THE WRECK OF CATALONIA

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 The Wreck of
Catalonia
Civil War in the Fifteenth Century

AL AN RYDER

1
 3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford 2 6
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 Preface

A visitor to the Catalan region of Spain will nowadays encounter an assured air
of purpose and prosperity, an exuberant creativity, and the pride of a dynamic
people in its achievements. The traveller six hundred years ago would have
found a similar spirit and condence in the Principality of Catalonia, as the ter-
ritory was then known: Catalan commerce held sway over the whole of the
western Mediterranean and gave the principality a dominant voice in that
commonwealth of eastern Spanish states known as the Crown of Aragon.1 A
century later the power and splendour had vanished; commerce had shrunk to
a shadow of its former self and Catalonia had become an outlying province of
an expanding Castilian empire. Bloody consequences have time and again
owed from that humiliationmost memorably in the Catalan revolt of
1640,2 the War of the Spanish Succession, and the Civil War of 1936and it
rankles still in the Catalan psyche to this day.3
Blame for the catastrophic change of fortune was pinned by the nationalist
school of Catalan historians (notably Domnech i Montaner and Soldevila)4
upon the extinction of a native line of kings and its replacement with a branch
of the ruling Castilian dynasty, the Trastmara. From that moment (1412)
onwards, they maintain, its alien rulers relegated the interests of Catalonia to a
lowly place in their schemes of self-aggrandizement across the Mediterranean
and within the Spanish peninsula, leading ultimately to the principalitys sub-
jection to Castile. There is substance in that interpretation for, although kings
of Catalan stock had pursued an aggressive policy of territorial expansion,
Catalonia had remained at the heart of all their designs. The Trastmaras, by
contrast, had neither patience with Catalan pretensions to primacy nor any

1
This group of states comprised the kingdoms of Aragon, Valencia, and Majorca, the principality
of Catalonia, and the counties of Roussillon and Cerdagne; further aeld it embraced the kingdoms
of Sicily and Sardinia. These states had no common institutions or bonds save allegiance to a common
sovereign.
2
J. H. Elliot, The Revolt of the Catalans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963).
3
While the Spanish Succession War (170213) and the Civil War (19369) had their origins
elsewhere, they afforded Catalans the opportunity to rise in arms against a Castilian state, on both
occasions with disastrous consequences.
4
L. Domnech i Montaner, La iniquitat de Casp i la del comte dUrgell, (Barcelona: Llibreria
Verdaguer, 1930). F. Soldevila, Histria de Catalunya, ii (Barcelona: Editorial Alpha, 1935). Their
work gave teeth to a similar line of argument pursued by the romantic historians of the 19th cent.
vi Preface
sense of personal identication with the principality. To them Catalonia was
not a patria but one of many subject territories whose resources they employed
in quest of Mediterranean empire and hegemony within the Iberian peninsula.
A younger generation of scholars (among them the Catalan Vicens Vives
and the French historians Vilar and Carrre)5 adopted a more nuanced, socio-
economic approach to the problem, attributing Catalonias calamities to fun-
damental economic and social ills, many of them common to the whole of
Europe in that epoch, but others peculiar to Catalonia and few susceptible to
easy remedy. As with all such analyses, everything depends upon the quality of
the statistical material available and its interpretation. So there are others, most
notably the Italian historian del Treppo,6 who have argued that, despite its
problems, the Catalan economy was marked by no fundamental deterioration
but proved adaptable and resilient until in 1462 it was plunged into terminal
decline by a disastrous civil war. Another important dimension to this argu-
ment has been highlighted by Abulaa; he stresses the importance of a our-
ishing coastal trade which leaves little trace in the records utilized by historians
to measure economic health.7 It is also signicant, as Coral Cuadrada has
recently emphasized,8 that much of this interpretation of Catalan economic
fortunes depends very heavily, some of it almost exclusively, on statistics drawn
from the economy of Barcelona; and most, with the exception of del Treppo,
close the account at the onset of the civil war as though what happened over the
succeeding three or four decades was of little account in deciding Catalonias
fate. This is to ignore years of strife which ravaged the land, and gave the coup
de grce to its ailing trade and industry. Nor will any purely domestic explana-
tion sufce, for Catalonia lay enmeshed in the Aragonese confederation where
its sister states were readier to turn its misfortunes to their own advantage than
to proffer assistance. More fatally still, its travails from the outset awoke the
predatory ambitions of its great neighbours, France and Castile. Nor did out-
side involvement end there; Portugal, Navarre, Genoa, Naples, and Burgundy
all played their part in a tangle of foreign intrigue which brought ruin upon

5
J. Vicens Vives, Els Trastmares (segle xv) (Barcelona: Teide, 1956). P. Vilar, Catalogne dans
lEspagne moderne, i (Paris: SEVPEN, 1962). C. Carrre, Barcelone centre conomique lpoque des
difcults (Paris and The Hague: Mouton, 1967).
6
M. del Treppo, I mercanti catalani e lespansione della Corona dAragona nel secolo xv, 2nd edn.
(Naples: Libreria Scientica Editrice, 1972). Carrre agrees with del Treppo to the extent that she
identies a revival of Barcelonas commerce in the 1450s.
7
D. Abulaa, Leconomia mercantile nel Mediterraneo occidentale: commercio locale e commercio
internazionale nellet di Alfonso il Magnanimo, CHCA XVI (Naples: Paparo, 2000), ii.
8
Cuadrada, La Mediterrnia, crulla de mercaders (segles xiiixv) (Barcelona: Dalmau, 2001).
 Preface vii
Catalonia. In the conicts nal stages Catalans found themselves hardly
more than hapless bystanders as wave upon wave of foreign soldiery devastated
their land.
It is one of the curiosities of Catalan historiography that so little attention
has been paid to these catastrophic events. For example, the third volume of the
Histria de Catalunya edited by Pierre Vilar and published in 1988 devotes less
than three of its ve hundred pages to the civil war. La ciutat consolidada (segles
xiv i xv), volume iii of the Histria de Barcelona edited by Jaume Sobrequs i
Callic (Barcelona: Ajuntament de Barcelona, 1992) skips over the period in
equally summary fashion. In the general histories of Spain it is equally almost
invisible9 save for the valuable pages in the second volume of Hillgarths The
Spanish Kingdoms. More than half a century ago a Barcelona publishing house
did attempt to ll the void by commissioning a history of the war from
Santiago Sobrequs i Vidal and his son Jaume Sobrequ i Callic, both of them
specialists in fteenth-century Catalonia. But, as the two admit, the project
never got off the ground and ended up as one of those unfullled contracts
which gather dust on publishers shelves. In its place they brought together a
number of articles and papers bearing on the causes and course of the war
which they had written over many years. These appeared in 1973 as the two-
volume La guerra civil catalana del segle xv, an invaluable guide to numerous
aspects of the conict, but not the history which had been expected. Since then
the eld has been abandoned.
In this study I have endeavoured to move towards lling that gap in the
broader context of the forces and events which shaped Catalonias fortunes
throughout the fteenth century. Much still lies hidden in the abundant
archival records. The rst section examines the part played by social conicts,
economic problems, and dynastic politics in leading the principality into war.
Particular emphasis is laid upon peasant unrest, hostilities within urban com-
munities, endemic feuding among the aristocracy, royal absenteeism, and the
destabilizing effect of quarrels within the royal family. For reasons already
explained, the war, in both its internal and international dimensions, is treated
in some detail in the second part and because I believe that the manner in
which it was conducted decided the fate of Catalonia. A third section surveys
the nature of the regime imposed by Fernando after hostilities had come to
an agonizingly protracted end. Conformity to royal will and a deep social

9
e.g. L. Surez Fernndez, Los Trastmara y los Reyes Catlicos (Historia de Espaa, 7; Madrid:
Gredos, 1985).
viii Preface
conservatism were its hallmarks. How little Catalans could now resist, let alone
defy, their Catholic monarch was demonstrated in two calamitous episodes,
the expulsion of the Jews and the introduction of the Inquisition.
Geographic names are given in the form currently employed in those places,
hence the Catalan Lleida, not the Castilian Lrida, the French Roussillon, not
the Catalan Rossell. Exceptions are made where a standard English version
is in common use, as with Catalonia and Castile. For personal names I have
adopted the practice of using the form appropriate to the nationality of the per-
son concerned, so Juan for a Castilian, Joan for a Catalan, Joo for a Portuguese,
Jean for a Frenchman, and Giovanni for an Italian. The genealogical tables will,
I trust, make clear the relationships between the principal characters in this
somewhat tangled tale.
My gratitude is due to my wife for preparing the maps and above all for her
patience and encouragement throughout the long gestation of this project.

A. R.
 Contents

PART I. THE COMING STORM

1. A Fine, Well-Ordered Country 3
2. Strains in the Fabric 9
3. A Widowed Land 17
4. A Clamorous Peasantry 30
5. Turmoil in Barcelona: Busca and Biga 40
6. A Peasantry Expectant 51
7. Busca in Triumph and Disillusion 55
8. The Violence of an Urban and Rural Aristocracy 61
9. Catalonia Deant 72
10. Juan II, a Monarch Beset 80

PART II. WAR, CIVIL AND FOREIGN

11. The Drawing of Swords 109
12. Catalonia at Bay: Enter Castile 124
13. Diplomacy, or War by Other Means 138
14. The Portuguese Saviour 151
15. In Extremis, France 175
16. The Castilian Marriage 192
17. A Rebellion in Ruins 210
18. The Lost Lands 226

PART III. FERNANDO THE CATHOLIC

19. The Monarch Triumphant 253

Bibliography 270
Index 278
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 PART I
THE COMING STORM
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 1
A Fine, Well-Ordered Country

. . . la terra e bella e ben piena de gente e bene adatta a merchatantia e bene

ordinate de tutto; e sechondo le chosse si posono vedere, questa pare una
richa terra.
(Baldo Villanuzzi, 22 December 13971)

At the dawn of the fteenth century Catalonia stood at the height of its
fortunes, mistress of the western Mediterranean and the dominant power in
the Crown of Aragon. Bounded to the north by France, to the east by Aragon
and Castile, and on its southern ank, at the delta of the River Ebro, by the
kingdom of Valencia, the principality extended over a modest 37,000 square
kilometres and was well populated with some 375,000 inhabitants. An un-
usually high proportion of this number, around 30 per cent, lived in towns,
thirteen of which had populations exceeding 2,000. On the coast, Barcelona,
Perpignan, Tortosa, Tarragona, and Castell dEmpries controlled a our-
ishing maritime trade;2 Reus, Valls, Vilafranca del Peneds, and Girona were
the commercial centres of the fertile coastal plains. Further inland, Vic com-
manded the road along which textiles and spices travelled northwards to
France, while Montblanc, Cervera, and Lleida served a similar function as trad-
ing centres on the routes leading to Aragon and Castile. Largest of these urban
centres was Barcelona with a population of some 35,000, a city acknowledged
as the capital of Catalonia. A common language and culture gave the people a
strong sense of identity; of the Moors there remained no more than 10,000 and
of the Jews far fewer after the pogroms of the late fourteenth century; only a few
Gascons had as yet migrated into the mountainous regions of the north.3 All
1
. . . it is a ne country, well-peopled, well-suited to trade and well-ordered in every respect; and,
as far as one can tell, it seems a rich country. Archivio di Stato di Prato, Archivio Datini, Carteggio
Barcellona-Firenze, lig. 635.
2
Abulaa, Leconomia mercantile, emphasizes the importance of the short-distance trade, espe-
cially that with Languedoc and Provence, conducted from these and other small ports.
3
J. Iglsies, La poblaci de Catalunya durant els segles xiv i xv, CHCA VI (Madrid: La Direccin
General de Relaciones Culturales del Ministeno de Asuntos Exteriores, 1959).
4 The Coming Storm
the major towns and cities were subject to the crown, but elsewhere two-thirds
of the land and people fell under the jurisdiction of either the church or of that
1.5 per cent of the population constituted by barons, knights, squires, and
gentlemen. The latters power was especially felt in the north (Old Catalonia)
where feudalism had been long entrenched.4 In southern Catalonia ecclesiast-
ical authority and the military orders dominated the countryside.
Agriculture was the bedrock of the Catalan economy, employing about
three-quarters of the people, including many who lived in towns but gained
their livelihood in the surrounding countryside. They worked on a land con-
stituted in almost equal parts of rugged mountains, barren plateaux, and fertile
plains, a combination which had encouraged in these latter areas a develop-
ment of cash crops such as saffron and vines at the expense of cereals, and else-
where a dramatic expansion of sheep-rearing. From the sheep came the wool
which provided the raw material of Catalonias staple industry, textiles, and the
source of much of its riches. Barcelona and Perpignan, its greatest cities, our-
ished on the manufacture and export of woollen cloth; many other towns,
among them Girona, Lleida, and Tortosa, grew in size and wealth through its
manufacture. Civic afuence and condence was made manifest in the
magnicent municipal and ecclesiastical buildings erected in the earlier years
of the fteenth century.
From Perpignan (with its port at Collioure) to Tortosa a large number of
coastal towns had grown prosperous through trade around the shores of the
Mediterranean, none more so than Barcelona which functioned as a major
entrepot as well as an outlet for the produce of its hinterland, handling more
than half of the total commercial trafc of Catalonia. Each year saw its mer-
chants dispatch four or ve large vessels to the markets of the Levant. Their
outward cargoes consisted mainly of cloth and coral (brought from Sardinia
and Sicily); in return they carried home the spices, silks, and cottons of the East
as well as considerable numbers of slaves. In the central Mediterranean, Sicily
offered rich commercial pickings based upon the exchange of Catalan cloth
for Sicilian wheat.5 An exchange of Spanish wool for Italian woad and alum
sustained a protable trade with Genoa despite the contest for control of
Sardinia and Corsica which put Catalans and Genoese perpetually at odds.
Southern France provided another lucrative outlet for Catalan cloth and spices

4
See P. Freedman, The Origins of Peasant Servitude in Medieval Catalonia (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1991).
5
Del Treppo (I mercanti catalani, 99110) delves into the intricacies underlying this exchange.
 A Fine, Well-Ordered Country 5
carried by overland routes rather than by sea. Trade with North Africa, import-
ant as a source of gold, passed mostly through Majorca, dominated by a
Catalan population and since 1343 subject to the Crown of Aragon. Even
in Flanders there ourished a sizeable colony of Catalan merchants but the
balance of trade with northern Europe was unfavourable.6
From the great Arsenal in Barcelona and from many other shipyards came
the vessels which carried most of the principalitys commerce, vessels of every
size and design owned by native merchants. Those same merchants furnished
most of the capital which sustained the economy; Italians, although promin-
ent, did not exercise the degree of control they enjoyed in Valencia and Castile.7
Barcelonas municipal bank, the Taula de Canvi, established in 1401, ensured
the nancial stability of the systems nerve-centre. A visitor to that city may still
admire the splendid architectural manifestations of Catalonias fteenth-
century prosperity in the cathedral, the merchants Exchange (Llotja), the
church of Santa Maria del Mar, and many noble mansions in the Carrer
Moncada. Perpignan and Tortosa likewise celebrated their economic vitality
with the construction of ne llotjas.8
Catalonia owed its prosperity in considerable measure to its association with
the kingdoms of Aragon, Valencia, and Majorca in that curious congeries of
states, the Crown of Aragon, brought into being by dynastic accident and
the vagaries of the Reconquista. Despite the name, Aragon enjoyed no consti-
tutional primacy, for each component state retained its own administrative,
judicial, and representative institutions, having nothing in common with its
fellows other than the sovereign monarch who, on his accession, swore to each
to uphold its laws and liberties. Aragon was indeed the poorest partner in the
confederation; yet it appears, in the earlier decades of the fteenth century, to
have enjoyed a moderate prosperity thanks to a growing external market for its
wool, wheat, and saffron, even if much of the prot ended up in the hands of
Catalan and foreign merchants. Descending from the crest of the Pyrenees to
the Ebro basin, its dry uplands were screened from the moist Mediterranean
winds by the mountain ranges of Catalonia; only by the course of a few rivers
did the harsh climate permit vegetation to ourish. Of its sparse population of

6
Cuadrada, La Mediterrnia, provides an excellent overview of the Catalan trading system in
its Mediterranean context. Carrre, Barcelona, studies the period in great detail but with an over-
emphasis on the theme of decline. See also Vilar, Catalogne, and J. N. Hillgarth, The Spanish
Kingdoms (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), ii.
7
See J. Aurell, Els mercaders Catalans al quatre-cents (Lleida: Pags, 1996).
8
A. Cirici, Lart gtic catal: Larquitectura al segles xv i xvi (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1979).
6 The Coming Storm
some 200,000, approximately 20,000 were to be found in the capital,
Zaragoza; the rest lived a rural existence in scattered small towns and hamlets.
Few Jewish communities had survived the pogroms of the late fourteenth cen-
tury, but Moors (Moriscos) still made up 11 per cent of the population. Barely
35 per cent of Aragonese lived on land under the direct jurisdiction of the
crown, land which lay for the most part in the Pyrenean region. Elsewhere
nobles, the church, and the military orders held sway through the members
and dependants of some score of noble clans.9
The kingdom of Valencia, by contrast, with around 320,000 inhabitants
was well populated. Of the Aragonese states it was the one most recently con-
quered from the Moors who still accounted for no less than 40 per cent of this
total and furnished most of the labour that supported a ourishing, diversied
agriculture on which the kingdom based its wealth. Like Catalonia, Valencia
enjoyed the advantages of a long Mediterranean coastline where a ourishing
commerce was already making its mark. Over Catalonia it had the added
advantage of direct access to the wool and wheat of Castile, a market vigorously
exploited by a Catalan merchant class which had taken root in the kingdom.
Also, it was better situated than Barcelona on the shipping routes to the
Atlantic, southern Spain, and North Africa. Although, as in the other states,
the crown had direct jurisdiction over less than one-third of the territory,
that portion included all the major towns and hence a larger proportion of the
population. The capital city, Valencia, is reckoned to have had between 32,000
and 40,000 inhabitants early in the fteenth century, a population comparable
to that of Barcelona. Royal inuence over the kingdom was also enhanced
by the fact that most private estates were very small because custom required
that they be divided between all heirs; a major exception was the large area
controlled by the military Order of Montesa.
As for the kingdom of Majorca, which comprised all the Balearic islands,
Catalans had participated enthusiastically in its conquest by their king Pere III
in 1343, and had ever since striven to ensure that it should not challenge their
commercial ascendancy. Fifty years later, with a population of barely 50,000, a
chronic cereal decit, a crippling public debt (much of it owed to Barcelona)
and a dependence on foreign shipping, it posed no threat to Catalonia. It

9
E. Sarasa Snchez, Sociedad y conictos socials en Aragn, siglos xiiixv: Estructuras de poder y
conictos de clase (Madrid: Siglo Veintiuno, 1981). C. Laliena Corbera, Sistema social, estructura
agraria y organizacin del poder en el bajo Aragn en la edad media (siglos xiixv) (Teruel: Instituto de
Estudios Turolenses, 1987).
 A Fine, Well-Ordered Country 7
offered, rather, a eld for investment and an important way-station for Catalan
ships bound for the Eastern Mediterranean or North Africa.10
From the foregoing it will be evident that Catalonia enjoyed great advant-
ages in human and natural resources, in wealth and economic development
over its partners in the Crown of Aragon. That preponderance it could trans-
late into political inuence over its rulers as by far the largest contributor to
their coffers. It beneted, too, from the fact that those rulers were a Catalan
dynasty descended directly from the Counts of Barcelona. The bond between
crown and Catalonia was consequently one of particular signicance:
Barcelona became an unofcial capital; kings were laid to rest on Catalan soil
in the Cistercian monastery at Poblet. The Crown of Aragon was very much a
Catalan show.
Most striking of all in its manifestation of Catalonias power and enterprise
was the establishment of an informal Mediterranean empire in the teeth of
opposition from France and Genoa. The saga had begun in 1229 with the con-
quest of Majorca from the Moors, followed by an inux of Catalan settlers.11
During the period 12761343, when Majorca existed as an independent king-
dom under a junior branch of the Catalan dynasty, it rivalled Catalonia as a
trading power, but its reconquest by Pere III of Aragon in 1343 (enthusiast-
ically supported by Barcelona) brought it under the commercial hegemony of
the Catalan mainland. On the heels of the Majorcan campaign came the vic-
tory over the Moorish kingdom of Valencia (123245) where Catalans gath-
ered the lions share of lands granted to immigrants. Another leap forward came
in 1282 with an expedition to aid Sicilian rebels against their French king (the
Sicilian Vespers); it led to the enthronement of a Catalan prince in the island,
with consequent benets for Catalan trade, although it was not until 1409 that
Sicily became united with the Crown of Aragon. Out of the diplomatic
imbroglio generated by the Sicilian adventure Jaume II extracted from Pope
Boniface VIII in 1297 a title to two more island kingdoms, Sardinia and
Corsica. Not until 1324 was he able to make good his claim to Sardinia by
driving out the Pisans; the capital, Cagliari, developed into a Catalan colony
organizing the export of the islands grain, salt, and silver. As for Corsica, it was
judged prudent not to attempt to dispossess the incumbent Genoese. Nor did

10
G. Sabater, Historia de la Baleares (Palma de Mallorca: Ediciones Cort, 1987). J. Alzina et al.,
Histria de Mallorca (Palma de Mallorca: Moll, 1982). P. Macaire, Majorque et le commerce interna-
tional (14001450 environ) (Lille: Universit de Lille, 1986). Majorca also conducted a ourishing
trade to North Africa employing its own small vessels.
11
The occupation of Ibiza and Minorca followed in 1235 and 1287 respectively.
8 The Coming Storm
Catalan commerce benet from that amazing offshoot of the Sicilian wars, the
rampage of Catalan mercenary bands (known as almogvars) in the eastern
Mediterranean which ended in their seizure (1311) of the Duchy of Athens;
it remained a ef of the Sicilian crown until 1387 but never attracted the atten-
tion of Catalan merchants.12
By 1400 Catalan inuence had been rmly established in all but one of the
western Mediterranean islands and with it control over a network of ports and
shipping routes which no competitor could rival.

12
C. E. Dufourque, Lexpansi catalana a la Mediterrnia occidental, segles xiixv (Barcelona: Ed.
Vicens Vives, 1969). J. Lalinde Abada, La Corona de Aragn en el Mediterrneo medieval (12291479)
(Zaragoza: Institucin Fernando el Catlico, 1979). J. N. Hillgarth, The Spanish Kingdoms, i
12501410 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976) and id., The Problem of a Catalan
Mediterranean Empire 12291327 (London: Longman, 1975).
 2
Strains in the Fabric

Most of his n-de-sicle contemporaries, Catalans and non-Catalans alike,

would have agreed with the Florentine merchant Baldo Villanuzzi that
Catalonia showed a face of prosperity, orderliness, and fair prospects. However,
as many historians have been at pains to stress, the picture was not without its
darker, troubled side; some indeed would argue, erroneously in my opinion,
that the land was already in the grip of a crisis which would carry it to destruc-
tion. All societies are inherently subject to the potentially destabilizing effects
of conicting elements within them; most contrive to contain the stresses and
so avoid breakdown or disaster. Where conict does result in civil war or revo-
lution the cause is to be found in an overwhelming accumulation of unresolved
problems whose origins recede indenitely like those of waves breaking wildly
upon a shore. Historical analysis nonetheless demands that we seek a point at
which the rhythm changes signicantly, a watershed (to vary the metaphor)
dividing one tract of human experience from another.
When considering the civil war which irreversibly altered the course of
Catalonias history we may conveniently take as our point of departure the
cataclysmic impact of pulmonary plague (the Black Death) and bubonic
plague in the preceding century. In May 1348 the rst great epidemic struck
Spain where it raged with especial ferocity in the towns of Catalonia and
Valencia; the city of Valencia lost, according to the most reliable estimates,
35 per cent of its population, Barcelona 20 per cent. Further outbreaks fol-
lowed at regular intervals (1362, 1371, 1381, 1396, 1410, 1429, 1439, 1448,
and 1457). As elsewhere in Europe, depopulation resulted in severe social and
economic dislocation: labour shortage pushed up wages (initially four or ve-
fold) and prices, less fertile land fell into disuse, a decimated royal and ecclesi-
astical bureaucracy struggled to control a restless population, and landowners,
lay and clerical, seeing their incomes drastically reduced, placed heavier bur-
dens and restrictions on the surviving peasants under their control. At the same
time, peasants in the more fertile areasaround Vic, in the Valls, and the
10 The Coming Storm
Llobregat valleywere able to enlarge their holdings. To the trauma of plague
was added the misery of a devastating war with Castile which dragged on for
almost twenty years (135674), further harrowing a suffering population and
driving the state towards nancial ruin.1
Even if demographic upheaval had not sent the Catalan economy into a long
spiral of recession, it had severely dislocated its workings. Towns, with
Barcelona in the van, advanced their grip upon their rural environs by the
acquisition of lands intended to secure the foodstuffs and raw materials needed
to sustain urban life and trade.2 Rural areas had also suffered a disproportion-
ate loss of population as towns attracted immigrants to sustain the labour
force vital to their industrial life, and especially to the textile industry which
employed up to one-third of Barcelonas inhabitants and similarly large num-
bers in many other towns.3 Towards the end of the fourteenth century, when
Catalan textiles ran into recession, those artisans saw their standard of living
decline as wages fell by 15 to 20 per cent. Measures, largely ineffective, taken
by government and civic authorities to protect the urban economy put new
strains upon the social fabric and nancial structures. Agricultural production,
especially of cereals, declined sharply from the rst onset of pestilence, leading
to shortages, lasting price rises, and perennial problems with urban food sup-
plies. Social relationships in the countryside had become more sharply antago-
nistic when landowners, lay and clerical, responded to the shrinkage in the
peasant labour force with measures, legally sanctioned, which reinforced their
power to restrict freedom of movement, increase burdens, and inict severe
punishment on any who resisted. Against that drive to bolster servitude the
peasantry affected, many of whom had seized the opportunity of depopulation
to enlarge their holdings, reacted with some violence and demands for the gen-
eral abolition of the status of serfdom. Currency devaluation in 1413 may have
quietened peasant agitation by reducing the burden of seigneurial dues but it
also strengthened the determination of lords to safeguard their incomes
through legislation that further reinforced their power over a subject peasantry.
Currency instability stemmed in part from a remorseless growth in public
debt fuelled largely by fourteenth-century wars which kings had nanced by

1
C. Batlle, La crisi demogrca, Lexpansi baixmedieval (segles xiixv), Histria de Catalunya,
3, ed. P. Vilar (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1988).
2
Garca-Oliver, Estructura agrria i crisi rural, 48, in E. Sarasa and E. Serrano, (eds.), La Corona
de Aragn y el Mediterrneo (Zaragoza: Institucin Fernando el Catlico, 1997).
3
M. Riu, The Woollen Industry in Catalonia in the Later Middle Ages, in Cloth and Clothing in
Medieval Europe (London: Heinemann, 1983).
 Strains in the Fabric 11
taxes converted by state and municipal authorities into long-term, interest-
bearing loans (censos). That process had created a growing class of fund-holders,
recruited in the main from the dominant urban groups whose interest lay in
sustaining the value of the currency and hence their investment. Royal mints,
on the other hand, were under pressure to keep royal coffers supplied by debas-
ing the coinage; those who lived by commerce were likewise driven to demand
currency adjustment when the national money fell out of line with that used by
their competitors. In the popular mind devaluation too readily became viewed
as a happy device to ll pockets and make life easy. With its strong capitalist
class and dependence on commerce, Catalonia was particularly prone to the
tensions generated by these nancial questions.
In the midst of this prolonged epidemic ordeal the Aragonese state suffered
in 1410 an additional shock with the extinction of the Catalan dynasty which
had ruled since the county of Barcelona was united with the kingdom of
Aragon in 1137. The candidate with probably the strongest claim to the vacant
throne, because nearest in the male line of succession, was a Catalan magnate,
Jaume, count of Urgell. However, powerful interests in Aragon and Valencia
saw an opportunity to end more than two centuries of Catalan domination in
the federation, while within Catalonia Jaume had to contend with the enmity
of great noble clans (Pallars, Cervell, Illa) who had long sustained feuds
against his family. Furthermore he faced opposition from Benedict XIII, the
Aragonese anti-pope, who manuvred to ensure that the outcome should
favour his cause in the tangled international politics of the Schism.4 Jaumes
main rivals, the French Louis of Anjou and the Castilian Fernando of
Trastmar, based their claims on alternative, female, versions of proximity
to the royal line.
Martin the last king of the old dynasty having shirked the choice of a suc-
cessor, it was left to those who controlled each of the component states of the
crownAragon, Catalonia, Valenciato agree upon a procedure to ll the
throne, and meanwhile conduct the business of government. Given the anta-
gonisms that existed within and between those states, it is hardly surprising that
the ensuing interregnum witnessed widespread violence and bitter dispute. In
Aragon Jaumes chief partisans, the Luna clan, murdered the archbishop of

4
A disputed papal election in 1377 had led to a division in the church with one party owing alle-
giance to a pope living in Rome and another supporting a pope based in Avignon. The Aragonese
cleric, Pedro de Luna, elected to the Avignon throne in 1394, hoped to nd in the new Aragonese
monarch a champion who would drive his rival from Rome and make him undisputed head of
the church.
12 The Coming Storm
Zaragoza, leader of their rivals the Urreas. In Valencia the urgellist Vilaraguts,
entrenched in the capital, were defeated by their opponents the Centelles in a
bloody battle fought at Murviedro in January 1412. Catalonia, while avoiding
open hostilities, found itself paralysed by divisions among the great nobility
and by anti-urgel sentiment in the chief cities, especially Barcelona. In these
circumstances it proved impossible to assemble a general parliament that
might consider the succession problem. The initiative passed instead to
Benedict XIII who through the Cortes of Aragon proposed that each of the
three states should nominate three commissioners who would jointly declare
which of the claimants had the best right to the throne. When the nine
delegates met in the Aragonese town of Caspe they were undoubtedly much
inuenced by the charismatic personality of Benedicts henchman, the
Dominican preacher Vicent Ferrer. He it was who in a sermon delivered on
28 June 1412 announced their verdict in favour of the Castilian Fernando by
a two-thirds majority that included the delegate of Barcelona.5
Although the populace of some cities in Catalonia and Valencia responded
to the decision by rioting, the Sentence of Caspe accurately reected the senti-
ment of a majority of those then wielding power and inuence. The man they
had chosen was undoubtedly the most prestigious of the candidates. The sec-
ond son of Juan I of Castile, Fernando had married the richly endowed Leonor
de Alburquerque and thereby become lord of the greatest estate in Castile; the
death of his brother King Enrique III in 1406 made him co-regent for the
infant Juan II; in 1410 his campaigns in crusader guise against Granada were
crowned with success in the capture of Antequera.6 To Pope Benedict he could
guarantee the allegiance of Castile, one of the few states which still recognized
the schismatic pontiff. To the anti-urgell factions in Aragon and Valencia he
could offer the support of Castilian gold and soldiery which had poured gen-
erously across the frontier even as debate proceeded on the dynastic crisis.
Catalan historiography of a nationalist hue has portrayed the defeat of
Jaume of Urgell and the victory of the Castilian Fernando at Caspe as the
5
Domnech i Montaners polemic, La iniquitat de Casp, famously denounced the verdict. For a
favourable view see J. Camarena Mahiques (ed.), El compromiso de Caspe (Zaragoza: Institucin
Fernando el Catlico, 1971). See also J. N. Hillgarth, The Compromiso de Caspe: A Castilian
Dynasty in CataloniaAragon, The Spanish kingdoms, ii, and S. Sobrequs i Vidal, El compromise de
Casp i la noblesa catalana (Barcelona: Curial, 1982).
6
He was subsequently known as Fernando de Antequera. Although the subject of a biography by
the humanist Lorenzo Valla (Gesta Ferdinandi Regis Aragonum, ed. O. Besomi (Padua: Antenore,
1973)), Fernando has not been accorded the honours of an adequate modern biography. I. I.
Macdonald, Don Fernando de Antequera (Oxford: Dolphin Book Co., 1948) relies heavily on a single
Castilian chronicle. Vicens Vives provides an excellent but brief account in Els Trastmares.
 (13691379) ENRIQUE II (of Trastamara K. of Castile)

(13791390) JUAN I = ELIONOR (of Aragon)

ENRIQUE III = CATALINA of Lancaster FERNANDO (of Antequera) = LEONOR

(K. of Castile 13801406) (K. of Aragon 141216)

MARIA = ALFONSO V LEONOR = DUARTE (K. of

(K. of Aragon 141658) Portugal 14338)

Strains in the Fabric

FERRANTE
(K. of Naples 145894) AFONSO V LEONOR = FREDERICK III
(K. of Portugal 143881) (H. R. E. 145293)

1
CATALINA = ENRIQUE = BEATRIZ Pimentel 2

2
ISABEL = JUAN II = MARIA 1 1
BLANCHE = JUAN II = JUANA 2
of Portugal (K. of Castile 140654) d. 1445 (Queen of Navarre) (K. of Navarre 142579) Enriquez
d. 1439 (K. of Aragon 145879)

2
JUANA = ENRIQUE IV = BLANCHE 1 CHARLES of Viana ELINOR = GASTON de Foix
(K. of Castile 145474)

JUANA la Beltraneja

13
ISABEL (Queen of Castile 14741504) = (K. of Aragon 14741512) FERNANDO II

Figure 1. The Houses of Trastmara and Antequera

14 The Coming Storm
origin of a long succession of calamities that was to befall their land. That line
of thought shies away from the fact that in the circumstances prevailing Jaume
could not have been elected king of Aragon. Nevertheless it is certainly true
that Catalonia (and indeed its sister states) was henceforth ruled by a dynasty
which, unlike its predecessor, had no emotional ties to the province. An era of
alien rule had begun, as was made manifest by the great train of Castilian
courtiers, soldiers, and ofcials accompanying Fernando when he entered his
new kingdom in August 1412. His subjects lost no time in launching an ener-
getic campaign to send them home. Politically too the new ruler kept one foot
rmly in Castile where he retained the regency, vast estates, and the masterships
of the military orders of Alcntara and Santiago in which he planted his
younger sons, Sancho and Enrique. Moreover, in his mental baggage came a
Castilian centralizing, authoritarian tradition potentially at odds with the con-
federal, pactista7 custom that had hitherto prevailed in the Aragonese realms.
Small wonder then if his Aragonese subjects exacted oaths to observe the laws
and constitutions of their respective states before they swore allegiance.
Fernando trod carefully, rewarding supporters and placating the prickly
Catalans by conceding to the Diputaci, the executive organ of their parlia-
ment (Corts), a permanent supervisory role in administration. So central were
these bodies to the political and administrative life of Catalonia, and so crucial
their role in the upheavals of the fteenth century, that some account is needed.
Of thirteenth-century origin, the Corts (the Catalan parliament) consisted of
three estatesclergy, nobility, and the representatives of certain royal towns.
Triennial meetings, the power to authorize taxes and legislation, the right to
present complaints against royal ofcials, gave these assemblies a voice in pub-
lic affairs that no king could ignore.8 From the Corts had emerged in 1364 a
permanent executive body, the Diputaci del General (known also as the
Generalitat), charged with administering funds voted by the Corts. It was
composed of three diputats and three oydors (auditors), one for each estate,
appointed for a three-year term.9 The concessions made by Fernando in 1413
vastly extended the powers of these dignitaries who henceforth presided over

7
The term applied, especially in Catalonia, to a constitutional theory which held that a pact
of mutual obligation bound together ruler and subjects. See J. Sobrequs i Callic, El pactisme a
Catalunya (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1982).
8
Les Corts a Catalunya (Actes del Congrs dhistria institucional; Barcelona: Generalitat de
Catalunya, 1991).
9
J. Borja de Riquer (ed.), Histria de la Diputaci de Barcelona, 2 vols. (Barcelona: Diputaci,
1987). I. Rubio y Cambronero, La Deputaci del General de Catalunya en los siglos xv y xvi (Barcelona:
Diputaci, 1950).
 Strains in the Fabric 15

Narbonne
FRANCE

Bayonne COUNTY
Fuenterrabia OF FOIX
San Sebastian Pamplona Perpignan
Vitoria N A V A R R E
Girona
Estella Ejea de los caballeros
Logroo Tudela Monzon NIA
Burgos ALO
Burgo de Osma Zaragoza C AT Barcelona
Lleida
Medina del Calatayud

R. E o
Tarragona

br
Rio Seco Belchite
Valladolid Hijar
Olmedo Alcaiz
Toro ARAGON Tortosa
Segovia
Madrigal Arvalo
vila

IA
MINORCA

NC
Cuenca
Ocaa

LE
Valencia MAJORCA
Toledo

VA
PORTUGAL
CASTILE IBIZA
Guadalupe

Lisbon

Cordoba

A
Seville A D Granada
AN
GR

Jerez

Ceuta

Map 1. The Iberian context

an administrative network which rivalled that of the crown, although the two
were in theory complementary. It saw to the promulgation of acts of the Corts;
it safeguarded the constitutions and privileges of the principality, in defence of
which it could summon the population to arms; it maintained a eet to protect
the coasts and shipping; it collected and disbursed taxes known as drets del
general or generalitats and oversaw the gathering of subsidies granted by
Corts to the crown. In addition it exercised civil and criminal jurisdiction, and
maintained an agent (diputat local) in the major towns. Fernandos conces-
sion had the effect of making this powerful body a watchdog over the conduct
of his own royal ofcials.
How much support the new king enjoyed in this honeymoon period was
demonstrated when in 1413 the count of Urgell, after much prevarication,
16 The Coming Storm
stumbled into rebellion; with rare dispatch and unanimity the Catalan estates
joined with Aragon and Valencia to denounce Jaume and offer aid to defeat
him. Some differences did later arisenotably from Fernandos decision to jet-
tison Benedict XIII in favour of the programme for church unity championed
by the Emperor Sigismundbut these were overshadowed by an unexpected
collapse in the kings health which led to his death in 1416 at the age of 37. He
left a 19-year-old heir, Alfonso, already well versed in affairs of state, and three
other sons to secure the succession.
The dynastic crisis had thus been surmounted with remarkably little appar-
ent damage to constitutional and social structures but the installation of a
Castilian line created a psychological barrier between monarch and subjects
that Fernandos sons did little to bridge. Alfonso had already married the king
of Castiles sister, and for several years was heir apparent to the Castilian throne.
His brothers retained their lands, titles, and ofces in Castile; and in 1418 he
was to betroth his sister to the Castilian king, Juan II. The junior branch of the
Trastmares was patently resolved to maintain and, if possible, to tighten its
hold upon its native land. Alfonso, moreover, showed little inclination to settle
down to a routine life as the monarch of his new kingdom; instead, in 1420 he
embarked upon the Italian adventures which were to embroil him in a lengthy
conquest of the kingdom of Naples and consequent absence from his Spanish
states that lasted from 1432 until his death in 1458. From 1442 the city of
Naples became the capital of an empire that was as much Italian as Spanish in
character. Those years which he did spend in Spain were chiey remarkable for
two armed incursions into Castile in support of his brothers ambitions in that
kingdom.10

10
A. Ryder, Alfonso the Magnanimous, King of Aragon, Naples, and Sicily, 13961458 (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1990). Id., The Kingdom of Naples under Alfonso the Magnanimous (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1976).
 3
A Widowed Land

A difference in political culture between the Trastmar dynasty and its subjects
was exacerbated, as noted earlier, by Alfonsos abandonment of his Spanish
domains. All the states resented his absenceAragon with most reason, for it
saw less of him than either Catalonia or Valenciabut it was in Catalonia that
resentment found its most sustained and vehement expression. Relations
between the principality and the new dynasty had got off to a bad start for rea-
sons already explained: the politics behind the Compromise of Caspe, urgellist
sentiment in Catalonia, and the strength of the pactist tradition there.
Fernandos subsequent sacrice of Benedict XIII to the cause of church unity
went down badly with the Catalan clergy,1 and he ended his life on a note of
acute conict with the governing oligarchy of Barcelona. That oligarchy
wielded its power by manipulating membership of the two bodies which ran
the city: the ve-man executive Council (Consell) and the deliberative Council
of a Hundred (Consell de Cent Jurats) which, save in exceptional circum-
stances, delegated its authority to a smaller commission known as the Council
of Thirty (Consell de Trenta).
The tone of Alfonsos relations with the Catalans was set in his rst
encounter with their Corts at the outset of his reign. Fired by visions of glory
in the only eld of action open to himthe Mediterraneanthe young
monarch hoped to enlist support in a campaign to wrest Corsica and Sardinia
denitively from the Genoese, secular opponents of Catalan mercantile and
territorial expansion.2 Instead he found an assembly determined to put domes-
tic affairs at the top of its agenda with demands for constitutional reform,
greater accountability in royal ofcials, stern measures against peasant unrest,
and the dismissal of Castilians in his service. Frustrated and furious, Alfonso
turned instead to the Corts of the Valencian kingdom which, by contrast,

1
See Ryder, Alfonso the Magnanimous, 3842.
2
For many aspects of this relationship see Atti del primo congresso storico LiguriaCatalogna
(Bordighera: Istituto Internazionale di Studi Liguri, 1974).
18 The Coming Storm
proved relatively amenable and nancially forthcoming in backing active pre-
parations for an expedition to Sardinia and Corsica.3 This forced the Catalans,
fearing they would be outanked by their burgeoning southern neighbour, to
offer a grudging aid (60,000 orins), but they failed again to make any progress
towards their goal of tight control over the crown and its agents. Their plans for
control of the royal council, independence of the judiciary, and subordination
of the royal prerogative to the constitutions of Catalonia Alfonso dismissed out
of hand; his father, he believed, had already conceded too much in that direc-
tion. When at last his eet sailed for Italian waters in May 1420 he left behind
a resentful principality convinced that its alien sovereign cared little for its
interests, and vexed by its inability to coerce him.
Catalan anxiety over the kings intentions sharpened markedly when news
came in 1421 that Alfonso had accepted an invitation to go to the rescue of
Queen Giovanna of Naples in return for adoption as her heir in that kingdom.
Ever since the Sicilian Vespers had brought the houses of Aragon and Anjou
into conict over southern Italy neither had nally accepted an outcome which
had established an Aragonese dynasty in Sicily and an Angevin on the throne
of the mainland kingdom. Early in the fteenth century the Crown of Aragon
appeared to be gaining the upper hand when it incorporated Sicily, and its rst
Trastmar monarch, Fernando, tried to marry his second son to Queen
Giovanna, last in the line of Angevins on the Neapolitan throne. Although that
project came to nothing, civil war within her kingdom and desperate intrigues
over the succession brought the dominant faction in her court to the convic-
tion that salvation lay in the arms of Aragon. Hence the appeal to Alfonso,
spiced with the prospect that he might soon add the kingdom of Naples to his
dominions; glory and empire beckoned irresistibly.
The Neapolitan enterprise, following hard upon the kings successful subju-
gation of Sardinia,4 presented Catalans with a dilemma. On the one hand it
fuelled fears that the principality would nd its weight still further diminished.
On the other there were those who scented opportunities: merchants who
hoped that they might extend to the Italian mainland the commercial advant-
age they had already gained from Catalan control of Sicily; nobles who relished
the prospect of exercising their warrior profession with good prospects of mater-
ial and honoric rewards. In 1422 the Corts responded skilfully to Alfonsos
initial success and request for aid, offering both money and a eet in the hope

3
They were rewarded with some important administrative reforms.
4
He had, however, failed to oust the Genoese from Corsica.
 A Widowed Land 19
of concluding the Neapolitan adventure swiftly and bringing home a beholden
ruler. At rst, perceiving the snare attached, he summarily rejected the offer of
ships, but later that year when Giovanna turned against him he was forced to
snatch at it on the conditions demanded.5 By the time the eet of twenty-eight
vessels carrying 4,000 men hove in sight of Naples in June 1423 Alfonso,
besieged in the fortress of Castelnuovo, was in desperate plight. Thanks to this
Catalan reinforcement he was able to wreak vengeance on Giovanna and the
Neapolitans by sacking the city, only to nd himself cornered by the accom-
panying ambassadors of Catalonia who insisted that he return to his neglected
natural kingdoms and his abandoned wife.6 For three months he held out,
hoping for a change of fortune, until he had no choice but to embark with the
eet on its homeward voyage. Having augmented its Neapolitan spoils by sack-
ing Marseille en route,7 it reached Barcelona on 9 December 1423. The city
received him with ceremonial pomp and a Te Deum which celebrated as much
a Catalan triumph as its rulers return. Catalonia had successfully exed its
nancial and maritime muscle.
So satised were the Catalans with the eets demonstration of their
maritime power that Alfonso had no difculty in winning support for the
immediate arming of another expedition designed to chastise the Genoese and
relieve the garrison left in Naples under the command of his brother Pedro, but
on condition that he would remain in Spain.8 A Catalan council led by the
count of Cardona supervised the preparation of twenty-four galleys and the
command Alfonso cannily entrusted to a Catalan idol, Frederico, count of
Luna.9 A protable slave-raid on the coast of North Africa and some successes

