tf COLUMBUS AS A YOUT5 CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN BY JOHN BONNER AUTHOR OF "A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ROME" "A CHILD'S HISTORY OF FRANCE" ETC. ILLUSTRATED NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 1894 Copyright, 1894, by HARPER & BROTHERS. All rights reserved. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. FKOM THE BEGINNING TO THE ROMAN CONQUEST . . 1 II. THE GOTHS IN SPAIN 9 III. THE MOORISH CONQUEST 16 IV. WHO WERE THE MOORS? 22 V. THE CONQUEST 30 VI. ABDERRAHMAN THE FIRST 36 VII. ABDERRAHMAN'S SUCCESSORS 45 VIII. FLORA AND MARY 52 IX. ABDERRAHMAN THE THIRD 56 X. THE GREAT VIZIER 66 XI. THE CHRISTIANS OF NORTHERN SPAIN 72 XII. THE CID CAMPEADOR 80 XIII. THE BATTLE OF LAS NAVAS 85 XIV. SEVILLE 93 XV. CASTILE AND ARAGON 103 XVI. THE MOORS AT GRANADA 108 XVII. ZAHARA AND ALHAMA 117 XVIII. BORDER WARFARE 122 XIX. THE FALL OF MALAGA 128 XX. THE FALL OF GRANADA .......... 134 XXI. THE LAST OF THE MOORS 142 XXII. THE CONDITION OF SPAIN 149 XXIII. COLUMBUS 156 XXIV. THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 161 XXV. THE SECOND VOYAGE . 168 2OS801 Vlli CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE XXVI. THE DEATH OF COLUMBUS 178 XXVII. THE END OP FERDINAND AND ISABELLA . . . 186 XXVIII. CHARLES THE FIRST . . 193 XXIX. HERNANDO CORTEZ 202 XXX. IN THE CITY OF MEXICO 209 XXXI. CORTEZ DRIVEN OUT OP MEXICO 216 XXXII. THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO 222 XXXIII. PIZARRO 227 XXXIV. THE CONQUEST OF PERU 231 XXXV. PHILIP THE SECOND 236 XXXVI. THE DUKE OF ALVA 244 XXXVII. DON JOHN OF AUSTRIA 250 XXXVIII. THE KNIGHTS OF MALTA 257 XXXIX. THE MORISCOES 263 XL. SPAIN UNDER PHILIP THE SECOND 268 XLI. Two MORE PHILIPS .... 1 279 XLII. CHARLES THE SECOND 285 XLIII. PHILIP THE FIFTH 292 XL1V. FERDINAND THE SIXTH 298 XLV. CHARLES THE THIRD 301 XLVI. THE PRINCE OF THE PEACE 307 XL VII. THE OLD KING AND THE NEW ONE 313 XLVIII. KING JOSEPH 319 XLIX. THE FRENCH IN SPAIN 324 L. FERDINAND THE SEVENTH 329 LI. THE SPANISH-AMERICAN COLONIES 337 LII. THE WOMAN FROM NAPLES 344 LIII. ISABELLA 352 LIV. SPAIN IN OUR DAY . 357 ILLUSTRATIONS Columbus as a Youth . . Frontispiece. The Bay of Biscay page 3 King Ramirez 11 The Evening Prayer 20 A Moorish Fort 23 Mosque of Medina, Containing the Prophet's Tomb 27 The Entrance to Toledo 31 At the Fountain, Cordova 37 Street Scene, with Goats, Toledo. 4 1 A Patio in Toledo 43 The Moorish Gate, Seville 47 Restoration of the Mosque at Cordova 59 The Garden of the Alcazar, Cor- dova 63 The Archway of St. Mary at Burgos 67 Church at Valencia 75 The Cathedral, Seville 87 A Moorish Camp 90 A Street Corner, Seville 95 A Lane in Seville 99 The Giralda Tower, Seville 101 Girls Drawing Water at the Fountain, Toledo 109 The Surrender of Granada. . . ,135 In the Dusk at Granada. . ..page 143 "Remember that thou too must die" 153 The World as It was Known in Columbus's Time 157 Vision on the Voyage. . .~ 163 Landing of Columbus 165 The Bradley Portrait of Colum- bus. 169 A Spanish Caravel 173 Front of Spanish Church 179 Death-bed of 'Queen Isabella. . . 183 Charles the Fifth and His Friends in Marble 194 Charles the First 199 Pyramid of Cholula 211 Tree of Montezuma 213 Aztec Calendar Stone 217 Philip the Second 237 Work-room of Philip the Second. 239 Crucifix to which Philip the Second Prayed 241 Spanish Galleys in a Sea-fight. . 253 Irrigating Near Alicante 266 A Garlic Seller 269 Coffins of the Kings, in the Es- curial. . . 271 ILLUSTRATIONS The Tomb of Philip the Second at the Escurial page 273 Choir of the Church in the Es- curial 277 The Village Curate 280 Doing Penance 282 The Monastery at the Escurial. 287 Court of the Evangelists, in the Escurial 290 At Mid-day in the Sun 293 On the Road to the Bull-fight. . 295 A Spanish Monk page 303 A Professional Beggar 309 Peasants in the Market-place . . 315 Going to Market 331 A Street Barber Operating on a Customer 335 " All the day long I am happy" 345 A Serenade 349 The Great Square at Madrid ... 358 How They Thresh Grain in Spain 360 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN CHAPTER I SPAIX FROM THE BEGINNING TO THE ROMAN CONQUEST 500 B.C.-50 A.D. AWAY down in the south-western corner of Europe, cut off from the rest of the continent by a range of mountains six to twelve thousand feet high, is the beautiful country of Spain. It is a country of lofty and rugged mountain chains and long level plains. Some of the latter lie low, and are watered by flowing rivers; here the climate is genial and the rainfall copious, so that the fields are fat and rich; others, in the centre of the country, stand higher above the level of the sea ; these have a scanty rainfall, ex- cessive heat in summer, and extreme cold in winter, and are sometimes baked and sometimes frozen, but always dry and poor. In the north the Basque peasant in his long ragged black cloak cowers from the bleak winds from the Atlantic and the biting gales from the snow-clad ridge of the Pyre- nees and the Cantabrians ; in the south, the gay Andalu- sian is warmed by balmy breezes from the Mediterranean, and sleeps his noonday sleep under groves of gently wav- ing palms or orange-trees, or beneath broad vine-leaves, or in orchards laden with fragrant fruit, or in snug corners of fields yellow with golden wheat. Thus Spain is divided into a paradise and a wilderness. 1 2 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN [500 B.C.-SO A.D. Long, long ago, before history began to be written, Spain was probably part of Africa. On the Cape of Gibraltar live thirty or forty monkeys of the African breed; an old Span- ish legend says that they still visit their old home, from time to time, by a submarine tunnel under the Mediterra- nean. In old prehistoric times the country was overrun with mammoths and other enormous preadamite monsters, whose bones are still found in great heaps in the mountains. After their day came volcanic convulsions which altered the shape of the country, uptwisted mountain ranges, burst yawning chasms, tilted great layers of rock on edge, cut channels for rivers, and perhaps opened a way for the waters of the Mediterranean to empty into the At- lantic through the Straits of Gibraltar. We first hear of Spain four or five hundred years before Christ, when the Phoenicians of Tyre planted a colony near the present seaport of Cadiz. Two or three hundred years later we again hear of it, when the mighty trading city of Carthage founded the town which is now called Cartha- gena, and sent a general with an army of fifty thousand men and two hundred elephants to conquer the coasts of Spain. At that time the peninsula was inhabited by two races, who were know as Iberians and Celts, and who afterwards blended and were then called Celtiberians. The Iberians came from Africa, and were short, dark-skinned men, though not negroes; the Celts came from the North, were tall and white, wore their hair in long braids, and dressed in leathern coats, over which they threw long black cloaks. They spent their time in war or at the chase, while their women tilled the fields. Their weapons were swords and spears of iron, and they were skilled horsemen. They lived chiefly on vegetables, fruits, acorns, and chestnuts, and were not acquainted with strong liquor. In some respects they may remind you of some of our Indian tribes. These races were intermarrying, or living peaceably side by side, and growing in numbers, when the Carthaginians invaded Spain. The latter were a very superior people to 500 B.C.-SO A.D.] A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN 5 the Celtiberians ; highly educated, far-seeing, good soldiers, good sailors, and, above all, good merchants. They taught the natives how to work their mines of silver and gold and lead and iron ; they bought the produce of the mines and the fields and the orchards, and gave in exchange the goods of Carthage and of Tyre ; they kept order with their armies, and when Greek marauders landed they drove them off with their well-drilled regiments and their elephants ; they treated the Celtiberians so fairly that the two races became friends, and when the Carthaginian gen- eral proposed that Spain should become a province of Carthage the Celtiberians agreed. Thus, for the first though not for the last time in history, Spain came to be ruled by men of the Arab race from Africa. It did not all become Carthaginian, however. There were a few Greek settlements here and there along the coast, and as Greece went down and Rome rose up, some of these became more Roman than Greek. Such a place was Saguntum. On the place where it stood there is now a small Spanish town called Murviedro, or Old Walls; something over twenty- one hundred years ago it was a rich and powerful city, with high stone -walls, an amphi- theatre, an aqueduct, temples, and other fine buildings. It was full of brave people, who were stanch friends of Rome. Now it befell at this time that Rome and Carthage were foes. They had waged one war which had lasted twenty-three years, and had ended in the defeat of Car- thage. A young Carthaginian general, named Hannibal, who was then in Spain, resolved to reopen the fight, and to begin by attacking Saguntum. For the work he mustered one hundred and fifty thou- sand troops, most of whom were Spaniards. A Spanish poet, writing many centuries afterwards, sang : "Lord Hannibal upon the town His hirelings brings from far ; The men of Ocana come down To serve him in the war. 6 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF sfAix [600 B.C.-SO A.n. With all that Andalusia yields Her trooping soldiers come; From rich Granada's fertile fields, From Cadiz washed with foam, With guards and spears and helms and shields They march to fight with Rome." Hannibal attacked the place with high towers which overtopped the walls, and from which huge stones, thrown by machinery upon the parapet, cleared it of defenders; while an immense battering-ram with a steel head, and driven by twoscore men, working day and night, at length made a breach in the wall. Then the leading Saguntines kindled a great fire in the public square, and after throw- ing their gold and silver into it, leaped into the flames themselves. The victorious army swarmed into the city and showed no mercy. Saguntum was burned, and though the Romans long afterwards undertook to rebuild it, it never regained its former state. This was the beginning of the second war between Rome and Carthage. It opened with splendid victories by young Hannibal, who overran Italy and defeated army after army. But the dogged tenacity of the Romans won at last ; Carthage received her death-blow, and Hanni- bal himself committed suicide in exile. You will find a trace of his service in Spain in the town of Barcelona, which was named after his family Barca. While Hannibal was winning victories in Italy, the Romans resolved to carry the war into Spain. They sent an army there under Publius Scipio, and he was defeated and killed; then another army, under his brother Cneius Scipio, and he was defeated and killed; then a third, under Publius Cornelius Scipio, who was afterwards known as the African, and he conquered the country, though he was only twenty-four years old. When he landed, with eleven thousand men, somewhere near Barcelona, nine-tenths of Spain was Carthaginian; in seven or eight years all Spain, except a town or two here and there, was Roman. This he 500 B.C.-50 A.D.] A CHILD'S HISTORY OP SPAIN 7 accomplished not so much by fighting as by policy and kind- ness. Then, as now, the Spaniards were a hot-headed, im- pulsive people; they had never warmed to the Carthagin- ians, who were harsh and cruel. Scipio was gentle and generous. When the Carthaginians won a victory they held the finest youths among their vanquished foes as hostages for the good behavior of their tribe. Scipio asked for no hostages. Among the Carthaginians beautiful maidens were always spoil of war. After a battle, when a lovely Spanish girl was brought to Scipio as his prize, he restored her to her lover, and gave her a dowry. He was always just and kind; and this was so surprising to the simple Spaniards, accustomed to the rough Avays of a brutal age, that they regarded Scipio as more than a man, and offered to make him king. He refused the title, saying : "No Roman can endure the name of king. If you think that the royal spirit is the noblest spirit of man, I shall be glad if you think that such a spirit is mine. But you must never call me king." So completely did he win their hearts that for his sake they became firm friends of Rome. And you will find, as you read this history, that of all people the Spaniards are the most faithful. They have often given their lives rather than break their troth. They were, moreover, at this time a rich people. When Scipio took the city which is now known as Carthagena, he received as part of the government's share of the plunder two hundred and sev- enty-six golden bowls, each weighing about a pound, nine tons of wrought and coined silver, and one hundred and thirteen merchant vessels. Before he died he saw Roman authority firmly planted over Eastern and Southern Spain. In the North and West some native tribes were still independent. They were generally a people of herdsmen and shepherds poor, with no great city and no treasure that was worth steal- ing. They were, moreover, brave and skilful fighters, and 8 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN [500B.C.-50 A.D. by going to war with them the Romans stood to win more hard knocks than plunder. Therefore the Roman legions kept away from the bulk of the regions which are now known as Portugal, Estremadura, the Asturias, Gali- cia, Leon, Castile, and the windy plateau 'on which Madrid stands, and clung to the sunny slopes which lean to the Mediterranean. On those purple hills which look into the Southern Sea, and in the leafy valleys between them, where summer is long and life is sweet, and fragrant odors and the buzz of many insects lull the idler to sleep, the Roman soldier, weary of war, took to his broad breast a blushing Spanish maiden, who in his arms became a Roman matron, as he in hers became a Spanish citizen. Thus Spain became Roman, and for four or five hundred years, when Rome itself was ravaged spring and fall by barbarian invaders, it was a home of Roman civilization, a refuge of Roman letters, a centre of Roman spirit. Some of the wisest statesmen, several of the most skil- ful generals, a few of the most brilliant writers of the later ages of Rome, were born in Spain. The Emperors Trajan and Hadrian were both born near Seville ; Marcus Aure- lius was born at Rome of Spanish parents; the Senecas and the poet Lucan at Cordova ; the poet Martial in Aragon ; Quintilian, the grammarian, in Navarre. These great men generally spent their lives at Rome; but some of them, as death approached, returned to lay their bones in the country of their birth, by the side of the flowing rivers they loved, and under the kindly skies they had gazed at in their boyhood. During the first centuries of the Chris- tian era Spain was a more peaceful and happier country to live in than Italy. CHAPTER II THE GOTHS IN SPAIN A.D. 200-700 FOR over five hundred years after the Roman conquest Spain was tranquil. The only interruption to peace was an uprising by a proconsul named Sertorius, Avho for a time established an independent government in the North. He defied the utmost power of Rome for ten years, and might have founded an empire, for he was brave, wise, and honest, had he not, in a moment of forgetfulness, accept- ed a bidding to a banquet given by some refugees from Rome, who murdered him as he sat at table. He was adored by his people. There is a legend that one of the secrets of his power was his ownership of a white fawn, which he had tamed, and which came at his call and ate out of his hand. He persuaded the ignorant Spaniards that this creature came to him from Heaven, held converse with the gods, and advised him in moments of trouble. The Spaniards, like most dwellers in mount- ainous, volcanic regions, have always been a superstitious people, prone to believe things incredible. It would have been well for them if they had never cherished wilder de- lusions than the one about the white fawn. During the first centuries of the Christian era unending conflict raged between the Roman Empire and wild tribes of Northern Europe, who bore various names, among oth- ers Vandals, Sueves, Franks, Alemans, Saxons, Burgun- dians, and especially Goths. These last came from the shore of the Baltic, and were sometimes distinguished as Visigoths and Ostrogoths. They and rough races like them ravaged the Roman country, from the turbulent Bay 10 A CHILD'S HISTORY OP SPAIN [200-700 of Biscay to the Danube, and plundered in turn the re- gions which we now call France, Germany, Italy, and Austria. For a long time the lofty wall of the Pyrenees kept them out of Spain; but an hour came when the bar- barous tribes, thirsting for new towns to sack, scaled the mountain wall and poured into the valley of the Ebro. They were terrible visitors ; often giants in size and strength, with blue eyes, long yellow hair, and coats of sheepskin or fur on their backs. They could neither read nor write, but they could fight from the dawn of day to the setting of the sun. The first tribes which settled in Spain were Sueves and Vandals. They roamed through the North, robbing cities and carrying off flocks and herds. The Spaniards called upon Rome for help ; but Rome could not 'even defend herself. She was glad when a Gothic chief, Ataulph, or Adolphus, a brother of Alaric the Goth, offered to drive the Vandals and Sueves out of Southern France and Spain, on the condition that Rome should give them to him, and with them the Emperor's sister, Honoria, a lady of remarkable beauty, to be his wife. The bargain was closed on these terms. At the head of an army of Goths Ataulph scattered the other barbarians ; not, however, un- til the Vandals had given their name to the most lovely portion of the country, which to this day is known as Andalusia. Then Ataulph founded a Gothic empire in Spain, and chose for his capital the beautiful city of Barcelona, on the Mediterranean. His Goths mingled and intermarried with the Spaniards, and in course of time it was difficult to distinguish one people from the other. The Goths had conquered the Spaniards on the battle-field, but the Span- iards had civilized their conquerors, and forced upon them the manners and customs and language of Rome. During several hundred years many kings succeeded each other on the Gothic throne. Ataulph did riot reign long. As he was reviewing his troops a dwarf crept up 200-700] A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN 13 behind him and stabbed him in the back. His successor, Sigeric, thought to make himself secure on his throne by causing the six little children of Ataulph to be put to death ; but the people said this was going too far, and they killed the murderer. A good riddance ! Then there came a king named Wallia, who waged successful war upon the remnant of the Vandals and Sueves, and penned them up in corners of Spain; and after him came Theod- oric, also a valiant fighter, who helped defeat Attila, King of the Huns, the Scourge of God, on the battle-field at Chalons. Both Attila and Theodoric died of wounds received in this battle. The next Gothic king, Evaric, was the most powerful and the wisest of the Gothic mon- archs. All nations sent embassies to make treaties with him. He drew the Gothic code of laws, which was in force for many centuries, and is the basis of the system of laws which is in force in Spain to-day. We are told there were thirty-two Gothic kings in all, and that of these eight were usurpers, four were dethroned, and eight were murdered. As they did little except to quarrel and make war on their neighbors, I do not think you would care to hear much about them. There was a king named Leovigild, who, like Evaric, became a monarch of repute. He held his court at Toledo, dressed in purple, and sat on a throne. He levied heavy taxes on his people, and seized the estates of traitors, by which means he was enabled to gather a vast sum of money into his treasury. It was in his reign that the dispute became hot between two sects into which the Christians were divided Arians and Catholics. The king was an Arian, his people Cath- olics. While he reigned the Arians were in the ascendant. After he died, A.D. 586, the Catholics got the upperhand and did not delay to crush out Arianism, though it was the ancient faith of the Goths. He had a wife whose name was Goswinda, and whose temper was hot. She was an Arian. Her son married a French princess named Ingunda, who was a Catholic. 14 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN [-200-700 Goswinda ordered her daughter-in-law to become an Ari- an; Ingunda, who was only seventeen, respectfully de- clined to do anything of the kind. Thereupon the mother- in-law seized her by the hair of her head, threw her down, trampled on her, and held her in the water while she was baptized by an Arian priest. The young lady appealed to her husband and father-in-law for redress, but got none. In those days such pleasantnesses were not unusual at courts. It was a son of Leovigild, Ricared by name, who de- clared Catholicism to be the religion of Spain. He had been an Arian, but renounced his faith. He was so fortu- nate as to be able to effect the religious union of his peo- ple without war. He died A.D. 601, having built a cathe- dral at Toledo, which was consecrated to the Virgin Mary. According to the legend, the Virgin herself came down from heaven to inspect it when it was finished, and if you go to see it, you will be shown the footprint of her step on the stair. Seventy-one years after Ricared, in the year A.D. 672, the Gothic lords elected a farmer named Wamba to be king. The story goes that their messengers found Wamba ploughing his field; that when they told him their er- rand he laughed, saying that he would be king when leaves grew on his staff. With which words he smote the earth with the staff, and green leaves forthwith sprouted from it. Whatever you may think of this story, you will have to admit that the old ploughman was a valiant and gallant soldier. He carried on many wars, and was always vic- torious. A rebellion breaking out at Nismes, which then formed part of the Spanish dominion, Wamba marched swiftly to the city and stormed it. Numbers of the de- fenders were killed in the attack ; their leader was brought before Wamba in chains. " Thy life," said the king, " will I spare, though the mercy is ill deserved." He ordered the prisoners' heads to be shaved and their beards to be cut off it was esteemed a disgrace to wear a 200-700] A CHILD'S HISTORY OP SPAIN 15 bare chin and when he returned to Toledo he required them to march in front of the army with bare feet and clothed in hair. The leader wore a leather crown, which I suppose corresponded to the leather medal of our day. I wish Wamba had been as merciful to the Jews as he was to the rebels. But he hated them with a hatred which nothing could appease, and, as was the custom of that day, he persecuted them cruelly. Toledo was said to have been an ancient Jewish city, founded before Christ. How the Jews got there, in the very heart of Spain, we are not told. But in the time of Wamba they were numerous at Toledo, and, as is their custom, they had grown rich. The king robbed them of their wealth, and gave them the choice of turning Christians or going into exile. Thus To- ledo lost many of its most useful and enterprising citizens. One day King Wamba fell ill. His disease deprived him of consciousness; he could neither see what was going on round him, nor hear what was said. Now there was a curious custom in Spain that when a person became un- conscious on his death- bed his friends could shave his head, and the priests could ordain him, unconscious as he was, as a monk of the church; the object being to secure him easy entrance into heaven, whose door always stood wide open for the priesthood. King Wamba's courtiers, being sure that he was going to die, shaved' his head, and the Arch- bishop of Toledo received him into the Church as a-monk, and ordained him with the usual ceremonies. Fancy their surprise next day when the king got better! His majesty was a good deal nonplussed when he passed his hand over his head and found his hair gone; likewise when he observed that he was dressed in the costume of a monk. A council of bishops and lawyers was summoned to consider the case, and they decided that the rule once a priest, always a priest must apply. So King Wamba was told that his reign was over, and that there was noth- ing for him to do but to retire to a monastery at Burgos, which he did. CHAPTER III THE MOORISH CONQUEST A.D. 710-711 WHEN the Goths first became masters of Spain they were a rude tribe of savages, without learning or culture. After they had mixed with the natives for a century or so they became a refined and polished people, speaking Latin, and trained in letters, law, and religion; and they still re- mained warlike and manly. But after they had been two or three centuries in possession of the rich valleys of Spain they acquired idle and luxurious habits, spent their lives in drinking and feasting and dancing, and thus be- came as weak and helpless as the people of Italy. It was the old story. Powerful chiefs, with men-at- arms under their command, seized the richest lands, and made the common people till them for their food and clothes. The man who drove the plough was cowed, house- less, hungry, ragged, unkempt, filthy, and ignorant. The man who owned the land lived in a splendid castle, with soldiers guarding the gate. He wore clothes of silk and rich stuffs, ate choice food, drank fine wines, took his siesta in the shade of olive groves, where fragrant flowers per- fumed the air, listened to the sweet music of lutes, or lazily watched lovely girls dancing on Persian carpets for his delight. You know that there was too much contrast here for such a society to last. When the pillars of the arch are so very far apart the corner-stone is apt to fall in. At the close of the Gothic period in Spain a good deal of fable is mixed with the history. The Gothic king was named Roderick; of that there can be no doubt. He is 710-711] A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN 17 said to have been brutal, reckless, headstrong, and incap- able ; of that there is no certainty at all. The legend says that at Toledo there was a house which had been built by Hercules, the strong man of Greece, and which was called " The House of God." It was the law that no one should enter that