The entire fighting season of 1488 had been squandered in overweaning pride. The king would not again underestimate the enemy. He took his army back east to Murcia and disbanded it. To gather his thoughts and concentrate on the embarrassment of this wasted season, he withdrew to the holy sanctuary of Caravaca to reflect and pray.
For such a trauma the pilgrimage site of Caravaca de la Cruz was an appropriate retreat for the chastened king. Its fame derived from an episode that was believed to have taken place 250 years before. Then, so the legend goes, a Moorish lord was intrigued by the Christian faith and asked the local priest to celebrate a Christian mass, so that the Moor could witness the liturgy and make up his mind about whether to convert. Reluctantly, the priest agreed. But when he assembled his holy implements, he found that he did not have a proper cross. Without this essential, the priest was about to call the whole thing off, when two angels flew through the window bearing a silver cross.
The relic was there still to remind both the holy and the powerful to make their preparations full and complete before they appealed for salvation or triumph.
In the spring of 1489, the Christian army mobilized in Jaén with renewed determination and greater wisdom. The rains were frequent and heavy well into May, a condition that made all roads to Jaén slick, rutted, and often washed out. It was not until the end of that month that the army was ready. This time, the force had ballooned to forty thousand foot soldiers and thirteen thousand cavalry. With the Cardinal of Spain standing beside them, Ferdinand and Isabella looked on with satisfaction. For what they hoped would be the final assault on Granada and the consummation of a 500-year-old quest to reconquer Spain for Christianity, the monarchs were confident that the mistake of unpreparedness would not be repeated. For Ferdinand, the king, the code of the warrior reigned: he wished to avenge the humiliation of the year before.
Baza now lay in their sights as the first objective. If Baza fell, the monarchs expected Guadix and Almería to topple quickly after.
Some fifty miles to the east of Jaén, the town of Baza presented an awesome fortress. Protected by high palisades, it was built on the slope of a hill, enclosed by massive walls with immense towers and a small stream at its foot. Beyond the stream, outlying residences stretched for half a mile; and beyond them lay the complex of walled gardens and groves that had so confused and bedeviled the Christian forces the year before. Of special pride to Baza’s citizens were the groves of stately oak, mulberry, and wild pine trees that graced the gardens and provided many pleasant walks for the citizens.
The town itself was constructed around an ancient central plaza; narrow alleys and streets radiated outward haphazardly. On one of these narrow byways was the famous atelier where magnificent silk prayer rugs of great renown were woven. The approach to the town was across a wide basin of undulating ground, striated by small streams. The high ground on the western road to Guadix was guarded by a number of conical, brush-covered hillocks that greeted the traveler and the invader alike as sentinals.
When El Zagal got word in Guadix of the Christian mobilization in Jaén, he guessed that Baza was the Christian objective. Though Guadix was only thirty-five miles south of Baza, the old warrior was loath to leave his bastion for fear that the unpredictable, flighty Boabdil might venture out of Granada and take advantage. El Zagal called on his most trusted comrade, Prince Cidi Yahye, the governor of Almería, to assume the command of Baza. Cidi Yahye was El Zagal’s cousin and brother-in-law, and he rose to the call enthusiastically. El Zagal was grateful.
“You are my second self,” El Zagal wrote his cousin affectionately. “Happy is the monarch who has his kinsman to command his armies.”
Cidi Yahye did more than avail himself of this important last-ditch command. In his port of Almería, he gathered a force of ten thousand Moorish fighters and marched them double-time to Baza. Meanwhile, El Zagal sent out the call to Jihad. All true believers in Islam were called to the defense of their homes, their liberty, and their religion.
O you who believe! Answer Allah by obeying him and His Messenger when he calls you. To fight in Allah’s cause is your third best deed! And by this deed, you make Allah’s Word superior! He who avoids this duty dies a hypocrite, and say not of those who are killed in the Way of Allah, “They are dead.” Nay, they are living, but you perceive it not!
There was a sense on both sides that Islam was approaching its final apocalyptic battle with Christianity. From the far corners of the last Moorish state the soldiers poured into Baza, including a number who had slipped out of the Granada of El Zagal’s nephew, Boabdil. Between Prince Cidi Yahye’s troops from the south and El Zagal’s jihadists, the garrison of Baza doubled.
As the rains delayed the arrival of the Christian army, Baza became an immense stockyard, grainery, storehouse, and armory. When the gardens and the groves were picked clean, the spring wheat in the surrounding countryside was cut prematurely to salvage whatever nutritional value it might have and to deprive the invading army of sustenance. Meanwhile, the stockpiles of weapons and munitions filled the stone caverns of the walls. Toward the end of May, Cidi Yahye calculated that he had enough food and firepower to survive a siege of fifteen months. To his gathered soldiers, he proclaimed,
“We fight for life and liberty, for our families, our country, our religion. Nothing is left for us to depend upon but the strength of our hands, the courage of our hearts, and the almighty protection of Allah.”
