lisbon, was regarded as the bulwark of that capital. It was on the point of being taken, when Yusuf was surprised by an unexpected sally of the besiegers and mortally wounded. The Moslems, goaded to madness by this misfortune, drove back the attacking party, entered the gates with the fugitives, and ten thousand persons, massacred amidst the horrors of the unequal conflict, expiated the temporary and fatal success of a handful of their number. The death of the Sultan, which, to avoid political complications and civil war, was kept a secret, and did not become publicly known until his successor, Abu-Yakub-Ibn-Yusuf,--the ablest of his many sons, and who assumed the title of Al-Mansur-Billah,--a few weeks afterwards ascended the throne. The traits of Yusuf were those of a liberal, a just, a devout, a magnanimous ruler. He reduced taxation. He increased the imperial revenues. His inexorable severity was the terror of malefactors. Before his tribunals no suitor could complain of judicial oppression or venality. Under his administration, as under that of his father, the clergy were restricted to the performance of their religious duties, and were not permitted to usurp the functions or to absorb the revenues of the civil power. The cities were patrolled by a well-appointed and vigilant police, and law-abiding citizens were assured of protection. The banditti disappeared from the highways before the untiring pursuit of the authorities, who crucified every brigand as soon as he was captured. Never since the most flourishing days of the Ommeyade empire had the people of Moorish Spain enjoyed such security.

According to Moslem custom, Yakub signalized his ascent to the throne by acts of public charity and benevolence. He caused to be distributed as alms the sum of a hundred thousand pieces of gold. He increased the compensation of such officials as had honestly and faithfully administered the public service. The taxes of the poor were remitted, the tributes of the wealthy were reduced. The prisons were cleared of all offenders except such as were accused of capital crimes. Upon every magistrate was sedulously impressed the necessity for the strict yet merciful enforcement of the laws. The army was placed under better discipline, the pay of the soldiers was increased, and the sanitary conditions of the barracks and the camp improved. In both Spain and Africa new fortresses were erected at points peculiarly exposed to the incursions of an enemy. Great sums were expended in the improvement and the construction of highways, and the bridges were placed in perfect repair, that no obstacle might exist to the rapid movement of couriers or to easy military communication between the seat of government and the frontiers of the empire. At regular intervals along these thoroughfares, wells were dug and stations established for the shelter of travellers and the convenience of troops. The obligations of religion and the demands of knowledge were not neglected by this devout and generous ruler. Mosques, richly adorned, were built in every considerable town and city, and attached to them were institutions of learning, where gratuitous instruction was furnished to the poor but aspiring student. The sufferings of the afflicted were relieved by the establishment of hospitals, presided over by physicians and surgeons thoroughly versed in the medical science of the age. To such a degree had the traditions and example of the Western Khalifate awakened the noble emulation of the greatest prince who ever traced his origin to an African ancestor.

The commencement of the reign of Yakub, like those of his predecessors, was distracted by war and sedition. The remains of the Almoravide faction, established in the Balearic Isles, instigated by delusive representations the tribes of the Desert and the malcontents of the Peninsula to insurrection. Their efforts were, however, incapable of seriously endangering the power of Yakub. The leaders were arrested, and the adoption of the most energetic measures soon restored the public tranquillity. The repentant Berbers implored with success the royal clemency; and two of the brothers of the Sultan, involved in the common guilt, were sacrificed to the stern demands of justice and fraternal indignation.

At the head of a splendidly appointed army Yakub then passed into Spain. At his approach, all who had wavered in fidelity or had taken up arms hastened to solicit forgiveness and renew their obligations of fealty. The expedition, which was merely a reconnoissance, penetrated without difficulty as far as Lisbon. The degree of its success may be inferred from the fact that the booty is said to have exceeded in value any heretofore secured by any foreign invader in the Peninsula excepting Musa, and that the captives who followed in the train of the conqueror amounted to the respectable number of thirteen thousand.

The crusading spirit, then at its height in Europe, soon offered the King of Portugal an opportunity for retaliation. A large body of Flemish and English knights and men-at-arms, on their way to the Holy Land, disembarked at Lisbon to avoid, during the winter months, the inconveniences of a protracted voyage and the proverbial dangers of the Spanish coast. These adventurers accepted with avidity the tempting proposals of the Portuguese king. The Moorish territory was invaded by the crusaders, co-operating with a force of native troops; and the cities of Evora, Beja, and Silves became the prey of the most licentious soldiery in Europe. The latter place, which had surrendered under articles of capitulation to Sancho, King of Portugal, was, in violation of the laws of war and of every principle of justice, abandoned to the tender mercies of the foreigners. Out of a population of sixty thousand barely one-fifth escaped with life and liberty. The majority of these were Jews, whose commercial relations with the countries of Western Europe gave them influence with the Christian commanders, while the presence of numbers of their countrymen in the enemy’s camp contributed in no small degree to their security. This immunity was not obtained, however, without the payment of an exorbitant ransom; the city was pillaged amidst indescribable scenes of cruelty, and many of the crusaders, renouncing the pious cause in which they had embarked, remained in Silves as subjects of the King of Portugal.

