Here as elsewhere the nobles and people of Toledo were constantly at loggerheads, though it would be difficult to say on which side reason preponderated. Now it was the Silvas who sided with the rebels, then the Ayalas who opened the city gates to them. One Ayala, mayor of the town, rode to meet an invading infante; the infante reproached him insolently, on which Ayala flung back his words, and turning rode into Toledo to shut the gates in his face. They were not to be trifled with, these haughty Toledans. In a measure their prince was their valet, and was subject to insult upon provocation.

The same may be said of the artisans. There exists a Toledan proverb: “Soplaré el odrero alborazarse ha Toledo.” Let the ironmonger (or pot-maker) blow and Toledo will rise up. This proverb dates from the time of John II., who begged the Toledans to supply him with a certain amount of maravedis towards the expenses of his wars with Aragon and Navarre. The people indignantly refused, and the first to hiss the Toledan note of revolt was a maker of iron pots. Previously someone had discovered a Gothic inscription which proved that the ironmongers of Gothic days were the centre of urban revolution, hence the proverb proving their traditional contumelious disposition.

King John’s love of poetry produced two Toledan poets, praised by Dr Pisa, Antonio de Heredia, a poet who “added rare glory to the Castillian muse” (probably an ancestor of the French academician, Jose Maria de Heredia) and a woman, Aloysia de Sigea, whose portrait may be seen in the Biblioteca provincial de Toledo. The fame of her erudition travelled to Portugal, and she is said to have written fluently in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabian, though with so inconceivable a lack of decency that her muse to-day is not translateable in modern tongue. Doña Luisa Sigea of Toledo, and her witty daughter Doña Angela, were called “women philosophers,” and their depraved works are supposed to be founded on the traditions of a mysterious association discovered under John II. at Sevilla, “a bizarre school whose immorality is understood by the terms of the law that prescribes it.”[11]

Alvaro de Luna found the Toledans no easy subjects to deal with. Pedro Sarmiento constituted himself chief of the revolution against the mighty Constable, and instead of a great lord the people had to do with a mean and avaricious hound. Don Alvaro appointed captains his sons, Pedro de Luna and Fernando de Rivadeneira, and ordered them to cross the river and besiege the town by the Puente de Alcantara. Sarmiento sent 50 horses and 500 foot out by the Puerta del Cambron under his son to surprise the Constable’s forces near the river. A fierce battle ensued, and the King himself had to make conditions for the Constable with the violent and haughty citizens. Sarmiento demanded that the Constable should be given up or the King resign, and roundly accused his sovereign of weakness and favouritism. The King demurred, upon which Sarmiento invited his son to come and reign, but Henry soon found that he was only a tool in Sarmiento’s hands, and left the city in dudgeon, to return speedily at the head of an army to crush the too powerful Sarmiento. Ordered to leave Toledo, Sarmiento loaded two hundred beasts with gold, silver, jewels, carpets, brocade, silk, and linen he had robbed of the citizens he oppressed, and to the prince’s shame the impudent thief was permitted to carry off his treasure unmolested. The execution of the great Constable, infamously abandoned by his friend and sovereign, did not secure peace and content to rebel Toledo.

The state of the town in the succeeding years was so terrible that the citizens sent the Bachelor Fernan Sanchez Calderon to supplicate the king’s interference, and enable them to possess in security their goods and products of those who had beaten, robbed, and ruined the town. The King declined to interfere himself, and expressed surprise that a man of such marvellous learning and science as the bachelor should come on such an errand. To the King’s rebuke, the bachelor replied: “God forfend, illustrious lord, that I should hold as worthy of your majesty’s attention such things, but I accepted this embassy to make manifest to your excellency the evil things that are being done.” The King retorted: “It is my duty to punish evil, not to reward it.”

