edro the Cruel was
king of Castile, 1350-69. This Spanish Nero, when sixteen years old,
commenced his reign by the murder of his mother. A catalogue of his
crimes is impossible. Enough to say that assassination was his remedy,
and means of escape, from every entanglement in which his treacheries
involved him. It was the unhappy fate of Blanche de Bourbon, sister of
Charles V., King of France, to marry this King of Castile, and when
he refused to live with her and had her removed from his palace the
Alcazar to a fortress, and finally poisoned her, the French King
determined to avenge the insult to his royal house. He allied himself
with the King of Aragon to destroy Pedro, with whom the King of Aragon
was of course at war.

Edward, the "Black Prince," was then brilliantly invading France and
extending the kingdom of his father Edward III. He was the kinsman of
Pedro, and when appealed to by his cousin for aid in protecting
his kingdom from the King of Aragon and his French allies, Edward
gallantly consented to help him; and in the spring of 1367, for
the second time, a splendid army advanced through the Pass at
Roncesvalles, and a great battle, worthy of a better cause, was fought
and won.

So this most atrocious king--perhaps excepting Richard III. of
England, whom he resembled--had for his champion the victor of Cressy
and Poictiers. He was restored to his throne, which had been usurped
by his brother Enrique (or Henry), but in a personal encounter with
Enrique soon after (which was artfully brought about by the famous
Breton knight, Bertrand du Guesclin), he met a deserved fate (1369).

Constanza, the daughter of Pedro the Cruel, had been married to John
of Gaunt (Duke of Lancester), brother of the Black Prince and son of
Edward III. As Constanza was the great-grandmother of Isabella I. of
Spain, so in the veins of that revered Queen there flowed the blood of
the Plantagenets, as well as that of Pedro the Cruel!

Because of the number of doubtful pretenders always existing in
Spain, disputes about the royal succession also always existed. Such
a dispute now led to a long war with Portugal, where King Fernando had
really the most valid hereditary claim to the throne made vacant by
Pedro's death. If his right had been acknowledged, Portugal and Spain
would now be united; Isabella would have remained only a poor and
devout princess, and would never have had the power to win a continent
for the world. So impossible i