Fortune did not suffer them long to retain the fruits of their bad faith and rapacity. Orders were issued from Morocco to retrieve the disgrace sustained by the Moslems, and Mohammed, governor of Cordova, having invaded the lost territory, stormed one after another the places which had tempted the avarice of the adventurous foreigners; the horrors of the previous capture were repeated and even surpassed, and the Christians in their turn experienced the bitterness of defeat and the calamities of servitude. Fourteen thousand male captives, chained together, were paraded through the streets of Cordova, and fifteen thousand women, distributed through the Moslem communities of Spain and Africa, attested the fearful retribution exacted by the lieutenant of the Sultan.

Three years after this event, Yakub, who in the midst of extensive projects for the amelioration of his people had never relinquished those plans of conquest which formed so important a feature in the policy of every active Moslem prince, prepared for a grand campaign against the Christians of Castile. The imperial forces, amounting to three hundred thousand men, were transported across the Strait without difficulty, and this mighty armament, for which the resources of the governors of Andalusia were greatly taxed to provide subsistence, began its march into the interior. Yakub, weary of unprofitable forays and of expeditions which inflicted no permanent injury upon the enemy, had resolved to attempt a most perilous and doubtful enterprise. The city of Toledo, whose geographical position, impregnable fortifications, and national prestige as the military centre of the Castilian monarchy made it the most important strategic point in the entire Peninsula, was the main object of his ambition. The political condition of the Christian kingdoms, whose princes, again influenced by mutual hatred, regarded with complacency the distress of their neighbors, was peculiarly favorable to the designs of the Moslems. Portugal and Leon were embroiled with the Holy See. Its interference with the royal prerogatives and its unsolicited participation in the religious disputes of those states were regarded with undisguised disapproval by a people which had never explicitly recognized the jurisdiction of the Supreme Pontiff. The jealousies of power and the hope of profiting by the discord of their rivals kept aloof from each other the kingdoms of Castile, Navarre, and Aragon. It was by the former of these, unaided and alone, that the shock of the impending tempest was to be sustained; while the other monarchies, removed from the seat of war, might await in temporary security the issue of the inevitable conflict. Alfonso VIII., who had aroused the ire and hastened the invasion of Yakub by a challenge couched in all the extravagant terms of Spanish rodomontade, now realized to the full the disastrous effects of his untimely insolence. In vain, in his extremity, he appealed to the piety, the patriotism, the martial spirit of the neighboring Christian princes. The King of Aragon returned no answer. Alarmed by the reports of the immense preparations of Yakub, the King of Navarre had not hesitated to open secret negotiations with him, with a view to preserving his possessions as a vassal of the Moslem. The sole auxiliaries who responded to the entreaties of Alfonso were a handful of French knights, with their retainers, from the districts of Provence and Gascony. With these, with the brethren of the military orders, and with his own forces, whose united number has not been mentioned in the chronicles, but which was greatly inferior to that of the Africans, Alfonso calmly awaited the approach of the enemy below the castle of Alarcos, not far from Calatrava.

At dawn, on one of the most memorable days in the annals of the Reconquest, the hostile armies prepared for battle. The arrangement of the Moslems indicated a degree of military ability scarcely to be expected from the rude tacticians of the age. The Almohades formed the left wing, the right was held by the Andalusians, in the centre were placed the picked troops of the empire, veterans of many campaigns. Behind the first line were ranged the African volunteers, armed principally with missile weapons, whose solid mass was intended to aid the foremost ranks in repelling the charge of the Christian cavalry. The manœuvres were immediately directed by the generals of the Sultan; for Yakub, at the head of his guards and a reserve of several thousand of his bravest troops, remained in ambush within easy access of the field, equally ready at a moment’s notice to retrieve disaster or to burst unexpectedly and with crushing force upon the disordered ranks of a terrified and flying enemy. The position of the Christians had been most advantageously chosen. The gently ascending slope of a mountain, with a steep acclivity at the rear, its sides defended by the deeply worn channels of mountain torrents, was occupied by their camp. With characteristic disregard of prudence the Castilians began the fray. Eight thousand knights in complete armor charged with terrific force the centre of the Moslem line of battle. Twice they recoiled before the solid mass of the enemy, but the third effort was successful; his line was pierced, his ranks were thrown into confusion, and the Christians, elated by a temporary advantage which they thoughtlessly magnified into victory, indulged to the utmost their savage instincts, infuriated as they were by the unexpected resistance they had encountered. But the field was not yet won. As they rushed forward in their bloody course, the impetuous cavaliers were insensibly surrounded by the active Mauritanian cavalry and the archers, who had been drawn up on the flanks of the African army; and, their retreat cut off, they were at once overwhelmed by numbers. In the mean time, the skill and coolness of the Moslem general, Al-Senani, who commanded the broken line, had enabled him to consolidate its wings, not as yet engaged, and, rallying the stragglers, he made a determined attack upon the enemy’s camp. Thus, in different parts of the field two battles were in progress, in which a portion of each army constituted the assailants. Of the knights who had so boldly hurled themselves against the Moslem host, but few escaped the spears and arrows of the Almohades. Despite the strength of the Christian position, it was taken by Al-Senani and his Andalusians, and the picked Castilian troops, unable to withstand the shock of the Moslem charge, were utterly routed. The heavy armor of the chivalry of Alfonso impeded their movements and delayed their flight; their senses were bewildered by the din and tumult of battle, and the fierce Mauritanian horsemen, strangers to pity in the hour of triumph, were deaf to the supplications of a defeated and helpless foe. The manifest exaggerations of the ancient chronicles render it impossible to form even an approximately correct estimate of the Christian loss. It must, however, have been enormous; but the proximity of the mountains, inaccessible to the Moorish cavalry, undoubtedly preserved numbers who would otherwise have perished. Twenty thousand prisoners taken in Alarcos, which fortress was stormed immediately after the battle, were liberated without exchange or ransom, an act of unusual generosity, which, while acquiring for Yakub the unfavorable criticism of his subjects, was considered an evidence of weakness by the ungrateful recipients of his favor, incapable of understanding such indulgence in wars ordinarily waged with indescribable barbarity.