Temporary peace came with the union of the two powerful houses of Ayala and Silva, in the marriage of Doña Maria de Silva and Pero Lopez de Ayala. But King Henry’s entry into Toledo aroused the old lion. The alarm bells rung, and the citizens rushed armed to the bishop’s palace, where the King was. Fearing bloodshed, a squadron of cavaliers rode hot haste to the palace and begged the King to leave the city, and he went forth surrounded by the reconciled Ayalas and Silvas. To all the troubles that followed between Isabel and Henry, Toledo added more than her share. One moment the nobles held the town, and then the people, both parties ever opposed in interests, allegiance, and both in reality caring greatly more for their own archbishop, their real sovereign, than the throned king who ruled all Castille. With two parties contending for the crown of Castille, Isabel and the Beltranaje, Henry’s acknowledged heiress, his wife’s but not his own daughter, sympathy ran high in Toledo on both sides. The Marquis of Villena attempted to capture the Princess Isabel, but was defeated by the vigilant archbishop, who collected a body of horse, and carried her off to Valladolid. Never were betrothal and marriage solemnised under more romantic and thrilling circumstances than were those of Isabel, Shakespeare’s “queen of earthly queens,” the sole majestic and perfect sovereign of Spain, and Ferdinand her unworthy husband, whose single virtue lay in the admirable way during her lifetime in which he seconded her rule. In gratitude for Toledo’s sympathy, the great queen visited the town immediately after her marriage, but the scenes of her triumphs and glory lie elsewhere. There is but one blot on them, due to her husband and the terrible Torquemado, the introduction of the Inquisition into Castille. This was shortly before the great Cortes held at Toledo, 1480, where the salutary measures of reform instituted by her were such to leave her subjects awestruck in admiration of her genius. But there were the Portuguese and the Moors calling her attention, with blare of trumpet and shock of steel, while Toledo’s true sovereign was the great Cardinal, the Cardinal of Spain, Mendoza. Gallant, learned and liberal, a grand seigneur, he was in every way in contrast with his austere successor, Cisneros. He was not unfamiliar with illicit love and its complications, and acknowledged two sons, Iñigo de Mendoza, and Diego, Count of Melito. His gifts to various cities in the shape of palaces, churches, colleges, jewels and rich church ornaments, were incredible, while Toledo possesses his most beautiful Hospital of Santa Cruz. He left all his wealth to this hospital, appointing Queen Isabel his executor. He it was who waved the royal standard from the highest tower of the Alhambra after the taking of Granada, and, better still, counselled Isabel to lend a friendly and helpful hearing to Columbus. His library was the most magnificent of mediæval Spain. Philip II. was in treaty to purchase this rare collection for the Escorial, and a correspondence exists between his secretary and the vicar of Toledo, Maese Alvar Gomez. It afterwards fell into the hands of Cardinal Loaysa, and was valued at twenty thousand ducats. Mendoza employed a staff of writers in copying and transcribing rare MSS., the chief of whom was a Greek, Calosynas, a pupil of Darmarius.

We approach the last hours of Toledan history. The great queen’s death revealed the worthlessness of her husband, and the unfortunate Juana became the victim of the vilest conspiracy between the three men to whom she should have been most sacred. First her father, not willing to step down from the throne of Castille to make way for his daughter, decided to proclaim her mad. Then her husband, won over by promises of Fernando, consented to accept the situation, but was cut off suddenly, after the agreement, poisoned it is said, by Fernando’s orders. Then the heartless young prince, her son, resolved to carry on the infamous persecution, in order to reign in her stead, and kept the poor woman nearly fifty years in a dark comfortless chamber, ill-treated by her keepers, the Marquis and Marchioness of Denia, with no communication with the outer world. The story of Juana la Loca, to whose perfect sanity Cisneros and her confessor, Juan de Avila, testify, is one of the saddest of history.

In 1505, the Marquis of Villena received orders to place Toledo under Flemish rule. The town murmured rebelliously, and as soon as Philip died at Burgos, declared itself independent. The nobles, headed by Silva and Ayala, met and swore that under no consideration should the sword or any artillery be employed to keep the peace. The Silvas held the gates and bridges, but the Ayalas, exasperated by the dominance of their old rivals, talked the townspeople into a rising, and bloodshed ensued. The Silvas conquered, flung the magistrate and his party out of the city, and the streets were strewn with wounded and dead. On Fernando’s death, Cisneros became the regent of Castille, with Adriano of Utrecht and Armestoff. Cisneros filled the town with militia, and the ramparts glittered with steel. Now Toledo’s pet aversion was a uniform. She liked to fight, but in her own rough, free-lance style. So she rose up against the cardinals, and after a futile rebellion, in which neighbouring towns engaged, was speedily quelled. But the insurgents within her gates kept muttering of treachery on Charles’ side and of his unhappy mother. So Toledo, “the crown of Spain and light of the whole world, ever free since the high reign of the Goths,” decided to fight for the queen, and depose the tyrannical young Charles. Insolent verses rang round the town, jeering at Xebres the favourite:—

The favourite had to fly from the city, and when his nephew, William of Croy, was appointed to the great see of Toledo, there was a frantic explosion. Everything combined to excite indignation. Austrian fashions were adopted to please Charles, goods were imported from every foreign port to the detriment of home productions, and Toledo, that employed over ten thousand workmen in silk factories, was nearly ruined by the royal decree limiting the use of silk, and forbidding the use of Spanish embroideries of gold, and silver, and rich brocade. This tyranny brought about the famous rising of the Comuneros, under Juan de Padilla. Padilla is the greatest figure of mediæval Toledo. Historians delight in him as a true hero, brave, gallant, honourable, wise, a perfect hidalgo, as romance paints him, punctillious, unaffected and pious. The worst his bitterest enemies ever said of him was, that he played second fiddle to his heroic wife, Maria de Pacheco, and coveted the mantle of Master of Santiago. His influence over the citizens and people was immense. For a single word of his, 20,000 workmen armed themselves, and stood round him. They named him captain-general of the combined forces of the Comuneros, with Francisco Maldonado in command at Salamanca, and Juan Bravo in command at Segovia. Toledo seized all the outlying towns and villages, and her voice of command reached to the Portuguese frontier and as far north as Valladolid. The cruelty and treachery practised by the Imperial army, with the prince of perfidy at its head, were such to send all Castille vigorously marching behind the heroic Padilla. War once set a-going, Padilla went down to Tordesillas to see the queen. Toledo remembered that the outraged sovereign had been born within her walls, and despatched her gallantest son with words of sympathy and allegiance. At a sign from Juana, he was ready to translate the junta from Toledo to Tordesillas, and make a rampart of his men for her protection. He forced the gates, and learnt the miserable tale of the queen’s compulsory detention and sufferings, and found that “she was in her right senses, and quite as capable of governing as her mother, Isabel.” To every urgent prayer to sign the decree proclaiming her inviolable rights, and her son’s base usurpation, she answered “that all that she has is her son’s.” “The queen,” wrote Hurtado de Mendoza to Charles, “spoke nobly to the rebels,” and adds that he regards her as “perfectly sane.”