house; and for the better assurance of this, every king set his seal upon the door. Roderick had set his seal with the others. But after- wards, consumed with curiosity to know what was in the house, he broke his own and the other kingly seals and forced his way in. First he saw the statue of a man of prodigious size lying in bed, and he knew that this was Hercules. Then he went on, and he came to a room of which one wall was dazzling white, another pitch-black, the third an emerald-green, and the fourth blood-red. In this room stood a tall pillar ; in the pillar a niche ; in the niche a casket of gold, studded with precious stones and closed with a lock of mother-of-pearl ; and in the casket a white cloth, on which were drawn pictures of strange men with turbans on their heads, banners in their hands, swords hanging from their necks, bows tied to their saddles, and a scroll underneath, saying: "Whosoever shall see this cloth shall also see men like these conquer Spain and become the lords thereof." You do not need to be told that there was no house of Hercules, no colored walls, no pillar, no casket, no pictures on cloth, and no scroll, but that all these were invented long afterwards by the rich Moorish fancy. I cannot be as sure that another story of the same time was also a fable, but I suspect it was. Over against Spain, on the northern coast of Africa, dwelt tribes of Moors who constantly threatened to invade Europe. To hold them in check, Roderick built forts in Africa, and filled them with fighting men under a captain named Julian. Now this Julian had a lovely young daughter, named Clorinda, whom he sent to Toledo to be educated, and placed under the guardianship of the king. 18 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN [710-71 1 Forgetting his duty, Roderick fell in love with her, and, though he had a wife already, carried her off from her boarding-school. Her relations flew to arms to rescue her, but when they broke into the place where she was shut up she refused to leave, and said she would cast her lot with the king. At this her kinsmen left her with curses, and from that time to this the Spaniards have never christened a girl-baby by the name of Clorinda, but have taken pleas- ure in giving the name to dogs. I suspect myself that this story was made up long after- wards to excuse the treachery of Julian; for, according to the story, just at this time that officer sent word to the Moorish chief that he would surrender his forts if the Moors would despatch a force into Spain to overthrow Roderick. The chief's name was Mousa or Musa. He de- layed till he could consult the Caliph; then, receiving a favorable reply, he sent into Spain an officer named Tarif with five hundred men, and on his report despatched an- other army of seven thousand under another officer named Tarik. These invaders are called Moors, because they embarked for Spain from Mauritania, which we call Morocco. They were a mixed race, part Arab and part African, of whom I will tell you more in the next chapter. Swarthy but not black, fierce, warlike, unruly; tireless on the march, and fearless in battle; living for a day on a handful of fruit, with a mouthful of water; devoted heart and soul to the Moslem faith, which they believed it to be their duty to spread through the world by fire and sword, they may perhaps remind you of the Carthaginians, who sprang from the same stock and lived also in Northern Africa. They were indeed terrible foes for the weakened Spanish Goths to encounter. When Roderick heard of their landing he mustered all the troops he could gather, and marched down to Xeres, near Cadiz, with ninety thousand men. It is said that he went into battle in an ivory chariot drawn by two milk- 710-711] A GUILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN 19 white mules, but this is not certain. What is certain is that, though his force far outnumbered that of the Moors, even after the latter had been reinforced with five thousand fresh troops, he was beaten, after a desperate fight which lasted eight days. There is an old Spanish ballad which tells the story of the end of the battle, and describes the despair of Rod- erick : ". He climbed into a hill-top, The highest he could see, Thence all about of that wide rout His last long look took he; He saw his royal banners, Where they lay drenched and torn, He heard the cry of victory, The Arabs' shout of scorn. ' Last night I was the King of Spain : To-day no king am I. Last night fair castles held my train : To-night where shall I lie ? Last night a hundred pages Did serve me on the knee ; To-night not one I call my own, Not one pertains to me. Oh ! Death, why now so slow art thou, Why fearest thou to smite ?'" The story goes that the king was drowned in the Gua- dalquivir in trying to escape. His body was never found, but his crown and his royal robe fell into the hands of the Moors. His army scattered ; neither officers nor men were true to Roderick. He had taught them to hate him by his cru- elties and his folly. The Jews, especially, whom he had oppressed, openly took sides with the Moors, in order to be revenged on their Christian oppressors. Musa, the chief general of the Moors in Africa, had ordered his lieutenant Tank, when he left Africa, to give one battle, if he thought it safe, but not to follow up his 20 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN [710-711 victory, if he won. Musa wanted the glory of conquest for himself. Tarik, looking out for his own glory, chose to disobey. Without an hour's delay, after the battle of Xeres, THE EVENING PRAYER he marched north, and took city after city. The Spanish spirit had been broken. But Musa had no idea of letting Tarik play the part of 710-711] A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN 2i conqueror. He placed himself at the head of an army, crossed into Spain, marched on the trail of his lieutenant, took Seville and Merida, and came up with Tarik outside the walls of Toledo. The Moorish chief, seated on a prancing charger, met his lieutenant with a black frown on his brow and bitter words on his tongue. He charged Tarik with having se- creted plunder for himself. When this was disproved, Musa accused him of having aimed at making himself ruler of Spain. When this was also denied, Musa slashed him across the face with his whip and ordered him into prison. While the Moorish conquerors were quarrelling among themselves the Spaniards submitted quietly to be con- quered. They were tired of the Goths and of their gov- ernment, which latterly had neither preserved the peace nor pi'otected the peasant. All they asked of the Moors was to be allowed to keep their old laws and their lands on the old terms ; these conditions the conquerors granted. As to their religion, the Moors promised that it should not be interfered with, but so long as a Spaniard remained a Christian he must pay head-money. This was not so hard to bear as some of the oppressions they had endured when the Gothic chiefs had been warring against each other. As you read Spanish history you will find no trait in the Spanish character more clearly marked than an uncon- querable hatred of foreign control. That trait had not de- veloped when the Moors overran Spain in the year of our Lord seven hundred and eleven. CHAPTER IV WHO WERE THE MOORS? A.D. 630-711 IN order that you shall understand something of the people who conquered Spain nearly twelve hundred years ago, and who held the best part of it for over seven hun- dred years, I must tell you something of their origin. In the deserts of Arabia, where a tropical sun scorches vast stretches of sand, divided from each other by bare mountain ranges, and grass and trees only grow round a well or spring, to which the traveller, choked with dust or sickened by breathing air which is full of sulphur and salt, staggers at the close of a sultry day's march, in order to camp for the night. In these deserts wandering tribes of dark-faced men, with their wives, their children, their servants, their horses, their camels, and their flocks and herds, lived as long ago as history remembers. They were Arabs of the Desert. They rarely ventured out of their country, and strangers seldom visited them. They were not barbarians. In their lonely life they had studied many things, among others astronomy, mathematics, and poetry. They lived so close to Nature that their minds inclined to thoughts of God. They were brave and warlike, hardened to fatigue, and, like all natives of barren regions, they could live on a few dates, or a frijole, on which others would have starved. Among these Arabs there appeared, in the first quarter of the seventh century, a teacher whose name was Mahomet, or Mohammed. He proclaimed to the Arabs a new relig- ion, which was based on the Old Testament. It differed from Christianity in that it did not admit the divinity of 630-711] A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN 25 Christ, but it resembled Christianity in that it declared there was but one God. It also declared that Mahomet was his prophet. The general rules of life which this new religion proclaimed were much like the rules of Christ, though it did not forbid the Eastern practice of marrying more than one wife, and did forbid the use of wine. It enjoined three chief duties : the duty of prayer, the duty of self-denial, and the duty of charity. Such a religion was a vast improvement upon the relig- ions which the Eastern nations had professed. After a few years' consideration the Arabs embraced it; and having embraced it, they resolved to spread it through the world by force of arms. In this enterprise they were surprising- ly successful. In a few years they overran Syria, Persia, Egypt, and the whole of Northern Africa, and made the people adopt their faith. It looked at one time as though Mahometanism, or Moslemism, was going to supersede Christianity. The chief holy city of the Moslem Church was Mecca, in Ai-abia ; but when the Moslems began to conquer territory, their chief ruler resided at Damascus, in Syria. He was called a caliph, which means a successor, and he was so called to indicate that he was a successor of Mahomet. He was, in fact, a Moslem Pope, with temporal as well as spirit- ual power. He gave orders to the Moslem armies wher- ever they were; his authority extended from the Indus to the Atlantic Ocean. After a time the caliphs removed from Damascus to Bagdad. I dare say you have read in story- books accounts of one of the caliphs of Bagdad who used to go round in disguise to see how his officers performed their duties, and to hear what people said of him. These Arabs had long led contented lives in their barren country, surrounded by their children, their fleet horses, and their tireless camels. There was no distinction of rank among them. All dressed alike, ate the same food, bore the same privations with the same fortitude. They were hospitable to the stranger, and merciful to the prisoner. In 20 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN [030-711 speech they were courteous. They loved poetry, and well knew the books of the Old Testament. When Mahomet roused them to undertake the spread of their religion by the invasion of other countries, and they enlarged their minds by mixing with foreigners, the Moslem Arabs be- came admirable soldiers, capable of long inarches on short rations, unconscious of fear, and submissive to discipline. Their swift horsemen were the terror of an enemy. In peace they were patient, intelligent workers. They farmed their lands with skill, and toiled with unceasing industry. They made fine cloths of silk and wool and linen. They forged steel swords which have not been surpassed in tem- per by the best weapons of our day. They knew much, for the times in which they lived, of various sciences. It is from the language they used that we borrowed such words as alphabet, algebra, and alchemy; and with the names we borrowed the first rudiments of the things. They invented the numerals we use. You will see, as we go on with this Child's History, that they were at one time the most learned people in the world. The Moors who invaded Spain in the year 711 were a branch of these Moslem Arabs. They were called Moors by the Christians, because they embarked for the enter- prise from ports in Morocco, and also because a consider- able number of them were natives of that country. Musa and Tarik were Arabs, born in Asia; but many of their regiments consisted of Berbers, who were men of the Arab race, born and bred in Northern Africa. You have already learned what manner of people they found in Spain. At this time the Goths and the native races had completely blended into one race Spaniards. Four or five hundred years before the Moors came Spain was a centre of elegant Roman civilization. Learning was general, manners were polished, letters were cultivated, fine cities had been built with splendid adornments, and rich people lived in luxurious villas, in which life was a dream of pleasure. At that time, too, the poor were not MOSQUE OP MEDINA, CONTAINING THE PROPHET'S TOMB 630-711] A CHILD'S IIISTOKY OF SPAIN 29 to be pitied, for everybody had or could have a farm; nor wei'e the Spanish soldiers to be despised, for they could hold their own against any foe. But by the beginning of the eighth century vast changes had taken place. Luxury had ruined the rich, and brought the poor to the verge of starvation. The earnings of the farmer were taken by nobles, to be spent in riotous liv- ing. Feuds between family and family constantly turned whole sections of the country into a wilderness. No Span- iard could tell when he might be called out to fight in a quarrel which was not his own. No one could go to bed sure that his vineyai'd and his wheat-field would not be ravaged in the night-time by an enemy. No father of a family could feel certain he would not be stabbed in the back as he filled his water-pail, or that a band of marauders would not carry off his daughters. Of course, when such confusion prevailed, farming was difficult, industry slow, and education impossible. The Spaniards forgot how to read. The science of war was lost when there were no armies, and everybody was skir- mishing on his own account. Courage died out when peo- ple fell into the way of stabbing each other from behind. Even the national spirit, exhausted by never-ending misery, faded out of existence, and the old Spanish love of country, which had taught the men of Saguntum to die rather than to surrender to Hannibal, had become a dim tradition. You must remember these contrasts if you wish to un- derstand the remaining chapters of this book. CHAPTER V THE CONQUEST A.D. 711-777 You read in the chapter before the last that, after the battle in which King Roderick lost his life, Tarik swiftly moved forward and captured city after city. Malaga made no resistance, Granada was stormed ; against Cordova Tarik sent seven hundred cavalry, who found a breach in the walls, and broke into the place. The Jews, who were numerous, sided with the Moors, and the Christians made but a feeble resistance. So the city fell, the governor and bishop fled for refuge to a convent, where they stood a three months' siege, and the Jewish rabbi was set in their place. At only one town was any semblance of resistance. This was Orihuela. The Christian commander was one Theodemir. He sallied forth, gave battle to the Moors, and lost his whole army. Returning to the town with a single page, he closed the gates and bade every woman in the place dress in the attire of a man. He placed sticks in their hands to resemble lances, and had each draw her long hair under her chin so that as the Moors approached in the dusk of the evening it resembled a beard. Then he paraded his female army in a long line on the parapet. Surprised at the appearance of troops they had not ex- pected, the Moors halted and camped for the night. Before they slept Theodemir entered the camp under a flag of truce. Stating that he came on behalf of the com- mander of the city, he offered to evacuate it next morning, provided the army and the inhabitants were allowed to go out with all their property. If this were denied, they 711-777] A CHILD S HISTORY OF SPAIN 31 would tight till the last man fell. The Moors accepted the offer. Next morning they were surprised to observe Theode- mir, followed by a single page and a crowd of women, emerge from the gate. They asked him where was his army that was going to fight to the death. TIIH ENTRANCE TO TOLEDO "There," replied Theodemir, patting his page on the head, " is my army." The Moors admired his stratagem so much that they made him Moorish Governor of Murcia. On from Orihuela the Moors pushed to Toledo, the Gothic capital. There they expected resistance. But the Jews, who had been so cruelly persecuted there, took up arms and opened the gates ; the Christian nobles and churchmen fled to the mountains, and Tarik found himself 32 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN [711-777 in possession of the most splendid and the strongest city of Spain without striking a blow. It was there that Musa, who had stopped on his way to capture Seville, rejoined his disobedient lieutenant and disgraced him, as you read in the third chapter of this Child's History. From that time all Southern Spain, from the Guadarrama Mountains to the Cape of Gibraltar, fell under Moorish control. Here and there a band of Christians, under a dar- ing leader, would rise against the invaders, but after a few skirmishes the uprising would be quelled. The Moors held all of Andalusia, with the fertile valleys of the Guadalquiv- ir and the Guadiana, and the fine cities of Cadiz, Malaga, Granada, Seville, and Cordova; all the country afterwards known as New Castile, with the valley of the Tagus and the cities of Toledo and Madrid; all of Murcia, Aragon, and Catalonia, with the valley of the Ebro, and the towns of Carthagena, Valencia, and Barcelona. The Christians were driven back into the northern provinces of Galicia, the Asturias, Leon, Old Castile, and Navarre a region which was cold, bleak, and broken. All of Spain that was worth having belonged to the Moors. I must say that in the beginning they governed it well. They laid a poll-tax on Christians and Jews, but after- wards both were placed on the same footing as Moslems. The Christians had their own churches. Their priests and their bishops, their magistrates and their judges were of their own choosing. The land-tax was the same for Mos- lem, Christian, and Jew. Every man, whatever his religion, could own his land and sell it. Under the Gothic rule the Christians had owned large numbers of slaves, some of whom were sold with the farms on which they worked, and could not be separated from them. The Moslem faith did not approve of slavery. Any Spanish slave could ob- tain his freedom by going before a magistrate and saying, with his right hand uplifted, "There is no God but God, and Mahomet is his prophet," 711-777] A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN 33 I am not surprised to learn that conversions among the slaves were frequent. But the splendid victory of the Moors did not benefit those who had planned it and carried it out. Tarik, with the sting of Musa's whip still tingling on his cheek, sent trusty messengers to the Caliph at Damascus to complain of the treatment he had endured. The Caliph ordered Musa to repair to Damascus forthwith, to justify himself, if he could. He went, laden with treasures. Scores of wagons, filled with gold and silver ornaments; four hun- dred Gothic nobles forming his body guard, and several thousand male and female slaves of matchless beauty fol- lowed him to the city of the Caliph. He fancied that he could buy his grace; but the Caliph saw in the conqueror of Spain a dangerous rival. Musa was heard, and bidden to await his sentence. Meanwhile trusty officers were sent to Spain with a mes- sage for Musa's son, Abdelaziz. They found him at the palace at Cordova, struck him down, cut off his head, em- balmed it, and bore it to Damascus. Next day Musa was sent for, and shown his son's head. " Dost thou recognize him ?" " I do," said the father. " He was innocent, and I in- voke God's curse on his assassin." He was an old man. His head, which was snow-white, he dyed, after the fashion of his times, with a red powder. In battle he was as fierce and valiant as he had been in his youth. But at the sight of the head of his dearly loved son he broke down and buried his face in his robe. The Caliph was not moved by his grief. He sentenced him to pay a fine which took everything he had. Then he ordered him to go in exile to Mecca. There he died of a broken heart. Nor did his enemy Tarik meet a much better fate. He, too, was ordered to Damascus to give an account of his doings in Spain. He was acquitted of wrong, and as a mark of favor was allowed to become one of the Caliph's slaves in the palace. 3 34 A CHILD'S HISTORY OP SPAIN [711-777 After Musa several Moorish governors, some appointed by the Caliph, others selected by their tribes, ruled over Spain. The news of the wealth of the new Moslem prov- ince drew to it Moslems from far and wide. Bodies of fighting men from Syria, from Egypt, from Damascus, from North Africa poured into Spain and fought with each other for the rich valleys. In their fights governor after governor was killed. None of them claimed to rule the whole country; the authority of many did not extend beyond a bowshot from the castle where they lived. About the only one who deserves your attention was named Abderrahman. He led an army of Moors into France in 730, and captured cities and spoil. He had planned the conquest of the country to the shore of the Baltic, and resolved that he would not rest till there was not a Chris- tian left in Western or Southern Europe. Unluckily for him, when he got as far as the valley of the Loire, in France, in 732, he ran against an army of Franks and Gauls, under the command of Charles Martel or Charles the Hammer. Where the two armies met is not now exactly known. It was somewhere near Tours. But wherever it was, Charles the Hammer hammered the Moors with such tremendous blows, and so many other stalwart Franks and Gauls hammered after him, that when the sun went down the followers of Mahomet were flying in all directions, and when the sun rose again nothing was to be seen of them anywhere. Abderrahman was killed in the battle, and his Moors made the best of their way back again to Spain, hav- ing concluded to postpone the destruction of Christianity till a more convenient season. Forty-five years afterwards the grandson of Charles the Hammer, who is known in history as Charlemagne, under- took to avenge the Moorish invasion of France by a Frank invasion of Spain. He crossed the Pyrenees in 777, there expecting to find allies among the Moors who were fight- ing among themselves. But bitterly as the Moorish chiefs hated each other, they hated the Christian Franks more 711-777] A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN 35 bitterly, and Charlemagne was disappointed in their aid. He did not stop to give battle but faced north and re- crossed the mountains; there, in the pass of Roncesvalles, his rear guard fell into an ambuscade, and was cut off to a man. It is said that thirty thousand were destroyed by rocks and darts and arrows, which the Spaniards poured upon them from the mountain heights as they wound thi'ough the defile beneath. The Spaniards who planned this ambuscade and de- stroyed the Franks were largely from the province of Leon, and were probably not Moors. They fought simply for their country. They have an old legend which says : "With three thousand men of Leon, From the city Bernard goes, To protect the Spanish soil From the spear of Frankish foes; From the city which is planted In the midst between the seas, To preserve the name and glory Of old Pelayo's victories. At least King Charles, if God decrees He must be lord of Spain, Shall witness that the Leonese Were not aroused in vain; He shall bear witness that we died As lived our sires of old Not only of Numantian pride Shall minstrel tale be told." You will not read of another invasion of Spain by the French till near the close of this history. ABDERRAHMAN THE FIRST A.B. 750-788 IN the year 750 the Caliph of Damascus was overthrown and killed by a rival who was called the Butcher, and who proved his right to the title by murdering every member of the Caliph's family except two. Of these two one was a young man named Abderrahman, who saved himself by running away to the desert, where he took refuge with an Arab family. Hunted by the Butcher, he ran away again, and this time he did not stop till he reached Africa, where he found a home with some kindly Berbers. The Governor of the Berber country, who was a friend of the Butcher, heard of him, and sent a party of soldiers to seize him. But the Berbers gave him warning; he escaped again, and this time he did not rest till he reached the sea- coast of Mauritania. While he was there certain of the Moors in Spain, who had been loyal to the murdered caliph and hostile to his assassin, heard of Abderraham and sent him word to come to Spain. The Moors had ruled Spain for forty-four years, and in those forty-four years they had no less than twenty governors or emirs, most of whom had died violent deaths. Warlike as the Moors were, they sighed for peace. Abderrahman landed in Andalusia in September, 755. He was only twenty years old, was blind of one eye, and devoid of the sense of smell. But he was tall, stout, strong, and brave. His judgment was sound, and his energy pro- digious. I am sorry to say that with these good qualities he coupled want of principle and cruelty. His word was not to be trusted, and no man's life was safe in his hands. He was not a good type of the Moorish chief. AT THE FOUNTAIN, COKDOVA 750-788] A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN 39 He took with him seven hundred and fifty horsemen, and the blessing of the old Berber chief, whose last words to him were : " 'Tis the finger of Heaven which beckons you. Your cimeter shall restore the honor of your family." Great numbers of Moors in Andalusia flocked to his standard, Seville opened her gates to him, and next spring, when he had got his army in shape, he marched on Cor- dova. Governor Yusuf, who had been appointed over Spain by the Butcher, came forth to meet him. The two armies were separated by the river Guadalquivir, swollen by the spring rains. As they gazed at each other across the rolling flood Abderrahman offered to treat for peace if Yusuf let him cross without resistance; the offer was ac- cepted, and when Abderrahman's troops got across they fell upon Yusuf's army and cut it in pieces. This treach- ery