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ISABEL OF CASTILE
AFTER A PAINTING IN THE PRADO GALLERY ATTRIBUTED TO MIGUEL ZITTOZ
FROM “TORQUEMADA AND THE SPANISH INQUISITION” BY RAFAEL SABATINI

ISABEL OF CASTILE
AND
THE MAKING OF THE SPANISH NATION
1451–1504

BY

IERNE L. PLUNKET

Author of “The Fall of the Old Order, 1763–1815”

Illustrated

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

NEW YORK AND LONDON

The Knickerbocker Press

1915

Copyright, 1915

BY

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

The Knickerbocker Press, New York

FOREWORD

Isabel of Castile is one of the most remarkable, and also one of the most attractive, figures in Spanish history. Her marriage with Ferdinand the Wise of Aragon brought about the union of the Spanish nationality, which had so long been distracted and divided by provincial prejudices and dynastic feuds. She is the ancestress of the Spanish Hapsburg line. But she is also important in Spanish history as a wise and energetic ruler, who rendered invaluable assistance to her husband and to some extent moulded his policy. Under their government Spain was reduced from anarchy to order and took her place among the great Powers of Europe. Isabel is perhaps best known as the patroness of Christopher Columbus and the unflinching ally of the Spanish Inquisition. But her career presents many other features of interest. In particular it reveals the problems which had to be faced by European governments in the critical period of transition from mediæval to modern forms of national organization.

H. W. C. D.

Balliol College, Oxford,

Dec. 17, 1914.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

ISABEL OF CASTILE

CHAPTER I
CASTILE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY

There are some characters in history, whose reputation for heroism is beyond reproach in the eyes of the general public. There are others, however, whose claims to glory are ardently contested by posterity, and none more than Isabel of Castile, in whose case ordinary differences of opinion have been fanned by that most uncompromising of all foes to a fair estimate, religious prejudice. Thus the Catholic, while deploring the extreme severity of the methods employed for the suppression of heresy, would yet look on her championship of the Catholic Faith as her chief claim to the admiration of mankind. The Protestant on the other hand, while acknowledging the glories of the Conquest of Granada and the Discovery of the New World, would weigh them light in the balance against the fires and tortures of the Inquisition and the ruthless expulsion of the Jews.

One solution of the problem has been to make the unfortunate Ferdinand the scapegoat of his Queen’s misdeeds. Whatever tends to the glory of Spain, in that, if not the originator, she is at least the partner and moving spirit. When acts of fanaticism hold the field, they are the result of Ferdinand’s material ambitions or the religious fervour of her confessors; Isabel’s ordinarily independent and clear-sighted mind being reduced for the sake of her reputation to a condition of credulous servility.

Such a view has missed the consistency of real life. It is probably responsible for the exactly opposite summary of another critic, who denies Isabel’s superiority to her husband in anything but hypocrisy and the ability to make her lies more convincing. He even fails to admit that, this being granted, her capacities in one direction at least must have been phenomenal, since Ferdinand was the acknowledged liar of his day par excellence.

Faced by the witness of the Queen’s undoubted popularity, he sweeps it away with a tribute to Spanish manhood: “The praise bestowed on the character of Isabel is, to no small amount, due to the chivalrous character of the Spaniards, who never forgot that the Queen was a lady.”

Such an assumption must be banished, along with Isabel’s weak-mindedness on religious matters, to the realms of historical fiction. The very Castilians who extol her glory and merit do not hesitate to draw attention in bald terms to her sister-in-law’s frailties. Indeed a slight perusal of Cervantes’ famous novel, embodying so much of the habits and outlook of Spain at a slightly later date will show it was rather the fashion to praise a woman for her beauty than to credit her with mental or moral qualities of any strength.

The Catholic Queen, like other individuals of either sex, must stand or fall by the witness of her own actions and speech; and these seen in the light of contemporary history will only confirm the tradition of her heroism, which the intervening centuries have tended to blur. The odium that sometimes attaches to her name is largely due to the translation of Spanish ideals and conditions of life in the Middle Ages into the terms that rule the conduct of the twentieth century.

“Quien dice España dice todo,” says the old proverb,—“He who says Spain has said everything.”

This arrogance is typical of the self-centred, highly strung race, that had been bred by eight centuries of war against the Infidel. The other nations of Western Europe might have their occasional religious difficulties; but, in the days before Luther and Calvin were born, none to the same extent as Spain were faced by the problem of life in daily contact with the unpardonable crime of heresy, in this case the more insidious that it was often masked by outward observance of rule and ritual.

The greater part of the modern world would dismiss the matter with a shrug of its shoulders and the comfortable theory that truth, being eternal, can take care of itself; but this freedom of outlook was yet to be won on the battlefields of the Renaissance and in the religious wars of the sixteenth century. It would be an anachronism to look for it in Spain at a time when the influence of the new birth of thought and culture had extended no further than an imitation of Italian poets.

Isabel’s bigotry is an inheritance she shared with the greater part of her race in her own day, the logical sequence of her belief in the exclusive value of the divine in man’s nature, as against any claims of his human body. If she pursued her object, the salvation of souls, with a relentless cruelty, from which we turn away to-day in sick disgust, we must remember that Spain for the most part looked on unmoved. Where opposition was shown, as in her husband’s kingdom of Aragon, it was rather the spirit of independence than of mercy that raised its head.

Indeed the religious persecution was in no way disproportionate to the severity of the criminal procedure of the reign, as will be seen by a glance at the usual sentences passed on those convicted of any crime. The least with which a thief could hope to escape from his judges was the loss of a limb, but the more likely fate was to be placed with his back to a tree, and there, after a hasty confession of his sins, shot or burnt.

Many of Queen Isabel’s contemporaries remark her intolerance of crime and disorder, and a few of the younger generation who had grown to manhood in the atmosphere of peace she had established, condemn her justice as excessive. By modern standards it is undoubtedly barbarous; but long centuries of anarchy had bred a spirit of lust and brutality little above the barbarian level, and only drastic measures could hope to cure so deep-rooted an evil. Isabel herself, throughout her childhood, had been a forced witness of her brother’s policy of “sprinkling rose-water on rebellion” instead of employing the surgeon’s knife; and her strength of character despised the weakness, that under the pretext of humanity made life impossible for nine-tenths of the population.

It is her great achievement that she raised the crown, the mediæval symbol of national justice, from the political squalor into which seventy years of mingled misfortune and incapacity had thrown it, and that she set it on a pedestal so lofty, that even the haughtiest Castilian need not be ashamed to bow the knee in reverence. By this substitution of a strong government for a weak, of impartiality for favouritism, she secured peace at home and thus laid a firm foundation for Ferdinand’s ambitious foreign policy, and the establishment of Spain as the first nation in Europe.

It is perhaps difficult to apportion exactly the respective shares of Isabel and her husband in the administrative measures of their reign; for their unanimity of aim and action was in keeping with their motto tanto monta,—“the one as much as the other.” Yet in this connection it is necessary to realize the contrast between the two kingdoms. Aragon, with its three divisions of Aragon proper, Valencia, and the Principality of Catalonia, measured in all scarcely a quarter of the territory of its western neighbour. Moreover the spirit of the people and the democratic character of its laws rendered it a soil peculiarly ill-suited for the growth of the royal prerogative. Thus, in spite of the sovereigns’ best endeavours, it stubbornly withstood their centralizing policy, and the main burden of taxation and governmental measures fell on Castile. The latter, “the corona” or “big crown,” in contradistinction to the “coronilla” or “little crown” of Aragon, continued throughout the Queen’s lifetime to look on her husband as more or less of a foreigner; and all the many documents signed “Yo, El Rey” could not weigh with a true Castilian against Isabel’s single “Yo, La Reina.” It is she, who, when “Los Reyes” are not mentioned together, is hailed to-day in Spain as the chief representative of national grandeur, just as “castellano,” the speech of the larger kingdom, has become synonymous with our term “Spanish.”

The word “Castile” itself conveys to an imaginative mind a picture of that mediæval land of castles, whose ramparts were not only a defence against the Moors but also the bulwark of a turbulent nobility. In vain the Crown had striven to suppress its over-powerful subjects. The perpetual crusade upon the southern border proved too alluring a recruiting-ground for the vices of feudalism; and many a mail-clad count led out to battle a larger following of warriors than the sovereign to whom he nominally owed obedience.

So long as the crusade continued, rulers of Castile could not attempt to disband the feudal levies on which their fortune depended; and each acquisition of Moorish territory was followed by fresh distributions of lands amongst the conquering troops. Sometimes these grants carried with them complete fiscal and judicial control of the district in question, at others merely a yearly revenue; but, whatever the tenure, the new owner and his descendants were certain to take advantage of royal embarrassments and national disorder to press their claims to the farthest limit. A few communities, behetrias, succeeded in obtaining the privilege of choosing their own over-lord with the more doubtful corollary of changing him as often as they liked, a process fruitful of quarrels which not unnaturally resulted in their gradual absorption by more settled neighbours.

Since the practice of primogeniture was common in Castile and lands were inalienable, large estates were rapidly built up, whose owners, unable to rule all their property directly, would sublet some of their towns and strongholds to other nobles and knights in return for certain services. These dependencies, or latifundia, yielded ultimate obedience not to the King but to the over-lord from whom their commander had received them. On one occasion Alvaro de Luna, the favourite minister of John II., appeared before the castle of Trujillo and demanded its surrender in his master’s name. To this the “Alcayde,” or Governor, replied that he owed allegiance to the King’s uncle, John of Aragon, and would open the gates to none else: an answer typical of the days when aristocratic independence ran riot in Castile.

A great territorial magnate could also renounce the obedience he owed to his sovereign by the simple method of sending a messenger who should, in the King’s presence, make the following declaration: “Señor, on behalf of ... I kiss your hand and inform you that henceforth he is no more your vassal.”

The weakness of the Castilian Crown was further aggravated in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries by disputed successions and long minorities; the nobles using the confusion these engendered to wring concessions from the rival claimants, or to seize them from inexperienced child rulers.

“A breastplate would have served him better!” exclaimed the Count of Benavente, when at the beginning of Queen Isabel’s reign he heard of the death of some man bearing a royal safe-conduct.

“Do you wish then that there was no King in Castile?” asked the Queen indignantly; to which the Count replied cheerfully: “Not so! I would there were many, for then I should be one of them.”

His words are the expression of the aristocratic ideal of life in his own day. It was perhaps most nearly realized in the case of the Grand Masterships of the three great Military Orders of Santiago, Calatrava, and Alcantara. These Orders had been called into existence by the crusade; but their original purpose was gradually obscured by the wealth and influence that made them the resort of the ambitious rather than of the enthusiast. Like the Monastic Orders, their members were bound by vows: obedience, community of property, strict conjugal fidelity, sometimes celibacy; but dispensations could be bought, and the gains to be reaped more than compensated for any theoretical austerities or submission.

The main canon of their creed, war against the Infidel, was readily accepted by every aspirant knight; the only drawback being that his inborn love of fighting led him to take part as well in whatever other kind of war happened to dawn on the horizon, no matter if it were against his own sovereign. How formidable this would prove for the sovereign we can imagine when we learn that in the fifteenth century the combined revenues of the Orders amounted to something like 145,000 ducats,[^[1]] while the Master of Santiago could call into the field a force of four hundred fully-armed cavaliers and one thousand lances. In addition he possessed the patronage of numerous “commanderies,” rich military posts that brought with them the rents of subject towns and villages, and that were eagerly sought by the highest in the land.

[1]. “The monetary unit of Castile was the ‘maravedi,’ anciently a gold coin of value; but, in the fifteenth century, diminished to a fraction of its former estimation.”—Lea, History of Spanish Inquisition, vol. i., Appendix III.

The ducat would be worth about 374 maravedis, or about 8s. 9d. in English money.

Extreme power and privilege are often their own undoing; and from the fruits of its triumph the Castilian aristocracy was to reap a bitter harvest. Had the fight with the Crown been more strenuous and the victory less certain, the ricos-hombres or great men of the land, might have learned to combine if not with other classes at least amongst themselves; but the independence they had gained so easily they placed in jeopardy by individual selfishness and mutual distrust. It has been said with truth that it was almost impossible to persuade the mediæval Castilian noble to act with his fellows. Pride, ambition, the courage that vaunts itself in duels, the revenge that lurks, dagger-drawn, in back streets or lonely roads: these were the source of constant feuds and internecine warfare, incapable of a final settlement save by the pressure of some outside force.

Nor could the noble, who distrusted the members of his own class, rely in times of danger on the co-operation of his humbler neighbours. Believing that war was the profession of the gentleman, he despised the burgher, the artisan, and the farmer. Like the French “seigneur” he had won freedom from direct taxation as the privilege of his Order, and thus lost touch completely with the pecheros or “taxable classes.” He had appropriated the majority of the high-sounding offices of state, the Grand Constable, the Admiral of Castile, and so forth; but he valued them from the wealth or honour they conveyed, not from any sense of responsibility. The very fact that such offices had tended to become hereditary had done much to destroy their official character. An “Enriquez” was Admiral of Castile, not on account of his seamanship, nor even on the system of the modern English Cabinet because of a certain “all-round” ability to deal with public business, but because his father and grandfather had held the post before him. The ricos-hombres might, from personal motives, defy the government or nullify its measures; but in placing themselves above the law they had lost the incentive to control legislation. A world of experience, or rather a lack of it, separated them from those below, to whom edicts and ordinances were a matter of daily concern.

