CHAPTER XIX

THE PROGRESS OF THE CHRISTIAN ARMS

1212–1252

General Disorder in the Peninsula--Aggressive Policy of the Christians--Capture of Ubeda--Al-Mamun--Rise of Mohammed-Ibn-Hud--Merida taken by the King of Leon--Prosperity of Barcelona--Jaime I. of Aragon--Siege of Majorca--Terrible Sack of that City--Extinction of the Almohades--Siege and Capture of Cordova by Ferdinand--Valencia surrenders to the King of Aragon--Character of the Struggle between Christian and Moslem--Xativa--Its Prosperity--Murcia becomes the Property of Castile--Xativa acquired by Aragon--Death and Character of Jaime--Rise of the Kingdom of Granada--Its Wealth and Literary Culture--Ferdinand captures Jaen---Mohammed-Ibn-Ahmar, King of Granada, renders Homage to Ferdinand--Seville invested by the Castilians--Great Strength of that City--Its Obstinate Defence--It is reduced by Famine--Character of Ferdinand the Saint.

The weakness of a sovereign and the arrogance of a tyrannical minister, provoking the defection of the Andalusian commanders, had decided the fate of the Saracen empire in Spain. Other disasters, apparently as serious, had been retrieved by the able emirs, generals, and statesmen who from time to time controlled the policy of that empire in the Peninsula. Other successes, not less brilliant, had been neutralized by the indecision, the incompetency, the national prejudices, or the personal rivalry of the conquerors. The battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, however, was one of the most decisive of the great struggles in which the Christian and the Moslem powers of the West contended for imperial supremacy. An interval of five centuries--a period signalized by almost incessant hostility--separates it from the field of the Guadalete. During that time a great monarchy had arisen, had reached the summit of military renown, literary excellence, and scientific culture, and had fallen, dragging with it the imposing fabric of civilization erected at such cost and under such favorable auspices as to encourage the hope that through the influence of its beneficent institutions and from the glorious example of its success might be effected the thorough and permanent regeneration of Europe. The khalifate had been succeeded by an era of anarchy, persecution, ruin. The fairest provinces of the Peninsula had been repeatedly abandoned to the savage hordes of the Sahara and to the equally ferocious warriors of the North. More than once, in the pursuit of their common prey, these fierce invaders, dissimilar in all the physical characteristics which distinguish the different races of humanity, yet strangely alike in the mental instincts peculiar to the unlettered and superstitious barbarian, who respects no influence but that of superior force, and despises every profession but that of arms, had encountered each other on fields of terrific battle. Amidst the confusion engendered by perpetual conflict, the individuality of the region which once was the centre of the Ommeyade empire was lost. Its provinces, sufficiently extensive and opulent to be ranked as kingdoms, were subdivided into scores of insignificant principalities. The imperial metropolis,--the centre of Faith, the destination of the pilgrim, the home of art and poetry, the emporium of commerce,--stripped of her honors and her wealth, was degraded to the position of a provincial city. Every district had its sovereign, every town its court, every castle its lord. National unity, so difficult to establish and preserve among a people whose traditions were based upon tribal prejudice and individual independence, now became utterly impossible. With each influx of foreigners came fresh cause for discord. The energies of the innumerable rulers, who, through superior address or more propitious fortune, had obtained the government of the Peninsula, instead of being directed to their mutual preservation were utilized for each other’s discomfiture. Alliances were formed with the infidel. Important fortresses were unhesitatingly surrendered to secure his favor. His garrisons were introduced into strongholds in the very heart of the Moslem territory. The Koran and the crucifix were carried side by side in campaigns against loyal and orthodox sectaries of Mohammed. In spite of the danger of familiarizing the Christian enemy with the position and strength of their defences, in spite of the well-known duplicity of that enemy in dealing with adversaries of another creed, a policy utterly subversive of national autonomy was encouraged. The fatal passions of the Desert, dormant for many centuries, revived with tenfold vigor. The relentless spirit of vengeance dominated every other feeling. A chieftain whose dominions embraced but a few square miles, whose castle was perched upon some isolated peak, and whose army numbered a few hundred banditti, cared not so much for the plunder by which he lived as for the destruction of his neighbor. The powerful emir, who governed great cities and aspired to the most grandiloquent titles of royalty, indulged without restraint his hereditary instincts of national, sectional, or tribal hatred. In vain wise statesmen, whose sagacity predicted the impending downfall of the Moslem power, represented the necessity for organization against the common foe. With sorrow those in whom the feelings of public spirit and pious zeal were not extinguished saw principality after principality enriched with the spoils of Moorish cities and, sustained by the aid of Moorish tribute, exalted to the rank of Christian kingdoms. With an apathy peculiar to those blinded by prejudice, the more bigoted partisans viewed the foundation and growth of a new state which, after many vicissitudes and reverses, having fixed its capital at the mouth of the Tagus, soon equalled in influence and wealth the more ancient kingdoms of Leon, Castile, and Aragon. Instead of there being one direction from which to expect the enemy, he now descended on every side. The Moslem territory was completely surrounded. The limits of that territory were annually contracting. The great naval powers of Italy dominated the Mediterranean. They were intimately connected with the Christian sovereignties of Spain; their aid had been conspicuously instrumental in effecting the capture of Almeria; their fleets were at the disposal of the Holy See, from which now issued bull after bull summoning the Faithful to new crusades in the Peninsula. Principally through this impulse, the armies of the Spanish princes were largely recruited from the most brutal and degraded populations in the world. Of these, returned adventurers from Palestine and outlawed bandits from England, France, and Italy formed no inconsiderable proportion. Such was the totally unprincipled character of these allies, that they did not hesitate, when opportunity offered, to plunder those in whose service they had voluntarily enlisted. Under such circumstances, the ferocity of the conflict, already sufficiently violent, was intensified. The use of torture became more frequent. The massacre of prisoners on the eve of a retreat became a popular method of disposing of such encumbrances to flight. Familiarity with scenes of horror, continued through many generations, has left an indelible impress on the character and demeanor of the Spaniard, whose name was long a synonym for cruelty.

The want of mutual co-operation among the Christian states prolonged for more than a century the Moslem domination in the south of Spain. The Emirate of Saragossa, distracted by intestine quarrels, was the first northern principality to succumb to the encroachments of its warlike neighbors. Then followed the opening of the Ebro to the sea, the conquest of the Algarves, or Portugal, the further extension of the frontier of Castile. Repeated forays obliterated the vegetation of vast districts which had once exhibited the marvellous results of Moorish industry. The massacre or deportation of large communities destroyed in an hour what it had required centuries to create,--a numerous and thrifty population. The Arabs, whose genius had developed the civilization of the Khalifate of Cordova, had been exterminated by civil war or absorbed by the barbarian multitudes which swelled to enormous numbers the annual tide of African immigration. As has already been many times remarked, the principles of the Moslem polity were naturally and necessarily antagonistic to permanent political union. So long as similar conditions prevailed among the Christians, the fabric of Moorish power, however shaken, was apparently secure. But as soon as factions which divided the population of the various kingdoms were reconciled, as soon as those kingdoms, instead of being arrayed against each other, presented an unbroken front to the common enemy, the decayed edifice of Moslem grandeur crumbled into dust. The victory of Las Navas was the starting-point of a new era. From it dates the real power of the Spanish monarchy, whose states, not yet united, but governed by valiant and energetic princes, now first began to exhibit indications of that portentous influence destined subsequently to overshadow the continents of America and Europe. A great advance was made by the kingdom of Castile after the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa. It at once assumed a higher rank in the society of nations. New lustre was imparted to its name. Increased prestige became the portion of its sovereign. Alfonso sent to Rome the tent, the lance, and the standard of the Sultan,--trophies, considering that they typified the destruction of Moslem power in the West, of great and far-reaching significance. The glory of the achievement was purely national. It was shared by no foreigners. The allies, from whom so much had been expected, had basely retired in the face of the enemy, and the contest had been decided by Spanish skill and Spanish valor. Henceforth the policy of the Christians was aggressive; their forces, consolidated and fighting under the same banners, were no longer dissipated in domestic feuds or wasted in the fruitless conflicts of rival interests. The importance of the victory is demonstrated by the fact that it was the first decisive step in the triumphal march which conducted the Christian arms from the banks of the Tagus to the walls of Granada.

After a halt of three days, the victorious army proceeded southward. Baños and Tolosa fell into its hands. At its approach the people of Baeza evacuated that city in terror. The mosque was occupied by wounded fugitives from the battle-field of Las Navas, who had resorted to its precincts as to a sanctuary, hoping that the cruelty of their pursuers would respect the sacred character of the edifice where they had sought an asylum. Their expectation was vain. The mosque, with its helpless inmates, was at once set on fire and consumed. Then the Christians besieged Ubeda. This city was one of the most flourishing and populous in Northern Andalusia. Refugees from Baeza had increased the number of its inhabitants to nearly a hundred thousand. Its defences were strong, its garrison was brave, but Italian engineers in the service of Castile mined its walls and opened a practicable breach. Apprehensive of the consequences of an assault, the Moors endeavored to negotiate for safety. In exchange for the unmolested possession of their homes and the practice of their religion, they offered a million maravedis of gold. These terms were agreed to by the Christian princes, whose power, nominally paramount, was in fact subordinated to the authority of the clergy, already accustomed to dictate the policy of courts and the movements of armies. The dignitaries of the Church in a body protested against such indulgence to infidels. Their pious remonstrances prevailed, and the treaty, which had already received the assent of both parties, was revoked. Another was then framed by which the Moslems were allowed to peaceably evacuate the city, with the privilege of retaining their personal effects. The ransom which they themselves had suggested was required as a preliminary security, and the delay in its payment afforded a plausible excuse for the exercise of violence. The cupidity of the prelates and the soldiers was aroused by the sight of the accumulated wealth of a thriving community now in their grasp, and the signal was secretly given for outrage and massacre. In the frightful scenes that followed, sixty thousand of the inhabitants of Ubeda perished under the most aggravating circumstances of lust and cruelty; the remainder were condemned to servitude; the portable wealth was appropriated by the conquerors, and the place itself was utterly destroyed. The occupation of the city by the Saracens dated from the invasion of Tarik. From that time it had never been besieged by a Christian foe. It contained a large number of Jews, whose property, amassed by generations of traffic and extortion, made a welcome addition to the spoils of war. Its great extent was an alleged reason for its destruction, for the King of Castile is said to have stated as the motive of such vandalism, “We should never have had people enough to inhabit it.” Such were the deeds sanctioned by the clergy and perpetrated under the direction of royal champions of the Faith, by whose instrumentality the Christian religion was re-established in the Peninsula.

The capture of Ubeda closed a campaign which, so gloriously begun, might, if vigorously pursued, have driven the disorganized and terror-stricken Moslems into the sea. But to the Christian soldiery the only valuable advantage to be obtained from any victory was a temporary release from the restraints of discipline. The orgies which accompanied the taking of Ubeda greatly impaired the effectiveness and diminished the numbers of the invading army. Debauchery and disease soon avenged the misfortunes of the Moslems. Thousands, chafing at the confinement of the camp and anxious to enjoy the fruits of their prowess, openly deserted. The pious enthusiasm of the King of Castile was abated by the discouraging circumstances of his situation; his scruples were removed by the casuistry of prelates whose zeal had been cooled by the lion’s share of the booty, and the crusade which had recently threatened with conquest the whole of Andalusia was postponed to a more convenient and propitious opportunity.

The Sultan Mohammed quitted with the utmost celerity the country which had been the scene of his humiliation and defeat. After appointing his son, Yusuf-Abu-Yakub, to the succession, he retired to the seclusion of his palace, where with the solace of wine and beauty he endeavored unsuccessfully to forget the failure of his aspirations and the destruction of that army whose numbers had not inaptly been compared to the sands of the Desert for multitude. His end is said to have been hastened by poison administered by the officials of the court, who saw, with disgust and apprehension, a reign begun with every prospect of success and glory unprofitably and ignominiously prolonged in the midst of personal degradation and national misfortune.

The military operations of the ensuing year were checked by a disastrous famine which, through a total failure of the harvests, afflicted the kingdom of Castile. The characteristic improvidence of a people unaccustomed to anticipate or counteract the effects of such a contingency aggravated the public distress. The highways, the fields, the banks of streams were strewn with moaning and emaciated wretches helpless from privation and exposure. Contrary to the rule which ordinarily obtains during similar visitations, the mortality in the country greatly exceeded that of the towns. Vast numbers of cattle died in pastures denuded of vegetation by the drought, unclean animals were sought with avidity by the famishing, and the revolting resource of cannibalism was adopted by those in whose breasts the last feelings of humanity had been eradicated by intense and prolonged suffering. The immunity afforded the Moslems by this calamity was confirmed by renewed quarrels between the monarchs of Leon and Castile. The projects of the latter which looked to the deliverance of Spain from the Saracen yoke were destined to disappointment, for a fever, the result of inhaling an atmosphere polluted with the exhalations from thousands of decaying bodies, ended the career of the victor of Las Nevas in the fifty-ninth year of his age.

With the death of an imbecile sovereign and the accession of an infant, new and even more intolerable evils beset the unhappy Moslems of Andalusia. The provinces of the South were partitioned among the kinsmen of the successor of Mohammed, who habitually violated, in his name, every principle of honor and rectitude. The most responsible official positions were made objects of purchase. Corruption such as had never been previously known, even under the most unscrupulous of rulers, flourished in every department of the government. The four uncles of Yusuf-Abu-Yakub, who had appropriated his Peninsular inheritance, regarded the country that fortune had placed in their power as their legitimate prey. The wealthy, fortified by bribes, openly defied the execution of the laws. The poor, placed at the mercy of the inexorable tax-gatherer, were reduced to starvation. Such was the arrogance of these usurpers that they acknowledged no responsibility to any superior, and the authority of the Sultan was practically ignored in this portion of his dominions. The people, exasperated by such treatment and without hope of redress, were ready to welcome any change as a benefit, and the projects of the Christians received in the sequel no small encouragement and support from the despairing victims of Moslem tyranny. Long before the King of Castile occupied the cities of Andalusia, the way had been paved for their conquest by generations of misgovernment and oppression. After ten years passed amidst the sloth and enervating pleasures of the seraglio, Yusuf-Abu-Yakub died, without having, in reality, exercised control over his extensive empire for even a single day; nor had he, since his accession, ever issued from the gates of his capital. Abd-al-Melik, one of his numerous uncles, whose life had been passed as a dervish, and whose previous experience hardly fitted him for the arduous and practical duties of royalty, was raised by the combined voice of the nobles and the populace to the throne of the Almohades.

In Spain, the Moorish princes of the same family that had heretofore administered the affairs of the Peninsula, without regard to the claims of the court of Morocco, openly asserted their independence. The Emir of Murcia, Abu-Mohammed, by reason of age and superior talents, obtained an acknowledged ascendency over his brethren. His diligence and liberality secured many active partisans in the capital of the empire; his ambition to supplant a weak and inexperienced monarch unable to sustain the weight of a crown was approved by the populations of both Andalusia and Al-Maghreb, and the pious Abd-al-Melik returned without reluctance to the practice of a life of devotion and solitude, after having relinquished the sceptre to his able and fortunate kinsman.

