now trailed ignominiously through their streets; when, in short,
they witnessed the arrival of the count of Cifuentes, the royal
standard-bearer of Spain, with his gallant brother, Don Pedro de Silva,
brought prisoners into the gates of Granada,--there were no bounds to
their exultation. They thought that the days of their ancient glory were
about to return, and that they were to renew their career of triumph
over the unbelievers.

The Christian historians of the time are sorely perplexed to account
for this misfortune, and why so many Christian knights, fighting in the
cause of the holy faith, should thus miraculously, as it were, be given
captive to a handful of infidel boors, for we are assured that all this
rout and destruction was effected by five hundred foot and fifty horse,
and those mere mountaineers without science or discipline.* "It
was intended," observes one historiographer, "as a lesson to their
confidence and vainglory, overrating their own prowess and thinking that
so chosen a band of chivalry had but to appear in the land of the enemy
and conquer. It was to teach them that the race is not to the swift nor
the battle to the strong, but that God alone giveth the victory."

* Cura de los Palacios.

The worthy father Fray Antonio Agapida, however, asserts it to be a
punishment for the avarice of the Spanish warriors. They did not enter
the kingdom of the infidels with the pure spirit of Christian knights,
zealous only for the glory of the faith, but rather as greedy men of
traffic, to enrich themselves by vending the spoils of the infidels.
Instead of preparing themselves by confession and communion, and
executing their testaments, and making donations and bequests to
churches and convents, they thought only of arranging bargains and sales
of their anticipated booty. Instead of taking with them holy monks
to aid them with their prayers, they were followed by a train of
trading-men to keep alive their worldly and sordid ideas, and to turn
what ought to be holy triumphs into scenes of brawling traffic. Such is
the opinion of the excellent Agapida, in which he is joined by that most
worthy and upright of chroniclers, the curate of Los Palacios. Agapida
comforts himself, however, with the reflection that this visitation
was meant in mercy to try the Castilian heart, and to extract from its
present humiliation the elements of future success, as gold is extracted
from amidst the impurities of earth;