20. CHAPTER XX.
Fufilment of the prophecy of the dervise.—Fate of
Hamet el Zegri.
No sooner was the city delivered up, than the
wretched inhabitants implored permission to purchase
bread for themselves and their children, from
the heaps of grain which they had so often gazed at
wistfully from their walls. Their prayer was granted,
and they issued forth with the famished eagerness
of starving men. It was piteous to behold the struggles
of those unhappy people, as they contended who
first should have their necessities relieved.
“Thus,” says the pious Fray Antonio Agapida,
“thus are the predictions of false prophets sometimes
permitted to be verified, but always to the
confusion of those who trust in them: for the words
of the Moorish nigromancer came to pass, that the
people of Malaga should eat of those heaps of bread;
but they ate in humiliation and defeat, and with sorrow
and bitterness of heart.”
Dark and fierce were the feelings of Hamet el
Zegri, as he looked down from the castle of Gibralfaro,
and beheld the christian legions pouring into
the city, and the standard of the cross supplanting
the crescent on the citadel. “The people of Malaga,”
said he, “have trusted to a man of trade, and he has
trafficked them away; but let us not suffer ourselves
to be bound hand and foot, and delivered up as part
of his bargain. We have yet strong walls around us,
and trusty weapons in our hands. Let us fight until
buried beneath the last tumbling tower of Gibralfaro,
or, rushing down from among its ruins, carry
havoc among the unbelievers, as they throng the
streets of Malaga!”
The fierceness of the Gomeres, however, was
broken. They could have died in the breach, had
their castle been assailed; but the slow advances of
famine subdued their strength without rousing their
passions, and sapped the force both of soul and body.
They were almost unanimous for a surrender.
It was a hard struggle for the proud spirit of
Hamet, to bow itself to ask for terms. Still he trusted
that the valor of his defence would gain him respect
in the eyes of a chivalrous foe. “Ali,” said he,
“has negotiated like a merchant; I will capitulate
as a soldier.” He sent a herald, therefore, to Ferdinand,
offering to yield up his castle, but demanding
a separate treaty.[1]
The Castilian sovereign made a
laconic and stern reply: “He shall receive no terms
but such as have been granted to the community of
Malaga.”
For two days Hamet el Zegri remained brooding
in his castle, after the city was in possession of the
christians; at length, the clamors of his followers
compelled him to surrender. When the broken
remnant of this fierce African garrison descended
from their cragged fortress, they were so worn by
watchfulness, famine, and battle, yet carried such a
lurking fury in their eyes, that they looked more like
fiends than men. They were all condemned to slavery,
excepting Abrahen Zenete. The instance of
clemency which he had shown in refraining to harm
the Spanish striplings, on the last sally from Malaga,
won him favorable terms. It was cited as a magnanimous
act by the Spanish cavaliers, and all admitted,
that though a Moor in blood, he possessed the christian
heart of a Castilian hidalgo.
[2]
As to Hamet el Zegri, on being asked what moved
him to such hardened obstinacy, he replied, “When I
undertook my command, I pledged myself to fight in
defence of my faith, my city, and my sovereign, until
slain or made prisoner; and depend upon it, had I
had men to stand by me, I should have died fighting,
instead of thus tamely surrendering myself without a
weapon in my hand.”
“Such,” says the pious Fray Antonio Agapida,
“was the diabolical hatred and stiff-necked opposition
of this infidel to our holy cause. But he was
justly served by our most Catholic and high-minded
sovereign, for his pertinacious defence of the city;
for Ferdinand ordered that he should be loaded with
chains, and thrown into a dungeon.”[3]
