THE CHRISTIAN STATES OF SPAIN
Suspension of the Moorish wars in the middle of the thirteenth
century—Constitution of Castile—Disorders in the kingdom—Alfonso
XI.’s victories over the Moors—Peter the Cruel and Henry of
Trastamara—John of Gaunt in Spain—John II. of Castile and Alvaro de
Luna—Henry III. and the accession of Isabella in Castile—The
Constitution of Aragon—Acquisition of Sicily and Sardinia—The
general Privilege and the Privilege of Union—Reign of Peter
IV.—Re-union of Sicily with Aragon—Accession of the House of
Trastamara in Aragon—Alfonso V. gains Naples—Relations of Aragon and
Navarre—John II. and Charles of Viana—Union of Castile and
Aragon—Government of Ferdinand and Isabella—The _Santa Hermandad_
and the Inquisition—Conquest of Granada—Geographical discoveries of
Portugal and Castile—The Bull of Borgia and the Treaty of
Tordesillas.
The middle of the thirteenth century was an important turning-point in
the history of Spain. Hitherto the Christian [Sidenote: Suspension of
Moorish wars.] states had been engaged in a continuous crusade for the
conquest or expulsion of the Moors, who had held almost the whole
peninsula in the eighth century. But the capture of Cordova in 1236, and
of Seville in 1248, with the reduction of the province of Murcia in
1266, drove the Moors to their last stronghold in the kingdom of
Granada, which they were allowed to retain in comparative peace for
nearly two centuries and a half. This cessation of military activity in
the south was due to several causes. Granada itself was strongly
defended by nature, and its population was more homogeneous than that of
the dominions which had been lost. And the old enemies of the Moors were
now diminished in number. Portugal was cut off from all direct contact
with the infidel by the district round Seville and Cadiz, and Aragon was
equally isolated by the intervention of the Castilian province of
Murcia. The only state which had a conterminous frontier with the Moors
was Castile, and the attention of Castile was distracted from its
southern neighbours by internal feuds and foreign interests. One result
of the termination of the religious war is that Spanish history loses
such unity as it had hitherto possessed, and it is henceforth necessary
to follow the separate history of its component states. And with its
unity the history of the peninsula loses much of its dignity and
importance. The record of internal feuds, of dynastic revolutions, and
of criminal bloodshed, which fills the annals of the Spanish kingdoms,
and especially of Castile, would hardly be worth preserving if it were
not the necessary prelude to the rise of Spain in the sixteenth century
to a foremost position among the powers of Europe.
Castile, permanently united with Leon since 1230, was the largest, and
ultimately the dominant state of Spain. It had been formed in the course
of a prolonged religious [Sidenote: Constitution of Castile.] war, and
this had left a permanent impress on the constitution. While the kings
had risen to power as military leaders, the nobles and cities had also
earned great independence in a struggle which had often depended more
upon sudden local effort than upon the action of large armies; and the
clergy, as the preachers of religious ardour against the infidel,
retained more authority than in any other country in Europe. When
national exertion was relaxed by the diminution of external danger, a
struggle between the rival forces was inevitable; and though the victory
rested in the end with the monarchy, it was long before this result was
assured. The national assembly, or Cortes, was composed of three
estates—clergy, nobles, and citizens—and its importance varied very much
from time to time. But the royal power was more effectually limited by
the danger of armed resistance than by any formal constitutional
restrictions. The great nobles were independent princes in their own
domains, and could command the allegiance of their vassals in private
feuds with each other, and even in warfare against the crown. For the
vindication of their own rights, and for resisting the encroachments of
the barons, the towns claimed and exercised the right of forming an
armed union or _hermandad_. It was fortunate for the kings that
conflicting interests and mutual jealousy prevented any common action
between classes whose power both of offence and defence was so extremely
formidable.
Alfonso X., who ruled in Castile from 1252 to 1284, is known in history
as ‘The Wise,’ but the epithet was earned [Sidenote: Disorders in
Castile.] by his remarkable learning rather than by his ability as a
ruler. The only territorial acquisition of his reign, Murcia, was won
for him by the arms of Aragon. He abandoned the war against the Moors
for a vain effort to gain the imperial dignity, which he disputed during
the Great Interregnum with an English rival, Richard of Cornwall. His
later years, and the reigns of his successors, Sancho IV. (1284-1295)
and Ferdinand IV. (1295-1312), were disturbed by a disputed succession
to the crown. Alfonso’s eldest son, Ferdinand de Cerda, died in 1275,
leaving two sons, who are known as the Infantes de Cerda. According to
modern ideas, their hereditary claim would be incontestable. But in the
Middle Ages it was frequently held that nearness of blood gave a better
claim than descent in an elder line. On this ground Alfonso’s second
son, Sancho, was recognised as his father’s heir, and succeeded in
ousting his nephews. But the Infantes de Cerda had many partisans in
Castile, and a prolonged but desultory struggle ensued, in which the
neighbouring kings of Aragon and Portugal were involved. The actual
contest was ended by a treaty in 1305, by which the claimants were
bought off with lavish grants of land. But the disorders to which it had
given rise were not so easily suppressed. Two successive kings,
Ferdinand IV. and Alfonso XI. (1312-1350), came to the throne in their
childhood, and a minority is always an evil in an early stage of
society. Castile in this matter was almost as unlucky as was Scotland a
little later, and the results in the two countries were very similar.
The noble families fought out private wars among themselves, and the
kings became rather partisans than arbiters among their subjects. In
fact, the chief force for the maintenance of order was supplied, not by
the monarchy, but by a great _hermandad_ or brotherhood, which was
formed in 1295 by thirty-four Castilian towns.
The obvious weakness of Castile, after nearly seventy years of anarchy,
encouraged the Moors to make an effort for the recovery of their lost
power. Abul Hakam, the [Sidenote: War of Alfonso XI. with the Moors.]
