All hope of relieving themselves of the detested ordinance having thus vanished, the leaders of the Albaicin took counsel as to the best mode of resisting the government. The first step seemed to be to get possession of the capital. There was at this time in Granada a Morisco named Farax Aben-Farax, who followed the trade of a dyer. But though he was engaged in this humble calling, the best blood of the Abencerrages flowed in his veins. He was a man of a fierce, indeed ferocious nature, hating the Christians with his whole heart, and longing for the hour when he could avenge on their heads the calamities of his countrymen. As his occupation earned him frequently into the Alpujarras, he was extensively acquainted with the inhabitants. He undertook to raise a force there of eight thousand men, and bring them down secretly by night into the vega, where, with the aid of his countrymen in the Albaicin, he might effect an entrance into the city, overpower the garrison in the Alhambra, put all who resisted to the sword, and make himself master of the capital. The time fixed upon for the execution of the plan was Holy Thursday, in the ensuing month of April, when the attention of the Spaniards would be occupied with their religious solemnities.

A secret known to so many could not be so well kept, and for so long a time, but that some information of it reached the ears of the Christians. It seems to have given little uneasiness to Deza, who had anticipated some such attempt from the turbulent spirit of the Moriscoes. The captain-general, however, thought it prudent to take additional precautions against it; and he accordingly distributed arms among the citizens, strengthened the garrison of the Alhambra, and visited several of the great towns on the frontiers, which he placed in a better posture of defence. The Moriscoes, finding their purpose exposed to the authorities, resolved to defer the execution of it for the present. They even postponed it to as late a date as the beginning of the following year, 1569. To this they were led, we are told, by a prediction found in their religious books, that the year of their liberation would be one that began on a Saturday. It is probable that the wiser men of the Albaicin were less influenced by their own belief in the truth of the prophecy, than by the influence it would exert over the superstitious minds of the mountaineers, among whom it was diligently circulated.[28]

Having settled on the first of January for the rising, the Moslems of Granada strove, by every outward show of loyalty, to quiet the suspicions of the government. But in this they were thwarted by the information which the latter obtained through more trustworthy channels. Still surer evidence of their intentions was found in a letter which fell by accident into the hands of the marquis of Mondejar. It was addressed by one of the leaders of the Albaicin to the Moslems of the Barbary coast, invoking their aid by the ties of consanguinity and of a common faith. "We are sorely beset," says the writer, "and our enemies encompass us all around like a consuming fire. Our troubles are too grievous to be endured. Written," concludes the passionate author of the epistle, "in nights of tears and anguish, with hope yet lingering,—such hope as still survives amidst all the bitterness of the soul."[29]

But the Barbary powers were too much occupied by their petty feuds to give much more than fair words to their unfortunate brethren of Granada. Perhaps they distrusted the efficacy of any aid they could render in so unequal a contest as that against the Spanish monarchy. Yet they allowed their subjects to embark as volunteers in the war; and some good service was rendered by the Barbary corsairs, who infested the coasts of the Mediterranean, as well as by the monfis,—as the African adventurers were called,—who took part with their brethren in the Alpujarras, where they made themselves conspicuous by their implacable ferocity against the Christians.

Meanwhile the hot blood of the mountaineers was too much inflamed by the prospect of regaining their independence to allow them to wait patiently for the day fixed upon for the outbreak. Before that time arrived, several acts of violence were perpetrated,—forerunners of the bloody work that was at hand. In the month of December, 1568, a body of Spanish alguazils, with some other officers of justice, were cut off in the neighbourhood of Granada, on their way to that city. A party of fifty soldiers, as they were bearing to the capital a considerable quantity of muskets,—a tempting prize to the unarmed Moriscoes,—were all murdered, most of them in their beds, in a little village among the mountains where they had halted for the night.[30] After this outrage Aben-Farax, the bold dyer of Granada, aware of the excitement it must create in the capital, became convinced it would not be safe for him to postpone his intended assault a day longer.

