The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 10

by Unknown

CHAPTER IV. ARAGON TO THE UNION WITH CASTILE

[1162-1475 A.D.]

Owing to the alternate separations and unions of the Spanish kingdoms and their picturesque activities within their own realms as well as with each other and with foreign countries, the arrangement of the earlier chronicle has always puzzled historians. To carry one realm too far forward before going back to bring forward the other is destructive of a sense of synchronology, while the attempt to carry them simultaneously is as bewildering as it is difficult.

To carry Castile forward to that well-known time when Isabella wed Ferdinand of Aragon is to be compelled to retrace our steps for three centuries. It seems most convenient to do as follows: Leaving Castile at the moment of the death of that easily remembered monarch Pedro the Cruel, to take up Aragon and bring its history to the same point. But once reaching there it leaves but little more to be said to bring Aragon definitely to the marriage of its prince Ferdinand with the Castilian princess Isabella. This, then, we shall do, returning thence to take up the story of Castile after the death of Pedro the Cruel, after which time the chronicle lies straight and single.[a]

[1196-1276 A.D.]

That gallant monarch Alfonso II, the liberal art-loving patron of the troubadours, who was endowed with such brilliant princely qualities, had either by right of inheritance or success in arms extended his sway over a great part of southern France and curbed the might of the Saracens. In 1196 he was succeeded in Aragon, Catalonia, and Roussillon by his first-born son Pedro II, while the county of Provence and the rest of his possessions in France fell to Alfonso the younger brother. Pedro had himself crowned by Pope Innocent III, perhaps with the object of investing the authority of the crown with greater prestige in the eyes of the nobles. At his coronation he swore fealty to the pope and pledged himself to pay an annual tribute to the apostolic see. In order to defray this expense he introduced a new property-tax, the monedaje, to be levied upon the nobles, who had hitherto been exempt from taxation. The nobles and cities, incensed at the new impost and the abasement of the crown, formed a “union” in consequence of which the king was compelled at least to reduce the tax.

Pedro took part in the wars against the Albigenses as an ally of his brother-in-law, Raymond of Toulouse, and in 1213 he met his death in battle before the walls of the fortress of Muret, where he proved himself worthy of the reputation for heroic strength which he had won two years before in the famous victory of Ubeda in the plain of Tolosa. Pedro was a true son of his age; a brave warrior of mighty arm and gigantic stature, he was distinguished for chivalrous valour as well as for liberality and sumptuous tastes; a gallant knight, who honoured women in poetry and song and won repute among the troubadours of his day, though he was harsh and unloving to his virtuous consort, Maria de Montpellier, granddaughter of the Byzantine emperor Manuel. His knightly and royal qualities were often overcast by debauchery, superstition, and religious fanaticism.

JAMES THE CONQUEROR (1213-1276 A.D.)

[1213-1276 A.D.]

James,[37] the son of Pedro and Maria, had to win by arms the throne which his uncles contested with him, before he could resume the war of conquest against the Saracens at the head of the chivalry of Aragon and Catalonia. He then prosecuted it with such success as to gain for himself the surname of “the conqueror.” He began by a campaign of four years’ duration, in which he subjugated Majorca and the rest of the Balearic Islands, so long the headquarters of a ruthless system of piracy and the terror of all Christian seaboard states of the Mediterranean.

The Catalans, whose important trade suffered great loss at the hands of hostile pirates, took a particularly active part in the conquest, and many Catalan knights and nobles were therefore endowed with fiefs in the islands. A matter of even greater consequence to the future of the kingdom of Aragon was James’ expedition against Valencia, which the Spaniards regarded as a sacred inheritance from the great Cid Campeador, the first Spanish conqueror. James invaded the territory of Valencia with a great army of Catalan and Aragonese knights, which was joined by many volunteers from southern France and even from England. The emir Jomail ben Ziyan was forced to capitulate, and the capital was vigorously besieged and reduced to submission (1238). The Saracen population migrated elsewhere, either voluntarily or under compulsion, their property was assigned to Christian settlers, Catalans occupied the cities, and the land was given in fee among the victorious barons and knights. Within the next few days the other towns fell into the hands of the Aragonese conquerors, the chief of them being the strongholds of Jativa, situate upon a hill in the midst of a fertile and lovely country, and the town of Denia; and Moslem dominion was soon confined to the kingdom of Granada and its strong, rock-built capitals, for the kings of Castile and Portugal were likewise pushing their frontiers forward on the Guadiana and the Guadalquivir.

James was one of the greatest monarchs of his century, and not only because in the course of a reign of sixty-three years he extended the kingdom he had inherited in every direction, nor because he conquered Majorca and Valencia, nor even because in the closing years of his life he fought with youthful ardour against the infidels in Murcia, who had revolted afresh against their Christian conquerors with the help of the Merinids from Africa, nor that he fought, as is reported, thirty battles against the Moors; but because with the might of a conqueror he combined the endowments of a wise and humane ruler. He was clement and merciful to the Moslem who sued him for mercy, and greatly as he had the propagation of Christianity at heart (he is said to have founded nearly two hundred churches in the countries he conquered) he showed tolerance and consideration for their faith and their religious and civil laws, and defended the independence of his crown against the pretensions of the papal see.

[1266-1282 A.D.]

But he was pre-eminent, above all things, as a lawgiver; it was he who made the first compilation of the laws of Aragon; he founded the maritime laws of Catalonia,[38] he promoted navigation and trade, laid the basis of the free constitution of Barcelona, and was the author of a new political organisation in Valencia. The Catalonian language, intellectual culture, and the art of poetry likewise enjoyed his patronage; Jordi of Valencia, to whom Petrarch owes many beautiful passages,[39] and other minstrels lived at his court, which was not lacking in brilliance and splendour. But his unfortunate idea of dividing the dominions he had inherited and conquered among his sons caused him many pangs and wrought great confusion in the kingdom of Aragon. Several treaties of partition were agreed upon during his reign, and invariably brought rebellion and civil war in their train. The great dismemberment he contemplated was only prevented by the fact that the eldest infante, Alfonso, the son of his marriage with Leonora of Castile, whom he afterwards divorced, died before his father, and the third of the sons whom Violante [or Yolande] of Hungary bore him sank into an early grave. Thus the great provinces of Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia passed on united into the hands of Pedro III, and only the Balearic Islands, with Montpellier, Roussillon, and some of his other possessions fell to the younger brother, James, as a separate kingdom. Fernan Sanchez, a natural son of the king, was drowned in the river Chica by order of his brother the infante Pedro, after a futile attempt at rebellion, and his property was sequestrated. James not only sanctioned the deed but testified his satisfaction at it, so greatly had the unnatural strife hardened his usually noble heart.[b] He died in 1276 and was succeeded by his son.

PEDRO III AND HIS SICILIAN WARS

Pedro III lost no time in restoring tranquillity in Valencia; but scarcely was this object effected, when many of his rebellious barons, whose constant end was the curtailment of the royal prerogative and the oppression of the poor, broke out into an open insurrection. He reduced them to obedience. In two years they again rebelled, but with no better success: they were invested in the fortress of Balaguer, which was at length compelled to surrender, and were for some time detained prisoners.

[1282-1285 A.D.]