gave him possession of Cordova. Most of Spain submitted with little hesitation. Nearly fifty years of war had inclined the Moors to peace. They secretly respected the vigor with which Abderraham put down rebellions against his authority; they said to each other that such a man knew how to rule. One party of Moors, who were friends of the Butcher, beset him at Carmona. He attacked them and defeated them. Then cutting off the heads of the officers, he labelled them and sent them in sacks to the Butcher. The latter inspected them with a grim face, and said : "Thank God, there is a sea between that man and me!" Toledo was one of the last cities to yield. It opened its gates at last on promise of fair treatment by the conqueror. But he no sooner entered the city than he seized the chief citizens and crucified them. He chose as his capital the city of Cordova, and when you visit that grand old city you will see many traces of his work, and of the work of his successors. He built dikes along the Guadalquivir, and planted on its banks gardens in which Eastern trees and plants grew. It is said 40 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN [760-788 that he was the first to plant the palm-tree in Spain. It reminded him of his Arabian home, though, as he said, the palm and the Euphrates had forgotten his early griefs. He loved poetry, and wrote verse which is not without merit. To the palm he wrote : "Like me, thou art a stranger, Far from thy Mends : Thou hast grown up in a foreign soil Far from the land of thy birth." But his poetic instincts did not stand in the way of his prosaic care of himself and his throne. He kept power in his own hands, and required all officers in Spain to take their orders from him, and to obey him without debate. To execute his will he had forty thousand Berbers from Africa enrolled as a body-guard, and commanded by de- voted officers. They did not speak the language of the Spaniards, and hated them. It was to them a joy to fall upon Spanish rebels with sword and lance, and to strew the field with their corpses. Abderrahman himself was the hardest worker in his em- pire. He seemed to require neither rest nor sleep. He would work all night over the reports of his officers in the provinces, and at daybreak he would be found on his horse, reviewing his troops or leading them to battle. When he first made himself master of Spain he required the country to pay him ten thousand ounces of gold, ten thousand pounds of silver, ten thousand horses, ten thou- sand mules, and one thousand cuirasses. Before him the governors of Spain had been called emirs, and had held their authority from the Caliph at Damascus. He now declared that he was the true Caliph, and the head of the Moslem Church, having the blood of Mahomet in his veins. And the Asiatic Caliph, who was in power at this time, removed from Damascus to Bagdad, and did not under- take to dispute his assumption with arms. STREET SCENE, WITH GOATS, TOLEDO 750-788] A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN 43 But if the successor of the Butcher let Abderrahman alone, his subjects in Spain were not disposed to be so sub- missive. They were perpetually plotting against him, and the plots did not cease, though the Caliph had a way of crucifying the plotters when he found them out. In the A PATIO IN TOLEDO first years of his stay at Cordova he used to walk the streets alone and converse in a friendly way with any one he met. In his later years he never appeared without a powerful body-guard, armed to the teeth. He had several thousand soldiers to guard his palace and his person, and 44 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN [750-788 not one of them was a Spaniard. Woe befell any one whom he thought he had reason to suspect. In his way he was pious. He would offer prayers over the bodies of the dead, and on Fridays he would get into the pulpit of the mosque and preach sermons. Having left the mosque, he would give orders for the execution of prisoners who were accused of disloyalty. Abderrahman lived to be fifty-three, but his later years were years of misery. A tyrant may enforce submission, but he cannot command friendship. Everybody rela- tions, friends, comrades-in-arms, and even servants desert- ed him, except at the hours when duty required them to attend his presence. They stood before him in silence, with bowed heads. He could not order them to execution because they would not 'talk to him, and yet it was galling to live a life of silence. Not one single person loved him. Every one looked forward eagerly to his death, and he knew it. Of the women who had laid their beautiful heads on his breast in his youth not one remained; they had died, I suppose perhaps of broken hearts, for there was not a ray of tenderness in him. His son, who was an admirable young man, rarely saw his father, and could not have respected him. Not even one of those whom he had raised to high command was hypocrite enough to feign to like him. This desolate old man, however, founded a dynasty which lasted three hundred, and an empire which lasted over seven hundred years. The race of which he was the leader ruled Spain for a period equal in length to that which separates us from the Crusades. They left a mark on that country which ignorance, intolerance, and bigotry have been una- ble to efface; and, by a strange fatality, the epoch of their expulsion coincides very nearly with the decline and fall of Spanish power and prosperity. CHAPTER VII ABDERRAHMAN'S SUCCESSORS A.D. 788-852 ABDERRAHMAN THE FIRST was succeeded by his son Hisham, who reigned eight years, and he by his son Ha- cam, who reigned twenty-six years. *r The first was an excellent young man, who ruled his people justly and established schools all over the country. It had been foretold of him by an astrologer that he would reign eight years, and no more; and sure enough, in the eighth year of his reign he died. The people mourned him, for they had loved him as much as they had hated his father. He was famous for kind deeds; constantly visited the sick, sent food to the needy, and prayed with the devout who were confined to their houses by inclement weather or illness. His son Hacam was a very different person. He loved nothing so much as pleasure hunting, wine-drinking, gay- ety, and frolic. He counted some of the most beautiful women in Spain among his wives. When he died he left forty sons. His way of life gave offence to truly relig- ious Moslems the students of the college at Cordova, who were extremely devout, having been converted from Christianity, were especially incensed at the loose behav- ior of the head of the Church. It may give you some idea of the singular manners of the time to hear that these stu- dents followed the Caliph in the streets, jeering him and throwing stones at him. Hacam only laughed at them; but when they concoct- ed a plot for his overthrow, he showed that he was of the blood of Abderrahman. He swooped down upon the plot- 46 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN [788-852 ters at the head of his Mamelukes, caught the leaders, and crucified them. Three or four years afterwards, in 806, they formed another plot, and the plotters met the same fate. Then, after a time, the nobles of Toledo broke out in revolt, and declared that they would make an end of Hacam, as they had made an end of so many emirs before Abderrahman. They raised quite an army, and prepared to take the field against an unworthy follower of Ma- homet. Hacam sent his young son, whose name was Abe man, like his grandfather, and who was only fifteen years old, to deal with the rebels, giving him private instructions how to act. The boy got into the castle of Toledo you can still see the ruins of its walls and invited the nobles and chief people of the place, to the number of a thousand or more, to a banquet, at which he proposed to discuss with them the causes of their -discontent. They came, and were directed to walk through the castle ditch round the main tower of the banquet hall. They were so numerous and made such a fine show that a crowd collected to see them enter the castle. After a time the on-lookers were surprised that the ban- queters did not come out of the castle. Some one said that they had doubtless gone out by the back door. "Not so," said a physician, who was watching; "I have been at the back door for some time, and no one has gone out that way." Next day it was discovered that the guests, as they walked through the ditch in narrow file, had been struck down by Mamelukes and their bodies thrown into a pit. The date of the massacre was long remembered in Toledo by the name of the Day of the Foss. It kept the Tole- dans quiet for many a long year. Hacam's last years were spent in private. You will read in the histories that he was as melancholy and as wretched as his grandfather. But I notice that he wrote poetry, and was passionately fond of music, which seems to imply that THE MOORISH GATE, SEVILLE 788-852] A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN 49 he was not always sad. There are legends that he gloried in putting people to death in order to exult over their dy- ing agonies. But this and other stories were probably started by fanatic Moslems, who hated him because he was not as bigoted as they. At the time of his death the Moors of Spain had got over the liberal toleration with which they began their empire. They had got the taste of persecu- tion into their mouths. The students of the college, who were crazy enthusiasts on religion, would have liked to crucify him. Once they roused the mob and attacked the palace with fury. Hacam, aroused by the noise, bade his page perfume his hair and beard with civet. When the page hesitated, in a moment of such peril, the Caliph cried : "Proceed, fellow! How shall the rebels identify my head among the rest except by its sweet odor ?" Then swiftly sending a force of cavalry by a round- about way to the quarter from which the mob had come, he ordered the houses set on fire. The rioters turning to rescue their belongings from the flames, the palace gates were opened and a swarm of Mamelukes poured forth, while the cavalry charged them under cover of the smoke. Thus caught between two foes the mob was crushed with frightful slaughter, and, by way of a lesson, Hacam burned down that part of the city in which they lived, and exiled the survivors to Africa. The students he spared. One of them, who was brought before him, was asked why he had rebelled against his sovereign. " Because it was the will of God," said the fanatic. "He who commands thee to hate me," said Hacam, " commands me to pardon thee. Go and live." Hacam was succeeded by one of his forty sons, Abder- rahman the Second. He came to the throne in 822, and reigned till 852. Throughout the thirty years religious feuds glowed and grew hotter and hotter. I will tell you of them in the next. chapter. The king did not take much interest in them, and after the severe lesson his 4 50 A CHILD'S HISTORY OP SPAIN [788-852 father Hacam had given the fanatics, they did not fly to arms as quickly as formerly. Abderrahman spent his time in works of art and beauty. He built mosques and palaces and bridges ; he laid out fine gardens, and watered them by means of aqueducts leading from mountain springs. His court was splendid. He gave handsome rewards to poets and musicians, and gathered the brightest of them round him. His wife Tarub is the first Moorish queen who figures in history. She seems to have been a woman of mind, though she did love necklaces and bags of silver, and was not particular how she got them. Church affairs Abderrahman left to a bigoted priest named Tahya, who ruled the Moslems with a rod of iron, and punished neglect of religious duty severely. He does not seem to have troubled the Christians much unless they made themselves offensive ; but whenever a Moslem omit- ted his daily prayers Tahya made an example of him. Abderrahman's best friend and chief associate was a Persian named Ziriab, who was a musician and a singer. It was said that he knew a thousand songs by heart, and the king was so fond of hearing him sing them that he would spend all day by Ziriab's side, would share his meals with him, and was never tired of giving him houses and pensions and presents of value. Ziriab was more than a musician ; he was a wit and a wise observer of mankind. He gave his master advice which generally proved to be sound. He was also a man of taste, and he undertook to reform the manners of the Moors. He set new fashions in dress, and taught the Moorish nobles to cut their hair. He persuaded the court to cease drinking out of metal cups, and to use glasses in- stead. He abolished linen table-cloths, and covered din- ner tables with leather cloths which does not give me a high opinion of his notions of cleanliness. Linen sheets he declared to be an abomination, and advised people to sleep on leather instead. He invented fricassees and forcemeat; 788-852] A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN 51 he introduced asparagus into Spain. He did not rest till he had changed the fashions of the Moors in almost all their ways of living. And for these services the people admired him almost as much as the king did. Though he was the favorite, he did not inspire envy in his lifetime, and I think you can remember him with pleasure. Abderrahman's thirty years 1 reign was a period of peace and comfort for the Spaniards. Taught by the king's ex- ample, the nobles in many places irrigated their land by bringing water to it in leaden pipes from great distances, and the consequence was improved harvests. They were stimulated to pursue this work by a drought which occurred in 846, and which of course was followed by famine and pestilence; those who had neglected their water supply starved in great numbers, while those who had aqueducts reaped the usual harvest. In the year 852 the memorable year when the Dan- ish or Norman sea rovers ravaged the coasts of England, France, and Germany, and captured the cities they could reach, including the City of London King Abderrahman the Second ascended to the terrace of his palace to breathe the evening air. His eye was offended by a row of Chris- tian corpses, mutilated, and swinging by the neck to a gib- bet. He ordered them cut down and decently buried, and his cheek flushed as he thought of the bigotry of his fellow- believers. The flush rose and deepened till his whole face turned purple. He staggered and fell, and when the phy- sicians came they declared that the king had died of apo- plexy. CHAPTER VIII FLORA AND MARY A.D. 840-859 WHILE Abderrahman the Second was Moorish King or Sultan as the king was sometimes called of Spain, there was born to an honest Moorish mechanic a daughter, whom he named Flora. Though her father was a Moslem, her mother was a Christian. Now the Moorish law was that children of Moors must be brought up in the Moorish faith; but in secret Flora's mother brought her up to be a Chris- tian. At that time Moors and Christians were living peaceably side by side. Moslemism was the religion of the country, but the Christians were not persecuted ; they had their churches, their bishops, and their priests ; nobody troubled them about their religion as long as they were decently respectful to the Moslem faith ; but it chanced at that par- ticular time that a wave of religious enthusiasm swept over Spain. In the gloom of their cloisters, monks let their minds dwell upon the history of the early martyrs until their heads were turned, and they could think of nothing but the joy of giving up one's life for religion's sake. They recalled the past glories of their Church, and they groaned in spirit when they remembered that it had been overthrown by infidels. Such a one was Eulogius, who had spent years in fasting and prayer, till he had destroyed his constitution and up- set his mind. Such another was Perfectus, who had work- ed himself up to such a pitch of frenzy that he went through the streets cursing Mahomet, and was duly ar- rested and executed for blasphemy, according to the Moor- 840-859] A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN 53 ish law. Another such was a monk named Isaac, who went into court, reviled Mahomet in the presence of the cadi, or judge, was taken out and beheaded; whereupon the Christian Church enrolled him in the list of saints, to- gether with others who proved their saintliness by insult- ing the faith of their fellow-countrymen. Flora, who was a fanciful, high-strung girl, caught the exaltation of the priests and fled from her home, saying that she was a Christian. Her brother was a quiet Mos- lem; he was hurt at her conduct, brought her back, and reasoned with her ; but as she would listen to nothing, he took her before the judge. According to the Moorish law she had forfeited her life by abandoning the faith of her father; but the judge shrank from sentencing one so young and so beautiful; he ordered that she be whipped, and he enjoined her brother to take better care of her thereafter. His back was no sooner turned than she ran away again, and this time hid herself with a Christian fam- ily, where she met Eulogius, the man who had prayed and fasted so long. He fell in love with her, and her Christian friends had to hide her from him as well as from the Moors. By this time the religious enthusiasm had become a craze. Eulogius made a convert of one of the sultan's guards, who, to show his zeal, reviled Mahomet before his regiment. When he was taken out and beheaded six monks rushed to the court where the judge was sitting and roared at him: " The guardsman was right ! Now avenge your accursed prophet ! Here we are, ready to die !" They were promptly accommodated ; and three more monks, who insisted on being beheaded, shared their fate. It looked as though the Christians had gone mad. I do not know what would have happened if the bishops had not called a halt, and proclaimed that suicide was not the road to heaven. Each bishop in his diocese preached against the folly and wickedness of the enthusiasts, and for a time the mania was checked. 54 A CHILD'S HISTORY OP SPAIN [840-859 But the mad priest Eulogius raved more loudly than ever, and confounded the bishops with extracts from the lives of the saints. He bawled and bellowed so furious- ly that the Moorish judge, not wishing to execute him if it could be avoided, locked him up in jail to stop his tongue. There he met Flora again, and with her another young and beautiful girl named Mary. Both of them had been imprisoned by the judge, who wanted to evade the duty of putting them to death. In the solitude of her cell Flora had had time to think, and she had seen the folly of insulting the faith which her father had professed and to which her brother belonged. She was ready, when her release came, to behave quietly, as became a young girl, and to keep her religious opinions to herself. When the wild fanatic Eulogius met her, her good reso- lutions were quickly scattered to the winds. He over- whelmed her with his frantic fury. He besought her by the love he bore her not to let the opportunity of martyr- dom escape. He entreated of her to show her true Chris- tian spirit by reviling the Moors and their prophet. And the weak girl, probably loving him as he loved her, and believing him to be her best friend and adviser, did as he bade her. She and Mary went before the cadi and cursed Mahomet; whereupon the judge, whose patience was worn out, ordered them to execution ; and their heads were sev- ered from their bodies on November 24th, 851. When she told Eulogius that he had convinced her, and that she was ready for martyrdom, he exulted and said : "I sought to confirm her in her resolution by showing her the crown of glory. I worshipped her; I fell down before this angel, and besought her to remember me; then I returned less sad to my sombre cell." When the Moors turned this maniac priest out of his sombre cell, the Christians of Toledo chose him to be their bishop. He had not been long preaching when another beautiful girl was missing. She also was traced to Eulo- gius, who was training her for the glory of martyrdom. 840-859] A CHILD'S HISTORY OP SPAIN 55 They were both arrested and taken before the judge. Eulo- gius, who had quite lost his head, burst forth with a storm of curses against Mahomet. Whereupon the judge sen- tenced him to die, as the law required ; but before his exe- cution a friend of the Sultan tried to save him, offering to get him a pardon if he would withdraw what he had said before the cadi. He stoutly refused, declaring that he had nothing to recant. Whereupon his head was struck off, eight years after Flora, by his persuasion, had voluntarily given up her life. I have no doubt that Eulogius was honest. But it is not enough to be honest, if the honesty be displayed in a way that will injure others. A blind teacher cannot escape blame for his teaching on the ground that his motives were pure. In the coming chapters of this history you will often be shocked by tales of religious persecution ; I sus- pect that the fashion was set by the yearnings of Eulogius and his brethren for martyrdom. CHAPTER IX ABDERRAHMAN THE THIRD A.D. 850-961 THE second Abderrahman died before Eulogius, leaving Spain in disorder, through his weakness as a ruler. He was followed by his son Mohammed ; he by his son Mund- hir, who was assassinated; and he by his brother Abdallah, who reigned twenty -four years, and died in 912. During all these reigns the power of the Caliph was gradually dissolving. Almost all Andalusia had risen in revolt and driven out the Caliph's officers. Seville declared its independence. Saragossa defied the Caliph. Jaen was in the hands of the Berbers. Granada was seized by Chris- tians, who challenged the Moors to attack them. Toledo was up in arms again. All Murcia, Estremadura, Algarvc, had thrown off the Moorish yoke. In the whole of the empire which had been ruled from Cordova, that city alone obeyed the orders of the Caliph, and there poverty reigned by his side. There was no money to pay troops, and the people had none to buy bread. Meanwhile the new chiefs of cities and provinces made incessant war on each other, and quite often raided the suburbs of Cordova. Matters were in this shocking condition when Abdallah died, and his throne fell to his grandson, Abderrahman the Third, a boy of twenty-one. Young as he was, he was full of vigor. He called upon the rebels against his authority to lay down their arms, marched against those who hesitated, and beat them in the field. Town after town, district after district submitted. They had tried rebellion for fifty years, and as its chief re- sult had been to hand over their vineyards and orchards 850-961] A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN 57 and wheat-fields to bands of robbers, who destroyed more than they consumed, they concluded it did not pay. Even the Christians of Granada felt that no caliph could be as bad as the bandit chiefs, who, whenever their purses or their larders were empty, raided the nearest town for fresh supplies. The last place to submit was Toledo, which the young caliph beleaguered and starved into surrender. Then Abderrahman returned to Cordova, prepared to reign in peace. It had taken him eighteen years to put the rebels down. But he had other enemies on his hands whom he could not put down; these were the Christians of the North. Portions of the slopes of the Cantabrians, in Galicia, the Asturias, Leon, Old Castile, and Navarre had never been conquered outright by the Moors; here and there bands of Christians, feeding flocks in the mountains, had never sur- rendered their independence, and fought the Moors when- ever they could get at them. They were rude and rough; they could neither read nor write; they gave no quarter in battle; but their courage was dauntless, and their per- severance inexhaustible. One of these barbarians, whose name was Pelayo, shut himself up in the cleft of a steep mountain in the Asturias, and defied the Moors to take him. He had thirty men and ten women all told ; they lived in a cave in the cleft, which could only be reached by a ladder of ninety steps. A Moorish general said: " What are thirty barbarians perched on a rock ? They must inevitably die." They did die, of course, as all men must; but before they died they gathered round them armies of Christians from the rocky steeps of Northern Spain, poured down under old Pelayo into the valleys of Castile, and when they met the Moors in battle the Crescent was often routed and the Cross victorious. The war began before Abderrahman had been two years on his throne. It lasted, with some inter- vals of peace, till a few years before his death. It was a 58 A CHILD'S HISTORY OP SPAIN [850-961 shocking and a cruel war. After some years of fighting neither side asked nor gave quarter and after each battle women and children were sold into slavery, simply on the ground of their religion. The generals who began the fifty years' fighting on both sides died in the course of nature; but other generals took their place, and the war went on. The net result was that before Abderrahman's death the Christians were masters of all Northern Spain, and had pushed the Moors south of the Guadarrama Mount- ains. The valleys of the Douro and of the upper Ebro, as well as the cities of Zamorra, Salamanca, Segovia, Tara- zona, and Tudela were in their hands, and the great work of the expulsion of the Moors had begun. I must now tell you something of the city of Cordova in the time of Abderrahman the Third. It was a fine city under Abderrahman the First. But it was the third caliph of the name who made it one of the wonders of the world. According to the ancient historians, it stretched ten miles along the river Guadalquiver, and for this distance the banks were lined with houses of white marble, mosques, and gardens, in which Eastern trees and plants grew lux- uriantly, watered by irrigating ditches. It is now a dead town, with about fifty thousand people in it, most of whom are poor and ignorant ; it is the chief city of a miserable district. Then it was surrounded by a strong wall, on which square or octagonal towers rose at intervals; parts of the wall still endure, and you can over- look the country from the turf on their top. A thousand years ago, we are told, from the summit of these towers twelve thousand towns or villages could be counted in the valley of the Guadalquivir. At that time the Arab writers say that Cordova con- tained a million people, two hundred thousand houses, six hundred mosques, nine hundred public baths, many thou- sand palaces of the nobility, and a number of royal palaces with poetic names, such as the Palace of Flowers, the Pal- ace of