“Both to the right and left we lay waste fields, houses, demesnes, everything in fact that we see,” says a letter of Peter Martyr, describing the Christian advance on Granada, “and every day we press on further. Thus the Moors grow more and more enfeebled.” Such a policy of siege and destruction, carried out with the pitiless logic that humaner ages have condemned, and backed by the united resources of Castile and Aragon, though necessarily slow, was certain of its ultimate success. As the Marquis of Cadiz had foreseen, the issue was further hastened by the release of Boabdil, that at once threw the kingdom of Granada into fresh convulsions of civil war. During the young Sultan’s imprisonment, his father, Muley Hacen, had appeared in the capital and established himself in his old palace of the Alhambra, relying on the disgust that he knew his son’s failure would awaken amongst Moorish patriots. True to his expectations the majority of the inhabitants received him joyfully; but the poorest quarter of the city, called the Albaycin where Aixa had taken refuge on his approach, still maintained its former allegiance; and thither one dark night came Boabdil with the few Moorish nobles who had remained faithful to his cause. Before dawn a desperate struggle was in progress; Boabdil being unable to drive his enemy from the Alhambra but gaining possession of the Alcazaba, its twin fortress on the opposite hilltop. At length, when the extermination of one or other faction seemed the only prospect, an armistice was arranged, by which Muley Hacen retained Granada, while his son retired with kingly honours to the port of Almeria on the Mediterranean coast. Such a settlement could not prove lasting, nor was the young Sultan, in spite of his personal bravery, the man to alter its terms to his own advantage. Without strength of purpose either to break his Christian shackles, or to take the initiative once more against his father, he remained inactive at his new capital, until the discovery in 1484 of a plot amongst his garrison to sell him to his uncle “El Zagal” sent him in hot flight to Cordova. The sovereigns somewhat contemptuously granted him an asylum. He was a pawn in their game they could not afford to ignore; but their hatred of the Infidel, combined with the self-reliance that was so marked a feature of both their characters, inspired them with little pity for his helplessness.