Emir of Fez, crossed the Straits of Gibraltar in 1339 with a large army.
He was joined by the ruler of Granada, and their combined forces laid
siege to Tarifa. The approach of danger had a wholesome and healing
effect upon Castile. Alfonso XI. was enabled to make peace with his
rebellious subjects, and also with the king of Portugal, whose daughter
he had married only to desert her for the beautiful Eleanor de Guzman.
In 1340 he advanced to the relief of Tarifa, and gained in the battle of
the Salado the first victory which had fallen to a Castilian king for
nearly a century. The complaisant chronicler of the royal achievement
tells us that only twenty Christians perished in a battle which cost the
lives of two hundred thousand Moslems. It is at any rate authentic that
Abul Hakam was driven back to Africa, and that in 1344 Alfonso captured
the town of Algeciras. He hoped to complete his success by the reduction
of Gibraltar, which would have excluded any further reinforcement from
Africa to the Moors of Granada. But he was carried off by the Black
Death in 1350, and this event led to the abandonment of the siege.
Alfonso’s successes against the infidel have outweighed in the histories
of Spain both the vices of his private character and the disorder that
prevailed in the kingdom during his minority and the greater part of his
reign.
Few historical epithets have been more thoroughly deserved [Sidenote:
Peter the Cruel.] than that of ‘the Cruel,’ as attached to the name of
Peter I. (1350-1369). Numerous attempts to whitewash his character have
been made in vain, and all that can be said in his favour is that he had
received very great provocation. He was the only son of Alfonso XI. and
Maria of Portugal, and during his father’s reign both he and his mother
had been kept in ignominious seclusion, while every mark of favour was
showered upon the royal mistress, Eleanor de Guzman, and her numerous
children. Henry, the eldest of the bastards, was Count of Trastamara,
and his twin-brother Frederick held the grand-mastership of the great
Order of St. James. It was by no means unnatural that the dowager queen
should urge her son, when he came into power, to avenge the insults
which she had so long endured in angry impotence. Eleanor de Guzman was
strangled in 1351, and two of her sons in later years were murdered by
the king’s own hand. Henry of Trastamara sought safety in exile, first
in Portugal, and afterwards in France. It would be disgusting even to
enumerate the atrocious acts which have been attributed, some with more
and some with less authority, to the youthful monster in his early
years. His treatment of Blanche of Bourbon, whose hand he had solicited
from the French king, is a conspicuous but rather mild illustration of
his ruthless temperament. He was living openly with a mistress, Maria de
Padilla, when the princess arrived, and he refused even to see her.
Later, under considerable pressure, he went through the form of
marriage, but immediately returned to the arms of his mistress; and the
bride, who was never a wife, was consigned to a solitary prison, and
ultimately poisoned. In 1356 Peter put down a rebellion among his
nobles, and took the most sanguinary vengeance upon his defeated
opponents. His thirst for bloodshed seems, in moments of excitement, to
have amounted almost to mania. Yet, for a long time at any rate, he was
not unpopular with the lower orders among his subjects. It was upon the
nobles and the Jews, neither very popular with the people, that his hand
fell with such severity, and he could show at times a coarse good-nature
and a taste for rough buffoonery which won him some popular applause.
This helps to explain why he met with little or no opposition when he
endeavoured to secure the succession to his own illegitimate children.
In 1362 he solemnly swore to the Cortes, and his oath was supported by
the archbishop of Toledo, that he had been for ten years the lawful
husband of Maria de Padilla, and the docile Cortes recognised her
children as legitimate heirs to the crown. But this settlement was not
destined to be carried out. Bastardy in Spain, as in Italy, was not
considered so fatal a bar to inheritance as it was regarded in northern
countries. Henry of Trastamara found supporters in Peter of Aragon and
Charles V. of France, who had both grounds of quarrel with the king of
Castile. The latter, who was preparing to repudiate the treaty of
Bretigni and to renew the war with the English, was not unwilling to
allow Bertrand du Guesclin to train on Spanish soil the military
companies which he was forming for the service of France. In 1365 a
large army crossed the Pyrenees into Aragon, and thence proceeded in the
next year to establish Henry of Trastamara upon the Castilian throne.
Peter fled to Bordeaux to implore the aid of the Black Prince, and
unfortunately succeeded in touching a chivalrous chord in his host’s
character. At the battle of Najara the war-hardened troops, which had
won the victory of Poitiers, proved more than a match for the only
half-trained recruits of du Guesclin (1367). Peter recovered his
kingdom, but he showed as much ingratitude to his auxiliaries as he
showed barbarity towards his own subjects. Neither the Black Prince nor
his army ever completely recovered from their successful but disastrous
campaign in Spain, and Charles V. was able in a few years from 1369 to
expel the English from nearly the whole of their possessions in France
(see p. 95). But the betrayer had no better fortune than the betrayed.
The departure of Peter’s allies enabled Henry of Trastamara to return to
Castile, and with French aid to win the battle of Montiel. In a personal
interview the two half-brothers came to blows, and Henry’s dagger
avenged the death of his murdered kinsfolk. The two surviving children
of Peter and Maria Padilla, Constance and Isabella, had been left at
Bordeaux, and were married to two brothers of the Black Prince—John of
Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, and Edmund Langley, duke of York.
Henry II. had by no means reached the end of his troubles when the death
of Peter enabled him for the [Sidenote: Henry II., 1369-79.] second time
to ascend the throne of Castile. His title was contested by two rival
candidates—Ferdinand of Portugal, whose grandmother had been a daughter
of Sancho IV., and John of Gaunt, who asserted the legitimacy and rights
of his wife as recognised by the Cortes of 1362.[12] The Portuguese king
was the nearer and, for the moment, the more formidable opponent, but
French aid enabled Henry to attack Lisbon and extort a treaty of peace.
