HISTORY OF THE REIGN OF FERDINAND AND ISABELLA, THE CATHOLIC
Volume I
Chapter II
Conditions of Aragon Aragon Aragon Naples Sicily Aragon Barcelona Catalonia Catalonia offered to Rene of Anjou Lorraine Aragon Barcelona
…
The revolutionary spirit of
Barcelonians, kept alive by the recollection of past injury, as well as by the
apprehensions of future vengeance, should John succeed in reestablishing his
authority over them, soon became so alarming, that the queen, whose consummate
address, however, had first accomplished the object of her visit, found it
advisable to withdraw from the capital; and she sought refuge, with her son and
such few adherents as still remained faithful to them, in the fortified city of
Gerona, about fifty miles north of Barcelona.
Hither, however, she was speedily
pursued by the Catalan militia, embodied under the command of their ancient
leader Roger, count of Pallas, and eager to regain the prize which they had so
inadvertently lost. The city was quickly entered, but the queen with her
handful of followers, had retreated to a tower belonging to the principal
church in the palace, which, as was very frequent in Spain , in those wild times, was so
strongly fortified, as to be capable of maintaining formidable resistance. To
oppose this, a wooden fortress of the same height was constructed by the
assailants, and planted with lombards and
other pieces of artillery than in use, which kept up an intermitting discharge
of stone bullets on the little garrison. The Catalans also succeeded in running
a mine beneath the fortress, through considerable body of troops penetrated
into it, when their premature cries of exultation having discovered them to the
besieged, they were repulsed, after a desperate struggle, with great slaughter.
The queen displayed the most intrepid spirit in the midst of these alarming
scenes; unappalled by the sense of her own danger, and that of her child, and
by dismal lamentations of the females by whom she was surrounded, she visited
every part of the works in person, cheering her defenders by her presence and
dauntless resolution. Such were the stormy and disastrous scenes in which the
youthful Ferdinand commenced a career, whose subsequent prosperity was destined
to be checkered by scarcely a reverse of fortune.
In the mean time, John, having in
vain attempted to penetrate through Catalonia
to the relief of her wife, effected this by the cooperation of his French ally,
Louis the Eleventh. That monarch, with his usual insidious policy, had covertly
dispatched an envoy to Barcelona
on the death of Carlos, assuring the Catalans of his protection, should they
still continue averse to a reconciliation with their own sovereign. These
offers were but coldly received; and Louis found it more for his interest to
accept the propositions made to him by the king of Aragon himself, which
subsequently led to most important consequences. Bu three several treaties, of
the 3rd, 21st and 23rd of May, 1462, it was
stipulated that Louis should furnish his ally with seven hundred lances and a
proportionate number of archers and artillery during the war with Barcelona, to
be indemnified by the payment of two hundred thousand gold crowns with one year
after the reduction of the city; as security for which the counties of
Roussillon and Cerdagne were pledged by John, with the cession of their
revenues to the French king, until such time as the original debt should be
redeemed. In this transaction both monarchs manifested their usual policy;
Louis believing that this temporary mortgage would become a permanent
alienation, from John’s inability to discharge it; while the latter
anticipated, as the event showed, with more justice, that the aversion of the
inhabitants to the dismemberment of their country from the Aragonese monarchy
would baffle every attempt on the French to occupy it permanently.
In pursuance of these
arrangements, seven hundred French lances wit a considerable body of archers
and artillery crossed the mountains, and rapidly advancing to Gerona , compelled the insurgent army to raise
the siege, ant to decamp with such precipitation as to leave their cannon in
the hands of the royalists. The Catalans now threw aside the thin veil, with
which they had hitherto covered their proceedings. The authorities of the
principality, established in Barcelona ,
publicly renounced their allegiance to Jing John and his son Ferdinand, and
proclaimed them enemies of the republic. Writings at he same time were
circulated, denouncing from scriptural authority, as well as natural reason,
the doctrine of legitimacy in the broadest terms, insisting that the Aragonese
monarchs, far from being absolute, might be lawfully deposed for an
infringement of the liberties of the nation. “The good of the commonwealth”, it
was said, “must always be considered paramount to that of prince”.
Extraordinary doctrines these for the age in which they were promulgated,
affording a still more extraordinary contrast with those which have been since
familiar in that unhappy country!