5
The shifting sands of Neapolitan and Italian politics had engulfed him when the principal players
became convinced that they could not manipulate him. See Ryder, Alfonso the Magnanimous, 96106.
6
Relations between Alfonso and his Castilian wife, Maria, were never cordial and became ever
more distant as it became probable that she could not bear a child. Catalonia, the abandoned coun-
try, took to its heart this abandoned queen who acted as regent during most of the long years of
Alfonsos absence.
7
After breaking with the king of Aragon, Giovanna adopted as her heir Louis III, duke of Anjou,
who had already entered the lists as Alfonsos rival for the Neapolitan throne. Louiss French home-
land, Provence, thereupon became a legitimate target for Catalan attacks.
8
Valencia laid down the same condition when it agreed to help nance the eet: ques deixara
danar altra volta a Napols, A. Santamara Arandez, Aportacin al estudio de la economia de Valencia
durante el siglo xv (Valencia: Diputacin Provincial de Valencia, 1966), 188.
9
Frederico was the illegitimate, and only, son of King Marti of Sicily who died in 1409 while his
father, Marti I, was still reigning in Aragon. Because the king of Aragon had no other sons, many
expected him to legitimize Frederico, although still a young child, in order that the Catalan line of
rulers might not die out. He failed to do so, but Frederico remained for many a symbol of past glories.
In reality an ineffectual, dissolute gure, he was lured into rebellion in 1429 and ended his life in inglo-
rious exile in Castile.
20 The Coming Storm
in Genoese waters, but under the leadership of Pedro, not Frederico, were the
sum of its achievements.
If his Iberian subjects thought that Alfonsos ambitions had been tamed,
they were very soon disabused. Frustrated in Italy, he immediately turned his
attention to his homeland, Castile. The hegemony which the junior branch
of the Trastmares (known as the Antequeras) had exercised in that kingdom
for two decades had been undermined by violent dissension between its prin-
cipal protagonists, Alfonsos brothers, Juan and Enrique. Their enemies led
by lvaro de Luna, favourite of the Castilian king, Juan II, had exploited the
breach to such good effect that the brothers became open enemies, Enrique
resorted to arms, and was in June 1423 thrown into captivity. The urgent need
to attend to so dire a situation had served as a pretext to cloak Alfonsos inglo-
rious exit from Naples. It was none the less a situation which he was resolved
to turn to some account. As early as April 1424 measures were set in train to
rally foreign allies and dissident Castilian nobles for an invasion of the neigh-
bouring kingdom. His avowed aim was to oust lvaro de Luna and his party
from court and government in order that the Antequeras might resume their
domination over king and state. Whether he contemplated going further and
taking the crown from his cousin, the hapless Juan II, can only be a matter of
speculation for he was always careful to deny any such intention. Without
doubt he had at least arrogated to himself the role of arbiter and guardian in
Castilian affairs with the implicit threat that he would intervene again when-
ever he saw t.10
This lurch from one entanglement in Naples to another in Castile aroused
deep mistrust in Barcelona, so when cities were invited in January 1425 to send
delegates to a gathering in Zaragoza in order to lend a show of popular enthu-
siasm for the enterprise, Barcelonas representatives from the outset took a rm
stand against it. Their opposition culminated in June 1425 with a public state-
ment in which they criticized the kings conduct and dissociated the Catalan
capital from any resort to force. Doubtless they were inuenced by fears that
hostilities with Castile would entail nancial burdens similar to those that had
wrought such havoc in the preceding century. More fundamentally they were
concerned that the root purpose was to re-establish and consolidate Antequera
domination over Castile, from where Alfonso might in future draw resources
that would free him of that dependence on subjects they had struggled so hard
10
Surez Fernndez, Los Trastmara y los Reyes Catlicos, ch. 5. Hillgarth, The Confusions of
Castile 141674, The Spanish kingdoms, ii. Ryder, Alfonso the Magnanimous, 12130. N. Round, The
Greatest Man Uncrowned: A Study of the Fall of Don Alvaro de Luna (London: Tamesis Books, 1986).
 A Widowed Land 21
to assert. While Barcelonas declaration did not deter the king from what
proved to be a triumphant venture into Castile, it did breed in him a lasting
hostility towards the citys oligarchy. Henceforth Valencia became his
favoured, regular residence; Barcelona he visited only for necessary business; in
June 1427, for example, he spent a bare ten days there meting out justice in the
wake of civil disturbances.
A similar but deeper confrontation erupted in 1429 when family interests
again led Alfonso to mount an invasion of Castile. On this occasion the kings
plans misred disastrously, leaving his dominions open to Castilian retali-
ation.11 His summons to the Catalan militia to aid in the defence of the
Aragonese frontier met with the legally valid objection that it could not be
called upon to operate outside the principality. The Catalan Corts, summoned
to Tortosa in November 142912 to offer aid and counsel in this crisis, infuriated
Alfonso by its proposal to send a fact-nding mission to Castile (fruitless,
shameful and damnable he dubbed it),13 and by its determination to extract
substantial political concessions in return for a modest subsidy. The only out-
come of the session, which ended in May 1430 amid mutual recriminations,
was a short-term loan of 30,000 orins. Although the Catalans were certainly
not to blame for the consequent loss of all Antequera estates in Castile, their
conduct had once again demonstrated how little they sympathized with those
concerns that lay at the heart of their sovereigns policy. Above all it was those
in the principality of Catalonia,14 he declared, who had wrecked his strategy.
Attempts to ne them for ignoring the calls to arms only sharpened the anta-
gonism; so too did Barcelonas refusal to sign as a guarantor the truce with
Castile until compelled to comply by a threat of military action.
Concerned at so dangerous a deterioration in their relationship with the
king, and by his evident preference for Valencia, the city fathers of Barcelona
subsequently sought to mend their fences with the most effective means at
their disposalmoney. By offering a subsidy for his living expenses they

11
Mistrust between the brothers Juan and Enrique had again allowed Alvaro de Luna to establish
himself at court and engineer a coalition of nobles keen to carve up the vast Antequera estates. Against
his better judgement, Alfonso found himself driven by Juans insistence that only force could save
those estates and family domination in Castile. In the event the Castilian nobility did not rise in sup-
port of the invasion which turned into a disastrous rout. From his triumphant foes he could secure
nothing but a truce which was renewed until it suited both parties to conclude a peace treaty in 1436.
12
The Tortosa assembly was a General Corts, a joint meeting of the Corts of Aragon, Valencia, and
Catalonia.
13
infructuosa, vergonyosa e damnosa. ACA 2692, 38.
14
los vassals del dit Senyor . . . no se son moguts ne mostrats en aquests affers ab aquella arder que
ell pensava, senyaladament los del principat de Cathalunya. ACA 2692, 94.
22 The Coming Storm
persuaded him to take up residence in the Catalan capital and summon
another session of the Corts to meet there in 1431. From that assembly Alfonso
hoped to extract funds for a new expedition to Italy;15 the bait he offered was
judicial reform, a cause dear to Catalan hearts. But it quickly became evident
that their concepts of reform differed radically: what the Corts proposed
Alfonso stigmatized as a new ordering and complete transformation of
justice.16 Months of bluff and haggling delivered more modest results to the
satisfaction of clergy and commons, and to the chagrin of the military order.
What angered the latter, many of whom had pledged their lands as security for
loans from urban nanciers, was a provision which favoured creditors seeking
to enforce payments due on annuities; debtors now faced the threat of coercion
by militia action and even life imprisonment. On the other hand, as land-
owners the aristocracy beneted from royal assent to a law which permitted a
lord to take possession of any remensa landholding abandoned for a year.
One other major source of dissension between king and Corts arose over the
appointment of the person who should represent the king in his absence.
Alfonso had intended to entrust all his Spanish dominions to his eldest brother
Juan, King of Navarre,17 but the Catalans made it quite clear that they had no
wish to be governed by someone whom they regarded, with some justication,
as obsessed by his Castilian ambitions. Impatient to be gone, the king surren-
dered to Catalan sensibilities and agreed to leave them their own viceroy in the
person of his wife, the amiable, neurasthenic Queen Maria, while Juan took
control of Aragon and Valencia. In return Alfonso collected an aid of 80,000
orins. On 23 May 1432, with a few gentle words,18 he took his leave of the
Corts; three days later the royal galley bore him away from Barcelona on the
Italian adventure from which he was never to return.
If his Spanish subjects expected any prot from their investment in this new
expedition, they were sorely disappointed. Alfonso took no advantage of a
recent Venetian naval victory over the Genoese to pursue his claims in Corsica,
nor could he prevent Louis of Anjou consolidating his position as heir
15
The experience of 1425 had convinced him that Castile offered no prospect of personal aggran-
dizement, whereas from Naples came a stream of inducements persuading him that he had good
prospects of possessing that kingdom. Plans for a second Italian expedition had been thrown out of
gear by the Castilian war of 1429. Ryder, Alfonso the Magnanimous, 14950, 1756.
16
Ne per via de reparacio ne reformacio, mas per via de nova ordinacio de justicia e de alteracio
total de aquella. Cortes, xvii. 88.
17
Juan had married Blanche of Navarre, heiress to the throne of Navarre, and on the death of her
father in 1425 became king of Navarreanother step in the family project to gather to itself the
crowns of Spain.
18
Ab dolces e breus paroles. Cortes, xvii. 249.
 A Widowed Land 23
apparent in Naples.19 Two brief forays against Tunisian territory ended inglo-
riously. Such a performance hardly justied the royal absence from Spain
where the truce with Castile remained extremely fragile and noble unrest fes-
tered in Catalonia. While Juan urged his brother to return to face the former
problem, Maria pleaded for his attention to the latter. People fear to travel
except in large groups because they are robbed, beaten, wounded and killed,
and the penalties are triing. If heavy punishment were imposed, everything
would be remedied and put to rights, for fear would bring order in many
things. Have pity on this land, she begged her husband.20 In reply Alfonso
afrmed his approval of stern justice towards such malefactors; these were mat-
ters for the queen and her council, not a reason for his return. Meanwhile she
should get rid of the troublesome Catalan Corts which he had earlier dubbed
useless and a waste of time,21 meaning that it would neither cooperate with the
government nor give it money. As for Castile, against the ill-concealed desire of
his brothers for another trial of strength, he persisted with tortuous negotia-
tions towards a prolonged truce and eventual peace. Much to the consternation
of his Spanish subjects he also displayed no inclination to leave Sicily, a vantage
point for the Neapolitan project, which had become the goal of all his ambi-
tion, and for possible further ventures against North Africa.22 Even the joint
persuasion of his brothers, who travelled to Sicily for that purpose, failed to lure
him away; instead, all three of them joined with him in the expedition designed
to seize the Neapolitan prize when both Queen Giovanna and her designated
heir, Louis of Anjou, died in 1435. In the power and riches of that kingdom,
Alfonso sought to persuade them, lay the key to triumph in Castile.
But instead of enlarging their freedom of action, the enterprise led to a dis-
aster which made them yet more dependent upon Spanish goodwill. Defeated
by a Genoese eet at the battle of Ponza (5 August 1435), Alfonso, Juan, and
Enrique along with dozens of Aragonese, Catalan, and Valencian nobles found
themselves prisoners of the duke of Milan, overlord of Genoa. Loss of their
king and many ships badly wounded the pride and condence of his Spanish

19
The promises of support held out to him by a number of Neapolitan barons bore no fruit, so he
made instead for Sicily to await developments in the chaotic scene of mainland politics.
20
. . . sino en gran companyha car son robats, batuts, nafrats e morts, e les punicions son poques.
E si un gran castich sich fahia, tot seria reparat e redreat, car la temor arreglaria moltes coses . . .
Senyor sie vostra merce haver pietat de aquesta terra. ACA, Reg. 3173, 7 (15 Dec. 1432).
21
. . . inutil e perdicio de temps. ACA 2688, 141 (15 Nov. 1433).
22
His attention was drawn in that direction by Sicilian claims to tribute from Tunis and by a num-
ber of crusading incentives (among them his fathers exploits in Granada and the Portuguese conquest
of Ceuta), not least a papal aid of 100,000 orins for crusade.
24 The Coming Storm
subjects; they faced moreover the prospect of paying enormous sums to ransom
the captives. It fell to Maria and her counsellors to rally them by summoning
a general Cortes in the Aragonese town of Monzon.23 Within the unusually
brief space of three months the Catalans agreed to a grant of 100,000 orins to
equip a eet destined to succour their monarch and, of course, fend off the
Genoese.24 Well before the Cortes reached that decision (March 1436) it had
become known that Alfonso and his brothers had been freed without ransom,
andfar less welcome to Iberian earsthat the duke of Milan was helping the
king to resume his Neapolitan campaign. Clearly no quick victory was in sight
because Isabelle of Anjou had arrived in Naples to uphold the Angevin cause
and her husband Ren, heir to his brother Louiss claim on the Neapolitan
throne, was rumoured to be on his way.25
Everything that happened in the year following the Ponza disaster had
demonstrated Alfonsos resolve to devote his person and all the resources he
could muster to the prodigious task of conquering southern Italy. It was not
an enterprise that commended itself to his Spanish subjects, least of all to the
Catalans whose discontent, to the intense irritation of their sovereign, soon
became noised abroad. He countered by appealing to their mercantile
instincts: The ancient enmity between Genoa and Aragon cannot possibly
ever end without the destruction of one party, and he had the enterprise
against Genoa no less at heart than that in the kingdom.26 The plea met with
little response. By the spring of 1437 it had become clear that the Catalan Corts
refused to continue nancing a eet in Italian waters, which had been the prin-
cipal reason for convoking it,27 except in return for the constitutional conces-
sions Alfonso had previously refused as tantamount to the total destruction
and overthrow of his royal supremacy.28 Equally uncompromising was a mes-
sage from the counsellors of Barcelona urging that he should return home

23
A general cortes brought together the assemblies of Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia in one place
in order to consider matters of common interest.
24
To put the Catalan aid into perspective it should be noted that the Cortes of Aragon later that
year voted a subsidy of 220,000 orins, the largest ever given by that kingdom.
25
At the time of Louiss death Ren was a prisoner of the duke of Burgundy; his wife, Isabelle,
accordingly assumed the leadership of the Angevin party in Naples.
26
. . . la inimicia antiga [sc. between Genoa and Aragon] no seria may possible poderse cessar
sense gran destruccio dela una part, and the enterprise against Genoa, lo dit Senyor no te menys a cor
que aquella del Reyalme. ACA, Reg. 2649, 21 (8 May 1436).
27
. . . pus de les Corts de Catalunya no se spera algun fruyt e bona conclusion de fer armada
contra Genova per la qual cosa era stada principal intencio del dit senyor de convocar aquelles . . .
ACA 2695, 67 (15 May 1437).
28
. . . sens total destruccio e abatiment dela sua preeminencia reyal . . . ACA 2695, 80 (3 Aug.
1437).
 A Widowed Land 25
quickly, for presiding over the Corts he would achieve greater and better things
than in pursuing that enterprise.29 So concerned did the king become at the
damage inicted on his reputation by such patent opposition that in August
1437 he sent his senior chaplain, the abbot of Santes Creus, to remonstrate
with the Corts and the counsellors of Barcelona. Reports of dissension had, he
contended, encouraged the Genoese in their onslaught on Catalan shipping
and commerce with dire consequences for the principality. Playing further on
the theme of self-interest, he suggested that Barcelona send ships to the Levant
in order to intercept Genoese merchantmen which sailed those waters without
the protection given them in the western Mediterranean.30 Earlier he had rst
mooted the idea that the Catalans should be encouraged to build very large
vessels, both because it would be commercially advantageous to them in com-
peting with the Genoese, and because he needed such ships to confront his
enemies.31 Months later he was still having to appeal to Catalan pride and
pockets against their disastrous inclination.32 Had their forebears been so
unforthcoming, Majorca, Sardinia, and Sicily would never have been won.
Genoa, though inferior in power and population, did not hesitate to bear the
cost of far-off conquest, even in the Orient. Already his subjects were reaping
the fruits of his labour in the newly won city of Gaeta, an exceptional port,
famed throughout Italy, close to Rome and its patrimony, and to many other
regions; a main centre for trade in Italy.33 As for the whole kingdom, they
should think how much merchandise comes from there, how much might be
opened to those kingdoms (sc. in Spain),34 once it was in his hands.
All to no avail; the Catalans were determined to voice their ill-concealed
misgivings and Alfonso met with scant success in his efforts to head them off
by insisting that if they wished to send an embassy to him it must make a pub-
lic statement supporting his enterprise whatever they might say privately.
Maria was accordingly instructed to dissolve the Corts and ensure that it sent
no delegation to the king, unless it brought some money. Heedless of such
admonitions and angered by the dismissal of the Corts, in July 1438 Barcelona
dispatched a mission which, to the kings face, damned his Italian ambition as

29
. . . degues repatriar prest que president en les dites Corts faria maiors e millors coses que pro-
seguint la dita empresa . . . ACA 2695, 110 (May 1437).
30 31
ACA 2695, 87 (4 Aug. 1437). ACA 2695, 40 (4 Jan. 1437).
32
sinistre intencio . . . ACA 2695, 111 (n.d. Nov. 1437).
33
. . . notable port singular e famos en tota Italia, vesi a Roma e a son patrimoni e a moltes parts
altres e scala principal en Italia de mercaderia. Ibid.
34
. . . deven pensar quanta mercaderia hix de aquell, quanta sen desempatxa de sos regnes dalli . . .
Ibid.
26 The Coming Storm
most elusive, full of snares, warning that it must end in disaster and dishonour
should he not abandon it forthwith.35
Catalan disquiet over the Italian adventure affected clerics as well as laymen.
Despite his fathers repudiation of Benedict XIII, Alfonso had kept the Schism
alive until 1429 solely in the interest of his Neapolitan ambition. A brief rap-
prochement with Rome brought him various benets, including large sub-
sidies paid by the clergy of his Spanish states,36 but not the investiture of the
Neapolitan kingdom which was technically a papal ef. He thereupon turned
to schism in another form by adhering to the Council of Basle which was
locked in confrontation with Pope Eugenius IV.37 Catalan prelates and abbots,
with those from Aragon and Valencia, were coerced to attend the council; rela-
tions with Rome were severed and sanctions imposed upon anyone who chal-
lenged the breach. Doubts raised, even within the queens council, Alfonso
brushed aside: They should not be unaware that his royal forebears and he
himself on occasion, in matters touching the reformation, good and benet
of the universal church, have been used to exercise authority over the clergy, as
by law they are justly entitled to do; and in such cases they are not bound to
observe constitutions and privileges.38 Any who questioned that authority
were to be sacked from the council. In the face of such sentiments the opinion
gained ground that the kings real intention was to secure a free hand over
church appointments and pocket ecclesiastical revenues. There arose a great
muttering that this was a new breach through which to impoverish the land
and to extract from it that little money which is now left. Subjects already dis-
contented with royal policy in the temporal sphere should not, the queen
warned her husband, be offended over matters spiritual.39

35
. . . molt esquivada, que s ple de molts laos . . . J. M. Madurell Marimn, Mensajeros
barceloneses en la corte de Npoles de Alfonso V de Aragn, 14351458 (Barcelona: Consejo Superior de
Investigaciones Cientcas, 1963), 192.
36
W. Kchler, Die nanzen der Krone Aragon whrend des 15 Jahrhunderts (Alfons V und Johann
II.) (Mnster: Spanische Forschungen der Grresgesellschaft, 1983); Catalan trans., Les nances de la
Corona dArag al segle xv (Valencia: Edicions Alfons el Magnnim, 1997), ch. 4.
37
A. Black, Council and Commune: The Conciliar Movement and the Council of Basle (London:
Burns & Oates, 1979).
38
No deven ignorar com los reys sos predecessors e ell en son temps en les coses que toquen refor-
macio, be e utilitat dela sglesia universal indistinctament han acostumat segons per dret justament
poden fer exercir potestat en lo clero, ne en tal cas es subject a servar constitucions o furs. ACA 2695,
109 (n.d. Nov. 1437).
39
. . . un gran murmurament e dien les gents que aquest es novell forat pera dapauperar tot lo
regne e traure aquella poca moneda que vuy hic resta. . . . deve considerar sa longa absencia e no donar
occasio a sos subdits e vassalls que ab raho se puscen descontentar de sa senyoria ja que en lo temporal
son massa descontents almenys non sien en lo spiritual. ACA 2695, 141 (20 June 1440).
 A Widowed Land 27
Friends and foe alike rightly saw the fall of the city of Naples in June 1442 as
a dening moment in the protracted war; already Alfonso had the greater part
of the kingdom in his hands and could expect the remainder to submit without
serious resistance. Anticipation of his return to Spain accordingly sprang to life
anew, fostered in part by his own assurances. The more wary might, however,
have noted two conditions signalled as early as August 1442 for the benet of
Barcelona: the rst was the need to secure the Neapolitan kingdom in his
absence; the second stressed his obligation to settle huge debts accumulated
in Italy. What could not be made common knowledge was his fear of being
dragged by his brothers into the maelstrom of Castiles civil wars. And what he
could not, at that moment, have foreseen was the well-nigh insoluble problem
of extricating himself from the entanglements of Italian war and diplomacy.
Together these constraints, reinforced by an unmistakable appreciation of
Italian culture, were to keep him away from Spain for the remainder of his life.
Aragon, Catalonia, Valencia, Majorca all trembled under the seismic shift
of central authority from Spain to Italy. Very quickly they understood that
the revenues regularly available to Alfonso from the kingdom of Naples far
exceeded the sums he could with difculty extract from his western realms.
Subsequent development of their rulers appetite for further acquisitions in
Italy, eastwards to the Balkans, the Levant, and even Hungary, only strength-
ened convictions that Antequera imperialism was relegating its Spanish lands
to a subsidiary role. Injured pride and fear of an uncertain future undoubtedly
played a part in unremitting efforts by all these states to reverse this shift by
bringing back the king. His repeated procrastinations opened a gulf between
the dynasty and subjects, a gulf which Alfonsos presumptive heir Juan, inex-
tricably linked with Castilian ambitions, could not bridge.
Nowhere was the alienation more marked than among the Catalans who
found their former paramountcy facing an additional menace nearer at home
from the rising prosperity of Valencia. A buoyant economy together with
shrewd political dealing enabled the southern kingdom to reap great mercan-
tile advantage from the conquest of Naples and to secure a disproportionate
share of ofces in the court and administration which Alfonso established in
his new capital. His ostentatious preference for Valencia exhibited in earlier
years was thus continued from afar; hence the advice to Maria in 1442 that she
should hold the Corts of Valencia before those of Catalonia because they were
likelier to reach a speedy and satisfactory conclusion.
Barcelona had voiced its disquiet over a perceived discrimination against its
citizens in royal appointments as early as 1437. In that city it is said that he
28 The Coming Storm
does not love the people of Barcelona, and that this is shown by the fact that in
his household its citizens enjoy no ofces or favour. To which Alfonso replied:
This is not from any fault on his part because he is not accustomed to make
any distinction of nationality, but whoever is best disposed to serve him, that
person he has preferred, whether he be Aragonese, Catalan or Valencian, or
even a foreigner. But they themselves have avoided his service, and he doesnt
know why. Let them come forward and they would nd favour and employ-
ment.40 The complaint somewhat misrepresented the factsseveral members
of the court and royal bureaucracy, including the powerful chief secretary,
Arnau Fonolleda, were sons of Barcelonabut Valencians did hold posts
disproportionate to their number.41 More signicantly, it voiced a feeling of
alienation among the upper urban class of Catalonia which saw advancement
heaped upon its Valencian rivals.
The remaining years of Alfonsos reign saw growing strain between the
crown and its Catalan subjects. In 1442 he instructed his treasurer, Matteu
Pujades, to ensure that the Catalans did not use rumours of a French invasion
to lay hands on the funds of the Generalitat in order to distribute them in the
city of Barcelona and make things better there.42 Barcelonas counsellors, so
the king complained to the citys envoy in 1443, had never given him anything
but trouble.43 Undeterred, the city continued to solicit his return, dispatching
two leading citizens to Naples in 1444 for that purpose. They soon perceived that,
despite fair words, he had no intention of quitting Italy, and that, whatever
praises he might lavish on Barcelona in public, privately he regarded its citizens
as obstructive skinints. He marvelled much at that city which, however great
his need was seen to be, had never been willing to come to his aid with a penny,
or even a halfpenny, but had always wanted to bargain and haggle with him.44

40
. . . en aquella ciudat se diria que no amava los de barchinona, e demostrasse por esto que en su
casa no han havido lugar, ofcios ni favour los ciudadanos de aquella . . . aquesto no ha sido culpa
suya, por quanto no ha acostumbrado fazer specialidat de naciones mas quien millor se ha dispuesto a
servirlo, aquell ha avanado asi de aragoneses, cathalanes como valencianos, e encara estrangeros. Mas
que ellos mesmos se son lunyados de su servicio, e no sabe porque. ACA 2695, 118 (22 Dec. 1437).
41
For an analysis of the personnel of the royal court and administration see Ryder, Kingdom of
Naples. Also E. and J. M. Cruselles, Valencianos en la corte napolitana de Alfonso el Magnnimo,
XVI CHCA (Naples: Comune di Napoli, 2000), i. 87598.
42
. . . per donar occasion de distribuir aquelles en la ciutat de Barcelona e per ferne millor la condi-
cio de aquella . . . ACA 2652 (13 Sept. 1442).
43
. . . clamantse al acustumat dels honorables consellers de aquexa ciutat, que nuncha li fan sino
enuigs. Madurell Marimn, Mensajeros, 229 (15 May 1443).
44
E ques meravella molt de aquexa ciutat, qui nunque per gran necessitate en que lhaie vist lo
havie volgut soccorrer de un diner, ne de malla, ans tostemps havie volgut mercadeiar e primeiar ab
ell. Ibid. 261 (11 June 1444).
 A Widowed Land 29
Joan Margarit, bishop of Elna, a cleric noted for his loyalty to the crown,
eloquently voiced the Catalan point of view when he addressed the Corts in
Barcelona on 6 October 1454:
This is Catalonia, that once fortunate, glorious and most faithful nation which in the
past was feared by land and by sea; that which with its loyal and valiant sword has
spread the empire and lordship of the house of Aragon; that conqueror of the Balearic
isles, of the kingdoms of Mallorca and Valencia, expelling the enemies of the Christian
faith; that Catalonia which has conquered those great Italian islands, Sicily and
Sardinia . . . that Catalonia which has put to ight and brought to total perdition
diverse neighbouring kings of France, Spain and others . . . Now it is seen totally
ruined and lost through the absence of its glorious prince and lord, the lord king.
Behold it bereft of all strength, honour and ecclesiastical jurisdiction; powerful barons
and knights are ruined; cities and towns, corrupting the commonweal, are torn apart;
knights steeds have become mules; widows, orphans and children seek vainly for con-
solation; corsairs and pirates plunder the ports and roam through all the seas. Thus the
Catalan nation lies as if she were a widow, and with the prophet Jeremiah weeps for her
desolation and awaits someone to console her.45

After much deliberation this same Corts offered Alfonso an enormous sum
400,000 orinscollectable only after the errant monarch had once again set
foot on Catalan soil. Time and again he contrived to extend the deadline
attached to this offer, always holding out the promise that he would soon
embark. In December 1457, only six months before his death, Barcelonas
envoy in Naples could still report, without question it is believed the king will
be there [sc. in Catalonia] this coming spring. Pray God it may be so.46

45
R. Albert and J. Gassiot (eds.), Parlaments a les Corts Catalanes (Barcelona: Editorial Barcino,
1928), 20910. These words were directed to the kings brother, Juan, acting as his locumtenens at
the opening session of the Corts which had been summoned to grant an aid to nance the kings
return.
46
. . . se creu indubitadament lo senyor rey ser aquesta primavera aqui. Placie a Dus que axi sia.
Madurell Marimn, Mensajeros, 612 (12 Dec. 1457). The writer, Pere Boquet, did, however, make
it clear that all depended on a successful outcome of the kings campaign to install a friendly regime
in Genoa. To others Alfonso was at the same time proclaiming his intention to lead a crusade against
the Turks.
 4
A Clamorous Peasantry

The dominant class in town and country had agitated for Alfonsos return in
order that they might reassert their inuence over the crown; the lower orders
had anticipated the appearance of a champion in their struggles with that same
dominant class. Prominent among the latter was a peasantry chang under the
irksome burdens imposed by lay and clerical landlords. Most resented were the
mals usos borne by peasants known as remensas. Although not subject to per-
sonal servitude, these remensa peasants who numbered between 15,000 and
20,000 and who were found mainly in northern Catalonia, were tied to the
land and subjected by their lords to a host of exactions, restrictions, and obli-
gations known as the mals usos which had been introduced by the Catalan
Corts in 1283 to check a ight into the towns.1 The freer, and more prosperous,
majority of peasants were seeking personal freedomthe right to move when
and where they choseand an end to a seigneurial drive to reclaim abandoned
farms (masos morts) and turn the peasants living there into short-term tenants.
In poorer areas remensas had raised a demand for possession of the land, and
hence the abolition of their annual rents (cens). All found cause for grievance in
the judicial powers that a cash-strapped monarchy had alienated to landlords
over a long period, and which effectively denied them access to royal justice.
Any amelioration of their lot must come, they were convinced, not from the
institutions of Catalonia, entirely dominated by their adversaries, but from
a crown which found itself often at odds with those same institutions. An
alliance between crown and remensas had rst become apparent in 1402 when
the queen of Aragon wrote letters to Pope Benedict XIII in which she described
the peasant plight as the worst, most oppressive and mean state and condition
suffered in this world by men oppressed by the yoke of servitude and a disgrace

1
Freedman, Origins of Peasant Servitude, chs. 4 and 5, and p. 199 for a discussion of the mals usos
and attitudes to them in the 15th cent.
 A Clamorous Peasantry 31
to the Catalan nation.2 Because a majority of remensas lived on ecclesiastical
estates, she hoped, with papal backing, to persuade the clergy to commute the
mals usos into a xed rent; lay proprietors would then necessarily have to
follow suit. In return each remensa household would offer the crown four
orinssome 60,00080,000 orins in total. (Any privilege granted by the
crown came, it must be remembered, with a price-tag attached.) However, the
clergy proving recalcitrant, the project progressed no further.
Forty years later the peasant question was brought back to life as the result of
a government drive to boost its revenue by recovering alienated estates and
jurisdiction.3 Lacking the funds needed for that purpose, the crown had to rely
upon the readiness of those living in such places to pay the price of redemption,
a burden that most were willing to bear in order to escape feudal lordship.
Their masters proved unsurprisingly hostile and endeavoured to forbid or
obstruct moves to organize collective action towards that end. In response,
royal ofcials in Catalonia received an instruction that those living in places
sold or pledged by the crown were to be permitted to hold meetings for the
purpose of restoring their royal desmesne status on condition that such gather-
ings numbered no more than ten persons.4 Thus came into being a new phe-
nomenon of peasant syndicates which gave formal and permanent status to
their assemblies. There followed swiftly, in January 1445, a declaration that
jurisdiction over the persons and property of all knights and gentlemen
belonged to the king who therefore claimed cognizance of any action brought
against them by any party:5 this in order to forestall the claim that the crown
had no standing in a dispute between lords and peasants. Most lords persisted
nonetheless in maintaining that claim, among them Ramon de Sanminato
who, in November 1446, was charged with trying to force the population
of Santiga to abandon the syndicate formed to defend their rights. Such
behaviour, together with other acts of oppression, was construed as a usurpa-
tion of royal jurisdiction and hence an offence of high treason.6 The abbot of
Montserrat in 1449 adopted a more conciliatory approach by asking the queen

2
. . . el estado y condicin peores, ms opresivos y viles que sufren en el mundo hombres oprim-
idos por el yugo de la servidumbre . . . infamia de la nacin catalana. J. Vicens Vives, Histria de los
remensas (en el siglo xv), new edn. (Barcelona: Ediciones Vicens-Vives, 1978), 467.
3
The crown had evinced some sympathy for remensa aspirations during the 1420s. For this and
Queen Marias part in the subsequent controversy over redemption see T. Earenght, The political
dynamic between the Aragonese monarchy and the Consell de Cent of Barcelona during the lieut-
enancy of Maria of Castile (14401458), XVII CHCA (Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, 2003),
iii. 24564.
4 5 6
ACA 3193, 12 (23 Dec. 1444). Ibid. 25. ACA 3197, 45 (16 Nov. 1446).
32 The Coming Storm
to arbitrate between him and his vassals in Olesa. It was however thought
necessary to give him a warning: take care not to mistreat the people for you
will thereby gain nothing but reproach.7
Bolstered by encouragement from on high, the movement for redemption
swiftly gained momentum.8 In February 1447 the Generalitat noted a
widespread gathering of remensa syndicates in Empord, a region dominated
by the see of Girona whose bishop ranked among the most obdurate enemies
of the remensa cause.9 That same year appeared in their midst Pere de Besal,
Conservator of the Royal Patrimony, charged by Alfonso with verifying all
titles to possession of royal desmesne and arranging their redemption.10 His
earlier activities in the kingdom of Valencia had given the landowners of
Catalonia ample warning of what to expect. Without delay the Corts, acting
as their mouthpiece, dispatched an envoy to Naples bearing a denunciation
of this outrageous man, a great inciter of unrest, a detestable scoundrel,11
together with demands for his replacement by someone who would act in
accordance with the laws of the land (that is to say, in their interest), and the
revocation of the permission granted for meetings of their underlings. They
protested too against abuses by the sagramentals, armed companies of peas-
ants and artisans created by the monarchy in the previous century to counter
the violence of nobles; companies which occasionally allowed the lower classes
to vent their feelings in attacks on the property of nobles and bourgeoisie. To
all of these concerns Alfonso returned non-committal answers, concerns ren-
dered still more ineffectual by his decision in May 1448 to dissolve the Corts
which had voiced them. Meanwhile the formation of syndicates had so far
advanced that on 2 June 1448 four representatives, speaking for all communi-
ties seeking redemption, were able to offer Queen Maria 64,000 orins in
return for royal backing for their cause.
Alfonsos attitude in these matters was governed partly by antipathy towards
the Catalan Corts, partly by a need for money to nance his Italian ambitions,

7
guardauvos de maltractar lu gent car vos noy guanyarieu res sino carrech. ACA 3201, 133
(20 Feb. 1449).
8
Sobrequs i Vidal (La guerra civil, i. 42) gives a random list of nineteen places in northern
Catalonia which between 1445 and 1453 lodged formal demands for redemption.
9
Vicens Vives, Histria de los remensas, 50.
10
For the ofce of Conservator General and de Besalu see Ryder, Kingdom of Naples, 20610, and
C. Batlle, Colaboradores catalanes de Alfonso el Magnnimo en Npoles, IX CHCA (Naples: Societ
Napoletana di Storia Patria, 1978), ii. 73.
11
home scandals, gran inventor de novitats, scelerat, detestable . . . S. Sobreques i Vidal,
Poltica remensa de Alfonso el Magnnimo en los ltimos aos de su reinado (14471458), Anales
del Instituto de Estudios Gerundenses (1960), 8.
 A Clamorous Peasantry 33
and perhaps above all by the advice received from two trusted servants, Besal
and Galceran de Requesens. The latter had already embarked on a career which
was to have a profound inuence in the stormy course of Catalan history. The
Requesens, a noble family from Tarragona, began their spectacular ascent
in royal service when Galcerans father ranged himself with the Trastmar
faction during the interregnum and was subsequently rewarded with the ofce
of governor-general in Catalonia.12 Galceran followed him at an early age, rst
as batlle general of the principality, a post which swiftly brought him into
conict with the counsellors of Barcelona over their respective jurisdictions.
That rst contest culminated with the city authorities throwing him into
prison, and thus sealing an antagonism which was to breed untold calamities.
With the crown, on the contrary, his credit remained unshaken, as evidenced
by his subsequent appointment as governor of Minorca where he curbed the
power of municipal factions by introducing a system of election by lot. At the
same time he and his brother Bernat advanced further in Alfonsos favour by
serving him with their galleys in the Neapolitan campaign.13 On its conclu-
sion, Galceran returned in triumph to Catalonia as its governor-general. The
enemies of this malefactor strove mightily to curb his authority, and with
some success on the part of Barcelona, for its envoys obtained in 1444 from
a cash-strapped king a privilege which allowed its counsellors to summon
the governor-general to the city and send him packing at their pleasure. Over
the next few years they made full use of this power to harass and humiliate
Requesens. On the other hand, Requesens succeeded in persuading the king to
revoke an earlier privilege that subjected any exercise of the governor-generals
civil and criminal jurisdiction within the city and its vicariate to the participa-
tion and approval of the counsellors. Also, hostility to the royal ofcial was far
from universal: large numbers of inhabitants, probably a majority outside the
ranks of the honoured citizens, looked to Requesens as an ally in their strug-
gle to break the monopoly of power exercised by that small oligarchy in the
government of Barcelona.
Besal had returned to Italy from Spain in the summer of 1447 well-briefed
on the attitudes of the parties involved in the campaign to recover alienated
crown prerogatives. Requesens sailed from Barcelona to join the king in March
1448, in time to gain further royal favour by playing a prominent part in an
abortive siege of Piombino, and further hardened in his antagonism to the
12
For the Requesens family, see Sobrequs i Vidal, Entorn del llinatge dels Requesens, in idem,
Societat i estructura poltica de la Girona medieval (Barcelona: Curial, 1975).
13
Galceran was one of the few to escape capture in the disaster at Ponza.
34 The Coming Storm
Barcelona oligarchy by its last-minute attempt to prohibit his departure.14
There can be little doubt that he had much to do with the royal decision to dis-
solve the Corts, and with the directive, issued on 1 July 1448, which authorized
gatherings of remensa peasants no more than fty in number and in the pres-
ence of a royal ofcial for the purpose of electing syndics who would collect the
sum of 100,000 orins now offered to the crown as the price of redemption
from the mals usos. Because Alfonso desperately needed the money to pay for
supplies in his war against Florence, the process was to be pushed ahead with
all speed.15 Pray see to the speedy dispatch of the affairs of the remensas, he
wrote to Maria in September 1448, so that they may obtain due execution of
the provisions and letters which they have obtained from us permitting them
to form a syndicate, after the legalisation of which they are to pay Bertran
Crexells the above-mentioned sum.16 On 14 October 1448 Maria replied that
the remensas had duly signed an undertaking to pay Crexells 36,000 orins
one month after their syndicate had been formed.17 Organized gatherings of
peasants began in the autumn in the teeth of opposition and dire warnings
from the Diputaci del General and the municipal council of Barcelona voiced
directly but fruitlessly both to Maria and Alfonso.18 Individuals, such as the
bishop of Girona, threatened their tenants with penal consequences. However,
by January 1449 organization of the remensas had advanced to the stage where
the queen was able to x the payment due from each household at 3 orins, to
be raised by a levy of one-twelfth on annual produce. On 27 February 1449 the
king wrote to Jofre dOrtigues and other jurists engaged in the remensa process
to assure them of his support, telling them to press ahead taking no heed of any
protests, demands or menaces whatsoever . . . on the part of the diputats of
Catalonia.19 To his wife he maintained that no one could claim to suffer by the

14
Madurell Marimn, Mensajeros, 283. The reason for his journey was to defend himself against
charges, probably trumped up by his enemies, that he had received more than his approved salary and
that he had engaged in piracy. ACA 2656, 94 (15 Jan. 1448). For Alfonsos Tuscan campaign which
culminated in an abortive siege of Piombino see Ryder, Alfonso the Magnanimous, 27880.
15
By dissolving the Corts Alfonso had forfeited the 50,000 orins it had promised for the hire of a
thousand crossbowmen whom he wanted for his Tuscan campaign.
16
Vullats donar orde e manera e tota expedicio als afers dels dits homens de rehemena que
obtinguen la deguda execucio deles provisions e letres que de nos han obtengudes per que puxen fer lo
sindicat aprs la ferma del qual han a pagar al dit bertran crexells la dessusdita quantitat. ACA 2657, 75
(7 Sept. 1448). The sum in question (25,495 ducats) was owed to Crexells, a merchant of Perpignan.
17
ACA 3203, 11 (14 Oct. 1448).
18
Sobrequs i Vidal, La guerra civil, i. 20. The ultimate goal of the peasants, they predicted, was to
take control of the Corts on the grounds that they constituted the majority of the population.
19
. . . no curant de qualsevol protestes o requestes ne menaces per part dels diputats de
Cathalunya. ACA 2655, 53 (27 Feb. 1449).
 A Clamorous Peasantry 35
administration of justice to the remensas. This attempt by the diputats to
block this business comes from nothing but the private interest of some of
them who have held and still hold peasants in the servitude of the mals usos.20
Further trouble over the issue might be expected from the Catalan Corts which
the queen-regent had reconvoked in January 1449: let it be held in abeyance,
he instructed, until the remensas had delivered at least 36,000 orins, the sum
needed to meet Crexellss bill of exchange.21 A letter addressed at the same time
to the counsellors of Barcelona declared that kingship and lordship existed to
administer justice, so that the poor may be treated equally with the rich, the
lowly with the great.22
Thus far had Alfonso held rm in the face of a storm of protest and warnings
that his policy towards the remensas would unleash a revolutionary spirit
among the Catalan peasantry, even a diabolical plot to betray the principality
to the French. He proved a little less steadfast against another tactic deployed
by the diputats: the suggestion of a nancial deal. When rst it was put to him,
in February 1449, he had indignantly rejected the idea as one which went clean
against our interest and honour, adding however the qualication unless it
becomes plainly apparent that the peasants are guilty of a grave default.23
Queen Maria likewise indignantly repudiated rumours that she was party to
such proposals, rumours put about, she asserted, in order to undermine peas-
ant condence.24 But nancial exigency and social justice did not necessarily go
in harness. Nor did every ofcial share the views of Requesens, Besal and Joan
de Montbui, who was acting as governor-general of Catalonia in Requesenss
absence. Perot Mercader, the treasurer-general, whose responsibility it was to
gather the remensa monies, displayed far more interest in a tidy transaction
that would enable him promptly to discharge Crexellss bill. After meeting the
diputats in Perpignan, Crexellss home town, he forwarded to the king on 13
March 1449 their offer to furnish 36,000 orins without delay in return for a
halt to the remensa process.25 Although complaining of Mercaders lack of zeal
in pursuing the remensa collection, and suspecting that he wanted to strike a
20
Et aquesta empresa dels dits diputats de empatxar aquests negocis no es alter que lo propri
interes que alguns dells hi han que alguns dels dits pagesos han detenguts e detenen en la dita servitut
dels mals usos. ACA 2655, 54 (1 Mar. 1449).
21
In the event, the opening was delayed for more than a year, until Mar. 1450.
22
. . . que aixi egualment sie tractat lo pobre com lo rich e lo chich com lo gran. Vicens Vives,
Histria de los remensas, 54.
23
Nons par en ao dejau per res condescendre com no se pusca ne deia fer per lo interes e honor
nostre . . . sens que constas notoriament los dits pageses esser en gran culpa e defecte. To the
Treasurer-General, ACA 2719, 88 (25 Feb. 1449).
24 25
ACA 3203, 45 (26 Feb. 1449). ACA 2719, 90 (13 Mar. 1449).
36 The Coming Storm
bargain with the diputats, Alfonso did authorize him to treat with them if the
peasants failed to produce the funds in time to meet the bill.26 Maria openly
denounced Mercader to her husband as one of the fomenters of opposition
who have put this principality in so great a confusion and turbulence as was
never seen in past generations: may God forgive them.27
In the event neither threats nor blandishments deterred the champions of
reform; the acting governor-general laid an embargo on the estates of his prin-
cipal antagonists; the queen took similar action against the bishop of Girona,
placing his peasantry under royal protection and warning the civic authorities
of Girona not to heed his invitation to join with the clergy in opposition to the
crown; an investigation was ordered into the archbishop of Tarragonas claim
that there were no remensas in his diocese; the viscount of Illa and Canet saw
his jurisdiction sequestered for refusing to obey a royal order to grant safecon-
ducts to vassals who claimed to be remensas.28 Pressure had also to be exerted
on the peasants and collectors to full their side of the bargain.
With the return of Requesens in April 1449 the tide turned still more
strongly against the opponents of reform. He came armed with powers to
sequestrate the jurisdiction of anyone who refused to give assurances against
maltreatment to the remensas, in effect imposing an interim moratorium on
the mals usos. Sequestration was also threatened against those who, having
given the assurance, failed to have their peasants pay the 3 orin levy. Finally,
the same fate awaited any lord proved to have gone into hiding to avoid the
summons.29 With Requesens came letters of re from the king ordering col-
lection of the levy to go ahead with great speed and vigour, notwithstanding
any offers whatsoever made to his majesty by diputats or others, but rather,
putting them aside, let this matter be pursued with much zeal and devotion as
the dearest there is.30 Before that display of resolution the diputats had already
begun to retreat; on 7 May 1449 they had instructed their procurator in the
county of Empuries to permit the remensa tax to go ahead in the lands of the
Diputaci.31 The viscount of Illa and Canet too gave way. But in other quarters
the struggle continued: still the counsellors of Barcelona resisted the levy, paid

