THE union of Ferdinand and Isabel (Los Reyes Catolicos) knits mediÆval with modern times.

The whole round of royal actors in the dramatic epoch move before us as living characters on the stage of life. Their daughter Juana, la Folle, her handsome husband Philippe le Bel, Duke of Burgundy, the parents of Charles V., Katharine, her younger sister, married to King Henry VIII., Philip II., his son Don Carlos, and Elizabeth of Spain, bring us on to modern wars with Alva and Orange, the Armada, and our own Queen Elizabeth.

At once the royal spouses were involved in anarchy and war.

Alfonso, King of Portugal, brother to the bad queen, actually espoused his niece, Juana la Beltraneja, then thirteen, to gain the throne. But he was defeated by Ferdinand, and the standard of Portugal—borne by the gallant De Almeyda first with his right hand, then with his left, when, losing both arms, he held it in his teeth—was torn to shreds. Alfonso retreated, and the Beltraneja, the innocent cause of so much strife and bloodshed, disgusted with a world in which she had found nothing but sorrow, took the black veil at the convent of Santa Chiara at Coimbra.

Ferdinand was, before everything, a soldier. He lived on the battle-field, and the queen, who followed him in all things with devoted love, rode with him in his campaigns, mounted on a war-horse, encased in mail, at the head of her Castilians.

When not engaged in war, she went to and fro in her own kingdom, reforming abuses, founding convents and churches, and enforcing the laws, fallen into much disuse during the riotous reign of her brother; in all assisted by her great minister, Cardinal Ximenes, her friend and secretary, Peter Martyr, Cardinal Mendoza, Garcilaso de la Vega, and, alas! be it added, by her fanatic confessor, Cardinal Torquemada, whose influence brought about the creation of the tribunal of the Inquisition, “To unite more firmly,” it was said, “Church and State, and to discover and extirpate all heresies, Jews, and unbelievers from the kingdom” (1480).

Two such sovereigns could not long leave the Moors in undisturbed possession of the third of Spain. The north of Africa (Barbary) was theirs, with Sicily and, afterwards, Naples. Ferdinand loved conquest for itself, and, to the pious mind of Isabel, the conversion of the Moslem was a duty direct from God. But as they, with a dogmatism equal to her own, despised the Castilians as unlettered boors, and ridiculed their religion, nothing could solve the difficulty but a cruel war.

Nor was a pretext wanting. The tribute of twelve thousand golden ducats, paid by the Moors from the time of San Fernando for permission to inhabit the land of Spain, was refused; and the brave knight, Don Juan de Vega, was despatched from Cordoba to demand the cause (1478).

And this leads us to the poetic city of Granada, successor in learning and civilisation to Cordoba of the Almoravides, vermilion-walled and rich in running waters, snowy patios, domes, peristyles, and filigree porticoes glowing with rainbow tints, where Moslem knights waylaid pearl-crowned sultanas, and turbaned sheikhs clasped jewelled fingers.

Granada, a name of infinite suggestion in all ages. The Moslem capital and the heart of Moorish Spain. The fastness of the Alhambra rearing its ruddy buttresses aloft over the land. The plaza of the Bivarrambla, the centre of tilt and tourney, the pillared bazar of the Alcayceria, gay with eastern wares, the narrow Zacatin strewed with the ducats of Oriental wealth, the walled-in fortress of the Albaycin commanding the frowning gorge of the Darro, the two gardens of the Alamedas, each with its dashing rivers, backed by the eternal snows of the mountains of the Sierra Nevada.

What a world of beauty! The Vega, emerald green, with orange groves and pasture, huertas and carmens, showing between, where cool airs waft from woods and gardens; the Xenil, like a blue ribbon, wandering to the sea by precipices and defiles, eloquent with song under the heavy tread of hostile hosts; the pale line of the Elvira mountains to the west, and arid sepia-tinted range opposite, to be called in our own day “the last sigh of the Moor,” and the airy palace of the Generalife perched on high among dark cypress groves, backed by the naked outline of a brown hill, “The Seat of the Moor,” under which Boabdil still is said to sit.

By the gate of Elvira Don Juan de Vega entered Granada with a small but well-chosen band, the great banner of Los Reyes borne before him by a herald. And so stern did he and his Castilians look, and so haughty was their carriage, that the Moors, though they hated them, let them pass unchallenged.

As they traversed the narrow streets of Los Gomeles, they passed by the great mosque, now the cathedral, and many palaces, the sound of water ever in their ears, so abundantly is the city supplied.

Nor did Don Juan fail to notice, in his passage, that the city was in a complete state of defence; the walls, of tremendous strength, manned and furnished with the heavy artillery of the day, the outposts guarded by deep ditches, and the Moorish soldiers many and well equipped with steel morions, chain armour, and stout scimitars at their side.

They enter the Alhambra by the three great arches of the Gate of Justice, one within the other, bearing the talismanic signs of the hand and the key, which no one has ever explained, and pass by the rude stone where the Moorish kings administer justice. Challenged by the Moorish guard, a parley ensues as to the errand on which they come.