But the most important transactions of Pedro were with Sicily. On the death of Manfred, who had perished at Benevento in battle with Charles of Anjou, whom the pope had invested with the fief, the French prince took undisturbed possession of the Two Sicilies. When Conradin had attained his sixteenth year, knowing the hatred borne to the French rule by the Sicilies, and that the Ghibelline faction was at his command, he resolved to vindicate his rightful claims. Despising the papal thunders, which had consigned him while living to every ill that life can suffer, and when dead to the goodly fellowship of Dathan, Abiram, and the devil, he invaded Italy, passed, in contempt of the church, through the city of Rome, where he was hailed with enthusiasm, and proceeded towards Naples. He was defeated by his formidable adversary; was taken prisoner in the retreat; was tried, condemned, and executed at Naples. The Ghibellines, and all who revered the rights of blood, now turned their eyes towards Constanza, daughter of Manfred and queen of Aragon, while the Guelfs and all who recognised the papal supremacy over the kingdom continued the zealous asserters of the rights of Charles, the pope’s feudatory. But the tyrannical government of Charles, his rapacity and injustice, soon made him hateful to the whole body of his subjects. The oppressed inhabitants of Sicily despatched messengers with renewed complaints to Nicholas III, to Michael Palæologus, emperor of Constantinople, and, above all, to Pedro of Aragon, whom they regarded in right of Constanza as lawful ruler, and whom they urged to expel the tyrant without delay.

Pedro was overjoyed at this opportunity of extending his dominions; but to fight against the pope, the king of France, brother to Charles of Sicily, and the whole party of the Guelfs, was too momentous an undertaking to be lightly commenced. He first secured a considerable sum from the Greek emperor, to whom the Sicilian usurper was obnoxious; he next collected a fleet, assembled his barons, gave liberty to his rebel subjects, whom he had placed in confinement; but took care to conceal his purpose. It seems, however, to have been divined both by the pope and the French king, who, alarmed at the extent of his preparations, demanded for what object they were intended. By pretending that his expedition was to be directed against Barbary, and by even sending an ambassador to the pope (Martin IV), soliciting an indulgence for all who joined him in warring against the infidels, he hoped to lull the suspicions of Europe. But Martin, who was not to be deceived, contumeliously dismissed the ambassador. This circumstance did not discourage Pedro, whose armament was prosecuted with an alacrity inspired by the hope of success. An accident which, operating like a spark on the inflammable temper of the Sicilians, forced them into open insurrection, hastened his departure. The citizens of Palermo rose as one man, and destroyed every Frenchman on whom they could lay hands. Their example was followed by other towns—by none more heartily than Messina; so that scarcely a Frenchman was left alive from one extremity of the island to another. Such is the famous massacre which posterity has called the Sicilian Vespers. [Burke

g estimates the number of slain at 28,000.]

When Pedro learned that the Messenians were courageously repelling the assaults of Charles of Anjou, who had passed over from Naples to reduce them, and when a deputation from Palermo arrived, beseeching him to accept the crown, he laid aside his extreme caution, and proceeded towards the western coast of the island. In August he landed at Trapani, where his reception was enthusiastic; he hastened to Palermo, where he was joyfully proclaimed king of Sicily. The inhabitants of Messina, still invested by Charles, besought the new monarch to relieve them, and to receive their homage. Pedro hastened to their aid. Charles now raised the siege, and conducted his powerful armament towards the ports of Calabria; it was pursued by that of Aragon, headed by Don James, a son of Pedro, who took twenty vessels, with four thousand prisoners. But the young prince, listening only to his ardour, instead of returning to Messina, pursued Charles to a fort in Calabria, which he attempted to take; where, being repulsed with some loss, he re-embarked his troops. His father, indignant at his failure, deprived him of the naval command, which was intrusted to a more experienced chief, Roger de Lauria.

No sooner did Pope Martin hear of Pedro’s proclamation at Palermo and Messina, of the enthusiasm shown towards the monarch by the Sicilians, and of the flight of Charles, than he excommunicated the Aragonese. A defiance next followed between the two rivals; who agreed to decide their quarrel by combat, one hundred knights on each side, in the city of Bordeaux, in June the following year. Until the appointed day arrived, Pedro employed himself in causing his queen, who had arrived from Aragon, to be acknowledged by the Sicilians, and in reducing some of the forts on the Neapolitan coast. Leaving Constanza and his son, Don James, in the government of the island, he returned into his states, for the purpose, as was believed, of preparing for the combat. But that combat never happened, nor, amidst the conflicting statements of historians, can we easily decide to which of the royal rivals the disgrace of its failure must be imputed. It is certain that Pedro caused one hundred knights to be selected for the occasion, and that he appeared secretly at Bordeaux, attended by three horsemen only, and returned to his dominions before the lists were opened. For this extraordinary proceeding he appears to have had sufficient reason. He found that a considerable number of troops were silently moving towards the south of France, with the view, as he feared, of seizing his person. If the Aragonese writers are to be credited, the seneschal of Bordeaux, whom he consulted on the subject, informed him that the field was not a safe one, and advised him not to risk his person. This account is the more probable, from the fact that Pope Martin had previously condemned the combat, and had required the English king, Edward I, to whom Bordeaux belonged, and who was to be present on the occasion, not to guarantee a fair field, nor to be present, either in person or by his seneschals. What confirms the suspicion that some treachery was meditated is that, though the English monarch was thus enjoined not to visit the field, in other words, was given to understand that the battle would not take place, no such intimation was made to the king of Aragon.

A Royal Attendant, Spain

While Pedro remained in Aragon, his admiral, Roger de Lauria, reduced the greater part of Malta (1284). He afterwards defeated a French fleet within sight of Naples, taking the prince of Salerno, the son of Charles, prisoner. The vindictive pope now proclaimed a crusade against the excommunicated king of Aragon: his legate zealously preached it in France, declaring Pedro deprived of the crown, which he conferred on Charles de Valois, who was thus to possess both it and that of the Two Sicilies. Fortunately for Pedro both Sicily and Aragon required other weapons than a furious churchman could wield before they could be drawn from his sway.

Though the same indulgences as were awarded to all who warred for the Holy Sepulchre were promised to such as engaged in this Spanish crusade; though vast numbers, among whom was James, king of Majorca, brother and vassal of the Aragonese king, flocked to the standard of Philip; though that monarch lost no time in penetrating, by way of Roussillon, into Catalonia, at the head of one hundred thousand men, these formidable preparations ended in nothing. If Gerona, after a long and bloody siege, capitulated, the French fleet was almost annihilated near Rosas by the famous Roger de Lauria. The ranks of the invaders were so thinned by pestilence and the sword, that Philip, leaving a garrison in Gerona, immediately returned to Perpignan, where he died. The rear of his army in this retreat was dreadfully harassed by Don Pedro, who recovered Gerona with facility.

Pedro had just despatched his eldest son Alfonso with a small armament to dethrone his brother Don James, as a punishment for the aid which that prince had lent to the invaders, when death surprised him at Villafranca del Panades (1285). In his will he left Aragon and Catalonia to Alfonso, and Sicily to his second son, Don James.

Though Alfonso III heard of his father’s death immediately after his disembarkation, he refused to return until he had dethroned his uncle. As James was not much beloved by the inhabitants of these islands, whom he had offended by his exactions, the enterprise was successful. The dethroned king had still Montpellier, Conflans, and other possessions in France: to these he retired, but they appear the same year to have been laid waste by Roger de Lauria, the able and intrepid admiral of Aragon.