26
ACA 2719, 89 (10 Apr. 1449).
27
. . . han posat aquest Principat en gran bullicio et turbacio, en que may los antichs ho veren;
Deu los ho perdo (30 Apr. 1449). Vicens Vives, Histria de los remensas, 53.
28 29
ACA 3203, 37 (8 Feb. 1449). ACA 3203, 63 (16 Apr. 1449).
30
. . . ab gran for e calor, no obstants qualsevol offertes fets a sa magestat per diputats ne altres,
ans aconortantse de aquelles, abra aquest fet ab tanta gelosia e amor com la pus cara cosa que haia.
ACA 3203, 97 (7 June 1449).
31
The county had passed into the hands of the Diputaci as security for a loan to the crown.
 A Clamorous Peasantry 37
lawyers handsome sums to defend their cause, and waged a campaign of intim-
idation against those working for the crown with the remensas; other lords, lay
and clerical, obstructed as much as they were able. Some peasants too, the very
poor and those with more radical ideas, voiced opposition to paying for aboli-
tion of the mals usos; some, like those on the count of Cardonas estates, dis-
puted their remensa status and hence their obligation to contribute to the levy.
To quell that resistance Requesens embarked on a progress through Catalonia
supervising collection either in collaboration with the remensa syndics, or on
his own initiative when necessary, with the result that by the end of 1449
18,000 remensa households out of an estimated 20,000 had been registered in
the syndicate.
The next step was for that syndicate to bring a suit in the royal court against
those exercising the mals usos on the grounds that they were illegal. This it did
in December 1449. Treating the matter as a civil suit, the court on 21 January
1450 summoned the lords of the remensas to answer the plea. Now the lords,
like the remensas, had to come together to defend their case. An issue of fun-
damental concern to them both had brought an oligarchy of landowners into
open conict with a substantial body of peasants. Why had the crown favoured
the peasant cause? Alfonso liked to present the issue as one of conscience and
justice, but it is hardly possible to disentangle it from his hardened antipathy
to the ruling class of Catalonia and the institutions which that class had
frequently manipulated to frustrate him. Ensconced in the kingdom of Naples,
he could afford to be more robust in his dealings with the Catalan oligarchy;
those whom he trusted to advise him on Catalan affairs certainly desired to
strengthen the crown and its servants against their declared personal enemies.
Bernat Joan de Cabrera, viscount of Cabrera and count of Mdica, took it
upon himself to organize the lords; they adopted a tactic of refusing to
acknowledge the existence of the remensa plea, and hence returned no answer
to the summons. To bolster their position they denied that the crown had any
judicial standing in the question and also demanded that their remensa vassals
acknowledge their obligations. Barcelona based its deance on a declaration
(5 February 1450) that the crowns action violated the Constitutions of
Catalonia. The Corts, inaugurated in Perpignan in March 1450, reiterated the
objections raised by its predecessor and subsequently by the diputats; it went
on to lay the blame for any trouble that might ensue upon the queens advisers.
In August it sent ambassadors to Naples in an effort to have the remensa pro-
cess halted; others from Barcelona had preceded them in June to demand inter
alia restoration of the citys control over Terrassa, Sabadell, and Montcada,
38 The Coming Storm
suspended by the governor Requesens in retaliation for its obstruction of the
remensa proceedings.
Warned in advance by the queen that these delegations were on their way,
Alfonso had assured her that he would not budge from his determination to do
justice, and that he approved her reply to the protest from the Corts, although,
in his opinion, it merited something harsher . . . for a repudiation of our court
and judgement by our vassals ought not to be well received. His council had
agreed that the king or his locumtenens was the proper judge in the remensa
case; he therefore ordered Maria to issue a declaration in that sense and then
proceed to judgement.32 When the Corts envoys reached Italy their request for
a stay in proceedings met with a blank refusal; Alfonso replied that he would
not do it, because it would be an unjust provision and contrary to the interest
of one party, for he could not deny justice.33 Barcelonas men fared a little bet-
ter thanks to the inuence of the count of Cocentayna and Arnau Fonolleda,
the kings principal secretary and a scion of the Barcelona establishment: it
recovered its baronies even though the queen had sent her own secretary to
argue against it. That success perhaps encouraged a belief that a decision
favourable to the masters could more easily be extracted from the king than
from the queen and her advisers, and hence led to redoubled efforts to induce
Alfonso to return to Spain.
Nervousness among the upper levels of Catalan society intensied that sum-
mer when the peasantry of Majorca exploded into violence against landowners
and the burgers of the islands capital.34 You can imagine, the counsellors of
Barcelona wrote to their envoys in Naples, how much these things have per-
turbed our spirits, for they are a portent of great misfortune, and if proper pro-
vision is not made to deal with them, it must be expected that great difculties
will follow because thunder and lightning are the precursors of approaching
rain.35 Their fears were not entirely without foundation; incidents of remensa
violence had already occurred on the very doorstep of Barcelona where, at Sant

32
. . . pus aspra . . . car declinar nostre for e iuhi no deu esser be pres en nostres vassalls. ACA
2655, 74 (3 May 1450).
33
. . . que no u faria, com fos injusta provisi e contraris interessos de part, car no podia denegar
justicia. Madurell Marimn, Mensajeros, 324 (4 Sept. 1450).
34
G. Morro, Mallorca a mitjan segle xv: el sindicat i lalament for (Palma: Edicions Documenta
Balear, 1997).
35
E podets pensar . . . en quanta turbaci sn estats nostres coratges de aquestes coses com sien
senyal de gran infortuni, e si no si fa provisi deguda, se nsperen seguir grans inconvenients, car los
lamps e trons sn primicies de esdevenidora pluya. Madurell Marimn, Mensajeros, 316 (14 Aug.
1450). They passed on the rumour that the Majorcan insurgents intended to share out the wives,
daughters, and goods of their enemies.
 A Clamorous Peasantry 39
Andreu, the veguer of the city had fought with an angry crowd of peasants.36
But had the unrest assumed serious dimensions it would assuredly have formed
a major plank in their campaign to halt the redemption process. Their own
behaviour, on the contrary, continued in an intemperate vein. In August 1450
the queen had to act against those who from their private prejudice, or at the
instigation of others who are aggrieved by the remensa business, speak and
spread abroad words which are exceedingly rash and derogatory to the honour
of the king and ourselves, and a confusion to that business.37 Royal ofcials
were ambushed and otherwise intimidated. The most unrestrained behaviour
of all was exhibited by Arnau Roger, count of Pallars. Against his vassals, who
had formed syndicates to redeem alienated jurisdiction, he unleashed a wave of
violence. A notary went around coercing them into signing declarations
against redemption. Those who refused could expect to share the fate of the
Vall de Cardos where some fty armed retainers of the count descended by
night to shouts of Death and Fire, drove out the terried inhabitants naked
and half-dressed, and carried off animals, property, and prisoners to the counts
castle. Having established in a general assembly that the men of the county
were in favour of redemption (they cried with one voice that we want redemp-
tion),38 and having failed to persuade Arnau Roger to appear to answer the
charges against him, the court ordered Requesens in August 1450 to take pos-
session of the county.
Thus had a large element of the Catalan peasantry become locked in bitter
conict with the powers, spiritual and temporal, which exercised lordship over
them, while the latter saw its absent monarch as an avowed antagonist.

36
Vicens Vives, Histria de los remensas, 58.
37
. . . alguns homens per passio propia o induccio daltres qui han enuig del negoci deles remences
. . . parlarien e publicarien algunes paraules assats temeraries e derogatories al honor del senyor rey e
nostra e perturbatants del negoci. ACA 3199, 90 (14 Aug. 1450).
38
. . . cridat una veu que volem la luycio. ACA 3203, 180 (3 Aug. 1450).
 5
Turmoil in Barcelona: Busca and Biga

By this time another thread of tension had been woven into Catalan unrest. It
was spun in Barcelona when a conict of interest between groups of citizens
grew into a contest for control of the city. Despite Barcelonas fundamentally
mercantile character, its government had for two centuries been dominated by
a restricted class of honoured citizens (ciutadans honrats), numbering some
two hundred families. All had abandoned trade to live on their investments;
often they made marriage alliances with the lesser aristocracy or put their off-
spring into key ecclesiastical ofces. One half continued to live in the city; the
rest had bought rural estates nearby, in the process transferring capital from
trade into agriculture.1 A minority of merchant families, motivated by ambi-
tion, rivalries, and alliances, joined with them to form the seemingly impreg-
nable Biga faction which held Barcelona in thrall. It wielded its power by
manipulating membership of the two bodies which ran the city: the ve-man
executive council (the Consell), and the deliberative Council of a Hundred
(Consell de Cent Jurats) which, save in exceptional circumstances, delegated its
authority to a smaller committee known as the Council of Thirty (Consell de
Trenta). The Biga used its grip upon the municipality to combat inimical
change or reform on the pretext that they were thereby defending the Con-
stitutions of Catalonia, and, thanks to Barcelonas pre-eminence in the prin-
cipality, it also wielded great inuence in the Corts and Diputaci, as well as
exercising a leadership role among other towns and cities in the principality.
Inevitably the Biga mentality and interest found themselves at odds with the
Trastmar spirit, impatient to remodel institutions in order to further its own
aggrandizement. On most occasions, as we have already seen, the Biga had
hitherto played a prominent part in Catalan confrontations with the crown.
Now it was to nd itself, for the rst time, faced with a direct, domestic chal-
lenge to its authority.
1
Aurell, Els mercaders catalans al quatre-cents. C. Batlle, La crisis social y econmica de Barcelona a
mediados del siglo xv, 2 vols. (Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, 1973).
 Turmoil in Barcelona: Busca and Biga 41
Those excluded from the charmed circle had, of course, long nursed resent-
ment, and increasingly so as entry for a favoured few became ever more
restricted. Most aggrieved were the majority of merchants whose sense of
injury grew as the Bigas stance on matters of commerce and nance clashed
with their own desires; and ranged behind the merchants stood a large popula-
tion of artisans, craftsmen, and journeymen whose livelihood hung upon the
mercantile prosperity of the city. More surprisingly, within the ranks of out-
siders stood a very signicant number of honoured citizens divided from
class, and even family, by complex issues of tradition, interest, and conviction.2
Out of this broad coalition grew the Busca faction seeking a voice in city gov-
ernment commensurate with its social and economic importance. Claude
Carrre has demonstrated in great detail how the crisis of the fteenth century
sharpened hostility by breeding demands for change which merchants believed
to be vital, but which the Biga condemned as subversive.3 Without subscribing
in full to the crisis scenario, we may still accept that the century saw develop-
ments in economic structures which demanded a response from a great com-
mercial centre such as Barcelona, and an effective response would, almost
inevitably, entail royal intervention whether through legislation or through
reform of the political system.
One major issue that set the citizen body of Barcelona bitterly at odds was
reform of the currency.4 When compared with neighbouring states, silver was
much overvalued in the Crown of Aragon: the gold/silver ratio stood at 1:8.7
in Barcelona against 1:9.5 in Castile; in war-ravaged France the coinage suf-
fered repeated rounds of debasement. Greshams Law duly operated to the
detriment of good Catalan money, and in particular of the silver croat which
was coined in Barcelona. Once efforts to check the inow of bad French silver
by physical controls had proved ineffective, attention turned to an alternative
solution, devaluation of the croat. Merchants and producers favoured it as a
seemingly straightforward response to the difculties they were experiencing in
foreign markets; the crown, keen to exploit its monopoly of gold coinage and
to boost its revenue from customs, took a similar view. The rentier oligarchy,
on the other hand, fought against a measure that would substantially reduce
its income, xed in terms of the silver coin. And its resolution stiffened further

2
Carmen Batlles analysis of the groups in the 1450s reveals that 86 merchants and 55 citizens
adhered to the Busca while the Biga commanded the allegiance of 16 merchants and 61 citizens.
Any interpretation of the urban conict in simple class terms is palpably wide of the mark. Aurell, Els
mercaders catalans, 3212.
3 4
Carrre, Barcelona, ii, ch. 9. Ibid. 33242, El problema monetari.
42 The Coming Storm
following two blows to its fortunes in the mid-1420s: in 1425 Majorca pro-
claimed a moratorium on its public debt, so withholding no less than 32,000
libras of silver a year from creditors in Barcelona; in 1426 the king decreed a
33 per cent reduction in the croats value from 18 to 12 dineros in the money
of account.5 But nothing, including a ferocious campaign against coiners,
sufced to stem the inux of debased French coin, or the exodus of Catalan sil-
ver and a consequent scarcity of good money in the principality; and because
there supervened an acute phase in Barcelonas commercial woes,6 further
devaluation became, in Busca eyes, a necessary measure.
Some tension and conict are natural conditions of any society, so too much
signicance may not attach to a ban which the city authorities imposed in 1419
on association among tailor apprentices; disputes at this level divided the arti-
san class. Demonstrations against oppression of the common people in 1427,
however, reached a pitch where the king had to intervene in person. And in
1433 cracks in the social fabric at a still higher level were revealed when Miquel
Ros, the merchant Consol del Mar,7 led a symbolic protest against Biga domi-
nation. Refusing to take his place behind the ciutadans honrats in the great civic
procession on St Johns day, he and most of his fellow merchants rode in their
own cavalcade through the city to great popular acclamation. The Biga retali-
ated by excluding Ros and his principal supporters from the council for ten
years and forbidding them from holding any municipal bonds. While those
sanctions were lifted two years later, following an apology, the Biga took care
thereafter to summon the Consell de Cent and Consell de Trenta, the repres-
entative and theoretically supreme bodies, as seldom as possible and keep all
important business within the small executive council which they controlled.
At the same time they did endeavour with many measures, short of monetary
reform, to placate the merchant class and meet its concerns,8 but the funda-
mental issuewhether an outdated oligarchy could retain its monopoly of
powerremained unresolved. It perhaps needed the eruption of a peasant
challenge to the same entrenched class of privilege to embolden the urban mal-
contents in pursuit of their own liberation.
5
Del Treppo, I mercanti catalani, 194. The Catalan money of account was reckoned in pounds
(libras), shillings (sous), and pence (diners).
6
Carrre, Barcelona, ii, ch. 9, Desencadenament de la crisi (14251450). Alfonsos Italian wars
were in signicant measure responsible for this downturn in Barcelonas fortunes.
7
Founded in 1257, the Consolat del Mar (Consulate of the Sea) was a body which administered
maritime law. Its two consuls and a judge were elected by the Council of a Hundred, one from the
honoured citizens, the other from the merchants.
8
Carrre, Barcelona, ii. 238. Among their initiatives were the construction of a new harbour and
the introduction of English wool to improve the quality of cloth manufactured in Barcelona.
 Turmoil in Barcelona: Busca and Biga 43
A common antipathy to the Biga might by itself have forged an alliance
between the Busca and a monarch who had from the beginning of his reign
sought to remodel municipal government so that closed cliques were replaced
by a broader spectrum of interests. What seems to have precipitated it was
Alfonsos need of assistance from Catalan merchants (principally from Barcelona
and Perpignan) in pursuit of his Italian ambitions; the credit they furnished
played a vital part in keeping his armies in the eld, and their interests con-
sequently became for him matters of prime concern.9 The Biga, by contrast,
continued to uphold the Corts policy of tying any aid to the kings departure
from Italy, prompting an outburst: Let the Catalans keep their money to spend
on other things.10 Empire could not be built on such a foundation. Alfonso
struck rst at Perpignan through a decree ( July 1449) which replaced the rul-
ing consols with a new regime which, so the queen informed him, showed great
zeal.11 Those who dominated Barcelona had good cause to feel uneasy.
In these circumstances it is hardly surprising that Requesens found himself
at odds with the Biga and aligned with the Busca, just as he had become the
champion of the remensas. On his return from Italy in 1449 merchants, arti-
sans, and journeymen approached him seeking his support for a syndicate
(another echo of the remensa struggle) through which to defend their interests.
Thanks to him they were able to send an envoy to plead their cause with the
king while other spokesmen petitioned the queen. A sympathetic hearing
unaccompanied by any royal action did not deter either them or their cham-
pion, and when the Biga used its power to eject Requesens from the city, they
continued their campaign from nearby towns. As he left Barcelona in February
1450 the governor addressed a few words to the large crowd gathered at the
gate: Bear witness that I was in this city on the kings business and to do justice.
The counsellors dont wish me to remain, but it wont be long before there is
trouble.12 To the king he submitted a denunciation of the city authorities,
accusing them of abusing their privilege and playing with him as though he

9
A. Ryder, Cloth and Credit: Aragonese War Finance in the Mid Fifteenth Century, War and
Society, 2/1 (1984).
10
ACA 2940, 23 (11 Dec. 1446).
11
ACA 3201, 189 (16 June 1449). The ousted consols had barricaded themselves all night in the
council house; after emerging in the morning wearing their robes of ofce, they had taken refuge in
private houses. They feared, according to the queen, discovery of their malpractice in the management
of the public nances.
12
Fets-me testimony que jo era en aquesta ciutat per affers del senyor rey e per fer justicia, e los
consellers no volen que hic atur, mas no tardaran molts dies sich seguiran escndols. C. Batlle,
Barcelona a mediados del siglo xv (Barcelona: El Albir, 1976), 21.
44 The Coming Storm
were on a string.13 Once again Alfonso demonstrated his condence in his gov-
ernor by ordering the revocation of the offending privilege and by conferring
on him the lordship of Molins de Rei which, to add insult to injury, was taken
from Barcelona. How quickly and closely the interests of Busca and remensas
had become intertwined was demonstrated when the remensa syndics offered,
in July 1451, to furnish 5,000 orins towards the 10,000 needed to redeem the
privilege.14 Requesens lost little time in pursuing his advantage. In August
1451 he sailed again for Italy, taking with him two Busca spokesmen, a
merchant and a weaver. Hard on their heels went an emissary of the Biga,
the notary Antoni Vinyes, charged with obtaining Requesenss dismissal and
discrediting the Busca.
In Naples both parties encountered a monarch following an agenda very dif-
ferent from their own: Italy had become for Alfonso the focus to which all other
issues must relate. The remensa cause, as we have seen, had come to his atten-
tion as an answer to a nancial difculty raised by his Tuscan campaign.
Further support for it might strengthen royal authority in Catalonia but, at the
same time, would certainly alienate powerful segments of society whose back-
ing had contributed much to success in Italy. Moreover the peasants might get
out of hand, as was happening in Majorca, and so imperil the state that he
would be obliged to abandon Italy and return to Spain. The Busca likewise rep-
resented an instrument that might serve to install in Barcelona a regime more
amenable to royal wishes, and through its delegates ensure a more cooperative
attitude in the Corts. Another important consideration in the kings mind was
an ambitious scheme to build upon the nancial and commercial bonds
already forged between his Italian and Spanish territories a form of common
market: a reciprocal ow of Spanish textiles and Italian grain, carried exclu-
sively in vessels built and owned by his subjects, would support a credit struc-
ture on which he could draw with comparative ease. Were the Busca not likely
to prove more enthusiastic partners than the Biga for such a project? But, once
change had been unleashed, would the moderate Busca elements be able to
restrain wilder spirits15 and avoid the disorders that had recently wracked
Majorca and Palermo?16 From the Corts of Catalonia Alfonso managed to
extract in 1452 a form of insurance which promised him a subsidy of 400,000
13
. . . que semblava quen jugs a la cordella. Ibid.
14
ACA 2658, 173 (4 Jan. 1452). Privileges obtained from the crown by payment could only be
revoked on repayment of the appropriate sum.
15
Batlle, Barcelona a mediados del siglo XV, 401.
16
Morro, Mallorca a mitjan segle XV. Ryder, The Palermo Rising of 1450, in M. J. Pelez (ed.),
Papers in European Legal History: Trabajos de derecho histrico europeo en homenaje a Ferran Valls i
Taberner (Barcelona: Promociones Publicaciones Universitarias, 1992), V.
 Turmoil in Barcelona: Busca and Biga 45
orins should he need to return within the next year or so. (The Catalans, of
course, saw it as a means of enticing him back.) He hoped also, vainly as it
proved, to coax from the Corts and from Barcelona the funds needed to sup-
press the peasant rising in Majorca. Beyond that he had little expectation of, or
use for, the Corts. In particular, it would not, experience had taught him, pro-
vide aid in any form to meet the crisis that had erupted on the Aragonese/
Castilian frontier.
The source of the trouble lay in Navarre where Juan had held on to his royal
title after the death of Queen Blanche in 1441, thereby antagonizing his son
Charles, the rightful heir, and providing fertile ground for the intrigues of the
Beaumonts and Agramonts, two factions engaged in endless conict for mas-
tery in the kingdom. Their confrontation sharpened with Juans ignominious
failure to impose himself on Castile in 1445: Charles and the Beaumonts grav-
itated towards the triumphant party in Castile; the Agramonts rallied to a king
of Navarre bent on revenge and raging against a son whom he considered a
traitor. In 1451 confrontation escalated into a civil war given international
dimensions by the intervention of Enrique,17 heir to the Castilian throne, on
Charless side, and by Juans position as Alfonsos locumtenens in the kingdom
of Aragon. When hostilities spilt over the Aragonese borders Alfonso became
alarmed. Should this conict grow out of control into full-scale war with
Castile, he might well nd himself compelled to abandon Naples. We beg you
most affectionately, very dear and beloved brother, that as far as possible you set
yourself to work for peace and agreement,18 he wrote to Juan in October 1451,
knowing full well that his brother hardly inclined to moderation in matters
Castilian. His brightest hope appeared to rest in direct negotiations with the
king of Castile who sent ambassadors to Naples for that purpose.
Small wonder if, amid this welter of contradictions, the messengers from
Catalonia, whatever party they might represent, encountered evasion and
stonewalling that drove them to despair. On informal occasions Vinyes, the
Biga envoy, found the king amiably relaxed, but when he broached the dis-
missal of Requesens, Alfonso replied frostily that he was not accustomed to
remove anyone from ofce without good cause. His endeavours to discredit the
Busca envoys by claiming that they spoke only for a few poor men who seeing
themselves ruined and having no means of living because of their idleness and
17
Enrique was Charless brother-in-law, having married his sister Blanca in 1440. For the conict
in Navarre see J. Vicens Vives, Juan II de Aragn (13981479): monarqua y revolucin en la Espaa
del siglo xv, new edn., ed. P. H. Freedman and J. M. Muoz i Lloret (Pamplona: Urgoiti Editores,
2003). Surez Fernndez, Los Trastmara y los Reyes Catlicos.
18
Rogamos vos muy affectuosamente muy caro e muy amado ermano que quanto possible vos sera
vos adapteys e prepareys a pa e concordia . . . ACA, Reg. 2658, 166 (23 Oct. 1451).
46 The Coming Storm
vices had resorted to slanders against the city fathers,19 failed to bar them from
access to a royal audience. To add to Vinyess discomfort, Alfonso frequently
broke out into public complaints against his masters behaviour. Even the
arrival of two magnicent presents from the citya silver statue of its patron
saint, Eulalia, and a huge bowlfailed to produce the hoped-for softening of
the kings stance. Yet the Busca and their secular patron fared little better:
Alfonso refused to sanction a syndicate. We have Vinyess record of a signicant
exchange on this subject that took place between the king and Requesens in his
presence in December 1451:
Master Valenti Claver, the new vice-chancellor, begged that the king should graciously
be willing to give dispatch to the two artisans (menestrals).20 The king replied, What
is it they are asking?. The vice-chancellor answered that they were ill-treated by the
authorities, and that it was desirable to take action. They were also asking that the king
should give the menestrals leave to meet and form syndicates etc. At this, speaking
angrily, the king replied, Who will benet from such meetings and syndicates?. Those
present, seeing the king so agitated, said that the governor of Catalonia would give him
an explanation. So quickly the king summoned the governor, who was in an adjoining
room, and said to him, For what purpose is this permission to form a syndicate being
requested?. To which the governor replied that it was in order to give peace to the city
and so that they might render the king service and gifts. Then the king replied with
some heat that if it resulted in trouble or outrage, neither the governor or even the
queen would be capable of settling it; and that nothing would sufce but the presence
of the king himself. For that reason he would not grant permission. . . . Turning
angrily to the governor he said to him that he and the queen between them had man-
aged these affairs very ill, that he had Majorca as an example before him.21

19
. . . que vehentse perduts e no havent remey de viure per lur pigricia e mals vicis . . . Madurell
Marimn, Mensajeros, 378.
20
Vinyes always employed this disparaging term for the Busca delegation.
21
. . . micer Valenti Claver, vicicanceller novell, inst e soplic lo dit senyor que fos de sa merc
volgus desemptxar los dos manastrals. E lo dit senyor resps, que ere lo que demanaven. E lo dit vice-
canceller resps que ells eren mal tractats per los regidors, e que ere spedient si provehis. Item. Que lo
dit senyor dons licncia als manastrals ques poguessen ajustar e fer sindicats, etc. En a, lo dit senyor
resps a qui aprotaria tals ajusts e sindicats, dient a ab clera. E los instants, vehents lo dit senyor
axi somogut, digueren que lo governador de Cathalunya lin darie rah. E axi, prestament, lo dit
senyor fu cridar lo dit governador, qui ere present en lo dit segon retret, al qual lo dit senyor dix a
quina se demenave aquesta licncia de ajustar e fer sindicat. Al qual, senyors, lo dit governador resps
que per reposar la ciutat, e perqu poguessen fer servirs e donatius a sa senyoria. E lavors lo dit senyor
ab assats clera resps que si dai surtie inconvenient o scndol, lo dit governador, ne encare la seny-
ora reyna no serien bestants a reposarho; e que also no y serie ne bestant, sin la presncia del dit
senyor. E per o ell no atorgaria tal licncia . . . E girantse ab clera al dit governador, li dix que entre
la senyora reyna e ell havien prou dolentament menegats aquests affers, e que eximpli tenie al denant
de Mallorques. Madurell Marimn, Mensajeros, 4078.
 Turmoil in Barcelona: Busca and Biga 47
Allowing for some bias in the reporting, we may accept this account as a fair
reection of the atmosphere then prevailing in the court.
Still glancing through Vinyess jaundiced eye, we see Requesens studiously
distancing himself in public from his Busca protgs, while night and day this
ox of a governor sings in his [sc. Alfonsos] ear and persuades him to all manner
of evil.22 The line he pursued, seeing that the syndicate was out of season,
aimed at a reform of the electoral system in Barcelona to put an end to abuses
which had, for example, inated membership of the Council of a Hundred to
250, and kept among its merchant members many who should properly have
sat with the rst estate, thus giving the citizen lite undue inuence in the
annual appointment of counsellors. Here, as Vinyes uneasily recognized, the
governor was on sure ground, but all his endeavours failed to discover the con-
tent of royal letters directing that Barcelona adhere strictly to the electoral
procedure laid down in the privilege of Jaime I (1274), and that appropriate
business be not conned to the executive committee of ve but brought before
the representative councils. By the time those orders arrived in Barcelona on
28 November 1451 elections to the Council of a Hundred were already in
progress. Brushing aside both the letters and artisan protests, the authorities
went ahead in the customary manner to appoint new counsellors, only one of
whom, Jofre Sirvent, belonged to the Busca. They justied their action on the
grounds that the king could not act contrary to the privileges of Catalonia
which he had sworn to uphold. Here was a challenge not to be ignored by a
monarch of Alfonsos stamp. For their part the Busca claimed that the elections
were invalid, and that all municipal ofcials subsequently appointed held
ofce illegally.
All now depended on the king. The Bigas failure to shake his condence in
Requesens became clear when he provided the funds needed to complete the
business of restoring the governors free access to Barcelona. Yet Requesens did
not immediately resume his ofce in Catalonia because Alfonso judged it more
urgent that he join an embassy charged with the delicate task of calming rela-
tions with Castile. Since, according to Vinyes, Requesens had heartily solicited
the assignment, it may be that he wished to distance himself from Catalan
affairs until such time as his superiors had come to a resolution on the great
questions that lay before them. It was autumn before he reappeared in
Barcelona, free now to come and go as he pleased.

22
. . . aquest bou de governador nit e die li canta a la orella e lindueix a tot mal. Ibid. 397.
48 The Coming Storm
During his absence hostility between the factions had grown apace.
Through ceaseless petitioning the guilds mounted pressure on the queen to
grant the syndicate and devaluation. Although alarmed at the vehemence of
these demands, she could not act without instructions from her husband from
whom she begged a swift response, for much is at stake, so great is the insolence
of the people nowadays.23 So far did that insolence grow that in June 1452,
without waiting for a reply from Naples, she verbally authorized separate guild
meetings on condition that they discussed only monetary reform. Within days
they had met, formulated a policy, and mandated Pere Rubi, a sword-maker,
to seek the kings approval. His departure attracted the sarcastic attention of the
notary afont who kept the Diputacis diary:
Thursday 29 June, sailed from the sea-shore of Barcelona the ship of Rafael Juli,
bound for Naples, where is the king. With the ship went Pere Rubi, sword-maker,
messenger so-called, sent to the king by the artisans and some other men of the city
commonly called the men of the Busca. They are asking for an increase in the value of
the coinage, so that, as the croats are now valued at 15 diners, they should be raised to
18 diners. They assert, and believe, that as they now live meagrely, they will then all
become rich, and will hardly need to work. It is true that others maintain that the
poverty they suffer is not caused by the value of the coinage but comes from the fact
that they are nowadays very dissolute in their eating and drinking and other vanities,
spending more in one day than they earn in two. So they will always experience poverty
however much the value of money is raised.24

The return of Requesens in the autumn of 1452 from his mission to

Castile25 mightily boosted the condence of the Busca leaders who began
to meet in his residence and later, under his chairmanship, in the convent of
the Dominicans. They further manifested their corporate identity and civic
signicance in a form familiar to that agea public building: in the garden of
23
car molt hi va per lo gran atreviment que les gents han vuy. Batlle, Barcelona a mediados del siglo
XV, 33.
24
Dijous a xxviiii Juny se perlonga de la plaia de la mar de Barchinona la nau den Julia, qui anava
en Napols, on es lo senyor rey, ab la qual sen ana en Pere Robio, mandrater, missatger, segons se diu,
trames al dit senyor per part dels manestrals e alguns altres homens de la dita ciutat vulgarment appellats
los homens de la Buscha, los quals demanen que les monedes los sien muntades de for, o es, que axi
com los creuats valen xv diners, que sien muntats a xviii diners; afermants e creents ells que axi com ara
viuen acament, que lavors serien tots richs, e que scassament los calria fer feyna ne jornal. Es veritat
que alguns altres afermen que la pobretat que han nols ve per lo for de les monedes mes per o com
ells son huy molt dissoluts en manjar e en beure e en altres vanitats, despanent mes en un jorn que no
gonyen en dos, a axi tots temps sentirien pobritat per molt quels muntassen les monedes. Dietari de la
Deputaci del General de Cathalunya (Barcelona: Diputacin Provincial de Barcelona, 1974), i. 2012.
25
He had failed to settle the matters in dispute between Aragon and Castile, leaving Alfonso still in
a quandary from the dangers posed by the upheavals in Navarre.
 Turmoil in Barcelona: Busca and Biga 49
the merchants Llotja they built their own chapel which they inaugurated with
a solemn mass on 19 November 1452. Shortly afterwards there arrived from
Naples royal assent to the syndicate, allowing the battle against the municipal
oligarchs to begin in earnest. Alfonso had, after long hesitation, decided where
his interest lay. As with the remensa syndicate, the Buscas chosen weapon was
a plea before the royal tribunal denouncing the illegalities of its opponents,
specically a violation of royal privileges in the election of the Council of a
Hundred in the previous November when the Biga had packed that body and
excluded guild nominees. A council wrongly constituted lacked, they argued,
the authority to collect taxes or appoint to municipal ofces. Like the remensa
lords, so the hard-liners among the Biga questioned the propriety of such pro-
ceedings and declined to appear before the vice-chancellor to whom the queen
had delegated the process. Testimony from the few moderates of that party
revealed a glaring ignorance of electoral regulations: the ruling minority had,
in effect, over a long period tailored them to suit its own ends. Armed with that
evidence, the syndicate obtained from the queen in April 1453 an order pro-
hibiting the Council from proceeding with the annual election of consuls
and judge of the Consolat del Mar. The Biga, uncomprehending before this
avalanche of popular hatred, could only attribute it to the malevolence of
Requesens who had cut through the privileges of Barcelona and other liberties
of the land as if they were a piece of white bread.26 Two messengers left imme-
diately (8 May 1453) for Naples to denounce his iniquities. Hard on their heels
went a Busca party led by the merchant Miquel de Manresa. For both Alfonso
enacted the customary pantomime of benevolence and procrastination, while
behind the scenes a small group of counsellors prepared measures that were to
shake Barcelona to its foundations.
What furnished him the opportunity to break the deadlock between Biga
and Busca was the fall of lvaro de Luna, constable of Castile and inveterate foe
of the Antequeras.27 It opened the way to peace between Aragon and Castile,
towards which end the king of Castile invited his sister, Queen Maria of
Aragon, to visit him. Anxious as he was to stabilize the affairs of Spain, Alfonso
readily approved, and in so doing sanctioned the departure of his locumtenens
from Catalonia. In her place he appointed none other than Galceran de
Requesensthe clearest possible signal of the line he meant to follow in
Catalan conicts. When the horror-stricken Biga envoys learnt of this early in
26
. . . trencava los privileges de Barchinona e altres libertats de la terra, axi com si fossen un tros de
pa blanch. Dietari, 206.
27
He was arrested on 5 Apr. 1453 and executed on 5 July. Round, Greatest Man Uncrowned.
50 The Coming Storm
September 1453, probably from the sympathetic secretary Fonolleda, they
immediately assailed the king with dire warnings, yet came away once again
misinterpreting assurances that he desired nothing more than the good of the
city to signify benevolence towards their party. More disillusionment followed
in November with the revelation that, because of the Busca allegations of irregu-
larities and intimidation, the council elections were to be suspended.
Biga protests notwithstanding, the blows duly fell. On 1 October the queen
sent her vice-chancellor to dissolve the Corts; on the 9th she left Barcelona for
Castile without any other leave-taking of the principality, which had so loved,
obeyed and venerated her, as if the Catalans were disobedient or unworthy.28
Worse still, on 19 October, Requesens accompanied by the vice-chancellor, the
count of Cardona, the viscount of Illa, some sympathetic municipal delegates
from the Corts, and a crowd of Busca supporters, made his way to the cathe-
dral, had his appointment as locumtenens read from the high altar, and took
the oath of ofce, ignoring protests from the deputies of the Generalitat and
the city counsellors. Over the ensuing month leading to the November elec-
tions tension grew, dividing the city into irreconcilable factions whose temper
may be judged by the belief of his opponents that Requesens had sold himself
to the devil. Their recourse to the prayers of the most notable religious houses
of Catalonia availed nothing, however, against the decision already taken in
Naples to suspend the elections because of the Buscas allegation of illegalities.
By proclamation on the eve of election day, 29 November, Requesens forbade
the existing counsellors and council members to meet or proceed with elec-
tions on the feast of St Andrew. Instead, in the presence of a large Busca gath-
ering in his own residence, he nominated ve counsellors of his own choosing,
all of them drawn from patrician ranks, but all partisans of moderate reform
allied to the Busca. The routed Biga stood aghast; its stoutest champion, Franci
Carb, ed to Naples disguised as a courier; some members of the former
administration found themselves in prison, others came under judicial
scrutiny; none could reconcile themselves to loss of power, or to betrayal at the
hands of an absent monarch who had made the upstart Requesens (a mere
knight) arbiter of Catalonias destiny.

28
. . . sens altre comiat del Principat, qui tant la ha amada, obeda e venerada, com si los cathalans
fossen inhobedients. Madurell Marimn, Mensajeros, 484.
 6
A Peasantry Expectant

It has already been remarked that the remensa syndicate appreciated how much
its fortunes were bound to those of Requesens when it offered nancial help in
freeing him from the shackles Barcelona had imposed on his freedom of move-
ment. Queen Maria did not immediately take up the offer because, as she
informed her husband in a letter of 30 July 1451, it had given rise to differences
between the syndics and their principals. However, the remensa envoys, pres-
ent with Requesens in Naples, denied any rift, so Alfonso ordered, in January
1452, that the proffered 5,000 orins be collected. Further, in March 1452, he
instructed the queen to protect the remensas from harassment and ensure that
they freely pursued their plea.1 Like that of the Busca, the cause of the remen-
sas had to contend in the Neapolitan court with the inuence of its enemies.
Prominent among these were the deputies dispatched there by the Catalan
Corts in December 1451. Pleading the Constitutions of Catalonia, they
argued for an annulment or at least suspension of the remensa action. They
won some concessions: a delegate at court to ensure that no provision or action
violated the Catalan Constitutions or the Usatges of Barcelona;2 the appoint-
ment to the queen regents council of three counsellors from each order so that
there, too, they might safeguard Catalan laws and privileges. On the remensa
issue Alfonso at the same time gave instructions which he believed would sat-
isfy the justice owed to our vassals and the recovery of our rights.3 What those
instructions were we do not know but may reasonably suppose that they put
the question into abeyance until the king should think it politic to give judge-
ment on the points of law raised by both parties.
That tactic left the queen vacillating in the mean time between pressures and
protests from both sides. At rst she tried to restore the status quo by revoking
the order that forbade lords to demand acknowledgement of the mals usos

1 2
ACA 2660, 33 (17 Mar. 1452). ACA 2660, 26 (8 May 1452).
3
. . . creem sera satisfet al deute dela Justicia de nostres vassals e ala reintegracio e recuperacio de
nostres drets. ACA 2659, 91 (24 May 1452).
52 The Coming Storm
from their peasants. Consequent representations from the remensa syndics led
her on 30 March 1453 to reimpose the prohibition. Immediately the lords
responded with a great clamour that, contrary to the Constitutions of
Catalonia, they had been deprived of their rights without due legal process.
Their complaint gained weight from the backing of the Corts, then meeting in
Barcelona; still more when two ambassadors from the king appeared before it
on 9 July to ask for a years extension on the aid promised against his return.
Those same ambassadors almost certainly brought orders for Maria who, on
15 July 1453, accordingly changed tack and once again restored seigneurial
authority. With the aid in the balance, Alfonso wished to mollify the Corts.
Still the remensa leaders doggedly pursued their legal course, nanced from
April 1454 by an annual cash levy.4 Requesens, now regent in Catalonia,
ordered royal ofcials to support the remensa syndics in collecting it.
Hostility to Requesens among the Catalan oligarchy knew no bounds; to his
malevolence they attributed all the ills and unrest that beset them, and to his
downfall they devoted all their energy. In appearance they moved a step in
that direction when, on 31 May 1454, Alfonso appointed Juan of Navarre
locumtenens in Catalonia in his stead. But from the day Juan assumed ofce
(on 1 August 1454), Requesens took up his former duties as governor and con-
tinued to champion reform with undiminished zeal. An effort to deliver the
coup de grce to this detested gure by means of a grievance (greuge de Requesens)
presented in a new session of the Corts (October 1454) proved unavailing.
Equally fruitless was another grievance directed against the remensas (Super
hominibus de redimentia) which called for the annulment of their bargain with
the crown, and of all provisions and legal proceedings arising from it.5 Well
might the unease have grown still more acute when, in June 1455, the gover-
nor left Barcelona, summoned for yet another consultation on Catalan affairs
with his master in Naples. How much hung upon his presence a messenger
from Barcelona conveyed in a letter to the counsellors: We are all waiting on
his coming, and no one is stirring until he has arrived.6 And how greatly
Alfonso esteemed him was manifested in the extraordinary warmth of the
entertainment lavished upon him.7 There can be little doubt that Requesenss

4
The levy was equivalent in value to one-third of the twelfth imposed on produce in 1449 in order
to pay Crexells and meet the expenses of the syndicate. This payment in kind had subsequently been
replaced by a cash payment of equivalent value. ACA 3319, 70 (27 Apr. 1454).
5
Cortes de los antiguos reinos de Aragn y de Valencia y principado de Catalua, xxii. 234.
6
Tots stam sperants la dita venguda, e neg no sich mou, ns ell sia vengut. Madurell Marimn,
Mensajeros, 500. This letter was written by the notary Pere Boquet on 28 May 1455. A condant of
Requesens, he had been sent to Naples by the Council of a Hundred in Oct. 1454.
7
Ibid. 503.
 A Peasantry Expectant 53
counsel persuaded the king to deliver, on 5 October, a provisional sentence in
the remensa plea which had been hanging re for ve years: all those exactions
denounced by the peasants were suspended until such time as the lords might
purge their contempt by acknowledging royal jurisdiction in the matter.
Requesens himself may indeed have carried the momentous document when
he returned to Catalonia in November 1455.
Juan of Navarre duly promulgated the sentence and in January 1456 re-
afrmed the legality of the remensa gatherings, rst created in 1449, so that
they might collect some 60,000 orins still outstanding from the sum offered
for their redemption. The opposition, congregated still in Barcelona in a ster-
ile Corts, fought back; that same month its emissary, the jurist Pere Dusay, left
to argue its case on this and other points in Naples. Despite the assertion of the
Biga agent that the king was standing rm,8 he appeared to beat a retreat when
he issued an order suspending the interlocutory sentence of October 1455 at
the instance of members of his household and for certain good reasons.9 What
these reasons were he left unexplained. Spanish historians are inclined to
attribute the tergiversation to the kings desire to secure another prolongation
of the aid promised by the Corts against his return to Spain, and he certainly
took pains to assure all parties that he hoped to be there within the year. When
Dusay left for home in June 1457 he carried a letter telling the diputats that
Alfonso had been unable to deal with the matters of his mission, but that, God
willing, he would soon return to those kingdoms and principality, and he
would then see to everything.10 As an insurance policy against an Iberian crisis
the offer could not be lightly discarded while the bitter quarrel between Juan
and his son Charles of Viana still threatened the peace with Castile and the
internal stability of the Aragonese state.11 On the other hand, Alfonso had
always insisted that the offer must be unconditional, and in that form the Corts

8
Ibid. 513.
9
. . . dictado a instancias de sus familiares y por ciertos buenos respectos. Vicens Vives, Histria
de los remensas, 59.
10
. . . ms que Dus volent sa anada ser presta en aquexos regnes e principat, o que hi provehir
lavors en tot . . . Madurell Marimn, Mensajeros, 586.
11
Hostility between the Navarrese factions had erupted into open battle in Oct. 1451, an
encounter which left Charles and the Beaumont leader, Jean de Beaumont, prisoners in the hands of
Juan. Under pressure from Alfonso and the Aragonese, exasperated by the incursions of Charless
Castilian allies into their territory, Juan came to an agreement with Charles in May 1453: each would
exercise authority over their respective spheres of inuence in Navarre, but sovereignty remained with
Juan. The accord soon proved hollow; incited by his partisans, Charles began acting as de facto
sovereign and challenging the fragile balance of power within the kingdom. An exasperated Juan retal-
iated by disinheriting his son in favour of his daughter Leonor and her husband, Gaston de Foix
(3 Oct. 1455). The following May, Charles ed from Spain, seeking support rst in France and
then from his uncle Alfonso in Naples. Vicens Vives, Juan II de Aragn, ch. 5.
54 The Coming Storm
had grudgingly given it. What decided his attitude to the remensas was, rather,
the balance of opinion in his council: with Requesens in Naples, it markedly
favoured them; without him, the legalistic arguments of their enemies carried
more weight. Thus, once Dusay and pressure from the Corts had been
removed, there was a shift back to a position with which the king was funda-
mentally in sympathy. No longer able to bear the continual distress and
outcries of the remensa peasants,12 he decreed on 9 September 1457 the
reimposition of his interlocutory sentence of 1455 suspending the mals usos.
Juan duly promulgated the decree on 14 January 1458. Time allowed Alfonso
no further change of course nor the opportunity to deliver a nal sentence in
the remensa cause, for he died in Naples on 27 June 1458, leaving his brother
to confront the turmoil that now affected wide areas of Catalonia.

