THE REIGN OF HENRY IV.: CIVIL WAR AND ANARCHY
1464–1474
Henry IV. had been merely a figurehead at the meeting of Fuenterrabia, a
rôle to which with his habitual lethargy he had no objection. When,
however, he attempted to obtain possession of the town of Estella and
failed to do so in spite of Villena’s outwardly strenuous efforts, he
began at last to suspect that he had been also a dupe, and that French
and Aragonese money had bribed his ministers to his own undoing.
He could not make up his mind to break openly with the Marquis and his
uncle, the Archbishop of Toledo; but a perceptible coldness appeared in
his manner where they were concerned, in contrast to the ever-increasing
favour that he now bestowed on Beltran de La Cueva, Count of Ledesma.
The latter’s share in the conferences had been mainly ornamental. Indeed
his talents had lain hitherto rather in the ballroom or the lists than
in the world of practical politics; but success had stirred his
ambitions, and especially his marriage with the daughter of the Marquis
de Santillana, head of the powerful family of Mendoza. With this
connection at his back he might hope to drive Villena and his relations
from Court, and with the Queen’s aid control the destinies of Castile.
In the struggle between the rival favourites, the Princess Isabel was
regarded as a useful pawn on their chess-board. She and her brother had
been summoned to Court at Villena’s suggestion that “they would be
better brought up and learn more virtuous customs than away from his
Majesty’s presence.” Whether irony were intended or no, Henry had
accepted the statement seriously; and while Alfonso was handed over to a
tutor, his sister joined the Queen’s household.
There were hopes at this time of another heir to the crown; and the
King, foreseeing in the prospect of a son the means to raise his fallen
dignity, was anxious to gratify his wife’s wishes. When she pleaded
therefore for an alliance with her own country, to be cemented by the
marriage of her brother Alfonso, then a widower, with the
twelve-year-old Isabel, he readily agreed. The scheme was the more
pleasing that it ran counter to the union of Isabel and Ferdinand of
Aragon, still strongly advocated by King John. Villena, who had been
bribed into assisting the latter negotiation, received the first real
intimation that his ascendancy was shaken, when he learned that the King
and Court had set off to the south-western province of Estremadura
without consulting him.
Through the medium of the Queen and Count of Ledesma, the Portuguese
alliance was successfully arranged; and Alfonso V. was so impressed by
the young Princess that he gallantly protested his wish that the
betrothal could take place at once. Isabel replied with her strange
unchildlike caution, that she could not be betrothed save with the
consent of the National Cortes, an appeal to Cæsar that postponed the
matter for the time being. Perhaps she knew her brother well enough to
doubt his continued insistence that “she should marry none save the King
of Portugal”; or she may thus early have formed a shrewd and not
altogether flattering estimate of the volatile and uncertain Alfonso.
In the meantime the Marquis of Villena was plotting secretly with his
brother, the Master of Calatrava, the Archbishop of Toledo, the Admiral
of Castile, and other nobles how he might regain his old influence.
After a series of attempts on his rival’s life, from which Beltran de La
Cueva emerged scatheless with the additional honour of the coveted
Mastership of Santiago, he and his fellow-conspirators retired to
Burgos, where they drew up a schedule of their grievances. Secret
measures having failed they were determined to browbeat Henry into
submission by playing on his well-known fears of civil war.
The King’s hopes of an undisputed succession had been shattered by the
premature birth of a still-born son; and thus the question of the
Infanta Joanna’s legitimacy remained as a convenient weapon for those
discontented with the Crown. Nor had the gifts and honours heaped on
Beltran de La Cueva encouraged the loyalty of the principal nobles. The
new favourite was rapacious and arrogant, while even more intolerable to
courtiers of good family and wealth was the rise of an upstart nobility,
that threatened to monopolize the royal favour.
Louis XI. was astute enough to develop such a policy to his own
advantage; but the feeble Henry IV. was no more able to control his new
creations than their rivals. Almost without exception they betrayed and
sold him for their own ends, poisoning his mind against the few likely
to remain faithful, and making his name odious amongst his poorer
subjects by their selfishness and the corruption of their rule.
The conspirators of Burgos were thus enabled to pose as the defenders of
national liberties; and their insolent letter of censure took the
colouring most likely to appeal to popular prejudice. Complaints of the
King’s laxity in religious matters, of the unchecked violence of his
Moorish guard, of the debasement of the coinage, and of the incompetence
and venality of the royal judges—these were placed in the foreground,
but the real crux of the document came later. It lay in two petitions
that were veiled threats, first that the King would deprive the Count of
Ledesma of the Mastership of Santiago, since it belonged of right to the
Infante Alfonso, and next that the said Alfonso should be proclaimed as
heir to the throne. The illegitimacy of the Princess Joanna was openly
affirmed.
