Ebook The History of Peter the Cruel

The title of the work of which the present is a translation, is "Histoire de Don Pedre I, Roi de Castille." This title it has not been thought advisable to adopt, inasmuch as several of our English historians, and even so recent a writer as Sir James Mackintosh, confounding the Castilian King with his namesake and contemporary of Aragon, call him Pedro IV. The same error is observable in the later editions, both of Lord Berners' and Mr. Johnes' translations of Froissart. As, therefore, a large proportion of English readers might not recognize in Pedro I. the ally of the Black Prince, and the victim of Du Guesclin's treachery, the more familiar name, "Peter the Cruel," is affixed to these volumes.