12
No pudiendose ms tolerar las continuas congojas y clamores de los dichos pageses de remensa
y mals usos. S. Sobrequs i Vidal, Poltica remensa de Alfonso el Magnnimo en los ltimos aos de
su reinado (14471458), Anales del instituto de estudios gerundenses (1960), 34.
 7
Busca in Triumph and Disillusion

The ssure opened in the social structure by the implacable forces of remensa
struggle and landlord resistance in large measure precipitated the civil war
which engulfed Catalonia four years after Alfonsos death. But that catastrophe
could not have occurred had the fabric not been simultaneously weakened by
other rents and stresses. Foremost among these other strains gured the battle
between Busca and Biga parties for control of the Catalan capital, a battle
which saw Busca and remensa drawn together in the face of common enemies.
The Biga moreover accepted defeat no more readily than did the remensa land-
lords, and in its struggle to overthrow the new municipal regime won unstinted
backing from oligarchic forces entrenched in the Corts and Diputaci.
Though portrayed by his opponents as a fanatic partisan of the Busca,
Requesens had demonstrated in his choice of counsellors a desire to encourage
a spirit of moderation which had manifested itself among a few in both camps;
and to enhance their authority he put into their hands the appointment of
members of the Council of a Hundred. Radical change resulted in that body
when, in face of a Biga boycott, lawyers and physicians were chosen to ll many
of the twenty-two seats allocated to ciutadans honrats. Another upheaval saw
cloth-retailers and ship-masters admitted to the benches (fty seats) hitherto
reserved to the estate of merchants. More radical still was the allocation of a
majority of seats (104) to artisans and journeymen, most of whom served also
on the syndicate of guilds which Alfonso, overcoming his initial misgivings,
authorized in November 1453. Possibly the intention was to harness the
popular force of the syndicate (the key element in Requesenss Busca strategy)
in support of the new administration or, perhaps, to neutralize its radicalism.
Yet, despite the changes, the Busca-dominated municipal administration
often found itself at odds with these champions of the masses entrenched in
the Council and syndicate, a situation which obliged Requesens to act as the
arbiter of their disputes and increased still further his sway in the affairs of
Barcelona.
56 The Coming Storm
Initially the syndicate concentrated its re on the misdeeds of the former
administration which became the subject of a judicial investigation. There fol-
lowed a thorough purge in the ranks of municipal employees to the advantage
of Busca candidates; then came the measure that had justied the syndicates
creation, currency reform. Rubi had returned from Naples bearing royal
approval which Requesens had proclaimed on 4 January 1454 amid wild
popular rejoicing.1 But no joy was manifest among rentiers and creditors
throughout Catalonia; all faced a substantial loss on their loans and invest-
ments. Their outrage found a voice in the deputies of the General who declared
the royal provision a violation of the Catalan constitutions and, failing to move
Alfonso, took the issue as a grievance to the Corts. Opponents of reform
employed another, and more immediately effective, means of counterattack
when they insisted on payment in current small coin (menuts) which they then
hoarded; as a result the city found itself starved of the currency needed for
everyday commercial transactions and domestic purchases until a further royal
decree, promulgated in February 1457, xed the value of the gold orin at 13
sous and made obligatory its acceptance in the settlement of contracts. Amid
the confusion, currency speculation ourished, the inow of debased coinage
continued unchecked, and the cost of living edged upwards. Grossly deceived
in their admittedly exaggerated expectations, the common people through
their syndicate threw much of the blame upon the Busca leadership.2
Bitter disillusionment was also to follow upon the implementation of
another reform cherished by the Busca: protection of the ailing textile industry
on whose fortunes hung the well-being of perhaps a third of the citys popula-
tion. Like currency reform it became a battle-cry on both sides of the political
divide, a focus of passions that paid small heed to realities. In that febrile atmo-
sphere imaginations fastened upon a constitution of the Corts (Havents a cor)
promulgated in 1422, a measure which had banned the import of all foreign
textiles into Catalonia. Within four years it had become inoperative thanks to
Biga power in Barcelona which saw protection threatening its investment in
the business of imported draperies. Time had not sufced to demonstrate
whether native production could satisfy the market, but its ability to do so
became a Busca article of faith and restoring protection a key plank in its pro-
gramme. Their moment came in 1456 in the wake of another major victory
for the syndicate, the entry of guild members into the ranks of counsellors.

1
The croat was revalued from its current rate of 15 diners to 18 diners.
2
Carrre, Barcelona, ii. 36979.
 Busca in Triumph and Disillusion 57
Requesenss nomination of the ve in 1453 had been a stop-gap pending
Alfonsos decision on the Busca charge of Biga illegalities in earlier elections.
That verdict, arriving on the very eve of elections in November 1454, found
clearly for the Busca but left the future mode of election clouded in uncer-
tainty. Radical members of the Council of a Hundred seized the moment
to demand a change in the composition of the electoral body so that each of
the four estates should appoint three of its twelve members. Moderate Busca
opinion wanted to keep the existing distribution which gave four seats each to
the estates of citizens and merchants, two to the guilds and two to the artisans.
So intransigent were both parties over so fundamental a shift in the balance of
power that Requesens had to postpone the elections, rst to January and then
to March 1455, in the hope that the king would resolve the question. He did
so in a manner that left the choice effectively in the hands of the Council of
a Hundred which, when assembled on 1 March 1455, comprised ninety-six
artistas3 and artisans against fty-two representatives of the rst two orders.
Furious and prolonged argument having brought deadlock in that body, it fell
to Requesens (in Juans absence) to break it, which he did by ordering that the
question be decided by a majority votea decision which inevitably gave vic-
tory to his syndicate allies. The outcome was an election which, for the rst
time, gave the two lower orders seats on the governing council (a notary and a
silversmith); a citizen and two merchants lled the other posts. Reform on the
same principle of equality between the four estates produced a general council
of 128 and a Council of Thirty numbering thirty-two. The little men of
Barcelona had at last reached that goal of equality with the great ones to which
they had aspired for more than a century.
Later that year the syndicates triumph was sealed by a royal privilege
(7 October 1455) which made the new electoral procedures permanent.
Requesens had gone to Naples in June to champion the reform and returned
with the privilege in time to ensure that the elections of November 1455 fol-
lowed its precepts. In addition, Alfonso had sanctioned the entry of lawyers
and physicians into the ranks of citizens, and of cloth-retailers and ship-owners
to the estate of merchants. The democratic base was still further broadened by
making employees eligible for election to the citys governing bodies, and
by giving some powers of initiative to the representative councils. If anything
marred Busca joy in this revolution, it was the price Alfonso demanded:
3
The artistas comprised the professions of notary, grocer, spicer, apothecary, wax-chandler,
barber, and advocate. The artisans or menestrales included harness-makers, tailors, skinners, shoe-
makers, silversmiths, blacksmiths, carpenters, leather-workers, wool-weavers, and tanners.
58 The Coming Storm
restoration to the crown of the county of Empuries held in pawn by Barcelona,
and a gift of 5,500 libras to Requesens for his services to the city. But it was well
recognized that every favour had its price; even the bishop of Urgell wrote caus-
tically to the city fathers reminding them that he expected something for the
assistance he had rendered the Busca cause in Naples.
Once entrenched in the seats of power, the syndicate moved swiftly to revive
the 1422 system of protection for the cloth industry. They directed their appeal
rst to the Diputaci, because the measure in question was a constitution of
the Corts applicable to the whole of Catalonia. They soon understood that that
institution stood four-square with the Biga against anything they might pro-
pose. (Might as well put in goats as men of low condition, the Diputacis sec-
retary had commented a propos of Barcelonas new masters.4) Losing patience
after six months of stonewalling, they persuaded the city administration in July
1456 to proclaim the 1422 constitution on its own authority, omitting that
part which referred to silks and cloth of gold. Immediately the Diputaci and
its allies joined battle, accusing Barcelona of usurping power and of altering the
constitution to gratify a Busca counsellor who sold silks. Tension rose danger-
ously within the city where an excited mass confronted its Biga foes, a hostile
Diputaci and an equally hostile Corts meeting in its midst at a time when
both locumtenens and governor were occupied elsewhere. Caught between these
res, showered with contradictory orders, the royal ofcials responsible for law and
order in Barcelona, the veguer and batlle,5 fell apart: the batlle Massanet, allied
to a rich draper father-in-law, approved the Diputacis design to revoke the con-
stitution; the veguer Saplana opposed it. Matters came to a climax on 11 August.
afont, the Diputacis acerbic notary, anked by trumpeters, emerged from
its seat in the square of Sant Jaume and began reading the revocation; out of the
town hall opposite came the veguer, a counsellor and a band of cloth workers
who, having seized afont and his assistants, imprisoned them in chains. In
response the deputies invoked royal authority to declare Saplana dismissed
from ofce with the revolutionary claim that, in order to defend the rights of
the General of Catalonia, they were entitled to exercise the full powers of royal
jurisdiction. Next day the sub-veguer, at the deputies command, tried again to
read the proclamation, only to nd himself likewise beset and thrown into prison.

4
. . . tant se valria metrey bochs com homens de vil condicio. Dietari, 218.
5
For these ofces see J. Lalinde Abada, La jurisdiccin real inferior en Catalua (Barcelona:
Ayuntamiento de Barcelona, 1966). In general terms the veguer exercised delegated royal authority in
matters relating to crime and public order, while the batlle was charged with safeguarding the royal
patrimony and the crowns material interests.
 Busca in Triumph and Disillusion 59
With the return of Juan to Barcelona on 16 August the conict shifted its
focus to the arena of the Corts.6 The immediate crisis Juan tranquillized by
releasing the prisoners (at night to avoid a riot) and replacing the veguer, but
with a man related to Requesens. Despite his absence during these events, the
gure of the governor still haunted the enemies of the Busca who were con-
vinced that his downfall would bring about the new regimes destruction. They
accordingly drafted in the Corts a constitution that would give the Diputaci
powers to proceed against any royal ofcial, from vice-chancellor and governor
to veguer, who violated the privileges of Catalonia. Only desperation can have
persuaded them that Alfonso would consent to so drastic a curtailment of his
authority. On the other side of the argument, Barcelona had some success in
enlisting the support of other centres of textile production, among them
Lleida, Vic, Girona, and Perpignan. Both parties then turned to the vital task
of convincing a king who, as usual, made his distance a pretext for prevarica-
tion: a decision must await his return to Spain; in the mean time the protection
measure should remain in force, although his brother might wink at infringe-
ments. For the Busca it was a famous victory; the Biga offensive, directed
through the Corts and Diputaci, had failed to regain control of Barcelona,
and a large market now lay open to cloth made in the city. But there remained
the problem of expanding production of quality cloth to meet the demand
when producers lacked the capital to buy English wool, the essential raw
material. On that rock the project foundered. The guilds, having failed to
gain nancial support from a cash-strapped municipality, saw their opportunity
slip away; within two years imports of foreign cloth had risen to their former
level.7 Deceived in their expectations over both monetary reform and protection
for textile manufacture, Busca supporters inevitably lost condence. They also
looked for scapegoats, which they found ready to hand in the Biga and its allies
within the Diputaci and Corts; and some share of blame they heaped upon
those elected to govern in their interest. The peace of the city was becoming
ever more fragile.
The ills suffered by man, whether of the Busca or Biga persuasion, found in
contemporary eyes dire reection in natural portents and calamities. afont
noted in his diary on 22 June 1455 how the earth shook at the very hour
Requesens boarded his galley for Naples. In June 1456 he reported the appear-
ance of a bright comet seen over the city for many nights; he trusted it might be

6
The Corts could only meet in the presence of the king or his locumtenens.
7
Carrre, Barcelona, ii. 392404.
60 The Coming Storm
a divine signal that Barcelona would suffer no greater disasters at Busca hands.
But worse was to come: an outbreak of plague that lasted from May until
December 1457 killed thousands including, afont noted with grim satisfac-
tion, two of the Busca counsellors. A whale the size of a galley washed ashore in
the following June portended to many the death of a great prince; soon after-
wards came news that Alfonso had died in Naples on 27 June. An atmosphere
of doom and frustration pervaded the Busca era. It says much for the authority
of the Busca leadership, Requesens above all, that it was able to hold in check
the violence so often predicted by its enemies.
 8
The Violence of an Urban and
Rural Aristocracy

Barcelonas size, combined with political and economic prominence, gave it a

pre-eminent place among Catalan cities, but the upheavals that threw it into
crisis in the mid-fteenth century were not unique; their clamour resonated in
most other much smaller urban centres and lent crucial weight to the forces
that were tearing Catalonia apart.
Girona, which was to gure so prominently in the events of the civil war,
well illustrates the condition of these lesser towns and cities. With a population
of around 4,500 and an economy dominated by the woollen industry, Girona
lived in a state of violent social unrest orchestrated by factions (bandols) for
whom control of the municipality represented both an object and an instru-
ment of their rivalry.1 Although heads of households were categorized for elect-
oral purposes into three stratied orders based upon wealth (upper, middle,
and lower), they had long divided vertically behind leaders in the urban aris-
tocracy. Like their Barcelona counterparts, these patricians were rentiers and
landed proprietors leavened by a few members of the learned professions,
jurists and physicians. Merchants, well-to-do masters of trades, and notaries
accounted for the middle order. Lesser tradesmen, artisans and craftsmen, by
far the largest number, lled the lower rank. A group of clerics attached to the
cathedral, and families of the military estate (cavallers and donzells) domiciled
in the city, although barred from direct participation in its government, med-
dled incessantly, and to ill effect, in its politics. Many of them were related to,
and descended from, urban families, and hence readily plunged into the latters
quarrels even when their own concerns were not directly at stake.2

1
The classic study of faction in Girona is J. de Chia, Bandos y bandoleros en Gerona, 3 vols. (Girona,
188890). Such urban conict was, of course, common throughout Western Europe. In Catalonia,
as in Castile, civil war gave it a new and dangerous dimension.
2
Sobrequs i Vidal, Societat i estructura poltica de la Girona medieval.
62 The Coming Storm
Protests against blatant manipulation of the electoral system led Queen
Maria in 1445 to impose reforms which, while ensuring a fairer distribution of
power in the rst and second orders, had an opposite effect on the third: of the
several hundred in its ranks, the number eligible for election was cut from fty-
two to thirty-six. Moreover, the elimination of vote-rigging did not entail an
end to factional strife, it may indeed have exacerbated it; there were, besides,
plenty of other bones over which to contend. A quarrel between the abbot of
Sant Pere de Galligants, a monastery within the city, and a canon of the cathed-
ral escalated into violence involving the formers brother, Joan Cavalleria (a
citizen) and the canons relative Narcs de Santdionis (cavaller). Santdions
ambushed the abbot on the highway, then attacked his house in Girona; their
armed bravos constantly clashed in the streets.3 Another patrician family, the
Terrades, found itself simultaneously at grips with the Boxols brothers (donzels)
over an inheritance and with their fellow-citizen Narcs Pere over his exclusion
from the council.4 In so closed a community such feuds inevitably became
intertwined through ties of family and loyalties, with the result that most
inhabitants found themselves drawn into one or another of the loose alliances
which divided the city. Truces and treaties made in particular feuds therefore
often proved ineffectual when the protagonists could re-engage in a different
cause. Mostly the antagonists satised themselves with ritual acts of deance
and aggression, but occasionally these spilt over into violence and bloodshed.
That happened on 13 April 1453. A brawl between hostile groups in front of
the council chamber left Joan Cavalleria, chief gure on one side of the feuding
divide, stabbed to death and nine of his party wounded. Two ringleaders, the
physician Mart Pere and Bernat Miquel, were tried and condemned to death,
only to have that penalty commuted to a ne by Juan of Navarre who well knew
that fault lay on both sides, and that severe punishment might only generate
deeper hatred and greater disorder.5 He strove, instead, by personal interven-
tion in September 1456 and January 1458, to impose a truce cemented by mar-
riage alliances between the principal warring families. Open deance of those
measures brought swift retribution. Thanks to such vigilance from on high, the
excesses of a few hotheads apart, an uneasy peace prevailed until the outbreak
of civil war in 1462 again tore the city asunder.
Juans endeavours to dampen the feuding spirit in the higher ranks of Girona
society ran in tandem with a surge of antagonism towards those same elements
3
ACA 3193, 175 (11 Apr. 1447).
4
ACA 3204, 1 (2 Apr. 1448) and 3203, 85 (19 May 1449).
5
Sobrequs i Vidal, La guerra civil, i. 71 n. 121.
 Violence of Urban and Rural Aristocracy 63
among the mass of the population. Outraged by their loss of political clout in
the 1445 reform and encouraged by Busca success in Barcelona, the common
people found a powerful weapon in the city militia (sagramental) which the
monarchy had authorized in 1431 as a counterweight to feudal forces. In 1453
they turned it against the powerful Margarit family in retaliation for an assault
on one of its members, a woolworker, by Bernat Margarit, nephew of the
bishop of Girona. The militia destroyed the familys house and gardens as well
as a mill owned by a dependant.6 In February 1455 a similar incident, an attack
on a militia captain in his own house, brought out not only the militia but a
large crowd all seeking vengeance on the assailants, servants of the patrician
Francesc Samps. After failing to dislodge their quarry from refuge in the Sant
Pere de Galligants monastery, the pursuers vented their fury on a house belong-
ing to Sampss daughter, rst sacking then burning it. A magistrate who
attempted to intervene had to ee for his life, leaving the city in a state of insur-
rection for two successive days; and the turmoil threatened to spread further
through the surrounding region of Empord as the populace rose against hated
individuals in the military and ecclesiastical orders.7
In government eyes these events bore more of a likeness to outright rebellion
in Majorca than to the Busca campaign controlled by Requesens. Accordingly,
the royal council treated the rising as an act of treason, brought the ringleaders
to Barcelona, and hanged the militia captain (Nicolau Devesa, a draper) whose
injury had sparked the trouble. Three other militia ofcers escaped with nes.
Samps, meanwhile, had brought an action for damages which led to an award
of 30,000 sols against more than a hundred of those involved in the sack of his
daughters house.8 Encouraged by that judgement, the Margarit family then
claimed the grossly inated sum of 10,000 orins in compensation for the
destruction of their property in 1453. Another stratum of conict and outrage
had become manifest, not within the social ranks but between them.
Thus far the government had acted with severity against the humbler perpe-
trators of disorder, but it viewed with profound irritation the endemic feuding
of the higher social orders and had no wish to undermine the militias which
had been designed to bolster royal authority. Following this other line of
concern, Juan, when visiting Girona in February 1456, insisted that the city
assume responsibility for collecting and paying the ne imposed for the riot of

6
Ibid. 72. The author cites other actions of the militia against the persons and property of the priv-
ileged classes in town and country.
7
ACA 3319, 95 (14 Aug. 1455).
8
Sobrequs i Vidal, Societat i estructura poltica de la Girona medieval, 95.
64 The Coming Storm
the previous year on the grounds that the militia was a civic institution. He also
authorized the artisans of Girona to hold meetings and elect delegates whose
task it would be to organize collection of the money.9 He cannot have been
unaware that he had conjured up before the citys aristocracy the spectre of
remensa and Busca syndicates. From those artisan gatherings duly emerged
petitions for a greater share in municipal affairs. The knights and clerics of
Empord fared worse: to them he awarded token compensation of one egg per
household against those responsible for the rural riots.
On his next visit to Girona (September 1456) Juan tackled the issue of elect-
oral reform by persuading the municipal council to accept a system of election
by lot, similar to that already operating in Zaragoza and the Majorcan capital.10
Signicant numbers from all three orders lined up both for and against the
proposal, so demonstrating how deeply vertical divisions still fractured the city
and made impossible a form of government on the lines of that introduced in
Barcelona. A different system, promulgated in 1457, achieved instead a wider
participation by including all eligible members of the upper and middle orders
in the lottery, and by increasing the number of participants from the lower
order to one hundred. This still left hundreds (c.650) more excluded from the
electoral process, a majority who in 1459 voiced what the city fathers termed
their wild desires before their new king, Juan II.11 The old dominant cliques,
deprived of the means of xing elections, manifested their hostility by boy-
cotting the new procedures. In Girona, as in Barcelona, municipal reform had
not paved the way to urban peace.12
Although only about half the size of Girona, the neighbouring city of Vic
was still more prone to discord because part belonged to the royal domain and
part to the count of Foix, while its bishop exercised authority over a substantial
clerical element of the population.13 Tempers easily ared in so small, close-
packed, and interconnected a community which in the eyes of the crown by
its temperament was more inclined to do evil than good.14 Typical of these
violent spirits was the de Malla family: Pons, a knight, aided by his brothers
9
Sobrequs i Vidal, Societat i estructura politica de la Girona medieval, 96.
10
The system rst appeared in Zaragoza in 1414 and was subjected to several renements before
assuming its nal form in 1446. M. I. Falcn Prez, Organizacion municipal de Zaragoza en el siglo xv
(Zaragoza: Institucin Fernando el Catlico, 1978), ch. 1. Also in 1446 it was imposed in Majorca.
11
. . . lurs desordenats appetits. Sobrequs i Vidal, Societat i estructura poltica de la Girona
medieval, 111.
12
Despite oligarchic and popular displeasure the electoral regime was to survive in Girona almost
unchanged for 300 years.
13
E. Junyent, La ciutat de Vic i la seva histria (Barcelona: Curial, 1976).
14
. . . los quals per lur inclinacio son pus prests a fer mal que be. ACA 3205, 44 (5 Sept. 1449).
 Violence of Urban and Rural Aristocracy 65
Guillem and Francesc, the latter a canon of Vic, killed Pere March, batlle of the
count of Foix, on the city streets in June 1426.15 Retaliation duly followed with
the ring of Guillems house and the murder of Roger de Malla, knight, and his
squire.16 Ten years later the de Malla brothers were locked in a feud with an
equally rough character, Pere Mir. Queen Maria intervened in person to patch
up a truce,17 but this failed to stop Mir from instigating a horric attack on the
de Mallas in August 1448. A mob rst red the house of a priest where Francesc
de Malla was living, then pursued its occupants to Guillem de Mallas house
which they also set alight; seven persons perished in the ames; Guillems wife
escaped half-naked from her bed with a new-born child.18
Having concluded that divided power contributed greatly to crime and mal-
practice, the king resolved in 1448 to buy the rights belonging to the count of
Foix.19 A successful conclusion to the negotiations entailed a reorganization of
municipal government, an opportunity which the crown seized to institute in
1450 the system of election by lot. If, in the absence of evidence to the contrary,
we may conclude that this reform brought some peace in the electoral eld, the
embattled factions of Vic pursued their feuds in other terrain, despite efforts by
Queen Maria to pacify them. Her failure arose in great part from the fact that
most of the leading trouble-makers belonged not to the citizen body but to the
military estate, all possessed of lands in the vicinity, all surrounded by numer-
ous kinsmen and retainers, and all prepared to spill their endless wrangles over
rights and wrongs into the streets of Vic.20 Attempts to prohibit their entry and
to ban the carrying of weapons proved generally fruitless. And how perilous
recourse to legal action against them could be was demonstrated by the fate of
Salvador de Serradebaix, procurator scal to the crown court of Vic. Travelling
to Barcelona in May 1451 to pursue a case against some assailants, he was set
upon and killed by a gang in the pay of the Crulles clan.21 Crulles and
Altariba, who had fought a battle on the VicGranollers highway (March
1451) and thereby put themselves at the crowns mercy, meanwhile ignored
repeated summonses to appear before the queen-regent, brushed off orders for

15 16
ACA 2647, 31 (17 Aug. 1426). ACA 2647, 137 (16 Apr. 1429).
17
ACA 3182, 183 (19 Oct. 1443).
18
ACA 3204, 57 (5 Aug. 1448). Mir was eventually outlawed after unsuccessfully claiming cler-
ical status and ignoring a summons to appear before the royal court.
19
ACA 2657, 139 (15 May 1448).
20
The clergy, too, were a turbulent element. In Jan. 1450 the canons of Vic attacked their bishop
in the cathedral chapel with arrows. When he took refuge in the cloister, they besieged his palace,
threatening to burn it and wounding his servants. ACA 3199, 27.
21
ACA 3209, 70 (8 June 1451).
66 The Coming Storm
arrest and sequestration of property, and mustered their forces for another trial
of strength. Fearing violence when a truce between them expired at the end of
January 1452, the queen ordered the acting governor to intervene in person,
but too late to prevent a brawl in which Jofre Gilabert de Crulles, lord
of Peratallada, was killed.22 Investigations and proceedings foundered in pre-
dictable procedural sands, while attempts to hold the factions apart by forbid-
ding outsiders to enter Vic and conning their partisans inside the walls to
their own quarters met with only limited success. They did not prevent Joan
Gilabert de Crulles (a Hospitaller), Jacme Alamany, and Gabriel Colomer
from killing Joan Muntaner inside Vic cathedral in November 1453.23 Even in
the face of such an outrage the veguer declined a call by the victims brother to
arrest the killers, on the grounds that he had earlier given them safeconducts.
Bernat Guillem dAltariba, chief of the other faction, proved equally recalci-
trant: in March 1454, openly defying the veguer, he rode into Vic accom-
panied by several men outlawed for their part in the Crulles murder. The royal
council found itself powerless to act because dAltariba had in his pocket a safe-
conduct secured from the king which covered everyone incriminated in that
affair. Juan, as regent of Catalonia, extended that protection; as king he went
further by making dAltariba veguer and batlle of Vic (14581461) against the
wishes of a city which understandably feared that such an appointment would
exacerbate discord. Civil war saw dAltariba ghting for Juan, the Crulles clan
in the opposing ranks.
Noble disorder and violence, whether in town or countryside, sprang, in
part, from a compulsion to support clients or kinsmen in a society as prone to
feuding as it was to litigation. In the truces and safeconducts, endlessly applied
by the crown as sticking-plaster upon the feuds of the military caste, appear
long lists of adherents covered by the provisions. Embracing often dozens of
individuals from baron to simple gentleman, they reveal how far the webs of
dependence extended and entwined. With good reason the government feared
that violence among the great might ignite whole provinces (almost the greater
part of the barons and knights of the principality preparing for battle against
each other and throwing the principality into tumult24 Maria warned in
1449), yet seldom could it lay hands on or punish a violator of the peace when
a magnate could call on lesser men, often with some footing in the clerical
estate and hence partially immune to secular justice, to execute his designs.
The right of all, from the greatest aristocrat to the meanest gentleman, to wage
22 23
ACA 3209, 179 (6 Feb. 1452). ACA 3319, 18 (30 Dec. 1453).
24
. . . quasi es la maior part dels barons e cavallers del principat preparantse a batalla una contra
altres metents bullicio en lo principat. ACA 3203, 66 (22 Apr. 1449).
 Violence of Urban and Rural Aristocracy 67
private war gave them free rein to indulge their passions wherever they
pleased, with the result that the rural population suffered still more than the
towns from their depredations. That freedom was, it is true, in some degree
circumscribed by the crowns ability to impose a truce upon individuals or to
decree a general peace.25 But when royal authority did attempt, however falter-
ingly, to impose its will upon such unbridled spirits, it inevitably encountered
resistance, sometimes open deance, which in turn led to penal sanctions and,
in the last resort, outlawry. Thus was created a network of hostilities holding
in its toils both monarch and large numbers of his powerful subjects. In the
normal course of events, society contained the resulting friction; should it fail,
general conict threatened.
Noble violence may also in part be attributed to a critical deterioration in the
economic conditions of the upper echelons of society manifested especially
in a growing burden of indebtedness and a dogged resistance to any move, such
as peasant emancipation, that appeared to threaten further impoverishment.
Demographic catastrophes in the fourteenth century had undoubtedly under-
mined the old economic order in the countryside, while a growth in urban
money-markets had encouraged landowners to borrow and mortgage in order
to sustain their incomes and status. Their inability, or plain reluctance, to
satisfy their creditors did sometimes end in a resort to arms. But common as
dispute and conict between indebted landlords and their creditors may have
been, the archival evidence reveals very few cases where they led to sustained
violence. More often immoderate borrowing by the landowning classes opened
their ranks to the aspiring bourgeoisie through marriage or the purchase of
estates, and hence to the forging of a united front between rural and urban arist-
ocracies against the pretensions of those lower in the social scale.26
An adverse economic climate might also be invoked to explain noble aggres-
sion against kinsmen and fellow ef holders, yet one must be wary of too
straightforward a connection because the cost incurred often far exceeded any
prospective gain. Personal and family pride and honour, a web of sworn obli-
gations to others, the burden of vendetta, any grievance real or imagined, all
could drive this military caste into private war, feud, duel, assassination, and
murder. Even the more restrained, even high servants of the crown, could not
wholly cast off a mentality and conventions that had always met challenge with
violence. Only a more absolute royal authority and a stronger state apparatus

25
A truce valid for a maximum period of eleven months could be imposed on the contending part-
ies in a feud. A general peace could be proclaimed in three cases: war with a foreign power, a session of
the Corts, and the absence of the monarch or his locumtenens.
26
Aurell, Els mercaders Catalans, ch. 5.
68 The Coming Storm
would eventually restrain them, and these were patently not yet in place.
Private vendetta, not ideological conviction, often determined which side
these men fought on in the civil war.
Any of the greater or lesser noble families of Catalonia would serve to illus-
trate the unruly behaviour characteristic of this class; none better than the
Counts of Pallars whose lawlessness, extended over generations, made them
pre-eminent enemies of the Antequera dynasty during the civil war. The cam-
paign of coercion against his remensa peasants waged by Arnau Roger, count of
Pallars, has been discussed earlier.27 This was only the last phase in a turbulent
career of violence against family, neighbours, vassals, and royal authority. What
fuelled that aggression was an arrogant temper red partly by descent from the
old ruling dynasty, partly by the isolation of his domains in the frontier fast-
nesses of the Pyrenees,28 and partly by a chronic lack of money. Born around
1400, Arnau Roger succeeded his father as count of Pallars in 1424; four years
later, following family tradition, he took a bride from the powerful Cardona
clan despite the hostility that festered between the two houses, and despite the
cost which drove him deeper into debt with his Barcelona creditors. He reacted
by disputing the title of his brother-in-law, Jaume de Bellera, to lands carved
from the Pallars patrimony as dowries for two kinswomen, one Belleras
mother, the other his wife. Ignoring legal process and a royal edict against pri-
vate wars during the conict with Castile, the count appeared early one morn-
ing with an armed following before the little town of Rialp, one of the places in
dispute. Having tricked the inhabitants into opening the gates, he attacked the
house of Aldonsa de Bellera, Jaumes mother, killed some of her servants who
resisted, then carried her off to a mountain stronghold. The king reacted vig-
orously in February 1430, outlawing Arnau Roger and ordering the governor
of Catalonia to retake Rialp, free Aldonsa, and seize the count, calling out the
host if necessary. But events soon compelled Alfonso to follow a very different
path. Faced with the refusal of the Catalan Corts to vote money for the war
with Castile, he had to solicit aid from individual nobles, prominent among
them this same count of Pallars. The royal council, accordingly, received orders
to suspend proceedings against Arnau Roger. Once the Castilian crisis had
passed, and before departing to Italy, Alfonso did in 1432 give judgement in
the dowry suit in favour of de Belleras wife, Blanquina (the counts sister).
Again to no effect because Arnau Roger resisted every attempt by the vice-
gerent, Queen Maria, to enforce it.
27
S. Sobrequs i Vidal, Els barons de Catalunya, rev. edn. (Barcelona: Editorial Vicens-Vives,
1980), 18799.
28
They covered an area of 1300 sq. km to the west of Andorra.
 Violence of Urban and Rural Aristocracy 69
Pursuing his family feuds, the count next despoiled his mother, Beatriu de
Cardona, of all her dowry lands and when, accompanied by a royal bailiff, she
attempted to reclaim them his henchmen stripped the bailiff of staff and sur-
coat before driving both away. Outraged at this affront, and unconvinced by
the counts expressions of regret, the council wanted to set the host of Catalonia
upon him, but was overruled by the queen who feared it might provoke him
into greater faults. Yet at the same time she confessed to her husband that the
counts behaviour set a bad example to other great men and blamed the current
violence among them on a failure to deal rmly with him! She knew, perhaps,
that Alfonso hesitated to sanction any action against a powerful noble lest it
lead to serious unrest in Catalonia and hence jeopardize his Italian projects.
Emboldened still further, Arnau Roger proceeded in 1434 to have his kinsman
Artal with a force of Gascons carry off yet another relative, this time his grand-
mother, so that he might lay hands on her revenues. Once again royal author-
ity displayed its habitual lack of resolution until a gathering of the Corts in
December 1435 furnished the injured parties with another forum in which to
present their grievances; Barcelona, concerned for its nancial stake in the
county, added its voice to their pleas for action. As a result, the governor of
Catalonia was ordered to seize the counts lands and absolve his vassals from
their allegiance. Had not his French neighbour, the count of Foix, grasped the
opportunity to mount a simultaneous invasion of Pallars in support of his
de Bellera relatives, one may doubt whether Arnau Roger would have been
brought to any account. As it was, he retained possession of his lands and, at the
kings express command, suffered no personal penalties, on the understanding
that he submitted the dowry disputes to royal judgement. That he had no
intention of doing so, he demonstrated immediately by grabbing three more of
his sisters dowry estates, and by mustering his allies and Gascon mercenaries to
resist any further coercion. Again the count of Foix backed by a thousand men
waded into the dispute; the result was a veritable war on the frontier and great
devastation in the lands of all those involved. It must be suspected that Maria
and her advisers were counting upon Gaston of Foix to subdue Pallars, for they
did little themselves, even when it became evident that the count was more
than holding his own in the rugged terrain of the Pyrenees. Their dilemma
grew still more acute when in 1438 the king of France prepared to invade
Aragon in support of his kinsman, Ren of Anjou, who was ghting Alfonso
for possession of the kingdom of Naples. Because the anticipated invasion
route, the Vall dAran, bordered the county of Pallars, they feared that Arnau
Roger might in desperation be persuaded to throw in his lot with the French
and so escalate a frontier war into an international conict. As before, the count
70 The Coming Storm
seized his opportunity, offered his services in defence of the realm, and so
escaped all retribution for his offences against state, family, and neighbours,
even though the French attack never came.
The following decade saw Arnau Roger deantly defending his patrimony,
no longer from kith and kin, but from a crown championing peasant aspira-
tions to greater freedom. When a royal commissioner arrived to supervise the
formation of syndicates his reaction went far beyond the vehement protests of
his fellow barons: he provisioned his castles, recruited Gascon mercenaries, and
was rumoured to be plotting with the duke of Anjou. Anxious as ever to avoid
a crisis on the French frontier and, if at all possible, the ruin of so great a
noble,29 the royal council hatched a plan to give custody of his lands and
teenage son to his trustworthy uncle, also named Arnau Roger de Pallars, who
was both bishop of Urgell and chancellor. It succeeded only partially: by the
end of 1448 he had acquiesced so far as to permit the bishop to act for the
crown within the county, and in April 1449 he took an oath to surrender Pallars
into the kings hands on demand. Here the council judged it prudent to push
no further, only to discover that he remained as obdurate as ever in his hostility
to judicial reform. While he accused ofcials of plotting to kill him, and of
inciting vassals not to pay dues, they reported numerous acts of violence
against peasants favouring redemption. To save the whole reform programme,
Maria and her advisers had at last to grasp the nettle; in August 1450 Requesens
took possession of all his lands without resistance from an ailing, debt-ridden
Arnau Roger. The re had suddenly been quenched, and within a year he died
leaving a son and heir who found in the civil war ample room to pursue pater-
nal feuds and grudges.30

29
. . . com sia gran tala la perdicio de hun tal baro. ACA 3203, 11 (14 Oct. 1448).
30
This account of Arnau Rogers career is based upon the following ACA registers. Their number
bears witness to the anxiety caused by his behaviour: 3171, 11 (25 Feb. 1430); 18 (4 Mar. 1430); 33
(24 Apr. 1430); 39 (24 May 1430); 45 (17 June 1430); 48 (21 June 1430); 90 (17 Dec. 1432); 98
(7 Nov. 1432); 2686, 102 (11 June 1430); 2648, 24 (15 May 1431); 2793, 139 (15 June 1433); 3173,
7 (15 Dec. 1432); 14 (12 Nov. 1432); 15 (10 Nov. 1432); 17 (26 Nov. 1432); 18 (27 Dec. 1432); 20
(18 Apr. 1433); 29 (20 Dec. 1433); 30 (31 Dec. 1433); 38 (30 May 1434); 40 (20 Sept. 1434); 51
(21 June 1432); 74 (11 Sept. 1432); 118 (5 Feb. 1433); 164 (21 Nov. 1433); 165 (3 Dec. 1433); 227
(18 Sept. 1434); 228 (18 Sept. 1434); 229 (20 Sept. 1434); 230 (25 Sept. 1434); 3175, 4 (Oct. 1434);
9 (18 Oct. 1434); 11 (21 Oct. 1434); 12 (20 Oct. 1434); 43 (9 Aug. 1436); 3176, 100 (22 Dec. 1435);
3184, 174 (12 May 1443); 3188, 40 (22 Feb. 1444); 3189, 80 (15 June 1443); 3193, 46 (20 April
1445); 3194, 174 (23 Nov. 1447); 176 (29 Nov. 1447); 3200, 48 (11 July 1450); 49 (11 July 1450);
3201, 166 (2 May 1449); 3203, 11 (14 Oct. 1448); 15 (23 Oct. 1448); 20 (3 Nov. 1448); 41 (18 Feb.
1449); 75 (2 May 1449); 157 (31 Mar. 1450); 159 (15 Apr. 1450); 175 (11 July 1450); 176 (14 July
1450); 178 (28 July 1450); 180 (3 Aug. 1450); 180 (5 Aug. 1450); 183 (19 Aug. 1450); 185 (20 Aug.
1450); 187 (24 Aug. 1450); 188 (1 Sept. 1450).
 Violence of Urban and Rural Aristocracy 71
Why did the state adopt so supine an attitude in the face of such agrant
deance? Partly from concern for the security of the northern frontier; partly
because all the nobles of Catalonia, high and low, friends as well as enemies of
the dynasty, held tenaciously to their privilege of waging private war in defence
of honour and estate. Signicantly, it was Galceran de Requesens, a social
upstart and avowed adversary of that class, who seized the county of Pallars in
August 1450 while the queen and her council were still dithering.
 9
Catalonia Deant

Over two centuries the Corts of Catalonia had gathered condence and power:
their control over legislation and extraordinary taxation had forced monarchs
to treat them as partners, and sometimes as rivals, in government.1 Their asser-
tion in 1410 that their authority derived from God put them, in their own esti-
mation at least, on an equal footing with the throne. In the Diputaci del
General de Catalunya, the permanent delegation that watched over their inter-
ests between sessions, the Corts possessed an executive instrument that rivalled
any belonging to the crown. No wonder, then, that they chose to represent the
choice of Fernando as monarch as an election which bound the ruler in a form
of contract with his people embodied in the Corts; only by mutual consent
might that contract be modied; violation of it absolved the people from
their allegiance.
Relations between Corts and crown had never run smoothly under the old
Catalan dynasty, so it was hardly to be expected that the Castilian line would
fare better. In the forthright opinion of a modern Catalan historian, Fernando
was humiliated in a completely gratuitous and unnecessary manner by the
Corts of 1413 which displayed all the vices of intransigence, often needless
aggression, egoism, disunity and political stupidity that characterised most of
the countrys privileged orders.2 Alfonso, the second of the line, learnt in time
how to live with the prickly body by mixing resolution and compromise; but
he never accepted its rigid adherence to established law and custom. You
should not greatly concern yourselves with ancient or past practices, he told
the Corts in 1431, for experience has shown that not all past practices have

1
J. Sobrequs i Callic, El pactisme a Catalunya (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1982).
2
. . . fou humiliada duna manera absolutament gratuta i innecessria . . . palesaren, en efecte,
tots els vicis de la instransigncia, lagressivitat, sovint gratuta, legoisme, la insolidaritat i lestupidesa
poltica que caracteritzaven la major part dels estaments privilegiats del pas. Sobrequs i Callic, Les
Corts a Catalunya, 79.
 Catalonia Deant 73
been laudable or brought about good.3 For their part, the privileged orders, as
we have seen, harboured grievances on two main counts: rst, that the wider
ambitions of the royal family were marginalizing Catalonia; secondly, that
within the principality Alfonso was working to undermine their position and
interests. As, during the last decade of the reign, Naples increasingly assumed
the role of an imperial capital and Catalonia felt the impact of reform, so their
fears and uneasiness grew.
All that concern found a platform for expression in the Corts whose sessions
extended over the nal years of Alfonsos reign: inaugurated in the cathedral of
Barcelona in October 1454, they ended in March 1458.4 Alfonsos purpose in
having his brother convoke the Corts had been to secure an extension of the
deadline attached to the aid granted against his return. Subsequent requests for
further extensions dragged out proceedings and thereby gave malcontents
ample scope for the airing of grievances. Let it be remembered, however, that
the crown had its protagonists among the ranks of nobles, knights, clerics, and
townsmen, most notably in the ve syndics representing the Busca administra-
tion of Barcelona and in those of the smaller towns summoned for the rst time
to the Corts. The higher ranks of nobles and clergy, close partners of the crown
in its domestic administration and international ambitions, kept at a discreet
distance from the Corts, rarely attending sessions which threatened any direct
confrontation with the sovereign power.
Replying on behalf of the whole Corts to Juans opening address, Joan
Margarit, bishop of Elna, eloquently voiced the underlying concern of his
countrymen: Catalonia, once the heart of the Aragonese monarchy and the
source of that valour and power which had conquered far and wide, now found
itself totally ruined and lost through the absence of its glorious prince and
lord, a nation almost widowed. His remedies: the kings return and the preser-
vation of Catalonias privileges and liberties.5 This appeal to liberties was no
mere rhetorical ourish for custom demanded that the formulation and redress
of grievances must precede any concession to royal demands. Immediately
the syndics of Perpignan, Lleida, Girona, Tortosa, Vic, Vilafranca del Peneds,
and Vilafranca de Conent raised the grievance of greatest moment to urban
oligarchies everywhere: the ousting of their Biga confrres from control of
Barcelona. The Busca syndics, they maintained, were in effect royal appointees

3
. . . car experincia ha mostrat que totes les prctiques passades no sn estades lloables ne sn
vengudes a bona . Albert and Gassiot, Parlaments, 161.
4
Sobrequs i Vidal, La crisi poltica a les Corts de 14541458, in La guerra civil, 1.
5
Albert and Gassiot, Parlaments, 20812.
74 The Coming Storm
and could not, therefore, participate in Corts business because it would be tan-
tamount to the king negotiating with himself. In reply the Busca representa-
tives denied that they were creatures of the crown and accused their adversaries
of raising the issue in order to delay a reply to the kings request over the aid.
The dispute did indeed paralyse the Corts until May 1455 when regular elec-
tions in Barcelona enabled Juan to rule in favour of the citys syndics.6
Getting down at last to formulating grievances, the Corts proceeded in its
usual dilatory manner, to the great exasperation of both king and regent. The
delay might have lasted longer still had not a hard core of those most aggrieved
by royal policies seized an opportunity presented to them in the days before
Christmas 1455. Wearied by months of delay and expense, large numbers had
already left the Corts, many more went home for the holidays. The way was
then left open for a small but determined group to hijack procedures and rush
through its chosen schedule of grievances. Most of the items presented at long
last to Juan on 23 December 1455 involved relatively minor complaints touch-
ing individuals or communities, but tucked among them lay some of explosive
intent. One of these, known as the greuge de Requesens, demanded nothing
less than the annulment of every measure enacted while Requesens had held
the ofce of locumtenens in Catalonia, on the grounds that the appointment
of anyone other than a member of the royal family violated the constitutions,
and so rendered all his actions illegal. By such means the Biga sought to undo
reform in Barcelona. Requesenss unpopularity in the upper reaches of society
guaranteed some support from the clergy and military, but in the third estate
the grievance passed only by a piece of late-night gerrymandering. Other major
items in the schedule of grievances called for an end to proceedings favouring
the remensas, revocation of the coinage revaluation, and the disbanding of urban
militias, all stigmatized as agrant violations of usages and constitutions, all
silently interpreted as part and parcel of an alien and autocratic dynastys inten-
tion to humble the Catalan ruling classes. The fact that twenty-eight of the
sixty-eight members of the military order left in Barcelona subsequently voted
against inclusion of the greuge de Requesens did not signify that they did not
share their fellows alarm at the onward march of royal authority, but at this
juncture they were mainly concerned with factional struggles within the order.7
Similar considerations swayed the clergy which sanctioned the whole schedule

