“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.