OF TRIBUTE FROM THE MOORISH MONARCH.


The flagrant want of faith of Muley Abul Hassan in fulfilling treaty
stipulations passed unresented during the residue of the reign of
Henry the Impotent, and the truce was tacitly continued without the
enforcement of tribute during the first three years of the reign of his
successors, Ferdinand and Isabella of glorious and happy memory,
who were too much engrossed by civil commotions in their own
dominions, and by a war of succession waged with them by the king
of Portugal, to risk an additional conflict with the Moorish sovereign.
When, however, at the expiration of the term of truce, Muley Abul
Hassan sought a renewal of it, the pride and piety of the Castilian
sovereigns were awakened to the flagrant defalcation of the infidel
king, and they felt themselves called upon, by their dignity as
monarchs and their religious obligations as champions of the faith,
to make a formal demand for the payment of arrearages.

In the year of grace 1478, therefore, Don Juan de Vera, a zealous
and devout knight, full of ardor for the faith and loyalty to the
Crown, was sent as ambassador for the purpose. He was armed
at all points, gallantly mounted, and followed by a moderate but
well-appointed retinue: in this way he crossed the Moorish frontier,
and passed slowly through the country, looking round him with the
eyes of a practised warrior and carefully noting its military points
and capabilities. He saw that the Moor was well prepared for
possible hostilities. Every town was strongly fortified. The Vega
was studded with towers of refuge for the peasantry: every pass
of the mountain had its castle of defence, every lofty height its
watch-tower. As the Christian cavaliers passed under the walls of