[Sidenote: [1214-1369 A.D.]]
Alfonso III of Castile did not long survive the glorious triumph over
the Moslems at Navas de Tolosa. After two hostile irruptions into the
territories of the enemy, he died in 1214, and was succeeded by his only
surviving son, Henry [Enrique] I. As the new king, however, was only in
his eleventh year, the regency was entrusted to his sister Berengaria
[or Berenguela], the most excellent princess of her age. But neither her
wisdom, her virtues, nor the near relation she held to the infante could
avail her with the fierce nobles of Castile. The house of Lara, whose
unprincipled ambition had on a former occasion been productive of such
evils to the state, again became the scourge of the country. She resigned
the custody of the royal ward to Count Alvaro Nuñez de Lara, the chief of
that turbulent family.
No sooner was Don Alvaro in possession of the regency than he exhibited
the true features of his character--haughtiness, rapacity, tyranny, and
revenge. Those whom he knew to be obnoxious to his party he imprisoned or
confiscated their possessions. His exactions, which fell on all orders
of the state, were too intolerable to be long borne: remonstrances were
addressed to him by the clergy; but as they produced no effect, and as he
had laid violent hands, not only on the substance alike of rich and poor,
but on the temporalities of the church, he was solemnly excommunicated by
the dean of Toledo. Even this ordinarily terrific weapon was powerless
with one who disregarded both justice and religion.
[Sidenote: [1217-1230 A.D.]]
He continued his iniquitous career, running from place to place with the
young king, destroying the habitations and confiscating the substance of
such as dared to censure his measures. But an accident, as unexpected
as its consequences were fortunate for Spain, deranged all his views.
Towards the end of May, 1217, while Henry was playing with his young
companions in the courtyard of the episcopal palace of Palencia, a tile
from the roof of the tower fell on his head, and inflicted a wound of
which he died on the 6th of June following. Knowing how fatally this
event must affect his interests, Don Alvaro, with the intention of
concealing it as long as he could, conveyed the royal corpse as the
living prince to the fortress of Tariego; but the intelligence soon
reached the queen, who, on this critical occasion, displayed a prudence
and promptitude justly entitled to admiration. By the laws of Castile
she was now heiress to the crown; but she resolved to transfer her
rights to her son Ferdinand, heir to the crown of Leon, and thereby to
lay the foundation for the union of the two kingdoms. Knowing that the
young prince and his father, her former husband, were then at Toro, she
despatched two of her knights with an earnest request that King Alfonso
would allow her to see her son. The request was immediately granted, and
Ferdinand was conducted to Antillo, where he was met by his impatient
mother, and received with acclamation by the people. The states swore
allegiance to her as their lawful sovereign. Immediately afterwards a
stage was erected at the entrance of the city; and there, on the 31st day
of August, 1217,--near three months from the death of Henry,--the queen,
in presence of her barons, prelates, and people, solemnly resigned the
sovereignty into the hands of her son, who was immediately proclaimed
king of Castile.
[Illustration: COUNT ALVARO NUÑEZ DE LARA
(From an effigy)]
But Ferdinand III was not yet in peaceable possession of the crown: he
had to reduce the towns which held for Don Alvaro, and, what was still
worse, to withstand his father the king of Leon, who now invaded the
kingdom. Aided by the party of that restless traitor, Alfonso aspired
to the sovereignty. The Castilian nobles were not slow in combining for
the defence of their king: they hastened to Burgos in such numbers, and
were animated by such a spirit, that Alfonso, despairing of success, or
perhaps touched by the more honourable feelings of nature and justice,
desisted from his enterprise.
Tranquillity being thus restored, the kings of Leon and Castile prepared
to commence an exterminating war against the Mohammedans. The crusade
was published by the archbishop Rodrigo, the celebrated historian; and
the same indulgences were granted to those who assumed the cross in
Spain, as to those who visited the Holy Land. Though partial irruptions,
generally attended with success, were made into the territories of the
Moors from various parts,--from Aragon, Castile, Leon, and Portugal,--it
was not until 1225 that the career of conquest commenced, which ended in
the annihilation both of the African power and of all the petty kingdoms
which arose on its ruins. In that and the two following years Murcia was
invaded, Alhamha taken, and Jaen besieged, by Ferdinand; Valencia invaded
by King James of Aragon; Badajoz taken by Alfonso, and Elvas by the king
of Portugal. The king of Castile was present before Jaen, which his
armies had invested two whole years, when intelligence reached him of his
father’s death (in 1230), after a successful irruption into Estremadura.
[Sidenote: [1230-1246 A.D.]]
The inestimable advantage which this event was calculated to procure
for Christian Spain--the consolidation of two kingdoms often hostile to
each other--was near being lost. In his last will, Alfonso named his
two daughters--for the kingdom had long ceased to be elective--joint
heiresses of his states. Fortunately for Spain, the majority of the
Leonnese took a sounder view of their interests than Alfonso. Nobles,
clergy, and people were too numerous in favour of the king of Castile, to
leave those princesses the remotest chance of success. No sooner did that
prince hear how powerful a party supported his just pretensions, than he
hastened from Andalusia into Leon. As he advanced, accompanied by his
mother Berengaria,--a princess to whose wisdom he was indebted for most
of his successes,--Avila, Medina del Campo, Tordesillas, and Toro opened
their gates to him. Directing his course towards Leon, Villalon, Mayorga,
and Mansilla imitated the example of the other towns. As he approached
the capital, he was met by the bishops and clergy, the nobles, and the
people of the greater portion of the kingdom, who escorted him in triumph
to the cathedral, where he received their homage.[b]
FERDINAND (III) EL SANTO
Thus the kingdoms of Leon and Castile were forever united. The king
afterwards visited the towns of his new kingdom, administering justice
and receiving on all sides the homage of the different towns, and the
most promising demonstrations of affection from his new subjects.
Ferdinand, having recommenced his campaign in Andalusia, conquered the
town of Ubeda (1234); and in the same year the Christians took possession
of the western suburb of Cordova, defending themselves there with daring
courage. As soon as this news reached the king, who was at Benavente,
he set out and bore down upon Cordova, which the king of Seville dared
not succour, and the siege becoming every day more rigorous, this large
town, formerly chief seat of the Mussulman monarchy, was compelled to
capitulate (1236), the inhabitants being allowed to depart freely with
such of their goods as they could carry.
This conquest filled Christian Spain with joy, not only from its
importance but as being the herald of more glorious victories. The cross
was raised upon the highest pinnacle of the mosque, which was converted
into a Christian church. The pious monarch caused the bells of the
church of Compostella, which were being used as lamps, and which had
been brought thither by Almansor on the shoulders of captive Christians
more than two centuries and a half previously, to be carried back to the
church of the Apostle by captive Mussulmans.[c]
BURKE’S ESTIMATE OF QUEEN BERENGARIA
[Illustration: QUEEN BERENGARIA, SPAIN
(From an effigy)]
Ferdinand’s mother, Berengaria [who died in 1246], was one of those rare
beings who seem to have been born to do right, and to have done it. From
her earliest youth she was a leading figure, a happy and noble influence
in one of the most contemptible and detestable societies of mediæval
Christendom. Married of her own free will to a stranger and an enemy,
that she might bring peace to two kingdoms, she was ever a true and loyal
wife; unwedded by ecclesiastical tyranny in the very flower of her young
womanhood, she was ever a faithful daughter of the church; inheriting
a crown when she had proved her own capacity for royal dominion, she
bestowed it on a strange and absent son, with no thought but for the
good of her country and of Christendom; and, finally, as queen-mother
and ever-faithful counsellor, she accepted all the difficulties of
government, while the glory of royalty was reserved for the king whom
she had created. Berengaria was ever present in the right place and at
the proper time, and her name is associated only with what is good, and
worthy, and noble, in an age of violence, and wrong, and robbery--when
good faith was well-nigh unknown, when bad men were all-powerful, when
murder was but an incident in family life, and treason the chief feature
in politics.[d]
FERDINAND’S CONQUESTS
[Sidenote: [1246-1247 A.D.]]
In the following campaigns the king took possession of the kingdom of
Cordova, of all the passes of Sierra Morena on the side of Estremadura,
and finally of Jaen (1246) which was ceded after a siege of more than a
year by its lord, Muhammed al-Akhmar, who in the first place was king
of Arjona, of which he was a native, and afterwards of Granada when he
acknowledged himself the vassal of Ferdinand.
This enterprise being so successfully terminated, Ferdinand resolved to
employ the great military resources now at his disposal in the conquest
of the town and kingdom of Seville, the richest and most powerful of the
remaining Mussulman possessions, but almost entirely dependent on its own
strength. The Christians were well aware that Seville could expect but
little assistance from Africa, and therefore undertook the enterprise
with celerity. Immediately on the fall of Jaen, Ferdinand set out for
Seville with his whole army, accompanied by the king of Granada and his
troops, as vassal of Castile. He laid waste to the territory of Carmona,
and took possession of Alcalá de Guadaira, which he made into his
arsenal; he also commanded the country surrounding the capital and Xeres
to be devastated.
The following year (1247) commenced the celebrated siege of Seville, in
which a fleet, which had been constructed in Santander and Biscay, took
part commanded by the admiral Boniface, penetrating by San Lucar on the
Guadalquivir. The Moors could receive provisions and relief solely from
Nieblo and Algarve by means of a bridge of boats uniting the fortress
with Triana. This was destroyed by the admiral, who got ready two of the
strongest ships of his fleet and awaited a violent sea wind, when, with
all the sails of both ships set, he weighed anchor at the moment the
full tide was strongest, and let the ships be hurled against the bridge
of boats, which was broken by the force of the shock, thus well-nigh
destroying the only hope of the besieged. From that day a scarcity of
food was experienced in the thickly populated town, but the stores laid
in were sufficiently abundant to enable the town to hold out for another
six months.
[Sidenote: [1247-1252 A.D.]]
Eventually, driven by hunger, the besieged proposed terms, which were
rejected, King Ferdinand desiring that all the Moors should leave the
town, taking with them only such of their property as they could carry.
Three hundred thousand of them left Seville, and on the evacuation of the
town Don Ferdinand entered with his army and took up his residence in the
palace of the Moorish kings. There he devoted himself to organising his
new court, summoning settlers to the country, and granting them licenses
and privileges. After settling matters in Seville, Ferdinand marched with
his army to the maritime towns of the kingdom, taking possession of Xeres
(1250), Medina Sidonia, Cadiz, Puerto de Santa Maria, and other places.
Master of the maritime towns, and unable to make war on the Mohammedans
of Granada, his vassals, he resolved to cross to Africa and overthrow
the empire of the Almohads, leaving instructions to the admiral Boniface
to assemble a large fleet in the ports of northern Spain. Such were the
plans of this great monarch, in spite of his suffering from dropsy, which
disease was slowly sapping his vitality, and of which he finally died in
1252, his death being most exemplary.
