[Sidenote: [1162-1475 A.D.]]
Owing to the alternate separations and unions of the Spanish kingdoms
and their picturesque activities within their own realms as well as with
each other and with foreign countries, the arrangement of the earlier
chronicle has always puzzled historians. To carry one realm too far
forward before going back to bring forward the other is destructive of a
sense of synchronology, while the attempt to carry them simultaneously is
as bewildering as it is difficult.
To carry Castile forward to that well-known time when Isabella wed
Ferdinand of Aragon is to be compelled to retrace our steps for three
centuries. It seems most convenient to do as follows: Leaving Castile
at the moment of the death of that easily remembered monarch Pedro the
Cruel, to take up Aragon and bring its history to the same point. But
once reaching there it leaves but little more to be said to bring Aragon
definitely to the marriage of its prince Ferdinand with the Castilian
princess Isabella. This, then, we shall do, returning thence to take up
the story of Castile after the death of Pedro the Cruel, after which time
the chronicle lies straight and single.[a]
[Sidenote: [1196-1276 A.D.]]
That gallant monarch Alfonso II, the liberal art-loving patron of the
troubadours, who was endowed with such brilliant princely qualities, had
either by right of inheritance or success in arms extended his sway over
a great part of southern France and curbed the might of the Saracens.
In 1196 he was succeeded in Aragon, Catalonia, and Roussillon by his
first-born son Pedro II, while the county of Provence and the rest of
his possessions in France fell to Alfonso the younger brother. Pedro
had himself crowned by Pope Innocent III, perhaps with the object of
investing the authority of the crown with greater prestige in the eyes
of the nobles. At his coronation he swore fealty to the pope and pledged
himself to pay an annual tribute to the apostolic see. In order to defray
this expense he introduced a new property-tax, the _monedaje_, to be
levied upon the nobles, who had hitherto been exempt from taxation. The
nobles and cities, incensed at the new impost and the abasement of the
crown, formed a “union” in consequence of which the king was compelled at
least to reduce the tax.
Pedro took part in the wars against the Albigenses as an ally of his
brother-in-law, Raymond of Toulouse, and in 1213 he met his death in
battle before the walls of the fortress of Muret, where he proved himself
worthy of the reputation for heroic strength which he had won two years
before in the famous victory of Ubeda in the plain of Tolosa. Pedro was a
true son of his age; a brave warrior of mighty arm and gigantic stature,
he was distinguished for chivalrous valour as well as for liberality and
sumptuous tastes; a gallant knight, who honoured women in poetry and song
and won repute among the troubadours of his day, though he was harsh and
unloving to his virtuous consort, Maria de Montpellier, granddaughter of
the Byzantine emperor Manuel. His knightly and royal qualities were often
overcast by debauchery, superstition, and religious fanaticism.
JAMES THE CONQUEROR (1213-1276 A.D.)
[Sidenote: [1213-1276 A.D.]]
James,[37] the son of Pedro and Maria, had to win by arms the throne
which his uncles contested with him, before he could resume the war of
conquest against the Saracens at the head of the chivalry of Aragon and
Catalonia. He then prosecuted it with such success as to gain for himself
the surname of “the conqueror.” He began by a campaign of four years’
duration, in which he subjugated Majorca and the rest of the Balearic
Islands, so long the headquarters of a ruthless system of piracy and the
terror of all Christian seaboard states of the Mediterranean.
The Catalans, whose important trade suffered great loss at the hands
of hostile pirates, took a particularly active part in the conquest,
and many Catalan knights and nobles were therefore endowed with fiefs
in the islands. A matter of even greater consequence to the future of
the kingdom of Aragon was James’ expedition against Valencia, which
the Spaniards regarded as a sacred inheritance from the great Cid
Campeador, the first Spanish conqueror. James invaded the territory of
Valencia with a great army of Catalan and Aragonese knights, which was
joined by many volunteers from southern France and even from England.
The emir Jomail ben Ziyan was forced to capitulate, and the capital
was vigorously besieged and reduced to submission (1238). The Saracen
population migrated elsewhere, either voluntarily or under compulsion,
their property was assigned to Christian settlers, Catalans occupied the
cities, and the land was given in fee among the victorious barons and
knights. Within the next few days the other towns fell into the hands
of the Aragonese conquerors, the chief of them being the strongholds of
Jativa, situate upon a hill in the midst of a fertile and lovely country,
and the town of Denia; and Moslem dominion was soon confined to the
kingdom of Granada and its strong, rock-built capitals, for the kings of
Castile and Portugal were likewise pushing their frontiers forward on the
Guadiana and the Guadalquivir.
James was one of the greatest monarchs of his century, and not only
because in the course of a reign of sixty-three years he extended the
kingdom he had inherited in every direction, nor because he conquered
Majorca and Valencia, nor even because in the closing years of his life
he fought with youthful ardour against the infidels in Murcia, who had
revolted afresh against their Christian conquerors with the help of
the Merinids from Africa, nor that he fought, as is reported, thirty
battles against the Moors; but because with the might of a conqueror he
combined the endowments of a wise and humane ruler. He was clement and
merciful to the Moslem who sued him for mercy, and greatly as he had the
propagation of Christianity at heart (he is said to have founded nearly
two hundred churches in the countries he conquered) he showed tolerance
and consideration for their faith and their religious and civil laws, and
defended the independence of his crown against the pretensions of the
papal see.
[Sidenote: [1266-1282 A.D.]]
But he was pre-eminent, above all things, as a lawgiver; it was he who
made the first compilation of the laws of Aragon; he founded the maritime
laws of Catalonia,[38] he promoted navigation and trade, laid the basis
of the free constitution of Barcelona, and was the author of a new
political organisation in Valencia. The Catalonian language, intellectual
culture, and the art of poetry likewise enjoyed his patronage; Jordi of
Valencia, to whom Petrarch owes many beautiful passages,[39] and other
minstrels lived at his court, which was not lacking in brilliance and
splendour. But his unfortunate idea of dividing the dominions he had
inherited and conquered among his sons caused him many pangs and wrought
great confusion in the kingdom of Aragon. Several treaties of partition
were agreed upon during his reign, and invariably brought rebellion and
civil war in their train. The great dismemberment he contemplated was
only prevented by the fact that the eldest infante, Alfonso, the son of
his marriage with Leonora of Castile, whom he afterwards divorced, died
before his father, and the third of the sons whom Violante [or Yolande]
of Hungary bore him sank into an early grave. Thus the great provinces of
Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia passed on united into the hands of Pedro
III, and only the Balearic Islands, with Montpellier, Roussillon, and
some of his other possessions fell to the younger brother, James, as a
separate kingdom. Fernan Sanchez, a natural son of the king, was drowned
in the river Chica by order of his brother the infante Pedro, after a
futile attempt at rebellion, and his property was sequestrated. James not
only sanctioned the deed but testified his satisfaction at it, so greatly
had the unnatural strife hardened his usually noble heart.[b] He died in
1276 and was succeeded by his son.
PEDRO III AND HIS SICILIAN WARS
Pedro III lost no time in restoring tranquillity in Valencia; but
scarcely was this object effected, when many of his rebellious barons,
whose constant end was the curtailment of the royal prerogative and the
oppression of the poor, broke out into an open insurrection. He reduced
them to obedience. In two years they again rebelled, but with no better
success: they were invested in the fortress of Balaguer, which was at
length compelled to surrender, and were for some time detained prisoners.
[Sidenote: [1282-1285 A.D.]]
