setting forth the terms on which traitors might yet escape the extreme penalties, but denouncing, without hope of mercy, the severest chastisements known to war against such as should continue disobedient after knowledge of this offer of remission. The issuing of these proclamations may be looked upon as the beginning of the end of the Morisco war. It was not concluded at once, nor without some farther contention; for the Morisco chief, or king as he claimed to be, after making considerable advances towards accommodation, thought he saw another chance of winning, and once more drew the remnant of his unhappy nation into open hostilities. Thus they rendered themselves liable to the most dreadful penalties with which the King had threatened them, and only too many of them drank to the dregs the cup of his indignation. The royal troops had now mustered in such strength that it was useless for the reduced Morisco bands to contend with them longer. A little farther struggle, and the rebellion collapsed. The rebel king was slain by treachery in the mountains; but his corpse was brought down to Granada, – and it was thought rather a fine pageant of triumph to wedge the dead body in a frame, set it upright upon a mule, and to parade it with much show and shouting through the streets. After this miserable exhibition, the head was severed from tho trunk, and fixed on a spike over one of the gates of Granada.
The rebel Moriscoes who had been taken in arms were sold for slaves into all cities and districts of Spain. Those who had not rebelled were forcibly removed from the theatre of rebellion, and dispersed through the other provinces. The tale of expatriation is most heartrending, even among stories of cruel and bloody deeds. It was a "bag and baggage" removal. He who studies the account of it will appreciate the truculency of the proposal made regarding the Turks by an English orator towards the end of the nineteenth century – the most inhuman utterance which any man, claiming to be a statesman, has allowed himself to make in modern days!
Don John "wound up" the affairs of the war. He had been about eighteen months in command. He had been ultimately successful: he had made no great mistake: his conduct and his personal valour were greatly praised: and he was said to have acquired considerable renown. Probably, however, if his renown had never rested on anything more solid than this Morisco war, it would have been at the best local and partial. His chief glory from that miserable war is that he made use of it for perfecting himself in the arts of command, that he gained store of experience, and that he educated himself for the acquisition of a fame which was undoubtedly European, and which made him for a span "the foremost man of all this world." The wave of the wand which was to show the fairy favours at their meridian was now to be given.
It was the fortune of Don John to have always work awaiting him at times when his hands became free. Before things had been re-established on a peace footing in the south of Spain after the Morisco war, he had been already nominated to the splendid command in which he did the great exploit of his life. Pope Pius V. had, after much anxiety and labour, succeeded in constructing the Holy League of the Christian Powers against the Turk; and it had been decided (though not until after