St. Ferdinand is without doubt the greatest hero of the Spanish nation;
to his military genius, manifested in many great expeditions which he
brought to a successful termination, he united two qualities rarely
combined--a prudent policy and an acute sense of justice, which caused
him to be loved and respected by all the kings of Spain and even by his
enemies. It was through the fame of his rectitude that Murcia submitted
to him without warfare, and that from an enemy the king of Granada became
his loyal and submissive vassal. He respected the rights of the rich,
but would not suffer their violence, knowing when to punish and when to
pardon. When it was proposed in the cortes to impose taxes on the people,
he would merely say: “Take heed of what you do, for I fear the curses of
an old woman more than the united power of the Moors.” His enlightened
policy is clearly manifested in that he never acceded to the instances
of his cousin, St. Louis of France, that he would accompany him to
Palestine. “There is no lack of Moors in my own country,” was his answer.
He had a great aversion to making war upon a Christian prince, which he
was never known to do during the whole of a long reign. His qualities as
a governor were superior to the century in which he lived; he commanded
a collection to be made of the ancient laws and customs, he gave a great
impetus to national literature, commanding all public documents, formerly
published in Latin, to be published in the vulgar tongue; and finally,
during his reign, the custom of summoning the deputies of the principal
towns to the cortes was firmly established. He faithfully fulfilled
his promises to the vanquished Moors, and was careful to see that the
priests laboured to convert them. In this he showed greater zeal than in
extending his kingdom.[c]
That he was a just, a pious, an able, and a paternal ruler, as well as a
valiant soldier, is undoubted; but his justice sometimes degenerated into
revenge; and his persecution of heretics--especially at Palencia, where,
with his own royal hands, he condescended to set fire to the fagots on
which they perished--proves either that his disposition was naturally
cruel, or that the very demon of bigotry had smothered within him the
best feelings of humanity. It was probably to this latter circumstance,
more than to his prayers, his fasts, and his frequent use of the
discipline, that, in 1671, he was canonised by Clement X.[b]
ALFONSO THE LEARNED (EL SABIO) AND HIS SUCCESSORS
[Sidenote: [1252-1275 A.D.]]
When Ferdinand the Saint died, after a long and glorious reign, he was
succeeded by his eldest son, Alfonso X, surnamed the Learned,[30] a
prince who concerned himself less with the enlargement of his kingdom
than the cultivation of science, and who, in emulation of the old court
of the caliphate of Cordova, valued culture and learning more highly
than military renown. Although the contentions with the Moors did not
quite cease and Castile not only asserted her supremacy over Granada, but
also fitted out a fleet to carry out the crossing into Africa which had
been already meditated by Ferdinand, yet the mind of Alfonso preferred
to dwell on intellectual matters, on observations of the heavens, and
researches into the historical past of his native country. A prince of
various knowledge, and penetrated with the love of study, he encouraged
art and science with much generosity, shared the tasks of the learned,
and sought to accomplish works during his lifetime which might win
greater glory in the eyes of posterity than feats of war and arms.
Alfonso X enlarged the University of Salamanca by the establishment
of new professorships and by increasing its privileges, so that it
could vie with the institutions of Paris and Bologna; he established
observatories and caused a band of fifty astronomers, some of whom he
sent for from a great distance to prepare the “Alfonsine Tables,” a solid
foundation for the astronomy of a future day, even though he himself
diverted astronomical observations to astrological superstition. Under
his supervision learned historians drew up the _Universal Chronicle_,[e]
compiled from ancient sources and dealing with the period from the
most ancient times to the date of his accession. He also encouraged
the cultivation of the national language by introducing the Castilian
mother-tongue into the administration of justice and the state, instead
of the Latin which had hitherto been used, and he had the Bible
translated into the language of the people; and that he might do away
with the vast crowd of special _fueros_ (privileges), laws and judicial
usages, he drew up a scientific code of law (_Las Siete Partidas_),
grounded on the principles of Roman jurisprudence, which was to apply
to the whole kingdom, and superseded not only local laws, but also the
free Old Gothic law. Only three Castilian towns preserved their ancient
_fueros_.
But however distinguished King Alfonso might be as teacher and poet, as
historical and astronomical author, his reign was nevertheless full of
calamity and disorder. The revenues of his kingdom were not sufficient
for the vast expenditure required for the generous support of learned
men and scientific institutions, as well as for the maintenance of a
brilliant court. And when he allowed his pride and vanity to lure him,
as son of the Hohenstaufen princess Beatrice, into assuming the crown of
the Holy Roman Empire and purchasing the votes of the covetous princes
at a heavy price, he found himself in want of money. He contracted
debts at high interest, he laid new taxes on the people, and when all
this did not suffice, he debased the coinage and thus brought about a
dislocation of trade and commerce which placed the nation at the mercy of
money-lenders and Jews; and when, after having made use of the latter as
his instruments, he persecuted and had them tortured until they ransomed
themselves by new sacrifices, still no improvement was effected in the
situation. But the greatest misfortune to the kingdom came from a dispute
about the right to the succession.
[Sidenote: [1275-1295 A.D.]]
Alfonso’s eldest son, Ferdinand de la Cerda, died before his father
in a campaign against the Moors, who had attacked and defeated the
governor of Algeciras in his fortified camp and conquered and slain the
archbishop Sancho of Toledo, a brother of King Pedro III of Aragon, who
marched against them (1275). A decree solemnly promulgated by the king
in accordance with ancient Spanish law declared the second son Sancho
heir to the throne, regardless of the fact that the dead man had left
two sons, Ferdinand and Alfonso. But his widow, Blanche, daughter of St.
Louis of France, now came forward in defence of her sons’ rights and her
claims were powerfully supported both by her brother Philip III and by
her stepmother Iolanthe, a sister of Peter III of Aragon. Thereupon a
war ensued, which outlasted Alfonso’s reign and threw Castile into the
greatest disorder and party strife. The king of France, with whom his
sister sought refuge and help, took up the cause of his two nephews,
now living in Aragon, and for several years conducted a destructive war
against Alfonso on the borders of Navarre and Castile. The attempted
intervention of the pope had no effect. The situation grew still worse
when the king, having quarrelled with his son Sancho, wished to proceed
to a partition. This plan was opposed by the members of the royal
house and by a great part of the nobles. At an assembly at Valladolid
Sancho was declared heir to the throne and regent, and invested with
the government of the kingdom in his father’s stead (1282). Forsaken by
his family and the estates, Alfonso called in the aid of Abu Yusuf of
Morocco, while Sancho, disinherited and laid under a ban by his father
in his turn, entered into an alliance with the emir of Granada. Thus,
through the schism in the royal house, the power of the Moors in southern
Spain was once more strengthened. At the same time the unhappy party
wars in Castile itself led to the demoralisation of the people and the
increase of the power of the nobles.[f]
Burke gives the following picturesque, if perhaps somewhat overdrawn
estimate of Alfonso: “For nigh on five centuries all that was learned
and all that was refined in Spain was found among the Arabs of Andalus.
But on the taking of Seville by St. Ferdinand, the centre of gravity
was completely changed. In the thirteenth century, Spain was passing
through a great social and intellectual revolution, and the first man
of intellectual Spain was Alfonso of Castile. If his royal highness,
the heir apparent to the crown of England, were a senior wrangler, and
a double first-class man at the English universities; if he were called
upon to fill the post of Astronomer Royal of England, in default of any
other man in the kingdom worthy even to be compared with him in that
department of science; if he had written a more brilliant history than
Macaulay, and a finer poem than Tennyson; if he were fit to teach Wagner
music, and Cayley mathematics; and if in the intervals of his studies
he had found time to codify the entire laws of England into a digest
which might endure for six hundred years to come: then, and only then,
would the practical pre-eminence of his intellectual attainments, in
modern England, represent the practical pre-eminence of the _sabiduria_
of Alfonso X, in mediæval Spain. No Spaniard but Isidore of Seville, and
no sovereign of any age or nation, not even Alfred the Great, so much
surpassed all his contemporaries in learning as the king of Leon and
Castile; and the _Siete Partidas_ is a work which as great a scholar
as Isidore, and as great a statesman as Alfred, might well have been
proud to own. But learning, or even lawgiving is not wisdom, and many
a wiser and better king than Alfonso has performed his most elaborate
calculations on his ten fingers, and signed his name with the pommel of
his sword.”[d]
This was still more apparent when, after Alfonso’s death, Sancho IV
succeeded to the kingly power (1284). The families of Lara and Haro, with
their vast wealth and the great number of their vassals, had attained
such overwhelming power that the king was quite subordinate to them. Only
their mutual jealousies and conflicting desire for rule made it possible
for him to still preserve some power and authority over them; but if he
favoured one party he had the other for his bitterest enemy.
At an assembly of the estates (1288) Lopez de Haro, the head of this
family, whose daughter Don Juan, Sancho’s brother and enemy, had married,
became so excited that he not only flung insults at the king, but even
threatened him with his sword. Enraged at this arrogance Sancho’s
followers slew the insolent noble before his eyes. The renewal of the
civil war was the consequence, for the son and brother of the victim fled
to Aragon and joined the party of La Cerda for the overthrow of Sancho.
Don Juan in his hatred for his brother so far forgot himself as to join
Abu Yakub, and marched at the head of a Moorish army against the fortress
of Tarifa, which was defended by the brave Alfonso Perez de Guzman.
In vain, however, did he seek to compel the commander to surrender by
threatening to murder the latter’s son, whom he had taken prisoner; with
the heroic spirit of a Brutus, Guzman himself threw down a sword from the
wall, and Don Juan, furious at his contempt, was inhuman enough, as it
is said, to stab the son before his father’s eyes (1294). Sancho hurried
to the rescue and saved the beleaguered town. Not long after, the king
died (1295), and such a storm broke from all sides against the Castilian
kingdom that its dissolution or dismemberment seemed almost unavoidable.
[Sidenote: [1295-1312 A.D.]]
As Sancho’s son Ferdinand IV, whom he had appointed his successor,
was still under age, and the marriage of his mother Maria de Molina
was regarded as illegal, not only did the two infantes, Don Juan and
Alfonso’s brother Henry, hitherto kept in captivity at Naples, lay claim,
the former to the crown and the latter to the regency, but Alfonso de la
Cerda came back across the Pyrenees from his sojourn at the French court
and, supported by James II, the king of Aragon, and the powerful nobles
of the families of Lara and Haro, also appeared as a pretender. At the
same time the kings of Portugal and Granada sought to take advantage of
the discordant condition, and the pope refused to grant a recognition of
legitimacy.
