University of Virginia Library

21. CHAPTER XXI.
How the Castilian sovereigns took possession of the city
of Malaga, and how King Ferdinand signalized himself
by his skill in bargaining with the inhabitants for
their ransom.

One of the first cares of the conquerors, on entering
Malaga, was to search for christian captives.
Nearly sixteen hundred men and women were found,
and among them were persons of distinction. Some
of them had been ten, fifteen, and twenty years in
captivity. Many had been servants to the Moors, or
laborers on public works, and some had passed their
time in chains and dungeons. Preparations were
made to celebrate their deliverance as a christian
triumph. A tent was erected not far from the city,
and furnished with an altar and all the solemn decorations
of a chapel. Here the king and queen waited
to receive the christian captives. They were assembled
in the city, and marshalled forth in piteous procession.
Many of them had still the chains and
shackles on their legs; they were wasted with famine,
their hair and beards overgrown and matted, and
their faces pale and haggard from long confinement.
When they beheld themselves restored to liberty,
and surrounded by their countrymen, some stared
wildly about as if in a dream, others gave way to
frantic transports, but most of them wept for joy.

All present were moved to tears, by so touching a
spectacle. When the procession arrived at what is
called the Gate of Granada, it was met by a great
concourse from the camp, with crosses and pennons,
who turned and followed the captives, singing hymns
of praise and thanksgiving. When they came in
presence of the king and queen, they threw themselves
on their knees and would have kissed their
feet, as their saviors and deliverers; but the sovereigns
prevented such humiliation, and graciously
extended to them their hands. They then prostrated
themselves before the altar, and all present joined
them in giving thanks to God for their liberation
from this cruel bondage. By orders of the king and
queen, their chains were then taken off, and they were
clad in decent raiment, and food was set before them.
After they had ate and drunk, and were refreshed
and invigorated, they were provided with money
and all things necessary for their journey, and were
sent joyfully to their homes.

While the old chroniclers dwell with becoming
enthusiasm on this pure and affecting triumph of
humanity, they go on, in a strain of equal eulogy, to
describe a spectacle of a far different nature. It so
happened, that there were found in the city twelve
of those renegado christians who had deserted to the
Moors, and conveyed false intelligence, during the
siege: a barbarous species of punishment was inflicted
upon them, borrowed, it is said, from the Moors,
and peculiar to these wars. They were tied to stakes
in a public place, and horsemen exercised their skill

in transpiercing them with pointed reeds, hurled at
them while careering at full speed, until the miserable
victims expired beneath their wounds. Several
apostate Moors, also, who, having embraced christianity,
had afterwards relapsed into their early faith,
and had taken refuge in Malaga from the vengeance
of the Inquisition, were publicly burnt. “These,”
says an old Jesuit historian, exultingly, “these were
the tilts of reeds and the illuminations most pleasing
for this victorious festival, and for the Catholic piety
of our sovereigns!”[1]

When the city was cleansed from the impurities
and offensive odors which had collected during the
siege, the bishops and other clergy who accompanied
the court, and the choir of the royal chapel, walked
in procession to the principal mosque, which was
consecrated, and entitled Santa Maria de la Incarnacion.
This done, the king and queen entered the
city, accompanied by the grand cardinal of Spain,
and the pricipal nobles and cavaliers of the army,
and heard a solemn mass. The church was then
elevated into a cathedral, and Malaga was made a
bishopric, and many of the neighboring towns were
comprehended in its diocese. The queen took up
her residence in the Alcazaba, in the apartments of
her valiant treasurer, Ruy Lopez, from whence she

had a view of the whole city; but the king established
his quarters in the warrior castle of Gibralfaro.

And now came to be considered the disposition
of the Moorish prisoners. All those who were strangers
in the city, and had either taken refuge there, or
had entered to defend it, were at once considered
slaves. They were divided into three lots: one was
set apart for the service of God, in redeeming christian
captives from bondage, either in the kingdom of
Granada or in Africa; the second lot was divided
among those who had aided either in field or cabinet,
in the present siege, according to their rank; the third
was appropriated to defray, by their sale, the great
expenses incurred in the reduction of the place. A
hundred of the Gomeres were sent as presents to
Pope Innocent VIII., and were led in triumph
through the streets of Rome, and afterwards converted
to christianity. Fifty Moorish maidens were
sent to the queen Joanna of Naples, sister to king
Ferdinand, and thirty to the queen of Portugal. Isabella
made presents of others to the ladies of her
household, and of the noble families of Spain.

Among the inhabitants of Malaga were four hundred
and fifty Moorish Jews, for the most part
women, speaking the Arabic language, and dressed
in the Moresco fashion. These were ransomed by
a wealthy Jew of Castile, farmer-general of the royal
revenues derived from the Jews of Spain. He agreed
to make up, within a certain time, the sum of twenty
thousand doblas, or pistoles of gold; all the money
and jewels of the captives being taken in part payment.

