[1381-1383 A.D.]
Ferdinand at length saw that the affections of his queen were estranged from him, and transferred to Andeiro. Yet—such was his deplorable weakness!—he met both with constrained smiles, and deputed both to be present at the marriage of his daughter Beatrice with Juan of Castile. On this occasion the favourite appeared with a splendour which might have become a sovereign prince, but which filled the beholders with indignation or envy. The perpetual sight of a faithless wife and her insolent paramour was at length too much even for the feeble Ferdinand. In the agony of his feelings he one day opened his heart to the grand-master of Aviz, who he knew hated Andeiro, and with whom he planned that minion’s assassination. But his own death, the result alike of constitutional weakness of frame and mental suffering, saved him from the guilt of murder. The reign of this sovereign was one of the most deplorable that ever afflicted Portugal. The wars with Castile,—wars lightly undertaken and ingloriously conducted,—and the consequent invasions of his territory by his more powerful neighbours, impoverished his people.[h]
FOOTNOTES
[135] According to the Chronicon Lusitanum,[d] the Chronicon Complutense,[e] and other authorities, Lisbon and Cintra were taken by Alfonso. They must, however, have been soon recovered by the Moors.
[136] That Henry, whose extraction has given rise to much disputation, was of the family of the first duke of Burgundy, and of the royal blood of France, is indisputable from a MS. discovered in the monastery of Fleury, according to La Clède.[f]
[137] Lemos[g] endeavours to vindicate the character of Theresa from the charges imputed to her: the same vain effort, as the reader will remember, has been made by the Castilian writers in favour of Urraca.
[138] “Mas o rei mandando fazer as mortes indistintas, sem differenca de sexo, e idade; o horror dos gemidos, o tropel da genté, o clamor das mulheres, a meninos, o escuro da noite causan hum espanto tao geral.”—Lemos.[g]
[139] On this occasion Alfonso, with no more than sixty horsemen, is said to have encountered five hundred horsemen of the Almoravids, and forty thousand foot; and, what is more, to have defeated them! (See Chronicon Lusitanum.[d]) These prodigious relations were admitted without scruple by the earlier historians of Portugal.
[140] [According to some authorities Diniz did not rebel at all, but was an exemplary son, and was present at his father’s death-bed.]
[141] [Like all other romantic events, this story has attracted the critics, their chief objection to it being the fact that the contemporary historian Lopes,[l] who describes the death of Iñes with much detail, has nothing to say of the exhumation and coronation. But such negative argument must be cautiously used and historians have not yet annulled the story of Iñes.]