But the prudence and governing talents of Maria de Molina, to whom the
king had entrusted the regency, met all these difficulties with skill and
success. She managed to divide the infantes by conceding to the elder of
them, the feeble Henry, a share in the government; by a double marriage
she attached the powerful king Diniz of Portugal to the royal house of
Castile; to the Aragonese, the protector of the prince de la Cerda, she
offered so successful and so obstinate a resistance that the union or
_hermandad_ of the estates of his kingdom compelled him to make peace
with Castile; she prevailed on the pope to declare her marriage lawful
and the king’s birth legitimate, and she won over the estates by lowering
the taxes. It is true that fresh troubles afterwards broke out when
Ferdinand IV began to reign in his own name (1305); at last, however,
by the Treaty of Campillo, the long dispute about the succession was
adjusted, and Ferdinand remained in possession of the throne while the
princes Ferdinand and Alfonso de la Cerda were indemnified with revenues
and feudal lordships. The latter indeed preferred to live as a refugee in
Germany, rather than give up the kingly title, but his son, the founder
of the ducal house of Medina Sidonia, submitted to the stipulations of
Campillo. But Castile had been too long distracted by civil strife,
and men’s minds were too much demoralised for peace and tranquillity
to return at once without further disturbance. Neither was Ferdinand IV
exactly the man to rally the different parties round his throne. His
cruelty and the violence of his disposition called forth enmity and
hatred and increased the discontent and variance. Jealousy and dissension
amongst the grandees were the chief cause why a campaign entered upon
in conjunction with the Aragonese king against the emir Mulei Nazar of
Granada had no success. On this occasion Ferdinand laid before the pope a
complaint against his uncle Don Juan, the soul of all hostile intrigues,
charging him with having an understanding with the infidels, and he
procured a judicial inquiry, the issue of which he did not, however, live
to see.[f]
The story of Ferdinand’s death may be told in the following translation
from the old Spanish historian Mariana:
_Mariana’s Account of the Divine Judgment on Ferdinand IV_
By order of King Ferdinand IV of Castile, two brothers, Pedro
and Juan Carvajales, were arrested, being accused of the murder
of a nobleman of the house of Benavides, who was killed in
Palencia when leaving the royal palace. The identity of the
murderer was not ascertained, and many were ill-treated upon
suspicion, in particular these two knights, who, after their
defence was heard, were condemned for this crime against the
king, without a proper trial, although they had not confessed
their guilt, a dangerous course to pursue in such cases.
They were condemned to be thrown down from a steep rock near
by, none being able to appease the king, who was intractable
when enraged, and knew not how to restrain his anger. The
courtiers, being well aware of this, took advantage of it to
maliciously inform against and ruin those who stood in their
way. At the moment of execution, the knights proclaimed aloud
that their death was an injustice and a great wrong, calling
upon God as witness before heaven and earth; they declared
that since the king turned a deaf ear to their defence and
protestations, they appealed to the divine tribunal, and
summoned him to appear before it within thirty days. By a
remarkable coincidence these words, at first looked upon as
vain, came to be regarded in a very different light.
Heedless of the incident, the king set out for Alcaudete,
where his army was encamped; there he fell seriously ill, and
was compelled to return to Jaen, notwithstanding that the
Moors were negotiating to deliver up the town. His condition
grew daily worse, and his suffering increased so greatly
that he was unable to treat with them personally. Rejoiced,
however, at the news brought him, that the town was taken, he
mentally planned new conquests, but on Thursday, the 7th day of
September, having retired to rest after dining, he was shortly
afterwards found dead. He died in the flower of his age,
being twenty-four years and nine months old, at a time when
his affairs were prospering. He reigned seventeen years four
months and nineteen days, and was the fourth of the name. It
was believed that his death was caused by excess in eating and
drinking; others declared that it was the judgment of God, as,
marvellous to relate, it occurred precisely thirty days after
he was summoned[31] to appear, and therefore he is known as Don
Fernando _el Emplazado_, that is, “the summoned.”[g]
ALFONSO XI (1312-1350 A.D.)
[Sidenote: [1312-1337 A.D.]]
Over Ferdinand’s grave, party passion once more lifted its bloody
standard. As the heir to the throne, Alfonso XI, was only two years old
at his father’s death, Don Juan advanced claims to the government of the
kingdom, but found himself thus brought into collision with Ferdinand’s
brother, Don Pedro, and the royal ladies. The kingdom was soon again
divided into two hostile camps, which carried on a savage war with
one another. Order and discipline were at an end, the royal authority
disappeared, the possessions of the crown were alienated, commons,
corporations, and powerful nobles seized what they wanted and freed
themselves from all authority; the young king’s mother, Constanza, and
his grandmother, Maria, had entrusted his education to the archbishop of
Avila, who had to hide his pupil in his cathedral to preserve him from
being kidnapped.
To restore some measure of order recourse was at length had to a division
of the governing power. Each was to rule where he had the greatest
following, Juan in the north and west, Pedro in the south and east. At
the same time the pope interfered to effect a reconciliation (1315). The
rulers of the kingdom now undertook a campaign against Ismail, who had
snatched the lordship of Granada from his uncle, Mulei Nazar, the ally of
Castile, a Moorish commander who had been summoned from Fez to the aid of
his co-religionists, and defeated Juan and Pedro in a battle at the river
Venil, in which they lost their lives (1319).
And now whilst the Saracens were profiting by their victory to make raids
and conquests in the kingdom of Castile, four infantes laid claim to the
regency and again filled the kingdom with civil wars and party rage. In
vain did the states endeavour to bring about a settlement, in vain did
the queen-mother Maria and the pope labour to effect a reconciliation;
the strife continued for years, almost uninterruptedly; even when, at
fifteen years old, the king was declared of age and took the reins of
government into his own hand, the confusion was not ended. Alfonso XI
had grown up amidst violence and party intrigues, and exhibited a harsh
and savage temper. He enticed his cousin, Don Juan the younger, who
had followed in his father’s footsteps, to the court at Toledo, had
him murdered at a banquet, and seized from his family the patrimony of
Biscay; he repudiated his betrothed, Constanza, daughter of the infante
Juan Emmanuel (a nephew of Alfonso X), that he might marry a Portuguese
princess, which so enraged the injured father that he again set up the
standard of revolt (1328), and supported by the Castilian grandees and
the king of Aragon, conducted a long war against Alfonso.
Civilisation and morals declined, and vice and crime throve to such an
extent as to bring the Castilian people everywhere into contempt. From
the court itself all sentiment of honour and justice had disappeared.
The king neglected his Portuguese wife in the most insulting manner,
and treated his mistress, Leonora de Guzman, as queen. Garcilasso de la
Vega, Alfonso’s favourite, made himself notorious by perfidy, trickery,
and murder till he and his son were slain by the indignant nobles;
Osorio and the Jew Joseph, who, as the king’s all-powerful advisers and
high officials, had acquired for themselves great wealth, but had also
roused the hatred of the people by their covetousness and extortions,
were at last delivered to their enemies by Alfonso himself, when the one
was surreptitiously murdered and the other hunted from the country with
disgrace and ignominy; their wealth went to feed the royal coffers. Under
such circumstances the Saracens could have easily made new conquests,
had not Granada too been distracted at the same time by internal wars.
The king concluded a truce with Castile, by which Alfonso gained time for
the complete overthrow of his domestic enemies.
[Sidenote: [1337-1350 A.D.]]
After having won over the Basques to his side by confirming their rights
and liberties in an assembly of that bold mountain people under the
famous oak of Guernica, he conquered one hostile town after the other,
divided his enemies by making separate treaties with each, and aided by
the diligent mediation of Pope Benedict XII compelled them, one by one,
to make homage and submission. Alfonso de Haro and other faithless barons
made atonement with their lives. Even the king of Portugal overcame his
indignation at the insults offered to his daughter, and the machinations
of the royal quasi-wife Leonora de Guzman, and, on Alfonso’s promising
to atone for the injury and treat his wife as her position rightfully
demanded, he made his peace with him (1339). Immediately afterwards a new
Saracen army from Africa landed on the Spanish coast under Abul-Hakam,
and in conjunction with the emir of Granada began a holy war with the
siege of Tarifa (1340). But the battle of Salado struck the death-blow
of the Mohammedan power in Spain, and enriched the Christian victors
with unlimited booty. The pope too, who had forwarded the undertaking by
briefs and exhortations to a crusade, received magnificent tokens of the
victory as a reward.
This great campaign ended with the conquest of Algeciras and covered
Alfonso’s name with glory and honour, both in the estimation of his
contemporaries and of posterity; to defray its cost the estate of Burgos,
after the example of the Moors, granted the Alcabala tax, a twentieth
on all movable and real property, whenever it was sold or bartered, an
impost most injurious to trade and commerce which though first intended
to last only during the war was afterwards continued for the future. Six
years later (1350), at the siege of Gibraltar, King Alfonso was carried
off by the plague, which, coming from Asia, now spread itself like a
destroying angel over the whole of Europe.[f]
MARIANA’S ACCOUNT OF PEDRO THE CRUEL
In Castile, grave disturbances, storms, events, cruel and bloody wars,
deceit, treachery, exiles, and innumerable deaths, followed one on the
other; many great lords met with a violent end, numerous were the civil
wars, no care was taken of matters either sacred or profane; none knew
whether to attribute these disorders to the new king or to the nobles.
By common opinion they were laid to the king’s charge, so much so that
he earned from the people the nickname of “the cruel.” Some trustworthy
authors attribute the majority of these disorders to the intemperance
of the nobles, who, heedless of right, followed their inclinations and
inordinate avarice and ambition in all things good or evil, so that the
king was compelled to punish their excesses.
Upon the death of Don Alfonso, Don Pedro, his son by his lawful wife,
was there and then proclaimed king in the camp, as was just, though he
was only fifteen years and seven months old and was absent in Seville,
where he had remained with his mother. In years he was unfitted for such
grave cares, in natural disposition he showed capacity for great things.
He had a pale complexion, handsome countenance, and majestic air; his
hair was fair, and his stature commanding. He showed signs of great
courage, wisdom, and other qualities. In mind and body he was undaunted
by difficulty and fatigue. Falconry and hawking were his chief pleasures.
He was upright in the administration of justice. To these virtues he
joined vices equally great, which were already visible and increased
with age. He despised others, spoke insolently, listened haughtily, and
granted an audience with difficulty, not only to strangers but also to
members of his own household. These bad qualities were visible from his
early childhood; avarice, dissoluteness, and harshness were added to them
in the course of time.
[Illustration: LEONORA DE GUZMAN
(Thrown into prison by order of Pedro the Cruel)]
These failings, to which he was naturally addicted, increased under the
tuition of Don Juan Alfonso de Albuquerque, the tutor given him by his
father when a little child to train him in good habits. This may be
suspected from the fact that, after he was king, this man was admitted
to his intimacy, and in all things was given great authority, to the
envy and discontent of the nobles, who declared that he endeavoured to
increase his wealth at the expense of the public good--the worst possible
of all plagues.[g]
Thus the historian Mariana.[g] The figure of Pedro I stands in history
and romance for that of a monster of cruelty, though it must be borne
in mind that Pedro López de Ayala,[h] the chronicler who has left us an
account of his reign, was the friend and supporter of his rebellious
brother Henry of Trastamara. Pedro was the only son of Maria of Portugal,
queen of Alfonso XI, but Alfonso’s mistress, Leonora de Guzman, had
several sons of whom Henry (Enrique) was the eldest. His father had
settled on him the great domain and title of Trastamara, and he is
generally known as Henry of Trastamara.[a]
[Sidenote: [1350-1352 A.D.]]
