THE TRIAL BY BATTLE.

A TALE OF CHIVALRY.[^[3]]

CHAPTER I.

THE CORONATION.

Easter-even, in the year of our Lord 1099, was held as a high festival in the fine city of Barcelona: it was the coronation-day of the young Count Raymond Berenger the Third, whose twelvemonth’s mourning for his lamented father and sovereign was to close with his own solemn inauguration. The count had accordingly, by his letters patent, convoked to his good city of Barcelona the bishops, barons, knights, and also the ambassadors from foreign courts, to witness him take his knighthood, and receive from the altar, and place upon his head, the garland of golden roses which formed the coronet of the Counts of Arragon.

At the appointed day, not only the prelates, barons, and chivalry of Spain repaired to the festival, but a great many foreign lords and princes: the Judge and the Archbishop of Albera, from Sardinia; the King of Arragon, from Saragossa; the King of Castile, from Madrid. The Moorish sovereigns of Tlemecen and Granada, not being able to come in person, had sent rich presents to the count, with congratulatory epistles by the hands of their ambassadors. Indeed, so great was the concourse to Barcelona on this day, that thirty thousand stirrups belonging to gentlemen of condition were counted in the city and its environs.