IX.
THE PRIME MINISTER.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ANCIENT KORAN CASE. (_Escurial Library._)]
Abd-er-Rahman III. was the last great Sultan of Cordova, of the family of the Omeyyads. His son, Hakam II., was a bookworm, and although bookworms are very useful in their proper place, they seldom make great rulers. A king cannot be too highly educated; he may know everything under the sun, and, like several of the Cordovan Sultans, he may employ his leisure in music and poetry; but he must not bury himself in his library, or care more for ma.n.u.scripts than for campaigns, or prefer choice bookbinding to binding up the sore places of his subjects. Yet this was what Hakam did. He was not a weak man, or at all regardless of his great responsibilities; but he was too much absorbed in his studies to care about the glories of war; and his other delight, which consisted in building, was so far akin to his studious nature that it involved artistic tastes, which are often allied to those of literature. Hakam"s peaceful, studious temperament did no great harm to the State. He was son enough of the Great Khalif to lead his armies against the Christians of Leon when they did not carry out their treaties; and so overwhelming was the awe that his father had inspired, so universal the sentiment of his crushing power, that the Christian princes of the north submitted to Hakam"s interference with their affairs, and one of them even came to Cordova, and with many abject genuflexions implored the aid of the Sultan to restore him to his throne. Peace was soon signed between all the parties, and Hakam had leisure to collect his famous library. He sent agents to all parts of the East to buy rare ma.n.u.scripts, and bring them back to Cordova. His representatives were constantly searching the booksellers" shops at Cairo and Damascus and Baghdad for rare volumes for the Sultan"s library. When the book was not to be bought at any price, he would have it copied; and sometimes he would even hear of a book which was only in the author"s brain, and would send him a handsome present, and beg him to send the first copy to Cordova. By such means he gathered together no fewer than four hundred thousand books, and this at a time when printing was unknown, and every copy had to be painfully transcribed in the fine clear hand of the professional copyist. Not only did he possess all these volumes, but, unlike many collectors, he is said to have read them all, and even to have annotated them. So learned was he that his marginal notes were greatly prized by scholars of after times, and the destruction of a great part of his library by the Berbers was a serious loss to Arab literature.
It was possible for one successor of the Great Khalif to rest upon his father"s laurels, and enjoy his studious tranquillity, while the enemy without was watching for an opportunity of renewing his attacks; but two such sovereigns would undo the great work which Abd-er-Rahman had accomplished, and bring the Cordovan empire tumbling down to the ground again. Hakam II. only reigned fourteen years, and his son, Hisham II., was a boy of twelve when he ascended the throne. What the young Sultan might have been, had he been allowed fair play, no one can say; but it is recorded that he exhibited many signs of intelligence and sound judgment in his childhood, and showed some promise of following in the brilliant steps of his grandfather. Hakam"s easy-going scholar"s rule had, however, deprived his son and successor of any chance of real power. While the student Sultan was anxiously collating a ma.n.u.script, or giving directions to a copyist or bookbinder, the great officers of the State were gradually attaining a degree of authority which Abd-er-Rahman III. would have instantly checked. The ladies of the Sultan"s harim also began to exercise an influence upon the government of the country.
Abd-er-Rahman built a city to please his wife, but he would have been very much astonished if Ez-Zahra had ventured to dictate to him who was to be the prefect of police. When Hakam died, however, the harim influence was very strong, and the Sultana Aurora, mother of the young Khalif Hisham, was perhaps the most important person in the State. There was one, however, a favourite of hers, who was destined soon to become even more influential. This was a young man called Ibn-Aby-Amir, or the "Son of the Father of Amir," but whom (since this is rather a roundabout name) we shall call by the t.i.tle he afterwards adopted, when he had won many victories over the Christians--Almanzor, which means "the victorious by the grace of G.o.d." Almanzor started in life as an insignificant student at the university of Cordova, where his father was known as a learned lawyer of good but not influential family. The young man, however, had no intention of restricting his ambition to the modest elevation which his father had attained. While still a student he dreamed of power, and confidently predicted that one day he would be master of Andalusia; he even asked his schoolfellows--for they were little more than boys--what posts they would prefer to have when he came to power, and it is worth noticing that when that event came to pa.s.s he did not forget his promises. His career is an interesting example of what pluck, talent, and selfishness could do in a Moslem State, where the road to power was open to genius, however unpromising the beginnings. Almanzor, who was at first merely a professional letter-writer to the court servants, ingratiated himself with the Grand Chamberlain, who exercised the functions which would nowadays be held by a Prime Minister, and in due course he was appointed to some small offices about the court. Here his charm of manner and skilful flatteries gained him the favour of the ladies of the royal harim, and especially of Aurora, who fell in love with the brilliant young man. Step by step, by dint of paying his court to the princesses, and making them magnificent presents (for which he had sometimes to draw upon public funds), he rose to higher offices; and by the age of thirty-one he enjoyed a comfortable plurality of posts, including that of superintendent of the property of the heir-apparent, a judgeship or two, and the office of commander of a division of the city guard.
Everybody was charmed with his courtesy, his prodigal generosity, and the kindness with which he helped the unfortunate. He had already succeeded in attaching to himself a large number of persons, some of whom were of very high rank, when the death of the Khalif Hakam placed Aurora in a position of great importance, as mother of the boy Khalif, and gave Almanzor the opportunity he needed of making his power felt.