Lovers, the Palace of Contentment. These palaces RESTORATION OF THE MOSQUE AT COUDOVA 850-961] A CHILD'S HISTOKY OF SPAIN 61 opened on gardens in front, and on the river in the rear; carpeted passages hung with jewelled lamps connected them with mosques, in which the Sultan and his family paid their devotions to God. The ceilings were supported by pillars of many- colored marble and porphyry, and the floors were mosaic. The great mosque of Cordova, which devout Moslems from all parts of Asia and Africa came to pray in, was probably the grandest religious temple in the world. Its roof was light and elegant, and was supported by a forest of pillars of different colors. There were over twelve hun- dred of them, each with silver lamps kept constantly burn- ing, and some with jewelled cornices. When the Catholics took possession of Cordova they pulled down many of the pillars and stripped the others of their lamps and orna- ments. But enough remains to show what it was. The finest of the palaces was built in honor of the Ca- liph's pet wife, Ez-Zabra. The Arab writers say that Ab- derrahman kept ten thousand men and four thousand horses working on the building for twenty-five years. It contained fifteen thousand doors of brass or iron. In the centre of the Caliph's Hall was a lake of quicksilver, which was set in motion by a spring. When it moved it flashed rays of light like lightning, and dazzled the eye. To wait upon the queen in this palace we are told that there were thirteen thousand male servants and six thousand females. The terraces and halls and pavilions and flower-gardens were past numbering. Into one fish-pond it is said that twelve thousand loaves of bread were flung daily to feed the fish. In the main court-room stood a throne glitter- ing with gold and gems. On the mosaic floors were Per- sian rugs, and silken portieres veiled the bronze doors. I am not sure that you can believe all these stories; but how- ever this may be, you may feel sure that Cordova was the centre of art, science, and industry. It contained doctors who understood anatomy and medical science, astronomers who knew all that was known of the skies before Galileo 62 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN [850-961 and Kepler, learned botanists, profound philosophers, ex- quisite poets. Some of the poetry of the Cordova bards is delightful. In architecture and bronze work the Cordo- vans of the tenth century have not been surpassed to this day. The working-men of Cordova were expert silk -weavers and skilled potters. They carved admirably on silver and bronze. They made a steel which was not surpassed at Toledo. In some of the museums in Europe you will see marvellous sword-hilts made at Cordova at a time when our ancestors fought with stone hatchets. These various attractions drew travellers to Cordova from every part of the world. We hear of an ambassador who was taken by the Caliph to see the Ez-Zabra palace, and who fainted at the sight of such an accumulation of splendors. The great college was thronged with students from every country in Europe ; they found professors there who could address each of them in his own language. It was indeed the only place in Europe where a seeker after knowledge could obtain a good education. Its glories did not last long. Fifty years after the death of Abderrahman the Third an army of Castilians and Berbers stormed Cordova, and pillaged it for several days. Thousands of magnificent buildings were burned, among others the palace of Ez-Zabra, which was thoroughly robbed before it was fired. Nothing was destroyed by the flames except that which could not be carried away. So one generation undid the work of a preceding generation, and after a century or more knowledge and civilization found themselves just where they had been at the begin- ning. If you wonder, as perhaps you may, at a nation which had made such progress in art and science being as bigot- ed in matters of religion as both Moors and Christians were in the time of Abderrahman the Third, you must remember that, in the country of your forefathers, in the very year that the Caliph was putting Christians to death in North- THE GARDEN OF THE ALCAZAR, CORDOVA 850-961] A CHILD'S HISTOEY OF SPAIN 65 ern Spain, an English priest dragged a young king from the altar at which he was being married to the lady of his love, and that this same lady, who was virtuous and beau- tiful, was shortly afterwards murdered by the order of an archbishop. The bigotry, you see, was not in the race, but in the times. CHAPTER X THE GREAT VIZIER A.D. 961-1002 ABDERRAHMAIST THE THIRD was succeeded as Caliph by his son Hacam, who was a scholar. He reigned fifteen years, but these years he devoted to study to the neglect of his empire ; thus, though he collected a library of four, or, as some say, six hundred thousand manuscripts, at a time when other libraries were thought rich with five hundred; and though he established schools everywhere, so that every Andalusian could read and write, he was not a suc- cessful ruler. At his death his son, Hisham the Second, a boy of twelve, became caliph ; and the real power passed into the hands of his mother, Aurora, and an exceedingly able minister of hers, who is known in history as Almanzor. This was the son of a Cordova lawyer. He had studied at the college, and on graduating became a letter-writer for the court. Sultana Aurora took a fancy to him, and through her favor and his own address he rose from post to post until, at the age of thirty two or three, he was pre- fect of Cordova and general in the army. He had had no training in arms, but luck favored him, and he conducted two successful campaigns against the Christians of the North. On his return he was so strict in enforcing the law as prefect that when his own son committed a crime the stern father had him beaten to death with rods. It did not take him long to convince the Caliph that he would be far happier among the ladies of the harem than at the Council Board; and then Almanzor became ruler of Spain. He was the most vigorous and unscrupulous ruler that country had had for many, many years. Those who stood THE ARCH OF ST. MARY AT BURGOS 961-1002] A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN 69 in his way mysteriously died. He made himself friends with the high-church party by burning books which in the smallest degree questioned the Moslem faith. He kept the working-class quiet by giving them employment on new buildings. He endeared himself to the army by giv- ing them full license to plunder the enemy; thus he always had full ranks, and many Christians served under his flag. He became popular with the people by winning victories and extending the empire. He conquered a large piece of Northern Africa, and during his time the Christians of Northern Spain were pushed back again towards the Can- tabrians and the Bay of Biscay. Twice a year, spring and fall, he made war on the Chris- tians. He took Leon, and pulled down its walls and towers. He captured Barcelona. He defeated the Christians at Castile and Navarre. He even seized Santiago in Galicia, where the famous shrine of St. James of Compostella was. When his army reached the shrine they found the church empty. Only a single monk was seen, kneeling. " What dost thou here ?" said a Moorish officer. " I pray," said the old monk. And they spared him. His soldiers had absolute trust in him. At a battle they were driven back, with the Christians at their heels ; Al- manzor leaped from the high seat he had occupied, and bending head to earth, covered his hair with dust, in token of shame and sorrow; at which sight the troops turned on the enemy, attacked them furiously, and routed them. Another time the Christians cut off his retreat, and made sure of his surrender. He coolly collected lumber and farm tools, built houses, and began to plant seeds. When the Christians inquired what this meant, he told them that he intended to stay where he was, and to in- trench, as the next campaign would begin in a few weeks. Upon which the men of the North, not being minded to encourage so uncongenial a neighbor, made haste to open the way for his retreat south. 70 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN [961-1002 The Christians learned to fear him. In the Kingdom of Navarre was a Moslem woman who was kept a prisoner. Almanzor sent word to the king that she must be given up, and instantly. The king did not lose a day in setting her free, with many apologies. Almanzor was a man of iron nerve. When he was sitting at the council - chamber one day the councillors noticed the smell of burning flesh, and looked round in- quiringly. "It is nothing," said Almanzor; "my surgeon" point- ing to a man kneeling at his feet "is cauterizing my leg with a red-hot iron." If Almanzor had lived, and had been succeeded by men of his fibre, I am afraid that the Christians would have found the expulsion of the Moors more difficult than they did. He was a born soldier, and a statesman of genius ; but such men do not often bequeath their qualities to their successors. A day came when Almanzor was taken ill on one of his campaigns and died. A monk, who wrote the history of these times, disposed of the event in few words. He wrote: "In 1002, Almanzor died, and was buried in hell." At his death a son of his took the title of Vizier, and tried to rule; then another son tried, in his turn, with no bet- ter success. The people, dreading the old troubles which racked Spain before Abderrahman the Third, dragged the Caliph Hisham out of his harem and insisted that he should exert his authority. He was no longer young, and had been living thirty years among women and eunuchs. He entreated them to let him alone, protesting that he knew nothing about government, and only wanted to lead a quiet life with his ladies and his books and his music. I am afraid that the poor old creature was roughly handled by some of his Moorish friends, who thought that vigorous measures might restore his energy; but it was all to no purpose. The caliph was like a baby. He was allowed to return to his harem, where he remained 961-1002] A CHILD'S HISTORY OP SPAIN 71 several years, while caliph succeeded caliph, and each was murdered in turn. One of them, whose name was also Hisham, had a very sad fate. He was dragged from his throne by the guards and thrust into a dark dungeon under the mosque, with his wives and his only child. Sometimes the jailers forgot to bring him food. When the council of the chiefs had decided what was to be done with him, their messenger found him clasping his little child to his breast, with his wives all in rags and shivering with cold standing round him. At sight of the jailers he begged piteously for bread. Food was brought, and he was told that he was to be removed to a fortress in the mountains. He made no objection. "But I hope," he said, "that there will be a window, or at least a candle, in the prison. It is dreadful to be in the dark." After many changes the people of Cordova remembered old Hisham the Second, and they pulled him out of his harem and told him he must be caliph once more. But the old man's mind was quite gone; he could only laugh in a half-witted way, and say he would do whatever they wanted. So they locked him up in a prison, and whether he died there or escaped, as one story says, and lived out his life in some friend's house, I do not know. The Empire of Cordova ended with Abderrahman the Third and Almanzor. After them no Moor could control the quarrelsome chiefs, and the history of Spain for nearly five hundred years is an endless story of war. CHAPTER XI THE CHRISTIANS OF NORTHERN SPAIN A.D. 740-1065 IT is time that I should tell you something about the Christians who lived in Northern Spain and made unend- ing war upon the Moors. If you look at the map of Spain, you will see that the northern part is divided into five provinces, thus following each other from west to east Galicia, Asturias, the Basque country, Navarre, and Catalonia and that south of these the two provinces of Leon and Old Castile dovetail into them and are geographically part of them. This part of Spain is much broken by mountain ranges, and is cold and windy. It is not barren, for it grows wheat, barley, and flax in abundance, and on the mountain slopes the cork- tree flourishes. But the climate is harsher than* in the val- leys of the South, where the vine and the orange and the lemon and the fig luxuriate in an almost perpetual summer. The Moors were never able to conquer this northern country. They made raids into it, fought battles, won victories, and built forts; but after the victories were won the natives were ready to fight again next year; and when the forts were finished they were often taken by the races against which they had been built. These native races were Christians, of a mixed Gothic and Spanish stock; with them were allied some Berbers, whom the Moors of Arab race had driven into Galicia from the fertile valleys of Andalusia, and who professed to be Christians, though at that time I do not think their Christianity was very deep. You remember old Pelayo, who with thirty men and ten 740-1065] A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN 73 women took refuge in a cave in a cleft of the Asturian Mountains and defied the Moors. When this old warrior had driven the Moors out of his province he took the name of King of the Asturias, and the people round about agreed to accept him as their king. When he died his son became king after him, and reigned until a bear ate him. After him his son, who was named Alfonso the First, succeeded to the throne, and, being a famous warrior, extended his kingdom from Galicia to the borders of Navarre. This was about the year 750, just at the time when your ances- tors in England were first enabled to read the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the Creed in their own lan- guage. It was in the time of one of Pelayo's immediate succes- sors that Bernardo, the champion of Spain, and one of the heroes of the Spanish legends, is said to have lived. He was the son of Sancho Diaz, Count of Saldaiia; this count the king, from jealousy, had imprisoned and most cruelly maltreated. Bernardo, being unable to bear the tyranny of the king and the sight of his father's misery, fled to the woods, and at the head of a party of outlaws barricaded himself in a castle. The king besieged him there; but be- ing unable to make a breach in the walls, he bethought himself of offering to Bernardo to set Don Sancho free if the castle were surrendered. The offer was accepted. The treacherous king forthwith had Sancho done to death in the prison. Bernardo came out of his castle, and cried: " Where is my father, the Count of Saldana?" "There he comes," said the king; and sure enough, in the distance a horse ridden by a knight in Don Sancho's armor was seen approaching. Bernardo ran forward to seize his hand to kiss it; but the hand was cold, and the son perceived that his father was dead. " What have I done ?" cried he ; " Don Sancho, in an evil hour didst thou beget me !" For nearly a hundred years after that other kings reigned 74 A CHILD'S HISTORY or SPAIN [740-1065 over the Asturias. Sometimes their dominions were large, and sometimes they were small; but whether they were large or small, the Asturians were always fighting, both with Moors and with their Christian neighbors. They must have been unpleasant fellows to live near. About the year 942 there was a king named Ramiro, who was fierce and bold. He burned witches, and put out the eyes of robbers; but he swept the Moors out of his country, reclaimed the fields they had laid desert, rebuilt the churches they had pulled down, mended the forts they had wrecked. The old legend says of him : "A cry went through the mountains When the proud Moor drew near, And trooping to Ramiro Came every Christian spear; The blessed San lago They called upon his name : That day began our freedom, And wiped away our shame." He was king when the Moorish caliph demanded the payment of a tribute which the Christians had once, after a defeat, agreed to pay to Cordova. The tribute consisted of one hundred Christian maidens, the fairest of the As- turias. For an answer to the demand, Ramiro called out his fighting men, and went to meet the Moors near a vil- lage in Leon. The fight lasted two days, and the first day the Moors had the advantage. But in the night, says the legend, the blessed San lago appeared to the king and bade him be of good cheer, that he would be with him on the morrow. Sure enough, as the armies engaged, the saint appeared in a suit of white armor, on a milk-white steed, and scattered the Moors so that they threw their arms away in their flight. Thus the horrid tribute was abol- ished forever. It was about these times that Fernando Gonzales was Count of Castile, and in lov with Sancha, the daughter of CHURCH AT VALENCIA 740-1065] A CHILD'S HISTORY OP SPAIN 77 Garcia, the King of Navarre. He was on his way to Na- varre to court her when her father treacherously seized him and thrust him into a dungeon. A Norman knight heard of his capture, and the old ballad tells what hap- pened : " They have borne into Navarre The great Count of Castile, And they have bound him sorely They have bound him hand and heel: There is great joy and feasting Because that lord is ta'en; King Garcia in his dungeon Holds the doughtiest lord in Spain. The Moors may well be joyful, But great should be our grief, For Spain has lost her guardian, When Castile lost her chief; The Moorish host is pouring Like a river o'er the land ; Curse on the Christian fetters That bind Gonzales's hand." The knight bade Sancha try to set him free, for her love's sake. " The lady answered little, But at the dead of night, When all her maids are sleeping, She hath risen and ta'en her flight: She hath tempted the Alcayde With her jewels and her gold, And unto her his prisoner That jailer false hath sold." Then she married her true love, and years afterwards, when he was made prisoner in the wars and again locked up in a dungeon, she prayed leave to visit him just once. The favor granted, she changed clothes with him. He escaped in the gown of a woman, and when the jailer came round he found the countess in the cuirass and boots of a knight. 78 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN [740-1065 Other kings followed Ramiro, but nothing happened in their reigns which you would care to hear. The provinces waged incessant war against each other ; and in one of the wars the King of Leon, whose name was Garcias, overthrew the King of the Asturias, and annexed his kingdom. He and his descendants held the throne for a quarter of a cen- tury, and then the King of Navarre, Sancho Mayor, swooped down upon Leon and Asturias, conquered both, and extend- ed his kingdom from the Pyrenees to the Atlantic. He left his dominions to his son Ferdinand, who in 1035 became monarch of all Northern Spain except Catalonia. That fine province, which is separated from Aragon by the river Ebro, is one of the richest portions of Spain. It contains the City of Barcelona, which was a famous place of trade in the time of the Carthaginians, and is a lively seaport to-day. Eight hundred and fifty years ago it was ruled by a family named Berenguer, who called themselves counts, and were independent of Moor, Christian, Spaniard, and Frank. You hear much of them in the history of the Crusades. Two of them, father and son, both named Ray- mond Berenguer, went to the Crusades at the head of their fighting men, and both died in Palestine. One of them was a Knight Templar, whose exploits made much noise at the time. These counts set King Ferdinand at defiance, and he did not care to molest them. So Catalonia was the only northern province of Spain which did not form part of the Christian league against the Moors. Ferdinand, King of Northern Spain from 1035 to 1065, led a life of toil and strife ; when he felt his end ap- proaching he had himself carried to a church, where he prayed and confessed to the priests, took off his royal robes, put on the garment of repentance, and laid down and died. Before we begin the long story of the death grapple be- tween Moor and Christian, you may care to hear some- thing of what was happening in other countries at that time. 740-1065] A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN 79 In the year following the death of Ferdinand, William, Duke of Normandy, fought the battle of Hastings and conquered England, which was then a wild country, with- out learning, or wealth, or trade, or good roads, or fine buildings, except monasteries and churches. In France, about the same time, a Church decree forbade the marriage of priests, and this, among other things, caused the separa- tion of the Catholic and the Greek Churches. In Italy a love for letters broke out, schools and ccrlleges were found- ed, and interesting works were written ; the courts of the Pope and of some of the nobility were polished, and were frequented by learned men. At this time the Empire of the East, of which Constantinople was the capital, began to be molested by Moslem raids ; the long fight between Moslem and Christian, which, after lasting four hundred years, was destined to end thirty-seven years before the same fight in Spain though in a different way had fairly begun. And, finally, thirty-four years before Ferdinand became king, a Norman or Norwegian sea-rover, named Leif,is said to have crossed the Atlantic and to have landed in Rhode Island. This story is legend, and you are not required to believe it if you think it improbable though it may quite possibly be true. CHAPTER XII THE CID CAMPEADOR A.D. 1064-1099 AFTER some years of confusion the kingdom of Ferdi- nand fell into the hands of his son Alfonso. It was in his time that the Cid Campeador, or the "Lord Challenger," figured in the old history of Spain ; and though his story reads like a fanciful legend, and some pundits have even doubted whether there ever was such a personage, he is too famous in Spain to be passed over. We must suppose that he really lived, and that he was, at twenty, one of the class of men whom the troublous times called into being a fighting adventurer, brave, strong, skilful, but ready to sell his services to any one who could pay for them. In those days, when two armies met, it was common for a knight to ride out of the ranks and challenge any knight on the opposite side to single combat, while the two armies looked on. This knight was called a challenger in Spanish, campeador. Even while he was a mere boy the Cid became famous as a campea- dor; hardly a day passed that he did not fight some one. Once, when Castile and Navarre were at war, he challenged a huge knight of Navarre, and killed him. For this the King of Castile gave him high command. But not long afterwards the king grew suspicious of him and banished him, declaring that any one who gave him food or shelter after ten days should lose their possessions and their eyes. The Cid rode away with a few friends, homeless, sad, and cheerless ; but he took some comfort when at Bivar he saw a crow on his right hand, and at Burgos another crow on his left. At Burgos he tried to 1064-1099] A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN 81 get food and a roof to shelter him; but every door was closed, and when he hammered with his spear, a little girl came out of a house and told him people were afraid to open to him, for the king had said that those that did so should lose their houses and their eyes. He rode on mournfully to San Pedro, where his wife and daughters were, and the good abbot of the monastery fed him and his men. His wife wept bitterly at the parting, but he comforted her, saying, " Please God, and Saint Mary, I shall live to give these daughters of mine in marriage, and to do my service to you, my honored wife." From San Pedro he rode to Saragossa, which was ruled by the Moors, and he offered his sword to the Moorish prince, who quickly accepted it, and despatched him to raid the neighboring state of Aragon. He rode through Aragon like the wind, slaying every man he met, burning houses and trees, tearing up vines, and stealing what he could carry off. I hardly think that this was honorable work for one who relied on God and the Virgin Mary ; but you must remember that the Cid was a soldier of fort- une. After a time he left the employ of the Prince of Sara- gossa, and took service with a Christian prince or count, to serve against the Moors. According to the story, he was the most terrible foe they had met. When the Moors saw him and his body-guard coming at full gallop on their fast horses, every man with his lance in rest and his shield covering his heart, they made a lane for them to pass, while the Cid shouted : "Smite them, knights, for the love of charity !" Queer ideas of charity they had in those days! Then he went back into the service of the Moors, and the Prince of Saragossa gave him the city of Valencia to rule, and to be his own. From this city he raided the neighboring country, carrying off booty and prisoners for sale at Valencia. On one of these expeditions he strayed 6 82 A CHILD'S HISTOBY OP SPAIN [1064-1099 too far from home, and his old enemy Alfonso laid hands on Valencia. When he heard of it, the Cid turned furious- ly on Alfonso's Castilian towns in the valley of the Ebro, and with terrible hand he wasted and harried them, stripped them bare of their riches, and carried everything off that he could handle. But when he returned to Valencia he found the gates closed and the enemy in possession. He sat down before the town and besieged it for nine months. There was no food to be bought in the place, and the people were in "the waves of death;" tender maidens and strong men were seen to drop of hunger in the streets. The Cid cut off the river Guadalaviar, so that the garri- son had to battle with thirst as well as hunger. Valencia surrendered at last, and I am glad to say that the people were not butchered, as the custom of that day was. The Cid took their goods, and then forgave them; after which he proclaimed himself King of Valencia. Here he kept his promise, sent for his daughters, and married them to two counts, whose name was Carrion. It was a fitting name, for the counts shamefully neglected their wives, beat them, whipped them publicly, and left them bleeding in a wood. I wish the Cid had punished the Carrion counts, but I cannot find that he did. After a time a great Moorish army marched up against Valencia. The Cid had but a few men, but he was as undaunted as ever. He mustered his forces, such as they were, and at cock-crow they heard mass sung by a valiant bishop, whose name was Hieronymo. When the mass was over the bishop absolved the