CHAP. VI.] PERSECUTION OF THE MORISCOES. 187 Carlos a mutual and guilty passion, and attributed the death of both to the jealousy of Philip; nay, even the Prince of Orange in a grave state paper has not scrupled to charge the King of Spain with the murder of his wife, in order to make room for his marriage with Anne of Austria.19 But modern researches have dissipated this charge. Philip appears to have always treated Elizabeth with affection, while she herself was devoted to her husband, and absorbed by the fanaticism with which she was surrounded. It is one of the penalties incurred by a character like Philip's to become the constant object of calumny and suspicion. The intolerance and bigotry of the Spanish King increased with his years, and only gathered new strength from opposition; and the unfortunate Moors of Spain were destined to expiate the symptoms of revolt displayed by Philip's subjects in the Netherlands. We have already related the cruelty with which Ferdinand the Catholic and Cardinal Ximenes pursued the Moors. The persecution was continued under Charles V., but with not quite so much violence; for many years a sort of toleration was observed; not only in some towns, as Albaycin, the Moorish quarter of Granada, but even whole districts, as in the Alpujarras and their valleys, the Moors were suffered to retain their names and dialect, their manners and costumes. Some of them had pretended to become converts to Christianity, and these were called Marranos, the rest retained the name of Moriscoes. In 1564 and 1565 Philip II., stimulated by his clergy, and especially by Don Pedro Guerrero Archbishop of Granada, and Cardinal Spinosa, Vice-Grand Inquisitor, who, from his influence over Philip, was long called the "King of Spain," 20 issued some severe ordinances against the Moorish customs; and these were followed up in the subsequent year by another of such absurd atrocity, that even Philip himself hesitated for a while to adopt it, till the priests forced it upon him by alarming his conscience.21 By a statute of November 17th 1566, the Moriscoes were forbidden, on pain of death, to retain their ancient customs, and even to speak their mother-tongue; their music, their dances, and their baths were suppressed; they were not to fasten their doors; their wives were to throw aside their veils; their very names were to be changed for Castilian; in short, every distinctive trace was abolished, and they were to be entirely extirpated as a nation. 1944 Celuy done qui a épousé sa nièce ose me reprocher mon mariage! Celuy, lequel pour parvenir à un tel mariage a cruellement meurtri sa femme, fille et sœur des Rois de France!" Apologie of the Prince of Orange in Dumont, t. v. pt. i. p. 389. Cf. Watson, Hist. of Philip II. vol. iii. App. p. 364. 20 Strada, Bell. Belg. lib. vi. t. i. p. 203. 21 See especially the Letter of Ōtadin, professor of theology at Alcalà to Philip, in Circourt, Hist. des Maures d'Espagne, t. ii. p. 278 sq. 188 REVOLT AND SUBJUGATION OF MORISCOES. [BOOK III. The Marquis of Mondejar, Viceroy of Granada, hesitated to publish this cruel and impolitic law; but Don Pedro de Deza, president of the Chancery of Granada, caused it to be proclaimed by sound of trumpet, January 1st 1567. Astonished and afflicted, the Moors hastened to lay their petitions and remonstrances at the feet of Philip. They might as well have spoken to the winds. Despair then drove them secretly to organise a revolt.22 Applications were made to the Sultan and to the Moors of Algiers for assistance; money was secretly raised, and great quantities of arms and provisions were collected in a large cave, or grotto, in the mountains. Meanwhile the severity of the law was enhanced by the regulations of Don Pedro de Deza. Spaniards were forbidden to hold any intercourse with a Mahometan, and by an' edict published in January 1568 the Moriscoes were directed to send in the names of all their children from the age of three to fifteen years, in order that they might be sent to Spanish schools. In April the Moorish inhabitants of the Alpujarras flew to arms; and in the following September, in conjunction with their fellow-countrymen at Albaycin, they elected for their chief Don Fernando Muley of Valor and Cordova, a young man twenty-two years of age, descended from the Ommiyahd chalifs, to whom they gave the title of Muley Abdallah Nahmed ben Ommiyah, King of Granada and Andalusia.23 In the winter the Moors made an unsuccessful attempt upon Granada, while the Spanish infantry penetrated into the Alpujarras and perpetrated the most inhuman cruelties. An internecine war ensued which lasted two years. Muley