action, the brilliancy of which would reanimate the
{187} hopes and confidence of a party that was ready to abandon him, he
sallied forth at the head of a small force, with the intention of
surprising Lucena, a city belonging to the Castilians.

But the ill-fated Boabdil was made a prisoner in this expedition.

He was the first Moorish king who had ever been a captive to the
Spaniards. Ferdinand lavished on him the attentions due to misfortune,
and caused him to be conducted to Cordova, attended by an escort.

The old king, Mulei-Hassem, seized this opportunity to repossess
himself of the crown of which his rebellious son had deprived him, and,
in spite of the party of Zagel, he again became master of his capital.
But the restored monarch could oppose but a feeble resistance to the
progress of the Spaniards, who were rapidly reducing his cities and
advancing nearer to his devoted capital. Within the walls of that city
the wretched inhabitants were madly warring against one another, as if
unconscious of the destruction that was fast approaching them from
without. To increase the sanguinary feuds which already so surely
presaged their destruction, the Catholic sovereigns had become the
{188} allies of the captive Boabdil, engaging to assist him in his
efforts against his father on condition that he should pay them a
tribute of twelve thousand crowns of gold, acknowledge himself their
vassal, and deliver certain strong places into their hands. The base
Boabdil acceded to everything; and, aided by the politic Spanish
princes, hastened again to take arms against his father.

The kingdom of Grenada was now converted into one wide field of
carnage, where Mulei-Hassem, Boabdil, and Zagel were furiously
contending for the mournful relics of their country.

The Spaniards, in the mean time, marched rapidly from one conquest to
another, sometimes under pretext of sustaining their ally Boabdil, and
often in open defiance of the treaty they had formed with that prince;
but always carefully feeding the fire of discord, while they were
despoiling each of the three rival parties, and leaving to the
vanquished inhabitants their laws, their customs, and the free exercise
of their religion.

In the midst of these frightful scenes of calamity and crime, old
Mulei-Hassem died, either worn out by grief and misfortune, or through
{189} the agency of his ambitious brother. This event occurred A.D.
1485, Heg. 890.

Ferdinand had now