corsairs in 1567, and now his royal brother sent him once more against the infidel. He entered Granada in April 1569. He was to do nothing without first communicating with the king, and was strictly enjoined not to expose himself to danger or to take any personal part in the mountain warfare, which was to be left to the Marquis de los Velez. The reasons probably why Don Juan had been chosen for the command were his youth, which would, it might be thought, render him amenable to guidance from Madrid, and the fact that he had from his childhood been indoctrinated in the diplomatic principles of Ruy Gomez’s party, to which Secretary Antonio Perez also belonged. But he was a youth of high courage and great ability, who could ill brook strict control, and he chafed at being kept in the city of Granada away from the fighting. Philip again and again directed him to do as he was told and stay where he was. The task confided to him was a pitiful one. Orders came from Madrid that every Morisco in Granada was to be sent to Castile. On the day of St. John 1569, writes the English spy Hogan, “Don Juan gathered together 13,000 Moriscos of Granada, and took 2000 for the king’s galleys, and hanged some; a great number were sent to labour in the king’s works and fortifications, and the rest, with their wives and children, kept as slaves.” Despair fell upon the poor people, innocent mostly of all participation in the mountain rising, at being dragged from their beautiful homes and smiling native land to be sent in slavery to arid Castile; but Deza and Espinosa were pitiless, and their advice alone was heard in Madrid. The Marquis of Mondejar, the hereditary governor of Granada, could not brook such ruinous folly to the city he loved, and left in disgust. Things in the meanwhile were going badly for the Spaniards in the mountains. The king, Aben Humeya, gained a victory at Seron, and the main body of Spaniards, under the Marquis de los Velez, got out of hand, provisions and pay were short, and the men deserted in shoals, until at last Los Velez was left only with the veteran regiment of Naples. Then Philip and the churchmen saw that they must let Don Juan have his way and give him active command, whilst the king himself, to be nearer, came to Cordova. But Aben Humeya’s power was slipping away. Dissensions had broken out in his own family. He had exercised his royal authority with as much harshness and arrogance as if it had been founded on a rock instead of on the desert sand, and soon a revolution of his people broke out. The young king, already sunk in lascivious indulgence, was strangled in his bed, and his cousin, Ben Abó, was proclaimed King of Granada.