But the most important transactions of Pedro were with Sicily. On the
death of Manfred, who had perished at Benevento in battle with Charles
of Anjou, whom the pope had invested with the fief, the French prince
took undisturbed possession of the Two Sicilies. When Conradin had
attained his sixteenth year, knowing the hatred borne to the French rule
by the Sicilies, and that the Ghibelline faction was at his command, he
resolved to vindicate his rightful claims. Despising the papal thunders,
which had consigned him while living to every ill that life can suffer,
and when dead to the goodly fellowship of Dathan, Abiram, and the devil,
he invaded Italy, passed, in contempt of the church, through the city of
Rome, where he was hailed with enthusiasm, and proceeded towards Naples.
He was defeated by his formidable adversary; was taken prisoner in the
retreat; was tried, condemned, and executed at Naples. The Ghibellines,
and all who revered the rights of blood, now turned their eyes towards
Constanza, daughter of Manfred and queen of Aragon, while the Guelfs and
all who recognised the papal supremacy over the kingdom continued the
zealous asserters of the rights of Charles, the pope’s feudatory. But the
tyrannical government of Charles, his rapacity and injustice, soon made
him hateful to the whole body of his subjects. The oppressed inhabitants
of Sicily despatched messengers with renewed complaints to Nicholas
III, to Michael Palæologus, emperor of Constantinople, and, above all,
to Pedro of Aragon, whom they regarded in right of Constanza as lawful
ruler, and whom they urged to expel the tyrant without delay.
Pedro was overjoyed at this opportunity of extending his dominions;
but to fight against the pope, the king of France, brother to Charles
of Sicily, and the whole party of the Guelfs, was too momentous an
undertaking to be lightly commenced. He first secured a considerable sum
from the Greek emperor, to whom the Sicilian usurper was obnoxious; he
next collected a fleet, assembled his barons, gave liberty to his rebel
subjects, whom he had placed in confinement; but took care to conceal his
purpose. It seems, however, to have been divined both by the pope and the
French king, who, alarmed at the extent of his preparations, demanded
for what object they were intended. By pretending that his expedition
was to be directed against Barbary, and by even sending an ambassador to
the pope (Martin IV), soliciting an indulgence for all who joined him in
warring against the infidels, he hoped to lull the suspicions of Europe.
But Martin, who was not to be deceived, contumeliously dismissed the
ambassador. This circumstance did not discourage Pedro, whose armament
was prosecuted with an alacrity inspired by the hope of success. An
accident which, operating like a spark on the inflammable temper of the
Sicilians, forced them into open insurrection, hastened his departure.
The citizens of Palermo rose as one man, and destroyed every Frenchman on
whom they could lay hands. Their example was followed by other towns--by
none more heartily than Messina; so that scarcely a Frenchman was left
alive from one extremity of the island to another. Such is the famous
massacre which posterity has called the Sicilian Vespers. [Burke[g]
estimates the number of slain at 28,000.]
When Pedro learned that the Messenians were courageously repelling
the assaults of Charles of Anjou, who had passed over from Naples to
reduce them, and when a deputation from Palermo arrived, beseeching him
to accept the crown, he laid aside his extreme caution, and proceeded
towards the western coast of the island. In August he landed at Trapani,
where his reception was enthusiastic; he hastened to Palermo, where he
was joyfully proclaimed king of Sicily. The inhabitants of Messina, still
invested by Charles, besought the new monarch to relieve them, and to
receive their homage. Pedro hastened to their aid. Charles now raised
the siege, and conducted his powerful armament towards the ports of
Calabria; it was pursued by that of Aragon, headed by Don James, a son
of Pedro, who took twenty vessels, with four thousand prisoners. But
the young prince, listening only to his ardour, instead of returning to
Messina, pursued Charles to a fort in Calabria, which he attempted to
take; where, being repulsed with some loss, he re-embarked his troops.
His father, indignant at his failure, deprived him of the naval command,
which was intrusted to a more experienced chief, Roger de Lauria.
No sooner did Pope Martin hear of Pedro’s proclamation at Palermo and
Messina, of the enthusiasm shown towards the monarch by the Sicilians,
and of the flight of Charles, than he excommunicated the Aragonese. A
defiance next followed between the two rivals; who agreed to decide their
quarrel by combat, one hundred knights on each side, in the city of
Bordeaux, in June the following year. Until the appointed day arrived,
Pedro employed himself in causing his queen, who had arrived from Aragon,
to be acknowledged by the Sicilians, and in reducing some of the forts on
the Neapolitan coast. Leaving Constanza and his son, Don James, in the
government of the island, he returned into his states, for the purpose,
as was believed, of preparing for the combat. But that combat never
happened, nor, amidst the conflicting statements of historians, can we
easily decide to which of the royal rivals the disgrace of its failure
must be imputed. It is certain that Pedro caused one hundred knights to
be selected for the occasion, and that he appeared secretly at Bordeaux,
attended by three horsemen only, and returned to his dominions before the
lists were opened. For this extraordinary proceeding he appears to have
had sufficient reason. He found that a considerable number of troops were
silently moving towards the south of France, with the view, as he feared,
of seizing his person. If the Aragonese writers are to be credited,
the seneschal of Bordeaux, whom he consulted on the subject, informed
him that the field was not a safe one, and advised him not to risk his
person. This account is the more probable, from the fact that Pope
Martin had previously condemned the combat, and had required the English
king, Edward I, to whom Bordeaux belonged, and who was to be present on
the occasion, not to guarantee a fair field, nor to be present, either
in person or by his seneschals. What confirms the suspicion that some
treachery was meditated is that, though the English monarch was thus
enjoined not to visit the field, in other words, was given to understand
that the battle would not take place, no such intimation was made to the
king of Aragon.
[Illustration: A ROYAL ATTENDANT, SPAIN]
While Pedro remained in Aragon, his admiral, Roger de Lauria, reduced
the greater part of Malta (1284). He afterwards defeated a French
fleet within sight of Naples, taking the prince of Salerno, the son of
Charles, prisoner. The vindictive pope now proclaimed a crusade against
the excommunicated king of Aragon: his legate zealously preached it in
France, declaring Pedro deprived of the crown, which he conferred on
Charles de Valois, who was thus to possess both it and that of the Two
Sicilies. Fortunately for Pedro both Sicily and Aragon required other
weapons than a furious churchman could wield before they could be drawn
from his sway.
Though the same indulgences as were awarded to all who warred for the
Holy Sepulchre were promised to such as engaged in this Spanish crusade;
though vast numbers, among whom was James, king of Majorca, brother and
vassal of the Aragonese king, flocked to the standard of Philip; though
that monarch lost no time in penetrating, by way of Roussillon, into
Catalonia, at the head of one hundred thousand men, these formidable
preparations ended in nothing. If Gerona, after a long and bloody siege,
capitulated, the French fleet was almost annihilated near Rosas by the
famous Roger de Lauria. The ranks of the invaders were so thinned by
pestilence and the sword, that Philip, leaving a garrison in Gerona,
immediately returned to Perpignan, where he died. The rear of his army in
this retreat was dreadfully harassed by Don Pedro, who recovered Gerona
with facility.
Pedro had just despatched his eldest son Alfonso with a small armament to
dethrone his brother Don James, as a punishment for the aid which that
prince had lent to the invaders, when death surprised him at Villafranca
del Panades (1285). In his will he left Aragon and Catalonia to Alfonso,
and Sicily to his second son, Don James.
Though Alfonso III heard of his father’s death immediately after his
disembarkation, he refused to return until he had dethroned his uncle.
As James was not much beloved by the inhabitants of these islands, whom
he had offended by his exactions, the enterprise was successful. The
dethroned king had still Montpellier, Conflans, and other possessions in
France: to these he retired, but they appear the same year to have been
laid waste by Roger de Lauria, the able and intrepid admiral of Aragon.
