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.
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.
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.
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
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
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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:
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
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.
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
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.
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
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.