Joanna I of Castile

“ 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 45daughter 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. ”

“ When Isabella died, Ximenes, holding in one hand the archbishop's cross, grasped in the other the sceptre of state. Joanna, the consort of Philip the Fair, who inherited the crown of Castile, had become the prey of a disordered imagination. Her husband would not reside in Spain, and she would not consent to live there without him. Isabella had foreseen her incompetency and probable absence. She had appointed Ferdinand of Aragon, her own husband, Regent of Castile, till her grandson Charles should have attained his twentieth year. The nobles of Castile factiously resisted this wise provision ”

“ Had they been merely private individuals, the evil effects of their passions might have spread no further than the street or town in which they lived; but unfortunately Joanna had gone to Flanders not merely as a bride but as an agent to influence her husband’s policy in her father’s favour, and the odium and exasperation her behaviour aroused reacted to the detriment of Spain. Philip had nothing in common with the Castilian race. ”

“ But it was only with the greatest difficulty that the Cortes of Castile was induced to accept him as titular sovereign in conjunction with his mother. Her name was to take precedence of his in all royal documents. Until her death in 1555, the year before her son’s abdication, Joanna was the rightful sovereign of Spain. Charles was elected emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in 1519, only two years after he had assumed the control of Spanish affairs. It is not remarkable, therefore, that he should be known to most people only by the more important title. ”

“ Unmindful of the disgrace attendant on his divorce from Blanche of Navarre, Henry sought and obtained the hand of Joanna, Princess of Portugal, whose ambition and unprincipled intrigues heightened the ill-favor with which he was already regarded. The court of Castile, once so famous for chastity and honor, sank to the lowest ebb of infamy, the shadow of which, seeming to extend over the whole land, affected nobles and people with its baleful influence. All law was at an end: the people, even while they murmured against the King, followed his evil example ”

“ Sympathy at home and abroad were alienated. Louis XI., more hopeful of adding Franche Comté to his possessions than the hostile population of Northern Spain, had come to terms with Castile; Sixtus IV., under pressure from Castile, Aragon, and the Aragonese House of Naples, had revoked his bull of dispensation for Joanna’s marriage; Ferdinand himself, in January, 1479, had succeeded his father peacefully in the three divisions of the western kingdom. ”

“ The mental balance, once a flaw has shaken its equilibrium, is of all scales the most difficult to adjust; and Isabel’s hopes that a personal supervision of her daughter would effect a cure were doomed to disappointment. Philip and Joanna came to Spain in 1502; but their presence was an unwilling acknowledgment that custom required their recognition as Prince and Princess of Castile by the national Cortes. ”

“ A civil war ensued, during which Isabella steadily refused to assume the crown, though often entreated; limiting her efforts to the maintenance of her rights as heiress presumptive. In 1474, or five years after her marriage, Don Henry died, and she then became Queen of Castile, though her spurious niece was also proclaimed by a small party among her subjects. The war of the succession, as it was called, lasted five years longer, when Joanna, or La Beltraneja, assumed the veil, and the rights of Isabella were generally acknowledged. ”

“ Among the nobles, who openly testified their adhesion to Isabella, were no less than four of the six individuals, to whom the late king had intrusted the guardianship of his daughter Joanna; viz. the grand cardinal of Spain, the constable of Castile, the duke of Infantado, and the count of Benavente.
[8] A precedent for female inheritance, in the latter kingdom, was subsequently furnished by the undisputed succession and long reign of Joanna, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, and mother of Charles V. The introduction of the Salic law, under the Bourbon dynasty, opposed a new barrier, indeed ”

“ 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 42Barcelona, 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. ”

“ In 1504 Isabella of Castile died, and her kingdom descended by inheritance to her daughter Joanna and Joanna's husband, the Archduke Philip. Henry was deeply interested to know how much authority over Castile Ferdinand still possessed as governor in the absence of the new king and queen, and in 1505 he sent three gentlemen to Spain mainly to report on this subject, though ostensibly to offer terms for an alliance against France to which he had been much solicited. ”

“ This injunction was amplified by the command that if Joanna should be absent from Spain, “or although present ... unable to reign and govern,” Ferdinand should act as regent, until his grandson Charles was of an age to undertake this task for himself.
Such were the most important clauses of the document, by which Isabel strove to safeguard her loved Castile from the dangers threatening her. In others, she insisted that Gibraltar, which she had acquired for the Crown should never be alienated from it ”

“ ZORADA.
I understand;—a monk's unseemly cowl.
I'm glad you did not mean to shed his blood.
SEBASTIAN.
My gentle child, we meant but as I say.
And while revenging my especial wrongs,
We should have freed Castile from a hard master,
Who now sheds noble blood upon the scaffold
As lavishly as hinds the common water
Of village pool cast o'er their arid fields.
And yet to kindle in our native land
The flames of civil discord, even for this,
Has often rack'd my mind with many doubts,
Recoiling thoughts, and feelings of remorse.
ZORADA.
Ha! ”

“ 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 71not 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ FROM SITGES’ “ENRIQUE IV, Y LA EXCELENTE SEÑORA.”
119Circumstances thus urged peace; and Alfonso, bowing to necessity, consented to negotiations which ended in the treaty of Lisbon, signed on September 24, 1479. The sovereigns on either side renounced the titles they had usurped; the King of Portugal bound himself by oath never to marry with his niece; Isabel and Ferdinand agreed to pardon their rebellious subjects. For Joanna there was a choice of three things: either to wed the little Prince of Asturias, sixteen years her junior, when he should have reached a marriageable age ”

“ 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 56father’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.” ”

“ 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 85views; 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. ”

“ In vain the Queen, who knew his character, 96tried 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. ”

“ He was disgusted with the frivolity of her Court, and with her conduct, and fearing lest the same fate should befall him that had come on her first husband Andrew, he quitted Naples and fled to Spain. James of Aragon died, and in 1376 Joanna married Otto of Brunswick. This fourth marriage offended Charles of Durazzo, grandson of John de Gravia, younger brother of Robert, King of the Two Sicilies, who calculated on succeeding to the throne and the county of Provence should Joanna die childless. His father Louis had been poisoned by Queen Joanna. ”

“ Of wonderful intelligence for one in her station, gifted beyond her years, and beautiful and ambitious, she won the favor of the queen to such a degree that she soon became her chief attendant. Her foster-child, the Duke of Calabria, who tenderly loved her, married her to the seneschal of his palace and appointed her first lady in waiting to his wife; and thus it happened that she was present at the birth of Joanna, and was the first to receive her in her arms. Naturally enough, then, King Robert made her the governess and custodian of the small duchess after her father's death. ”

“ Joanna, on her part, was destined to become by the death of her brother and her nephew heiress of Spain, and to transmit not only Spain itself, but vast empires in the western hemisphere to the descendants of this marriage. ”

“ Joanna, deserted by many of her nobles in these dire straits, and not knowing what to do,—as her husband seems to have played no part in this emergency,—decided upon flight as the only means of safety, and, embarking with her entire household in three galleys, she set sail for Provence, where loyal hearts awaited her coming. There she went at once to Avignon, where Pope Clement VI. was holding his court with the utmost splendor; and in the presence of the pope and all the cardinals, she made answer in her own behalf to the charges which had been made against her by the Hungarian king. ”

“ Great was the throne of France even in those days, and great was he that sate upon it: but well Joanna knew that not the throne, nor he that sate upon it, was for her; but, on the contrary, that she was for them; not she by them, but they by her, should rise from the dust. Gorgeous were the lilies of France, and for centuries had the privilege to spread their beauty over land and sea, until, in another century, the wrath of God and man combined to wither them; but well Joanna knew, early at Domrémy she had read that bitter truth, that the lilies of France would decorate no garland for her. ”

“ In 1404 she was specially allowed to retain her two daughters and a Breton attendant when other aliens were expelled, but two years later she was compelled to part with them (ib. p. 527; Ann. Hen. IV, pp. 379, 419) . Various grants to her from the king are recorded, among them being one of the tower near the gate of Westminster Hall, for the transaction of her business and custody of her muniments (Fœdera, viii. 380-1, 408) . In February 1408 Joanna had a tomb with a sculptured effigy executed in England, and erected in Nantes Cathedral to the memory of her first husband (ib. viii. 510) . ”

“ Caracciolo. Hoping to re-establish his position and crush Caracciolo, Sforza favoured the pretensions of Louis III. of Anjou, who wished to obtain the succession of Naples at Joanna’s death, a course which met with the approval of the pope. Joanna refused to adopt Louis owing to the influence of Caracciolo, who hated Sforza; she appealed for help instead to Alphonso of Aragon, promising to make him her heir. War broke out between Joanna and the Aragonese on one side and Louis and Sforza, supported by the pope, on the other. ”

“ In the beginning of his reign he had to contend with the hostility of John of Gaunt, who claimed the crown by right of his wife Constance, daughter of Peter the Cruel. The king of Castile finally bought off the claim of his English competitor by arranging a marriage between his son Henry and Catherine, daughter of John of Gaunt, in 1387. Before this date he had been engaged in hostilities with Portugal which was in alliance with John of Gaunt. His first quarrel with Portugal was settled by his marriage, in 1382, with Beatrix, daughter of the Portuguese king Ferdinand. ”