King Pedro believed that every man had a price, and, on Du Guesclin’s pretence that he might be bought over, stole secretly one night to the Frenchman’s tent. Here he found his hated brother with some of his courtiers who cried aloud ‘Look, Señor, it is your enemy.’ ‘I am! I am!’ screamed Pedro furiously, seeing he was betrayed, and flung himself on his brother, while the latter struck at him with his dagger. Over and over they rolled in the half-light of a tallow candle, until Pedro, who had gained the upper hand, fumbled for his poignard with which to strike a fatal blow. Then, according to the old ballad, Du Guesclin interfered. ‘I neither make king nor mar king, but I serve my master,’ he said, and turned Pedro over on his back, enabling those who were standing by to dispatch him with their knives. The tale, if creditable to Du Guesclin’s loyalty, is hardly so to his love of fair play, but the murdered king had lived like a wild animal, and it is difficult to feel any regret that he died like one instead of in battle as a knight. The House of Trastamara was now established on the Castilian throne by the triumphant Henry II. Some years later it gave also a king to its eastern neighbour, when the royal House of Aragon had become extinct in the male line. This was the Infante Ferdinand, a man of mature judgement, who had already won golden opinions for his honesty and statesmanship when acting as guardian for his young nephew, John II of Castile. Both kingdoms, but more especially Castile, were to remain victims of civil wars and of frequent periods of anarchy for another half-century. John II, deprived of his uncle’s wise guidance, devoted his time to composing love-songs and surrendered his weak will to a royal favourite, Alvaro de Luna, without whose consent, tradition says, he dared not even go to bed. The result was incessant turbulence, for the nobles hated the arrogant and all-powerful upstart, who managed the court as he pleased, and steadily added to his own estates and revenues. Yet, having brought about his downfall and death, they had no better government with which to replace his tyranny. [Sidenote: Henry IV of Castile] Under John’s son and successor Castile fared even worse; for Henry IV was not merely weak but vicious, so that he rolled the crown in the mire of scandal and degradation. Government of any sort was now at an end. ‘Our swords’, wrote a contemporary Castilian, recalling this time of nightmare, ‘were employed, not to defend the boundaries of Christendom, but to rip up the entrails of our country.... He was most esteemed among us who was strongest in violence: justice and peace were far removed.’