“The Queen has provided for every need,” wrote the Italian scholar, Peter Martyr, to the Archbishop of Milan, when at the seat of war before Baeza; and his letter shows that Isabel’s thoughts were not wholly occupied with the destruction of the Infidel. It is well worth while [he adds] to see the four large hospital tents that her goodness of heart has designed, not only for the succour and cure of the wounded, but for every imaginable illness. Such is the number of doctors, chemists, surgeons, and their assistants; such the organization and energy; such the quantity of supplies that it is in no way inferior to your Hospital of the Holy Ghost outside the city, or to the great one in your Milan. The “Queen’s Hospitals,” as they were called, were in keeping with the other methods of warfare now adopted by the sovereigns, and show their intention that the old careless campaigning of the past should cease. On the one hand the Castilian soldier should be assured in return for his patriotism of all that foresight and care could do for him; on the other there should be meted out to the enemy either the prospect of submission or the alternative of death or slavery. Ferdinand showed himself ready to grant favourable terms to those cities that opened their gates at his summons; allowing the inhabitants to seek their fortunes elsewhere with what goods they could carry, or to remain if they preferred as his subjects. In the latter case he assured them of his protection, a promise that he strictly enforced to the admiration of the chroniclers and dismay of his own troops. His vengeance on rebellious _mudejares_, as the Moors were called who had at any time accepted the Castilian yoke, was in inverse ratio to this clemency, as the smoking ruins of Benemaquez were to bear witness. And the King [we are told] commanded justice to be executed on those Moors who were within; and there were put to the sword, or hung, one hundred and eight of the principal men, and he commanded the rest with the women and children to be made captive, and that the town should be burnt and its walls razed to the ground. Equally drastic was the new campaign of devastation that marked the trail of the Christian army. No longer were inroads to be made only in the spring, but instead a perpetual invasion, slackening in the hottest months when the sun forbade strenuous action, and renewed again with the coming of autumn, that neither crops nor fruit might have time to recover from the previous onslaught. For this work of destruction were set aside thirty thousand foragers, whose task it was, spreading out on either side of the main army often to the distance of two leagues, to burn all the mills, orchards, and trees within that area.