At the head of only a hundred and eighty followers, without waiting to collect a larger force, he made his descent, on the night of the twenty-sixth of December, a week before the appointed time, into the vega of Granada. It was a dreadful night. A snow-storm was raging wildly among the mountains, and sweeping down in pitiless fury on the plains below.[31] Favoured by the commotion of the elements, Aben-Farax succeeded, without attracting observation, in forcing an entrance through the dilapidated walls of the city, penetrated at once into the Albaicin, and endeavoured to rouse the inhabitants from their slumbers. Some few came to their windows, it is said, but, on learning the nature of the summons, hastily closed the casements and withdrew, telling Aben-Farax that "it was madness to undertake the enterprise with so small a force, and that he had come before his time."[32] It was in vain that the enraged chief poured forth imprecations on their perfidy and cowardice, in vain that he marched through the deserted streets, demolishing crucifixes and other symbols of Christian worship which he found in his way, or that he shouted out the watchword of the faithful, "There is but one God, and Mahomet is the prophet of God!" The uproar of the tempest, fortunately for him, drowned every other noise; and no alarm was given till he stumbled on a guard of some five or six soldiers, who were huddled round a fire in one of the public squares. One of these Farax despatched; the others made their escape, raising the cry that the enemy was upon them. The great bell of St. Salvador rang violently, calling the inhabitants to arms. Dawn was fast approaching; and the Moorish chief, who felt himself unequal to an encounter in which he was not to be supported by his brethren in the Albaicin, thought it prudent to make his retreat. This he did with colours flying and music playing, all in as cool and orderly a manner as if it had been only a holiday parade.

Meantime the citizens, thus suddenly startled from their beds, gathered together, with eager looks, and faces white with fear, to learn the cause of the tumult; and their alarm was not diminished by finding that the enemy had been prowling round their dwellings, like a troop of mountain wolves, while they had been buried in slumber. The marquis of Mondejar called his men to horse, and would have instantly given chase to the invaders, but waited until he had learned the actual condition of the Albaicin, where a population of ten thousand Moriscoes, had they been mischievously inclined, might, notwithstanding the timely efforts of the government to disarm them, have proved too strong for the slender Spanish garrison in the Alhambra. All, however, was quiet in the Moorish quarter; and, assured of this, the captain-general sallied out, at the head of his cavalry and a small corps of foot, in quest of the enemy. But he had struck into the mountain-passes south of Granada; and Mendoza, after keeping on his track, as well as the blinding tempest would permit, through the greater part of the day, at nightfall gave up the pursuit as hopeless, and brought back his wayworn cavalcade to the city.[33]

Aben-Farax and his troop, meanwhile, traversing the snowy skirts of the Sierra Nevada, came out on the broad and populous valley of Lecrin, spreading the tidings everywhere, as they went, that the insurrection was begun, that the Albaicin was in movement, and calling on all true believers to take up arms in defence of their faith. The summons did not fall on deaf ears. A train had been fired which ran along the mountain regions to the south of Granada, stretching from Almeria and the Murcian borders on the east to the neighbourhood of Velez Malaga on the west. In three days the whole country was in arms. Then burst forth the fierce passions of the Arab,—all that unquenchable hate which seventy years of oppression had nourished in his bosom, and which now showed itself in one universal cry for vengeance. The bloody drama opened with the massacre of nearly every Christian man within the Moorish borders,—and that too with circumstances of a refined and deliberate cruelty, of which, happily, few examples are to be found in history.

The first step, however, in the revolutionary movement had been a false one, inasmuch as the insurgents had failed to secure possession of the capital, which would have furnished so important a point d'appui for future operations. Yet, if contemporary chroniclers are correct, this failure should rather be imputed to miscalculation than to cowardice. According to them, the persons of most consideration in the Albaicin were many of them wealthy citizens, accustomed to the easy, luxurious way of life so well suited to the Moorish taste. They had never intended to peril their fortunes by engaging personally in so formidable a contest as that with the Castilian crown. They had only proposed to urge their simple countrymen in the Alpujarras to such a show of resistance as should intimidate the Spaniards, and lead them to mitigate, if not indeed to rescind, the hated ordinance.[34] If such was their calculation, as the result showed, it miserably failed.