The fruits of this great victory were limited to the possession of a few thousand captives and the plunder of the Castilian camp. At no time had the Christian territory been more vulnerable to the attack of an invader than after the battle of Alarcos. The power of Castile was temporarily destroyed. Navarre, intimidated by the approach of the Moslems, was now ready for the oath of fealty and the humiliating rendition of tribute. Leon was also suspected of entertaining secret negotiations with Yakub, whose influence had not improbably contributed to the inimical relations generally existing between the Christian states of Northern Spain. Aragon, deprived of its sovereign and arrayed against its neighbors, was a prey to political intrigue as well as exposed to the danger of foreign conquest. Portugal alone, protected in a measure by her remoteness from the seat of war, resolutely upheld by her uncompromising attitude the sinking fortunes of the Christian arms.

Many causes conspired to render the campaigns of the Moslems indecisive. Their armies, composed of many nations and commanded by numerous generals, were incapable of thorough organization and discipline. The powers of high officials claiming equal authority, undefined by law and unconfirmed by precedent, were subject to constant and vexatious interference. Prolonged operations were viewed with disfavor by soldiers accustomed to the independent movements and rapidly shifting scenes of partisan warfare. A victory was, to the morale of such a force, almost as detrimental as a defeat. The ordinarily powerful incentives to conquest--the propagation of the Faith, the hope of martial renown, the prospect of territorial acquisition--were forgotten in the desire to enjoy without delay the fruits of activity and courage. Wholesale desertions were the inevitable consequences of success. Military expeditions in the Peninsula were not, since it had become a dependency of Africa, carried on with the systematic regularity which aimed at permanent occupancy. Towns were usually pillaged and burnt. The country was desolated, the population enslaved. But it was rare that a garrison was placed in a captured city, and new fortresses were no longer erected to guard the security of the frontier. The frontier, indeed, had become the uncertain boundary of a debatable land, a region which the constant incursions of enemies had transformed into a waste, whose limits, ever shifting, were yet steadily encroaching on the Moslem domain. The fortunes of a mere province, however valuable and extensive it might be, could excite but a languid and transitory interest amidst the plots and revolutions of a distant and turbulent capital. After a foray into Castile directed by Christian refugees and renegades with real or fictitious grievances to avenge, the Moslems retired from the campaign, and the opportunity afforded by the battle of Alarcos was irretrievably lost. The next spring was passed in unprofitable excursions into Castile and Estremadura. Calatrava and Guadalajara were taken, and Salamanca was stormed and burnt to the ground after having submitted to the utmost excesses of a barbarian enemy. The absence of organized resistance, the general consternation which prevailed in every Christian community, the craven behavior of great princes, who solicited with abject humility the protection of the Almohade Sultan; the extraordinary facility with which one fortress after another was occupied by the Moslems, indicate the universal demoralization consequent upon the rout of Alarcos. A campaign conducted with energy and determination must have resulted in the complete overthrow of the Christian monarchies of the North. But Yakub, destitute of the most eminent qualifications of a commander, wasted his time and consumed the strength of his soldiers in predatory enterprises which yielded neither military distinction nor political advantage, while his enemies expected in constant terror the appearance of the squadrons which had annihilated the knights of the monastic orders, the pride of Christian Spain, and had trampled under foot the Castilian chivalry, already illustrious for endurance and prowess among the famous warriors of Europe. An attempt, indeed, was made upon Toledo, the original object of the invasion, behind whose walls the fugitives of Alarcos had taken refuge; but the old Visigothic capital, which had issued victorious from a hundred sieges, was not to be hastily reduced by an enemy ignorant as yet of the destructive force of gunpowder. A few days demonstrated the futility of an attack where the deficiencies of military engineering could not be compensated by superiority in numbers, and the King of Castile was fortunate enough to negotiate a truce with the Sultan, now alarmed by reports of sedition in his own dominions. The return of the latter preceded only a short time his sudden and unexpected death. He was a prince who, of all the descendants of African dynasties, was most worthy of the honors of imperial greatness, and it was not without propriety that he assumed the title of Al-Mansur, The Victorious. Under his reign his countrymen probably attained to the highest degree of civilization and intellectual development of which their race is capable. Experience had repeatedly proven that the innate savagery of the Berber was incorrigible. The benefits of education, habitual association with the learned and the polite, familiarity with the finest literary productions of preceding ages, the daily presence of architectural monuments of unrivalled splendor, were unable to efface the barbarous instincts inherited through unnumbered generations of roving banditti. Like the Arab, a freebooter by birth and inclination, the Berber abandoned with reluctance and resumed with delight the unsettled and precarious existence of his forefathers. No political affinity existed between the various divisions of the African race. Of such components an enduring empire could not be constructed. When temporarily united, they were held together solely by the unnatural and artificial influences of force and fear; the principles of mutual co-operation, of national pride, of devoted loyalty, which constitute at once the security and the glory of a nation, were absent. The first three princes of the Almohade line were pre-eminently conspicuous for their talents, their firmness, their political sagacity. Their reigns, while characterized by more or less severity, the consequence of peculiar political conditions, were neither oppressive nor unjust. No restrictions were laid on commerce. The burdens of taxation were lightened and illegal impositions abolished. Many internal improvements were planned and perfected. The administration of justice was purified and corrupt magistrates punished. The religious sentiment, dominant in the minds of an ignorant people, was gratified by the erection of sumptuous temples. The prosecution of extensive military operations, the enslavement of entire tribes, the sack of opulent cities, the achievement of sweeping victories, the extermination of armies, were calculated to secure the attachment and confirm the allegiance of a people passionately devoted to the stirring excitements of war. But so capricious and disloyal was the African, that neither the enjoyment of present favor nor the expectation of future benefit could insure his fidelity. He was wholly careless of the advantages of civilization. His superstition made him the facile dupe of every impostor. The Almohade sovereigns lived in constant apprehension of dethronement. If they left Africa for Spain, the desert tribes were certain to rebel. As soon as they had recrossed the Strait, Andalusia rose in arms. The death of an ignorant charlatan, who in a short time had restricted the empire of Abd-al-Mumen to two cities, alone saved that monarch and his dynasty from destruction. The annals of his son and grandson are a bloody chronicle of insurrections, massacres, executions. The Berber element, while abhorred by the Arabs, had yet so permeated the society of the Peninsula that every department of government, every rank and profession of men, had been infected with its poison. Under such conditions political regeneration was impossible. No reformer, no conqueror, could avert the final catastrophe,--a catastrophe inevitable in the decadence of nations,--subjection to a foreign enemy actuated by religious fanaticism, military ambition, and inflexibility of purpose. The victory of Alarcos was the closing triumph of Islam in the Peninsula, and with the reign of Yakub disappeared the last opportunity for the restoration of Moslem power.