POLITICAL GROWTH

[1283-1336 A.D.]

During Alfonso’s absence, the nobles of Aragon had assembled in Saragossa, to provide for the due administration of justice. Some of them were not a little scandalised that he should have assumed in the Balearic Isles the title of king, since, by ancient custom, it could be assumed only after he had sworn before the assembly of the states to observe the customs, privileges, immunities, and laws of the realm. No sooner did they hear of his return to Valencia, than they despatched several of their body to wait upon him, and to express their surprise at his thus arrogating to himself the supreme power without their formal sanction. He justified himself by replying that the crown was his by right of succession, and that there would be time enough to guarantee the constitutions of the realms at the ceremony of his coronation. Accordingly, when that ceremony took place in the cathedral of Saragossa, he fulfilled the conditions of the compact.[c]

Under Pedro III, the knightly monarch,—“girded,” as Dante says, “with the cord of every virtue,”—the Aragonese, exasperated by the burdensome taxes which the king was compelled to levy for his costly enterprises, had extorted such great privileges and liberties in the General Privilege of Saragossa (1283) that after Pedro’s successor, Alfonso III, a man of milder temper, had amplified the Privilegium,[40] by fresh concessions to the union of the nobles, the kingdom of Aragon was less like a hereditary monarchy than a republican commonwealth with a responsible chief. The king was not only bound to secure the consent of the estates of the kingdom (cortes) in all important public affairs, especially for the declaration of war, the conclusion of peace, the enactment of laws, the imposition of taxes, and the selection and appointment of the advisers of the crown (the ministers), but it was further decreed that “without previous sentence of the justiciary and the cortes of Saragossa, the king might not proceed against any member of the union by way of capital punishment, imprisonment, or other injury, and that should he nevertheless do so, the union had power to exclude him and his descendants from succession to the throne, without thereby incurring the guilt of wrong-doing or disloyalty.”

On Alfonso’s death without issue (1291) he was succeeded by his brother James II, up to that time king of Sicily, a well-meaning, kindly, and (as the surname he bears in history testifies) “just” sovereign, who thought more of perfecting the laws and constitution and maintaining peace and prosperity amongst his people than of enlarging the borders of his kingdom. He handed Sicily over to his brother Frederick as a separate kingdom; but on the other hand, after protracted wars with the Genoese, he won the island of Sardinia which the pope had bestowed upon him in fee. A war against the Moors, which he undertook in conjunction with Ferdinand, king of Castile, led to no important results. In an attempt to break down the overweening power of the aristocratic families, James had the assistance of the great jurist Martínez de Salanova; the power of the justiciary was strengthened.

But the greatest benefits which James conferred upon the Aragonese nation was a law enacted in the assembly of Tarragona, by virtue of which the kingdoms of Aragon and Valencia, the county of Barcelona, and the suzerainty of Majorca were united in perpetuity and incapable of division by will or gift, though each was to remain a kingdom possessed of its separate constitution and cortes. The king, however, reserved the right of assigning to his sons and other members of his family the possession of particular cities and castles, a right of which his successors frequently availed themselves to excess, and which often provoked internecine quarrels and feuds.[b]

King James died in 1327, and was succeeded by his second son, Alfonso, his first son having voluntarily renounced his claims that he might, tradition says, give himself up more completely to his vices.[a]

Alfonso IV was doomed to much annoyance from the recent conquest of Sardinia. In 1330 the Genoese, incensed that the Catalans, their rivals in commerce, should have obtained a settlement in seas which they considered as exclusively their right, not only fomented a spirit of disaffection among the islanders, but sent a fleet to invest the capital. A bloody war ensued, the details of which would afford little interest. To stay these hostilities the pope frequently interfered, but without effect; the Genoese insisted on an ample indemnification for the expenses of their armaments; the Aragonese would consent to none. Thus the warfare raged during the whole of this prince’s reign. Alfonso, like his predecessors, was not averse to encourage the rebellions which at this period almost continually afflicted Castile; but without deriving any ultimate advantage from his ungenerous policy. If the internal state of his own kingdom was tranquil, it was not so in his own house. His eldest son and destined successor, Don Pedro, offended that he had bestowed on Alfonso—another son, by a second wife—some domains of the crown, complained loudly of his prodigality. The queen, Leonora of Castile, at whose instigation the alienation had been made, cherished a deep resentment against her stepson. Pedro despised her anger; and, to incense her the more, seized on Jativa, which had been assigned to her on her marriage with his father, and loudly proclaimed his intention of revoking every grant made by the king, whenever he should succeed to the sovereignty. It was not in Alfonso’s power to stifle these dissensions, which not only imbittered his peace but aggravated the hydropsical disease under which he had long suffered. He died at Barcelona, in 1336.

[1336-1347 A.D.]

No sooner had Pedro IV ascended the throne, than Queen Leonora, apprehensive of the consequences of her late quarrel with him, fled to Fraga, whence she implored the protection of her brother Alfonso, king of Castile. Alfonso naturally espoused his sister’s cause. The pope despatched a legate to exhort the two kings to settle their dispute by negotiations, and to insist on justice being done to Queen Leonora. Their deliberations ended in nothing, beyond a suspension of actual hostilities. Some years having elapsed, in 1345 the king, so far from wishing to do his stepmother justice, endeavoured to seize the domains belonging to his two brothers, Ferdinand and Juan, on the pretext that the revenues of the crown were materially injured by the prodigality of their common father. On the representations of the Castilian king, he again suspended, though he was far from abandoning, his purpose. The troubles which agitated his kingdom will account for this temporary forbearance.

He offended his barons, in 1347, by purposing to set aside the order of succession, as established by Don Jayme el Conquistador (James the Conqueror), which, on the failure of direct heirs male, called in the collateral male branches—or, in other words, which enforced the Salic law. As Pedro, by his queen Maria of Navarre, had only a daughter—the infanta Constanza—his brother Don James was the presumptive heir to the crown. To secure the succession to his daughter, he assembled twenty-two theologians and civil jurists, nineteen of whom readily sanctioned her right. They knew that Doña Petronilla had not been excluded by the accident of sex; that in Navarre and Castile women were called to the succession; and they could not approve the arbitrary regulation of James I, nor recognise it as binding on his successors. But however weighty these reasons, they had no effect on the prince whom they tended to exclude, and who resolved to vindicate his supposed claims by force. Amid the elements of discontent which lay scattered on every side, he had no difficulty in collecting means of resistance.

From the causes just detailed, and from the restless ambition of his barons, who constantly aimed at diminishing the royal authority, a formidable confederacy was soon formed against the king. It consisted of prelates, barons, magistrates, and a majority of the great towns. They formed themselves into a political union, and bound themselves by oath never to cease their opposition to the king until their privileges rested on some surer guarantee than the royal engagement, and until the Salic law became fundamental in the state. At the head of this league was Don James. A similar one was soon formed in Valencia, under the guidance of the infante Ferdinand. Both diligently raised troops to take the field against the king. Conscious of their united strength, they now loudly demanded the convocation of the states, which accordingly met at Saragossa, and which were, as usual, opened by the monarch. Among the demands made by the union, not the least obnoxious was the nomination of the public officers by themselves—a concession which, as before related, James II had been constrained to grant, and which they insisted should thenceforward be held as a fundamental law of the realm. Pedro showed great reluctance to sanction it; but on being told that, if he refused to do so, the states would immediately proceed to a new election, he no longer withstood the torrent. From that moment, however, he resolved to effect the destruction of the union, if not by force, by corruption. So well did he labour, so efficaciously were his gold and promises distributed that in a few days he gained over a few of the most influential members.