The Castilian Church was also in a sense above the law; for the clergy were exempt from ordinary taxation, paying to the Crown instead a small portion of their tithes. Like the nobles they could neither be imprisoned for debt nor suffer torture; while legally they came under ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and were subject only to its penalties and censures. Archbishops, bishops, and abbots, were for the most part younger sons of wealthy nobles and shared the outlook and ambitions of their class. The Castilian prelate of the early fifteenth century found it as natural to don his suit of mail and draw his sword as to celebrate Mass or hear confessions. It would not be dislike of shedding blood nor a faint heart that would distinguish him from laymen on the battlefield, but the surcoat embroidered with a cross, that he wore in deference to his profession.

The worldly character of the higher ranks of the clergy had permeated also to the lower; and vice, ignorance, and careless levity sapped the influence of the ordinary parish priest and corrupted the monasteries and convents. Here and there were signs of an awakening, but for the most part the spiritual conscience of the Castilian Church lay dormant.

Its sense of nationality on the other hand was strong; that is to say if dislike of foreign interference and strong racial prejudice deserve such a definition. Partly from very worldliness, local and provincial interests tended to predominate over any claims of a universal Church; and submission to Rome was interpreted with a jealous regard to private ambitions. The members of the episcopate, concerned in the civil wars of Henry IV.’s reign, looked on with cool indifference when a papal legate, vainly seeking to arbitrate between the armies on the eve of a battle, was forced to save his life by flight. Similarly, the Archbishop of Toledo, Primate of Castile, thought little of throwing into a dungeon the candidate who, armed with letters of appointment from Rome, had dared to dispute a rich living in the diocese with his own nominee. The Pope was a convenient “King Log”; but his subjects had not the least wish for him to develop the authority of a “King Stork.”

The Castilian Church also displayed her national prejudice, as we shall see later, in her hatred and suspicion of the alien races that formed such a large element of the Spanish population. These had sunk their roots deep in the soil during the centuries of Moorish conquest when, from behind the barrier of the Asturian mountains in the far north-west, the pure Castilian alone had been able to beat back the advancing waves of Mahometanism. As he at length descended from his refuge, where the sword or the hunting-spear had been his sole means of livelihood, he might profess to despise the believers in Allah, from whom he wrested back the land of his fathers, but in practice he was glad enough to accept them as a subject race. The Moorish warriors, who fell on the battlefield or retreated southwards before their foes, left in Christian territory a large residue of the more peaceful Arabs and Berbers, willing to till the fields, work at the looms, and fulfil all those other tasks of civilized national life that the Castilian was inclined to imagine degrading to his own dignity. Left behind also were colonies of prosperous Jews, whose ancestors, hounded from every Christian court, had found a home under the tolerant rule of the caliphs of Cordova.

Agriculture, industry, and commerce thus became stamped, unfortunately for Spain, with the taint of subjection. Not that the Castilian took no share as the years passed in the economic life of his country; for the legislation of the fifteenth century shows the middle and lower classes busily engaged in occupations such as cattle-breeding, sheep-farming, and mining; and, more especially in the south, of fruit-growing, and the production of silk, wine, and oil. The basis of a progressive national life was there; but perpetual war against the Moors and internal discord, combined with racial prejudice against the industrious alien, gave to the profession of arms a wholly disproportionate value.

Many of the towns were in their origin border outposts; and their massive towers, fortified churches, and thick walls, with the suburbs huddling close against them for protection, marked the enveloping atmosphere of danger. Since it had been difficult at first to attract the industrial classes to such surroundings, rulers of Castile had been driven to grant fueros or charters, to the inhabitants embodying numerous privileges and a large measure of self-government. Then the time of danger passed; the Castilian boundary pushed farther south, and other fortified towns were needed to defend it; but the citizens of the old outposts clung jealously to the fueros of their fathers and defied either royal or seignorial control.

“Ce sont de veritables petits états,” says Mariéjol, speaking of the Castilian municipalities in mediæval days; but the description that implies peculiar powers shadows forth also peculiar difficulties. The city that would keep its independence would have to struggle continually against the encroachments both of the Crown and of neighbouring territorial lords. It must for this purpose maintain its own militia, and, most arduous of all, watch carefully lest it should fall into subjection to its very defenders. Not a few of the municipal councils came in time to be dominated by a class of “knights,” or nobles of secondary rank, whose quarrels and feuds endangered industry and filled the streets with bloodshed.

The principal civic official was the “regidor”; but the Crown had by the early fifteenth century succeeded in introducing in many cases a representative, the “corregidor,” whose business it was to look after royal interests. His presence was naturally resented by the more influential citizens and, where he dealt corruptly with the people, disliked by all; but an honest corregidor, who was unconnected with local families and therefore without interest in the local feuds, and who had no axe of his own to grind, was a Godsent help to the poorer classes.

Besides appointing corregidors, the Crown had also begun to influence the municipalities in another way, through a gradually increasing control of the “Cortes,” or national parliament of Castile. This body consisted of three “Estates”; the nobles, whether ricos-hombres or hidalgos of lesser grade; ecclesiastics; and the Third Estate, or “Commons.” On an occasion of outward or obvious importance, when a succession or a Council of Regency were under dispute, or if an oath of homage to a new sovereign or the confirmation of some unprecedented act were required; all three “Estates” would meet together at whatever town the King happened to be staying. Such was a “General Cortes.”

An ordinary Cortes was of a very different character; for, since its business mainly concerned taxation, only the Commons, or “taxable” element of the population was in the habit of attending. In the early days of Castilian history the number of places represented was unlimited; but a right that in the disordered state of the country was both expensive and tiresome, if not actually dangerous, was regarded as a burden by most of the municipalities. By the fifteenth century only seventeen cities and towns sent members to the Cortes. These were: Toledo, Burgos, Seville, Cordova, Murcia, Leon, Segovia, Avila, Salamanca, Zamora, Cuenca, Jaen, Valladolid, Madrid, Toro, Soria, and Guadalajara, while Granada was added after her conquest in 1492.

The “Procuradores,” or representatives, were in theory free to act at their own discretion; but in practice they went tied by the instructions of their fellow-citizens. Nor had they much scope for independence in the Cortes itself; for though they might and did air their grievances and press for reform, redress rested with the Crown and did not precede but follow the assent to taxation. All legislative power was in fact invested in the King; who might reject, amend, or accept suggestions as he thought fit.

“We hold that the matter of your petition is to our service.” “We command that it shall take effect.” Such phrases expressed sovereignty in a gracious mood, and all were satisfied; while the absence of royal sanction sent the procurador back to his city, his efforts wasted. He could, of course, on the next occasion that the King, in need of money, summoned his deputies to grant it, refuse the supply; but in the meantime three more years might have elapsed and conditions and needs would have altered. Moreover a system of bribes and flattery went far to bring the Commons into line with the royal will; while the shortsighted complaints of some of the municipalities at the expense of maintaining their representatives paved the way for the Crown to accept the burden, thereby establishing an effective control over those who became practically its nominees.

That the towns missed the future significance of this change is hardly surprising. The civil wars that devastated Castile had taught the people that their most dangerous enemies were not their kings but the turbulent aristocracy; and they often looked to the former as allies against a common foe. In the same way the more patriotic of the nobles and ecclesiastics saw in the building up of the royal power the only hope of carrying the crusade against the Moors to a successful conclusion, or of establishing peace at home. At this critical moment in the history of Castile, national progress depended on royal dominance; and it was Queen Isabel who by establishing the one made possible the other.

CHAPTER II
THE REIGN OF HENRY IV.: MISGOVERNMENT
1454–1463

“I the King ... make known to you that by the grace of Our Lord, this Thursday just past the Queen Doña Isabel, my dear and well-beloved wife, was delivered of a daughter; the which I tell you that you may give thanks to God.”

With this announcement of her birth to the chief men of Segovia was “Isabel of Castile” ushered by her father John II. into public life; but on that April day of 1451 none could have suspected the important part she would play in the history of her country. The future of the throne was already provided for in the person of her elder half-brother, Henry, Prince of Asturias; and nearly three years later the birth of another brother, Alfonso, made that inheritance apparently secure from any inconvenience of a female succession.

HENRY IV.
FROM “BOLETIN DE LA REAL ACADEMIA DE LA HISTORIA,” VOL. LXII.
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY HAUSER AND MENET

Castile was at this time nearing the end of a long and inglorious reign, signalized by the struggles of the King and his selfish favourite against the domination of an equally selfish nobility. The latter triumphed; the favourite was beheaded and John II., broken-hearted at his own weakness in agreeing to the sentence, died in the following year. His life had been one long negation of everything for which true kingship stands,—dignity, honour, and power; but the son who succeeded to his title and troubles was even less fitted for the task.

Feeble and vain, Henry, Prince of Asturias, had been from boyhood the puppet of his father’s rebellious nobles, led by their flattery into attacking the royal authority that it would be one day his duty to maintain.

“In him,” says the chronicler Pulgar, “desire had the mastery over reason”; and, when he ascended the throne, it was with a character and constitution that self-indulgence had utterly undermined. One virtue he possessed, strangely out of keeping with his age, a compassion arising from dislike of bloodshed; but, since he failed to draw any distinction between justice and indiscriminate mercy, this attribute rather endangered than distinguished his rule. A corresponding indifference, also, to his property, and a reluctance to punish those who tampered with it, might have a ring of magnificence, but it could hardly inspire awe of the King’s law.

The problems by which Henry was faced at the beginning of his reign were not acutely dangerous; and their chief difficulty lay in the constant friction between Castile and the neighbouring kingdom of Aragon. Between these two the tie of mutual descent from the House of Trastamara had been drawn ever closer by frequent intermarriage. Henry IV. was not only cousin of Alfonso V. of Aragon, but also his nephew, while he was son-in-law to Alfonso’s ambitious brother, John, King of Navarre. Here was scope for the time-honoured right of family interference, a right strengthened by quarrels as to confiscated property and abused privileges.

ALFONSO V. OF ARAGON
FROM “ICONOGRAFIA ESPAÑOLA” BY VALENTIN CARDERERA Y SOLANO

It is only fair to say of Alfonso V. himself, that he took little part in these feuds. A true Aragonese by instinct, though of Castilian descent, his interests were not so much directed towards acquiring Spanish territory as to extending a maritime empire in the East. Such had been for generations the ambition of a kingdom, whose backbone was the hardy race of Catalan merchants and sailors. Alfonso dreamed of making Barcelona and Valencia the rivals of Genoa and Venice. To this purpose he strengthened his hold over Sardinia, and fought with the Genoese for the sovereignty of Corsica. Foiled in his designs on that island by a superior fleet, he sailed away to make good a claim that Joanna II. of Naples had allowed him to establish, when in a capricious moment she had adopted him as her son. What favour and affection she had to bestow, and she was capable of very little, she had given to the House of Anjou; and when she died without descendants, Naples became the battleground of Aragonese and French claimants.

Alfonso V., after a series of misfortunes, was at length victorious; and delighted with this new kingdom, the land of sunshine and culture in spite of the grim background of its history, he established his court there, and henceforth ranked rather as an Italian than a Spanish sovereign.

While, at his ease, he wove chimerical schemes of a crusade for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre, and extended a liberal patronage to Renaissance poets and philosophers; his wife, Queen Maria, remained as regent at home, and strove to keep peace with Castile and temper the ambitions of her brothers-in-law. This was a well-nigh impossible task, for John the eldest and most turbulent, in default of any legitimate descendants of Alfonso, was heir to the Aragonese throne. A judicious marriage with Blanche, the heiress of a small state of Navarre, had made him virtual master of that kingdom, when on her father’s death in 1425 they assumed the joint sovereignty.

Fiction has never devised a more painful domestic tragedy than resulted from this match. Of the three children of Blanche and John of Navarre, the death of two was to be laid at their father’s door, the third to earn the unenviable reputation of connivance in a sister’s murder. The Queen, with some premonition of the future, strove feebly on her death-bed to guard against it, and in her will, that left her son Charles of Viana as the rightful ruler of Navarre, she begged him not to claim the title of King in his father’s lifetime. To this the Prince agreed, but the attempt at compromise was to prove ineffectual.

In 1447, King John married again, a woman of very different temperament to his former wife. This lady, Joanna Enriquez, daughter of the Admiral of Castile, was as unscrupulous and greedy of power as her husband, and from the first adopted the rôle of “cruel stepmother.” The birth of her son, Ferdinand, in March, 1452, set fire to the slumbering jealousy she had conceived for Charles of Viana, and henceforth she devoted her talents and energy to removing him from her path.

It is the penalty of public characters that their private life is not only exposed to the limelight, but its disagreements involve the interference of many who are not directly concerned. The hatred of Queen Joanna for her stepson not only convulsed Navarre and Aragon but dragged Castile also into the scandal.

Throughout the long reign of John II. of Castile, the King of Navarre had on various pretexts interfered continually in his cousin’s affairs. On some occasions he had posed as the protector of sovereignty from the schemes of an ambitious favourite. On others he had been an open rebel, harrying the royal demesnes, or sulkily plotting revenge when, as the result of his rebellion, the estates he had inherited in Castile were taken from him. Through all these vicissitudes the thread of his policy ran clear,—to fish in waters that he himself had previously troubled. If his own haul proved empty, he could at least boast of spoiling the sport of others.

In 1440, in a brief moment of reconciliation with Castile, he married his eldest daughter Blanche to Henry, then Prince of Asturias, and was thus provided with a plausible excuse for henceforth thwarting his cousin in his son-in-law’s interests. From no other point of view could the alliance be called a success. Henry proved as faithless a husband as he was disloyal a son; and, after thirteen years of fruitless union, the marriage was annulled on the grounds of impotence.

Blanche returned to her own land; but her father found the man who had been her husband too useful an ally to resent her repudiation, and as soon as Henry became King he agreed to a treaty by which, in return for an annual income, he surrendered any rights he might have to estates or property in Castile. With such a settlement the political horizon seemed fair; but the Castilian royal favourite, Juan Pacheco, Marquis of Villena, to whom a lion’s share of the said estates had fallen, mistrusted its serenity, believing that as soon as the King of Navarre succeeded his brother Alfonso V. on the throne of Aragon, he would revive claims so obviously to his advantage.

The Marquis of Villena was deaf to the voice of patriotism or personal loyalty to his master, but he was more than ordinarily acute, where his own prosperity was concerned. He had garnered successfully the confiscated property, but “he lived” we are told “always with the fear of losing it, as those live who possess what does not belong to them.”

JUAN PACHECO, MARQUIS OF VILLENA
FROM “ICONOGRAFIA ESPAÑOLA” BY VALENTIN CARDERERA Y SOLANO

In this malicious but eminently shrewd estimate of his attitude lies the clue to the tortuous mazes in which he involved Castile. Pacheco was a noble of Portuguese extraction, who had entered Prince Henry’s service as a page, being created Marquis of Villena by John II. When that sovereign died, the favourite succeeded to the practical sovereignty of Castile through the influence he had acquired over his master’s weak and impressionable nature. It was a position that would have dazzled and satisfied most favourites, but Pacheco despised all but the most tangible gains. Power was reckoned in his vocabulary as a means towards procuring fresh wealth, and for this his thirst was insatiable. All King Henry’s eagerness to alienate royal estates and revenues in his favour failed to meet his constant demand for fresh grants either to himself or to his immediate relatives. The gift of half a province, with the lordship of all its towns and castles would leave him envious of the small village across the border, whose rent-roll passed into other pockets.

“He knew,” says the chronicler, “how to conceal all other vices save his greed: that he could neither conceal nor moderate.”

In pursuance of his own interests Villena, who distrusted the King of Navarre’s future intentions, suggested a counter-alliance with Portugal. This western kingdom had always seemed in danger of absorption by its more powerful neighbour; once their common enemy, the Moor, had been driven southwards; but good fortune and a spirit of sturdy independence had preserved its freedom. By the great victory of Aljubarrota in 1385 Portugal had vindicated her claim to be a separate nationality; and Castile, leaving the flower of her chivalry dead on the battlefield, had retired to nurse her resentment in secret. Nearly a century had passed, and mutual hatred still smouldered between the two peoples, though frequent intermarriage had long broken down the barriers in the case of the royal families.

The bride now selected by Henry IV. was the Infanta Joanna, sister of the reigning King, Alfonso V., a lady of sufficient youth and beauty to appeal, at any rate temporarily, to her bridegroom’s jaded taste. Her journey to her new home was a triumphal progress of banquets and receptions, culminating in jousts and feasts at Madrid, where a crowning touch of extravagant display was given by Alonso de Fonseca, Archbishop of Seville, when, after a magnificent banquet, he ordered salvers, laden with rings and precious stones to be handed round, that the Queen and her ladies might take their choice.

Unfortunately, real feelings, if they had ever been in tune, ceased to correspond with these outward rejoicings. Henry soon tired of his bride, probably because he was legally bound to her, and bestowed his attentions instead on a Portuguese lady of her retinue, Doña Guiomar. The latter increased the Queen’s mortification by her insolent behaviour; and, after a stormy scene, in which royal dignity was thrown to the winds and slaps and blows were administered, Henry removed his mistress to a country-house. The Court, watching to see which way the wind would blow, divided into factions according to its decision; the Marquis of Villena supporting the Queen, the Archbishop of Seville the cause of Doña Guiomar.

Matters became even more serious when scandal, always busy with the King’s name, began to attack the honour of his bride. Queen Joanna, who according to Zurita had objected to the match from the first, was incapable of the gentle resignation of her predecessor, Blanche of Navarre. As extravagant and devoted to pleasure as her husband, she had no intention of playing the rôle of deserted wife.

“She was a woman to whom love speeches were pleasant ... delighting more in the beauty of her face than in the glory of her reputation.” Such was the court chronicler’s summary of her character; nor did public opinion remain vague in its accusations.

Amongst the principal Castilian nobles was a certain Beltran de La Cueva, who by his handsome looks and adroit manners had gained for himself the King’s confidence and the lucrative office of “Mayordomo,” or Lord High Steward.

On one occasion the King and Queen had been entertaining the ambassadors of the Duke of Brittany at their country-house at Pardo. Returning to Madrid after three days’ hunting, they found on nearing the city that Beltran de La Cueva, gorgeously arrayed, was waiting lance in hand to challenge all who came by that road. This was a form of entertainment highly popular with the chivalry of the time; and the tiers of scaffolding erected for spectators were soon crowded.

Every knight, as he rode up, was summoned to tilt six rounds with the Mayordomo or to leave his left glove in token of his cowardice. If he succeeded in shivering three lances, he might go to a wooden archway, resplendent with letters of gold, and from there take the initial of the lady of his choice. This famous “Passage of Arms” lasted from morning till sunset; and thus to the satisfaction of the Court did Beltran de La Cueva maintain the cause of an unknown beauty, to whom rumour gave no less a name than that of royalty itself.

If the King had his suspicions, they did not hinder his pleasure in the spectacle; and he proceeded to celebrate the event by establishing a monastery on the site, to be called “San Jeronimo del Paso,” or “Saint Jerome of the Passage of Arms.” Such an origin for a religious foundation was to say the least of it bizarre; yet it compares favourably with Henry’s cynical appointment of a discarded mistress as abbess of a convent in Toledo, on the excuse that the said convent was in need of reform.

Little good could be expected from a Court whose rulers set such an example of licence and selfish pleasure; but, fortunately for Castile, her hopes for the future lay not in the idle throng that surrounded Henry IV. and Joanna, but in the old walled town of Arévalo. Here, since the death of John II., had lived his widow, Isabel of Portugal, and her two children, in an atmosphere rendered doubly retired by her own permanent ill-health.

“Her illness,” according to the chronicler, “was so grievous and constant that she could in no way recover”; and with conventional propriety he attributes the cause to grief at the loss of her husband. This may have been, though John II. was hardly the type of man to inspire une grande passion. It is more likely that her mind was already the prey of the burden of melancholy that became the curse of her descendants; and that the malady was aggravated by the uncertainty of her new position.

According to one of the royal chaplains Henry treated his half-brother and sister “with much love and honour and no less the Queen their mother.” This account, however, conflicts with Pulgar’s description of Isabel as “brought up in great necessity.” It is more than probable that the fortunes of the family at Arévalo varied with the policy or whim of the Marquis of Villena; and thus, in her most impressionable years, the little Princess learned her first lessons in the hard school of experience. Such a theory would explain the extraordinary discretion and foresight she displayed at an age when most girls are still dreaming of unrealities. If the contrast is not wholly to her advantage, and precocity is seldom charming, we must remember that only sheltered fruit can keep its bloom. What Isabel lost of childish softness, she gained in self-reliance and a shrewd estimate of the difference between true and false.

Though far enough removed from the succession to escape the flattery that had ruined her elder brother, she was early a pawn on the political chess-board, and by the age of six had made her début in the matrimonial market. Henry IV. and King John of Navarre were at that time eager to show their mutual love and confidence; and a double alliance was suggested that would make this patent to all the world. For Isabel was destined John’s favourite son, the five-year-old Ferdinand, while the latter’s sister Leonora was chosen as bride for the little Alfonso, Henry’s half-brother.

Amid all the turns of Fortune’s wheel that were to bring in search of Isabel’s hand now one suitor, now another, this first alliance alone was to reach consummation; yet few, versed in the changing politics of the day, could have believed it likely. The kings had sworn eternal friendship; but in little more than twelve months an event happened that made of their treaties and complimentary letters a heap of waste paper.

In 1458, Alfonso V. died at Naples leaving his newly acquired Italian kingdom to his illegitimate son Ferrante, and the rest of his dominions, including the island of Sicily, to his brother John. The latter was now in a far stronger position than ever before; he need not depend on Henry’s friendship; indeed his inheritance from past rulers was rather a policy of feud and aggression against the neighbouring kingdom, while the influence of his father-in-law, the Admiral of Castile, drew him in the same direction.

This Admiral, Don Fadrique Enriquez, was himself a descendant of the royal House of Trastamara; and his haughty and choleric nature found the dreary level of loyalty little to its taste. His sense of importance, vastly increased by his daughter’s brilliant marriage, revelled in plots of all sorts; and soon conspiracy was afoot, and he and the majority of Castilian nobles were secretly leagued with John of Aragon against their own sovereign. Even the Marquis of Villena consented to flirt with their proposals, in the hope of reaping some benefit; while his uncle, the Archbishop of Toledo, and his brother, Don Pedro Giron, Master of Calatrava, were amongst the leading members of the league.

Looking about him for an ally, Henry’s glance lit naturally on Charles of Viana, whose disputes with his father had reached a stage beyond the chance of any peaceful settlement. Navarre, always a prey to factions as irreconcilable as Montagues and Capulets, had broken into civil war on the advent of Queen Joanna as regent; the powerful family of the Agramonts welcoming her eagerly; while the Beaumonts, their rivals, out of favour at Court and wild with jealousy, called hourly upon Charles to avenge their wrongs and his own. His mother’s will, leaving Navarre to her husband during his lifetime, had, they declared, been made null and void by the King’s subsequent remarriage. Not only was it the duty of a son to resist such unlawful tyranny, but it was folly to refuse with imprisonment or a poison cup lurking in the background.

The latter argument was convincing; but never was rebellion undertaken with a heavier heart. The Prince of Viana was a student and philosopher who, like the Clerk of Oxenford, would have preferred a shelf of Aristotle’s books at his bed’s head to the richest robes, or fiddle, or psaltery. The quiet of a monastery library, with its smell of dust and parchment, thrilled him more than any trumpet-call; and he would gladly have exchanged his birthright for the monk’s garb of peace. Fortune willed otherwise, laying on his shoulders in pitiless mockery the burden of the man of action; and the result was the defeat that is the usual reward of half-heartedness.

His uncle’s Court at Naples proved a temporary asylum for him in his subsequent enforced exile; and also the island of Sicily, where he soon won the affection of the people, and lived in happiness, till Alfonso’s death awoke him rudely from his day-dreams. He was overwhelmed by fear for his own future; though, had he been a different man, he might have wrested away the sceptre of Sicily. In Aragon itself public opinion had been growing steadily in his favour, and not only in Navarre were there murmurs at his absence, but up and down the streets of Barcelona, where the new King was far from popular, and his haughty Castilian wife an object of dislike.

Prudence dictated to King John a policy of reconciliation; and after prolonged negotiations the exile returned; but the cold forgiveness he received from his father and stepmother for the wrongs they had done him was in marked contrast to the joyous welcome of the nation. No outward ceremony of a loving father pardoning a prodigal son could mask the lack of confidence that still denied the Prince his recognition as rightful heir, and drove him to enter into a secret alliance with Henry IV. of Castile.

As a result of these negotiations, a marriage was arranged between Charles and the Infanta Isabel. That the suggested bride was only ten and the bridegroom nearing forty was a discrepancy not even considered; and the messengers, who went to Arévalo to report on the appearance of the Princess, returned to her suitor, as the chroniclers expressed it, “very well content.” Far different were the feelings of the King of Aragon, when he learned of the intended match from his father-in-law, the Admiral of Castile. Isabel had been destined for his favourite son, and, in spite of the conspiracy to which he had lent his aid, this alliance still held outwardly good. It did not need the jealous insinuations of his wife to inflame afresh his hatred of his first-born; and the Prince of Viana soon found himself in prison, accused of no less a crime than plotting against his father’s life.

Unfortunately for King John, popular belief ran in a contrary direction, and his son’s release was soon demanded by all parts of the kingdom. In Barcelona, the citizens rose, tore down the royal standard and took the Governor prisoner. Revolt flamed through the land; but even more alarming was the sudden declaration of war by Henry IV., who, taking advantage of the King of Aragon’s embarrassments, hastily dispatched a force to invade Navarre, where the Beaumonts were already in the field.

It was a bitter moment for King John. Realizing his critical position, he agreed to his son’s release; and Charles of Viana passed in triumph to Barcelona. For once, almost without his intervention, Fortune had smiled on him; but it proved only a gleam before the final storm. Three months after he had been publicly proclaimed as his father’s heir, the news of his sudden illness and death fell on his supporters with paralysing swiftness.

Nothing, on the other hand, could have been more opportune for King John and his Queen; and their joy can be gauged by the haste with which they at once proclaimed the ten-year-old Ferdinand heir to the throne, demanding from the national Cortes of the three kingdoms the oath they had so long denied his elder brother. Yet Queen Joanna’s maternal ambitions were not to be satisfied by this easy assumption of victory. Charles of Viana dead was to prove an even more potent foe than Charles of Viana living.

Gentle and unassuming, yet with a melancholy dignity that accorded well with his misfortunes, he had been accepted as a national hero by the impulsive Catalans; and after death they translated the rather negative qualities of his life into the attributes of a saint. Only the halo of martyrdom was required to fire the general sympathy into religious fervour; and this rumour supplied when it maintained that his tragic end had been due to no ordinary fever, but to poison administered by his stepmother’s orders.

The supposition was not improbable; and the inhabitants of Barcelona did not trouble to verify the very scanty evidence for the actual fact. They preferred to rest their accusations on the tales of those who had seen the Prince’s unhappy spirit, like Hamlet’s father, walking abroad at midnight demanding revenge. Soon his tomb became a shrine for pilgrims, and there the last touch of sanctity was added. He who in life had suffered acutely from ill-health became in death a worker of miracles, a healer whom no absence of papal sanction could rob of popular canonization.

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.”

Was the King blind? or why was the handsome Beltran de La Cueva created at this moment, almost it seemed in celebration of the occasion, Count of Ledesma, and received into the innermost royal councils? There were those who did not hesitate to affirm that Henry was indifferent to his own honour, so long as his anxiety for an heir was satisfied.

Whatever the doubts and misgivings as to her parentage, there was no lack of outward ceremony at the Infanta’s baptism, in the royal chapel eight days after her birth. The Primate himself, the Archbishop of Toledo, performed the rites, and Isabel, who with her brother Alfonso, had been lately brought up to court, was one of the godmothers, the other, the Marquesa de Villena, wife of the favourite. Two months later, a Cortes, composed of prelates, nobles, and representatives of the Third Estate, assembled at Madrid, and, in response to the King’s command, took an oath to the Infanta Joanna as heir to the throne; Isabel and her brother being the first to kneel and kiss the baby’s hand.

The Christmas of 1462 found Henry and his Queen at Almazon; and thither came messengers from Barcelona with their tale of rebellion and the fixed resolution they had made never to submit to King John’s yoke. Instead the citizens offered their allegiance to Castile, imploring help and support in the struggle before them.

Henry had been unmoved by Blanche’s appeal, for he knew the difficulties of an invasion of Navarre, but the present project flattered his vanity. He would merely dispatch a few troops to Barcelona, as few as he could under the circumstances, and the Catalans in return would gain him, at best an important harbour on the Mediterranean, at worst would act as a thorn in the side of his ambitious neighbour. He graciously consented therefore to send 2500 horse, under the leadership of one of the Beaumonts, as earnest of his good intentions; but almost before this force had reached Barcelona, those intentions had already changed, and he had agreed to the mediation of the King of France in the disputes between him and the King of Aragon.

Louis XI., “the universal spider,” as Chastellain called him, had been spreading his web of diplomacy over the southern peninsula. By the Treaty of Olito, signed by him and King John in April, 1462, he had promised to lend that monarch seven hundred lances, with archers, artillery, and ammunition, in return for two hundred thousand gold crowns to be paid him on the reduction of Barcelona. Whether he would ever receive this sum was perhaps a doubtful matter; but Louis had accepted the pledge of the border counties of Roussillon and Cerdagne, that commanded the eastern Pyrenees, should the money fail, and would have been more annoyed than pleased by prompt repayment. According to his own calculations he stood to gain in either case; and in the meantime he was well content to increase his influence by posing as the arbiter of Spanish politics.

After a preliminary conference at Bayonne, it was arranged that the Kings of Castile and France should meet for a final discussion of the proposed terms of peace on the banks of the Bidassoa, the boundary between their two territories. It is a scene that Philip de Commines’ pen has made for ever memorable; for though he himself was not present he drew his vivid account from distinguished eye-witnesses on both sides. Through his medium and that of the Spanish chroniclers we can see the showy luxury of the Castilian Court, the splendour of the Moorish guards by whom Henry was surrounded, the favourite Beltran de La Cueva in his boat, with its sail of cloth-of-gold dipping before the wind, his very boots as he stepped on shore glittering with precious stones. Such was the model to whom Castilian chivalry looked, the man, who with the Archbishop of Toledo and the Marquis of Villena dictated to their master his every word.

It is small wonder if Louis XI. had for the ruler of Castile “little value or esteem,” or that Commines himself, summing up the situation, caustically dismisses Henry as “a person of no great sense.” There could not have been a stronger contrast between the two kings: Henry with his pale blue eyes and mass of reddish hair, his awkwardly-built frame, overdressed and loaded with jewels, towering above his meagre companion; Louis, sardonic and self-contained, well aware of the smothered laughter his appearance excited amongst Castilian courtiers, but secretly conscious that his badly cut suit of French homespun and queer shaped hat, its sole ornament an image of the Virgin, snubbed the butterfly throng about him.

“The convention broke up and they parted,” says Commines, “but with such scorn and contempt on both sides, that the two kings never loved one another heartily afterwards.”

The result of the interview, May, 1463, was soon published. In return for King John’s future friendship, and in compensation for her expenses as an ally of Charles of Viana, a few years before, Castile found herself the richer for the town of Estella in Navarre, a gain so small that it was widely believed the Archbishop of Toledo and his fellow-politicians had allowed themselves to be bribed.

If the Castilians were bitter at this decision, still more so were the Catalans, deserted by their ally and offered nothing save the unpalatable advice that they should return to King John’s allegiance. The messengers from Barcelona quitted Fuenterrabia as soon as they heard, openly uttering their contempt for Castile’s treachery.

“It is the hour,” they exclaimed, “of her shame and of her King’s dishonour!”

They could not realize to the full the truth of their words, nor to what depths Henry was shortly to fall and drag the fortunes of his country with him.

CHAPTER III
THE REIGN OF HENRY IV.: CIVIL WAR AND ANARCHY
1464–1474

Henry IV. had been merely a figurehead at the meeting of Fuenterrabia, a rôle to which with his habitual lethargy he had no objection. When, however, he attempted to obtain possession of the town of Estella and failed to do so in spite of Villena’s outwardly strenuous efforts, he began at last to suspect that he had been also a dupe, and that French and Aragonese money had bribed his ministers to his own undoing.

He could not make up his mind to break openly with the Marquis and his uncle, the Archbishop of Toledo; but a perceptible coldness appeared in his manner where they were concerned, in contrast to the ever-increasing favour that he now bestowed on Beltran de La Cueva, Count of Ledesma. The latter’s share in the conferences had been mainly ornamental. Indeed his talents had lain hitherto rather in the ballroom or the lists than in the world of practical politics; but success had stirred his ambitions, and especially his marriage with the daughter of the Marquis de Santillana, head of the powerful family of Mendoza. With this connection at his back he might hope to drive Villena and his relations from Court, and with the Queen’s aid control the destinies of Castile.

In the struggle between the rival favourites, the Princess Isabel was regarded as a useful pawn on their chess-board. She and her brother had been summoned to Court at Villena’s suggestion that “they would be better brought up and learn more virtuous customs than away from his Majesty’s presence.” Whether irony were intended or no, Henry had accepted the statement seriously; and while Alfonso was handed over to a tutor, his sister joined the Queen’s household.

There were hopes at this time of another heir to the crown; and the King, foreseeing in the prospect of a son the means to raise his fallen dignity, was anxious to gratify his wife’s wishes. When she pleaded therefore for an alliance with her own country, to be cemented by the marriage of her brother Alfonso, then a widower, with the twelve-year-old Isabel, he readily agreed. The scheme was the more pleasing that it ran counter to the union of Isabel and Ferdinand of Aragon, still strongly advocated by King John. Villena, who had been bribed into assisting the latter negotiation, received the first real intimation that his ascendancy was shaken, when he learned that the King and Court had set off to the south-western province of Estremadura without consulting him.

Through the medium of the Queen and Count of Ledesma, the Portuguese alliance was successfully arranged; and Alfonso V. was so impressed by the young Princess that he gallantly protested his wish that the betrothal could take place at once. Isabel replied with her strange unchildlike caution, that she could not be betrothed save with the consent of the National Cortes, an appeal to Cæsar that postponed the matter for the time being. Perhaps she knew her brother well enough to doubt his continued insistence that “she should marry none save the King of Portugal”; or she may thus early have formed a shrewd and not altogether flattering estimate of the volatile and uncertain Alfonso.

In the meantime the Marquis of Villena was plotting secretly with his brother, the Master of Calatrava, the Archbishop of Toledo, the Admiral of Castile, and other nobles how he might regain his old influence. After a series of attempts on his rival’s life, from which Beltran de La Cueva emerged scatheless with the additional honour of the coveted Mastership of Santiago, he and his fellow-conspirators retired to Burgos, where they drew up a schedule of their grievances. Secret measures having failed they were determined to browbeat Henry into submission by playing on his well-known fears of civil war.

The King’s hopes of an undisputed succession had been shattered by the premature birth of a still-born son; and thus the question of the Infanta Joanna’s legitimacy remained as a convenient weapon for those discontented with the Crown. Nor had the gifts and honours heaped on Beltran de La Cueva encouraged the loyalty of the principal nobles. The new favourite was rapacious and arrogant, while even more intolerable to courtiers of good family and wealth was the rise of an upstart nobility, that threatened to monopolize the royal favour.

Louis XI. was astute enough to develop such a policy to his own advantage; but the feeble Henry IV. was no more able to control his new creations than their rivals. Almost without exception they betrayed and sold him for their own ends, poisoning his mind against the few likely to remain faithful, and making his name odious amongst his poorer subjects by their selfishness and the corruption of their rule.

The conspirators of Burgos were thus enabled to pose as the defenders of national liberties; and their insolent letter of censure took the colouring most likely to appeal to popular prejudice. Complaints of the King’s laxity in religious matters, of the unchecked violence of his Moorish guard, of the debasement of the coinage, and of the incompetence and venality of the royal judges—these were placed in the foreground, but the real crux of the document came later. It lay in two petitions that were veiled threats, first that the King would deprive the Count of Ledesma of the Mastership of Santiago, since it belonged of right to the Infante Alfonso, and next that the said Alfonso should be proclaimed as heir to the throne. The illegitimacy of the Princess Joanna was openly affirmed.

Henry received this letter at Valladolid, and, calling together his royal council, laid it before them. He expressed neither resentment at its insolence nor a desire for revenge; and when the aged Bishop of Cuenca, who had been one of his father’s advisers, bade him have no dealings with the conspirators save to offer them battle, he replied with a sneer that “those who need not fight nor lay hands on their swords were always free with the lives of others.”

Peace at all costs was his cry, and the old Bishop, exasperated, forgot prudence in his anger. “Henceforth,” he exclaimed, “you will be thought the most unworthy King Spain ever knew; and you will repent it, Señor, when it is too late to make amends.”

Already knights and armed men were flocking to the royal standard, as they heard of the rebels’ ultimatum. Many of them were genuinely shocked at the attack on the dignity of the Crown, but for the greater number Henry’s reckless prodigality of money and estates was not without its attractions.

The King, however, proved deaf alike to warnings and scorn. After elaborate discussions he and the Marquis of Villena arranged a temporary peace, known as the Concord of Medina del Campo. Its terms were entirely favourable to the conspirators, for Henry, heedless of the implied slur on his honour, agreed to acknowledge Alfonso as his heir, on the understanding that he should later marry the Infanta Joanna. With incredible shortsightedness he also consented to hand his brother over to the Marquis; and on the 30th of November, 1464, the oath to the new heir to the throne was publicly taken. This was followed by the elevation of the Count of Ledesma, who had resigned the Mastership of Santiago in favour of the young Prince, to the rank of Duke of Alburquerque.

The question of the misgovernment of the country and its cure was to be referred to a committee of five leading nobles, two to be selected by either party, while the Prior-General of the Order of San Geronimo was given a casting vote. This “Junta of Medina del Campo,” held in January, 1465, proved no lasting settlement, for the King’s representatives allowed themselves to be won over to the views of the league, with disastrous results for their own master.

“They straitened the power of the King to such an extent,” says a chronicler, “that they left him almost nothing of his dominion save the title of King, without power to command or any pre-eminence.”

Henry was roused at last, but it was only to fall a victim to fresh treachery.

Two of the most prominent members of the league in its beginnings had been Don Alonso Carrillo, Archbishop of Toledo, uncle of the Marquis of Villena, and the Admiral of Castile, Don Fadrique Enriquez. The former had little of his nephew’s suave charm and adaptability, and his haughty, irascible nature was more suited to the camp than the Primacy of the Castilian Church.

“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.

For all his folly and weakness, it is difficult to believe that Henry would consent to such terms, but so low were the straits in which he found himself that he immediately expressed his satisfaction, sending word to Don Pedro Giron to come as quickly as he could. Isabel on her part was aghast and, finding entreaties and remonstrances of no avail, she spent days and nights upon her knees, praying that God would either remove the man or herself, before such a marriage should take place. Her favourite lady-in-waiting, Doña Beatriz de Bobadilla, moved by her distress, assured her that neither God nor she would permit such a crime, and, showing her a dagger that she wore hidden, swore to kill the Master, if no other way of safety should present itself.

Help, indeed, seemed far away, for the bridegroom, having obtained from Rome a dispensation from his ill-kept vow of celibacy, was soon on his way to Madrid at the head of a large company of knights and horsemen. His only reply to those who told him of the Infanta’s obstinate refusal of his suit was that he would win her, if not by gentleness then by force.

At Villa Real, where he halted for the night, the unexpected happened, for, falling ill of an inflammation of the throat, he died a few days later.

“He was suddenly struck down by the hand of God,” says Enriquez del Castillo; while Alonso de Palencia describes how at the end “he blasphemously accused God of cruelty in not permitting him to add forty days to his forty and three years.”

Both the King and the Marquis of Villena were in consternation at the news. The latter had begun to lose his influence with the league, who justly suspected him of caring more for his own interests than theirs; and, while he bargained and negotiated with a view to securing for himself the Mastership of Santiago, a position that he no longer considered belonged to the young Alfonso “of right,” the Archbishop of Toledo and the Admiral were bent on bringing matters to an issue by open war.

Henry was forced to collect his loyalists once more; and on the 20th of August, 1467, a battle took place on the plain of Olmedo, just outside the city. The King’s army had the advantage in numbers; indeed he had been induced to advance on the belief that the enemy would not dare to leave the shelter of their walls, and by the time they appeared it was too late to sound the retreat. Conspicuous amongst the rebels were the Infante Alfonso clad, notwithstanding his youth, in full mail armour, and the fiery Archbishop of Toledo in his surcoat of scarlet emblazoned with a white cross. The latter was wounded in his left arm early in the fight but not for that ceasing to urge on his cavalry to the attack. On the other side the hero of the day was Beltran de La Cueva, whose death forty knights had sworn to accomplish, but whose skill and courage were to preserve him for service in a better cause.

Alone, amongst the leading combatants, Henry IV. cut but a poor figure, for, watching the action from a piece of rising ground, he fled at the first sign of a reverse, persuaded that the battle was lost. Late that evening a messenger, primed with the news of victory, discovered him hiding in a neighbouring village, and he at last consented to return to the camp.

The royalists succeeded in continuing their march, but since the enemy remained in possession of the larger number of banners and prisoners, both armies were able to claim that they had won.

The battle of Olmedo was followed by the treacherous surrender to the league of the King’s favourite town of Segovia. Here he had left the Queen and his sister; but while the former sought refuge in the Alcazar, which still held out for her husband, Isabel preferred to remain in the palace with her ladies-in-waiting. She had not suffered such kindness at the hands of Henry IV. as would make her rate either his love or his power of protection highly; and, when the rebels entered the town she surrendered to them with a very goodwill.

Henceforward her fortunes were joined to those of Alfonso; but death which had saved her from marriage with a man she loathed, was soon to rob her of her younger brother. It is difficult to form a clear estimate of either Alfonso’s character or abilities from the scanty references of the chroniclers; but already, at the age of fourteen, he had proved himself a better soldier than Henry IV.; and we are told that those who knew him personally judged him more upright. The news of his death, on July 5, 1468, was therefore received with general dismay. His death had been ostensibly the result of swollen glands, but it was widely believed that the real cause of its seriousness was a dish of poisoned trout prepared for him by a secret ally of the King.

With his disappearance from the political chess-board, the whole balance of affairs in Castile was altered; and Isabel emerged from comparative obscurity into the prominent position she was afterwards to hold. Would she take Alfonso’s place as puppet of the league? or would she be reconciled to her elder brother? In the latter case, how would the King decide between her claims and those of Joanna “La Beltraneja”? These were the questions on whose answers depended the future of the land.

The principal members of the league had no doubts at all as to her complete acquiescence in their plans, and in the town of Avila they made her a formal offer of the throne, inviting her to assume the title of Queen of Castile and Leon. Isabel received the suggestion with her usual caution; for though but a girl of seventeen, she had few illusions as to the glories of sovereignty. She knew, moreover, that several prominent insurgents had taken the opportunity of reconciling themselves at Court, while the Marquis of Villena, now acknowledged Master of Santiago, was once more hand in glove with the King. She therefore replied that while her brother lived she could neither take the government nor call herself Queen, but that she would use every effort to secure peace in the land.

ALFONSO, BROTHER OF ISABEL OF CASTILE
FROM “ICONOGRAFIA ESPAÑOLA” BY VALENTIN CARDERERA Y SOLANO

This answer deprived the league of any legitimate excuse for rebellion; and they therefore sent letters to the King, declaring their willingness to return to his service, if he would acknowledge Isabel as heir to the throne. The Marquis of Villena also pressed the suggestion, thinking by this means to re-establish his influence completely; since his enemies, the House of Mendoza, and especially its cleverest representative Pedro Gonsalez, Bishop of Siguenza, who had been promoted from the See of Calahorra, had taken up the cause of Queen Joanna and her daughter.

Henry, anxious for peace, no matter what the price, fell in with Villena’s schemes. On the 19th of September, 1468, a meeting was held at the Toros de Guisandos near Avila; and there, in the presence of the Papal Legate, Henry swore away for a second time the honour of his so-called daughter, and recognized Isabel as legitimate heir to the throne and Princess of Asturias. By the terms of an agreement previously drawn up, he also promised that his sister should not be compelled to marry against her will, while she in return agreed to obtain his consent; furthermore he declared that he would divorce and send back to her own land his wife, whose lax behaviour had now become a byword.

Isabel’s own position had materially improved; and there were no lack of suitors for this eligible heiress. Amongst them was a brother of Edward IV. of England, but whether the Duke of Clarence or Richard of Gloucester, the chroniclers do not say. The English alliance was never very seriously considered, whereas a veritable war of diplomacy was to be waged around the other proposals.

The Infanta’s chief adviser at this time was the Archbishop of Toledo, though it does not appear that she was as much under his thumb, as Enriquez de Castillo would have us believe. There is evidence of considerable independence of judgment both in her refusal of the crown on Alfonso’s death, and in her willingness to meet her brother at the Toros de Guisandos, in spite of the Archbishop’s violent opposition. Throughout the negotiations, the Archbishop had been on the watch for evidence of some hidden plot, and only Isabel’s tact and firmness had induced him to accompany her to the meeting.

Nevertheless it was natural that a girl of her age should rely considerably on the judgment of a man so well versed in the politics of the day, especially as the alliance that he urged appealed in every way to her own inclinations. Ferdinand of Aragon, the Archbishop’s protégé, was her junior by eleven months; a slight disparity in comparison with the age of former suitors such as Charles of Viana, Alfonso of Portugal, and the Master of Calatrava, all her seniors by at least twenty years.

In modern reckoning, Ferdinand would be called a boy, but his childhood had been spent amidst surroundings of war and rebellion, from which he had emerged as his father’s right hand; and John II., in token of his love and confidence, had created this son of his old age King of Sicily to mark his dignity and independence. Shrewd, practical, and brave, Ferdinand united to a well-set-up, manly, appearance all those qualities that Henry IV. so conspicuously lacked. It was little wonder then if he found grace in the Infanta Isabel’s eyes, not only as an eligible husband, but as a fitting consort with whose help she might subdue the turbulence of Castile.

It can be imagined that Ferdinand found no grace at all in the eyes of the Marquis of Villena, to whom opportunities for turbulence were as the breath of life, and whose affection for the House of Aragon had never been sincere.

Policy dictated to him a counter-alliance and at first the importunate Alfonso of Portugal won support. Villena had re-established his old influence over his master, and at this time formed an ambitious scheme, by which his son should marry the Infanta Joanna; the idea being to draw up a new settlement, settling the crown on his own descendants, if Isabel and her Portuguese husband had no children.

At Ocaña, where Henry IV. and his sister held a meeting of the Cortes in 1468, a magnificent embassy appeared from Alfonso V., with the Archbishop of Lisbon at its head, seeking the betrothal of their master to the Infanta Isabel.

“They thought it an easy matter to bring about the marriage,” says Alonso de Palencia; but they were destined to return to their own land, with their mission unfulfilled. Isabel had never been attracted to the Portuguese King; and her coldness was hardened into antipathy by the Archbishop of Toledo, who sent her secret warnings that the alliance was a plot to ruin her prospects. Once married, she would become a foreigner in the eyes of Castile, and while her children could not hope to succeed to the throne of Portugal, since Alfonso had already an heir, the Infanta Joanna would be preferred to her in her own land. Isabel, moved both by these arguments and her own feelings, thereupon gave a secret promise to marry her cousin Ferdinand, returning a steady refusal to her brother’s persuasions and threats.

Henry now made an attempt to capture her, with a view to imprisoning her in the Alcazar at Madrid; but the attitude of the principal knights of Ocaña, who loved neither Villena nor the Portuguese, was so threatening that he quickly changed his manner. Assuring the Archbishop of Lisbon that some other means would be found to placate the Princess, whose opposition would only be increased by violence, he sent him and his fellow-ambassadors away, not altogether despairing but with their confidence somewhat shaken.

In the meanwhile the fires of rebellion were alight once more in Andalusia and burnt so furiously, that it was felt only the King in person could hope to allay them. With great reluctance he left his sister in Ocaña, but he dared not risk further unpopularity by using force. At the Master of Santiago’s suggestion he demanded that she should promise to take no new steps about her marriage until his return, thinking in this way to place her in an equivocal position. Either she would refuse, in which case she would stand self-convicted of some secret plot, or she would take the oath, condemning herself as a perjurer if she broke it.

Isabel, appreciating the situation, gave her promise. Even the Master of Santiago, for all his vigilance, did not know that her consent to the Aragonese alliance was of previous date, and therefore arrangements concerned with it could be argued not to fall under the heading “new.” As soon as Henry IV. and his favourite had gone southwards, she herself left Ocaña, with the ostensible object of taking her brother Alfonso’s body to be buried in state at Avila, and from there went to Madrigal her birthplace, where her mother was living. It was her hope that here she would be able to complete her negotiations with King John and his son, undetected; but she found the Bishop of Burgos, a nephew of the Master of Santiago, in the town ready to spy on all her actions.

The King had by now planned for his sister a new match, with Charles, Duke of Berri, brother and heir-presumptive to Louis XI. Not only would this alliance cement the customary friendship of Castile and France, but Isabel’s close connection with the French throne would remove her very thoroughly from the danger zone of Castilian affairs. When the Cardinal of Arras arrived in Andalusia he was therefore encouraged by Henry to go to Madrigal in person and urge the Duke’s suit.

Nothing doubting the success of his mission, for he was a man famed for his oratory, the Cardinal, having gained admittance to the Princess, brought forward all his arguments, laying stress not only on the wealth and personal charms of the Duke, but on the joy such an alliance would give her father in the other world. Now Isabel had previously sent secret messengers to report on the respective appearance and bearing of Ferdinand and the French Duke, and the comparison was hardly favourable to the latter, who was a weakling with thin ungainly limbs and watery eyes. She could thus estimate the worth of the Cardinal’s statements and replied firmly that “she could not dispose of her hand in marriage save by the advice of the leading nobles and knights of the kingdoms, and that having consulted them she would do what God ordained.”

This was equivalent to a refusal; and the Cardinal, having exerted his eloquence once more in vain, returned to France, nursing his resentment and wrath. He left the Princess in a critical position; for her brother could draw but one conclusion from her refusal of such an advantageous match; and he and the Master of Santiago now strained every effort to stop her marriage with the King of Sicily.

Unable to leave Andalusia themselves, they warned the citizens of Madrigal that any favour shown to the Princess would be regarded as an act of treachery to the Crown, while she was so surrounded by spies and enemies that even her faithful lady-in-waiting, Beatriz de Bobadilla, grew frightened and besought her to break off the Aragonese alliance. Isabel knew that, once intimidated into doing this, she would remain absolutely at her brother’s mercy, and she therefore implored the Archbishop of Toledo to come to her assistance before it was too late. A lover of bold and decisive actions, that warlike prelate was soon at the gates of Madrigal at the head of an armed force; and Isabel, refusing to listen to the threats of the Bishop of Burgos, at once joined him, going with him to Valladolid, the headquarters of the Admiral, Don Fadrique.

She had burned her boats, and it only remained for the man on whom she had pinned her faith to play his part in the drama adequately. Both Ferdinand and his father realized the seriousness of the situation. If the treaty of Fuenterrabia had spelled trouble and disaster for Castile, it had been the source of even greater evils in Aragon; for the Catalans, far from returning to their old allegiance, as they were advised, had continued to maintain their desperate resistance in Barcelona. They had elected as their Count first one prince of royal extraction and then another; each new puppet doomed to ultimate failure, but leaving behind him a defiance increasing in ferocity as it lost power in other ways.

Nor was chronic rebellion John II.’s only serious trouble. The important counties of Roussillon and Cerdagne, pledged to Louis XI. in return for troops, had been seized by that monarch, as soon as he saw his neighbour too involved in difficulties to show practical resentment; and the web of French diplomacy was now being spun over Navarre, through the medium of the King of Aragon’s son-in-law, the Count of Foix. Personal sorrows added their quota: the loss of sight at a time when political clouds looked blackest, followed by the death of Queen Joanna, whose courage and brains had made her a fitting helpmate for her ambitious husband, whether in the council-chamber or on the battlefield. John was indeed repaid with added measure for the turbulence and treachery of his early days; but like many men of his type he showed better in adversity than in success.

Doggedly he laid fresh plans, and Providence that seldom hates the brave rewarded him by the recovery of his eyesight.

The realization of his son’s marriage with Isabel of Castile, always favoured by him, was now his dearest ambition; for he believed that the final union of the two kingdoms would mean the death-blow to Louis XI.’s hopes of dominating the Pyrenees, as well as the building up of the power of the Crown at home against unruly subjects. Such designs were, however, of the future, while the immediate steps to achieve them were fraught with danger.

Isabel, the bride-elect was at Valladolid, temporarily protected by the Archbishop of Toledo and the Admiral; but to the north lay the hostile Bishopric of Burgos, to the south-east a line of fortified strongholds, all in the hands of the Mendozas, the chief supporters of Joanna La Beltraneja and therefore enemies of the Aragonese match. It only needed the return of Henry IV. from Andalusia to make her position untenable.

Isabel and the Archbishop of Toledo therefore dispatched messengers to Aragon in haste to insist that the King of Sicily should come to Valladolid. They found him in Saragossa, and suggested that, as every moment of delay increased the danger, he should disguise himself and go to Castile with only a few adherents, thus hoodwinking the Mendozas, who would never expect him to take this risk, and who also believed the negotiations for the marriage to be at a much earlier stage.

Notwithstanding his later reputation for a hard head and a cool heart, Ferdinand in his youth possessed a certain vein of adventurous chivalry. It was with difficulty that he had been prevented from leading an entirely rash expedition to Isabel’s rescue at Madrigal, and he now readily agreed to a scheme, whose chief merit lay in its apparent impossibility.

Sending one of the Castilian messengers on before to announce his coming, he and a few of the most trusted members of his household boldly crossed the frontier. The rest were disguised as merchants, Ferdinand himself as a servant; and at the inns where they were forced to halt he played his part, waiting at table and tending the mules. They did not stop often, riding in spite of the intense cold by day and night; with the result that they arrived before they were expected at the friendly town of Burgo de Osma. Ferdinand, whom excitement had rendered less tired and sleepy than the others, spurred forward as they came in sight of the gates, narrowly escaping death at the hands of an over-zealous sentry. Soon, however, their identity was explained, and amid the blowing of trumpets and joyful shouts the young King was welcomed by his allies.

At Valladolid the news of his arrival into safe territory was the signal for feasting and jousts, and preparations for the marriage were pushed on apace. Ferdinand came by night to Valladolid, and, being met at a postern gate by the Archbishop of Toledo was led to the house where the Princess lodged.

Four days later, on October 18, 1469, the formal betrothal took place. Isabel and Ferdinand as second cousins stood within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity; but the Archbishop of Toledo produced a bull, affording the necessary dispensation. This bore the signature of Pius II., who had died in 1464, and authorized Ferdinand to marry within the third degree of consanguinity, on the expiration of four years from the date of the bull. Granted its authenticity, the marriage was perfectly legal; but it is almost certain the document was an elaborate forgery, constructed by John of Aragon and the Archbishop to meet their pressing needs.[^[2]] The dispensation was essential to satisfy, not only Isabel, but any wavering supporters of orthodox views. On the other hand, apart from the haste required and known dilatoriness of the Papal Court, Paul II., who at that time occupied the See of Saint Peter, was the sworn ally of Henry IV.; and those who were negotiating the Aragonese alliance recognized that there could be no successful appeal to his authority.

[2]. See Clemencin, Elogio de Isabella, Illustracion II.

Another matter requiring delicate handling had been the marriage settlement that, signed by Ferdinand and ratified by his father, was read aloud at the betrothal ceremony by the Archbishop of Toledo. In it Ferdinand declared his devotion to the Mother Church and Apostolic See, and his undying allegiance to Henry IV. The document then went on to say that the signatures of both husband and wife must be affixed to all ordinances and public deeds; while the remainder of the clauses were directed to allaying the suspicions of those who feared that the King of Sicily might use his new position for the good of Aragon rather than Castile. In them he promised not to leave the kingdom himself without consent of the Princess, nor to remove any children that they might have, whether sons or daughters. He would not on his own account make peace nor war nor any alliance. He would not appoint to offices any save natives of Castile; while he pledged himself to take no new steps with regard to the lands that had once belonged to his father but had since been alienated.

After the ceremony was over, Ferdinand retired with the Archbishop to his lodging in Valladolid; and the next day, October 19th, he and Isabel were married; and for six days the town kept festival in honour of the event.

Henry learned of his sister’s marriage from the Master of Santiago, and naturally nothing of the insolence of such proceedings towards himself was lost in the telling. The news found him in broken health, the result of his life-long self-indulgence, and with his vanity badly wounded by the scorn and defiance he had encountered in Andalusia. He was therefore in no mood for conciliation, and received Isabel’s letters, explaining the necessity under which she had acted and her assurances of loyalty, in gloomy silence, lending a willing ear to the Master of Santiago’s suggestion that he might retract the oath he had taken at the Toros de Guisandos.

Circumstances favoured such a course; for Louis XI., who looked on the Castilian-Aragonese alliance with alarm as inimical to French expansion, offered Isabel’s rejected suitor, Charles, now Duke of Guienne, to the Infanta Joanna, the underlying condition being of course that Henry should disinherit Isabel in her favour. Negotiations were at once begun; and in 1470, the Cardinal of Arras appeared at the Spanish Court charged with the final conclusion of the terms. He had never forgiven the Infanta’s indifference to his oratory; and, as diligent enquiry had made him cognizant of the fact that Pius II.’s bull must be a forgery, he proceeded to denounce her in words, according to Enriquez de Castillo, “so outrageous that they are more worthy to be passed over in silence than recorded.”

Henry far from being shocked was obviously pleased; and, having completed the agreement with the Cardinal, in October, 1470, he publicly withdrew his oath, taken at the Toros de Guisandos, and acknowledged the Infanta Joanna, then nine years old, as his daughter and heir. Her formal betrothal to the Duke of Guienne followed, and then the little Princess was handed over to the care of the Master of Santiago, much to the indignation of the Marquis of Santillana and the Mendozas, in whose keeping she had hitherto been.

Henry now published a manifesto, in which he declared that his sister had broken her oath in marrying without his consent, and had aggravated her offence by her choice of an enemy of Castile, and by not waiting to obtain a dispensation from the Pope. He had therefore judged her unfit to succeed to the throne and had restored Doña Joanna to her rights.

This document did not meet with general approval. Indeed the principal towns of Andalusia, already disaffected, openly expressed their refusal to consent to its terms. Yet to Isabel in Dueñas, where her first child, a daughter named after herself, had been born in the October of this year, the prospect seemed bleak enough. Her difficulties in Castile were intensified by the ill-fortunes of John of Aragon in his war against Louis XI. for the recovery of Roussillon and Cerdagne; so that in spite of the critical position of affairs at home, she was forced to let Ferdinand go to his father’s assistance.

Hiding her fears, she replied to Henry’s manifesto by a counter-protest, in which she recalled her own moderation in refusing the crown on her brother Alfonso’s death, and vindicated her marriage as performed on the advice of the wiser and larger section of the leading nobility. Henry, she declared had broken his oath, not only in acknowledging Joanna, who was known to be illegitimate, as his daughter and heiress; but long before, when he had failed to divorce and send away the Queen as he had promised, and when he had tried to force his sister to marry the King of Portugal against her will.

In the meanwhile, in spite of the flourish of trumpets with which the betrothal had taken place, the French marriage hung fire. Gossip maintained that the Duke of Guienne’s interest in Joanna had been merely the result of pique at Isabel’s refusal; while Louis XI. had used it as a temporary expedient against his enemy, the King of Aragon. At any rate the French Prince was openly courting the heiress, Mary of Burgundy, when death cut short his hopes in May, 1472.

Various bridegrooms were now suggested for the Infanta Joanna; amongst them her own uncle the King of Portugal.

Henry IV. was at this time at Segovia, whose Alcayde, Andres de Cabrera, husband of Isabel’s lady-in-waiting, Beatriz de Bobadilla, had always been one of his faithful adherents. In the Alcazar was stored a considerable sum of money; and the Master of Santiago now advised the King to demand its surrender and also that of the fortress, hoping to get them into his own hands, as he had done with the Alcazar at Madrid. Cabrera, suspecting rightly a plot for his own ruin, stoutly refused; and his enemy, after stirring up in the town a rebellion which the Alcayde promptly quelled, left the city in disgust. Henry, who loved Segovia, remained behind, unable to make up his mind to any decisive action.

The favourite’s departure was the opportunity for which those inclined to Isabel’s interests had long been waiting; and Beatriz de Bobadilla urged her husband to effect a reconciliation between the King and his sister. This plan met with the approval of no less important a person than Pedro Gonsalez de Mendoza, Bishop of Siguenza, whose material position had been lately increased, not only by the Archbishopric of Seville, but also by receiving a long-coveted Cardinal’s hat. At the time of the Aragonese marriage the Mendozas had been amongst Isabel’s most formidable opponents, but their enforced surrender of the Infanta Joanna to the Master of Santiago after the French betrothal, had quite altered their views; and the Cardinal of Spain, as Pedro Gonsalez was usually called, now worked to secure Isabel’s accession, as the best means of ruining his rival.

Another person, who had set himself to negotiate an agreement, was the Papal Legate, Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, by birth a Valencian. John of Aragon’s old enemy, Paul II. had died in 1471; and Sixtus IV., his successor, when dispatching Cardinal Borgia to Castile, in 1473, to demand a clerical subsidy, gave him at the same time a bull of dispensation, which legalized Ferdinand and Isabel’s marriage, and also affirmed the legitimacy of their daughter and her rights of inheritance.

Isabel’s prospects had considerably brightened, and a bold action on her part was to put them to the test. One day, Beatriz de Bobadilla, who had secretly kept her informed of the current state of affairs, disguised herself as a countrywoman and, mounted on an ass, rode out to the city of Aranda, where her mistress was living. She begged her to come to Segovia immediately; and, on a day arranged, Isabel and the Archbishop of Toledo appeared in the city before dawn and were received into the Alcazar. Henry was then in his hunting-box in the woods outside, but that evening he returned to the palace and saw his sister. With his usual impressionability he echoed the joy of all around him, and embracing her informed her of his goodwill and the pleasure her coming had given him. The next day they rode through the city together, his hand on her bridle-rein; and some little time afterwards Ferdinand, who had been hastily summoned, was reconciled to his brother-in-law.

Andres de Cabrera, delighted at the success of his hazardous scheme, arranged an elaborate dinner on the Feast of the Epiphany of that year, 1474, in order to celebrate the occasion; but unfortunately Henry, who was in delicate health, fell ill. Secret supporters of the Master of Santiago cleverly suggested that he had been poisoned, and that this had been the main object of the reconciliation. Henry, thoroughly alarmed, in spite of all his sister’s efforts to allay his fears, left Segovia, as soon as he was well enough to bear the journey, joining the Master of Santiago and the Infanta Joanna at Madrid.

All the old trouble and discord seemed destined to begin once more, but in reality the labours of both schemer and dupe were nearly at an end. Early in the autumn the Master of Santiago hastened to Estremadura to gain possession of a certain fortress, and there, on the eve of achieving his purpose, he fell ill and died.

Henry, though almost inconsolable at the news, transferred his affections to his favourite’s son, the Marquis of Villena, confirming him in all his father’s offices and titles and creating him Master of Santiago. It was to be almost the last of the many honours and gifts that he bestowed in the course of his long reign, for on December 11, 1474, a few weeks before his fiftieth birthday, he also died.

The same atmosphere of vacillation, in which he had moved in his life, enveloped his death-bed. When questioned as to the succession, the chronicler, Alonso de Palencia, declares that he equivocated, saying that his secretary knew what he wished; other writers that he confessed to a friar that the Princess Joanna was indeed his daughter, and that he left a will to this effect. Enriquez del Castillo, his chaplain and chronicler, makes no mention of Joanna’s name. Henry’s personal beliefs and wishes had availed little in his own day, and he may have guessed that they would carry no weight after his death. One at any rate was fulfilled, and he was buried, as he had asked, in the Church of Sancta Maria de Guadalupe, at the foot of his mother’s tomb.

CHAPTER IV
ACCESSION OF ISABEL: THE PORTUGUESE WAR
1475–1479

The news of Henry IV.’s death was the signal for Isabel’s proclamation as Queen in Segovia. Riding through the crowded streets, her palfrey led by two of the “regidores” of the city, she came amid the shouts of the people to the principal square. Before her walked four kings-at-arms, and after them Gutierre de Cardenas, bearing a naked sword, emblem of the justice that should emanate from kingship. In the square stood a high scaffold, hung with rich embroidered stuffs, and on it a throne, raised by three steps from the surrounding platform. Isabel ascended these and took her place; and then, a king-at-arms having called for silence, a herald cried in a loud voice: “Castile! Castile for the King Don Fernando and the Queen Doña Isabel, his wife.” Those watching below took up the shout, and amid cheers the royal standard was raised.

Ferdinand was in Aragon; but news had at once been sent him of the King’s death, and in the meanwhile Isabel received the homage of the great nobles and knights who were ready to pledge themselves to her cause. Chief amongst them were the Admiral of Castile, the Cardinal of Spain, his brother, the Marquis of Santillana, and the rest of the Mendozas; while they brought with them Beltran de La Cueva, Duke of Alburquerque, whose fortunes scandal would naturally have linked with the cause of the Infanta Joanna.

Significant was the tardy appearance of the Archbishop of Toledo, once so hot in Isabel’s cause. Now he came in the train of all the rest, with little enthusiasm in his homage or in the oath he took in the hall of the palace, his hand resting on a copy of the Gospels. On the 2d of January he and the Cardinal of Spain rode out to meet the King of Sicily, returning with him, one on either side, amid such crowds that it was past sunset before they reached the palace.

He was a young man of twenty and two years ... [says Colmenares, the historian of Segovia, commenting on Ferdinand’s appearance], of medium height, finely built, his face grave but handsome and of a fair complexion, his hair chestnut in shade but somewhat spare on the temples, his nose and mouth small, his eyes bright with a certain joyful dignity, a healthy colour in his cheeks and lips, his head well set on his shoulders, his voice clear and restful. He carried himself boldly both on horse and foot.

His character, his new subjects could not fully gauge; but the contrast with Henry’s vacillating puerility was obvious. Here at any rate was a man, who would not fail in what he undertook through indecision or lack of courage.

The Cardinal of Spain and Archbishop of Toledo proceeded to draw up “Provisions” for the future government of the kingdom, adjusting the exact relations of the sovereigns on the basis of the marriage settlement. Royal letters and proclamations were to be signed by both, the seals affixed to be stamped with the joint arms of Castile and Aragon, the coinage engraved with the double likeness. Justice was to be awarded by the two sovereigns, when together; by each, when separated. Castile safeguarded her independence by placing the control of the Treasury in the hand of the Queen, and by insisting that the governors of cities and fortresses should do homage to her alone. She alone, also, might appoint “corregidores” and provide incumbents for ecclesiastical benefices, though the nominations were to bear Ferdinand’s signature as well as her own.

FERDINAND OF ARAGON
FROM “ICONOGRAFIA ESPAÑOLA” BY VALENTIN CARDERERA Y SOLANO

It can be imagined that such a settlement would depend for its success largely on the goodwill and tact of those called on to fulfil it; and Ferdinand though he consented to sign his name to the document did so with considerable reluctance. Many of the nobles in Segovia, though mainly those of Aragonese birth, had professed their annoyance that Ferdinand’s position should be in any way subordinated to that of his wife. They declared that the Salic law, excluding women from the royal succession, should hold good in Castile as well as in France; and that, the Castilian House of Trastamara having died out in the male line with Henry IV., the crown should pass directly to the Aragonese branch, in the person of King John and his son, the King of Sicily.

Loud was the indignation of Isabel’s Castilian supporters at this suggestion. The Salic law, they maintained, had never been acknowledged in Castile; on the contrary, cases could be cited in which women had succeeded to the throne to the detriment of the obvious male heir.

Thus, between arguments on the one side and the other, feelings ran high, for Ferdinand himself inclined to a theory that flattered his love of power and independence. Isabel, who had no intention of ceding her rights, at length exerted her influence to win him to her point of view.

“Señor,” she said, after a stormy council-meeting that had in the end upheld her right of succession, “this matter need never have been discussed, because, owing to the union that, by the Grace of God, there is betwixt us, there can be no real disagreement.”

She then alluded to her duty of obedience as his wife; but perhaps to Ferdinand her most convincing argument was the pertinent suggestion that if the Salic law were acknowledged and they should have no male heirs, their daughter Isabel could not lawfully succeed them. It would ill have pleased Ferdinand to leave his possessions to any of his Aragonese cousins. “The King,” we are told, “having heard the Queen’s reasons was highly pleased, because he knew them to be true; and both he and she gave orders that there should be no more talk on this matter.”

The chronicler then goes on to remark on the complete concord that ever afterwards existed between the sovereigns.

And when it was necessary that the King should go to look after affairs in one part of the kingdom and the Queen in another, it never happened that he or she issued a command that conflicted with those that the other gave. Circumstances might separate them, but love held their wills joined.

Ferdinand and Isabel had shown their wisdom in refusing to let the rift between them widen into an open quarrel. In a crisis the least straw may turn the balance; and the condition of affairs required their combined energies in the one scale. It is true that the majority of nobles and knights had either in person, or by deputy, expressed their allegiance; but there still remained a small though powerful group, headed by the young Marquis of Villena, who maintained that the Infanta Joanna was the rightful Queen.

That their objective was rather self-interest than any deep loyalty to the little Princess was obvious from Villena’s letter, mentioning the terms on which he and his followers would consent to submit. For himself he demanded, first his acknowledgment as Master of Santiago, next the confirmation of all lands, castles, and revenues that had belonged to his father, including the Alcazar at Madrid, and thirdly a yearly income of over two million maravedis to be paid by the Crown. The Count of Plasencia, his ally, whom Henry IV. had created Duke of Arévalo with the gift of that town (taken from the widowed Queen Isabel for the purpose), sought also the confirmation of his honours.

With regard to Joanna, whom Villena and his followers styled “Princess of Castile,” they insisted that she should be suitably married; and on this demand all negotiations ultimately broke down. Ferdinand and Isabel were willing to grant the Marquis the Mastership, in spite of the clamours of seven other candidates; they agreed to the idea of Joanna’s marriage; but their stipulation that, while this subject was under consideration, she should be handed over to some trustworthy person, virtually put an end to all hopes of reconciliation. Joanna was the Marquis’s trump card, and he had no intention of playing her until he was certain of his trick, far less of passing her into the hands of anyone, whom her rivals would consider trustworthy.

Dazzled by the schemes he had planned, he believed it would be an easy matter to secure Isabel’s ruin, and in this view he was strengthened by the secret correspondence he had been carrying on with his great-uncle, the Archbishop of Toledo. The latter’s conduct is on the surface inexplicable; for, having maintained Isabel’s cause with unswerving loyalty throughout the negotiations for her marriage, when she was in danger of imprisonment and he of incurring, on her account, not only papal censure but the loss of his archbishopric, he had yet at the end of Henry IV.’s reign reconciled himself to that monarch and his favourite the young Marquis of Villena, to the weakening of his old allegiance. His tardy appearance at Segovia, and the sulky manner he had adopted towards Ferdinand and the Queen, were alike in keeping with a change of policy that in a man of his ambitions seemed as shortsighted as it was unaccountable. The explanation lies in Carrillo’s lack of self-control that made his ambition the plaything of his besetting vice.

Like Juan Pacheco, he loved wealth, the more that he was in secret an alchemist and squandered the revenues of his see in a vain endeavour to make gold; but even the glitter of precious metals lost its charm beside his lust for power and influence. He must be first. This was the motive that had driven him to desert Henry IV., to break with his nephew in the revolt of the League, and now, finally, when the cause for which he had laboured was on the eve of success, to renounce his allegiance to Isabel, because of his jealousy of her new adviser the Cardinal of Spain.

In vain the Queen, who knew his character, tried to dissipate his suspicions. Carrillo’s temperament set his imagination afire at the least glimmer of insult or neglect; his manner grew morose and overbearing, his desire for gifts and rewards every day more rapacious. At length, when Ferdinand ventured to oppose his demands, the Archbishop openly expressed his anger and, leaving the Court, withdrew to his town of Alcalá de Henares, where he began to plot secretly with Joanna’s supporters.

Between them he and the Marquis hatched a scheme, whose success would, they hoped, make them the arbiters of Castile. This was nothing less than a Portuguese alliance by which Alfonso V., married to his niece, would in her name cross the border, and aided by his Castilian allies drive out Ferdinand and his Queen. With this intention, the Marquis dispatched a letter to Alfonso full of showy promises. The most important Castilian nobles, he declared, including himself and all his relations, the Duke of Arévalo, and the Archbishop of Toledo, were pledged to Joanna’s cause; while numbers were only waiting to follow their example as soon as they were reassured by the first victory. Furthermore, he guaranteed the goodwill of fourteen of the principal towns in the kingdom; while, alluding to the factions that convulsed the rest, he prophesied that one side would be certain to adopt the Portuguese cause and with a little help secure the upper hand. Victory was the more certain by reason of the penniless state in which Henry IV. had left the treasury. It was impossible that Ferdinand and Isabel could compete without financial assistance against the wealth and well-known military strength of Portugal.

Such arguments had a surface plausibility; though a statesman might have asked himself if they did not take Fortune’s smiles too much for granted. Was it safe to ignore the deep-rooted dislike that Castile bore Portugal, or to assume the friendliness of the larger towns, on whose possession the ultimate victory must depend? Alfonso V. was not the type of man to ask uncomfortable questions. He saw the object of his desire in a glamour that obscured the pitfalls along the road on which he must travel; and where courage and enthusiasm were the pilgrim’s main requisites he was rewarded by success. Three times he had defeated the Moors beyond the sea; and, dowered with the proud title “El Africano,” he now aspired to be the victor of a second Aljubarrota. The rôle pleased his romantic and highly strung nature for, while posing as the defender of injured womanhood in the person of his niece, he could also hope to avenge on Queen Isabel the slight his vanity had suffered from her persistent refusal of his suit.

Practical-minded councillors shook their heads over his sanguine expectations and pointed out the untrustworthy reputations of the Marquis of Villena and the Archbishop of Toledo. That these same men had sworn to Joanna’s illegitimacy and made it a cause of rebellion against King Henry looked as if love of self rather than love of justice were now their inspiration.

Isabel and the Cardinal of Spain wrote letters of remonstrance to the same effect, begging Alfonso to submit the matter to arbitration; but that credulous monarch chose to believe that their advice arose merely from a desire to gain time, and therefore hurried on his preparations for war.

In May, 1475, having collected an army of 5600 horse and 14,000 foot, he crossed the border and advanced to Plasencia. His plan of campaign was to march from there northwards in the direction of Toro and Zamora, as secret correspondence had aroused his hope of winning both these strongholds. At Plasencia he halted, until the Marquis of Villena and the Duke of Arévalo appeared with his niece, and then he and Joanna were married on a lofty platform in the centre of the city, the marriage awaiting fulfilment pending the necessary dispensation from Rome. A herald, however, using the old formula at once proclaimed the union: “Castile! Castile for the King Don Alfonso of Portugal and the Queen Doña Joanna his wife, the rightful owner of these kingdoms.”

From Plasencia the Portuguese at length marched to Arévalo, where another delay, this time of two months, took place, Alfonso determining to await the troops that had been promised him by his Castilian allies. He had with him the chivalry of his own Court, young hot-bloods, who had pledged their estates in the prospect of speedy glory and pillage. In their self-confidence the easy theories of Villena found an echo; and they loudly boasted that Ferdinand and his wife would never dare to meet them, but were in all probability on the road to Aragon. “Before gaining the victory they divided the spoil,” comments Pulgar sarcastically.

The Castilian sovereigns were far from meditating flight. The war had not been of their choosing, but, since it had been forced upon them, they were ready to prosecute it to the end. For the moment affairs looked threatening. Not only was their treasury practically empty, and a hostile army on the march across their western border, but news came from France that Louis XI., who had at first expressed his pleasure at their accession, was now in league with their enemies and intended to invade the provinces of Biscay and Guipuzcoa; Villena and his companions were in arms; the Archbishop of Toledo sulking in Alcalá de Henares.

To him the Queen determined to go and address a last appeal in person, leaving her husband to watch the movements of the Portuguese from Valladolid. Some of those at Court, who knew the pitch of resentment and fury to which the old Primate had brought his broodings, assured her that her mission would be in vain, saying that it was beneath her dignity to thus humble herself to a subject. Isabel replied that she counted as little on his service as she feared his disloyalty, and that if he had been anyone else, she would most certainly have weighed the matter more carefully, but she added, “I would not accuse myself later with the thought that if I had gone to him in person, he would have withdrawn from the false road he now seeks to follow.”

She then set out southwards, accompanied by the Marquis of Santillana newly-created Duke of Infantado, and the Constable of Castile, the Count of Haro, sending the latter on in advance as they drew near to Alcalá to announce her coming. Carrillo listened to the Constable’s skilful reasoning in uneasy silence; but he was not to be cajoled either by his conscience or by appeals to his vanity, and at length burst into a storm of passion, declaring that it was his intention to serve the King of Portugal, and none should turn him from it. If Isabel entered Alcalá by one gate, he himself would leave by another.

This was plain speaking; and the Queen, who had planned the interview less from policy than out of regard for the old man, whose restless jealousy she knew so well, continued on her way to Toledo, where she intended to make preparations for the defence of Estremadura and Andalusia.

Ferdinand, in the meanwhile, mustered his forces in Valladolid. So great was the hatred of the Portuguese that many of the towns of Old Castile sent citizens equipped at their own expense; while nobles in mail, and ginetes, or lightly-armed horsemen, flocked to the royal standard along with Biscayan archers and hardy mountaineers from the north. Joined with the levies of Segovia and Avila, that Isabel had collected on her journey to Toledo, the whole army mustered about 12,000 horse and 80,000 foot, as it advanced to the relief of the citadel of Toro, both that town and Zamora having surrendered to the Portuguese through the treachery of their respective governors. The enthusiasm was general, and Ferdinand himself burned with the desire to achieve some great deed.