While Padilla was being worshipped as a popular idol at Valladolid, jealousy and disunion were working against him at Toledo. Great men had joined the people and Padilla, the Duke of Infantado, the Marquis of Villena, Juan de Avila, and many prelates and knights. They had imprisoned the King’s messengers and ministers in the Chapel of St Blas, and forced the governor to swear fealty to the Commindad. The mayor defending the Bridge of St Martin had fallen, and the Silvas, guarding the Alcázar against 4000 men, were forced to evacuate when the insurgents burnt down the gates and walls, and were masters of all the fortifications. They made canons of the church bells, stopped up every entrance by the river, and defied the Imperial army. Such a proud and congenial hour for Toledo. All the citizens went about puffed up with glory and addressed one another as “Brutus,” swaggering abroad, and ready to ring the bells as soon as word came from Tordesillas that the queen had signed.[12] Padilla hurried back, hearing his wife was ill, and in his absence the Imperial army sacked Tordesillas. Jealousy as usual had weakened the force of the Comuneros, though Padilla’s gallant presence impelled them to some brilliant skirmishing. But their fate was sealed at Villalar, where the Conde de Haro defeated them, and took prisoners to the Castle of Villalar, the infamous Ulloa’s property, three noble gentlemen of old Castille, Padilla, Maldonado and Bravo, whose names are writ upon the walls of the parliament house of Madrid, and printed large upon the hideous page of Charles Quint’s early reign. Padilla’s noble letters of farewell to his wife, Maria de Pacheco, and to Toledo, may be seen in the archives of Simancas, letters full of stately sentiment, of dignified tenderness and virile pathos. History proudly records his rebuke to Bravo’s last lament as they walked to the gallows: “Señor Juan Bravo, yesterday it befitted us to fight like cavaliers; to-day it befits us to die like Christians.” Their heads were exposed over the gates of Toledo, and then flung into the river.

Maria de Pacheco, “the great widow,” as a Spanish poet calls her, still held the town against the Imperial army. She was found praying at the foot of the cross when her servants brought her the news of Padilla’s defeat and death. She rose, robed herself in black, and walked to the Alcázar between her husband’s lieutenants, Davalos and Acuña, who bore a standard representing Padilla’s execution. They named her captain of the insurgents, and found her implacable and violent, but still a sovereign commander. She took gold from the churches without any compunction, ordered the massacre of her enemies and their bodies to be flung over the castle walls, but could liberally admire gallantry in an enemy too. Pedro de Guzman, wounded, was carried into her presence. He had fought magnificently, and she ordered him to be treated well. When cured, she offered him the command of the Comuneros which he indignantly refused, whereupon she gave him freedom and paid for his carriage, only asking him to free any Toledan who should fall into his hands. A generous if a ruthless enemy! Her influence over the town was extraordinary. The Imperialists and Comuneros met in a violent clash upon the Zocodover. On one side shouts of Viva el rey; on the other, Padilla y Commindad. Too ill to walk, Maria was carried out in a chair into the midst of the conflict, and cried out loudly, “Peace! Peace!” Her cry was enough. There was no need of eloquence, of menace, of adjuration. One single word and a look, and swords were sheathed as by magic, and both parties, in pacific rivalry, enthusiastically escorted her back to the Alcázar where she was throned a queen. She it was who interposed between Charles and Toledo, and obtained the town’s pardon. But the dead remained unforgiven, and Padilla’s palace, by royal decree, was levelled to the ground, and the place is now an ugly little square planted with acacias, without even the tablet that used to mark the spot where the house stood. The great widow died in exile in Portugal. Her flight from Toledo was worthy of her romantic career. Dressed as a villager, by dead of night, she stole out of the town to join her knights in the silent Vega. Here a horse awaited her, and the little band, gallantly guarding a brave woman and the baby son she clasped in her arms, Padilla’s proscribed heir, made for the Portuguese frontier. With this heroic figure vanishes the last gleam of Toledo’s greatness.

Charles V. came here, and had some liking for the town, since he rebuilt the Alcázar with its magnificent staircase, but did not live to enjoy it, and his wife, Doña Isabel, died here. To him Toledo owed the great water works of Juanelo Turriano, the wonder of the times, a machine composed of tin cases pinned together and rising in file from the river to the castle. The water entering the first case was pushed into the second by wheels, and thus up to the castle, where it fell into a reservoir. This artificio is written of in Paris in 1615 in “L’Inventaire général des plus curieuses recherches des Royaumes d’Espayne”: “Là tu verras le grand, fort et mémorable Alcázar, où l’eau monte en grande abondance par un artifice admirable, qui rejaillit de la rivière du Tage. A ceste invention est semblable celle que fit faire Henry le Grand d’heureu mémoire sur le Pont Neuf de cette bonne ville de Paris où il y a deux belles figures de bronze, l’une de Jésus Christ, et l’autre de la Samaritáine. Il n’y a que cette différence que l’eau de Tolède monte deux fois plus haut que l’autre, et jette aussi gros que le corps d’un bœuf.”