As the Moriscoes had now proclaimed their independence, it became necessary to choose a sovereign in place of the one whose authority they had cast aside. The leaders in the Albaicin selected for this dangerous pre-eminence a young man who was known to the Spaniards by his Castilian name of Don Fernando de Valor. He was descended in a direct line from the ancient house of the Omeyas,[35] who for nearly four centuries had sat with glory on the throne of Cordova. He was but twenty-two years of age at the time of his election, and, according to a contemporary who had seen him, possessed a comely person and engaging manners. His complexion was of a deep olive; his beard was thin; his eyes were large and dark, with eyebrows well defined, and nearly approaching each other. His deportment was truly royal; and his lofty sentiments were worthy of the princely line from which he was descended.[36] Notwithstanding this flattering portrait from the pen of a Castilian, his best recommendation, to judge from his subsequent career, seems to have been his descent from a line of kings. He had been so prodigal in his way of life that, though so young, he had squandered his patrimony, and was at this very time under arrest for debt. He had the fiery temperament of his nation, and had given evidence of it by murdering, with his own hand, a man who had borne testimony against his father in a criminal prosecution. Amidst his luxurious self-indulgence he must be allowed to have shown some energy of character and an unquestionable courage. He was attached to the institutions of his country; and his ferocious nature was veiled under a bland and plausible exterior, that won him golden opinions from the multitude.[37]

Soon after his election, and just before the irruption of Aben-Farax, the Morisco prince succeeded in making his escape from Granada, and, flying to the mountains, took refuge among his own kindred, the powerful family of the Valoris, in the village of Beznar. Here his countrymen gathered round him, and confirmed by acclamation the choice of the people of Granada. For this the young chieftain was greatly indebted to the efforts of his uncle, Aben-Jahuar, commonly called El Zaguer, a man of much authority among his tribe, who, waiving his own claims to the sceptre, employed his influence in favour of his nephew.

The ceremony of the coronation was of a martial kind, well suited to the rough fortunes of the adventurer. Four standards, emblazoned with the Moslem crescent, were spread upon the ground, with their spear-heads severally turned towards the four points of the compass. The Moorish prince, who had been previously arrayed in a purple robe, with a crimson scarf or shawl, the insignia of royalty, enveloping his shoulders, knelt down on the banners, with his face turned towards Mecca, and, after a brief prayer, solemnly swore to live and die in defence of his crown, his faith, and his subjects. One of the principal attendants, prostrating himself on the ground, kissed the footprints of the newly-elected monarch, in token of the allegiance of the people. He was then raised on the shoulders of four of the assistants, and borne aloft amidst the waving of banners and the loud shouts of the multitude, "Allah exalt Muley-Mohammed-Aben-Humeya, lord of Andalucia and Granada!"[38]

Such were the simple forms practised in ancient times by the Spanish-Arabian princes, when their empire, instead of being contracted within the rocky girdle of the mountains, stretched over the fairest portions of the Peninsula.[39]

The first act of Aben-Humeya was to make his appointments to the chief military offices. El Zaguer, his uncle, he made captain-general of his forces. Aben-Farax, who had himself aspired to the diadem, he removed to a distance, by sending him on an expedition to collect such treasures as could be gathered from the Christian churches in the Alpujarras. He appointed officers to take charge of the different tahas, or districts, into which the country was divided. Having completed these arrangements, the new monarch—the reyezuelo, or "little king," of the Alpujarras, as he was contemptuously styled by the Spaniards—transferred his residence to the central part of his dominions, where he repeated the ceremony of his coronation. He made a rapid visit to the most important places in the sierra, everywhere calling on the inhabitants to return to their ancient faith, and to throw off the hated yoke of the Spaniards. He then established himself in the wildest parts of the Alpujarras, where he endeavoured to draw his forces to a head, and formed the plan of his campaign. It was such as was naturally suggested by the character of the country, which, broken and precipitous, intersected by many a deep ravine and dangerous pass, afforded excellent opportunities for harassing an invading foe, and for entangling him in those inextricable defiles, where a few mountaineers acquainted with the ground would he more than a match for an enemy far superior in discipline and numbers.

While Aben-Humeya was thus occupied in preparing for the struggle, the work of death had already begun among the Spanish population of the Alpujarras; and Spaniards were to be found, in greater or less numbers, in all the Moorish towns and hamlets that dotted the dark sides of the sierras, or nestled in the green valleys at their base. Here they dwelt side by side with the Moriscoes, employed probably less in the labours of the loom, for which the natives of this region had long been famous, than in that careful husbandry which they might readily have learned from their Moorish neighbours, and which, under their hands, had clothed every spot with verdure, making the wilderness to blossom like the rose.[40] Thus living in the midst of those who professed the same religion with themselves, and in the occasional interchange, at least, of the kind offices of social intercourse, which sometimes led to nearer domestic ties, the Christians of the Alpujarras dwelt in blind security, little dreaming of the mine beneath their feet.

