John II of Aragon

“ The cause of the son was taken up by the Aragonese, and the king’s attempt to join his second wife in the lieutenant-generalship was set aside. There followed a long conflict, with alternations of success and defeat, which was not terminated till the death of the prince of Viana, perhaps by poison given him by his stepmother, in 1461. ”

“ The king of Aragon could oppose no force capable of resisting this formidable army. His exchequer, always low, was completely exhausted by the 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, or from secret good-will to the enterprise of his feudal subject, withheld from King John the stipulated subsidies, the latter monarch found himself unable, with every expedient of loan and exaction, to raise sufficient money to pay his troops, or to supply his magazines. ”

“ The permanent deputation of Aragon, and a delegation from the council of Barcelona, waited on him for a similar purpose, remonstrating at the same time against any violent and unconstitutional proceeding. To all these John returned a cold, evasive answer, darkly intimating a suspicion of conspiracy by his son against his life, and reserving to himself the punishment of the offense. [21]
No sooner was the result of their mission communicated, than the whole kingdom was thrown into a ferment. The high-spirited Catalans rose in arms, almost to a man. ”

“ In his old age he was blinded by cataract, but recovered his eyesight by the operation of couching. The Catalan revolt was pacified in 1472, but John had war, in which he was generally unfortunate, with his neighbour the French king till his death on the 20th of January 1479. He was succeeded by Ferdinand, his son by his second marriage, who was already associated with his wife Isabella as joint sovereign of Castile. ”

“ D. John had not time to accept the invitation of the first Grandee of Aragón, because the Archbishop of Saragossa, hearing of his illness and being at Frasno, at once sent the Governor of the town, with many other noble gentlemen, to fetch D. John and carry him off to be well looked after in his own palace.
This Archbishop was D. Hernando of Aragón, grandson of King Ferdinand the Catholic, and was respected as much for his age as for his illustrious lineage. ”

“ The bastard Aragonese dynasty was Italian in its tastes and interests, though unpopular both with the barons of the realm and with the people, who in their restlessness were ready to welcome any foreign deliverer from its oppressive yoke. This state of general discontent rendered the revival of the old Angevine party, and their resort to French aid, a source of peril to the monarchy. It also served as a convenient fulcrum for the ambitious schemes of conquest which the princes of the House of Aragon in Spain began to entertain. ”

“ John was first married to Blanche of Navarre, of the house of Evreux. By right of Blanche he became king of Navarre, and on her death in 1441 he was left in possession of the kingdom for his life. But a son Charles, called, as heir of Navarre, prince of Viana, had been born of the marriage. John from the first regarded his son with jealousy, which after his second marriage with Joan Henriquez, and under her influence, grew into absolute hatred. ”

“ His reign was an inferior copy of his father’s. As the legitimacy of his alleged daughter Juana was disputed, his sister Isabella claimed the succession, and married her cousin, Ferdinand of Aragon, son of John I., in 1469 in defiance of her brother. In Aragon, Ferdinand I. “of Antequera” (1412–1416) was succeeded by Alphonso V. (1416–1458) the Magnanimous, whose brilliant life belongs to Italy. ”

“ 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 40alarming 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. ”

“ In 1447, John of Aragon contracted a second alliance with Joan Henriquez, of the blood royal of Castile, and daughter of Don Frederic Henriquez, admiral of that kingdom; [8] a woman considerably younger than himself, of consummate address, intrepid spirit, and unprincipled ambition. Some years after this union, John sent his wife into Navarre, with authority to divide with his son Carlos the administration of the government there. ”

“ At the age of sixteen he already figures in the chronicles of the time, as one of the dignitaries of state who honored the coronation of Ferdinand of Aragon; [606] and at the age of eighteen, we are told, he boldly reclaimed his possessions, which, partly through the forms of law and partly by force of arms, he recovered. [607] From this period we find him, during the reign of John the Second, busy in the affairs of the kingdom, both civil and military; always a personage of great consideration, and apparently one who, in difficult circumstances and wild times, acted from manly motives. ”

“ So in devious pursuit of this plan, on March 16, 1513, new articles to the treaty with Aragon were signed in London, and Henry was again bled, and at Malines the Aragonese ambassador 42 attempted to rid the Flemish council of Chièvres and the French party and replace them with people more agreeable to his master, [110] while at Valladolid John Stile was told positively that the truce between France and Aragon was accomplished. [111] All fair writing and slack deeds in Spain also, "for the Spaniards," said Stile, "are by nature so hasty and envious to all strangers that they despise every man." ”

“ The nobles of Aragon protested against King Peter's submission to the papacy, declared that his surrender of their kingdom was invalid, and prevented the payment of the promised tribute. When John of England procured his Roman overlord's condemnation of Magna Charta, the support of Rome was of no avail to prevent his indignant subjects combining to drive him from the throne, and did not even hinder Louis of France, the son of the papalist Philip II, from accepting their invitation to become English king in his stead. ”

“ On the south France was menaced by the recently consolidated and extended kingdoms of Aragon and Castile. Their neutrality was purchased (January, 1493) by the retrocession without indemnity of the counties of Roussillon and Cerdagne, on the northward slope of the Eastern Pyrenees, pledged in 1462 to Louis XI by John of Aragon for 300,000 crowns. Maximilian, King of the Romans, had not only been robbed of his Breton marriage, but had also a claim under the treaty of Arras to the restitution of Franche Comte and Artois, with some minor places, part of the heritage of Charles the Bold. ”