But henceforth Toledo is an effaced figure among Spanish towns. She is no longer the Imperial city or the Royal town, and is only a great historic memory.

CHAPTER V

The old Spanish Capital, once and now

Unchanged I have said she is in all respects; a perfect mediæval picture in high relief against the background of civilised Europe. Nothing less civilised will you find along the least traversed byways of our modern world. Of her ancient splendours she presents such vestiges as to shame all that the ages have done for us. In beauty, alas, we have not progressed. That remains behind along with many other divine things, the portion of this sadly-used old world’s bright morning. Such vast centres as London and Paris are mean enough compared with what such a town as Toledo must have been when her semi-royal archbishops flourished and kings were proud and delighted if she but smiled upon them, more used as they were to her frowns and her visage of haughty revolt; when the Jews throve, great capitalists, and ruled the Exchange, when the Muezzin was heard over her narrow streets and the crescent floated from her towers, and her weekly markets in the Zocodover were so thronged that magistrates had to preside at the coming and going of strangers, such was the influx on all sides. If the town wears so unique and imposing an aspect after centuries of silence and decay, what must it not have been in each of its great hours of domination, under Goth, Moor, and Christian?

Would that Toledo were but the mausoleum of regrets and memories. There is a dignity and charm in noble widowhood, a grandeur in unobtrusive poverty. But such is not her portion. She has become the home of the most shameless and persecuting beggary it has been my lot to see. All over Italy and Spain beggars thrive in the sun of winter and in the shade of summer. But here they are worse than a plague of mosquitoes. Castillian good-nature, a grand manner in money matters, and courtesy, vanish at Toledo, where a sullen discourtesy and importunate mendicity reign. The people reverse every notion travels in North Spain and Old Castille had led me to form of the Spaniards, of their kindliness, of distinguished honesty, and of disinterestedness. The Toledans regard the foreigner with the eye of the bird of prey. The instant his foot touches their ground they pounce upon him, and he knows neither rest nor freedom from their mercenary and dishonest attentions till the train carries him away from their mean little station. It is not safe to ask a question of even a well-dressed Toledan. If he tells you to take the right instead of the left, he is sure to ask you either for a tip or alms. But you may rest assured he regards himself entitled to one or the other. All the boys of whatever class, bourgeois or artizan, coming out from the Institute with sachels slung over their shoulders, or running errands, well-shod and clothed, along the streets, at the sight of a foreigner shriek out “Un canki sou” if they imagine they know French, and “cinco centimes” when they are content with Castillian. If you take no notice, they will pursue you in a vituperative procession, and not scruple to fling their caps, ay, even stones at you. Other Spanish towns are proud and noble in their decay, Toledo is unhappily degraded and brutalised. She has no commerce, no stir, no money. She has no communication with the outer world except through the travellers who briefly pass her way, and upon whose exploitation she lives. She has no standard of civilisation. Her object is to make every foreigner pay for every step he takes along her rude and inhospitable pavements. The people have no desire whatever to make a good impression, no pride in the hope that the stranger shall go away and speak them fair in remote parts. They neither want his good opinion nor his sympathy; but they want as much of his money as they can get. The ill-will is general. Canons, citizens, sacristans, guides, interpreters—all appear to be in a secret league to multiply difficulties and exact tips. Only the common women, all over Spain the cream of the race, retain something of Spanish good-nature and courtesy. If Spain should ever be redeemed and lifted once again to her old position as a nation of the earth—for now she is but a squalid and disorderly province—it will be due to the persistent amiability and kindliness of the women of the people. These want nothing but intelligence to make them the equals of the French, and here the intelligence is only dormant. It would take so little to develop it, and they are so unconsciously the better half, in such pathetic and humble ignorance of their superiority to their pretentious mates. So little love have the people for anything that is graceful, or charming or pleasant, that the guitar-players would not dream, as they wander down the dark romantic streets at night, of thrumming their guitar for mere pleasure. They must be paid a real (2-1/2d.) before they will play a single air, and then of the shortest, and if you wish them to continue you must continue producing reals at intervals. I have not heard any good playing here, and the music is of the vulgarest, but such as it is, in a dead town without a single distraction or break in the night’s monotony, one would gladly pay a peseta to hear undisturbed a little Toledan music. But no. They have no artistic desire to please before receiving payment. Their mean terror is of playing a bar that shall go unpaid for, and for this reason they stop in the middle of an air and spoil their effect.

