Royal authorities stood by as a Morisco village was burned and pillaged.

Evidence

All this time the authorities in Saragossa still dithered. Troops were assembled and marched toward Codo but held back short of the village and did nothing decisive. The monta˜neses must have felt this was their chance to get their blow in first. They and other outside forces under the governor (alcaide) of Belchite found the village of Codo evacuated by its terrified inhabitants: they set it on fire and pillaged the ruins. The abbot of Rueda in his memorandum alleges that the alcaide of Belchite had been encouraged (“tuvo aliento” [Mel´on 1917, xiv]) to do this by the viceroy of Aragon and that the monta˜neses had been tipped the wink (se les hizo del ojo) that they had backing. The authorities had effectively stood by while a whole village had been destroyed, and the news of the great booty taken at Codo was leading to an influx of fresh recruits to the anti-Morisco cause. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1200

Categorization

• CANDY: Three hundred-plus raiders sacked an evacuated village while the viceroy allegedly winked at them, and troops sent to intervene did nothing — compactly absurd.
• SEED: The violence escalating because a royal force stands by and does nothing, then bystanders flock to the sacking for loot, is a clean structure for an essay on how state inaction enables paramilitarism/ethnic cleansing.