POLITICAL GROWTH
[Sidenote: [1283-1336 A.D.]]
During Alfonso’s absence, the nobles of Aragon had assembled in
Saragossa, to provide for the due administration of justice. Some of
them were not a little scandalised that he should have assumed in the
Balearic Isles the title of king, since, by ancient custom, it could be
assumed only after he had sworn before the assembly of the states to
observe the customs, privileges, immunities, and laws of the realm. No
sooner did they hear of his return to Valencia, than they despatched
several of their body to wait upon him, and to express their surprise at
his thus arrogating to himself the supreme power without their formal
sanction. He justified himself by replying that the crown was his by
right of succession, and that there would be time enough to guarantee
the constitutions of the realms at the ceremony of his coronation.
Accordingly, when that ceremony took place in the cathedral of Saragossa,
he fulfilled the conditions of the compact.[c]
Under Pedro III, the knightly monarch,--“girded,” as Dante says, “with
the cord of every virtue,”--the Aragonese, exasperated by the burdensome
taxes which the king was compelled to levy for his costly enterprises,
had extorted such great privileges and liberties in the General Privilege
of Saragossa (1283) that after Pedro’s successor, Alfonso III, a man of
milder temper, had amplified the _Privilegium_,[40] by fresh concessions
to the union of the nobles, the kingdom of Aragon was less like a
hereditary monarchy than a republican commonwealth with a responsible
chief. The king was not only bound to secure the consent of the estates
of the kingdom (_cortes_) in all important public affairs, especially
for the declaration of war, the conclusion of peace, the enactment of
laws, the imposition of taxes, and the selection and appointment of
the advisers of the crown (the ministers), but it was further decreed
that “without previous sentence of the justiciary and the cortes of
Saragossa, the king might not proceed against any member of the union
by way of capital punishment, imprisonment, or other injury, and that
should he nevertheless do so, the union had power to exclude him and his
descendants from succession to the throne, without thereby incurring the
guilt of wrong-doing or disloyalty.”
On Alfonso’s death without issue (1291) he was succeeded by his brother
James II, up to that time king of Sicily, a well-meaning, kindly, and
(as the surname he bears in history testifies) “just” sovereign, who
thought more of perfecting the laws and constitution and maintaining
peace and prosperity amongst his people than of enlarging the borders of
his kingdom. He handed Sicily over to his brother Frederick as a separate
kingdom; but on the other hand, after protracted wars with the Genoese,
he won the island of Sardinia which the pope had bestowed upon him in
fee. A war against the Moors, which he undertook in conjunction with
Ferdinand, king of Castile, led to no important results. In an attempt to
break down the overweening power of the aristocratic families, James had
the assistance of the great jurist Martínez de Salanova; the power of the
justiciary was strengthened.
But the greatest benefits which James conferred upon the Aragonese nation
was a law enacted in the assembly of Tarragona, by virtue of which
the kingdoms of Aragon and Valencia, the county of Barcelona, and the
suzerainty of Majorca were united in perpetuity and incapable of division
by will or gift, though each was to remain a kingdom possessed of its
separate constitution and cortes. The king, however, reserved the right
of assigning to his sons and other members of his family the possession
of particular cities and castles, a right of which his successors
frequently availed themselves to excess, and which often provoked
internecine quarrels and feuds.[b]
King James died in 1327, and was succeeded by his second son, Alfonso,
his first son having voluntarily renounced his claims that he might,
tradition says, give himself up more completely to his vices.[a]
Alfonso IV was doomed to much annoyance from the recent conquest of
Sardinia. In 1330 the Genoese, incensed that the Catalans, their
rivals in commerce, should have obtained a settlement in seas which
they considered as exclusively their right, not only fomented a spirit
of disaffection among the islanders, but sent a fleet to invest the
capital. A bloody war ensued, the details of which would afford little
interest. To stay these hostilities the pope frequently interfered, but
without effect; the Genoese insisted on an ample indemnification for the
expenses of their armaments; the Aragonese would consent to none. Thus
the warfare raged during the whole of this prince’s reign. Alfonso, like
his predecessors, was not averse to encourage the rebellions which at
this period almost continually afflicted Castile; but without deriving
any ultimate advantage from his ungenerous policy. If the internal
state of his own kingdom was tranquil, it was not so in his own house.
His eldest son and destined successor, Don Pedro, offended that he had
bestowed on Alfonso--another son, by a second wife--some domains of
the crown, complained loudly of his prodigality. The queen, Leonora of
Castile, at whose instigation the alienation had been made, cherished a
deep resentment against her stepson. Pedro despised her anger; and, to
incense her the more, seized on Jativa, which had been assigned to her
on her marriage with his father, and loudly proclaimed his intention of
revoking every grant made by the king, whenever he should succeed to the
sovereignty. It was not in Alfonso’s power to stifle these dissensions,
which not only imbittered his peace but aggravated the hydropsical
disease under which he had long suffered. He died at Barcelona, in 1336.
[Sidenote: [1336-1347 A.D.]]
No sooner had Pedro IV ascended the throne, than Queen Leonora,
apprehensive of the consequences of her late quarrel with him, fled to
Fraga, whence she implored the protection of her brother Alfonso, king
of Castile. Alfonso naturally espoused his sister’s cause. The pope
despatched a legate to exhort the two kings to settle their dispute by
negotiations, and to insist on justice being done to Queen Leonora.
Their deliberations ended in nothing, beyond a suspension of actual
hostilities. Some years having elapsed, in 1345 the king, so far from
wishing to do his stepmother justice, endeavoured to seize the domains
belonging to his two brothers, Ferdinand and Juan, on the pretext that
the revenues of the crown were materially injured by the prodigality of
their common father. On the representations of the Castilian king, he
again suspended, though he was far from abandoning, his purpose. The
troubles which agitated his kingdom will account for this temporary
forbearance.
He offended his barons, in 1347, by purposing to set aside the order
of succession, as established by Don Jayme el Conquistador (James the
Conqueror), which, on the failure of direct heirs male, called in the
collateral male branches--or, in other words, which enforced the Salic
law. As Pedro, by his queen Maria of Navarre, had only a daughter--the
infanta Constanza--his brother Don James was the presumptive heir to the
crown. To secure the succession to his daughter, he assembled twenty-two
theologians and civil jurists, nineteen of whom readily sanctioned her
right. They knew that Doña Petronilla had not been excluded by the
accident of sex; that in Navarre and Castile women were called to the
succession; and they could not approve the arbitrary regulation of James
I, nor recognise it as binding on his successors. But however weighty
these reasons, they had no effect on the prince whom they tended to
exclude, and who resolved to vindicate his supposed claims by force. Amid
the elements of discontent which lay scattered on every side, he had no
difficulty in collecting means of resistance.
From the causes just detailed, and from the restless ambition of his
barons, who constantly aimed at diminishing the royal authority, a
formidable confederacy was soon formed against the king. It consisted
of prelates, barons, magistrates, and a majority of the great towns.
They formed themselves into a political union, and bound themselves by
oath never to cease their opposition to the king until their privileges
rested on some surer guarantee than the royal engagement, and until the
Salic law became fundamental in the state. At the head of this league
was Don James. A similar one was soon formed in Valencia, under the
guidance of the infante Ferdinand. Both diligently raised troops to take
the field against the king. Conscious of their united strength, they
now loudly demanded the convocation of the states, which accordingly
met at Saragossa, and which were, as usual, opened by the monarch.
Among the demands made by the union, not the least obnoxious was the
nomination of the public officers by themselves--a concession which, as
before related, James II had been constrained to grant, and which they
insisted should thenceforward be held as a fundamental law of the realm.