It is beyond the province of this work to minutely describe the interminable intrigues, quarrels, and petty revolutions which preceded the extinction of the Mussulman power in the South of Spain. The governors of the different provinces exhausted, as usual, the resources of their subjects by constant and destructive hostility. Such as were successful were certain to be eventually overwhelmed by their recent adversaries, who invoked the ready aid of infidel allies. No permanent advantage was secured excepting by the Christians, whose cause was materially advanced by the universal prevalence of Moslem discord. Castilian troops continued to visit with devastation the fertile plains of Andalusia. Every alliance with the invaders was concluded at the expense of the Moors, who were compelled to accede without alternative to the exorbitant demands, by whose acceptance alone they could hope to retain their power. Fortresses which commanded vital points on the frontier and the passes and highways into Andalusia were surrendered as the price of military assistance in the settlement of some insignificant dispute. Among those who had thus secured the precarious and expensive friendship of the Christians was Abu-Ali-Edris, surnamed Al-Mamun, Emir of Seville. By the co-operation of Ferdinand III., King of Castile, he had dispersed an army of Africans sent to reduce him to subjection. The Castilians, not accustomed to observe the faith of treaties longer than it coincided with their immediate interest, persisted in gratifying their rapacity by destructive incursions on Moslem soil. Ferdinand, whose reputation as a saint has been somewhat tarnished by his perfidy as a sovereign and his cruelty as a soldier, directed in person these raids against his allies. His adventurous spirit carried him to the very borders of the Vega of Granada. The frontier strongholds of Priego, Loja, and Alhama fell into his hands. After menacing the capital, he laid siege to Jaen. Consideration of the character of the forces engaged in the attack and defence of this city discloses the peculiarity of this double warfare. In the army of Ferdinand was a large body of Moorish troops, of which the Emir of Baeza furnished not less than three thousand horse and twenty thousand foot. The besieged were assisted by a detachment of Christians whose nationality is not mentioned, but who were probably Spanish soldiers of fortune or Italian and French mercenaries.

The enterprise was unsuccessful; the assaults of the besiegers were vigorously repelled, and Al-Mamun, having collected an army, relieved the city and routed the Christians in a pitched battle; and the expedition heralded with such extravagant boasts and begun under the most auspicious circumstances terminated in defeat and ignominy. The spoils of conquest were relinquished, the captured fortresses were speedily retaken, and the booty abandoned in the camp before Jaen more than recompensed the soldiers of Al-Mamun for the dangers and exposure of a short and glorious campaign.

That prince was now at liberty to pursue unmolested his schemes of ambition. The incapacity of the Almohades had left the empire without a master and the capital without defence. In the absence of the sovereign, public affairs were administered by the two councils organized by the Mahdi, an institution which, through all the vicissitudes attending the development and decline of the Almohade power, had remained unchanged. With a rapidity that anticipated the swiftest courier, Al-Mamun, at the head of a strong force of cavalry, hastened to Morocco. The councillors and the sheiks who had questioned his authority and disputed his title were peremptorily summoned before him. In vain they protested their innocence. In vain they confronted the spies who had reported their treasonable and insulting speeches to the tyrant. With their families and their friends, who atoned for their relationship and attachment with a similar fate, they passed to immediate execution. Their slaves and retainers shared the fate of their unfortunate lords; and neither the weakness of youth nor the attractions of beauty availed to secure immunity from the bloody and indiscriminate sacrifice. A row of five thousand gory heads was ranged along the walls of the capital, and the sight and odor of these significant emblems of despotic cruelty effectually checked all disposition to revolt. With an insolent disregard of religious prejudice and political tact which it is difficult to comprehend, Al-Mamun denounced the name and memory of the Mahdi as that of an unscrupulous and cunning impostor. The form of government he had instituted had been already abolished by the murder of the Councillors of State. The name of the false prophet was omitted from the prayer in the mosques. His title was erased from the inscriptions of the coinage. All magistrates were prohibited from alluding to him in their decisions. These measures, adopted in defiance of public sentiment, were not conducive to the permanence of usurpation. The memory of the Mahdi was still revered by the illiterate and fanatical masses of Africa. In all ages sacrilege has been the most dangerous offence of which a monarch could be guilty; and after these impolitic exhibitions of jealousy nothing but the ferocious character of their sovereign deterred the exasperated Berbers from rebellion.

While Al-Mamun was strengthening his empire in Africa, his influence was rapidly declining in Spain. A new antagonist, well worthy to assert, in an age of national decadence, the rights of an outraged people, had arisen as the representative of Andalusian liberty. Mohammed-Ibn-Hud, who concealed under the mask of patriotism an ambition which aimed at despotic power, stood forth as the champion of the oppressed. His extraction was noble,--he was a lineal descendant of the famous dynasty of Saragossa; but no royal ancestry was required to dignify a character eminent for military genius, political sagacity, and the exercise of every princely virtue. Influential chieftains at once ranged themselves around him. His increasing power enabled him to seize and retain the Emirate of Murcia. His cause was promoted by the assurance that all taxes imposed by Almohade tyranny would be abolished, and that the Africans would be either expelled or exterminated. These pledges were speedily fulfilled. An overwhelming proportion of the inhabitants of Moorish Spain supported the claims of the alleged representative of freedom. The doctrines introduced by the Mahdi were declared schismatical, and his disciples branded as public enemies. The mosques in which their rites had been celebrated for more than a century were cleansed and rededicated with the same solicitude and ceremony as would have been displayed in the purification of Pagan temples. Those of the hostile faction who had made themselves offensively conspicuous were promptly executed; the less obnoxious were exiled. White, the official color of the followers of the Mahdi, was superseded by black, the distinguishing badge of the Abbasides; for Ibn-Hud had already publicly announced his allegiance to the khalifs of Bagdad. The revolution soon spread to the confines of the Moslem territory. The Arabs and the Andalusians avenged the accumulated evils of generations by the butchery of every African who fell into their hands. The emirs of Granada and Valencia were expelled by the exasperated populace. Al-Mamun, having undertaken to suppress the rebellion, sustained a decisive defeat at Tarifa, and the prestige of Ibn-Hud, increased by this fortunate event, now became greater than ever.

But a severe reverse was in store for this adventurer, who, elated by his success, was blinded by illusory visions of imperial splendor. Alfonso IX. of Leon, after a blockade of many months, took the city of Merida. This place, the metropolis of Lusitania in the days of the Roman Empire, was the largest and strongest of the cities of Western Spain. Its geographical position, in a measure, commanded the frontier, and its proximity to the valley of the Guadalquivir rendered its hostile occupation a constant and dangerous menace to the peace of Andalusia. No one recognized these facts more readily than Ibn-Hud, and, having for the time suspended his operations against the Sultan of Morocco, he advanced without misgivings to encounter the Christian enemy. The latter formed but a handful when compared with the Moslems, but they did not shrink from the conflict; and we are edified by the statement of the pious chronicler that St. Jago, with an innumerable host of angels, fought on the side of the champions of Christ. The Moors were defeated with great loss, and the entire province of Estremadura was, in consequence, annexed to the domain of Leon. The sovereign of that kingdom died soon afterwards, while returning from a pilgrimage to the shrine of Santiago; the credit of the Saint was greatly enhanced by this signal victory; and his apparition, mounted upon a white horse and wielding a flaming sword, was henceforth visible to the eyes of all true believers in every important engagement which resulted favorably to the Christian cause.

While in the West the policy and valor of the Kings of Castile and Leon were gradually undermining the already shattered fabric of Moslem government, in the East the prowess of another Christian hero had begun to make serious encroachments upon the fertile and populous region extending along the Mediterranean from the Alpujarras to the borders of Catalonia. The acquisition of the latter province by the crown of Aragon at once raised that kingdom to a prominent rank among the sovereignties of Western Europe. From a comparatively unknown inland power it was at once brought into intimate contact with the principal commercial emporiums of the civilized world. The city of Barcelona, as has already been mentioned in these pages, attained at an early date a high and deserved celebrity as a centre of enterprise and industry. Its maritime facilities equalled those of any European port. In the thrift and activity of its inhabitants it was superior to all others, unless, perhaps, Venice or Genoa. Its ships and cargoes were eagerly welcomed by every trading nation. Long accustomed to a condition of independence, it had developed a naval power which scarcely yielded in number and equipment to the forces of its celebrated neighbors,--the republics of Italy. It presented the sole exception among all the Moslem communities which had submitted to the Christian arms, in that this occupancy had not produced stagnation and decay. Under the rule of its counts, its progress, instead of being retarded as in other instances, seemed to acquire a new and greater impetus. The population increased in an unusual, even a phenomenal, ratio, and soon it became one of the most opulent, one of the most polished, of cities. Its merchants were the first in Europe to perfect a system of banking and exchange. The source of Barcelona’s extraordinary commercial vitality--to which also must be attributed the energy and acuteness which distinguished its citizens--was the large Hebrew population. Numerous and intellectual under the Moors, as soon as Catalonia attained to the dignity of a virtually independent state, the Jews, save alone in the domain of religious belief, became predominant in influence. They controlled the treasury. In all but name they administered the government. Their institutions of learning instilled, without remonstrance, the most heterodox opinions into the minds of the Christian youth. Their native practitioners were, since the decline of the University of Cordova, the most learned medical men of the age. The unreasonable prejudice attaching to the nationality and the faith of the Barcelona surgeon did not prevent his employment by the most bigoted princes of Christendom. The presence of such an accomplished, shrewd, and highly educated people could not fail to react on those with whom they were associated in daily intercourse. As a consequence, Barcelona had acquired, and indisputably merited, the reputation of being one of the most intelligent, wealthy, and cultivated communities of mediæval times. With all its advantages, there was still one serious drawback to its prosperity. The Balearic Isles, lying a hundred and fifty miles from the main-land,--which, from some inexplicable cause, have always enjoyed a consideration out of all proportion to their political or maritime importance,--were still in possession of the Moslems. They constituted a dependency of the Emirate of Valencia, having been sold by the Genoese to that principality, after having remained for a considerable period under the jurisdiction of the Counts of Barcelona. The governor, Mohammed-Ibn-Ali, who belonged to the Almohade faction, had provoked the enmity of the Catalonians by repeated acts of piracy, which were the more inexcusable as he was in no condition to defend by arms the consequences of his imprudence.

Jaime I., King of Aragon, who had planned the conquest of these islands, was now about to enter upon that career which eventually raised him to such an eminent rank among the most celebrated princes of the thirteenth century. Reared amidst exciting scenes of conquest, from childhood he seemed inspired with the martial spirit of the crusader. In the military and chivalrous exercises which formed an indispensable part of the education of every aristocratic youth, he had no superiors. Such was the formidable antagonist with whom the Moslems of Eastern Spain were now to contend for the prize of empire.

As soon as the project of Jaime had been broached to the Cortes, it was received with the acclamations of every class in his dominions. The city of Barcelona equipped the larger portion of the fleet. Among those who thus enthusiastically welcomed hostilities against the Moslem, none evinced a more energetic and liberal disposition than the clergy. The church militant was represented by many distinguished prelates, practised almost from infancy in the art of war. The Archbishop of Tarragona gave a thousand pieces of gold and a hundred loads of wheat, and, completely sheathed in steel, entered the crusaders’ camp at the head of eleven hundred well-armed men. Others responded with equal alacrity. The nobles vied in zeal and prodigality with the dignitaries of the Church. The military orders, whose duty and inclination made such an enterprise the most pious and agreeable of diversions, from far and near sought the standard of Jaime. A number of French and Genoese vessels, whose crews were more eager for Moorish spoil than for the triumph of the Cross, joined the forces of Aragon; and in the autumn of 1229 a flotilla of nearly two hundred ships set sail from the harbor of Salou for the island of Majorca.

Warned of the object of the expedition, the Moors had made extensive preparations for the reception of their enemies. A landing was effected with difficulty at Palomera, and the Christians, constantly harassed by the active mountaineers, were compelled to fight their way to the capital, then known by the name of the island, but familiar to the ancients as Palma, by which appellation it has also been designated since the seventeenth century. Heretofore comparatively free from the attacks of a besieging army, the fortifications of that city were ill-adapted to withstand the effects of the formidable appliances of war. The machines constructed by the Italian engineers at Majorca were among the most ponderous and destructive ever used in Europe. The strongest towers crumbled under the weight and impetus of the immense balls of stone projected against them. The walls were mined in several places. As soon as a breach was opened the Christians rushed to the attack, only to be repulsed by the determined courage of the besieged. In their defence the latter displayed a knowledge of war not inferior to that of their adversaries. The ramparts were equipped with engines that cast showers of missiles into the Christian camp. The destruction caused during the day by projectiles from the enemy’s catapults was repaired at night. The demolished walls were rebuilt with a celerity that awakened the amazement of the enemy. Obstinate and sanguinary encounters took place in the depths of the earth, where the mines, conducted under the walls, were intersected by countermines dug by the besieged. The latter, greatly annoyed by the stones from the tremendous engines, resorted to the strange and inhuman expedient of fastening their prisoners to crosses and raising them upon the battlements, in the hope of checking the fire of the Christians. These victims of Moorish cruelty, however, exhorted their companions not to slacken their efforts; and we are gravely informed by monkish annalists, whose faith was evidently in an inverse ratio to their veracity, that by the miraculous interposition of Heaven these candidates for martyrdom escaped without injury. At all events, the device was a failure, and, after an exposure of several hours, the captives were returned to their dungeons, and the operations of the besiegers continued with renewed and increasing energy. An attempt was next made to cut off the supply of water by diverting the course of a stream which ran through the Christian camp. But the vigilance of the Aragonese sentinels thwarted this plan at its inception. A detachment of Moslems, while engaged in the work, was surprised and put to the sword, and the head of its commander, hurled over the walls from a catapult, proclaimed to the dismayed and astonished garrison the failure of the expedition and the fate of their comrades. The spirit of the Moslems, heretofore apparently indomitable, now began to evince signs of discouragement. Nor was the plight of the Christians much better in comparison. For seven weeks the siege had continued. It was the rainy season; their camp drenched by daily storms became a quagmire, and their efforts were seriously impeded by the unfavorable conditions of their situation and the inclemency of an autumn memorable for an incessant tempest. Despite these drawbacks and the stubborn resistance of the Moors, the constancy of the besiegers remained unshaken. The admirable arrangements of Jaime had secured the establishment of an abundant commissariat. Uninterrupted communication with Barcelona gave encouraging assurance of supplies and reinforcements. The skill of the Jewish surgeons, who served on the medical staff of the Christian army, prevented the outbreak of an epidemic in the camp,--an event more to be dreaded than the weapons or the strategy of a crafty and courageous enemy. Disheartened by their reverses and doubtful of their ability to resist much longer the determined assaults of the invaders, the Moors attempted to negotiate. They agreed to defray all the expenses incurred by the campaign if the King would withdraw his forces and conclude a truce. When this proposal was rejected, they declared their willingness to surrender the capital if transportation to Africa were furnished such as desired to depart and security were guaranteed to all who chose to remain. Jaime again refused to consider a suggestion evidently dictated by a consciousness of declining strength. The pathetic significance of an indisposition to entertain favorable terms of submission was unmistakable by those familiar with the shocking enormities of mediæval warfare. It was now apparent that the city was destined to pillage. The hardships of the siege induced by the intrepidity of a people in defence of their homes were to be expiated by the awful scenes exhibited by a place taken by storm. Many of the citizens were refugees from the conquered provinces of the Peninsula; had witnessed or participated in the sack of cities, and well understood the dreadful fate that was in store for them. Nerved by the consciousness of their desperate situation, they redoubled their efforts to repel the enemy, whose engines had almost ruined a large part of the fortifications, which in several places already offered vulnerable points of attack. The besiegers began to suffer from exposure, and the King, fearful that the enthusiasm of his troops might abate if a decided advantage was not soon obtained, ordered a general assault. On the last day of the year, before dawn, the Christian camp was under arms. With all the impressive solemnities of the Catholic ritual mass was said, the sacrament was administered, and the soldiers were earnestly exhorted to fight bravely for the Faith. Before an altar erected for that purpose, the King and the nobles, drawing their swords, swore to enter the city or perish. The combined influence of cupidity and fanaticism was too strong to be successfully withstood; the assailants poured into the breach, and their weight and impetuosity overwhelmed the garrison, driving it back into the city. The conflict raged with unremitting fury in the winding streets. The women on the housetops cast down missiles of every description upon the heads of the struggling Christians. From the minaret of every mosque came the stentorian voice of the muezzin, encouraging the Moslems to renewed action and invoking the curse of Allah upon the infidel. The narrow thoroughfares and the houses solidly constructed of stone retarded the progress of the assailants. The Moors fought with desperation for their homes and their liberty; but animated by the example of their sovereign and urged on by the presence and the appeals of the ecclesiastics, who, like their antagonists, the faquis and the muezzins, took a prominent part in the battle, the Aragonese ultimately prevailed. Fifty thousand persons perished; thirty thousand were sold as slaves, and a great number found a temporary asylum in the mountains among the hospitable and sympathetic peasantry.

