the land, accompanied by a hurricane
and a trembling of the earth. Houses were unroofed, the walls and
battlements of fortresses shaken, and lofty towers rocked to their
foundations. Ships riding at anchor were either stranded or swallowed
up; others, under sail, were tossed to and fro upon mountain waves
and cast upon the land, where the whirlwind rent them in pieces and
scattered them in fragments in the air. Doleful was the ruin and great
the terror where this baleful cloud passed by, and it left a long
track of desolation over sea and land. Some of the faint-hearted,"
adds Antonio Agapida, "looked upon this torment of the elements as a
prodigious event, out of the course of nature. In the weakness of their
fears they connected it with those troubles which occurred in various
places, considering it a portent of some great calamity about to be
wrought by the violence of the bloody-handed El Zagal and his fierce
adherents."*

* See Cura de los Palacios, cap. 91; Palencia, De Bello Granad.,
lib. 8.

CHAPTER LXX.

HOW KING FERDINAND PREPARED TO BESIEGE THE CITY OF BAZA, AND HOW THE
CITY PREPARED FOR DEFENCE.

The stormy winter had passed away, and the spring of 1489 was advancing,
yet the heavy rains had broken up the roads, the mountain-brooks were
swollen to raging torrents, and the late shallow and peaceful rivers
were deep, turbulent, and dangerous. The Christian troops had been
summoned to assemble in early spring on the frontiers of Jaen, but were
slow in arriving at the appointed place. They were entangled in the
miry defiles of the mountains or fretted impatiently on the banks of
impassable floods. It was late in the month of May before they assembled
in sufficient force to attempt the proposed invasion, when at length a
valiant army of thirteen thousand horse and forty thousand foot marched
merrily over the border. The queen remained at the city of Jaen with the
prince-royal and the princesses her children, accompanied and supported
by the venerable cardinal of Spain and those reverend prelates who
assisted in her councils throughout this holy war.

The plan of King Ferdinand was to lay siege to the city of Baza, the key
of the remaining possessions of the Moor. That important fortress taken,
Guadix and Almeria must soon follow, and then the power of El Zagal
would be at an end. As the Catholic king advanced he had first to secure
various castles and strongholds in the vicinity of Baza which