Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada | Page 7

of the Moorish
monarchs. Everywhere I took notes, from the most advantageous points
of view, of whatever could serve to give local verity and graphic effect
to the scenes described. Having taken up my abode for a time at Seville,
I then resumed my manuscript and rewrote it, benefited by my
travelling notes and the fresh and vivid impressions of my recent tour.
In constructing my chronicle I adopted the fiction of a Spanish monk as
the chronicler. Fray Antonio Agapida was intended as a personification
of the monkish zealots who hovered about the sovereigns in their
campaigns, marring the chivalry of the camp by the bigotry of the
cloister, and chronicling in rapturous strains every act of intolerance
toward the Moors. In fact, scarce a sally of the pretended friar when he
bursts forth in rapturous eulogy of some great stroke of selfish policy
on the part of Ferdinand, or exults over some overwhelming disaster of
the gallant and devoted Moslems, but is taken almost word for word
from one or other of the orthodox chroniclers of Spain.
The ironical vein also was provoked by the mixture of kingcraft and
priestcraft discernible throughout this great enterprise, and the mistaken
zeal and self-delusion of many of its most gallant and generous
champions. The romantic coloring seemed to belong to the nature of
the subject, and was in harmony with what I had seen in my tour
through the poetical and romantic regions in which the events had
taken place. With all these deductions the work, in all its essential
points, was faithful to historical fact and built upon substantial
documents. It was a great satisfaction to me, therefore, after the doubts

that had been expressed of the authenticity of my chronicle, to find it
repeatedly and largely used by Don Miguel Lafuente Alcantara of
Granada in his recent learned and elaborate history of his native city, he
having had ample opportunity, in his varied and indefatigable
researches, of judging how far it accorded with documentary authority.
I have still more satisfaction in citing the following testimonial of Mr.
Prescott, whose researches for his admirable history of Ferdinand and
Isabella took him over the same ground I had trodden. His testimonial
is written in the liberal and courteous spirit characteristic of him, but
with a degree of eulogium which would make me shrink from quoting
it did I not feel the importance of his voucher for the substantial
accuracy of my work:
"Mr. Irving's late publication, the 'Chronicle of the Conquest of
Granada,' has superseded all further necessity for poetry and,
unfortunately for me, for history. He has fully availed himself of all the
picturesque and animating movement of this romantic era, and the
reader who will take the trouble to compare his chronicle with the
present more prosaic and literal narrative will see how little he has been
seduced from historic accuracy by the poetical aspect of his subject.
The fictitious and romantic dress of his work has enabled him to make
it the medium of reflecting more vividly the floating opinions and
chimerical fancies of the age, while he has illuminated the picture with
the dramatic brilliancy of coloring denied to sober history."*
*Prescott's Ferdinand and Isabella, vol. ii. c. 15.
In the present edition I have endeavored to render the work more
worthy of the generous encomium of Mr. Prescott. Though I still retain
the fiction of the monkish author Agapida, I have brought my narrative
more strictly within historical bounds, have corrected and enriched it in
various parts with facts recently brought to light by the researches of
Alcantara and others, and have sought to render it a faithful and
characteristic picture of the romantic portion of history to which it
relates.
W. I.

Sunnyside, 1850.

A CHRONICLE OF THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA.
CHAPTER I.
OF THE KINGDOM OF GRANADA, AND THE TRIBUTE WHICH
IT PAID TO THE CASTILIAN CROWN.
The history of those bloody and disastrous wars which have caused the
downfall of mighty empires (observes Fray Antonio Agapida) has ever
been considered a study highly delectable and full of precious
edification. What, then, must be the history of a pious crusade waged
by the most Catholic of sovereigns to rescue from the power of the
infidels one of the most beautiful but benighted regions of the globe?
Listen, then, while from the solitude of my cell I relate the events of the
conquest of Granada, where Christian knight and turbaned infidel
disputed, inch by inch, the fair land of Andalusia, until the Crescent,
that symbol of heathenish abomination, was cast down, and the blessed
Cross, the tree of our redemption, erected in its stead.
Nearly eight hundred years were past and gone since the Arabian
invaders had sealed the perdition of Spain by the defeat of