But perhaps we should not grumble, great a blot on an impressive landscape and down streets that have not altered since the spurred and belted centuries, as this grasping and mendicant race is.[13] With a different people Toledo must surely have changed her physiognomy, and taken on a more civilised and prosperous air. And though this would be her gain, it would assuredly be our eternal loss. The city as it stands is one of the oldest and most interesting of Europe. Coming straight to it from Nuremberg, a painter has told me that Nuremberg seemed new and artificial beside it. The streets, so terrible for the modern shod foot, could not well be other than they are, taking into consideration the fact that the town is built upon seven rocky peaks 1820 feet above the sea. Perched so high, one has no right, even in the face of electric light, with which we could better dispense, to expect comfortable circulation. As a matter of fact, you do not circulate. You tumble down, and you climb up; you twist round high-walled passages the natives call streets and seem to understand, and your walk is little better than an undignified limp. The feet of the people through the influence of centuries, no doubt, appear to be impervious to the lacerating effect of pointed stones, and you have nothing to do but rise superior to the sensation of pain if you can; if not, to groan in private. But you are so well repaid by every step you take, that you have no claim upon sympathy.

Was ever city so strongly placed, so superbly fortressed as Toledo must have been in Roman, Gothic and Moorish days? We need nothing but her gates to tell us this, though all her great successive walls have been thrown down. Let us gather from her historian of the beginning of the last century, Dr Francisco Pisa, some idea of the town’s features after the Christian conquest, since we can only hope to seize fragmentary notions of the splendours of Moorish rule, and the rudest suggestion of Gothic sway. The life of the city then, as now, spread from the Zocodover, word of inexplicable charm, said to be Arabian and to signify “Place of the Beasts.” To-day even it offers us quite a fresh and startling study of the famous picaresca novel. Down the picturesque archway, cut in deep yellow upon such a blue as only southern Europe can show at all seasons, a few steps lead you to the squalid ruin where Cervantes slept, ate and wrote the Ilustre Fregona. So exactly must it have been in the days Cervantes suffered and smiled, offering to his mild glance just such a wretched and romantic front. In the courtyard muleteers and peasants sit about, and above runs a rude wooden balcony, in the further corner of which was Cervantes’ room, where he sat looking down upon the beasts being fed and watered, cheerfully writing, we may imagine, in the din of idle clatter, in the dense and evil atmosphere of an age and land when the nose was not an inconvenience. If he were no more comfortable than I presume the guests must be to-day, he cannot have suffered more in the prison of Argamasilla, or in slavery to the Turk. Stepping upon the Plaza, there would not now be much that is novel to shock his eye beyond the dress. The Plaza has preserved its old triangular form, two sides straight, and the third curved, with the single broad path that leads to the Alcázar. The shops still run inside the rough arcade that makes the circuit of the place, and loafers and gossips loll upon the stone benches, while water-laden mules amble by, and girls, effective and unimaginably graceful, with well-dressed heads and brilliant eyes, in groups saunter into view, carrying on their hips earthen amphoras, which they have filled at the public fountain. These are features that have not changed since the grave sweet humourist trod this broken pavement. Visit it in the dropping twilight, when the early stars are out, and you will find it alive with promenaders, uniforms in excess among the males. Priests, soldiers and beggars abound, and dwelling on the dulness of Toledo, it can be no

MOORISH ARCH LEADING TO ZOCODOVER
MOORISH ARCH LEADING TO ZOCODOVER

HOUSE CERVANTES STAYED IN, TOLEDO
HOUSE CERVANTES STAYED IN, TOLEDO

wonder to us that the spruce young officers of Madrid detest being quartered here. What have they to do in a town where there is not even a decent café, and social existence is not partially understood? And the pleasures of walking round a romantic city cannot be offered them as adequate distraction. For us, of course, it suffices as long as taste keeps us at Toledo, and each walk has its fresh surprise, if not a fresh enchantment. Impossible to find a more intricate, maze-like arrangement of streets, and some of the passages behind the Alcázar, and round by the Cathedral look so dreadful and perilous that the marvel is there are to be found persons with sufficient courage to dwell in such places. One is disposed to agree with Robida the French artist, who attributes the excellence of Toledan steel in bygone ages to the desperate danger of the streets, since nobody then but a citizen armed to the teeth would be insane enough to leave his house.

But if the main features of the Zocodover have not changed, the fulness of its life has diminished. In the sixteenth century the Tuesday markets of the place were widely famous. Don Enrique IV. granted the citizens a free market every Tuesday in return for Toledo’s gracious reception of him. For Toledo, as I have shown, did not spoil her rulers, and like all ill-tempered persons, she received a disproportionate acknowledgment of her rare soft moods. Fruit, flowers, provisions of every kind, birds, fish, oil, honey, bacon and cheese were sold, and the exceeding moderation of the prices, owing to the untaxed sales, attracted crowds from all parts. The influx of trade even at this period, though the Jews and Moors, source of her wealth, art and civilisation, had been destituted and expelled, was enormous, so that the magistrates held audience every Tuesday to judge the cases of purchase and sale, and see that the peace was kept. Trade was then so important an affair in Toledo, that priests and magistrates kept the interests of the traders in view in the settlement of church and legal matters, and mass was celebrated over the archway leading to Cervantes’ inn and Cardinal Mendoza’s most beautiful hospital (see façade of Santa Cruz) in a little chapel dedicated to The Precious Blood, expressly set aside for the market people, at the earliest hour of day to suit them, and the audience chamber timed its hearing of civil cases at an hour in the interest of the same class, so that business should not be interfered with. There was a smaller market up near Santo Tomé, ruled and protected like that of the Zocodover, with also a high chapel for service for

