Dogs of God

by James Reston Jr

  The battle plan for the summer was now their focus. A voyage across the Dark Ocean to some imaginary land of treasure was far from their minds.

  16

  Do What Is Most Convenient

  MÁLAGA

  Málaga was the second city of the Moorish empire, its principal port, its entry point for troops and money from Muslim North Africa, the lair of El Zagal the Valiant. Its wealth was great, especially that which was vested in the hands of its powerful sea merchants, who despite the evident hostilities between Christian and Muslim Spain carried on a lucrative trade with the Aragonese ports of Barcelona and Valencia. Málaga was, first and foremost, a city of commerce, and it valued money above mere international imbroglios.

  The metropolis of eleven thousand inhabitants had been Islamic for nearly eight hundred years. Its defense depended upon its daunting double fortress, which occupied a lower and upper hill in the center of the city and which was connected by a double wall. The citadel on the lower hill had been built 250 years before, and then the immense castle on a pinnacle of rock above it called Gibralfaro had been added. Taken together, these connected fortresses were every bit as awe-inspiring as the Alhambra itself. Málaga’s harbor was wide but unenclosed and unprotected from high seas and high winds. Now that the Christians owned the sea, the Islamic defenders of Málaga considered the liability of its open harbor to be to their advantage.

  As he studied his war maps for his campaign of 1487, Ferdinand had to choose his summer strategy, whether to move directly on this well-defended city or to concern himself first with its outposts. Vélez-Málaga, a fortified town thirty miles east of Málaga, was the logical first target, since it was slightly inland and astride the road to Granada. To allow Vélez-Málaga to remain in Islamic hands was to ignore a staging area and rallying point for the Moors. In consultation with the marquis of Cádiz and his other generals, Ferdinand decided that Vélez-Málaga would be the first objective of the campaign, for its capture would deny the Moors a base and resupply depot in the principal assault on the port of Málaga itself.

  The requisition for troops and money was the largest yet. Soldiers signed up by the thousands for an eighty-day tour, while the great overlords from Medina-Sidonia, Cádiz, Benavente, and central Castile ponied up millions of maravedis. El Zagal the Valiant, however, commanded numbers equal to the Castilian king, and he would be fighting on his home turf. The outcome was by no means foreordained.

  On the political front, the news was good for the attackers. The divisive, internecine competition between El Zagal and his nephew and Ferdinand’s vassal, Boabdil El Chico, continued hot and heavy. Boabdil had been holed up far to the east in Murcia, in his border castle called Vélez El Blanco. There, his uncle had sent ambassadors to go through the motions of negotiation, but their real mission was to put before Boabdil certain official-looking diplomatic papers that were poisoned with deadly herbs. When this assassination attempt was discovered before it did any damage, Boabdil was angry, but his anger was nothing compared to the fury of his passionate mother, Ayxa the Chaste.

  “For shame to linger timorously about the borders of your kingdom while the usurper is seated in your capital!” the sultana is supposed to have said. “Why look abroad for treacherous aid from the Christian when you have loyal hearts beating true to you in Granada. The Albaicín is ready to throw open its gates to receive you. Strike home vigorously. A sudden blow may mend all. A throne or a grave: for a king there is no honorable in between.”

  Secretly and dutifully, El Chico stole out of Murcia with several hundred minions and made his way west to Granada. He was indeed admitted to the citadel of Albaicín, if not with hearts throbbing, at least with sufferance, and soon enough the old skirmishes in the narrow alleys of Granada between the partisans of the nephew and his uncle began anew. In narrating these events later, the chronicler of the Christian court saw the hand of God at work.

  “As guards opened the gate of the City to him, so God opened the hearts of the Moors to receive him as their king.”

  Meanwhile, on Palm Sunday, 1487, Ferdinand’s army moved out of Córdoba. Initially, the auguries were worrisome, for on that day a terrible earthquake rocked Córdoba. Torrential rains and floods followed in the days ahead. At these bad omens, so upsetting to the superstitious, Ferdinand was not cowed, for there was much work to be done. The rains presented practical problems, especially in transporting his heavy guns over the rutted and washed-out roads. Nevertheless, by mid-April, he stood with his army before Vélez-Málaga.

