Accounts of the riot and its causes were hastily dispatched to the King and Queen at Seville; and, Cisneros’s particular messenger being delayed, their anger was at first directed against him; and Isabel wrote, demanding an explanation of his provocative action. In response Cisneros himself soon appeared at Court, and, undaunted by the failure of his last efforts or the coldness with which he was received, justified his conduct with much the same reasoning that Torquemada upheld the righteousness of the Inquisition. The people of Granada, he declared in conclusion, had forfeited the terms of capitulation by their outburst of rebellion; and he urged that the sovereigns should not let them go unpunished, and that they should push forward the Faith with unswerving devotion by every means in their power. His arguments, with their obvious flaw that he himself by an evasion of the terms was mainly responsible for the rebellion in question, yet carried conviction in an atmosphere, whose natural intolerance of heretics and infidels had been considerably stimulated by the persecution of the last twenty years—for it is a commonplace that fanaticism breeds fanatics. The milder counsels of Fra Fernando de Talavera and the Count of Tendilla were rejected; and a certain patriotic sanction seemed given to the rigorous proceedings taken against the rioters, when threatening letters were received from the Sultan of Egypt, showing that the Mahometans of Granada had dared to appeal to him for assistance. Cisneros’s triumphant return to the southern capital was marked by the baptism of from fifty to seventy thousand Moors within the city and its environs. Outward peace reigned; but trouble was brewing in the mountains of the Alpujarras to the south-east, where many of those who were determined not to accept conversion had taken refuge to plan and plot. The sovereigns, alarmed at this news, dictated a letter of conciliation to their secretary, and sent it to the disaffected area: “Be it known unto you [they said] that, a report having reached our ears that some declare it is our will that you should be compelled by force to embrace Christianity, and, since it never was, nor is it our will that any Moor should turn Christian under compulsion, we therefore assure and promise you, on our royal word, that we have not consented nor allowed this; and that we wish that the Moors, our vassals, should remain secure and meet with all justice as our vassals and servants. Given in the City of Seville, in the twenty and sixth day of the month of January.... I the King. I the Queen.” The matter of the writing was fair enough, but the Moors might be forgiven if they considered the royal word a somewhat dubious safeguard. Ferdinand, despite his pacific protestations, was collecting an army; and the rebels hastened to seize the nearest fortresses and to make raids in the Vega beyond.