Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/319

175 WAR OF THE SUCCESSION. 173 the monastery of Varatojo, on a bleak eminence chapter near the Atlantic ocean, when he suddenly fell ill, '. — at Cintra, of a disorder which terminated his ex- istence, on the 28th of August, 1481. Alfonso's fiery character, in which all the elements of love, chivalry, and religion were blended together, re- sembled that of some paladin of romance ; as the chimerical enterprises, in which he was perpetually engaged, seem rather to belong to the age of knight- errantry, than to the fifteenth century. ^^ In the beginning; of the same year in which the Dea'n of Co J the king of pacification with Portugal secured to the sovereigns ^""^son. the undisputed possession of Castile, another crown devolved on Ferdinand by the death of his father, the king of Aragon, who expired at Barcelona, on the 20th of January, 1479, in the eighty-third year of his age.^^ Such was his admirable constitution, that he retained not only his intellectual, but his bodily vigor, unimpaired to the last. His long life was consumed in civil faction or foreign wars ; and his restless spirit seemed to take delight in these tumultuous scenes, as best fitted to develope its various energies. He combined, however, with this intrepid and even ferocious temper, an address in the management of affairs, which led him to rely, for the accomplishment of his purposes, much more on negotiation than on positive force. He may be said to have been one of the first monarchs, 37 Faria y Sousa, Europa Por- 79. — Bernaldez, Reyes Catolicos, tuguesa, torn. ii. p. 423. — Ruyde MS., cap. 42. — Mariana, Hist. Pina, Chron. d' el Key Alfonso v., de Espaiia, (ed. Valencia,) torn, cap. 212. viii. p. 204, not. — Abarca, Reyes 38 Carbajal, Anales, MS., ano de Aragon, torn. ii. fol. 295.