Chapter 178 - How the Master distributed the property of those who were guilty [of acting] against him
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 December 2023
Summary
After that well-deserved justice had been meted out to García González, the people could not speak of anything else other than the treason that he, along with others, had plotted against the Master. They made various comments on it, gave examples and, talking angrily among themselves, they criticised the Master as follows: ‘So let him get on with it if that is the way he wants it! What Dom Pedro did in the siege of Lisbon was not enough for him, when he wanted to give the city to the King of Castile so that the kingdom and all of us would be lost. He had him taken prisoner and then released him again so that he could afterwards deliver death to the Master as a reward for his release! He did not immediately order him to be killed or to be put in a prison from which he would never come out, in order to remove this threat from the kingdom, but released him after a few days as if it were a trivial matter that had caused him little hindrance. So now they can truly say the same as the old proverb, that whoever saves his enemy should die at his hands. The Master thinks that forgiving wicked men is a good thing to do; yet they carry out ever more evil deeds and play this game against him as you can all see.’
They told so many more of these proverbs and stories and in so many ways that they could not get tired of it.
Others said that the Master had done well, ordering such men to be pursued, caught and submitted to the justice they deserved. Yet this had availed him nothing because they had the best and swiftest horses that there were in the whole army, with the result that no one had ever been able to catch up with them.
Indeed, the Master, publicly and in everyone's presence, told of the great treason and evil against him, according to what the dead man had confessed, saying that now he was aware of it all and understood why Juan Alfonso used to brandish his lance, why each one of them had spoken in so many ways of how devoted they were to his service, and how all of them had been based on disservice and harm towards him.
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- The Chronicles of Fernão LopesVolume 3. The Chronicle of King João I of Portugal, Part I, pp. 362 - 365Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2023