Henry received this letter at Valladolid, and, calling together his
royal council, laid it before them. He expressed neither resentment at
its insolence nor a desire for revenge; and when the aged Bishop of
Cuenca, who had been one of his father’s advisers, bade him have no
dealings with the conspirators save to offer them battle, he replied
with a sneer that “those who need not fight nor lay hands on their
swords were always free with the lives of others.”
Peace at all costs was his cry, and the old Bishop, exasperated, forgot
prudence in his anger. “Henceforth,” he exclaimed, “you will be thought
the most unworthy King Spain ever knew; and you will repent it, Señor,
when it is too late to make amends.”
Already knights and armed men were flocking to the royal standard, as
they heard of the rebels’ ultimatum. Many of them were genuinely shocked
at the attack on the dignity of the Crown, but for the greater number
Henry’s reckless prodigality of money and estates was not without its
attractions.
The King, however, proved deaf alike to warnings and scorn. After
elaborate discussions he and the Marquis of Villena arranged a temporary
peace, known as the Concord of Medina del Campo. Its terms were entirely
favourable to the conspirators, for Henry, heedless of the implied slur
on his honour, agreed to acknowledge Alfonso as his heir, on the
understanding that he should later marry the Infanta Joanna. With
incredible shortsightedness he also consented to hand his brother over
to the Marquis; and on the 30th of November, 1464, the oath to the new
heir to the throne was publicly taken. This was followed by the
elevation of the Count of Ledesma, who had resigned the Mastership of
Santiago in favour of the young Prince, to the rank of Duke of
Alburquerque.
The question of the misgovernment of the country and its cure was to be
referred to a committee of five leading nobles, two to be selected by
either party, while the Prior-General of the Order of San Geronimo was
given a casting vote. This “Junta of Medina del Campo,” held in January,
1465, proved no lasting settlement, for the King’s representatives
allowed themselves to be won over to the views of the league, with
disastrous results for their own master.
“They straitened the power of the King to such an extent,” says a
chronicler, “that they left him almost nothing of his dominion save the
title of King, without power to command or any pre-eminence.”
Henry was roused at last, but it was only to fall a victim to fresh
treachery.
Two of the most prominent members of the league in its beginnings had
been Don Alonso Carrillo, Archbishop of Toledo, uncle of the Marquis of
Villena, and the Admiral of Castile, Don Fadrique Enriquez. The former
had little of his nephew’s suave charm and adaptability, and his
haughty, irascible nature was more suited to the camp than the Primacy
of the Castilian Church.
“He was a great lover of war,” says Pulgar in his _Claros Varones_, “and
while he was praised on the one side for his open-handedness he was
blamed on the other for his turbulence, considering the religious vows
by which he was bound.”
At the time of the Concord of Medina del Campo, he and the Admiral of
Castile had professed themselves weary of the consistent disloyalty of
their colleagues, and had returned to Court with the King. They now
denounced the “Junta” and advised their master to revoke his agreement
to the Concord, and to demand that the Infante Alfonso should be
instantly restored to his power. As might be expected, the league merely
laughed at this request. They declared that they held the young Prince
as a guarantee of their safety, and that, since the King had determined
to persecute them, they must renounce his service.
Not a few of those at Court suspected the Archbishop and Admiral of a
share in this response, but Henry refused to take a lesson from the
ill-results of past credulity. Instead he submitted entirely to his new
advisers, surrendering at their request two important strongholds. This
achieved, Don Fadrique and the Archbishop deserted to the league without
further pretence; and when the royal messengers discovered the latter in
full fighting gear, on his way to one of his new possessions, and
ventured to remind him that the King awaited him, that warlike prelate
replied with an air of fury: “Go, tell your King that I have had enough
of him and his affairs. Henceforward he shall see who is the true
Sovereign of Castile.”
This insult with its cryptic threat was explained almost immediately by
messengers hurrying from Valladolid, who brought word that the Admiral
had raised the standard of revolt, proclaiming in the market-place,
“Long live the King—Don Alfonso!”
From defiance in words the rebel leaders proceeded to show their scorn
of Henry IV. in action. On June 5th of the same year, they commanded a
wooden scaffold to be set up on the plain outside the city of Avila, so
that it could be clearly seen from all the surrounding neighbourhood. On
it was placed an effigy of the King, robed in heavy black and seated in
a chair of state. On his head was a crown, before him he held a sword,
and in his right hand a sceptre—emblems of the sovereignty he had failed
to exercise. Mounting the scaffold, the chief members of the league read
aloud their grievances, declaring that only necessity had driven them to
the step they were about to take. Then the Archbishop of Toledo removed
the crown and others of the league the sword and sceptre. Having
stripped the effigy of its royal robes, they threw it on the ground,
spurning it from them with their feet.
Immediately it had fallen and their jests and insults had died away, the
eleven-year-old Alfonso ascended the scaffold, and when he had been
invested with the insignia of majesty, the nobles knelt, and kissed his
hand, and took the oath of allegiance. Afterwards they raised him on
their shoulders, shouting, “Castile for the King, Don Alfonso!”
