The Duke of Medina Sidonia, Juan Alfonso Pérez de Guzmán promoted the seizure of the place, to be headed by , while the Catholic Monarchs, Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon endorsed the initiative, also providing the assistance of their artillery officer Francisco Ramírez de Madrid during the operation. Melilla was occupied on 17 September 1497 virtually without any violence as it, as located in the border between the Kingdom of Tlemcen and the Kingdom of Fez and fought over many times by those powers, it had been left abandoned and partially ruined. No big-scale expansion into the Kingdom of Fez ensued, and, barring the enterprises of the Cardinal Cisneros along the coast in Mers El Kébir and Oran (in the Algerian coast), and the rock of Badis (this one in the territorial scope of the Kingdom of Fez), the imperial impetus of the Hispanic Monarchy was eventually directed elsewhere, to the Italian Wars waged against France, and, particularly since 1519, to the newly discovered continent across the Atlantic.