It is not, however, by his conquests, the extent of his dominions, or the splendor of his court that Yakub-al-Mansur is best known to us. The Giralda, or minaret, which towered over the mosque of Seville, and now, for the most part intact, is the principal ornament of its cathedral, is the greatest monument to his fame. The stately temple to which it was attached, founded by Yusuf, and almost a quarter of a century in building, was at last finished by his son. The spoils of many a foray, the wealth of many a conquered city, the plunder of many a Christian sanctuary, were devoted to its construction. Gold and silver obtained from the sacramental vessels of violated altars glittered upon its walls. Its masonry had been laid by the painful labor of hundreds of captives. Its foundations stand upon a base composed of busts, statues, bas-reliefs, and carvings taken from the Roman structures abounding in the vicinity, and many of which represented the finest efforts of classic taste and imperial magnificence. To strict observers of Moslem law,--and none adhered more closely to the letter of its provisions than the Almohades,--every representation of the human form was classed as idolatrous, and the effigies of the emperors, statesmen, and orators of antiquity were buried far beneath the walls of the Giralda, that the eyes of the Faithful might no longer be offended by what were ignorantly presumed to be objects of Pagan adoration; and that the spiritual as well as the material supremacy of Islam might be symbolized by the erection over these infidel memorials of the most imposing and beautiful edifice of its kind that has ever been devised by the genius of man.

Its base is a square of fifty feet; its original height was three hundred. For eighty-seven feet from the foundation the walls are of stone blocks fitted with the greatest nicety, and once polished to the smoothness of glass. The superstructure is of brick, and almost covered with graceful arabesque patterns in terra-cotta. Each side is divided into six panels with the designs in bas-relief, the panels resting upon ogival arches sustained by marble columns sunk into the masonry. In the central panels are a series of ajimezes, or Moorish windows, whose compartments are separated by miniature columns of alabaster. A charming variety and elegance exist in their arrangement and decoration; the openings are symmetrical but unequally disposed, and the terra-cotta patterns, while they exhibit a general similarity, are unlike in detail, no two faces of the tower exactly resembling each other. The minaret as originally designed was crowned with battlements, and was surmounted by another tower eight cubits in height, of similar plan but of much more elaborate ornamentation. Above the latter structure rose a bar sustaining four bronze balls of different sizes, placed one above the other. The general color of the building was a brilliant red, due to the bricks of which it was principally composed. Within this bright setting the sunken arabesques glowed with all the splendor of the richest damask. The interstitial portions of the designs were painted with scarlet, azure, green, and purple, the parts in relief were gilded. The maze of gold and color was at once tempered and defined by the duller framing and by the white, translucent, alabaster columns of the central panels. Around the summit of the principal tower was a mosaic of intricate pattern and many colors. The beauty of the gorgeous tints that under the sunlight of Southern Spain exhibited the refulgence of the rainbow was heightened by the use of tiles covered with gold leaf, whose enamelled covering imparted a brilliancy not even exceeded by the burnished metal itself. Upon the superstructure had been lavished all the exquisite taste and skill of the Moorish and the Byzantine artisan. Its sides presented a complicated and elegant mosaic of white, blue, and gold. Its parapet blazed with that precious metal, and above ascended, in regular gradation, the row of immense gilded globes, visible to the approaching or to the departing caravan for the space of more than a day’s journey. The largest of these was nearly twenty feet in diameter; the surfaces of all were deeply grooved, the better to reflect the light; and the iron bar which sustained them, and which was also plated with gold, weighed nearly a thousand pounds.