As the capital was the centre of a flourishing maritime trade, had been enriched with the spoils of innumerable piratical excursions, and had become the residence of many wealthy refugees from Africa, the victors obtained a magnificent booty. So great was it, indeed, that the horrors of pillage continued without cessation for eight consecutive days. Their avarice satiated, the first duty imposed upon the Christians was the purification of the city. The immense number of dead bodies, putrefying under a tropical sun, made this an unwelcome and onerous task; but the labors of the workmen were cheered and accelerated by the pious assurance of the clergy that a thousand days of pardon would be accorded them for the head of every misbeliever. The streets were cleared of the repulsive encumbrances which offended the senses and impeded traffic; the corpses of the victims of war and brutality were consumed by fire outside the walls; and the soldiers proceeded to indemnify themselves for past privations by indulgence in every kind of debauchery.

Their excesses produced a contagious and fatal distemper, whose ravages, baffling the skill of the best physicians, completed the havoc of the sword, and the army became so reduced in numbers and efficiency that operations were suspended until reinforcements could be obtained. Fourteen months in all were required for the subjugation of the island. The native population was enslaved, and the fruits of conquest were equitably apportioned among the victors. The conquered territory, especially exempted from the burden of taxation, became the property of those by whose valor it had been acquired; and Majorca passed forever from the jurisdiction of the Successors of Mohammed. Its favorable situation and delightful climate attracted many colonists from the kingdoms of Southern Europe, and before many years the losses in population it had sustained by war were repaired; the preponderance of Moorish characteristics gradually disappeared; and a quarter of a century had not elapsed before Majorca, in ignorance and orthodoxy, could challenge competition with the most bigoted state in Christendom. The island was erected into a fief of the crown, and twelve years after its occupation Minorca and Ivica, profiting by the example of their more powerful neighbor, yielded, after a show of resistance, to the fame and influence of the King of Aragon. The conquest of the Balearic Isles, preceding that of Valencia--of which, indeed, it was the necessary prelude, when their dangerous proximity to the African coast is considered,--was the first and one of the most brilliant of the many exploits which reflected renown upon the career of Jaime el Conquistador.

The Almohade monarchy, following the example of almost every government established under the Moslem polity, was now rapidly hastening to its end. Its territory had been dismembered. Its prestige, founded upon a successful career in arms, had vanished. The polygamous families of the Sultans of Africa furnished, at the decease of every monarch, a formidable number of pretenders to the vacant throne. In Morocco a crowd of hostile claimants, many of whom were not allied to the descendants of Abd-al-Mumen, and whose only titles to sovereignty were military genius and personal popularity, contended with indifferent and varying success for the possession of imperial power. Independent emirates arose at Mequinez and Tlemcen. Al-Maghreb was distracted with sedition, massacre, civil war. The contagion of strife infected every class of the hot-blooded population of Northern Africa. An opportunity for rapine, so congenial to the tastes of the Bedouin and the Berber, was not long neglected by the predatory tribes of the Desert, and the Sahara was again made the scene of organized brigandage and guerilla warfare. The fragments of the great empire founded by the Mahdi were no longer capable of reunion. Their cohesive power, dependent on superstitious awe, individual merit, and popular admiration, was destroyed; the fatal conflicts which for years exhausted the energies of antagonistic factions had extirpated every vestige of national ambition and religious zeal; the noble sentiment of patriotism, always weak in the breast of a barbarian, even when accustomed to civilized life, was now completely subordinated to private enmity; universal discord rendered effective resistance to an enemy impossible; and the last of the Almohades, Edris-Abu-Dibus, perished, a century and a half after the advent of the Mahdi, in a skirmish with the troops of an obscure adventurer.

Conditions similar to those prevailing in Africa occupied the attention and destroyed the efficiency of the Mussulmans of Spain. With every year, with the inauguration of each successive potentate of magnificent pretensions and insignificant following, factional hatred was intensified. The Christians, by cession, by purchase, by conquest, were rapidly acquiring the territory once embraced by the khalifate of Cordova, which had been the prize of Moslem valor and the seat of Moslem faith. The authority of the representative of the Almohades was confined to a narrow district which scarcely extended beyond the environs of Seville. The enemies of Islam pressed daily upon the shrunken confines of the rich and extensive domain conquered by the soldiers of Tarik and Musa, made illustrious by three centuries of military success and intellectual progress under the Ommeyades, and degraded by the African sultans to humiliating dependence on a barbarian monarchy. In the West, the rich provinces of Lusitania and the Algarves had been absorbed by Portugal. In the East, the steady progress of the King of Aragon portended the approaching extinction of the Mussulman power. The principality of Guadix had assumed the dignity of a kingdom under the first prince of the Alhamares, a dynasty eventually destined to revive the departed glories of Cordova in the new metropolis of Granada. That entire region of the Peninsula which was still subject to Moslem rule was distracted by the implacable feuds of aspirants to the disrupted empire of the Almohades. The impracticability of again uniting the discordant constituents of that empire was not understood, or even considered. The rival contestants sacrificed every consideration of patriotic and religious duty to the gratification of their revenge or the furtherance of their ambition. Their subjects beheld with apprehension and disgust the purchase of Christian aid against their brethren by the payment of extravagant subsidies and the surrender of the bulwarks of the frontier. They saw the resources wasted which, if properly employed, might have redeemed from infidel occupation vast tracts of territory whose fertility had once been the pride of the industrious people of Andalusia. They saw their own arms turned upon their neighbors, when the combined efforts of both would have sufficed, if not to successfully resist, at least to check the progress of the common foe. Three princes indiscriminately arrayed against each other occupied an unenviable prominence in this suicidal conflict. In the West, Yahya, the former Almohade sovereign, held Seville. In the East, his nephew Mohammed-al-Ahmar and the celebrated partisan Mohammed-Ibn-Hud contended for the possession of the provinces of Murcia and Granada. The latter, in the ignoble desire to satiate his vengeance, had secured from the Castilians temporary immunity from molestation by the daily payment of a thousand pieces of gold. This ignominious contract was at length rescinded on account of the remonstrances and threats of the Andalusians, whose fields were ravaged in security by Christian marauders, while Moslem partisans were cutting each others’ throats under the walls of Murcia. Ibn-Hud, after a campaign which terminated with little glory and still less honor for either party, succeeded in compelling the Christians to retreat,--a step which they anticipated by the slaughter of their captives. Repeated raids into the southern provinces were gradually but surely preparing the way for Christian supremacy. Relying upon the additional prestige acquired by his recent advantage over the Castilians, Ibn-Hud negotiated a treaty with Ferdinand, which stipulated for a cessation of hostilities for four years. The results of this negotiation indicate the slight regard for the most sacred agreements entertained by a prince whose services to the Church have procured for him the questionable honor of canonization. No engagement could have been assumed under more solemn circumstances. The treaty was ratified by the signatures, by the oaths, by the pledges of regularly authorized representatives of the contracting parties. An enormous sum of gold was paid by the Moslem as a preliminary consideration. But priestly casuistry and royal ambition had little respect in times of universal ignorance for the maintenance of national honor or the observance of public faith. The prelates whispered in the ear of the King that it was an established principle of the ecclesiastical polity that no contract was binding which was entered into with an enemy of Christ. The suggestion was in thorough accordance with the views of Ferdinand, accustomed, moreover, to implicit obedience to the directions of his spiritual counsellors. A rare and tempting opportunity was offered to violate the agreement entered into with the Saracens, for which the price had already been received. The attention of the latter--who fancied themselves secure from foreign hostility--had been diverted from their hereditary foe, and was now concentrated on each other. Civil war was raging on the borders of Granada, where Mohammed-Ibn-Hud and Mohammed-al-Ahmar were engaged in a desperate struggle for the possession of Eastern Andalusia. In consequence of this, as well as of the presumed inviolability of the treaty, the entire valley of the Guadalquivir had been stripped of troops. The open country was practically defenceless. The garrisons of the great cities were insufficient to resist a siege. Exhausted by a long series of inroads, the peasants were beginning to again cultivate their farms and rebuild their desolate homes. No one suspected that the storm was about to break forth more furiously than ever. Repeated examples of Christian perfidiousness had been insufficient to teach the Moslems to what depths ecclesiastical infamy, in the prosecution of schemes of worldly advantage, was ready to descend.

Some Moorish prisoners, whom the commander of a small detachment of freebooters was about to send to execution as the most convenient way of disposing of them, promised, in return for their lives, to place the eastern suburb of Cordova, which virtually commanded the city, in the hands of the Christians. The proposal was too alluring to be declined; the risk of failure was not considered; and, in an age characterized by the most foolhardy and romantic exploits, the greater the danger the more fascinating it appeared to the audacious spirits who lived upon the excitements of border warfare. During a stormy night in the month of January, 1236, the assailing party, numbering but a few hundred, advanced in silence to scale the walls of one of the largest Moslem cities of the. Peninsula, which, although greatly diminished in population since the era of the khalifate, still contained more than a hundred thousand inhabitants. A few agile soldiers succeeded in reaching the ramparts; the guard was surprised and despatched, and the gate was at once thrown open to their comrades. The suburb thus entered by the Christians was one of the five principal quarters or wards into which the metropolis of Moorish Spain had been originally divided. Completely isolated from the remainder of the capital by a line of fortifications, it gave an enemy far greater facilities for defence than the mere penetration into a walled town of ordinary character would have afforded. The first intimation of their misfortune was communicated to the citizens at daybreak by the tumult which accompanied the inauguration of pillage and murder. Taken completely by surprise and hemmed in on every side, there was no possibility of effectual resistance and but little hope of escape. The garrison issued from the citadel, but were unable to dislodge the Christians, who, inured by long practice to similar encounters, and favored by the tortuous streets and by the towers occupied by the cross-bowmen, easily held their ground against overwhelming odds. But notwithstanding their temporary success, their situation was desperate. It was hardly possible that so small a force would be able to maintain itself in the centre of a hostile community until reinforcements could arrive. Yet such was the undaunted resolve of the assailants, who, now besieged in turn, were subjected to the harassing effects of unremitting conflict. Messengers requesting aid had been early sent to Alvar Perez, the commandant of the frontier, and to King Ferdinand at Leon. The knights of Calatrava and Alcantara responded with eagerness to the call to arms, and with these and a considerable body of militia, to whom were confided the patrol and defence of the border, the Castilian general hastened to Cordova.

When he received the message, Ferdinand was at a banquet. His martial followers learned with exultation of the prospect of a new campaign, and the scene of mirth and festivity was at once exchanged for the stern and serious preparations for war. The season was most unpropitious to military operations. The winter rains had flooded the country, raised the streams far beyond their banks, and rendered the roads impassable. A long and toilsome journey separated the capitals of Leon and Andalusia. But nothing could daunt the spirit of the Castilian and Leonese chivalry, whose religious fervor and martial enthusiasm were augmented and stimulated by the example of their king. The exigencies of the situation would not tolerate delay. Communication with remote districts was difficult, and but three hundred horsemen could be raised to follow Ferdinand in an expedition which promised far more danger than glory. The Christians surrounded at Cordova formed but an insignificant force, wholly inadequate, it would at first appear, to the conquest of a strong and populous capital. But fortune, which had so frequently aided in promoting the designs of Spanish audacity, again interposed in favor of the champions of the Cross. In their extremity, the Cordovans had repeatedly implored Mohammed-Ibn-Hud, whose army was encamped at Ecija, to raise the siege before more Castilian troops arrived. Had these requests been heeded, the utter destruction of the Castilians could hardly have been prevented. That cautious leader, however, entertained a wholesome dread of the prowess of his enemies, and hesitated to confront in battle, even when the conditions were all in his favor, the redoubtable warriors of the North. He delayed, he temporized, he sent renegade spies into the Christian camp, who, having been detected, seized the opportunity to stipulate for pardon on condition of their return of false reports to the Moorish general. Their representations of the exaggerated numbers of and hourly increasing accessions to the Castilian army were believed; Ibn-Hud declined to risk his power upon the event of a single engagement, and the Cordovans beheld with sorrow and indignation the disappearance of their only hope of escape. Retribution soon overtook the vacillating and too credulous Moslem prince. The siege of Valencia had been formed by the King of Aragon, and the entreaties of its Emir had more weight with Ibn-Hud than the plaintive appeals of his other imperilled countrymen. While on his march to reinforce that monarch he halted at Almeria. That city was governed by a secret partisan of Mohammed-al-Ahmar, who saw in this unexpected visit a convenient opportunity to increase his favor with his patron. A magnificent banquet was prepared, and the noble and wealthy merchants of Almeria contended with each other in honoring the distinguished guest. The choicest wines of Spain were provided in the greatest variety and profusion for the canonically prohibited, but none the less acceptable, entertainment of the assembled Moslems. At a late hour Ibn-Hud was conducted to his chamber and drowned in the basin of a fountain by slaves who had received their instructions from the governor himself. His death was officially attributed to apoplexy resulting from intoxication; but popular suspicion was not slow in tracing to its true origin the sudden end of the victim of broken faith and perfidious hospitality.

