Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/472

 450 D P E D and thereby regulates the indication to the average pace. Obviously the pedometer is little better than an ingenious toy, depending even for rough measurements on the uni formity of pace maintained throughout the journey measured. PEDRO (PETER), the name borne by several sovereigns of Aragon, Castile, and Portugal. Three of them were contemporaries, and, to add to the confusion to which this has given rise, each of them was the son and successor of an Alphonso. Araijon. PEDRO IV. (1317-1387), surnamed &quot;the Ceremonious,&quot; succeeded his father Alfonso IV. in 1336, placing the crown upon his own head at Saragossa to make it quite plain that he did not hold of the pope. In 1344 he deposed his brother-in-law Jayme from the throne of Majorca, and again made the Balearic Isles, Cerdagne, and Eoussillon directly subject to the crown of Aragon. In 1346 jealousy of his brother Jayme led him to alter the succession in favour of his daughters, but two powerful unions or leagues in Aragon and Valencia compelled him in the following year anew to recognize the legitimate heir-presumptive. The victory of Epila, however, in 1348 enabled him to triumph over his factious nobles and to cancel the privileges they had extorted from him. In 1351 Pedro, desiring to strengthen his precarious hold upon the island of Sardinia, entered into an alliance with Venice, and began hostilities against Genoa, which, carried on at inter vals for many years, were definitively terminated only by his successor. In 1356 a breach of neutrality by some Catalan ships at San Lucar led to a war with the king of Castile, which was carried on with occasional suspensions until 1375, when the infanta Leonora of Aragon was married to Don Juan (afterwards John I.) of Castile. In 1377 Pedro succeeded in reconquering Sicily after the death of Frederick III., but, to avoid the threatened inter dict of Urban VI., he ceded the island to Martin, his grandson, retaining the suzerainty only. In 1382 he sent troops to Greece to seize, on his behalf, the duchy of Athens. Pedro died at Barcelona on 5th January 1387, and was succeeded by his son John I. He left a curious history of his reign, written in Catalan, which has been printed by Carbonell in his Chroniques de Espanya (1547). Three other kings of Aragon bore this name. PEDRO I. suc ceeded his father Sancho Ramirez on the throne of Aragon and Navarre in 1094, and died in 1104. The leading event of his reign was the conquest of Huesca (1096). PEDRO ll. (1174-1213) succeeded his father Alphonso II. in Il96. In November 1204 he was crowned in St Peter s, Rome, by Innocent III., in return for which honour he declared his kingdom feudatory of the Roman see and promised an annual tribute, not, however, without a strong protest on the part of his subjects, whose hostile demonstrations in the following year he had difficulty in repressing. In 1209 he purchased peace with Sancho VII. of Navarre, and in 1212 he, along with that sovereign, gave valuable help to Alphonso of Castile in securing the splendid victory over the Arabs at Navas de Tolosa. In the following year, having taken up arms on behalf of his brother- in-law, Count Raymond of Toulouse, he was slain in the disastrous battle of Muret (12th September 1213). He was succeeded by his only son, Jayme I., &quot;el Conquistador.&quot; PEDRO III. (1236-1285), son of Jayme I. and grandson of Pedro II., succeeded to the crowns of Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia in 1276. In 1262 he had married Constance, daughter of Manfred, king of the Sicilies, and on the strength--of this alliance he took advantage of the Sicilian Vespers to lay claim to the kingdom of Sicily. This involved him in a ruinous war, in the course of which his dissatisfied subjects united to assert their ancient &quot;fueros&quot; or privileges, exacting from him at Saragossa in 1283 the &quot; Privilegio General &quot;, which in spirit and import may be compared to the English Great Charter. Charles of Valois, invested by the pope with the crown of Aragon, sought to invade the kingdom, but was repulsed both by Innd and sea. Charles s death in 12S5, which terminated the war, was followed by that of Pedro in the same year. Castile and Leon, PEDRO I. (1333-1369), commonly surnamed &quot; the Cruel,&quot; but sometimes referred to as &quot; the Justiciary,&quot; was the only legitimate son of Alphonso XL, and was born at Burgos on 30th August 1333. When raised to the throne at Seville by his father s premature death before Gibraltar (29th March 1350), Pedro was a mere lad, with exceptionally small experience of courts and camps, having lived in comparative retirement along with his mother, Dona Maria of Portugal, in the Andalu- cian capital, while his illegitimate brothers, the children of Leonora de Guzman, the eldest of whom were Don Enrique (Henry), count of Trastamara, and Don Fadrique (Frederick), grandmaster of Santiago, had remained beside Alphonso, and had accompanied him on his warlike expe ditions. At the beginning of his reign he was thus, almost of necessity, compelled to abandon the conduct of affairs to more experienced hands ; by the skilful policy, accord ingly, of the powerful and ambitious Juan Alonso de Alburquerque, who had been his father s chancellor and prime minister, his many enemies and rivals were, for a time at least, successfully kept at bay. The king, how ever, soon began to assert his independence ; whereupon the minister, remembering how helpful a royal mistress had been for the furtherance of his own ends during the preceding reign, did not scruple to encourage Pedro s passion for the young, well-born, and beautiful Maria de Padilla, even after his marriage with Blanche de Bourbon had been arranged. His experiment proved a disastrous one, and not least so to himself. The influence of Maria and of her relations, which rapidly became great, was soon turned against the too politic Alburquerque ; and, as a first step towards his dismissal from power, they succeeded in making him seem less indispensable by effecting a superficial reconciliation between the king and his brothers. Then, on the minister s remonstrating against the conduct of Pedro in deserting Blanche for his mistress almost immediately after his marriage at Valladolid in June 1354, a complete change of administration took place, and Alburquerque retired to his estates. Shortly afterwards he was joined by the king s brothers Enrique and Fadrique in raising the standard of revolt in Castile ; in this formidable movement they were speedily joined by Pedro s cousins, the infantes of Aragon, as well as by increasing numbers of the ricos hombres and caballeros of the kingdom, and by several of the towns, their grievances being his repudiation of Blanche, his deposition of Alburquerque, and the murder of Juan Nunez de Prado, the master of Calatrava, for which he was believed to be responsible. The cortes of Toro accordingly asked him to take back his queen and dismiss the Padillas ; and so general was the national feeling in this matter that even his own mother deserted his cause, and on his giving evasive replies he found himself before the end of the year practically stripped of all his real authority, surrounded by officials of his enemies choosing, and virtually a prisoner in their hands. He succeeded, however, in making his escape from Toro to Segovia with a handful of followers in the following year, and the divergence of interest that soon arose to separate the Aragonese princes from the bas tard sons of Alphonso XI. so wrought in his favour that he was soon able (1356) to recover all the authority he had ever had, and to secure at least a transitory peace by the policy of reckless assassination which years previously he had inaugurated while Alburquerque was still his minister, and which he brought to a climax in the cold-blooded murder of his brother Don Fadrique at Seville in 1358, the tragedy to which he is said to have been specially indebted for his unenviable surname. In 1356 he already found himself strong enough to enter upon a war with his namesake Pedro IV. of Aragon, and, with inconsiderable intervals of truce brought about through the intervention of the papal legate, he continued to carry it on for several years. In 1365 he was still campaigning beyond the borders of his kingdom when Castile was invaded by the &quot;free companies &quot; of French and English troops under Du Guesclin and