having made himself hated and despised by his tyranny and sensuality, the Moriscoes formed a conspiracy against him. He was betrayed in his sleep and murdered by the treachery of his beautiful wife, Zahara; and the conspirators then chose Ben Abu for their leader (October 1569). Philip had appointed his brother, Don John of Austria, a natural son of Charles V., to conduct the war against the Moors; but it was not till towards the close of 1569 that the mistrustful Philip could prevail upon himself to grant his relative full power. Don John then raised the ban and arrière ban of Andalusia, and at the beginning of 1570 brought an army of 24,000 men into the field. Galera was taken after a long siege (February 10th), and Don John disgraced himself by ordering an inhuman massacre. Ben Abu was murdered about the same time, and the Moors lost all hope of a successful resistance. The war became one of extermination; 22 This revolt has been described at great length by Prescott, Hist. of Philip II. vol. iii. B. v. ch. i.-viii. Cf. Circourt, t. ii. ch. 13. 23 Andalusia, in the Moorish dialect, signified the whole of Spain. CHAP. VI.] SOLYMAN RESOLVES TO BESIEGE MALTA. 189 village after village, town after town fell into the hands of the Spaniards and were destroyed; and in 1571 the Moors were completely subdued. Towards the end of that year those who survived were transplanted into Estremadura and other Spanish provinces ; though considerable numbers succeeded in escaping to Fez and Algiers. At this period the arms of Philip II. were also engaged against the Turks, whose fleets had long infested the Mediterranean. During the reign of Henry II. of France, and at the instigation of that monarch, the Sultan sent every year large armaments into the Mediterranean, whose operations however were chiefly confined to supporting the Mahometan pirates on the coast of Africa. In the autumn of 1559 Philip fitted out a fleet against the chief of their pirates, the corsair Draghut. The Pope (then Paul IV.), the Genoese, the Florentines and the Knights of Malta contributed to the expedition, and 200 vessels under the command of Doria, and having on board 14,000 troops, attacked and took the island of Jerbah in March 1560; but it was recovered in the following July by the Turkish admiral Piali, and no permanent success was achieved by this large expedition. The wars between the Spaniards and the Moors on the African coast continued some years; they present an unvarying web of barbarity and slaughter, and we shall not pursue them in detail. In 1564 the Spaniards gained considerable advantages. In the following year, Sultan Solyman resolved to direct all his forces against the Knights Hospitallers of St. John at Malta, who were the chief support of the Christian power in the Mediterranean. We have already mentioned how Charles V. gave them that island after they had been driven from Rhodes and were wandering in Italy; a politic, as well as a charitable act, since by the donation of this barren rock, which yielded no revenue, for the feudal tenure of an annual falcon, Charles secured gratuitously an excellent bulwark for his dominions. The Knights greatly improved the island not only by fortifying it, but also, so far as the soil permitted, by its cultivation. The siege of Malta by the Turks is one of the most memorable feats of arms of the sixteenth century, though its details are interesting only in a military point of view.24 The immediate occasion of it was the capture by the Knights of a Turkish galleon belonging to the chief eunuch of the Sultan's harem. The Grand-Master of the order at that time was Jean Parisot de la Valette, who, when he heard of Solyman's design, made the most vigorous preparations gociations de la France dans le Levant, t. ii. p. 804 sqq. 24 Some new particulars respecting the siege of Malta will be found in the Ne 190 HEROIC DEFENCE OF LA VALETTE. [Book III. for defence. The useless part of the population was shipped off to Sicily, the fortifications were strengthened and foreign auxiliaries obtained; and in order to breed emulation, the different posts were assigned to the Knights according to their language, or nation. The whole body of the Knights was 700 in number, with a force under them of about 9000 men. The Turkish fleet consisted of 180 galleys commanded by Piali, with a large number of transports having about 30,000 troops on board, including 6000 Janissaries, under the veteran Mustapha. This armament, which appeared off Malta May 18th 1565, was afterwards reinforced by Draghut from Tripoli with thirteen galleys. The first attack of the Turks was directed against the castle