By the assassination of Mohammed-Ibn-Hud was removed the greatest remaining obstacle to Castilian conquest. He alone, of all the Moorish potentates of Spain, had refused to barter Moslem territory for Christian aid. When his political necessities required the co-operation of the infidel power, that power was reluctantly purchased with gold, and not with the surrender of fortresses to be used as a basis for hostile operations, and which could never be regained. He was the most prominent representative of Hispano-Arab nationality that had appeared for generations in the Peninsula. In opposition to him were arrayed the various elements which, in many respects mutually inimical, combined either purposely or unconsciously for the subversion of the Saracen empire, the greed and brutality of the Berbers, the fanaticism of the theologians, the hopeless aspirations of a horde of princely adventurers, the indomitable energy and perseverance of the Christian sovereigns. Against these destructive agencies Ibn-Hud conducted a brave but hopeless struggle. Prejudice against African domination had been aggravated by centuries of crime and oppression. But Berber influence was still potent in many communities, and in some predominantly so. Immigration and intermarriage had contributed largely to consolidate and preserve the power originally obtained by violence. Ibn-Hud was in no sense the champion of the clergy. He was accused of atheism; his speech was often blasphemous, and he was habitually addicted to immoderate indulgence in wine. But these faults would have been readily condoned by ecclesiastical indulgence if their possessor had exhibited an edifying subserviency to the ministers of religion. Instead of this, however, he lost no opportunity of turning the hypocritical professions of the faquis into ridicule, a course which, by alienating a numerous and influential sect, materially accelerated the hour of Christian triumph. The suicidal behavior of the petty rulers and soldiers of fortune who indulged the fallacious hope of empire has already been repeatedly alluded to in this work. United, they might have deferred for a time the inevitable day of reckoning for official misconduct and national corruption; separated and hostile, they destroyed the basis of all power and social organization, and the stability of none so quickly as their own.

The murder of Ibn-Hud caused the immediate disbanding of his troops, and the investment of Cordova proceeded without fear of interference from an army which, properly commanded, could easily have raised the siege. Ali-Ibn-Yusuf, the brother of the dead prince, obtained the Emirate of Murcia, of which, however, he was soon deprived by assassination through the instrumentality of Mohammed-al-Ahmar, and, together with the principality of Almeria, it was added to the territory of the rising kingdom of Granada.

Their desertion by Ibn-Hud and the intelligence of his tragic death struck the citizens of Cordova with terror. Notwithstanding his pusillanimous conduct, they had still hoped that he might ultimately effect their deliverance. Now, however, there was no one to whom they could turn for succor. News of the important enterprise in which the King of Castile and Leon was engaged had already spread to the most distant settlements of the Christian territory. Citizen and peasant, noble and mountaineer, braving the inclemency of an unfavorable season and the dangers of swollen torrents and flooded highways, hastened to the seat of war. The dismay of the besieged increased with each shout which announced the arrival of a new detachment at the Castilian camp. The Christians made frequent and desperate attempts to carry the place by storm. The garrison was worn out with the fatigue it was compelled to undergo; and the effeminate and disorderly populace were ill-qualified to perform the duties of soldiers. Walls and towers were tottering under the blows of the military engines. The suddenness of the attack had found the city, which, nominally protected by a truce, dreamed of nothing less than a siege, entirely unprovided with supplies. Food became scarce. It was manifest that the inevitable destiny of the ancient metropolis of the Ommeyade khalifate could not long be postponed. Actuated by motives of self-preservation and humanity, the Moorish authorities determined to make terms with the King, and to avoid if possible the awful calamities which had been visited upon so many of the unfortunate cities of Andalusia. The capitulation was made under the distressing conditions usually imposed in such cases upon the vanquished. The inhabitants were required to abandon everything and to depart from the province. As the long and weeping train of penniless exiles passed out of the gates on one side the conquerors entered on the other. It was with the greatest display of military and ecclesiastical pomp that the Christians took possession of the famous Moslem capital. The old walls echoed the tread of mailed squadrons, the stirring notes of the trumpet, and the solemn chants of the clergy, who, in all the splendor of glittering vestments, jewelled censer, and crucifix, occupied the post of honor in the procession. The royal standard of Castile and Leon was planted on the highest tower of the fortifications. It was with wonder, not altogether unmingled with reverence, that the ignorant and ruffian soldiery viewed the exquisite beauty of the Great Mosque,--the shrine which, venerated as a sanctuary, had invited the pilgrimage of the devout of distant nations; the temple which had been enriched by the emulous munificence of the most opulent and polished princes of Europe; the edifice which, alone of all the marvellous architectural creations of the Hispano-Arab age of gold, had survived intact the fury of religious discord, the tumult of revolution, the extinction of dynasties, the destruction of empires. Amidst the vicissitudes of invasion, conquest, and revolt, a veneration akin to idolatry had always invested the Djalma of Abd-al-Rahman. The exterior still glowed with the warm and brilliant coloring of the Orient. The court-yard still exhibited in its diversified horticulture the capricious taste of the Andalusian gardener. Inside, the presence of the myriads of pious worshippers who had trodden its interminable aisles in the course of five eventful centuries had left few permanent traces. The pattern of the elegant pavement was partially effaced. Within the Mihrab--the centre of the little sanctuary which looked towards the temple of Mecca--a channel deeply worn in the marble floor indicated where countless pilgrims, in imitation of the ceremonies of the Kaaba, had seven times made its circuit on their knees. These, however, were the sole but eloquent testimonials of the continuous devotion of fifteen generations. The walls were hung with that richly embossed and decorated leather whose name indicated the Ommeyade capital as the place of its invention and manufacture. The ceiling sparkled in the semi-obscurity with its gilded pendentives and silver stars. Upon the arches of the Mihrab appeared in untarnished beauty the dazzling mosaics which had been the pride of the Byzantine artisan. The treasures of the mosque, the mimbar, or pulpit, the chandeliers, lamps, and censers, were all, save one, in their accustomed places. The most precious object of Moslem reverence, the Koran of Othman, regarded as the talisman of Spain, had been carried away to Africa by the Almohade monarch, Abd-al-Mumen, and with its departure, according to the superstitious belief of the devout, had vanished the last warrant of the security of Moslem power. That ornament of the Mihrab--the relic stained with the blood of a martyred khalif, the first of a race whose martial energy and literary endowments were destined to dignify and honor the royalty of Islam--was now in the hands of foreign and inappreciative barbarians. From the ceiling were suspended the bells of the church of Santiago, placed there by the great Al-Mansur, significant trophies of the victorious career of that most renowned of Moorish commanders. But once before in its history had this splendid temple, which, in public estimation, was inferior in holiness only to the mosques of Mecca and Jerusalem, been desecrated by the presence of the infidel. Now, however, it was eternally lost to the religion for the celebration of whose rites it had been founded. The Mussulman pilgrim, attracted by the reputation of its sanctity and the fame of its unrivalled magnificence, could henceforth no more invoke the name of the Prophet within its venerable walls.

The vast edifice was almost deserted as the Christian procession, headed by the greatest prelates of Spain, filed slowly through its portals. A few of the attendants peered curiously from behind the pillars at the splendid array, whose appearance was the ominous signal of the final suppression of the Mohammedan faith in the Peninsula. Amidst the prayers of the priests and the shouts of the soldiery, the cross was raised upon the cupola of the Mihrab. In accordance with the prescribed ceremonies of the Roman Catholic ritual, the edifice was cleansed of the abominations presumed to have infected it under the ministrations of another and a hostile belief. The mosque was dedicated as a cathedral, whose see was enriched with donations of some of the most valuable estates of the conquered territory. In pious retribution for the sacrilege which had appropriated them, the bells of Santiago were returned to the church from which they had been taken upon the shoulders of Moorish captives. The latter, as they painfully traversed the extensive regions that separated the plains of Andalusia from the cheerless Galician solitudes--regions which once trembled at the very mention of Moslem heroes--might well reflect upon the transitory character of religious faith and the instability of human greatness.

The compulsory evacuation of Cordova struck a blow at its prosperity from which it never recovered. With natural advantages enjoyed by few communities, it remains to this day the most poverty-stricken and stagnant of the great cities of Spain. Its vitality is preserved by the wealth and resources of its ecclesiastical establishment alone. Its markets are deserted, its thoroughfares grass-grown and silent. A grotesque and tawdry church rises in the very centre of the mosque of Abd-al-Rahman, impairing its symmetry, and furnishing an eternal monument to the folly and prejudices of a fanatical priesthood. The banished population carried with it a thrift and an industry which centuries have not been able to replace. Many arts, brought to a high degree of perfection, disappeared with its expulsion. The walls begun by the Cæsars, and greatly extended by the princes of the House of Ommeyah, embraced within their circumference the original area of the once populous Moslem capital. Time, however, had dealt severely with that far-famed city. Entire quarters had been depopulated by the fury of rebellion, the vicissitudes of political fortune, the ravages of conquest. Streets, formerly crowded with merchants and brokers of every clime, were impassable from the accumulated rubbish of demolished houses. The alcazar, which adjoined the mosque, was a dismantled ruin. The rage of the populace and the vandalism of African invaders had swept away the palaces whose number and elegance had awakened the admiration of every beholder. The villas of the suburbs had disappeared. The lovely gardens, in whose culture and preservation had been exhibited the utmost perfection of horticultural art, were now impenetrable thickets, from whose tangled depths, here and there, rose a heap of fallen columns or a broken horseshoe arch. Under the khalifate, the Valley of the Guadalquivir was so thickly settled as to present the appearance of one vast community, and from Cordova to Andujar countless villages attested the fertility of the soil and the thoroughness of its cultivation. At the time of the Christian occupation this region had become a desert, and a desert it has since remained. For the intelligence and energy of the Moslem were substituted the sloth and ignorance of the monk; ecclesiastical councils, in which were solemnly discussed the alleged inspired origin of absurd dogmas, usurped the place of the literary assemblies of the khalifs; and the monastery and the episcopal palace, with their secret crimes and open vices, rose upon the ruins of institutions of learning whose instruction had developed the greatest minds of Europe, and whose influence and principles had dignified even the papal throne.

While the Castilians were prosecuting their important campaign in the West, the genius of the King of Aragon was again asserting itself in the principality of Valencia. Under the lax system of political morality prevalent during the Middle Ages, an insignificant event was not infrequently made the pretext for a protracted and bloody war. Abu-Djomail, Emir of Valencia, for some reason deferred the delivery of tribute to Jaime, his suzerain, and the latter, elated by the conquest of Majorca, determined to make this an excuse to add to his already extensive dominions the most valuable remaining province of Spain. Profoundly politic as well as brave, the King of Aragon obtained the official sanction of Pope Gregory IX. for his meditated design, and the inauguration of a fresh crusade was proclaimed to the bold adventurers of Europe. An extraordinary tax was voted for the pious enterprise by the Cortes of Catalonia; a great army was assembled, and the campaign was begun by the siege of Burriana, a strongly fortified seaport, whose numerous garrison and maritime relations with the neighboring states of Africa promised a long and vigorous resistance. This expectation was verified to the letter. Several months elapsed before the place surrendered. It was midwinter, for the impetuosity of Jaime did not consider, in the attack on an enemy, either the disadvantages of the season or inferiority in numbers. In the conduct of this siege he displayed the qualities of an able commander even more conspicuously than he had done before Majorca. He personally directed the operations of the military engines. He led the troops to the breach. He exercised careful supervision over the camp, provided for the comfort of the soldiers, dressed the wounds of the injured, cheered with words of consolation the last moments of the dying. The severe privations it was called upon to endure damped the enthusiasm of the army. Some of the discontented nobility demanded that the siege be raised. The King refused, even in the face of the imminent desertion of a majority of his troops. While the malcontents remained sullenly in camp, he, supported only by a few faithful followers, skirmished daily with the enemy, who, having learned the condition of affairs, had assumed the offensive. At length the determination of the King prevailed, and the nobles returned to their duty. The siege was thenceforth pressed with redoubled energy, and Burriana was soon added to the long list of Jaime’s conquests. Its reduction caused the immediate surrender of the strong city of Peniscola and of a considerable number of towns in the Valencian territory. The disaffection of the Aragonese and Catalonian nobility was removed by these successes, and their fidelity was confirmed by the immediate investiture of the most distinguished of their number with the larger part of the conquered domain,--a politic measure which increased their military and feudal obligations, while it temporarily secured their attachment and gratitude.

From the day of his accession to the hour when he entered the Moorish capital in triumph, the absorbing desire of Jaime was the conquest of Valencia. The difficulties which presented themselves to the realization of this project only confirmed the resolution of the King. A few miles from the city stood the fortress of Puig. Its impregnable situation and close proximity to the metropolis of the kingdom rendered its possession highly advantageous to an army besieging Valencia. It had fallen into the hands of the Aragonese after the capitulation of Peniscola, and its defences had been greatly strengthened by the Christian engineers. During the absence of Jaime, an army of forty thousand Moslems, commanded by the Emir in person, appeared before it. The garrison was greatly inferior in numbers, but composed of picked warriors never accustomed to count their enemies excepting after a victory. Their intrepidity hardly allowed them to await the approach of the Valencians. They issued from the gates; their sudden and impetuous attack disconcerted their adversaries; and the discomfiture of a host of twenty times their number added a new trophy to the innumerable triumphs of Christian valor. The battle of Puig destroyed the confidence of the Moslems of Valencia, and they never again ventured to encounter their terrible antagonists in the open field.

