In the meantime Henry had been joyfully received at Seville, and acknowledged by the whole of Andalusia. Seeing himself thus master of the kingdom, except Galicia, he marched to reduce it. He closely invested Ferdinand de Castro in the city of Lugo. From Lugo the king proceeded to Burgoo, where he convened his states and obtained the necessary supplies for the defence of the kingdom. He renewed his alliance with the king of Aragon; and, in an interview with the sovereign of Navarre, on the confines of the two monarchies, he prevailed on the latter, for a gift of 60,000 pistoles, and by the promise of two fortresses, to refuse a passage to the prince of Wales. No sooner, however, was the king of Navarre returned to Pamplona, than he received messengers from the dethroned Pedro, who offered to put him in possession of Alava and Guipuzcoa, with the two important places of Logroño and Vittoria, if he would suffer the English prince to march through his territories unmolested. Charles had no difficulty in accepting the latter proposition, as he had accepted the former.
The preparations of the English prince being completed early in the spring of 1367, he passed the Pyrenees at Roncesvalles, and descended into the plains of Navarre. In his combined army of English, Normans, and Gascons, were some of the flower of English chivalry. Instead of opposing his passage, Charles secretly desired Oliver de Manny, one of Edward’s generals, to seize him (the king of Navarre) while hunting in a certain place, and make him prisoner: by this contrivance he hoped to excuse his inactivity to Henry. Oliver did as directed, and the English prince pursued his march towards the Castilian frontiers. He was joined by Sir Hugh de Calverley, who preferred the loss of the new lordship of Carrion to violating a vassal’s faith by bearing arms against his natural chief. Henry also advanced; but so well was he acquainted with the valour of his renowned antagonist, that he was undetermined whether he should do more than hover round the flanks of the invaders, cut off their supplies, and force them, by famine, to return. In a council of war, however, which he assembled to hear the opinion of his officers as to the plan of the campaign, his Castilian chiefs so justly convinced him that, if he refused the battle, several towns would immediately declare for Pedro, that he resolved to risk all. No wonder that he should; for if, as Froissart[i] informs us, his army was near seventy thousand strong, he might well have little fear as to the result. One of his detachments had the advantage over a foraging party of the allies. On the 2nd of April, the two hostile armies met, west of Logroño, a few miles south of the Ebro.
BATTLE OF NAJERA OR NAVARRETE (1367 A.D.)
[1367 A.D.]
The Castilians immediately occupied the vicinity of Najera: the allies encamped at Navarrete. To spare the effusion of Christian blood, Edward sent a letter, by a herald, to the camp of Henry, explaining the causes which had armed the English monarch in defence of an ally and a relation; but offering, at the same time, to mediate between the two parties. His letter, which was addressed, “To the noble and powerful Prince Henry, count of Trastamara,” not to the king of Castile, was courteously received by Henry. In his reply, he dwelt on the cruelties and oppressions of Pedro’s government, whose expulsion he represented as the act of an indignant nation, and expressed his resolution to maintain both that nation’s rights and his own by the sword.
The battle which decided the fate of the two kings commenced the following morning, April 3rd, 1367. The war-cry of “Guienne and St. George!” on the one side, and of “Castile and Santiago!” on the other, were soon drowned by the clash of arms, the shouts of the victors, and the groans of the dying. The struggle was for a short time desperate: but who could contend with the victor of Crécy and Poitiers? A fierce charge on the left wing of Henry, by the prince in person, so terrified Don Tello, who commanded a body of cavalry, that he fled from the field; perhaps he was as treacherous as he was cowardly. Henry fought nobly; so also did his antagonist, who, like his celebrated counterpart, Richard III of England, was as brave as he was cruel. But after the flight of Don Tello, the infantry of Castile began to give way; and, after some desperate efforts by Henry to support the contest, resistance was abandoned. The number of slain, on the part of the vanquished, was eight thousand. Many thousands were made prisoners—all but a handful, who accompanied the defeated count into Aragon, whence he escaped into France. Success so splendid is seldom to be found in the annals of history: it at once restored Pedro to the Castilian throne. But the heroic victor met with little gratitude from his faithless ally: as on a former occasion, the states of Biscay were secretly advised not to accept him for their ruler; and it was not without difficulty that he could obtain from Pedro an oath that the money due to his troops should be paid at two instalments—the first in four, the second in twelve months. But what most disgusted the humane conqueror was the eagerness which the restored king showed to shed the blood of the prisoners.[b]
The Spanish historian Ayala has drawn a picture of the Englishman’s protest against Spanish ruthlessness.
AYALA’S ACCOUNT OF THE QUARREL BETWEEN EDWARD AND PEDRO
You must know that so soon as the battle was won, from that day onwards there was little harmony between Don Pedro and the prince, and the reason thereof was as follows. In the first place, upon the day of the battle, a gentleman named Iñigo Lopez de Orozco was taken prisoner by a gentleman of Gascony, whereupon Don Pedro rode upon horseback, and slew the said Iñigo Lopez; and the gentleman whose prisoner he was complained to the prince that, this man being his prisoner, Don Pedro came up and killed him; and he complained not only for the loss of his prisoner, but also because he held himself greatly dishonoured by the death of this gentleman who had surrendered to him, and was in his power.