No beneficial consequences resulted from this measure, as cruel as it was unwise. The insurgents continued their depredations. Every straggler was killed; and no foraging party whose force was less than that of a regiment could hope to return. The Moriscoes by degrees became more daring, and it was no longer safe for individuals to venture beyond the limits of the camp. The encounters were all to the advantage of the rebels; and the great city of Almeria, by the merest accident, escaped falling into their hands. The latter, however, were not only unable to cope with the entire power of the Spanish monarchy, but were even unprovided with the means necessary for the retention of their paltry conquests. Even in a situation where unity was more than ever indispensable to self-preservation, the irrepressible tendency of the Arab mind to factional disturbance began to manifest itself. Nine centuries of national disaster had been insufficient to repress the tribal hatred and the thirst for private vengeance which had sapped the vitality and finally torn into fragments the realm of a vast and splendid empire. The Moor was incapable of profiting by experience. The law of reprisal, that accursed legacy of his Bedouin forefathers, had never been lost sight of, even amidst all the culture and all the wisdom of his civilization. It was the most powerful and effective weapon that his enemies possessed, and it was eternally used to his prejudice. To its aid the Reconquest was far more indebted than to the energy of Alfonso VI. or to the craft of Ferdinand the Catholic. It won more battles than all the conquering sovereigns from Pelayus to Isabella. No Castilian prince had ever failed to recognize its importance or to profit by its employment. And now, in the remote Alpujarras, the last resort of Moorish valor and ambition, it was again to be wielded with even more fatal and demoralizing effects than had ever marked its use since the troublous epoch which followed the decline of the Ommeyade supremacy.