The illness of the Black Prince left the conduct of the war in France to
John of Gaunt, and so Henry was able at once to harass his rival and to
repay some of his obligations to Charles V. by sending a Castilian fleet
to cut off direct communication between England and Gascony. Thus the
reign, which had opened so stormily, ended in complete peace, and Henry
of Trastamara handed on the crown to his son [Sidenote: John I.
1379-90.] John I. (1379). His accession gave the signal for a renewal of
the war with Portugal and of the Lancastrian claim. In 1385 the
Portuguese troops won a crushing victory at Aljubarrota, and in the next
year John of Gaunt came to the Peninsula in person to uphold his wife’s
cause. His daughter Philippa was married to the new king of Portugal,
John I., and their united forces invaded Castile and occupied
Compostella. But the Castilians had no desire to accept a foreign
dynasty; and John of Gaunt, never very lucky or very resolute in his
enterprises, was induced to desert his son-in-law and to conclude a
separate peace (1387). Catharine, the only daughter of John of Gaunt and
Constance, was betrothed to John of Castile’s eldest son Henry, the
first heir to the crown who received the title of Prince of Asturias,
and the mother’s claim was renounced in favour of the youthful bride.
Henry III., though he was only a boy when his father was suddenly killed
by a fall from his horse, proved to be one of [Sidenote: Henry III.,
1390-1406.] the ablest kings in the history of Castile. He insisted on a
resumption of domain-lands which had fallen into the hands of the
nobles, and maintained greater order in the kingdom than had been known
for many generations. His marriage with Catharine of Lancaster freed him
from any rival claimants to the throne, and also contributed to the
maintenance of peace with Portugal, whose queen was Catharine’s
half-sister. But, unfortunately, his health was never strong, and he
died in 1406 at the early age of twenty-seven, leaving a boy of two
years old to succeed him. As it happened, the minority [Sidenote: John
II., 1406-1454.] of John II. proved to be the most successful and
orderly part of his reign. The regency was shared between his mother and
his uncle Ferdinand; and so great was the respect inspired by the
latter, that he might easily have supplanted his nephew with the general
approval of the Castilians. But Ferdinand acted with perfect loyalty;
and after his elevation to the throne of Aragon in 1412, he continued to
give honest and disinterested advice to his sister-in-law.
Unfortunately, when John II. was old enough to take the government into
his own hands, he proved wholly unworthy of the care with which his
kingdom had been administered for him. Unwarlike and averse to the cares
of business, he allowed himself to be completely overshadowed by the
famous Alvaro de Luna, grand-master of the [Sidenote: Alvaro de Luna.]
Order of St. James, and constable of Castile. Alvaro de Luna was no
commonplace favourite. He was by general recognition the most
accomplished knight of his country and his age, and he combined with his
brilliant personal attractions political abilities of no mean order. He
set himself to increase the authority of the crown because that
authority was wielded by himself, and he achieved no small measure of
success. He trampled upon the privileges of his brother nobles, and he
prepared the way for the humiliation of the third estate by reducing the
representation in the Cortes to seventeen of the principal cities. But
his government, although despotic, was by no means conducive to order.
The absolutism of a king may be submitted to and even welcomed, but the
absolutism of a subject is certain to excite discontent among those who
consider themselves to be legally his equals. The reign of John II. was
filled by a series of conspiracies and rebellions, and the malcontents
in Castile received formidable assistance from the king’s cousin, John
of Aragon. The constable, however, was as successful in the battle-field
as in the tilt-yard, and no Castilian rebel or foreign foe was strong
enough to effect his overthrow. His ultimate downfall was due to the
ingratitude of his master. John’s second wife, Isabella of Portugal,
indignant that her authority counted for so little in the state, set
herself to sow distrust between her husband and the all-powerful
minister. The more domestic influence triumphed for the moment over the
feeble mind of the king, and Alvaro de Luna was put to death after a
parody of a trial in 1453.
John II. only survived the constable a year, and his death in 1454
ushered in a still more troubled period for Castile. He left behind him
three children—Henry, the son of his first wife, Mary of Aragon, and
Isabella and Alfonso, the offspring of Isabella of Portugal. Henry IV.,
[Sidenote: Henry IV., 1454-74.] who succeeded his father, was the most
incapable king of Castile until the accession of the unfortunate Charles
II. in the seventeenth century. He was equally feeble in mind and body,
and the contempt of his subjects found expression in his appellation of
‘Henry the Impotent.’ There were several aspirants to fill the position
which Alvaro de Luna had held in the previous reign, and success rested
with Beltran de la Cueva, who had all the showy without any of the solid
qualities of the famous constable. It was currently reported that the
handsome favourite supplemented his influence over the king by securing
the affections of the queen, Joanna of Portugal. The birth of a daughter
increased instead of allaying the scandal, and the unfortunate infanta
was generally known as ‘la Beltraneja.’ Jealousy of the favourite and
disgust with the king’s incompetence combined to provoke a formidable
rebellion (1465). At Avila the rebels went through the formal ceremony
of deposing a puppet dressed up to represent the king. The crown was
offered to Henry’s half-brother Alfonso, on the ground that Joanna was
illegitimate, but the young prince died in 1468, before the civil war
had come to a decisive end. Isabella, to whom the malcontents now
turned, showed that she had inherited the qualities of her mother rather
than those of her father. With a calculating wisdom beyond her years,
she [Sidenote: Isabella.] refused to weaken her claim by allowing her
cause to be associated with rebellion against the monarchy. At the same
time she was equally resolute to avoid any recognition of the legitimacy
of her niece. Her firmness extorted a treaty from Henry IV., by which
she was recognised as his heiress, and on this condition the rebels were
induced to lay down their arms (1468). In the next year Isabella
concluded her all-important marriage with Ferdinand, the heir to the
crown of Aragon. As soon as the immediate danger of deposition was
removed, Henry IV. embarked in a struggle to repudiate the recent treaty
and to secure the succession to his wife’s daughter. But he died in 1474
without having succeeded in his aim, and his half-sister inherited the
crown. The cause of Joanna was now espoused by her uncle, Alfonso V. of
Portugal, but Isabella succeeded in maintaining the position she had
won. Her accession, and the subsequent union of the crowns of Aragon and
Castile, ushered in a new and more distinguished epoch in the history of
the Spanish peninsula.