The interior of the famous minaret presents some extraordinary, not to say unique, architectural features. Its walls are nine feet in thickness at the base, and, instead of decreasing in dimensions, become still more solid as they rise, until the capacity of the structure near the summit is but little more than half what it is at the bottom. The ascent is made by thirty-five ramps, or inclined planes, resting upon vaults and arches, and supported by a shaft of masonry built in the centre of the tower.

It was to the architects of Constantinople that the Moors were indebted for this excellent substitute for the stairway, by which the loftiest buildings could be ascended with comparatively slight fatigue. Byzantine influence, which has left such an impress upon the architecture of Venice, has provided its towers with this ingenious device, of which the Campanile offers a familiar example. Instances of its employment also exist in many cities of Africa, some of whose mosques, constructed by the Almohades, present, upon a greatly reduced scale, minarets in form and decoration almost counterparts of the Giralda as it was in the day of its original splendor. It is not uninteresting to note that the architect who superintended the completion of the Giralda was Abu-Layth, a Sicilian, whose country, long a province of Constantinople, had never, even under Moslem domination, completely abandoned the traditions or renounced the influence of the Christian capital of the East.

Mohammed-Ibn-Yakub, whose hereditary title had been confirmed by the exercise of regal authority during the lifetime of his father, succeeded to the perilous honors of the Almohade throne. A prince of amiable character but mediocre talents, without ambition and destitute of self-reliance, his accession augured ill for the maintenance of order among a score of jealous nations, which all the genius of great statesmen and warriors had hardly sufficed to restrain within the bounds of loyalty and discipline. The death of Yakub was the signal for revolt to the turbulent spirits who inhabited the mountains of Fez, and their defection was immediately followed by a formidable insurrection in the Balearic Isles. There, where Almoravide influence was nourished by descendants of that family,--who, expelled from the main-land, had for a time enjoyed in that sequestered region a nominal independence,--the standard of rebellion was raised by Yahya, an active partisan, who traced his descent from the last Almoravide emperor, Yusuf-Ibn-Tashfin. The sedition of the mountain tribes was easily suppressed, but that of the Balearic Isles was far more serious, and demanded the adoption of the most stringent measures. The name of the Almoravides had by no means lost its potency in Africa. Among the inhabitants of the coast and the denizens of the Sahara, the exploits of the dynasty that had first consolidated the vagrant tribes of that continent into the semblance of a nation, had brought to their knowledge the benefits of letters and the arts, and had, by its conquests, raised them to the height of military glory, were still remembered. The sympathies of the people of the Balearic Isles were almost unanimously with the representatives of their ancient masters. Before such an event could be anticipated, an army landed on the coast of Africa. The Berbers, allured by novelty and by the prospect of license, began to show signs of discontent. The political agitation enveloped the northern portion of the Desert, and the following of the intrepid Yahya was increased by the enrolment of many warlike tribes. One element, however, and a most important one, was lacking to insure success. The enterprise of the Almoravides was a purely political one. In every revolution which had previously aroused the enthusiasm and enlisted the support of the Africans, religion was the alleged incentive and the most prominent feature. A certain degree of mystery, a plausible exhibition of imposture, were indispensable to the excitement and the control of the credulous and fanatical wanderers of the Sahara. No movement could prosper in that benighted region unless presided over by the sombre genius of superstition.

The first operations of Yahya were highly successful. Several fortresses along the coast opened their gates to the invader. The city of Almahadia was carried by storm. Kairoan, once the seat of the Fatimite khalifs, and still the centre of an extensive trade between the Desert and the Mediterranean, was threatened. The discernment of Mohammed convinced him that the occupation of this ancient capital would impart a dangerous impetus to the rebel cause, a contingency which must, at all hazards, be prevented. The young prince acted with extraordinary decision. The forces of Yahya were beaten. Some fortresses were retaken, others voluntarily submitted. The insurgent leader, hotly pursued by the enemy, was unable to re-embark, and was driven to implore the hospitality of his Berber allies in the heart of the Desert. A great force besieged Almahadia, which was bravely defended by the Almoravide governor, Al-Hadshi. But the courage and determination of the garrison could not prevail against the science of the Sicilian and Spanish engineers who served in the army of the Sultan. The walls were undermined. The towers were crushed by immense projectiles of iron and stone hurled against them from engines of novel construction and prodigious size. To avert the calamities of an assault, the city was surrendered. With a generosity without precedent in the annals of mediæval warfare, a general amnesty was proclaimed. The garrison was persuaded to enlist under the banners of the conqueror, and Mohammed, charmed with the gallantry of Al-Hadshi, received him into his confidence and conferred upon him an important command in his army.

The Balearic Isles, captured in 1115 by Raymond Berenger III., Count of Barcelona, and afterwards occupied by the surviving leaders of the Almoravide party, now for the first time in their history experienced the effects of Berber invasion. Majorca was devastated by the Mauritanian cavalry, its cities were burnt, and its population enslaved. Minorca and Ivica, profiting by this example, hastened to solicit the clemency of their sovereign, and the heads of the Almoravide chieftains, carefully embalmed with camphor and enclosed in an elegant casket, were sent to Morocco as conclusive evidence that nothing more was to be feared from a crushed and disorganized faction.