“ The dynasty which Charles now hoped to dispossess was Spanish. After the death of Joanna II. in 1435, Alfonso, King of Aragon and Sicily, who had no claim to the crown beyond what he derived through a bastard branch of the old Norman dynasty, conquered Naples, expelled Count Réné of Anjou, and established himself in this new kingdom, which he preferred to those he had inherited by right. Alfonso, surnamed the Magnanimous, was one of the most brilliant and romantic personages of the fifteenth century. ”

“ Don John, in return, put himself at the head of a rising of Aragon and Catalonia, which led to the expulsion of Nithard on the 25th of February 1669. Don John was, however, forced to content himself with the viceroyalty of Aragon. In 1677, the queen mother having aroused universal opposition by her shameless favour for Fernando de Valenzuela, Don John was able to drive her from court, and establish himself as prime minister. Great hopes were entertained of his administration, but it proved disappointing and short. Don John died on the 17th of September 1679. ”

“ No sooner had Barcelona submitted to King John, as mentioned in a preceding chapter, [13] than the inhabitants of Roussillon and Cerdagne, which provinces, it will be remembered, were placed in the custody of France, as a guaranty for the king of Aragon's engagements, oppressed by the grievous exactions of their new rulers, determined to break the yoke, and to put themselves again under the protection of their ancient master, provided they could obtain his support. ”

“ Álvaro soon secured a commanding influence over John II., then a mere boy. During the regency of the king’s uncle Ferdinand, which ended in 1412, he was not allowed to be more than a servant. When, however, Ferdinand was elected king of Aragon, and the regency remained in the hands of the king’s mother, Constance, daughter of John of Gaunt, a foolish and dissolute woman, Álvaro became a very important person. The young king regarded him with an affection which the superstition of the time attributed to witchcraft. ”

“ Unhappy too beyond her deserts in her marriages, whereof the first was with King Charles VIII., by whom she was while still quite a girl sent back to her father’s house; the second with the King of Aragon’s son, John by name, of whom she had a posthumous son that died soon after its birth. ”

“ This alludes to a dispute between the Spanish government and the Aragonese, which had continued from the days of Charles V. The Aragonese claimed either that the king himself should reside among them, or be represented by some person of the royal blood. Charles V. appointed, as viceroy of Aragon, his uncle, the Archbishop of Zaragoza, and then Don Fernando de Aragon, his cousin. Philip II. appointed a Castilian to that dignity. ”

“ The Christians had taken advantage of the continual divisions which prevailed among their former conquerors. Alphonso the Chaste, king of Asturia, a valiant and politic monarch, had extended his dominions and refused to pay the tribute of the hundred young maidens. Ramir, the successor of Alphonso, maintained this independence, and several times defeated the Mussulmans. Navarre became a kingdom, and Aragon had its independent sovereigns, and was so fortunate as to possess a government that properly respected the rights of the people. ”

“ By the irony, or perhaps the eternal justice of fate, all the chicanery of Ferdinand, all the wisdom, the labours, and the fervour of Isabella brought disaster, ruin, and death to Spain. A thousand times happier would it have been for Castile to have remained isolated in its corner of Europe, untroubled with the complications of vast European connections, rather than to have been dragged by Aragon into a position of responsibility and world-wide ambition for which neither its native resources nor the extent nor character of its population befitted it. ”

“ We have seen the Spanish peninsula in previous ages the seat of endless strife between Saracens and Christians. Gradually the Moors had been driven back, and the little independent Christian states had been united by the fortunes of war and marriage into three—Portugal on the Atlantic coast, Castile occupying the larger part of the mainland, and Aragon, a maritime kingdom, less extensive in Spain, but extending its sovereignty over many of the Mediterranean isles, over Sicily and southern Italy. In 1469 Isabella, heiress of Castile, and Ferdinand, heir of Aragon, were wedded ”

“ Blanche had been married to, and then separated from, Henry the Impotent, King of Castille. Leonora was married to the Count of Foix.
The inhabitants of Pampeluna, and the people generally throughout Navarre, were indignant at the injustice committed by Juan; they elected Charles to be their king, and invited him to ascend the throne. Unfortunately for him, Alphonso, King of Aragon and the Two Sicilies, died in 1458, whereupon Juan ascended the throne that had been occupied by his brother. ”

“ The Catalans, whose important trade suffered great loss at the hands of hostile pirates, took a particularly active part in the conquest, and many Catalan knights and nobles were therefore endowed with fiefs in the islands. A matter of even greater consequence to the future of the kingdom of Aragon was James’ expedition against Valencia, which the Spaniards regarded as a sacred inheritance from the great Cid Campeador, the first Spanish conqueror. ”

“ The little kingdom of Navarre was founded by Garcia Jimenes as early as 758, and Louis, the son of Charlemagne, drove the Moors out of Barcelona and established a Christian country there about fifty years afterwards. At length the kingdom of Aragon was founded by Ramiro I., a son of the King of Navarre, and Buesca was taken from the Moors and became the first capital of Aragon. Then the great Alonso, surnamed ‘El Batallador,’ having firmly established his power in the plains, drove the Moors out of Zaragoza in 1118, which was thenceforth the capital of Aragon. ”

“ Isabel, as queen in her own right, retained the Crown patronage and revenues within Castile, but general affairs were transacted under a common seal. In Aragon Ferdinand's authority was not shared by his queen. The Spanish possessions in Italy belonged to Aragon exclusively, as America afterwards belonged to Castile. A common policy, and the vastly increased resources of a kingdom uniting under its sway 77 per cent, of the peninsula, at once gave preponderating weight at home. During the greater part of the sixteenth century Spain was the chief Power in the world. ”