Messengers soon brought Henry news of his mock dethronement; and reports
of risings in different parts of the land followed in quick succession.
Valladolid and Burgos had risen in the north; there were factions in the
important city of Toledo; a revolt had blazed up in Andalusia, where Don
Pedro Giron, Master of Calatrava, had long been busy, sowing the seeds
of disaffection.
“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall the earth receive
me,” exclaimed the King when he was told, and he found a melancholy
satisfaction in quotations from Isaiah concerning the ingratitude of a
chosen people. The tide had, however, turned in his favour. Even in
Avila, amid the shouts of triumph and rejoicing, when Henry’s effigy was
thrown to the ground, some of those present had sobbed aloud with
horror. More practical assistance took the shape of an army that rapidly
collected in response to Henry’s summons, “eager,” as the chronicler
expressed it, “to come to blows with those tyrants who had thus
dishonoured their natural lord.”
Villena who much preferred diplomacy to the shock of warfare had in the
meanwhile induced his master to agree to a personal interview, with the
result that the King broke up his camp, compensating his troops for
their inaction by large gifts of money. The league, it was understood,
would return to Henry’s allegiance within a certain time; but its
leaders had fallen out amongst themselves, and at length Villena thought
it as well that he and his family should seek advantageous terms on
their own account.
He demanded with incredible insolence that Henry should give his sister
Isabel in marriage to Don Pedro Giron, Master of Calatrava. In return
the Master would pay into the impoverished royal treasury an enormous
sum of money, amassed by fraud and violence, besides entering the royal
service with the 3000 lances, with which he was just then engaged in
harrying the fields of Andalusia. By way of securing future peace, the
Infante Alfonso was to be restored to his brother, and the Duke of
Alburquerque and his brother-in-law, the Bishop of Calahorra, banished.
For all his folly and weakness, it is difficult to believe that Henry
would consent to such terms, but so low were the straits in which he
found himself that he immediately expressed his satisfaction, sending
word to Don Pedro Giron to come as quickly as he could. Isabel on her
part was aghast and, finding entreaties and remonstrances of no avail,
she spent days and nights upon her knees, praying that God would either
remove the man or herself, before such a marriage should take place. Her
favourite lady-in-waiting, Doña Beatriz de Bobadilla, moved by her
distress, assured her that neither God nor she would permit such a
crime, and, showing her a dagger that she wore hidden, swore to kill the
Master, if no other way of safety should present itself.
Help, indeed, seemed far away, for the bridegroom, having obtained from
Rome a dispensation from his ill-kept vow of celibacy, was soon on his
way to Madrid at the head of a large company of knights and horsemen.
His only reply to those who told him of the Infanta’s obstinate refusal
of his suit was that he would win her, if not by gentleness then by
force.
At Villa Real, where he halted for the night, the unexpected happened,
for, falling ill of an inflammation of the throat, he died a few days
later.
“He was suddenly struck down by the hand of God,” says Enriquez del
Castillo; while Alonso de Palencia describes how at the end “he
blasphemously accused God of cruelty in not permitting him to add forty
days to his forty and three years.”
Both the King and the Marquis of Villena were in consternation at the
news. The latter had begun to lose his influence with the league, who
justly suspected him of caring more for his own interests than theirs;
and, while he bargained and negotiated with a view to securing for
himself the Mastership of Santiago, a position that he no longer
considered belonged to the young Alfonso “of right,” the Archbishop of
Toledo and the Admiral were bent on bringing matters to an issue by open
war.
Henry was forced to collect his loyalists once more; and on the 20th of
August, 1467, a battle took place on the plain of Olmedo, just outside
the city. The King’s army had the advantage in numbers; indeed he had
been induced to advance on the belief that the enemy would not dare to
leave the shelter of their walls, and by the time they appeared it was
too late to sound the retreat. Conspicuous amongst the rebels were the
Infante Alfonso clad, notwithstanding his youth, in full mail armour,
and the fiery Archbishop of Toledo in his surcoat of scarlet emblazoned
with a white cross. The latter was wounded in his left arm early in the
fight but not for that ceasing to urge on his cavalry to the attack. On
the other side the hero of the day was Beltran de La Cueva, whose death
forty knights had sworn to accomplish, but whose skill and courage were
to preserve him for service in a better cause.
Alone, amongst the leading combatants, Henry IV. cut but a poor figure,
for, watching the action from a piece of rising ground, he fled at the
first sign of a reverse, persuaded that the battle was lost. Late that
evening a messenger, primed with the news of victory, discovered him
hiding in a neighbouring village, and he at last consented to return to
the camp.
The royalists succeeded in continuing their march, but since the enemy
remained in possession of the larger number of banners and prisoners,
both armies were able to claim that they had won.