The propitious beginning of a reign fated to end in ruin and disgrace encouraged the youthful Sultan to undertake enterprises of far greater importance. The truce unwisely conceded by Yakub to the entreaties of the King of Castile had not yet expired. But the deliberate violation of a treaty contracted with an infidel was considered an offence scarcely worthy of absolution by the Christian casuists of that age. Present expediency alone regulated the observation of public engagements. The prince, who, to his own disadvantage, honorably fulfilled the terms of a contract with a Moslem, would have been rewarded with the derision of his subjects and the anathemas of the clergy. Long anterior to the time of Mendoza and Ximenes, who made the broadest application of that infamous principle, its adoption had been approved by both the civil and ecclesiastical powers of Christian Spain, and faith was kept with an unbeliever or a heretic only so long as it suited the convenience of the other contracting party.

The death of Yakub had in a measure revived the spirits of the disheartened Christians. Alfonso had succeeded with much difficulty in collecting the scattered fragments of his defeated army. The military orders, which had left their bravest members on the field of Alarcos, began to fill the vacancies in their decimated ranks. In the larger cities the impatient youth again longed for the excitements and the plunder of the foray. Importuned by the solicitations of his subjects, and fortified by the opinions and assurances of the clergy, Alfonso violated the truce and descended unexpectedly upon the plains of Baeza and Jaen. His success encouraged the organization of other expeditions, and the bloody scenes of former years were re-enacted, until no portion of Andalusia was secure from the ravages of the enterprising Christian partisan. The subjection of the Almoravide rebels had inspired Mohammed with a thirst for conquest, and with a desire to punish the perfidy and the boldness of an adversary who, but a few years before, had in abject and humiliating terms sued for peace. The proclamation of the Holy War was issued. The Berber chieftains and their followers responded with enthusiasm. With all the naval facilities of the empire at their command, nearly two months were required by the immense body of troops--more than three hundred thousand in number--for transportation across the Strait; and, assembled at Seville, their tents and bivouacs dotted the landscape for leagues around that city.

It was with the greatest consternation that tidings of the impending invasion were received by the Christians. From the presence of the African had dated not only the political misfortunes of the Peninsula, but the most serious disasters ever experienced by the Spanish arms. Thrice already in its history the landing of a Mussulman host had been the precursor of a national catastrophe. Sixteen years had passed since the fatal day of Alarcos, but the memory of that appalling defeat was still fresh in the memory of almost every family in Castile; and so destructive and wide-spread had been its effects that the resources of that kingdom, which had sustained the brunt of the attack, had never been completely restored. In the present emergency the Holy See was appealed to; the war against the Moslems was invested with the character and privileges of a crusade, and the anathemas of the Church were denounced against all who should impede the movements or assist the enemies of the King of Castile, now the champion of Christendom. Emissaries furnished with the letters of the Supreme Pontiff went forth from the Vatican to rouse the flagging religious spirit of Europe. While the entire country north of the Tagus was in a state of terror, and few preparations had been made for resistance, the army of the Sultan, organized in five grand divisions, broke camp at Seville. Remembering the issue of similar undertakings, the Christian population were stricken with the apathy of despair. Everything was favorable to the plans of Mohammed, and had he improved his opportunity the Moslem domination might have been re-established throughout the Peninsula. In the path of the invading force rose the castle of Salvatierra, a fortress of such insignificance that even its ruins cannot now be identified; but the conceit of the Sultan was so great that he was unwilling to leave behind him a single Christian stronghold, and the siege of an obscure frontier outpost, on whose endurance, however, now depended the destinies of Spain, was formed. In the indulgence of this foolish whim eight precious months passed away, while the severities of the season and the pangs of famine fast depleted the ranks of the Moorish army. The capture of Salvatierra was finally accomplished, at the greatest cost probably ever incurred in the conquest of a place of so little importance, and the Moslems retired to their quarters in Andalusia. Encouraged by this unexpected check of the enemy, the Christians, while realizing that the danger was only postponed, began to exhibit unwonted activity. Amidst the snows of winter, the warriors of Spain, about to make an expiring and desperate effort for the defence of their homes and the salvation of their country; crusading fanatics, animated by the fury of religious zeal, and representing almost every nationality of Europe; ferocious soldiers of fortune, whose swords still dripped with the blood of the Albigensian heretics; eminent prelates, who discharged with equal dexterity the duties of the confessional and the office of command, assembled at Toledo, once the civil and ecclesiastical centre of the Visigothic power, now the capital of a growing monarchy predestined for many coming centuries to abject subserviency to the See of Rome.

The influence of the Papacy, no less than the imminent peril of the state, had successfully appealed to the religious instincts and national honor of every Christian potentate in the Peninsula. Many of these came in person, followed by the nobles and ecclesiastical dignitaries of their dominions. In this strange array, which could so easily reconcile the din of battle with the peaceful services of the altar and the pilgrimage, and which substituted without hesitation for the monotonous intonations of the mass the martial notes of the trumpet, were numbered the principal officials of the Church, headed by the celebrated Roderick, Primate of the Kingdoms of Spain. The grand-masters of all the military orders, including those of the Hospitallers and the Templars, who with a considerable following had come from distant countries to share in the honor and the glory of a new crusade, formed no unimportant accession to the ranks of the Christian army. Every organization in the land--civil, political, military, and religious--had despatched its representatives to the appointed rendezvous, full of patriotic confidence, yet with a thorough realization of the fatal consequences to their liberties and their faith which must inevitably result from another great Moslem victory obtained over a people which had already well-nigh lost its recuperative power. A remarkable concourse was that whose various dialects and often discordant accents were heard in the streets, and whose daily increasing numbers, exceeding the capacity of the old Visigothic capital to contain, were distributed through the pastures and gardens of its environs. An abundance of provisions supplied by the timely foresight of Alfonso kept the motley host content, but want of occupation soon developed the prevalent vices of the camp. Quarrels, provoked by the claims of different nationalities to superiority, were not unusual, and the narrow thoroughfares of the ordinarily sedate and tranquil city became nightly the scene of brawls and disorder. Among the crusaders were many who had served in Palestine and were accustomed to unrestrained indulgence in every variety of crime. To these adventurers, whose religious fervor was largely stimulated by avarice, the wealth of the numerous and thriving Hebrew population of Toledo was a prize too valuable to be overlooked. The prejudices of the age were favorable to persecution, and the Jew, especially if prosperous, was to the ignorant zealot the worst of infidels. A plan was formed for the massacre of the entire Jewish colony; and it required all the influence of the clergy and all the authority of Alfonso to prevent the destruction of a large portion of his most industrious and useful subjects in the very heart of his capital.