But no sooner was the first note of insurrection sounded, than the scene changed as if by magic. Every Morisco threw away his mask, and, turning on the Christians, showed himself in his true aspect, as their avowed and mortal enemy.

A simultaneous movement of this kind, through so wide an extent of country, intimates a well-concerted plan of operations; and we may share in the astonishment of the Castillan writers, that a secret of such a nature, and known to so many individuals, should have been so long and faithfully kept,—in the midst, too, of those who had the greatest interest in detecting it,[41]—some of them, it may be added, spies of the Inquisition, endowed, as they seem to have been, with almost supernatural powers for scenting out the taint of heresy.[42] It argues an intense feeling of hatred in the Morisco, that he could have been so long proof against the garrulity that loosens the tongue, and against the sympathy that so often, in similar situations, unlocks the heart, to save some friend from the doom of his companions. But no such instance, either of levity or lenity, occurred among this extraordinary people. And when the hour arrived, and the Christians discerned their danger in the menacing looks and gestures of their Moslem neighbours, they were as much astounded by it as the unsuspecting traveller on whom, as he heedlessly journeys through some pleasant country, the highwayman has darted from his covert by the roadside.

The first impulse of the Christians seems to have been very generally to take refuge in the churches; and every village, however small, had at least one church, where the two races met together to join in the forms of Christian worship. The fugitives thought to find protection in their holy places and in the presence of their venerated pastors, whose spiritual authority had extended over all the inhabitants. But the wild animal of the forest, now that he had regained his freedom, gave little heed to the call of his former keeper,—unless it were to turn and rend him.

Here crowded together, like a herd of panic-stricken deer with the hounds upon their track, the terrified people soon found the church was no place of security, and they took refuge in the adjoining tower, as a place of greater strength, and affording a better means of defence against an enemy. The mob of their pursuers then broke into the church, which they speedily despoiled of its ornaments, trampling the crucifixes and other religious symbols under their feet, rolling the sacred images in the dust, and desecrating the altars by the sacrifice of swine, or by some other act denoting their scorn and hatred of the Christian worship.[43]

They next assailed the towers, the entrances to which the Spaniards had barricaded as strongly as they could; though, unprovided as they were with means of defence, except such arms as they had snatched in the hurry of their flight, they could have little hope of standing a siege. Unfortunately, these towers were built more or less of wood, which the assailants readily set on fire, and thus compelled the miserable inmates either to surrender or to perish in the flames. In some instances they chose the latter; and the little garrison—men, women, and children—were consumed together on one common funeral pile. More frequently they shrank from this fearful death, and surrendered at the mercy of their conquerors,—such mercy as made them soon regret that they had not stayed by the blazing rafters.

The mode of death was often varied to suit the capricious cruelty of the executioners. At Guecija, where the olive grew abundantly, there was a convent of Augustine monks, who were all murdered by being thrown into caldrons of boiling oil.[44] Sometimes the death of the victim was attended with circumstances of diabolical cruelty, not surpassed by anything recorded of our North-American savages. At a place called Pitres de Ferreyra, the priest of the village was raised by means of a pulley to a beam that projected from the tower, and was then allowed to drop from a great height upon the ground. The act was repeated more than once in the presence of his aged mother, who, in an agony of grief, embracing her dying son, besought him "to trust in God and the blessed Virgin, who through these torments would bring him into eternal life." The mangled carcase of the poor victim, broken and dislocated in every limb, was then turned over to the Moorish women, who, with their scissors, bodkins, and other feminine implements, speedily despatched him.[45]

The women, indeed, throughout this persecution, seem to have had as rabid a thirst for vengeance as the men. Even the children were encouraged to play their part in the bloody drama; and many a miserable captive was set up as a target to be shot at with the arrows of the Moorish boys.

