Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. II.djvu/455

429 DEATH OF ALONSO DE AGUILAR. 429 in reaching an elevated point, which entirely com- chapter manded the Moorish fortress. '- — Great was the dismay of the insurgents at the parries Lan- •^ " jaron. apparition of the Christian banners, streaming in triumph in the upper air, from the very pinnacles of the sierra. They stoutly persisted, however, in the refusal to surrender. But their works were too feeble to stand the assault of men, who had van- quished the more formidable obstacles of nature ; and, after a short struggle, the place was carried by i50o. Storm, and its wretched inmates experienced the same dreadful fate with those of Huejar. * At nearly the same time, the count of Lerin took punishment •^ ' of the rebels. several other fortified places in the Alpuxarras, in one of which he blew up a mosque filled with wo- men and children. Hostilities were carried on with all the ferocity of a civil, or rather servile war ; and the Spaniards, repudiating all the feelings of courtesy and generosity, which they had once shown to the same men, when dealing with them as hon- orable enemies, now regarded them only as rebel- lious vassals, or indeed slaves, whom the public safety required to be not merely chastised, but exterminated. These severities, added to the conviction of their own impotence, at length broke the spirit of the Moors, who were reduced to the most humble con- cessions ; and the Catholic king, " unwilling out of his great clemency," says Abarca, " to stain his 4 Peter Martyr, Opus Epist., Anales, torn. v. lib. 3, cap. 45. — epist. 215. — Abarca, Reyes de Carbajal, Anales, MS., ano 1500. Aragon, torn. ii. fol. 338. — Zurita,