Finally, in June, 1212, the crusading army prepared for the active operations of a campaign. In its order of arrangement, the advance guard was composed of the foreigners, the centre was allotted to the Aragonese, and the rear was closed by the soldiers of the remaining states and kingdoms, who had most at stake and on whose efforts the issue of a battle must principally depend.

The crusaders had advanced but a few days’ march beyond Toledo, when signs of insubordination began to appear among the French and Italians. There is probably not in all Europe a region so inhospitable and so desolate during any season as the plateaus of Central Spain. No tree rises to relieve the dull monotony of the landscape. In winter the plain is swept by icy blasts from the sierras. In summer the exhausted traveller is prostrated by the fierce rays of an almost tropical sun. That country even now, for scores of leagues in every direction, presents the aspect of a desert; and in the thirteenth century, marking the boundary between two nations involved in continuous hostility, was yet more dreary and uninhabited than it is to-day. To the old crusader it recalled only too forcibly the hardships and the perils of the Holy Land, privations long since gladly exchanged for a life of luxury and license in the service of generous and indulgent European princes. The prelate sighed for the cloister, reluctantly abandoned for the camp at the command of the Holy Father, and longed to return to the scenes of wassail,--to the gay hunting parties in the forest; to the festive board, with its convivial and unclerical guests, its appetizing dishes, and sparkling wines; to the embraces of those beautiful companions who, chosen for their rare fascinations, whiled away, behind the walls of palace and monastery, the leisure of the epicurean bishop with Oriental dances and with the lively notes of lute and castanet. To men who had been induced to take up the cross by glowing descriptions of the Moorish cities of Andalusia, the experiences of a march through La Mancha were a grievous disappointment. So universal and serious was the discouragement among the foreigners, that the indignant remonstrances of the King and the prelates were scarcely sufficient to prevent their desertion in a body. At length, after a few insignificant frontier castles had been stormed and little booty obtained, the Italians and French, instigated by the ecclesiastics, abandoned their allies and marched homeward. Their freebooting instincts were disclosed by an ineffectual attempt to surprise Toledo, whose wealth they had never ceased to covet; but the inhabitants refused them admission to the city, and they were compelled to return to their homes empty handed, covered with infamy and objects of derision and contempt to the devout of every Christian nation of Europe.

The passes of the Sierra Morena had been already occupied by the Moors when the Christian army approached that range of mountains which forms the northern boundary of the province of Andalusia. A shepherd, whom superstition has exalted into a saint, and whose familiarity with the depths of the Sierra is still represented as miraculous, was found, who guided the army through secret paths by the outposts of the enemy. On the lofty plains of Tolosa the two armies met to decide the fate of the Peninsula. The Moslems had slightly the advantage of situation and decidedly the superiority in numbers. In the centre of the Moorish camp, on a gentle elevation, was pitched the scarlet, silken tent of the Sultan, which, with its gold embroidery and fluttering pennons, was the most conspicuous object in the field. This position was protected by the baggage-wagons, which, united by a ponderous iron chain, encircled its base. In front of the hill, and defended by a ditch, was drawn up the Moslem infantry, whose want of steadiness and defective discipline the ingenuity of their officers had attempted to correct by the dangerous expedient of fastening the ranks together with ropes. The mailed soldiers were placed in the centre, and the swift and irregular Mauritanians on the flanks of the foremost line. A guard of black slaves covered the summit of the hill where sat the monarch, clad in a black and threadbare robe, revered as the sacred garment worn by the founder of his sect, with the Moslem symbols of conquest, the Koran and the scimetar, beside him. The Moorish order of battle did not differ greatly from that of Alarcos, and the experience of that day no doubt determined the adoption of an arrangement which had once been crowned with such brilliant success. Apparently the circumstances were more propitious to the invaders than those of the former contest. Their numbers were greater than those of the army of Yakub, the forces of the enemy probably nearly the same as before. Their position was much stronger and defended with more military skill. The sovereign was present to encourage the efforts and animate the zeal of his innumerable soldiery. The memory of two great victories--one so recent as to be still fresh in the minds of many in both armies, and each of which had imparted such glory to the Moslem cause--incited the soldiers of Mohammed to emulate the heroic exploits of Zallaca and Alarcos.

