Peter the Cruel, according to all authentic history, was a man so completely detestable that it would be strange if he had not attracted the attention of apologists. At the despotic court of Ferdinand and Isabella, it was a species of lèse majesté to speak of any King of Castile as unworthy. There was something in Peter's destruction of his powerful nobles not entirely displeasing to the autocratic Ferdinand; and it was ordained that he was no longer to be known as the Cruel, but as El Justiciero, the doer of justice-the title more worthily borne by his father.

In the time of Philip II. a courtly author and royal herald, Pedro de Gratia Dei-rather a strange surname, once adopted by a celebrated Jew on his conversion-published another vindication of the character of Peter the Cruel, under the title of a Life of the Worthy King.1

Prosper Mérimée's Life of the King is a brilliant work,2

Peter was not struck down by his brother's dagger without a struggle, and the brothers fighting hand to hand in the midst of a ring of French men-at-arms, who called for fair play (Franc jeu), rolled over in a deadly embrace. Don Henry, according to the most celebrated of the many legends, fell undermost, when Rocaberti, an Aragonese knight, caught hold of Don Peter and allowed his assailant to get the upper hand, saying:

Ni quito Rey, ni pongo Rey,

Pero ayudo á mi Señor.

According to Argote de Molina and the Romances del Rey Don Pedro, the name of the knight was Fernando Perez de Andrada, and it is du Guesclin himself who is sometimes said to have intervened at the critical moment. Froissart, ch. ccliv. Carbonell, p. 197. Mérimée, chap. xxiii. According to another account, Peter escaped from Montiel, but was captured outside the walls by a French knight, Bègue de Vilaine, by whom he was delivered into the hands of his brother. The man must have been more or less than human who could have suffered Peter to escape from his clutches.

(The struggle in which Peter was engaged during the whole of his reign was that initiated by his father; namely the power of the crown against that of the nobles. That he was savage and cruel in a savage age and a cruel contest is certain; but his failure finally to conquer the nobles and their puppet Henry threw Spain back, and prevented for at least a century the humbling of the feudal lords. James the Conqueror of Aragon was of course a far greater man than Peter, and he partially effected what the latter tried to do. But it was a contest in which neither of them was over scrupulous; only, in one case the history of it was written by the principal figure himself, and in the other by an enemy.-H.)

1 It was printed (in 1790) in the Semanario Erudito of Valladares, tit. 27, 28. Philip II. says Zuniga (Anales de Sevilla, año 1369) dió precepto de clamarle Justiciero; mas nunca se le borrava el titulo de Cruel.

More modern apologists are the Count de la Roca, El Rey don Pedro defendido (1648) and the licentiate Lerdo del Pozo, Apologia, etc. (1780).

A catalogue of the writers who have attempted desacreditar la Cronica del Rey Don Pedro escrita por D. P. Lopez de Ayala will be found in vol. xx. of the Documentos ineditos, p. 28 et seq.

2 There is a very good note in which all the biographers of Peter are passed in review in Lafuente tom. ix., pp. 308-315. There is also a Defensa de la veracidad

impartial in profession, apologetic in tone, but full of damning facts. The chronicles of Froissart and of Ayala are the chief contemporary authorities.

No one has succeeded in making him an attractive character; and his long reign of nearly twenty years, which began in his boyhood, at the age of sixteen, and came to a close ere he had passed the prime of early manhood, does not include one single good deed in either his private or his public life, to relieve the general gloom of his wickedness.

de Don Pedro Lopez de Ayala en la cronica del Rey don Pedro, by Rafael de Floranes, in vol. xix. of the Documentos Ineditos, pp. 513-575

Old Froissart, the Italian Matteo Villani, and Pedro Gomez de Albornoz give no uncertain confirmation of the records of Ayala, whose temperate language when chronicling the greatest villainies of his master is worthy of all respect.

CHAPTER XXX.

ARAGON IN SPAIN.

(1327-1416).

JAMES II. of Aragon died in 1327, and was succeeded by his second son Alfonso, who reigned from 1327 to 1336 as Alfonso IV. His eldest son, in order the more freely to indulge his licentious appetities, had renounced his rights of succession, and embraced what is called a religious life. That a cloister should be preferred to a palace by a debauched youth as affording greater opportunities of self-indulgence, is sufficiently characteristic of the manners and morals of the times. It is at least creditable to the prince himself, and to the Order in which he sought his retirement, that he was content to abide by his renunciation, and that he gave no trouble to his younger brother during the whole course of his reign. He may possibly have killed himself with riotous living. At all events we hear no more of him in the history of his country. Alfonso IV. was crowned with great pomp at Saragossa, but his reign is neither glorious nor interesting. Constant warfare with the Genoese maintaining their ancient rights over the unhappy island of Sardinia, domestic quarrels between the king's eldest son and his children by a second marriage, these were the principal features of his short reign. Alfonso died at Barcelona in 1336, and his son Peter inherited not only his kingdom, but his quarrels.