  In Granada, El Zagal now had a dilemma, and he risked losing his kingdom whichever way he chose. If he allowed the Christian invaders to take Málaga, the 800-year-old Moorish empire was lost. If he left Granada, he risked a takeover by Boabdil. His only hope was to leave and to win a spectacular victory. He chose this latter course, confident of victory, as he left the Alhambra with a force equal to Ferdinand’s: one thousand mounted cavalry and twenty thousand foot soldiers. To coordinate his assault on the invaders, he sent a messenger ahead to the defenders of Vélez-Málaga about his place and expected date of arrival. But the messenger was captured. Under interrogation, he revealed the contents of his dispatches. When El Zagal arrived at the narrow pass that leads into the bowl of Vélez-Málaga, the marquis of Cádiz was waiting in ambush for him. Within hours, the Muslim forces scattered in disarray, abandoning their weapons and fleeing back to Granada.

  When the first stragglers reached Granada, the news of El Zagal’s defeat spread rapidly. Once again, confused between resistance and accommodation, the fickle populace flip-flopped, switching loyalties, escorting Boabdil across the gorge and into the Alhambra, and barring El Zagal when that warrior returned, breathless and bedraggled. Within a few days, El Zagal took up residence thirty miles east of Granada in Guadix, and did his best from there to marshal his forces.

  Boabdil in turn sent a triumphant message to his lord and master Ferdinand about his possession of the Alhambra. In it he renewed his vassal’s pledge of obedience. El Chico now proposed a new double cross: he would surrender Granada to the Catholic monarchs in exchange for dominion over the Moorish towns of Guadix, Cenete, Ugíjar, and Mojácar in the Alpujarras Mountains southeast of Granada. The great prize thus seemed to be within Ferdinand’s grasp. He was not quite prepared to accept it just yet, however, largely because El Zagal was still dangerous and in charge of large portions of the province of Almería.

  Meanwhile, the defenders of Vélez-Málaga were in difficult straits. The torrential rains had ruined much of the provisions that had been stored away. The inhabitants lived a few anxious days under the delusion that Ferdinand would be unable to bring his fearsome artillery pieces through the mud to their town. But when the heavy guns showed up, it was the equivalent of the Inquisition showing the instruments of torture. The mere sight of the heavy bombards was enough to quell resistance. On May 3, Vélez-Málaga surrendered.

  As Vélez-Málaga was merely the forerunner to the main battle, and since the town’s resistance had been brief and light, Ferdinand offered its residents a graceful exit. No doubt he wished to send a message to Málaga. So long as all Christian captives were returned safe and unharmed, the Moors of the town were free to leave and to relocate. When the town was secure, Ferdinand entered it with the usual fanfare. Characteristically, he went immediately to the main mosque, which he reconsecrated as a Christian church and within which he placed the cross of Holy Crusade.

  To the king was brought a most interesting captive. He was a former servant of the marquis of Cádiz, Mohamet Mequer, who had left the marquis’s service to become successful in business in Vélez-Málaga. Now a man of considerable property (which he fervently hoped to retain), he offered to help in the surrender of Málaga itself. When the marquis proposed this gambit to the king, Ferdinand replied to his field marshal sweetly,

  “I leave this matter in your hands. I will entrust the treasures of Málaga to you, to distribute them as you will, if you can bring that city under m
y name.”

  And so the marquis dispatched Mequer to Málaga with the offer of 4,000 gold doubloons to the commander of Málaga’s castle, if he would surrender the town. With the surrender he would guarantee the liberty of its inhabitants and the right to retain their property and possessions. But the commander was now the great warrior El Zegri, the bitter former governor of Ronda, and he replied, politely but firmly, to get lost.

  “Tell Ferdinand that if I were to comply with these demands, I would be the worst and most cowardly of Moors,” he said. “The city has not been entrusted to me to surrender it to King Ferdinand, but to defend it.”

