13. CHAPTER XIII.
Effects of the disasters among the mountains of Malaga.
The people of Antiquera had scarcely recovered
from the tumult of excitement and admiration,
caused by the departure of the gallant band of cavaliers
upon their foray, when they beheld the scattered
wrecks flying for refuge to their walls. Day
after day, and hour after hour, brought some wretched
fugitive, in whose battered plight, and haggard,
wobegone demeanor, it was almost impossible to
recognise the warrior whom they had lately seen to
issue so gaily and gloriously from their gates.
The arrival of the marques of Cadiz, almost alone,
covered with dust and blood, his armor shattered
and defaced, his countenance the picture of despair,
filled every heart with sorrow, for he was greatly
beloved by the people. The multitude asked where
was the band of brothers which had rallied round
him as he went forth to the field; and when they
heard that they had, one by one, been slaughtered at
his side, they hushed their voices, or spake to each
other only in whispers as he passed, gazing at him in
silent sympathy. No one attempted to console him
in so great an affliction, nor did the good marques
speak ever a word, but, shutting himself up, brooded
in lonely anguish over his misfortune. It was only
the arrival of Don Alonzo de Aguilar that gave him
a gleam of consolation, for, amidst the shafts of death
that had fallen so thickly among his family, he rejoiced
to find that his chosen friend and brother in
arms had escaped uninjured.
For several days every eye was turned, in an agony
of suspense, towards the Moorish border, anxiously
looking, in every fugitive from the mountains, for the
lineaments of some friend or relation, whose fate was
yet a mystery. At length every hope and doubt subsided
into certainty; the whole extent of this great
calamity was known, spreading grief and consternation
throughout the land, and laying desolate the
pride and hopes of palaces. It was a sorrow that
visited the marble hall and silken pillow. Stately
dames mourned over the loss of their sons, the joy
and glory of their age; and many a fair cheek was
blanched with wo, that had lately mantled with secret
admiration. “All Andalusia,” says a historian of the
time, “was overwhelmed by a great affliction; there
was no drying of the eyes which wept in her.”[1]
Fear and trembling reigned, for a time, along the
frontier. Their spear seemed broken, their buckler
cleft in twain: every border town dreaded an attack,
and the mother caught her infant to her bosom when
the watch-dog howled in the night, fancying it the
war-cry of the Moor. All, for a time, seemed lost;
and despondency even found its way to the royal
breasts of Ferdinand and Isabella, amidst the splendors
of their court.
Great, on the other hand, was the joy of the Moors,
when they saw whole legions of christian warriors
brought captive into their towns, by rude mountain
peasantry. They thought it the work of Allah in
favor of the faithful. But when they recognised,
among the captives thus dejected and broken down,
some of the proudest of christian chivalry; when
they saw several of the banners and devices of the
noblest houses of Spain, which they had been accustomed
to behold in the foremost of the battle, now
trailed ignominiously through their streets; when, in
short, they witnessed the arrival of the count of Cifuentes,
the royal standard-bearer of Spain, with his
gallant brother Don Pedro de Silva, brought prisoners
into the gates of Granada, there were no bounds
to their exultation. They thought that the days of
their ancient glory were about to return, and that
they were to renew their career of triumph over the
unbelievers.
The christian historians of the time are sorely perplexed
to account for this misfortune; and why so
many christian knights, fighting in the cause of the
holy faith, should thus miraculously, as it were, be
given captive to a handful of infidel boors; for we
are assured, that all this rout and destruction was
effected by five hundred foot and fifty horse, and
those mere mountaineers, without science or discipline.[2]
“It was intended,” observes one historiographer,
“as a lesson to their confidence and vain-glory;
overrating their own prowess, and thinking that so
chosen a band of chivalry had but to appear in the
land of the enemy, and conquer. It was to teach
them that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle
to the strong, but that God alone giveth the victory.”
The worthy father Fray Antonio Agapida, however,
asserts it to be a punishment for the avarice of
the Spanish warriors. They did not enter the kingdom
of the infidels with the pure spirit of christian
knights, zealous only for the glory of the faith, but
rather as greedy men of traffic, to enrich themselves
by vending the spoils of the infidels. Instead of preparing
themselves by confession and communion, and
executing their testaments, and making donations and
bequests to churches and convents, they thought only
of arranging bargains and sales of their anticipated
booty. Instead of taking with them holy monks to
aid them with their prayers, they were followed by
a train of trading men, to keep alive their worldly
and sordid ideas, and to turn what ought to be holy
triumphs into scenes of brawling traffic. Such is
the opinion of the excellent Agapida, in which he is
joined by that most worthy and upright of chroniclers,
the curate of Los Palacios. Agapida comforts
himself, however, with the reflection, that this
visitation was meant in mercy, to try the Castilian
heart, and to extract, from its present humiliation,
the elements of future success, as gold is extracted
from amidst the impurities of earth; and in this reflection
he is supported by the venerable historian
Pedro Abarca, of the society of Jesuits.[3]