The battle of Olmedo was followed by the treacherous surrender to the
league of the King’s favourite town of Segovia. Here he had left the
Queen and his sister; but while the former sought refuge in the Alcazar,
which still held out for her husband, Isabel preferred to remain in the
palace with her ladies-in-waiting. She had not suffered such kindness at
the hands of Henry IV. as would make her rate either his love or his
power of protection highly; and, when the rebels entered the town she
surrendered to them with a very goodwill.
Henceforward her fortunes were joined to those of Alfonso; but death
which had saved her from marriage with a man she loathed, was soon to
rob her of her younger brother. It is difficult to form a clear estimate
of either Alfonso’s character or abilities from the scanty references of
the chroniclers; but already, at the age of fourteen, he had proved
himself a better soldier than Henry IV.; and we are told that those who
knew him personally judged him more upright. The news of his death, on
July 5, 1468, was therefore received with general dismay. His death had
been ostensibly the result of swollen glands, but it was widely believed
that the real cause of its seriousness was a dish of poisoned trout
prepared for him by a secret ally of the King.
With his disappearance from the political chess-board, the whole balance
of affairs in Castile was altered; and Isabel emerged from comparative
obscurity into the prominent position she was afterwards to hold. Would
she take Alfonso’s place as puppet of the league? or would she be
reconciled to her elder brother? In the latter case, how would the King
decide between her claims and those of Joanna “La Beltraneja”? These
were the questions on whose answers depended the future of the land.
The principal members of the league had no doubts at all as to her
complete acquiescence in their plans, and in the town of Avila they made
her a formal offer of the throne, inviting her to assume the title of
Queen of Castile and Leon. Isabel received the suggestion with her usual
caution; for though but a girl of seventeen, she had few illusions as to
the glories of sovereignty. She knew, moreover, that several prominent
insurgents had taken the opportunity of reconciling themselves at Court,
while the Marquis of Villena, now acknowledged Master of Santiago, was
once more hand in glove with the King. She therefore replied that while
her brother lived she could neither take the government nor call herself
Queen, but that she would use every effort to secure peace in the land.
[Illustration:
ALFONSO, BROTHER OF ISABEL OF CASTILE
FROM “ICONOGRAFIA ESPAÑOLA” BY VALENTIN CARDERERA Y SOLANO
]
This answer deprived the league of any legitimate excuse for rebellion;
and they therefore sent letters to the King, declaring their willingness
to return to his service, if he would acknowledge Isabel as heir to the
throne. The Marquis of Villena also pressed the suggestion, thinking by
this means to re-establish his influence completely; since his enemies,
the House of Mendoza, and especially its cleverest representative Pedro
Gonsalez, Bishop of Siguenza, who had been promoted from the See of
Calahorra, had taken up the cause of Queen Joanna and her daughter.
Henry, anxious for peace, no matter what the price, fell in with
Villena’s schemes. On the 19th of September, 1468, a meeting was held at
the Toros de Guisandos near Avila; and there, in the presence of the
Papal Legate, Henry swore away for a second time the honour of his
so-called daughter, and recognized Isabel as legitimate heir to the
throne and Princess of Asturias. By the terms of an agreement previously
drawn up, he also promised that his sister should not be compelled to
marry against her will, while she in return agreed to obtain his
consent; furthermore he declared that he would divorce and send back to
her own land his wife, whose lax behaviour had now become a byword.
Isabel’s own position had materially improved; and there were no lack of
suitors for this eligible heiress. Amongst them was a brother of Edward
IV. of England, but whether the Duke of Clarence or Richard of
Gloucester, the chroniclers do not say. The English alliance was never
very seriously considered, whereas a veritable war of diplomacy was to
be waged around the other proposals.
The Infanta’s chief adviser at this time was the Archbishop of Toledo,
though it does not appear that she was as much under his thumb, as
Enriquez de Castillo would have us believe. There is evidence of
considerable independence of judgment both in her refusal of the crown
on Alfonso’s death, and in her willingness to meet her brother at the
Toros de Guisandos, in spite of the Archbishop’s violent opposition.
Throughout the negotiations, the Archbishop had been on the watch for
evidence of some hidden plot, and only Isabel’s tact and firmness had
induced him to accompany her to the meeting.
Nevertheless it was natural that a girl of her age should rely
considerably on the judgment of a man so well versed in the politics of
the day, especially as the alliance that he urged appealed in every way
to her own inclinations. Ferdinand of Aragon, the Archbishop’s protégé,
was her junior by eleven months; a slight disparity in comparison with
the age of former suitors such as Charles of Viana, Alfonso of Portugal,
and the Master of Calatrava, all her seniors by at least twenty years.
In modern reckoning, Ferdinand would be called a boy, but his childhood
had been spent amidst surroundings of war and rebellion, from which he
had emerged as his father’s right hand; and John II., in token of his
love and confidence, had created this son of his old age King of Sicily
to mark his dignity and independence. Shrewd, practical, and brave,
Ferdinand united to a well-set-up, manly, appearance all those qualities
that Henry IV. so conspicuously lacked. It was little wonder then if he
found grace in the Infanta Isabel’s eyes, not only as an eligible
husband, but as a fitting consort with whose help she might subdue the
turbulence of Castile.