  Ferdinand would have to win Málaga the hard way.

  On May 6, 1487, Ferdinand encircled the city, and the siege of Málaga got under way. The king’s forces numbered 2,500 mounted cavalrymen and 14,000 foot soldiers, as well as scores of warships that lay just offshore. Several hundred small bombards were deployed on the perimeter, along with seven of the king’s largest cannons. At first, Ferdinand was restrained in the use of his doomsday weapons. Wealthy as it was, Málaga was more useful intact than in ruins.

  Substantial though the encircling forces were, Ferdinand’s opponent, Hamet el Zegri, was confident in his defense. Behind the walls, the lower citadel, and the castle of Gibralfaro above, he commanded six thousand soldiers, a considerable portion of whom were awe-inspiring black Gomeres from North Africa, along with highly motivated Jewish refugees from Seville and Moorish refugees from the battle of Ronda.

  Days stretched into weeks with no surrender, and anxieties rose in the Christian camp, for not only was the wait expensive but Ferdinand’s forces were unaccustomed to long sieges. Moreover, El Zegri’s frequent raids kept the Christian forces off guard. When the siege dragged into July, many of the Christian soldiers had fulfilled their eighty-day commitment to the crown and wanted to go home. Rumors of discontent and rampant desertion in the Christian ranks spread rapidly, fueled by the presence of a “holy Moor,” a dervish who had slipped into the besieged town and claimed to have been blessed by Allah with a revelation of a Moorish victory. This would-be prophet roamed through the streets hectoring the assemblage and rousing the defenders to greater efforts.

  “Allah has commanded that tomorrow morning you shall sally forth to the fight,” the dervish is supposed to have said. “I will bear before you the sacred hammer and deliver your enemies into your hands. Remember that you are but instruments in the hands of Allah to take vengeance on the enemies of the faith. Go into battle with pure hearts. Forgive each other all past offenses, for those who are charitable toward each other will be victorious over the foe.”

  When Ferdinand caught wind of these destructive rumors, he sent for Queen Isabella, thinking that her presence would inspire his troops and dispirit the opposition. With the queen in the ranks, there could be no doubt of the determination of the Christian invaders.

  But this gambit had no effect, and even the Christian chroniclers admired the sturdy defense. “Who does not marvel at the bold heart of these infidels in battle, their prompt obedience to their chiefs, their dexterity in the wiles of war, their patience under privation, and undaunted perseverance in their purpose?” wrote one.

  Things turned ugly. One summer night, 150 Moors stole through the enemy lines with gunpowder and provisions, only to be apprehended before they reached the city walls. One of these Moors insisted on an audience with Ferdinand, professing to have important intelligence about the sorry state of the defenders. As the king and queen were not nearby, the Moor was ushered into the tent of a Portuguese nobleman, Dom Alvaro, the brother of the duke of Braganza. Impressed by the knight’s noble appearance and thinking him to be Ferdinand, the Moor pulled out his dagger and proceeded to stab the Christian knight until other Christian nobles rushed in and literally sliced the assassin to pieces. When the king returned, he ordered the dead assassin to be sewn back together and catapulted over the city wall. In proportionate reprisal the Moors killed a Galician captive, strapped the body to the back of a donkey, and sent the animal loping through the gate.

  By August, the defenders were indeed in a sorry state. It was rumored that the inhabitants were eating the flesh of dogs, cats, and horses, and baking bread made from the fronds of the palm tree, a confection that was killing them. Amid the disintegrating situation, the emir, El Zegri, seemed to be going mad before his citizens’ eyes. Word spread that he was considering killing all the women, children, and old people within his walls and then launching a final, desperate suicide attack on the Christians. Worried about these signs of madness, prominent men of commerce stepped forward to take charge. Their leader was a merchant named Ali Dordux, a man well known to the traders of the Mediterranean, especially Genovese traders, for his levelheadedness.

