The Marquess of Mondéjar, who commanded at Granada, endeavoured by conciliation and generosity to calm the rebellion, which his resolute march into the mountains at the head of four thousand men had to a great extent suppressed; but an accidental massacre at Jubiles, and an act of treachery at Laroles, rekindled the flame of revolt which had been partly extinguished; and the ruthless murder of one hundred and ten Moriscos by their Christian fellow-prisoners in the jail of the Albaycin still further exasperated the persecuted race. Mondéjar was innocent of any share in this bloody work, and was marching with his guard to the prison to quell the disturbance, when the Alcayde met him with the remark: "It is unnecessary; the prison is quiet--_the Moors are all dead_." After this the Moriscos gained daily in strength, and Aben Umeyya became really lord of the whole district of the Alpuxarras. This incapable and profligate sprig of Cordovan nobility enjoyed his power for a very brief period, however; for in October, 1569, private spite and suspicion led to his being strangled in bed by his own followers, when an able and devoted man, the true leader of the rebellion, and one who could even dare to die for his friend, assumed the title of king as Muley Abdallah Aben Abó. Aben Abó had to deal with a new opponent. The king's half-brother, Don John of Austria, a young man of twenty-two, but full of promise, superseded Mondéjar as commander-in-chief against the Moriscos, and after a protracted war of letters he convinced Philip of the gravity of the situation and the necessity for strong measures. At last Don John received his marching orders, and after that, it was but a short shrive that the Moriscos had to expect. In the winter of 1569-70 he began his campaign, and in May the terms of surrender had been arranged. The months between had been stained with a crimson river of blood. Don John's motto was "no quarter"; men, women, and children were butchered by his order and under his own eye; the villages of the Alpuxarras were turned into human shambles. Even when the rebellion seemed at an end, a last feeble flicker of revolt once more sprang up: Aben Abó was not yet reconciled to oppression. Assassination, however, finally convinced him: his head was exhibited over the Gate of the Shambles at Granada for thirty years. The Grand Commander, Requesens, by an organized system of wholesale butchery and devastation, by burning down villages, and smoking the people to death in the caves where they had sought refuge, extinguished the last spark of open revolt before the 5th of November, 1570. The Moriscos were at last subdued, at the cost of the honour, and with the loss of the future, of Christian Spain.