Unfortunately Toro, flanked by fortresses in the power of the Portuguese, and protected on the rear by the Douro, whence provisions could be passed into the town, proved altogether too strong for the besiegers. A stormy council-of-war was held in the Castilian camp, it being decided that the only wise course would be to retreat. This rumour spread, gradually taking the shape that the nobles were forcing the King for their own ends to give up the siege; and in a fury the ordinary soldiery rushed to the royal tent, swearing to stand by Ferdinand in whatever act of daring he sought to do, and above all to protect him from traitors. In bitterness of spirit they learned that he also counselled retreat, and in disorderly fashion they shook the dust of Toro from their feet and returned to Valladolid. Their departure resulted in the surrender of the citadel to the Portuguese, with whom the Archbishop of Toledo now openly allied himself, rancorously declaring that he had called Isabel from her spinning-wheel and would send her back to it again.

From Valladolid Ferdinand was summoned to Burgos. The city was almost entirely in his favour, but the fortress and the church of Santa Maria La Blanca were held by the men of the Duke of Arévalo, whose catapults caused so much destruction that the inhabitants declared unless help was given they must surrender. In one of the principal streets alone, over three hundred houses had been burned, while the firing never ceased by night or day.

Ferdinand and his illegitimate brother, Alfonso, Duke of Villahermosa, were soon on the scenes, for Burgos was too important a place to be lost; and earthworks and fortifications were hastily constructed over against the citadel to prevent help reaching it from the King of Portugal. All this, however, cost time, and, still more disastrous, money; for the contents of the treasury in Segovia, handed over by Andres de Cabrera, were exhausted, and the land, impoverished by Henry IV.’s misgovernment, could obviously yield few taxes.

The sovereigns, in deep gloom, called a meeting of the Cortes in Medina del Campo, and laid their monetary difficulties before it. How was the army to be paid? The problem was the harder for the reckless generosity of the Portuguese, who gave fine promises of lands and revenues to all who joined them, the fulfilment depending on the success of the war. One solution was to permit the Castilian troops to provide for themselves by pillage and robbery. This the sovereigns at once rejected, nor would they consent to alienate the few royal estates still remaining to them. A third suggestion was to exact a loan from the Church, and it speaks well for the reputation that Ferdinand and Isabel had already established, that the clergy at once consented to this arrangement. In the end it was settled that the Church should surrender half her silver plate to specified royal officials, and that this should be redeemed at the end of three years by the payment of thirty millions of maravedis.

The war now continued with unabated vigour, not only in the north-west corner, occupied by Alfonso V., but throughout Castile and even across the Portuguese border. On hearing of the proclamation at Plasencia, Ferdinand and Isabel, by way of retaliation, had added to their titles that of King and Queen of Portugal. This encouraged their partisans in Galicia and Estremadura to cross the frontier and seize certain of the enemy’s strongholds, from which they raided the country round, carrying off cattle and burning villages. In the neighbourhood of Toledo, those who were discontented with the over-lordship of Archbishop Carrillo and his nephew the Marquis of Villena took the opportunity to proclaim their allegiance to Isabel, and in the latter’s name threw off the yoke they hated. The Count of Paredes, an old warrior who had fought against the Moors, and who was one of the candidates for the Mastership of Santiago, joyfully went to their assistance with a large body of troops, collecting his rival’s revenues at the point of the sword, until the turmoil forced Villena to leave the King of Portugal and hurry to the protection of his own estates.

He did not attempt to conceal his indignation with his ally, insisting that Alfonso should go immediately to Madrid, that from there he might aid those who had put their trust in him. To this the King replied with equal bitterness that he saw no reason to risk the loss of Toro and Zamora by leaving the north; nor was his conscience burdened with the ill-luck of his allies, seeing that their help had fallen far short of their promises. This was very true. But a small portion of the nobles committed to Joanna’s cause had appeared when expected at Arévalo, the majority of the defaulters not having dared to leave their own territory, where Ferdinand and Isabel’s partisans kept them occupied in the defence of their houses and lands.

Isabel herself from Valladolid placed careful guard over the road to Burgos, that the King of Portugal might not send relief to that citadel. Ever since the beginning of the war, she had spared herself no pains or trouble, in her effort to aid Ferdinand in his campaign. At one time she had journeyed to Toledo to raise the levies of New Castile, at another hastened northwards to rescue Leon from a governor suspected of treachery; then again collected and dispatched troops to the help of Guipuzcoa, where Louis XI. was endeavouring to win a stretch of coveted seaboard. One evil result of the strain entailed by such exertions had been her miscarriage in the summer of 1475. Her daughter Isabel was now doubly precious; and her parents for her better safety had sent her to Segovia, where she remained in the charge of Andres de Cabrera, lately created for his services Marquis of Moya.

While the siege of Burgos still delayed, Ferdinand succeeded in gaining possession of the town of Zamora, after secret correspondence with the captain who had guard of the main entrance, a strongly fortified bridge. The Portuguese King was forced to retreat to Toro, and the Castilians, entering at once, placed siege to the citadel; Isabel supplied troops and artillery from Valladolid, while each day fresh loyalists appeared from Galicia.

TOLEDO, LA PUERTA DEL SOL
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDERSON, ROME

Alfonso now found himself cut off from Portugal, and, aware that his fortunes had not matched his hopes, began to try and negotiate favourable terms of peace. These were still in keeping with his lofty pretensions; for, in addition to a large sum of money and the permanent surrender of Toro and Zamora, he demanded that the kingdom of Galicia should be joined to Portugal.

These conditions Ferdinand and Isabel indignantly refused; whereupon Alfonso, who had been reinforced by his son, Prince John, and a large body of troops, advanced once more on Zamora, pitching his tents near the river-bank. On the other side was a formidable array of earthworks and ramparts, making communication with the citadel impossible; and after a few weeks he broke up his camp and slipped away one dark night as silently as possible in the direction of Toro.

This was the opportunity for which the Castilians had been waiting, and as soon as they discovered what had happened they swarmed over the fortifications in hot pursuit. The Portuguese had broken up the bridge behind them to cover their retreat, so that long hours were spent in repairing it sufficiently for the transit of the troops. The road also was often narrow, winding between the Douro and the hills, and it was almost dusk before Ferdinand came in touch with the enemy’s rear-guard about three leagues from Toro.

Then the battle began in grim earnest. Prince John of Portugal, who was on his father’s left, by the use of his small ordnance followed by a daring charge, succeeded in shattering the forces opposed to him; but on the centre and right a prolonged struggle ensued, intensified by all the bitterness of national hatred. Here fought the rival kings, and hard by, with a lust of war ill becoming their office, the Archbishop of Toledo on the one side, the Cardinal of Spain on the other. After three hours of hand-to-hand combat, the Portuguese broke and fled. In the darkness and the rain, Prince John sounded his trumpets and, rallying such of his forces as he could, retreated in good order towards Toro. Before him went a mass of flying fugitives who, coming to the city, beat in vain upon the closed gates for admittance.

“Where is your King?” cried those within. “You guarded his person in his room and at his table, in his pleasures and at his feasts, but when his life and honour were most in your care, you left him alone in the battle. Where is your King?”

Those of the royal body-guard that stood without hung their heads in shame and misery. They could not answer. The Archbishop of Toledo appeared, later Prince John, but neither knew aught of Alfonso. The Portuguese looked at their Castilian allies askance. Had these betrayed him? The Castilians returned their glances with defiance. Little good had foreign help ever brought them!

In this suspense the city continued till morning, when messengers came from Castronuño, a small fortress in the neighbourhood, to say that Alfonso had taken refuge there. As easily cast into the depths of despair, as buoyed by main hopes, he had believed all lost when the retreat began and imagined Toro already in Ferdinand’s power. This mood of depression did not last long; for his dispatches to Lisbon narrated a signal victory.

Isabel was at this time in Tordesillas and celebrated her husband’s triumph by a religious procession to the church of San Pablo, where barefoot she gave thanks to God for the mercy He had shown them. She and Ferdinand also founded the magnificent monastery of San Juan de Los Reyes in Toledo in memory of the event.

The battle of Toro did not end the Portuguese war, which was destined to drag on its somewhat uninteresting course for another three years; but it was decisive enough to show with whom the final victory would be. Alfonso, in spite of claiming success, left Toro in the charge of a lieutenant and retired in disgust to his own land. He complained bitterly of his Castilian allies and the failure of their promises, but soon recovered heart in the conception of another scheme. This was nothing less than a personal interview with Louis XI., by which he hoped to persuade that monarch to join with him in an invasion of Castile; and with this intention he left his government and niece to the care of his son, and set sail for France.

Less sanguine of the future, most of his captains in Castile struck the best bargains with their opponents that they could; the citadels of Burgos and Zamora both surrendering at once, while Toro followed their example in the early autumn. Characteristic also of the trend of events was the appearance of the Duke of Arévalo’s son at Tordesillas to beg forgiveness for his father; a petition to which Isabel, who was more anxious to pacify the country than to extort vengeance, readily agreed. The Duke restored to her the town of Arévalo, changing his title to Plasencia.

TOLEDO, CHURCH OF SAN JUAN DE LOS REYES
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDERSON, ROME

The Marquis of Villena and Archbishop of Toledo, deprived of their friends, also sued for mercy, thinking that it was better to lose a portion of their estates than the whole, but there was little sincerity in the homage they offered. The rift had widened too far between Carrillo and his royal mistress ever to be bridged again by mutual trust; and the Primate remained on his estates brooding over his fallen fortunes.

Ferdinand in the meanwhile, having realized that the crisis of the war was over, had gone to Aragon to see his father. The old King, clear of mind and enterprising as ever at an age when most men have set aside their life work in weariness of spirit, was planning new schemes for gaining Roussillon and Cerdagne, while he worked to keep Navarre, now owned by his grandson Francis Phœbus, from undue French influence. He had fought through his other difficulties, recovered his sight, subdued Barcelona, achieved the Castilian alliance; perhaps time would be given him to realize the rest of his ambitions. If not, there was the son in whom he had always believed to carry on his work; and he greeted Ferdinand, not with the mediæval condescension of father to child, but with the reverence one sovereign offers to another of somewhat higher rank.

From Aragon Ferdinand was called to help the men of Biscay and Guipuzcoa in their struggle against their French invaders; while Isabel, left as sole ruler in Castile, carried on her policy of mingled suppression and reconciliation.

At the beginning of August, 1476, what threatened to be a serious rebellion broke out in Segovia, during the absence of the governor, Andres de Cabrera, now Marquis of Moya. The malcontents, whose disaffection had been roused by his appointment of certain officials, succeeded by a ruse in gaining entrance to the citadel and seized the deputy governor, the father of Beatriz de Bobadilla, while the rest of the garrison were forced to take refuge in one of the towers with the Infanta Isabel.

The Queen, warned by messengers, came in haste from Tordesillas and found the city in confusion, all but one of the gates being in the hands of the insurgents. The latter begged her not to enter by the gate of San Juan, which remained faithful to Moya, nor to take with her Beatriz de Bobadilla his wife nor the Count of Benavente his friend, as such actions would be bitterly resented by the mob. To this Isabel sent prompt reply:

Tell these knights and citizens of Segovia that I am Queen of Castile and this city is mine.... I need not laws nor conditions, such as they would impose, to enter into my own.

Then with the Count of Benavente and the Cardinal of Spain, one on either side, she rode through the gate of San Juan and so to the Alcazar. Behind her surged the crowd, crying death to the Marquis and his adherents. So threatening was their attitude that the Cardinal of Spain begged her for her own safety to have the doors tightly closed and barred; but she, bidding them stay within, went out alone to the top of the staircase overlooking the big courtyard. At her command the gates were flung wide, and the mob surged through them, howling and gesticulating, but at the sight of the Queen their cries died away to silence.

“My vassals, what do you seek?” she demanded, “for that which is for your good is for my service, and I am pleased that it should be done.”

One of the crowd, speaking for the rest, begged that Andres de Cabrera might no longer have command of the Alcazar.

“That which you wish, I wish also,” answered the Queen.

She then bade them go up at once to the towers and walls and drive out all who were in possession, whether of Cabrera’s following or the actual rebels who had since occupied the place.

“I will entrust it,” she added, “to one of my servants, who will guard both his loyalty to me and your honour.”

Her words put an end to the rebellion for, both Cabrera’s adherents and the insurgent leaders being suppressed, the city remained quiet, and Isabel was able to enquire into the true facts of the case. This resulted in the punishment and dismissal of various minor officials, but the Marquis of Moya, whose conduct was cleared, was restored to his responsible post.

When Ferdinand returned from Biscay, the sovereigns, after a short time together, were separated once more; he remaining in the north to watch over the affairs of Aragon and France, while she went south to Estremadura and Andalusia. The civil war was practically at an end. Here and there some strongly fortified place still floated the Portuguese standard; or the nobles, like wild horses bridled for the first time and unable to believe themselves mastered, chafed in secret conspiracies or flamed into spasmodic rebellion. The history of their suppression is connected rather with the work of reconstruction than of actual warfare. For the moment this one change, effected by the sovereigns’ methods, challenges our attention,—that the great cities of the south, lately the scenes of chronic feuds and rebellions, were turning again to be the centres of civilization and justice for their neighbourhoods.