* Cura de los Palacios.
The fall of Ali Atar put an end to the transient stand of the cavalry. Horse and foot mingled together in the desperate struggle across the Xenil, and many were trampled down and perished beneath the waves. Don Alonso and his band continued to harass them until they crossed the frontier, and every blow struck home to the Moors seemed to lighten the load of humiliation and sorrow which had weighed heavy on their hearts.
In this disastrous rout the Moors lost upward of five thousand killed and made prisoners, many of whom were of the most noble lineages of Granada; numbers fled to rocks and mountains, where they were subsequently taken.
Boabdil remained a prisoner in the state tower of the citadel of Lucena under the vigilance of Alonso de Rueda, esquire of the alcayde of the Donceles; his quality was still unknown until the 24th of April, three days after the battle. On that day some prisoners, natives of Granada, just brought in, caught a sight of the unfortunate Boabdil despoiled of his royal robes. Throwing themselves at his feet, they broke forth in loud lamentations, apostrophizing him as their lord and king.
Great was the astonishment and triumph of the count de Cabra and Don Diego Fernandez de Cordova on learning the rank of the supposed cavalier. They both ascended to the castle to see that he was lodged in a style befitting his quality. When the good count beheld in the dejected captive before him the monarch who had so recently appeared in royal splendor surrounded by an army, his generous heart was touched by sympathy. He said everything to comfort him that became a courteous and Christian knight, observing that the same mutability of things which had suddenly brought him low might as rapidly restore him to prosperity, since in this world nothing is stable, and sorrow, like joy, has its allotted term.
The action here recorded was called by some the battle of Lucena, by others the battle of the Moorish king, because of the capture of Boabdil. Twenty-two banners, taken on the occasion, were borne in triumph into Vaena on the 23d of April, St. George’s Day, and hung up in the church. There they remain (says a historian of after times) to this day. Once a year, on the festival of St. George, they are borne about in procession by the inhabitants, who at the same time give thanks to God for this signal victory granted to their forefathers.*
* Several circumstances relative to the capture of Boabdil vary in
this from the first edition, in consequence of later light thrown on the
subject by Don Miguel Lafuente Alcantara in his History of Granada. He
has availed himself much of various ancient documents relative to the
battle, especially the History of the House of Cordova by the abbot of
Rute, a descendant of that family—a rare manuscript of which few copies
exist.
The question as to the person entitled to the honor and reward for having captured the king long continued a matter of dispute between the people of Lucena and Vaena. On the 20th of October, 1520, about thirty-seven years after the event, an examination of several witnesses to the fact took place before the chief justice of the fortress of Lucena, at the instance of Bartolomy Hurtado, the son of Martin, when the claim of his father was established by Dona Leonora Hernandez, lady in attendant on the mother of the alcayde of los Donceles, who testified being present when Boabdil signalized Martin Hurtado as his captor.
The chief honor of the day, and of course of the defeat and capture of the Moorish monarch, was given by the sovereign to the count de Cabra; the second to his nephew, Don Diego Fernandez de Cordova.
Among the curious papers cited by Alcantara is one existing in the archives of the House of Medina Celi, giving the account of the treasurer of Don Diego Fernandez as to the sums expended by his lord in the capture of the king, the reward given to some soldiers for a standard of the king’s which they had taken, to others for the wounds they had received, etc.