of St. Elmo, commanding the entrance of the harbour. After a bombardment of several weeks, and the repulse of two general assaults, St. Elmo, reduced almost to a heap of ruins, was captured by the Turks, June 23rd. During the siege Draghut received a mortal wound. There still remained to be taken the Borgo, and the castles of St. Angelo and St. Michael. Space will not allow us to detail the many desperate struggles which took place for the possession of the last-named castle, which was defended by La Valette in person; suffice it to say that after a siege of more than two months, the Turks abandoned the attempt in despair, and set sail for Constantinople (September 8th). After their departure the Sicilian viceroy Don Garcia, who was strongly suspected of cowardice, arrived with reinforcements. He subsequently received permission to retire from his government. The merit of the defence belongs entirely to La Valette, who received compliments and presents from every sovereign in Europe, and among them a cardinal's hat from the Pope, which however he declined. He subsequently founded a new capital of Malta, which obtained from him the name of Valetta. Solyman was furious at this defeat, the most humiliating that he had sustained during his long reign. The capture by Piali iu the following year (1566) of the Isle of Chios, the last possession of the Genoese in the Levant, which however offered no resistance, afforded the Sultan some consolation. Chios was then ruled by the family of Justiniani, the last of the Frankish lords who maintained a semblance of independence in these waters, though indeed they paid an annual tribute to the Porte. But before Piali could lay the spoils at his master's feet, Solyman had expired. The Sultan had been impelled to wipe out the disgrace of Malta by some glorious achievement, and the affairs of Hungary offered the occasion. The truce of eight years concluded between CHAP. VI.] DEATH OF SOLYMAN THE MAGNIFICENT. 191 Ferdinand I. and the Porte 25 had not yet expired; and though that Emperor had left the stipulated tribute unpaid, yet Maximilian II. after his accession had paid the arrears in February 1565, as well as the pension to the Grand Vizier. The truce was accordingly to have been renewed; but before a fresh treaty could be prepared, Solyman, nettled by his reverses, had determined on a war in Hungary, in support of the cause of his "slave" John Sigismund. The war which Maximilian had waged with that prince had been hitherto successful; he had recovered the places captured by John Sigismund, and had also conquered Tokay, Kovar, Erdad and Bathor. But he had now to contend with a more redoubtable enemy, and he used all his exertions to collect an adequate force. The Germans unanimously voted him 48,000 men at the Diet of Augsburg, and a considerably larger body was raised in his other dominions. Of this force, one division under Schwendi was cantoned on the Theiss, to hold Transylvania in check, another under the Archduke Charles secured Illyria, while Maximilian himself, with the main body of 80,000 men, encamped near Raab. Solyman the Magnificent left Constantinople at the head of a vast army with all the pomp of war, May 1st 1566. At Semlin he received John Sigismund with royal honours (June 29th), and declared that he had come to vindicate his cause against the House of Austria. It was Solyman's intention to ascend the course of the Danube, had not a feat of arms of Count Zriny diverted his attention to the little town of Sigeth, the family seat of that nobleman, near Fünfkirchen. In a sally which he made, Zriny had defeated and killed near Siklos a favourite Pasha of the Sultan's, and Solyman to punish him directed against Sigeth his army of 100,000 men and 300 guns. But this siege afforded another instance of the unskilfulness of the Turks in such operations. Zriny made a valorous defence for nearly five weeks, when the place was at last captured, and he himself beheaded on one of his own cannons. But the enterprise cost the Turks 20,000 men, and among them the great Sultan himself, who died September 4th 1566, from the consequences of fatigue and the unwholesome air of the marshes. Solyman had long been in bad health. Besides the gout, he was subject to attacks of melancholy, and lay sometimes totally unconscious in a swoon or trance.26 Navagero describes him 27 at the age of sixty-two as much above the middle height, but meagre 25 See above, p. 168. See the Despatches of De Petremol, in the Négociations, &c., t. ii. p. 692. Relazione of Navagero, in Alberi's collection, Ser. iii. t. i. p. 72. Cf. Busbequii Epist. p. 105. (Ed. Elzev. 1633.) |