Gonzalvo of Cordova was empowered by the conquerors to arrange the articles of capitulation. These provided that the people of Grenada should recognise Ferdinand and Isabella, and their royal successors, as their rightful sovereigns; that all their Christian captives should be released without ransom; that the Moors should continue to be governed by their own laws; should retain their national customs, their judges, half the number of their mosques, and the free exercise of their faith; that they should be permitted either to keep or sell their property, and to retire to Africa, or to any other country they might choose, while, at the same time, they should not be compelled to leave their {195} native land. It was also agreed that Boabdil should have assigned to him a rich and ample domain in the Alpuxares, of which he should possess the entire command. Such were the terms of capitulation, and but ill were they observed by the Spaniards. Boabdil fulfilled his part of the stipulations some days before the time specified, in consequence of being informed that his people, roused by the representations of the imans, wished to break off the negotiations, and to bury themselves beneath the ruins of the city rather than suffer their desolate and deserted homes to be profaned by the intruding foot of the spoiler. The wretched Moslem prince hastened therefore to deliver the keys of the city, and of the fortresses of the Albazin and the Alhambra, into the hands of Ferdinand. Entering no more, after this mournful ceremony, within the walls where he no longer retained any authority, Boabdil took his melancholy journey, accompanied by his family and a small number of followers, to the petty dominions which were now all that remained to him of the once powerful and extensive empire of his ancestors. {196} When the cavalcade reached an eminence from which the towers of Grenada might still be discerned, the wretched exile turned his last sad regards upon the distant city, amid ill-suppressed tears and groans. "_You do well_," said Aixa, his mother, "_to weep like a woman for the throne you could not defend like a man!_" But the now powerless Boabdil could not long endure existence as a subject in a country where he had reigned as a sovereign: he crossed the Mediterranean to Africa, and there he ended his days on the battle-field. Ferdinand and Isabella made their public entrance into Grenada on the 1st of January, 1492, through double ranks of soldiers, and amid the thunder of artillery. The city seemed deserted; the inhabitants fled from the presence of the conquerors, and concealed their tears and their despair within the innermost recesses of their habitations.