laden with spoil, and bearing in triumph the banners and pennons taken at Zahara. While preparations were making for jousts and other festivities in honour of this victory over the Christians, the captives of Zahara arrived--a wretched train of men, women, and children, worn out with fatigue and haggard with despair, and driven like cattle into the city gates by a detachment of Moorish soldiery." The civilized people of Granada were shocked at the cruelty of Abu-l-Hasan, and felt that this was the beginning of the end. "Woe to Granada!" they cried. "The hour of its desolation is at hand. The ruins of Zahara will fall upon our own heads!" Retribution was not far off. The redoubtable Marquess of Cadiz captured the castle of Alhama by surprise, and thus planted a Christian garrison in the heart of the Moslem territory, within a short distance of Granada itself. In vain did Muley Abu-l-Hasan invest the captured castle; the Christians within performed prodigies of valour in its defence, and held the place till their friends came to their support. _Ay de mi Alhama!_ "Woe for my Alhama!" was the cry that arose in Granada; "Alhama is fallen; the key of Granada is in the hands of the infidels!" Byron has made every one familiar with the plaintive ballad which he mistranslated: Pasavase el rey Moro Por la ciudad de Granada, Desde las puertas de Elvira Hasta las de Bivarambla. Ay de mi Alhama! Henceforward, the castle proved a sore thorn in the side of the Moorish kings; for thence the brave Count of Tendillo harried the Vega and wrought infinite destruction. "It was a pleasing and refreshing sight," says the Jesuit chronicler[28] invented by Washington Irving, "to behold the pious knight and his followers returning from one of these crusades, leaving the rich land of the infidel in smoking desolation behind them: to behold the long line of mules and asses laden with the plunder of the Gentiles, the hosts of captive Moors, men, women, and children; droves of sturdy beeves, lowing kine and bleating sheep--all winding up the steep acclivity to the gates of Alhama, pricked on by the Catholic soldiery.... It was an awful spectacle at night to behold the volumes of black smoke, mingled with lurid flames, that rose from the burning suburbs, and the women on the walls of the towns wringing their hands and shrieking at the desolation of their dwellings."