Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/465

319 SURPRISE OF ALHAMA, 319 It was not long before the desired opportunity chapter for retaliation presented itself to the Spaniards. '- — One Juan de Ortega, a captain of escaladores, or ofAiii^ma. scalers, so denominated from the peculiar service in which they were employed in besieging cities, who had acquired some reputation under John the Second, in the wars of Roussillon, reported to Diego de Merlo, assistant of Seville, that the for- tress of Alhama, situated in the heart of the Moorish territories, was so negligently guarded, that it might be easily carried by an enemy, who had skill enough to approach it. The fortress, as well as the city of the same name, which it com- manded, was built, like many others in that tur- bulent period, along the crest of a rocky eminence, encompassed by a river at its base, and, from its natural advantages, might be deemed impregnable. This strength of position, by rendering all other precautions apparently superfluous, lulled its de- fenders into a security like that which had proved so fatal to Zahara. Alhama, as this Arabic name implies, was famous for its baths, whose annual rents are said to have amounted to five hundred thousand ducats. The monarchs of Granada, in- dulging the taste common to the people of the east, used to frequent this place, with their court, 180. — L. Marineo, Cosas Memo- of gold ducats, and that it kept in rabies, fol. 171. — Marmol, Histo- pay 7,000 horsemen on its peace ria del Rebelion y Castigo de los establishment, and could send forth Moriscos, (Madrid, 1797,) lib. 1, 21,000 warriors from its gates. cap. 12. The last of these estimates would Lebrija states, that the revenues not seem to be exaggerated. Re- ef Granada, at the commencement rum Gestarum Decades, ii. lib. 1, of this war, amounted to a million cap. 1.