nts of
their trade. The troops of the old king, among whom were many cavaliers
of pride and valor, soon drove the populace from the squares. They
fortified themselves, however, in the streets and lanes, which
they barricadoed. They made fortresses of their houses, and fought
desperately from the windows and the roofs, and many a warrior of the
highest blood of Granada was laid low by plebeian hands and plebeian
weapons in this civic brawl.*

* Conde, Domin. de los Arabes, p. 4, c. 37.

It was impossible that such violent convulsions should last long in the
heart of the city. The people soon longed for repose and a return to
their peaceful occupations, and the cavaliers detested these conflicts
with the multitude, in which were all the horrors of war without its
laurels. By the interference of the alfaquis an armistice was at length
effected. Boabdil was persuaded that there was no dependence upon the
inconstant favor of the multitude, and was prevailed upon to quit a
capital where he could only maintain a precarious seat upon his throne
by a perpetual and bloody struggle. He fixed his court at the city of
Almeria, which was entirely devoted to him, and which at that time vied
with Granada in splendor and importance. This compromise of grandeur
for tranquillity, however, was sorely against the counsels of his
proud-spirited mother, the sultana Ayxa. Granada appeared, in her eyes,
the only legitimate seat of dominion, and she observed, with a smile of
disdain, that he was not worthy of being called a monarch who was not
master of his capital.

CHAPTER XXII.

FORAY OF THE MOORISH ALCAYDES, AND BATTLE OF LOPERA.

Though Muley Abul Hassan had regained undivided sway over the city of
Granada, and the alfaquis, by his command, had denounced his son Boabdil
as an apostate doomed by Heaven to misfortune, still the latter had many
adherents among the common people. Whenever, therefore, any act of the
old monarch was displeasing to the turbulent multitude, they were prone
to give him a hint of the slippery nature of his standing by shouting
out the name of Boabdil el Chico. Long experience had instructed Muley
Abul Hassan in the character of the inconstant people over whom he
ruled. "A successful inroad into the country of the unbelievers," said
he, "will make more converts to my cause than a thousand texts of the
Koran expounded by ten thousand alfaquis."

At this time King Ferdinand was absent from Andalusi