Pedro showed great reluctance to sanction it; but on being told that,
if he refused to do so, the states would immediately proceed to a new
election, he no longer withstood the torrent. From that moment, however,
he resolved to effect the destruction of the union, if not by force, by
corruption. So well did he labour, so efficaciously were his gold and
promises distributed that in a few days he gained over a few of the most
influential members.
[Sidenote: [1347-1356 A.D.]]
The king soon closed the states, without yielding any further to the
demands of the union, and hastened into Catalonia, with the avowed
purpose of collecting troops, to reduce the whole body to obedience. That
the leaguers did not prevent his departure was owing to the suspicions
irresistibly forced on their minds that there was treachery in their
camp, and that he had more secret adherents than they had expected. He
was followed to Barcelona by the infante Don James, who sickened and died
in that city, not without suspicions of poison. The union of Valencia,
nowise discouraged by the ill success of that of Aragon, immediately
invested the fortresses which held for the king, whose troops they
defeated before Jativa. The infante Ferdinand, who was now proclaimed
lieutenant-general of that province and head of the confederacy, with a
force estimated at thirty thousand obtained a second victory over the
royalists. Pedro now hastened from Barcelona, to crush in person this
formidable rebellion.
He had soon an army on foot with which two of his generals attacked,
defeated, and took Ferdinand.[41] The infante, however, from fear of the
king’s vengeance, was conducted into Castile. Pedro himself advanced
against Saragossa, the very stronghold of faction. One instance of ill
fortune had damped, as much as success had encouraged, the rebels: they
received him with great humility, renounced the privileges of the union,
and threw themselves wholly on his mercy. Thirteen of the most obnoxious
ringleaders were put to death; the rest he pardoned. In an assembly
of the states, which he was no longer afraid of convoking, the _ricos
homes_ [or _hombres_] and deputies solemnly renewed the renunciation of
the privileges claimed by the union; in presence of them all, the king
tore in pieces the registered act of that body, but at the same time he
confirmed his subjects in the possession of all their ancient rights.
Aragon was now pacified; its union was no more: but Valencia remained in
rebellion. Having assembled a formidable army, James marched into that
province, and, in a general battle near the capital, triumphed over the
leaguers. Valencia immediately surrendered at discretion.
[Sidenote: [1356-1365 A.D.]]
On the termination of these troubled scenes, Leonora and one of her sons
took refuge in Castile. But misfortunes assailed them there, superior,
perhaps, to any which would have befallen them in Aragon. How the infante
Juan was murdered at Bilbao, and Leonora herself in the castle of Castro
Xeres, by order of Pedro the Cruel, has been related in the reign of
that monarch. Ferdinand, indeed, escaped the vengeance of the tyrant;
but, as we shall soon see, a fate no less tragical awaited him. The
misunderstanding between the two Pedros commenced in 1356, on the refusal
of the Castilian to restore a prize made at sea by one of his Biscayan
pirates. The second offence was committed by an admiral of Catalonia,
who, under the eyes of the Castilian, captured two Pisan vessels--a
power with which the Aragonese were at war--in the port of Santa Maria.
With some justice, the Castilian remonstrated against the violation of
a neutral port; and on the refusal of his brother sovereign to make
satisfaction for it, he levied a heavy contribution on the Catalan
inhabitants of Seville, and declared war against Aragon. Hostilities now
commenced, with various success and many suspensions.
[Illustration: CORDOVA]
In general, the success of the war rested with the Castilian. In 1363,
through the interference of the papal legate, the first peace was made,
the secret conditions of which were of an atrocious character. Pedro
of Aragon engaged not only to remove by death the obnoxious brothers
of the Castilian, but his own, the infante Ferdinand. A servant of
Count Henry of Castile dealt the victim a fatal blow. Henry himself was
spared--doubtless because Pedro foresaw that his new ally of Castile
would not fulfil his engagements; perhaps, also, because he himself had
no disposition to do so. His anticipations were right: war was renewed by
the Castilian. His operations were as indecisive as those of the former.
Seeing that the war did not and could not lead to any result, in 1365
Pedro concerted with the count of Trastamara the invasion of Castile,
and the dethronement of the Castilian king. The aid which Henry obtained
from France, the fate of his first and second invasions, we have already
related. But the Aragonese king--so true it is that no honour can long
subsist among the wicked--was never on good terms with the new king of
Castile. He insisted on Murcia, which Henry, while count of Trastamara,
had agreed to resign, in the event of his obtaining the Castilian throne;
and on the refusal of that prince to dismember so important a province
from the crown, not only coolness, but actual hostilities, between the
two kingdoms were preparing. But those hostilities were soon averted by
the papal legates; and the truce was, from time to time, prolonged, until
1374, when peace was finally arranged between the two monarchs.
[Sidenote: [1338-1386 A.D.]]
The foreign transactions of Pedro were of some importance. In 1338 began
his misintelligence with Don James, king of Majorca, whose dethronement
he appears to have meditated from the commencement of his reign. Though,
in 1339, James did homage for his kingdom, his destruction was no less
resolved; his unpopular rule afforded Pedro well-founded hopes of success.
In 1343, Don Pedro sailed with a very formidable armament, landed in
Majorca, and was immediately joined by the islanders. Thus universally
deserted, James fled, leaving the three islands in the power of his
brother-in-law. In opposition to the remonstrances of the pope, who
compassionated the misfortunes of the fugitive king, his possessions
in France were threatened, and several places in Roussillon speedily
reduced. This war beyond the Pyrenees appears to have been as
disagreeable to the Catalans and to the Aragonese as it was to the pope;
and only by force could the king obtain supplies for conducting it. The
following year (1344) he declared by a solemn decree that the Balearic
Isles should forever form an integral portion of the Aragonese crown; and
again penetrated into Roussillon, the whole of which, except the capital,
Perpignan, he speedily reduced. The unfortunate James was later killed in
a skirmish.
To Pedro, as to his two predecessors, Sardinia proved a sharp thorn in
the crown. His obstinacy in retaining possession of an island which
experience had shown would never willingly own his sway, which cost him
so many successive campaigns, drew on him the frequent remonstrances of
his states, and the refusal of supplies. As if one ruinous war for an
unattainable object were not sufficient, on the death of Frederick, king
of Sicily, in 1377, who had married his daughter Constanza, he claimed
that crown, and showed a disposition to arm in defence of his claim.
But for the obstinacy of his eldest son and heir, Don Juan, who, in
1384, became a widower, whom he wished to marry with the young princess
Maria, daughter of the late king Frederick, and now settled on the throne
of Sicily, but who secretly formed the indissoluble connection with a
French princess, the effect of his policy would have been an immediate
union of the two crowns. It may, however, be doubted whether such a
union was desirable; since from the distance of the two kingdoms, and
the contiguity of the island to Naples, it could not long have been
perpetuated.
[Sidenote: [1386-1387 A.D.]]
The ambition of Pedro was insatiable; but it was also senseless, as
it grasped at impossibilities. Hearing that some people of Athens
and Patras, who were of Aragonese extraction--the descendants of the
crusaders, who had conquered this duchy--had risen to establish his
domination, he sent an armament to their aid, and was ultimately
acknowledged. It need, however, be scarcely observed that possessions so
far removed from the seat of power would yield but a nominal allegiance,
and would soon be lost. But there was no advantage, however small in
magnitude or transient in duration, which he was not at all times ready
to grasp--generally without much regard to the rights or feelings of
others. The avidity with which, in 1386, he seized on the city of
Tarragona, the government and sovereignty of which had long rested with
the archbishops of that see, is affirmed by some historians to have been
the cause of his death.[42] He died early in the month of January, 1387,
after an agitated reign of fifty-one years.
