RENEWAL OF THE WAR.
The grand-commander executed his commission in the same remorseless spirit in which it had been dictated. Early in September, quitting Granada, he took the field at the head of five thousand men. He struck at once into the heart of the country. All the evils of war in its most horrid form followed in his train. All along his track, it seemed as if the land had been swept by a conflagration. The dwellings were sacked and burned to the ground. The mulberry and olive groves were cut down; the vines were torn up by the roots; and the ripening harvests were trampled in the dust. The country was converted into a wilderness. Occasionally small bodies of the Moriscoes made a desperate stand. But for the most part, without homes to shelter or food to nourish them, they were driven, like unresisting cattle, to seek a refuge in the depths of the mountains, and in the caves in which this part of the country abounded. Their pursuers followed up the chase with the fierce glee with which the hunter tracks the wild animal of the forest to his lair. There they were huddled together, one or two hundred frequently in the same cavern. It was not easy to detect the hiding-place amidst the rocks and thickets which covered up and concealed the entrance. But when it was detected, it was no difficult matter to destroy the inmates. The green bushes furnished the materials for a smouldering fire, and those within were soon suffocated by the smoke, or, rushing out, threw themselves on the mercy of their pursuers. Some were butchered on the spot; others were sent to the gibbet or the galleys; while the greater part, with a fate scarcely less terrible, were given up as the booty of the soldiers, and sold into slavery.[266]
Aben-Aboo had a narrow escape in one of these caverns, not far from Bérchul, where he had secreted himself with a wife and two of his daughters. The women were suffocated, with about seventy other persons. The Morisco chief succeeded in making his escape through an aperture at the farther end, which was unknown to his enemies.[267]
Small forts were erected at short intervals along the ruined country. No less than eighty-four of these towers were raised in different parts of the land, twenty-nine of which were to be seen in the Alpujarras and the vale of Lecrin alone.[268] There they stood, crowning every peak and eminence in the sierra, frowning over the horrid waste, the sad memorials of the conquest. This was the stern policy of the victors. Within this rocky girdle, long held as it was by the iron soldiery of Castile, it was impossible that rebellion should again gather to a head.
The months of September and October were consumed in these operations. Meanwhile the duke of Arcos had mustered his Andalusian levies, to the number of four thousand men, including a thousand of his own vassals. He took with him his son, a boy of not more than thirteen years of age,—following in this, says the chronicler, the ancient usage of the valiant house of Ponce de Leon.[269] About the middle of September he began his expedition into the Sierra Vermeja, or Red Sierra. It was a spot memorable in Spanish history for the defeat and death of Alonso de Aguilar, in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, and has furnished the theme of many a plaintive romance in the beautiful minstrelsy of the South. The wife of the duke of Arcos was descended from Alonso de Aguilar, as he himself was the grandson of the good count of Ureña, who, with better fortune than his friend, survived the disasters of that day. The route of the army led directly across the fatal field. As they traversed the elevated plain of Calaluz, the soldiers saw everywhere around the traces of the fight. The ground was still covered with fragments of rusty armour, bits of broken sword-blades, and heads of spears. More touching evidence was afforded by the bones of men and horses, which, in this solitary region, had been whitening in the blasts of seventy winters. The Spaniards knew well the localities, with which they had become familiar from boyhood in the legends and traditions of the country. Here was the spot where the vanguard, under its brave commander, had made its halt in the obscurity of the night. There were the faint remains of the enemy's entrenchments, which time had nearly levelled with the dust; and there, too, the rocks still threw their dark shadows over the plain, as on the day when the valiant Alonso da Aguilar fell at their base in combat with the renowned Fèri de Ben Estepar. The whole scene was brought home to the hearts of the Spaniards. As they gazed on the unburied relics lying around them, the tears, says the eloquent historian who records the incident, fell fast down their iron cheeks; and they breathed a soldier's prayer for the repose of the noble dead. But these holier feelings were soon succeeded by others of a fierce nature, and they loudly clamoured to be led against the enemy.[270]
The duke of Arcos, profiting by the errors of Alonso de Aguilar, had made his arrangements with great circumspection. He soon came in sight of the Moriscoes, full three thousand strong. But, though well posted, they made a defence little worthy of their ancient reputation, or of the notes of defiance which they had so boldly sounded at the opening of the campaign. They indeed showed mettle at first, and inflicted some loss on the Christians. But the frequent reverses of their countrymen seemed to have broken their spirits; and they were soon thrown into disorder, and fled in various directions into the more inaccessible tracts of the sierra. The Spaniards followed up the fugitives, who did not attempt to rally. Nor did they ever again assemble in any strength, so effectual were the dispositions made by the victorious general. The insurrection of the Sierra Vermeja was at an end.[271]
The rebellion, indeed, might be said to be everywhere crushed within the borders of Granada. The more stout-hearted of the insurgents still held out among the caves and fastnesses of the Alpujarras, supporting a precarious existence until they were hunted down by detachments of the Spaniards, who were urged to the pursuit by the promise from government of twenty ducats a head for every Morisco. But nearly all felt the impracticability of further resistance. Some succeeded in making their escape to Barbary. The rest, broken in spirit, and driven to extremity by want of food in a country now turned into a desert, consented at length to accept the amnesty offered them, and tendered their submission.
EXPULSION OF THE MOORS.
On the twenty-eighth of October Don John received advices of a final edict of Philip, commanding that all the Moriscoes in the kingdom of Granada should be at once removed into the interior of the country. None were to be excepted from this decree, not even the Moriscos de la Paz, as those were called who had loyally refused to take part in the rebellion.[272] The arrangements for this important and difficult step were made with singular prudence, and, under the general direction of Don John of Austria, the Grand-Commander Requesens, and the dukes of Sesa and Arcos, were carried into effect with promptness and energy.
By the terms of the edict, the lands and houses of the exiles were to be forfeited to the crown. But their personal effects—their flocks, their herds, and their grain—would be taken, if they desired it, at a fixed valuation by the government. Every regard was to be paid to their personal conveniences and security; and it was forbidden, in the removal, to separate parents from children, husbands from wives; in short, to divide the members of a family from one another;—"an act of clemency," says a humane chronicler, "which they little deserved; but his majesty was willing in this to content them."[273]