On the other hand, it was with feelings of sullen desperation that the Christians armed themselves at midnight for the decisive conflict of the morrow. They were not oblivious of the national and religious interests dependent on their constancy and their valor. Their allies, on whose support they had reckoned, had perfidiously deserted them. Their resources were exhausted. Unjustly, as the event demonstrated, yet not without foundation, suspicions of the fidelity of some in their ranks whose dispositions had once been hostile, and who had privately negotiated with the enemy, were entertained. The disastrous results of former contests, the present disadvantages of inferior numbers and position, even the most fervent exhortations of ecclesiastical zeal, were inadequate to remove or counteract. By the weird light of fires and torches the sacrament was administered to the Christian warriors, admonished by the activity of their enemies, whose sounds of preparation could be faintly heard from their distant camp. The officers received their final orders, and the troops were disposed in the array of battle. The right wing was commanded by Sancho, King of Navarre; the centre by Alfonso; the left wing by Pedro, King of Aragon.

The attack was begun by the Castilians, who with headstrong impetuosity rushed forward to storm the enemy’s intrenchments. They were received, however, with a courage worthy of their own, and their formation was shaken by the solidity of the Moslem ranks. Both armies soon became engaged; the Spanish mountaineers, inexperienced in warfare and sickened by the frightful carnage, took to flight; and the nobility were left, with momentarily diminishing numbers, to contend with the myriads of barbarians who threatened to overwhelm them. It was then that Alfonso, with his guards, plunging into the serried masses of the enemy, retrieved the failing fortunes of the day. The supplications and the threats of divine vengeance uttered by the ecclesiastics, who, attired in their sacred vestments and holding aloft the crucifix, intercepted the retreat of the mountaineers, caused them to rejoin their devoted comrades, whose valor awakened their admiration while it magnified their cowardice. The battle now raged with fury along the entire line. The Berbers, without reflection on the consequences, exposed their half-naked bodies to the swords of the Christian knights, whose armor received without impression the strokes of the missile weapons of the Desert. The slaughter of these wretched fanatics was appalling; but the places of those who fell were instantly supplied by others, who sought at the hands of the infidel the martyr’s death, which is a certain passport to the Moslem paradise. In the very crisis of the struggle, while victory was hanging in the balance, the day was lost by a flagrant act of treachery. The hajib of Mohammed, Saad-Ibn-Djiami, who exercised despotic influence over the feeble spirit of that monarch, had alienated the Andalusians by tyranny. The governors of the frontier castles taken by the crusaders had been treated with the greatest indignity by that official, and one, whose intrepidity had exacted even the admiration of an unfeeling foe, he had caused to be put to death by torture. The remonstrances of the Arabs of Andalusia were received with insult; they were declared inferior in rank and courage to the Almohades, and the hajib publicly announced that they would hereafter be assigned to the least honorable position on the march and in the face of danger. The double imputation of plebeian extraction and cowardice, a reproach as false as it was unwise, was deeply resented by the Andalusians, many of whose families traced their lineage beyond the era of the Prophet; their courage had been tested for centuries in the wars of the Peninsula, and it was they who had stormed the Christian camp at Alarcos and contributed far more than the Africans to the completeness of that splendid victory. Exasperated by the unjust treatment of the hajib, and not without reason apprehensive of the power such a tyrant would enjoy if successful, they resolved to sacrifice country, religion, independence, and honor to the vindication of their offended national dignity. At a signal from their commander they marched away from the field. The sudden withdrawal of a body of sixty thousand men produced a panic; the Moslem lines were shattered, and the terrified fugitives, entangled in the ropes to which the infantry had been attached, were thrown into hopeless confusion, and remained at the mercy of the Castilian cavalry. The efforts of the Christians were now directed towards the summit of the eminence crowned with the scarlet pavilion of the Sultan. For a brief period the squadrons of the Almohades held their ground, but the weight of the armored horsemen eventually proved too great for the lighter Africans; Sancho, at the head of the Navarrese, broke the chain which encircled the Moslem entrenchment, and the victory of Las Navas de Tolosa, forever afterwards famed in song and story, was lost and won. Mohammed, who, with the apathy of a fatalist, from his commanding position had viewed the rout of his army, fled with only four thousand followers. The butchery which ensued exceeded belief, and the most conservative estimate of the killed was a hundred thousand. Orders had been issued, in accordance with the merciless barbarity of the time, that whoever, for any cause, spared the life of a Moslem should himself be punished with death; and the naturally cruel instincts of the Spanish soldiery, exasperated by the remembrance of past reverses and by the losses resulting from a desperate resistance, scarcely required the incentive of fear to suppress the sentiments of humanity. From dawn to twilight the conflict had continued, four hours of that time being consumed in the pursuit and massacre. In the bloody field, surrounded by the evidences of their valor, the Christians were assembled, and a Te Deum was chanted by the prelates, who returned thanks to God for their unexpected deliverance. The greater part of the spoil was abandoned to his princely associates by Alfonso, whose pride was content with the glory of success; and well it might be, for Castile, hitherto an insignificant principality, was now destined to the enjoyment of more than imperial authority. The value of the horses and camels, magnificent robes, costly weapons, and gold and silver utensils was inestimable. For two days the Christian fires were lighted with the arrows and lances of the enemy, and even then the supply was far from exhausted. A portion of the massive chain which encircled the Sultan’s tent was carried to Pampeluna, where, as a votive offering, it is still suspended before the high altar of the Cathedral; and its emblem, “or, on a field gules,” was long conspicuous in the blazonry of the royal escutcheons of Spain, France, and Navarre.