Despite the favorable beginning of the campaign, the Aragonese army was daily reduced by desertions, and when, a few weeks afterwards, it encamped before Valencia, it mustered less than fifteen hundred strong. Rarely had an enterprise of such importance been undertaken with so small a force. In addition to its numerical weakness, its efficiency was impaired by a general feeling of suspicion, engendered by a lack of confidence and an absence of discipline. Many nobles abandoned their king, often without notice, taking their retainers with them. Those who remained could not be relied on, and had, in fact, good reason for discontent. The daily winter rains increased the difficulty of military movements and the danger of disease. Few of those who had served in the former campaign cared for a repetition of the experiences before Majorca. The presence of a brave and treacherous enemy rendered increasing vigilance indispensable and magnified the already arduous labors of a siege whose issue, under existing circumstances, could hardly be successful. The pay of the soldiers was in arrears, and the treasure chest, exhausted by unusual demands and plundered by dishonest custodians, was empty. The camp resounded with complaints. The murmurs of the courtiers were not suppressed even in the royal presence. When the King announced his intention to return for the purpose of seeking reinforcements, the remaining nobles declared that they would accompany him and renounce an undertaking which promised nothing but disaster. But relief was at hand from a quarter whence substantial encouragement had already been repeatedly obtained in wars with the Moorish infidel. The crusading spirit, generally nourished by incentives wholly foreign to the principles of religion, which, however, always afforded a convenient pretext for the most flagrant outrages against humanity, was by no means dormant in Europe. Another crusade was proclaimed by the Holy See. The passions of rapacious adventurers were inflamed with the hope of conquest, while the promise of unlimited pardons, indulgences, and booty attracted to the standard of the Cross a motley concourse of criminals, outlaws, and fanatics. France and England furnished almost all of these recruits, who numbered nearly seventy thousand. With such an army, which was constantly supplied with provisions by sea, the ultimate result of the campaign seemed no longer doubtful. To prove to the enemy, as well as to his own followers, his intention not to abandon his position until the city should be captured, Jaime made use of every artifice and expedient at his command. The Christian camp by degrees assumed the appearance and character of a permanent outpost. The quarters of the soldiery were constructed of substantial materials. The Queen, attended by the ladies of the court, arrived and took up her residence in the royal pavilion. Operations were pressed with increasing diligence. The Moors, impressed by these ominous evidences of the unalterable purpose of the besiegers, attempted to negotiate. All the territory between Teruel, Tortosa, and the Guadalquivir--a region of boundless fertility and defended by many strong fortresses, together with a yearly tribute of ten thousand pieces of gold--was offered as the price of peace. The King, conscious of his advantage, declined to listen to any terms of accommodation which did not include the capitulation of the city. The prize almost within his grasp was too valuable to be made the subject of barter. The traveller who to-day traverses the province of Valencia is amazed and enchanted with its productiveness and beauty. Yet what he sees is a comparatively insignificant portion of that which was once under the highest cultivation attainable by any system of agriculture. The density of the population required the greatest economy and labor in the division and use of both land and water. Hills that are now rocky and barren. were, under Moorish occupation, covered to the very summits with verdant terraces. Irrigation, governed by a code of laws which Spanish conceit and prejudice have never been able to repeal, was carried to almost absolute perfection. Every product flourished in a climate not inaptly compared with that of Paradise. The natural resources and accumulated wealth of such a principality were too alluring to permit its long continuance in the hands of those whose skill and patient efforts had founded and perpetuated its prosperity. At the sight of the voluptuous regions of Southern Spain, the Christian of the inhospitable North often forgot his country and the deeds of his heroic ancestors who had wrested with difficulty from the infidel a foothold in the Pyrenees; in the presence of the lovely houris of another faith he sometimes renounced his religion and his God. The Spanish crusades were not characterized by the absurd but sincere fanaticism which was the chief motive that inspired the expeditions to Palestine. No kings or courtiers abandoned home, country, friends, and family to obtain an object of doubtful expediency in the midst of an arid and scorching desert. No misguided multitude, roused by ecclesiastical eloquence, undertook the most interminable of journeys, endured the most horrible of privations for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre, which omnipotent wisdom or Moslem valor had left since the reign of Omar, with a single slight intermission, in the hands of the infidel. The warriors who assumed the cross in the Peninsula were men of a widely different stamp from the followers of Peter the Hermit or the vassals of Philip Augustus and Richard Plantagenet. It is true that some of them had served in the Holy Land; but these were not fair representatives of the brave, the chivalrous, the pious crusaders. Their incentives had been mercenary, or they may have sought security for unpardonable crimes in the confused obscurity of a multitude of strangers. The most ignoble designs were concealed by the ample but well-worn mantle of religion. The wealth of the Moorish cities, the seductive influence of the climate when contrasted with the inclement and dreary atmosphere of Central and Northern Europe, the beauty and grace of the Mohammedan women were well known to every nation from Byzantium to Britain. It was no secret, either, that the population of the terrestrial paradise which bordered on the Mediterranean had long since lost the prestige and the strength which had distinguished the armies of the khalifate, and was not fitted to contend with fierce and powerful warriors reared amidst cold and privation, trained to martial exercises from infancy, and whose occupation and pastime alike were war. The accomplishment of the Reconquest would have been long and indefinitely deferred had it depended on the exertions of the Spaniards alone. Credit for the exploits which subdued and eventually consolidated under the Castilian sceptre the Hispano-Arab principalities is in no small degree due to the prowess of adventurers from every country in Christendom. The frenzied exhortations of monkish zealots were not required to excite the passions of the foreign crusader who volunteered in the armies of Jaime and Ferdinand. In his eyes the propagation of the Faith was merely an excuse for pillage. He was conspicuously negligent in the performance of his religious duties, extended experience and observation having thoroughly familiarized him with the inconsistencies and the failings of the clergy, and inspired him with a contempt for that order which he was usually at no pains to conceal. His attachment to the cause of Christ lasted just as long as it was profitable. Such considerations are not applicable, however, to the independent Christian population of Spain. With it the extinction of Moslem domination was a measure of political necessity, of national existence, of individual freedom. For five hundred years the struggle had continued. More than once the petty states which had sprung from the weak and insignificant community established in the Asturias in the face of Moorish triumph, expanded by ages of undaunted resolution and superhuman valor, and finally developed into a number of kingdoms whose mutual antagonisms were the greatest menace to their stability and power, had been on the point of submitting once more in humiliating subordination to Moslem authority, evidenced by the regular and humiliating rendition of homage. Generations of battle had engendered in the mind of the Spanish Christian a sentiment of ferocious hatred against the infidel enemy who had usurped the empire of his ancestors; who had defeated his most valiant sovereigns; to whose harems had been consigned the most beautiful maidens of his race, either as a degrading tribute or as the spoils of war; whose sacrilegious hands had seized the sacred treasures of his altars; who had deposited with exultant shouts within the mosque of his capital the bells whose solemn tones had so often called to their devotions the pilgrims assembled at the holy shrine of Santiago. The grosser passions of avarice and military ambition were, indeed, rarely absent from the motives which prompted the conduct of the mediæval Spaniard. Inherited prejudice, early education, the maxims of his religious guides, all had a tendency to intensify the detestation entertained by him against such as refused assent to the doctrines of his creed. The Castilian despised the knowledge and the intellectual accomplishments which made the Moor immeasurably his superior, but he often reluctantly confessed the bravery of his infidel adversary in the field. This antipathy and intolerance, while openly encouraged by the clergy for professional reasons, were in reality less marked among the ecclesiastics than elsewhere. As their order monopolized the meagre learning of the time, they were better qualified to appreciate the scientific acquirements which distinguished the polished enemies of their faith. As representatives of a system largely maintained by organized hypocrisy, they condemned in public what they often studied with wonder and delight in the luxurious solitude of the convent and the monastery. The prelates as well as the nobles did not disdain to imitate the vices of the Moslem, especially condemned by their religion, their canons, the precepts of their Founder, and the example of the chaste and abstemious Fathers of the Church. The writings of the heterodox Mussulmans were not unfamiliar to the more intelligent and inquisitive members of the Spanish hierarchy. The theological gloom of the episcopal palace was dispelled by the joyous presence of lovely infidels, whose caresses were more attractive to the clerical voluptuary than the monotonous ceremonies of the mass, and whose suggestive dances, relics of the licentious diversions of Pagan antiquity, were frequently performed for the delectation of saintly visitors in the most retired apartments of the ecclesiastical seraglio.

Incentives other than those inspired by disinterested piety had great weight with the majority of the Spanish clergy. The Church, through the diligently fostered fears and the misdirected liberality of its superstitious adherents, was always the greatest beneficiary of a successful campaign against the Saracen. The lucrative precedent for the accumulation of treasure, eventually consumed in the construction and adornment of the palatial religious houses of the Peninsula, whose number and magnificence, although sadly diminished, are still sufficient to excite the envy of Catholic Europe, had already been established. The annual contributions bestowed by royal munificence or wrung from individual poverty were but a pittance when compared with the booty to be secured by the Church militant at the capture of a single Moslem city. Uncanonical considerations were, moreover, no insignificant inducements to the martial ecclesiastic to abandon for a time the cope for the cuirass. The formal and traditional obligations of his order were but lightly regarded by the Castilian or the Leonese prelate. His vow of poverty had long been forgotten amidst the boundless epicureanism of elegant luxury, magnificent furniture, expensive and gaudy raiment, priceless jewels, the possession of horses whose purity of breed moved the envy of the greatest nobles, the parade of trains of slaves whose physical attractions were indisputable proof of the taste and incontinence of their masters. The Spanish hierarchy, independent of the Papacy from the early days of Gothic domination, was far from presenting in its polity the nice distinctions of official rank and the rigid subordination to superiors exhibited in the profound and elaborate organization of the papal system. Each prelate enjoyed a large share of independence in his own diocese, and recent acknowledgment of the paramount claims of the See of Rome had not abrogated the ecclesiastical prerogatives confirmed by prescriptive right based upon the uninterrupted usage of centuries. The vow of implicit obedience--generally considered an unmeaning formality and unknown in practice under the Visigoths--was for generations after the public submission to papal supremacy disregarded as an imperative obligation of the clergy. Such was the condition of the Spanish priesthood and such the base and inconsistent motives which prompted the overthrow of the most perfect examples of material and intellectual progress which had adorned and instructed Europe since the climax of Roman civilization.

The great accession of moral strength secured through the instrumentality of the Papacy enabled the King of Aragon vigorously to assume the offensive. A great fortified camp, whose works defied the feeble and desultory efforts of the besieged, now encircled the city of Valencia. The machines were placed in position, the walls were mined, and intercourse with the Moors on the side of the land effectually intercepted. By the sea, however, communication was as yet comparatively clear, and pressing messages for assistance were sent by the beleaguered Moslems to their brethren in Andalusia and Africa. To these appeals no one responded except the Emir of Tunis, whose squadron was not able to effect a landing in the face of the overwhelming numbers of the enemy. After the departure of the Africans, the Catalonian navy formed the blockade of the port; under the increased exertions of the besiegers the walls began to crumble, and the inhabitants held themselves in constant readiness to repel a storming party. It required no power of the imagination to picture the result of a successful attack by the lawless troops now besieging the city. The melancholy examples of beautiful and populous towns delivered up to pillage were fresh in the mind of every Moslem in the Peninsula. Of all the Christian armies which the Saracens of Spain had yet encountered, that of Jaime contained the largest proportion of foreign adventurers. The native soldiery, seldom accessible to pity, were humane when compared with the fierce and bloodthirsty outlaws who formed the bulk of the crusaders. These considerations were not lost upon the people of Valencia, who could not hope to hold in check much longer an enemy whose numbers, valor, and military resources gave him such decided advantages over a garrison exhausted by prolonged hostilities, whose defences were rapidly becoming untenable, whose provisions were almost exhausted, and which had no prospect of reinforcements or aid from any quarter. Haunted by the dread of massacre, the Valencians proposed terms of surrender, which the prudence of Jaime readily induced him to accord. They were expressly guaranteed against the violence of the troops, a provision which experience had frequently demonstrated to be but a precarious security. Such as chose to remain were promised the undisturbed enjoyment of their possessions, their individual liberty, and their religious faith. All taxes, excepting those ordinarily imposed on the people of Aragon, were to be abolished. To those who preferred to tempt the doubtful fortunes of voluntary exile were conceded their arms and all the portable property they could carry, with the assurance that their Journey through the territory occupied by the Christians might be prosecuted without molestation. The majority of the Moslems adopted the latter alternative. The uncontrollable temper of their enemies, infuriated by the loss of anticipated booty and inflamed with religious hatred, was too great a menace to be lightly braved in the presence of men who would, under the most insignificant pretext, indulge to satiety their ferocious instincts.

Fifty thousand persons abandoned their homes and sought temporary safety beyond the Xucar, which was designated as the new boundary of Christian conquest; a truce nominally of seven years, but whose actual duration was entirely dependent on the capricious indulgence of the victor, was agreed upon, and the royal standard of Aragon was raised by the Moslems themselves upon the battlements of Valencia. It required all the authority of the King to repress the fierce passions of his unruly followers, some of whom did not hesitate to violate the provisions of the treaty and the laws of military discipline by attempts to plunder the helpless and the distressed who had been compelled to yield to the inexorable results of war. The heads of these mutineers, insensible alike to the claims of public faith and the suggestions of humanity, were promptly struck off by the King himself, whose evident intention to maintain inviolate the pledges he had given produced a salutary effect on the turbulent and insubordinate spirits of his command.

The houses and the estates abandoned by their former owners, who preferred exile and penury to the risk of death or oppression, were apportioned among such of the crusaders as had distinguished themselves by the amount of their contributions, the importance of their military service, or the number of the retainers who had followed them to battle. Considerable difficulty was incurred in adjusting the conflicting claims of those who, exaggerating the value of their achievements and the generosity of their donations, demanded an undue share of the reward. Three hundred and eighty knights and nobles were, according to the judgment of the King, deemed worthy of investiture with fiefs derived from the lands of the conquered territory, whose tenures imposed upon each feudatory the obligation of guarding for four months in every year a certain portion of the border. The clergy, as was usually the case, secured by superior dexterity and by the influence attaching to their sacred office the most valuable of the lands affected by the public distribution.

Information of the surrender of the Moorish capital spread fast through the dominions of the victorious monarch. Attracted by the richness of the new conquest, the subjects of Jaime deserted their barren country by thousands to fix their residence and improve their fortunes in a land so favored by the bountiful hand of Nature. The void occasioned by the departure of fifty thousand Moslems was speedily filled, so far as the mere enumeration of individuals might supply a deficiency of population. But intelligence, industry, enterprise, and taste were not prominent characteristics of the Aragonese and Catalonian peasantry who replaced the Moorish merchants and artificers of Valencia. These were qualities which could not be provided by promiscuous immigration. The new colonists presented a striking and unfavorable contrast to the remaining inhabitants; the numbers of the latter were eventually reduced by systematic persecution, and the decadence of Valencia dates from the day of its subjection to Christian authority.

The internal affairs of his kingdom urgently demanding his attention, Jaime was forced to leave the scene of his triumph before the political organization of the new province was complete. During his absence, his lieutenants persistently abused their delegated authority for the sake of private emolument. The national obligations incurred by the conclusion of: a truce had no significance in the eyes of these professional marauders. The King had scarcely embarked, before a predatory inroad convinced the Moors of the duplicity of a foe who violated without compunction engagements which had been ratified with every circumstance of deliberation and solemnity. The grievous conditions of partisan warfare were renewed. The existence of a truce was considered an advantage, as increasing opportunities for surprise. Every individual who wore a Moorish dress was classed as an enemy and treated accordingly. Fields were ravaged. Castles were taken and sacked. The peasantry fled from their homes in terror. The country was rapidly assuming the melancholy appearance of those regions of the Peninsula which had been harassed for generations by the alternate occupancy of hostile armies, when the arrival of the King arrested the progress of destruction. Such property as could be found and identified was restored to its owners. The frightened cultivators were invited to resume their peaceful avocations. The noble, who, with his retainers, had unceremoniously occupied the fortress of some Moslem prince, was summarily deposed from his recent and illegally acquired dignity. By every means in his power the King endeavored to make reparation for the wrongs committed without his sanction by an undisciplined and reckless soldiery. This conduct, dictated by sentiments of personal honor and public equity, was, however, not destined to endure. The long period designated by the truce was eminently unfavorable to the designs of both clerical avarice and royal ambition. Episcopal piety was grieved by the infidel possession of cities whose revenues would sustain with ease the pecuniary burdens of an extensive bishopric. The worthy prelate saw with horror and indignation the performance of Moslem rites in sumptuous mosques protected by the unwonted indulgence of a Christian prince, and longed for the day when the wealth of these splendid establishments might be confiscated for the benefit of the Church of Christ and the treasury of a corrupt and sensual priesthood. With military success and expanding power the public opinion of the age tended more and more to the disregard of treaties contracted with an enemy who was daily becoming less capable of resistance. The constant and universal excitation of theological odium contributed mainly to the adoption of this false and pernicious principle of political ethics. Secular ignorance came in time to sincerely believe the odious doctrine defended by ingenious casuists and promulgated by ecclesiastical hypocrisy and hatred from motives of personal interest. For its acceptance and pursuit to an inevitable conclusion, the degradation of Spain from the high position it occupied under the first sovereigns of the Austrian dynasty is to be chiefly attributed. No people can systematically repudiate its contracts, even with an adversary incapable of resenting his injuries, without forfeiting the respect and confidence of the other members of the great community of nations. The diplomatic perfidy inaugurated by religious malice and royal subserviency in the Moorish wars of the Peninsula was subsequently repeated, on a larger scale, in the politics of Europe, and was responsible for most of the incredible atrocities which accompanied the conquest of Mexico, Central America, Peru. Already tacitly acknowledged as a maxim of national policy in a country which subsequently displayed its willingness to sacrifice the most obvious principles of public faith and morality for the exaltation of ecclesiastical power by the foundation of the Jesuit Order, the peremptory abrogation of a treaty with the votaries of a hostile faith was considered, during the epoch under consideration, rather a meritorious than a reprehensible proceeding. Therefore the King of Aragon, after he had rebuked his officious subordinates for their ill-timed energy and exhibited a plausible zeal for redress by restoring their possessions to the injured Moslems, felt no reluctance in committing the same offence against honor and justice as soon as his own plans were matured. His martial emulation had been excited by the exploits of Ferdinand of Castile in the West, and he feared that that monarch might be tempted to include in his ambitious projects the subjugation of the remaining Eastern states of Moorish Spain, which he himself already regarded as his own by the doubtful claims of geographical proximity and anticipated conquest. With the insatiable avidity of the conqueror, he preferred to violate his royal word rather than to be insulted by the presence of a foe who still enjoyed possession of a region equal in extent and advantages to any recently added to the dominions of Aragon, and, what was even more important, who could not hope to offer any serious opposition to his arms. The ever-available pretext of religious expediency, or even duty, urged by able and pious advocates, was no doubt efficacious in removing any conscientious scruples he might have entertained.