6
The proceedings of this Corts are published in Cortes de los antiguos reinos de Aragn y de Valencia
y Principado de Catalua, i. Catalua (Madrid, 18961922), vols. 22 and 23. They are discussed by
Sobrequs i Vidal, La crisi poltica a les Corts de 14541458, in La guerra civil, i.
7
The military order had long been at odds with itself over the demand by its lower ranks that they
be accorded the status of a separate order as was the case in the kingdom of Aragon.
 Catalonia Deant 75
by a majority of ten to three. But in the commons, where Barcelona mustered
fourteen votes against eight in protest at the conduct of the Corts, majority
sentiment genuinely favoured reform as well as the kings return, seen as a
guarantee that the gains so far achieved would not be undone and might
be carried further. Barcelonas inuence and voice was magnied, it is true, by
the practice whereby many smaller municipalities, in order to save expense,
appointed fellow-citizens resident in Barcelona to represent them in the Corts.
Despite their protestations to the contrary, the other two orders viewed the
prospect of Alfonsos return in an ambiguous light: while desiring to reclaim
the sovereign and seat of government from Italy, they shared the commons
belief that the consequence, at least in the short term, would be to reinforce the
campaign being waged against many of their cherished privileges. Procedural
wrangles which kept the Corts at a standstill therefore caused them no undue
distress. Not until 9 April 1456 did the whole body assent to a compromise
brokered by the bishop of Elna: it gave the king until the end of the year to
make his promised return and four months thereafter to redress grievances;
only then would he receive the aid. In the legislative eld they were able to agree
on constitutions establishing the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, the
celebration of St Georges day, a closed season for fowling, and a hygienic mea-
sure to ban clothing that touched the ground. But on the great constitutional
issues they remained deadlocked.
Juans manifest frustration with these proceedings arose not solely from
delay over the aid issue; he badly needed to get away from Catalonia to con-
front problems in Aragon and, above all, in Navarre. An upsurge of noble feud-
ing in the former kingdom had led to widespread disorder and consequent
appeals for Juans personal intervention to save the land from re and ame.8
But if duty summoned him to Aragon, passion called him to Navarre where he
meant, whatever the cost, to take revenge on his son, the prince of Viana, for
the part he had played in bringing Juan to a humiliating peace with Castile in
1455. That settlement had cost the king of Navarre all his Castilian estates and
his bastard son, Alfonso, the mastership of Calatrava.9 Retribution took shape

8
. . . este regno va a fuego e ama. Sobrequs i Vidal, La guerra civil, i. 100 n. 220. For the
endemic conicts in Aragon see Sarasa Snchez, Sociedad y conictos sociales en Aragn.
9
During the course of the struggle with his father in Navarre, Charles had sought, and received,
aid from the Infante Enrique who succeeded Juan II as king of Castile on 21 July 1454. When, on the
initiative of King Alfonso, peace between Aragon and Castile was concluded in Sept. 1454 Juan had
no choice but to ratify it, which he did in Feb. 1455, despite the humiliations heaped upon him. He
never forgave Charles for what he regarded, with some reason, as blackest treachery. Vicens Vives,
Juan II de Aragn, 1648. His son Alfonso had been imposed on the Order against its will in 1443
when Juan was at the height of his power in Castile.
76 The Coming Storm
in a pact between Juan and his son-in-law, Gaston of Foix: Charles of Viana
and his sister Blanche10 were to be disinherited, Gaston and his wife Leonor
(another of Juans daughters) proclaimed heirs to Navarre, and a military opera-
tion, jointly mounted by Juan and Gaston, was to drive the disgraced prince
from that kingdom. The operation was planned for June 1456. Charles and
Blanche were duly stripped of their rights to the crown of Navarre in December
1455, and Gaston himself arrived in Barcelona in April to conrm that his
overlord, the king of France, had sanctioned the deal, and press Juan to insti-
tute the process of disinheritance.
Destined to become as potent an icon of Catalan nationalism as Jaume of
Urgell, Charles of Viana at this moment cast over the principality a brief
shadow doomed to deepen into the darkness of civil war. Because he had to
keep the Corts in session or lose the aid, Juan needed its permission to absent
himself. To gain that permission he must convince it that grave perils threat-
ened in Aragon and Navarre. Over Aragon there were few serious objections,
but the situation in Navarre aroused grave concern which led Barcelona and
the clergy separately to put forward the idea of sending an embassy to Charles
in the hope of reconciling him with his father. Catalan interest in their quarrel
extended far beyond the immediate issue of Juans absence. No longer could
anyone expect that Queen Maria would produce an heir, even should Alfonso
return from Italy. In the event of his death (by the standards of the age and the
Trastmar family he was already an old man), the crown would pass to Juan,
himself verging on 60, with Charles his heir. Were Charles to be disinherited,
the succession fell to Juans only other legitimate son, Fernando, then no more
than 4 years old and a thoroughbred Castilian. On this occasion, however, no
one wanted to press the point too far, so, with some haggling over details, the
Corts gave Juan leave to absent himself for two months.
The prince of Viana meanwhile had decided not to wait for the axe to fall.
Instead he took his cause in person to the French court, asking Charles VII to
judge between himself and his father.11 Further obstruction to Juans Navarrese
scheme came from none other than his brother, the king of Aragon, who
expressed his disquiet over behaviour that might shatter the peace newly made

10
Following her divorce from Enrique, prince of Asturias, in 1453, Blanche had returned to
Navarre where she became a stout supporter of her brother in his differences with their father.
11
The only substantial study of Charles of Viana is still G. Desdevises du Dzert, Don Carlos
dAragon, prince de Viane, tude sur lEspagne du Nord au XVe sicle, (Paris: Colin, 1889).
 Catalonia Deant 77
with Castile.12 Alfonso became still more uneasy when he learnt of his nephews
ight to France, his implacable antagonist on the Italian scene.
Juan returned to Barcelona, as promised, on 16 August 1456 to nd the
Corts and Diputaci locked in combat with Barcelona over the citys procla-
mation banning the import of foreign woollens. A vociferous, Biga-friendly
minority, taking control of proceedings in the Corts, presented the affair as an
issue of life and death for the liberties of Catalonia but could not get the con-
sent needed from a Barcelona-led majority in the third estate to declare this a
grievance. Consequently, all proceedings in the Corts remained deadlocked.
To make life still more difcult for Juan, his brother was asking for yet another
extension of the aid, this time until May 1457, while his own plans for Navarre
were hamstrung by the difculty of getting away from Catalonia. Convinced
that the Corts would agree on nothing, the aid included, he resolved in
October 1456 to prorogue it for three months and concentrate instead on
Navarre. Arriving there in January 1457, he renewed his pact with Gaston of
Foix and xed their joint military operation against those still defending the
cause of the absent Charles for the following May.
None of this pleased Alfonso. He still attached great psychological import-
ance to the aid, tied to the prospect of his return, for his relationship with his
Spanish subjects, even though he had by this time determined to put the sub-
jugation of Genoa at the top of his agenda.13 Misinformed about the true
nature of difculties in the Corts, he saw the prorogation as a dereliction of
duty on Juans part, made more reprehensible by a stubborn pursuit of the feud
against Charles of Viana. To lure that prince away from his dangerous irtation
with France, Alfonso invited him to Naples with a promise to negotiate a re-
conciliation with his father. In January 1457, just as Juan and Gaston were
concerting their plans against him, the prince arrived in the Neapolitan court
to a most cordial reception. Whereas Juan had little taste or time for the arts in
any form, Charless avowed interest in them struck a welcome chord with his
cultured uncle.
Juan loyally resumed his tussle with the Corts in February 1457, as yet
unaware of this faraway setback to his schemes. The line-up of forces within the
estates he found unchanged, but when confronted with his request for yet
another adjournment of the aid the constitutionalist block adopted a new tac-
tic based upon the not unreasonable assumption that the king had no intention
12
Charless old ally, now King Enrique IV of Castile, was concerned to keep his nger in the affairs
of Navarre by supporting the Beaumont faction against Juan and the Agramonts.
13
Ryder, Alfonso the Magnanimous, 4004.
78 The Coming Storm
of leaving Italy. He should have his extension to the end of September, and
indenitely beyond; in return he must approve ad beneplacitum an ordinance,
drawn up by a commission of the Corts, for the reform of justice in Catalonia.
That ordinance would come into force should he not return in September and,
as opponents of the proposal foresaw, would undoubtedly decide the great
issues of the day in favour of the entrenched oligarchies. Such conditions
Alfonso rejected out of handthe snare was plain to see; the offer, he insisted,
must be unconditional. By now, it should be noted, expense, other business,
and boredom had driven most members of the Corts away from Barcelona,
leaving behind a committed few resolved to ght the constitutional battles
with little thought of truce or compromise.
Already a sombre counterpoint had established itself between the crises in
Catalonia and Navarre as Juan, frustrated on both fronts, hurried back and
forth. The linking motif, the fate of Charles of Viana, has already been dis-
cussed; around it Juan was developing another, the future of his infant son
Fernando as heir to the throne of Aragon. Turning his back once again on the
stalemated Corts at the end of March 1457, he took himself to his Pyrenean
kingdom to prepare for a meeting with his old adversary Enrique, now king of
Castile, whom he hoped to wean away from the cause of Viana. The alterna-
tive, Fernando, he cunningly14 introduced to the Castilian court in order to
gain both sympathy and support for his cause. All in vain, for a few days after
the meeting, late in May, he had to confess to an envoy from the count of Foix
that Enrique was resolved to support Charles against any attack. Worse still, he
had lately received a demand from Alfonso that he submit his dispute with
Charles to the kings judgement, a demand backed by the threat that, should he
refuse, Alfonso would strip him of the ofce of regent and do all in his power
to aid the prince of Viana against him and Gaston.
No choice remained but to placate Gaston with vain assurances and resume
the ever more ungrateful ofce of regent in Catalonia. Reaching Barcelona on
30 June 1457, Juan found a Corts still more denuded in numbers. An epidemic
had driven so many away that neither his request for an adjournment to
another town nor his subsequent decision to prorogue the session until
Christmas evoked any response. Free again, by default, from Catalonian con-
cerns, he was thus able to spend the next six months in Navarre locked in argu-
ment with Alfonsos emissaries over the fate of that kingdom and his son.
During that time, as in his previous absences, effective control of Catalonia

14
disimuladamente: Zurita, Anales, xvi, p. xlii.
 Catalonia Deant 79
passed into the hands of Requesensthe embodiment in oligarch eyes of royal
hostility to the principalitys liberties and traditions. Populist policies cham-
pioned by that monster, his embattled opponents cried, were destroying not
only the constitutional foundations but also security of life and limb. The
abbot of Sant Benet de Bages carried their woes to the Neapolitan court which
he lled with laments for the state of Catalonia full of feuds and evils where no
man lives or moves in safety.15 All to no purpose; Alfonso continued to pro-
claim condence in his governor and in the thrust of reform; in November he
promulgated the edict against the mals usos. Nor did he, on this occasion, raise
any objection to Juans neglect of the Corts and Catalonia, preferring that he
devote his energies to a settlement in Navarre. Knowing that his sceptre must
sooner rather than later pass to Juans line, Alfonso strove in the nal year of his
life to settle the succession by resolving the conict between father and son. A
solution appeared to be in sight when, in March 1458, Alfonsos ambassador in
Navarre was able to establish a truce between the warring parties there, Juan
having previously been cajoled into withdrawing all legal processes against the
prince of Viana. At this point both parties stood bound to accept Alfonsos nal
judgement on all matters in dispute. Had not death intervened, that judge-
ment would probably have favoured Charles. The Catalan aid Alfonso tacitly
let fall into oblivion and with it the recalcitrant Corts. Juan met the rump for
a few, fruitless days in December 1457 and again in March 1458; he then pro-
rogued it to September, by which time the crown rested on his own head.
So inconsequential an ending to four turbulent years belies their signic-
ance. They had hardened Catalan suspicion that the ruling dynasty had rele-
gated their land to a subordinate place in its grand designs: Alfonsos scheme for
hegemony over Italy and the western Mediterranean; Juans obsessive resolve to
restore Antequera fortunes in Castile. Catalonia would have to ght to regain
the primacy on which it had always prided itself and avoid relegation to the
status of a province permanently ruled over by an obedient royal agent. Those
same years had, however, seen the bulwark of Catalan constitutionalism frac-
tured by the repercussions of Busca triumph in Barcelona, and social divisions
deepened and embittered by peasant militancy against subjection to a feudal
hierarchy. At every level society found itself riven by feud and faction. Would
such a divided people ever unite in defence of a common cause?

15
. . . plena de bandors e mals, e no anar ni estar segur neg. Madurell Marimn, Mensajeros, 594.
 10
Juan II, a Monarch Beset

News of Alfonsos death reached Barcelona on 12 July 1458. It took three days
more to travel to the Navarrese town of Tudela where Juan was keeping close
watch on a fragile truce and pushing forward his Castilian schemes with a
proposal to marry his infant son and daughter, Fernando and Leonor,1 to the
brother and sister (Alfonso and Isabel) of the childless Enrique IV;2 thus would
he ensure that one or other of his offspring sat one day on the Castilian throne.
Immediately, however, he had to attend to the throne of Aragon which he had
now inherited. The kingdom of Naples, acquired with so much Spanish blood
and treasure, passed, as Alfonso had so long patently intended, to his illegitim-
ate son Ferrante. To that division of the inheritance Juan made no objection,
for he had no desire to become entangled in Italian adventures which, in his
eyes, had for too long distracted his family from its true Iberian destiny. He
nevertheless at once made it plain that he would back his Neapolitan nephew
against restless barons, a hostile pope, and a Genoese republic dominated by
France; dynastic pride and his subjects maritime interests demanded no less.3
Regret at the demise of their royal bugbear did not, understandably, plague
the Catalan old guard. afont had noted in his diary, with patent satisfaction,
that a religious procession of dignitaries held in Barcelona on 23 June to inter-
cede for the kings recovery attracted a following of no more than twenty ordin-
ary citizens. The sermon preached by a Franciscan at the solemn memorial
service on 28 July he denounced as full of falsehoods; may God forgive him,
presumably because it cast too glowing a light on the late king.4 Those on the
other side of the fence viewed events very differently; Boquet, the Busca envoy

1
Both were children of the marriage to his second wife, the Castilian Juana Enriquez.
2
Following his divorce from Blanche, Enrique had in 1455 married Juana, a Portuguese princess,
in an endeavour to produce an heir. Rumours of his impotence were common currency in Castile.
See J. Martn, Enrique IV (Hondarribia: Nerea, 2003), 617.
3
J. Vicens Vives, La poltica mediterranea i italiana de Joan II dArag entre 1452 i 1462, in Obra
dispersa (Barcelona: Editorial Vicens-Vives, 1967).
4
. . . lo qual dix moltes falcies en la trona; Deu loy perdo. Dietari, 250 and 252.
 Juan II, a Monarch Beset 81
in Naples, voiced their trepidation when he wrote on 15 May: All should
humbly beg and pray (for Alfonsos recovery) for his health is the peace, repose
and safety of all.5 In the event, the expectations of one party and the fears of the
other proved for a time unfounded because Juan held rmly to his brothers
course amid the troubles of Catalonia. Requesens remained governor and was
probably instrumental in securing a proclamation conrming suspension of
the mals usos. Juan, on his rst appearance as sovereign in Catalonia, dispelled
all doubt as to his stance in the peasant issue. Take care, he admonished the
vicar-general of the Girona diocese, not to meddle in such matters, as you prize
our love, and concern yourself solely with what belongs to your ofce, leaving
to us, as rightful judge, the consideration and despatch of this business.6 The
radicals in Barcelona, too, found continuing favour with king as well as gover-
nor; in November 1459 leave to hold assemblies, granted by Alfonso to the
guilds syndicate for two years in 1457, was conrmed for a further period of
six years. With this provision, lamented afont, all people, good and bad
alike, understood very well that the king was endeavouring to keep his vassals
divided.7
Once conrmed in their long-held suspicion that Juan was no better dis-
posed towards them than his brother had been, the reactionary forces in
Catalonia began to seek ways of imposing their will upon him. The instrument
that had proved most effective in the pastthe Cortswas not available; the
assembly convoked in Alfonsos name in 1454 had lapsed on his death and
Juan, in no urgent need of funds, showed no inclination to submit himself to
another round of vexation when he wanted his hands free to grapple with
Navarre and the Castilian marriages. The Diputaci, that other stronghold of
conservatism, could do little unaided, but it was strategically located in
Barcelona where reactions prospects began to look brighter. In the Catalan
capital the mood of popular solidarity and enthusiasm which had sustained the
Busca rise to power had not survived an inevitable disillusionment with the
fruits of that triumph. Increasingly the guilds syndicate was behaving as an
adversary rather than an ally of the citys administration and councils. Also,

5
E tots len deuen homilment soplicar e pregar, car la sua salut s pau, reps e salut de tots.
Madurell Marimn, Mensajeros, 620.
6
. . . guardau vos de innovar ne enantar en dits affers, per quant haveu cara nostra amor, e haiau
cura solament a ao ques sguarda a vostre ofci, remetent a nos la cognicio e execucio del dit negoci.
ACA 3361, 84 (15 Dec. 1458). Cited in Vicens Vives, Histria de los remensas, 62 n. 2.
7
E ab aquesta provisi tots los pobles bons e mals hagueren plena conaxena que lo senyor rey
sestudiava en tenir en divs sos vassalls. Batlle, Barcelona a mediados del siglo XV, 153.
82 The Coming Storm
trust between Requesens and the Busca was beginning to fray, as were the loose
bonds that had formerly held the Busca itself together. Biga stalwarts assidu-
ously fostered these divisions. Thus the summer months of 1459 witnessed
demonstrations whipped up against the governor on rumours that men had
forcibly been put to the oars in his galley; at the same time leaders of the Busca
council were inveigled into amicable gatherings, social and ceremonial, with
the chief ofcers of the Biga Diputaci. Meanwhile Biga inuence grew within
the city councils as its adherents abandoned the policy of boycott. The elec-
tions of November 1459 saw two Biga supporters (Romeu and Massanet)
become counsellors, and a subsequent return to the illegal practice of taking
decisions, which properly belonged to the Council of Thirty, in meetings of a
caucus. Reform suffered further attrition through tinkering with appointment
to the Council of a Hundred in order to admit Biga sympathizers. Vain protests
from the syndicate served only to widen the breach between guilds and
government.
Given time, moderate elements among the Busca and Biga might have
evolved a modus vivendi within the reformed municipality, but diehard
enemies of reform were determined to overthrow it, knowing at the same time
that, however much they might advance by stealth, the king would use his
authority against them. To many it seemed reasonable to hope and expect that
they might not have to deal long with Juan; at 60 he had already lived much
longer than most of his Trastmar forebears and relatives. In their eyes, accord-
ingly, everything hung upon the succession which belonged still by right to
Charles of Viana (living in Sicily since Alfonsos death) but which Juan mani-
festly desired to settle upon his favourite, Fernando. Although old by contem-
porary standards, Juan in fact enjoyed rude health in mind and body, marred
only by cataracts which severely restricted his vision; the iron obstinacy which
had sustained him through so many setbacks to his Castilian dreams was to
serve him still through another decade of tragedy and triumph.
An opportunity to challenge Juan over the succession rst presented itself in
October 1459 when he attempted to have himself and the queen crowned in
Zaragoza; jointly with Aragon and Valencia, the Catalans protested that the
ceremony could not proceed in the absence of the prince of Viana who must
simultaneously be sworn as primogenitus, a title which recognized his status as
heir to the throne. Tension grew to a dangerous pitch when the prince, in the
following spring, set foot in Barcelona. Extricating himself from a half-baked
plot to put him on the Neapolitan throne when Alfonso died, he had settled for
a time in Sicily, only to nd himself again the target of that islands separatist
 Juan II, a Monarch Beset 83
ambitions.8 Those he had resisted, but an implicit threat of secession gave an
edge to bargaining for a settlement with his father which he conducted from
Sicily. Much more dastardly, in Juans eyes, was Charless continued scheming
with Castile, above all his proposal for a marriage with the Princess Isabel
which struck at the heart of his fathers ambitions. No marriage would in truth
have met with Juans wholehearted approval because he would have preferred
that Charles had no legitimate son with a claim to the Aragonese throne out-
weighing Fernandos, but in order to steer the prince towards an acceptable
bride he set in train negotiations for a match with the Portuguese Princess
Catalina. Charles appeared to acquiesce.9
If he wished to play for high stakes, Charles would have been well advised
to continue the game from his Sicilian haven; instead he allowed himself to be
lured back to a precarious refuge in Majorca with specious assurances of pater-
nal goodwill. From that Balearic island, where he arrived in August 1459, he
picked up the tortuous thread of dialogue with his father while simultaneously
nurturing a host of precautionary contacts with other parties. Once again he
was outwitted.10 In January 1460 he agreed to surrender all the Navarrese
territory held by his allies against a pardon for himself, his sister, and his fol-
lowers; he was also given permission to choose a place of residence anywhere in
his fathers realms, Navarre and Sicily excepted. Having settled all this, Juan
hurried off to supervise the surrender in Navarre only to learn that Charles,
in a characteristically impulsive show of initiative, had left Majorca and, on
28 March, landed at Barcelona. He could not have chosen a more contentious
spot. God willed that the prince should have come so opportunely, wrote
afont.11 While the agreement said nothing about the crucial succession ques-
tion, both parties in Barcelona, hoping to win him to their cause, treated the
prince as de facto heir to the Aragonese crown. Wisely he turned down the citys
proposal for a ceremonial entry in the form customarily offered to the heir
apparent, but he did attend a reception in his honour given in the town hall on
17 April. Furious at this turn of events, Juan ordered the governor Requesens
and other ofcials to ensure that neither Barcelona nor any other Catalan
city treated Charles as primogenitus, a title which the prince nevertheless

8
The Sicilian parliament asked Juan to appoint Charles regent in that kingdom. J. Vicens Vives,
Trajectria mediterrnea del Princep de Viana (Barcelona: Dalmau, 1961).
9
He had earlier married Ana of Cleves, in 1439; she died childless in 1448.
10
Vicens Vives ( Juan II, 2203) represents the bargain between Juan and Charles as more evenly
balanced.
11
Dios quiera que el Principe haya entrado en buena hora. Vicens Vives, Juan II, 224.
84 The Coming Storm
continued to employ in his correspondence. An encounter with this detested
offspring that the king would gladly have avoided had now become inevitable.
Queen Juana prepared the ground by meeting the prince beyond Igualada
on the highway from Barcelona. All seemed well; Charles dismounted, kissed
her hand, she responded with a kiss on the mouth, and they rode back amicably
into Igualada. On the following day, 17 May 1460, father and son met, for
the rst time in seven years, at the same spot. Kissing the kings hand, Charles
said, My lord, forgive me; I wish to amend my ways and be an obedient son.
To which Juan replied, If you behave to me as a son, I will be to you a good
father.12 Sunday 18 May saw the king, queen, and prince enter Barcelona amid
scenes of great jubilation at this apparent healing of their enmity. But behind
the emotional words and gestures of reconciliation all three persevered in the
ways that doomed all hope of understanding: Juan and Juana in their resolve
that Fernando should inherit the Aragonese throne, Charles in his rash irta-
tions with Castile which he resumed in August.
Any expectation that Juan might have changed his stance vanished when in
the Cortes of Aragon, meeting at Fraga in September 1460, he insisted on hav-
ing the oath of allegiance sworn to himself alone, rejecting all pleas to permit
the customary oath to the rst-born as heir.13 Charles, waiting expectantly in
the monastery of Monserrat for a call to Fraga, nally understood that the
breach with his father was irreparable. Still more did attering proposals from
agents of the Castilian court seem to offer his only hope of salvation: marriage
to Isabel and ight to sanctuary in Castile. Whilst spies in Charless entourage
kept Juan informed as the prince fell ever deeper into treasonable intrigue,
others around the king laboured to precipitate a crisis.14 Their moment came
at the end of November 1460 when Charles tardily obeyed a summons to join
the king in Lleida, the city to which Juan had summoned the Catalan Corts. The
very choice of that city for his rst encounter, as king, with the Corts infuriated
Barcelona which held it as an ancient privilege that it should always be the seat

12
Senyor, perdonaume, que yom vul esmenar e esser ll obedient. Si tum fas fetes de ll, yot fare
fets de bon pare. Such is the version of these exchanges recorded in the Dietari del capella dAlfons V
el Magnanim, 239, a 15th-cent. chronicle attributed to Melchor Miralles. For this attribution see
J. Sanchis i Sivera, (ed.), Dietari del capell dAnfos el Magnnim (Valencia, 1932), pp. xiiixviii.
13
A distinction was made between the natural and ofcial primogenitus. Vicens Vives, Juan II, 225.
14
Among these was the archbishop of Toledo, Alonso Carrillo, who arrived in Fraga with the
ratication of a pact which Juan had concluded with dissident Castilian nobles earlier in the year. It
was to counter this threat that Enrique sought to stir up trouble in Aragon, using Charles as his agent.
Vicens Vives, Historia crtica de la vida y reinado de Fernando II de Aragn (Zaragoza: Institucin
Fernando el Catlico, 1962), 54. Martn, Enrique IV, 115.
 Juan II, a Monarch Beset 85
of such gatherings. Much worse was to follow. Messages from Juans father-in-
law, the admiral of Castile, warned that Charless marriage to Isabel was con-
cluded, and that he was about to ee to join the king of Castile in a campaign
to seize the throne of Aragon.15 Still Juan hesitated until late at night on 1
December the queen threw herself weeping at his feet imploring him to heed
her fathers warnings, and thrusting before his clouded eyes letters, supposedly
in Charless own hand, conrming the treasona ttingly histrionic gesture
which decided him on a fateful step.16 The following morning, having sum-
moned the prince and greeted him in the accustomed fashion, Juan gave orders
for his arrest. Nine years earlier in similar manner he had hoped, but in vain, to
quell civil war in Navarre. Now, unwittingly, he had ignited a train that would
blow Catalonia to ashes. Prime responsibility for this miscalculation must rest
with the queen and that powerful faction in the court committed to ensuring
Fernandos succession; at all costs they had to keep Charles from the Aragonese
throne and a Castilian marriage. Juan remained, as always, mesmerized by dim
yet alluring visions of a return to Castilian glory. Wholly preoccupied by those
ends, they all ignored rumblings of discontent and danger beneath their feet.
Ominous signs had appeared in Barcelona during the summer following the
call to elect delegates to the forthcoming Corts. The popular syndicate, stand-
ing on the privileges granted by Alfonso, insisted that they should be chosen
equally from the four estates, not solely, as had happened before 1455, from the
ranks of citizens. Against them the Biga maintained that the privileges in ques-
tion made no mention of such elections which ought, therefore, to be con-
ducted in accordance with the precedents that had governed the appointment
of syndics in 1454. There ensued an impasse which it was left to Requesens to
resolve when Juan took his court to Lleida in August. Unhappily for the peace
of the city, the governors popularity and inuence had, as we have seen, waned
in step with the disintegration of Busca solidarity. Two months of mediation
came to nothing, with the result that on 5 November one-third of the Consell
de Cent elected four syndics representing each of the four estates, while the
majority proceeded to choose a rival body of syndics, all of them citizens. An
explosion of popular outrage greeted the news. Guided by Requesens, who had
hastened to Lleida, Juan reprimanded the city authorities for permitting such a

15
The admiral was another of those involved with Juan in the alliance against the king of Castile.
The accusations against Charles were set out in detail in the instructions given to an ambassador
whom Juan dispatched to justify his conduct to the king of France.
16
Twelve years later Juan told Fernando that he had learnt the letters were forgeries. In the fevered
atmosphere of the moment the queen may well have believed them to be genuine.
86 The Coming Storm
schism and refused to admit either delegation to the Corts. On 25 November
the governor returned to Barcelona with a letter ordering new elections in the
form demanded by the three lower estates. But far from cowing the resurgent
spirit of the Biga, this royal intervention served only to generate a reaction in
its favour when, a few days later, the Consell proceeded to the annual election
of the executive council; three of the ve posts went to the Biga, the others to
moderates disinclined to challenge their colleagues. Once back in the saddle,
the oligarchy made no secret of its readiness for a showdown with the king and
his agents. Categorically it refused to obey Juan and Requesens over the elec-
tion of syndics, and within a few hours the detention of Charles presented an
opportunity to call into question the very foundations of royal authority. In the
margin of a document entitled Discordia syndicorum civitatis Barchinone a
chancery clerk later wrote, Hic est principium commocionum in Principatu
Cathalonie.
Biga interest in the prince of Viana arose not from altruistic sympathy for
his plight, but partly from the affront to constitutional sensibilities represented
by the arrest of one they held to be the true primogenitusJuan was presum-
ing to ignore the laws he had sworn to upholdand, above all, from long-
nurtured hostility to his father. The summer months Charles spent in
Barcelona had allowed the kings enemies ample time to assess his malleable
character and forge links with him; the urban oligarchy realized that it had to
hand an ideal weapon to employ against the king, and, in the Corts, a eld
where it could be used to maximum effect.
Fully aware of the potential of the Corts to cause trouble in such circum-
stances, Juan hastened to prorogue it, but too late to prevent riots in the streets
of Lleida, riots encouraged by delegates to the Corts and Charless entourage.
Calls on the neighbouring population to rise in support threatened still greater
chaos. Nor did the Corts meekly disperse; on 4 December 1460 they charged
their standing commission, the Diputaci, with the task of taking measures to
deal with the situation and made a general appeal for the support of all
Catalonia. Signicantly, Barcelona was given a key advisory role, amounting to
a veto, in the Diputacis deliberations. Acting together, the city authorities
and Diputaci assembled in the capital a parliament of the three estates,17 a

17
A Catalan parliament was a body similar in composition to the Corts but summoned on an ad
hoc basis and lacking the power to legislate. J. Lalinde Abadia, Los parlamentos y demas instituciones
representatives, CHCA IX, 14351. For the dominant role of Barcelona in the Council see Sobrequs
i Callic, Extraterritorialitat del poder poltic del Consell de Cent durant la guerra civil catalana del
segle xv, CHCA XVII, iii. 92336.
 Juan II, a Monarch Beset 87
body which later assumed the title of Consell Representant lo Principat de
Cathalunya (Council representing the principality of Catalonia). Endowing
itself with extraordinary powers, this parliament proceeded to appoint an
eight-man delegation, backed by an advisory group twenty-seven strong, to
confront the king. Thoroughly alarmed by these displays of violent discontent,
Juan dispatched Charles in custody of the queen to Fraga; hard on their heels
came those charged by Catalonia with seeking Charless release. There followed
a strange game of make-believe between these envoys and a seemingly sympa-
thetic queen who gave them access to the prince and appeared ready to inter-
cede with the king. This was doubtless a ploy to gain time. Juan following
ignominiously in their wake, found the Aragonese Cortes, still gathered in
Fraga, unsympathetic so, with their prisoner in tow, the royal pair pushed on to
the shelter of their palace in Zaragoza.18
So universal was the sympathy for Charles, a seemingly penitent son harshly
used by a vengeful father, that the guild syndics of Barcelona hardly dared raise
a voice against the triumphant Biga who proted from the occasion to consol-
idate their grip on the citys institutions. Nor could any utter a word in defence
of a king on whose favour and protection hung the fate of the popular cause;
rather was the mass of the population swept into the hysteria surrounding a vir-
tual martyr. A beleaguered Requesens was driven to propose punishing the
more outrageous abuse of his sovereign by the common folk, only to be told by
the Biga authorities that Catalans had always had a freehold of tongue in talk-
ing of their kings and lords, and had been accustomed to speak ill of them.19
The campaign to free Charles was pursued by sending to Zaragoza a distin-
guished deputation representing the three Catalan estates, at its head the senior
cleric, the archbishop of Tarragona. Jointly with a number of sympathetic
Aragonese barons, they presented their demands and were given access to the
prisoner in a manner which seemed to indicate some yielding on the kings
part, although care was taken to present the queen as the one open to persua-
sion.20 But beyond allowing his captive more creature comforts Juan would not
go, and the delegation returned to Barcelona empty-handed. Their report of
the rebuff, delivered to the parliament on 8 January 1461 stiffened Catalan

18
Zurita, Anales, xvii, pp. ii and iii. Batlle, Barcelona, ch. 5. Vicens Vives, Juan II, ch. 8.
19
. . . havien hada la lenga en francha alou de parlar de lurs reys e senyors e havien acustumat mal
dir de aquells. Batlle, Barcelona, 167.
20
They held meetings with her on 24, 25, and 31 Dec. On the last occasion they visited Charles
in her company. N. Coll Juli, Doa Juana Enriquez, 2 vols. (Madrid: Consejo Superior de
Investigaciones Cienticas, 1953). i. 91.
88 The Coming Storm
resolve. Ignoring Juans warning that it should not meet and that it had
displayed arrogance and excessive insolence,21 the parliament went on to
formulate accusations that he had violated the constitutions and privileges of
Catalonia, the Usatges of Barcelona and the law of succession. Clergy, nobles,
and towns were now united with the nucleus of Biga forces in a common
determination to bring their monarch to heel.
For several weeks their quarry failed to appreciate the danger, insisting, to all
who approached him, on the one hand that the prince was guilty of treason, on
the other that he was exercising no more than the common right of a father to
punish an errant son. Such was the message conveyed to Barcelona by an emis-
sary who was also to insist that the king was obliged to account for his actions
to none but God. Reassured by exaggerated reports of dissension in the Consell
de Cent, he concluded that he could still count upon substantial support in
Barcelona as well as from those other Catalans who had reason to look to the
crown for the betterment of their condition. To that belief he continued to
cling when, on 20 January 1461, he left Zaragoza to resume the contest in the
dissident stronghold of Lleida. There he was confronted by forty-ve emis-
saries from the Catalan parliament armed with an ultimatum: release Charles
and acknowledge him as heir or face rebellion. The crisis came to a head on
6 February 1461. Juan refused to give the Catalans audience, dismissively say-
ing that he had more important business on hand, and then prepared to leave
the city. Finding the gates closed, he ordered them to be opened, only to be
answered, My lord, you shall not leave Lleida until you have heard the
messengers or delivered the prince to us. So Lleida, you would hold me pris-
oner,22 he retorted and turned about, in a great rage, to meet the embassy.
An account of their encounter recorded by the diarist Miralles, has Juan
declaring in roundly authoritarian terms, Ambassadors, you shall have no
prince other than my son, don Fernando; to a fanfare of trumpets, a herald
then proclaimed Fernandos titles, among them prince of Aragon. To which
the Catalans responded with the cry, Don Carles, by the grace of God, prince
of Aragon and governor of the principality of Catalonia.23 A graphic relation

21
arrogancia y excesivo atrevimiento: Vicens Vives, Juan II, 234. At the same time he offered to
settle the dispute peacefully rather than by the means which by right he might exercise.
22
Senyor, la vostra merce, vos no hexireu de Leyda ns que hagau hoit los missatges, hons derie lo
senyor princep. Donchs, Leyda me tendra pres. Dietari del capella, 244. It is possible that the author
of the Dietari witnessed these events.
23
Embaxados, alter princep no aureu sino mon ll don Ferrando. Don Ferrando, princep de
Arago. Don Carles, per la gracia de Deu, princep de Arago e governador del Principat de
Cathalunya. Dietari, 244.
 Juan II, a Monarch Beset 89
of what followed is contained in a document seemingly originating from the
Neapolitan chancery and now in the Milanese archives.24 In it the Catalan
noble Guerau Alemany de Cervell gures as the spokesman who presented
the demand that the king release Charles, our governor and future king, and
his ally de Beaumont,25 that he respect the liberties of Catalonia, and that he
dismiss foreign ofcials from his court. When Juan returned no answer, de
Cervell tore open the mourning habit he was wearing, revealing himself clad
in full armour. Hand on sword, in token of rebellion, he then turned to his
companions to ask whether they wished him to proceed; on their assent he
three times repeated his demands. Still the king remained silent; whereupon
the baron, unsheathing his sword, declared, Catalonia intends no longer to
obey you in anything. To that deance Juan retorted, You Catalans, who were
ever traitors to the crown, get out of my sight, lest you provoke me to greater
anger.26 They thereupon again demanded Charless release and, at the kings
refusal, delivered the parliaments message of deance.
Force had patently become the arbiter of this quarrel. Juan immediately
summoned his son Alfonso27 to his aid from Fraga with two hundred horse.
They managed to enter Lleida, only to have their horse harness seized by the
city authorities. Before worse could befall, the king retired with them that same
night to Fraga, leaving behind a city torn by riot. His attempt to suppress
Barcelona fared no better. On that same fateful day his envoys, the viceroy of
Sicily and the master of Montesa, arrived in the Catalan capital bearing assur-
ances of his readiness to deal with any legitimate grievances. They found them-
selves powerless in the face of the Council of Catalonia which on the following
day proclaimed Charles primogenitus and heir in the principality. In still more
revolutionary mood, it sent out a call to arms by land and sea in defence of the
principality against an enemy who could be none other than the king.28 Within

24
Vicens Vives, Fernando el Catlico, 106.
25
Ibid.: gubernator noster est et rex futurus. Jean de Beaumont, Grand Prior of the Order of
Jerusalem, had been the leader of Charless party in Navarre from the very beginning of the civil war
and became his principal adviser when the prince returned to Spain in 1460. He had been arrested
with Charles in Dec.
26
Tota Cathelonia . . . advocat juramentum quod tibi prestitit, nec intendit tibi ultra in aliquot
obedire postquam quod te iurasti non servas. Vos, cathelani, qui semper fuistis proditores corone,
evestigio recedatis a conspectus nostro, nec me ultra ad iram provocetis. Vicens Vives, Fernando el
Catlico, 1067.
27
The illegitimate son whom Juan had imposed as master of the Order of Calatrava; he was to
prove an outstanding military leader in the civil wars of both Catalonia and Castile.
28
Among the measures was a decision to construct twenty-four galleysa formidable force were
it ever to materialize.
90 The Coming Storm
days an army over three thousand strong had assembled and, under the com-
mand of Bernat Joan de Cabrera, count of Mdica and the greatest landowner
in Catalonia, began marching towards Fraga. Requesens, fearing for his life,
ed the city only to be forcibly apprehended on his estate at Molins de Reis
on 10 February and brought back a prisoner. Those voices on whom Juan
had counted fell silent in fear; any dissenter risked denunciation as a public
enemy.29 Within days Biga determination, buoyed by a wave of popular senti-
mentality, had swept away the whole apparatus of royal authority.30 Its
condent elation knew no bounds as it moved from a defence of the status quo
to an assertion that the good of the republic must take precedence over the
interest of the prince. Others among Charless self-interested partisans acted
with equal dispatch and to like effect. In Navarre they rose en masse and drove
their lowland enemies before them; Enrique IV gathered Castilian armies
on the frontier. A wave of genuine enthusiasm swept through the towns of
Catalonia, mobilizing their militia, and on into the neighbouring kingdoms,
where it raised serious disturbances in Zaragoza and calls for action in
Valencia.31
Now little better than a refugee in Fraga, Juan had to hear messenger after
messenger bearing news of fresh calamities: a Catalan army advancing on him
from Lleida, Castilians threatening Navarre, Aragon unwilling to pledge its
support. Soon Fraga itself became untenable. On 9 February the royal family,
with its prisoners, left in haste for Zaragoza. Despite an initial display of resolve
to defy the stormhe had Charles and de Beaumont carried off to secure
prisons in Morela and XativaJuan had very soon to recognize that there
remained no way of escape but to negotiate with the triumphant Catalans, not
face to facethat humiliation he would not acceptbut through the queen,
even though many saw her as the evil stepmother in the whole sorry saga. On
14 February at Aljafarin, on the road to Zaragoza, Juana Enriquez met the three
notables deputed by the Diputaci to press its demands: the abbot of Poblet
and the prior of Tortosa supported by no other than Beatriz Pimentel, widow
of Juans brother Enrique. With them the queen deployed the diplomatic
acuity that was to serve her husband so well through a decade of war; she
29
If the measures taken were greeted by cries of Long live the king and Don Carles; death to the
traitors who give the king evil counsel (Dietari, 246), this hardly signied true enthusiasm for the
monarch. However, a proclamation issued in Barcelona on 20 Feb. forbidding all public discussion of
the crisis suggests that the authorities were aware of an undercurrent of dissent.
30
The nal step was taken on 19 Feb. when the Diputaci arrogated to itself supreme power in the
principality and ordered all royal ofcials to obey it. Vicens Vives, Juan II, 237.
31
Zurita, Anales, vii, p. viii. Sarasa Snchez, Sociedad y conictos, 91. Dietari, 24950.
 Juan II, a Monarch Beset 91
nevertheless had to report to Juan, waiting in Zaragoza, that the insurgents
would accept nothing less than Charless liberation and his return to Catalonia
in her company. On 25 February, barely three weeks after the crisis had
erupted, the king capitulated behind the saving ction that he had yielded to
the entreaties of his queen and the representations of Aragon and Zaragoza; no
word of Catalan menaces. Juana Enriquez left in haste to free Charles from the
castle of Morella which she reached on 1 March. That same afternoon Charles
wrote to the Catalan army, by now encamped in Fraga, giving news of his
release. In Zaragoza, meanwhile, Juan prepared himself for a bitter struggle
over the future shape of government in Catalonia.
From Tortosa through Tarragona Charles progressed triumphantly with a
great armed escort and the queen, little better than a hostage, in his train. The
climax came on 12 March with his entry into Barcelona as a conquering hero.
A week of festivities followed to celebrate this Catalan victory, driven home by
the humiliation of his travelling companion, the queen, who had been ordered
to wait outside the city at Vilafranca del Penedes. By the beginning of April
the Catalans were ready to present her with demands that reected huge
condence in their advantage and the kings helplessness.32 The principal
points were conrmation of all extraordinary measures taken since December;
release of Jean de Beaumont and others seized with the prince; recognition
of Charles as heir apparent with the powers of governor-general throughout
the Aragonese states; the irrevocable transfer of full royal authority within
Catalonia to the prince so that the king should never again enter the province
(with the proviso that this authority should pass to Fernando in the event of
Charles dying without heirs); dismissal of all those who had counselled Juan
during the period of Charless imprisonment; the removal of Gaston de Foix
from Navarre and delivery of that kingdoms fortresses to trusted castellans.
Nor was it any secret that Charles had lost no time in taking up with renewed
vigour his projected marriage with Isabel of Castile.
At the end of April Juana Enriquez delivered this cup of gall and wormwood
to the king in the Navarrese town of Sanguesa where he and his son Alfonso
were endeavouring to rally their allies, the demoralized Agramont party,
against a Castilian invasion. Devoid of all present hope and means of coercing
the Catalans, he could do nothing but accept it. Within three weeks, accom-
panied by a body of experienced counsellors, the queen had returned to

32
Their terms were delivered to Juana by the abbot of Poblet, Joan Sabastida (a knight), and
Toms Taqu (merchant of Perpignan), representing the three estates.
92 The Coming Storm
Catalonia bearing a very qualied acceptance of the terms. She found the
Catalans in no mood to discuss any compromise or even to allow her into the
capital.33 Buoyed up by hopes of a split in the opposing ranksthe archbishop
of Tarragona, the count of Prades, and the abbot of Poblet were all showing
uneasethe royal delegation none the less battled on to win at least some con-
cessions. Possibly it was the archbishops change of stance which, at the end of
May, led Juana to move to Vilafranca del Peneds, within reach of refuge in
Tarragona should the simmering hostility around her erupt into open violence.
Three more weeks of wrangling dashed her hopes of winning concessions.
In the aptly styled Capitulation signed on 22 June 1461, she gained little
apart from retaining for the king the right to summon corts, hence some
control over legislation, the release of Galceran de Requesens in exchange for
Jean de Beaumont,34 and a promise that Catalonia would urge the king of
Castile to come to terms over Navarre. Otherwise the oligarchic forces, which
had for a century been struggling to subject the government of Catalonia to the
organs they controlled, had won a hitherto unimaginably brilliant victory.
Behind a purely nominal king and a gurehead deputy stood the effective cen-
tres of power: the Diputaci which paid and controlled the chief ofcers of
state, the new Consell of Catalonia endowed with authority to enforce the
Capitulation, and the Consell of Barcelona, master of the capital and universal
Biga watchdog.35 In every corner of the principality reworks and bonres
burst into a deluded blaze of triumph.
Publicly Juan ordered celebrations and illuminations in Zaragoza to mark
the accord; privately he nursed a yet deeper hatred of Charles and the Catalans
who had brought him to this humiliating pass. Age had not dimmed his ery
energy nor his thirst for revenge against those who thwarted him; he would
assuredly not consider himself morally or legally bound by the surrender forced
upon him. Years later, when addressing the Cortes of Monzon in 1470, Juan
castigated it as: A Capitulation of a kind that left to us no more sovereignty in
Catalonia than it pleased them to allow . . . we never ceased to understand how