The kingdom of Aragon was formed by the union of the three provinces of
Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia. The union was very imperfect, as each
province jealously [Sidenote: Constitution of Aragon.] insisted upon
retaining its own laws and institutions, and resented any attempt to
introduce uniformity of administration. The powers of the monarchy were
more narrowly restricted than in the neighbouring kingdom of Castile.
The privileges of the _ricos hombres_, or great nobles, were so
extensive as to make them almost the equals of their king, and the
desire to maintain these privileges brought about among them a wholly
unusual unity of interest and political action. Ferdinand the Catholic
expressed this difference between the two kingdoms in his saying that
‘it was as difficult to divide the nobles of Aragon as to unite the
nobles of Castile.’ And the citizens were not far behind the nobles in
the spirit of independence, which was especially strong in the maritime
province of Catalonia. The representation of towns in the Cortes of
Aragon dates back to 1133, thirty-three years before any similar
concession was made in Castile, and more than a century before any
regular practice of central representation was established in England.
The Cortes was not a general assembly of the whole kingdom, but each
province had its own Cortes, which possessed within its borders the
supreme control of jurisdiction, legislation, and taxation. In Valencia
and Aragon the assembly consisted, as in Castile and France, of the
ordinary three estates—clergy, nobles, and citizens. But the Cortes of
Aragon contained four estates or arms (_brazos_). Besides the clergy and
the delegates of towns, the secular nobles were divided into two
distinct classes—(1) the _ricos hombres_, who had the right of attending
either in person or by proxy, and (2) the _infanzones_, or lesser
tenants-in-chief, and the _caballeros_, the sub-tenants, who were
entitled to attend in virtue of their knighthood. In the office of
Justiciar, Aragon possessed a unique institution which has always
attracted the interest of historical students. Originally the Justiciar
was merely the president of the Cortes when it sat as a court of
justice, and his functions were of no special political importance. But
in course of time he became the mediator, and ultimately the supreme
arbiter, in all disputes between the monarch and his subjects. In this
capacity he was regarded as at once the depositary and the champion of
constitutional traditions and liberties. The dignity of the office was
enhanced by the character of its successive holders, and the history of
Aragon abounds with instances of their resolute resistance to despotism
on the one hand or to lawless disorder on the other. It is noteworthy
that the responsibility of the Justiciar to the Cortes was secured by
his selection from the lesser nobles or knights. The _ricos hombres_,
whose privileges included exemption from execution or any corporal
punishment, were always excluded from the office.
James I. of Aragon (1213-1276) is known by the honourable title of the
Conqueror. He brought the long Moorish wars to an end, and completed the
extension of the kingdom by the annexation of the Balearic Islands,
which had long been a nest of Mussulman pirates, and of Valencia. He
also effected the reduction of Murcia, but with rare loyalty handed it
over to the king of Castile, in whose name he had carried on the war
(1266). One result of these victories was that his successors, freed
from the pressure of continual warfare at home, were able to turn their
attention eastwards to events in Italy. Peter III. (1276-1285) was
married to Constance, the daughter and heiress [Sidenote: Aragon and
Sicily.] of Manfred, and thus acquired a claim to be regarded as the
successor of the Hohenstaufen in Naples and Sicily. But it is doubtful
whether this claim would have led to any practical results but for the
massacre of the French in the famous Sicilian Vespers (1282). To protect
themselves from the vengeance of Charles of Anjou, the islanders
appealed to the king of Aragon, and offered him the crown. Hence arose
the prolonged wars against a coalition formed by the Angevin rulers of
Naples, the popes and the kings of France, which constitute the most
prominent episode, not only in the later years of Peter III., but also
in the reigns of his two sons and successors, Alfonso III. (1285-1291)
and James II. (1291-1327). These wars have already been referred to in
connection with the history both of France and of Italy (see pp. 25,
48), and it is unnecessary to tell the story again. The essential points
to remember are that in 1295 Boniface VIII. negotiated a treaty by which
James II. was to marry Blanche, the daughter of Charles II. of Naples,
to receive the island of Sardinia, and resign his claim upon Sicily; but
the Sicilians refused to agree to terms in which they had had no voice,
offered the crown to James’s younger brother Frederick, and succeeded in
1302 in establishing him upon the throne. Hence in the end there was a
double gain. Sicily was secured to a younger branch of the house of
Aragon, and on its extinction reverted to the main line. Some years
later James III. (1327-1336) took Sardinia from the Genoese and Pisans
in virtue of a treaty which had been very imperfectly carried out on his
side, as the only price which he paid for his acquisition had been an
ineffectual attempt to expel his brother from a kingdom which he had
deemed himself too weak to retain. Sardinia remained united with Aragon,
and so with Spain, until the treaty of Rastadt in 1714 gave it to
Austria, and the treaty of London in 1720 transferred it, with the title
of king, to the duke of Savoy.