[1347-1356 A.D.]

The king soon closed the states, without yielding any further to the demands of the union, and hastened into Catalonia, with the avowed purpose of collecting troops, to reduce the whole body to obedience. That the leaguers did not prevent his departure was owing to the suspicions irresistibly forced on their minds that there was treachery in their camp, and that he had more secret adherents than they had expected. He was followed to Barcelona by the infante Don James, who sickened and died in that city, not without suspicions of poison. The union of Valencia, nowise discouraged by the ill success of that of Aragon, immediately invested the fortresses which held for the king, whose troops they defeated before Jativa. The infante Ferdinand, who was now proclaimed lieutenant-general of that province and head of the confederacy, with a force estimated at thirty thousand obtained a second victory over the royalists. Pedro now hastened from Barcelona, to crush in person this formidable rebellion.

He had soon an army on foot with which two of his generals attacked, defeated, and took Ferdinand.[41] The infante, however, from fear of the king’s vengeance, was conducted into Castile. Pedro himself advanced against Saragossa, the very stronghold of faction. One instance of ill fortune had damped, as much as success had encouraged, the rebels: they received him with great humility, renounced the privileges of the union, and threw themselves wholly on his mercy. Thirteen of the most obnoxious ringleaders were put to death; the rest he pardoned. In an assembly of the states, which he was no longer afraid of convoking, the ricos homes [or hombres] and deputies solemnly renewed the renunciation of the privileges claimed by the union; in presence of them all, the king tore in pieces the registered act of that body, but at the same time he confirmed his subjects in the possession of all their ancient rights. Aragon was now pacified; its union was no more: but Valencia remained in rebellion. Having assembled a formidable army, James marched into that province, and, in a general battle near the capital, triumphed over the leaguers. Valencia immediately surrendered at discretion.

[1356-1365 A.D.]

On the termination of these troubled scenes, Leonora and one of her sons took refuge in Castile. But misfortunes assailed them there, superior, perhaps, to any which would have befallen them in Aragon. How the infante Juan was murdered at Bilbao, and Leonora herself in the castle of Castro Xeres, by order of Pedro the Cruel, has been related in the reign of that monarch. Ferdinand, indeed, escaped the vengeance of the tyrant; but, as we shall soon see, a fate no less tragical awaited him. The misunderstanding between the two Pedros commenced in 1356, on the refusal of the Castilian to restore a prize made at sea by one of his Biscayan pirates. The second offence was committed by an admiral of Catalonia, who, under the eyes of the Castilian, captured two Pisan vessels—a power with which the Aragonese were at war—in the port of Santa Maria. With some justice, the Castilian remonstrated against the violation of a neutral port; and on the refusal of his brother sovereign to make satisfaction for it, he levied a heavy contribution on the Catalan inhabitants of Seville, and declared war against Aragon. Hostilities now commenced, with various success and many suspensions.

Cordova

In general, the success of the war rested with the Castilian. In 1363, through the interference of the papal legate, the first peace was made, the secret conditions of which were of an atrocious character. Pedro of Aragon engaged not only to remove by death the obnoxious brothers of the Castilian, but his own, the infante Ferdinand. A servant of Count Henry of Castile dealt the victim a fatal blow. Henry himself was spared—doubtless because Pedro foresaw that his new ally of Castile would not fulfil his engagements; perhaps, also, because he himself had no disposition to do so. His anticipations were right: war was renewed by the Castilian. His operations were as indecisive as those of the former.

Seeing that the war did not and could not lead to any result, in 1365 Pedro concerted with the count of Trastamara the invasion of Castile, and the dethronement of the Castilian king. The aid which Henry obtained from France, the fate of his first and second invasions, we have already related. But the Aragonese king—so true it is that no honour can long subsist among the wicked—was never on good terms with the new king of Castile. He insisted on Murcia, which Henry, while count of Trastamara, had agreed to resign, in the event of his obtaining the Castilian throne; and on the refusal of that prince to dismember so important a province from the crown, not only coolness, but actual hostilities, between the two kingdoms were preparing. But those hostilities were soon averted by the papal legates; and the truce was, from time to time, prolonged, until 1374, when peace was finally arranged between the two monarchs.

[1338-1386 A.D.]

The foreign transactions of Pedro were of some importance. In 1338 began his misintelligence with Don James, king of Majorca, whose dethronement he appears to have meditated from the commencement of his reign. Though, in 1339, James did homage for his kingdom, his destruction was no less resolved; his unpopular rule afforded Pedro well-founded hopes of success.

In 1343, Don Pedro sailed with a very formidable armament, landed in Majorca, and was immediately joined by the islanders. Thus universally deserted, James fled, leaving the three islands in the power of his brother-in-law. In opposition to the remonstrances of the pope, who compassionated the misfortunes of the fugitive king, his possessions in France were threatened, and several places in Roussillon speedily reduced. This war beyond the Pyrenees appears to have been as disagreeable to the Catalans and to the Aragonese as it was to the pope; and only by force could the king obtain supplies for conducting it. The following year (1344) he declared by a solemn decree that the Balearic Isles should forever form an integral portion of the Aragonese crown; and again penetrated into Roussillon, the whole of which, except the capital, Perpignan, he speedily reduced. The unfortunate James was later killed in a skirmish.

To Pedro, as to his two predecessors, Sardinia proved a sharp thorn in the crown. His obstinacy in retaining possession of an island which experience had shown would never willingly own his sway, which cost him so many successive campaigns, drew on him the frequent remonstrances of his states, and the refusal of supplies. As if one ruinous war for an unattainable object were not sufficient, on the death of Frederick, king of Sicily, in 1377, who had married his daughter Constanza, he claimed that crown, and showed a disposition to arm in defence of his claim. But for the obstinacy of his eldest son and heir, Don Juan, who, in 1384, became a widower, whom he wished to marry with the young princess Maria, daughter of the late king Frederick, and now settled on the throne of Sicily, but who secretly formed the indissoluble connection with a French princess, the effect of his policy would have been an immediate union of the two crowns. It may, however, be doubted whether such a union was desirable; since from the distance of the two kingdoms, and the contiguity of the island to Naples, it could not long have been perpetuated.

[1386-1387 A.D.]

The ambition of Pedro was insatiable; but it was also senseless, as it grasped at impossibilities. Hearing that some people of Athens and Patras, who were of Aragonese extraction—the descendants of the crusaders, who had conquered this duchy—had risen to establish his domination, he sent an armament to their aid, and was ultimately acknowledged. It need, however, be scarcely observed that possessions so far removed from the seat of power would yield but a nominal allegiance, and would soon be lost. But there was no advantage, however small in magnitude or transient in duration, which he was not at all times ready to grasp—generally without much regard to the rights or feelings of others. The avidity with which, in 1386, he seized on the city of Tarragona, the government and sovereignty of which had long rested with the archbishops of that see, is affirmed by some historians to have been the cause of his death.[42] He died early in the month of January, 1387, after an agitated reign of fifty-one years.