THE ZOCODOVER
THE ZOCODOVER

the market folk. One side was given over to the butchers’ shops, above which was inscribed: “Reigning in Spain the most high and powerful Felipe II., he has ordered in the town of Toledo these butchers’ shops with the concurrence of Perafande Ribera, his magistrate. Year MDLXXXIX.” There was another little meat market down in the old place of Sanchez Minaya, near the hospital of the Misericordia. The slaughter-houses were in the wide place close to the Puertas del Cambron and San Martin, where, as Pisa says, “The air of the open country came to cleanse away the evil odour of the dead remains.” Grain and wheat were sold near the Alcázar, down by the Cardinal’s hospital.

The Exchange of Toledo was the most important of Spain. It was founded by Martin Ramirez, in the parish of St Nicholas, near San José. Near here the gilders and silversmiths worked, and their work was as prized as it was costly; while the tanners, leather-cutters and dyers were relegated to the barriers above the river, between the mills of the Hierro and San Sebastian. The potters lived at the top of the town, under San Isidro, and spread everywhere were countless weavers of cloth, and silk and fine embroiderers. Running from the Zocodover to the Puerta de Perpiñan was the famous street of arms where the sword-makers, the armourers, the iron and damascene-workers lived, and in the wide street opposite (now the calle del Comercio) the shoemakers and jewellers had their shops. The Jews had their own barrier before their expulsion, one of the wealthiest and most important of the city.

The four streets on the further side of the Cathedral were called the Alcayzerias, and here dwelt the silk-sellers, the hosiers, the linen-sellers, the clothiers and haberdashers. These shopkeepers did an enormous trade with Valencia, Xativa, Murcia; with Medina del Campo, Medina del Rioseca, Sevilla, Cádiz and Ecija, even as far as Portugal. After the discovery of America all the ships that went out laden with Spanish goods purchased these at Toledo. The scriveners dwelt round the Ayuntamiento.

In early days the Ayuntamiento was an insignificant body, and all the power lay between the sovereign and the mighty archbishop. But after the conquest of the Saracens, the kings of Castille found their realm too large and complicated for anything so minute as mere civic rule, and gradually the magistrature increased in power, till this Ayuntamiento, with its president, came to be the important body it was, and rivalled the Archbishopric in semi-royal powers. Pedro the Cruel was the first to grant it the privilege of the arms of Castille, and it was to the famous Corregidor, Gomez Manrique, who had his namesake’s famous inscription painted on the staircase, that Isabel the Catholic, on her first visit, gave the castles and gates of the city. Under the Corregidor were four mayors, who judged civil cases, one of whom sat only in the Zocodover to settle disputes between the traders. These magistrates were usually powerful nobles, such as the Toledos—the present dukes of Alba—the Castillas, the Silvas, the Ayalas, Montemayors and Fuensalidas, all great historic names. The city jury, half Latin, half Mozarabe, in religion, was furnished by all the parishes. As well as the Ayuntamiento, there was the Santa Hermandad behind the Plaza Mayor, with its prison and officers. To-day it is a muleteer’s inn, the Posada de la Hermandad, and the big kitchen, once the judgment chamber of the Inquisition, and the wooden benches around have not been changed, nor the dark-beamed ceiling within the Gothic façade, with the royal arms and the statues of the archers and members of the brotherhood.

The town prison was situated at San Roman, and was rebuilt and improved in 1575 by one of Toledo’s most enlightened corregidors, Juan Guttierrez Tello. Less joyous and profitable than the Tuesday fairs of the Zocodover were the terrible autos-da-fé, and, indeed, so agreeably wedded is the memory of this quaint little triangular plaza to the picture of heroes of capa and espada, to betitled loafers and dinnerless dons, that the mind with difficulty conceives it made over to gloomy and flaming images of the most solemn and atrocious hour of Spanish cruelty. More in keeping with the bright and busy scene are the bull-fights that used to be held here, when there were no seats or trees in the middle as now.

A curious document is the charter to Toledo of Alfonso the Emperor, after the conquest of the Moors: “In the name of God and His Grace, I, Aldefonso, by the will of God, Emperor of Spain, conjointly with my wife, the Empress, Doña Berenguela, with an agreeable spirit, and of our own will, without being forced by anyone, give this letter of donation and confirmation to all Christians who to this day have come to people Toledo, or will come, Mozarabe, Castillian and French, that they may pay toll neither on entering nor on leaving the city, nor in any part of my lands. They shall be free of duty on all the things they purchase and sell, except those who carry to or bring from the land of the Moors articles of trade, which shall be taxed according to their weight and value.” This little touch of spite against the vanquished Moor is the more intolerable when we remember the old relations of Alfonso’s predecessor with that same generous enemy; remember that the man he had conquered and exiled was the son of his benefactor and host when he was himself conquered and exiled by an unnatural brother; that the king, on whose throne he sat, had been his loyal and kindly comrade, and that the conquest his successor so grandiloquently recalls in this charter was the basest act of ingratitude perpetrated in the record of Castillian treachery.

