From Valladolid Ferdinand was summoned to Burgos. The city was almost entirely in his favour, but the fortress and the church of Santa Maria La Blanca were held by the men of the Duke of Arévalo, whose catapults caused so much destruction that the inhabitants declared unless help was given they must surrender. In one of the principal streets alone, over three hundred houses had been burned, while the firing never ceased by night or day. Ferdinand and his illegitimate brother, Alfonso, Duke of Villahermosa, were soon on the scenes, for Burgos was too important a place to be lost; and earthworks and fortifications were hastily constructed over against the citadel to prevent help reaching it from the King of Portugal. All this, however, cost time, and, still more disastrous, money; for the contents of the treasury in Segovia, handed over by Andres de Cabrera, were exhausted, and the land, impoverished by Henry IV.’s misgovernment, could obviously yield few taxes. The sovereigns, in deep gloom, called a meeting of the Cortes in Medina del Campo, and laid their monetary difficulties before it. How was the army to be paid? The problem was the harder for the reckless generosity of the Portuguese, who gave fine promises of lands and revenues to all who joined them, the fulfilment depending on the success of the war. One solution was to permit the Castilian troops to provide for themselves by pillage and robbery. This the sovereigns at once rejected, nor would they consent to alienate the few royal estates still remaining to them. A third suggestion was to exact a loan from the Church, and it speaks well for the reputation that Ferdinand and Isabel had already established, that the clergy at once consented to this arrangement. In the end it was settled that the Church should surrender half her silver plate to specified royal officials, and that this should be redeemed at the end of three years by the payment of thirty millions of maravedis.