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with his division, by Du Guesclin; and in a very brief time the whole line was hotly engaged. Lancaster gained the highest applause from all sides for his valorous and knightly bearing, and for maintaining a difficult ground against fearful odds. Don Sancho, a brother of King Henry, was the first to give way, in the centre; after that it was only a question which of the other Castilian divisions should yield first. Defeat soon became retreat; retreat accelerated itself into disordered flight. Numbers had succumbed to valor and generalship. The victory of the Black Prince was complete, terrible, decisive. It once more revolutionized the dynasty of Castile. For the strength of the good usurper, Henry, fell on that field; he had no other resource to save his crown but in that army, which was now a hopeless rabble. The losses were greatly disproportionate; the invaders lost but four knights and forty privates; of the Castilians were slain nearly twenty thousand.

The throne of the distracted kingdom reverted by this conquest, accomplished by a single action, to the legitimate tyrant. The glory was monopolized by Prince Edward; the fruits by Don Pedro. The victory had hardly been gained, before this monster showed his cruel and perfidious character. He was eager to murder the prisoners in cold blood; he desired to put mercenary and foreign swords to Castilian necks. After he was once more secure in his former power, he showed another quality, a fit companion of cruelty-ingratitude. Edward's army had not been paid-they were distressed for food, for clothing, for means to return to their families. Pedro delayed payment on various pretences (pretences are never wanting to a soul whose life is a perpetual lie);

and the troops were obliged to return without their wages. It was the shortsightedness of a villain, who in his career of crime is unconsciously reckless of his safety, and who of all precautions usually omits the very one which alone can avail him. Thus Pedro threw away the very friendship without which he would still have been an exile, the alienation of which left him exposed without defence to that resistless home party, which still clung to his brother Henry. That enterprising prince, accompanied by the great general Du Guesclin, returned from France with a fresh army; all Castile flocked to his standard. The brothers met at Montiel; Henry made the attack with great impetuosity; Pedro's army was little more than an armed and undisciplined rabble, but preponderated in numbers; the fight was long and bitter. Finally, the tyrant's force was repulsed with great slaughter. Pedro himself, abandoning his men, retired to the castle of Montiel. Finding that he would be easily starved out there, he sought to escape in the night. He was taken by the watch, and brought before Henry. He went into the presence of the victor undismayed, being a bold man; not, as tyrants usually are, a coward. Henry, in a rage, rushed upon him, and brought him to the earth; and, drawing a poniard, plunged it into his brother's breast. Thus died Pedro the Cruel of Castile. He was but thirty-five years of age; but within that narrow space, what a life, prolific in crime and conflict, had he led!

Henry was now able to resume his usurped sovereignty, not only without resistance, but with the joyful consent of his subjects. Pedro left no male heirs, but two daughters-the infantas Constance and Isabella.

Two years after the expedition into Castile, the Duke of Lancaster lost the fair Blanche, his wife. He had been fighting gallantly the while, under his brother the Black Prince, who never rested. There had been plenty of work to do in France; and these two princes had found constant employment congenial to their active natures. Bordeaux had been their headquarters, and this cheerful town bore the double aspect of a military station and the rendezvous of a gay court circle. From all those nations and provinces which were hostile to Charles the Wise, the adherents of the princes were gathered. Among them were the barons of Gascony. These barons, in 1369, proposed a marriage between the Duke of Lancaster and the eldest of the lovely daughters of Pedro the Cruel. This was soon after the death of the Duchess Blanche. The proposal of the Gascons met with the concurrence of the Duke, for they anticipated his wishes. He sent off an ostentatious embassy of knights to Bayonne, where the infantas were living, in secluded grief at the loss of their father and their sovereignty. They at once acceded to the proposal, and set out to join the Prince's court. When they approached Bordeaux, the Duke went out of the city surrounded by a brilliant cortége of nobles, and conducted them into the city. The marriage rites were performed at Rochefort, a small village near Bordeaux; and on the same day a great feast, such as were the delight of princes in those days, was given to the concourse which attended on the occasion. The bridal pair lingered for a time at Bordeaux; and a season of festivity and good cheer was kept up for several weeks in honor of the marriage, by the gallant knights and light-hearted beauties of the little court.

The younger infanta, Isabella, was afterward mar ried to the Earl of Cambridge, Lancaster's younger brother. The marriage of the infanta Constance with an English prince gave much alarm and anxiety to the new King of Castile, who foresaw another attempt upon the Castilian throne; and he speedily sought an alliance with the King of France, to defend himself from the invasion which now seemed imminent. The warfare between France and England continued, with here and there a brief armistice. The invasions of the English possessions in France by the French King provoked constant retaliation, and the history of those turmoils exhibits the usual alternation of victory and defeat when the conflicting powers are nearly equal. In all the campaigns John of Lancaster was a conspicuous officer, often commanding in chief in the absence of his brother the Black Prince, and invariably adding to his renown as a skilful, calm, and intrepid general. The Prince of Wales, after a long and painful illness, which had often kept him from the field when his whole heart was there, died in the height of his illustrious career, and after a life of unexampled virtue and valor, in 1376. He was forty-six years of age. King Edward the Third had one glory above all others-one pride, which was far above ambition and jealousy-Edward the Black Prince. The decease of this dearly-beloved, it may be said adored, son, broke down that majestic spirit which had so long sustained with serene fortitude the vast cares which a warlike age and people demanded. The blow was fatal to both mind and body. The vigorous intellect became enfeebled; the sturdy constitution, which had coped with fifty years of battle, lost the integrity of its strength, and yielded to this

last vital shock. Within a year the mortal remains of the great monarch were tenderly borne to the Great Abbey, and laid with that royal line of which he was the most illustrious example.

Richard, only son of the Black Prince, then in his twelfth year, ascended the throne. A regency was formed consisting of his three uncles, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and the Dukes of York* and Gloucester. The administration of the government was mainly confided to the Duke of Lancaster, the eldest brother. The indolence of York, and the restlessness of Gloucester, made each incapable, in the eyes of court and people, of the grave trust. The young prince was the heir to domestic intrigue and foreign war. France on one side, and Scotland on the other, in close alliance and bitter in their hatred of England, caused constant apprehension and conflict. The Duke of Lancaster, in the name of his Duchess, the daughter of Pedro the Cruel, claimed the crown of Castile; and Don Henry, the reigning king, was consequently in perpetual warfare with the southern allies of England. The King of Navarre, whose dominions were contig uous to Castile, had maintained the war with vigor for a long time. Finally the news came to Lancaster that the combatants had become friends; that they had made an alliance offensive and defensive; that Navarre's son had married Castile's daughter; that Henry was dead; and that his son, Don John, had been crowned King of Castile. John of Portugal still remained faithful to the English interest and in hostility to Castile, and favored the restoration of Pedro's line.

The Duke of Lancaster took the bold resolu

* The Earl of Cambridge was created Duke of York at Richard's accession.

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