The juncture was a favourable one for Don Juan, and he lost no time. With marvellous activity he collected the Spanish forces again around the Naples regiment; he brought men from all parts of Spain, and by the end of January 1570 he was besieging the fortress of Galera with 13,000 soldiers. For a month the siege lasted, and hardly a day passed without some act of daring heroism on one side or the other. At last by February 16 the place was taken by assault, and the defenders to the number of 3000 killed. Massacre, pillage, and lust again threw the Spanish troops into a state of demoralisation, and a few days later, in attempting to recover Seron, an uncontrollable panic seized them, and the seasoned warriors fled like hares before an insignificant gang of Moors, with a loss of 600 men. All discipline and order were thrown to the winds; desertion, anarchy, and murder were all that could be got from Don Juan’s army, now a mere blood-thirsty rabble. The Moorish king would fain make terms, and Don Juan was in favour of entertaining his approaches. Philip was at his wits’ end with two wars on his hands, both the result of his blind, rigid policy; his treasury, as usual, was well-nigh exhausted. Elizabeth of England had recently seized all the ready money he could borrow for the payment of Alba’s army, and the Turk was busy in the Mediterranean, with the more or less overt encouragement of Catharine de Medici. But though Don Juan begged for clemency for the submissive Moors, the fanatics Deza and Espinosa would have none of it, and Philip’s zeal was aroused again in the name of religion to strike and spare not for the interests of “God and your Majesty.” Deza and one of his officials of the Inquisition managed to bribe a Moor to betray and kill the king, Ben Abó. The body of the dead king was brought into Granada, and Deza, churchman though he was, struck off the head and had it nailed to the gate of what was once the Moorish quarter, with a threat of death to the citizen who should dare to touch it.