The rage of the barbarians was especially directed against the priests, who had so often poured forth anathemas against the religion which the Moslems loved, and who, as their spiritual directors, had so often called them to account for offences against the religion which they abhorred. At Coadba the priest was stretched out before a brazier of live coals until his feet, which had been smeared with pitch and oil, were burned to a cinder. His two sisters were compelled to witness the agonies of their brother, which were still further heightened by the brutal treatment which he saw them endure from their tormentors.[46]

Fire was employed as a common mode of torture, by way of retaliation, it may be, for similar sufferings inflicted on the Infidel by the Inquisition. Sometimes the punishments seemed to be contrived so as to form a fiendish parody on the exercises of the Roman Catholic religion. In the town of Filix the pastor was made to take his seat before the altar, with his two sacristans, one on either side of him. The bell was rung, as if to call the people together to worship. The sacristans were each provided with a roll containing the names of the congregation, which they were required to call over, as usual, before the services, in order to see that no one was absent. As each Morisco answered to his name, he passed before the priest, and dealt him a blow with his fist, or the women plucked his beard and hair, accompanying the act with some bitter taunt expressive of their mortal hate. When every one had thus had the opportunity of gratifying his personal grudge against his ancient pastor, the executioner stepped forward, armed with a razor, with which he scored the face of the ecclesiastic in the detested form of the cross, and then, beginning with the fingers, deliberately proceeded to sever each of the joints of his wretched victim![47]

But it is unnecessary to shock the reader with more of these loathsome details, enough of which have already been given, not merely to prove the vindictive temper of the Morisco, but to suggest the inference that it could only have been a long course of cruelty and oppression that stimulated him to such an awful exhibition of it.[48] The whole number of Christians who, in the course of a week, thus perished in these massacres—if we are to receive the accounts of Castilian writers—was not less than three thousand![49] Considering the social relations which must to some extent have been established between those who had lived so long in the neighbourhood of one another, it might be thought that, on some occasions, sympathy would have been shown for the sufferers, or that some protecting arm would have been stretched out to save a friend or a companion from the general doom. But the nearest approach to such an act of humanity was given by a Morisco, who plunged his sword in the body of a Spaniard in order to save him from the lingering death that otherwise would await him.[50]

Of the whole Christian population very few of the men who fell into the hands of the Moslems escaped with life. The women were not always spared. The Morisco women, especially, who had married Christian husbands and embraced Christianity, which they refused to abjure, became the objects of vengeance to their own sex. Sad to say, even the innocence and helplessness of childhood proved no protection against the fury of persecution. The historians record the names of several boys, from ten to twelve or thirteen years of age, who were barbarously murdered because they would not renounce the religion in which they had been nurtured for that of Mahomet. If they were too young to give a reason for their faith, they had at least learned the lesson that to renounce it was a great sin; and, when led out like lambs to the slaughter, their mothers, we are told, stifling the suggestions of natural affection in obedience to a higher law, urged their children not to shrink from the trial, nor to purchase a few years of life at the price of their own souls.[51] It is a matter of no little gratulation to a Catholic historian, that, amongst all those who perished in these frightful massacres, there was not one of any age or either sex who could be tempted to secure personal safety by the sacrifice of religious convictions.[52] On the contrary, they employed the brief respite that was left them in fortifying one another's courage, and in bearing testimony to the truth in so earnest a manner that they might almost seem to have courted the crown of martyrdom. Yet among these martyrs there were more than one, it is admitted, whose previous way of life showed but a dim perception of the value of that religion for which, they were thus prepared to lay down their lives.[53]

The chief blame of these indiscriminate proscriptions has been laid on Aben-Farax, the famous dyer of Granada, whose appetite for blood seems to have been as insatiable as that of any wild beast in the Alpujarras. In executing the commission assigned to him by Aben-Humeya, he was obliged to visit all parts of the country. Wherever he came, impatient of the slower movements of his countrymen in the work of destruction, he caused the prisons to be emptied, and the wretched inmates to be butchered before his eyes. At Ugijar he thus directed the execution of no less than two hundred and forty Christians, laymen and ecclesiastics.[54] His progress through the land was literally over the dead bodies of his victims.

Fierce as he was, Aben-Humeya had some touches of humanity in his nature, which made him revolt at the wholesale murders perpetrated by his lieutenant. He was the more indignant when, on hastening to Ugijar to save the lives of some of the captives, his friends, he found that he had come too late, for the man of blood had been there before him. He soon after summoned his officer into his presence, not with the impolitic design of taxing him with his cruelties, but to call him to a reckoning for the treasure he had pillaged from the churches; and dissatisfied, or affecting to be so, with his report, he at once deposed Aben-Farax from his command. The ferocious chief submitted without a murmur. He descended into the common file, and no more appears on the scene. He was one of those miscreants who are thrown on the surface by the turmoil of a revolution, and, after floating there for a while, disappear from sight, and the wave of history closes over them for ever.

