The Junior Classics, Volume 4: Heroes and heroines of chivalry
General
The Junior Classics, Volume 4: Heroes and heroines of chivalry
Children's literature
Now, the kings of Spain were of the blood of the Goths, which was a
fierce blood, for it had many times come to pass among the Gothic
kings, that brother had slain brother. From this blood was King Don
Sancho descended, and he thought that it would be a reproach to him if
he did not join together the three kingdoms under his own dominion,
for he was not pleased with what his father had given him, holding
that the whole ought to have been his. And he went through the land
setting it in order, and what thing soever his people asked, that did
he grant them freely, to the end that he might win their hearts.
When King Don Sancho of Navarre, nephew of Don Ferrando, saw that
there was a new king in Castille, he thought to recover the lands
which had been lost when the king, his father, was defeated and slain
in the mountains of Oca. And now seeing that the kingdom of Ferrando
was divided, he asked help of his uncle Don Ramiro, King of Aragon;
and the men of Aragon and of Navarre entered Castille together. But
King Don Sancho gathered together his host, and put the Cid at their
head; and such account did he give of his enemies, that he of Navarre
was glad to lay no farther claim to what his father had lost. The King
of Castille was wroth against the King of Aragon, that he should thus
have joined against him without cause; and in despite of him he
marched against the Moors of Zaragoza, and laying waste their country
with fire and sword, he came before their city, gave orders to assault
it, and began to set up his engines. The Moors seeing that they could
not help themselves, made such terms with him as it pleased him to
grant, and gave him hostages that they might not be able to prove
false. They gave him gold and silver and precious stones in abundance,
so that with great riches and full honourably did he and all his men
depart from the siege.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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