The duplicity of this monarch was only equalled by his violence; of
sincerity and justice he was wholly destitute; and in savage barbarity he
was scarcely exceeded by his namesake of Castile.
With many of the vices and none of the virtues of humanity, he was
neither loved nor respected; but, in return, he was feared. It is
impossible not to admire his constancy in reverses: he deviated not from
his purposes, nor suffered his mind to be depressed, in the most critical
periods of his reign--and few princes were ever placed in circumstances
more critical--yet he almost uniformly gained his end. Justice must also
allow that, whatever were his personal vices, he was no enemy to the
lowest class of his people. During the reign of this prince, the era of
Cæsar was abolished, and the Christian adopted for the two chief kingdoms
of Spain; in 1350 at Saragossa, and in 1383 at Segovia.[c]
Pedro IV enlarged the powers of the justiciary, enabling him to oppose
his veto to usurpations on the part of the crown in the same way as to
the encroachments of the feudal aristocracy; he provided for the swift
and careful administration of justice; promoted the study of law, and
showed favour to the legal and juridical profession. Whenever occasion
offered and he was not prevented by the inhibitory intercession or legal
warrant of the justiciary, he curbed the usurpations and arbitrary action
of the great nobles and increased the privileges and power of the knights
and burghers.[b]
[Sidenote: [1387-1408 A.D.]]
In 1387, Juan I was peaceably acknowledged. His accession was regarded
with great apprehension by his stepmother, Sybilla (the late king led
four ladies to the altar), who, since 1384, had been his open enemy. The
reason of this animosity was here, as in former cases, the eagerness
of the king to alienate the crown domains in favour of his new queen
and her family, and the indignant opposition of the heir apparent. At
one time, so vindictive was the queen that she had expelled the infante
from the palace, and had probably instigated her uxorious husband to
try him, and exclude him from the succession; but the protection of
the grand justiciary of Aragon had screened him from her malice: now,
it was her turn to dread his displeasure. Just before the death of
Pedro, she fled from Barcelona, accompanied by her brother: they were
pursued by the Catalonians; were brought back, and imprisoned until
the pleasure of the new monarch, who then lay ill at Gerona, could be
learned. On his recovery, he hastened to that city; caused the queen to
be tried as a witch, who had enchanted the late king, and several of her
kindred and servants as accomplices. Some of the latter were executed;
and she herself would probably have shared the same fate, but for the
interference of the papal legate, and more still for the facility with
which she restored the fortresses conferred on her by her royal husband.
These possessions were immediately transferred to the new queen.
The eagerness which the new king showed to gratify his queen Violante,
surprised and offended the Aragonese. As her disposition was gay, she
insisted on converting the palace into a theatre: balls, concerts,
theatrical representations, and the exhibitions of the _gaya ciencia_,
succeeded each other without intermission. As the Aragonese themselves
were too sober or too dull to excel in such diversions, professors were
brought from France, and even schools established for instruction in the
idle art. It became not merely the relaxation, but the business of life;
the duties of government were neglected or despised, until remonstrances
both frequent and loud fell on the royal ear. Apparently, however,
they produced little effect, beyond the convocation of the states at
Monzon, to deliberate on this pernicious novelty. There the prelates,
nobles, and deputies insisted that the king should expel from his palace
his singers and dancers, his buffoons and his poets--above all, Doña
Carraza Villaragut, one of the queen’s ladies, and the chief promoter of
such fooleries. At first he resisted this interference with his royal
recreations; but when he perceived that his barons were in earnest, that
they were even preparing to arm for his moral reformation, he yielded:
the fiddlers were dismissed, and with them the obnoxious lady.
The short reign of this prince was not without its troubles. An
insurrection broke out among those most restless and faithless of
subjects, the Sardinians. As usual, the efforts of his generals to
repress it were but partially successful. The affairs of Sicily were
not more promising. None of these commotions appears to have occasioned
King Juan the least anxiety: he resumed his diversions, that of hunting
especially, with as much eagerness as before, leaving the cares of
government to his queen. One day, while occupied in this favourite
occupation in the forest of Foja, he fell from his horse, and was killed
on the spot.
On receiving intelligence of this catastrophe Aragon, Catalonia, and
Valencia proclaimed Don Martin, brother of the late king, who was then in
Sicily supporting the rights of his son and daughter-in-law, sovereigns
of that island. This choice gave great umbrage to Matthieu count de
Foix, who had married the eldest daughter of Juan, and who contended
that the crown belonged to him in her right. He collected troops and
penetrated into Catalonia; but he found the inhabitants averse to his
pretensions, and indignant at his proceedings. As the states were sitting
at Saragossa, he now adopted the wiser mode of deputing ambassadors to
that assembly, with instructions to espouse his rights, which, according
to the laws of legitimate succession, were well founded. But Aragon had
seen only one female sovereign, Doña Petronilla, and had for some time
been inclined to consider the Salic law as tacitly in force. The count
met with a repulse both there and at Barcelona; but he hoped that arms
would be more effectual than arguments; and, with a second and more
numerous army, he invaded Aragon. There he and his countess solemnly
assumed the royal title and arms, and reduced several towns; but he was
soon compelled to retire into Navarre.
[Sidenote: [1408-1412 A.D.]]
Having pacified Sicily, in appearance at least, and caused his son and
daughter-in-law to be acknowledged by the rebels, Martin, who seems to
have been in no anxiety about the security of his kingdom, proceeded
to Sardinia and Corsica, with the view of restoring tranquillity also
in those islands. The following year he convoked his prelates, barons,
and deputies at Saragossa, and caused his son, the Sicilian king, to be
acknowledged his successor; it was also decreed that Sicily and Aragon
should forever be united under the same sceptre. No sooner had Martin
arrived in Spain, than Sardinia again became the theatre of civil war.
The Aragonese had acknowledged the rival pontiff, Benedict, and Boniface
had conferred the fiefs of Sardinia and Sicily on the count de Molineto.
In 1408, the Sicilian king marched against the rebels, who, with eighteen
thousand infantry, did not refuse the battle. It ended in a complete
triumph for the king, and was followed by the surrender of an important
fortress. As the heat of the weather began to be intensely felt, the
victor returned to Cagliari. That heat and the festivities consequent on
his success threw him into a fever, which, though not in itself fatal, he
is said to have rendered so by incontinence. He died on the 24th of July,
1409. On the death of this prince Martin and the Aragonese were anxious
to name a successor to the crown.[c]
Civil war was imminent when King Martin departed this life (1410),
leaving the succession of the kingdom by his last will and testament
to him to whom it was lawfully due. By his death the male line of the
counts of Barcelona became extinct--a dynasty which had vigorously and
gloriously filled the throne of Aragon for nearly three centuries.
INTERREGNUM IN ARAGON (1410-1412 A.D.)
[Sidenote: [1410-1414 A.D.]]
No nation whose political sagacity was less highly developed by a free
constitutional and political system could have emerged from the two years
of revolution upon which Aragon now entered without detriment to its
liberty and legal institutions. For during the interregnum the kingdom
fluctuated between two perils; it might either have broken up into its
three constituent parts or succumbed to a military despotism.
