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The capture of this place, which soon followed, roused the enthusiasm of the Moriscos to the highest pitch. From all sides the warlike peasantry flocked to the standard of their able chief, and a war began resembling that of a century before, when the forces of Ferdinand and Isabella were invading the Kingdom of Granada.
Portundo was anxious not to sink the Turks, for fear of drowning the fugitive Moriscos, whom he supposed to be on board, and for whose recapture he was to have ten thousand ducats; but the Corsairs imputed his conduct to cowardice, and, suddenly changing their part from attacked to attackers, they swooped like eagles upon the galleys, and after a brisk hand-to-hand combat, in which Portundo was slain, they carried seven of them by assault, and sent the other flying at topmost speed to Iviça.
Six of the oldest and "most Christian" Moriscos in each community of a hundred souls were to remain to teach their modes of cultivation and their industries, and only three days were allowed for the carrying out of this most wicked and suicidal law.
Don John of Austria, the victor at Lepanto, led the Spanish troops, but he had a difficult task, the Moriscos, sheltered in their mountain fastnesses, making a desperate and protracted resistance, and showing a warlike energy equal to that which had been displayed in the defence of Granada.
Here he entered the military service, and held a captain's commission in the war against the Moriscos, and, afterwards, under Don John of Austria. Though he acquitted himself honorably in his adventurous career, he does not seem to have been satisfied with the manner in which his services were requited by the government.
Seven of the United Provinces had achieved their independence during the reign of the third Philip, who had also driven out of his kingdom six hundred thousand Moriscos; by far the most skilled and industrious portion of the community.
The remnant of the Moors who still lingered in the land were called Moriscos; and under a very thin surface of submission to Christian Spain, they nursed bitter memories and even hopes that some miracle would some day restore them to what was really the land of their fathers.
When the Moriscos were expelled from their native provinces of Andalusia and Granada, their places were but slowly filled up with other settlers, so that a great part of their aqueducts and watercourses fell into decay within a few years.
The disasters and distresses occasioned by this barbarous crusade, which crippled the royal revenues, and seriously injured the estates of the principal barons, from whose lands the industrious and intelligent Moriscos were expelled, ultimately concentred a deep and general hatred upon Calderon.
"And the figure in the jota!" he turned to her. "You know that the Spaniards of birth have, as well as their own, the blood of the Moriscos. What they were, what the East is, with women, I beg you to remember. "This new treatment of women is very regrettable.
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