On the accession of Pedro, Leonora de Guzman, dreading his resentment, or
rather that of the queen-mother, retired to the city of Medina Sidonia,
which formed her appanage. Through the perfidious persuasions, however,
of a Lara and an Albuquerque, who governed the mind of Pedro, and who
pledged their knightly faith that she had nothing to fear, she proceeded
to Seville to do homage to the new sovereign. No sooner did she reach
that city, than she was arrested and placed under a guard in the Alcazar.
The eldest of her sons, who was permitted to visit her there, would
have shared the same fate, had he not precipitately retreated from the
capital. From Seville she was soon transferred to Carmona; and if her
life was spared a few months, it was not owing to the forbearance, but to
the indisposition of the king, which was at one time so dangerous as to
render his recovery hopeless. Unfortunately for Spain, he did recover;
and one of his first objects, early in 1351, was to draw her from
Carmona, and make her accompany him to Talavera, where she was consigned
to a still closer confinement. Her doom was soon sealed: in a few days
she was put to death by the express order of the queen; no doubt, with
the concurrence of the king.
This murder was quickly followed by another. Having despatched one of his
creatures to Burgos, to levy, by his own authority alone, a tax which, to
be legal, required the sanction of the states, the people resisted, and
slew his collector. Accompanied by his unscrupulous adviser, Don Juan de
Albuquerque, he hastened to that capital, to inflict summary vengeance
on the inhabitants. They naturally took up arms; and being joined by
Garcilasso de la Vega, the _adelantado_ of Castile, sent a messenger to
the king, disclaiming all wish to oppose his authority, but beseeching
him not to allow Albuquerque, whose violent character they well knew, to
attend him. The request was disregarded; the count arrived, and the doom
of Garcilasso was sealed.
No sooner did Pedro perceive him, than the command was given;
“Ballasteros,[32] seize Garcilasso!” The adelantado begged for a
confessor; but no attention would have been paid to the request, had
not a priest accidentally appeared in sight. Both having retired for
a few minutes into a corner, Albuquerque, who bore great enmity to
the prisoner, desired the king to order what was to be done, and the
ballasteros were immediately told to kill Garcilasso. On receiving the
order, the men, who could not conceive it was seriously given, hesitated
to fulfil it: one of them, approaching the king, said, “Sir king, what
are we to do with Garcilasso?” “Kill him!” was the reply.
The man returned, and with a mace struck the adelantado on the head,
while another associate despatched him. The bleeding body was thrown into
the street; where, after lying for some time to be trodden under foot by
some bulls which were passing, it was removed outside the walls of the
city, to be there buried. The same fate would have befallen the child
Nuño de Lara, who by his father’s death was become the hereditary lord of
Biscay, had not his governess, apprised of the intention, removed to a
fortress in the heart of the Biscayan Mountains. The child, however, soon
died; and Pedro, by imprisoning the female heirs, obtained what he so
much coveted--the rich domains of that house.
Pedro proceeded to Ciudad Rodrigo, to confer on the interests of the two
kingdoms with his grandfather, the sovereign of Portugal. Well had it
been for him had he followed the advice of that monarch, who urged on him
the necessity of living on a good understanding with his illegitimate
brothers, and of forgiving the natural indignation they had shown at the
death of their mother. But both brothers soon left him and revolted.
Some of the confederates were reduced and put to death; but the princes
themselves eluded his pursuit,--Don Tello by fleeing into Aragon. While
besieging the places which had thrown off his authority, he became
enamoured of Doña Maria de Padilla, who was attached to the service
of his favourite’s lady, Doña Isabella de Albuquerque. Through the
persuasion of this unprincipled minister, the uncle of the young lady,
Don Juan de Henestrosa, did not hesitate to sacrifice the honour of his
house by consigning her to the arms of the royal gallant. The connection
thus formed, which continued unto the death of Doña Maria, brought the
greatest disasters on the country.
[Sidenote: [1352-1353 A.D.]]
Some months previous to this connection, Pedro, in compliance with the
request of the cortes of Valladolid, had agreed that an embassy should
be sent to the French king, soliciting for wife a princess of the royal
house of that nation. The choice fell on Blanche de Bourbon, a princess
of excellent qualities, who, early in 1353, arrived at Valladolid. But
the king, infatuated by his mistress, who had just been brought to bed of
a daughter, was in no disposition to conclude the marriage; and it was
not without difficulty that his minister Albuquerque, who was already
jealous of the favours accorded to the relations of Maria de Padilla,
and for that reason the more eager for its solemnisation, prevailed on
him to meet the princess at Valladolid. Leaving Padilla and his heart
at Montalvan, he reluctantly proceeded towards that city. On his way
he accepted the submissions of his brothers Henry and Tello, whom, on
an occasion like the one approaching, he could not decently punish for
their rebellion. Monday, June 3rd, 1353, the ceremony took place with due
splendour.[b] The contemporary chronicler Ayala gives so intimate a view
of the king and his household that we may quote part of the sequel in his
words.
AYALA’S ACCOUNT OF THE KING’S HONEYMOON
On the Wednesday after his marriage the king dined in his palace. And he
dined alone that day, with no companions whatever. And while the king was
at table there came to him Queen Doña Maria, his mother, and Queen Doña
Leonora, his aunt, in tears. Then the king rose from the table and spoke
with them aside, and as both he and they afterwards reported they said to
him:
“My lord, it is made known to us that you are minded to go from hence and
rejoin Doña Maria de Padilla, and we beg you in mercy to desist. For if
you do this thing you make but little of your honour in thus forsaking
your wife immediately after your marriage, when all the best and highest
in your kingdom are assembled here. And further, the king of France will
have good cause of complaint against you, who has newly allied himself to
you by this marriage, and has sent you this niece of his whose hand you
asked of him; and he sent her hither with great pomp and retinue, as was
but just. Further, my lord, it will cause grave scandal in your kingdom,
should you thus go hence, for all the highest in your kingdom have come
hither at your command, and it will not be for your good service thus to
depart without word or speech with them.”
The king made answer that he marvelled greatly that they should believe
that he would thus leave Valladolid and his wife, and bade them not
believe it. And the queens replied that they had been most certainly
informed that he was minded to seek Doña Maria de Padilla at once.
And the king assured them that he would not do so, and had no thought
of it, and bade them never believe it. Upon this the queens withdrew,
knowing full well that the king would set out at once, but powerless to
prevent it. An hour after the king called for his mules, saying that
he would visit Queen Doña Maria, his mother. And as soon as the mules
were brought he left Valladolid, and went and slept that day at a place
called Pajares. The next day he went to the village of Montalvan where
Doña Maria de Padilla was, for though he had left her in the castle of
Montalvan, he had already sent her word to come to Montalvan. But many
others who were to accompany him arrived the next day.
[Sidenote: [1353-1354 A.D.]]
Great clamour and excitement arose in the town of Valladolid, when it was
known that the king had departed thence and had rejoined Doña Maria de
Padilla. Then Don Juan Alfonso de Albuquerque and other knights visited
the queens Doña Maria the king’s mother and Queen Blanche his wife, and
Doña Leonora, queen of Aragon, the king’s aunt, and found them very sad.
And all those who remained there were anxious and dismayed thinking that
this day’s work would bring war and evil on Castile, as indeed it did.
They held their council, saying that it was ill-done of the king thus to
desert his wife, and they were sore grieved at it. And they resolved that
the master of Calatrava, Don Juan Nuñez de Prado, and Don Juan Alfonso
should follow the king, and many other gentlemen with them, and that they
should do their utmost to induce the king to return to his wife, Queen
Blanche, and to amend his ways.
When Don Pedro heard that Don Juan Alfonso de Albuquerque and the master
of Calatrava, Don Juan Nuñez, had turned back, not daring to seek him,
and that the master had gone to his own land, and Don Juan Alfonso to
the castles which he had on the frontiers of Portugal, he immediately
resolved to return to Valladolid in order to meet Queen Doña Maria his
mother, and his wife Queen Blanche, to avoid a scandal in the kingdom.
This was the counsel given him by the gentlemen who were with him. And
thus the king came to Valladolid, and remained there with his wife Queen
Blanche for two days. But he could not be prevailed upon to remain there
longer and he left Valladolid and went to Mojados a village close by. And
the next day he went to Oviende, and remained there for some days; and he
never saw his wife Queen Blanche again.
The next year he ordered Juan Ferrandez de Henestrosa his chamberlain,
and uncle of Doña Maria de Padilla, to go to Arevalo where his wife Queen
Blanche of Bourbon then was, and bring her to Toledo, and place her in
the Alcazar of the said city. And so it was published that all might be
aware of it. The knights of Toledo heard of it, and it was great grief
to many that such a lady as this should be a prisoner and that Toledo
should be chosen for her prison. And Juan Ferrandez de Henestrosa as the
king commanded, brought Queen Blanche to Toledo. And when Queen Blanche
of Bourbon entered Toledo, she said it was her will to go and pray in the
church of Sancta Maria. And she went thither, and as soon as she reached
it she refused to leave the church, fearing imprisonment or death. This
she did by the advice of the bishop and of those who had come with
her. Then Juan Ferrandez de Henestrosa, who had brought Queen Blanche
to Toledo, when he saw that she would not leave the church, begged her
graciously to accompany him to the Alcazar which belonged to the king and
her, for she would find good apartments there; but she would not do so.
And the king replied that he would come himself to Toledo and take such
measures in this matter as best befitted his service.
After Juan Ferrandez de Henestrosa left Toledo, Queen Blanche held
converse with many great ladies of that city, who dwelt there and came
every day to visit her. And she told them how she went in fear of her
life, and that she had heard that the king was minded to come to Toledo,
and have her seized and put to death; and therefore she begged and prayed
for some protection. And all this business of Queen Blanche, she being
very young, for she was not then more than eighteen, was managed by a
lady who was her governess, holding this office by the appointment of
Queen Doña Maria, the king’s mother, who had bestowed it on her. The
ladies of Toledo, when they heard these things every day from Queen
Blanche and her governess, Doña Leonora de Saldaña, were filled with
pity for the queen, and they spoke to their husbands and kinsmen,
saying that they would be the meanest men on earth if such a queen as
this, their lady and the wife of their lord the king, should die such a
death in the city where they were; but since they had power, let them
prevent it. For the queen thought and feared that Juan Ferrandez de
Henestrosa would return with the king’s order to seize and imprison her
in the Alcazar, where she was certain she would be put to death. And she
thought that this was not the true will of the king, but that he had been
persuaded to it by certain of his counsellors, kinsmen of Doña Maria de
Padilla, and that the time would come when the king her lord and husband
would hold that they who had saved her from such a death had done him
good service, and would understand that they had not done wrongfully, but
in his interest.
