Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/210

66 66 CASTILE UNDER HENRY IV. PART icy, and the people of the south, on whom the charges of the expeditions fell with peculiar heavi- ness, from their neighbourhood to the scene of operations, complained that " the war was carried on against them, not against the infidel." On one occasion an attempt was made to detain the king's person, and thus prevent him from disbanding his forces. So soon had the royal authority fallen into contempt! The king of Granada himself, when summoned to pay tribute after a series of these in- effectual operations, replied " that, in the first years of Henry's reign, he would have offered any thing, even his children, to preserve peace to his domin- ions; but now he would give nothing."^ Hi8dusoiute 'Yhe coutcmpt, to which the king exposed him- self by his public conduct, was still further height- ened by his domestic. With even a greater indis- position to business, than was manifested by his father,^ he possessed none of the cultivated tastes, which were the redeeming qualities of the latter. Having been addicted from his earliest youth to de- bauchery, when he had lost the powers, he retained all the relish, for the brutish pleasures of a volup- tuary. He had repudiated his wife, Blanche of Aragon, after a union of twelve years, on grounds 3 Zuniga, Anales Eclesiasticos Guzman and Ponce de Leon, did y Seculares de Sevilla, (Madrid, not occur till a later period, 1462. 1667,) p. 344. — Castillo, Cr6nica, 4 Such was his apathy, says cap. 20. — Mariana, Hist, dc Espa- Mariana, that he would subscribe ua, torn. ii. pp. 415, 419. — Alonso his name to public ordinances, de Palencia, Cor6nica, MS., part, without taking the trouble to ac- 1, cap. 14 et seq. — The surprise quaint himself with their contents, of Gibraltar, the unhappy source Hist, dc Espafia, torn. ii. p. 423. of feud between the families of