At home, in contests with his own nobles, he had been hardly more successful. Indeed, with all the accumulated expenses of his long-continued attempts to obtain the imperial crown it would have required a man of almost superhuman force to keep his powerful vassals under control and at the same time subject them to the excessive taxation necessarily involved. This, as we have seen, Alfonso did not possess. The Infante Don Enrique was the first to rebel. His outbreak was followed by a more serious uprising of the nobles under the ostensible leadership of the king’s brother, the Infante Don Felipe, but was really fostered and maintained by Nuño de Lara, the boldest and most favored noble of the court. To restore harmony the king surrendered many of his own prescriptive rights, but even then the nobles were not satisfied and Nuño de Lara, inspired by this recently acquired power, objected to the royal decision to require no further payments of tribute from the king of Portugal. Alfonso, in anger, demanded that Nuño withdraw from the council; this he did but in open rebellion, successfully drawing with him a large number of the nobles. Many of these, apparently faithful to Alfonso, followed an intimation given them by Nuño and outwardly supported their sovereign while privately plotting with some of his powerful enemies, the king of Navarre and even the emir of Granada. In an endeavor to adjust matters Alfonso summoned a general convocation, which the aggrieved nobles, in an attitude of open affront, attended fully armed while their sovereign wore only civilian dress. At this meeting the monarch ceded still further privileges; but, pursuing their advantage, they finally came out in open rebellion and, gathering their army, marched away from Castile to the kingdom of Granada, burning and plundering as they went. Meanwhile Alfonso, by means of his eldest son and heir, Fernando de la Cerda, still endeavored to negotiate with them. In spite of all these internal troubles the crown of the Holy Roman Empire still held the uppermost place in the mind of the monarch and it was just at this juncture that he succeeded in arranging for his above mentioned visit to France and left his oldest son, Fernando de la Cerda, to govern in his stead. The latter altho only a boy of twenty years was already showing great ability as his father’s representative, when suddenly he died. Fate seemed determined that not one bright lingering hope should be permitted to relieve Alfonso’s long, unhappy reign.