Isabella watched assiduously over the nurture of the high-born damsels of her court, whom she received into the royal palace, causing them to be educated under her own eye, and endowing them with liberal portions on their marriage. By these and similar acts of affectionate solicitude she endeared herself to the higher classes of her subjects, while the patriotic tendency of her public conduct established her in the hearts of the people. She possessed, in combination with the feminine qualities which beget love, a masculine energy of character which struck terror into the guilty. She enforced the execution of her own plans, oftentimes even at great personal hazard, with a resolution surpassing that of her husband. Both were singularly temperate, indeed frugal, in their dress, equipage, and general style of living; seeking to affect others less by external pomp than by the silent though more potent influence of personal qualities. On all such occasions as demanded it, however, they displayed a princely magnificence, which dazzled the multitude, and is blazoned with great solemnity in the garrulous chronicles of the day. Thus laudable objects were gradually achieved by a course of measures equally laudable; and the various orders of the monarchy, brought into harmonious action with each other, were enabled to turn the forces which had before been wasted in civil conflict to the glorious career of discovery and conquest which it was destined to run during the remainder of the century. No sooner had Ferdinand and Isabella restored internal tranquillity to their dominions, and made the strength effective which had been acquired by their union under one government, than they turned their eyes to those fair regions of the peninsula over which the Moslem crescent had reigned triumphant for nearly eight centuries. Fortunately, an act of aggression on the part of the Moors furnished a pretext for entering on their plan of conquest at the moment when it was ripe for execution. Mulei Abul-Hassan, who succeeded his father in 1466, was of a very different temperament. His fiery character prompted him, when very young, to violate the truce by an unprovoked inroad into Andalusia. When, in 1476, the Spanish sovereigns required, as the condition of a renewal of the truce which he solicited, the payment of the annual tribute imposed on his predecessors, he proudly replied that the mints of Granada coined no longer gold, but steel. His subsequent conduct did not belie the spirit of this Spartan answer. [Sidenote: [1481-1482 A.D.]]