Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/209

65 MARRIAGE OF FERDINAND AND ISABELLA. 65 He maintained greater state than was usual with chapter the monarchs of Castile, keeping in pay a body- guard of thirty-six hundred lances, splendidly equip- ped, and officered by the sons of the nobility. He proclaimed a crusade against the Moors, a measure always popular in Castile ; assuming the pomegran- ate branch, the device of Granada, on his escutch- eon, in token of his intention to extirpate the Moslems from the Peninsula. He assembled the chivalry of the remote provinces ; and, in the early part of his reign, scarce a year elapsed without one or more incursions into the hostile territory, with armies of thirty or forty thousand men. The re- n* disap- •' '' points ex- suits did not correspond with the magnificence of pectation« the apparatus ; and these brilliant expeditions too often evaporated in a mere border foray, or in an empty gasconade under the walls of Granada. Orchards were cut down, harvests plundered, villa- ges burnt to the ground, and all the other modes of annoyance peculiar to this barbarous warfare, put in practice by the invading armies as they swept over the face of the country ; individual feats of prowess, too, commemorated in the romantic ballads of the time, were achieved ; but no victory was gained, no important post acquired. The king in vain ex- cused his hasty retreats and abortive enterprises, by saying, " that he prized the life of one of his soldiers, more than those of a thousand Mussul- mans." His troops murmured at this timorous pol- appeUation of " the Liberal," he is ian sovereigns by the less flatter» better known on the roll of Castil- ing title of " the Impotent." VOL. I. 9