soldiers, and begged the privilege of leading the attack. It was so arranged; and when the gate was opened, the fighting bishop, on a pow- erful charger, led the van with a lance in his hand and a mace at his saddle-bow. Presently the voice of the Cid was heard shouting " God and Santiago !" the terrible bishop, who had broken his lance, was smashing a Moorish head with every blow of his heavy mace, and the Moors, scared by the appearance of a body of men whom the 1064-1099] A CHILD'S HISTORY OP SPAIN 83 Cid had placed in ambush, broke in every direction and scattered. But the Moors came on again, and this time they drove the Christians back into the city. In July, 1099, we are told in the story that the Cid died of grief for the defeat. That he died is sure ; the accounts of his death-bed are hardly so certain. They say that for seven nights his father and his son, who were both dead, appeared to him and said: " You have tarried long enough here, now come among the people who endure forever." Then St. Peter appeared to him, and said he should live thirty days and no more. At the end of the thirty days he received the sacrament from the fighting bishop, and passed into his rest. When he was stiff in death his wife, Dona Ximena, took his body and set it on his horse Barieca, and fastened his body on the saddle so that it should not fall. His sword Tizona was grasped in his hand, his eyes were open and strangely bright, and his long beard floated down his breast. A squire led his horse out of Valencia, five hun- dred knights rode as a body-guard; behind the body fol- lowed Dona Ximena and her attendants. The procession moved slowly and silently, and the Moors, not quite under- standing it, made way for it to pass. It halted at the church at San Pedro de Cardena, and there, under a canopy which bore the Cid's coat of arms, the body was set upright in an ivory chair, still sword in hand. For ten years, says the legend, the corpse forbore to decay ; when the skin began to change color it was reverently taken out of the ivory chair and buried before the altar, by the side of the faithful Ximena. Just fifty years ago a coffin, which was said to contain the bones of the Cid Campeador, was dug out of the vault of the church of San Pedro de Cardena, and reburied in the town- hall of Burgos. You will thus perceive that good Span- iards believe that the Cid was a real personage, and that 84 A CHILD'S HISTOKY OF SPAIN [1064-1099 his body was really buried where the legend says. I think it will do you no harm to admit that his story was founded on fact. A whole library of romance and poetry has been written about the Cid. Some of the poems which narrate his ad- ventures are very fine indeed. One of the most beautiful stories of his life was written by the English poet Southey, and called the " Chronicle of the Cid." There is also in French a tragedy by Corneille, which is written in such pure French and such manly verse that boys read it in learning French at school. The Spaniards always think of the Cid as one of their early heroes. CHAPTER XIII THE BATTLE OF LAS NAVAS A.D. 1002-1212 AFTER the fall of the great Vizier Almanzor all Moorish Spain went to pieces. The nobles declared themselves in- dependent and absolute rulers over the country round their castles. They were continually warring with each other, and wasting the substance of the people who worked. Almost every year the Christians of Castile and Leon and Asturias, with the Berbers of Galicia, swooped down upon the Moorish cities, robbed them and murdered their inhabitants. In this way the beautiful city of Cor- dova was sacked, and most of its splendid monuments destroyed. After enduring this misery for over half a century, the Moors resolved to call upon their friends in Africa for help. These friends were called Almoravides, or Mara- bouts, which means " the truly pious." They formed a powerful nation, which lived round the city of Morocco ; their ruler was an old man named Yussef, who was tall and dark, with piercing eyes, a long beard, a powerful frame, and a pleasant voice. Like many of his people, he was ignorant, and could barely read and write; but his mind was broad, and his foresight clear. When it was first proposed to invite this African to Spain some of the Andalusian chiefs objected, declaring that the fierce dwellers in the African desert were more like tigers than men. But it was answered that they could not be worse than the Christians, and that it would be better for an Andalusian to drive camels for Yussef than to herd swine for the dogs of Castile. 86 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN [1002-1212 So Yussef came with an army, met Alfonso, who was then King of Castile, Leon, and the Asturias, at Zallaka, in October, 1086, and utterly defeated him. The Christian king had trouble to escape with his body-guard, and the Moorish chiefs, who for several years had been paying him tribute for the sake of peace, threw him over and welcomed Yussef to their cities. They did not make much by the change. One of Yus- sef 's first acts was to seize the chief who had invited him to Spain, and to banish him and all his family to Africa in chains. The Moslem went on board ship with un- moved face, saying to his children : " This is the will of Allah ; let us bear it in pa- tience." Then Yussef took Seville, Granada, and other cities, rich and splendid, and divided their treasures among his men. He put down robbery, because he intended to do all the robbing himself. He took the goods of Christians be- cause they were Christians, the goods of Jews because they were Jews, and the goods of Moors because they were rich. His troops, who were never tired of compar- ing the fertile valleys of Andalusia with the parched sands of the desert where they had been brought up, turned brigands. He was laying a heavy hand on Spain, when he died, at the age of ninety-seven. His power fell to a son, who died ; then to a grandson, who one dark night rode over a precipice into the sea ; and then to a boy, named Ibrahim. Now it befell that the city of Morocco, in Africa, where Ibrahim lived, was besieged by the son of a lamplighter, who said that he was more devout than the Marabouts themselves. Like the Arab chief who put General Gordon to death ten years ago, he called himself the Mahdi. The Mahdi's army took Morocco, and young Ibrahim on his knees begged his life from the conqueror, who hesitated, the boy was so young and so fair. But a Mahdist cried: THE CATHEDRAL, SEVILLE 1002-1 2 12] A CHILD'S HISTORY OP SPAIN 89 " Would you spare the cub of the lion, who may some day devour us all ?" Which sealed the fate of Ibrahim and his followers. It was this butcher who now took the command of the Moors in Spain, and declared he would tread in the foot- steps of Yussef. But Christian Spain was aroused. The Pope sent let- ters to the kings and counts, imploring them to save Spain from the power of the infidel. For a time they agreed to forget their quarrels. The kings and counts embraced, and swore they would stand shoulder to shoulder. Castile and Aragon, Navarre and Asturias, Catalonia and Galicia, all sent troops to serve under the banners of the King of Castile, who was another Alfonso; and many a good knight from France and Portugal rode to join the host. After a solemn fast, King Alfonso gave the signal, and the mighty army was set in motion. When it reached the great mountain range which divides New Castile from Central Spain they found the Moors in possession of all the mountain passes, and the king was for a moment puz- zled. But a shepherd showed him a pass which the Moors had neglected, and by that pass the whole army gradually defiled into the southern plain. It was the July of 1212. In front of the Christian army which had camped at the mountain slope was the village of Tolosa, in a plain called Las Navas, on which the Moors were drawn in line of battle with the long thread of their spears shining in the sun from the blue horizon on one side to the purple mountain ridge on the other. At the trumpet call the Christians rolled down the slope like an avalanche and fell upon the enemy. They knew that if they were beaten the Cross in Spain would go down in blood, and the Crescent would rise, perhaps to stay. So every man tightened his waist-belt, called on Saint Jago, and struck his heaviest blows. The sun had not set, though it was low down in the sky, the hot anv still glowed on that sultry July afternoon, 90 A CHILD'S HISTORY OP SPAIN [1002-1212 when an African led a swift mule to the Moorish chief, and gasped: " Prince of the faithful, how long wilt thou remain here ? Dost thou not see that thy Moslems flee ? The will of Allah be done." " Allah," gravely replied the Moor, "Allah alone is just and strong; the devil is false and wicked." A MOORISH CAMP And he mounted the mule, drove his spurs into its sides, and was soon out of sight. The victory of the Christians showed kings and counts what they could do when they were united. They did not all learn the lesson. Feuds still broke out among 1002-1212] A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN 91 them, but after this they generally acted in concert against the Moors. In those old dark days, when there was no printing, there were few writers of history, and our ac- counts of events were meagre; but bits of stories have come down to us, which are sometimes pleasant and some- times not. One of the Alfonsos of Castile, sixth of the name, lost his son in a battle, and was nearly killed by his grief. The legend says that he paced the rooms of his court crying: " Oh, my son, joy of my heart, and light of my eyes, my mirror, in which I used to see myself ! Oh, my dear ! Cavaliers, what have you done with him ? Counts, give me my son ! Give me my son !" Another Alfonso, who was King of Aragon, died with- out heirs. Being extraordinarily pious, he left his king- dom by will to a body of monks at Rome. But the peo- ple of Aragon had no idea of being willed away like a herd of cattle. They met as a Cortes, annulled the king's testament, and elected his brother to be their king. He was a monk by calling, but he made a very good king. It was daring this period of conflict between Moors and Christians that the Spanish people acquired their first lib- erties. Towns were generally built around castles, and the count of the castle ruled the town and the country round about, often cruelly and unjustly. I read of one of them who used to yoke his prisoners, and sometimes, when prisoners ran short, his own vassals, to the plough to till his lands; when they complained of not having enough to eat, he bade them go fill themselves with grass. When the king founded a city he gave it a charter, or f uero, which provided that the people should have certain rights that could not be taken from them. After a time the people of districts demanded charters from the counts who claimed to rule them, and in a great many cases, es- pecially where the demand was made by a city which lent money to the count, the charters were granted. These 92 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN [1002-1212 not only provided for the punishment of crime, but like- wise set limits to the power of the counts, declaimed that all men were equal before the law, forbade the persecution of Jews, fixed the amount of taxes which the count could collect, forbade his interference in households, and in sev- eral cases imposed penalties on bachelors who refused to marry. If the king or the count attempted to break these charters the people flew to arms to maintain them. You will see, as we go on with this Child's History, that these fueros, or charters, were the nest of Spanish liberty, just as township self-government has been the nest of na- tional liberty in this country. The Spaniard who lived in a town which had a fuero knew that he had rights which no king or count could trample on; it was a short step for him to learn that he had also rights as a member of the nation, and he would have learned the lesson, to his un- ending benefit, but for an influence of which I shall have to tell you in the remainder of this history. CHAPTER XIV SEVILLE A.D. 1213-1284 BETWEEN the dates of the battle of Zallaka and the bat- tle of Las Navas, all Spain, except a strip in the North, was in the hands of the Moors. They held the valley of the Guadalquivir, with Seville and Cordova, and the best por- tions of Andalusia ; the province of Granada with the city of the same name; most of Murcia; the province of Va- lencia with its city ; parts of Aragon, and the valley of the Ebro, with Saragossa ; and in the centre of Spain the best part of Estremadura and New Castile, with the valley of the Tagus and the city of Toledo. The whole sea-coast, from the Cape of Gibraltar to the mouth of the Ebro, was theirs. At this time the Christians held their own country in the North, spreading from the Bay of Biscay to the foot- hills of the Guadarrama Mountains, and comprising, in whole or in part, the provinces I have so often named Galicia, the Asturias, the Basque Country, Leon, Old Cas- tile, and Aragon. Navarre and Catalonia considered that they were independent, and not part of Spain. After the battle of Las Navas the parts were reversed. One city after another, one kingdom, or principality, after another deserted the Moors, and declared itself on the side of the Christians. In 1236 Ferdinand of Castile occu- pied Cordova, and planted the flag of the Cross over the great mosque. Ten years later, after a long siege, he took Seville, which had been the Moorish capital after the Moors had been driven out of Cordova; two years afterwards he took Valencia. Malaga fell soon after. Thus, about the 94 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN [1213-1284 year 1250, the only part of Spain which the Moors still held was the City of Granada, the fertile country round it to the slopes of the snowy mountains, its seaport Al- meria, and a strip of coast running towards Gibraltar. All the rest of Spain was in Christian hands, and was ruled by Ferdinand the Third, who had united Castile and Leon, and was recognized as the head of the Christian princes. He was a valiant soldier and a just ruler; but what made people think most of him was that he was in the habit of scourging himself frequently by way of penance for his sins. When he died his body was embalmed and was placed in a silver coffin with glass sides, which stands in the royal chapel of the cathedral of Seville. He is in his royal robes, with his crown on his head. His hands are crossed over his breast. On one side of him lies his sceptre, on the other his sword. There were once jewels in the handles of both, but they were long ago stolen, it is said, by later kings of Spain. On holidays the body is exhibited to the people. When Ferdinand took Seville it was one of the largest and most beautiful cities of Spain. It is still marvellously beautiful, though it is not as large as it was five hundred years ago. It then contained as many people as Baltimore or San Francisco to - day. It only houses one - third as many in our time. The city stood in a plain on the banks of the Guadalquivir, and was surrounded by a wall with sixty -six towers and eighteen gates. Outside the wall were orange and olive groves, groups of palms, vineyards, and forests of graceful and fragrant trees from the East. The houses were of marble, and some of them were mag- nificent. The old Spaniards had a proverb : Who has not seen Seville has missed one of the wonders of the world. It is one of the oldest cities we know. Twenty-three or twenty - four hundred years ago it was a Phoenician or Carthaginian town, and a place of active trade. The Carthaginians called it Sephela, and built there a temple A STREET CORNER, SEVILLE 1213-1284] A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN 97 to Astarte, their goddess of Love ; the building has been successively a temple of Astarte, a temple to some Roman god, a Gothic church, a Moorish mosque, and a Catholic cathedral. It is a noble edifice, with a tower three hundred and fifty feet high, an immense organ, and a library which was founded by the son of Christopher Columbus. Other buildings carry you back, as you look at them, to very an- cient times indeed, and remind you of the changes which the world has seen. There is a spot where the Cartha- ginians used to light fires to Moloch and throw their children into them; it was afterwards a parade-ground for Roman legions; then a barrack was built on it for Moor- ish cavalry; and now it is covered with a bull -ring, in which eleven thousand people watch fights between bulls and matadors. You can see a tall building which goes by the name of the Tower of Gold. This was built by the Romans. Pa- tricians used to ascend to the top of it to enjoy the even- ing breeze and the sight of the silver Guadalquivir wind- ing through the orange - groves and the purple vines. When Spanish galleons began to bring gold from America the tower was turned into a treasure-house, and regiments of soldiers camped round to guard it. It is a ruin now. And there is another building, where three thousand wom- en, chiefly from the Canary Islands, make cigars and ciga- rettes. On its site there was once a Moorish castle, where many a dark deed was done and many a bright-eyed girl was stabbed to the heart by a jealous lover. The Moors of Seville were as polished as the Moors of Cordova, and they were gentle in disposition, though fierce fighters when they were roused. Of the siege which led to its capture the ballad says : " King Ferdinand alone did stand One day upon the hill, Surveying all his leaguers And the ramparts of Seville. 98 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN [1213-1284 The sight was grand when Ferdinand By proud Seville was lying, O'er tower and tree far off to see The Christian banners flying." A Christian knight who covered himself with glory at the siege of Seville was Don Garcia de Vargas, of Toledo. He was a mighty man of war, and never counted odds. Once he was attacked by seven Moors together. The bal- lad tells us how he got out of the trouble : "That day the lord of Vargas Caine to the camp alone, His scarf, his lady's largess, Around his heart was thrown; Bare was his head, his sword was red, And from its pummel strung Seven turbans green, sore hacked I ween, Before Don Garcia hung." King Ferdinand of Castile and Leon died in 1252; his son and successor, Alfonso the Learned, reigned from 1252 to 1284. As his sobriquet indicates, he was a man of pro- digious learning. He understood music, astronomy, and mathematics. He drew a code of laws. He wrote a his- tory of Spain. He translated the Bible into Spanish. He wrote prose, discourses on politics and morals, and poetry on love and romance. He knew so much, and was so well aware of it, that he is said to have observed that if he could have been consulted when the world was created he might have made some useful suggestions. But, with all his learning and all his good heart he was really a kindly monarch, though he had murdered his brother in the flush of youth he was always in trouble. He forbade any interference with the Moors, who had gathered in Granada, and thus displeased the Christians. who were eager to persecute the Moslems, now they had got them down. He had two sous ; they quarrelled with LANE IN SEVILLE each other and with him about the succession, and both the Pope and the King of France took a hand in the quarrel; the former with bulls of ex- communication, the latter with threats of war. One of the sons was named Sancho. He act- ually rebelled against his father, and took the field fighting men. King Alfonso cursed him, and the Pope cursed him, and Sancho, who was a good deal broken up by so many curses, laid down his arms and took to his bed, THE GIRALDA TOWER, SEVILLE 102 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN [1213-1284 declaring that he was going to die. At this the fond old father relented, and moaned and lamented till he also was taken ill of a fever. He was for taking back all his curses, but Sancho said it was no use, he was going to die, and a few curses more or less would not matter. At this the father bemoaned himself more piteously than ever, until he made himself so ill that, with the assist- ance of a few physicians, he presently died. On which oc- currence Sancho got out of bed, shook off his illness, and began to rule the kingdom. You may be interested to know that at the very time the Christians were crushing the Moors of Spain and tak- ing cities which the latter never recovered, the same Mos- lem race were inflicting terrible defeats on the Christians, who for fifty years had been crusading to the East to rescue Jerusalem from the hands of the infidel. In the same year that the Spanish Moors were penned up in Gra- nada, the knights and men-at-arms who, under the lead of Saint-Louis of France, had engaged in the Fifth Crusade, were slaughtered and driven into the sea by the Moslems in Egypt, and shortly afterwards the king himself was taken prisoner and held to ransom. Thus at one end of the Mediterranean the Cross was up and the Crescent down, while at the other end the followers of Mahomet were tri- umphant and the followers of Christ were plunged into overwhelming disaster. CHAPTER XV CASTILE AND ARAGON A.D. 1284-1469 KING SANCHO reigned over Castile for eleven years, and was followed by Ferdinand the Fourth, Alfonso the Elev- enth, and Peter the Cruel, who became king in 1330. Of these three monarchs there is nothing to be said, except that the last named, Peter, was a monster of cruelty. He loved killing people for the mere pleasure of kill- ing, and the closer of kin they were to him the more he enjoyed putting them to death. If he had lived longer he would have destroyed his whole family. He married a sweet French girl, Blanche of Bourbon, but after the wedding he would not live with her, or even see her. His favorite was a black-hearted Spaniard, named Maria de Padilla. The queen had given him as a wedding- present a golden belt adorned with precious stones. Maria found a Jew who was said to be a magician ; he contrived in some way to get the girdle off the king's waist and to put in its place a serpent. When the king saw it he was filled with horror; and Maria telling him that this was some of the queen's sorcery intended to injure him, he thrust poor Blanche into prison. To hold her the more safely he sent her to Toledo. But the people of that city, who were turbulent, as you remem- ber, and always did their own thinking, took the poor pris- oner's side, turned out in arms, with the king's brother Fadrique at their head, and declared that no harm should come to Blanche. Cunning Peter answered them that he had never meant any harm to his dear Blanche; he only wanted to clasp her in his arms once more. Whereupon 104 A CHILD'S HISTOKY OF SPAIN [1284-1469 the people, not suspecting that the king would tell a lie, let him into the place, and showed him where Blanche was. He no sooner got her in his power than he shut her up in a strong dungeon, where he put her to death. Then he turned on his brother Fadrique, who had taken Blanche's part. Him he invited to a tournament at Seville. When Fadrique came, the king appeared before him in the court-yard of the castle and ordered a man-at-arms to cut nim down. When you go to Seville you will be shown the stains of his blood on the stones of the yard. After he was dead Peter had his head cut off and laid before the fair Maria de Padilla. Shortly afterwards another brother, Henry, rebelled against Peter and took the field against him at the head of an army. But Peter got Edward the Black Prince of England to help him, and won a victory over the rebels at Navawete, on April 3d, 1367. After the battle Peter began to murder his prisoners, which shocked the Black Prince, and caused him to remonstrate. Peter answered, simply : " What's the good of your helping me, then ? If I let them go they will join Henry, and all the work will have to be done over again." This disgusted the Black Prince so much that he gath- ered his men and marched off home. Then the war broke out again, and now that the terrible Englishman was gone, victory generally sided with Henry. The war ended, however, by a curious piece of treachery, which may give you some idea of the laws of honor which prevailed in that day. Henry was in the tent of his ally, the gallant French general, Bertrand Duguesclin, of whom you have read in the History of France, and who was looked upon as a type of chivalry. A message was sent to Peter, inviting him into the tent, which he accepted unsuspiciously. At first Henry did not recognize him, though he was his brother, they had been parted so long ; but an attendant cried : 1284-1469] A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN 105 " There is your enemy !" Henry shouted : "Where is the Jew who calls himself King of Castile?" "Here I stand," answered Peter, "the lawful king and heir of King Alfonso ; 'tis thou that art a false pretender." With that they grappled with each other, while the knights, including Duguesclin, stood looking on. Henry stabbed Peter with his poniard in the face, but could not pierce his body, which was protected by a coat of mail. Peter was the stronger and threw his brother on a bench; but one of Henry's men, seizing Peter by the leg, threw him over on his back, and Henry stabbed him to death. "Thus with mortal gasp and quiver, While the blood in bubhles welled, Fled the fiercest soul that ever In a Christian bosom dwelled. " After Peter, there was another series of kings of Castile two Henrys and two Johns about whom there is noth- ing recorded that you would care to hear, unless it be an expression of the last John, who said he " wished he had been born in the hut of an obscure workman rather than on the throne of Castile." This John was father to the Isabella who became the wife of Ferdinand of Aragon, and Queen, not of Castile, but of Spain. Of Aragon, I have told you little. There was, however, a long list of kings who reigned from the times when Cor- dova first became the Moorish capital until the times of Ferdinand. Most of them left no trace; there were a few who perhaps deserve to be remembered. One of these was Jayrne the First, a poet, warrior, and statesman ; a great, broad-shouldered, blue-eyed, fair-haired scion of the Goths, who won thirty pitched battles, founded two thousand churches, and died in 1276. Then there was his son, Peter the Third, a wise monarch, who added Catalonia and Va- lencia securely to Aragon, and gave to his people such a 106 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN [1284-1469 charter of liberty as at that time existed nowhere else in the world, not