The disputed succession on the death of Enrique again plunged the city into civil war; both claimants, Juana and Isabel, finding partisans within its walls. Hoping to profit by these disorders, the Conde de Alba de Tormes entered the town at the head of his vassals and endeavoured to obtain possession of it. After much fighting he was expelled by the citizens, headed by Don Alfonso Maldonado and Suero de Solis. Upon the triumph of Isabel’s faction, the Portuguese quarter was promptly sacked in revenge for the assistance given by that nation to Juana. Another Maldonado was seized by King Fernando and ordered to deliver up his castle of Monleon under pain of death. The captive lord gave the necessary orders to his wife, commanding the garrison, who, at first, obstinately refused to obey them. It was only when the headsman was about to strike off her husband’s head in view of the ramparts that she relented and admitted the king’s troops. The Salamancans were assuredly of stern stuff. The Catholic Sovereigns amused them with tournaments and pageants, and found employment for their swords before the walls of Granada. In the year 1497 Fernando, returning defeated from the Portuguese frontier, found his only son, Prince Juan, at the point of death. He expired on the 4th of October, after thirteen days’ sickness, at the age of nineteen, his mother arriving too late to see him alive. It is related that Fernando caused the queen to be informed that he also was dead, that her joy on finding him alive should somewhat soften the blow. Isabel never returned to the scene of her greatest bereavement; but we find Fernando, now a widower, here in the winter of 1505-1506. The failure of the harvest about this time caused so much distress that the university was closed, and the ecclesiastical authorities had to leave the city. Hard upon these dark days came the rising of the Comuneros, into which the Salamancans threw themselves with all their hearts. Even the nobility espoused the popular cause, as also did the dean of the cathedral, various professors of the university, and the more prominent merchants. The leaders of the movement in Salamanca were young Maldonado Pimentel, and a skinner called Valloria, who was the idol of the populace, and by them hailed as ‘pope and king.’ But neither Valloria’s popularity nor Maldonado’s valour and rank availed to save them from the scaffold to which, with so many illustrious Castilians, they were doomed after the crushing defeat of the Comuneros at Villalar.