The duplicity of this monarch was only equalled by his violence; of sincerity and justice he was wholly destitute; and in savage barbarity he was scarcely exceeded by his namesake of Castile.

With many of the vices and none of the virtues of humanity, he was neither loved nor respected; but, in return, he was feared. It is impossible not to admire his constancy in reverses: he deviated not from his purposes, nor suffered his mind to be depressed, in the most critical periods of his reign—and few princes were ever placed in circumstances more critical—yet he almost uniformly gained his end. Justice must also allow that, whatever were his personal vices, he was no enemy to the lowest class of his people. During the reign of this prince, the era of Cæsar was abolished, and the Christian adopted for the two chief kingdoms of Spain; in 1350 at Saragossa, and in 1383 at Segovia.[c]

Pedro IV enlarged the powers of the justiciary, enabling him to oppose his veto to usurpations on the part of the crown in the same way as to the encroachments of the feudal aristocracy; he provided for the swift and careful administration of justice; promoted the study of law, and showed favour to the legal and juridical profession. Whenever occasion offered and he was not prevented by the inhibitory intercession or legal warrant of the justiciary, he curbed the usurpations and arbitrary action of the great nobles and increased the privileges and power of the knights and burghers.[b]

[1387-1408 A.D.]

In 1387, Juan I was peaceably acknowledged. His accession was regarded with great apprehension by his stepmother, Sybilla (the late king led four ladies to the altar), who, since 1384, had been his open enemy. The reason of this animosity was here, as in former cases, the eagerness of the king to alienate the crown domains in favour of his new queen and her family, and the indignant opposition of the heir apparent. At one time, so vindictive was the queen that she had expelled the infante from the palace, and had probably instigated her uxorious husband to try him, and exclude him from the succession; but the protection of the grand justiciary of Aragon had screened him from her malice: now, it was her turn to dread his displeasure. Just before the death of Pedro, she fled from Barcelona, accompanied by her brother: they were pursued by the Catalonians; were brought back, and imprisoned until the pleasure of the new monarch, who then lay ill at Gerona, could be learned. On his recovery, he hastened to that city; caused the queen to be tried as a witch, who had enchanted the late king, and several of her kindred and servants as accomplices. Some of the latter were executed; and she herself would probably have shared the same fate, but for the interference of the papal legate, and more still for the facility with which she restored the fortresses conferred on her by her royal husband. These possessions were immediately transferred to the new queen.

The eagerness which the new king showed to gratify his queen Violante, surprised and offended the Aragonese. As her disposition was gay, she insisted on converting the palace into a theatre: balls, concerts, theatrical representations, and the exhibitions of the gaya ciencia, succeeded each other without intermission. As the Aragonese themselves were too sober or too dull to excel in such diversions, professors were brought from France, and even schools established for instruction in the idle art. It became not merely the relaxation, but the business of life; the duties of government were neglected or despised, until remonstrances both frequent and loud fell on the royal ear. Apparently, however, they produced little effect, beyond the convocation of the states at Monzon, to deliberate on this pernicious novelty. There the prelates, nobles, and deputies insisted that the king should expel from his palace his singers and dancers, his buffoons and his poets—above all, Doña Carraza Villaragut, one of the queen’s ladies, and the chief promoter of such fooleries. At first he resisted this interference with his royal recreations; but when he perceived that his barons were in earnest, that they were even preparing to arm for his moral reformation, he yielded: the fiddlers were dismissed, and with them the obnoxious lady.

The short reign of this prince was not without its troubles. An insurrection broke out among those most restless and faithless of subjects, the Sardinians. As usual, the efforts of his generals to repress it were but partially successful. The affairs of Sicily were not more promising. None of these commotions appears to have occasioned King Juan the least anxiety: he resumed his diversions, that of hunting especially, with as much eagerness as before, leaving the cares of government to his queen. One day, while occupied in this favourite occupation in the forest of Foja, he fell from his horse, and was killed on the spot.

On receiving intelligence of this catastrophe Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia proclaimed Don Martin, brother of the late king, who was then in Sicily supporting the rights of his son and daughter-in-law, sovereigns of that island. This choice gave great umbrage to Matthieu count de Foix, who had married the eldest daughter of Juan, and who contended that the crown belonged to him in her right. He collected troops and penetrated into Catalonia; but he found the inhabitants averse to his pretensions, and indignant at his proceedings. As the states were sitting at Saragossa, he now adopted the wiser mode of deputing ambassadors to that assembly, with instructions to espouse his rights, which, according to the laws of legitimate succession, were well founded. But Aragon had seen only one female sovereign, Doña Petronilla, and had for some time been inclined to consider the Salic law as tacitly in force. The count met with a repulse both there and at Barcelona; but he hoped that arms would be more effectual than arguments; and, with a second and more numerous army, he invaded Aragon. There he and his countess solemnly assumed the royal title and arms, and reduced several towns; but he was soon compelled to retire into Navarre.

[1408-1412 A.D.]

Having pacified Sicily, in appearance at least, and caused his son and daughter-in-law to be acknowledged by the rebels, Martin, who seems to have been in no anxiety about the security of his kingdom, proceeded to Sardinia and Corsica, with the view of restoring tranquillity also in those islands. The following year he convoked his prelates, barons, and deputies at Saragossa, and caused his son, the Sicilian king, to be acknowledged his successor; it was also decreed that Sicily and Aragon should forever be united under the same sceptre. No sooner had Martin arrived in Spain, than Sardinia again became the theatre of civil war. The Aragonese had acknowledged the rival pontiff, Benedict, and Boniface had conferred the fiefs of Sardinia and Sicily on the count de Molineto. In 1408, the Sicilian king marched against the rebels, who, with eighteen thousand infantry, did not refuse the battle. It ended in a complete triumph for the king, and was followed by the surrender of an important fortress. As the heat of the weather began to be intensely felt, the victor returned to Cagliari. That heat and the festivities consequent on his success threw him into a fever, which, though not in itself fatal, he is said to have rendered so by incontinence. He died on the 24th of July, 1409. On the death of this prince Martin and the Aragonese were anxious to name a successor to the crown.[c]

Civil war was imminent when King Martin departed this life (1410), leaving the succession of the kingdom by his last will and testament to him to whom it was lawfully due. By his death the male line of the counts of Barcelona became extinct—a dynasty which had vigorously and gloriously filled the throne of Aragon for nearly three centuries.

INTERREGNUM IN ARAGON (1410-1412 A.D.)

[1410-1414 A.D.]

No nation whose political sagacity was less highly developed by a free constitutional and political system could have emerged from the two years of revolution upon which Aragon now entered without detriment to its liberty and legal institutions. For during the interregnum the kingdom fluctuated between two perils; it might either have broken up into its three constituent parts or succumbed to a military despotism.