“To deliver the Catholic sovereigns’ message to the King of Granada,” replies Don Juan, proudly. Upon which the black-bearded Moslems open the massive doors onto a narrow road, with sharp angles to baffle an enemy, a road only for horses and litters, the walls orange-coloured and glowing. And so they follow on to the broad platform where the alcazada (keep) rears its majestic front with quatrefoil arches, bright with gaudy tiles, in the centre of a wondrous group of vermilion towers, each with its tradition of battle and carnage, to the patio of the Alberca, a marble-lined court, bordered by canals and fragrant hedges of myrtle and orange, an arcaded frontispiece at one end, and at the other the sun-dyed walls of the ancient tower of Comares.

And here it must be noted that the Alhambra is a fortress following on round the crown of a broad hill rising over Granada, and is entirely formed of fortified walls and innumerable Moorish towers of extraordinary solidity and various sizes, covering a vast platform divided into arcaded courts of exquisite beauty, and that there is no solid building at all, but lovely suites of halls following on, formed to the taste of an Oriental people living in the open air.

Don Juan is received with much formal courtesy in the court of the Alberca—where the water cisterns are guarded by low hedges of sweet shrubs—by the sheikhs and emirs attending on the king, a glittering band of dark-visaged eunuchs. By them Don Juan alone is led to the tower of Comares, through marvellously worked arches dropping with golden stalactites, a vista of vestibules of scarcely earthly beauty, panelled and embroidered in patterns of roses, bosses, emblems, borders, and arabesques all in pale Oriental shades of red, green, and blue; a scene of enchantment utterly bewildering to the simple mind of the Castilian knight. Then under more snowy arches, set with filigree edges, as of gems, into the Hall of the Ambassadors, glowing with gold and deep azure, with open-pillared balconies overhanging the precipitous banks of the Darro, giving a glimpse of outer splendour to the sombre walls, to prepare the mind of the stranger for the awful presence of Muley Hassan, seated upon a golden throne, inclosed by screens and hangings of jewelled embroideries fringed with pearls. Gold and silver tissues lie at his feet, and at his back a divan of dark heads, dazzling white turbans, and plumed casques with trembling gems; a vaulted artesonado dome over his head radiant with stars scintillating in a ground of crystal and tortoise-shell.

As the good knight, nothing daunted, stands forth in glittering armour, before the old king, under a battery of hostile eyes, he speaks his message in a loud, clear voice:

“I come, O Caliph of Granada! from the sovereigns of Castile and Aragon, to demand the tribute due, for the permission to occupy the land of Spain, conquered from your ancestors by San Fernando of Castile!”

As he listens, a bitter smile curls Muley’s bearded lips, and his hand seeks the handle of a jewelled dagger at his side.

“Tell the Spanish rulers,” he says, in a voice tremulous with passion, “that the sovereigns of Granada who paid tribute are all dead. My mint coins nothing but dagger-blades and lances!”

War—bitter war—spoke in these words. Nor did the haughty bearing of the turbaned court belie the sign.

So Don Juan accepted it, but he was too discreet a knight to permit this impression to influence the lofty courtesy of his departure, as, with fitting salutations, he returned, filled with amazement at all the wonders he had seen.

Nor was the impression lessened as he passed through the Court of Lions, followed by a band of swarthy attendants, black-skinned Ethiopians and Nubians, naked but for a white cloth about their loins, and noted the giant forms of the marble lions filled with leaden pipes, which support the double basins, to the verge of which the fountain rises; the Arab porticoes and pavilions around the court, light as air, and range upon range of snowy arches, worked with the fineness of a chiselled cup.

If architecture at all, an Oriental fantasia, utterly unreal! the splendour of the Hall of Justice, of the Abencerrages, which follows on either side, with long vistas of many-domed halls opening into other patios, where violets, roses, and orange-trees blaze in the light, entered by portals glowing with brilliant mosaics, a low arch, specially pointed out to him by a noble Moor, more courteous than the rest, in the Hall of Justice, as leading to the place of execution. Whether intended as a hint to him of his danger, or of the swift course of justice towards the condemned, did not appear. At any rate, Don Juan remained perfectly unmoved; he had confessed before he started, and his life belonged to his sovereign—but when he was joined by a flippant emir, oiled and combed, who ventured to enter into an argument against the Christian faith, and especially the folly of believing in the immaculate conception of the Virgin, forgetting all the prescribed bearing of an envoy, he dealt him a sounding blow on the head with his sheathed sword.

In an instant a noise like thunder swept through the court, and the long lines of white arcades, at the back of the pavilion, were darkened by masses of Africans, black as night, stolid, passionless, their silver breastplates and long earrings shining on their dark skins, carrying immense clubs, studded with brazen nails. In advance the captain, the fatal bowstring hanging on his arm, and his eyes turned to obey the gesture of command to torture or to slay.

But Muley Hassan, better instructed in the usages of courts, instantly sent orders to respect the person and freedom of an ambassador while in his court; and so Don Juan departed safely by the way that he had come.

The night attack on JaÉn followed the defiance borne by Don Juan—a cruel onslaught on a defenceless town, the fierce old Muley Hassan turning a deaf ear to all remonstrance.

This was succeeded by the no less cruel assault of the sovereigns on the castle of Alhama near Granada (described in the ballad Ay de mi Alhama), by Ponce de Leon, MarquÉs de Cadiz, one of Ferdinand’s most valiant captains; and the long Moorish war, destined to last ten years, began in earnest.