the
success of the Spanish arms to interfere in a desperate cause, and the
unfortunate Moors of Granada were abandoned to their fate.

The month of December had nearly passed away: the famine became extreme,
and there was no hope of any favorable event within the term specified
in the capitulation. Boabdil saw that to hold out to the end of the
allotted time would but be to protract the miseries of his people. With
the consent of his council he determined to surrender the city on the
sixth of January. He accordingly sent his grand vizier, Yusef Aben
Comixa, to King Ferdinand to make known his intention, bearing him,
at the same time, a present of a magnificent scimetar and two Arabian
steeds superbly caparisoned.

The unfortunate Boabdil was doomed to meet with trouble to the end of
his career. The very next day the santon or dervise, Hamet Aben Zarrax,
the same who had uttered prophecies and excited commotions on former
occasions, suddenly made his appearance. Whence he came no one knew: it
was rumored that he had been in the mountains of the Alpuxarras and on
the coast of Barbary endeavoring to rouse the Moslems to the relief of
Granada. He was reduced to a skeleton; his eyes glowed like coals in
their sockets, and his speech was little better than frantic raving. He
harangued the populace in the streets and squares, inveighed against the
capitulation, denounced the king and nobles as Moslems only in name, and
called upon the people to sally forth against the unbelievers, for that
Allah had decreed them a signal victory.

Upward of twenty thousand of the populace seized their arms and paraded
the streets with shouts and outcries. The shops and houses were shut up;
the king himself did not dare to venture forth, but remained a kind of
prisoner in the Alhambra.

The turbulent multitude continued roaming and shouting and howling about
the city during the day and a part of the night. Hunger and a wintry
tempest tamed their frenzy, and when morning came the enthusiast who
had led them on had disappeared. Whether he had been disposed of by the
emissaries of the king or by the leading men of the city is not known:
his disappearance remains a mystery.*

* Mariana.

Boabdil now issued from the Alhambra, attended by his principal nobles,
and harangued the populace. He set forth the necessity of complying with
the capitulation, from the famine that reigned in the city, the futility
of defence, and from the hosta