Count James of Urgel, an ambitious and unscrupulous nobleman, counted the majority of the great nobles of Aragon, more particularly the partisans of the powerful family of Luna, among his adherents, the cortes of Catalonia was on his side, and what his title might lack he was prepared to make good by the sword, for the lower classes everywhere were in his service. The murder of the archbishop of Saragossa by his brutal associate Antonio de Luna, an act of violence in which he himself was not unconcerned, was intended to cow all resistance. The ricos hombres[43] saw in anticipation the return of the time when the right of the mailed fist should override the law, when the aristocracy, allied with the town rabble, should triumph over the middle classes, and the anarchy of the unions settle down upon the country once more. The danger was realised by the wise justiciary Cerdaño, his friends and those likeminded with him, chief among whom were Gil Ruiz de Lihori, governor of Aragon, and Berengar de Bardaxi, a man distinguished alike for genius and learning, and to their judicious and patriotic exertions the preservation of the ancient constitution is mainly due. Allying themselves with the freemen of the communes and the minor nobility, they endeavoured to force the decision into the hands of the cortes. Fortunately for them the great nobles were split up by faction, for the Urrea family sided with the constitutional party out of hatred to the Lunas, and their ranks were soon further reinforced by the accession of the Heredia family, to which the murdered archbishop belonged. The latter contrived that the infante Ferdinand should garrison the frontier with Castilian troops to prevent violent measures on the part of the count of Urgel.

Nevertheless the situation was full of peril, owing to the mutual jealousies of the three divisions of the kingdom; the cortes of each held separate consultations and each was anxious to give the casting vote. It was then that the patriotic energy of the men above mentioned intervened to save the kingdom from impending ruin. They proposed that a general parliament should be called together, and that the legal decision should be left to it, as King Martin had wished; representing at the same time to the separate assemblies that if the question of the succession were decided by the sword, the victor would dictate new laws at the sword’s point, as though to a conquered nation. According to their proposal the cortes of the three kingdoms were to elect committees for joint deliberation. By this time, however, they were all too deeply imbued with party spirit, and the cortes of Valencia refused to co-operate with the rest. Those two astute politicians Cerdaño and Bardaxi then ventured upon a bold stroke. They induced the cortes of Aragon and Catalonia to authorise them to nominate a committee of nine members at their own discretion from the three divisions of the country. This committee was to sit at Caspe on the Ebro, and after conscientiously examining the claims of all pretenders was to give its decision according to law. The Urgel party at Valencia tried to interfere, but the victory of the barons at Murviedro put an end to their resistance, and the patriotic caution and justice displayed by Cerdaño and Bardaxi in the selection of the nine secured general recognition and public confidence.

While the whole country was a prey to tumultuous passions, factions at strife one with another, civil war raging with all its accompaniments of crime, rape, and ignominy, these nine men—who were held in the highest esteem by all men, not only for learning and experience but also for strictness of morals and blameless life, and who, like Bardaxi, Ferrer, and Aranda Valseca, were among the first jurists of their day—undertook a laborious examination of the claims submitted to them by the agents of the various pretenders. The count of Urgel had the largest following, and if his Aragonese origin and his descent through the male line were taken into account he would necessarily have had the prior claim; but his despotic temper, always apt to choose methods of violence rather than of law, made them apprehensive of a tyrannic government if he were chosen, and the majority of the electoral college therefore decided in favour of Ferdinand, infante of Castile, whose mother Leonora had been the daughter of Pedro IV, and the wife of Henry II.

ARAGON UNDER RULERS OF THE ROYAL HOUSE OF CASTILE

No better choice could have been made, and accordingly the new king was acknowledged by the estates of the three united kingdoms as soon as he had confirmed the rights and liberties of the realm (1412). Ferdinand, who combined justice and clemency with vigour, restored tranquillity and order, and used his power to overawe the malcontents both in Aragon and in the islands. But the count of Urgel could not brook defeat. Ferdinand treated him with the utmost distinction, but in spite of all, impelled by his own ambition and incited by his imperious wife, he presently raised the standard of rebellion. He invaded and ravaged Catalonia with an army of mercenaries which the duke of Clarence had handed over to him in Guienne, but was defeated by Ferdinand (1413), and paid the penalty of his unlawful deeds by loss of fortune and perpetual imprisonment.

[1414-1454 A.D.]

In the following year Ferdinand added splendour to his accession to the throne by a gorgeous coronation at Saragossa. Thus the crowns of Castile and Aragon were worn by scions of the same reigning house, a prelude to the future union of the two kingdoms under Ferdinand’s grandson and namesake.

Through the prudence and patriotic zeal of one statesman and friend of the people, Aragon had passed through a dangerous crisis without injury to her government or liberties. Ferdinand of the ruling house of Castile, after he had taken the oath of fealty to the constitution, which he did according to custom, kneeling bareheaded before the justiciary, was recognised as king of the united realm and received the homage of the cortes. This upright and well-disposed monarch, Ferdinand, conscientiously observed the laws and even respected and acknowledged the excessive liberties and privileges of the rich commercial town of Barcelona on an occasion when it was extremely inconvenient to himself to do so; but he died after four years’ reign (1416).

His son, Alfonso V, busied himself during the greater part of his reign with the affairs of Naples. That newly acquired kingdom in the beautiful country of the Apennines, where a docile people bowed in obedience and submission to the will of the master, and where the senses were courted with a rich, luxurious life, elevated through social culture and adorned with art and science, was more congenial to Alfonso’s inclinations than his hereditary domain of Aragon with its rigorous legal forms and its earnest population; therefore he preferred a residence in Naples, whilst his native kingdom was governed by a regency. At its head was the king’s brother Juan, afterwards Juan II, a prince well-versed in statecraft and sharing, in regard to politics and public morality, the faithless principles of his time. Already as governor and regent he gave signs of that inclination to despotism and tyranny which later on, when he had succeeded his brother on the throne, he openly displayed, so that the estates took care to secure their constitution against invasion while there was yet time.

Spanish Nobleman, Fifteenth Century

We have seen what importance and consideration were attached to the position of chief justice or justiciary of Aragon, the guardian and protector of the laws. To secure the office against violation and despotism of any kind, it was decreed that the holder should retain office for life, and could only be removed by the king with consent of the estates and on sufficient grounds (1442). There was no danger that a legal institution of this nature, standing as it did between the throne and the people, would be diverted against the laws of the country, since the justiciary was subject to a regular and close inquiry into the administration of his office from a committee of the states. Besides this, a navigation law which forbade foreign vessels to ship cargoes in any of the domains under the crown of Aragon was passed in the reign of Alfonso V (1454), an important enactment, which gave a new impulse to the maritime trade of Barcelona, the Catalan capital, at whose instigation the regulation was made. Thus, both in constitutional progress and in commercial policy, Aragon was the forerunner of the island kingdom of Britain.

[1442-1458 A.D.]

The reign of Juan, both as regent and afterwards as king, turns to a great extent on the acquisition of the kingdom of Navarre and the family quarrels which it kindled. In 1442 the mountain country on either side of the Pyrenees passed to the princely house of Aragon by the death of Blanche, wife of Juan, and previously the widow of King Martin. She had inherited Navarre from her father Charles III and by her will her patrimonial domains were to fall as an independent lordship to her eldest son Charles, prince of Viana. More as a matter of courtesy than a legal restriction the condition was added that, before assuming the government of the country, he should obtain the consent and approbation of his father. Juan seems at first to have made no difficulty to his son’s taking possession, so that Charles, while his father continued to bear the rank and title of king of Navarre, conducted the administration for several years as governor and ruler of his mother’s inheritance.