From such slight indications it will be seen that the commerce of Toledo flourished upon a large scale. There is something stately and commanding about this method of confining each trade and business to its own quarter. How dearly now one would like to evoke the street of arms, and follow some slim young knight down from the royal Alcázar on the higher hill-point, with slashed sleeves, cloak flung jauntily from shoulder, and plumed cap, on his way to this deadly and interesting street to purchase a “trusty Toledo,” and linger over an exquisitely-wrought poniard. Or earlier still, and more delightful, accompany a turbaned Turk, wonderfully arrayed, and gaze with him in ecstasy upon the rows of damascened scimitars.

Toledo was used to travellers in the days of her greatness for, near all the gates, Pisa tells us, there were inns for strangers. Not strangers only, but the bishops and great lords, and sovereigns even, seem to have patronised the inns of Toledo. Alfonso the Perfidious stayed at a posada near the town gates when he came to visit his old protector and host, Almenor, whom he invited to dinner here. More astonishing still than this hospitable provision for travellers, is the fact we learn that there was not only a foundling hospital for unclaimed children, but also several homes for lost or strayed animals. Spain was more advanced in this respect centuries ago than now, for it is pretty certain the race shows no concern that we know of on behalf of forlorn and unprotected brutes.

If you would have some dim notion of the castellated and walled aspect of Toledo in Pisa’s days, you have only to thread your way through his prolix geographical history of the town. He begins with the magnificent Puerta de Visagra, and when we examine this double gate in its present battered and defaced condition, we cannot carp at the word “sumptuous” which he applies to it. Sumptuous it must have been then, if now it is magnificent. It holds the imperial arms, two eagles and a crown, with castles and lions of middle size gilt, and an inscription. Outside this gate, which, Pisa tells us, was shut at night, there was a broad space, and another entrance without. Entering the city on this side, you came by the parish of Santiago and San Isidro, and the barrier of La Granja. The ascent was made by the old hermitage of the Cross to the Zocodover. Here were two gates in a strong wall, probably half Roman and half Gothic, and this was the entrance to the town. Pisa calls these gates intermediary. Between the Puerta de Visagra and this latter gate in the great tower, he describes another, smaller and less important, which was always closed, and was called the gate of Almohada. Beyond this was another called the gate of the twelve stones, descending from the monastery of the Carmen by the Bridge of Alcántara. Before Pisa’s time, this gate was lower, and the twelve stones around obtained it the odd name of Doce Cantos, there being supposed twelve fountains once here. Another gate anciently called Adabazim, and afterwards Hierro, was near the bridge and the mills, on the limits of the lovely gardens of Alcurnia. Above the old hermitage of the Cross were the tower and gate of King Aquila, and above Santo Domingo el Real, the tower of Alarcon, with another intermediate between it and the Zocodover. From this ran round a castellated wall, and here you entered the street of arms by the Puerta de Perpiñan.

The gardens of the Alcurnia were famed all over Spain, as beautiful as any of Valencia or Granada, or Cordova, laid down by the Moors between the bridges of St Martin and Alcántara. The Tagus was used here as the Turia is used still at Valencia, for purposes of irrigation, so that fruit and flowers and trees abounded. At the time of the conquest, these lovely grounds became the property of the Christian monarchs, until King Alonso the Good, in 1158, granted them to the Archbishop Rodrigo, who built the mills and greatly improved the grounds. The name is said to signify “horn-shaped,” on account of the curves the river takes as it runs under the bridge of Alcántara. But a fierce inundation swept away all this loveliness from the eyes of the dismayed Toledans in Cardinal Tavera’s time. The ungrateful waters of the Tagus laid waste this green and flowery paradise upon a burnt and rocky hill-side, and Tavera died before he could carry out his project of restoring it.

True, even then, the Cigarrales beyond the town walls were noted spots of refreshment, whither the jaded citizens and nobles betook themselves to their country houses for the enjoyment of orchards, gardens and trees. The apricots of the Cigarrales have always been famous. But they constituted small comfort for the loss of such radiance and perfume, such oriental splendour as the Huerta de Alcurnia. They spread still from the river bank up among the cool hill breezes, and make a charming walk towards sunset. In the huerta del Rey was one of the palacios de Galiana, known through the legend of Galafre’s fair daughter and Charlemagne, the other having served as Wamba’s palace or prætorium, and later still as the palace in which the Cortes sat to judge the case between the immortal Cid and his wretched sons-in-law. Westward from Santa Leocadia ran a long, broad space of foliaged and flowered land, vines, and pleasant country houses. The rich cigarrel of Cardinal Quiroga was here, and the dean and chapter of the Cathedral possessed on the other side gardens and orchards nearly as beautiful.