The city of Xativa, situated on the frontier of the now diminished Moorish domain and south of the Xucar, the boundary established by the treaty, was the first place to experience the effects of Spanish duplicity and the resistless impetus of Spanish power. Its manufacturing interests had from time immemorial been among the most extensive and profitable in the Peninsula. Under the Romans, its linen products enjoyed a reputation for fineness and durability which spread to the limits of the empire. During the Moslem occupation, it was the centre of the paper industry in Spain. The adoption of cotton as a material for the fabrication of this most useful article of commerce is said to have been due to the practical genius of the artisans of Xativa. At a time when the scribes of Christian Europe were reduced to the necessity of erasing the works of classic authors to obtain parchment for the preservation of pious homilies and monkish legends, the mills of Xativa were producing great quantities of paper, much of which, in texture and finish, will compare not unfavorably with that obtained by the most improved processes of modern manufacture. The demand for this product, indispensable among a people of intellectual tastes like the Hispano-Arabs, was enormous. The factories of the city supplied the imperial scriptoriums whence issued the voluminous works that filled the vast libraries of the khalifs. The literary necessities of a highly educated population, the multiplication of manuscripts, the requirements of innumerable institutions of learning had a tendency to constantly promote this industry, of which Xativa was the principal distributing point in the empire, and of whose profits it enjoyed a practical monopoly. In consequence of this lucrative branch of traffic, the citizens in time amassed prodigious fortunes, and many of them rivalled, in the splendor of their domestic establishments and their equipages, the magnificent displays of royalty. But this was far from being the only source of the opulence of Xativa. The same genial climate, the same wonderfully productive soil belonged to the district surrounding that city which had made the principality of Valencia a model of agricultural perfection. In the thirteenth century it presented to the casual observer the same charming aspect it had exhibited under the khalifate. Aside from occasional temporary occupation by freebooters, it had almost entirely escaped the destructive effects of internal discord and foreign invasion. Its inhabitants retained to a large extent their possessions, impaired somewhat by the casualties incident to national misfortune and by the resultant diminution of the manufacture which had been the principal source of their prosperity. But the abounding harvests, the interminable orchards, the vast plantations of cane and cotton still attested the flourishing and happy condition of an industrious people. The knowledge of these manifold advantages and the overpowering incentive of military glory more than counterbalanced, in the mind of the King of Aragon, the moral obligations he had incurred. Without a formal declaration of war, without any intimation of broken faith or meditated hostility, a numerous Christian army, commanded by Jaime in person, pitched its tents before Xativa. Under ordinary circumstances that city was not incapable of an obstinate defence. Its fortifications were strong and in good repair. Its immense castle, which is still its most conspicuous feature, was second in extent and massiveness only to the famous citadel of Almeria. The population was numerous, the facilities for obtaining subsistence excellent. In imitation of many of the Moslem communities of Spain which royal incompetency and national indifference had abandoned to their fate, the inhabitants of Xativa had erected their city into an independent principality, whose laws and institutions were modelled after those of a republic. This political anomaly had not yet secured even the confidence of its originators. The experimental stage of government had not been passed. The radical deviation from principles always recognized as essential elements of a constitution which had endured from time immemorial and on which the entire Moslem polity was based was not regarded with favor by a large and powerful faction, in which were included many of the most wealthy and influential citizens. This want of harmony was fatal to the liberties of Xativa. It was found impossible to secure the co-operation of parties which mutually distrusted each other, and the sudden appearance of an enemy increased the uncertainty and danger of the situation. It was not improbable that the enterprise of Jaime had been undertaken with a previous knowledge of the political conditions prevailing in the last great city of Oriental Spain which remained in the hands of the Moslems. Apprehensive of the result of a siege which must terminate disastrously, the magistrates of Xativa hastened to propose a compromise. An agreement was concluded by which the place was not to be surrendered to any sovereign but the King of Aragon. A number of castles and a considerable extent of territory which acknowledged the jurisdiction of the city were given up as the price of a temporary respite; other unprotected places distracted by revolution and without hope of relief sought the dangerous protection of a Christian suzerain; and the greater part of the region south of the Xucar was incorporated into the Aragonese monarchy, which received this important addition to its realms with no other exertion than that required by the commission of a deliberate act of perfidy.

Family troubles and the civil dissensions which distracted the kingdom of Jaime deferred for three years any further molestation of the Moslems of Xativa. Profiting by their dearly purchased experience, they utilized every moment of that interval in preparing for the approaching conflict. Foreign engineers were employed to direct the efforts of the native laborers. The castle, already one of the best fortified in Europe, was still further strengthened. The walls of the city were increased in height and protected by additional buttresses and barbicans. An efficient militia was organized, and the citizens, whose enervating climate made them reluctant to undergo the duties of military service, were thoroughly instructed in the use of arms. Magazines sufficient to contain supplies for an extended siege were erected and filled. These preparations, which indicated the determined spirit of the Xativans, were productive of important results when the Aragonese again invested the city. The King, whose force was wholly inadequate to the reduction of the most formidable fortress in the Peninsula, was repulsed; but the capture of Alcira and Denia, after an obstinate resistance, in a measure indemnified him for the disappointment he was compelled to endure before Xativa.

In the mean time Ferdinand had subjected to the crown of Castile the remaining Moorish cities of Andalusia, and his occupation of Murcia seemed to indicate an intention to encroach upon those provinces of the East which the King of Aragon, in the formation of great plans of conquest, already regarded as his own. The latter learned with apprehension of the progress and the increasing reputation of his enterprising and successful contemporary. Like the aspiring young Greek general, the trophies of his rival would not suffer him to sleep. The prospect of additional power and glory to be acquired by a monarch whose exploits had already eclipsed the distinction in arms he himself enjoyed and had won the applause of Christendom, was not flattering to his vanity and ambition. He collected an imposing army, and bound himself by a solemn oath never to slacken his efforts until Xativa should be taken. Once more the siege of the Moorish stronghold was begun. The defence was conducted with signal ability and courage; but the garrison, well aware that no hope of assistance could be entertained, was induced to propose terms of accommodation before the city was reduced to extremity. Such was the impregnable character of the place that remarkably favorable conditions were obtained by the besieged. The nature of these conditions may well excite surprise. The Christians seem to have gained nothing in reality but a nominal occupation of those quarters of the town which, in case of renewed hostilities, were not susceptible of effective defence. The great citadel, which dominated not only Xativa but also the surrounding country, remained in possession of the Moors. At the expiration of two years it was to be evacuated, and two other castles were to be given in exchange for its peaceable transfer to the Aragonese. The Moslems were guaranteed protection of person and property as well as permitted the practice of their religion and the operation of their laws. Such equitable treatment of an infidel foe had been long unknown to the savage code of the princes who directed the Reconquest. Never since the Christian power attained to prominence had concessions equally generous been granted to the vanquished Saracen. It would appear, however, that this leniency was really only a pretext to gain by treachery what was unattainable by force. For a time the treaty was respected. The murmurs of the soldiery, defrauded of their expected prey, were silenced by ample donatives from the royal treasury. The inhabitants, deluded by a show of impartiality and moderation, pursued in peace their ordinary employments. But this condition was only temporary. The grasping ambition of Jaime was not to be satisfied with the mere shadow of possession and authority. Considerations of moral obligation were unceremoniously swept aside by the royal casuist the moment they conflicted with the imperious demands of political necessity. Excuses were invented and opportunities found to accuse the Moors of infraction of the treaty. The enmity of the conquerors was, in accordance with the baser and more mercenary instincts of humanity, first directed against the rich. Opulent merchants were condemned, without accusation or trial, to exile and beggary. Their property, the chief cause of their persecution, was confiscated by the crown or divided among the clergy and the nobles, who received with complacent gratification the rewards of national perfidy and dishonor. Possession of the citadel was secured by stratagem; the castles for which it was to have been exchanged were retained by the Christians, and numbers of Moorish maidens became, in spite of the faith of conventions and in defiance of the canons of the Church, unwilling ministers of the pleasures of the orthodox but voluptuous conqueror. The melancholy end of the governor of Xativa, Yahya-Ibn-Ahmed, will arouse the compassion of every reader who sympathizes with the misfortunes which ill-directed resolution and bravery are liable to encounter in every age. He was a personage of the highest consideration among his countrymen. His talents and his integrity had elevated him to the first position in the state. His wealth enabled him to sustain with dignity the civil and military honors conferred upon him by an appreciative and admiring people. In the defence of the city he had more than justified the exalted opinion universally entertained of his capacity. The treaty he negotiated with an enemy of vastly superior resources and elated by recent conquests was the most advantageous to the weaker party of any recorded in the annals of the Peninsula. He scrupulously observed every condition of that agreement which his adversaries repudiated at their convenience without shame and without excuse. With the other wealthy citizens of Xativa he was driven from his home; his estates were appropriated by the rapacious foreigner; he was forced to subsist by the charity of strangers in a land where he had formerly displayed the ensigns and exercised the prerogatives of royalty; and, while his fate remains in doubt, his death was popularly believed to have been hastened by poison or starvation.

The subjection of Xativa by the King of Aragon caused a rupture between the two greatest soldiers of Western Europe which, had it developed into open hostility, would have seriously imperilled the cause of Christianity in the Peninsula. It was not without reason that Jaime had apprehended the dangerous effects of Castilian ambition. The tendency of conquest must hereafter inevitably be to the eastward. Andalusia, forever lost to the Moslem, was now an integral part of the dominions of Ferdinand. It was well known that the aspirations of that conqueror had not been satisfied by the acquisition of the most valuable portion of the Saracen empire. His intention to dispute the doubtful claim of Aragon to the coveted region lying east of Granada had already been disclosed by his occupation of Murcia. It was not merely by arms that the astute King of Castile endeavored to extend, at the expense of his rival, his already formidable power. The political interests of the two monarchs had recently been nominally united by the marriage of Alfonso, the heir to the Castilian throne, and Yolande, the daughter of Jaime. Instigated by his father, that prince endeavored to induce the Moslem governor to surrender to him the city of Xativa, in contravention of the treaty negotiated with the King of Aragon. This scheme was frustrated by the vigilance of Jaime, and the expulsion of the principal citizens, some of whom were suspected of complicity in the designs of Ferdinand, was determined upon in consequence of the discovery.

Foiled in this attempt, Ferdinand then demanded the place as the dowry of his daughter-in-law. But the King of Aragon, whose pride was not inferior to that of Ferdinand, was unwilling to relinquish to the importunity of a rival the substantial fruits of his courage and energy, and it required all the address and the blandishments of his queen to reconcile the conflicting pretensions of her husband and her kinsman. The ancient boundary of Murcia and Valencia was eventually re-established as the frontier of the two Christian monarchies. The designs of Jaime were hereafter prosecuted to a successful termination without hinderance from the intriguing policy of Castile, and in a few years all the other fortresses held by the Moslems in the East of the Peninsula were incorporated, either by conquest or negotiation, into the realms of the kingdom of Aragon. The remaining years of Jaime were passed amidst the distracting turmoil of family disputes and feudal encroachments. An ill-advised expedition to the Holy Land, in which the crusading fleet was dispersed by a tempest and which ended ignominiously, for a time engaged his attention. On the seventh of July, 1276, he died at Valencia, the scene of his greatest triumph.

This famous king was one of the most extraordinary personages of mediæval history. The romance which colored his entire career antedated his very existence. The son of Pedro II. and Marie, Countess of Montpellier, whose marriage had never before been consummated and was immediately afterwards practically annulled, he owed his origin to an artifice, not infrequently met with in the merry tales of the Middle Ages, but in this instance exhibiting a singular mixture of the humorous and the pathetic. Even his name he owed to chance. His mother lighted twelve candles, to represent the twelve apostles, and that of St. James having burned longer than the others, her son was christened for that worthy as his patron saint. While yet a little child, he was intrusted to Simon de Montfort, crusader, soldier of fortune, and persecutor of the Albigenses, to be educated. That freebooter, the most eminent in his infamous calling of any of the military outlaws of his time and who subsequently defeated and killed the father of his charge on the field of Muret, caused the boy to be betrothed to his own daughter before he had attained the age of four years. It afterwards required all the influence of the Pope, moved by the entreaties of the Spanish clergy, to rescue the royal infant from the hands of Simon and place him upon the throne of Aragon.

Held in the arms of the Bishop of Tarragona, he repeated mechanically and without comprehension the customary oath to maintain and execute the laws of the realm. From the very beginning his abilities, child as he was, were exercised with tact and discretion in the treatment of his uncles, who attempted to govern in his name, and of the nobles, who obstinately disputed his authority. It was not long before his genius asserted itself and commanded the respect and obedience of his unruly vassals. Personal advantages, which have so much influence with the majority of mankind, bore no small share in effecting this result. Nature had lavished upon him her most precious gifts. His stature greatly exceeded that of other men. His features were handsome; his form exhibited the proportions and the muscles of a Roman gladiator. His manners were singularly winning; his demeanor conspicuous for its graces among a people renowned for their courtesy. While fearless in the presence of danger, such was his compassion that he shrank from the signature of a death-warrant, and more than once a criminal escaped the consequences of his misdeeds through the gentleness and humanity of his king.

No prince in Spanish history occupies a more exalted position for manly qualities, dauntless valor, and lavish generosity. His reign of sixty-three years is the longest, if not the most eventful, in the annals of the Peninsula. It was practically one uninterrupted campaign. This great king won thirty pitched battles over the Moslems. He was the exemplar of the prevalent crusading passion of the time. His popularity with the clergy surpassed that of any of his royal contemporaries. He founded and endowed at his own expense two thousand churches in the territory conquered from the Moors. He knew the Scriptures by heart, and during every grand religious festival he preached from the pulpit to vast congregations with all the unction and probably with more than the eloquence of an ecclesiastical orator. His memoirs, written under the title of a chronicle, disclose a profound knowledge of human nature, acute observation, and a remarkable degree of literary culture, considering the advantages he enjoyed and the circumstances under which his life was passed. Powerful even in death, the provision of his will excluding females from the succession has always been sacredly observed as an inviolable part of the constitution of the kingdom of Aragon.