even in England. The motto of Aragon was : "Laws first, kings afterwards !" For nothing was an Ara- gonese so quick to draw the sword as for any breach of law committed by his sovereign. When a king was crowned, a noble addressed him : " We, each of whom is as good as you, and who alto- gether are more powerful, make you our king, so long as you shall respect our charter, and no longer." I am afraid that in securing their own rights against the king the nobles of Aragon did not pay as much attention as they might have done to the rights of their vassals against themselves; as the English barons at Runnymede did not include in their bill of rights any guarantees for poor men against oppression by King John or by them- selves. There was a king named Peter the Ceremonious, who was cold as a stone and pitiless as a tiger ; he reigned fifty years, and did much to strengthen his kingdom by his calcu- lating policy. And his son, John the Careless, who reigned from 1387 to 1395, made Aragon famous by keeping the most splendid court of Europe. It was under him that Barcelona and Valencia became rivals of Genoa and Venice for the commerce of the world. Their ships were to be seen in every ocean, and their storehouses were filled with rich goods from every part of the world. All the great islands of the Western Mediterranean belonged at this time to Aragon. In the middle of the fifteenth century both Aragon and Castile were about to be plunged into civil wars over the crown. Both states had grown so rich that their thrones were prizes worth capturing, and it was evident to wise men that the only security for peace would be the union of the two kingdoms in one hand, strong enough to put down rebellion and to repel foreign attack. These wise men saw a chance of realizing their hopes when, on April 22d, 1451, the heir to the throne of Castile proved to be a 1284-1469] A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN 107 girl Isabella; and on March 15th following an heir to the throne of Aragon was born, in the person of Ferdinand, who was afterwards known as Ferdinand the Catholic. Far-seeing people discerned that these two ought to marry. They met when Isabella was eighteen and Ferdinand seventeen, fell in love at first sight, and the marriage con- tract was signed forthwith. Ferdinand was a good-looking boy, who could ride well, talk fluently, and say pleasant things to every one; his eyes were bright, his complexion fair. Isabella was blue-eyed, with chestnut hair; she was almost a beauty; her figure was perfect; her manner was gracious, and was marked by a modesty which is not always observed in queens. When the marriage was arranged Isabella went to live at Valladolid, on the Douro. Stories reached Ferdinand's ear that she ran some risk of being kidnapped by one of the many royal suitors who aspired to her hand ; so without notice to any one he slipped away, with only six attendants, and rode breakneck to Valladolid, travelling under a feigned name. When he told his fears to his lady love, she fell on his breast, declaring she would not leave him again; and accordingly, on October 19th, 1469, in the palace of Don Juan de Vivero, and in the presence of a party of invited guests, the two children were married. It was not till five years later that the wedding celebration took place at Segovia, and that a her- ald, after blowing his trumpet, lustily proclaimed : "Hear all ye people of Castile and Aragon, the King Don Ferdinand, and his wife, Dona Isabella, are proprietors- sovereign of these kingdoms !" It is now time that I should tell you something about the Moors, who fill so large a place in the reign of Ferdi- nand and Isabella. CHAPTER XVI THE MOORS AT GRANADA A.D. 1250-1476 WHEN the Moors were driven out of Andalusia, Valencia, and New Castile, they took refuge in Granada, and to that spot their countrymen flocked from all parts of Spain. They chose as their caliph, or emir, or sultan, or king he is called indifferently by all these names a chief from Se- ville, named Ibrahim Ben Akmar, who was known as the red-man, because his complexion was fair and his hair light. He was a bold warrior, but he could not hold his own against the Christians, and he thought it wiser to pay them tribute, rather than continue the war. So every year he sent twelve thousand gold ducats to Castile as the price of peace. Granada, his capital, was a fine city when he made it his home, and he spent enormous sums in beautifying it. It lay on both banks of the little river Darro, in the heart of a vast plain which was surrounded by lofty mountains, so tall that they were generally capped with snow. The city, which was surrounded by a wall with twelve gates and one thousand and forty towers, was built on the sides of two hills, which sloped to the river ; the houses, with gar- dens and courts, in which oranges, lemons, and pomegran- ates grew, rose one above another till the tops of the hills were reached. On the top of one hill stood a strong fort which commanded the city; on the other stood the fa- mous Red Palace, or Alhambra, of which, I dare say, you have heard. The palace of the Alhambra stood in an enclosure sur- rounded by a wall fifteen feet thick, and so high in places GIRLS DRAWING WATER AT THE FOUNTAIN, TOLKDU 1250-1476] A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN 111 that from the terrace on the summit of the wall you can look down on the tops of tall trees growing in the valley beneath. The enclosure was large enough to have con- tained a small city, but it never enclosed anything but courts and halls, where the Moorish kings received ambas- sadors and transacted business, and splendid apartments where their wives and children lived. It is partly in ruin to-day, but enough remains to show you what it must have been in the days of its glory. When you go to see it you will pass under a tall tower to a gate, which is called the Gate of Justice. Here the Caliphs of Granada used to sit, under a great stone key and a massive stone hand, to hear the complaints of their peo- ple, and render justice. Then you pass into the Court of Myrtles, whose walls used to be hidden by a myrtle hedge. Then comes another court, whose centre is a lake in which myriads of golden fish play; it is still, so still that you can almost hear yourself breathe. Then you come to the Hall of the Ambassadors, with its grand throne where the Caliph sat, its walls worked over with tracery, its white, blue, and gold cornices, its lofty dome with stars on it to imitate the vault of heaven. Under that dome some of the most fa- mous people of Europe used to stand, before the days of Columbus, and for a long time after him. In a building near by are the rooms where the ladies of the Moorish court lived. The rooms were thickly carpeted, and under the floor incense and perfumes were burned, so that the luxurious ladies should breathe sweet savors from an unseen source. There were a score of bath-rooms, each with a bath-tub cut out of a single block of marble, and on the floor were rugs of cloth-of-gold, on which the fair bather rested her pretty, bare feet. A fine metal tracery, representing stars and roses, let in light. Another famous hall is the Hall of Lions, so called be- cause the fountain in the centre is surrounded by marble lions, who, in the old days, poured water out of their mouths. The roof is a series of arches resting on groups 112 A CHILD'S HISTORY OP SPAIN [1250-1476 of white marble pillars ; it vaults from pillar to pillar with fantastic lightness. Yet another hall, also with a fountain and basin in its centre, is the Hall of the Abencerrages, of whom I will tell you presently. To this marble building under a balmy sky, breathing an atmosphere cooled by the snow -caps of the near-by mountains and scented by every sort of fragrant tree, plant, and flower, with no noise to disturb the ear except the soothing murmur of fountains, and with a picture for tue eye of an endless garden, with the town of Granada in the foreground and the snowy range on the horizon the ca- liphs returned from their toils to spend the evening with dark-eyed houris, and to listen to tender melodies and to the dreamy music of the lute. It must have been the life of a Moslem paradise. You will not be surprised to hear that the Emperor Charles V., when he went over the Al- hambra, exclaimed to his courtiers: " 111 fated was the man who lost all this." The whole of the wide plain of Granada had been turned into a garden by the skilful diversion of the water of the Xenil and the Darro into thousands of irrigating ditches. The Moors were famous for knowing the uses of water; they did not allow a gallon of it to go to waste; every acre of their land 'bore bounteous crops of grapes, or figs, or oranges, or lemons, or citrons, or walnuts, or pomegran- ates; in rows of mulberry-trees silk-worms wove cocoons, which were reeled into the finest silk. In the city people worked industriously at making steel weapons and cloths, and beautiful objects in gold, silver, and bronze. It was a busier place than any of the Christian cities in Spain. The Moorish nobles who lived there led lives of culture and splendor. Schools flourished, prose and poetry were written; music was played on lutes, science was studied. Both sexes dressed handsomely; the ladies wore bracelets and anklets of silver or gold, studded with emeralds and chrysolites; they braided their hair and fastened the braids with jewels, The men dressed in spotless white coats of 1250-1476] A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN" 113 linen, over which, in winter, they threw cloaks of wool or silk of the finest texture. The sheaths of their swords and daggers were inlaid and adorned with gems ; their very horses' trappings were of green and crimson velvet, on which letters were traced with gold and silver thread. The masses of the people were kept busily employed on their farms or in their factories. But the noble Moors gave their whole time to love and war. They paid to young ladies a respectful devotion, which I find it difficult to explain in a people who locked their wives up in harems. For over two hundred years the Moors lived in wealth and luxury at Granada, their only diversion from love- making being freebooting forays, generally directed from the town of Jaen against the Christian cities of the neigh- borhood. For all this long stretch of time we hear little of their history except a string of names and occasionally a story or two which reads like a legend. We are told that there were twenty-three caliphs of Granada, some of whom took the title of king, and nearly all of whom were named Mahomet. One of the stories says that the governor of a Christian town near the border of Granada resolved to make a raid upon the Moorish country. Before putting his men in the field he sent secretly a party of horse to explore the road; they fell in with a Moorish courtier of fine appearance, whom they forthwith made prisoner and brought before the governor. The young man cried bitterly when he was examined, and the governor, disgusted at his want of manliness, reproached him, saying: " You are no warrior, but a woman, for you weep like one. Are you such a coward as to fret for your capture ?" " It is not the loss of rny liberty that I lament," said the Moor, " but I have long loved the daughter of an alcalde in our neighborhood. She loves me, and to-night was to be our wedding night. Now she is awaiting me, and will think I have deserted her. She will die of despair." " Noble cavalier," said the governor, " you touch my 8 114 A CHILD'S HISTORY or SPAIN [1250-1476 heart. Go and see your lady; I will take your word that you will return." I need not tell you that the Moor rode fast and furious to the lady's house. When he told her the story, she said: "You must keep your word. But I will go with you. I share your fate, bond or free. And see, here are jewels to buy your ransom." Next morning the couple appeared before the governor, and offered him the jewels. But he would none of them from a cavalier so loyal and a maiden so true. He had the pair married by a priest, loaded them with presents, and sent them back under escort to the home of the groom. Another story of these times was the legend of the Abencerrages. It is not certain that it is true, but the Spaniards believe it; when you go to Spain you will be shown the stains of the blood of the Abencerrages on the floor .of the hall in the Alhambra which bears their name. They were a noble and wealthy family of Moors, who were equally famous for their valor and for their mercy. They spent their money in ransoming Christian prisoners, and it was said of them that there had never been an Abencerrage who was a coward, or a false husband, or a faithless friend. Between these Abencerrages and 'anoth- er Moorish family, called the Zegris, a feud always raged. The Zegris were as brave as the Abencerrages and as skil- ful in war, but they had never been known to spare a pris- oner's life, or to say a word of love to a woman. Now the Sultan of Granada had married a Zegri girl. She was cold and cruel, like the men of her tribe, and the king, losing his love for her, married, as the law allowed, a Christian captive as his second wife. At this the first wife became furiously jealous, and called upon her kins- men to avenge her wrong; and the Christian wife appealed to the Abencerrages to take her part, which they promptly did. It chanced that a wedding in the nobility just then took 1230-1476] A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN 115 place, and the usual games were given. At one of the games the object was for a rider on a galloping horse to pierce with the point of his lance a ring "held in the mouth of a silver dove on the branch of a tree, new rings being supplied as fast as any were pierced. The young men of the Abencerrages entered the list in white tunics, embroid- ered with pearls and silver; they rode white horses, and carried a shield on which were a lion and a shepherdess, with the legend "Gentleness and Strength." The Zegris wore green tunics, with gold ornaments, on horses covered with gaudy velvet trappings. Their shield bore the de- vice of a bloody cimeter, with the motto "This is my law." At the first joust one of the Abencerrages won twenty- five rings, while the highest number won by any Zegri was five. The defeat drove the latter to fury, and they vowed revenge. A young Abencerrage had loved a maiden named Zoro- aide before the caliph's son had ordered her to become his wife. He did not cease to love her when she was taken from him, and she pined in secret for him on the splendid terraces of the Alhamhra. One night, when he could not restrain himself, the young Abencerrage scaled the side of the castle, leaped on the terrace, and stood before his love. She bade him go, telling him that his life depended on his flight, and promising him that every evening of her life she would come to that rose-tree and mourn for him. He went; but it was too late. A Zegri had overheard his voice. Hastening to the caliph's son, the spy told what he had seen. The prince at once summoned all the chiefs of the Abencerrages to the palace. When they came they were dragged to the court of the Abencerrages thirty-six in all and the head of every one was cut off and thrown into the fountain. The prince himself struck off the head of his wife's lover. The rest of the broken-hearted family removed from Granada. In the year 1476, when the King of Castile and Aragon 116 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN [1250-1470 sent a messenger to Granada to collect his annual tribute, the Caliph Muley Abul Hassan replied to the Castilian : " Go, tell your master that the emirs who agreed to pay tribute are dead. The mints of Granada now coin nothing but sword-blades." King Ferdinand pondered over the message. Then learning that the Moors of Granada occupied fourteen cities, ninety - seven fortified places, and castles without count, he said : " I will pick out the seeds of this pomegranate one by one." In Spanish the word Granada means pomegranate. CHAPTER XVII ZAHARA AND ALHAMA A.D. 1481-1482 MULEY ABUL HASSAN, the fierce Moor who said that his mints coined nothing but sword-blades, did not wait for King Ferdinand to attack him. On a dark night, between Christmas and New-year, in a storm of rain and lightning and thunder, he suddenly loomed up at the head of a large force before the Christian town and fort of Zahara, not very far from the town of Malaga. Everybody in the place, including sentinels, was asleep. In a silence only broken by the patter of the rain and the roar of the thun- der the Moors set their ladders against the walls and scaled town and castle. The cry arose : "The Moor ! The Moor !" But in the darkness the garrison could not find their arms nor their comrades. They were cut down by the savage Moors as fast as they groped their way out of their barracks. All men, women, and children were bidden to gather in the square, and wait for morning in their night-clothes in the cold rain. When day dawned they were marched to Granada under an escort of troops, and prodded with spear-points when they slackened their gait. Muley Abul Hassan followed after them with a string of mules laden with the plunder of Zahara. But the conqueror was not received at his home with the welcome be expected. The Moors were a wise people; they foresaw that this raid on a Christian town boded trouble in the future. A dervish paced the streets, groan- ing aloud : " Woe to Granada ! The hour of its destruction is at hand ! The ruins of Zahara will fall on our heads !" 118 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN [1481-1482 In Christian Spain the news of the Moorish capture of Zahara roused the people to fury. They clamored for war on the infidel. The first one to act was a valiant knight named Ponce de Leon, the Marquis of Cadiz. He gath- ered a body of fighting men and promised them that Zahara should be avenged. Not far from his chief castle was the Moorish fortified town of Alhama, on the top of a hill, about twenty-five miles from Granada. It was the town which was shattered by an earthquake a few years ago. To spy out this place he sent a trusty officer, who walked round it at night, measured the walls, peered over the heights, counted the sentries. Then the marquis start- ed out. With four thousand foot and three thousand horse he set forth from his town of Marchena on a dark February night. The little army crept cautiously, lay hid all day, and lit no fires at night ; so that a little after midnight of the third march they reached Alhama without having been seen by a single Moor. Ladders were quickly set against the citadel, and it was taken by storm before the garrison had any idea that an enemy was near. The Moors in the town resisted for a while, but so many of them were shot down from the citadel gunpowder was then used for the first time in the Spanish wars that the rest surrendered. There is a story of the assault which will show you that the fighters of this period, fierce and cruel as they often were in battle, had still on occasion the instincts of gentle- men. In leading the attack on the castle the marquis broke into room after room, and found himself unexpect- edly in the chamber where the Moorish governor's wife was in bed. She shrieked, wrapped the clothes round her, and begged for life. "Madam," said the marquis, "fear nothing. You are in the hands of a Spanish gentleman." And when her maids came running in presently scream- ing, with half a dozen soldiers at their heels pursuing 14S1-H82] A CHILD'S HISTORY OP SPAIN 119 them, the marquis drove his men out at the point of the sword, and set a trusty guard at the door of the lady, with orders to cut down any one who attempted to enter. Alhama was one of the richest and strongest towns in Spain. It was so strong a place that the Moors had used it as a storehouse. It contained quantities of gold and sil- ver and gems and rich silks and grain and oil and honey, besides numbers of horses and cattle. All this was now given up to plunder by the Marquis of Cadiz, and the Moors men, women, and children were sold as slaves. Zahara was indeed avenged. When the news reached Granada the people cursed the Caliph. " Accursed be the day," they said, " that thou hast lit the flames of war. On thy head and on thy children's heads rest the sin of Zahara !" The old ballad " Ay de mi Alhama," which Spanish girls sometimes sing to this day, tells the story : " Letters to the monarch tell How Albania's city fell ; In the fire the scroll he threw, And the messenger he slew. Woe is me, Alhama!" But Muley Abul Hassan was not the man to content himself with groaning over disaster. He called the Moors to arms and- marched- swiftly to Alhama to retake the place. The garrison was ready for him, and beat his forces back with great loss. He sat down before the place raging with disappointment, and yet resolved to suc- ceed. Now the fort and town of Alhama had no water supply except what it got from a little stream running past the base of the hill. There were a few wells in the place, but they soon ran dry. And then the Moors diverted the water of the stream, so that the Christians could not get water without passing through the Moorish camp. The 120 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN [1481-1482 throats of the soldiers dried till they could hardly speak; some died, others went mad from thirst. Christian knights, among others Don Alfonso de Aguilar, tried to raise the siege, but they were beaten back by the Moors. Muley Abul Hassan stroked his beard, and feast- ed his hungry eyes with the sight of the Christians on the battlements, knowing they were doomed and must pres- ently surrender. There was but one man who could save them; that was the Duke of Medina Sidonia, and he was at deadly feud with the Marquis of Cadiz, and was not likely to help his enemy. When the duke heard of the trouble in which his old foe stood he said it was no concern of his. But when the wife of the marquis fell at his feet, with tears flowing from her beautiful eyes, and besought him, in a voice broken by sobs, not to allow her noble husband to be butchered by the infidel, but to go to his aid, for the sake of his honor and of knightly chivalry, the duke, in a voice like thunder, commanded his horse to be saddled, and bade his squire blow the war bugle, and to keep on blowing it as long as he had a breath in his body. His people were quite ready to march. Every man of them felt that the day had come to settle the question whether Spain should be Christian or Moslem. Messengers were sent to every town and fortress, east and west, and north and south, to send all the troops they could spare to Seville, and just as the marquis's men were reduced to such straits that they had to make sallies to get a little water, and paid for every drop of it with a drop of their blood, the duke marched out of Seville with fifty thousand fighting men and a long army of gallant knights from every part of Andalusia. King Ferdinand was in Castile when he heard of the siege of Alhama; he rode south on relays of horses, hard- ly taking time to sleep. When he reached Cordova he despatched messengers to Medina Sidonia, bidding him to await his coming. But the peril was too pressing. U81-14S2] A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN 121 The duke's personal enemy was dying of thirst. He sent word to the king that he would not wait. He would march, and would not tarry an hour nor the tenth part of a minute by the way for king or devil. When Muley heard of his coming he made one more at- tempt to storm the place. A band of picked Moorish war- riors attacked it on a side thus far untried, and seventy of them actually got into the town. But they were quickly surrounded, and though they formed back-to-back, with the Moorish flag in the centre, and fought like heroes or demons, they were all killed, and their heads were thrown over the wall to their friends outside. Then Muley Abul Hassan, tearing his beard in his rage, and knowing that if he waited till Medina Sidonia came up he would be caught between two fires, sullenly drew off his army and aban- doned Alhama to the Christians forever. I need not tell you of the joy with which the duke was received by the garrison. Ponce de Leon fell upon his neck; and these two fierce warriors, who thought nothing of killing an enemy in battle, threw their arms round each other and cried like girls. Ever after that day they were brothers- in-arms. CHAPTER XVIII BORDER WARFARE A.D. 1483 EXULTING over his victory over the Moors, the Marquis of Cadiz pined for greater triumphs. He fixed his eye on Malaga, the great seaport on the Mediterranean, where the foreign trade of the Moors was carried on. This would be a nobler prize than Alhama. Malaga was divided from Antequera, where the marquis mustered his force, by a ridge of lofty and rugged mount- ains, cut at intervals by rocky valleys and the beds of dead rivers, which were the only passes. On either side of these valleys and gulches cliffs rose, sometimes with very steep sides; from these cliffs great pieces of rock and bowlders, detached by storm or earthquake, had rolled down, par- tially blocking the path at their base. It was over this difficult road that Ponce de Leon led his men to the attack of Malaga. It was a road almost impassable for cavalry. He had hoped to get through the mountains and to reach the plain on which Malaga stands before the Moors dis- covered his purpose ; but it seems they were informed of it before he set out; for on the second night, as his army in close file was slowly and painfully working its way through a narrow pass, man and horse stumbling over the rough stones, and sometimes tumbling into clefts by the road-side, lights flashed out on the top of the heights above the pass, and a shower of stones and darts rained upon the Christians. In a little while they found they could neither advance nor retreat, for the narrow pass was blocked in front of them and behind them with the bodies of the soldiers who had been killed by the stones and darts. 