  Ferdinand saw an opportunity to circumvent El Zegri, but he needed to know more about these Muslim merchants. Who had information on them? Abruptly, the name of Christopher Columbus flashed back into the king’s mind. The starry-eyed petitioner was languishing in Córdoba, and he was already on the king’s payroll. Had he not been on countless trading voyages whose caravels had called in Málaga? Was there not a significant contingent of Genovese commercial traders in the port? Perhaps he could be useful. And so Columbus was summoned from Córdoba to the muddy Christian encampment outside Málaga. He had been paid an installment of 3,000 maravedis in July. When he arrived in Málaga, he received an additional 4,000.

  Whatever representations Columbus may have made about Dordux, a backchannel correspondence did begin between the merchant and the king, a correspondence whose first missive was freighted with deference and with references to past merciful generosities by Christian kings.

  “To Your Majesties, the King and Queen, greater than all Kings and all princes,” Dordux’s letter began. “Trusting in the greatness of your state, and kissing the ground beneath your feet, your servants and slaves of Málaga, old and young (may God redeem them!), beg your royal highnesses to visit us with your pity and compassion, as did your ancestors who were great and powerful monarchs. You are aware of how Córdoba was sieged for a long time until half of it was taken, and the Moors were confined to the other half until they ate all the bread and begged King Fernando who showed mercy and allowed them to keep their belongings. Likewise, in Antequera, your grandfather sieged it for six months and a half until the water ran out and then listened to the people’s supplications and secured their escape with their goods. And Your Majesties, more honorable than all monarchs, your fame and honor and mercy is well known and have manifested themselves in your treatment of people before us. This reputation has spread among Christians and Moors.

  “We, your servants and slaves, place ourselves in your hands and entrust our persons to your favor. Do with your serfs what is most convenient to you. And may God make you act well toward us. May God extol Your Majesties.”

  But the long, bloody, and costly siege had hardened Ferdinand. He was no longer in an accommodating mood. With Boabdil’s offer of the Alhambra itself, a total victory for Jesus Christ, his divine mission, was at hand.

  “I the King have read your letter in which you propose to surrender this city with all its belongings on the condition that you be free to leave whenever you want,” Ferdinand replied. “If you had sent me this plea when I first contacted you from Vélez-Málaga or as I was arraying my forces around you, I would have been able to satisfy your wishes. But as it stands now, your only option is to surrender yourself.”

  Dropping all the flatteries of their first letter, the Moors answered cryptically. They wanted only a guarantee of liberty in return for the surrender of the city. If the king did not agree, the defenders would hang the five hundred Christian men and women whom they held captive. Then they would burn the city and launch one final, desperate attack on Ferdinand. Ferdinand was unimpressed. If you harm a single Christian captive, he replied, no Moor would survive the inevitable surrender. He would slaughter them all.

  The protracted correspondence
between Ali Dordux and Ferdinand advanced to the fine points until Dordux was negotiating only for himself. So long as none of the defenders was executed, the merchant was prepared to surrender the city. For his efforts, Dordux and his family were to be rewarded with his liberty to remain in Málaga as a mudéjar, or Muslim under Christian rule, to retain his property and his business. That settled, the town was handed over, except for the castle of Gibralfaro, which remained in the clutches of the desperate El Zegri. From the parapets the old warrior would watch the sad spectacle of surrender below him for two days, before he too capitulated and was led away in chains. Why had he held out so long? he was asked.

  “Because I was commissioned to defend the place to the last extremity,” he replied. “If I had been properly supported, I would have died sooner than surrender now!”

  After three months and eleven days of siege the stench of Málaga was unbearable, and Ferdinand refused to enter the putrid place until it had been cleaned and sanctified. With the job half done, Hernando de Talavera, now the bishop of Ávila and the queen’s confessor, entered the town to provide the Christian blessings. As before, the main mosque of the city was reconstituted as a Christian church and renamed as yet another Santa María de la Encarnación. It was consecrated as a cathedral whose dominion would cover the captured towns of Ronda, Vélez-Málaga, and Coín. When all this was accomplished, the King and Queen of Castile along with the Cardinal of Spain led a solemn procession to the cathedral for a mass of thanksgiving.