ition. His call to
arms robbed Henry of the aid of those English Companies who had marched
till now with the rest of the crusaders, but who returned at once to the
standard of the Prince; the passes of Navarre were opened with gold, and in
the beginning of 1367 the English army crossed the Pyrenees. Advancing to
the Ebro the Prince offered battle at Navarete with an army already reduced
by famine and disease in its terrible winter march, and Henry with double
his numbers at once attacked him. But in spite of the obstinate courage of
the Castilian troops the discipline and skill of the English soldiers once
more turned the wavering day into a victory. Du Guesclin was taken, Henry
fled across the Pyrenees, and Pedro was again seated on his throne. The pay
however which he had promised was delayed; and the Prince, whose army had
been thinned by disease to a fifth of its numbers and whose strength never
recovered from the hardships of this campaign, fell back sick and beggared
to Aquitaine. He had hardly returned when his work was undone. In 1368
Henry reentered Castille; its towns threw open their gates; a general
rising chased Pedro from the throne, and a final battle in the spring of
1369 saw his utter overthrow. His murder by Henry's hand left the bastard
undisputed master of Castille. Meanwhile the Black Prince, sick and
disheartened, was hampered at Bordeaux by the expenses of the campaign
which Pedro had left unpaid. To defray his debt he was driven in 1368 to
lay a hearth-tax on Aquitaine, and the tax served as a pretext for an
outbreak of the long-hoarded discontent. Charles was now ready for open
action. He had won over the most powerful among the Gascon nobles, and
their influence secured the rejection of the tax in a Parliament of the
province which met at Bordeaux. The Prince, pressed by debt, persisted
against the counsel of his wisest advisers in exacting it; and the lords of
Aquitaine at once appealed to the king of France. Such an appeal was a
breach of the treaty of Bretigny in which the French king had renounced his
sovereignty over the south; but Charles had craftily delayed year after
year the formal execution of the renunciations stipulated in the treaty,
and he was still able to treat it as not binding on him. The success of
Henry of Trastamara decided him to take immediate action, and in 1369 he
summoned the Black Prince as Duke of Aquitaine to meet the appeal of the
Gascon lords in his court.

[Sid