Infidels_ A History of the Conflict Between Christendom and Islam - Andrew Wheatcroft [80]
When one of Jiménez de Cisneros’s officials went up into the Moorish quarter on December 18, 1499, to summon other elches, the people of the quarter killed him, closed the gates, and took up arms in defense of their rights. “They began to call upon Mohammed, clamouring for liberty, and saying that they would burn the treaty of surrender; they took to the streets, blocked and fortified the gates to the Albaicin against the Christians of the city. They began to fight with them and all through the night the tumult grew.”24 There was a near panic among them that all Muslims would be converted by force. Even the well-liked Archbishop Talavera was stoned and not allowed to enter. When the count of Tendilla, the captain general of the kingdom, followed the archbishop, he was heard more respectfully. He told them that the pursuit of the elches would end, there would be no more forced conversions, and in a symbolic gesture, he brought down his wife and young child from the Alhambra to the Albaicin and entrusted them to the care and hospitality of the Muslim inhabitants. The rising in the city lasted some ten days, but further outbreaks of violence were forestalled. Yet nothing could be done to prevent news of the events in the capital reaching the staunchly Muslim villages of the Alpujarras. These had become a last redoubt for those who could not or would not leave their country, but did not want to live too close to Christians. Many of them had participated in the defense of Granada and were familiar with every contour and crevice of the land, invaluable knowledge in the guerrilla war that soon engulfed most of the kingdom.
Meanwhile Jiménez de Cisneros continued with his program of mass conversion, and rendered Tendilla’s promises worthless. Five days after the rising of the Albaicin had ended, Cisneros boasted that he had baptized 3,000 in a single morning. Messengers were sent to Ferdinand and Isabella at Seville, who, while fearing Muslim anger, were even more impressed by the rising total of conversions. They instructed Jiménez de Cisneros that “our desire is that in conversion you make all the fruit you can make.”25 To justify this shift in policy, Ferdinand now held that the brief rising in Granada, which had cost but a single life, had transformed the Granadines into warlike “Moors” who had broken the terms of the capitulation. That this was a ruse is suggested by the fact that he also recognized that the rising was little more than a riot. He immediately confirmed Tendilla’s pardon for all except those directly involved and extended an amnesty for all acts of rebellion provided those concerned converted to Christianity by February 25, 1500. The mass conversion that the Muslims feared was already under way and Cisneros, reassured of royal support, now redoubled his efforts. By the deadline he and his team had baptized almost the entire population of the city—this is the “heroic” event commemorated on Vigarny’s relief in the Chapel Royal.
Talavera had come to know the Muslims of Granada well; now marginalized by Jiménez de Cisneros, he feared disaster. He wrote to Ferdinand’s secretary that the success in the capital did not represent what would happen in the countryside. “One swallow does not make a summer,” he commented laconically. He ended his letter: “From Granada, in truth very desgranada [winnowed and turned into an empty husk].”26 The mass rising in the mountains that soon followed was on a scale never anticipated by the king. However, it also seemed to confirm that he had been right all along: the Muslims were wild and warlike, and tranquillity would reign only when they were all converted. Only a Christian Spain could hope to flourish. But as the towns and villages of the Alpujarras rose one by one, it was clear that this goal would not be accomplished by peaceful means. The captain general, Tendilla, gathered what troops he could find and moved against Guejar, the