The knights of Toledo, by the many representations made to them, with
tears for the imprisonment and death of so noble a lady as Queen Blanche,
who was a creature without blame and of so high lineage, and because the
highest and best in the kingdom were ill contented with the kinsmen of
Doña Maria de Padilla, were for the most part moved to defend the queen
to the utmost of their power, and to hazard their lives and possessions
for her. And when the knights and squires and true men of the city heard
that Juan Ferrandez de Henestrosa was coming to Toledo, although he was
with the king, and that he was about to seize the queen and imprison
her, as they were given to understand, they took Queen Blanche from the
church of Sancta Maria where she abode, and placed her in the Alcazar
of the said city, on Thursday at the hour of tierce, on the eve of the
feast of St. Mary in August, of that year. And with her all her ladies
and damsels, and many other ladies of the city. And they gave the towers
of the Alcazar and of the city into the keeping of the knights and loyal
citizens of that city, for their defence; for all came to this work
right willingly. And on the day that this was done they seized all their
kinsmen who would not take part in it.[h]
PEDRO’S FALSE MARRIAGE
In the meanwhile Pedro wavered in his fidelity to his mistress long
enough to be infatuated with Doña Juana de Castro. Not being able to
win her to his desires, he proposed marriage; and the bishops of Avila
and Salamanca stooped first to substantiate his pretence that he had
not really married Blanche of Bourbon and then to marry him to Juana
de Castro. When he had tired of her person, the king told her that his
marriage with Blanche was a true marriage, and the other only a ruse to
overcome her scruples. A son was born of this outrageous deception.[a]
When news of this base transaction reached the brother of Juana,
Ferdinand Perez de Castro, who was one of the most powerful lords of
Galicia, he instantly joined the league of the discontented. A civil
war now commenced, which, during some months, raged with more animosity
than success to either party. On its commencement, the king, persuaded
that the fortress of Arevalo was not a secure prison for the unfortunate
Blanche, ordered her, as we have seen, to be conveyed to Toledo and
lodged in the Alcazar of that city. She was immediately rescued from
the power of her jailer, who returned to acquaint his employer with the
event. Furious at the intelligence, Pedro ordered the commanders of
Santiago, first to depose their grand-master, his brother Fadrique, then
to march on Toledo, and force the princess from her sanctuary. But she
was no longer there; the whole city had taken her part, and honourably
placed her, under a strong guard, in the palace of their kings. These
defenders of oppressed innocence were now joined by the heads of the
league, whose party daily acquired strength.
[Sidenote: [1354-1355 A.D.]]
Neither the sudden, perhaps suspicious, death of Albuquerque, nor the
deposition of Don Fadrique, depressed their zeal. To show that a redress
of grievances, and not individual ambition, was their object, they
despatched messengers to the king, with the assurance of their attachment
to his person, and proposed that, if he would dismiss his mistress with
her kinsmen, and return to his queen, they would instantly lay down their
arms. Pedro was resolved to do neither; but, as it suited his views
to protract the negotiation, he nominated commissioners to treat with
those of the league, which was now strengthened by the accession of the
queen-mother. To bring about an amicable adjustment between her son and
his barons, she invited both to Toro, where she then abode--an invitation
which both accepted. But Pedro now found that he was the prisoner of the
leaguers, who changed the officers of his household, substituted others
from their own body, and closely watched his motions at the time they
were treating him with the highest outward respect. To escape from his
situation, he had recourse to his usual arts--to bribing some heads of
the league, and, above all, to dissimulation, in both cases with success.
The king soon contrived to escape, and threw himself into the fortress of
Segovia.
After his escape (1355), Pedro assembled his states at Burgos, and, by
artfully representing himself as thwarted in all his proceedings for the
good of his people by his mother, his brothers, and the other rebels,
whose only aim was to tyrannise over the nation, he procured supplies
for carrying on the war. These supplies, however, were granted on the
condition of his living with Queen Blanche--a condition which he readily
promised to fulfil, without the slightest intention of so doing. After
an unsuccessful assault on Toro, he returned to Toledo, the peculiar
object of his hatred. Contrary to all reasonable expectation, he forced
an entrance, and expelled the troops of his brother Henry. This success
would, however, have been unattainable, had not most of the inhabitants
believed in the sincerity of his declaration to the pontifical
representative. The unfortunate Blanche was transferred--not to his
palace, to enjoy her rights as queen, but to the fortress of Siguenza;
the bishop of that see was also consigned to a prison; and some of the
most obnoxious individuals of the league were beheaded or hung.
The legate, Bertrand, no longer withheld the thunders of the church:
Pedro, Maria de Padilla, and even Juana de Castro, were excommunicated,
and the kingdom subjected to an interdict. But these thunders passed
harmless over the head of the royal delinquent, who lost no time in
marching against Toro, where his mother and many of the leaguers still
remained. His first attempt on that place was repulsed with loss; but,
after a siege of some months, he prevailed on the inhabitants, by
lavishing extraordinary promises of clemency, to open their gates to him.
How well he performed his promise appeared the very day of his entrance,
when he caused some barbarous executions to be made in his mother’s
sight.[33] The queen fainted at the spectacle; and, on recovering her
senses, requested permission to retire into Portugal, which was granted.
About the same time many Castilian barons fled into Aragon.
[Sidenote: [1355-1358 A.D.]]
During the next few years Pedro waged a desultory war against the king
of Aragon, both by sea and land; but the result was decisive to neither
of the belligerents. In this war many of the disaffected barons fought
in the ranks of the latter--a policy for the condemnation of which no
words are sufficiently strong, and which greatly detracts from the
commiseration that must be felt at the fate of some who afterwards
fell into his hands. It cannot be denied that the Castilian king had
many provocations to vengeance: his nobles rebelled for the slightest
causes--often without any cause at all; nor is he known to have put
to death any of his subjects, whom he did not conceive, at one time
or other, either openly or secretly to have aimed at subverting his
authority. But the barbarity of his executions; the duplicity with which
he planned the destruction of such as submitted under the assurance
of pardon; his perfidious disregard of promises, or even oaths, when
the openly pardoned objects of his hatred were fully in his power--not
even excepting his nearest connections--stamp him at once as a ruthless
barbarian, and a bloody tyrant.
The execution of his brother Fadrique, grand-master of Santiago, in
1358, is, perhaps, more characteristic of him than any other of his
actions. On some suspicion--whether founded or not in justice must
remain unknown--that the grand-master maintained an understanding with
the king of Aragon, Fadrique was recalled from the Valencian frontier to
Seville, where Pedro then was. He found the king apparently in the best
of humours, and his reception was very friendly.[b]
The account of the horrible and cold-blooded deed which followed may be
quoted from the contemporary Ayala.
AYALA’S ACCOUNT OF THE MURDER OF FADRIQUE
[Sidenote: [1358 A.D.]]
The king Don Pedro being in Seville in his Alcazar, on Tuesday the 29th
day of May of this year, there came thither Don Fadrique his brother,
master of Santiago, who had just recovered the town and fortress of
Jumilla which is in the kingdom of Murcia. In the truce of a year
established by the cardinal Don Guillen between Castile and Aragon, this
town was claimed for Aragon by a nobleman called Don Pero Maza, who said
it belonged thereto and not to the dominion of the king of Castile, and
that it was not included in the truce. But in this war that town was
first for Castile, and as soon as the master Don Fadrique heard of it, he
went thither and besieged and recovered it, to do the king service. For
the master Don Fadrique was eager to serve the king and do him pleasure.
And when the master had recovered the said town and castle of Jumilla,
he went to the king, from whom letters came every day requesting his
presence.
The master arrived in Seville on the said Tuesday in the morning, at the
hour of tierce, and coming immediately to pay his duty to the king, he
found him playing draughts in the Alcazar. And as soon as he came in the
master kissed his hand, and the many knights who came with him likewise.
The king received him with a show of good-will, asking him from whence
he came that day, and if he had good lodgings. The master replied that
he had set out that day from Cantillana, which is five leagues from
Seville, and for his lodgings he knew not of them yet, but was full sure
they would be good. The king bade him go and look to his lodging and then
return to him; and the king said this because many companies had come
into the Alcazar with the master.
Then the master left the king and went to see Doña Maria de Padilla and
the king’s daughters, who were in another part of the Alcazar called the
Caracol. Doña Maria de Padilla knew all that was planned against the
master and at the sight of him she assumed a countenance so mournful
that all might read it; for this lady had a very good heart, and sound
judgment, and liked not the deeds of the king, and the death decreed
against the master lay heavy on her.
After the master had visited Doña Maria and his nieces the king’s
daughters, he went down to the courtyard of the Alcazar, where he had
left his mules, intending to seek his lodgings and bestow his companies.
But when he reached the courtyard of the Alcazar he found that his beasts
were gone, for the king’s porters had given orders for everyone to leave
the courtyard, and they turned out all the beasts and closed the gates;
for so they had been commanded, that there might not be many there. When
the master could not find his mules he was at a loss whether he should
return to the king or what he should do; and one of his knights, whose
name was Suer Gutierrez de Navales, an Austrian, perceived that some
mischief was afoot, for he saw a stir in the Alcazar, and he said to the
master, “My lord, the postern of the courtyard stands open; go out and
you shall not lack mules.” This he repeated many times, for he thought
that if the master got outside the Alcazar he might perchance escape, and
there they must needs slay many of his followers ere they could take him.
In the meanwhile there came to the master two knights who were brothers,
and their names were Ferrand Sanchez de Tovar, and Juan Ferrandez de
Tovar, and they knew nothing of this business. By the king’s orders they
said to the master, “My lord, the king calls for you”; and the master
turned back to go to the king, in dread, for he now suspected evil. As he
passed the doors of the palace and of the different apartments the number
of his followers grew less and less, for those who guarded the doors had
ordered the porters not to let them pass.
When the master came to the place where the king was, none was allowed
to enter save only the master Don Fadrique, and the master of Calatrava,
Don Diego Garcia (who that day accompanied Don Fadrique, the master of
Santiago, and knew nothing of all this), and two other knights. The king
was in a hall called “del Fierro” with the door closed. And when the
masters of Santiago and Calatrava came to the door of the hall where the
king was, it was not opened to them, and they stood at the door. And
Pedro Lopez de Padilla, the king’s ballestero mayor, was outside with the
masters, and thereupon a wicket opened in the hall where the king was,
and the king said to Pedro Lopez de Padilla:
“Pedro Lopez, seize the master;” and he replied, “Which of them?” and the
king said, “The master of Santiago.” Then Pedro Lopez de Padilla laid
hold of the master Don Fadrique, and said, “I arrest you,” and the master
stood silent full of dread, and the king said to some ballesteros who
stood by, “Ballesteros, kill the master of Santiago.”
But even so the ballesteros durst not do it. Then one of the king’s
bedchamber, a man named Rui Gonzalez de Atienza who was in the secret,
cried aloud to the ballesteros:
“Traitors! what are you about? Did you not hear the king command you to
kill the master?”
