Like his father, Bermudo III, though already married to the infanta of Castile, was at a tender age on his accession. Of this circumstance advantage was unworthily taken by Sancho el Mayor, king of Navarre, who, not satisfied with assuming the sovereignty of Castile in right of his queen, Doña Muña Elvira, the elder sister of the queen of Leon, and daughter of Don Garcia, the last count of Castile, made a hostile irruption into the states of his brother-in-law. Having passed the Pisuerga, the western boundary of Castile, he conquered as much of Leon as lay between that river and the Cea. Peace was, however, made on the condition that the king of Leon should confer the hand of his sister, Doña Sancha, on Don Ferdinand, one of King Sancho’s sons. But this peace appears to have been subsequently broken, doubtless through the ambition of the enterprising Navarrese; for, according to the Complutensian[p] and Toledan[q] annals, that king in 1034 possessed Astorga, and indeed most of the country as far as Galicia. Yet what need of conquest? As Bermudo continued childless, the wily monarch might safely cherish the hope that the crown of Leon would devolve on the brows of his son in right of the infanta, his daughter-in-law. On the death of Sancho, in 1035, his ample states were thus divided: to Garcia he left the kingdom of Navarre, the lordship of Biscay (which had been hitherto annexed to Castile), and a part of Rioja; to Ferdinand he bequeathed the new kingdom of Castile, and the conquests he had made between the Pisuerga and the Cea; to Ramiro fell the states of Aragon, which had hitherto continued a stateship as much dependent on Navarre as Castile on Leon; to another son, Gonsalo, he left Ribagorza, with some forts in Aragon. This policy could not fail to be followed by fatal results. While Ramiro made war on his brother of Navarre, Ferdinand I was summoned to the defence of the conquests which he held beyond the Pisuerga, and which Bermudo resolved again to incorporate with the kingdom of Leon. Aided by some auxiliary troops under his brother Garcia, he encountered Bermudo on the banks of the Carrion. The battle, which was fought in 1037, was sanguinary and long-continued; until the king of Leon impatiently spurred his horse into the midst of the hostile squadrons, and fell mortally wounded by the thrust of a lance. With Bermudo III ended the male line of the house of Leon. This prince deserved a better fate than that of falling by hostile hands at the premature age of nineteen. The zeal with which he rebuilt churches and monasteries; the valour which he exhibited against the Mohammedans of Portugal, from whom he took several fortresses; the firmness with which, even at that early age, he enforced the administration of justice; and his affability of disposition, rendered him deservedly dear to his people.[h] THE HISTORY OF CASTILE (1037-1109 A.D.) [Sidenote: [1037-1064 A.D.]]