Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/349

 ARAGON, I2I3-I479.] SPAIN 325 only replied with obscure hints at a conspiracy. But his subjects were not prepared to acquiesce in this unnatural treatment of a prince whom they had learned to love and whom they regarded as their future ruler. The Catalans, always easily moved, rose in arms and marched upon Lerida, and it was only by a hasty retreat that John was able to escape with his court to Saragossa. But the revolt speedily spread from Catalonia to the other pro- vinces, and even to Sicily and Sardinia, while it found supporters in the king of Castile and in the faction of the Beaumonts in Navarre. Surrounded by enemies, John II. found it necessary to yield. He not only released his son, professing that he did so at his wife's request, but appointed him lieutenant-general of Catalonia and pro- mised not to enter that province without the permission of the cortes. But no sooner had Charles of Viana regained his liberty than he died, on September 23, 1461 ; and the circumstances led ready credence to be given to the suspicion that he had been poisoned during his captivity. The crown of Navarre now devolved by right upon Charles's elder sister Blanche, who had been married to and afterwards repudiated by Henry IV. of Castile. But she had incurred her father's enmity by the support which she had given to her brother : and John II. was not unwilling to curry favour with France by securing Navarre to his second daughter Eleanor of Foix, whose son Gaston had married a sister of Louis XL The unfortunate Blanche was committed to the guardianship of her younger sister, and after two years of imprisonment in the castle of Orthez she died of poison. But Eleanor reaped little advantage from the crime which all historians impute to her. Her father retained the crown of Navarre till his death, and she only survived him a few weeks. She was succeeded by her grandson Francis Phcebus, but he only lived for four years, and his sister and heiress Catherine brought the crown of Navarre by her marriage to the French house of D'Albret, from which it was wrested by Ferdinand the Catholic in 1512. This third union with Aragon proved permanent, although the district north of the Pyrenees was subsequently annexed to France. Meanwhile the troubles of John II. were by no means removed by his son's death. In Aragon the young Fer- dinand was acknowledged as heir, and was then sent with his mother to Catalonia to receive the oath of allegiance from that province. But the Catalans rose again in rebel- lion, and besieged Joanna and her son in the fortress of Gerona. As John II. was unable to advance through the revolted province to his wife's relief, he purchased the assistance of Louis XI. by a promise of 200,000 gold crowns, as security for which he pledged the counties of Roussillou and Cerdagne (1462). The Catalans replied to this alliance by throwing off their allegiance to John and proclaiming a republic. As, however, Gerona was relieved by the French, and the royal troops succeeded in reducing several of the chief towns, they determined to appeal for foreign aid. The crown was offered first to Henry IV. of Castile and then to the constable of Portugal, who vas descended from the old counts of Barcelona. On the death of the latter in 1466 the rebels turned to the tradi- tional rivals of the house of Aragon, and offered the crown to Rene le Bon, the head of the Angevin house. Rene, whose life had been spent in putting forward claims which he had never been able to enforce, accepted the offer and sent his chivalrous son John of Calabria to assist the Catalans (1467). John II.'s fortunes were now at their nadir. He had lost his eyesight, and the death of his wife in 1468 deprived him of the companion and adviser who had for years directed and inspired his policy. John of Calabria, whose enterprise was secretly encouraged by the treacherous king of France, was steadily regaining much of the ground which had been lost by the Catalans before his arrival. But the old king, whose sight was restored by a surgical operation, fought on with a dogged obstinacy worthy of a better cause. The death of the duke of Calabria in 1469 deprived his opponents of their leader, and from this moment their ultimate defeat was inevitable. The fall of Barcelona (1472) completed the reduction of Catalonia. But John did not venture to abuse the victory which he had so hardly won. He granted a general amnesty, and took a solemn oath to ivspcct the constitution and liberties of the conquered province. The only notable event of the remaining years of John II.'s reign was an attempt to recover Roussillon and Cerdagne. But Louis XL kept a firm hold by arms upon the provinces which his diplomacy had won, and they were only restored to Aragon in 1493 when Charles VIII. ceded them to Ferdinand the Catholic. In 1479 the death Ferdinand of John II., at the ripe age of eighty-two, transferred the Q a yj ^ c crown to his son Ferdinand, who ten years before had con- cluded his marriage with Isabella of Castile. Literature. LaMente, Historia General de Espana; Ortiz, 'I de la Historia de Espana; Mariana, Historia General de Espana ; Lembke, Schafer, and Scliirrmacher, Gcschichte von Spanicn (clown to 1295); Dozy, Histoire des Musulmans d'Espagne (to 1110); Desormeaux, Abregf. Chronologique de V Histoire d'Espagne. For the constitutional history the chief books of reference are for Castile, Marina, Tear la de las Cortes, and Sempere, Histuire des Cortes d'Espagne, and for Aragon, Blancas, Coinmcntarii Rcrum Arayoncnsium ; bnt a fair summary of their conclusions may be found in chapter iv. of Hallam's Middle Ages and iu the introduction to Prescott's Ferdinand and Isabella. The history of the Castilian cortes has been recently elucidated by Don Manuel Colmeiro in his Cortes de los Antiyuos Reinos de Leon y de Castilla (Madrid, 1883). The chief media- val chroniclers may be found, though not well edited, in Florez, Espana Sagrada, and Schott, Hispania Illustrata. (E. L. ) SECTION IV. MODERN HISTORY. The history of Spain as a united state dates from the Ferdinand union of Castile and Aragon by the marriage of Isabella ? n, ,, and Ferdinand. The marriage took place in 1469, before the accession of either sovereign. In 1474 the crown of Castile was claimed by Isabella on the death of her brother Henry IV., whose daughter Joanna was uni- versally believed to be illegitimate. It was contended by the partisans of Ferdinand that female succession was prohibited in Castile, and that he was entitled to the crown as the nearest male heir after his father. Ulti- mately the question was settled in Isabella's favour, and she obtained the most important rights of sovereignty, though the government was carried on in their joint names. It is possible that Ferdinand would have refused to accept this arrangement, if concerted action had not been necessary to oppose the party which espoused the cause of Joanna. A number of the Castilian nobles, headed by the marquis of Villena, dreaded the danger to the privileges of their order that might arise from the establishment of a strong government. They found an ally in Alfonso V. of Portugal, who was Joanna's uncle by the mother's side, and who cherished the design of obtaining the Castilian throne by a marriage with his niece. In 1476 the confederates were routed in the battle of Toro, and Alfonso departed to France with the chimerical plan of seeking assistance from Louis XI. The treaty of St Jean de Luz between France and Castile in 1478 ruined these hopes, and in the next year Alfonso was compelled, by the treaty of Lisbon, to abandon the cause of his niece. This terminated the war of succession in Castile ; and Joanna, known from her reputed father as La Beltraneja, retired into a convent. A few months before the treaty of Lisbon the death of John II. (January 20, 1479) gave to Ferdinand the succession to Aragon, Sicily, and Sardinia. Navarre, which had been brought