Then the ballesteros, seeing that it was indeed the king’s order, raised
their maces to strike the master Don Fadrique. When the master of
Santiago saw this, he disengaged himself from the grasp of Pedro Lopez
de Padilla, and jumped into the courtyard. He seized his sword but could
not draw it, for it was slung round his neck under the tabard which he
wore, and when he would have drawn it the hilt caught in the strap and
he could not get it free. The ballesteros pursued him to wound him with
their maces but they could not succeed, for he eluded them and fled from
side to side, in the courtyard.
Then Nuño Ferrandez de Roa, who pursued him more closely than the rest,
came up with him and dealt him a blow on the head with his mace, so that
he fell to the ground, and thereupon all the other macemen came up and
wounded him. As soon as the king saw the master lying on the ground, he
went through the Alcazar thinking to find some of his followers and put
them to death, and he found none; for some had not entered the palace
when the master returned in answer to the king’s summons, because the
doors were well guarded, and some had fled and concealed themselves. But
the king found a squire named Sancho Ruiz de Villegas, who was surnamed
Sancho Portin, and he was the master’s chief equerry. The king found him
in the part of the palace called the Caracol, where Doña Maria de Padilla
dwelt with the king’s daughters, where he had taken refuge when he heard
the noise of the master’s murder. The king entered the room, and Sancho
Ruiz had taken Doña Beatrice, the king’s daughter, in his arms, thinking
to escape death through her. But when the king saw it, he caused his
daughter Doña Beatrice to be torn from his arms, and stabbed him with the
dagger which he wore in his belt.
The king returned to where the master lay, and found that he was not yet
dead, and the king took a dagger from his belt and gave it to a groom of
the chambers, to kill him with. When it was done the king sat down to
eat in the place where the master lay dead, a hall called the Azulejos,
which is in the Alcazar. Then the king sent for his cousin, the infante
Don Juan, (of Aragon) and told him in secret that he was going from
thence to Biscay at once, and that he should come with him, for it was
his intention to put Don Tello to death and give Biscay to Don Juan. For
the infante Don Juan was married to Doña Isabella, sister of the wife of
Don Tello, and both were daughters of Don Juan Nuñez de Lara, lord of
Biscay, and of Doña Maria his wife. And the infante kissed the king’s
hands, thinking that he would act according to his word. That day, after
the death of the master Don Fadrique, the king took the adelantadoship of
the frontier from his cousin the infante Don Juan, saying that he would
make him lord of Biscay, and bestowed it upon Enriquez, who was alguacil
mayor of Seville; and he gave that office to Garci Gutierrez Tello, an
honourable gentleman dwelling in Seville.
That same day on which the master of Santiago died the king sent orders
to Cordova for Pero Cabrera, a gentleman who dwelt there, to be put to
death, as well as a _zurat_ whose name was Ferrando Alfonso de Gabete.
And he sent to kill Don Lope Sanchez de Bendaña, chief commander of
Castile, and they killed him in Villarejo, a place belonging to the
order of Santiago, the property of the commander. In Salamanca they
killed Alfonso Jufre Tenorio; and Alfonso Perez Fermosino in Toro. In the
castle of Mora they slew Gonzalo Melendez de Toledo, who had been held a
prisoner there. And the king ordered all these to be put to death, saying
that they were concerned in the rebellion when some in the kingdom took
up the causes of Queen Blanche, as has already been related. And although
he had indeed pardoned them it appeared that his wrath against them was
not dead.[h]
OTHER ROYAL MURDERS
[Sidenote: [1358-1361 A.D.]]
The king and the prince of Aragon departed for Biscay; but, on reaching
Aguilar, they found that Don Tello had been apprised of his intended
doom, and had fled. Pedro followed him to Bermeo, where he learned that
the fugitive had just embarked for Bayonne. In his blind fury he embarked
in the first vessel he found in the harbour, and ordered a pursuit; but
the sea began to rise so high that he soon abandoned it, and returned
to the port. The infante Juan now requested the fulfilment of the royal
promise; but he who had made it had now changed his mind. With his usual
duplicity, however, he amused his cousin, saying that he could do nothing
without the states of the province; that he would speedily convoke them,
and procure the recognition of the new feudatory. He did convoke them;
but it was to persuade them to confer their sovereignty on himself alone.
The disappointed claimant now left Pedro in disgust; but was speedily
recalled to Bilbao, where the king repaired, by the promise that his
ambition should be gratified. The infante hastened to that town, and
proceeded to the house occupied by the court. As he approached the royal
apartments, some of the tyrant’s creatures, as if in jest, deprived him
of his poniard--the only weapon which he had about him, and, at the
same moment he was struck on the head by a mace; another blow brought
him lifeless to the ground. His corpse was thrown from the window of
the apartment occupied by the king into the street; but was afterwards
conveyed to Burgos, and cast into the river.
To revenge the murder of these victims, the two brothers, Henry and
Tello, who had returned to Aragon, made frequent irruptions into Castile.
In a battle fought in 1359, they triumphed over Henestrosa, whom they
left dead on the field; and, in subsequent invasions, they obtained no
small portion of plunder.[34] But none of these things moved the king,
who persevered in his course of barbarities as if his throne rested on a
rock of adamant. It is impossible to specify all his individual acts of
murder; such only can be represented here as are either more than usually
characteristic of him, or as exercised some influence on following
events: in revenge for the aid afforded to his revolted subjects by the
infante of Aragon, he put to death Leonora, the dowager queen of that
country, who had long resided in Castile, and who was also his own aunt.
But his famous, or rather infamous compact with the Portuguese king,
Pedro, is most indicative of the man. Knowing how much that sovereign
longed to extirpate all who had been concerned in the murder of Iñes
de Castro,[35] and of whom a few had sought refuge in Castile; and no
less eager on his own part to take vengeance on three or four of his own
obnoxious subjects, who had implored the protection of the Portuguese,
he proposed to surrender the Portuguese in exchange for the Castilian
refugees. The kindred soul of the Lusitanian felt a savage joy at the
proposal; in 1360, the men were exchanged and put to death.
That he cared as little for the king of France as for the pope--both
were distant enemies--Spain had a melancholy proof, in 1361, in the
tragical death of that unhappy queen, Blanche de Bourbon. His orders
for her removal by poison were first given to the governor of Xeres, to
whom the custody of her person had for some time been intrusted; but
that governor, whose name (Iñigo Ortiz de Zuñiga) ought to be revered by
posterity, refused to become the executioner of his queen. It is somewhat
surprising that his life was not the penalty of his disobedience--a doom
which he doubtless expected. A less scrupulous agent for this bloody
business was found in one of the king’s ballasteros, Juan Perez de
Robledo, who hastened to the fortress, superseded the noble Iñigo Ortiz
in the command, and perpetrated the deed--whether by poison or by steel
is unknown. The same violence befell Isabella de Lara, widow of the
infante Don Juan, whom the tyrant had murdered at Bilbao.
[Sidenote: [1361-1366 A.D.]]
The death of Blanche was followed by the natural one of the king’s
mistress, Maria de Padilla. Whether through the example of the Portuguese
sovereign, who had shortly before proclaimed his secret marriage with
Iñes de Castro, or whether because the Castilian had in like manner
actually married Maria, certain it is, that, in 1362--immediately after
the murder of the king of Granada by his own hand--Pedro convoked the
cortes at Seville, and declared that Maria de Padilla had been his
lawful wife, and that for this reason alone he had refused to live with
Blanche de Bourbon: he therefore required that his son Alfonso should
be declared his legitimate successor. Three of the king’s creatures
were brought forward, who swore on the holy Gospels that they had been
present at the nuptials; and the cortes, though far from convinced of
the fact, affected to receive it as such, declared Maria the queen and
Alfonso the heir of the kingdom; and, after him, the daughters of their
monarch by that favourite. If such a marriage were really contracted,
Blanche was deceived as well as Juana de Castro; but, from want of
sufficient evidence, history can place the French princess only in the
rank of Castilian queens. The man who had imposed on the credulity of
Doña Juana, who had broken his faith whenever it suited his views, whose
character was as much distinguished for duplicity as for violence--must
produce some better voucher than his word, or his oath, or those of his
creatures, before he will obtain credit with posterity.
THE WAR WITH HENRY OF TRASTAMARA
It was to defend himself against the probable vengeance of France,
and the present hostility of Aragon, that, in 1363, Pedro sought the
alliance of Edward III of England and the heroic Black Prince. The
danger was the more to be apprehended, when the king of Navarre joined
his brother of Aragon. For some time, the advantage lay on the side of
the Castilian; who, early in 1364, reduced several towns in Valencia,
and invested the capital of that province; the siege of which, however,
he was soon compelled to raise. But these temporary successes were more
than counterbalanced by the activity of Henry; who, in 1365, prevailed on
Bertrand du Guesclin, the count de la Marche, and other French chiefs, to
aid him in his projected dethronement of the Castilian tyrant.
The French king, Charles V, anxious to avenge the cruel insult done to
his royal house, espoused the cause of Henry, and commanded his disbanded
soldiers to serve in the expedition destined against Castile. To meet
it, Pedro, in 1366, assembled his troops at Burgos. He had not long to
wait: under some noted leaders, the French soon entered Catalonia; they
were favourably received by their ally the king of Aragon, and reached
Calahorra unmolested, the gates of which were speedily opened to them.
There Henry was solemnly proclaimed king of Castile.
The inactivity of Pedro on the invasion of his kingdom was such as to
leave it a doubtful point with posterity whether he was a coward, or
whether he knew too well the disaffection of his people to hazard a
battle with the enemy. In opposition to the urgent remonstrances of the
inhabitants, he precipitately left Burgos for Seville, without venturing
his sword with his aspiring brother. Henry hastened to the abandoned
city, where he was joyfully received by many deputies of the towns, and
crowned in the monastery of Huelgas. With the money he found in the
Alcazar, and the presents made him by the Jewish inhabitants, he was able
to gratify his followers; their chiefs he rewarded more nobly: thus,
to Du Guesclin he gave the lordship of Molina and Trastamara; and to
the Englishman Hugh de Calverley, who, with the former, had the chief
command of the auxiliaries, the city and lordship of Carrion; on his
brother Tello he conferred the sovereignty of Biscay; on Sancho, another
brother, that of Albuquerque and Ledesma. He now lost no time in pursuing
the fugitive Pedro. Presenting himself before Toledo, he summoned that
important place to surrender; which, after some deliberation, obeyed the
summons. There he was joined by deputies from Avila, Segovia, Madrid,
Cuenza, Ciudad Real, with the submission of those towns. He was now
master of the whole of New Castile.