The reverse of the medal is not so attractive. The famous Aragonese crusader was bigoted, perfidious, licentious, cruel. He introduced the Inquisition into Spain. Its agents, the Dominicans, were his favorite counsellors. While treating for the surrender of Elche, in the presence of his courtiers he slipped a purse of three hundred byzants into the sleeve of one of the Moorish envoys, who he had ascertained was willing to betray his countrymen for gold. He violated his royal word to Doña Teresa de Vidaure, whom he had promised to make his queen, and was supported in his infamous resolve by the Pope. He habitually repudiated the most solemn contracts entered into with his Moslem vassals and adversaries. His libertinism was conspicuous even in an age of universal social depravity. He lived with two wives at once. He entertained numerous concubines. He was said to have had a mistress for every church that he founded. He caused the tongue of the Bishop of Gerona, his spiritual adviser, to be torn out as a punishment for having betrayed certain unsavory secrets learned in the sacred privacy of the confessional. Amidst the frightful spectacles afforded by cities carried by assault, the pitiless hand of the ferocious soldiery was rarely stayed by the authority of the champion of the Christian cause, in whose eyes every infidel was legitimate prey.

The scene of action in the exhibition of the romantic drama of the Reconquest now shifts to Andalusia. It was in that province, enriched with every gift of nature, improved by every resource of industry and art, that Moorish civilization first had its origin; and it was there that, after centuries of glory, it was destined to a melancholy and disastrous end.

The monarchy of Castile, the foundation of whose future greatness had been already laid by the important military successes which preceded and followed the capture of the ancient metropolis of the khalifate, was now to be adorned with yet more decisive and brilliant triumphs. With the death of Mohammed-Ibn-Hud the integrity of the Emirate of Murcia was destroyed. The alcalde of each city, the governor of each province, forthwith aspired to independence. The absurd claims and irreconcilable quarrels of these petty rulers, none of whom were worthy of the title of prince, but the majority of whom claimed the dignity of khalif, advanced unconsciously, but none the less expeditiously, the projects of the Christian enemy. The dismemberment of Murcia had been the result of the intrigues of Mohammed, King of Granada, the founder of the famous line of the Alhamares, who was now recognized by all patriotic Moslems as the representative of their power and their religion in the Peninsula. The assassination of the daring Ibn-Hud had been injurious rather than beneficial to the national cause. None of the score of pretenders who had divided among themselves the principality of Murcia were willing to do homage to the King of Granada, whose title to sovereignty was, in fact, no better than their own; and Mohammed, whose attention was fully occupied by the movements of the Christians, was not at liberty to enforce compliance with his demands by the potent agency of the sword. After a series of indecisive operations, in which the Christians, although they succeeded in penetrating as far as the Vega of Granada, seem to have been worsted in almost every encounter, Ferdinand turned his attention to the more promising field presented by the divided and helpless Emirate of Murcia. An army under the command of Prince Alfonso had already reached the borders of that kingdom when hostilities were suspended by overtures for peace. The reputation of the Castilian monarch, while stained with many well-founded accusations of violated honor and broken faith, was so far superior to that of his contemporaries that the Moslems did not hesitate, even with the full knowledge of the ecclesiastical influences to which he was blindly subject, to intrust to him the custody of their persons and the disposal of their fortunes. Other reasons impelled them to this wise determination. Combined, the states of Murcia could never have successfully withstood the power of the Castilian monarchy; disunited, their resistance was absolutely hopeless. The dreadful fate of Moorish cities which had attempted to retard the advance of Christian conquest was always present to the effeminate population of Murcia. Ultimate subjection to either Ferdinand or Jaime was inevitable. The inhumanity of the Castilian had heretofore been far less conspicuous in instances of voluntary submission than that displayed by the cruel and perfidious Aragonese, whose armies were largely composed of foreigners, and whose ideas of equity were habitually subordinated to considerations of present gain or future advantage. With these facts before them, the Moslems of Murcia did not long hesitate in making a choice of masters. The cities of the emirate with the exception of Lorca voluntarily submitted to the ascendency of Castile, and the ceremonies incident to the establishment of royal supremacy were performed. The feudal obligations which preceded the institution of suzerainty and vassalage were then publicly acknowledged, and the credulous Moors welcomed the tyranny of a foreign prince with acclamations such as they would scarcely have vouchsafed to a ruler of their own blood and their own religion.

The respite afforded by the prestige of his victories and by the diversion of the arms of Castile to Murcia was employed by Mohammed-Ibn-Ahmar in the improvement of his kingdom and the embellishment of his capital. The encroachments and the conquests of the Spaniards had driven into exile thousands of Moslems, to whom the society of their countrymen and the unmolested exercise of their worship were privileges not to be sacrificed to the uncertain security of Christian domination. Within the space of a few years, as a result of constant immigration, the population of Granada had increased with tremendous rapidity. The most experienced cultivators, the most finished artisans, the most learned scholars who represented the declining age of Saracen genius, found a refuge from persecution and insult in the dominions of a prince not unworthy to be compared with the most distinguished sovereigns who had ever dignified the Hispano-Arab throne. Their accumulated experience and industry had enriched beyond measure the country of their adoption. Nor was that country in the charms of climate, soil, and scenery unworthy of the labors of the most energetic and accomplished of colonists. Its surface, diversified by valley, plain, and mountain, afforded the combined advantages elsewhere enjoyed only by a succession of regions in widely distant quarters of the globe. A few hundred feet of elevation or descent determined the character of the vegetation, and valuable plants, ordinarily separated by many degrees of latitude, here grew luxuriantly almost side by side. Streams fed by melting snows rushed down the mountain slope, diffusing their refreshing moisture through the teeming harvests of the Vega. This district--as the plain enclosed by the Sierra Nevada and the Alpujarras became subsequently designated--was unsurpassed in the fertility of its soil and the number and superior quality of its agricultural products. So dense was its population, that its contiguous and endless hamlets and plantations gave it the appearance of a single interminable village. Although including an area of not more than seven hundred and fifty square miles, it supplied with ease under Moslem care and economy the wants and luxuries of a hundred thousand souls. At its northern extremity, on the gentle slope of the Sierra, stood the capital, which had begun to assume the architectural splendor which distinguished the dynasty of its builders, the crumbling ruins of whose edifices are still the models of the architect and the admiration of the traveller. The vast circuit of the Alhambra, with the ancient fortress which, from a period far anterior to the foundation of the khalifate, had commanded the city with its innumerable towers, barbicans, outworks, had already been enclosed. Facing the citadel, on the most elevated point of an eminence which barbarian sagacity had, even before the date of Phœnician occupation, chosen as a place of refuge and security, a magnificent palace, the exemplar of a new and indescribably gorgeous style of architecture, had arisen. Its arcades and halls and courts did not as yet exhibit the extent of area, the exquisite taste, the profusion of ornament which subsequently distinguished the most elaborate and beautiful edifice of Mohammedan Spain. In that portion, however, which had issued from the hands of the builders the germ of its future elegance was plainly discernible. The most skilful workmen in the Peninsula--still the European centre of architectural superiority--had been employed in its construction and embellishment as well as in the design and completion of many less sumptuous and imposing, but still not less remarkable, structures of the capital. A constant influx of dextrous and ingenious colonists from the provinces harassed by Christian cruelty and intolerance had developed, to a degree which could scarcely have been anticipated by the most sanguine political economist, the inexhaustible mineral, agricultural, and commercial resources of the kingdom. As a legitimate consequence of this extraordinary impulse received by every department of trade and husbandry, the revenues of the state were prodigiously increased. With the means and the opportunity of enjoyment came a growing demand for every article of luxury. Through the ports of Almeria and Malaga a maritime trade was maintained with distant countries which greatly enriched the merchants of Granada. The capital was adorned with superb buildings dedicated to the noble purposes of public instruction and religious worship. A portion of the intellectual ambition and literary culture which had exalted the Ommeyade metropolis to such well-merited pre-eminence seemed to have been inherited by Granada. Her institutions of learning were superior to all others of contemporaneous Europe. The works of her historians, travellers, and scholars survive as the masterpieces of the age in which they were composed. It is to the genius of Mohammed I. that the origin of her prosperity and influence must be attributed. The Moslem immigrant, deluded by a false and momentary security, believed that he had, after many wanderings, at last discovered a permanent abode. But the sagacious mind of Mohammed was deceived by no such pleasing anticipations. He recognized the full significance of Christian encroachment, and the eventual result of a conflict already prolonged for more than six hundred years, and whose termination could not long be deferred. In conjunction with his military talents he brought to bear all the resources of political craft and far-sighted diplomacy. He purchased the influence of powerful nobles and ecclesiastics at the court of Castile. He maintained the closest and most amicable relations with the sultans and sheiks of Northern Africa, whose inextinguishable hostility to the Almohade dynasty made them the faithful and enthusiastic allies of a prince who represented a faction devoted to its extermination. The important consequences of these wise and able measures subsequently became apparent in the hour of Christian success and Moslem extremity.

The rise of the monarchy of Granada in opulence and strength was coincident with, and, indeed, partly resultant from, the decline of Moorish power in the remaining states of the Peninsula. Sancho II., King of Portugal, was gradually adding to his possessions the isolated and feeble remnants of what had formerly constituted one of the most important principalities of the khalifate. In the prosecution of conquest, Jaime had invaded the region south of the Xucar, which had just before been declared inviolate by the provisions of a deliberately executed treaty. With the single exception of Jaen, the whole of Northern Andalusia had been incorporated into the monarchy of Castile. After the submission of Murcia, Ferdinand, impatient of inaction, prepared for another campaign. He penetrated into the Vega of Granada, desolated its plantations, and, returning through the valley of the Genil, where his destructive march was but too clearly indicated by the blackened remains of crops and dwellings, encamped before Jaen. The governor of that city, Ibn-Omar, an officer of indomitable courage and inexhaustible fertility of resource, showed himself eminently worthy of the trust reposed in him. The advanced position of Jaen gave it unusual value in a military point of view. It was the extreme outpost of the Moslem possessions towards the north. Its loss implied the certain fall of Seville as well as the subjection of the remaining territory of Andalusia, and would afford an unobstructed course to an enemy who desired to invade Granada. The city was only fifty miles from the capital of that kingdom. These facts made its retention in Moorish hands a strategical necessity. Its strength and the bravery of its citizens were such that hitherto every effort to take it had been futile. Anticipating the object of Ferdinand, the King of Granada had sent a large convoy with provisions and arms for the garrison, which was delayed and narrowly escaped capture. Then he attempted at the head of a numerous but undisciplined army to raise the siege. The Moorish peasantry, ill-fitted to cope with veterans skilled from boyhood in the profession of arms, were easily routed, and the situation of the besieged grew desperate. It was evident that the city was doomed, and its occupation by the Christians must, in the present defenceless condition of the Moslems, be the melancholy precursor of a long series of misfortunes, of religious persecution, poverty, slavery, and exile. Then it was that Mohammed determined upon a course which his shrewdness convinced him was the only expedient through whose means the integrity of his kingdom and the preservation of his people could be secured. He appeared voluntarily in the camp of the Castilian king and announced his willingness to render him homage. The penetration of the astute Moslem had not miscalculated the effect of this extraordinary resolve upon the mind of his generous rival. The surprise and gratification of Ferdinand at the proposal inclined his disposition, ever averse to acts of deliberate cruelty and injustice, to a display of unusual magnanimity. He accepted with unconcealed pleasure the offer of Mohammed; the mutual obligations of lord and vassal were assumed, and the sovereign of Granada agreed to attend, when summoned, the national assembly of the Cortes, to furnish a stated number of soldiers in case of war,--even against the votaries of his own religion,--and to pay each year into the treasury of Castile a tribute of fifty thousand maravedis of gold. The duty of protection incumbent on the suzerain, according to the laws of feudalism, was solemnly acknowledged by Ferdinand, and the surrender of Jaen, as an assurance of good faith, was the significant preliminary of a temporary but advantageous peace. The impolitic liberality of their monarch in granting such favorable concessions to an enemy reduced to despair has been, perhaps not with injustice, severely criticised by Spanish historians and churchmen. In this instance, at all events, the royal saint was not guided by celestial inspiration, and the adoption of a treaty inimical to the interests of his country prolonged the existence of Islamism in the Peninsula for a period of two hundred and fifty years.

The success which had attended the movements of the King of Castile in the recent campaign incited him to further and even more strenuous efforts. Seville, the greatest city of Moslem Spain, the centre of a region of prodigious fertility, the seat of a most lucrative maritime and internal trade, a city whose wealth and manifold attractions could hardly be exaggerated by either the pride of the Moor or the cupidity of the Spaniard, was still in the hands of the infidel. At that time its population, increased by thousands of refugees and exiles, was larger than at any previous period of its history. The productiveness of the soil and the patient industry of the cultivator had repaired the effects of foreign depredation and domestic violence. Its environs, remote from the seat of war, had not suffered from repeated and systematic devastation such as had afflicted the suburbs of Cordova. From the summit of the Giralda, for a distance of fifty miles on every side, could be seen a continuous mass of verdure dotted with farm-houses and villas, interspersed with olive plantations, vineyards, and orange groves, and intersected by the silver threads of countless canals and rivulets. Occasionally the ruins of a hamlet or the brushwood which covered the surface of a once flourishing district proclaimed the former presence of an enemy, but in general the appearance of the surrounding country did not differ materially from that which it had worn in the most thriving days of the Moslem domination. The quays of the city were crowded with shipping from every port of the Mediterranean. The streets swarmed with people. The markets, provided alike with the most common articles of daily consumption and the most expensive luxuries, afforded unmistakable evidences of general prosperity, and the imposing and splendid edifices dedicated to public utility, private ostentation, and religious worship disclosed the extraordinary development of architectural taste and the substantial results of princely munificence. In its external aspect, therefore, Seville still exhibited an apparent, if deceptive, image of imperial greatness. Her power, however, as was perfectly realized by her citizens, rested upon an insecure and crumbling foundation. Many of those citizens had once been residents of flourishish communities which the fortunes of war had delivered to the merciless Christian. Their mosques had been profaned. Their household gods had been scattered. Their children were in the harems of the licentious noble or ecclesiastic. They, more than all others, understood the deplorable results of conquest, and the persevering, the indomitable, the resistless spirit which inspired the measures and guided the movements of the Christian armies. The fears which had for so long agitated the inhabitants of Seville were now about to be realized. In a political as well as in a geographical sense the city and its dependencies were completely isolated. At the south was the Mediterranean; in all other directions the Castilian power encroached upon the limits of Sevillian territory; the sole monarch of kindred blood and a common faith was a vassal of the enemy. Other causes conspired to render the separation more complete. Berber influence, extinct elsewhere in Spain and fast vanishing in its original seat across the sea, still maintained a precarious but decided foothold in the centre of Andalusia. The Emir of Seville, Abu-Abdallah, was a prince of the Almohade dynasty. The unpopularity of that abhorred race had by no means declined with its capacity to effect either substantial benefit or serious injury. In the breast of the Arab partisan all other animosities were reconciled when confronted with the universal execration which attached to the names and the character of Almohade and African. Two centuries and a half had passed since the distrust and the partiality of Al-Mansur had elevated to posts of pre-eminent dignity and power individuals of a race that Arab pride disdained as inferior, and whose influence subsequent experience had conclusively proved to be inconceivably destructive to art, learning, and every instinct of civilization. Since that fatal day the supremacy of Islam in the West had steadily declined. Results of the inherent evils of a defective political system, and of the refractory character of a mixed population whose elements were incapable of thorough and permanent fusion, were commonly attributed to the sinister influence with which tribal prejudice and hereditary malevolence invested every act of an aggressive and finally dominant faction.

