But previous to the above date, an event took place in and around Zamora that has given national fame to the city, and has made it the centre of a Spanish Iliad hardly less poetic or dramatic than the Homerian legend, and therefore well worth narrating as perhaps unique in the peninsula, not to say in the history of the middle ages. When Fernando I. of Castile died in 1065, he left his vast territories to his five children, bequeathing Castile to his eldest son Sancho, Galicia to Garcia, Leon to Alfonso, Toro to Elvira, and Zamora to Urraca, who was the eldest daughter, and, with Sancho, the bravest and most intrepid of the five children. According to the romance of Zamora, she, Doña Urraca, worried her father's last moments by trying to wheedle more than Zamora out of him; but the king was firm, adding only the following curse: _"'Quien os la tomara, hija,_ _¡La mi maldición le caiga!'--_ _Todos dicen amén, amén,_ _Sino Don Sancho que calla."_ Which in other words means: "Let my curse fall on whomsoever endeavours to take Zamora from you.... Those who were present agreed by saying amen; only the eldest son, Don Sancho, remained silent." The latter, being ambitious, dethroned his brothers and sent them flying across the frontier to Andalusia, then Moorish territory. Toro also submitted to him, but not so Zamora, held by the dauntless Urraca and the governor of the citadel, Arias Gonzalo. So it was besieged by the royal troops and asked to surrender, the message being taken by the great Cid from Don Sancho to his sister. She, of course, refused to give up the town. Wherefore is not known, but the fact is that the Cid, the ablest warrior in the hostile army, after having carried the embassy to the Infanta, left the king's army; the many romances which treat of this siege accuse him of having fallen in love with Doña Urraca's lovely eyes,--a love that was perhaps reciprocated,--who knows? In short, the city was besieged during nine months. Hunger, starvation, and illness glared at the besieged. On the point of surrendering, they were beseeched by the Infanta to hold out nine days longer; in the meantime one Vellido Dolfo, famous in song, emerged by the city's postern gate and went to King Sancho's camp, saying that he was tired of serving Doña Urraca, with whom he had had a dispute, and that he would show the king how to enter the city by a secret path. According to the romances, it would appear that the king was warned by the inhabitants themselves against the traitorous intentions of Vellido. "Take care, King Sancho," they shouted from the walls, "and remember that we warn you; a traitor has left the city gates who has already committed treason four times, and is about to commit the fifth." The king did not hearken, as is generally the case, and went out walking with the knight who was to show him the secret gate; he never returned, being killed by a spear-thrust under almost similar circumstances to Siegfried's.