The ravages of war had as yet spared a little portion of the Vega of Granada. A green belt of gardens and orchards still flourished round the city, extending along the banks of the Xenil and the Darro. They had been the solace and delight of the inhabitants in their happier days, and contributed to their sustenance in this time of scarcity.
Ferdinand determined to make a final and exterminating ravage to the very walls of the city, so that there should not remain a single green thing for the sustenance of man or beast. The eighth of July was the day appointed for this act of desolation. Boabdil was informed by his spies of the intention of the Christian king, and prepared to make a desperate defence. Hernando de Baeza, a Christian who resided with the royal family in the Alhambra as interpreter, gives in a manuscript memoir an account of the parting of Boabdil from his family as he went forth to battle. At an early hour on the appointed day, the eighth of July, he bathed and perfumed himself, as the Moors of high rank were accustomed to do when they went forth to peril their lives. Arrayed in complete armor, he took leave of his mother, his wife, and his sister in the antechamber of the Tower of Comares. Ayxa la Horra, with her usual dignity, bestowed on him her benediction and gave him her hand to kiss. It was a harder parting with his son and his daughter, who hung round him with sobs and tears: the duenas and doncellas too of the royal household made the halls of the Alhambra resound with their lamentations. He then mounted his horse and put himself in front of his squadrons.*
*Hernando de Baeza, as cited by Alcantara, Hist. Gran., t. 4, c. 18.
The Christian army approached close to the city, and were laying waste the gardens and orchards when Boabdil sallied forth, surrounded by all that was left of the flower and chivalry of Granada. There is one place where even the coward becomes brave--that sacred spot called home. What, then, must have been the valor of the Moors, a people always of chivalrous spirit, when the war was thus brought to their thresholds! They fought among the scenes of their loves and pleasures, the scenes of their infancy, and the haunts of their domestic life. They fought under the eyes of their wives and children, their old men and their maidens--of all that was helpless and all that was dear to them; for all Granada, crowded on tower and battlement, watched with trembling heart the fate of this eventful day.
There was not so much one battle as a variety of battles: every garden and orchard became a scene of deadly contest; every inch of ground was disputed with an agony of grief and valor by the Moors; every inch of ground that the Christians advanced they valiantly maintained, but never did they advance with severer fighting or greater loss of blood.
The cavalry of Muza was in every part of the field; wherever it came it gave fresh ardor to the fight. The Moorish soldier, fainting with heat, fatigue, and wounds, was roused to new life at the approach of Muza; and even he who lay gasping in the agonies of death turned his face toward him and faintly uttered cheers and blessings as he passed.