These Italian wars were not without their influence on the history of
Aragon. They were waged in the interest of the dynasty, not of the
kingdom, and the Aragonese [Sidenote: Concessions to the Aragonese.] had
a substantial grievance in being called upon to furnish money, men, and
ships for an enterprise in which they had no particular concern. Hence
the kings were compelled to appease their subjects by concessions, which
went far beyond any sacrifices extorted from contemporary rulers in
other countries. The ‘General Privilege,’ granted by Peter III. in 1283,
has been compared, and justly compared, with the English _Magna Charta_.
It provided salutary securities for general and individual liberty, and
its frequent confirmation shows that it was highly valued. But four
years later Alfonso III. went to a dangerous extreme when he signed the
famous ‘Privilege of Union’ (1287). By this his subjects were formally
authorised to take up arms against their sovereign if he attempted to
infringe their privileges. Rebellion may be and often is the only
effectual safeguard against oppression, but it is harmful and
unnecessary to formulate a right to rebel. The Privilege of Union put a
very formidable weapon into the hands of the nobles, who could always
disguise the selfish pursuit of their own interests under the pretence
that they were engaged in opposing despotism.
Peter IV. of Aragon (1336-1387) was the first king who set himself to
free the monarchy from some of the excessive [Sidenote: Reign of Peter
IV.] restraints which had been imposed upon it. He annexed to the crown
the Balearic Islands, which had been held since 1374 by a younger son of
James the Conqueror and his descendants, under the title of kings of
Majorca. The reigning king, James II., made a prolonged struggle to
retain a dominion which he had done nothing to forfeit, but was
compelled to submit to the superior force of his imperious cousin. This
arbitrary act was followed by an attempt to settle the succession
according to the personal wishes of the king. At the time (1347) Peter
had only one child, a daughter Constance, and the heir-presumptive to
the throne was his half-brother James, Count of Urgel. There was no law
or custom excluding females from the succession in Aragon, but there was
a very strong prejudice in favour of male heirs, and they had usually
been preferred to heiresses, even though the latter stood nearer in the
line of descent. The attempt of James to procure a settlement in favour
of his daughter, combined with the generally high-handed character of
his government, provoked a formidable rising among the nobles, and also
gave them a powerful leader in James of Urgel. Claiming the rights
accorded by the Privilege of 1287, the rebels formed a Union at
Saragossa and formulated their demands. The king, taken by surprise, was
compelled at first to feign compliance; but the opportune death of James
of Urgel, attributed by contemporaries to poison administered by his
brother’s command, together with a rally of the Catalans to the cause of
the king, turned the balance in favour of Peter IV. In 1348 the royal
forces met the rebels on the field of Epila, and gained a complete
victory. The Privilege of Union was promptly revoked, and the parchment
on which it was written was destroyed by the king’s own hands. Thus the
monarchy gained a really considerable triumph, and the nobles were the
only immediate sufferers. In fact, Peter made no attempt to curtail any
popular liberties, and the authority of the Justiciar was more firmly
established in his reign by the grant of a life-tenure to the holders of
the office. His later years were occupied with wars against his cruel
namesake in Castile, with a struggle against the Genoese in Sardinia,
and with the suppression of an attempt on the part of James III. to
recover his father’s kingdom of Majorca. The original doubt about the
succession was removed by the birth of two sons, who successively came
to the throne as John I. (1387-1395) and Martin I. (1395-1410). Their
reigns are chiefly noteworthy for the reunion of Sicily with Aragon. The
two crowns had [Sidenote: Reversion of Sicily.] been separated since the
repudiation of his claims by James II. had given his younger brother
Frederick the opportunity of gaining a kingdom. Since 1302 Sicily had
been peacefully held by the descendants of Frederick I.; and on the
extinction of the male line had fallen to an heiress, Mary, the daughter
of Frederick II. by a marriage with a daughter of Peter IV. of Aragon.
Mary was married in 1391 to her cousin, Martin the Younger, the only son
of Martin I., who was enabled by the support of his uncle and father to
obtain the Sicilian crown. On his early death in 1409, the island
kingdom fell to his father, who for the one remaining year of his life
was king both of Aragon and of Sicily.
The death of Martin the Younger not only brought the crown of Sicily to
the king of Aragon, but also gave rise to a disputed succession in the
latter kingdom. The [Sidenote: Disputed succession.] elder Martin was
now the only surviving male descendant of Peter IV., and he died in
1410, before any arrangement had been come to about his successor. If
male descent were insisted upon, the obvious heir was James of Urgel,
whose grandfather had been the second son of Alfonso IV. Recent
precedents, notably the accession of Martin himself in preference to the
daughters of John I., were in favour of the exclusion of heiresses, but
there remained the open question whether the male descendants of a woman
could derive a claim through her. Of such candidates, two were most
prominent—Louis, the eldest son of Louis II. of Anjou and John I.’s
daughter Yolande, and Ferdinand, the regent of Castile in the minority
of John II., whose mother was Eleanor, a daughter of Peter IV.[13] There
can be no doubt that the count of Urgel had by far the strongest
hereditary claim; but his own rash assumption that he had only to take
the crown provoked opposition among the rather contentious Aragonese,
and he was ultimately excluded. A joint committee was appointed from the
Cortes of the three provinces to inquire into precedents; and after an
interregnum of two years, their choice curiously fell upon Ferdinand of
Castile, whose claim by descent was unquestionably weaker than that of
his rivals (1412).
