From this time we find him actively engaged on the frontiers in a succession of military operations, till 1327, when he gained over the Moors the important victory of Guadalhorra. But the same year was marked by the bloody treachery of the king against Prince John’s uncle, who was murdered in the palace under circumstances of peculiar atrocity.[96] The Prince immediately retired in disgust to his estates, and began again to muster his friends and forces for a contest, into which he rushed the more eagerly, as the king had now refused to consummate his union with Constantia, and had married a Portuguese princess. The war which followed was carried on with various success till 1335, when Prince John was finally subdued, and, entering anew into the king’s service, with fresh reputation, as it seemed, from a spirited rebellion, and marrying his daughter Constantia, now grown up, to the heir-apparent of Portugal, went on, as commander-in-chief, with an uninterrupted succession of victories over the Moors, until almost the moment of his death, which happened in 1347.[97] [96] Mariana, Hist., Lib. XV. c. 19. [97] Ibid., Lib. XVI. c. 4. Crónica de Alfonso XI., c. 178. Argote de Molina, Sucesion de los Manueles. In a life like this, full of intrigues and violence,--from a prince like this, who married the sisters of two kings, who had two other kings for his sons-in-law, and who disturbed his country by his rebellions and military enterprises for above thirty years,--we should hardly look for a successful attempt in letters.[98] Yet so it is. Spanish poetry, we know, first appeared in the midst of turbulence and danger; and now we find Spanish prose fiction springing forth from the same soil, and under similar circumstances. Down to this time we have seen no prose of much value in the prevailing Castilian dialect, except in the works of Alfonso the Tenth, and in one or two chronicles that will hereafter be noticed. But in most of these the fervor which seems to be an essential element of the early Spanish genius was kept in check, either by the nature of their subjects, or by circumstances of which we can now have no knowledge; and it is not until a fresh attempt is made, in the midst of the wars and tumults that for centuries seem to have been as the principle of life to the whole Peninsula, that we discover in Spanish prose a decided development of such forms as afterwards became national and characteristic. [98] Mariana, in one of those happy hits of character which are not rare in his History, says of Don John Manuel, that he was “de condicion inquieta y mudable, tanto que a muchos parecia nació solamente para revolver el reyno.” Hist., Lib. XV. c. 12.