summoned to the battlements Arias Gonzalo, who commanded the city for Urraca, he pronounced this celebrated impeachment in the following words:

"The Castilians have lost their Lord; the traitor Vellido slew him, being his vassal, and ye of Zamora have received Vellido and harboured him within your walls. Now therefore I say that

he is a traitor who hath a traitor with him, if he knoweth and consenteth unto the treason. And for this I impeach the people of Zamora, the great as well as the little, the living and the dead, they who now are and they who are yet unborn; and I impeach the waters which they drink and the garments which they put on; their bread and their wine, and the very stones in their walls. If there be any one in Zamora to gainsay what I have said, I will do battle with him, and with God's pleasure conquer him, so that the infamy shall remain upon you.”—P. 75.

In answer to this defiance, Gonzalo informed the champion, with great composure, that perhaps he was not aware of the law of arms in the case of impeachment of a council; which provided that the accuser should contend not with one only, but with five champions of the community successively, and his accusation was only held true if he retired victorious from this unequal contest. Ordonez, though somewhat disconcerted at this point of military law, which was confirmed by twelve alcaldes, chosen on each side, was under the necessity of maintaining his impeachment. Gonzalo, on the other hand, having first ascertained that none of the people of Zamora had been privy to the treason, resolved, that he himself and his four sons would fight in their behalf. With difficulty he is prevailed upon, by the tears and intreaties of Urraca, to let his sons first try their fortune. One of them enters the lists after his father had armed, instructed, and blessed

him. The youth is slain in the conflict; and the victor calls aloud, "Don Arias, send me another son, for this one will never fulfil your bidding.", He then retires from the lists to change his horse and arms, and to refresh himself with three sops of bread and a draught of wine, agreeably to the rules of combat. The second son of Gonzalo enters the lists, and is also slain. Ordonez then lays his hand on the bar, and exclaims," Send me another son, Don Arias, for I have conquered two, thanks be to God!" Rodrigo Arias, the eldest and strongest of the brethren, then encounters the challenger, and in the exchange of two desperate blows he receives a mortal wound; while, at the same time, the horse of Ordonez, also wounded, runs out of the lists with his rider. This was a nice point of the duello; for, on the one hand, the challenger had combated and vanquished his enemy; on the other, he had himself, however involuntarily, been forced out of the lists; which was such a mark of absolute defeat that even death was not held so strong. And there is a Spanish story of a duel, in which the defendant slew the challenged party; but the defunct being very corpulent and heavily armed, the victor was unable to heave him over the palisade, and after labouring the whole day to no purpose, was at sunset very rationally held to be convicted of the treason of which he had been accused; because he could not give the necessary and indispensable proof that he had vanquished the accuser. The judges of the field, in the impeachment of Zamora, did not choose positively to decide so nice a dependence. It would

be probably doing those worthy alcaldes injustice to suppose, that they were moved with compassion either for the challenger, who had still such an unequal contest before him, or for Don Arias, who having lost three of his children, was to risk his own life with that of his remaining son. But whether from unwonted feelings of pity, or because the case could not be judged, they held the third combat to be a drawn battle, and would not allow Ordonez to proceed in his accusation. Thus Don Arias, at the expense of the lives of his three gallant sons, delivered from impeachment the people of Zamora, born and unborn, living and dead, past, present, and to come, together with their waters, their food, their garments, and the stones of their battlements. It would have been, no doubt, as easy to have delivered up the murderer, whose act both parties agreed in condemning; but it is not the least fantastical part of the story, that he was suffered to elude all punishment, excepting that the Chronicle assures us he could not escape it in hell," where he is tormented with Dathan and Abiram, and with Judas the traitor, for ever and ever."

While this scene was passing before Zamora, Alfonso, the remaining brother of the deceased Sancho, received the news of his murder; and resolved immediately to quit Toledo, where he was the guest of the Moorish monarch, Alimaymon, in order to take possession of the kingdom of Castile, to which he was now sole heir. That monarch had already heard a rumour of Sancho's death, and posted guards in the passage to prevent his guest,

now become a hostage of importance, from departing without his leave. But when Alfonso boldly and openly requested his license to return to Castile, the generous Moslem answered,—

"I thank God, Alfonso, that thou hast told me of thy wish to go into thine own country; for in this thou hast dealt loyally by me, and saved me from that which might else have happened, to which the Moors have always importuned me. And hadst thou

departed privily thou couldst not have escaped being slain on taken. Now, then, go and take thy kingdom; and I will give thee whatever thou hast need of to give to thine own people, and win their hearts that they may serve thee."-P. 85.

He then requested him to swear friendship to himself and his sons; but in enumerating them, he "had a grandson whom he dearly loved, who was not named in the oath, and therefore Don Alfonso was not bound to keep it towards him." And the historian records it as a high instance of generosity, that Alfonso, was so far from taking advantage of this omission, that, on a future occasion, when Alimaymon was as much in his power as he had been in Alimaymon's, he compelled the Moor to release him from the oath, but only that he might take it again fully, freely, and with all solemnity. When King Alfonso arrived in his kingdom, he found that many of his nobility, but especially the Cid, nourished a suspicion that he had been in some sort accessory to the murder of his brother Sancho. To purge himself of this guilt, the king and twelve knights as his compurgators, made oath of his innocence, upon the Gospels in the church of St Gadea, at Burgos. The Cid administered the oath with a rigour which implied the strength of his

suspicions; and the following is the account of the manner in which the King was obliged to exculpate himself in the face of his people.

"And the King came forward upon a high stage, that all the people might see him, and my Cid came to him to receive the oath; and my Cid took the book of the Gospels and opened it, and laid it upon the altar, and the King laid his hands upon it, and the Cid said unto him, King Don Alfonso, you come here to swear concerning the death of King Don Sancho, your brother, that you neither slew him nor took counsel for his death; say now you, and these hidalgos, if ye swear this.' And the King and the hidalgos answered and said, Yea, we swear it.' And the Cid said, If ye knew of this thing, or gave command that it should be done, may you die even such a death as your brother the King Don Sancho, by the hand of a villain whom you trust; one who is not a hidalgo, from another land, not a Castilian; and the King and the knights who were with him said Amen. And the King's colour changed; and the Cid repeated the oath unto him a second time, and the King and the twelve knights said Amen to it in like manner, and in like manner the countenance of the King was changed again. And my Cid repeated the oath unto him a third time, and the King and the knights said Amen; but the wrath of the King was exceeding great, and he said to the Cid, 'Ruydiez, why dost thou thus press me, man? To-day thou swearest me, and to-morrow thou wilt kiss my hand.' And from that day forward there was no love towards my Cid in the heart of the King."-P. 88.

The Castilian monarch having this offence deeply engraved in his remembrance, took the first occasion which offered, to banish the Cid from his dominions, on pretence of some incursions which he had made on the friendly Moors of Toledo. The Cid then assembled the relations, vassals, and retainers, whom his influence or high military reputation had attached to his person, and resolved at their head to leave Castile, and subsist by a predatory war upon the Moors.