Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada Author:Washington Irving Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. Of the Embassy of Don Juan de Vera to demand Arrears of Tribute from the Moorish Monarch. I HE flagrant want of faith of Muley Abut Hassan... more » in fulfilling treaty stipulations, passed unresented during the residue of the reign of Henry the Impotent, and the truce was tacitly continued without the enforcement of tribute, during the first three years of the reign of his successors, Ferdinand and Isabella, of glorious and happy memory, who were too much engrossed by civil commotions in their own dominions and by a war of succession waged with them by the king of Portugal, to risk an additional conflict with the Moorish sovereign. When, however, at the expiration of the term of truce, Muley Abul Hassan sought a renewal of it, the pride and piety of the Castilian sovereigns were weakened to the flagrant defalcation of the infidel king, and they felt themselves called upon, by their religions obligations as champions of the faith, to make a formal demand for the payment of arrearages. In the year of grace 1478, therefore, Don Juan de Vera, a zealous and devout knight, full of ardor for the faith and loyalty to the crown, was sent as ambassador for the purpose. He wasarmed at nil points, gallantly mounted,,and followed by a moderate but well-appointed retinue ; in this way he crossed the Moorish frontier, and passed slowly through the country, looking round him with the eyes of a practiced warrior, and carefully noting its military points and capabilities. He saw that the Moor was well prepared for possible hostilities. Every town was strongly fortified. The vega was studded with towers of refuge for the peasantry, every pass of the mouu- tain had its castle of defense, every lofty height its watch-tower. As the Christian cavaliers passed under the walls of the for...« less