[Illustration: A SPANISH KING OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY]
The rapidity of these successes convinced the guilty Pedro that his
own subjects alone would form but a poor rampart against the assaults
of his brother. To procure the aid of Portugal, he sent his daughter
Beatrice, now the heiress of his states (his son Alfonso was no more),
into that country, with a great treasure as her marriage portion, for
the infante Don Ferdinand, to whom she had been promised. He was himself
soon obliged to follow her: an insurrection of the Sevillians, who openly
declared for Henry, inspiring the detested tyrant with a just dread of
his life, he fled into the territories of his uncle and ally. But here
new mortifications awaited him: the Portuguese returned both his daughter
and his treasures, on the pretext that, the states of Castile having
acknowledged Henry, the latter had no wish to plunge the two kingdoms
into war; all that he could obtain was permission to pass through the
Portuguese territory--he durst not venture into Estremadura--into
Galicia. No sooner was he arrived at Monterey, than the archbishop of
Santiago, Ferdinand de Castro, and other Galician lords, joined him, and
advised him to try the fortune of arms; especially as Zamora, Soria,
Logroño, and other cities still held for him: but, though they offered
to aid him with two thousand foot and five hundred horse, either through
cowardice or distrust he rejected the proposal, and set out for Santiago,
with the resolution of proceeding thence to Corunna, and embarking for
Bayonne, to join his ally the prince of Wales.
[Sidenote: [1366-1367 A.D.]]
Pedro reached the city of Santiago about the middle of June. While there,
he resolved on the murder of Don Suero the archbishop--a resolution
almost too extraordinary to be explained, yet sufficiently characteristic
of the man; who, whenever blood was to be shed, or plunder to be
procured, little troubled himself about reasons for his conduct. But his
most powerful motive for this atrocious deed was his desire to obtain the
towns and fortresses of Don Suero. The fortresses of the murdered prelate
were immediately occupied. The assassin, leaving them, as well as the
support of his interests, to the care of Ferdinand de Castro, proceeded
with his daughter to Corunna, where, with a fleet of twenty-two sail,
he embarked for Bayonne. Thus, in three short months, without a single
battle on either side, was this cowardly tyrant deprived of a powerful
kingdom. It may, however, be doubted whether the majority of the people
cared much for either prince; on them the fantastic cruelties of Pedro
fell harmless: indeed, there is room for believing that, whatever were
his cruelties towards his obnoxious and usually rebellious barons, he
caused justice to be impartially administered, and wished no unnecessary
imposts to be laid on the great towns.
The exiled king was well received by the English hero, who undertook to
restore him to his throne. The treaty into which the two princes had
entered rendered the aid of Edward almost imperative: besides, it was
his interest to oppose the close ally of France; and his own personal
ambition was not a little gratified by the offer of the lordship of
Biscay, with 56,000 florins of gold for his own use, and 550,000 for the
support of his army. To insure the punctual performance of the other
conditions, Pedro delivered his daughters as hostages into the hands of
the Black Prince. The enterprise was sanctioned by the English monarch,
and the necessary preparations were immediately commenced.
In the meantime Henry had been joyfully received at Seville, and
acknowledged by the whole of Andalusia. Seeing himself thus master of the
kingdom, except Galicia, he marched to reduce it. He closely invested
Ferdinand de Castro in the city of Lugo. From Lugo the king proceeded
to Burgoo, where he convened his states and obtained the necessary
supplies for the defence of the kingdom. He renewed his alliance with
the king of Aragon; and, in an interview with the sovereign of Navarre,
on the confines of the two monarchies, he prevailed on the latter,
for a gift of 60,000 pistoles, and by the promise of two fortresses,
to refuse a passage to the prince of Wales. No sooner, however, was
the king of Navarre returned to Pamplona, than he received messengers
from the dethroned Pedro, who offered to put him in possession of
Alava and Guipuzcoa, with the two important places of Logroño and
Vittoria, if he would suffer the English prince to march through his
territories unmolested. Charles had no difficulty in accepting the latter
proposition, as he had accepted the former.
The preparations of the English prince being completed early in the
spring of 1367, he passed the Pyrenees at Roncesvalles, and descended
into the plains of Navarre. In his combined army of English, Normans,
and Gascons, were some of the flower of English chivalry. Instead of
opposing his passage, Charles secretly desired Oliver de Manny, one of
Edward’s generals, to seize him (the king of Navarre) while hunting in
a certain place, and make him prisoner: by this contrivance he hoped to
excuse his inactivity to Henry. Oliver did as directed, and the English
prince pursued his march towards the Castilian frontiers. He was joined
by Sir Hugh de Calverley, who preferred the loss of the new lordship of
Carrion to violating a vassal’s faith by bearing arms against his natural
chief. Henry also advanced; but so well was he acquainted with the
valour of his renowned antagonist, that he was undetermined whether he
should do more than hover round the flanks of the invaders, cut off their
supplies, and force them, by famine, to return. In a council of war,
however, which he assembled to hear the opinion of his officers as to the
plan of the campaign, his Castilian chiefs so justly convinced him that,
if he refused the battle, several towns would immediately declare for
Pedro, that he resolved to risk all. No wonder that he should; for if, as
Froissart[i] informs us, his army was near seventy thousand strong, he
might well have little fear as to the result. One of his detachments had
the advantage over a foraging party of the allies. On the 2nd of April,
the two hostile armies met, west of Logroño, a few miles south of the
Ebro.
BATTLE OF NAJERA OR NAVARRETE (1367 A.D.)
[Sidenote: [1367 A.D.]]
The Castilians immediately occupied the vicinity of Najera: the allies
encamped at Navarrete. To spare the effusion of Christian blood, Edward
sent a letter, by a herald, to the camp of Henry, explaining the
causes which had armed the English monarch in defence of an ally and a
relation; but offering, at the same time, to mediate between the two
parties. His letter, which was addressed, “To the noble and powerful
Prince Henry, count of Trastamara,” not to the king of Castile, was
courteously received by Henry. In his reply, he dwelt on the cruelties
and oppressions of Pedro’s government, whose expulsion he represented as
the act of an indignant nation, and expressed his resolution to maintain
both that nation’s rights and his own by the sword.
The battle which decided the fate of the two kings commenced the
following morning, April 3rd, 1367. The war-cry of “Guienne and St.
George!” on the one side, and of “Castile and Santiago!” on the other,
were soon drowned by the clash of arms, the shouts of the victors, and
the groans of the dying. The struggle was for a short time desperate:
but who could contend with the victor of Crécy and Poitiers? A fierce
charge on the left wing of Henry, by the prince in person, so terrified
Don Tello, who commanded a body of cavalry, that he fled from the field;
perhaps he was as treacherous as he was cowardly. Henry fought nobly;
so also did his antagonist, who, like his celebrated counterpart,
Richard III of England, was as brave as he was cruel. But after the
flight of Don Tello, the infantry of Castile began to give way; and,
after some desperate efforts by Henry to support the contest, resistance
was abandoned. The number of slain, on the part of the vanquished, was
eight thousand. Many thousands were made prisoners--all but a handful,
who accompanied the defeated count into Aragon, whence he escaped into
France. Success so splendid is seldom to be found in the annals of
history: it at once restored Pedro to the Castilian throne. But the
heroic victor met with little gratitude from his faithless ally: as on a
former occasion, the states of Biscay were secretly advised not to accept
him for their ruler; and it was not without difficulty that he could
obtain from Pedro an oath that the money due to his troops should be
paid at two instalments--the first in four, the second in twelve months.
But what most disgusted the humane conqueror was the eagerness which the
restored king showed to shed the blood of the prisoners.[b]
The Spanish historian Ayala has drawn a picture of the Englishman’s
protest against Spanish ruthlessness.
AYALA’S ACCOUNT OF THE QUARREL BETWEEN EDWARD AND PEDRO
You must know that so soon as the battle was won, from that day onwards
there was little harmony between Don Pedro and the prince, and the
reason thereof was as follows. In the first place, upon the day of the
battle, a gentleman named Iñigo Lopez de Orozco was taken prisoner by a
gentleman of Gascony, whereupon Don Pedro rode upon horseback, and slew
the said Iñigo Lopez; and the gentleman whose prisoner he was complained
to the prince that, this man being his prisoner, Don Pedro came up and
killed him; and he complained not only for the loss of his prisoner, but
also because he held himself greatly dishonoured by the death of this
gentleman who had surrendered to him, and was in his power.
The prince said to Don Pedro that it was not well done of him, for he
knew full well that one of the chief articles of those agreed, sworn,
and signed between them, was that the king should not put to death any
gentleman of Castile, nor any person of note, while the prince was there,
until he had been justly judged, save those whom he had previously
sentenced, among whom this Iñigo Lopez was not included. And that it
appeared from this that the king did not intend to fulfil his engagements
towards him, and he presumed that his fidelity on all points would be the
same as in this matter. The king excused himself as best he might, but
neither he nor the prince was well pleased that day. The day after the
battle Don Pedro asked the prince that all the knights and squires of
note, natives of Castile, who were taken prisoners in the battle, should
be delivered to him, and that a reasonable price should be set upon them,
and he would pay it to those who held them prisoners. And that the prince
should be security for such payments to the knights and men-at-arms who
held them prisoners; and the king, Don Pedro, would pledge himself to
the prince for the sum to which they amounted. And the king said that,
if these knights were delivered to him, he would deal and speak with
them in such a way that they should remain on his side; but if their
ransom should be procured by other means, or they should escape from the
imprisonment in which their captors held them, they would always remain
his enemies and be active in his dis-service. Don Pedro insisted strongly
on this point, on Sunday, the day after the battle, which was fought
on the Saturday before Lazarus Sunday, the 3rd of April. The prince of
Wales said to Don Pedro that, saving his royal majesty, his request was
beyond reason, for these lords, knights, and men-at-arms, who were there
in the king’s service and his own, had laboured for honour, and if they
had taken any prisoners they were theirs. And the knights who held them
were of such sort that for all the wealth of the world, though it were
a thousand times the worth of their prisoners, they would never deliver
them to him, for they would think his purpose was to kill them. And he
bade the king urge the point no more, for it was a thing to which he
never could agree; however, if there were any among the captive knights
against whom he had passed sentence before the battle, he would order
them to be delivered to him.
The king said to the prince that if things were to fall out thus, his
kingdom was now more surely lost than ever, for these prisoners were
those by whose fault he had lost his kingdom, and if they were to escape
thus, and not be delivered to him, that he might come to terms with them
and win them to his cause, he held that the prince’s help was of small
account, and that he had expended his treasure in vain. Then the prince
was angry at the words the king, Don Pedro, had spoken to him, and thus
made answer:
“Sir kinsman, methinks you are now more like to recover your kingdom than
when it was yours indeed, and you governed it so ill that you were fain
to lose it. And I would counsel you to cease these executions and seek
some means whereby you may recover the good will of the lords, knights,
and noblemen, and the towns and cities of your kingdom; but if, on the
contrary, you govern yourself as you did formerly, you are in sore peril
of losing your kingdom and life, and of being brought to such a pass that
neither the king of England, my lord and father, nor myself, will avail
to help you, though we were so minded.”
Such was the discourse held between Don Pedro and the prince that day,
Sunday, after the battle, when they lay in that camp[h]
A NEW REVOLT; THE END OF PEDRO THE CRUEL
[Sidenote: [1367-1368 A.D.]]
Pedro’s cruelty soon raised new discontent of which Henry was ready to
take advantage, while the English prince was too disgusted[36] to support
further with his bravery the odious tyranny of the Spanish Nero.[a]
Towards the close of the year (1367), Henry entered Spain by Roussillon,
at the head of a very small force, not exceeding four hundred lances.
