The grand-commander executed his commission in the same remorseless spirit in which it had been dictated. Early in September, quitting Granada, he took the field at the head of five thousand men. He struck at once into the heart of the country. All the evils of war in its most horrid form followed in his train. All along his track, it seemed as if the land had been swept by a conflagration. The dwellings were sacked and burned to the ground. The mulberry and olive groves were cut down; the vines were torn up by the roots; and the ripening harvests were trampled in the dust. The country was converted into a wilderness. Occasionally small bodies of the Moriscoes made a desperate stand. But for the most part, without homes to shelter or food to nourish them, they were driven, like unresisting cattle, to seek a refuge in the depths of the mountains, and in the caves in which this part of the country abounded. Their pursuers followed up the chase with the fierce glee with which the hunter tracks the wild animal of the forest to his lair. There they were huddled together, one or two hundred frequently in the same cavern. It was not easy to detect the hiding-place amidst the rocks and thickets which covered up and concealed the entrance. But when it was detected, it was no difficult matter to destroy the inmates. The green bushes furnished the materials for a smouldering fire, and those within were soon suffocated by the smoke, or, rushing out, threw themselves on the mercy of their pursuers. Some were butchered on the spot; others were sent to the gibbet or the galleys; while the greater part, with a fate scarcely less terrible, were given up as the booty of the soldiers, and sold into slavery.[266]
Aben-Aboo had a narrow escape in one of these caverns, not far from Bérchul, where he had secreted himself with a wife and two of his daughters. The women were suffocated, with about seventy other persons. The Morisco chief succeeded in making his escape through an aperture at the farther end, which was unknown to his enemies.[267]
Small forts were erected at short intervals along the ruined country. No less than eighty-four of these towers were raised in different parts of the land, twenty-nine of which were to be seen in the Alpujarras and the vale of Lecrin alone.[268] There they stood, crowning every peak and eminence in the sierra, frowning over the horrid waste, the sad memorials of the conquest. This was the stern policy of the victors. Within this rocky girdle, long held as it was by the iron soldiery of Castile, it was impossible that rebellion should again gather to a head.