"Yet the whole garrison of the castle consisted but of ten esquires, Castilian exiles; but behind thick and lofty walls, in a tower built on perpendicular rocks, and against which battering engines could not be brought, ten resolute men might defend themselves against an army, and need only yield to famine. The place being well provisioned, the siege was likely to be long. But the ten esquires, all young men, were better able bravely to repulse an assault than patiently to endure the tedium of a blockade. Time hung heavy upon their hands, they wanted amusement, and at last they insolently insisted that the governor should give them women to keep them company in their eyrie. Now, the only women in Cabezon were the governor's wife and daughter. 'If you do not deliver them to us, to be dealt with as we list,' said the garrison to the governor, 'we abandon your castle, or, better still, we open its gate to the King of Castile!' In such an emergency, the code of chivalrous honour was stringent. At the siege of Tarifa, Alonzo Perez de Guzman, summoned to surrender the town, under penalty of seeing his son massacred before his eyes, answered the Moors by throwing them his sword, wherewith to slay the child. This action, which procured the governor of Tarifa the surname of Guzman the Good, was a _fazaña_ (an exploit)--one of those heroic precedents which everyman of honour was bound to imitate. _Permittitur homicidium filii potius quam deditio castelli_, is the axiom of a doctor in chivalry of that epoch. The governor of Cabezon, as magnanimous in his way as Guzman the Good, so arranged matters that his garrison no longer thought of abandoning him. But two of the esquires, less corrupt than their comrades, conceived a horror of their treason, and escaped from the castle. Led before the king, they informed him of the mutiny they had witnessed, and of its consequences. Don Pedro, indignant, forthwith entreated the governor to let him do justice on the offenders. In exchange for those felons, he offered ten gentlemen of his army, who, before entering Cabezon, should take a solemn oath to defend the castle against all assailants, even against the king himself, and to die at their posts with the governor. This proposal having been accepted, the king had the traitors quartered, and their remains were afterwards burned. Through the colours with which a romantic imagination has adorned this incident, it is difficult to separate truth from fiction; but we at least distinguish the popular opinion of the character of Don Pedro--a strange amalgamation of chivalrous sentiments, and of love of justice, carried to ferocity."