It can be imagined that Ferdinand found no grace at all in the eyes of
the Marquis of Villena, to whom opportunities for turbulence were as the
breath of life, and whose affection for the House of Aragon had never
been sincere.
Policy dictated to him a counter-alliance and at first the importunate
Alfonso of Portugal won support. Villena had re-established his old
influence over his master, and at this time formed an ambitious scheme,
by which his son should marry the Infanta Joanna; the idea being to draw
up a new settlement, settling the crown on his own descendants, if
Isabel and her Portuguese husband had no children.
At Ocaña, where Henry IV. and his sister held a meeting of the Cortes in
1468, a magnificent embassy appeared from Alfonso V., with the
Archbishop of Lisbon at its head, seeking the betrothal of their master
to the Infanta Isabel.
“They thought it an easy matter to bring about the marriage,” says
Alonso de Palencia; but they were destined to return to their own land,
with their mission unfulfilled. Isabel had never been attracted to the
Portuguese King; and her coldness was hardened into antipathy by the
Archbishop of Toledo, who sent her secret warnings that the alliance was
a plot to ruin her prospects. Once married, she would become a foreigner
in the eyes of Castile, and while her children could not hope to succeed
to the throne of Portugal, since Alfonso had already an heir, the
Infanta Joanna would be preferred to her in her own land. Isabel, moved
both by these arguments and her own feelings, thereupon gave a secret
promise to marry her cousin Ferdinand, returning a steady refusal to her
brother’s persuasions and threats.
Henry now made an attempt to capture her, with a view to imprisoning her
in the Alcazar at Madrid; but the attitude of the principal knights of
Ocaña, who loved neither Villena nor the Portuguese, was so threatening
that he quickly changed his manner. Assuring the Archbishop of Lisbon
that some other means would be found to placate the Princess, whose
opposition would only be increased by violence, he sent him and his
fellow-ambassadors away, not altogether despairing but with their
confidence somewhat shaken.
In the meanwhile the fires of rebellion were alight once more in
Andalusia and burnt so furiously, that it was felt only the King in
person could hope to allay them. With great reluctance he left his
sister in Ocaña, but he dared not risk further unpopularity by using
force. At the Master of Santiago’s suggestion he demanded that she
should promise to take no new steps about her marriage until his return,
thinking in this way to place her in an equivocal position. Either she
would refuse, in which case she would stand self-convicted of some
secret plot, or she would take the oath, condemning herself as a
perjurer if she broke it.
Isabel, appreciating the situation, gave her promise. Even the Master of
Santiago, for all his vigilance, did not know that her consent to the
Aragonese alliance was of previous date, and therefore arrangements
concerned with it could be argued not to fall under the heading “new.”
As soon as Henry IV. and his favourite had gone southwards, she herself
left Ocaña, with the ostensible object of taking her brother Alfonso’s
body to be buried in state at Avila, and from there went to Madrigal her
birthplace, where her mother was living. It was her hope that here she
would be able to complete her negotiations with King John and his son,
undetected; but she found the Bishop of Burgos, a nephew of the Master
of Santiago, in the town ready to spy on all her actions.
The King had by now planned for his sister a new match, with Charles,
Duke of Berri, brother and heir-presumptive to Louis XI. Not only would
this alliance cement the customary friendship of Castile and France, but
Isabel’s close connection with the French throne would remove her very
thoroughly from the danger zone of Castilian affairs. When the Cardinal
of Arras arrived in Andalusia he was therefore encouraged by Henry to go
to Madrigal in person and urge the Duke’s suit.
Nothing doubting the success of his mission, for he was a man famed for
his oratory, the Cardinal, having gained admittance to the Princess,
brought forward all his arguments, laying stress not only on the wealth
and personal charms of the Duke, but on the joy such an alliance would
give her father in the other world. Now Isabel had previously sent
secret messengers to report on the respective appearance and bearing of
Ferdinand and the French Duke, and the comparison was hardly favourable
to the latter, who was a weakling with thin ungainly limbs and watery
eyes. She could thus estimate the worth of the Cardinal’s statements and
replied firmly that “she could not dispose of her hand in marriage save
by the advice of the leading nobles and knights of the kingdoms, and
that having consulted them she would do what God ordained.”
This was equivalent to a refusal; and the Cardinal, having exerted his
eloquence once more in vain, returned to France, nursing his resentment
and wrath. He left the Princess in a critical position; for her brother
could draw but one conclusion from her refusal of such an advantageous
match; and he and the Master of Santiago now strained every effort to
stop her marriage with the King of Sicily.
Unable to leave Andalusia themselves, they warned the citizens of
Madrigal that any favour shown to the Princess would be regarded as an
act of treachery to the Crown, while she was so surrounded by spies and
enemies that even her faithful lady-in-waiting, Beatriz de Bobadilla,
grew frightened and besought her to break off the Aragonese alliance.