When you left all this cultivated brilliance of nature, that showed the passage of the Moors, narrow and stony streets and lanes confronted you in your upward road from the bridges and gates. Then as now! Cuestas and harsh passages, built upon peaks of rock and iron, Pisa calls them; twisted and narrow laneways. He accuses the Moors of having spoiled the town, of having obliterated the lustre and loveliness Roman and Goth bestowed upon it. This is an ill-tempered charge. The Moors gave in Spain everywhere more than the Christians lost, and the trial is, seeing the sad use the Christians made of what they received, to hold one’s soul in patience, and not cry out against their philistinism. He believes that in Christian hands, “fine places, wide and noble streets, churches and hospitals will spread.” Churches and convents, yes. But the streets remain the same, an expiation of the sins of civilisation, as twisted, as narrow, as stony as ever, good Dr Pisa, after eight centuries of Christian rule.

The present Alcázar, which dominates the city, was first built by the Cid’s sovereign, Alfonso, while the Moorish palace stood on the site of the monastery of St Augustine. In the parish of San Martin was the Alcázar of the infante Fadique, Sancho the Brave’s uncle, within a magnificent view of the river and the Vega, its walls running as far as the Puerta del Cambron. It fell into the hands of Maria de Molina, Sancho’s widow, and she gave the property to Gonzalo Ruiz de Toledo, lord of Orgaz, tutor of King Alonso and the infanta Beatrix. Gonzalo Ruiz, on his death, bequeathed it to the Augustines. In the time of Gothic rule the councils of Toledo were held in this Alcázar. A wall ran then from the Alcázar to the Palacio de Galiana, and continued from the Zocodover to the gate of Perpignan to separate the dwellings of the Moors from those of their conquerors. The Christians lived between the arch under the Chapel of the Precious Blood and the bridge of Alcántara. Later on Isabel and Fernando embellished the royal Alcázar, which was guarded by a thousand castillian hidalgoes, and Carlos V. built the great staircase, one of the most regal of the world, while a superb salon, richly wrought in arabesque, was the introduction of the Constable of Castillo, Alvaro de Luna, at an earlier period. All these glories are departed, negligently burnt. The first subject to occupy the Alcázar in state was the Cid, Ruiz Diaz, whom Alfonso named first governor of Toledo after its capture from the Moors. But the Cid chose to build his own house near it, and installed a cavalier therein in his place. The Cid’s house is now San Juan de los Caballeros. True, Rasis el Moro, in the beautiful copy of his Arabian manuscript,[14] translated into Castillian by Ambrosio de Morales from the Portuguese translation ordered by King Denys of Portugal, of Maestre Mahomed and Gil Perez, says that Caesar was the first governor of Toledo, and built the bridge over the Tagus, and Caesar, he tells us, came hither upon his tour in Spain, and in a quarrel with the praetor, Aulus, was beaten and departed “feeling a great weight on his heart, and longed for great power to come back and vanquish Aulus, and revenge himself of his wrongs.” Rasis also mentions “the marvellous bridge of Toledo” at the time of the Moorish conquest, “most subtly wrought, that in truth he saw nothing to equal it in all Spain.” The town he describes as “a very good city, extremely pleasant, and very strong and well fortified.” Every man was well off, and the workmen were paid. The air was so sanative and dry that wheat could remain ten years in cover without rotting.

Alcocer describes Toledo, the head of Spain, as a town mightily privileged by nature, placed in the centre of the land “like the heart in the human body”; a city, “high, rough, most firm and inexpugnable, founded upon a high mountain and on brave and hard rocks, round which turns the most famous Tagus, which forms a horse shoe, the town thus being nearly an island.” He waxes eloquent on the theme of the land’s fertility and freshness, the abundance of fruit trees, the mines of various metals, the quantities of stone, lime, wood, and every facility for building. Theodoric, the King of Italy, he tells us, came to Toledo to see for himself if report had not exaggerated its wonders, if it really were the strong and noble city rumour described it. So delighted with both town and people was this Ostrogothic sovereign that he took for second wife a wealthy lady of Toledo, Sancha, and was married in great pomp in the city. But we are less inclined to believe Alcocer when he assures us that Toledo declined from the hour of Moorish conquest, “for those barbarians knew nothing of architecture(!), and laid out narrow, little streets, and built vile little houses, no less ugly and filthy.” O worthy Alcocer, if he could but know that now the very Spaniards themselves, in the interests of art and loveliness, lament the expulsion of the Moors, and humbly admit that all they learnt of civilisation came from those same adorable “barbarians!”

The Tagus then, as now, was always the great natural charm of the town. Like the Arno, it takes on every hue; some mornings just after dawn, it is the palest blue, again is a still sleepy jade, or silver like a curled mirror, and as stirless as it gives back the ardent flash of the sunrays; or after sunset, when all the rich hues have faded from sky and earth, and crimson and russet gold have waved into an indigo dusk, you will see a white mist rise and travel in flakes from the bosom of the enazured water over the dim landscape. Capricious as these cold or fervent hours may be, the permanent colour of the tranquil untravelled Tagus is yellow. All poets and writers see but the yellow in it, as in the Tiber, though its blue and green and silvered hours are much more beautiful. “Del dorado Tago ausente,” sings the old Romancero General, as far back as 1605, and continues to describe Toledo above her golden river: