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.]