Meanwhile, only a few miles to the north, the clatter of hoofbeats, the grave, basso thump of kettledrums, the din of a holy army massing filled the air of Jaén. And in this furtive atmosphere, the Catholic monarchs issued a most curious order. On May 12, they put out the following summons: “The King and Queen to members of the court, justices, knights, squires, officials and all honest men in all cities and villages of our kingdom: Christopher Columbus must come to this court to concentrate himself on certain matters in our service. We command that when he should pass through cities and towns he must be given good lodgings for himself without charge, if not at inns, and provided maintenance at fair prices. You must not quarrel with him, or hinder him in any way, under pain of our justice and a fine of 10,000 maravedis.”
Why Christopher Columbus? Why now? In the preparations for Armageddon, what possible impulse could have motivated the monarchs? When terrible realities faced them in the coming days, they could scarcely have been interested in fantasizing yet again about the magical island of Cipangu, the golden pagodas of Cathay, or the jewels of the Great Khan. After the conclusions of the Talavera commission, most of the court viewed Columbus as a suave gadfly and insufferable boaster; not the “Christ-bearer,” as he would later like to think of himself, but the bearer of bad science. Was he summoned as entertainment, as diversion, from the terrible anxieties of the moment?
A partial answer may lie in Columbus’s possible value as an agent of intelligence about the enemy. Just as he had been summoned to the war camp at Málaga two years before, presumably to impart his knowledge of that port and its defenders, so now the Spanish army had the port of Almería as a war objective. In his many commercial ventures, trading goods and slaves in the Andalusian ports for various Genovese concerns, had Columbus also called at Almería? What did he know of Cidi Yahye? Had Columbus had any direct dealings with the prince?
Still, Columbus had his important boosters, few though they may have been. The faithful count of Medina Celi, for example, kept his offer in place to provide 4,000 gold ducats for the construction of three caravels and the wherewithal to supply them with sailors and supplies for a year. Columbus’s commanding presence in court fascinated and amused Queen Isabella, and she liked to have him around. If he was to be supported at all, she insisted on doing it. His stately bearing reminded some of a Roman senator, even if his suave ways reminded others of an oily huckster.
Once in the royal presence he knew how to adapt his grandiose dreams to the timbre of the court. If Spanish Christianity was on the verge of the
final apocalyptic battle with Spanish Islam, his proposal could add to the glory of a Christian victory. As Spain was reconquered for Christianity, so a New World might be unveiled in the dawning of a new golden age. In a cosmic drama, Discovery must join Reconquest and Purification. Together, the three fitted into the new heaven and the new earth that was promised in the book of Revelation. Ferdinand, Torquemada, and Columbus were to be the queen’s—and God’s—instruments in this passion play.
Columbus was not the only exotic visitor to contribute to this magnificent vision. At about the same time, two friars from the Convent of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem arrived with a terrifying ultimatum from the Mameluke sultan in Cairo. Unless the Catholic monarchs ceased their assault on Islam and the Moorish empire of Granada, the sultan threatened to execute all the Christians in his empire, destroy all the convents and churches, and level the Holy Sepulchre itself.
At this menacing threat, Columbus put forward a new argument to Queen Isabella. If she would fund his adventure, and if it were to prove successful, he would contribute its profits to fund a glorious new crusade to the Holy Land to wrest the holy Christian sites from the infidel.
Columbus’s offer summoned yet again the fondest dream of King Ferdinand. His destiny, the king believed, was to drive the infidel from Spain, to purify its religion of heresy and superstition, and then, as a modern-day King David, to return the Ark of the Covenant to the City of David, heralding the Second Coming of Christ and the kingdom of heaven on earth. It would be he, clothed in fine linen, hailed with cornets and shouting, who would sanctify himself and his brothers and then bring the Christian Jubilee to the Holy Land. He, Ferdinand V of Spain, would fulfill the prophecy of the twelfth-century Italian mystic and apocalyptic theologian, Joachim of Fiore,
“He who will restore the ark of Zion will come from Spain.”
In early June, Ferdinand entered the basin of Baza with his grand and colorful army and pitched his tents just beyond the expansive warren of gardens and orchards that buffered the city. Brazenly, he sent a message to Prince Cidi Yahye to surrender or die. This haughty communication infuriated the Moor, and he was for sending back a petulant, snappish reply. But one of his generals calmed him down.
“Let us threaten what we know we can perform,” he said. “And let us endeavor to perform more than we threaten.”
Within a day, Ferdinand launched his attack. With some trepidation, Christian knights entered the fearsome labyrinth of gardens and orchards. Between its many walled enclosures, its small canals, its tall and densely packed orchards, cavalry was useless. The Christian knights were immediately attacked by Moorish foot soldiers, and they were forced to dismount and fight on foot hand-to-hand. A hundred separate battles broke out in the various enclosures, a situation that favored the clever and well-commanded Moors, who knew the terrain and knew how to communicate from one garden to the next, one grove to another. The fighting was fierce, and the battles lasted twelve hours, until darkness fell and contact was broken off.
