Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/232

CASTILE UNDER HENRY IV. PART I. 146: Civil anar- cliy. Standing his arm had been pierced through with a lance early in the engagement. The king and the prelate may be thought to have exchanged charac- ters in this tragedy.^^ The battle was attended with no result, except that of inspiring appetites, which had tasted of blood, with a relish for more unlicensed carnage. The most frightful anarchy now prevailed through- out the kingdom, dismembered by factions, which the extreme youth of one monarch and the im- becility of the other made it impossible to control. In vain did the papal legate, who had received a commission to that effect from his master, interpose his mediation, and even fulminate sentence of ex- communication against the confederates. The in- dependent barons plainly told him, that " those, who advised the pope that he had a right to inter- fere in the temporal concerns of Castile, deceived him ; and that they had a perfect right to depose their monarch on sufficient grounds, and should exercise it."^° Every city, nay, almost every family, became now divided within itself. In Seville and in Cordova, the inhabitants of one street carried on open war against those in another. The churches, which were fortified, and occupied with bodies of armed men, were many of them sacked and burnt to the ground. In Toledo no less than four thousand in one dwellings were consumed general confla- 29 Lebrija, Rcriim Gestanim Palcncia, Cor6nica, MS., part. 1, Decades, lib. 1, cap. 2. — Zurita, can. 80. Ana]es,lib. 18, cap. 10. — Castillo, ■^ Alonso de PalenciajCor6aica, Cronica, cap. 93, 97. — Alonso de MS., cap. 82.