Count James of Urgel, an ambitious and unscrupulous nobleman, counted the
majority of the great nobles of Aragon, more particularly the partisans
of the powerful family of Luna, among his adherents, the cortes of
Catalonia was on his side, and what his title might lack he was prepared
to make good by the sword, for the lower classes everywhere were in
his service. The murder of the archbishop of Saragossa by his brutal
associate Antonio de Luna, an act of violence in which he himself was not
unconcerned, was intended to cow all resistance. The _ricos hombres_[43]
saw in anticipation the return of the time when the right of the mailed
fist should override the law, when the aristocracy, allied with the town
rabble, should triumph over the middle classes, and the anarchy of the
unions settle down upon the country once more. The danger was realised
by the wise justiciary Cerdaño, his friends and those likeminded with
him, chief among whom were Gil Ruiz de Lihori, governor of Aragon, and
Berengar de Bardaxi, a man distinguished alike for genius and learning,
and to their judicious and patriotic exertions the preservation of the
ancient constitution is mainly due. Allying themselves with the freemen
of the communes and the minor nobility, they endeavoured to force the
decision into the hands of the cortes. Fortunately for them the great
nobles were split up by faction, for the Urrea family sided with the
constitutional party out of hatred to the Lunas, and their ranks were
soon further reinforced by the accession of the Heredia family, to which
the murdered archbishop belonged. The latter contrived that the infante
Ferdinand should garrison the frontier with Castilian troops to prevent
violent measures on the part of the count of Urgel.
Nevertheless the situation was full of peril, owing to the mutual
jealousies of the three divisions of the kingdom; the cortes of each held
separate consultations and each was anxious to give the casting vote. It
was then that the patriotic energy of the men above mentioned intervened
to save the kingdom from impending ruin. They proposed that a general
parliament should be called together, and that the legal decision should
be left to it, as King Martin had wished; representing at the same time
to the separate assemblies that if the question of the succession were
decided by the sword, the victor would dictate new laws at the sword’s
point, as though to a conquered nation. According to their proposal
the cortes of the three kingdoms were to elect committees for joint
deliberation. By this time, however, they were all too deeply imbued
with party spirit, and the cortes of Valencia refused to co-operate with
the rest. Those two astute politicians Cerdaño and Bardaxi then ventured
upon a bold stroke. They induced the cortes of Aragon and Catalonia to
authorise them to nominate a committee of nine members at their own
discretion from the three divisions of the country. This committee was to
sit at Caspe on the Ebro, and after conscientiously examining the claims
of all pretenders was to give its decision according to law. The Urgel
party at Valencia tried to interfere, but the victory of the barons at
Murviedro put an end to their resistance, and the patriotic caution and
justice displayed by Cerdaño and Bardaxi in the selection of the nine
secured general recognition and public confidence.
While the whole country was a prey to tumultuous passions, factions at
strife one with another, civil war raging with all its accompaniments of
crime, rape, and ignominy, these nine men--who were held in the highest
esteem by all men, not only for learning and experience but also for
strictness of morals and blameless life, and who, like Bardaxi, Ferrer,
and Aranda Valseca, were among the first jurists of their day--undertook
a laborious examination of the claims submitted to them by the agents of
the various pretenders. The count of Urgel had the largest following,
and if his Aragonese origin and his descent through the male line were
taken into account he would necessarily have had the prior claim; but his
despotic temper, always apt to choose methods of violence rather than of
law, made them apprehensive of a tyrannic government if he were chosen,
and the majority of the electoral college therefore decided in favour of
Ferdinand, infante of Castile, whose mother Leonora had been the daughter
of Pedro IV, and the wife of Henry II.
ARAGON UNDER RULERS OF THE ROYAL HOUSE OF CASTILE
No better choice could have been made, and accordingly the new king was
acknowledged by the estates of the three united kingdoms as soon as he
had confirmed the rights and liberties of the realm (1412). Ferdinand,
who combined justice and clemency with vigour, restored tranquillity and
order, and used his power to overawe the malcontents both in Aragon and
in the islands. But the count of Urgel could not brook defeat. Ferdinand
treated him with the utmost distinction, but in spite of all, impelled by
his own ambition and incited by his imperious wife, he presently raised
the standard of rebellion. He invaded and ravaged Catalonia with an army
of mercenaries which the duke of Clarence had handed over to him in
Guienne, but was defeated by Ferdinand (1413), and paid the penalty of
his unlawful deeds by loss of fortune and perpetual imprisonment.
[Sidenote: [1414-1454 A.D.]]
In the following year Ferdinand added splendour to his accession to the
throne by a gorgeous coronation at Saragossa. Thus the crowns of Castile
and Aragon were worn by scions of the same reigning house, a prelude
to the future union of the two kingdoms under Ferdinand’s grandson and
namesake.
Through the prudence and patriotic zeal of one statesman and friend
of the people, Aragon had passed through a dangerous crisis without
injury to her government or liberties. Ferdinand of the ruling house
of Castile, after he had taken the oath of fealty to the constitution,
which he did according to custom, kneeling bareheaded before the
justiciary, was recognised as king of the united realm and received the
homage of the cortes. This upright and well-disposed monarch, Ferdinand,
conscientiously observed the laws and even respected and acknowledged
the excessive liberties and privileges of the rich commercial town of
Barcelona on an occasion when it was extremely inconvenient to himself to
do so; but he died after four years’ reign (1416).
His son, Alfonso V, busied himself during the greater part of his reign
with the affairs of Naples. That newly acquired kingdom in the beautiful
country of the Apennines, where a docile people bowed in obedience and
submission to the will of the master, and where the senses were courted
with a rich, luxurious life, elevated through social culture and adorned
with art and science, was more congenial to Alfonso’s inclinations than
his hereditary domain of Aragon with its rigorous legal forms and its
earnest population; therefore he preferred a residence in Naples, whilst
his native kingdom was governed by a regency. At its head was the king’s
brother Juan, afterwards Juan II, a prince well-versed in statecraft
and sharing, in regard to politics and public morality, the faithless
principles of his time. Already as governor and regent he gave signs of
that inclination to despotism and tyranny which later on, when he had
succeeded his brother on the throne, he openly displayed, so that the
estates took care to secure their constitution against invasion while
there was yet time.
[Illustration: SPANISH NOBLEMAN, FIFTEENTH CENTURY]
We have seen what importance and consideration were attached to the
position of chief justice or justiciary of Aragon, the guardian and
protector of the laws. To secure the office against violation and
despotism of any kind, it was decreed that the holder should retain
office for life, and could only be removed by the king with consent of
the estates and on sufficient grounds (1442). There was no danger that a
legal institution of this nature, standing as it did between the throne
and the people, would be diverted against the laws of the country, since
the justiciary was subject to a regular and close inquiry into the
administration of his office from a committee of the states. Besides
this, a navigation law which forbade foreign vessels to ship cargoes in
any of the domains under the crown of Aragon was passed in the reign of
Alfonso V (1454), an important enactment, which gave a new impulse to the
maritime trade of Barcelona, the Catalan capital, at whose instigation
the regulation was made. Thus, both in constitutional progress and in
commercial policy, Aragon was the forerunner of the island kingdom of
Britain.
[Sidenote: [1442-1458 A.D.]]
The reign of Juan, both as regent and afterwards as king, turns to a
great extent on the acquisition of the kingdom of Navarre and the family
quarrels which it kindled. In 1442 the mountain country on either side
of the Pyrenees passed to the princely house of Aragon by the death of
Blanche, wife of Juan, and previously the widow of King Martin. She
had inherited Navarre from her father Charles III and by her will her
patrimonial domains were to fall as an independent lordship to her eldest
son Charles, prince of Viana. More as a matter of courtesy than a legal
restriction the condition was added that, before assuming the government
of the country, he should obtain the consent and approbation of his
father. Juan seems at first to have made no difficulty to his son’s
taking possession, so that Charles, while his father continued to bear
the rank and title of king of Navarre, conducted the administration for
several years as governor and ruler of his mother’s inheritance.