At first the king of Aragon attempted to arrest his progress through
that kingdom, but with little zeal; the soldiers sent to oppose him
connived at his passage into Navarre. Having passed the Ebro at Azagra,
and set foot on the Castilian territory, he drew a cross on the sand,
and by it swore that he would not desist from his undertaking while life
remained. The neighbouring inhabitants of Calahorra readily received
him within their walls. He was joined by many of the Castilian barons
with considerable reinforcements, and by the archbishop of Toledo. Leon
was besieged and taken; the Asturias submitted; Illescas, Buytrago, and
Madrid opened their gates after a short struggle; and Toledo, which
promised a more obstinate resistance, was invested. It is useful to
observe that the resistance of these places was the work of the citizens
who were generally attached to Pedro; while the barons and hidalgos
were generally for Henry. This circumstance gives great weight to the
suspicion that, while Pedro ruled the privileged orders with an iron
sceptre, he favoured the independence of the people.
[Sidenote: [1368-1369 A.D.]]
The success of the invader roused Pedro to something like activity in
defence of his tottering crown. His ally, the king of Granada, was
persuaded to arm in his behalf; and to join him with six thousand horse
and thirty thousand foot. His own troops did not much exceed seven
thousand, but the united force was formidable. Cordova was immediately
assailed by the two kings; but the defence was so vigorous, and the loss
on the part of the besiegers so severe, that the enterprise was soon
abandoned. The troops of Muhammed V returned to Granada; and though they
afterwards took the field, they did so, not so much to aid their ally, as
to derive some advantage for themselves from the confusion of the times.
The operations of the war were now very desultory, though destructive
to the kingdom. In the north, Vittoria, Salvatierra, Logroño, and some
other places which held for Pedro, submitted to the king of Navarre in
preference to Henry--so great was their repugnance to that champion of
feudal tyranny. Toledo manfully resisted his assaults. To relieve that
important city, which had now been invested nearly twelve months, Pedro
left Seville in March, 1369, and passed by Calatrava towards Montiel,
with the intention of waiting for some reinforcements advancing from
Murcia, before he ventured an action with his rival.
At this time, Bertrand du Guesclin arrived from France with an aid
of six hundred lances. Henry now put his little army in motion; was
joined by the grand-master of Santiago; and, arriving at Montiel with
incredible despatch, he fell on the outposts of his rival, and forced
them precipitately into the fortress. With a very inadequate force, Pedro
was now besieged in this place, and cut off from all supplies, which
yet reached Henry every hour. What added to his difficulties was the
want of provisions and of water; so that his men began to desert one by
one to the enemy, or retire to their respective homes. In this critical
situation he meditated the means of escape.[b]
After the combat Don Henry took steps to prevent his enemy from escaping
from the castle of Montiel, causing the exits to be strictly guarded,
and surrounded by a wall of uncemented stones, presumably to prevent any
inmate from escaping on horseback.
[Illustration: PEDRO THE CRUEL
(From an old print)]
Mendo Rodriguez of Sanabria, who was with the king, on the strength of
having at one time been Du Guesclin’s prisoner, attempted to negotiate
with him for the king’s escape. The conference began from the ramparts
and was secretly continued at night in the besieger’s camp. Rodriguez
offered the French warrior, on the part of his lord, 200,000 doubloons
of gold and dominion over towns as important as Almazan, Atienza,
Monteagudo, Deza and Seron, if he would assist in the king’s flight
and join his party. The prayer was most natural and just from one so
distressingly situated; the answer was noble and befitting a knight. Du
Guesclin replied that he served in this expedition by order of his lord
the king of France, and in the service of the count of Trastamara, and
therefore, without dishonour, he could not accede to this prayer; upon
which Rodriguez returned to the fortress, suspicion being afterwards held
by some as to his sincerity and loyalty in this attempt.
Bertrand related what had occurred to Don Henry, and the bastard with his
natural generosity rewarded him by paying him what Rodriguez had offered,
though in acting thus Bertrand had but been faithful to his duty and to
the dictates of honour. He then induced the Frenchman to continue the
negotiations and promise safety to Don Pedro, so that upon the latter’s
coming to his tent he might summon thither Don Henry. The Frenchman had
some suspicion as to the proceeding being unworthy of a knight, but
eventually he conquered his scruples, and acceding to Don Henry’s request
entered into the ignoble plot.
The result was that the king, trusting in the safe escort promised by Du
Guesclin, left the castle of Montiel, where resistance was hopeless, and
where it was impossible to remain as there was even a scarcity of water,
and one by one the defenders were deserting. Armed and on horseback he
came to Bertrand’s tent, and dismounting entered and said to him: “Mount,
for it is time to be away.” Obtaining no reply, the unhappy monarch was
alarmed and attempted to remount, but a traitor’s hand detained him, and
he was made prisoner with his faithful followers Ferdinand de Castro,
Mendo Rodriguez of Sanabria, Garcia Fernandez de Villodre, and others.
The news was speedily carried to Don Henry, if indeed he was not awaiting
it near by, and well armed he hurried to the spot where the king was. As
this scene took place at night in presence of numerous witnesses, and
it was long since they had met, they did not immediately recognise one
another. Don Henry being informed of his brother’s presence, the latter
confirmed the news with noble arrogance, saying: “’Tis I! ’Tis I!”
Then occurred one of the most terrible scenes related in history for
the horror of mankind. Don Henry wounded the king in the face with his
dagger, and both grappling they fell to the ground. Don Henry succeeded,
either by his own strength or with the assistance of a bystander, in
falling on the top and wounding the unhappy king mortally, finally
cutting off his head with furious wrath. Thus on March 23rd, 1369, was
consummated a great crime against the legitimate king, and a repellent
fratricide which, if Don Henry had refrained from presenting himself at
that place, would have been avoided. It may be that he had no intention
of killing the king with his own hand, and that infuriated by his hateful
presence he flung himself upon him precipitately; but he should have
foreseen the result, knowing that Pedro was about to become his prisoner
through Du Guesclin’s treachery. It may be that the latter was merely
actuated by a desire to bring this long war to an end, and secure the
throne to Don Henry whom he served, and who had almost succeeded in
winning it; but his intervention in this business, which terminated in
a most horrible fratricide, was disloyal and unworthy of one whom the
French esteem their greatest knight, nor was treachery called for, as Don
Pedro must speedily have surrendered.
To conclude, this tragedy was shameful for the principal actors in
it, the victim alone being free from taint, and to a certain extent
his memory was purified by the shedding of his blood; for had not his
tempestuous life come to so untimely an end, we may feel certain that
passionate defenders would never have arisen to obliterate the title of
“cruel” by which he is and ever will be known in history.[j]
A FINAL ESTIMATE OF PEDRO THE CRUEL
In recent times, attempts have been made by Mondejar,[k] and other
historical critics, to vindicate the memory of this king, on the ground
that his chronicler and contemporary, Pedro López de Ayala,[h] was a
blind partisan of his rival’s, and has injuriously treated his memory.
They tell us of a chronicle of this king, written by Don Juan de Castro,
bishop of Jaen, in which Pedro is represented as one of the best
sovereigns of the age--as one who, while he protected the oppressed, was
severe only against his turbulent and lawless barons. There may be some
truth in this latter assertion: Pedro, like Richard III of England, whom
he partially resembles, was probably no enemy to the humbler orders, but
eager only to break the formidable power of the nobles. Even admitting,
what is very probable, that his character has been somewhat unfairly
treated by Ayala, if one-half the deeds narrated by that author were
actually perpetrated by him,--and the careful minuteness with which they
are recorded gives them the appearance of authenticity,--he has had but
one equal in ferocity, and that one was the czar Ivan IV of Russia. Until
Castro’s pretended chronicle is actually produced--and it has been sought
for in vain these three hundred years--and compared with Ayala, criticism
is compelled to receive the testimony of the latter, confirmed, as it
incidentally is, by Froissart[i] and other contemporary writers. That he
was a man of lust, as well as of cruelty, is apparent from the number of
his mistresses, to say nothing of his two pretended wives.[b]
Prosper Mérimée[m] is one of the modern defenders of Pedro, but while
his tone is apologetic, his facts leave the resulting opinion only the
stronger. Hume[n] admits the black heart of Pedro, but denies that he was
exceptionally heartless for that time, and insists that his struggles
against the nobles were for the good of the people and his failure to
restrain their feudal power a calamity. It is hard, however, to believe
that a monstrosity whom even his contemporaries found worthy of the fame
of the most cruel of the cruel, could have been moved by any altruistic
care for his people, or any motive except ferocious hatred of any
resistance to his unutterable selfishness.
It is difficult to find in history a monarch whose reign had not some
effort for good, since perfection in vice is as impossible as perfection
in virtue. But surely no other king ever deserved less sympathy than
Pedro for his failure to check the noblemen in their greed. Surely
the feudal lords rarely used their power with better excuse than in
protecting for a time the unhappy girl-wife Blanche de Bourbon whom Pedro
sought to murder, and finally put to death. And the revolt of Trastamara
can only be blamed by those to whom legitimacy of descent is a sacred
claim on loyalty, even though the legitimate monarch wield his dagger
right and left and have his kinsmen beaten to death with clubs till
the floor of his own palace was ankle-deep in blood, as the chronicler
asserts of Pedro.
It is unjust to deny the monarch the one distinction he earned by
consistency and perseverance in the cause of evil. “Cruel” was his
epithet in his own day; let “cruel” be his epitaph in ours.[a]
FOOTNOTES
[30] [Usually, but improperly termed, “the Wise” and also “the
Astronomer.”[b]]
[31] [The reader may remember that the Templar Jacques de Molay, when
burned alive, similarly summoned Philip the Fair of France and the pope
to meet him before the Judgment Seat, and that they died soon after.]
[32] A sort of men-at-arms, whose usual weapon was a short club, or mace.
[33] [It is said that she stood to her ankles in the blood of the
slaughtered noblemen.]
[34] While Pedro was at Najera, for the purpose of protecting his
frontiers against these irruptions, a priest of San Domingo de la Calzada
is said to have waited on him, and foretold, that, unless he kept on his
guard, he would be assassinated by his brother Henry. “Who has advised
you to tell me this?” asked the king. “No one,” replied the priest,
“except San Domingo.” Pedro regarded this as some “weak invention of the
enemy,” and caused the priest to be burned alive. This anecdote, true
or false, is extracted from the chronicle of the contemporary López de
Ayala.[h]
[35] The fate of this lady, which has so frequently occupied the tragic
muse of the peninsula, must be looked for in the history of Portugal.
[36] [He did not escape without being the victim of an attempt at
poisoning which ruined his health. He returned, as Burke[d] says, “with
the loss of his soldiers, of his money, and of his health, befooled and
cheated in one of the worst causes in which English blood and English
treasure had been squandered on the continent of Europe.” Burke, who
also calls Pedro “one of the greatest blackguards that ever sat upon a
throne,” notes that to the last it was two Englishmen who defended him.]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]