The two worked together, and after establishing the child Hisham on the throne, which was only effected by the murder of a rival claimant, he quickly suppressed the conspiracy of the palace "Slavs," who would have nothing to say to the accession of Hisham. The head of the government was Mus-hafy, the chamberlain who had helped Almanzor to climb the first rung of the ladder of power; and his junior readily joined him in his policy. The repression of the Slavs, many of whom were now banished, made the two officials very popular with the people of Cordova, who cordially hated the foreign mercenaries. But this alliance was only for a time: as soon as he saw his way to get rid of the chamberlain, Almanzor was determined to do so without scruple. The first thing, however, was to increase his own popularity. An occasion immediately happened, which the young official boldly seized. The Christians were again becoming overweening on the northern marches, and the Chamberlain Mus-hafy, being no soldier, did not know how to cope with their aggressions. Almanzor, who had been a judge and an inspector, was no more a soldier than the chamberlain; but he came of a sound old stock, and his ancestor had been one of the few Arabs who had accompanied Tarik and his Berbers in the first invasion of Spain. Without a moment"s hesitation or self-distrust, he volunteered to lead the army against the Christians; and so successful was the raid he made upon Leon, and so liberal was his _largesse_ to the soldiery, that he returned to Cordova, not only triumphant--a civilian general--but also the idol of the army.
A second campaign was undertaken against the Christians of the north, in which the generalship was really done by Ghalib, the commander of the frontier forces, a brave officer, whom Almanzor adroitly made his friend. Ghalib protested so warmly that the victories were the fruit of the young civilian"s talents, and vaunted his sagacity so highly, that the court and people came to believe that there lay a military genius under the cloak of the ex-lawyer--as, indeed, there was. Strengthened by this series of successes, and by Ghalib"s support, Almanzor next ousted the son of the chamberlain from the post of prefect of Cordova, and took his place; and so admirably did he exert his authority, that never had the city been so orderly or the law so justly administered. Even his own son was beaten, till he died, because he had transgressed. His father, like Junius Brutus, allowed no exceptions in the execution of the law.
By this policy he added to his laurels; he had already won over the army and pleased the populace, and now he had won the favour of all law-abiding citizens. The time had come for a great stroke of diplomacy. He played the chamberlain off against Ghalib so skilfully, that he widened the breach that already existed between the scarred man of arms and the nerveless clerk who held the functions of Prime Minister, and by inducing the former to throw over an engagement he was making with the chamberlain for an alliance between their families, and to give his daughter to Almanzor instead, he gave the last blow to the old minister. In 978, only two years after the death of Hakam, Almanzor had played his cards so ably, that he was in a position to accuse Mus-hafy of peculation--not without ample reason--and have him arrested, tried, and condemned. For five years the once powerful chamberlain led a wretched life at the heels of Almanzor, and then he died in prison, poisoned probably by his conqueror, in a state of utter dest.i.tution, covered only by an old tattered cloak of the jailor. Such was the fate of all who came between Almanzor and his ambition. The chamberlain, from the summit of glory and power, when thousands would come on bended knee to beg his favour, and when even an ex-king of Leon had sought humbly to kiss his hand, had been reduced to want and degradation by a young upstart whose insignificant origin had not crushed his genius.
That same day on which the chamberlain was disgraced, Almanzor stepped into his place. He was now at the height of power, and enjoyed the position of virtual ruler of all Mohammedan Spain. The government of Andalusia consisted of the Khalif in council; but Almanzor had buried the Khalif in his seraglio; and as for the Council of Vizirs who should advise him concerning affairs of State, Almanzor virtually united it in his own person. From his palace in the suburbs he ruled the whole kingdom; letters and proclamations were issued in his name; he was prayed for from the pulpits and commemorated on the coinage; and he even wore robes of gold tissue woven with his name, such as kings only were wont to wear. He was not, however, safe from the attacks of his enemies.
Ambition brings its own dangers, and those who have been trampled upon are apt to turn and avenge themselves. Such was the case with Almanzor.
One of the "Slavs," whom he had summarily deposed when they were planning a change in the succession, made an attempt to a.s.sa.s.sinate him; but it failed, and its author, along with a number of influential persons who had abetted the conspiracy, was arrested, condemned, and crucified.
In Cordova Almanzor was now supreme, for the young Khalif showed no symptoms of rebelling against the tutelage to which he was subjected, and the queen of the harim, Aurora, was still the great minister"s friend. One man only could pretend to any sort of equality with Almanzor, and this was Ghalib, his father-in-law. The army admired Almanzor, and wondered at his daring in taking the command of campaigns against the Christians without military experience; but they loved and adored Ghalib, as a type of the true warrior, bred to arms, and unconquerable in personal prowess. Ghalib was therefore a formidable rival, and Ghalib must be removed. The Prime Minister set about this task with his usual quiet determination. Whatever he undertook he carried out with the same immovable composure and iron will. A proof of his character was shown very strikingly one day, when he was seated with the Council of Vizirs, who formed the Cabinet of the Moorish government.
They were discussing some public question, when a smell of burnt flesh rose in the chamber, and it was discovered that the minister"s leg was being cauterized with red-hot iron while he was calmly debating the affairs of State! Such a man would find little difficulty in disposing of any obstacle--even General Ghalib. He laid his plans carefully, and they never failed. When his measures were a little too strong to be immediately approved by the people, he always had a plan ready for restoring the mob to acquiescence. Thus, when the revolt of several leading men had culminated in the attempted a.s.sa.s.sination already mentioned, he perceived that he had enemies among the theological and legal cla.s.ses, and he lost no time in making his peace with them.