Isabel knew that, once intimidated into doing this, she would remain
absolutely at her brother’s mercy, and she therefore implored the
Archbishop of Toledo to come to her assistance before it was too late. A
lover of bold and decisive actions, that warlike prelate was soon at the
gates of Madrigal at the head of an armed force; and Isabel, refusing to
listen to the threats of the Bishop of Burgos, at once joined him, going
with him to Valladolid, the headquarters of the Admiral, Don Fadrique.
She had burned her boats, and it only remained for the man on whom she
had pinned her faith to play his part in the drama adequately. Both
Ferdinand and his father realized the seriousness of the situation. If
the treaty of Fuenterrabia had spelled trouble and disaster for Castile,
it had been the source of even greater evils in Aragon; for the
Catalans, far from returning to their old allegiance, as they were
advised, had continued to maintain their desperate resistance in
Barcelona. They had elected as their Count first one prince of royal
extraction and then another; each new puppet doomed to ultimate failure,
but leaving behind him a defiance increasing in ferocity as it lost
power in other ways.
Nor was chronic rebellion John II.’s only serious trouble. The important
counties of Roussillon and Cerdagne, pledged to Louis XI. in return for
troops, had been seized by that monarch, as soon as he saw his neighbour
too involved in difficulties to show practical resentment; and the web
of French diplomacy was now being spun over Navarre, through the medium
of the King of Aragon’s son-in-law, the Count of Foix. Personal sorrows
added their quota: the loss of sight at a time when political clouds
looked blackest, followed by the death of Queen Joanna, whose courage
and brains had made her a fitting helpmate for her ambitious husband,
whether in the council-chamber or on the battlefield. John was indeed
repaid with added measure for the turbulence and treachery of his early
days; but like many men of his type he showed better in adversity than
in success.
Doggedly he laid fresh plans, and Providence that seldom hates the brave
rewarded him by the recovery of his eyesight.
The realization of his son’s marriage with Isabel of Castile, always
favoured by him, was now his dearest ambition; for he believed that the
final union of the two kingdoms would mean the death-blow to Louis XI.’s
hopes of dominating the Pyrenees, as well as the building up of the
power of the Crown at home against unruly subjects. Such designs were,
however, of the future, while the immediate steps to achieve them were
fraught with danger.
Isabel, the bride-elect was at Valladolid, temporarily protected by the
Archbishop of Toledo and the Admiral; but to the north lay the hostile
Bishopric of Burgos, to the south-east a line of fortified strongholds,
all in the hands of the Mendozas, the chief supporters of Joanna La
Beltraneja and therefore enemies of the Aragonese match. It only needed
the return of Henry IV. from Andalusia to make her position untenable.
Isabel and the Archbishop of Toledo therefore dispatched messengers to
Aragon in haste to insist that the King of Sicily should come to
Valladolid. They found him in Saragossa, and suggested that, as every
moment of delay increased the danger, he should disguise himself and go
to Castile with only a few adherents, thus hoodwinking the Mendozas, who
would never expect him to take this risk, and who also believed the
negotiations for the marriage to be at a much earlier stage.
Notwithstanding his later reputation for a hard head and a cool heart,
Ferdinand in his youth possessed a certain vein of adventurous chivalry.
It was with difficulty that he had been prevented from leading an
entirely rash expedition to Isabel’s rescue at Madrigal, and he now
readily agreed to a scheme, whose chief merit lay in its apparent
impossibility.
Sending one of the Castilian messengers on before to announce his
coming, he and a few of the most trusted members of his household boldly
crossed the frontier. The rest were disguised as merchants, Ferdinand
himself as a servant; and at the inns where they were forced to halt he
played his part, waiting at table and tending the mules. They did not
stop often, riding in spite of the intense cold by day and night; with
the result that they arrived before they were expected at the friendly
town of Burgo de Osma. Ferdinand, whom excitement had rendered less
tired and sleepy than the others, spurred forward as they came in sight
of the gates, narrowly escaping death at the hands of an over-zealous
sentry. Soon, however, their identity was explained, and amid the
blowing of trumpets and joyful shouts the young King was welcomed by his
allies.
At Valladolid the news of his arrival into safe territory was the signal
for feasting and jousts, and preparations for the marriage were pushed
on apace. Ferdinand came by night to Valladolid, and, being met at a
postern gate by the Archbishop of Toledo was led to the house where the
Princess lodged.
Four days later, on October 18, 1469, the formal betrothal took place.