1483] A CHILD'S HISTORY or SPAIN" 123 When day dawned they found that they were caught in a trap. They were being slowly cut off by an enemy at whom they could not strike back. A guide pretended to show them another pass through the range, but it was no better than the first. The Moors were still above them on the top of crags, pelting them with bowlders and fragments of rock. After vainly try- ing to find a safe road in any direction, the army scattered, and every man sought safety for himself. Numbers of them were lost and -perished miserably in the rocks; some fell over precipices, some were killed, others made prison- ers by the Moors. And so ended the wretched expedition against Malaga. But though the Moors won the day, they had cares enough from another source to prevent their being extrav- agantly happy. Muley Abul Hassan had two wives. One, Ayesha, was of his own kin, and was the wife of his youth. She had a son named Boabdil, who at the time of the rup- ture with the Christians was grown up. The other wife, Zoraya,had been a Christian, taken prisoner in battle ; she was surpassingly beautiful, and became the sultan's favor- ite. She had two sons, who were babies ; but she hoped they would grow up to succeed their father, while Ayesha, who was jealous of Zoraya, determined that her son Boab- dil should succeed. When Muley Abul Hassan returned baffled from Alha- ma, he was received at Granada with groans and curses. The old dervish went round predicting disaster more shriek- ingly than ever. The king, wearied with the clamor, went with Zoraya to a country-house in search of peace. He had only spent a few hours there when, just at nightfall, he heard a strange sound rising from Granada like the gathering of a storm. Presently a messenger, who had ridden at wild speed, told him that a rebellion had broken out in the city, and that the people had proclaimed his son, Boabdil, king in his stead. As full of fight as ever, the king put himself at the head 124 A CHILD'S HISTORY or SPAIN [1483 of his guards, and with his vizier, Abul Cacim, tried to break into the Alhambra, but was driven back and chased out of the city. "God is great," said he; "let us bow to what is written in the book of fate." So he rode off to a castle where he had friends, and left his son on the throne at Granada. Just to show that he was not dead, he headed a foray into the territory of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, and carried off booty and cattle. This set the Granadans to murmuring at the sloth of their new king, Boabdil, whom they called The Little; and the king's mother, Ayesha, who had spurred him to seize his father's throne, joining in reproaching him for his slug- gishness, he resolved to do something for glory. He call- ed his men to arms, nine thousand of them in all, and among them the flower of the Moorish chivalry. His mother girded on his cimeter with her own hands, and when his wife cried at the parting, the fierce old woman rebuked her : "Why dost thou weep? These tears become not the daughter of a warrior, nor the wife of a king. Believe me, there often lurks more danger for a monarch within the strong walls of a palace than within the frail curtains of a tent." Boabdil sallied forth from Granada in grand array. His horse was black and white ; on his breast he wore a steel corselet with gold nails, and on his head a steel casque richly engraved. On his back he bore a shield ; over his saddle hung a cimeter of Damascus, and in his hand he carried a long lance. But the troops, who admired his fine appearance, were rather taken aback when a fox ran out of a thicket and scurried through the ranks of the army, pressing close to the king without being touched by any of the missiles which were thrown at it. Like the Spaniards, the Moors were superstitious. They marched swiftly, how- ever, and presently, having been reinforced by AH Atar, Boabdil's father-in-law, a veteran of nearly ninety, who 1483] A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN 125 had spent his life in fighting the Christians, they came to a stand over against the Christian town of Lucena. They had been seen coming. On the night of April 20th, 1483, as Don Diego de Cordova, Count of Cabra, was going to bed, his watchman brought him word that the beacon-fires were lit on the mountain-tops. He knew what this meant. There was no rest that night in his castle of Vaena, or in the town adjoining. By daylight the count marched forth at the head of fifteen hundred men, taking the direction of the frontier. Word soon reached him that Lucena was the place threatened, and he made for it with all speed. When he got there he found the Moors gone. They had collected such a quantity of plun- der that they had started homeward to divide it. Ninety- year-old Ali wanted to burn Lucena and slay all the people ; but the soldiers preferred saving their booty to fighting. The Count of Cabra, not paying the least heed to thos who warned him that the Moors were six or seven times as numerous as his force, and who wanted him to wait for reinforcements, spurred after them. He found them in a valley near a little stream which the heavy rain had swol- len into a torrent. They were eating their dinner with great content. " By Santiago," said the count, " if we had waited for reinforcements the Moors would have escaped us." And he flung his cavaliers on the enemy. It is not easy to understand the battle, or how fifteen hundred Christians could overcome nine thousand Moors. I suppose the latter were badly handled, and that Boabdil did not understand the business of war. Many of the Moors thought they had got what they wanted, and that the best thing was to go home. As the battle began a dense fog settled on the field, and it seems to have confused the Moors more than the Christians. The former fought with their backs to the torrent I have mentioned; when they were pushed they backed into the torrent, lost their footing, and many 126 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN [1483 were drowned. In this and other ways the battle was lost. King Boabdil fell back with tlie others; his horse being shot, he was on foot. Afraid that his grand costume would attract shots or arrows, he hid in a clump of willows, where he remained until a Spanish cavalier detected him. He cried for quarter, saying that he was a man of family and would pay a rich ransom. A quarrel then arose be- tween the soldiers as to whose prisoner he was; but the Count of Cabra happening to ride up, the king surrendered to him, without, however, saying who he was. The count accepted him, put a red band round his neck to signify that he was a prisoner, and sent him off under escort to his quarters. It was not till three days afterwards that the count knew that his prisoner was the King of Granada. On the day after the battle the Moorish people of Loxa, who had been straining their eyes all day for the return of the king and his army, saw one horseman approaching on the borders of the Xenil. When he reached the city his horse, which had carried him swiftly so far, fell dead. The rider's face was so sad that at first no one dared accost him. At last an old man asked : "How fares it with the king and the army?" "There they lie!" answered the horseman, pointing to the hills. "All lost! all dead !" And he mounted another horse, while the people wailed; he shook his head and rode on and on to Granada. There he told his wretched story to the people; and still riding on and on, he did not draw rein till he stood at the Gate of Justice, in the Alhambra. The wife of Boabdil flung herself on the ground, weep- ing, and had to be carried to her apartments; but the stern old mother shed never a tear. She only said : " It is the will of Allah." The minstrels came with their lutes to sing and play for the harem, but their song was attuned to the sorrows of the hour. They sang : 1483] A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN 127 "Beautiful Granada ! Why is the Alhambra so lorn and desolate ? The orange and myrtle still breathe their perfumes into its silken chambers ; the nightingale still sings within its groves ; its marble halls are still refreshed with the plash of fountains and the gusli of liquid rills. Alas ! alas ! The countenance of the king no longer shines within these halls. The light of the Alhambra is set for- ever." CHAPTER XIX THE FALL OF MALAGA A.D. 14831488 WHEN King Ferdinand learned that the Moorish king was a prisoner he was puzzled to know what to do with him. Happily he had at his right hand one who was wiser and stronger- minded than he. This was his wife, Isabella. For some time she had been residing at Seville, and though she was barely thirty, she had presided over the royal court of justice there, had heard cases, and decided them wisely. The king had learned to lean upon her judgment for counsel. She now advised that Boabdil be released, on condition of his paying the old tribute to the King of Castile, and of setting free a certain number of captives. The prisoner readily agreed to these terms, and started for Granada. But Boabdil had not heard the news from his capital. No sooner had his capture by the Christians become known there than his fiery old father dashed into the place at the head of his troopers, proclaimed that he was king once more, and camped in the Alhambra. Boabdil's mother, Ayesha, he drove out of the palace, and bade her find lodg- ings in the quarter where the workmen lived. She, who was as fierce as her husband, barricaded herself in the quarter which had been assigned her, seized one of the gates of the city, and bade defiance to Muley. When Boabdil, who lhad left Granada in such glory and splendor, came creep- ing back under cover of night, cowering and quaking from fear of his terrible father, she let him in, flung her- self on his neck, called the workmen to his support, and told him : 1483-1488] A CHILD'S IIISTORY OF SPAIN 129 " It depends on thyself whether thou wilt remain here a king or a captive." When day dawned and old Muley Abul Hassan heard that his son was back he foamed with rage and summoned his fighting men. Ayesha summoned hers, and the two parties father against son fought all day in the streets. When night came Boabdil cried "Enough !" and ran away to live at Almeria, his mother taunting him as he went with the jibe that a man was not worthy of being called a king who could not hold his own capital city. King Ferdinand's hope for peace and a revival of tribute were ended when Boabdil was overthrown ; so he began again to raid the Moorish country, to carry off booty, and to make slaves of the Moors. At first Muley Abul Hassan watched him from the highest tower of the Alhambra, growling like a tiger and grinding his teeth, because he could not trust his troops; but at last a body of them were collected who were willing to follow the Christian example of fighting for plunder, and they raided Anda- lusia, while Ferdinand raided the plain or vega of Granada. I do not think that you can feel much sympathy for either. There was very little fighting done in comparison with the amount of robbing. The chief sufferers by the war were the poor peasants and residents of small towns and villages, who lost everything they had, and saw their children carried off to be sold as slaves, Moors by Chris- tians, Christians by Moors. It could not have mattered much to them whether they were despoiled by Moslems or Christians. Whichever race it was, the peasant lost his wheat crop, his vines, his orchard, his orange and olive grove, and his sons and daughters. But the Christians had the advantage in this border war- fare. King Ferdinand took town after town, castle after castle, village after village, and what he took he kept. Muley Abul Hassan took few places, and those he did take were quickly wrenched out of his grasp. During the whole of the year 1484 the Moorish territory was 9 130 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN [1483-1488 gradually growing narrower and the Spanish territory wider. Moreover, from repeated defeat, the Moors were losing heart. The old king, who had spent such a life of toil and battle, became blind and bedridden. His son Boabdil, who was always conspiring against him, was chased out of the kingdom by his uncle, El Zagal, and forced to take refuge, like an outcast, with the Christians at Cordova. When El Zagal appeared at Almeria to seize him, Queen Ayesha intrepidly faced him, and called him a perfidious traitor. So El Zagal thrust her into prison, and made an end of her for the time. Meanwhile, in May, 1486, King Ferdinand assembled at Cordova an army of twelve thousand horse, forty thousand foot soldiers armed with cross-bows, lances, and arquebuses, and a park of heavy cannon, which were then called Lom- bards. With these he marched down against the Moorish strongholds in Southern Spain lying back of Malaga. He took them all, one after the other Loxa, Illora, Moclin, and others ; thus gradually, by slow degrees, he encircled Mal- aga in his grip. Malaga lies on the shore of the Mediterranean, and is backed up against a range of sloping mountains, whose sides are clothed with the vines bearing Malaga grapes, which I dare say you have eaten, and with fragrant plan- tations of oranges, lemons, olives, and pomegranates. Five hundred years ago two of the heights behind the city were crowned, the one with the citadel and the other with a fort called the Gibralfaro. The latter, which was a strong work, was commanded by a dark and fierce - eyed Moor, who was known as Hamet el Zegri, and garrisoned with Moors fresh from Africa. Round the town itself ran a high wall with tall towers at intervals. Ferdinand fired his heavy guns at the towers, and pres- ently made a breach through one of them by which some of his troops entered ; but the Moors attacked them with heavy stones and boiling pitch, and undermined the tower 1483-1488] A CHILD'S HISTOKY OF SPAIN 131 which the Christians had taken, so that it fell in. Then the Marquis of Cadiz massed his men to storm Gibralfaro, but the Moors sallied forth at night, swooped upon the enemy with such fury and threw so many down the cliff- side that the stormers drew off with sore heads. Then the Christians undertook to undermine the walls. Hamet found it out and dug countermines, so that sometimes one tunnel would run into another, and Christian and Moor would engage in a death-grapple under the ground. Ferdinand held the sea, and Malaga could get no food from outside. Hamet had seized all the food in the city for the use of his soldiers, doling out to them a quarter of a pound of bread in. the morning, and half as much at night. Women and children ate what they could get the flesh of horses and stray remains of dried fruits. And all the while they saw ships arriving with grain for the Chris- tians, and droves of cattle slowly winding over the hills. Queen Isabella, who had joined her husband in camp, was touched by the stories of suffering in Malaga, and sent word that the most liberal terms would be granted in case of surrender. But Hamet el Zegri replied that he had only begun the fight, and that the sooner King Ferdinand raised the siege the better it would be for him. Numbers of citizens were ready to surrender, but Hamet threatened them with death if they spoke. After a time the fathers of starving families climbed up the rock of Gibralfaro, and besought the Moorish chief not to doom so many to die of hunger. He replied that the day of deliverance was at hand. All he asked was a little patience. It seems he had on his staff a crazy dervish, who pretended to be an astrologer; this astrologer said that it had been revealed to him by the stars that an attack made upon the Christians on a certain day, he leading the Moors with a certain white flag in his hand, was certain to make an end of the Spanish army. Accordingly, on the day set, the dervish led the way with his white flag, and the whole Moslem army in brave 132 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN [1483-1488 array sallied forth and fell upon the Spaniards. It was a foolhardy enterprise. The Christians were at first taken by surprise, but they recovered their wits, and attacked the Moors with such fury that hundreds of them were slain and the rest driven back, wounded and bruised, into Malaga. The crazy dervish had his poor sick brains knocked out by a stone. The city of Malaga then surrendered, and the starving people were abundantly supplied with food from King Ferdinand's stores. Hamet el Zegri shut himself up in his castle of Gibralfaro. But the Africans had suffered so dreadfully from battle, hunger, and fatigue that there was a dangerous light in their eyes; and when they bade Hamet ask terms of surrender, he did not keep them wait- ing. He wanted to make special terms for himself and his men; but Ferdinand, like some one else whom you will remember, answered that the only terms he would accept were unconditional surrender. And those were the terms settled. Hamet was imprisoned for life. His Moors were all sold as slaves but one. That one was Ibraham Zenete. I must close this chapter with the reason why, of all that band, Zenete alone was spared. When Hamet el Zegri made his great sortie from Malaga, under the guidance of the crazy dervish, Zenete led the ad- vance. In leading the van, he broke into a house which was occupied by Spanish officers, and in a room in that house he found three Spanish boys in a bed sleeping. He struck them sharply with the flat of his sword, and cried : " Away to your mothers, brats !" " Why," said a Moorish officer, " do you not kill the Christian dogs?" "Because," replied Zenete, "I see no beards on their faces." This was accounted so chivalrous an act that King Fer- dinand declared a Castilian hidalgo could not have been more high-minded ; and this was why, when all his com- 1483-1488] A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN 133 rades were sold into slavery, Zenete was forgiven and set at liberty. Malaga fell in the year 1488; and when it fell, as the Moorish saying went, the eye of Granada was plucked out. CHAPTER XX THE FALL OF GRANADA A.D. 1488-1492 KING FERDINAND found in Malaga, after the surrender, sixteen hundred Christians, men and women, many of whom had been years in captivity; some with shackles on their legs, with long hair matted and uncombed, with haggard, pale faces, and figures gaunt from famine. They were set at liberty, fed, and clothed, and sent to their homes. Among the Moorish captives were four hundred Jews, chiefly women, who were ransomed by a wealthy Jew of Castile. The others were held for ransom; but whatever they had was taken to the king, and accounted as part of the ransom. Each person man, woman, and child stepped singly out of their house, bearing their money, jewels, bracelets, anklets, and whatever they had of value. These were taken and valued. If they amounted to less than the ransom fixed, the owner was confined in an enclosure to be sold as a slave. Some of the most beautiful girls were allotted to Queen Isabella, who gave them as presents to her sister-in-law, the Queen of Naples, or to the ladies of her court. Meanwhile a bishop was appointed over the chief mosque, which was turned into a cathedral, and the king and queen, with the officers of the army, heard mass in it. While the plain -chant of the mass rose to heaven, the Moors, with their hands bound, chanted outside: " Oh, Malaga, city so famous and beautiful ! Where is now the strength of thy castle ? Behold thy children driven from their pleasant abodes to drag a life of bond- age in a foreign land, and to die far from the home of 1488-1492] A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN 137 their childhood ! What will become of the old men and matrons when their gray hairs will no longer be revered ? What will become of thy tender and delicate maidens, when reduced to hard and menial servitude? Oh, Mal- aga, city of our birth ! who can behold thy desolation and not shed tears of bitter grief ?" Ferdinand spent the winter in preparing for the final conquest of the Moors, and gave his army a rest. It was not till the end of May, 1489, that he mov.ed from the fortress of Jaen into the Granada country. He had to make sure of several castles, and especially of the fortified town of Baza, before he could "venture to attack Granada. Gra- nada was in the hands of Boabdil, who acted like a mean hypocrite. His heart was always with his people; but when Malaga fell he sent congratulations and presents to Ferdinand, and assured him of h;s fidelity and of his in- tention to pay tribute. Ferdinand received his messenger in grim silence. He knew that the real ruler of the Moor- ish empire was Boabdil's uncle, old Muley el Zagal, who was at Almeria, at the head of a considerable force. Ferdinand left him there while he laid siege to Baza. Baza was so strong a place, and was so stanchly de- fended by the Moors, that the Spaniards beleaguered it for six months before they could reduce it. They would have had to raise the siege for want of food had it not been for the energy of Queen Isabella. The country round the town had been laid bare by the raiders on both sides. It contained nothing to eat. There were no wagons to be .had, and no roads to drive them over if there had been. The army was on the point of starving, when long con- voys of loaded mules were seen winding down the hill- side, and bearing relief. Isabella had bought all the corn in Andalusia, and all the mules. She loaded each mule with as much corn as it could carry, and day after day started off droves of two hundred mules each to the camp. Her husband and his troops were thus saved by her vigor and foresight. 138 A CHILD'S HISTORY OP SPAIN [1488-1492 Not content with victualling the army, the queen re- solved to join it, in order to give heart to her husband, and to see personally to the establishment of field hospi- tals, which were always very near her heart. She jour- neyed from Jaen with a cavalcade of troopers and at- tendants, and rode slowly past the Moorish city with gay banners and pennons, and a splendid retinue of cavaliers, as if she were going to make a holiday. When the Moors saw her pass, they knew that the king was there to stay until the city fell, and the commanding officer sent a messenger to old El Zagal. The white-bearded veteran sat with a scowl on his brow, and said: " How fares it with Baza ?" The messenger handed him a letter, which he read with bowed head. " There is but one G'od," said he, " and Mahomet is his prophet; the people of Baza must submit to the decree of fate." So the city surrendered, and largely through the inter- cession of Isabella no one was sold as a slave, no one lost his property, and the Moors were allowed to go on praying in their old fashion. Then other forts surrendered. One of them was com- manded by an old soldier, who said that his men refused to stand by him, and therefore he could not hold out. Ferdinand offered him gold, but he refused it, saying : " I came not to sell what is not mine, but to yield what fortune has made yours." " But," said Queen Isabella, " can we do nothing for you ?". " You can," said the Moor ; " you can give me your royal word that ray unhappy countrymen, with their wives and children, shall be protected in the peaceable enjoy- ment of their homes and their religion." " We promise it," said the queen. And the high-minded old warrior took the road to Africa. Then Almeria fell, the second city in the Empire of Granada, and El Zagal was taken prisoner. He was set 1488-1492] A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN 139 free, and given an estate to live on. But he thought he would be happier in Africa, and went there. Unhappily he fell into the clutches of the Sultan of Fez, whose exe- cutioner held a basin of molten copper before his eyes ; and blinded him. He spent his last years groping about Fez, in rags and penniless. Then all that remained of the Moorish Empire was the city and plain, or vega, of Granada. Boabdil was there, in the Alhambra, writing cringing letters to Ferdinand who answered none of them hated and cursed by his people as a traitor. Suddenly, in the summer of 1490, a Spanish army appeared in the vega of Granada, which was clothed with a rich crop of fruit and grain. The soldiers ravaged it after their fashion : reaped the wheat, and put the grain in their stores, cut down the fruit-trees, and tore up the vines. The bad work done, Ferdinand summoned Granada to surrender. Boabdil tried to argue with him; Ferdinand would not listen to him or deal with him, but wrote to the officers in command at Granada, demanding the surrender of their arms. With one voice they re- fused. An officer named Muza spoke for them, and said they were ready to die, but they would not surrender. Boabdil, who then once more recovered courage, and said he was loyal to his race, begged to be allowed to lead them against the Spaniards, and they took him into favor once again. The siege lasted over a year, and though there was no general battle, single combats and feats of daring were of daily occurrence. Between the advanced line of the Christians and the walls was an open space. Almost every day some Christian knight or Moorish warrior rode into this space and challenged any horseman on the other side to meet him in a joust of arms. When these duels took place the two armies looked on; it was esteemed un- knightly to interfere. One of the Moorish warriors, named Tarfe, was famous for his personal exploits. In open day he rode so near to 140 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN [1488-1492 the Spanish lines that he flung his lance almost into the royal tent; when it was pulled quivering out of the ground it was found to bear a card with the queen's name on it. Yet Tarfe rode safely back to Granada. A Span- ish cavalier, named Hernan del Pulgar, with a handful of horsemen, rode stealthily at night into the city of Gra- nada, nailed on the door of the chief mosque a placard bearing the words Ave Maria ("Hail, Mary "), galloped furiously through the crowd which tried to stop him, and got safely away. Next day a Moorish warrior of gigantic size appeared before the walls with this very placard tied to his horse's tail. He taunted and jeered the Spaniards till a young hidalgo rode out to meet him. The two cava- liers met with such a shock that their lances were shivered to pieces, and both rolled into the dust. Then the Moor, who was a giant, turned his adversary over on the ground, and drew his poignard to stab him in the throat ; but the young hidalgo, shortening his sword, thrust it through a chink in the Moor's armor straight into his heart. These encounters did not drive the Spaniards away from Granada, and the Moors saw that it was a mere question of time when they must yield from hunger, now that their fields were laid waste. So, after much strife among them- selves, they agreed on terms of surrender in November, 1491, and on January 2d, 1492, the Spaniards marched into the place. Boabdil met the advance party with a face pinched by grief, and handed them the keys of the city. As he turned to look at his walls be burst into tears, and said: " God is great !" His old mother, Ayesha, who had somehow got out of her dungeon, and was spiteful to the last, exclaimed' " You may well weep like a woman for what you could not defend like