The Moriscoes, terrified by the misfortunes which they had undergone, offered, for the sake of present security, to submit to any conditions that might be imposed,--to deportation, to exile, to confiscation, to the maintenance of the troops that might be detailed as their guards against future hostility. Different and irreconcilable opinions prevailed among the officials of the crown as to the policy to be adopted; one party advocated amnesty, another extermination. In the mean time, while their superiors were wrangling, the soldiers pursued without interruption the agreeable diversion of rapine. Although hostilities had ceased, small bands of military brigands roamed everywhere without control, robbing houses, destroying property, ravishing women. Inoffensive peasants, who had never borne arms, were seized, carried to Granada, and publicly sold as slaves in the markets of the city by these outlaws, with the knowledge and connivance of the authorities. The latter quarrelled over the division of the spoil and the questionable distinction acquired by conflagration and massacre. No faith was kept with the vanquished. Safe-conducts signed by the highest officials were not respected. No Morisco was exempt from molestation and violence; no house was secure from the intrusion of prowling and bloodthirsty ruffians. When a body of Christian troops passed through a Moorish community everything portable departed with it, the rest was burned. There was deliberate method in this wholesale destruction of property. The army desired nothing so little as peace. War had been profitable even beyond expectation. The booty already secured was immense, but the greater portion had as yet escaped the avarice of the conqueror. The general and the common soldier alike cast longing glances upon the wealth of the Albaycin; upon the productive estates of the Vega, still cultivated by Moorish industry; upon the untold wealth in gold and jewels known to be hoarded by the residents of Guadix, Baza, and Almeria. Leaving all else out of consideration, the Moriscoes themselves, who numbered more than half a million, if condemned to slavery, would realize a prodigious sum. These were the sinister motives which urged an indefinite prosecution of the war, and it was not long before the desired object was attained. The Moriscoes, driven to despair by the duplicity of their enemies whose violence they could not resist, again fled to the mountains and sought the standard of Ibn-Ommeyah. The Spanish mob of Granada, excited by rumors of conspiracy, at once massacred the defenceless Moorish occupants of the prisons to the number of several hundred. Their personal effects were appropriated by the governor; their lands were confiscated for the benefit of the crown; and their widows and orphans were reduced to beggary. A judgment of the court subsequently obtained confirmed this arbitrary act, stating that its decision was based upon the fact that,