By the terms of the edict, the lands and houses of the exiles were to be forfeited to the crown. But their personal effects--their flocks, their herds, and their grain--would be taken, if they desired it, at a fixed valuation by the government. Every regard was to be paid to their personal conveniences and security; and it was forbidden, in the removal, to separate parents from children, husbands from wives; in short, to divide the members of a family from one another;--"an act of clemency," says a humane chronicler, "which they little deserved; but his majesty was willing in this to content them."[273]
The country was divided into districts, the inhabitants of which were to be conducted, under the protection of a strong military escort, to their several places of destination. These seem to have been the territory of La Mancha, the northern borders of Andalusia, the Castiles, Estremadura, and even the remote province of Galicia. Care was taken that no settlement should be made near the borders of Murcia or Valencia, where large numbers of the Moriscoes were living in comparative quiet on the estates of the great nobles, who were exceedingly jealous of any interference with their vassals.
The first of November, All-Saints' Day, was appointed for the removal of the Moriscoes throughout Granada. On that day they were gathered in the principal churches of their districts, and after being formed into their respective divisions, began their march. The grand-commander had occupied the passes of the Alpujarras with strong detachments of the military. The different columns of emigrants were placed under the directions of persons of authority and character. The whole movement was conducted with singular order,--resistance being attempted in one or two places only, where the blame, it may be added, as intimated by a Castilian chronicler, was to be charged on the brutality of the soldiers.[274] Still, the removal of the Moriscoes on the present occasion was attended with fewer acts of violence and rapacity than the former removal, from Granada. At least this would seem to be inferred by the silence of the chroniclers; though it is true such silence is far from being conclusive, as the chroniclers, for the most part, felt too little interest in the sufferings of the Moriscoes to make a notice of them indispensable. However this may be, it cannot be doubted that, whatever precautions may have been taken to spare the exiles any unnecessary suffering, the simple fact of their being expelled from their native soil is one that suggests an amount of misery not to be estimated. For what could be more dreadful than to be thus torn from their pleasant homes, the scenes of their childhood, where every mountain, valley, and stream were as familiar friends,--a part of their own existence,--to be rudely thrust into a land of strangers, of a race differing from themselves in faith, language, and institutions, with no sentiment in common but that of a deadly hatred? That the removal of a whole nation should have been so quietly accomplished, proves how entirely the strength and spirit of the Moriscoes must have been broken by their reverses.[275]