After Pedro had alienated his people’s hearts by his cruelty, Don Henry returned with a formidable body of French auxiliaries. At first the fortune of the rightful owner of the throne, who was supported by Edward the Black Prince, prevailed, and the invader was obliged to retire back to France: but suddenly renewing the attack, assisted by Du Guesclin, the flower of French knighthood, after the English auxiliaries had quitted Spain, he defeated and took prisoner his brother. Upon entering the chamber where he was confined, Henry exclaimed, “Where is that whoreson and Jew, who calls himself King of Castile?” Pedro, as proud and fearless as he was cruel, stepped instantly forward, and replied, “Here I stand, the lawful son and heir of Don Alphonso, and it is thou that art but a false bastard.” The rival brothers instantly grappled like lions; the French knights, and Du Guesclin himself, looking on. Henry drew his poniard, and wounded Pedro in the face, but his body was protected by a coat of mail. A violent struggle ensued. Henry fell across a bench, and his brother, being uppermost, had well nigh mastered him, when one of Henry’s followers seizing Don Pedro by the leg, turned him over, and his master thus at length gaining the upper hand, instantly stabbed the king to the heart. Menard, in his history of Du Guesclin, says that, while all around gazed like statues on the furious struggle of the brothers, Du Guesclin exclaimed to this attendant of Henry, “What! will you stand by, and see your master placed at such a pass by a false renegade? Make forward and help him, for well you may.”[24]