* Cura de los Palacios, c.104.
The tomb of the valiant Roderigo Ponce de Leon, with his banners mouldering above it, remained for ages an object of veneration with all who had read or heard of his virtues and achievements. In the year 1810, however, the chapel was sacked by the French, its altars were overturned, and the sepulchres of the family of the Ponces shattered to pieces. The present duchess of Benevente, the worthy descendant of this illustrious and heroic line, has since piously collected the ashes of her ancestors, restored the altar, and repaired the chapel. The sepulchres, however, were utterly destroyed: an inscription in gold letters on the wall of the chapel to the right of the altar is all that denotes the place of sepulture of the brave Ponce de Leon.
THE LEGEND OF THE DEATH OF DON ALONSO DE AGUILAR.
To such as feel an interest in the fortune of the valiant Don Alonso de Aguilar, the chosen friend and companion-in-arms of Ponce de Leon, marques of Cadiz, and one of the most distinguished heroes of the war of Granada, a few particulars of his remarkable fate will not be unacceptable.
For several years after the conquest of Granada the country remained feverish and unquiet. The zealous efforts of the Catholic clergy to effect the conversion of the infidels, and the coercion used for that purpose by government, exasperated the stubborn Moors of the mountains. Several missionaries were maltreated, and in the town of Dayrin two of them were seized and exhorted, with many menaces, to embrace the Moslem faith; on their resolutely refusing they were killed with staves and stones by the Moorish women and children, and their bodies burnt to ashes.*
* Cura de los Palacios, c. 165.
Upon this event a body of Christian cavaliers assembled in Andalusia to the number of eight hundred, and, without waiting for orders from the king, revenged the death of these martyrs by plundering and laying waste the Moorish towns and villages. The Moors fled to the mountains, and their cause was espoused by many of their nation who inhabited those rugged regions. The storm of rebellion began to gather and mutter its thunders in the Alpuxarras. They were echoed from the Serrania of Ronda, ever ready for rebellion, but the strongest hold of the insurgents was in the Sierra (12) Bermeja, or chain of Red Mountains, which lie near the sea, the savage rocks and precipices of which may be seen from Gibraltar.
When King Ferdinand heard of these tumults he issued a proclamation ordering all the Moors of the insurgent regions to leave them within ten days and repair to Castile; giving secret instructions, however, that those who should voluntarily embrace the Christian faith might be permitted to remain. At the same time he ordered Don Alonso de Aguilar and the counts of Urena and Cifuentes to march against the rebels.
Don Alonso de Aguilar was at Cordova when he received the commands of the king. “What force is allotted us for this expedition?” said he. On being told, he perceived that the number of troops was far from adequate. “When a man is dead,” said he, “we send four men into his house to bring forth the body. We are now sent to chastise these Moors, who are alive, vigorous, in open rebellion, and ensconced in their castles; yet they do not give us man to man.” These words of the brave Alonso de Aguilar were afterward frequently repeated, but, though he saw the desperate nature of the enterprise, he did not hesitate to undertake it.
Don Alonso was at that time in the fifty-first year of his age—a warrior in whom the fire of youth was yet unquenched, though tempered by experience. The greater part of his life had been spent in camp and field until danger was as his habitual element. His muscular frame had acquired the firmness of iron without the rigidity of age. His armor and weapons seemed to have become a part of his nature, and he sat like a man of steel on his powerful war-horse.