Peter, the fourth of that name in Aragon, is conventionally known to the Spanish historians as El Ceremonioso, or the

1 The first wife of Alfonso IV. was Teresa of Enteza, a niece of the Count de Urgel; his second was Eleanor of Castile.

2 A study of the Ordenanzas de la casa Real of Peter IV. demonstrates the luxury and refinement of his court, not perhaps unnatural, seeing that Aragon had been in constant communication for so many generations with Italy, with Provence and with the further and greater East.

3

Formalist, from his excessive attention to matters of courtly etiquette and ceremonial, and his formalism1 in affairs of legal and political procedure. But this excessive formalism did not prevent him from plundering 2 his neighbours, nor even from poisoning his friends. Nor was he prevented by his proverbial ceremoniousness, from placing, at his coronation in the cathedral at Saragossa, his own crown on his own royal head, lest he should be supposed to accept or ratify in any way the unhappy surrender of Peter II. He was not content, like the prudent Peter III., with a protest or declaration of his royal independence of Rome; and the archbishop who presided at the august ceremony, was compelled like Pope Pius VII. in the presence of the first Napoleon, to remain an unwilling spectator of the act which his sacred hands were ready and willing to perform.

The long reign of Peter IV., thus rudely initiated, was distracted, rather after the fashion of Castile-by civil wars and troubles at home, or at least within the limits of the Peninsula, than after the fashion of Aragon-by interference in the wars and politics of foreign countries. The king's persecution of his stepmother, as soon as he was invested with the power of persecution, provoked the first war with Castile, and the dishonourable peace which brought that war to a close, was followed by the unceasing disaffection of a great part of the nobility of Aragon.

4

In 1343, after some seven years of troubled rule in Aragon, the king took upon himself, in defiance of all existing treaties, both general and special, to drive his faithful vassal and kinsman, James of Majorca, out of the Balearic Islands, and to unite that little kingdom for ever to the crown of Aragon.5 Yet was this impudent robbery justified or excused by the ceremonious Peter under a false pretence of legality. The most celebrated

1 Lafuente, vii., 144-147.

2" No queria dar un paso fuera de la ley, y interpretandola a su antojo, cohenestaba en ella las mayores inquidades.' Castelar, Estudios Historicos, p. 46.

3 The opposition against Peter IV. on the part of the nobles, especially in Catalonia and Valencia, arose before his coronation, out of the claim of the Catalans that he should take the oath to observe the constitution of Catalonia before he was crowned King of Aragon. This was an innovation that the "Ceremonious" refused to accept; and the Catalans stayed away from the coronation at Saragossa. Pedro was subsequently crowned as Prince of Catalonia and King of Valencia, and duly took the respective oaths as such, but this failed to appease the nobles and Cortes.-H.

+ The quarrel was submitted to arbitration, and Peter was adjudged to allow his half-brothers to enjoy their inheritance unmolested.-H.

Jayme, or James, of Majorca was the husband of the king's sister.

hypocrites of fiction could never have conveyed their neighbours' property into their own possession with more punctilious formality, or expelled the rightful owner with a more meticulous regard for forms and procedure, than was displayed on this memorable occasion by Peter of Aragon.

An attempt to settle the crown on his daughter Constance rather than on his brother James, led to a popular outbreak, the last exercise in the kingdom of Aragon of the extraordinary Privilege of Union. The constitutional rebels assembled at Saragossa, and actually caused a seal to be engraved for their use, representing themselves kneeling respectfully at the feet of their king, with a background of tents and spears, denoting their readiness to assert their power, in case they should be driven to extremities. Gentle and simple united under the banner of the Union, and under the leadership of the king's brother, James of Aragon, Count of Urgel. The prince was poisoned by royal command. But his brother Ferdinand took his place; the king was subjected to restraint, if not actually to imprisonment, at Murviedro; and Ferdinand, with a band of Castilian allies, was received with acclamation at Valencia.

The

But greater forces than those of the King of Aragon were found to fight against the Union. In May, 1348, the plague broke out in Valencia. The rebels were dismayed; their forces were decimated; their organisation was broken up; and Ferdinand retired to the north, where a King's Party had been formed among the more prudent spirits of Aragon. League was confronted with counter league; Union with anti-union. opposing forces at length met in battle array at Epila near Saragossa in 1348, when Ferdinand and the authorised rebels were defeated with great slaughter. The dangerous Privilege of Union was immediately abrogated; the parchment on which it was engrossed was cut in pieces by the king with his own hand; 2 and the very words of the charter were blotted out of the records of Aragon.3

Yet were many excellent laws for the protection of the liberties of his subjects soon afterwards promulgated by Peter;

1 Sigillum Unionis Aragonum in the legend.

2 With his dagger; hence his surname of del Puñal-of the Poniard.

3 According to Señor Castelar, it was the aristocracy of Aragon that perished at Epila; and, as may be supposed, the brilliant Republican writer expresses no regret. (Estudios Historicos, 142-4.) But popular liberties, he thinks, did not suffer. La voluntad del pueblo... que aterroriza al Rey... era... mas grande que la victora, etc., etc., etc,