The surrender of Jaen and the unexpected submission of the King of Granada imparted extraordinary power and distinction to the cause of Ferdinand. His arms were regarded as invincible alike by his Moorish enemies and by his admiring subjects and allies. The inhabitants of Seville heard with consternation of the removal of the last bulwark which guarded the frontier and of the defection of the last Moslem prince who, despite the persistence of ancient prejudices and the memory of recent wrongs, it had been fondly hoped might still have made common cause with the adherents of the same religious belief against the enemies of Islam. The activity of the conqueror afforded them but little time for defensive measures. The great vassals of the kingdom were summoned to the camp at Cordova, the starting-point of the campaign. Among them was Mohammed, whose fealty to his suzerain was attested by a retinue of five hundred picked and splendidly mounted horsemen. Orders were sent to Biscay to equip and despatch a fleet to blockade the mouth of the Guadalquivir and to intercept all communication with Africa. The environs of Carmona were wasted with fire and sword. Alcalá de Guadair was taken and presented to the King of Granada as a token of esteem and confidence from his feudal lord. As the main body of the army was about to move, Ferdinand received intelligence of the death of his mother, Queen Berenguela, who at the advanced age of seventy-six years was, as the regent of the kingdom and the counsellor of her son, not unequal to the assumption of the cares and responsibilities of a great and turbulent empire. In the mind of the stoical and ambitious sovereign of Castile, the misfortune of domestic bereavement was unhesitatingly subordinated to the important interests of country and religion. The campaign was inaugurated without delay. The ruthless policy of an age which made war with a barbarity at present happily extinct demanded the absolute destruction of everything which could afford either shelter or subsistence to a foe. The Castilians, acting upon this principle, soon transformed the beautiful plain of Seville into a prospect of appalling desolation. The houses were burned. The harvests were trampled into the earth. The vineyards were destroyed. The orchards, the orange-groves, the almond and pomegranate plantations were cut down and set on fire. For leagues in every direction the view was obscured by dense clouds of smoke rising from half-consumed trees and burning villages. The city itself was enveloped in darkness which at times made the streets impassable and exceeded the gloom of a starless night. This exhibition of severity was not lost upon the inhabitants of the more defenceless towns of Andalusia. Carmona, Loja, Alcolea hastened to make terms with the invader. Others, among which was the fortress of Cantillana, held out till the last, and received a terrible lesson for their obstinacy. All places which offered resistance were stormed, delivered up to pillage, and every living being within their walls was massacred without mercy. The capitulation of other cities and the utter devastation of the country deprived the people of Seville of the prospect of reinforcements and the means of obtaining supplies. The produce of the crops, swept away by the Castilian cavalry, had been their dependence for replenishing the failing magazines of the capital, and upon the resistance of the outlying fortresses had rested the hope of securing time to reap the harvests. The only resource of the Almohade prince was now with his kinsmen beyond the Strait. His appeal for help was answered by the donation of a fleet of twenty galleys, which attempted to arrest the progress of the Christian squadron about to ascend the Guadalquivir. A naval battle was fought; the Moors, notwithstanding their superior numbers and their long experience in this kind of encounters, were defeated, and the Castilians, proceeding up the river without molestation, cast anchor in front of the city. The arrival of the squadron was the signal for energetic operations. The army, which had heretofore confined its efforts to the persecution of a defenceless peasantry, was brought within the restraints of discipline. The established policy of the Christian sovereigns, who, in the conduct of important enterprises, endeavored to impress upon the besieged the hopelessness of protracted resistance, was again observed. Substantial buildings were erected for the shelter of the soldiery. The avenues were lined with shops which, divided according to the various trades, suggested the occupations and the traffic of a considerable city. The families of the troops took up their residence within the intrenchments. Severe police regulations were established. Fortifications, whose materials and general plan were sufficiently solid and durable for the protection of a populous town rather than for the defence of a temporary encampment, rose before the eyes of the disheartened Moslems. A. strict blockade was maintained; the predatory excursions of the Christians were extended beyond the limits of the already ravaged territory, and the surviving provincials forced to take advantage of the impregnable security of mountain strongholds. The difficulties attending the prosecution of the enterprise in which he had embarked soon impressed themselves upon the Castilian King. Seville at that time was one of the best fortified cities in Europe. It was also one of the most populous, as it contained eighty thousand families, divided into twenty-four tribes according to the ancient Arabic system; and, as those families were polygamous, the number of its inhabitants could hardly have been less than five hundred thousand. Long exposed to the hazards of revolution and conquest, it had been strengthened by every dynasty by which it had been governed. A double line of walls, protected by a moat, encircled it. Its outworks were of unusual solidity, among these the Tower of Gold, which still exists in excellent preservation and indicates the massive construction of these defences, guarded the approach from the river. The present condition of the fortifications, some of which were contemporaneous with the Cæsars, suggests the ease with which an enemy provided only with the comparatively imperfect appliances of mediæval engineering could have been repelled. Its greatest weakness was to be found in the multitude of refugees who, driven from the open country, thronged its habitations, inviting, by the reckless disregard of sanitary precautions and by an increased consumption of provisions, the insidious approaches of disease and famine.

The employment of the influence of the Holy See in the wars of Valencia offered a precedent too valuable to be neglected in the present emergency. The tremendously effective intervention of the Papacy was again solicited to arouse the latent enthusiasm of Europe. From every corner of Spain, from every land subject to the spiritual jurisdiction of Rome, volunteers marched to join the legions of Christendom before the gates of Seville. Unlike former crusades, which had assumed a more or less partisan character and whose summons had been generally unheeded save by those directly interested in the result, representatives of all the states enclosed by the Pyrenees, the Mediterranean, and the ocean hastened to participate in the perils and to share the glory of a campaign destined to remove from Southern Andalusia the most serious impediment to Christian supremacy and the most formidable adversary of Spanish power. The princes of Castile, Aragon, Portugal, appeared escorted by the chivalry of their several kingdoms. From the pulpits of a thousand cathedrals and churches resounded the stirring call to arms. Frantic appeals to the fanaticism of the masses were made alike by famous prelates in great ecclesiastical assemblies and by itinerant friars at the wayside cross. Bishops cast aside the habiliments of the altar for the panoply of war. The metropolitan of Santiago, followed by a body of Galician peasantry, came to contribute, by his ghostly counsels and the inspiration of the patron saint of Spain, to the final overthrow of the accursed infidel. A motley assemblage of foreigners, of unsavory antecedents and mercenary character, added to the numbers, if not the efficiency, of the Christian host.

The siege of Seville, which lasted for seventeen months, proved to be the most arduous and obstinately contested struggle in the history of the Reconquest. The city, with a river easily accessible to an enemy on one side and the others surrounded by a vast and level plain, was necessarily compelled to rely for its defensive capacity and advantages mainly upon the art and ingenuity of man. Across the Guadalquivir was the suburb now known as Triana, whose fortifications, not inferior in strength to those of the capital itself, were manned by a brave and determined garrison. A bridge of boats moored with heavy chains connected the city and the suburb. The communication of these two points was a source of constant annoyance to the Castilians, and the investment had hardly been completed when the King of Granada volunteered to undertake the destruction of the bridge. A fleet of fire-rafts was prepared, but it drifted ashore before reaching its destination. The purpose of the besiegers was subsequently accomplished by means of boats laden with stone, whose weight, aided by the force of the current, shattered the bridge and drove its swinging fragments upon opposite banks of the river. The isolation of Triana failed to compel its surrender, which was one of the principal objects of the attack. Upon the broken bridge the frequent sallies of the garrison still carried death and terror into the Christian ranks. No nation of that period had a more thorough acquaintance with the art of defensive warfare than the Spanish Moslems. The sudden sally, the skirmish, the night attack were not more congenial to their nature than was their ability to detect, and their skill to foil, the well-matured designs of an enemy. The ramparts of Seville and Triana were equipped with the most formidable engines known to the military science of the age. The Saracen catapults projected for immense distances and with crushing power masses of stone and iron weighing more than a thousand pounds. Their balistas cast a hundred arrows at once, and the force of these missiles was so tremendous that they transfixed with ease a horse completely sheathed in steel. The secret of the composition of Greek fire the Moors had long before learned from the soldiers of Constantinople, and this dangerous agent of destruction had in their hands reached an even higher degree of efficiency than it had elsewhere attained. Numbers of movable towers, together with their unfortunate occupants, were consumed by its unquenchable flames before they had time to approach the walls. Considering the long duration of the siege, but little damage was inflicted upon the fortifications of the city. The ordinary resources of engineering skill became useless in the face of the vigilance and determination of the garrison. Repeated attempts to carry the place by escalade were repulsed. It was found impracticable to mine the walls. Owing to the accuracy and penetration of the projectiles discharged by the enemy, the machines of the Christians could not be worked within a range that would prove effective. The usual means at the disposal of an attacking force having failed, it became necessary to resort to a blockade, which the great numbers of the besieged must in the end render successful. Hunger and despair were thus eventually found to be more powerful weapons than all the military appliances at the command of an extensive monarchy, than the enthusiastic energy of a great nation, than the combined efforts of a thoroughly organized hierarchy, than even the benedictions and indulgences of the Papal throne. All of these influences had been exerted to effect the subjection of the Moorish capital, and all had hitherto proved unavailing. The Moslems, inclined to come to terms before their provisions were entirely consumed and the patience of their enemies exhausted, attempted to treat upon a basis of ordinary tribute and vassalage,--a proposition which the King of Castile peremptorily declined to consider. They then continued to offer concessions more and more favorable to the dignity of the Christian monarchy, until a treaty was finally agreed upon. It was with the greatest reluctance that the piety of the Moslems consented to the surrender of their great mosque, which, with its minaret, was the most sacred as well as the most conspicuous monument of the city. They proposed its demolition as one of the conditions of surrender. To this Ferdinand replied that if a single brick of the edifice was disturbed he would not leave a Moor alive in Seville. The title to the capital and its dependencies was transferred to the Castilian crown. The inhabitants who preferred to remain the subjects of the conqueror were assured the enjoyment of their laws and their religion, and were to be liable only to the imposition of taxes legalized by Moslem usage; those to whom such propositions were repugnant were permitted to retain their personal effects, and were promised transportation to any land possessed by their co-religionists which they might, without restriction, select. The policy of a court which habitually encouraged the infraction of treaties was not favorable to the retention of a population whose skill and industry were the true sources of the wealth of Andalusia. The surviving members of the Almohade dynasty passed over to Africa. A large majority of the Moors emigrated to Granada, where the liberality of their new sovereign and their own energy and perseverance soon raised them to a higher condition of prosperity than ever. The conduct of Mohammed I., who was placed in an anomalous and painful situation by an inexorable decree of destiny, elicited the unstinted praise of both friend and foe. His efforts contributed largely to the success of the Christians. His military accomplishments and personal courage were the admiration of cavaliers versed in every martial exercise and in every stratagem of war. He enjoyed the esteem and confidence of his royal suzerain. Yet, while participating in the triumphs of his new allies, he never renounced the ties of blood and faith which still bound him to his countrymen. His intercession procured for them advantageous terms in the day of disaster and humiliation. His sympathy alleviated the bitterness of defeat. And when no other alternative was left to the vanquished excepting the capricious indulgence of a perfidious enemy or voluntary exile, they found under his sceptre a secure and happy refuge from insult and oppression. More than a hundred thousand of the most industrious peasantry in the world were thus added to the population of his dominions by the politic and generous behavior of the King of Granada. These colonists received ample grants of lands. Seeds and implements of husbandry were furnished them by the government, and they were exempted from all taxation for a term of years. By this great immigration, which impoverished the territory conquered by the Christians, the states of Granada received a proportionate increase of profit and affluence.

The occupation of Seville by the Castilians was characterized by the usual ceremonies incident to the capture of a Mussulman city. The mosques were purified and consecrated to the Christian worship. In the division of the spoil and the distribution of the rich states of the Moslem, the Church exercised without remonstrance the privileges of priority of selection and exorbitant estimate of service. In the partition of infidel possessions the pretensions of the altar were fast becoming paramount to the rights of the crown. The ecclesiastical jurisdiction, suspended since the era of Visigothic supremacy, was restored. A metropolitan diocese was established. A multitude of religious houses were founded by the piety of the King and the zeal or repentance of his followers; thousands of colonists supplied the vacancies caused by emigration, and Seville within a few months assumed the dull and cheerless appearance of a Spanish city. The maritime district of Andalusia, to the westward, as well as the towns situated between the capital and the coast, successively acknowledged the claims of Spanish sovereignty, and the undisputed authority of Castile and Leon soon prevailed from the mountains of Biscay to the Mediterranean Sea.

While these events were transpiring, the Kings of Aragon and Portugal had wrested from the grasp of the Moslems, enfeebled by internal dissensions and constant defeat, the last fragments of the empire of the khalifs; and there remained of the extensive territory once ruled by the mighty potentates of Cordova but a single district, designated in the enumeration of their states as a province, but now daily increasing in renown as the tributary but powerful kingdom of Granada.

The character of Ferdinand III., like that of so many of his successors, was largely formed by the monitions of ecclesiastical counsellors. He was most emphatically the creature of his age,--an age of romantic undertakings, of mistaken piety, of religious intolerance. Like the King of Aragon, his contemporary, the early years of his reign were disturbed by domestic discord. Like him, also, he triumphed by the aid of the clergy. Profoundly sagacious, he was ever ready to profit by the factional quarrels of his infidel enemies. He made large additions to his power by furnishing Castilian troops to aid the ambition or the enmity of Saracen partisans in return for the cession of important castles and fertile territory. As a pretended neutral, alternately supporting the pretensions and promoting the feuds of rival Moslem princes, the Crown of Castile was always the gainer. King Ferdinand was a worthy representative of the proselyting spirit which characterized his royal line from the very institution of the monarchy. Popular with the masses, his subjects had declared him worthy of canonization even in his lifetime. To the ecclesiastical order he was an ideal sovereign. His donations to the Church were frequent and prodigal. In the occupation of conquered cities he always permitted the crucifix to take precedence of the sceptre. When the wretched Albigenses, fleeing from the tortures of Montfort and the swords of his bravos, attempted to find an asylum beyond the Pyrenees, the pious King of Castile burned all who fell into his hands, and even performed the highly meritorious duty of personally assisting at the sacrifice and of heaping fagots upon the funeral pyres which consumed those obstinate and abominable heretics.

The conqueror of Andalusia fixed his final residence in the largest of the provincial capitals which had bowed before the invincible efforts of his arms. A few hours before his death, on the thirtieth of May, 1252, in abasing humility he received the last sacrament, kneeling upon the bare earth, with a rope about his neck, in the guise and the attitude of a convicted malefactor.

In the great cathedral of Seville, the most incomparable monument of ecclesiastical architecture in Europe, a magnificent chapel has been raised to his memory. Before the high altar the venerated monarch lies enshrined in a casket of massy silver. Mounted effigies, encased in the armor of the thirteenth century, tower above the kneeling worshippers. On the walls, carved in stone, are the historic escutcheons of Castile and Leon. The royal sepulchre bears an inscription in four languages--Latin, Spanish, Hebrew, and Arabic--the respective idioms of the clergy, the people, the tributary, and the conquered race. Around it, on each anniversary of his death, a detachment of Granadan Moors, with lighted tapers in their hands, once stood motionless and in silence. To-day, three times in every year, the body of Castile’s most famous sovereign is exposed to public view adorned with all the pomp of royalty,--with the crown, the sceptre, the robes; mass is said, and a regiment of soldiers salute the mouldering remains of one of the most eminent and successful commanders of his time.