ed all his
enemies--Pedro the Cruel, Ferdinand of Portugal, and Prince Edward of
Crecy and Poictiers.

For Leonor's sake Ferdinand braved the great riot of the Lisbon mob,
when Fernan Vasquez the Tailor led his followers to the palace, burst in
the gates, and forced from the King an oath to stand by the Castilian
marriage he had contracted. For her sake he broke his word to his
artisans, as he had broken it to his nobles and his brother monarch.

Leonor herself the people hunted for in vain through the rooms and
corridors of the palace; she escaped from their lynch law to Santarem.
The same night Ferdinand joined her. Safe in his strongest fortress, he
gathered an army and forced his way back into the capital. The mob was
scattered; Vasquez and the other leaders beheaded on the spot. Then at
Oporto, without more delay, the King of Portugal married his paramour,
in the face of her husband, of Castille, and of his own people.

"Laws are nil," said the rhyme, "when kings will," but though nobles and
people submitted in the lifetime of Ferdinand, the storm broke out again
on his death in October, 1383. During the last ten years the Queen had
practically governed, and the kingdom seemed to be sinking back into a
province of Spain. Ferdinand's bastard brother, John, Master of the
Knights of Aviz, and father of Henry the Navigator, was the leader of
the national party, and Leonor had in vain tried to get rid of him,
silent and dangerous as he was. She forged some treasonable letters in
his name, and procured his arrest; then as the King would not order him
to execution without trial, she forged the warrant, too, and sent it
promptly to the Governor of Evora Castle, where the Master lay in
prison. But he refused to obey without further proof, and John escaped
to lead the national restoration.

On the death of Ferdinand his widow took the regency in the name of her
daughter Beatrice, just married to the King of Castille. It was only a
question of time, this coming subjection of Portugal, unless the whole
people rose and made monarchy and government national once more. And in
December, 1383, they did so. Under John of Aviz the patriots cut to
pieces the Queen's friends, and made ready to meet her allies from
Castille. On the battle field of Aljubarrota (August 14, 1385), the
struggle was decided. Castille was finally driven back, and the new
age, of the new dynasty, was fairly started. The Portuguese people under
King John I.