Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. II.djvu/70

46 46 WAR OF GRANADA, PART was considerably abridged by this popular military ! — force. ^ The sovereigns, after accomplishing the objects of their visit, and obtaining an appropriation from the cortes for the Moorish war, passed into Valen- cia, where measures of like efficiency were adopted for restoring the authority of the law, which was exposed to such perpetual lapses in this turbulent age, even in the best constituted governments, as required for its protection the utmost vigilance, on the part of those intrusted with the supreme execu- tive power. From Valencia the court proceeded to Murcia, where Ferdinand, in the month of June, 1488, assumed the command of an army amounting to less than twenty thousand men, a small force compared with those usually levied on these occa- sions ; it being thought advisable to suffer the nation to breathe a while, after the exhausting efforts in which it had been unintermittingly en- gaged for so many years. moads into Fcrdiuaud, crossing; the eastern borders of Gra- Granada. ' O nada, at no great distance from Vera, which speedi ly opened its gates, kept along the southern slant of the coast as far as Almeria ; whence, after expe- riencing some rough treatment from a sortie of the garrison, he marched by a northerly circuit on Baza, for the purpose of reconnoitring its position, as his numbers were altogether inadequate to its siege. A division of the army under the marquis 1 Zurita, Analcs, torn. iv. fol. 12. — Pulgar, Reyes Cat61icos, 351, 352, 356. — Mariana, Hist. part. 3, cap. 95. de Espafia, torn. ii. lib. 25, cap.