communities of Aragon had recently adopted the institution of the
hermandad, organized on similar principles to that of Castile. Ferdinand,
on his arrival at Saragossa in the month of November, gave his royal
sanction to the association, extending the term of its duration to five
years, a measure extremely unpalatable to the great feudal nobility, whose
power, or rather abuse of power, was considerably abridged by this popular
military force. [1]

The sovereigns, after accomplishing the objects of their visit, and
obtaining an appropriation from the cortes for the Moorish war, passed
into Valencia, where measures of like efficiency were adopted for
restoring the authority of the law, which was exposed to such perpetual
lapses in this turbulent age, even in the best constituted governments, as
required for its protection the utmost vigilance, on the part of those
intrusted with the supreme executive power. From Valencia the court
proceeded to Murcia, where Ferdinand, in the month of June, 1488, assumed
the command of an army amounting to less than twenty thousand men, a small
force compared with those usually levied on these occasions; it being
thought advisable to suffer the nation to breathe a while, after the
exhausting efforts in which it had been unintermittingly engaged for so
many years.

Ferdinand, crossing the eastern borders of Granada, at no great distance
from Vera, which speedily opened its gates, kept along the southern slant
of the coast as far as Almeria; whence, after experiencing some rough
treatment from a sortie of the garrison, he marched by a northerly circuit
on Baza, for the purpose of reconnoitring its position, as his numbers
were altogether inadequate to its siege. A division of the army under the
marquis duke of Cadiz suffered itself to be drawn here into an ambuscade
by the wily old monarch El Zagal, who lay in Baza with a strong force.