astile; giving secret instructions, however, that
those who should voluntarily embrace the Christian faith might be
permitted to remain. At the same time he ordered Don Alonso de Aguilar
and the counts of Urena and Cifuentes to march against the rebels.

Don Alonso de Aguilar was at Cordova when he received the commands of
the king. "What force is allotted us for this expedition?" said he.
On being told, he perceived that the number of troops was far from
adequate. "When a man is dead," said he, "we send four men into his
house to bring forth the body. We are now sent to chastise these Moors,
who are alive, vigorous, in open rebellion, and ensconced in their
castles; yet they do not give us man to man." These words of the brave
Alonso de Aguilar were afterward frequently repeated, but, though he saw
the desperate nature of the enterprise, he did not hesitate to undertake
it.

Don Alonso was at that time in the fifty-first year of his age--a
warrior in whom the fire of youth was yet unquenched, though tempered
by experience. The greater part of his life had been spent in camp and
field until danger was as his habitual element. His muscular frame had
acquired the firmness of iron without the rigidity of age. His armor and
weapons seemed to have become a part of his nature, and he sat like a
man of steel on his powerful war-horse.

He took with him on this expedition his son, Don Pedro de Cordova, a
youth of bold and generous spirit, in the freshness of his days, and
armed and arrayed with the bravery of a young Spanish cavalier. When the
populace of Cordova beheld the veteran father, the warrior of a thousand
battles, leading forth his son to the field, they bethought themselves
of the family appellation. "Behold," cried they, "the eagle teaching his
young to fly! Long live the valiant line of Aguilar!"*

* "Aguilar," the Spanish for eagle.

The prowess of Don Alonso and of his companions-in-arms was renowned
throughout the Moorish towns. At their approach, therefore, numbers
of the Moors submitted, and hastened to Ronda to embrace Christianity.
Among the mountaineers, however, were many of the Gandules, a tribe from
Africa, too proud of spirit to bend their necks to the yoke. At their
head was a Moor named El Feri of Ben Estepar, renowned for strength
and courage. At his instigation his followers gathered together their
families and most precious effects, placed them on mules, and, driving
before them their