Isabel and Ferdinand as second cousins stood within the prohibited
degrees of consanguinity; but the Archbishop of Toledo produced a bull,
affording the necessary dispensation. This bore the signature of Pius
II., who had died in 1464, and authorized Ferdinand to marry within the
third degree of consanguinity, on the expiration of four years from the
date of the bull. Granted its authenticity, the marriage was perfectly
legal; but it is almost certain the document was an elaborate forgery,
constructed by John of Aragon and the Archbishop to meet their pressing
needs.[2] The dispensation was essential to satisfy, not only Isabel,
but any wavering supporters of orthodox views. On the other hand, apart
from the haste required and known dilatoriness of the Papal Court, Paul
II., who at that time occupied the See of Saint Peter, was the sworn
ally of Henry IV.; and those who were negotiating the Aragonese alliance
recognized that there could be no successful appeal to his authority.
Footnote 2:
See Clemencin, _Elogio de Isabella_, Illustracion II.
Another matter requiring delicate handling had been the marriage
settlement that, signed by Ferdinand and ratified by his father, was
read aloud at the betrothal ceremony by the Archbishop of Toledo. In it
Ferdinand declared his devotion to the Mother Church and Apostolic See,
and his undying allegiance to Henry IV. The document then went on to say
that the signatures of both husband and wife must be affixed to all
ordinances and public deeds; while the remainder of the clauses were
directed to allaying the suspicions of those who feared that the King of
Sicily might use his new position for the good of Aragon rather than
Castile. In them he promised not to leave the kingdom himself without
consent of the Princess, nor to remove any children that they might
have, whether sons or daughters. He would not on his own account make
peace nor war nor any alliance. He would not appoint to offices any save
natives of Castile; while he pledged himself to take no new steps with
regard to the lands that had once belonged to his father but had since
been alienated.
After the ceremony was over, Ferdinand retired with the Archbishop to
his lodging in Valladolid; and the next day, October 19th, he and Isabel
were married; and for six days the town kept festival in honour of the
event.
Henry learned of his sister’s marriage from the Master of Santiago, and
naturally nothing of the insolence of such proceedings towards himself
was lost in the telling. The news found him in broken health, the result
of his life-long self-indulgence, and with his vanity badly wounded by
the scorn and defiance he had encountered in Andalusia. He was therefore
in no mood for conciliation, and received Isabel’s letters, explaining
the necessity under which she had acted and her assurances of loyalty,
in gloomy silence, lending a willing ear to the Master of Santiago’s
suggestion that he might retract the oath he had taken at the Toros de
Guisandos.
Circumstances favoured such a course; for Louis XI., who looked on the
Castilian-Aragonese alliance with alarm as inimical to French expansion,
offered Isabel’s rejected suitor, Charles, now Duke of Guienne, to the
Infanta Joanna, the underlying condition being of course that Henry
should disinherit Isabel in her favour. Negotiations were at once begun;
and in 1470, the Cardinal of Arras appeared at the Spanish Court charged
with the final conclusion of the terms. He had never forgiven the
Infanta’s indifference to his oratory; and, as diligent enquiry had made
him cognizant of the fact that Pius II.’s bull must be a forgery, he
proceeded to denounce her in words, according to Enriquez de Castillo,
“so outrageous that they are more worthy to be passed over in silence
than recorded.”
Henry far from being shocked was obviously pleased; and, having
completed the agreement with the Cardinal, in October, 1470, he publicly
withdrew his oath, taken at the Toros de Guisandos, and acknowledged the
Infanta Joanna, then nine years old, as his daughter and heir. Her
formal betrothal to the Duke of Guienne followed, and then the little
Princess was handed over to the care of the Master of Santiago, much to
the indignation of the Marquis of Santillana and the Mendozas, in whose
keeping she had hitherto been.
Henry now published a manifesto, in which he declared that his sister
had broken her oath in marrying without his consent, and had aggravated
her offence by her choice of an enemy of Castile, and by not waiting to
obtain a dispensation from the Pope. He had therefore judged her unfit
to succeed to the throne and had restored Doña Joanna to her rights.
This document did not meet with general approval. Indeed the principal
towns of Andalusia, already disaffected, openly expressed their refusal
to consent to its terms. Yet to Isabel in Dueñas, where her first child,
a daughter named after herself, had been born in the October of this
year, the prospect seemed bleak enough. Her difficulties in Castile were
intensified by the ill-fortunes of John of Aragon in his war against
Louis XI. for the recovery of Roussillon and Cerdagne; so that in spite
of the critical position of affairs at home, she was forced to let
Ferdinand go to his father’s assistance.
Hiding her fears, she replied to Henry’s manifesto by a counter-protest,
in which she recalled her own moderation in refusing the crown on her
brother Alfonso’s death, and vindicated her marriage as performed on the
advice of the wiser and larger section of the leading nobility. Henry,
she declared had broken his oath, not only in acknowledging Joanna, who
was known to be illegitimate, as his daughter and heiress; but long
before, when he had failed to divorce and send away the Queen as he had
promised, and when he had tried to force his sister to marry the King of
Portugal against her will.
In the meanwhile, in spite of the flourish of trumpets with which the
betrothal had taken place, the French marriage hung fire. Gossip
maintained that the Duke of Guienne’s interest in Joanna had been merely
the result of pique at Isabel’s refusal; while Louis XI. had used it as
a temporary expedient against his enemy, the King of Aragon. At any rate
the French Prince was openly courting the heiress, Mary of Burgundy,
when death cut short his hopes in May, 1472.
