Messengers had been dispatched at once to Andalusia and Medina del Campo, bearing news of the victory but demanding instant succour, lest glory should be dimmed in even more signal defeat. Leaving Isabel to send out letters and enroll captains and troops throughout Castile, Ferdinand hastened south to Cordova; but it was only to find that he came too late, and that help was already well on its way to the beleaguered city. This prompt action was due to no less a person than the Duke of Medina-Sidonia who, having received a piteous letter from the Marquesa de Cadiz in which she described her husband’s plight, generously put his old enmity aside and went to his rival’s assistance. Bernaldez the chronicler, more often called the Curate of Los Palacios, who was an eye-witness of much of the Moorish war and knew Andalusia well, once described the Duke and Marquis as “the two columns on which the province rested.” Their combined retinues provided an army that Muley Hacen, with his hastily collected troops, dared not face; and the Duke arrived before the gates of Alhama, as the last of the Moorish banners dipped below the far horizon. It was a meeting worthy of a chronicler’s pen, when with hands clasped the gallant young Marquis and his former enemy pledged eternal friendship amid the applause and shouting of their troops. Alhama was saved. Its maintenance was a different matter, for hardly had the Duke and the Marquis of Cadiz, leaving Diego de Merlo and a strong garrison behind them, departed for Cordova, than Muley Abul Hacen made a new and more strenuous attack on his old fortress. From every side the Moors swarmed up by ladders or projecting masonry and hurled themselves upon the ramparts. The Christians thrust them back only to face a fresh avalanche; and when at length, after a prolonged struggle, some seventy warriors who had made their entrance unnoticed were hemmed in and cut down, the garrison although victorious was both exhausted and dismayed. Fresh help must come from Cordova or they were lost. The advisability of burning and deserting Alhama, as a too costly capture, was warmly advocated in the royal councils; but Isabel who had arrived at Cordova would not hear of it. Every war, she declared, must have its heavy expenses; and, since she and the King were determined on the conquest of Granada at all costs, the surrender of the first city they had gained could appear nothing but cowardice. Then the King [we are told] and the Cardinal of Spain and all his host came to the city of Alhama, and they built up the fortifications and supplied it with all things necessary for its defence. It was not the last time that Isabel was to spur the lagging energies of the Christian army to fresh enthusiasm and endeavours.