The following year, the independent mountaineers again revolted, and massacred all the Christians on whom they could lay hands. They were again reduced: ten thousand submitted to the necessary rite; while a greater number fled to their African brethren. A third time, in the space of a very few months, were the embers of discontent fanned into a flame--partly by the injudicious zeal of the Christian priests, partly by the strong breath of indignation. This insurrection was the most difficult to quell: one or two partial successes were obtained over the royal troops; but, on the appearance of Ferdinand in person, with a formidable power, the revolted fortresses submitted. Again did thousands obtain his permission to settle on the opposite coast, and bade a final adieu to the peninsula. By their departure, those who remained were still less able to make head against the victor, who no longer hesitated to issue his irrevocable decree of expulsion against every obstinate follower of the Arabian prophet.[j] [Illustration: A MAN OF GRANADA] The sovereigns came to the extraordinary resolution of offering the alternative of baptism or exile. They issued a _pragmática_ from Seville, February 12th, 1502, that all the unbaptised Moors in the kingdoms of Castile and Leon above fourteen years of age if males, and twelve if females, must leave the country by the end of April following; that they might sell their property in the meantime, and take the proceeds in anything save gold and silver and merchandise regularly prohibited; and, finally, that they might emigrate to any foreign country, except the dominions of the Grand Turk, and such parts of Africa as Spain was then at war with. Obedience to these severe provisions was enforced by the penalties of death and confiscation of property. This stern edict, so closely modelled on that against the Jews, must have been even more grievous in its application. For the Jews may be said to have been denizens almost equally of every country; while the Moors, excluded from a retreat among their countrymen on the African shore, were sent into the lands of enemies or strangers. The former, moreover, were far better qualified by their natural shrewdness and commercial habits for disposing of their property advantageously, than the simple, inexperienced Moors, skilled in little else than husbandry or rude mechanic arts. We have nowhere met with any estimate of the number who migrated on this occasion. Castile might now boast, for the first time in eight centuries, that every outward stain, at least, of infidelity, was purified from her bosom. But how had this been accomplished? By the most detestable expedients which sophistry could devise and oppression execute; and that, too, under an enlightened government, proposing to be guided solely by a conscientious regard for duty.