In the Alpujarras, where everything was already upon a hostile footing, the case was different, and the wild mountaineers hailed with enthusiasm the advent of a sovereign and the welcome prospect of war and depredation. The tempest of rebellion burst forth at once in every settlement of the sierras. The excesses committed by the insurgents are incredible in their atrocity and worthy of a race of savages. Their animosity was especially directed against the priests, whom they considered as the instigators and the instruments of their misfortunes. Some had their mouths stuffed with gunpowder and their heads blown to atoms. Others were compelled to sit before the altar while their former parishioners tore out the hairs of their heads and eyebrows one by one and then slashed them to death with knives and razors. Others, still, were subjected to ingenious tortures and barbarous mutilation; compelled to swallow their own eyes, which had been torn from the sockets; to be gradually dismembered; to have their tongues and hearts cut out and thrown to dogs. Hundreds of monks were seethed in boiling oil. Nuns were subjected to shocking indignities and then tortured to death. The glaring hypocrisy in which the Moriscoes had been living was disclosed by their conduct as soon as they believed themselves emancipated from the restraints under which they had chafed so long. They exulted in every form of sacrilege. Dressed in sacerdotal habiliments, they travestied the solemn ceremonies of the mass. They defiled and trampled upon the Host. The churches were filled with laughing, jeering crowds that polluted every portion of the sanctuary. Sacred images, donated by pious monarchs and blessed by famous prelates, were broken to pieces and burnt. Ecclesiastical hatred had, as an indispensable sign of regeneration, forced all Moslem converts to eat pork, a kind of food doubly offensive from inherited prejudice and Koranic prohibition. In retaliation for this annoying requirement, the insurgents, with mock solemnity, and invested with all the paraphernalia of Catholic worship, sacrificed hogs upon the Christian altars. Every form of violence, every outrage which newly-found freedom exasperated by the memory of long-continued injury could devise, was perpetrated by the enraged Moriscoes. So unbridled was their fury that even the common usages of war were constantly violated; prisoners taken in battle were put to death without mercy, and it was publicly declared that not a Christian should be left alive within the insurgent territory. This resolution, promulgated without his knowledge, was discountenanced by Ibn-Ommeyah, and he deposed the commanders who had by their arbitrary conduct and impolitic cruelty insulted the honor of his crown, but not until irreparable wrong had been committed.