Various bridegrooms were now suggested for the Infanta Joanna; amongst
them her own uncle the King of Portugal.
Henry IV. was at this time at Segovia, whose Alcayde, Andres de Cabrera,
husband of Isabel’s lady-in-waiting, Beatriz de Bobadilla, had always
been one of his faithful adherents. In the Alcazar was stored a
considerable sum of money; and the Master of Santiago now advised the
King to demand its surrender and also that of the fortress, hoping to
get them into his own hands, as he had done with the Alcazar at Madrid.
Cabrera, suspecting rightly a plot for his own ruin, stoutly refused;
and his enemy, after stirring up in the town a rebellion which the
Alcayde promptly quelled, left the city in disgust. Henry, who loved
Segovia, remained behind, unable to make up his mind to any decisive
action.
The favourite’s departure was the opportunity for which those inclined
to Isabel’s interests had long been waiting; and Beatriz de Bobadilla
urged her husband to effect a reconciliation between the King and his
sister. This plan met with the approval of no less important a person
than Pedro Gonsalez de Mendoza, Bishop of Siguenza, whose material
position had been lately increased, not only by the Archbishopric of
Seville, but also by receiving a long-coveted Cardinal’s hat. At the
time of the Aragonese marriage the Mendozas had been amongst Isabel’s
most formidable opponents, but their enforced surrender of the Infanta
Joanna to the Master of Santiago after the French betrothal, had quite
altered their views; and the Cardinal of Spain, as Pedro Gonsalez was
usually called, now worked to secure Isabel’s accession, as the best
means of ruining his rival.
Another person, who had set himself to negotiate an agreement, was the
Papal Legate, Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, by birth a Valencian. John of
Aragon’s old enemy, Paul II. had died in 1471; and Sixtus IV., his
successor, when dispatching Cardinal Borgia to Castile, in 1473, to
demand a clerical subsidy, gave him at the same time a bull of
dispensation, which legalized Ferdinand and Isabel’s marriage, and also
affirmed the legitimacy of their daughter and her rights of inheritance.
Isabel’s prospects had considerably brightened, and a bold action on her
part was to put them to the test. One day, Beatriz de Bobadilla, who had
secretly kept her informed of the current state of affairs, disguised
herself as a countrywoman and, mounted on an ass, rode out to the city
of Aranda, where her mistress was living. She begged her to come to
Segovia immediately; and, on a day arranged, Isabel and the Archbishop
of Toledo appeared in the city before dawn and were received into the
Alcazar. Henry was then in his hunting-box in the woods outside, but
that evening he returned to the palace and saw his sister. With his
usual impressionability he echoed the joy of all around him, and
embracing her informed her of his goodwill and the pleasure her coming
had given him. The next day they rode through the city together, his
hand on her bridle-rein; and some little time afterwards Ferdinand, who
had been hastily summoned, was reconciled to his brother-in-law.
Andres de Cabrera, delighted at the success of his hazardous scheme,
arranged an elaborate dinner on the Feast of the Epiphany of that year,
1474, in order to celebrate the occasion; but unfortunately Henry, who
was in delicate health, fell ill. Secret supporters of the Master of
Santiago cleverly suggested that he had been poisoned, and that this had
been the main object of the reconciliation. Henry, thoroughly alarmed,
in spite of all his sister’s efforts to allay his fears, left Segovia,
as soon as he was well enough to bear the journey, joining the Master of
Santiago and the Infanta Joanna at Madrid.
All the old trouble and discord seemed destined to begin once more, but
in reality the labours of both schemer and dupe were nearly at an end.
Early in the autumn the Master of Santiago hastened to Estremadura to
gain possession of a certain fortress, and there, on the eve of
achieving his purpose, he fell ill and died.
Henry, though almost inconsolable at the news, transferred his
affections to his favourite’s son, the Marquis of Villena, confirming
him in all his father’s offices and titles and creating him Master of
Santiago. It was to be almost the last of the many honours and gifts
that he bestowed in the course of his long reign, for on December 11,
1474, a few weeks before his fiftieth birthday, he also died.
The same atmosphere of vacillation, in which he had moved in his life,
enveloped his death-bed. When questioned as to the succession, the
chronicler, Alonso de Palencia, declares that he equivocated, saying
that his secretary knew what he wished; other writers that he confessed
to a friar that the Princess Joanna was indeed his daughter, and that he
left a will to this effect. Enriquez del Castillo, his chaplain and
chronicler, makes no mention of Joanna’s name. Henry’s personal beliefs
and wishes had availed little in his own day, and he may have guessed
that they would carry no weight after his death. One at any rate was
fulfilled, and he was buried, as he had asked, in the Church of Sancta
Maria de Guadalupe, at the foot of his mother’s tomb.