The rest of the population was at the mercy of the conquerors, to the number of about twenty thousand. They were either forced to work at the new buildings ordered to be erected, or sent to Sicily and Barcelona to be sold as slaves.
The date of the capitulation was January 17, 1288, St. Anthony’s Day, which was ever afterwards kept as a holiday, with processions and other festivities. Alfonso remained in Minorca until the following March, leaving orders for a town to be built, with a fortified wall, at Port Mahon. He died three years afterwards at Barcelona, aged twenty-seven.
Don Juan Ramis y Ramis, the chronicler of Minorca, recorded the prowess of the young King and the conquest of the island in a poem entitled ‘Alonsiada.’
Pedro de Lesbia, a native of Valencia, was left as the first Christian Procurator-General of Minorca. The whole Moorish population appears to have been rooted out of the island and replaced by Catalan settlers. Ciudadela, at the western end, became the capital, as it was in Moorish times; while Port Mahon was the principal commercial port.
In a small island like Minorca a population could soon be extirpated by ruthless invaders without pity or remorse and actuated by unreasoning bigotry. Their cruelties were not only condoned but encouraged by their priests. It is a revolting picture. There was an industrious and happy people, engaged in cultivating a not very grateful soil, which needed much toil and no little skill to induce it to yield harvests sufficient for the wants of a frugal population. In homes endeared to them by centuries of occupation, and surrounded by their wives and children, they were living in peace and comparative prosperity, and enjoying the hard-earned fruits of their toil. The land tax, paid in kind, was the regular source of revenue in all Muhammadan countries. In Minorca the Almojarife, or collector, appears to have been the hereditary chief of the island. Suddenly, like a bolt from the blue, in a few days total destruction came upon them. Thousands were killed, all their chief men with their families disappeared, all their property was seized, wives were torn from husbands, children from parents, and sold into slavery.