Thus the lucky house of Trastamara, in spite of its illegitimate origin,
had come to furnish a king in Aragon as well as in Castile. And within a
generation events enabled the family to add to these possessions the
kingdom of Naples, and for a time the kingdom of Navarre. Ferdinand I.
did not live long enough to display in Aragon the great qualities which
his administration in Castile had shown him to possess. His elder son
Alfonso V. (1416-1458) [Sidenote: Alfonso V. and Naples.] is more
associated with the history of Italy than with that of Spain. He
inherited from his father Sicily and Sardinia as well as Aragon, and in
1423 his adoption by Joanna II. opened to him the prospect of inheriting
Naples. But the vicious queen soon changed her mind, disinherited
Alfonso, and adopted in his place Louis III. of Anjou, who could claim
through his mother a better right to the crown of Aragon than Alfonso
himself. This double adoption led to the long war between the house of
Aragon and the second house of Anjou, which raged for the last twelve
years of Joanna’s reign, and for eight years after her death. It ended
in the victory of Alfonso, who reigned peacefully in Naples until his
death in 1458 (see p. 271). As he left no legitimate children, Aragon,
Sicily, and Sardinia passed to his brother John II. (1458-1494), but
Naples was transferred to his bastard son Ferrante I. Half a century was
to elapse before the kingdom of the Two Sicilies was re-formed by
Ferdinand the Catholic.
While Alfonso was engaged in winning the crown of Naples amidst the
turmoil of an Italian war, his younger brother John had succeeded in
establishing an intimate [Sidenote: Relations of Aragon and Navarre.]
relation with Navarre. This little kingdom, which comprised territory on
both sides of the Pyrenees, had for a long time been more closely
connected with France than with Spain.[14] United with the French crown
by the marriage of Blanche of Navarre with Philip IV., it had again
become independent on the extinction of the direct line of the house of
Capet. When Philip of Valois ascended the throne of France, Navarre
passed to the rightful heiress, Jeanne, the daughter of Louis X., and
she was crowned with her husband, Philip of Evreux, in 1329. Their son,
Charles the Bad (1349-1387), played a prominent, though not very
creditable part in French history during the wars with Edward III. (see
Chapter IV.). Charles II. (1387-1425), who succeeded his father, devoted
more attention to art and letters than to politics, and kept his kingdom
in peace and obscurity. His daughter and heiress, Blanche, married John
of Aragon, but the succession was secured to her children. As long as
she lived Blanche ruled Navarre in her own right, and on her death in
1442 her son, Charles of Viana, was entitled to the crown of [Sidenote:
John II. and Charles of Viana.] Navarre. He actually undertook the
administration of the kingdom; but in deference, apparently, to his
mother’s wishes, he forbore to assume the royal title, which was still
borne by his father. In the ordinary course of things, no special
difficulty need have arisen, as Charles would have succeeded his father
in Aragon as well as Navarre. But in 1447 John concluded a second
marriage with Joanna Henriquez, daughter of the Admiral of Castile, and
a woman of equal energy and ambition. She persuaded her husband to
intrust her with the administration of Navarre, and Charles of Viana
found plenty of advisers to remind him that the kingdom was lawfully his
own, and to urge resistance to such an encroachment upon his authority.
Hence arose a civil war between the father and the stepmother on the one
side, and the son on the other. The great Navarrese families of Beaumont
and Egremont, as uniformly hostile to each other as the Orsini and
Colonnas in Rome, gladly welcomed so congenial a pretext for warfare.
The Beaumonts were intimately associated with Charles, so the Egremonts
had perforce to espouse the cause of his father. At Aybar, in 1452, the
royal troops won the victory, and Charles fell a prisoner into his
father’s hands. He was released soon afterwards, but his power had been
destroyed by his defeat, and his position was rendered worse by the
birth of a son, afterwards Ferdinand the Catholic, to the queen in 1452.
Joanna hardly concealed her intention to secure the recognition of her
own son as heir to his father, and her influence over John was
unbounded. The unfortunate prince of Viana set out to Naples in 1458 to
implore the advice and assistance of his uncle Alfonso V. But Alfonso
died in 1458, and John was now king in Aragon instead of merely
lieutenant for his brother. In 1460 Charles of Viana ventured to return
to his father’s kingdom, and, after a feigned welcome, was thrown into
prison at Lerida. This gross injustice—for there was no shadow of a
charge to be brought against the prince—excited a rebellion among the
liberty-loving Catalans. The revolt rapidly spread to the other
provinces, and the king of Castile showed a suspicious interest in the
welfare of the heir to the crown of Aragon. John II. found it politic to
yield to such general pressure. Charles of Viana was released and
appointed governor of Catalonia, but before he could undertake the rule
of his province he was removed by poison.
This terrible crime enabled John to retain possession of Navarre for his
lifetime, but it rather increased his difficulties [Sidenote: Rebellion
in Catalonia.] in his lawful kingdom. The Catalans renewed their
rebellion to avenge the death of the prince whose cause they had
championed with such fatal results, and besieged the queen and her son
in the fortress of Gerona. Unable to force his way through to their aid,
John was compelled to purchase the assistance of Louis XI. of France by
pledging the provinces of Roussillon and Cerdagne to cover his expenses.
French troops raised the siege of Gerona, but the Catalans maintained an
obstinate resistance. They went so far as to offer the crown to Réné le
Bon of Anjou and Provence, who was a grandson, through his mother, of
John I. Réné, old, and averse to risk or exertion, sent his chivalrous
son, John of Calabria, who had already fought a desperate war against
the reigning Aragonese king of Naples (see p. 277), to carry on the war
with the same family on the soil of Aragon. For a time John was almost
in despair. He had become blind, and in 1468 he lost the wife whom he
had loved and trusted too well. But the old man fought on with a dogged
obstinacy which deserved its reward. In 1469 John of Calabria died, and
in 1472 the fall of Barcelona completed the reduction of Catalonia. On
his death in 1479 John bequeathed to Ferdinand an inheritance which was
only diminished by the loss of Roussillon and Cerdagne, and these
provinces were restored by Charles VIII. in 1493 in the hope of
preventing the sending of aid from Aragon or Sicily to the bastard ruler
of Naples, whom Charles was preparing to attack.
