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.

[Illustration:

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.

Footnote 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

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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.

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