The government then enforced
levies of all such as were above the age of fourteen, and, distrusting the
sufficiency of its own resources, offered the sovereignty of the principality
to Henry the Fourth of Castile. The court in Aragon, however, has so
successfully insinuated its influence into the council of this imbecile
monarch, that he was not permitted to afford Catalans any effectual support;
and, as he abandoned their cause altogether before the expiration of the year,
the crown was, offered to Don Pedro, constable of Portugal, a descendant of the
ancient house of Barcelona. In the mean while, the old king of Aragon, attended
by his youthful son, had made himself master, with his characteristic activity,
of considerable acquisitions in the revolted territory, successively reducing
Lerida, Cervera, Amposta, Tortosa, and the most important places south of
Catalonia. Many of these places were strongly fortified, a most of them
defended with a resolution which cost the conqueror a prodigious sacrifice of
time and money. John, like Philip, of MACEDON, made use the gold even more than
arms, for the reduction of his enemies; and though he indulged in occasional
acts of resentment, his general treatment of those who submitted was as liberal
as it was politic. His competitor, Don Pedro, had brought little foreign aid to
the support of his enterprise; he had failed altogether in conciliating the
attachment oh his new subjects; and, as the operations of the war had been
conducted on his part in the most languid manner, the whole of principality
seemed destined soon to relapse under the dominion of it ancient master. At
this juncture the Portuguese prince fell ill of fever, of which he died on the
29th of June, 1466. This event, which seemed likely to lead to a
termination of war, proved ultimately the cause of its protraction.
It appeared, however, to present
a favorable opportunity to John for opening a negotiation with the insurgents. But,
so resolute were they in maintaining their independence, that the council of
Barcelona condemned two of the principal citizens, suspecting of defecting from
the cause, to be publicly executed; it refused moreover to admit an envoy from
the Aragonese cortes within the city, and caused the dispatches, with which he
was intrusted by that body, to be torn in pieces before his face.
The Catalans than proceeded to
elect Rene le Bon, as he was styled, of
Anjou, to the vacant throne, brother of one of the original competitors
for the crown of Aragon on the demise of Martin; whose cognomen of “Good” is
indicative of a sway far more salutary to his subjects than the more coveted
and imposing title of Great. The titular sovereign of half a dozen empires, in
which he did not actually possess a rood of land, was too far advanced in years
to assume this perilous enterprise himself; and he accordingly intrusted it to
his son John, the Duke of Calabria and Lorraine, who, in his romantic
expeditions in southern Italy, had acquired a reputation of courtesy and
knightly prowess, inferior to none other of his time. Crowds of adventurers
flocked to the standard of the leader, whose ample inheritance of pretensions
had made him familiar with war from his earliest boyhood; and he soon found
himself at the head of eight thousand effective troops. Louis the Eleventh,
although not directly, aiding his enterprise with supplies of men or money, was
willing so far to countenance it, as to open a passage for him through the
mountain fastness of Roussillon, then in his keeping, and thus enable him to
descend with his whole army at once on the northern borders of Catalonia.
The king of Aragon could
oppose no force capable of resisting this formidable army. His exchequer,
always low, was completely exhausted by extraordinary efforts which he had made
in the late campaigns; and as the king of France, either disgusted with the long
protraction of the war, of from secret good-will to the enterprise of his
feudal subject, withheld from King John the stipulated subsidies, the latter
monarch fond himself unable, with every expedient of loan and exaction, to
raise sufficient money to pay his troops, or to supply his magazines. In
addition to this, he was now involved in a dispute with the count and countess
of Foix, who, eager to anticipate the possession of Navarra, which had been
guaranteed to them on their father’s decease, threatened a similar rebellion,
though on much less justifiable pretences, to that which had experienced from
Don Carlos. To crown the whole of John’s calamities, his eyesight, which had
been impaired by exposure and protracted sufferings during the winter siege of
Amposta, now failed him altogether.
In this extremity, his intrepid
wife, putting herself at the head of such forces, as she could collect, passed
by the water to the eastern shores of Catalonia, besieging the Rosas in person,
and checking the operations of the enemy by the capture of several inferior
places; while prince Ferdinand, effecting a junction with her before Gerona,
compelled the Duke of Lorraine to abandon the siege of that important city.
Ferdinand’s ardor, however, had nearly proved fatal for him; as, in accidental
encounter with a more numerous party of the enemy, his jaded horse would
infallibly have betrayed him into their
hands, had it not been for the devotion of his officers, several of whom, throwing
themselves between him and his pursuers, enabled him to escape, by the
sacrifice of their own liberty.
…
Thus ended this long, disastrous
civil war, the fruit of parental injustice and oppression, which had nearly
cost the king of Aragon the fairest portion of his dominions; which devoted to
disquietude and disappointment more than ten years of life, at a period when
repose is more grateful; and which opened the way to foreign wars, that
continued to hang like a dark cloud over the evening of his days. It was
attended, however, with one important result: that of establishing Ferdinand’s
succession over the whole of the domains of his ancestors.
Chapter III
REIGN OF HENRY IV OF CASTILE
1454-1496
(Biblioteca VIRTUAL Universal
2008)
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