The next day, Ferdinand surveyed a scene of desolation. His confused and battered forces had withdrawn beyond the gardens once again, too far from the walls of the city for his artillery to have any effect, just as his cavalry was powerless within the gardens themselves. His council of war gathered to analyze the situation. Uncharacteristically, the marquis of Cádiz, hero of so many Christian battles in the war against the Moors, argued for realism. Baza was simply too well defended, its situation too advantageous to the defenders, its commanders too experienced and clever for the Christian side to prevail. To subdue the town would take weeks, if not months, and the problems of sustaining and supplying an army of fifty thousand in a protracted siege were both overwhelming and novel. Where was the money to come from to fund such an effort? They should withdraw, argued the marquis, and concentrate on the minor outposts not only around Baza but around Guadix and Almería, so that the three bastions could be completely isolated and starved out in the following year.
Other generals disputed their field general. To withdraw would reinvigorate the enemy, not weaken him, and make him more formidable rather than less in the following year. The battle had been joined, Christian against Muslim, Spain against Africa. This was no ordinary war but a crusade, and they, in the name of the Christian God, must persist.
There was a conflict within the high command. Given his aggressive nature, Ferdinand tilted toward the voices of perseverance, but he was wary of deciding one way or another without Queen Isabella’s input. A messenger was dispatched to Jaén, where Isabella had remained with her children, the Cardinal of Spain (and Christopher Columbus). Her reply was gracious and deferential. Ferdinand and his generals should resolve their differences. She would not do it for them. But if their decision was to continue the siege, she would step forward to take charge of the titanic undertaking of supplying the great army.
This missive was sufficient to end the dispute. From the parapets of the town, the Moors cheered as the Christians struck their tents and began to withdraw. Once the soldiers mustered in the open basin, however, the army split into two, with the two flanks commanded by the king and by the marquis, and then returned to reposition itself on either side of Baza’s extensive gardens. In the coming days, despite constant harassment from squads of Moorish commandos, the engineers went to work building an extensive system of defensive canals, berms, and towers. Later, an effort was made to divert the stream at the base of the town. Knights decorated their tents colorfully, fashioning makeshift roofs and walls to protect them from the weather, until the encampment looked less like a tent city than a colorful slum of shacks.
Weeks stretched into months. Within the town, Cidi Yahye did his best to buck up the spirits of the defenders. “The Infidel king builds his hopes on our growing fainthearted,” he told them. “We must show unusual cheerfulness and vigor. What would be rashness elsewhere becomes prudence for us now.”
In Jaén, meanwhile, Isabella worked feverishly to meet her side of the bargain. The rear area began a huge supply depot through which reinforcements tramped daily, and wagon trains passed with loads of flour, meat, and wine, followed by an army of tinkers and artisans ready to sell their wares or provide their services to soldiers with nowhere to go but a few maravedis to spend. Young bloods spent lavishly to outdo one another in outfitting themselves in colorful helmets or brocaded caparisons for their steeds.
Shiploads of wheat and barley from Catalonia and León came through the captured port of Vera. The number of beasts of burden the queen hired was estimated to be fourteen thousand. She muscled merchants and wealthy churches in Castile and Aragon for every last ducat. Where outright requisition was not possible, she resorted to loans. To demonstrate her personal investment in the holy siege, she even hocked some of her most precious jewels. The vital task of overseeing the fair distribution of these supplies was put in the hands of the eminent physician and courtier Rodrigo Maldonado. He had been on the commission to investigate Christopher Columbus’s proposal, but more important, immediate business pressed on him now.
Summer bled into fall, and the defenders were heartened. “The rainy season is at hand,” Cidi Yahye told his soldiers. “The floods will soon pour down from the mountains. The rivers will overflow their banks and inundate the valleys. The Christian king already begins to waver. He dare not linger and encounter such a season in a plain, cut up by canals and swollen rivers. A single wintry storm from our mountains will wash away his canvas city and sweep off those colorful pavilions like wisps of snow before the blizzard.”
After five months of confinement this was a brave front, but the strains were beginning to show. Secretly, Cidi Yahye wrote to El Zagal in Guadix that if the grip of the siege was not loosened soon, he would be forced to open negotiations with the infidel. He wrote in the spirit of the Koran: Make ready against them all you can of power, including steeds of war, to threaten the enemy of Allah and your enemy, and whatever you shall spend in the cause of Allah shall be repaid unto
you, and you shall not be treated unjustly. El Zagal had his own problems, however. He had no steeds of war to give. But if they incline to peace, you also incline to it, and put your trust in Allah. Verily, He is the All hearer, the All knower.
Ferdinand had his own strains. Between the daily harassment, the boredom, the deprivations of camp life, the army was growing restless. Desertion was becoming a problem. In fact, in October, as the Moor had predicted, a ferocious storm did sweep over the area, washing away the makeshift shacks and colorful pavilions of the Christians, leaving pennants and battle flags to be carried away in rivers of mud. Surveying the damage, the king, not the Moor, took the initiative toward an accommodation. He sent a message through to Cidi Yahye offering liberty and the security of property, as well as huge rewards for him and his top generals, in return for surrender.
“Leader of the Arabs: you are well aware of how many deaths and damages have been inflicted upon your city over the past six months. For your people as well as the soldiers of my own royal army, in addition to those who will soon be arriving, we must find an honest compromise…”
Dogs of God Page 25