a man." The Spanish advance-guard quickly raised the banner of the Cross and the flag of Castile and Aragon over the Alhambra, and in the open street the king and queen fell 1488-1492] A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN 141 on their knees to thank God for their victory. The old ballad draws the scene so that you can almost see it: "There was crying in Granada When the sun was going down ; Some calling on the Trinity Some calling on Mahoun. Here passed away the Koran There in the Cross was borne And here was heard the Christian bell, And there the Moorish horn. Here gallants held it little For ladies' sake to die, Or for the prophet's honor, And pride of Soldanry; For here did valor flourish, And deeds of warlike might Ennobled lordly palaces, In which was our delight. The gardens of thy vega I Its fields and blooming bowers ! Woe ! woe ! I see their beauty gone, And scattered all their flowers. No reverence can claim the king That such a land hath lost; On charger never can he ride, Nor be heard among the host; But in some dark and dismal place, Where none his face can see, There, weeping and lamenting, Alone that king should be." Ferdinand promised that the Moors should continue to pray as they chose in their mosques; that their property should not be taken from them; that they should not be taxed more than they had been under their own kings. We shall see how these promises were kept. Boabdil was given a sum of money and a castle. But he was restless. He sold his property and went to Africa. There he was robbed by the sultans, and his children lived to beg their bread. CHAPTER XXI THE LAST OF THE MOORS A.D. 1492-1575 THE Moors of Granada, who were a common-sense people, made no objections to the rule of the Spaniards so long as their religion was not interfered with, and they were al- lowed to pursue their several callings in peace. I dare say they were not sorry to exchange the turbulence of the old Moorish times of strife for the quiet of a government which was strong enough to keep order. But now came to the front in Spain an influence which was destined to work untold mischief the influence of the Church. Three months had not elapsed from the surrender of Granada when Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor of the Papal Church, terrified King Ferdinand into signing a de- cree for the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. The Jews were among the most useful and the richest of the people. They were skilful artificers, enterprising merchants, and liberal citizens. But because they were not Christians the priests insisted on their banishment. The Jews offered the king a bribe of thirty thousand ducats to let them alone. While the king and queen were considering it, Torquemada burst in upon them with a crucifix in his hand, and cried : " Judas Iscariot sold his master for thirty pieces of sil- ver. You would sell him for thirty thousand. Here he is ! Sell him !" And he flung the crucifix on the table. The king and queen yielded, and several hundred thou- sand Jews, some of them old and infirm, some of them I>~ THE DUSK AT GRANADA 149^-15/5] A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN 145 delicate women and children, were driven out of their homes and along the highways by brutal soldiers, to starve in a foreign land just as the Russian Jews have been in our day. They were not allowed to take silver or gold with them. Those who were rich were as badly off as those who were poor. If they halted on the journey, from fatigue or illness, the soldiers prodded them with their sword-points. So they scattered to Africa, to Portu- gal, to Italy, to Holland, and Germany and England, and to this day you can meet descendants of theirs who cherish a tender memory of their ancient home. You can imagine that priests who thus persecuted the Jews were not inclined to be tolerant to the Moors. Fer- dinand, as you remember, had promised the latter that they should be free to pray in their mosques after their fashion. Cardinal Ximenes now told the Moors of Gra- nada that infidels could not be suffered to live in Spain. They must be baptized or go. Numbers of them had no- where to go to, and had trades at their homes. They submitted to be baptized, and consoled themselves by washing off the mark of the holy water when they got back to their houses. Some fled to a mountain range near Granada, and barricaded the passes. There they stood a siege, but could not long hold out against the power of Spain; they surrendered, agreeing to be baptized or to go into exile, not, however, until they had killed the Spanish leader, Aguilar, in battle. Of him and of this expedition of his there is a ballad which says: " Beyond the sands, between the rocks, Where the old cork-tree grows, The path is rough, and mounted men Must singly march and slow; There o'er the path the heathen range Their ambuscade's line, High up they wait for Aguilar As the day begins to shine. 10 146 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN [1492-1575 'Nor knightly valor there avails, Nor skill of horse or spear, For rock on rock comes tumbling down From cliff and cavern drear; Down, down, like driving hail they come, And horse and horsemen die, Like cattle whose despair is dumb When the fierce lightnings fly. "A hundred and a hundred darts Hiss round Aguilar's head; Had Aguilar a thousand hearts, Their blood had all been shed. Faint and more faint he staggers Upon the slippery sod; At last his back is to the earth, He gives his soul to God. " Upon the village green he lay As the moon was shining clear. And all the village damsels To look on him drew near; They stood around him all agaze, Beside the big oak-tree; And much his beauty they did praise, Though mangled sore was he." Then the Moors of Granada submitted in patience. Cardinal Ximenes burned their splendid library of Arabic manuscripts, as the Church was afraid of learning, and shut up the mosques. A number of Moors who refused to re- pudiate their religion were burned at the stake by the Holy Inquisition. And a few years later successors of Ximenes resolved to make life intolerable to the Moriscoes, as the Moors began to be called. They forbade the Moors speaking their own language, and ordered them to speak nothing but Spanish. They forbade their bathing, as that cleanly people were in the habit of doing, and required them to be as dirty as the Spaniards. In order to make sure of this they tore down 1492-1575] A CHILD'S HISTORY. OF SPAIN 147 the baths. These oppressions again aroused the Moors to rebellion, and once more they took to the mountains, where the land, broken by many a torrent bed and many a dry gulch, slopes from the heights where the cattle browse under the shade of pine-trees to the narrow vega, spotted with cornfields and olive groves and vineyards, and again down to the tropical valleys, where the sugar-cane flour- ishes and the air is scented by the pine-apple. Here for two years the Moors held out. The war was one long string of murders and outrages, first on one side and then on the other. How fiercely Moor and Christian hated each other you may guess from what happened in the prison of the Alben- cin. There were a couple of hundred Christian prisoners confined there for various offences. One hundred and ten Moors, made captive in battle, were thrust into the jail. Instantly, with fists and feet and teeth and pocket-knives, the two sets of prisoners fell upon one another. To separ- ate them the governor of the place marched in the guard. But the jailer stopped the guard, saying; " You are not needed. The prison is quiet. All the Morlscoes are dead." The warfare did not cease until the king put his army under the command of Don Juan of Austria, a young man of twenty-two, of whom you will presently hear more. He bade his soldiers give no quarter ; and so, in course of time, the rebellious Moors were wiped out. Most of them were killed; the rest were banished. In the words of the old Arab historian: "The Almighty was not pleased to grant our people victory. They were overcome and slain on all sides, till at last they were driven forth from the land of Andalusia, the which calamity came to pass in our own days. Verily to God belongs land and dominions, and He giveth to whom He doth will." It is said in larger histories than this that three million Moors were driven into exile between 1492 and 1610, when 148 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN [1492-1575 the last of them were sent out of the country. I suppose that this was about one-fifth or one-fourth the entire popu- lation of Spain. And it embraced the most industrious workmen, the most skilled artisans, the best farmers, and the most refined, polished, and learned people in the country. At the time of their banishment Granada produced the finest cloths of wool, silk, and linen that were made in Spain; highly - tempered steel; perfect work in leather, bronze, and copper; elegant designs in embroidery and tracery; and at the same time the farmers of the vega had brought to such perfection the science of fertilizing land, and of developing the uses of water, that their per- formance has not been surpassed, if it has been equalled, to-day. At this same time the Christians of Spain, with the ex- ception of those who had learned from the Moors, were unable to make a fine sword-blade, or a rich silk, or a glow- ing dye, or a carved object in metal. Their farming was as rude as that of the Goths. They had a noble country with a fertile soil and a glorious climate. But they did not know how to turn either to account; the only occupa- tion of which they really knew anything was fighting. Yet the Moors were turned out for the sake of the Chris- tians. The Cross took the place of the Crescent. But at the same time ignorance took the place of learning. Deserts gradually succeeded to smiling cornfields and purple vine- yards. A polite and refined people made way for a race of stupid peasants, who could neither be taught nor made to work. A people who were the leaders of civilization were banished from their homes to make room for a people steeped in sloth and superstition, and who to this day, in the opinion of their leading men, are unfit to be trusted with self-government. CHAPTER XXII THE CONDITION OF SPAIN A.D. 1450-1500 WHEN Ferdinand and Isabella became King and Queen of Spain that country was divided into four States : Cas- tile, which included the old provinces of the North, Galicia, the Asturias and the Basque country, Leon, Old and New Castile, Estremadura, Andalusia, and Murcia; Aragon, which included Catalonia and Valencia; the Moorish king- dom of Granada ; and the independent kingdom of Na- varre. You have heard how Ferdinand conquered Gra- nada. Soon afterwards he annexed Navarre. Castile and Aragon being firmly united, the four States were merged into the kingdom of Spain. It was the home of many races, but thenceforth it constituted but one nationality. The people of Spain were divided into four classes : 1. The nobles, who were of various ranks and grades ; 2. The clergy ; 3. The burghers of cities which held f ueros, or charters, from the kings ; and 4. The common peo- ple. In some provinces there was a fifth class, consisting of slaves prisoners taken in war, captives bought from roaming slave-traders, or peasants belonging to the land they tilled. But the slavery of whites gradually died out, except on war-galleys, which were rowed by slaves a long time after Ferdinand and Isabella. In those days the nobles the highest among whom were called Grandees of Spain possessed vast estates and enor- mous incomes. They lived in castles, with their retainers in towns and villages round them. Some of them were as powerful as kings. The Duke of Infantado could put thir- ty thousand men into the field. The Duke of Alva had 150 A CHILD'S HISTORY OP SPAIN [1450-1500 an income of half a million a year of our money, which would buy as much goods or labor as several millions to- day. The income of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, of whom you have heard, was still larger. The family of Gonsalvo . de Cordova, of whom you will hear presently, was nearly as rich, and so were a dozen others. All these nobles called themselves subjects of the king; but on their own estates they were monarchs of all they surveyed. They paid no taxes, but were bound to lead their fighting men to the king's wars. The clergy were a large and powerful body, with the Archbishop of Toledo, who was called Primate of Spain, at their head. They also paid no taxes, and broad estates were assigned for the support of the several cardinals and archbishops and bishops. The Archbishop of Toledo had three-quarters of a million a year of our money, which was as much as five millions to-day. Many of the priests could afford to live in palaces; some of them had armies of re- tainers, whom they led to the wars. It became the fashion under Ferdinand and Isabella for the head of the Church to be likewise head of the government; thus Cardinal Ximenes ruled Spain in Ferdinand's later years. We should not think it a wise plan to put a bishop or arch- bishop at the head of the Cabinet in Washington; but four hundred years ago in Spain people looked at the thing in a different light. The cities which had fueros or charters had a right to elect members to a Congress or Cortes, which made laws for the cities and the country round about them. I do not find that these laws were binding upon king, nobles, or clergy. But as the burghers had a way of their own of resenting invasions of their liberties by rising in arms, and as, moreover, the men in the cities had enrolled them- selves in a brotherhood for mutual defence, I find that, so long as the Cortes continued to meet, neither king nor no- bles cared to quarrel with them. After a time they fell into disuse, and their meetings ceased. 1450-1500] A CHILD'S HISTORY or SPAIN 151 The common people of Spain muleteers, shepherds, farm laborers, ploughmen, vine - dressers, and the like, in the country, and shoemakers, tailors, blacksmiths, masons, car- penters, servants, and the like, in the cities do. not seem to have enjoyed any rights worth mentioning, except the right of living, when they did not incur the wrath of the Church. They were often robbed by the nobles, and driven into the armies against their will. But when the nobles were not busy robbing people, and there was no war raging, and they did not quarrel with the Church, the com- mon people appear to have led fairly cheerful lives, and to have danced merry boleros and sung tuneful romances on summer evenings. Since the Moorish conquest Spain had made progress. Christians had learned from the Moors their methods of agriculture. They tilled every field that was covered with soil, and watered it from the near-by rivers. Thus all the land was made to yield its increase, and Spain had quantities of fruit and oil and wine to send abroad in ex- change for foreign goods. The forbidding and sunburnt desert over which you will now travel if you go from Madrid to Toledo was then a garden, fed with water from the Tagus. The Moors were as expert breeders of cattle and sheep as they were good farmers. They raised fleet mules which were preferred to horses, and a breed of sheep, called Merinos, which yielded the softest and brightest wool in the world. You will see on some of our pastures sheep of that same Merino breed to-day. I have told you in former chapters of the pi'oducts of the Moorish looms and factories and foundries. They also were copied by the Christians. Thus at the close of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the cities of Spain were numerous and rich. You have heard of Cordova and Seville and Malaga and Granada. Toledo, with its turbulent people, was at the end of the fif- teenth century as splendid and bustling as any. Valladolid, in Castile, which is now a small place of ten thousand 152 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIX [1450-1500 population, could put thirty thousand soldiers in the field. Saragossa was the centre of so rich a country that it was "called "the abundant." Barcelona was a great seaport, Avhose flag was seen in all harbors. Valencia was its rival for the trade of Africa. Salamanca, the home of learning, was crowded with students from all parts of Europe. Burgos was a hive of industry. At that time the Spanish hidalgos were cultured and accomplished gentlemen, as well as valiant warriors. In comparison with Spain, England was a poor, weak, obscure country, peopled by an ignorant race, which at this time was busied in hanging witches, and among whom laborers worked for fourpence a day a country where Jack Cade thought to better matters by turning everything topsy- turvy, and Parliament had nothing better to do than to pro- hibit the importation of flour until it reached a price when it was too dear for the poor to afford it. The increase of wealth and the splendid example of the Moors led to much extravagance in living in the cities of Spain. People lived in houses v;ith mosaic floors, fret- ted arches by way of ceilings, delicately carved windows. They wore clothes of cloth-of-gold and silver, and of silk richly embroidered. Ladies carried priceless gems round their necks and in their hair. The queen herself was not fond of show. When not engaged in affairs of government she spent her time in embroidery and fancy needle-work. A law was passed that no one but nobles should wear silk ; but it was not obeyed. The rich burghers in the cities, like the nobles, gave grand feasts, at which rich food was served on gold and silver plates ; after the banquet the ladies danced in gowns which were worth a fortune, and which were as stiff as if they were made of boards. When a man died another fortune was spent on his funeral. Ferdinand tried to stop this by law, but the priests said he was trying to take the bread out of their mouths, and he gave up his attempt. The king and queen led frugal lives. Isabella never " REMEMBER THAT THOU TOO M1IST DIE 1450-1500] A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN* 155 used a carriage; she travelled on horseback. Both wore plain clothes and ate plain food. Isabella rarely touched wine. But the court did not follow her example. In one thing, however, she was extravagant. Printing had lately been invented. She sent for all the printing- presses and all the printers she could get; so that it is said there were more books printed in Spain during the century which followed the invention of printing than in all the rest of Europe put together. One popular Spanish pastime she could not endure. That was the custom of bull-fighting, which lasts to the present day. In her youthful days she was taken to a bull-fight, and she saw horses gored to death, and the poor bull, after being teased by the cruel picadors, finally stab- bed to death by the keen blade of the matador. As she came out she said she would never see such a spectacle again. She kept her word ; but in this, as in the other case, her people did not imitate her. In one more instance this admirable woman failed to carry her point. When the priests of Castile begged to be allowed to establish the Inquisition to crush the Jews, she objected, though she was a devout Catholic ; but afterwards she yielded to the bullying of her confessors and her bish- ops, and assented to the introduction of the Holy Office in Spain, on the condition that it should be mercifully admin- istered. I wish I could tell you that it was; but I cannot. On the contrary, the cruelties which were practised upon heretics, or persons suspected of being heretics, by the priests of the Inquisition were so horrible that I will not undertake to describe them. You will find them set forth in larger books than this. It is enough here to say that during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella several thousand persons were burned to death after being tortured in the dungeons of the Inquisition, and that probably a still larger number of persons were despoiled of their property in favor of the Church under threats that they would be accused of heresy. CHAPTER XXIII COLUMBUS A.D. 1484-1492 WHILE Ferdinand was fixing his mind on the foolish enterprise of crushing the Moors, a poor sailor was spend- ing his time in trying to attract his attention to a far more sensible undertaking. This was Christopher Columbus. He was a native of Genoa, the son of a wool-carder; at this time about fifty years old, quite gray and bronzed, as seafaring men are, though his blue eye was still clear, and his skin was fair and ruddy. He had spent all his life at sea, from the time he left the college at Pavia, at the age of fourteen. More than once he had been shipwrecked ; once off the coast of Portugal his ship foundered in battle ; he leaped into the waves and caught an oar, with the help of which he swam to shore, which was five or six miles distant. But the dan- ger did not prevent his going to sea again as soon as he could get a ship. At that time there was a craze for adventure at sea. Within a short period the mariner's compass and the astro- labe, which took the place of our quadrant and sextant, had been invented, and with their help seamen were enabled to make voyages far from land. Thus the coasts of Europe, Africa, and parts of Asia had been explored. But noth- ing was known of America. Some people supposed that Asia spread over the greater part of the world, and that it was not very far by sea from China and Tartary to Spain. Many mariners believed that by taking ship at any Western port in Europe, and sailing due westward, the eastern shore of Asia could be reached. This was the notion of 1484-1492] A CHILD S HISTORY OF SPAIN Christopher Columbus, and he had confirmed himself in the belief by studying the maps of the period, which were drawn chiefly from fancy. Columbus was in this mind when he settled at Lisbon, in Portugal, and married. For a whole quarter of a century he made voyages of exploration, one after another some- times sailing to the Northern Seas, where the ice never melts, and sometimes down to the gold coast of Africa, where snow never falls all the time keeping wary THE WORLD AS IT WAS KNOWN IN COLUMBUS S TIME watch of the tides and currents and winds, of the flight of birds, of the drift of weeds, and of the course of fishes, so as to learn the secrets of the great ocean. To the beau- tiful islands lying off the coast of Spain and Portugal, Madeira, the Azores, and the Canary Islands, he made many voyages, studying their shores and their waters, and whenever he found a mariner who had sailed out beyond them into the dark blue sea where the sea-weed grows on the top of the water, and blocks the way for ships, he 158 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN [1484-1492 was never tired of questioning him about what he had seen. At last he made up his mind, and asked King John, of Portugal, to give him a vessel or two to discover the western road to Asia. The king hesitated, consulted his ministers, studied over the maps ; then resolving that if there was any discovery to be made he would make it him- self, and would leave none of the glory of it for Columbus, he despatched a fleet westward. But the ships presently came back, the captains declaiming that they had sailed as far as they dared westward, and had found no land. Columbus heard their report; and, understanding its mean- ing, slipped privately out of Portugal and took refuge in Spain. He had no money and no friends. But a good priest, Juan Perez de Marchena, took him up, fed and clothed him, listened to his plans, and gave him a few coins and a letter to the queen's confessor. The confessor was of opinion that Columbus was crazy. The Duke of Medina Sidonia was like-minded; so were other great men at court. Many priests were inclined to suspect that any such discovery as Columbus planned was contrary to the Bible. Still, as the poor, battered old sailor stuck to his plans, and kept pressing them on the court, the king finally appointed a committee of learned men to consider them, and report to him at their leisure. The committee met at Salamanca. It seems that the committee took six years to make up its mind on the subject. During all this time Columbus who had with him his little son Diego was strained to find bread. Sometimes he served as a soldier in the Spanish armies against the Moors. Sometimes he drew maps, at which business he was skilful, and sold them for a few cents. For two years he kept a book-store at Seville, and young men eager for adventures used to gather there to hear him talk of the rolling sea, of the dangers which beset those who go down to the deep in ships, and of the 1484-H92] A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN 159 gold and gems which were to be gathered in the dirt of the distant countries where the savages lived. At last, in 1491, the committee reported that Columbus's scheme was vain and impracticable. The king thought so too ; so did most of his ministers ; the queen hesitated ; only Cardinal Mendoza, of whom you will hear more pres- ently, and one or two other intelligent priests, thought that Columbus should have a chance to try his experiment. For nearly a year, while King Ferdinand with his army lay before the city of Granada, the debate went on, and the big heart of Columbus almost broke from disappoint- ment and delay. At last, just as Granada surrendered, he gave up hope, and, mounting a horse, he rode slowly away from the camp. He had not gone far when he was overtaken by a mes- senger from the queen's household, who bade him return. As soon as it became known that he was gone, Queen Isabella called a council, and declared that she was for granting the prayer of Columbus. When she was told that it would cost a great deal of money, and that the royal treasury had been emptied by the Moorish war, this glori- ous woman replied : " I will assume the undertaking for my own Crown of Castile ; if there is not money enough in the treasury to meet the expense, I will pawn my jewels." I think you will understand the feelings with which Columbus wrote of this turning-point in his fortunes : "In the midst of general unbelief, God infused into the Queen, my lady, the spirit of intelligence and energy ; while every one else in his ignorance was thinking of the trouble and cost, she approved it and gave it all the help in her power." In a sheltered cove on the shore of the Mediterranean, near the mouth of the River Tinto, is the little village of Palos, which four hundred years ago was larger than it is now. For some misconduct it had been condemned to furnish two ships for two years to the government service. 160 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF SPAIN [1484-14