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Mementos Of BoabdilMementos Of Boabdil
Mementos Of Boabdil
While my mind was still warm with the subject of the unfortunate Boabdil,
I set forth to trace the mementos of him still existing in this scene of his
sovereignty and misfortunes. In the Tower of Comares, immediately under the
Hall of Ambassadors, are two vaulted rooms, separated by a narrow passage;
these are said to have been the prisons of himself and his mother, the
virtuous Ayxa la Horra; indeed, no other part of the tower would have served
for the purpose. The external walls of these chambers are of prodigious
thickness, pierced with small windows secured by iron bars. A narrow stone
gallery, with a low parapet, extends along three sides of the tower just below
the windows, but at a considerable height from the ground. From this gallery,
it is presumed, the queen lowered her son with the scarfs of herself and her
female attendants during the darkness of the night to the hillside, where some
of his faithful adherents waited with fleet steeds to bear him to the
mountains.
Between three and four hundred years have elapsed, yet this scene of the
drama remains almost unchanged. As I paced the gallery, my imagination
pictured the anxious queen leaning over the parapet; listening, with the
throbbings of a mother`s heart, to the last echoes of the horses` hoofs as her
son scoured along the narrow valley of the Darro.
I next sought the gate by which Boabdil made his last exit from the
Alhambra, when about to surrender his capital and kingdom. With the melancholy
caprice of a broken spirit, or perhaps with some superstitious feeling, he
requested of the Catholic monarchs that no one afterwards might be permitted
to pass through it. His prayer, according to ancient chronicles, was complied
with, through the sympathy of Isabella, and the gate was walled up.
I inquired for some time in vain for such a portal; at length my humble
attendant, Mateo Ximenes, said it must be one closed up with stones, which,
according to what he had heard from his father and grandfather, was the
gateway by which King Chico had left the fortress. There was a mystery about
it, and it had never been opened within the memory of the oldest inhabitant.
He conducted me to the spot. The gateway is in the centre of what was
once an immense pile, called the Tower of the Seven Floors (la Torre de los
Siete Suelos). It is famous in the neighborhood as the scene of strange
apparitions and Moorish enchantments. According to Swinburne the traveller,
it was originally the great gate of entrance. The antiquaries of Granada
pronounce it the entrance to that quarter of the royal residence where the
king`s bodyguards were stationed. It therefore might well form an immediate
entrance and exit to the palace; while the grand Gate of Justice served as the
entrance of state to the fortress. When Boabdil sallied by this gate to
descend to the Vega, where he was to surrender the keys of the city to the
Spanish sovereigns, he left his vizier Aben Comixa to receive, at the Gate of
Justice, the detachment from the Christian army and the officers to whom the
fortress was to be given up.
The once redoubtable Tower of the Seven Floors is now a mere wreck,
having been blown up with gunpowder by the French, when they abandoned the
fortress. Great masses of the wall lie scattered about, buried in luxuriant
herbage, or overshadowed by vines and fig-trees. The arch of the gateway,
though rent by the shock, still remains; but the last wish of poor Boabdil has
again, though unintentionally, been fulfilled, for the portal has been closed
up by loose stones gathered from the ruins, and remains impassable.
Mounting my horse, I followed up the route of the Moslem monarch from
this place of his exit. Crossing the hill of Los Martyros, and keeping along
the garden wall of a convent bearing the same name, I descended a rugged
ravine beset by thickets of aloes and Indian figs, and lined with caves and
hovels swarming with gipsies. The descent was so steep and broken that I was
fain to alight and lead my horse. By this via dolorosa poor Boabdil took his
sad departure to avoid passing through the city; partly, perhaps, through
unwillingness that its inhabitants should behold his humiliation; but chiefly,
in all probability, lest it might cause some popular agitation. For the last
reason, undoubtedly, the detachment sent to take possession of the fortress
ascended by the same route.
Emerging from this rough ravine, so full of melancholy associations, and
passing by the puerta de los molinos (the gate of the mills), I issued forth
upon the public promenade called the Prado, and pursuing the course of the
Xenil, arrive at a small chapel, once a mosque, now the Hermitage of San
Sebastian. Here, according to tradition, Boabdil surrendered the keys of
Granada to King Ferdinand. I rode slowly thence across the Vega to a village
where the family and household of the unhappy king awaited him, for he had
sent them forward on the preceding night from the Alhambra, that his mother
and wife might not participate in his personal humiliation, or be exposed to
the gaze of the conquerors. Following on in the route of the melancholy band
of royal exiles, I arrived at the foot of a chain of barren and dreary
heights, forming the skirt of the Alpuxarra mountains. From the summit of one
of these the unfortunate Boabdil took his last look at Granada; it bears a
name expressive of his sorrows, la Cuesta de las Lagrimas (the Hill of Tears).
Beyond it, a sandy road winds across a rugged cheerless waste, doubly dismal
to the unhappy monarch, as it led to exile.
I spurred my horse to the summit of a rock, where Boabdil uttered his
last sorrowful exclamation, as he turned his eyes from taking their farewell
gaze; it is still denominated el ultimo suspiro del Moro (the last sigh of
the Moor). Who can wonder at his anguish at being expelled from such a kingdom
and such an abode? With the Alhambra he seemed to be yielding up all the
honors of his line, and all the glories and delights of life.
It was here, too, that his affliction was embittered by the reproach of
his mother, Ayxa, who had so often assisted him in times of peril, and had
vainly sought to instil into him her own resolute spirit. "You do well," said
she, "to weep as a woman over what you could not defend as a man"; a speech
savoring more of the pride of the princess than the tenderness of the mother.
[See Portrait Of Charles V]
When this anecdote was related to Charles V by Bishop Guevara, the
emperor joined in the expression of scorn at the weakness of the wavering
Boabdil. "Had I been he, or he been I," said the haughty potentate, "I would
rather have made this Alhambra my sepulchre than have lived without a kingdom
in the Alpuxarra." How easy it is for those in power and prosperity to preach
heroism to the vanquished! how little can they understand that life itself may
rise in value with the unfortunate, when nought but life remains!
Slowly descending the "Hill of Tears," I let my horse take his own
loitering gait back to Granada, while I turned the story of the unfortunate
Boabdil over in my mind. In summing up the particulars I found the balance
inclining in his favor. Throughout the whole of his brief, turbulent, and
disastrous reign, he gives evidence of a mild and amiable character. He, in
the first instance, won the hearts of his people by his affable and gracious
manners; he was always placable, and never inflicted any severity of
punishment upon those who occasionally rebelled against him. He was personally
brave; but wanted moral courage; and, in times of difficulty and perplexity,
was wavering and irresolute. This feebleness of spirit hastened his downfall,
while it deprived him of that heroic grace which would have given grandeur and
dignity to his fate, and rendered him worthy of closing the splendid drama of
the Moslem domination in Spain.
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