Death had at last relaxed the tenacious grip which John II. had so long
maintained upon the kingdom of Navarre. Of his three children by his
first wife Blanche—Charles [Sidenote: Navarre after 1479.] of Viana,
Blanche, and Eleanor—only the last, who had married Gaston de Foix,
survived her father; Charles had been poisoned by his father, and
Blanche had been poisoned by her sister. And, after all, Eleanor only
outlived her father for a few weeks. Her grandson, Francis Phœbus,
succeeded her, but died in 1483, and his sister Catharine carried the
kingdom to the house of d’Albret. From this family Ferdinand the
Catholic wrested that part of Navarre which lay on the Spanish side of
the Pyrenees. The remainder came to the house of Bourbon by the marriage
of duke Antony to Jeanne d’Albret, and by the accession of their son
Henry IV. to the throne was ultimately annexed to France. When in the
following century Roussillon and Cerdagne were finally handed over to
the same state (1659), the Pyrenees at last became, as nature seemed to
have intended, although history was always thwarting her intention, a
boundary between two separate states.
The union of Castile and Aragon by the accession in the two kingdoms of
Isabella (1474) and Ferdinand (1479) laid the foundations of a kingdom
of Spain, and [Sidenote: Union of Castile and Aragon.] opened the way
for a brief period of Spanish predominance in Europe. Yet the union of
the kingdoms was merely personal: it was no more, in some ways it was
even less, than the union of England and Scotland effected by the
accession of James I. in the former kingdom in 1603. The great states of
the peninsula were not welded into one; they remained distinct units,
each with its own national characteristics, its own laws and
institutions, its own sense of corporate life and interests. This
imperfection of the union is a fundamental fact in later Spanish
history; it marks the essential difference between Spain and its more
successful neighbour France; it is a chief cause of the rapid and
apparently irreparable decline of Spain in a later age. Nevertheless, in
spite of its defects, the union was a necessary condition of the
emergence of Spain from its mediæval isolation. The very want of harmony
among the component states contributed to the rise of the royal power,
and the strength and weakness of Spain were equally bound up with the
fate of the monarchy. Without the forces of Aragon it would have been
impossible for Isabella to put down the disorderly independence of the
Castilian nobles, or for Charles V. to repress the communes and to
degrade the Cortes to impotence. And without the forces of Castile
Philip II. could never have ventured to trample upon the hardy liberties
of Aragon.
The grand period of Spanish history, and even great part of the reigns
of Ferdinand and Isabella, lie beyond the limits of this volume, which
is only concerned with [Sidenote: Government of Ferdinand and Isabella.]
the earlier achievements of these monarchs. The primary duty of the
queen was to strike at the independence of the Castilian nobles, and to
put an end to the lawless anarchy which had reached its height under the
feeble rule of her brother. For this purpose she found an instrument
ready to her hand in the time-honoured privileges of the burgher class.
In 1476 she proposed and carried in the Cortes the organisation of the
_Santa Hermandad_, or Holy Brotherhood, which was to supply a force of
civic police on a most extensive scale. Its affairs were managed by a
central junta, composed of deputies from all the cities of Castile,
which was convened once a year. A small army of two thousand cavalry,
with attendant archers, was formed to enforce the decisions of local
magistrates and of the supreme court. The nobles protested against the
measure as unconstitutional, but the protest of the chief evil-doers is
a proof of its value and its efficiency. Other measures followed in
rapid succession. The extravagant grants of lands and pensions which had
been made to the nobles in recent years were revoked, the fortresses
which had served as centres of brigandage were destroyed, and steps were
taken to codify the numerous laws which had been enacted since the reign
of Alfonso X. The grandmasterships of the orders of Calatrava,
Alcantara, and St. James, which conferred upon their holders powers too
great to be safely intrusted to subjects, were on successive vacancies
annexed to the crown. And the strengthened monarchy showed itself the
enlightened protector of the material interests of its subjects. Trade
and industry were encouraged by the remodelling of taxation, by a
much-needed reform of the currency, and by the removal of the barriers
to commercial intercourse between Castile and Aragon. It has been
reckoned that the royal revenue, without any increased charges upon the
people, was multiplied thirty-fold between Isabella’s accession in 1474
and her death in 1504.
The greatest of rulers have their defects, and Isabella’s were a
fanatical hatred of heresy and a feminine passion for religious
uniformity. There can be no doubt that her influence predominated in
bringing about [Sidenote: The Spanish Inquisition.] the introduction of
the Inquisition, which was authorised by a bull of Sixtus IV. in 1478,
and was set in working in 1483 under the presidency of Torquemada. It
may be regarded as the first institution of a united Spain. Its
extension to Aragon excited much opposition among the liberty-loving
people, but the iron will of Ferdinand proved irresistible. One of the
first outcomes of religious persecution was the expulsion of the Jews in
1492. Some two hundred thousand Jews are said to have been driven from
Spain by this edict. It was a cruel measure, but it was not so
disastrous as it has been represented by some writers, who seem to have
forgotten that it was followed, not by the immediate decline of Spain,
but by a period of unexampled prosperity.
The first overt proof to the world that a new power had arisen in Spain
was furnished by the final extinction of the [Sidenote: Conquest of
Granada.] Moorish dominion in the peninsula. The most signal
illustration of the weakness caused by the internal disorders of Castile
for the last two hundred years is to be found in the prolonged existence
of the kingdom of Granada. The establishment of a united and efficient
state upon their borders was fatal to the Moors. The war began in 1481,
and was steadily but not impetuously prosecuted for ten years. On
November 25, 1491, the capitulation of the Moorish capital was signed.
The terms granted to the conquered were as liberal as prudent policy
could dictate or as their heroic resistance had deserved. Full liberty
as to the exercise of their religion and the maintenance of their own
laws was granted to all who would peacefully submit to Christian rule.