But when the prince of Aragon contracted a second marriage with Juana
Henriquez, daughter of a Castilian admiral of the blood royal, rivalries
were awakened which soon assumed a malevolent character. According to the
disposition of her husband, the new consort, an imperious, ambitious,
and enterprising young lady, was to conduct the government of Navarre
in conjunction with the prince of Viana. But the divided rule did not
satisfy her proud spirit; as queen of Navarre she desired to be the only
person to issue orders, and exhibited an arrogant demeanour towards
her stepson. The disagreement soon passed into open hostility when the
two conflicting parties of the Beaumonts and the Agramonts took the
opportunity to fight out their ancient quarrels in sanguinary encounters,
and the Castilians, exasperated at the interference of Aragon in their
internal politics, fanned the flame. At the instigation of the Beaumonts,
Charles laid claim to the chief power, and at the head of his adherents
led an army into the field against the queen and the Agramonts. Juan of
Aragon, dominated by his wife’s superior intelligence, took part against
his son. A battle was fought at Aybar, when the prince of Viana was
defeated and made prisoner (1452). Some months before, in the little
town of Sos in Aragon, the queen had given birth to a son who, as
Ferdinand the Catholic, was afterwards to attain to such great historical
importance.
After some time Charles of Viana was released from captivity; but the
opposite party had in the meantime so successfully gained the upper hand
in Navarre, that he could not maintain himself in the government. He
betook himself to Naples to the court of his royal uncle Alfonso V, to
beg for his intervention. The chivalrous, open bearing of the prince won
him many friends and he was able to flatter himself with the prospect
of being speedily reinstated in his mother’s inheritance by the aid
of a powerful protector; but his uncle’s death rendered the hope vain
(1458). By the dispositions of the late king’s will, his brother Juan was
to succeed to his possessions in Spain, Sardinia, and Sicily, and his
illegitimate son Ferdinand to the kingdom of Naples.
[Sidenote: [1458-1461 A.D.]]
The Neapolitans, who mistrusted the gloomy, equivocal character of the
new prince, Ferdinand, tried in vain to persuade the chivalrous prince
of Viana to come forward as a candidate for Naples, holding out to him
the prospect of the people’s support. The magnanimous prince resisted the
temptation; even in Sicily, to which he now turned, similar allurements
awaited him; for there also the memory of his mother Blanche, who as
the consort of King Martin had formerly won much affection in the
island, procured him a good reception and many friends. But here again
he withstood all seductive temptations; he contented himself with the
generous assistance offered him by the gratitude of the islanders, and
passed a long time in the quiet of a Benedictine cloister at Messina,
occupied with scientific studies. He did not give up the thought of a
reconciliation with his father and a restoration of his rights. After all
he, as eldest son, was the rightful heir to the crown of Aragon, and the
cortes of the three provinces were on his side. In this expectation he
obeyed an invitation from his father to a personal interview at Iguala
(1460). By a submissive and penitent demeanour towards the royal couple
he endeavoured to put an end to the ancient enmity and win his father’s
heart, but the queen, who wished to secure the succession to her own son
Ferdinand, contrived to keep the distrust of her stepson still alive and
by hostile insinuations to throw suspicion on everything he did. Whilst
he was deceived by a delusive friendliness, he was surrounded by a web
of intrigues. Above all there was exhibited a zealous eagerness to keep
him from receiving any sort of homage or recognition of his rights on the
part of the cortes.
Still the prince did not allow himself to be betrayed into taking an
illegal step; only he became a suitor for the hand of the infanta
Isabella of Castile, with the idea of thus procuring himself a lasting
support for his claims to the throne. But it was just this alliance that
was a thorn in the eye of the queen of Aragon; her policy had already
singled out the princess for her own son, and she was to be the bond
of a union between the two kingdoms. The prince of Viana’s project was
endangering this plan in a formidable manner; it was therefore necessary
to make an energetic decision. Charles was invited by his father to a
meeting of the cortes at Lerida. The prince complied with the request in
the hope of being recognised by the estates of the realm as heir to the
throne. But immediately on his arrival he was arrested and taken to the
inaccessible mountain fastness of Morella on the borders of Valencia;
when the cortes showed signs of interposing with a protest, the assembly
was dismissed. On the committee of estates demanding the cause of this
remarkable proceeding, Juan darkly hinted at a plot, the inquiry into and
punishment of which he must reserve for himself.
At the news of these occurrences the excitable Catalans took up the
sword. Armed mobs advanced on Lerida and forced their way into the
palace, while the king fled under cover of the night with a few
companions to Fraga. The assailants were soon at the gates of Fraga,
but the royal couple had already fled to the fortress of Saragossa. The
flame of insurrection rapidly spread; in Navarre the Beaumonts, secretly
supported and urged on from Castile, declared for the prince; in Aragon,
in Valencia, in Sicily, the agitation was of a threatening character.
[Sidenote: [1461-1484 A.D.]]
King Juan could not resist these active manifestations of the popular
desires. He set his son at liberty, recognised him as his rightful
successor, and entrusted him with the office of governor-general of
Catalonia. It was at this moment that the prince sickened, and soon the
melancholy tidings of his death in his forty-first year were spread
through the kingdom (September, 1461). There was a very natural suspicion
that he had succumbed to a poison which had been brought to him in his
captivity. Thus in the prime of life this noble and chivalrous prince,
whose one crime was his lawful claim to the throne of Aragon, fell a
victim to treacherous statecraft. Imbued as he was with devotion to the
higher cultivation of the mind, had he succeeded to the throne he would
have been a worthy rival of his Florentine contemporaries. The fruit
of his profound studies was to be seen in a translation of Aristotle’s
_Ethics_ and a history of Navarre.
[Illustration: BLANCHE OF CASTILE]
The tragedy did not end with Charles’ death; instead, a second one
resulted from it. At his demise he had appointed as heiress of Navarre
his elder sister Blanche, who had formerly been married to Henry IV
of Castile and afterwards repudiated by him because she was childless.
But Blanche had always sided with her brother and had long shared his
exile; for this reason she was now to be overtaken by a similar fate. In
conjunction with the faithless King Louis XI of France, the sovereigns
of Aragon surrounded the unfortunate princess with a net of cabals and
deceits in which she could not fail to meet destruction. For it was
firmly resolved that the inheritance of Aragon should be obtained for
her younger sister Eleanor, countess of Foix, so that on the latter’s
death it might pass to her son Gaston de Foix, the husband of a sister
of Louis. With this view, and in accordance with a treaty concluded
between Aragon and France, Blanche was forcibly removed from Olit, where
she had hitherto resided, and conducted across the mountains to be
placed under the supervision of her sister. It was to no purpose that
she appealed in a touching letter to her former husband, King Henry of
Castile, and pledged him her maternal inheritance of Navarre as the
price of her rescue; there was to be no refuge for her from the hands
of a cruel father and an unloving sister. In 1462 she was taken to the
strong fortress of Orthez in Béarn, where, after two years of painful
captivity she succumbed to a poison, given her by the guilty hand of a
traitor By this means Navarre was united to Foix and Béarn and the ground
thus cleared for the subsequent partition of the ancient kingdom between
France and Spain.
Eleanor lived ten years longer than her son Gaston de Foix, prince of
Viana, who met his death through a wound from a lance at a tournament in
Lisbon in the year 1469. When she died, her grandson Francis Phœbus, a
handsome princely boy with shining golden hair, inherited the throne of
Navarre, with his mother Magdalena, sister of Louis XI, as his guardian.
But only four years later Francis Phœbus died suddenly, as it was
believed of poison, and his sister Catherine, then thirteen years old,
entered on the inheritance. In 1484 she married Jean d’Albret, whose
extensive possessions in the southwest of France were thus united to the
kingdom of Navarre. Magdalena, the queen’s mother, had arranged this
marriage, which was very displeasing to the Spanish rulers.