But when the prince of Aragon contracted a second marriage with Juana Henriquez, daughter of a Castilian admiral of the blood royal, rivalries were awakened which soon assumed a malevolent character. According to the disposition of her husband, the new consort, an imperious, ambitious, and enterprising young lady, was to conduct the government of Navarre in conjunction with the prince of Viana. But the divided rule did not satisfy her proud spirit; as queen of Navarre she desired to be the only person to issue orders, and exhibited an arrogant demeanour towards her stepson. The disagreement soon passed into open hostility when the two conflicting parties of the Beaumonts and the Agramonts took the opportunity to fight out their ancient quarrels in sanguinary encounters, and the Castilians, exasperated at the interference of Aragon in their internal politics, fanned the flame. At the instigation of the Beaumonts, Charles laid claim to the chief power, and at the head of his adherents led an army into the field against the queen and the Agramonts. Juan of Aragon, dominated by his wife’s superior intelligence, took part against his son. A battle was fought at Aybar, when the prince of Viana was defeated and made prisoner (1452). Some months before, in the little town of Sos in Aragon, the queen had given birth to a son who, as Ferdinand the Catholic, was afterwards to attain to such great historical importance.

After some time Charles of Viana was released from captivity; but the opposite party had in the meantime so successfully gained the upper hand in Navarre, that he could not maintain himself in the government. He betook himself to Naples to the court of his royal uncle Alfonso V, to beg for his intervention. The chivalrous, open bearing of the prince won him many friends and he was able to flatter himself with the prospect of being speedily reinstated in his mother’s inheritance by the aid of a powerful protector; but his uncle’s death rendered the hope vain (1458). By the dispositions of the late king’s will, his brother Juan was to succeed to his possessions in Spain, Sardinia, and Sicily, and his illegitimate son Ferdinand to the kingdom of Naples.

[1458-1461 A.D.]

The Neapolitans, who mistrusted the gloomy, equivocal character of the new prince, Ferdinand, tried in vain to persuade the chivalrous prince of Viana to come forward as a candidate for Naples, holding out to him the prospect of the people’s support. The magnanimous prince resisted the temptation; even in Sicily, to which he now turned, similar allurements awaited him; for there also the memory of his mother Blanche, who as the consort of King Martin had formerly won much affection in the island, procured him a good reception and many friends. But here again he withstood all seductive temptations; he contented himself with the generous assistance offered him by the gratitude of the islanders, and passed a long time in the quiet of a Benedictine cloister at Messina, occupied with scientific studies. He did not give up the thought of a reconciliation with his father and a restoration of his rights. After all he, as eldest son, was the rightful heir to the crown of Aragon, and the cortes of the three provinces were on his side. In this expectation he obeyed an invitation from his father to a personal interview at Iguala (1460). By a submissive and penitent demeanour towards the royal couple he endeavoured to put an end to the ancient enmity and win his father’s heart, but the queen, who wished to secure the succession to her own son Ferdinand, contrived to keep the distrust of her stepson still alive and by hostile insinuations to throw suspicion on everything he did. Whilst he was deceived by a delusive friendliness, he was surrounded by a web of intrigues. Above all there was exhibited a zealous eagerness to keep him from receiving any sort of homage or recognition of his rights on the part of the cortes.

Still the prince did not allow himself to be betrayed into taking an illegal step; only he became a suitor for the hand of the infanta Isabella of Castile, with the idea of thus procuring himself a lasting support for his claims to the throne. But it was just this alliance that was a thorn in the eye of the queen of Aragon; her policy had already singled out the princess for her own son, and she was to be the bond of a union between the two kingdoms. The prince of Viana’s project was endangering this plan in a formidable manner; it was therefore necessary to make an energetic decision. Charles was invited by his father to a meeting of the cortes at Lerida. The prince complied with the request in the hope of being recognised by the estates of the realm as heir to the throne. But immediately on his arrival he was arrested and taken to the inaccessible mountain fastness of Morella on the borders of Valencia; when the cortes showed signs of interposing with a protest, the assembly was dismissed. On the committee of estates demanding the cause of this remarkable proceeding, Juan darkly hinted at a plot, the inquiry into and punishment of which he must reserve for himself.

At the news of these occurrences the excitable Catalans took up the sword. Armed mobs advanced on Lerida and forced their way into the palace, while the king fled under cover of the night with a few companions to Fraga. The assailants were soon at the gates of Fraga, but the royal couple had already fled to the fortress of Saragossa. The flame of insurrection rapidly spread; in Navarre the Beaumonts, secretly supported and urged on from Castile, declared for the prince; in Aragon, in Valencia, in Sicily, the agitation was of a threatening character.

[1461-1484 A.D.]

King Juan could not resist these active manifestations of the popular desires. He set his son at liberty, recognised him as his rightful successor, and entrusted him with the office of governor-general of Catalonia. It was at this moment that the prince sickened, and soon the melancholy tidings of his death in his forty-first year were spread through the kingdom (September, 1461). There was a very natural suspicion that he had succumbed to a poison which had been brought to him in his captivity. Thus in the prime of life this noble and chivalrous prince, whose one crime was his lawful claim to the throne of Aragon, fell a victim to treacherous statecraft. Imbued as he was with devotion to the higher cultivation of the mind, had he succeeded to the throne he would have been a worthy rival of his Florentine contemporaries. The fruit of his profound studies was to be seen in a translation of Aristotle’s Ethics and a history of Navarre.

Blanche of Castile

The tragedy did not end with Charles’ death; instead, a second one resulted from it. At his demise he had appointed as heiress of Navarre his elder sister Blanche, who had formerly been married to Henry IV of Castile and afterwards repudiated by him because she was childless. But Blanche had always sided with her brother and had long shared his exile; for this reason she was now to be overtaken by a similar fate. In conjunction with the faithless King Louis XI of France, the sovereigns of Aragon surrounded the unfortunate princess with a net of cabals and deceits in which she could not fail to meet destruction. For it was firmly resolved that the inheritance of Aragon should be obtained for her younger sister Eleanor, countess of Foix, so that on the latter’s death it might pass to her son Gaston de Foix, the husband of a sister of Louis. With this view, and in accordance with a treaty concluded between Aragon and France, Blanche was forcibly removed from Olit, where she had hitherto resided, and conducted across the mountains to be placed under the supervision of her sister. It was to no purpose that she appealed in a touching letter to her former husband, King Henry of Castile, and pledged him her maternal inheritance of Navarre as the price of her rescue; there was to be no refuge for her from the hands of a cruel father and an unloving sister. In 1462 she was taken to the strong fortress of Orthez in Béarn, where, after two years of painful captivity she succumbed to a poison, given her by the guilty hand of a traitor By this means Navarre was united to Foix and Béarn and the ground thus cleared for the subsequent partition of the ancient kingdom between France and Spain.

Eleanor lived ten years longer than her son Gaston de Foix, prince of Viana, who met his death through a wound from a lance at a tournament in Lisbon in the year 1469. When she died, her grandson Francis Phœbus, a handsome princely boy with shining golden hair, inherited the throne of Navarre, with his mother Magdalena, sister of Louis XI, as his guardian. But only four years later Francis Phœbus died suddenly, as it was believed of poison, and his sister Catherine, then thirteen years old, entered on the inheritance. In 1484 she married Jean d’Albret, whose extensive possessions in the southwest of France were thus united to the kingdom of Navarre. Magdalena, the queen’s mother, had arranged this marriage, which was very displeasing to the Spanish rulers.

