Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. II.djvu/67

43 CONQUEST OF MALAGA. 43 from the most important ports along her coast ; and chapter , ., . ^ , . XIII. she was envn'oned on every point ol her territory by her warlike foe, so that she could hardly hope more from subsequent efforts, however strenuous and united, than to postpone the inevitable hour of dissolution. The cruel treatment of Malaga was the prelude to the long series of persecutions, which awaited the wretched Moslems in the land of their ancestors ; in that land, over which the " star of Islamism," to borrow their own metaphor, had shone in full brightness for nearly eight centuries, but where it was now fast descending amid clouds and tempests to the horizon. The first care of the sovereigns was directed to- Measures re " _ repeopling wards repeopling the depopulated city with their ^^"'"s^'- own subjects. Houses and lands were freely grant- ed to such as would settle there. Numerous towns and villages with a wide circuit of territory were placed under its civil jurisdiction, and it was made the head of a diocese embracing most of the recent conquests in the south and west of Granada. These inducements, combined with the natural advantages of position and climate, soon caused the tide of Christian population to flow into the deserted city ; but it was very long before it again reached the degree of commercial consequence to which it had been raised by the Moors. ^^ circumstantial Pulgar should have pancies of contemporary histori- omitted to notice so important a ans even, will have Lord Orford's fact as the scheme of the Moorish exclamation to liis son Horace ransom, had it occurred. It is still brought to his mind ten times a more improbable, that the honest day; ''Oh! readme not history, Curate of Los Palacios should for that I know to be false." have fabricated it. Any one who 32 Pulgar, Reyes Catolicos, cap. attempts to reconcile the discre- 94. — Col. deCed. tom. vi. no. 321.