Note 24 — MÉRIMÉE'S HISTORY OF PETER THE CRUEL. [20]

In various details of Don Pedro's life and character we trace resemblance to the eastern despot, although there seems no foundation for the charges of infidelity brought against him towards the close of his reign, and which may partly have originated, perhaps, in his close alliance with the Granadine Moors, a body of whose light cavalry for some time formed his escort. Contiguity of territory, commercial intercourse, and political necessities, had assimilated to a certain extent the manners and usages of Spaniards and Saracens, and given the former an oriental tinge, of which, even at the present day, faint vestiges are here and there perceptible. Don Pedro's orientalism was particularly perceptible in the mode of many of the executions that ensanguined his reign. He had constantly about him a band of cross-bowmen who waited on his nod, and recoiled from no cruelty. Occasionally we find him sending one of them to some distant place to communicate and execute the doom of an offending subject. This recalls the Turkish mute and bowstring. These death-dealing archers seem to have employed mace and dagger more frequently than axe or cord. They were assassins rather than executioners. They officiated in the case of Garci Laso. "Alburquerque, impatient of delay, warned the king that it was time to give final orders. Don Pedro, accustomed to repeat those of his minister, bade two of Alburquerque's gentlemen go tell the prisoner's guards to despatch him. The arbalisters, blind instruments of the king's will, mistrusted an order transmitted to them by Alburquerque's people, and desired to receive it from their master's mouth. One of them went to ask him what was to be done with Garci Laso. 'Let him be killed!' replied the king. This time duly authorised, the arbalister ran to the prisoner, and struck him down with a blow of a mace upon his head. His comrades finished him with their daggers. The body of Garci Laso was thrown upon the public square, where the king's entrance was celebrated, according to Castilian custom, by a bull-fight. The bulls trampled the corpse, and tossed it upon their horns. It was taken from them for exhibition upon a scaffold, where it remained a whole day. At last it was placed upon a bier, which was fixed upon the rampart of Camparanda. It was the treatment reserved for the bodies of great malefactors."—Mérimée, p. 73.