spirit carried him to the very borders of the Vega of Granada. The frontier strongholds of Priego, Loja, and Alhama fell into his hands. After menacing the capital, he laid siege to Jaen. Consideration of the character of the forces engaged in the attack and defence of this city discloses the peculiarity of this double warfare. In the army of Ferdinand was a large body of Moorish troops, of which the Emir of Baeza furnished not less than three thousand horse and twenty thousand foot. The besieged were assisted by a detachment of Christians whose nationality is not mentioned, but who were probably Spanish soldiers of fortune or Italian and French mercenaries. The enterprise was unsuccessful; the assaults of the besiegers were vigorously repelled, and Al-Mamun, having collected an army, relieved the city and routed the Christians in a pitched battle; and the expedition heralded with such extravagant boasts and begun under the most auspicious circumstances terminated in defeat and ignominy. The spoils of conquest were relinquished, the captured fortresses were speedily retaken, and the booty abandoned in the camp before Jaen more than recompensed the soldiers of Al-Mamun for the dangers and exposure of a short and glorious campaign. That prince was now at liberty to pursue unmolested his schemes of ambition. The incapacity of the Almohades had left the empire without a master and the capital without defence. In the absence of the sovereign, public affairs were administered by the two councils organized by the Mahdi, an institution which, through all the vicissitudes attending the development and decline of the Almohade power, had remained unchanged. With a rapidity that anticipated the swiftest courier, Al-Mamun, at the head of a strong force of cavalry, hastened to Morocco. The councillors and the sheiks who had questioned his authority and disputed his title were peremptorily summoned before him. In vain they protested their innocence. In vain they confronted the spies who had reported their treasonable and insulting speeches to the tyrant. With their families and their friends, who atoned for their relationship and attachment with a similar fate, they passed to immediate execution. Their slaves and retainers shared the fate of their unfortunate lords; and neither the weakness of youth nor the attractions of beauty availed to secure immunity from the bloody and indiscriminate sacrifice. A row of five thousand gory heads was ranged along the walls of the capital, and the sight and odor of these significant emblems of despotic cruelty effectually checked all disposition to revolt. With an insolent disregard of religious prejudice and political tact which it is difficult to comprehend, Al-Mamun denounced the name and memory of the Mahdi as that of an unscrupulous and cunning impostor. The form of government he had instituted had been already abolished by the murder of the Councillors of State.