bestriding armoured steeds, there were swarms of light horsemen, unencumbered by heavy armour and called genitours, from being mounted on the fleet Spanish steeds called jennets.  The desperate valour of Du Guesclin and his followers could not prevent utter disaster.  Henry fled in panic from the scene; Du Guesclin was again a prisoner, and the Najarilla was reddened by the blood of the thousands of fugitive Spaniards, for, caught as in a trap at the narrow bridge which offered the sole means of retreat, they were massacred without difficulty by the prince’s troops.  The victors marched on to Burgos, and, Don Henry having fled to France, Peter was restored with little further trouble to the Castilian throne.

The Black Prince remained in Castile all through the summer, waiting for the rewards which Don Peter had promised him.  His army melted away through fever and dysentery, and the prince himself contracted the beginnings of a mortal disorder.  Thus the crowning victory of his career was the last of his triumphs.  Like many other leaders of chivalry, he had not understood the limitations of his resources, and had dissipated on this bootless Spanish campaign means scarcely sufficient to grapple with the spirit of disaffection already undermining his power in Aquitaine.  With shattered health and the mere skeleton of his gallant army, he made his way back over the Pyrenees.  Henceforth misfortune dogged every step of his career.

Since 1363 the constant residence of the Black Prince and his wife, Joan of Kent, in Gascony, had been broken only by his Castilian expedition.  It was a wise policy to send the prince to hold a permanent court in Aquitaine, such as the land had never seen since Richard Coeur de Lion.  All that affability, magnificence, and chivalry could do to make his domination attractive might be confidently anticipated from so brilliant and high-minded a knight as the prince of Aquitaine.  The court of Bordeaux was as brilliant as the court of Windsor.  “Never,” boasted the Chandos Herald,[1] “was such good entertainment as his; for every day at his table he had more than four-score knights and four times as many squires.  There was found all nobleness, merriment, freedom, and honour.  His subjects loved him, for he did them much good.”  The sulky magnates of the south-west, such as John of Armagnac and Gaston Phoebus of Foix, found their bitterness tempered by the prince’s courtesy, while the boastful knights of Gascony looked forward to a career of honourable service under the descendant of their ancient dukes.  Feastings and tournaments were not enough to win all his subjects’ hearts; and the Black Prince strove with some energy to show that he was a ruler of men as well as the centre of a court.  It is to his credit that he cleared his inheritance from the free companies, so that Poitou and Limousin enjoyed far more prosperity and tranquillity than in the days of French ascendency.  Such new taxation as Gascon