33
She was made to lodge in the spa town of Caldes de Montbui, a good 20 miles from Barcelona,
probably because the Catalan leaders feared that her appearance in the capital might reawaken royal-
ist sympathies in the population at large.
34
For Juanas part in these negotiations see Coll Juli, Doa Juana Enriquez, i. 96102. A condi-
tion attached to Requesenss release was his banishment from Catalonia. He and his family went to
reside in Valencia where he lived until his death in 1465. His continued sole right to summon a Corts
Juan exercised to prevent Charles from doing so; because only the Corts could legally recognize the
prince as primogenitus, Charles was never able to acquire that status, despite the Capitulations.
35
Vicens Vives, Juan II, 2401, for an evaluation of the capitulations signicance.
 Juan II, a Monarch Beset 93
disastrous was this Capitulation. . . . we signed it because we sincerely wished
to avert greater evils and could see that Barcelona was disposed to the very
worst excesses.36 The objects of Juans wrath nursed no illusions about his bad
faith. Against it they staked the likelihood that death would soon eliminate
him; meanwhile they sought insurance in their own double-dealing with the
king of Castile, and in efforts to crush or tame all domestic opponents.
Foremost in that opposition gured those long-standing foes of the Catalan
oligarchs, the urban reformers in Barcelona and elsewhere, and the remensa
peasants. With the former there was to be no truce; reduced to a helpless
minority in both councils in the capital, they saw their champion, Galceran
de Requesens, brought to trial and sentenced to exile.37 For their allies, the
common people, life became harsher as the political crisis brought economic
disruption in its wake; early in 1461 the Consell of Barcelona estimated that
commercial transactions had fallen by two-thirds.38 The peasantry, numerous
and dispersed, presented more of a problem to the new regime; however
obnoxious the campaign against servitude might be to feudal landowners, the
oligarchy needed peasant support, or at least acquiescence. There ensued,
accordingly, a tussle between king and principality to win over the remensa
peasants.39 In April 1461 Juan reiterated the ban on the mals usos, and subse-
quently sent ofcials around the countryside in order to stimulate payment of
the promised 100,000 orins through remensa syndicates. On the other side,
the Diputaci and Council having arrogated to themselves all authority within
Catalonia, declared their intention to act as arbitrators between lord and peas-
ant, a move denounced by the crown as a usurpation of its powers. What they
could not, however, disguise was the weight of hostile seigneurial inuence in
their counsels, and even within the very body charged with settling the remensa
question. Small wonder, then, that the majority of peasant syndics soon
resolved to persevere with the crown as the most reliable champion of their
cause. Yet another player in the game, the prince of Viana as locumtenens
in Catalonia, was pursuing a line consonant with that of his father: he gave
judgements favourable to individual remensas and, by a provision issued on

36
Capitulacin tal, que no quedara mas senyoria en Catalua a Nos de quanto a ellos pluviere . . .
no dejamos de comprender cuanto esta capitulacin era desastrosa . . . la rmamos porque teniamos
en el corazn evitar males mayores y veamos a los barceloneses dispuestos a los peores excesos. Coll
Juli, Doa Juana Enriquez, i. 108. it is signicant that the king saw Barcelona as the moving spirit
behind the insurrection.
37
Watching him led a prisoner through the city, they are said to have lamented, Look, the rats
have caught the cat. (Veus les rates qui han pres lo gat.) Batlle, Barcelona, 170.
38 39
Ibid. 166. Vicens Vives, Histria de los remensas, 628.
94 The Coming Storm
28 August 1461, he conrmed the suspension of the mals usos.40 Given time, he
might have won most peasants to the cause of Catalan autonomy.
By wooing the remensas Juan had taken a small step towards rebuilding his
shattered fortunes in Catalonia. He had also achieved some success in stalemat-
ing Charless efforts to win his Castilian bride, for Isabels royal brother had
understood that further pursuit of his vendetta against the king of Aragon
risked reopening civil war at home. On 26 August 1461 Aragon and Castile
temporarily settled their differences.41 Frustrated in that direction, Charles
turned to the new king of France, Louis XI, another object of parental odium,
in search of sympathy, a bride, and aid in ousting Gaston of Foix from
Navarre.42 No one, friend or foe, dreamt that everything was to be so soon and
swiftly changed to Juans advantage by the hand of death falling not upon the
aged king but on the prince of Viana. A very little more patience would
assuredly have spared Juan the travails that had led to the humiliation of
Vilafranca; the underlying causes of dissension in Catalonia would not, how-
ever, have disappeared with the prince of Viana and would have found another
occasion to are into conict.
Charles died in Barcelona on 23 September 1461 after a brief illness which
inevitably gave rise to rumours that he had been poisoned by a royal agent, the
queen being the prime suspect; in fact, the agent of his demise was a pulmonary
infection aggravated by stress. Immediately an unthinking wave of emotion
enveloped his person and memory; popular hysteria attributed miracles to the
body even as it lay in state; the cofn lid and its satin drapes were hacked to
pieces by a multitude of relic-hunters. So was born the myth of St Charles of
Catalonia, a symbol of phantom hopes that divine intervention might some-
how save the principality from disaster. A letter the diputats dispatched to their
ambassadors with the king only three days after the death vividly demonstrates
how quickly and deeply this mania had spread.
. . . it has again been a cause of great consolation and joy to ourselves, this city and all
Catalans that, through the merits of the lord primogenit, the divine power has worked
and still works, by means of his body, many miracles such as curing tumours of the
throat and spasms, wiping away skin diseases, and giving sight to the blind; persons
who, for two, three and four years have not risen from their beds, when carried to his
body, merely by touching it are cured and return on foot to their homes in front of
huge crowds. These things have been witnessed by many of ourselves and the
honourable counsellors and very great numbers of people of the city; being so plain and
40 41
Coll Juli, Doa Juana Enriquez, ii. 57. Zurita, Anales, xvii, p. xxiii.
42
Louis succeeded his father, Charles VII, as king of France on 22 July 1461.
 Juan II, a Monarch Beset 95
manifest as to need no further proof, yet, for the sake of those not here and those still
to come, the vicar-general of the lord bishop has, through his notary, drawn up state-
ments by witnesses and made them public.43

Royalist propaganda countered with the charge that poor folk were hand-
somely bribed to fabricate these miraculous cures.44
However sincere the masters of Barcelona may have been in their
sanctication of Charles, they cannot have been unaware that it might serve
them well in the storms ahead. Never had they imagined, when triumphantly
dictating their terms at Vilafranca, that the clause designating Fernando suc-
cessor to Charles would so soon come to haunt them. Worse still, because
Juans favoured son was only 9 years old, his authority would have to be vested
in a regent whom Juan insisted must be none other than the childs mother and
guardian, Juana Enriquez, the one widely portrayed as the hand behind the
prince of Vianas death and an active partner in that royal power they were so
determined to exclude from the principality. Try as they might, the Catalans
could nd no way of escaping this unwelcome conclusion other than to request
that Fernando should come alone and be subject to a common guardianship
exercised by the principalitys governing councils. For his part, the king had no
wish to provoke another outright conict, but he kept the Catalan ambas-
sadors on tenterhooks for more than three weeks before announcing his deci-
sion: Fernandos tender age, and the dissension that any form of Catalan
guardianship would provoke, made it imperative that he come with his
mother. Further argument and delay threatened to paralyse the Catalan
administration, so Juan won the day and, as if to drive home his advantage,
postponed the queens departure some days more on the pretext of Castilian
business. In a land so wedded to legality as was fteenth-century Catalonia, the
43
. . . molt consolacio e alegria a nosaltres e a tota aquesta ciutat e a tots los cathalans novament
son procurades per quant, per merits del dit senyor Primogenit, la divinal potencia ha obrats e obra,
per mija del seu cors, visiblament davant molts de nosaltres e dels honorables consellers e de altra
innida gent de la dita ciutat, molts miracles, com es guarir de porcellanes, contrets e manchos fer
adrets, illuminar sechs, e persones qui dos, tres e quatre anys havia passats no.s levaven del lit, portades
al seu cors, per sol tocament, son guarides e tornades per sos peus en lurs cases devant innumerable
gent; de les quals coses, ab tot sien tant patents e manifestes que no freturen de prova, emperor, per los
absents e per memoria dels sdevenidors, lo vicari general del senyor bisbe, per mija de son notari e
scriva, ne ha fets testicar actes e cartes publiques . . . Coll Juli, Doa Juana Enriquez, ii. 241. Sallent,
a secretary to the Generalitat, also waxed lyrical in his diary. O, most happy are the souls of those who
with good and righteous purpose have served the lord primogenit whose merits and prayers will, as we
unquestionably believe, win for those faithful to him grace and divine blessing in this world and per-
petual glory in the next. Vicens Vives, Juan II, 235.
44
Diego de Valera, Memorial de diversas hazaas, ed. J. Mata Carriazo (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe,
1941), 67.
96 The Coming Storm
absence of superior authority was much more dangerous than the risks engen-
dered by the queens presence in Barcelona.45
A week of November had passed before queen and prince, accompanied
by the Catalan ambassadors and a numerous train, nervously entered the
uncertain waters of a mistrustful land. Reassured, even unduly elated, by
an unexpectedly cordial reception in Lleida (7 November), they progressed,
amid further scenes of popular enthusiasm for the young prince, directly to
Barcelona, disregarding Juans instruction to enter that city, still not as settled
as it should be,46 only when invited to do so by the Catalan authorities. By
nightfall on 13 November they had taken up lodgings in the monastery of
Valdonzella outside its walls. Within there was consternation, partly because
a protocol-conscious municipality had not settled the particulars for this
momentous reception, but more from fear that a spontaneous outburst of
rejoicing, such as that witnessed in other towns, might imperil the whole
edice of Vilafranca. Accordingly, the city was placed under strict guard by day
and night, and time spun out in laborious discussion of Juanas titles and func-
tions. At last, on 21 November, she and her son made their ceremonial entry
before a subdued crowd. Word from on high may have muted the warmth of
their welcome; Barcelonas hysterical veneration of the departed Charles must
certainly have cast a general cloud over the event. afont, admittedly an
extremely hostile witness, claimed that the guilds mounted only one oat, and
that ill-fashioned (mal fet); another observer, by contrast, describes at least
four.47 afont also noticed, with satisfaction, two ill-omens: one of the cathe-
dral bell-ropes broke ve times and a marble pillar before the high altar fell
down. To complete a bleakly negative picture, he went on to remark that, dur-
ing the customary visit to the cathedral, the royal pair came upon the cofn of
sent Karles. Juana knelt and kissed itin his eyes a hypocritical gesture.
Fernando, equally to blame, cared neither to kiss nor take any other note of
it.48 The queen, by contrast, expressed herself to her husband well satised
with the reception.49 Above all, she and the primogenitus were now ensconced
within the antagonists citadel.50
45
Vicens Vives, Fernando II, 81.
46
. . . visto que encara no sta tanto reposada quanto menester seria. Coll Juli, Doa Juana
Enriquez, i. 122. Colls study of this phase of the conict is the most comprehensive available.
47
Coll Juli, Doa Juana Enriquez, i. 135 n. 111.
48
E lo dit Senyor no cura de basar ne de fer-hi altre serimonia. Ibid. 138.
49
In her words, it had been accompanied by muy gran esta, alegra, reposo celebritat. Ibid. 139.
50
The title of primogenitus, so pertinaciously denied to Charles, had been hastily conferred on
Fernando before an assembly of the Aragonese Cortes in Calatayud on 11 Oct. To that title were
added the customary dignities of duke of Montblanc, count of Ribagorza, and lord of Balaguer.
 Juan II, a Monarch Beset 97
In other directions, too, the unforeseen turn of events had strengthened
Juans hand: it had removed a potent rival from Navarre,51 although that land
still burned with civil strife, and a major irritant in his relations with Castile. It
might have been thought, as Vicens Vives suggests,52 that the demise of Charles
would also ease the way to reconciliation between king and Catalans, but it
must be remembered that the prince had been little more than an emblem of
their differences. His replacement by Juana in the principalitys government
made it inevitable that the monarchy and its allies would strive to regain lost
ground, while its opponents employed every available means to hold them at
bay. Already the latter had not hesitated to rise in arms, so it was to be expected
that force might again become the arbiter of their cause.
Without delay, or too much subtlety, Juana set to work, perhaps with more
zeal than her husband thought wise. Conscious that the hard core of hostility
to the king was located in the citys ruling clique, she concentrated her initial
efforts upon the Council of Catalonia and the November election of counsel-
lors in Barcelona. The outcome of the latter gave her some satisfaction in that
one of the ve electedFrancesc Pallarswas a professed royalist, a stance
which was later to cost him his head. With growing condence she appeared
before the councils of both principality and city on 10 December, Fernando at
her side, asking that they request the king to return. In support she adduced
reports that the king of France was threatening to invade Navarrehardly a
reason for Juan to hasten to Catalonia. Reports that the king was seeking
French aid against the Catalans she vehemently denied. These were muddy
waters in which she lost her way. Louis XI was indeed casting predatory eyes on
his troubled southern neighbour, and not only in the direction of Navarre.53
On the same day that Juana confronted the Catalan assemblies, a French envoy,
Henri de Marle, delivered a letter from his king to the Diputaci; individuals
in Barcelona received infamous and offensive letters from that same source.54
It was also on 10 December that the queen, on instructions from Juan, ordered
the defences of Roussillon to be strengthened against a possible French attack.
Why did she not raise these fears which would have justied the kings presence
far more than a threat to distant Navarre? It seems probable that she must have
51
But not with an uncontested title to its crown because Charles had bequeathed his rights to his
sister Blanche.
52
Els Trastmares, 175.
53
For French designs on Navarre, the Pyrenean frontier, and beyond, see Vicens Vives, Juan II,
2734.
54
. . . assats desonestes e males de hoyr. The words were those of the counsellor, Miquel Dezpla,
addressed to the Consell de Trenta. Coll Juli, Doa Juana Enriquez, ii. 270.
98 The Coming Storm
done so in an off-the-record manner because a majority of the Council of
Catalonia looked ready to assent to her request, on condition that she rst
implemented all the provisions of the Capitulation touching the appointment
of the judiciary and ofcials of Fernandos household. But Barcelona, whose
consent was needed for any measure taken by the Council and Diputaci,
resorted to delaying tactics by insisting that it must consult every city involved
in the recent constitutional wrangling and thereby ensured that a decision was
deferred sine die.55 Her precipitate initiative in thus bringing into debate one
of the cardinal elements of the Vilafranca pact, an action taken against Juans
advice, had not only failed but deepened divisions and suspicion within the
body politic of Catalonia.
Thereupon the queen, never endowed with an excess of patience, redirected
her attention towards the Busca, the guilds, and remensa peasants in the
surrounding countryside, those old allies of the crown who had sustained
Galceran de Requesens. After enduring a year of intimidation, they responded
with such eagerness that the authorities, fearing violence, asked her to desist
from any further meetings with guild ofcials and to use her inuence to calm
popular agitation. Should she fail, they threatened to curb violence by closing
all but four of the city gates; the coming and going of suspected trouble-
makers would thus be closely watched. Juana riposted on 4 January 1462 with
a proposal to launch a judicial inquiry into the unrest and rumours ying about
the city, an inquiry with which, she suggested, the city council should associate
itself by nominating members of the commission. If this was intended to pro-
voke a show-down, it succeeded; the council refused her invitation and coun-
tered with two demands: that she send away four galleys stationed at Barcelona
under command of the kings veteran admiral, Bernat de Vilamar; and that she
dismiss from her council those non-Catalans held ineligible for ofce under
the terms of the Capitulation.
In truth, panic had begun to seize the Biga party. An insurrection orches-
trated by the queen among the discontented masses within and without the
walls would, it feared, be combined with an assault by Vilamars galleys, which
had been hovering for months just outside the harbour. Their uneasiness was
not ungrounded; Juana persisted in her dealings with the guilds syndicate,
hoping for just such a rising among the people. The swearing of Fernando as
locumtenens on 6 February, a ceremony to which the queen had insisted on
summoning representatives of the Catalan estates, including towns and cities,

55
All the cities consulted afrmed that they would follow the lead of Barcelona in this matter.
 Juan II, a Monarch Beset 99
seemed, in Biga eyes, to offer just such an occasion, with country folk pouring
into the city to witness the spectacle. But that day passed peacefully, and on
16 February Juana offered some reassurance to nervous spirits with an order
to the remensas to disband and desist from any further menacing actions. She
then precipitated the crisis, whether by design or accident is uncertain, by
announcing her intention of quitting Barcelona and moving with Fernando to
Girona, allegedly to deal with remensa unrest in that region. Faced with the
disappearance of their champion, a crowd of guildsmen and commoners some
thousand strong, the syndicates leaders at their head, marched to the royal
palace on the morning of 24 February 1462. afont, bent on discrediting
them, put their number at only fty or sixty, including many conversos. Had
there been so few, they would hardly have aroused panic among the Biga. As
they went they shouted, Long live the king, and death to the traitors who say
he must not come,56 and, once in Juanas presence, they delivered three peti-
tions: that the king return, that the queen and prince remain in Barcelona, and
that a royal ofcial be appointed to preside over meetings of the syndicate.
Representatives of the remensas voiced their support.
Here was that demonstration of mass sympathy for the royalist cause that
Juana, this time following her husbands instructions, had been striving to
awaken. Hindsight suggests that had she dared urge on the people and call in
the galleys, they might have taken control of the city. Civil war might still have
followed, but, without possession of Barcelona, Juans opponents could not
have sustained a prolonged struggle. Instead she temporized, agitation died
down, and those nobles who had promised the king to support an insurrection
held their hand. The Catalan authorities, by contrast, reacted instantly and
decisively; they clamped the city under secure guard, ordered an investigation
into the disturbances, and began a purge of its leaders, expelling them from
municipal councils and ofces. Fear of counter-revolution simultaneously
brought about a sudden, decisive shift of the balance of power within the coun-
cils. The archbishop of Tarragona, Pedro Ximnez de Urrea (an Aragonese),
saw his moderating inuence in the Council of Catalonia overcome by the
uncompromising anti-royalism of the count of Pallars who, on 5 March, per-
suaded the assembly to authorize the raising of an army on the grounds that it
would be needed to subdue the remensas should the queens measures to bring
them under control continue to prove ineffective. He fared no better in the city
council which atly rejected the queens nomination of him as chancellor of

56
Viva el rey y mueran los traidores, que dicen que el rey no venga. Zurita, Anales, xvii, p. xxxiv.
100 The Coming Storm
Catalonia. The result of the upheaval was, thus, to deprive the Busca of any
voice in Barcelona, and leave the Biga unchallenged masters of the city. Juanas
attempt to halt the process against the leaders of the February demonstration,
on the grounds that it usurped royal jurisdiction, was brushed aside. Fearful for
her own safety, dismayed at her failure to raise the city, she and Fernando left
Barcelona on 11 March. Seven days later the Diputaci and the city raised their
standards and began recruiting a force to combat not only remensas but also all
those they viewed as enemies of the Capitulation of Vilafranca.
Within Barcelona, the queens departure had left the Busca wholly at the
mercy of enemies who would pay scant regard to the royal safeconducts issued
to its leaders. Its attempts to organize meetings only exposed those same men
more readily to the vengeance of a now well-armed foe who closed all but
two of the gates, cancelled the Holy Week celebrations lest they provide an
opportunity for the feared popular rising, and offered rewards to informers.
Accusations and arrests followed swiftly. The rst to suffer was Jaume Perdig,
a shoemaker. He was accused of inciting to riot and, under torture, named
others; so was set in motion a chain of detentions. Carefully planted rumours
to the effect that a plot was afoot to steal and burn the prince of Vianas body
were circulated in the hope of diverting the popular mind from the gathering
repression. When the veguer, in tardy obedience to the queens command,
freed three of the prisoners, he was stripped of his ofce, placed under arrest,
and his property declared forfeit.57 One of the fugitive prisoners, Mart Solzina
(a merchant and member of the Consell de Cent), had meanwhile been quickly
recaptured. Under torture he confessed to a conspiracy involving the most
prominent Busca leaders in league with the archbishop of Tarragona, a con-
spiracy intended, in the paranoid words of afont, to cut the throats of the
counsellors, the deputies, the honoured citizens and all the people who revered
the blessed Saint Charles.58 Those named by Solzina, many of them belonging
to great families and therefore objects of especial hatred to their fellows, were
next rounded up and brought to trial on the charge that they had conspired
with the archbishop of Tarragona and certain nobles to bring the king into

57
Royal ofcials in Barcelona found themselves caught between their duties to the crown and the
city; the veguer had at rst obeyed orders from the city council to proceed against the Busca leaders,
even to the torture of Perdig. Only increasingly peremptory commands from the queen made him
change course. His fellow ofcial, the batlle of Barcelona, showed still less regard for the crown,
because it was he who, on the councils orders, arrested the veguer.
58
. . . se devien levar e devien degollar los consellers e los diputats e los ciutadans honrats e tots los
pobles, qui fossen devots de beneyt sent Karles. Batlle, Barcelona, 178. A full account of these events
may be found in Coll Juli, Doa Juana Enriquez, i. 169324.
 Juan II, a Monarch Beset 101
Barcelona and put to the sword adherents of the Biga regime. Chief among the
accused was no less a person than Francesc Pallars, second counsellor of the
city; he was publicly stripped of his robe of ofce before being led off to prison.
Two former rst counsellors, Pere Deztorrent and Bertran Torr were also
numbered among the prisoners. All were found guilty and, with the exception
of two sent into exile, condemned to death. The executions of Pallars and
Deztorrent, garrotted within the prison, took place on 19 May 1462. The vic-
tims bodies, displayed in grisly state on the Plaa del Rei, warned any others
who might try to overthrow a regime which would go to any lengths to preserve
itself. Four others were put to death on 21 May. With the bit between its teeth
it had also struck out at the queens principal advisers; on 8 March the arch-
bishop, with four others, was declared suspect and ineligible to hold ofce in
Catalonia; on 5 May they were proclaimed public enemies throughout the
principality. For the monarchy, as well as for the stricken ranks of the Busca,
Barcelona had shut fast the gates of compromise.
Was there a plot? That something involving the queen, the archbishop, some
nobles, Busca sympathizers, and the guilds was afoot seems certain. That it
lacked coordination and determined leadership looks equally plain. Its oppon-
ents, by contrast, were vigilant and decisive in their response.
Remensa unrest around Girona had served Juana as an excuse for removing
herself and Fernando from a turbulent scene in Barcelona. She was none the
less well aware that widespread agitation among the peasantry had assumed so
menacing an aspect that it threatened, as much as the rebellion in Barcelona, to
set Catalonia are.59 As we have seen, the king had scored some success in the
contest for remensa sympathies, but, lest he alienate the Catalan landowners en
masse, he had taken care to remain within the strict limits of the Alfonsine
decrees on the mals usos. For example, he had in October 1461 at the instance
of Joan Margarit, the inuential royalist bishop of Girona, ordered his ofcials
to compel that ecclesiastics recalcitrant remensa peasants to perform homage.
However, unrest in that region grew worse during the winter months thanks,
according to the aggrieved landowners, to the queens failure to enforce royal
instructions. On 11 February they wrote to Juana, the Diputaci and
Barcelona warning of large peasant gatherings in an ugly mood. From the
queen came an energetic response: the peasants she ordered to pay all licit dues
and abandon violence; the local authorities were commanded to prevent illegal
assemblies, but at the same time to ensure that no lord demanded any of the

59
Vicens Vives, El alzamiento de 1462, Histria de los remensas, 6187.
102 The Coming Storm
mals usos suspended by Alfonso. From other bodies came a range of proposals.
On 16 February the archbishop of Tarragona proposed in the Council of
Catalonia that the queen be asked to go in person to Girona, but this sugges-
tion found favour only with the count of Prades.60 Instead the Council joined
with the Diputaci and Barcelona in urging Juana to nd effective remedies,
with a thinly veiled threat that, should she fail, they would impose their own
solutiona military operation to crush the peasants. Three days later came the
request from Girona that the queen should come to deal with the crisis, for her
commands had signally failed to curb the violence. From the king she received
only the familiar counsel that she urge remensas to render legitimate dues and
lords to forego the mals usos pending his arbitration. In the ferment gripping
the land that proved an impossible task. Demoralized royal ofcials were
mostly keeping their heads down; those who dared obey orders often found
themselves ignored or, like the veguer of Barcelona, severely punished for their
pains. With the mediating power thus paralysed, lord and peasant confronted
each other in uncompromising mood. The former saw in the rout of royal
authority the opportunity to re-establish the regime of servitude in all its
rigour; the latter, likewise nding himself free of restraint, decided that the
moment had come to refuse all manner of payments on the grounds that all
were mals usos.61
During the early months of 1462 confrontation rapidly degenerated into
violence, even banditry, over broad regions of northern Catalonia. Remensa
lords seized persons and property to enforce payments; the peasants organized
armed bands to resist them. They gather the people together, elect leaders, and
have no hesitation in doing or saying anything, warned one baron.62 Only in
the vaguest sense were these peasants motivated by royalist sympathies; like
insurrectionaries everywhere they often raised a cry of Long live the king
when confronted by local oppressors; some, it is true, called for the king to
return to Catalonia, but they might equally shout, There is no king; we know
no king, as did some among the seven hundred peasants besieging Castellfollit
de la Roca in March 1462.63 Very early in 1462, however, most realized that the
governing institutions of Catalonia, controlled by the reactionary forces of
60
This move was probably made with the queens approval; only a few days later she announced
her intention of going to Girona.
61
The French revolutionaries encountered similar problems in determining where to draw the line
when abolishing the feudal system in 1789.
62
Convoquen pobles, fan capitanies, no dupten res dir ni executar. Vicens Vives, Histria de los
remensas, 72.
63
No hay rey ni lo conocemos. Ibid. 73.
 Juan II, a Monarch Beset 103
town and countryside, were implacably hostile to their aspirations. In Girona
the clergy and nobility of that diocese had set up a committee to coordinate
action against the remensas. At the centre, the council of the principality
resolved on 1 February 1462 to establish its own committee charged with
giving effect to a petition which called for the revocation of the crowns pro-
remensa pronouncements. Within days it was mooting the recruitment of an
army to stamp out peasant unrest should the queens endeavours fail. Impatient
to restore order, it waited only until the beginning of March before it gave the
signal to arm and, on 10 March 1462 with the queen still in the city, raised the
banners of Catalonia and Barcelona in manifest of their determination to crush
the remensa risings.
The majority in the Council of Catalonia which supported an appeal to
arms could claim that it was doing no more than respond to a remensa escala-
tion of violence which, it alleged, the king and queen were fomenting and
exploiting in order to destroy the principality. Unrest was certainly rife in many
areas, among them the mountainous region of Empuries where, early in March
1462, groups of armed peasants between a hundred and ve hundred strong
were operating around the town of Besal. Passing beyond resistance to
seigneurial and royal authority alike whenever it attempted to act against them,
these well-armed and organized bodies seized the village of Castellfollit de
la Roca, attacked Santa Pau, besieged Besal and seemed determined to con-
solidate their hold on the area by occupying a number of castles. Thus, from
diverse quarters was spreading the plague of war and anarchy.
In mounting alarm at the chaos on their doorstep, the authorities of Girona
had appealed to the queen who, as we have seen, left Barcelona on 11 March
with the avowed intention of subduing remensa unrest. Vicens Vives is
undoubtedly correct in holding that such was her purpose, not, as her enemies
later maintained, to foment a general peasant rising.64 Her line of conduct, if
not her day-to-day tactics, was directed throughout by the king whose ultimate
objective remained the full restoration of his authority in Catalonia. There
existed, he believed, a great reservoir of support for his cause in all sections of
Catalan society if only means could be found to give it voice. To that end, the
queen, once free of Barcelona, might gather these men of goodwill and, at their
request, summon a Corts, thereby automatically terminating the mandate

64
She would not, assuredly, have abandoned Barcelona so precipitately had her endeavours to
revive royalist fortunes in that city been successful. Having failed there, the call from Girona offered a
plausible reason for departure. The measures she took to pacify the remensas after leaving Barcelona
are detailed in Vicens Vives, Juan II, 2689.
104 The Coming Storm
given to the rebel council by the Corts of Lleida. Patience in the face of any
affront was not, however, in Juans character. If the hard core of recalcitrant
Catalans could not readily be brought to heel, then they must be crushed
before revolt took a deeper hold. To that end he was busily preparing an armed
assault on his rebellious subjects and clearing away all obstacles that might
stand in his way. First he patched up his disputes with Castile in a treaty con-
cluded in April 1462 and was thereby able to bring a temporary halt to hostil-
ities in Navarre.65 Peace on the western front would not, however, by itself
release the forces he would require to confront the Catalans, and there was lit-
tle prospect that his other realms would furnish the means to wage an intestine
war. He turned instead to the new king of France, Louis XI. From the outset of
his reign in July 1461 Louis had xed his eyes on the Catalan crisis, determined
to extract advantage from it, but uncertain whether his interests were best
served by alliance with Juan or with his opponents. It was at the instigation of
Gaston of Foix, who had hitched his fortunes so rmly to those of Juan and
married his son to Louiss sister (February 1462), that he chose the former
course.66 With the count of Foix acting as intermediary, the two kings rst con-
cluded a general alliance (Olot, 12 April 1462) which promised French aid in
the recovery of Navarrese territory seized by Castile in return for Aragonese
assistance in driving foreign foes from French soil. No hint yet of the Catalan
imbroglio lurking behind this smokescreen! To reward Gaston for his services
both parties conrmed the 1455 settlement of the Navarrese succession, which
Juan undertook to reinforce by extracting a renunciation of her claims from his
hapless eldest daughter, Blanche, and then delivering her into the keeping of
the Countess of Foix. So bent was he on punishing the Catalans and his enem-
ies in Navarre that Juan showed no hesitation in sacricing his child.67
All this was but a smokescreen for a secret deal over Catalonia which was
hammered out in a meeting between Louis and Juan held near Sauveterre on
the Navarrese frontier on 3 May. The fruit of their encounter was two treaties:
one a public document conrming the treaty of Olot which stipulated the

65
After the death of the prince of Viana the Beaumont party in Navarre had found a new rallying
point in his sister Blanche, recognized by them as heir to his throne. For the background to the treaty
of Apr. 1462 see Vicens Vives, Juan II, 2756.
66
He was also inuenced by a discouraging response to the overtures he had made to Barcelona.
67
In Juans eyes her activities in Navarre had tarnished her with the same treasonable brush as her
brother. Carried off by force into France she died in captivity, allegedly of poison, but not before
reasserting her claims to Navarre and bequeathing them to her ex-husband, Enrique IV of Castile. For
a full account of the circumstances surrounding the Treaty of Olot see J. Calmette, Louis XI, Jean II et
la revolution catalane (14611473) (Toulouse: Privat, 1903), ch. 2.
 Juan II, a Monarch Beset 105
usual mutual assistance against enemies; the second a secret pact known as
the Obligation General and formalized in the treaty of Bayonne (9 May). By
its terms Louis was to send an army of 700 lances (4,200 mounted men)
and 4,200 foot soldiers under Gastons command to aid Juan in subduing
Catalonia. In return he demanded the not unreasonable sum of 200,000 cus,
payable in two instalments following the subjection of Barcelona. It was also
provided that Juan might retain 400 French lances for subsequent operations
in the kingdoms of Valencia and Aragona startling revelation of his fears that
he might face rebellion on all sides. In that event the debt would rise by a fur-
ther 100,000 cus. Louiss master-stroke was to insist that the debt be secured
upon the revenues of Roussillon and Cerdagne and that, following the fall of
Barcelona, those two counties pass entirely under his control until the money
was paid. As a pledge of good faith, Juan would meanwhile allow French gar-
risons to occupy the castles of Perpignan and Collioure, so ensuring that Louis
became effective master of the territory.68
With this reckless, ill-judged agreement, which was to haunt the rest of his
life, Juan had thrown away any remaining hope of a peaceful solution to the
troubles of Catalonia. By pawning a notable part of the Catalan patrimony in
order to impose his will on the rest, he had, moreover, fanned the ame of
Catalan nationalism to still greater heights. To the drumbeat of the Councils
army and the remensa bands he joined that of the foreign invader. All the
players in the coming tragedy were now on stage.

68
Juans pledge followed logically from the public treaty, whereby both parties undertook to defray
in advance the cost of any military assistance they might receive from the other. Louis had drafted
these provisions in advance of the meeting, fully aware that Juan would nd it impossible to pay for
an army large enough to crush Catalonia. See Calmette, Louis XI, Jean II, 801.
This page intentionally left blank
 PART II
WAR, CIVIL AND FOREIGN
This page intentionally left blank
 11
The Drawing of Swords

Juana and Fernando reached Girona on 15 March 1462 accompanied only by

their counsellors and households;1 both Diputaci and the Council, the bod-
ies claiming to represent Catalonia, had refused the queens invitation to send
one of their number with her. Two mutually hostile seats of power now com-
peted for the principalitys allegiance, and each proclaimed the remensa crisis
to be at the forefront of its concerns. From her vantage point in the region most
affected, Juana was able to make a great show of her professed determination to
suppress disorder in a series of measures directed against remensa violence and
rejection of legal obligations; these began on the very day of her entry into
Girona.2 Nor were they entirely toothless, for they persuaded the remensas to
withdraw from Santa Pau, and convinced the military and clerical estates of the
province most affected (the Girona diocese) that she gives every indication
that she understands it [sc. the remensa problem] and is dealing with it.3 Two
peasants were hanged for their part in the violence. Her virtuous provision
and great diligence also impressed the jurats of Girona who were convinced
that she had calmed rural unrest to such an extent that no further measures
were needed. From other quarters came very different views. The chapters of
Vic and Girona wrote of peasant hordes terrifying the countryside, kidnap-
ping and waylaying travellers, refusing all dues, and gathering an army to join
the king in invading Catalonia. If action were not soon taken, so the Vic
chapter predicted, Such a re will be lighted as will not be extinguished with
a little water.4 A much more sanguine assessment came from Vilamayans, an
1
Their ceremonial entry into Girona accorded equal status to queen and prince whereas Barcelona
had taken care to give primacy to the primogenitus.
2
For further details see Coll Juli, Doa Juana Enriquez, 295303, Poltica remensa de Doa
Juana en Gerona.
3
. . . la dita senyora fa molta demostracio de entendrey e darhi recapte. Vicens Vives, Histria de
los remensas, 84. This was written on 8 Apr.
4
. . . lo foch se encendra que pocha aygua nol apagara. AHB, Consell de Cent X, Lletres
comunes, 32, no. 61 (1 May 1462). A letter from Joan Mayans, envoy of Barcelona, reporting on his
mission to Vic.
110 War, Civil and Foreign
anti-royalist gentleman of Girona, who assured Barcelona that the remensa
forces in the locality were a sorry lot gathered only to demand the release of
their fellows; they had no more than fty good men among them. Driven by
a storm from their encampment by the river, they had scurried to shelter in a
mill, like rabbits into a burrow. Given a hundred men, he could, so he boasted,
quickly send them eeing into the mountains.5 In Barcelona, where it had
already been decided to send an army against the remensas, the darker picture
was the one accepted because, since Juanas departure, the real but unavowable
target of that army had become, not the insurgent peasants, but the royalist
presence in Girona and those acting against the Capitulation.6
The queen had seen her attempts to protect her Busca allies brushed aside.
She was equally unsuccessful in her efforts to stop her opponents arming.
Immediately on learning that they had raised their standards, she forbade all
royal ofcials to take any part; on 27 March she commanded the deputies and
counsellors to retract their measures; on 26 April she authorized proclamations
forbidding enlistment. Finally, on 30 April, she issued a declaration condemn-
ing the military preparations in Barcelona as illegal; promptly the Diputaci
countermanded it and dispatched an emissary to rally towns and cities to its
side. On 13 May the rst contingents marched out of the capital in the direc-
tion of Girona, followed on 29 May by the main body. Ostensibly they went to
crush the remensas; their true purpose was to frighten Juana into abandoning
Catalonia in order that the self-proclaimed saviours of the principality might
assume undivided sovereignty. An unvarnished statement of that intention
appears in the instructions given to the count of Pallars on 7 June: he was to
inform the queen, humbly and with reverence (humilment e ab reverencia),
that she had been stripped of her ofce in Catalonia and was free to depart, tak-
ing Fernando with her if she chose.7 But, instead of eeing, Juana prepared to
ght. News that her husband had begun talks with France had reached her
on 28 March. Details of the less compromising general alliance (Treaty of
Sauveterre) she passed to Barcelona in mid-May in the hope of calming rising
apprehension. A letter dispatched to Perpignan on 24 May assured that city in

5
Coll Juli, Doa Juana Enriquez, II, 31617. The bishop of Girona had, according to
Vilamayans, said to the queen that in her place he would have hanged the prisoners in front of the
peasants and quartered the syndic who was leading them.
6
. . . tratan contra la Capitulacin. Vicens Vives, Juan II, 270. This latter category was added at
the instance of Barcelonas Council of a Hundred.
7
Vicens Vives, Fernando II, 113. Contemporary, and later, assertions that the objective was to kill
the royal pair were baseless, part of the propaganda campaign to rally support to the crown.
 The Drawing of Swords 111

Salses
FRANCE
Canet
PERPIGNAN

ROUSSILLON Elne

Argeles Collioure
Palau del Vidre

Boulou
El Artus
Coll de Panissars
CERDAGNE La Jonquera
Espolla
Pau
E Cadaques
M Perelada Palau Saverdera
St. Llorene de la P Vilanova
Llivia Muga
O Roses
R Castello dEmpuries
Puigcerd D Figueres
Rocabruna A
St Pere Pescador
Camprodon Navata
Ponts Siurana
Montagut de Fluvi Sant Mori
St Joan Les Fonts Besal Bascara
Castellfolit de la Roca
St Joan les Abadesses Verges La Tallada dEmpord
Olot Santa Pau Banyoles St Jordi Torroella de
Ripoll Mont Gr
Mieres Cervi de Ter Desvalls
Mediny Foix
Pals
Berga Cora
GIRONA La Bisbal dEmpord
a

N
R. Llobreg

r
Te Palafrugell
R.
Angls Calogne Palams

Vic Sant Feliu de Guixols

1 5 10 15 20 Height 500 1000
Scale kms. Caldes de Malavella
in Mts.over 1000

Map 2. Catalonia, the northern sector

the most categorical manner that rumours of a pact which sacriced the trans-
Pyrenean counties were a diabolical illusion. It may be that the King of
France, hearing of the upheaval in this principality, is, for his own honour and
without waiting for a request from the king [sc. Juan], preparing to full what
he has undertaken in the alliance to do for the king, but as for the suggestion
that Juan would abandon Roussillon and Cerdagne, you may be certain that
the king would never consent to such loss and disgrace, because it truly is dis-
graceful for a prince to alienate the adornments of his crown for all the money
112 War, Civil and Foreign
and riches in the world.8 If she was speaking from the heart, Juana must have
been mortied when later that same day she learnt that the king had per-
petrated just such an outrage and that a French army would soon be on the
march. Details of the secret deal she understandably kept to herself, realizing
how explosive might be its repercussions among the Catalans. Already she
knew that Juan was preparing to launch his own invasion of Catalonia. It there-
fore made sense for her to hamstring any defence of the Catalan frontiers
against these coming attacks by rallying loyal forces around her deep within the
principality. No record survives of what passed between her and the king at this
time, but it may reasonably be surmised that her stand in Girona formed part
of Juans grand design.
Even before the rst attackers left Barcelona she had begun to mobilize
support. Some measures, such as her appeal to the principal towns, met with
no success; all had declared their solidarity with Barcelona. Large numbers of
remensas, however, responded with some enthusiasm. Threatened with the
fate of the Buscas, their leaders were readily persuaded that their only hope of
eventual salvation lay with the king, however hostile he might be to their more
radical goals. They had much to offer: a force which had grown from armed
bands into a disciplined ghting body (so ineffective had been the measures of
repression) recruited by a levy of one man from every three households.9 At its
head stood the charismatic gure of Francesc Verntallat, not himself a peasant
but a small landowner of very modest means.10 His status as spokesman for the
peasants had been established in April when the queen began negotiating with
him in her endeavour to calm unrest. Those contacts led her to seek approval
from remensa lords for a moratorium on all exactions until August with a guar-
antee that they should suffer no loss; by the end of April she claimed that the
majority of lords, lay and ecclesiastic, had given their assent. In return
Verntallat used his inuence to hold the remensas in check. In the rst days of
May he and Juana struck an agreement which gave the stamp of legitimacy to
his small army and endowed him with the authority of a royal commander,

8
. . . aquesta tal illusi diabolica . . . poria esser que lo dit rey de Frana, sentint los movimientos
quis fan en aquest Principat, no sperada del dit senyor requesta, per la honor sua, se prepara a fer e com-
plir lo que ab la dicta liga ha offert al dit senyor . . . ho podets haver per cert, o es que jams lo dit
senyor a tanta derogaci e ignominia sua no daria loch, car verdaderament ignominiosa cosa es a rey et
princep e senyor que per dins ne valua del mon volgus alienar los merlets de la sua corona.
Calmette, Louis XI, Jean II, 43940.
9
Vicens Vives, Histria de los remensas, 87.
10
J. Camps i Arboix, Verntallat, cabdill dels remensas (Barcelona: Aedos, 1955).
 The Drawing of Swords 113
capita molt magnich, over the irregular bands in the area under his control.11
She was then able, on 10 May, to recall the Girona militia which ve days ear-
lier she had dispatched against remensa bands looting crops and animals in the
region of Besal. Within the month she was urging the peasantry to enlist in his
ranks, and offering the logistical support associated with more regular forces.12
At the same time, in a move to put a stop to spontaneous violence in the guise
of the somaten (a call to arms against an alleged wrong-doer), she commanded
the remensas, under pain of death, to obey their syndics and do nothing except
on their express instruction; by 26 May the syndics power had extended into
an authority to compel remensas to serve the crown and to exact a payment
of 2 orins from each household to support their forces. Demonstrating her
determination to impose discipline, she continued in the months to come to
warn against calls for the abolition of legitimate dues, for landowners had to be
reassured that their interests had not been jettisoned.13
The consols of Perpignan were not alone in voicing their indignation at
the queens action in conferring regular military status on the remensa forces;
and all this delicate balancing between incompatible pretensions did not, of
course, put an immediate end to peasant unrest. But further coercion had to be
abandoned in face of the army advancing from Barcelona; remensa arms had to
be raised in defence of Juana and her son. Three hundred men under Verntallat
marched south to support Bernat Joan de Cabrera, count of Mdica and grand
constable of Aragon, who was holding the town of Hostalric, astride the
road from Barcelona to Girona. Another remensa group, some forty strong,
mustered in the old fortied quarter of Girona itself, the Fora, while in the
countryside of Vic other peasants gathered round the royal standard.14 Very
soon remensa control had been established over a tract of territory in the wild
hill country known as the Montana and western Selva; it conferred a great
strategic advantage upon the royalists throughout the war for it enabled them

11
When appointing the count of Pallars captain-general of its army on 28 Apr., the Generalitat
made much of a remensa force displaying the royal standard under the command of one named
Verntallat (sots capitania de hun appellat Verntallat, ab bandera reyal stesa). Coll Juli, Doa Juana
Enriquez, ii, 333.
12
On 19 May she instructed town ofcials to furnish Verntallat and his company (El encuadre de
las fuerzas remensas en las huestes realistas) with all necessary victuals and other supplies. Ibid. i.
3326.
13
On 22 May Verntallat was ordered to stop his men shouting fora tascas e censos. Ibid. 334. The
tasca was a levy on agricultural produce, the cens a quit-rent. See Freedman, Origins of Peasant
Servitude, 64.
14
For other military action by the remensas in June 1462 see Calmette, Louis XI, Jean II, 104.
114 War, Civil and Foreign
to maintain contact with Girona and move forces into the Empord.15 With a
population of some 10,000, overwhelmingly remensa, this area also became a
refuge for peasants eeing from surrounding regions. Over them all Verntallat
exercised military command and judicial authority, either directly or through
local deputies. From July 1463 that rudimentary structure was strengthened
with a council of locals and royal ofcials charged with the supervision of
nances; all taxes and revenues collected within the redoubt were assigned to
maintaining Verntallats forces, a notable advantage which helps explain their
successes over many years in defending their own fastnesses and harrying the
enemy in the adjoining lowlands.
Remarkable and signicant as this rallying of remensas may have been, their
ragged bands hardly matched the forces gathering in Barcelona against which
Juana badly needed to nd substantial reinforcement of a more conventional
kind. For that she turned to the feudal nobility of Catalonia who were legally
bound to answer a summons to defend their sovereigns. During the rst week
of May a stream of couriers galloped from Girona bearing letters addressed to
each in person, and calling on them to present themselves with horses, arms,
and men, a call which she reinforced on 18 May by instructing veguers to issue
a public summons to all holding efs of the crown. To the population at large
she appealed for aid through the municipal authorities, but with little effect,
for the vast majority of the latter stood rmly in the opposing camp, and ever
more so as news spread that an already suspect king had pawned Roussillon and
Cerdagne to France. (Louis XI had taken care that it was bruited through the
principality.16) Meanwhile work went on to strengthen the fortications of
Gironas inner redoubt, the Fora Velha, and to bring in cannon from the arse-
nal and a royal ship lying at Sant Feliu de Guixols.
Regal deance moved in counterpoint with the measures taken by the rival
power in Barcelona. It prompted the latter to denounce Juanas appeal to the
nobility; it probably sealed the fate of the Busca leaders; and it led to the tardy
dispatch of the main body of troops, some 2,000 strong, against Girona on 29
May. (The rst contingents had marched on 13 May, with others following
over the next two weeks.) It also produced an attempt to counteract the alarm-
ing remensa stampede into the royalist camp by winning over the waverers with