But unfortunately the terms were not observed. After seven years of
tranquillity the bigotry of the Castilian government proved stronger
than considerations either of honour or of policy. The Moors were
suddenly called upon to choose between conversion and exile. Those who
accepted the former alternative had to live under a sort of ban in the
midst of an alien and hostile majority, until the insane edict of
expulsion against the Moriscoes in 1609 deprived Spain of a harmless and
industrious element of its population just at the time when it could
least afford to lose them.
In one great department of activity—geographical discovery and
expansion—Spain was anticipated and to some extent [Sidenote: Portugal.]
guided by her neighbour Portugal. Portugal began life as one of the
struggling Christian states of Spain, with no essential difference from
the other petty counties or kingdoms which were in the end combined to
form larger states. Gradually Portugal had been hardened into something
like nationality by a long struggle, first to secure its existence
against the Moors, and then to resist that absorption into Castile which
considerations of geography and race seemed to render not only natural,
but almost inevitable. The first end was achieved by the victories of
Alfonso I. (1112-1185), who exchanged the title of count for that of
king; the second by the victory of Aljubarrota in 1385 (see above, p.
474), and the wise government of John I. (1383-1433). It was in the
reign of the latter that Portugal [Sidenote: Geographical discovery.]
began to interest itself in the task of exploring the west coast of
Africa, which was destined to bring to the small kingdom such a lavish
measure of wealth and renown. His third son, who was also the grandson
of an Englishman, John of Gaunt, was the famous Prince Henry the
Navigator. He was inspired with a confident belief that it was possible
to sail round Africa, and that the Portuguese might by this route divert
to themselves the great gains which the Venetians and Genoese enjoyed
from their indirect trade with India through the Levant. His dream was
not fulfilled during his own lifetime, but his efforts contributed to
its later realisation. For forty years he laboured to fit out
expeditions for African exploration, and to these were due the
successive discovery, or in some cases the re-discovery, of Porto Santo
(1419), Madeira (1420), the Canaries, which were later surrendered to
Castile, the Azores (1431-1444), the White Cape or Cabo Blanco (1441),
and Cape Verde (1446). When once the great shoulder of Africa had been
rounded it was easy to reach the Guinea coast. The death of Prince Henry
in 1460 checked, but did not arrest the progress of discovery. Africa
had been found to produce one very valuable commodity—slaves—and
Portugal was keenly interested in the lucrative but demoralising
slave-trade. This served to stimulate frequent voyages to the west coast
of Africa, and it was certain that before long some of the more
adventurous sailors would be induced, either by design or by accident,
to prolong their journeys. Moreover, as the fifteenth century advanced,
the impulse to find a new route to India became constantly stronger. The
Levant was becoming more and more a Turkish lake. First the coast of
Asia Minor and then Constantinople fell into their hands. There was a
growing danger that the great markets in which the Venetians and Genoese
had purchased from Arab caravans the products of the East would be
closed to Christian merchants. Europe could not afford to dispense with
commodities which had become almost necessaries to her peoples, or to
purchase them upon terms which drained the western countries of their
all too scanty supply of the precious metals. A great prize was offered
to the discoverers of a direct maritime connection with India, and the
competition became more and more keen. Portugal, thanks to Prince Henry,
had been first in the race, and she deservedly won the prize. In 1486
Bartholomew Diaz reached Algoa [Sidenote: The Cape route to India.] Bay,
having at last rounded the Cape, to which he gave the well-merited name
of _Cabo Tormentoso_, or the stormy cape; though King John II., with
greater prescience and less familiarity, insisted upon calling it the
Cape of Good Hope. Twelve years later, in 1498, Vasco da Gama completed
the work by conducting a continuous voyage from Lisbon to Calicut.
Meanwhile Castile had attempted to solve the great problem of the age.
By the treaty of 1479, when Isabella was recognised and the claims of
Joanna were abandoned by her uncle and husband, Alfonso V., Portugal had
given up the Canaries, but had received the confirmation of past and
future discoveries on the African coast. Thus Spain was debarred from
competing with Portugal on the route to India which Henry the Navigator
had pointed out. But Christopher Columbus, a Genoese mariner who entered
[Sidenote: Discovery of America.] the service of Castile, proposed to
find a way to Asia by sailing westwards. In 1492 the first of his
ever-famous voyages brought him to land which he conceived to be part of
India. He had really found the new world of America, but his fruitful
error has given to the islands at which he first touched the name of the
West Indies.
These two discoveries, of America and of the route to India round the
Cape, are perhaps the greatest events of the fifteenth century. They
brought men face to face with new problems, new conceptions, new
interests, [Sidenote: Partition of the New World.] which have drawn a
conspicuous line of demarcation between the Middle Ages and later times.
But these belong to a subsequent period. The most immediate result was
to create a danger of collision between Spain and Portugal, which
contemporary statesmanship set itself to avert. A bull of Alexander VI.
in 1493 drew an imaginary line a hundred leagues west of the Azores, and
gave the countries to the west of the line to Spain and those to the
east to Portugal. This arrangement was modified in the next year by the
treaty of Tordesillas between the two countries, which shifted the line
of demarcation some hundred and seventy leagues farther west. This
served to give to Portugal its subsequent claim to Brazil. But the
monstrous pretension of the two pioneers of discovery to monopolise all
its fruits to themselves provoked before long the vigorous resistance of
northern countries which were equally fitted by geography for oceanic
trade. When Spain in 1580 annexed Portugal, the struggle against a
single monopoly became more desperate; and it was this, even more than
differences of religion, which led to those prolonged wars with the
English and Dutch in which the power of Spain was shattered.
Footnote 12:
See Genealogical Table Q, in Appendix.
Footnote 13:
See Genealogical Table R, in Appendix.
Footnote 14:
See Genealogical Table S, in Appendix.