“Letters to the monarch tell
How Alhama’s city fell;
In the fire the scroll he threw,
And the messenger he slew.
Woe is me, Alhama!”
The aged Muley Hassan was expelled, but he returned a few weeks later, and, gaining the Alhambra, made the fountains and corridors run with human blood in his endeavours to regain his crown. But in vain: Boabdil el Chico was then King of Granada, and it was foreordained that his weakness should be the cause of its downfall; for, in an assault he later made upon a Christian castle, he was taken prisoner and only released after promising to hold himself a vassal to King Ferdinand. Meanwhile the contest spread over a widening territory, until all the kingdom was aflame with war.
King Muley Hassan, who had retreated to the port of Malaga, made a raid into the dominions of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, in revenge for the part the latter had taken at Alhama, and regained his stronghold with vast plunder. An incident of this raid shows a romantic trait of Moorish as well as Spanish character. Old Muley asked some captive Christians what were the revenues of his opponent, Don Pedro de Vargas, captain of the castle of Gibraltar, whose territory he was then invading. They answered that he was entitled to an ox out of every drove of cattle that crossed his boundaries. “Then,” said the gallant old Moor, “Allah forbid that so brave a cavalier should be defrauded of his dues,” and he selected twelve of the finest cattle and sent them to Don Pedro with his compliments. The latter, surprised and touched by this display of gallantry, reciprocated by sending Muley Hassan a scarlet mantle and a costly vest of silk, with his regrets that he had not been able to meet him personally in the field!
Stung by this successful raid of the Moors into the heart of Christian territory, some cavaliers, headed by the Marquis of Cadiz and Don Alonzo de Aguilar, made a foray into the mountains of Malaga, expecting to take and sack several wealthy towns. But they were ambuscaded by a Moorish army under the veteran Zagal, of Malaga, and not only vanquished, but nearly exterminated, a miserable remnant only escaping to Antiquera, on the borders of Granada. In the meantime a siege of the wealthy city of Loxa, which lies not far from Granada, was abandoned by King Ferdinand on account of the superior tactics of another Moorish veteran, Ali Atar, father-in-law of Boabdil the king, and more than ninety years of age. He, too, led the Spaniards into an ambuscade, and then set upon them with such vigour that their camp was captured and many Christians slain.
So the demon of war stalked up and down the land, with victory first with Spaniard, then with Moor. Still, all the time the Spanish forces were augmenting, their territory being steadily extended by the capture of one stronghold after another, until, when King Ferdinand again sat down before the city of Loxa with a vast army, well equipped with cannon and foreign auxiliaries, he could count up more than seventy places that had fallen before the assaults of his soldiers. Among these were Coin and Cartama, and the almost inaccessible castle of Ronda, on the crest of the mountain of that name. Loxa (pronounced Lo´ha) finally fell, and then the victors were within thirty miles of the capital, Granada, against which Ferdinand’s forces were impatient to be led.
But though the ill-fated Boabdil, King of Granada—who had violated his pledge of vassalage to Ferdinand, and had hastened to the defence of the city—was among the captives, and though later the Castilians captured the important towns and castles of Illora and Moclin, within ten or twelve miles of Granada, yet the army was temporarily withdrawn. Ferdinand ravaged the vega, or plain of Granada, up to the very gates of the capital; but he was at that time unprepared to attempt its capture or siege, and so retired with his army to Cordova, whence he had set forth in May of that year.