The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic — Volume 3

by William Hickling Prescott

CHAPTER XXIII.

CONQUEST OF NAVARRE.

1512-1513.

Sovereigns of Navarre.—Ferdinand Demands a Passage.—Invasion and
Conquest of Navarre.—Treaty of Orthès.—Ferdinand Settles his Conquests.
—His Conduct Examined.—Gross Abuse of the Victory.

While the Spaniards were thus winning barren laurels on the fields of Italy, King Ferdinand was making a most important acquisition of territory nearer home. The reader has already been made acquainted with the manner in which the bloody sceptre of Navarre passed from the hands of Eleanor, Ferdinand's sister, after a reign of a few brief days, into those of her grandson Phoebus. A fatal destiny hung over the house of Foix; and the latter prince lived to enjoy his crown only four years, when he was succeeded by his sister Catharine.

It was not to be supposed, that Ferdinand and Isabella, so attentive to enlarge their empire to the full extent of the geographical limits which nature seemed to have assigned it, would lose the opportunity now presented of incorporating into it the hitherto independent kingdom of Navarre, by the marriage of their own heir with its sovereign. All their efforts, however, were frustrated by the queen mother Magdaleine, sister of Louis the Eleventh, who, sacrificing the interests of the nation to her prejudices, evaded the proposed match, under various pretexts, and in the end effected a union between her daughter and a French noble, Jean d'Albret, heir to considerable estates in the neighborhood of Navarre. This was a most fatal error. The independence of Navarre had hitherto been maintained less through its own strength, than the weakness of its neighbors. But, now that the petty states around her had been absorbed into two great and powerful monarchies, it was not to be expected, that so feeble a barrier would be longer respected, or that it would not be swept away in the first collision of those formidable forces. But, although the independence of the kingdom must be lost, the princes of Navarre might yet maintain their station by a union with, the reigning family of France or Spain. By the present connection with a mere private individual they lost both the one and the other. [1]

Still the most friendly relations subsisted between the Catholic king and his niece during the lifetime of Isabella. The sovereigns assisted her in taking possession of her turbulent dominions, as well as in allaying the deadly feuds of the Beaumonts and Agramonts, with which they were rent asunder. They supported her with their arms in resisting her uncle Jean, viscount of Narbonne, who claimed the crown on the groundless pretext of its being limited to male heirs. [2] The alliance with Spain was drawn still closer by the avowed purpose of Louis the Twelfth to support his nephew, Gaston de Foix, in the claims of his deceased father. [3] The death of the young hero, however, at Ravenna, wholly changed the relations and feelings of the two countries. Navarre had nothing immediately to fear from France. She felt distrust of Spain on more than one account, especially for the protection afforded the Beaumontese exiles, at the head of whom was the young count of Lerin, Ferdinand's nephew. [4]

France, too, standing alone, and at bay against the rest of Europe, found the alliance of the little state of Navarre of importance to her, especially at the present juncture, when the project of an expedition against Guienne, by the combined armies of Spain and England, naturally made Louis the Twelfth desirous to secure the good-will of a prince, who might be said to wear the keys of the Pyrenees as the king of Sardinia did those of the Alps, at his girdle. With these amicable dispositions, the king and queen of Navarre despatched their plenipotentiaries to Blois, early in May, soon after the battle of Ravenna, with full powers to conclude a treaty of alliance and confederation with the French government. [5]

In the mean time, June 8th, an English squadron arrived at Passage, in Guipuscoa, having ten thousand men on board under Thomas Grey, marquis of Dorset, [6] in order to cooperate with King Ferdinand's army in the descent on Guienne. This latter force, consisting of two thousand five hundred horse, light and heavy, six thousand foot, and twenty pieces of artillery, was placed under Don Fadrique de Toledo, the old duke of Alva, grandfather of the general, who wrote his name in indelible characters of blood in the Netherlands, under Philip the Second. [7] Before making any movement, however, Ferdinand, who knew the equivocal dispositions of the Navarrese sovereigns, determined to secure himself from the annoyance which their strong position enabled them to give him on whatever route he adopted. He accordingly sent to request a free passage through their dominions, with the demand, moreover, that they should intrust six of their principal fortresses to such Navarrese as he should name, as a guarantee for their neutrality during the expedition. He accompanied this modest proposal with the alternative, that the sovereigns should become parties to the Holy League, engaging in that case to restore certain places in his possession, which they claimed, and pledging the whole strength of the confederacy to protect them against any hostile attempts of France. [8]

The situation of these unfortunate princes was in the highest degree embarrassing. The neutrality they had so long and sedulously maintained was now to be abandoned; and their choice, whichever party they espoused, must compromise their possessions on one or the other side of the Pyrenees, in exchange for an ally, whose friendship had proved by repeated experience quite as disastrous as his enmity. In this dilemma they sent ambassadors into Castile, to obtain some modification of the terms, or at least to protract negotiations till some definitive arrangement should be made with Louis the Twelfth. [9]