The effect upon the public mind was to fan smouldering rebellion into flames; and when Queen Joanna, having gained the recognition of her son as heir to the throne by the Aragonese Cortes at Calatayud, proceeded with the same object to Barcelona, the citizens rose and drove her from their gates. Only the timely intervention of some French troops, which Louis XI. had just hired out to King John, saved her and Ferdinand from falling into the hands of their furious subjects.
This foreign assistance had contributed not a little to the bitterness of the Catalans, for the French King had secretly encouraged their turbulence and disaffection, promising them his support.
“As for peace he could hardly endure the thought of it,” wrote Philip de Commines of his master, Louis XI. That monarch, like King John of Aragon, had studied the art of “making trouble,” and in this truly mediæval pursuit excelled all rivals. It suited his purpose admirably that his ambitious neighbour should be involved in civil war, just as it fitted in with his schemes that his troops should prevent that conflict from going too far. The question was all part and parcel of his policy of French aggrandizement; the ultimate object of his design nothing less than the kingdom of Navarre, that semi-independent state, nominally Spanish, but projecting in a tantalizing wedge across the Pyrenees.
With Charles of Viana the male line of Evreux had come to an end, and the claims on Navarre had passed to his sister Blanche. On Blanche’s death, and Louis in his schemes leapt to the possibility of such a fortunate accident, the next heir would be Eleanor, her younger sister, wife of a French Count, Gaston de Foix. It would be well for France to establish a royal family of her own nationality on the throne of Navarre. It would be even better for that family to be closely connected with the House of Valois; and, calculating on the possibilities, Louis gave his sister Madeleine in marriage to the young Gaston de Foix, Eleanor’s son and the heir to her ambitions.
It only remained to turn the possible into the certain: to make sure that Blanche’s claims should not prejudice those of her younger sister. At this stage in his plans Louis found ready assistance in the King of Aragon, who included in his hatred of Charles of Viana a still more unnatural dislike of his gentle elder daughter, whose only sins were that she had loved her brother in his misfortunes and proved too good a wife for Henry of Castile.
Thus the tragedy was planned. Blanche must become a nun or pass into the care of her brother-in-law in some mountain fortress of Navarre. Then the alternative was whittled away. Nunneries and vows were not so safe as prison walls and that final silence, whose only pleading is at God’s judgment-bar. Eleanor, fierce and vindictive as her father, was determined there should be no loophole of escape, no half-measures by which she might miss her coveted inheritance.
John of Aragon went himself to fetch his elder daughter to her fate, assuring her of his intention of marrying her to a French prince, once they had crossed the Pyrenees; but his victim was not deceived. Powerless to resist, as she had been in bygone days to help her brother, Blanche made one last desperate appeal before the gates of the castle of Orthez closed for ever behind her. On the 30th of April, 1462, she wrote a letter to Henry IV. of Castile, ceding to him her claims on Navarre, and beseeching him by the closeness of the tie that had once united them, and by his love for her dead brother, to accept what she offered and avenge her wrongs.
It was in vain. Even before Charles of Viana’s death, Henry IV., repenting of his rash invasion of Navarre, had come to terms with the Aragonese King, regardless of his ally’s plight; while just at the climax of Blanche’s misfortunes, an event happened in Castile that was to make all but domestic affairs slide into the background.
In March, 1462, Queen Joanna gave birth to a daughter in the palace at Madrid. The King had at last an heir. Great were the festivities and rejoicings at Court, many the bull-fights and jousts in honour of the occasion. Below all the sparkle of congratulation and rejoicing, however, ran an undercurrent of sneering incredulity. It was nearly seven years since the Queen came a bride to Cordova, and for thirteen before that had Henry been married to the virtuous Blanche of Navarre, yet neither by wife nor mistress had he been known to have child.
“Enrique El Impotente,” his people had nicknamed him, and now, recalling the levity of the Queen’s life and her avowed leaning towards the hero of the famous “Passage of Arms,” they dubbed the little Princess in mockery “Joanna La Beltraneja.”