CHAPTER III.

REBELLION OF THE MORISCOES.

As day after day brought tidings to the people of Granada of the barbarities perpetrated in the Alpujarras, the whole city was filled with grief and consternation. The men might be seen gathered together in knots in the public squares; the women ran about from house to house, telling the tale of horrors which could hardly be exaggerated in the recital. They thronged to the churches, where the archbishop and the clergy were all day long offering up prayers to avert the wrath of heaven from Granada. The places of business were abandoned. The shops and booths were closed.[55] As men called to mind the late irruption of Aben-Farax, they were filled with apprehensions that the same thing would be attempted again; and rumours went abroad that the mountaineers were plotting another descent on the city, and, with the aid of their countrymen in the Albaicin, would soon deluge the streets with the blood of the Christians. Under the influence of these fears, some took refuge in the fortress of the Alhambra; others fled into the country. Many kept watch during the long night, while those who withdrew to rest started from their slumbers at the least noise, supposing it to be the war-cry of the Moslem, and that the enemy was at the gates.

Nor was the alarm less that was felt by the Moriscoes in the city, as it was certainly better founded,—for the Moriscoes were the weaker party of the two. They knew the apprehensions entertained of them by the Christians, and that, when men have the power to relieve themselves of their fears, they are not apt to be very scrupulous as to the means of doing so. They were afraid to venture into the streets by day, and at night they barricaded their houses as in a time of siege.[56] They well knew that a single act of imprudence on their part, or even the merest accident, might bring the Spaniards upon them, and lead to a general massacre. They were like the traveller who sees the avalanche trembling above him, which the least jar of elements, or his own unwary movements, may dislodge from its slippery basis, and bring down in ruin on his head. Thus the two races, inhabitants of the same city, were like two hostile camps, looking on each other with watchful and malignant eyes, and ready at any moment to come into deadly conflict.

In this stage of things the Moriscoes, anxious to allay the apprehensions of the Spaniards, were profuse in their professions of loyalty, and in their assurances that there was neither concert nor sympathy between them and their countrymen in the Alpujarras. The government, to give still greater confidence to the Christians, freely distributed arms among them, thus enabling them, as far as possible, to provide for their own security. The inhabitants enrolled themselves in companies. The citizen was speedily converted into the soldier, and every man, of whatever trade or profession,—the mechanic, the merchant, the lawyer,—took his turn of military service. Even the advocates, when attending the courts of justice, appeared with their weapons by their side.[57]

But what contributed above all to revive the public confidence was the care of the government to strengthen the garrison in the Alhambra by the addition of five hundred regular troops. When, by these various means, the marquis of Mondejar saw that tranquillity was restored to the capital, he bestowed all his thoughts on an expedition into the Alpujarras, desirous to crush the insurrection in its bud, and to rescue the unfortunate captives, whose fate there excited the most dismal apprehensions amongst their friends and relatives in Granada. He sent forth his summons accordingly to the great lords and the cities of Andalusia, to furnish him at once with their contingents for carrying on the war. The feudal principle still obtained in this quarter, requiring the several towns to do military service for their possessions, by maintaining, when called upon, a certain number of troops in the field, at their own expense for three months, and at the joint expense of themselves and the government for six months longer.[58] The system worked well enough in those ancient times, when a season rarely passed without a foray against the Moslems. But since the fall of Granada, a long period of inactivity had followed, and the citizen, rarely summoned to the field, had lost all the essential attributes of the soldier. The usual term of service was too short to supply the experience and the discipline which he needed; and far from entering on a campaign with the patriotic or the chivalrous feeling that gives dignity to the profession of arms, he brought with him the mercenary spirit of a trader, intent only on his personal gains, and eager, as soon as he had enriched himself by a lucky foray, or the sack of some ill-fated city, to return home, and give place to others, as inexperienced and possessed of as little subordination as himself.[59]

But, however deficient this civic militia might be in tactics, the men were well provided with arms and military accoutrements; and, as the motley array of troops passed over the vega, they made a gallant show, with their gay uniforms and bright weapons glancing in the sun, while they proudly displayed the ancient banners of their cities, which had waved over many a field of battle against the infidel.[60]