15
For a detailed description of this region see Vicens Vives, Histria de los remensas, 1003.
16
The emissary sent to Perpignan wrote an alarming report of the consternation aroused there and
the consequent reluctance to heed the queens call for aid. He pleaded that the king should either
abandon the French project or have the army diverted from Roussillon to Puigcerd. Coll Juli, Doa
Juana Enriquez, ii. 34752.
 The Drawing of Swords 115
proposals to settle all matters in dispute between lords and peasants, thus try-
ing to outank the crown which was still promising no more than judicial arbi-
tration when circumstances allowed.17 Terms for an interim settlement were
agreed between remensa syndics, the Council of Catalonia and the Diputaci,
only for them to founder on opposition from the lords. Demands from remen-
sas in the Vic diocese that lords be compelled to accept the agreement were still
being met, in January 1463, by calls to hold their hand until quieter times.
Atrocities committed against peasants by the principalitys own army soured
the atmosphere still more.18 Those setbacks notwithstanding, the Diputaci
did nd support among a majority of the remensa communities in north-
eastern Catalonia, explicable perhaps by a greater prosperity, a milder feudal
regime, a surge of patriotism, and a at terrain unsuited to guerrilla tactics.19
Another motiveplain self-interestmay have prompted the peasantry of the
county of Empries to throw in their lot against the royalist cause espoused by
their lord Enrique, Juans young nephew. By so doing they threw off a great
scal burden. Many others were similarly motivated in their choice of alle-
giance. In the rugged hill country to the west, ideally suited to guerrilla warfare,
the remensas held fast to the royalist cause. On neither side of the line did
landowners dare try to exact their dues, even some legitimate ones, so long as
the struggle lasted.
In other sectors the march of events and contradictory commandsin
Montblanc the orders of the queen and the Diputaci regarding the latters call
to arms were proclaimed within half an hour of each othercaused conster-
nation and confusion. How individuals and communities reacted depended
often upon attitudes, loyalties, interests that had little or no bearing on the
issue before them. For example, Joan Margarit, newly elected bishop of
Girona,20 had a record of proven loyalty to Juan; he also happened to be an
archrival of the bishop of Vic, Cosme de Montserrat, who had served Pope
Calixtus III, shared that pontiff s antipathy to Alfonso, and been duly casti-
gated when Juan banished him from the rich see of Girona to impoverished
Vic. In the Council of Catalonia Cosme duly became the kings implacable
foe whereas, like Margarit, most of the higher clergy, creatures of the crown,

17
C. Font Meli, La diputacin de Catalua y los payses de remensa: La Sentencia Arbitral de
Barcelona (1463), Homenaje a Jaime Vicens Vives (Barcelona: Universidad de Barcelona, 1965),
i. 4314.
18 19
Vicens Vives, Histria de los remensas, 8898. Ibid. 99.
20
Margarit was transferred from the diocese of Elne to Girona on 18 Feb. 1462. R. B. Tate, Joan
Margarit i Pau (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1955).
116 War, Civil and Foreign
faithfully supported it. Miquel Delgado, abbot of Poblet, for example, turned
staunch royalist in June 1462 after playing a prominent part in earlier actions
against Juan. But among the canons and lower clergy he encountered almost
uniform hostility. Those of the north, relying on rents and services extracted
from remensas, had long fought the crown on that account; they had moreover
borne the brunt of the endless demands made by Alfonso upon ecclesiastical
revenues to further his Italian ambitions.
Similar divisions opened in the ranks of the laity. If the count of Pallars, heir
to his familys bitter feuds with neighbours and the crown, took command of
the Catalan armies, those Cardona neighbours would persevere in their loyalty
to the dynasty. Perpignan, inclined like Valencia to look at Barcelona with a
jealous eye, questioned the wisdom of the course being pursued there. Within
Girona the queen received lodging and loyalty from Francesc Samps, leader of
one of the factions that had over decades fought for control of the city. With
him came his clients and friends; his enemies took the other side. Sometimes
the pressure to declare for one cause or the other found the fault-lines within
families, as happened with the Rocabert and Crulles clans of the Empord;21
the war gave new scope for the feuding which their numerous branches had
long pursued among themselves. And as ideology gave way so often to circum-
stance, loyalties too were seldom irrevocably xed; few gave their allegiance
unswervingly to one side or the other throughout the decade of civil war.
During the last days of May the many currents bearing Catalonia into the
abyss of civil war merged together in an irresistible ood. The execution of
Busca notables in Barcelona on 19 and 21 May, coupled with the veguers arrest
and denunciations of the highest royal ofcials, including the chancellor, the
archbishop of Tarragona, signalled open deance of the crown. On the follow-
ing day, 22 May, deance escalated into rebellion22 when the town of Hostalric
opened its gates to the Councils advance guard, and the count of Mdica,
instead of leading a heroic resistance, found himself ignominiously taken pris-
oner.23 His garrison in the castle did put up a ght which ended bloodily.
Confronted by open, armed rebellion, the king hastened his preparations to
ght his way into Catalonia and encouraged his wife to defend the Girona

21
Sobrequs i Vidal, Lalta noblesa del Nord de Catalunya, La guerra civil, ii.
22
Juan rst stigmatized the conict as a rebellion when on 23 May he ordered an economic block-
ade of the rebels.
23
During the Viana crisis the count had acted against the king; he led the Catalan army which
forced Juan to ee from Fraga and was a signatory to the Capitulation of Vilafranca. The onset of civil
war had drawn him back, albeit with muted enthusiasm, into the royalist camp.
 The Drawing of Swords 117
redoubt until rescue came. Command of the fortress he entrusted to Lluis
Despuig, master of Montesa, a man of vast diplomatic and military experience
gained through long service to Alfonso in Italy. Despuig reached Girona on
2 June, only a few days ahead of the enemy. Juana, however, was little reassured;
tormented by fears for the safety of herself and her son, she sent anguished pleas
for help to Aragon and Valencia: so great is our alarm that we can barely nd
words . . . we beg you with tears, with unbearable anguish and grief, not as
queen and sovereign, wife of your king and lord, but as a sister.24 On 4 June,
the day on which she dispatched those desperate appeals, she retired with her
band of loyal followers to the inner citadel.
Her adversary, the count of Pallars, rode up to the walls of Girona on 6 June
to nd them feebly defended.25 Only the loyalist Samps and a handful of
his stalwarts showed any ght by shouting insults from the walls and ring
on the attackers, thereby, the count maintained, initiating hostilities. Pallars
quickly battered his way through the gates to be greeted by general acclamations
of Sant Jordi and Charles, whose ghostly gure many claimed to have seen
ghting for the good cause. By nightfall the entire lower city was his, and he felt
condent that his elated troops would carry the Fora by storm on the morrow.
With a spirit like this we could get to Paris,26 he boasted. Those besieged in the
citadel quickly disabused him; during the night they exchanged brisk re and
put to the torch the buildings clustered against their walls in order to give
themselves a clear eld of defence. With morning dawned the realization that
Juana and Fernando had not ed. To attack the Fora would be to attack those
still recognized as locumtenens and heir apparent when the ostensible quarry
was a handful of evil counsellors. Pallars needed to seek guidance from
Barcelona. It came on the following day: as well as seizing the counsellors, he
was to demand that the queen surrender her tutelage and quit Catalonia, tak-
ing Fernando with her if she chose.
No longer could the great question be avoided. Had a struggle for the lib-
erties of Catalonia become a rebellion against its king? Juan himself helped
provide an answer. With such forces as he could musterno more than 250 horse

24
. . . nuestra turbacion es tanta que da impedimento al favlar . . . rogando vos con lagrimas, con-
goxa e dolor que tenemos intolerables, no como reyna e senyora, muger de voestro rey e senyor, mas
como ermana . . . Coll Juli. Doa Juana Enriquez, ii. 3534.
25
This rst siege of Girona has been fully studied by Coll Juli, ibid., ch. 9, and by Sobrequs i
Vidal, La guerra civil, i. 145224.
26
E crch que ab aquesta fria se poria anar ns a Pars. Ibid. 186. In the same letter he sounded
an oddly uncertain note: He venut perqu els meus enemics shan deixat vncer (I have beaten my
enemies because they let themselves be beaten). Ibid. 185.
118 War, Civil and Foreign
and 500 foothe had crossed the frontier and seized the town of Balaguer
on the day before Pallars reached Girona; on 8 June he pressed on to Trrega.
By that act he had torn up the Capitulation of Vilafranca, forfeited Catalan
allegiance, and given his opponents grounds to proclaim him a public enemy.
That irrevocable step into the quagmire they took on 9 June. Inexorably there
followed on 11 June a similar act against his accomplice, the queen. Against
the heir they still held their hand, hoping to gain control of him in Girona and
subsequently deploy him against his father in place of the much-lamented
Charles. Pallarss duty was, therefore, plain: storm the Fora without more ado.
Capturing a stout-walled fortress defended by almost 400 men, many of
them veterans of the Italian and Castilian wars, was no easy task for any com-
mander with barely 2,000 at his disposal, still less for one, like the count of
Pallars, wholly lacking military experience.27 His attack, made on Corpus
Christi day (17 June), lasted for six hours, but, to judge by the casualtiessix
dead and around one hundred wounded among the assailantsit was not
pressed with great zeal. At the time both the count and the Catalan councils
shrugged off this failure, but not so easily a much bloodier reverse about to
befall them in the west.
Mustering all his available cavalry and infantry, Juan had lured the garrison
of Trrega into an ambush outside the walls, killing, so he claimed, over a hun-
dred and wounding or capturing many more. This action, which took place on
21 June, spread panic as far aeld as Cervera where a mob vented its fury on a
familiar and defenceless target, the Jewish quarter. Further demoralization in
that sector was only prevented by the appearance, a few days later, of an army
composed of units recruited by the Generalitat together with the Bandera or
militia of Barcelona numbering in all 2,000 men. They had left the city on 16
June with orders to attack the royal army in Balaguer and so halt Juans advance
into Catalonia but, having reached Trrega and digested the lessons of the
recent action there, it was decided to abandon all thoughts of an offensive. In
justication the commander, Joan de Marimon of Barcelona, pointed to his
inferiority in cavalry (20 against over 600) in open country where ten horse
can do more than a hundred foot,28 and to a lack of spingards, an early form of

27
M. J. Pelez, La actuacin poltico-militar de Hugo Roger III de Pallars durante la guerra civil de
14621472 (Barcelona: Grcas Marina, 1975).
28
AHB, Consell de Cent X, Lletres Comunes 32, no. 155 (Cervera, 29 June 1462). Like the count
of Pallars and many others summoned to command insurgent troops, Joan de Marimon lacked milit-
ary experience; also he displayed from the outset of the campaign a degree of caution bordering on
defeatism.
 The Drawing of Swords 119
hand-held rearm. Juans withdrawal to Balaguer was none the less portrayed
by his opponents as ignominious ight. Unshaven and sad, they trumpeted,
he had scuttled away, looking only for death as an escape from his miseries.
Any who believed this propaganda were quickly and cruelly undeceived.
Seeing that its militia had gone to reinforce the Catalan army in Trrega, Juan
launched a devastating raid upon Lleida at the beginning of July, destroying the
harvest and driving a terried populace into an already overcrowded city. The
militia, hurrying back to Lleidas defence, then found itself intercepted and
trapped in Castelldasens by a large force of enemy cavalry commanded by the
ery Joan-Ramon Folc de Cardona, count of Prades.29 Troops from Trrega
did go to the rescue, but arrived too late to prevent Joan Agull, the militias
commander, surrendering with all 500 of his men on 9 July. Cries of treachery
greeted his hasty capitulation, perhaps with some justication for it was
reported that, although the king had hanged four of his captains, Agull him-
self had been warmly welcomed. No longer could anyone delude themselves
that they faced a mangy, toothless old lion.
Pallars, meanwhile, despite the failure of further assaults, continued to insist
that victory in Girona was imminent, an insistence that sounded increasingly
hollow as he watched his strength whittled away by demands for contingents
to aid in the forlorn defence of Roussillon against a mighty French army,
10,000 strong, which Gaston de Foix was gathering at Narbonne. Peasants
drafted from the surrounding countryside, doubtless under some compulsion,
but also by the lure of having their debts to Jews inside the Fora cancel-
led, proved inadequate replacements. Its hard, lamented the count, to get
Catalans into some kind of order, especially when they are many and unused to
this kind of warfare.30 In weaponry, too, he was decient: it is generally held
that bombards and cross-bolts win battles, he declared as he demanded more
of these essential arms.31 Even in the core of his army morale sagged and disci-
pline relaxed as the siege dragged on and the two-month period of enlistment
neared its end. Twice the council of Girona complained to Barcelona of the
thefts and violence perpetrated by Pallarss men. All he could do was to keep

29
Initially associated with Catalan opposition to Juan, the count turned his back on it in May 1462
to become an outstanding commander of the royalist forces. See Sobrequs i Vidal, Els barons de
Catalunya, 17681.
30
La gent cathalana s dura de metre en orde e majorment multitud e no exercitada en guerra tal.
Sobreques i Vidal, La guerra civil, i. 216.
31
. . . car lo vulgar es bombardes et passadors guanyen batalles. Calmette, Louis XI, Jean II, 100.
Some of the cannon balls he did receive proved to be too large for the cannon.
120 War, Civil and Foreign
siege engines and sappers busy, to some effect, against the citadels walls, and
remind the Council of Catalonia that Charlemagne had spent six years in
besieging that same city.
Three weeks into the siege Gaston de Foix had written to Juana urging her
to behave like an Amazon and promised to relieve her within a fortnight. But
his letter was intercepted, so we do not know whether any reassurance reached
those inside the Fora. Anecdotes relayed by chroniclers portray not so much a
warrior queen as one wracked by anxieties as weeks passed and the succour
promised by Juan failed to materialize. Letters sent by the king and others in his
court to assure Juana of a speedy relief fared little better than Gastons missive;
most fell into enemy hands. Among these was a notable piece, written in his
own hand on 8 June, in which Juan tenderly addresses his wife as mi ninya e mi
senyora bella, briey describes his military preparations, and signs himself, El
que mas que a si te ama.32 One anecdote paints a particularly dramatic picture
of Juanas fears.33 It happened on 26 June when a large party of attackers broke
into the midst of the fortress through a tunnel dug beneath its walls. Firing the
house in which the assailants were entrenched nally drove them back, but
only after a wave of panic had swept through the Fora. Juana, so it is alleged,
ran distractedly through the streets looking for her son; on nding him safe,
playing in front of the cathedral, she fell senseless to the ground. So shaken was
she that the following day an emissary appeared before Pallars to propose that
she, with the prince and all her followers, should abandon Girona. The story
has an exaggerated, perhaps hostile tang, but an abortive plan, hatched about
this time, to ee to Vilamars eet, now based at Roses, offers additional evid-
ence that she was not resolved to remain in Girona whatever might befall. A
youth who escaped from the Fora in the early days of July was discovered, on
being searched, to have concealed in his foreskin a slip of paper bearing the
words, Lord! Help us! (Senyor! soccorreu-nos!). If Santiago Sobreques is cor-
rect in his surmise that the queen might have written them, it would argue for
a degree of desperation, but to whom, through this vehicle, could they have
been addressed? Such hope as she still sustained rested solely in Gaston de Foix;
let him come with whatever force he could muster and without delay, she
wrote, for she could hold out for no more than another week. But effective

32
Coll Juli, Doa Juana Enriquez, ii. 359.
33
Vicens Vives, Fernando II, 120 n. 370. The story is recounted in a 15th-cent. chronicle compiled
by lvar Garca de Santamara. For an evaluation of that work see Macdonald, Don Fernando de
Antequera, 714.
 The Drawing of Swords 121
command of the Fora, it must be remembered, lay not in Juanas agitated
hands but in the steady grasp of Despuig.34
On the evening of 9 July Gaston de Foix had set in motion his formidable
array, some 10,000 strong, to rescue the queen and crush the rebels. To avoid
the blistering summer heat he marched at night, fought a brisk engagement
at the frontier with a few hundred militia sent from Perpignan, and quickly
occupied the fortied town of Salses, the key to Spain (clau de Spanya).35 By
mid-afternoon of the next day the French were lolling in the shade of the
surrounding olive groves. Gaston was then able to march southwards against
negligible opposition, for the Council had found it impossible to reinforce
Roussillon with anything more than small detachments from its army at
Girona and a few hundred local recruits. Although the port of Canet put up
a stout but brief resistance, only Perpignan proved an obstacle to his advance,
declaring that, We would sooner give ourselves to the Turk than to the king of
France.36 At the same time, among its inhabitants indignation ran high that
the Council, seemingly more interested in a single city, Girona, than in the
whole of the northern provinces, should have done so little to defend them. If
we were foreigners, or Moors from Barbary, and not of this principality, asking
you for help, your wonted valour alone would not allow you to let us perish: so
wrote an indignant viscount of Illa-Canet to those distant authorities.37 The
viscount together with the otherwise royalist-minded castellan of Perpignan,
Carles dOms, and his relative, Berenguer dOms, had resolved to stand against
the invader.38 Rather than lose time besieging the city, as the Catalans had
hoped, Gaston pressed on towards the Pyrenees. Panic-stricken, the Council
endeavoured to hold him there by summoning together all the militia of the
region, men whom their commander, Viscount Jofre de Rocabert, found
lamentably wanting in weaponry and training. Worse still, with only 2,000
men at his command, the viscount was hopelessly outnumbered; and of these
he assigned a mere hundred to defend the vital pass at Boulou. They limited
their deance to a show of bare bottoms, then promptly surrendered. The rest

34
Sobreques i Vidal, La guerra civil, i. 217. Six others, including a prominent jurist, had ed from
the citadel with this boy. For further details of Pallarss operations, ibid. 21418.
35
Calmette, Louis XI, Jean II, 134 n. 3. Ibid. ch. 4/1 for Gastons advance on Girona.
36
. . . ans nos donariem al Turch que al rey de Frana. Ibid. 137 n. 3.
37
Si erem gents stranges o Moros de Barberia, e no erem de aquest Principat, demanantvos socors,
sols per la virtut vostre acostumada nons deguereu perir. Ibid. 139.
38
Carless son Bernat, seneschal of Beaucaire, was with the French army and another son, also
named Carles, was with the queen in the Fora. Ibid. 89, n. 1. Sobrequs i Vidal, La guerra civil, i. 193.
122 War, Civil and Foreign
of Rocaberts scratch army did no better in contesting the passage of the
Pyrenees.
While at Boulou, Gaston had received the queens letter begging him to
come to her rescue without any delay because resistance was at its last gasp.
Similar pleas were coming from the king who realized that he lacked the
strength to break through to Girona in time to save his wife and son. Gaston
accordingly resolved not to wait until the two counties had been wholly sub-
dued, but to push on across the Pyrenees with 4,500 of his most seasoned and
best mounted men, leaving the rest of the army to secure Louis XIs prizes,
Rousillon and Cerdagne. On 21 July the French fought their way through the
pass at the Coll de Panissars against a token resistance by Rocaberts men;
by evening they had debouched into Catalonia. All further opposition melted
away as they moved on at a spectacular pace through La Junquera, Figueres,
and Bascara towards their goal. On the night of 22 July Gaston pitched camp
at Medinya, close enough to Girona for beacon res to signal to those in the
Fora that deliverance was at hand. The next morning the count of Foix
entered Girona unopposed to be met by a queen so overcome with emotion
that minutes passed before she was able to utter a word. Pallars had vanished,
leaving behind all the heavy artillery gathered with such pains for a nal assault
on the Fora. Two days earlier he had warned the Generalitat that he could not
hold out against an enemy seven or eight thousand strong with a thousand
men woefully lacking in heart.39 It suited both him and Gaston, as it had the
queen, to claim that the besieged were on the brink of despair. But if they were,
as it appears, reduced to eating only beans and horsemeat, their suffering was
but moderate. Nor were they in imminent danger of being stormed; Pallars had
seen his forces dwindling through demoralization and lack of paymoney to
renew their enlistment arrived from Barcelona only on 21 Julyand a last des-
perate appeal for volunteers from the vegueria had produced not a single man.
When he decided on 22 July to abandon Girona, his army had shrunk to 700,
and even these, he alleged, thought only of eeing from the dreaded piteus,
their nickname for the French soldiery.
Sorrows came not singly to Barcelona. On the very same day that Gaston de
Foix liberated Queen Juana, the king routed the Catalan army on the western
front. A royal detachment in the castle of Rubinat, near Cervera, found itself
surrounded by the Catalans. Hastening from Balaguer to its relief with an army
now much augmented in number by Aragonese and Valencian contingents,

39
Je so ab 1m. homes e prou dolents de cor. Calmette, Louis XI, Jean II, 144.
 The Drawing of Swords 123
Juan encountered the main enemy force entrenched on a craggy hill and well
equipped with weapons including rearms. Despite the difculty of the ter-
rain, especially for cavalry, the kings troops stormed the position at the third
attempt, killing more than 300 and taking many prisoners. Among the latter
were captains of the Barcelona militia and a number of the gentry who had long
opposed the crown in the Corts before taking up arms against it: Huc and
Guillem de Cardona and Roger dErill were the most prominent of these.
Another notable captive was the Aragonese baron Jofre de Castro against
whom Juan nursed especial animosity.40 A week later the survivors of the battle
were driven from Trrega, and Juan began his march towards Barcelona. Only
tattered remnants of the army of Urgell gathered in Igualada and Santa Coloma
de Queralt stood in his way.41

40
The action at Rubinat is described by Zurita, Anales, xvii, p. xli. The reasons for Juans attitude
towards de Castro are explained in Sobreques i Vidal, La guerra civil, ii. 1556. All these prominent
prisoners were tried for treason and executed in Mar. 1463; Juans rage against the rebels was still in
full ood.
41
In a letter to Marimon (28 July) the Council of Barcelona blamed the defeat on indiscipline and
God. Often God permits such reverses to happen; He knows the reason (moltes voltes deu permet
seguirse tals contraries, ell sap per que). He is told to rally his men with ne words and make good
use of his weapons and powder, for no more can be sent. AHB, Consell de Cent VI, Lletres Closes 23,
fo. 8.
 12
Catalonia at Bay: Enter Castile

Although within the space of six weeks Barcelonas cock-a-hoop euphoria had
melted away into consternation, the dismay occasioned by a succession of
defeats did not deect the leaders of the rising from their course. They had
ventured their own persons too far to expect any better fate than that of the
prisoners at Rubinat, but something more positive than an instinct for
self-preservation drove them on: an upsurge of patriotic fervour against the
French invaders and a king who had betrayed the homeland. In north-eastern
Catalonia, at least, the triumphant royalist cause was now identied with for-
eign oppression and atrocity, that of the beleaguered Council of Catalonia with
national salvation. Instead of the anticipated groundswell of support for the
liberators of Juana and Fernando, Gaston de Foixs army encountered erce
hostility which obliged it to keep within fortied towns and venture forth only
in large companies. Even in the immediate aftermath of defeat, the insurgent
leaders resolve was stiffened by pledges of loyalty spontaneously ooding
in from communities and individuals in the invaders path. Two principal
barons of the Empord, Bernat-Gilabert de Crulles and Guerau Alemany de
Cervell, wrote offering their persons and estates to the national cause.1 The
town of Peralada gave voice to the common sentiment of deance:
We reply with great grief and sorrow because Catalonia is not used to being lorded over
and so maltreated by foreign folk as it now is. May Our Lord grant you that victory
which this principality has always been wont to gain in such circumstances. We have
resolved to live and die in defence of the liberties of the land, and moreover to do every-
thing in our power to harry the French and drive them from this principality.2

1
Another member of the Crulles family, Mart-Guerau, was ghting in the opposing ranks with
the queen.
2
Vos responem amb molta congoxa e dolor per quant Cathalunya no s acostumada sser seny-
orejada ni ax maltractada per persones extrangeres com ara de present s; Nostre Senyor os do aqu-
ella victria que tot temps e en tals casos aquest Principat ha acostumat obtenir; havem deliberat viure
e morir per deffensi de les llibertats de la terra e encara de fer tot aquell sfor que a nosaltres ser pos-
sible en damnicar e foragitar de aquest Principat los francesos. Sobreques i Vidal, La guerra civil, i. 227.
 Catalonia at Bay: Enter Castile 125
The queen, by contrast, discovered that those loyal to her met with little or
no response when they appealed for support from communities over which
they had hitherto exercised inuence. Nor did the emissaries of Bishop Joan
Margarit fare better in his diocese of Girona. Pere de Rocabert, entrusted with
the mission of bringing rebel towns in the veguerias of Besal and Empord to
heel, found that even the promise of incorporation in the royal desmesne had
no effect. Few indeed fared as badly as Marti-Guerau de Crulles who encoun-
tered such hostility that he surrendered to his relative on the opposing camp;
threatened with summary execution by Pallars, he ended up a prisoner in
Barcelona. Only in the mountainous regions west of Girona, dominated by
remensa bands, was there a show of support for the crown.3 And even there, to
quieten the anxieties of his followers, Verntallat had to spread the word that the
French were the queens enemies. By contrast, north of the Pyrenees, where the
French army had quickly made itself master of Roussillon, nominal allegiance
to the crown was soon re-established. The governor, the viscount of Illa,
hoisted the royal banner over the castle of Perpignan on 25 July;4 the city, men-
aced by the castles cannon, submitted. But this success proved short-lived;
in August, when the main body of French troops left to reinforce the count of
Foix, the anti-royalist elements seized their opportunity. The city of Perpignan,
but not the castle, reafrmed its loyalty to the cause of insurrection and, with
other like-minded communities, tried to dislodge the French from their
strongholds.5 Even within Verntallat territory, the royal veguer found himself
hemmed into Camprodon by a rebel force 600 strong.6
Thus stiffened in its resolve to continue the struggle, the Council of
Catalonia had to nd the means. It began with a general call to arms directed
to all men aged 14 and above, a measure customarily adopted in extremis
against foreign invaders. Untrained and ill-equipped, such levies could harass
an enemy, as they were doing in the Empord, but they could never be a match
for professional soldiers in the eld. As for the military class of Catalonia,
although large numbers had thrown in their lot with the rebels, at least as many
were ghting on the other side. Therefore it had become imperative to seek aid

3
In July 1462 Verntallats forces had made important gains in this area, taking the towns of
Banyoles, Besal, Castellfollit dela Roca, Olot, and Camprodon, as well as several castles.
4
According to Calmette (Louis XI, Jean II, 161), the standard hoisted was that of France, in
fullment of Juans undertaking to put that fortress under French control. Sobrequs i Vidal, La
guerra civil, i. 22530, gives a full account of Juanas efforts to win over the Empord.
5
Their attempt to recover Canet ended in failure.
6
The leader of this group was Ramon de Planella, a canon who for many years had led a notori-
ously violent and disordered life which had put him constantly at odds with the crown.
126 War, Civil and Foreign
or allies further aeld. The other states of the Aragonese confederation showed
little inclination to commit themselves to either party. In the kingdom of
Valencia a refusal to assist the Catalans was matched by a reluctance to enforce
an embargo, decreed by Juan on 16 June 1462, on goods owned by citizens of
Barcelona, Lleida, and Tortosa. Prompted by the king, Valencia agreed in that
same month to send an embassy to Catalonia in order to explore the possibil-
ities of peace. Meetings with the leaders in Barcelona and with Juana in Girona
soon convinced them that reconciliation was impossible.7 Aragon too, at the
kings request, sent the bishop of Tarazona and the justiciar on a peace mission
in June; like the Valencians, they found Barcelona intransigent, which is
doubtless what Juan had desired to demonstrate. An embassy from Juans
nephew, the king of Naples, also arriving in June, met with a similar rebuff.
Majorcas offer of mediation was contained in a letter sent in July 1462 which
expressed sorrow and indignation at Catalonias behaviour towards the king
and queen.8 Unsurprisingly, that overture was rejected, with the result that the
island severed its commercial links with Catalonia and turned its sea-power
against Minorca, the only part of Juans dominions to demonstrate active sym-
pathy for the Catalans.9 Sicily, recovering from its brief irtation with Charles
of Viana, remained rmly loyal; as early as May 1461 its parliament had
rejected a call for support delivered by Catalan envoys.10
Having rejected all compromise with its erstwhile monarch, how was an
isolated Catalonia to seek its salvation? Some, condent in its native strength
and resources, contemplated a republican form of government on the Italian
model: better to suffer privation than elect another king,11 exhorted one of
this mind, the canon Dusay. A large majority, however, saw an opportunity to
replace a hostile sovereign with one ready to defend Catalonia and its new-
found liberties, but also one able and willing to counter-balance the formidable
weight of France in the opposing camp. A committee of ve appointed by the
Council on 1 August was charged with the task of nding such a saviour. The
obvious candidate was Juans inveterate foe and Charles of Vianas good friend,
Enrique IV the king of Castile, even though such a choice tted ill with the

7
Sobrequs i Callic, Un ltimo intento de concordia en la guerra civil catalana de 14621472:
La embajada del reino de Valencia, Anuario de estudios medievales, 3 (1966). Catalan version in La
guerra civil, i.
8 9
Text in Calmette, Louis XI, Jean II, 96 n. 1. Ibid. 97 n. 2.
10
Vicens Vives, Fernando el Catolico, ch. 3, Sicilia durante la guerra de Catalua (14621472).
11
. . . primer se deuria passar per privaci que per nova elecci de rey. Sobrequs i Vidal, La
guerra civil, i. 355.
 Catalonia at Bay: Enter Castile 127

Solsona
Cardona Hostalric
Vilanova de Aguda Blanes
Sant Celoni

Guissona Calaf Manresa Granollers

Castell de Farfanya Els Prats de Rei La Roca del Valls
Balaguer Montserrat Terrassa Montmel
Cervera
egre

Igualada Montorns
Tarrega Sabadell Montcada
Rubinat Piera St. Cugat d Valls
R. S

Anglesola Badalona
N

Verd Martorell BARCELONA

Sta. Coloma de Queralt
LLEIDA Guimer La Liacuna Gelida Molins de Rei
Torregrossa
O

Torres de Segre Sarral Vilafranca del Peneds

Barber de la Conca
LEspluga de Francoli
G

Montblanc Santes Creus

Alcover
A

La Palma dEbre
Tamarit
Flix
R

TARRAGONA
Asc
Mora dEbre Salou
A

Gandesa
Miravet
R. Ebro

TORTOSA
N
Amposta
Height:
over 1,000 mtrs
5001,000 mtrs
Ulldecona
VA L E N C I A Scale: kms.
10 20 40

Map 3. Catalonia, the southern sector

anti-Castilian rhetoric which had hitherto marked Catalonias propaganda

against its current Castilian monarch. So strong was that sentiment and so
seductive the vision of an independent Catalonia that at rst the Council, sup-
ported by the Diputaci and Barcelona, and on the committees recommenda-
tion, went no further than asking Enrique for 2,000 horse to be paid by the
Catalans for up to four months. Instructions to that effect were drafted on
6 August for an embassy to be led by Joan de Copons, a sworn enemy of the
Trastmares.12 But on reection that same committee returned ve days later to
propose that Enrique be offered the vacant lordship of Catalonia under the

12
While in Barcelona Juana had imprisoned Copons and endeavoured, in vain, to have him tried
on many charges, including one of murder in Majorca.
128 War, Civil and Foreign
conditions laid down in the Concordat of Vilafranca. In order to create such a
vacancy, Fernando was, on the same day, stripped of his rights to the succes-
sion. There is good reason to suspect that this design had been taking shape
ever since the relief of Girona had dashed hopes of putting the prince on the
throne under reliable Catalan tutelage.13 Having rst focused attention on
Castile as the source of salvation through aid, the committee had quickly con-
cluded that the request might appear far more enticing if accompanied by an
offer of sovereignty. As they put it in a letter addressed to Jean de Beaumont:
the food we have offered to the king is very delicious and, in the opinion of
ourselves and others who have seen it, it ought to be tasted and accepted with-
out delay, and the aid dispatched in great haste.14 It must also have crossed
their minds that they had no better hope than had Juan of paying cash down
for the services of a large foreign army. To justify the offer, military necessity
apart, they could remind the populace of Enriques friendship for Charles of
Viana, and legalists of the claims to the succession vested in the senior line of
the Trastmar family. It took only a day to convince the councils of Barcelona
and the principality. The way was then open to proclaim Enrique of Castile
count of Barcelona and lord of Catalonia, the latter title new-minted, probably
in order to skirt around the thorny issue of an implied right to the Crown of
Aragon which was not in Catalonias gift. At this critical moment the rebels pre-
ferred not to determine whether they were seceding from that crown or seeking
to impose their own choice of king upon it. They had none the less unilaterally
severed their constitutional ties with their sister states. Next day, 12 August,
letters were dispatched to inform the chosen saviour of this unexpected and
unsolicited honour.
Copons, making his way through Aragon in disguise, met Enrique at
Atienza, formerly part of Juans Castilian patrimony.15 His eloquent discourse
setting forth the Catalan proposals met with an encouraging response, but
Enrique being, as Zurita fairly observed, not very warlike nor covetous of more

13
As early as May 1462 the Council of Barcelona was expressing satisfaction with messages
received from Enrique via de Beaumont. Further letters and messages came in Aug. before he was
offered the lordship of Catalonia. AHB, Consell de Cent VI, Lletres Closes, 23, fos. 1 and 9.
14
. . . la vianda que al dit senyor rey havem presentada s tant sabrosa e al parer nostre e dels
miradors deguere sser sens dilaci degustada e abrassada e lo dit socors ab ms precipitaci expedit . . .
Sobreques i Vidal, La guerra civil, i. 374.
15
Martn, Enrique IV, 1201. Coponss address and Enriques reply are recorded by the Castilian
chronicler Diego Enrquez del Castillo who was a chaplain to Enrique, Crnica de Enrique IV
(Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, 1994), 1901.
 Catalonia at Bay: Enter Castile 129
kingdoms than he had inherited,16 declared that he must put the matter to his
council. Knowing full well what inuence Juans Castilian allies wielded in that
body, the anxious Catalans had to wait a week until it convened in Segovia.
Opinions divided along predictably partisan lines which had little to do with
Catalonia and everything with the internal feuds of Castile. They swayed
towards acceptance thanks largely to Enriques desire to spite a detested rival,
supplemented by Coponss unauthorized proffer of additional bait: the right to
coin money. The king himself, in wildly unrealistic vein, opined that he was
being offered success without trouble, dominion without labour.17 So it was
decided that Jean de Beaumont, Charles of Vianas closest friend throughout
the Navarrese wars and during the last troubled days in Catalonia, should
immediately lead 2,500 cavalry to the rescue of Enriques new subjects.18
Shadowy hosts should follow: 2,000 to Valencia, an equal number to Navarre,
and 8,000, headed by Enrique himself, to Catalonia; a eet of thirty galleys
should sweep the enemy from the seas. In his rst ush of enthusiasm Enrique
looked bent on driving Juan not only from Catalonia but from every corner of
his realms.19 Castiles formal acceptance of an ambiguous sovereignty reached
Barcelona on 12 September, the very day on which the royal army had begun
investing the city. The perennial conict between Juan and the kings of Castile
had entered a yet more bitter phase.
Juan, who had been kept well informed of what was afoot by his friends in
the Castilian court, was meanwhile seeking to forestall Enrique by a decisive
victory over the rebels; jointly with the French and those Catalans who had ral-
lied to Juana, he would fall upon Barcelona and with one stroke annihilate his
enemies. At the beginning of August the victors of GironaJuana, her son,
Gaston, and Luis Despuighad taken their army towards the coast, with the
intention of securing their ank and, by seizing the ports, their sea commu-
nications with France. They met with unexpectedly stiff resistance. It took
three days of intense bombardment before Verges surrendered on 9 August.
On the following day at Torroella de Montgr they met Pallars with the pick of

16
. . . no era ni muy guerrero ni codicioso de ms reinos de los que haba heredado . . . Zurita,
Anales, xvii, p. xlii.
17
. . . prosperidad syn fatiga, seorio sin trabajo . . . Enrquez del Castillo, Crnica, 192.
18
Blanches cession to Enrique of her title to Navarre had reinforced that princes alliance with the
Vianist faction led by the de Beaumont family; they now considered themselves Enriques subjects.
The Catalans had requested that Jean de Beaumont be given command of any Castilian forces sent to
the principality.
19
Martn, Enrique IV, 1224.
130 War, Civil and Foreign
his forces, 1,500 strong.20 They gained the advantage in an encounter watched
by the queen and her belles dames from the shelter of a tent pitched under a
great walnut tree, but failed to press the attack on Torroella and so open their
way to the sea. Instead, after ve days of inaction, they turned around and
marched back to Girona.
Although insurgent spirits were much heartened by this apparent blow to
the French reputation for invincibility, Gastons withdrawal was in fact dict-
ated by an order, dispatched on 14 August, in which Louis instructed him to
march directly upon Barcelona, the goal of this costly expeditionary force.
Juan, anxious to be reunited with his wife and son, promised to join forces,
leaving the line of march and place of rendezvous to the discretion of Gaston
and Juana. The queen desired only to rejoin her husband and lay down the
crippling responsibilities she had borne for so long. Once reinforced by
another 2,000 men from the French reserve in Roussillon, the army began
its advance from Girona on 1 September.21 Around the same time a French
squadron of eight or ten galleys joined Vilamar in an effort to secure command
of the seas. Pallars, advised now by a war council of experienced captains, shad-
owed his enemy by following a coastal route. A pitched battle was out of the
question, given the vast disparity in numbers, but the count and council hoped
to delay their foes with sieges and harassment until hunger destroyed them.
Gaston de Foix refused to be drawn into any such war of attrition. Adhering
to his earlier tactics, he pushed ahead, bypassing formidable obstacles such as
the fortress of Hostalric, but seizing the lightly defended towns of Sant Celoni,
Granollers, and Montmel. By 9 September he stood before the castle of
Montcada which had to be stormed because, perched high upon a rock, it com-
manded the approaches to Barcelona. He ordered an immediate attack, over-
whelmed the defence, and went on to pitch his camp at Sant Andreu within
sight of the capitals walls. Juan with some thousand troops reached Montcada
on 12 September, and was there reunited with the queen and son from whom
he had been separated for twelve tempestuous months. During August his
commanders had followed up their success at Rubinat with conquests towards
the east, culminating on 28 August in the surrender of Santa Coloma de

20
On 29 July Juana had written to Torroella threatening dire consequences if it persisted in its
refusal to submit.
21
Coll Juli, Doa Juana Enrquez, ii, La campaa de 1462. Sobrequs i Vidal, La guerra civil, i.
22538. Pere de Rocabert remained in Girona as royalist commander of the Empord. There he con-
ducted a vigorous, inventive campaign through the latter part of 1462, culminating in the relief of
Girona from a second siege in Nov.
 Catalonia at Bay: Enter Castile 131
Queralt. It was from that town that he marched through crumbling resistance,
by way of La Llacuna, skirting Vilafranca del Peneds and Martorell, towards
his goal, Barcelona.
On the day following his arrival at Montcada, Juan joined his son-in-law, the
count of Foix, to review the French army and then begin the siege of Barcelona.
Many historians, from Zurita to Sobreques i Vidal, have maintained that this
operation was undertaken at the insistence of Gaston supported by the queen,
and against the judgement of Juan who considered it a foolish enterprise.22 If
this was indeed the kings opinion, why had he approved a rendezvous beneath
the city walls? And what alternative strategy had he in mind to bring about the
quick victory expected by a king of France who was nancing the war? One
explanation, offered by Zurita, is that he wanted rst to subdue the hinterland
before attacking Barcelona.23 Another, founded upon his later conduct of the
war, gives grounds for believing that he was keen to avoid an all-out assault on
Barcelona which would inevitably have led to great bloodshed and destruction,
to a legacy of bitterness and the alienation of the many citizens hitherto faith-
ful to the crown. Perhaps he was already of this mind, but unable to stand
against the condent insistence of Gaston de Foix and his French ally bolstered
by the successes of the previous weeks. What led to later expressions of excul-
patory doubt may have been the failure of the siege.
Ever since the French army crossed the Pyrenees Barcelona had anticip-
ated an attack. When that concern turned to certainty at the beginning of
September, preparations began to put the city on a war-footing. The chief
counsellor, Miquel Despl, assisted by a committee of six, was given command
of the defence; weapons were inventoried, men assigned to posts on the walls,
and buildings adjacent to the outside face of the walls demolished; in every
square arose gallows as a warning to traitors; divine aid was summoned through
the bishops prayers and days of fasting. As for attempts to concentrate military
resources, they proved only partially fruitful: the count of Pallars and several
other captains ignored orders to fall back upon Barcelona, possibly because they
doubted their ability to break through the enemy lines, possibly because they
feared being trapped in a place that many thought doomed. The promised
Castilian hosts, too, failed to appear. Assiduously the Catalan authorities spread
reports that large armies led by de Beaumont and Enrique himself were on the

22
Sobreques i Vidal, La guerra civil, i. 242.
23
Zurita, Anales, XVII, xliii. No era el rey de parecer que se pusiese cerco a Barcelona, hasta haber
sojuzgado toda su comarca . . .
132 War, Civil and Foreign
march, more, it must be suspected, to raise morale than from conviction. Even
without them, Despl could count on 5,000 men to defend Barcelona against
an adversary 7,000 or 8,000 strong, a ratio distinctly in his favour.24
Of the progress of the siege we know very little.25 Gaston established his
headquarters at Sant Andreu to the east of the city; where the king made camp
is not recorded. The famous French artillery seems to have made little impres-
sion on the walls and gates; their mines likewise. No general assault was
attempted, and although Alfonso of Aragon did succeed in taking the hill
of Montjuich, most armed encounters were initiated by the defenders
who harassed the besiegers with repeated sorties. A contemporary chronicler
writing in Valencia gives an account of one such sortie on the night of
21 September which led to the seizure of a heavy bombard nicknamed
Bocafoc from the royal encampment.26 A naval engagement on 26 September
resulted in the rout of eight French galleys which had been threatening an
attack from the sea. Such lacklustre proceedings might suggest that Juan was
expecting a fth column to deliver the city into his hands, or at least to create a
disturbance sufcient to distract the defenders. The queen and others could
testify that when they left Barcelona a vigorous opposition to the Biga was still
very much in evidence. What they did not appreciate was how effectively
repression had since cowed it, and how profoundly French intervention had
rallied popular opinion around the separatist banner. The guilds could by now
safely be given a voice in the citys councils and a share of its ofces; it was a sur-
geon-barber, Melchior Rotllan, sent to stiffen resistance at Montcada, who was
hanged there by the queen in his counsellors robes after the fortress had fallen.
Continuing mass addiction to the Carlist cult added another dimension to the
spirit of deance. A group of prominent citizens who might have organized a
rising ( Joan Galceran Dusay, his son Guillem Pere Dusay, Joan Almogver,
Galceran Dusay, Joan Bernat Tarr, and Pere de Conomines) had ed betimes
to a safe haven in Valencia. In the municipal records there is no whiff of treach-
ery, without which so great a city might withstand a siege prolonged over many
months, even years. Juans summons to surrender, with a promise of general

24
The gures of 60,000, even 70,000, men ready to bear arms given by some contemporaries are
wildly exaggerated. The total population of the city was only half this gure. For a full account of mea-
sures taken to defend Barcelona see Sobrequs i Vidal, La guerra civil, i. 3806.
25
The fullest account is that given by the French chronicler Guillaume Leseur, Histoire de Gaston
IV, Comte de Foix, ed. H. Courteault, 2 vols. (Paris: Socit de lHistoire de France, 18935).
26
Miralles, Dietari, 293. In mitigation of this reverse the royalist author puts the number of
assailants at 22,000!
 Catalonia at Bay: Enter Castile 133
amnesty excepting only the six members of the Generalitat (25 September), fell
on wholly deaf ears.
The futility of the enterprise soon became evident for king and count perse-
vered for only three weeks. On 3 October, having laid waste its surroundings,
they turned their backs on Barcelona and directed their march inland towards
Vilafranca del Peneds and the still-distant Castilian army of Jean de
Beaumont. Attempting to force a passage through Aragon to Lleida, the
plan urged on him by the insurgents, de Beaumont had captured the frontier
town of Calatayud, but, nding Zaragoza hostile, he had switched to a more
southerly route. It took him through Hijar, the property of Juan de Hijar, one
of the few Aragonese nobles to take up arms against Juan; from there he
advanced in the rst week of October to Mora dEbre, and nally to Tortosa, a
separatist stronghold, all the while turning a deaf ear to pleas that he should
turn back to shield Lleida against an expected royalist onslaught. Enrique
meanwhile was hovering indecisively on the Castilian frontier, more concerned
to avoid a clash with France than y to the aid of his Catalan subjects.27
Vilafranca fell to the kings forces on 9 October after a resistance rendered
more desperate by an atrocity committed at the outset. A small group of
French, having scaled the walls, found itself isolated when the ladders broke;
two of them, the seneschal of Bigorre and one of Gastons pages, tried to sur-
render against ransom but were slaughtered by their captors. In retaliation the
town was delivered to the mercy of the French soldiery who massacred large
numbers of men taking refuge in the church. Women and children were spared
thanks to the queens intercession. The captain of Vilafranca, Joan de Cardona,
found hiding in the church tower, was beheaded at the kings command, his
body quartered and exposed on a gibbet.28 From the beginning of the conict
both sides had shown little mercy. At Verges the French had executed twenty or
thirty prisoners in reprisal for the escape of others; in the storming of Colomers
a similar number had perished by re in the castle keep when they refused to
surrender. So had atrocity spawned atrocity; and rumour, by exaggeration,
fuelled panic and retribution. By the time it reached Valencia the news from
Vilafranca had been blown into a tale of a wholesale slaughter of men, women,
and children pursued into the church, and even upon the altar; this in