Summoning a meeting of the chief doctrinal authorities, he asked them to make a list of those works on philosophy which they considered dangerous and heretical. The Moslems of Spain were famous for their rigid orthodoxy, and the philosophers received very harsh treatment from them.
They soon decided upon what the Roman Catholic Church calls an "Index Expurgatorius," or list of condemned books, and Almanzor forthwith had the proscribed works publicly burnt. By this simple means, although really a man of broad views and perfectly tolerant of philosophical speculation, he succeeded in making himself the champion of orthodoxy; the theologians conspired no more against him.[24]
A man so fertile in expedients would not find much difficulty in getting rid of Ghalib. He first began a series of army reforms, by which he reduced the influence of individual commanders and gained for himself the devotion which had previously been bestowed upon captains of divisions. This he accomplished by drawing his recruits from Africa and from among the Christians of the north, who were of course without any prejudice in favour of any particular Moslem leader, and soon became attached to Almanzor, when they understood his liberality, and were convinced by repeated proofs of his military genius. He was a stern commander, and had been known to cut a man"s head off with the culprit"s own sword, because the same weapon had been seen gleaming in the dressed ranks when it should have been in its scabbard. But while a martinet in matters of drill and discipline, he was a father to his soldiers so long as they fought well and maintained order. His influence was unbounded.
Once, when he sat in camp and saw his men in panic, running in, with the Christians at their heels, he threw himself from his throne, flung his helmet away, and sat down in the dust. The soldiers understood the despairing gesture of their general, and, suddenly turning about, fell upon the Christians, routed them, and pursued them even into the streets of Leon. Moreover, no one could lead them to such vast stores of booty as the man who made more than fifty successful campaigns against the princes of the north. The army thus formed of new levies became devoted to their master, and Ghalib and his veterans of the frontier were speedily beaten; Ghalib himself died in an engagement. One other leader, Ja"far, the Prince of Zab, threatened the peace of Almanzor by his extreme popularity with the troops; and he was presently invited to the minister"s hall, made very drunk, and a.s.sa.s.sinated on his way home. This was by no means a solitary instance of Almanzor"s treachery and bloodguiltiness; such acts deprive him of the t.i.tle of hero to which his many brilliant qualities almost attain, and it is impossible to like him. Yet, with all his sternness and unscrupulousness, Almanzor brought Andalusia to a pitch of glory such as even the great Khalif, Abd-er-Rahman III., had hardly contemplated. While keeping such hostile factions as remained in Cordova tranquil and powerless; whilst conciliating the people by making splendid additions to the great mosque of Cordova, when he found that they were beginning to grow indignant at the seclusion in which their young Khalif was kept, and were listening to the insinuations of Aurora and the palace party, who had grown tired or jealous of Almanzor; whilst overawing the Khalif himself by his personal influence; whilst keeping a watchful eye, that nothing escaped, upon every department of the administration, and devoting no little time to the cultivation of literature and poetry--amid all these various employments, this indefatigable man waged triumphant war in Africa and spread the dominion of the Khalif along the Barbary coast; and twice a year, in spring and autumn, led his troops, as a matter of course, against the Christians of Leon and Castile. Like a man of culture, he took his books along with his sword--his books were the poets who always accompanied his campaigns. Never was a general so constantly victorious.
Supported by his hardy foreigners, and also by many Christians who were attracted by his pay and the sure prospect of booty, he carried fire and sword through the lands of the north. He captured Leon, and razed its ma.s.sive walls and towers to the ground; he seized Barcelona; and, worst of all, he even ventured into the pa.s.ses of Galicia, and levelled to the ground the splendid church of Santiago de Campostella, which was the focus of countless pilgrimages and almost formed the Kaaba of Europe.
The shrine of St. James, however, where numerous miracles attested the presence of the saint"s relics, was spared. It is said that when the conqueror entered the deserted city he found of all its inhabitants but a solitary monk, who still prayed before the holy shrine. "What doest thou here?" demanded Almanzor. "I am at my prayers," replied the old monk. His life was immediately spared, and a guard was set round the tomb to protect him and it from the violence of the soldiery, who proceeded to destroy everything else in the city. Almanzor well deserved his t.i.tle of "Victorious," which was a.s.sumed after one of these campaigns. So long as his armies made their half-yearly expeditions, the Christian princes were paralysed, and Leon and the neighbouring country became a mere tributary province of the kingdom of Cordova. Castile, Barcelona, and Navarre were repeatedly defeated. He had taken the very capitals--Leon, Pamplona, Barcelona, and even Santiago de Campostella.
Once he had brought the King of Navarre to his knees simply because the uncompromising Minister learned that there remained one captive Moslem woman in his kingdom. She was instantly delivered up, and many apologies were tendered for the inadvertence. Another time Almanzor found himself and his army cut off by the Christians, who had occupied an impregnable position in his rear, and barred his return to Cordova. Nothing daunted, he ordered his troops to foray the country round about, and collect materials for sheds, and implements of husbandry. Soon the Christians, who dared not attack, but believed they held the Moslems in their grasp, perceived them deliberately setting up barracks, and contentedly tilling the soil and preparing for the various operations of agriculture. Their astonished inquiries were answered by the cool reply, "We do not think it is worth while to go home, as the next campaign will begin almost immediately; so we are making ourselves comfortable for the interval!"
Filled with consternation at the prospect of a permanent Moslem occupation, the Christians not only abandoned their strong position and allowed the enemy to go scot free, laden with booty, but even supplied them with baggage mules to carry off the spoils!
Almanzor, however, though invincible by man, was not proof against death. After a last victorious campaign against Castile, he was seized with mortal illness, and died at Medinaceli. The relief of the Christians is expressed in the simple comment of the monkish annalist: "In 1002 died Almanzor, and was buried in h.e.l.l."
[Ill.u.s.tration]
X.
THE BERBERS IN POWER.
The best const.i.tuted countries will occasionally fall into anarchy when the will that has guided them is removed; and this is one of the strong arguments of those who hold that a State is best governed by the ma.s.s of its people. Keep a people in leading strings, it is said, and the moment the strings break, or are worn out, the people will not know where to go. The theory, however, is only a general statement of an obvious truth, and its application depends greatly upon the character of the people. Some nations seem always to need leading strings, and none has yet become absolutely independent of the guidance of a dominant mind; nor would such independence be desirable, unless a dead level of mediocrity be our ideal of a State. Andalusia, at all events, could not dispense with her leaders; and the instant her leader died, down fell the State. When "great Caesar fell," then "I and you and all of us fell down," not so much for sympathy as incapacity. The multiplicity of mutually hostile parties and factions made anything resembling a settled const.i.tution impossible in the dominion of the Moors. Only a strong hand could restrain the animosity of the opposing creeds and races in Andalusia; and those who have considered the character and history of Ireland, and the irreconcilable enmity which prevails between the north and the south in that island of factions, will allow that the Arabs were not the only people who found mixed races and religions impossible to govern with the smoothness of a h.o.m.ogeneous nation.
The history of Andalusia, so far as we have told it, has been a series of ups and downs. First we saw a magnificent raid, led by born soldiers, ending in an unexpected conquest. Hardly was the peninsula won, when the jealousies and divisions of the various elements that made up the invading host bade fair to destroy the harvest just reaped by the sword.
Then the strong man, the born king, appeared in the person of the first Abd-er-Rahman, and Andalusia once more became, outwardly, one dominion.
"O King, live for ever!" was the conventional form of address to the Persian monarch, and one is tempted to think that its realization might be the solution of all political troubles, provided the right king was chosen for immortality. The first king of Andalusia was naturally not immortal; and the consequence of his death was what always happens when a strong repressing force is withdrawn: the people fell again into civil war and anarchy. Yet again the G.o.d-gifted king came to rescue the nation. The Great Khalif imposed law and order throughout his dominions, beat back the invader, and trod the rebel under foot. For fifty years Andalusia was a paradise of peace and prosperity; had the third Abd-er-Rahman been immortal she might have been peaceful to this day, and we should never have heard of the persecutions of Jews and Moors, of the terrible work of the Inquisition, or even (to come to very small things) the Carlists. It is a pity that such dreams cannot be true. But the Great Khalif had not left the country unprovided with a leader. A king had saved Spain twice, and now it was a prime minister who held the State together. Almanzor, the unconquerable minister, was able to make his masterful will felt to every corner of the peninsula; but Almanzor, too, was mortal, and when he died, and (as the monk piously hoped) "was buried in h.e.l.l," the land which owed him her prosperity and wealth, her perfect orderliness and security, became a prey to all the hostile forces which only his iron hand could repress. For eighty years Andalusia was torn to pieces by jealous chiefs, aggressive and quarrelsome tyrants, Moors, Arabs, Slavs, and Spaniards; and though many of the old roots of dissension had been plucked up by time, and the jealousies that arose from memories of tribal glories were sometimes forgotten because men had lost their pedigrees, there were enough rivalries, personal, racial, and religious, to make Andalusia as much a h.e.l.l upon earth as even the monkish chronicler could have desired for a burial-place for Almanzor.
For six years after the Prime Minister"s death, his son Muzaffar maintained the unity of the kingdom. Then followed the deluge of greedy adventurers, rival khalifs, and impudent pretenders. The Spaniards, who formed after all the bulk of the population in which they were merged, loved to be ruled by a king; they liked a dynasty, and were proud of the memories of the great Omeyyad house. The rule of a minister, however just and good, was not their idea of government; the king must rule by himself. So they rebelled against the authority of a second son of Almanzor, who had provoked them by publicly putting in his claim to succeed to the throne, and they insisted on the Khalif taking the reins of State into his own weak hands. The unfortunate Hisham, thus suddenly dragged out of the seclusion of his harim, where he had been a happy prisoner for thirty years, in vain implored the people not to demand impossibilities of him; they would have him rule, and when it became clear to everybody that the feeble middle-aged man was as helpless as an infant, they made him abdicate, and set up another member of his family in his place. This was really the end of the Omeyyad dynasty of Andalusia. Khalif after khalif was set up for the next twenty years; one was the puppet of the Cordovans, another was the puppet of the Slav guards; a third was the puppet of the Berbers; a fourth was a sort of figure-head to mask the ambition of the ruler of Seville; but all were puppets of some faction, and had no vestige of real authority. The throne-room in the palace became the scene of murder after murder, as khalif succeeded khalif. One poor wretch hid himself in the oven of the bath-room, till he was discovered, dragged out, and butchered before the eyes of his successor, whose turn was not far off. Hisham II., the poor creature who had been kept in a state of perpetual infancy by Almanzor and the queen-mother Aurora, was forced to play his part in the raree-show. He was again set up, and again pulled down; and the silken chains of his imprisonment among the beauties of his harim were exchanged for the gloomy walls of a real dungeon. What became of him afterwards is unknown. His women said that he had contrived to escape, and had taken refuge in Asia, or at Mekka. The throne possessed few attractions for the miserable Khalif, who loved seclusion and pious duties; and he must have known that his presence in Andalusia gave a rallying cry to ambitious partisans, and could only lead to further strife. It was natural that he should prefer to end his days in the exercise of devotion at the holy temple of Islam. An impostor, who closely resembled Hisham in person, set himself up as the Khalif at Seville, and was acknowledged as a convenient puppet by the powerful lord of that city; but the real Hisham had disappeared for ever, and no one heard of him again.
How pitiful was the fate of the unhappy Omeyyads, who allowed the ferocious Moors, or Slavs, in turn, to use them as pieces on their chess-board, may be seen from what happened at the deposition of the third Hisham. By order of the chief men of the city, this mild and humane prince was dragged with his family to a dismal vault attached to the great mosque of Cordova. Here, in total darkness, half frozen with the cold and damp, and poisoned by the foul air of the place, the wretched Khalif sat, holding his only child, a little girl, to his breast, while his wives hung round him in scanty clothing, weeping, shivering, and dishevelled. They had been long without food, and their inhuman jailers had left them unnoticed for hours. The sheykhs then came to announce to Hisham the decision of the council which had been hastily summoned to debate upon his fate; but the poor Khalif, who was trying to restore a little warmth to the child in his arms, interrupted them: "Yes! yes! I will submit to their decision, whatever it is; but for G.o.d"s sake get me some bread; this poor child is dying of hunger."
The sheykhs were touched--they had not designed such torments--and the bread was brought. Then they began again: "Sire, they have determined that you shall be taken at daybreak to be imprisoned in such and such a fortress." "So be it," answered the Khalif; "I have only one favour to ask: permit us to have a lantern, for the darkness of this dismal place appals us." The lord spiritual and temporal of the Mussulmans of Spain had fallen to such straits that he had to beg for bread and a candle.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GIRALDA AT SEVILLE.]
Such scenes as this were now frequent in Cordova. Each revolution brought its fresh crop of horrors. The people of Cordova, who had greatly increased in numbers, had also nourished those independent sentiments which the immense development of trade and manual industry, and the consequent creation of a prosperous artisan cla.s.s, generally promote; and when they overturned Almanzor"s dynasty, the mob broke out in the usual manner of mobs, and wreaked their vengeance by pillaging the beautiful palace which the great Minister had built in the neighbourhood of the capital for the use of himself and the government officials. When they had ransacked the priceless treasures of the palace, they abandoned it to the flames. Ma.s.sacres, plundering, and a.s.sa.s.sination went on unchecked for four days. Cordova became a shambles. Then the Berbers had their turn; the imperious Slav guards, who had won the cordial detestation of the people, were succeeded by the brutal Berbers, who rioted in the plunder of the city. Wherever these barbarians went, slaughter, fire and outrage followed. Palace after palace was ransacked and burnt, and the lovely city of Ez-Zahra, the delight of the Great Khalif, was captured by treachery, sacked, and set on fire, so that there remained of all the exquisite art that two khalifs had lavished upon its ornament nothing but a heap of blackened stones. Its garrison was put to the sword; its inhabitants fled for refuge to the mosque; but the Berbers had neither scruples nor bowels, and men, women, and children were butchered in the sacred precincts (1010).
While the capital was torn to pieces by savage bands of Slavs and Berbers, and was setting up one khalif after another, varying the family of Omeyya with that of Hammud, or trying the effect of a governing town council, the provinces had long thrown off all allegiance to the central State. Every city or district had its own independent lord--so soon had the consolidating effects of Almanzor"s rule disappeared. The Spaniards themselves enjoyed little of this sudden accession of small powers. They had to look on and lament, while foreigners divided their land among them. Berber generals fattened upon the South; the Slavs subdued the East; "the rest fell to parvenus or to the few n.o.ble families who had by some accident survived the blows which Abd-er-Rahman III. and Almanzor had dealt at the aristocracy. Cordova and Seville, the two most important cities of Andalus, had set up republics,"[25] in name, however, rather than fact; for the Moslem First Consul was a very close likeness of the Emperor. In the first half of the eleventh century some twenty independent dynasties came into power in as many towns or provinces, among which the Abbadites of Seville, the Hammud family at Malaga and Algeciras, the Zirites at Granada, the Beny Hud at Zaragoza, the Dhu-n-Nun dynasty at Toledo, and the rulers of Valencia, Murcia, and Almeria, were the most important. Some of these dynasts were good rulers, most of them were sanguinary tyrants, but (curiously) not the less polished gentlemen, who delighted to do honour to learning and _belles lettres_, and made their courts the homes of poets and musicians. Mo"temid of Seville, for instance, was a prince of many accomplishments, yet he kept a garden of heads, cut off his enemies"
shoulders, which he regarded with great pride and delight. As a whole, however, the country was a prey to disorder as intolerable and as dangerous as that which had prevailed when the Great Khalif came to the throne. It was not quite the same in character; for there was no great Christian rebellion like that of Ibn-Hafsun; but the anarchy was as universal, and the danger of a total collapse more imminent than ever.
For the Christians of the north were now on the move. They saw their opportunity, and they made the most of it. Alfonso VI., who had united under his sway the three kingdoms of the Asturias, Leon, and Castile, understood his part perfectly. He saw that he only had to allow the various Moslem princes rope enough, and they would proceed to hang themselves with the utmost expedition. These short-sighted tyrants, indeed, caring only for their petty individual power, and eagerly aiding in anything that could weaken their rivals, threw themselves at Alfonso"s feet, and implored his a.s.sistance whenever they found themselves overmastered by a more powerful neighbour. Partly in consequence of acts of this kind, and partly in terror at the furious raids which the Castilians made throughout the country, even as far as the port of Cadiz, the Moslem States were almost all tributaries of the King of Castile, who took care to annually demand heavier and more heavy tribute, as the price of his friendship, in order to lay up stores for the great conquest which he had in mind. The north was poor, and with a fine irony he trusted to the immense contributions of his va.s.sals among the Andalusian princes to provide the sinews of the war which should destroy them. Divided and jealous as were the Mohammedan dynasts, there was a limit to their patience. When Alfonso had bathed in the ocean by Hercules" Pillars, rejoicing that at last he had traversed all Spain and touched the watery border; when he had established a garrison of more than twelve thousand daring men in the fortress of Aledo, in the very midst of the Moslem territories, whence they ruthlessly emerged to harry the whole country and commit every sort of savage outrage; when Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar, "my Cid the Challenger," had established himself in Valencia with his Castilians, and laid waste the neighbouring lands; when it became clear to everyone that Alfonso meant nothing less than the reconquest of all Spain, and the extermination of all Moslems--then at last the Mohammedan princes awoke to their danger, and began to take measures for their defence. Helpless in themselves and, in spite of the common danger, despairing of any firm collected action among so many and such hostile factions, they took the only other course possible--they called in the aid of the foreigner. Some, indeed, foresaw dangers in such aid; but Mo"temid, the King of Seville, silenced them: "Better be a camel-driver in African deserts," he said, "than a swineherd in Castile!" The power they required was not far off. A new Berber revolution had taken place in North Africa, and a sect of fanatics, called the marabouts or saints (_Almoravides_, as the Spaniards named them), had conquered the whole country from Algiers to Senegal. They were much the same sort of people as Tarik and his followers, and they were ready enough to cross the water and conquer the fertile provinces of Spain. They made it a favour, indeed, and evinced supreme indifference to the attractions of Andalusia; but they came, and it was easy to see that they meant to stay.
When the Almoravides first came over like a cloud of locusts to devour the country thus offered to their appet.i.te, they found the way perfectly open. The ma.s.s of the people of Andalusia rejoiced to see once more a strong arm coming to repress the disorder which had destroyed their well-being ever since the death of the great Almanzor; the petty tyrants either had invited them or could not resist them, and were, at all events, glad to see the Castilians successfully repelled. The Almoravide king, Yusuf, the son of Teshfin, after appropriating Algeciras, as a harbour and necessary basis of operations, marched unopposed through the provinces, and met Alfonso at Zallaka, or, as the Spaniards call it, Sacralias, near Badajoz, October 23, 1086. Alfonso, as he looked upon his own splendid army, exclaimed, "With men like these I would fight devils, angels, and ghosts!" Nevertheless he resorted to a ruse to score a surprise over the joint forces of the Berbers and Andalusian; but Yusuf was not easily disconcerted. He took the Castilian army skilfully in front and rear, and, thus placed between two fires, in spite of the obstinate resistance which the tried warriors of Castile knew well how to offer, he crushed them utterly. Alfonso barely escaped with some five hundred hors.e.m.e.n. Many thousands of the best sword-arms in Castile lay stiff and nerveless on that fatal field.
After the victory, Yusuf the Almoravide returned to Africa, leaving three thousand of his Berbers to help the Andalusians. He had promised to make no annexations, and, except in retaining the harbour of Algeciras, he had so far kept his word. The Andalusians were delighted with him; they praised his valour and exulted over the saving of the land; they admired his simple piety, which let him do nothing without the advice of his priests, and which had induced him to abolish all taxes in Spain except those few authorized by the Khalif Omar in the earliest days of Islam. The upper cla.s.ses, indeed, ridiculed his ignorance and rough manners; he could speak but little Arabic, and when the poets recited their charming verses in his honour he generally missed the point of the compliment--no slight offence to the polished and elegant Andalusians, who never forgot their poetry even when they were up to their knees in blood. Yusuf was to them a mere barbarian. But their contempt for his education did not greatly matter; they could not do without his sword, and the vast ma.s.s of the people, thinking rather of comfort than culture, were ready to receive him joyfully as sovereign of Andalusia. In 1090 the King of Seville again prayed the Almoravide to come over and help him against the Christians, who were as bold as ever, and carried on a perpetual guerilla warfare from their stronghold of Aledo. He acceded, with a.s.sumed unwillingness, and this time he directed his attacks quite as much against the Andalusian princes as against the Christians of Castile. These foolish tyrants dinned into his ears innumerable complaints against each other, and mutually betrayed themselves to such an extent, that Yusuf very soon had grounds for distrusting the whole body of them. He had on his side the people, and, above all, the priests. These soon absolved him from his promise not to annex Andalusia, and even went so far as to urge him that it was his duty, in G.o.d"s name, to restore peace and happiness to the distracted land. Always under the influence of his spiritual advisers, and sufficiently prompted by his own ambition without any such external impetus, Yusuf readily fell in with this view, and before the year 1090 was out he had begun the subjugation of Spain. He entered Granada in November, and distributed its wonderful treasures--its diamonds, pearls, rubies, and other precious jewels, its splendid ornaments of gold and silver, its crystal cups, and gorgeous carpets, its unheard-of riches of every sort--among his officers, who had never in their lives seen anything approaching such magnificence. Tarifa fell in December, and the next year saw the capture of Seville and many of the chief cities of Andalusia. An army sent by Alfonso, under the famous captain, Alvar Fanez, was defeated, and all the south lay at the feet of the Almoravides--save only Valencia, which no a.s.sault could carry so long as the Cid lived to direct the defence. In 1102, after the hero"s death, Valencia succ.u.mbed, and now the whole of Mohammedan Spain, with the exception of Toledo, had become a province of the great African empire of the Almoravides.
The ma.s.s of the people had reason to be satisfied, for a time, with the result of their appeal to the foreigner. A minority, consisting of all the men of position and of education, were not so well pleased with the experiment. The reign of the Puritans had come, and without a Milton to soften its austerity. The poets and men of letters, who had thriven at the numerous little courts, where the most bloodthirsty despot had always a hearty and appreciative welcome for a man of genius, and would generally cap his verses with impromptu lines, were disgusted with the savage Berbers, who could not understand their refinements, and who, when they sometimes attempted to form themselves upon the model of the cultivated tyrants who had preceded them, made so poor an imitation that it was impossible to help laughing. The free-thinkers and men of broad views saw nothing very encouraging in the accession to power of the fanatical priests who formed the Almoravides" advisers, and who were not only rabidly opposed to anything that savoured of philosophy, but read their Koran exclusively through the spectacles of a single commentator.
The Jews and Christians soon discovered what the tolerance of the Almoravides was: they were cruelly persecuted, ma.s.sacred, or else transported. The old n.o.ble families, the few that remained, and the remnants of the petty princes, were in despair when they saw the stranger, whom they had bidden to their aid, taking up his permanent station in their dominions, and recalled with terror the doings of similar hordes of Berbers in the latter days of the Cordovan Khalifate.
But the ma.s.s of the people were glad enough to see the Almoravides staying in the land; their lives and goods were at last safe, which had never been the case when the country was cut up into a number of separate princ.i.p.alities, few of which were strong enough to protect their subjects outside the castle gates; the roads were free from the brigands who had made travelling impossible for many years, and the Christians, instead of pouncing upon unsuspecting villages and harrying the land, were driven back to their own territory, where a wholesome dread of the Berbers, and a long strife among themselves, kept them at a safe distance. Order and tranquillity reigned for the moment; the law was respected, and the people once more dreamed of wealth and happiness.
The dream was a delusion. There was no prosperity in store for the subjects of the Almoravides. What had happened to the Romans and the Goths now happened to the Berbers. They came to Spain hardy rough warriors, unused to ease or luxuries, delighting in feats of strength and prowess, filled with a fierce but simple zeal for their religion.
They had not been long in the enjoyment of the fruits of their victory when all the demoralization which the soft luxuries of Capua brought upon the soldiers of Hannibal came also upon them. They lost their martial habits, their love of deeds of daring, their pleasure in enduring hardships in the brave way of war--they lost all their manliness with inconceivable rapidity. In twenty years there was no Berber army that could be trusted to repel the attacks of the Castilians; in its place was a disorganized crowd of sodden debauchees, miserable poltroons, who had drunk and fooled away their manhood"s vigour and become slaves to all the appet.i.tes that make men cowards.
Instead of preserving order, they had now become the disturbers of order; brigands, when they could pluck up courage to attack a peaceful traveller; thieves on all promising opportunities. The country was worse off than ever it had been, even under the petty tyrants. The enfeebled Berbers were at the beck and call of bad women and ambitious priests, and they would counterorder one day what they had commanded the day before. Such rulers do not rule for long. A great revolution was sapping the power of the Almoravides in Africa, and the Castilians under Alfonso the Battler resumed their raids into Andalusia. In 1125 they harried the south for a whole year. In 1133 they burnt the very suburbs of Cordova, Seville, and Carmona, and sacked Xeres and set it in a blaze. The Christian forays now extended from Leon to the Straits of Gibraltar, yet the besotted government did nothing to meet the danger.
Exasperated at its feebleness, the people finally rose in their wrath and drove their impotent rulers from the land.
"At last," says the Arab historian, "when the people of Andalus saw that the empire of the Almoravides was falling to pieces, they waited no longer, but, casting away the mask of dissimulation, broke out into open rebellion. Every petty governor, chief, or man of influence, who could command a few followers and had a castle to retire to in case of need, styled himself Sultan, and a.s.sumed the other insignia of royalty; and Andalus had as many kings as there were towns in it. Ibn-Hamdin rose at Cordova, Ibn-Maymun at Cadiz, Ibn-Kasy and Ibn-Wezir Seddaray held the west, Lamtuny Granada, Ibn-Mardanish, Valencia; some Andalusians, others Berbers. All, however, shortly disappeared before the banners of Abd-el-Mumin, who deprived every one of them of their dominions, and subjected the whole of Andalus to his rule." Abd-el-Mumin was the leader of the Almohades, who succeeded to the Almoravide power in Africa and Spain.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
XI.
MY CID THE CHALLENGER.
It is time to glance at the opponents of the Moors in the North. We have seen how Pelayo gathered together the remnant of the Goths in the inaccessible caves and fastnesses of the Asturian mountains; how this remnant soon advanced beyond its early boundaries, and, taking courage from the indifference or the disunion of the Berber tribes who were quartered on the frontiers of the Mohammedan dominions, gradually recovered most of the territory north of the Sierra de Guadarrama, and there established the kingdom of Leon and the county of Castile; while the separate kingdom of Navarre arose further east, beneath the Pyrenees. We have also seen how these Christian kingdoms were in a state of almost constant war with their Moorish neighbours, and might have been seriously dangerous but for the no less constant divisions which neutralized the various Christian States. So long as the kingdom of Cordova remained strong and undivided, while the Christians of Leon, Castile, and Navarre wasted their vigour in civil wars, the Moors were fully equal to the task of preserving their dominions. But when the kingdom of Cordova fell, and Andalusia became a prey to petty dynasties, each of which thought first of its own interests, and then perhaps of the interests of the Mohammedan power at large, the Christians became more venturesome, and were enabled to wring from the Moors a considerable accession of territory. During the confusion of the eleventh century, when almost every city in Andalusia formed a State by itself, we have seen that the Christians scoured the land of the Moslems with their victorious armies, and exacted tribute from many of the most important Moorish princes. At this time Fernando the First had united the greater part of the north under his own sceptre. He had combined the conflicting provinces of Leon and Castile, and incorporated the Asturias and Galicia in his dominions. Fernando was undoubtedly the most powerful monarch in all Spain at this time; he had annexed Lormego, Viseu, and Coimbra in Portugal, and took tribute from the kings of Zaragoza, Toledo, Badajoz, and Seville; and though his imprudent division of his dominions among his three sons and two daughters involved the north in a series of civil wars after his death, Alfonso VI. "the Valiant"
eventually succeeded in cementing the scattered fragments together again, and henceforward the progress of the Christian power in Spain was inevitable. It was only the immense bribes of the Mohammedan princes (who paid blackmail to a fabulous amount to buy off the Christians), and the armies of the Almoravides in the background, that prevented the entire reconquest of Andalusia by the Christians at this period of Moorish weakness. As it was, the Moors were in no sense their own masters; they were hara.s.sed between the dread of Alfonso and the scarcely less alarming supremacy of their Almoravide ally; and in the end they had to succ.u.mb to the latter. At this time we find the Christians interfering in most of the political affairs of the Mohammedan states; Christian armies overrunning their territories and demanding heavy tribute for their goodwill; and so complicated became the alliances between the two parties that many Christian mercenaries were to be found in the armies of the Moors, vigorously a.s.sisting in campaigns of devastation and sacrilege through Christian provinces, while Moors were ready to join the Castilians against their fellow-Moslems. It was, in short, a time of adventurers, of paid mercenaries, of men who fought for personal interest and profit, instead of for king and country.
[Ill.u.s.tration: BOTICA DE LOS TEMPLARIOS, TOLEDO.]
We should make a great mistake if we regarded the warriors of Leon and Castile as anything approaching an ideal of knightly honour and chivalry, and a still greater error would be to imagine them polished, cultivated gentlemen. The Christians of the north formed the most striking possible contrast to their Moorish rivals. The Arabs, rough tribesmen as they had been at their first arrival, had softened, by contact with the Andalusians and by their own natural disposition to enjoyment and luxury, into a highly civilized people, delighting in poetry and elegant literature, devoted to the pursuit of learning, and, above all, determined to enjoy life to the utmost. Their intellectual tastes were unusually fine and delicate; they were moved by emotions which could only be felt by men of taste and _savoir vivre_. They were romantic, imaginative, poetical, speculative, and would bestow on a well-turned epigram what would have sufficed to pay a regiment of soldiers. The most tyrannical and bloodthirsty among their despots was held in some contempt if he were not also something of a poet, or at least instinctively appreciative of polished wit and courtly eloquence.
Music, oratory, as well as the severer pursuits of science, seemed to come naturally to this brilliant people; and they possessed in a high degree that quality of critical perception and delicate appreciation of the finer shades of expression which in the present day we a.s.sociate with the French nation.
The Christians of the north were as unlike this as can well be conceived. Though descended from an older kingdom, the northern states had most of the qualities of new nations. They were rude and uncultivated; few of their princes possessed the elements of what could be called education, and they were too poor to indulge in the refined luxuries of the Moorish sovereigns. The Christians were simply rough warriors, as fond of fighting as even their Moslem antagonists, but even better prepared by their hard and necessarily self-denying lives for the endurance of long campaigns and the performance of desperate deeds of valour. They had no idea of the high standard of chivalrous conduct which poets afterwards infused into their histories; they were men of the sword, and little besides. Their poverty made them any man"s servants; they sold their valour to him who paid them best; they fought to get a livelihood. We have seen how the great minister Almanzor won his victories against Leon and took Santiago with the aid of a large contingent of the Leonese themselves, who perceived clearly enough on which side their fortunes were to be made. The history of the eleventh century in Spain is full of such examples of the employment of Christian _chevaliers d"industrie_ by Moorish princes; but of these none has ever attained such celebrity as the Cid, the national hero of Spain.