r feet as their saviors and
deliverers, but the sovereigns prevented such humiliation and graciously
extended to them their hands. They then prostrated themselves before
the altar, and all present joined them in giving thanks to God for their
liberation from this cruel bondage. By orders of the king and queen
their chains were then taken off, and they were clad in decent raiment
and food was set before them. After they had ate and drunk, and were
refreshed and invigorated, they were provided with money and all things
necessary for their journey, and sent joyfully to their homes.

While the old chroniclers dwell with becoming enthusiasm on this pure
and affecting triumph of humanity, they go on in a strain of equal
eulogy to describe a spectacle of a far different nature. It so happened
that there were found in the city twelve of those renegado Christians
who had deserted to the Moors and conveyed false intelligence during
the siege: a barbarous species of punishment was inflicted upon them,
borrowed, it is said, from the Moors and peculiar to these wars. They
were tied to stakes in a public place, and horsemen exercised their
skill in transpiercing them with pointed reeds, hurled at them while
careering at full speed, until the miserable victims expired beneath
their wounds. Several apostate Moors also, who, having embraced
Christianity, had afterward relapsed into their early faith, and had
taken refuge in Malaga from the vengeance of the Inquisition,
were publicly burnt. "These," says an old Jesuit historian
exultingly,--"these were the tilts of reeds and the illuminations most
pleasing for this victorious festival and for the Catholic piety of our
sovereigns."*

* "Los renegados fuernon acanavareados: y los conversos quemados;
y estos fueron las canas, y luminarias mas alegres, por la fiesta de la
vitoria, para la piedad Catholica de nuestros Reyes."--Abarca, "Anales
de Aragon," tom. 2, Rey xxx. c. 3.

When the city was cleansed from the impurities and offensive odors
which had collected during the siege, the bishops and other clergy who
accompanied the court, and the choir of the royal chapel, walked in
procession to the principal mosque, which was consecrated and entitled
Santa Maria de la Incarnacion. This done, the king and queen entered
the city, accompanied by the grand cardinal of Spain and the principal
nobles and cavaliers of the army, and heard a solemn mass. The church
was then elevated into a