But no part of the warlike spectacle was so brilliant as that afforded by the chivalry of the country; the nobles and cavaliers who, with their retainers and household troops, had taken the field with as much alacrity on the present occasion as their fathers had ever shown when roused by the cry that the enemy was over the borders.[61] They were much inferior in numbers to the militia of the towns. But inferiority of numbers was more than compensated by excellence of discipline, by their perfect appointments, and by that chivalrous feeling which made them discard every mercenary consideration in the pursuit of glory. Such was the feeling of Luis Paer de Castillego, the ancient regidor of Córdova. When offered an independent command, with the emoluments annexed to it, he proudly replied: "I want neither rank nor pay. I, my sons, my kindred, my whole house, will always be found ready to serve our God and our king. It is the title by which we hold our inheritance and our patent of nobility."[62]

With such loyal and high-mettled cavaliers to support him, Mondejar could not feel doubtful of the success of his arms. They had, however, already met with one reverse; and he received tidings that his advance-guard, sent to occupy a strong pass that led into the mountains, had been driven from its position, and had sustained something like a defeat. This would have been still more decisive, had it not been for the courage of certain ecclesiastics, eight in number—four of them Franciscans, and four of the Society of Jesus—who, as the troops gave way, threw themselves into the thick of the fight, and by their example shamed the soldiers into making a more determined resistance. The present war took the form of a religious war; and many a valiant churchman, armed with sword and crucifix, bore his part in it as in a crusade.

Hastening his preparations, the captain-general, without waiting for further reinforcements, marched out of Granada on the second of January, 1569, at the head of a small body, which did not exceed in all two thousand foot and four hundred horse. He was speedily joined by levies from the neighbouring towns—from Jaen, Loja, Alhama, Antequera, and other places—which in a few days swelled his little army to double its original size. The capital he left in the hands of his son, the count of Tendilla; a man of less discretion than his father, of a sterner and more impatient temper, and one who had little sympathy for the Morisco. By his directions, the peasantry of the vega were required to supply the army with twenty thousand pounds of bread daily.[63] The additional troops stationed in the city, as well as those who met there, as in a place of rendezvous, on their way to the sierra, were all quartered on the inhabitants of the Albaicin, where they freely indulged in the usual habits of military licence. The Moriscoes still retained much of that jealous sensibility which leads the natives of the East to seclude their wives and daughters from the eye of the stranger. It was in vain, however, that they urged their complaints in the most respectful and deprecatory terms before the governor. The haughty Spaniard only answered them with a stern rebuke, which made the Moriscoes too late repent that they had not profited by the opportunity offered them by Aben-Farax of regaining their independence.[64]

Leaving Granada, the captain-general took the most direct route, leading along the western slant of the Sierra Nevada, that mountain-range which, with its frosty peaks glistening in the sun like palisades of silver, fences round the city on the south, and screens it in the summer from the scorching winds of Africa. Thence he rapidly descended into the beautiful vale of Lecrin, which spreads out, like a gay carpet embroidered with many a wild flower, to the verge of the Alpujarras. It was now, however, the dead of winter, when the bright colouring of the landscape, even in this favoured region, watered as it was by numerous fountains and running streams, had faded into the sombre tints more in harmony with the rude scenes on which the Spaniards were about to enter.

Across this gulf a frail wooden bridge had been constructed, forming the only means of access from this quarter to the country of the Alpujarras. But this structure was now nearly demolished by the Moriscoes, who had taken up the floor, and removed most of the supports, till the passage of the tottering fabric could not safely be attempted by a single individual, much less by an army.[65] That they did not destroy the bridge altogether, probably arose from their desire to re-establish as soon as possible their communications with their countrymen in the valley.

Meanwhile the Moslems had taken up a position which commanded the farther end of the bridge, where they calmly awaited the approach of the Spaniards. Their army, which greatly fluctuated in its numbers at different periods of the campaign, was a miscellaneous body, ill disciplined and worse armed. Some of the men carried fire-arms, some crossbows; others had only slings or javelins, or even sharp-pointed stakes; any weapon, in short, however rude, which they had contrived to secrete from the Spanish officials charged with enforcing the laws for disarming the Moriscoes. But they were a bold and independent race, inured to a life of peril and privation; and, however inferior to the Christians in other respects, they had one obvious advantage, in their familiarity with the mountain wilds in which they had been nurtured from infancy.