RISING IN CATALONIA
[Sidenote: [1461-1469 A.D.]]
The king of Aragon had entered into such close relations with France
chiefly because he needed her help against his own people. Far from the
rebellious movements subsiding on the death of the prince of Viana, the
indignation against the king and queen mounted still higher amongst the
excitable Catalans. The imagination of the people painted the tragic
fate of the king’s unfortunate son in the liveliest colours. Charles’
ghost was seen to glide by night through the streets of Barcelona; he was
heard lamenting in piteous tones over his untimely end and calling for
vengeance on his unnatural murderer. At last he came to be honoured as a
saint. When Queen Juana took her ten-year-old son Ferdinand to Barcelona,
that he might receive the homage of the Catalan estates, she soon saw
herself threatened with a rising, so that she sought refuge in Gerona.
The Catalan troops followed her, made themselves masters of the town
and besieged the fortifications where Juana and the prince were bravely
defended by a small garrison. Thereupon the king of Aragon concluded a
treaty with Louis XI (1462), in consequence of which that monarch sent
seven hundred lances with archers and fieldpieces to the aid of the
beleaguered queen.
In return for this Juan promised him 200,000 gold crowns and gave him the
counties of Roussillon and Cerdagne in pledge. The Catalans could not
withstand such a force. They retreated to Barcelona for the purpose of
organising more crushing resistance in that excitable town. They sought
to represent in a memorial that the liberties of their commonwealth had
been betrayed, and that therefore, since the good of the state must be
the highest law, they were justified in repudiating their allegiance.
They summoned the young men to take arms, and turned to Castile and then
to Portugal to win their support in the secession from Aragon (1463).
Don Pedro, constable of Portugal, did actually enter the country with
a small force, to lay claim to the government of Catalonia, to which,
as a scion of the house of Barcelona, he asserted an ancient hereditary
right. But the enterprise did not prosper; little by little, partly with
the sword, partly by means of gold, King Juan gained possession of the
most important towns in the country, such as Lerida, Cervera, Amposta,
and Tortosa. Still he could not succeed in breaking Barcelona’s bold
spirit of resistance; even when the Portuguese infante died suddenly, the
town would not hear of conciliation, and two distinguished burghers were
beheaded in the market-place for their sympathy with Aragon (1466).
The Catalans now turned to the famous “king” René of Anjou, that he
might add Barcelona to the other kingdoms whose royal title he bore
without possessing a handful of their soil. René sent his son John, the
chivalrous, adventurous duke of Calabria and Lorraine, with some thousand
mercenaries, across the Pyrenees. Louis XI, always seeing his own
advantage in disturbances in a neighbouring state, secretly favoured his
compatriot’s enterprise, but without dissolving his alliance with Aragon
on that account.
[Sidenote: [1469-1475 A.D.]]
This brave robber captain soon possessed himself of the northern district
of Ampurdan and under the walls of Gerona he fought a battle with the
queen, who in this time of trial showed heroic courage, and who since
her husband’s blindness, the result of the hardships of war during
the winter before Amposta, had directed the defence of the country in
unison with her son. John’s chivalrous bearing towards the townspeople
of Barcelona won for him such open sympathy that his public appearance
always resembled a triumph. The embarrassment of King Juan of Aragon
reached its highest point when his consort, who had been the very soul of
the government and the guiding spirit of the war, succumbed to a long and
painful illness at a time when the state coffers were completely drained,
when the chief province of the kingdom was in revolt and partly in the
possession of a bold leader of mercenaries, and new warlike complications
were threatening with Navarre and Castile. But here too the proverb held
good, “The darkest hour is that before the dawn.” In the same year,
1469, the king, now a very old man, had his sight restored by a skilful
Jewish doctor, and Duke John of Calabria and Lorraine was called to
his account, an event that filled the inhabitants of Barcelona with the
deepest grief, which they exhibited by giving him an imposing funeral. He
was laid to rest in the vault of the ancient rulers of Barcelona. It was
only natural that here too the suspicion of poisoning should be raised,
though it was without foundation.
The duke’s death could not break the defiant spirit of the Catalans; they
steadfastly rejected every summons to yield. After a two years’ struggle,
when the greater part of the country had fallen into the hands of the
energetic old king, when the town bands were reduced by heavy losses to
a very small number, and Barcelona was besieged by sea and land, then
only did the stern Catalan spirit stoop to peace. King Juan sweetened
their bitter cup of submission and homage. He confirmed their privileges
and judicial government, granted universal amnesty and conceded to the
foreign mercenaries, and any who might choose to join them, freedom to
depart. After the conclusion of peace King Juan, mounted on a white
charger, made a solemn entry into Barcelona (December, 1472). Thus the
succession to the whole kingdom of Aragon of Ferdinand the Catholic,
the husband of the infanta Isabella of Castile, was secured. The result
had been arrived at with much difficulty, perhaps crime. A few months
later the provinces of Roussillon and Cerdagne, which had been pledged
to France, made great efforts to become reunited to Aragon. King Juan
lent them his aid and, supported by his son, he defended the town of
Perpignan with great heroism against the French. But Louis XI did not let
his prize escape him. For the space of two years he made war on the town
and the whole country with such overwhelming force that at last they were
completely broken and submitted to the foreign yoke. The inhabitants of
Perpignan, worn out by suffering and hunger, were expelled, in 1475, by
the malice and cruelty of the French ruler.[b]
A few years previous to this, in 1469, the heir of King Juan II,
Ferdinand of Aragon, had married Isabella of Castile, uniting thus the
two countries into one Spain, as we have previously shown. Having thus
brought Aragon’s history down to where it merges into that of Castile, we
may return to Castile, which we left at the death of Pedro the Cruel.[a]
FOOTNOTES
[37] [Though this king is usually called “Jayme,” he spelled his own name
“Jacme” in the Catalan form.]
[38] [Burke,[g] however, credits this entirely to Barcelona.]
[39] [This statement of Petrarch’s indebtedness is, however, open to
discussion. There was another Jordi who lived in the fifteenth century
and may have been the author of the poems in which resemblances to
Petrarch are detected. This would make Petrarch the original. But the
Spaniards generally attribute the poems to the contemporary of James
the Conqueror, who has left an account of a storm which overtook that
monarch’s fleet near the island of Majorca.]
[40] [This document has been well called Aragon’s Magna Charta, and it
was secured in much the same manner. The Privilege was confirmed by the
cortes of Saragossa in 1325, and torture of witnesses in criminal trials
was abolished. In five years followed the Privilege of Union in which the
king of Aragon was forced to authorise unions of his subjects to make
war upon the sovereign in case of a denial of justice, or any attempt to
act independently of the justiciar. We have to look to Poland for a like
constitutional defiance of royalty.]
[41] [“The loss of the principal nobles of the union at Epila was a
death-blow to the feudal cause in Aragon.”[d]]
[42] St. Thecla, patroness of the church of Tarragona, appeared to him,
upbraided him with impiety, and gave him so good a box on the ear, or
smack in the face, that he never recovered from it. “_Está muy recibido
que fue contigado de la mano de Dios, y se le aparecio en vision Santa
Tecla, la qual le hirio de una palmada en el rostro, y que este fue la
ocasion de su dolencia._”--_Zurita._[e] Who would expect Ferreras,[f] a
writer of the eighteenth century, to believe such a relation?
[43] [This does not mean “rich men,” as would seem at first sight; but
_rico_ here is related to the German word _Reich_, _i.e._, kingdom.]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]