RISING IN CATALONIA

[1461-1469 A.D.]

The king of Aragon had entered into such close relations with France chiefly because he needed her help against his own people. Far from the rebellious movements subsiding on the death of the prince of Viana, the indignation against the king and queen mounted still higher amongst the excitable Catalans. The imagination of the people painted the tragic fate of the king’s unfortunate son in the liveliest colours. Charles’ ghost was seen to glide by night through the streets of Barcelona; he was heard lamenting in piteous tones over his untimely end and calling for vengeance on his unnatural murderer. At last he came to be honoured as a saint. When Queen Juana took her ten-year-old son Ferdinand to Barcelona, that he might receive the homage of the Catalan estates, she soon saw herself threatened with a rising, so that she sought refuge in Gerona. The Catalan troops followed her, made themselves masters of the town and besieged the fortifications where Juana and the prince were bravely defended by a small garrison. Thereupon the king of Aragon concluded a treaty with Louis XI (1462), in consequence of which that monarch sent seven hundred lances with archers and fieldpieces to the aid of the beleaguered queen.

In return for this Juan promised him 200,000 gold crowns and gave him the counties of Roussillon and Cerdagne in pledge. The Catalans could not withstand such a force. They retreated to Barcelona for the purpose of organising more crushing resistance in that excitable town. They sought to represent in a memorial that the liberties of their commonwealth had been betrayed, and that therefore, since the good of the state must be the highest law, they were justified in repudiating their allegiance. They summoned the young men to take arms, and turned to Castile and then to Portugal to win their support in the secession from Aragon (1463). Don Pedro, constable of Portugal, did actually enter the country with a small force, to lay claim to the government of Catalonia, to which, as a scion of the house of Barcelona, he asserted an ancient hereditary right. But the enterprise did not prosper; little by little, partly with the sword, partly by means of gold, King Juan gained possession of the most important towns in the country, such as Lerida, Cervera, Amposta, and Tortosa. Still he could not succeed in breaking Barcelona’s bold spirit of resistance; even when the Portuguese infante died suddenly, the town would not hear of conciliation, and two distinguished burghers were beheaded in the market-place for their sympathy with Aragon (1466).

The Catalans now turned to the famous “king” René of Anjou, that he might add Barcelona to the other kingdoms whose royal title he bore without possessing a handful of their soil. René sent his son John, the chivalrous, adventurous duke of Calabria and Lorraine, with some thousand mercenaries, across the Pyrenees. Louis XI, always seeing his own advantage in disturbances in a neighbouring state, secretly favoured his compatriot’s enterprise, but without dissolving his alliance with Aragon on that account.

[1469-1475 A.D.]

This brave robber captain soon possessed himself of the northern district of Ampurdan and under the walls of Gerona he fought a battle with the queen, who in this time of trial showed heroic courage, and who since her husband’s blindness, the result of the hardships of war during the winter before Amposta, had directed the defence of the country in unison with her son. John’s chivalrous bearing towards the townspeople of Barcelona won for him such open sympathy that his public appearance always resembled a triumph. The embarrassment of King Juan of Aragon reached its highest point when his consort, who had been the very soul of the government and the guiding spirit of the war, succumbed to a long and painful illness at a time when the state coffers were completely drained, when the chief province of the kingdom was in revolt and partly in the possession of a bold leader of mercenaries, and new warlike complications were threatening with Navarre and Castile. But here too the proverb held good, “The darkest hour is that before the dawn.” In the same year, 1469, the king, now a very old man, had his sight restored by a skilful Jewish doctor, and Duke John of Calabria and Lorraine was called to his account, an event that filled the inhabitants of Barcelona with the deepest grief, which they exhibited by giving him an imposing funeral. He was laid to rest in the vault of the ancient rulers of Barcelona. It was only natural that here too the suspicion of poisoning should be raised, though it was without foundation.

The duke’s death could not break the defiant spirit of the Catalans; they steadfastly rejected every summons to yield. After a two years’ struggle, when the greater part of the country had fallen into the hands of the energetic old king, when the town bands were reduced by heavy losses to a very small number, and Barcelona was besieged by sea and land, then only did the stern Catalan spirit stoop to peace. King Juan sweetened their bitter cup of submission and homage. He confirmed their privileges and judicial government, granted universal amnesty and conceded to the foreign mercenaries, and any who might choose to join them, freedom to depart. After the conclusion of peace King Juan, mounted on a white charger, made a solemn entry into Barcelona (December, 1472). Thus the succession to the whole kingdom of Aragon of Ferdinand the Catholic, the husband of the infanta Isabella of Castile, was secured. The result had been arrived at with much difficulty, perhaps crime. A few months later the provinces of Roussillon and Cerdagne, which had been pledged to France, made great efforts to become reunited to Aragon. King Juan lent them his aid and, supported by his son, he defended the town of Perpignan with great heroism against the French. But Louis XI did not let his prize escape him. For the space of two years he made war on the town and the whole country with such overwhelming force that at last they were completely broken and submitted to the foreign yoke. The inhabitants of Perpignan, worn out by suffering and hunger, were expelled, in 1475, by the malice and cruelty of the French ruler.[b]

A few years previous to this, in 1469, the heir of King Juan II, Ferdinand of Aragon, had married Isabella of Castile, uniting thus the two countries into one Spain, as we have previously shown. Having thus brought Aragon’s history down to where it merges into that of Castile, we may return to Castile, which we left at the death of Pedro the Cruel.[a]

FOOTNOTES

[37] [Though this king is usually called “Jayme,” he spelled his own name “Jacme” in the Catalan form.]

[38] [Burke,

g however, credits this entirely to Barcelona.]

[39] [This statement of Petrarch’s indebtedness is, however, open to discussion. There was another Jordi who lived in the fifteenth century and may have been the author of the poems in which resemblances to Petrarch are detected. This would make Petrarch the original. But the Spaniards generally attribute the poems to the contemporary of James the Conqueror, who has left an account of a storm which overtook that monarch’s fleet near the island of Majorca.]

[40] [This document has been well called Aragon’s Magna Charta, and it was secured in much the same manner. The Privilege was confirmed by the cortes of Saragossa in 1325, and torture of witnesses in criminal trials was abolished. In five years followed the Privilege of Union in which the king of Aragon was forced to authorise unions of his subjects to make war upon the sovereign in case of a denial of justice, or any attempt to act independently of the justiciar. We have to look to Poland for a like constitutional defiance of royalty.]

[41] [“The loss of the principal nobles of the union at Epila was a death-blow to the feudal cause in Aragon.”[d]]

[42] St. Thecla, patroness of the church of Tarragona, appeared to him, upbraided him with impiety, and gave him so good a box on the ear, or smack in the face, that he never recovered from it. “Está muy recibido que fue contigado de la mano de Dios, y se le aparecio en vision Santa Tecla, la qual le hirio de una palmada en el rostro, y que este fue la ocasion de su dolencia.”—Zurita.[e] Who would expect Ferreras,[f] a writer of the eighteenth century, to believe such a relation?

[43] [This does not mean “rich men,” as would seem at first sight; but rico here is related to the German word Reich, i.e., kingdom.]