They were sent to Castile, in two armed
galleys.

As to the great mass of Moorish inhabitants, they
implored that they might not be scattered and sold
into captivity, but might be permitted to ransom
themselves by an amount paid within a certain time.
Upon this, king Ferdinand took the advice of certain
of his ablest counsellors: they said to him, “If you
hold out a prospect of hopeless captivity, the infidels
will throw all their gold and jewels into wells and
pits, and you will lose the greater part of the spoil;
but if you fix a general rate of ransom, and receive
their money and jewels in part payment, nothing will
be destroyed. The king relished greatly this advice;
and it was arranged that all the inhabitants should
be ransomed at the general rate of thirty doblas or
pistoles in gold for each individual, male or female,
large or small; that all their gold, jewels, and other
valuables, should be received immediately in part
payment of the general amount, and that the residue
should be paid within eight months; that if any of
the number, actually living, should die in the interim,
their ransom should nevertheless be paid. If, however,
the whole of the amount were not paid at the
expiration of the eight months, they should all be
considered and treated as slaves.

The unfortunate Moors were eager to catch at the
least hope of future liberty, and consented to these
hard conditions. The most rigorous precautions were
taken to exact them to the uttermost. The inhabitants
were numbered by houses and families, and

their names taken down; their most precious effects
were made up into parcels, and sealed and inscribed
with their names; and they were ordered to repair
with them to certain large corrales or inclosures adjoining
the Alcazaba, which were surrounded by
high walls and overlooked by watch-towers, to which
places the cavalgadas of christian captives had usually
been driven, to be confined until the time of sale, like
cattle in a market. The Moors were obliged to leave
their houses one by one; all their money, necklaces,
bracelets, and anklets of gold, pearl, coral, and precious
stones, were taken from them at the threshold,
and their persons so rigorously searched that they
carried off nothing concealed.

Then might be seen old men and helpless women,
and tender maidens, some of high birth and gentle
condition, passing through the streets, heavily burthened,
towards the Alcazaba. As they left their
homes, they smote their breasts, and wrung their
hands, and raised their weeping eyes to heaven in
anguish; and this is recorded as their plaint: “Oh
Malaga! city so renowned and beautiful! where now
is the strength of thy castles, where the grandeur of
thy towers? Of what avail have been thy mighty
walls, for the protection of thy children? Behold
them driven from thy pleasant abodes, doomed to
drag out a life of bondage in a foreign land, and to
die far from the home of their infancy! What will
become of thy old men and matrons, when their gray
hairs shall be no longer reverenced? What will become
of thy maidens, so delicately reared and ten

derly cherished, when reduced to hard and menial
servitude? Behold, thy once happy families are scattered
asunder, never again to be united; sons are
separated from their fathers, husbands from their
wives, and tender children from their mothers: they
will bewail each other in foreign lands, but their
lamentations will be the scoff of the stranger. Oh
Malaga! city of our birth! who can behold thy desolation,
and not shed tears of bitterness?”[2]

When Malaga was completely secured, a detachment
was sent against two fortresses near the sea,
called Mixas and Osuna, which had frequently harassed
the christian camp. The inhabitants were
threatened with the sword, unless they instantly surrendered.
They claimed the same terms that had
been granted to Malaga, imagining them to be freedom
of person and security of property. Their claim
was granted; they were transported to Malaga with
all their riches, and, on arriving there, were overwhelmed
with consternation at finding themselves
captives. “Ferdinand,” observes Fray Antonio
Agapida, “was a man of his word; they were shut
up in the inclosure at the Alcazaba with the people
of Malaga, and shared their fate.”

The unhappy captives remained thus crowded in
the court-yards of the Alcazaba, like sheep in a fold,
until they could be sent by sea and land to Seville.
They were then distributed about in city and country,
each christian family having one or more to feed

and maintain as servants, until the term fixed for
the payment of the residue of the ransom should expire.
The captives had obtained permission that
several of their number should go about among the
Moorish towns of the kingdom of Granada, collecting
contributions to aid in the purchase of their liberties;
but these towns were too much impoverished
by the war, and engrossed by their own distresses,
to lend a listening ear: so the time expired without
the residue of the ransom being paid, and all the
captives of Malaga, to the number, as some say, of
eleven, and others of fifteen thousand, became slaves!
“Never,” exclaims the worthy Fray Antonio Agapida,
in one of his usual bursts of zeal and loyalty,
“never has there been recorded a more adroit and
sagacious arrangement than this made by the Catholic
monarch, by which he not only secured all the
property and half of the ransom of these infidels, but
finally got possession of their persons into the bargain.
This truly may be considered one of the greatest
triumphs of the pious and politic Ferdinand, and as
raising him above the generality of conquerors, who
have merely the valor to gain victories, but lack the
prudence and management necessary to turn them
to account.”