s it to remove one of the links forged
by fate, that we dare not regret even so monstrous a reign as that of
Pedro the Cruel!

Enrique's right to the vacant throne of his brother had two
disputants. Besides the King of Portugal, John of Gaunt, who had
married the lady Constanza,--by virtue of her rights as daughter of
Pedro,--claimed the crown of Castile. This Plantagenet was actually
proclaimed King of Castile and Leon (1386). For twenty-five years
he vainly strove to come into his kingdom as sovereign; but finally
compromised by giving his young daughter Catherine to the boy "Prince
of Asturias," the heir to the throne. He was obliged to content
himself by thus securing to his child the long-coveted prize. And it
was this Catherine, who at fourteen was betrothed to a boy of nine,
who was the grandmother of Isabella, Queen of Castile.

When such was the private history of those highest in the land we can
only imagine what must have been that of the rest. Feudalism, which
was a part of Spain's Gothic inheritance, had always made that
country one of its strongholds, and chivalry had nowhere else found
so congenial a soil. There was no great artisan class, as in France,
creating a powerful "bourgeoisie"; no "guilds," or simple "burghers,"
as in Germany, stubbornly standing for their rights; no "boroughs"
and "town meetings," where the people were sternly guarding their
liberties, as in England.

The history of other nations is that of the struggles of the common
people against the tyranny of kings and rulers. If there were any
"common people" in Spain, they were so effaced that history makes no
mention of them. We hear only of kings and great barons and
glorious knights; and their wonderful deeds and their valor and
prowess--excepting in the wars with the Moors--were always over
boundary-lines and successions, or personal quarrels more or less
disgraceful, with never a single high purpose or a principle involved.
It was all a gay, ambitious pageant, adorned by a mantle of chivalry,
and made sacred by the banner of the Cross. In the history of no other
European country do we see a great state develop under despotism so
unredeemed by wholesome ideals, and so unmitigated and unrestrained by
gentle human impulses.

CHAPTER XVI.

Juan II., the son of the young Catherine and the boy prince of the
Asturias, died in 1454, and his son Enrique (or Henry) IV. was King of
Castile. When, after some years, Henry was with