As the Spaniards approached the ravine, they were saluted by the enemy, from the other side, with a shower of balls, stones, and arrows, which, falling at random, did little mischief. But as soon as the columns of the Christians reached the brow of the barranca, and formed into line, they opened a much more effective fire on their adversaries; and when the heavy guns with which Mendoza was provided were got into position, they did such execution on the enemy that he thought it prudent to abandon the bridge, and take post behind a rising ground, which screened him from the fire.

All thoughts were now turned on the mode of crossing the ravine; and many a look of blank dismay was turned on the dilapidated bridge, which, like a spider's web, trembling in every breeze, was stretched across the formidable chasm. No one was bold enough to venture on this pass of peril. At length a Franciscan monk, named Christoval de Molina, offered himself for the emprise. It was again an ecclesiastic who was to lead the way in the path of danger. Slinging his shield across his back, with his robe tucked closely around him, grasping a crucifix in his left hand, and with his right brandishing his sword, the valiant friar set his foot upon the bridge.[66] All eyes were fastened upon him, as, invoking the name of Jesus, he went courageously but cautiously forward, picking his way along the skeleton fabric, which trembled under his weight, as if about to fall in pieces and precipitate him into the gulf below. But he was not so to perish; and his safe arrival on the farther side was greeted with the shouts of the soldiery, who, ashamed of their hesitation, now pressed forward to follow in his footsteps.

The first who ventured had the same good fortune as his predecessor. The second, missing his step or becoming dizzy, lost his foothold, and, tumbling headlong, was dashed to pieces on the bottom of the ravine. One after another, the soldiers followed, and with fewer casualties than might have been expected from the perilous nature of the passage. During all this time they experienced no molestation from the enemy, intimidated, perhaps, by the unexpected audacity of the Spaniards, and not caring to come within the range of the deadly fire of their artillery. No sooner had the arquebusiers crossed in sufficient strength, than Mondejar, putting himself at their head, led them against the Moslems. He was received with a spirited volley, which had well-nigh proved fatal to him; and had it not been for his good cuirass, that turned the ball of an arquebuse, his campaign would have been brought to a close at its commencement. The skirmish lasted but a short time, as the Moriscoes, already disheartened by the success of the assailants, or in obedience to the plan of operations marked out by their leader, abandoned their position, and drew off rapidly towards the mountains. It was the intention of Aben-Humeya, as already noticed, to entangle his enemies in the defiles of the sierra, where, independently of the advantage he possessed from a knowledge of the country, the rugged character of the ground, he conceived, would make it impracticable for both cavalry and artillery, with neither of which he was provided.[67]

The Spanish commander, resuming his former station, employed the night in restoring the bridge, on which his men laboured to such purpose, that by morning it was in a condition for both his horse and his heavy guns to cross in safety. Meanwhile he received tidings that a body of a hundred and eighty Spaniards, in the neighbouring town of Orgiba, who had thrown themselves into the tower of the church on the breaking out of the insurrection, were still holding their position, and anxiously looking for succour from their countrymen. Pushing forward, therefore, without loss of time, he resumed his march across the valley, which was here defended on either side by rugged hills, that, growing bolder as he advanced, announced his entrance into the gorges of the Alpujarras. The weather was tempestuous. The roads were rendered worse than usual by the heavy rains, and by the torrents that descended from the hills. The Spaniards, moreover, suffered much from straggling parties of the enemy, who had possession of the heights, whence they rolled down huge rocks, and hurled missiles of every kind on the heads of the invaders. To rid himself of this annoyance, Mondejar ordered detachments of horse—one of them under the command of his son, Don Antonio de Mendoza—to scour the crests of the hills and dislodge the skirmishers. Pioneers were sent in advance, to level the ground and render it practicable for cavalry. The service was admirably performed; and the mountaineers, little acquainted with the horse, which they seemed to have held in as much terror as did the ancient Mexicans, were so astounded by seeing the light-footed Andalusian steed scaling the rough sides of the sierra, along paths where the sportsman would hardly venture, that, without waiting for the charge, they speedily quitted the ground and fell back on the main body of their army.