27
Castile and France were already on a collision course over Navarre where Enriques claims to
sovereignty conicted with those of Gaston and his wife backed by Louis XI. The marriage of Louiss
sister to Gastons son and heir had further sharpened French territorial appetites.
28
Calmette, Louis XI, Jean II, 1534. Zurita, Anales, XVII, xliv, puts the number of men killed in
the church at 400.
134 War, Civil and Foreign
retaliation for the cold-blooded killing of three prisoners whose heads had been
cut off and thrown from the walls.29 The other side responded in kind. Orders
were given (27 February 1463) that when the castle of La Roca del Valls fell
after a lengthy siege, all its defenders were to be put to the sword, saving only
the elderly, women, and children. On the orders of de Beaumont, the three
Oliver brothers, leaders of the defence were paraded through Barcelona before
execution, chains around the neck, irons on the legs, hands tied behind and
mounted on cart horses at a time when all may behold them.30
If the blood-letting in Vilafranca was intended to spread terror and persuade
other places of the folly of resistance, it had immediate effect; the royal army
swept on unopposed to the south, took Tamarit without ring a shot, and pre-
pared to avenge the reverse suffered at Barcelona. On 17 October, reinforced
with troops gathered by Archbishop Pere dUrrea, it appeared before its next
major objective, the ancient city of Tarragona and immediately established a
close siege, with Juan and Gaston installed in convenient monasteries, those of
Santa Clara and the Predicadors respectively.31 To secure the sea approaches,
vessels took up position off the little port of Salou to the south. Then began an
intense bombardment by the French artillery. Zuritas description of the city
shows how it might well have withstood the most determined of sieges.
It seemed [to the kings captains] impregnable because it was sited on a steep, rocky
hillside and surrounded by walls so strong that the passage of many centuries had not
availed to wear them away, and because it was on the sea from where it could very eas-
ily receive help. There survived towers and walls of Roman origin with foundations of
boulders so huge that it seemed impossible they could be moved by the machines and
skill of these times. Their tunnels and cellars reached to the shore, so it seemed they
could lack nothing essential to life if they controlled the sea.32

The rst trial of strength came when a eet from Barcelona, supported by a
sally from the city, endeavoured to land reinforcements. Forewarned, the
29
Miralles, Dietari, 293.
30
. . . ab catenes al coll, grillons a les cames e mans ligadas derrera e a cavall en bsties de bast e de
dia, a la hora que a tothom sia manifesta lur entrada, sien mesos en ciutat. J. Sobrequs Callic,
Catlogo de la Cancillera de Enrique IV de Castilla (Barcelona: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones
Cientcas, 1975), no. 930.
31
Calmette, Louis XI, Jean II, 1556. Cortiella i dena, Una ciutat catalana, 34154.
32
. . . pareciles ser inexpugnable por estar puesta en una spera ladera de rocas y cercada de muros
fortsimos que no haba podido consumir la antigedad de tantos siglos y estar sobre la mar en tal sitio
que puede recoger el socorro muy fcilmente. Duraban algunas torres y muros de edicio romano fun-
dados sobre tan disformes y grandes peascos que no pareca que podan ser movidos por mquinas y
articio ni destos tiempos ni destos hombres, y sus minas y cavernas llegaban a la mar y de ninguna
cosa necessaria a la vida pareca que podan tener falta si tuvieran por s la mar. Zurita, Anales, XVII, xliv.
 Catalonia at Bay: Enter Castile 135
French drove them back to the ships in erce ghting which left both sides with
heavy casualties. A few days later the soundness of Zuritas evaluation was put
to the test by an attempt to storm the city, for, contrary to the statements of
some historians, Tarragona did put up a spirited resistance. The assault, pressed
home until nightfall, failed completely against the massive walls. A second
attack, launched by night, was likewise thrown back, but the French artillery
did succeed in breaching the walls near the hospital, and, despite their efforts
to make good the damage with wooden barricades, the citizens began to fear
that further resistance would end in a devastating sack and a slaughter similar
to that inicted on Vilafranca. Fear and the inuence of an important element
favourable to the king thus led them to appeal to their archbishop (a warrior
cleric, prominent among the assailants!) to negotiate a surrender. DUrrea will-
ingly agreed and by 1 November had come to an amicable arrangement with
the count of Prades, acting for the king; the French, it was stipulated, should
receive a sum of money, rumoured to have been 4,000 orins, in return for an
undertaking not to enter Tarragonasuch was the fear engendered by these
foreigners. A few days later Juan made a ceremonial entry amid scenes of jubi-
lation inspired, probably, as much by relief as by enthusiasm.
Rodrigo de Rebolledo, the captain appointed to govern Tarragona, behaved
harshly towards some in the city and neighbouring towns; in particular he
purged the governing council and commandeered livestock and foodstuffs.
The negotiated surrender of Tarragona did, however, mark a new phase in
Juans conduct of the war. Henceforth cities were to be encouraged to submit
with the assurance that they would be spared reprisals and, moreover, have
their statutes and privileges conrmed, an enticing carrot for an apprehensive
bourgeoisie. Tarragona enjoyed additional favour, probably thanks to the
inuence of its archbishop: for the next eight years it was to be the royalist cap-
ital of Catalonia, distinguished by the presence of a royal council,33 bureau-
crats, and a large garrison. The king and queen frequently took up residence in
a royal palace refurbished at the citys expense.34
De Beaumont meanwhile had left Tortosa and gone by sea to Barcelona. He
arrived there on 24 October to swear, in Enriques name, to observe the laws
and liberties of his new subjects, and to receive from them (11 November) the

33
Among the council members were Pere Boquet, a leading light of the Busca, and Francesc
Pallars, a former counsellor of Barcelona who, although belonging to a high bourgeois family, had
shown sympathy for the Busca.
34
Cortiella i dena, Tarragona, capital accidental del Principat, Una ciutat catalana, 35582.
136 War, Civil and Foreign
oath of loyalty.35 Only two days later he revealed Enriques deeper ambitions by
proposing that Catalonia be united in perpetuity with the kingdom of Castile.
Nothing could have been less welcome to Catalan ears, but they could not
afford to return a blunt refusal so, instead, they confronted Enrique with the
dangerous suggestion that he should assume the title of king of Aragon.36 At
any cost Castilian arms had to be drawn into the fray. A good half of de
Beaumonts army, a thousand men, horse and foot, led by his deputy, Juan de
Torres, had already gone to bolster the defence of Lleida. The remainder stayed
comfortably in Tortosa where, late in December, they were joined by another
contingent under the command of Juan Hurtado de Mendoza.37
So far these Castilians had, by design rather than by accident, avoided con-
tact with the army led by the king and the count of Foix; a clash involving large
bodies of French and Castilians raised the spectre of conict between two states
which had hitherto pursued a policy of close alliance. The chances of an imme-
diate encounter diminished as winter closed in and Juan turned away from
Tarragona towards his base at Balaguer. Still in company with Gaston and the
queen, he rst received the submission of his own town of Montblanc, then
pressed on through LEspluga de Francol and Torregrossa to reach Balaguer,
another personal possession and the starting point of his campaign, on 12
November. A council of war held there decided that the time had come to retire
to winter quarters, the kings men in Balaguer, the French at Castell de
Farfanya and Trrega. So positioned, they would be able to keep watch upon
both Catalonia and Aragon where Castilian incursions and intrigues allied to
endemic feuding and violence threatened to spread the Catalan conagration
over its borders.38 Reports that Ruy Diaz de Mendoza was setting out from
Cuenca to cross the frontier with a thousand lances appeared to conrm those
fears and led to Juana being dispatched to Zaragoza at the end of November to
rally the kingdom against him. She discovered that Mendoza had indeed
passed unresisted through lands controlled by nobles sympathetic to the
Catalan cause: Juan de Hijar (de Beaumonts brother-in-law), Jaime de Aragon,
and Charless majordomo, Hugo de Cardona. Immediately she appealed to
Zaragoza for a thousand infantry to join with the cavalry of the kingdom in
35
Sobrequs i Vidal, La guerra civil, i. 399402.
36
According to Martn (Enrique IV, 1224), Enrique was disposed to accept this offer, but was dis-
suaded by his council under the inuence of Juans allies, the archbishop of Toledo and the marquis
of Villena. Any form of Castilian sovereignty in Catalonia would have been untenable without pos-
session of the intervening territory of Aragon and Valencia.
37
It numbered 185 men-at-arms and 300 horse. Calmette, Louis XI, Jean II, 199.
38
Sarasa Sanchez, Sociedad y conictos sociales en Aragn, 94.
 Catalonia at Bay: Enter Castile 137
resisting the invader; still more urgently she begged the king to come in person
with all the men he could muster. So alarmed was Juan at this assault upon
Aragonand Enrique lurked with still larger forces near the frontierthat he
hastened on to Zaragoza in company with Gaston de Foix ahead of their army,
reaching there on 15 December. The immediate danger of war on Aragonese
soil had by then evaporated because Mendoza had moved swiftly on into
Catalonia to join his fellow Castilians in Tortosa. So a tempestuous year ended
with the Christmas festivities celebrated by Juan, Juana, and Fernando
together in the Aljaferia, the royal palace of Zaragoza.
Vicens Vives, following Zurita, dismisses Juans campaign in Catalonia as
nothing more signicant than a raid which did more harm to his friends than
to his enemies.39 A powerful French army had not delivered the anticipated
swift victory over the rebels, and the subsequent appearance of substantial
Castilian forces in the other camp had thrown into confusion the whole of
Juans military and diplomatic strategy. On the other hand, the Catalan leaders
had displayed ineptitude and timidity in the eld, recklessness in their political
judgement. Two of the greatest cities of CataloniaGirona and Tarragona
had been lost; Perpignan followed suit on 9 January 1463 when it submitted to
the French. Castile had not lived up to expectation. De Beaumont, Enriques
regent in the principality had no illusions: We have lost a third part of
Catalonia . . . and these people are ill-content, he lamented. They are saying
such things that truly I dare not leave the house so as not to hear them.40
Hardly the words of a man who felt that all was going well. Despite the reverse
at Barcelona and some rebel successes at the close of the year (Igualada and the
castle of Montcada were retaken), the balance of war at the end of 1462 must
be reckoned to fall in Juans favour. What had swayed the balancethe power
of Francewas, however, about to disappear, for Louis XI was deciding that
the time had come to get out of Spain.

39
Vicens Vives, Juan II, 283.
40
. . . es perdida la tercera parte de Cathalunya . . . E estos pueblos estn mal contentos . . . fablan
cosas tales que buenamente non oso sallir de casa por no oyr las (22 Jan. 1463). Letter to Juan
Fernndez Galindo, a captain of the Castilian troops in Catalonia. Sobrequs i Callic, La guerra civil,
i. 422, and idem, Catlogo de la cancillera de Enrique IV, no. 332.
 13
Diplomacy, or War by Other Means

Having thrown the conict open to foreign interference by his deal with
France, Juan knew that he could only win by preventing the Catalans from
following suit. No sooner did he get wind of their approaches to Castile than
he essayed his own moves to undermine them by approaching Enrique with
offers of negotiation and his illegitimate daughter Juana as a hostage in pledge
of good faith. His gambit achieved nothing; Enrique accepted the Catalans
as his subjects, dispatched an army (even if it accomplished little), and on
13 November 1462, through his representatives, Jean de Beaumont and Juan
Ximenez de Arvalo, received their oath of fealty in the cathedral of Barcelona.
Juan had then to trust that his friends in Castilian high placesthe archbishop
of Toledo, the marquis of Villena,1 and the admiral of Castilewould some-
how force or manuvre their king into different paths. His condence was not
misplaced; they ensured that Enrique rejected the Catalan proposal, delivered
late in December, that he should assume the title king of Aragon, quashed
suggestions for an attack upon Zaragoza or Valencia, cut off funds for the
Castilian forces already in Catalonia, and thereafter steered him towards dubi-
ous negotiations.2
Another player unpleasantly surprised by Enriques behaviour was the
French sovereign, Louis XI. The prize he counted upon plucking from the
Catalan embroilment, Cerdagne and Roussillon, would be put at risk should
Catalonia become subject to Castile. There arose a further complication when,
during the autumn, Castilian troops began to appear on the scene: Louis had
pledged to aid Juan in defeating the rebels and foreign foes. Existing treaties
forbade hostilities between himself and Enrique; not that treaties weighed
unduly on Louiss conscience, but the prospect of war with Castile was not
something he had foreseen or welcomed. Reassessing the situation, he moved

1
Juan Pacheco, marquis of Villena, had hitherto been hostile to Juan but was alienated from
Enrique by the favour the king showed to his rival at court, Beltran de la Cueva, another in that line
of favourites through which weak kings hoped to bolster their authority.
2
Enrquez del Castillo, Crnica, 1948. Martn, Enrique IV, 124. Vicens Vives, Juan II, 284.
 Diplomacy, or War by Other Means 139
swiftly to extricate himself from his obligations to Juan without forfeiting
his prize. In the last days of 1462 a large army under Jacques dArmagnac,
duke of Nemours, marched into Roussillon. It met resistance from the people
of Perpignan who had, since November, held the castle under siege, but by
9 January the city was in French hands.3 Quickly they overran the rest of
Roussillon, hoisted everywhere the lilied banners of France, not those of
Aragon, exacted oaths of loyalty to Louis, and appointed ofcials in his name.
A contingent of Nemours army then proceeded to bring Cerdagne to heel,
although it was not until 16 June 1463 that they reduced its capital, Puigcerd.
All Juan could do against this agrant violation of a treaty was to save a little
face and a veneer of sovereignty by nominating Louis his lieutenant-general in
the lost territories.4 It was a futile gesture, for Louis was resolved, as he informed
a delegation from Perpignan, to annex the counties: they had, he argued,
rejected the king of Aragon as their lord and had thus become the lawful prize
of their conqueror, the king of France.5 The Universal Spider had secured his
prey. Further he did not wish to go; certainly not into war with Castile at a time
when an Anglo-Burgundian alliance threatened France in the north.6
The danger of conict between France and Castile loomed largest in the
bleak, wintry heartland of Aragon where Gastons lieutenant, Amanieu
dAlbret, confronted a Castilian force sent in December 1462 to aid the rebel
Aragonese magnate, Juan de Hijar.7 After they had taken Belchite, Juan asked
the French to lay siege to the main rebel stronghold, the town of Hijar. This
dAlbret refused to do, afrming that the French had not come to ght
Castilians to whom they were bound by treaty.8 Instead, he took himself to the
Castilian court on New Years Day 1463 to pave the way for an emissary from
the king of France, and to sign a truce valid for ten days from 14 January.9
While Nemours was busy occupying Roussillon and without a word to his

3
Appeals to the Castilian captains at Tortosa to go to its rescue fell on deaf ears.
4
He did so on 1 Jan. 1463.
5
Calmette, Louis XI, Jean II, 1678. Et est le dit seigneur conclud et delibr de unir et joindre les
diz comtez de Roussillon et de Sardaigne sa couronne sans jamais en estre separs pour chose quil
peust advenir.
6
The danger was heightened in Dec. 1462 by the arrival in Castile of an embassy from Edward IV
of England proposing an alliance. Ibid. 1825.
7
In Nov. 1462 Enrique appointed de Hijars son, Luis, to be governor of Tortosa, the base for
Castilian operations in Catalonia. By calling on the French to aid him against rebels in Aragon, Juan
had increased his debt to France to the sum of 300,000 cus.
8
Zurita, Anales, XVII, xlvii.
9
Calmette, Louis XI, Jean II, 180. The way for this demarche had been prepared at the French
court by the archbishop of Toledo and the marquis of Villena. News of it had reached Barcelona in
Dec. when de Beaumont wrote to Enrique asking him to take up the cause of Blanche of Navarre in
any meeting with Louis. Sobrequs Callic, Catlogo de la Cancillera de Enrique IV, no. 92.
140 War, Civil and Foreign
Aragonese ally, on 6 January 1463 Louis sent Jean de Rohan, admiral of France,
to Enrique with an offer to mediate in the affairs of Catalonia and Aragon.
Urged on by the archbishop and the marquis, the king of Castile accepted,
whereupon Louis ordered his captains to observe an extended truce covering
the whole of Aragon and Valencia to the end of March. Thus was the sword
struck from Juans hand. He pleaded in vain with Louis to order dAlbret and
his other captains to remain in Aragon; led by Gaston de Foix, the whole army
withdrew to Navarre.
Louis had seized the initiative on all fronts, simultaneously grabbing the
Pyrenean counties, recalling Gastons army, and setting himself up as arbitrator
between Enrique and Juan. Further exchanges between the French and
Castilian courts led to an agreement that the two monarchs should meet on the
frontier at Fuenterraba to settle all differences fomented by the Catalan revolt.
Enrique attempted to seize the initiative in advance of that encounter with
a project which demonstrated how lukewarm was his commitment to the
Catalan cause: France should join him to crush Juan and parcel out his
domains. Enrique would take chunks of Aragon and Valencia plus the revenues
and lands still left to Juan in Castile. Louis would keep Roussillon and
Cerdagne, leaving Catalonia for his brother Charles, duke of Berry, who would
marry the oft-marketed Infanta Isabel. Gaston de Foix should have Navarre.
This whole farrago was obligingly leaked to Juan by the marquis of Villena.10
Louis turned it all down with a show of moral indignation: he would not betray
his ally, Juan, and he had his own claims on the crown of Aragon as valid as any
that might be advanced by Castile.
Barcelona knew little of what was afoot, only that the two kings were to
meet, and that Catalonia had been excluded from the truce in order that the
war against Juan might be pursued there. Any comfort it might have derived
from that provision had already been nullied by Enriques demand, delivered
in December 1462, that Catalonia assume responsibility for paying the 2,000
lances dispatched to its aid. Finding the money for even half that number, and
hence the means of waging war effectively, was proving well-nigh impossible.11
There remained a glimmer of hope; France might be induced to abandon Juan.
As for the king of Aragon, he had no choice but to cling to his ckle ally and
struggle to ensure that Louis kept his word. Just as he had thrown a g-leaf over
the loss of Roussillon and Cerdagne, so he covered his embarrassment at seeing
10
Calmette, Louis XI, Jean II, 181. Vicens Vives, Juan II, 285.
11
De Beaumont conveyed these concerns to Enrique immediately after receiving the demand.
Sobrequs Callic, Catlogo de la cancillera de Enrique IV, no. 92.
 Diplomacy, or War by Other Means 141
the French army abandon Aragon by making himself a party to the truce.
Although the Castilian invaders paid little heed to that gesture, Louis rewarded
him with a voice in the deal being negotiated by de Rohan.12 Equally vital to his
chances of survival was the tireless intrigue of his Castilian cabal which had
gained the upper hand in Enriques counsels. Its leaders, Villena and the arch-
bishop of Toledo, coaxed their king into a crucial concession: Louis XI should
act as sole arbiter between Castile and Aragon, pronouncing upon all matters
in dispute, and Castilian interests in the process should be entrusted to them-
selves.13 They had probably already ascertained through de Rohan how Louis
judgement was likely to go, but assured their master that he had nothing to
fear. The detail the archbishop and Villena settled when, early in April 1463,
they joined the French court at Bayonne bearing the documents which pre-
sented Enriques grievances against Juan and his solemn pledge to accept what-
ever sentence Louis might deliver.14 Having been relegated to the status of third
party in these affairs, Juan decided to entrust his role in them to the experi-
enced hands of Queen Juana assisted by his seasoned counsellors, Luis Despuig
and Pierres de Peralta, constable of Navarre; these two presented his case in
Bayonne while the queen kept watch from the Navarrese frontier. On 16 April
she gave the undertaking to abide by Louiss sentence.15 Standing on the side-
lines at Bayonne were Joan de Copons and Miquel Cardona, the Catalan
envoys to Castile; although present as part of the Castilian delegation, they
were denied any part in proceedings that were to decide the principalitys fate.
So tortuous did these dealings prove, that the royal encounter, rst planned
for February 1463, had to be postponed until April. Louis delivered his judge-
ment, known to history as the Sentence of Bayonne, on 23 April, ve days
before the monarchs met on the frontier at Urtubia. Enrique concealed his
habitual lack of assurance behind a magnicent entourage of gilded court-
iers and a 300-strong bodyguard of Moorish horsemen. Louis, by contrast,
appeared in his customary careless attire,16 dug his heels into French soil, and

12
For that purpose Ferrer de Lanuza, Justicia of Aragon, was sent in Feb. 1463 to join de Rohan at
Almazn. Zurita, Anales, XVII, xlviii. Zurita also recounts the continuing aggression of Castilian
forces in Aragon and Valencia.
13
Enrquez del Castillo (Crnica, 200) gives an indignant account of their dealings.
14
Enrique signed these undertakings in San Sebastian on 2 Apr. 1463. Martn, Enrique IV, 127,
for the grievances.
15
For Juanas part in these proceedings see Coll Juli, Doa Juana Enrquez, ii, ch. 12.
16
si mal que pis no povait. P. de Comines, Mmoires, ed. J. Calmette, 3 vols. (Paris: Champion,
1924), i. 138. Although not an eye-witness to these events, Comines gathered his information from
reliable sources at the French court. The meeting is described in some detail by Enrquez del Castillo,
Crnica, 202; also by Comines, Mmoires, i. 165 et seq.
142 War, Civil and Foreign
so obliged Enrique to cross to the northern shore of the River Bidassoa. After
an awkward exchange between the two men, neither gifted with easy speech,17
the parchment containing the sentence was produced and read aloud to an
audience, the Castilian element of which, at least, listened in stunned disbelief,
apart, of course, from the marquis and archbishop who were very well pre-
pared. Enrique was to abandon Catalonia to Juan, along with everything he
had occupied in Navarre, Valencia, and Aragon. In return he was thrown a
mixed bag of pecuniary and territorial consolations: the Castilian revenues
claimed by Juan, the lordship of Estella in Navarre, and a sum of 50,000
doblas. Catalonia was given three months to submit; if it complied, Juan was to
pardon all rebels, respect their property, and observe the terms of the Capi-
tulation of Vilafranca. For a further two months a commission of seven would
supervise the peace: two appointed by Louis, two by Juan, two by Enrique
(predictably they proved to be the archbishop of Toledo and the marquis
of Villena), and one solitary Catalan nominated by Barcelona. Juan could not
have asked for a body more biased in his favour! A pardon was also prescribed
for individual nobles from Aragon, Valencia, and Navarre who had taken arms
against their king. In a separate agreement between Juana and Villena it was
stipulated that, on the withdrawal of Castilian forces from Aragon, she and her
daughter, also named Juana, should deliver themselves into the custody of the
archbishop of Toledo as guarantors for the surrender of Estella.18
The most powerful objection Juan might have advanced against the whole
package was that it left him without any ally against the Catalans should they
refuse to submit; the king of Castile was explicitly freed of any obligation to
compel them, while the king of France appears to have reckoned his verdict in
favour of Juan as a nal discharge of his undertakings. Juanas efforts to lure him
into a new alliance fell on deaf ears, as did Juans attempt to insist that those
undertakings still held good.19 Unwelcome, too, was the surrender of Estella to
Castile, for it introduced yet another complication into the tortuous affairs of
Navarre. But, like Enrique, Juan had bound himself in advance to French arbi-
tration, so on 4 May he accepted the sentence. The king of Castile had done
likewise on 29 April after signing with Louis a three-month truce designed to
17
They did not much like each other (Ilz ne se goustrent pas fort) observed Comines, Mmoires,
i. 137. In token of good faith each placed a hand on the back of a greyhound.
18
Calmette, Louis XI, Jean II, 1868 gives a summary of the Sentence; also Sobrequs i Callic, La
guerra civil, i. 4568.
19
On 31 May Juan gave instructions to his treasurer, a witness to the proceedings at Bayonne, for
a mission to France. He was to insist that Louis was still bound to aid the king of Aragon should the
Catalans persist in armed rebellion. Ibid. 193.
 Diplomacy, or War by Other Means 143
allow time for implementing the complicated provisions. What he balked at
was the humiliation of having to break the news to Barcelona. For three weeks
he kept the insurgent authorities in the dark, informing them only that he had
met Louis and signed a truce. First hints of the awful truth reached them, by
exquisite irony, through Galceran Requesens Dessoler, the son of their old bte
noire, whom Juan had appointed in his fathers place as governor of Catalonia.
Requesens had addressed letters to several hostile towns notifying them of the
truce between Aragon and Castile, and calling on them to comply with its
terms. Cervera, one of the recipients, passed on the news to Barcelona with
expressions of incredulity, but other reports and rumours followed thickly, and
by 24 May de Beaumont could no longer delay proclaiming the general truce
which halted hostilities with the king of Aragon. Details of the Sentence had
reached him on 21 May but he had delayed the proclamation for three days, so
he informed Enrique, because of muttering and unrest, not only among the
populace but among many of the greater folk over the reports which are reach-
ing them; fear of disorder had forced his hand.20 But not until 13 June did the
full, inescapable truth dawn with a letter from Catalan envoys sent in haste to
Castile; their chosen king, they lamented, had been forced to accept the sen-
tence because of great commotions brewing at home; let them submit
patiently because the king of Aragon will treat you well.21 On that same day
Enrique formally renounced his Catalan crown. Even then the rebel authorities
maintained a public show of disbelief; to the towns and cities of Catalonia they
addressed a circular on 27 June afrming that they had Enriques assurance
never to abandon or fail the principality.22 In secret they endeavoured to con-
vince him (16 July) that the sentence was null and void because Catalonia had
neither been consulted nor consented, and that he should, accordingly, not
enforce its provisions in the principality.23 In reply Enrique lamented that he,
too, had had the wool pulled over his eyes, but that he was bound by oath to
accept the verdict and could promise nothing. For many months Barcelona
contrived none the less to avoid falling into a constitutional limbo by treating
de Beaumont as Enriques vice-gerent, ruling Catalonia in his name, while they
20
. . . por quanto, sennor, era un gran murmurar e alteracin en stos, no solamente en el pueblo
mas en muchos de los mayores por las nuevas a ellos divulgadas. Sobrequs i Callic, Catlogo de la
Cancillera de Enrique IV, no. 1173.
21
. . . per les grans comosions qui en son regne de Castella eren suscitades . . . car lo rey dArag
vos tractar b. Sobrequs i Callic, La guerra civil, i. 461.
22
. . . dejar ni faltar al Principado. Martn, Enrique IV, 131. Enrique was conveying an expres-
sion of goodwill not, as the letters implied, an assurance of continued military support.
23
Letters of the same tenor were sent to Castilian nobles known to be enemies of the archbishop
and marquis; but to no avail. Sobrequs i Callic, La guerra civil, i. 4623.
144 War, Civil and Foreign
searched for another master. The king of Castile acquiesced in this subterfuge
by continuing to correspond with de Beaumont who, as late as 18 October
1463, was able to issue assurances that he had received letters from Castile
promising not to abandon the Catalans and to send Juan de Hijar with
reinforcements.24
Patient submission was not the mood engendered in Barcelona by this spec-
tacular desertion. If the principality had lost Castile, Juan had lost France
whose aid he had judged essential to victory. Moreover he had seen the war spill
ominously over the frontiers of Catalonia into Aragon and thence to Valencia.
In western Aragon, once deprived of French support, he had failed to contain
those erstwhile champions of Viana: Juan de Hijar,25 Jaime de Aragn, and
Juan de Cardona. With Castilian assistance de Hijar had taken the important
town of Alcaiz and, further to the south, Aliaga and Castellote; they had
routed a royalist force trying to break the siege of Alcal de Ebro and threatened
the capital, Zaragoza. To the south and still within Aragon, Jaimes son-in-law,
Anton Navarro, seized his native town Rubielos together with Sarrin and
Albentosa. From those points of vantage, and in company with the Castilian
force in Tortosa, they ravaged the lands belonging to the Order of Montesa in
the northern reaches of the Valencian kingdom. Jaime himself, supported by
Cardona and Castilian cavalry, and recognized by de Beaumont as viceroy of
Valencia, raided far and wide up to the very gates of the capital; castles within
sight of the city fell into their hands. All the kings lands and subjects were
thrown into great perils, evils and divisions. O, Catalans, how much your lib-
erties will cost you, losing a multitude of people, exhausting your wealth, and
sacricing all your credit and reputation! So did the Valencian chronicler
Miralles bewail the events of these dark months.26
Within Catalonia, by contrast, the insurgents had proted little from
Castilian intervention. Juan Hurtado and Ruy Daz de Mendoza, the com-
manders of the main body of Castilian troops had moved from Tortosa to
Barcelona early in January 1463 but ventured no action while they awaited the
conclusion of a truce with France and a resolution of the dispute over their pay.
Three months passed before they began preparations to assist their hard-
24
Idem, Catlogo de la cancillera de Enrique IV, no. 2036. Letter to the count of Pallars.
25
. . . per quant me tinch per catala et so ciutada dela ciutat de Barcelona. I consider myself a
Catalan, and I am a citizen of Barcelona: so de Hijar wrote in Apr. 1462. AHB, Consell de Cent X,
Lletres Comunes 32, no. 50. He had a Catalan mother, Timbor de Cabrera.
26
Tots los regnes e terres e gens del senyor rey estan en gran dans e mals e divisions. O cathalans,
e tant costaran les libertats, perdent moltitut de gens, acabar vostres pecunies e perdent tot vostre credi
e fama! Dietari, 297. Zurita, Anales, XVII, xlviii, gives an account of the operations in Aragon.
 Diplomacy, or War by Other Means 145
pressed allies in the north with another attack upon the royalist bulwark,
Girona. And not until 9 May did their 2,000 men lumber into position within
the Mercadal, the suburbs outside the city walls. On their heels came a courier
with orders to cease operations; Louis had delivered his judgement and the
Castilians were to go home. Fearing a prolonged ordeal when their resources
of food, men, and money had already been heavily drained, the defenders
had driven out 400 non-combatants then steeled themselves to resist the
formidable array of attackers. To their astonishment, a week later their ordeal
turned to farce when the Castilian commanders, after a furtive night-time
conference with Rocabert, led away their whole army in the direction of
Hostalric.27 Against this lacklustre performance can be set the success of
Castilian troops based at Lleida under the command of Juan de Torres who,
having received the truce all-clear, moved with much greater dispatch than the
Mendozas. Supported by the cavalry of Lleida, he swept through a wide area in
April, taking the towns of Trrega, Guissona, Anglesola, and Vilanova de
lAguda. A promising operation ground to a halt in May when de Torres, like
the Mendozas, received orders to depart, leaving local forces to hold the eld.
Their inadequacy quickly became apparent; cavalry sorties from Lleida and
Cervera led by the count of Pallars were driven off and by September the count
of Prades was back in Trrega.
Where Castilian assistance to the rising was not forthcoming, the royalist
cause in Catalonia had more than held its own thanks to the high military skills
of Pere de Rocabert and Francesc de Verntallat. In November 1462 Rocabert,
the captain of Girona, seized the strategic town of Navata in the heart of the
hostile Empord.28 Verntallats remensa bands roamed far and wide in daring
guerrilla operations that kept their enemies continually on the hop and but-
tressed the royalist position in Girona. Communities which demonstrated
their loyalty by assisting them were rewarded with incorporation in the royal
desmesne, a status always coveted by those subject to private jurisdiction.
Castellfollit de la Roca, Sant Joan les Fonts, Montagut, and Castellar de la
Muntanya were among the beneciaries.
With their allies gone, both parties had to continue the war in such manner
as their resources would allow. Of all constraints none bit deeper than a want
of hard cash, the vital uid that sustained late medieval armies. Men enlisted
for xed periods, usually no more than a few months, for an agreed rate of
27
Sobrequs i Callic, La guerra civil, i. 4489.
28
In Feb. 1463 Rocabert was rewarded with the lands of his rebel cousin Jofre; at that time, how-
ever, Jofre still held them rmly in his possession.
146 War, Civil and Foreign
pay.29 When their contract ended they were free to depart, regardless of the mil-
itary situation, unless an extension of service could be negotiated.30 Militia
forces were still more evanescent: conned to their locality and often impressed
against their will, they disbanded within a few days; even the prestigious
Bandera of Barcelona began to lose men at the end of the rst month of service,
and after three months there remained a mere handful. The quality of these
contingents left much to be desired; men of any substance could escape mil-
itary service by providing a substitute, in some cases a slave.31 Barons sum-
moned to serve either king or the Council of Catalonia would seek nancial aid
to sustain the vassals in their train for whom they were obliged to provide
weapons and food. As Sobreques i Vidal points out,32 they burdened them-
selves with few men and for the shortest time possible; the greatest lords of
Catalonia mustered no more than three dozen followers. Many simply ignored
the summons.33 Ransom and booty torn from the enemy, and sometimes from
friends, boosted a soldiers pay at no cost to his employer, but the main nan-
cial burden fell squarely upon the latter.
Civil war had dislocated the states scal machinery to such an extent that
neither side could collect more than a small fraction of the customary revenues
in the territory under its control. Juan saw that disruption extend beyond
Catalonia to the kingdoms of Aragon and Valencia during the winter of
1462/3. For the rebels the problem was somewhat lessened because they con-
trolled Barcelona, the prime centre of commerce and nance, and its great
resources. The burden imposed by war none the less far exceeded the citys

29
In Feb. 1465 Juan notied the abbot of Poblet that a man-at-arms should be paid 150s. a month
and a light cavalryman (genet) 100s. (Cortiella i dena, Una ciutat catalana, 367). In Apr. 1463 Valencia
hired 600 men at the rate of 25 orins a month for a mounted man with squire and page; 12[1/2]
orins for a horseman with one other mount (Dietari, 300). The cavalry sent to the count of Pallars in
July 1463 were paid 6 libras (120s.) a month. In Dec. 1470 Barcelona laid down the following rates
of pay: a man-at-arms with heavy lance, a page, weapons, and a good horse, 11 a month; a man-at-
arms with light lance, sword, and good horse, 8. 5s. a month; light horseman (cavaller de la jineta)
with good horse and appropriate arms, 5. 10s. a month; foot soldier with cuirass, up to 55s. a month;
foot soldier without cuirass, 44s. a month. AHB, Consell de Cent, II, Deliberacions, vol. 20. fo. 25.
30
The count of Pallars wrote from Cervera on 22 Sep. 1463, I am here without any men. They
have already completed the time for which they were paid and so they are leaving; nothing will keep
them. (Jo stich aci sens gent, ja han complit lo temps del sou e axis en van que no valen gens aturar.)
AHB, Consell de Cent X, Lletres Comunes 33, no. 133. The same problem arose with Castilian
troops. The captains with de Torres declared, after their successful foray from Lleida, that they would
ght no more if they were not paid within the week. Ibid., no. 54.
31
In order to raise an army the Council of Catalonia decreed a levy of one man in every ten. Those
who could avoided the draft; hence the constant complaints from commanders about the quality of
their troops.
32
La guerra civil, i. 256.
33
When Guerau Alemany de Cervell, the Councils captain in the Empord, summoned all the
gentlemen of that province to join him with their men and horses (Jan. 1463) only two responded.
 Diplomacy, or War by Other Means 147
normal income which was, in any case, badly diminished by hostilities. From
the very outset in July 1462 additional taxes had to be imposed on prime articles
of consumptionsh, wine, and meatin order to repay (over twenty-four
years!) cash advanced by the municipal bank (the Taula de Canvi) to put the
Bandera in the eld.34 New taxes on salt and cloth followed in August 1463.
Earlier in that year ( January 1463) it had become necessary to make a forced
levy on silver and gold belonging to citizens in order to coin money; only after
three years would the owners receive any recompense, and then in the form of
annuities. In response, gold and silver began to be smuggled out of the city in
such alarming quantities that the Council of a Hundred voted in August to
compel those holding precious metals to surrender them all to the state bank in
exchange for annuities.35
In one way or another both parties squeezed as much as possible from their
subject populations and tailored their military operations to suit. Sobreques i
Vidal describes the expedients adopted by the royalist commander Rocabert
to sustain himself in Girona: he appropriated the municipal taxes, annuity pay-
ments, and monies long since deposited by communities to secure their free-
dom from seigneurial jurisdiction; he made workmen perform military duties
without payment. Protests to the king, claiming that half the population had
ed to escape Rocaberts exactions, brought no response other than instruc-
tions to tax the clergy and ne citizens who had shown a lack of loyalty during
the rst siege.36 In the other camp, the Council of Catalonia in June 1463
imposed on the towns of Empord a levy to support 150 cavalrymen intended
to safeguard the northern plain against raiding royalists at harvest-time.
Mounts were to be requisitioned from horse owners against a monthly pay-
ment of six pounds. In addition, each community was required to elect a cap-
tain under whom it would turn out to aid the regular forces in an emergency.
Before July had ended loud complaints forced the Council to modify its
demands to an ineffectual request that the towns do whatever they could
(segons poguessin). That capitulation left its captain in the region, the Baron
de Crulles, without a regular source of cash with which to pay his troops, and
hence at a pronounced disadvantage compared with Rocabert. It drove him to
lay hands on any money he could nd, resulting in still more denunciations
and sometimes, as happened at Castell dEmpries in September, outright
34
Annuities to the value of 100,000 libras were issued by the bank in July 1462.
35
At the same time the maximum amount any individual could withdraw from the bank was lim-
ited to 25 libras. AHB, Consell de Cent. II, Deliberacions, 16, fo. 24. The nancial measures adopted
by the Council of Catalonia and the municipality of Barcelona are examined by Sobrequs i Callic,
La guerra civil, i. 43640.
36
Sobrequs i Vidal, La guerra civil, i. 2525.
148 War, Civil and Foreign
insurrection. A few months later Castell, along with several other towns of the
region, was claiming that its privileges exempted it from a new salt tax.37
On balance nancial constraints weighed more heavily upon the insurgents
than upon the king who could draw on resources outside the principality. With
the Castilians gone, Juan also enjoyed a crucial advantage in the number and
quality of his cavalry, an arm which played a decisive part in engagements fought
in the open country of western and southern Catalonia. Accordingly, the sum-
mer and autumn of 1463 saw the tide owing quietly but perceptibly in his
favour. In June he named the doughty Joan Ramon Folc de Cardona, count of
Prades, his captain-general in Catalonia with 350 horse and 1,000 infantry under
his command. Having retaken Trrega, the count went on to recover most of the
territory won by de Torres earlier in the year. His kinsman, the warrior cleric Jaime
de Cardona, bishop of Urgell, operating to the north, took the town of Solsona.
Most important of all was the success scored by Luis Despuig and the kings
illegitimate son, Juan de Aragn, the warrior prelate of Zaragoza, in clearing the
enemy from their foothold in the northern parts of the Valencian kingdom.38
Cries of distress and pleas for aid rained upon Barcelona from every side.
From Vilafranca del Peneds came warnings that people were saying they
would rather submit to Juan than be killed by an enemy continually devast-
ating their countryside; We beg you not to make light of this for we cannot
continue to live in such a state.39 The captain of La Palma dEbre reported a
collapse of morale under constant enemy pressure and went on to complain
that, to everything I can say you answer me with silence.40 Tortosas anxieties
were aggravated by a shortage of grain which led to popular unrest, threats
against the counsellors and the expulsion of 600 inhabitants. Manresa and
Cervera41 both protested that they were in imminent danger. Only at sea did
the insurgents score some success with destructive raids upon the ports of
Valencia (19 March and 7 May) and Tarragona.
Leaders might be resolute, but would the people at large, in the face of
privation, military setbacks, and Castilian betrayal, still display the patriotic
fervour which had sustained their resistance in the previous summer? Louis
sentence and his own acceptance of its terms, the Capitulation included,
might, the king of Aragon hoped, persuade a signicant number of his
37 38
Sobrequs i Vidal, La guerra civil, i. 2525. Zurita, Anales, XVII, lii.
39
Suplicam no haiau per burlar car en tant sert no podem viure com si ja ho aviem. AHB, Consell
de Cent, X, Lletres Comunes 33, no. 163 (10 Nov. 1463). The count of Prades men had broken into
Vilafranca in July.
40
. . . a tot quant yo puch dir me donau lo callar per resposta. Ibid., no. 192 (28 Nov. 1463).
41
Ibid., no. 146 (15 Oct. 1463). In June several prominent citizens were expelled from Cervera for
words and deeds favouring Juan.
 Diplomacy, or War by Other Means 149
opponents to sheath their swords. He had earlier been encouraged by the defec-
tion of the deputy Bernat Saportella who on 7 January 1463 ed by sea from
Barcelona to Tarragona. From that royalist stronghold Saportella proclaimed
himself, with Juans consent (23 January), sole legitimate deputy of Catalonia,
a one-man government in exile; the two fellow deputies he had left behind
in Barcelona were, he maintained, acting under duress. Soon afterwards he
was joined by several other fugitives: moderate Buscas (the Deztorrents) and a
signicant number of the Biga (the banker Arnau Esquerit, the merchant
Ramon Marquet, Joan Francesc Bosc a citizen). Galceran Dusay, who had ed
from Barcelona to Valencia in October 1462, came to join the swelling band of
exiles in Tarragona. With Juans approval they constituted themselves into a
Diputaci claiming to represent Catalonia. By November 1463 they were
sufciently numerous to form a parliament which offered the king the paid ser-
vices of 300 horse.42 Another deep ssure had opened in the faade of Catalan
unity, but it failed to trigger the collapse which Juan had anticipated.
Without question a pall of oppression had hung over Barcelona ever since
the Biga had cowed its adversaries in what may fairly be called a reign of terror.
In an atmosphere of war and siege it became denser still, yet insufcient to stie
all seditious murmurs. By June 1463 the council thought it necessary to decree
the death penalty for many who, little zealous for the good and tranquillity of
this principality, utter many things in favour of King Juan.43 Strict censorship
of correspondence followed in October. But those so minded could still escape,
as Saportella and others before him had demonstrated. That few of conse-
quence did so in the traumatic summer months of 1463 lends weight to the
argument that the ght against Juan had taken on a meaning far deeper and
more popular than the oligarchic self-interest of its early phase. Contem-
poraries noted the change. For them it was, in the words of Zurita,
a matter of great astonishment that a people, by nature so restrained that they were
commonly considered moderate and very sober, should in war become so prodigal of
their lives and property that they valued it all at naught for the vain name of liberty they
had conjured up against so warlike a prince . . . neither for love, nor reward, nor bonds
of kinship, being so hardened of heart, could any one of them over so long a passage of
time be brought to a true understanding of their countrys ruin.44

42
Cortiella i dena, Una ciutat catalana, 370. For the royalist Diputaci see Sobrequs i Callic,
La guerra civil, i. 4315.
43
. . . moltes gents poch zelants lo b e reps daquest Principat . . . prediquen moltes coses en
favor del rey don Johan. Ibid. 441.
44
. . . cosa de gran maravilla que una nacin que de su naturaleza era tan limitada que comnamente
los estimaban por modestos y muy templados, en la guerra se volviesen tan prdigos de sus vidas y de
sus haciendas, que todo lo menospreciasen por el vano nombre de libertad que se haban imaginado
150 War, Civil and Foreign
Sobreques i Vidal nds something far more positive and profound in the spirit
engendered by adversity in Catalonia: the modern concept of the patria. The
leaders of the principality were able, he maintains,
to strike a chord almost unheard-of at that time: loyalty to the land for its own sake . . .
in contrast to the traditional note of loyalty to the king, which was the one continu-
ously played upon by Juans propaganda. So was born the concept of the patria, not
solely in its territorial form, but increasingly in its juridical aspect. Solidarity between
the people of a country comes from having common laws and living in the same land,
not as hitherto, from being vassals of the same sovereign.45

A similar spirit, it might be argued, was already abroad in the republics of Italy
and perhaps inuencing the Catalans. What remains beyond doubt is the
resolve of those leading the revolution to rally their followers with calls to defend
laws and liberty, never their phantom sovereigns. Established law still governed
Barcelonas institutions: the elections of November 1462 rmly followed
precedent both in procedure and in the distribution of ofce among the estates.
As for liberty, the council managed in the midst of a military and political crisis
to deliver in June 1463 a decision that freed the remensa peasants from the
mals usos.46 Admittedly that step was driven by the necessity to retain support
among the peasantry, and it was imperfectly put into practice, but it was more
radical than anything the king was yet prepared to offer. Had those appeals to
the cause of law and liberty not found some answer in the hearts of the people,
the rising could hardly have lasted for a decade. Yet it is difcult to believe
that the old social divisions exemplied in the Busca and Biga parties had been
entirely transcended in this apparent blaze of national solidarity. The authorities,
drawn from the former ruling classes, kept an anxious watch for popular dis-
content and subversion; the loudest cries for laws and liberty emanated, prob-
ably, from those who had hitherto most proted by them; and when it came to
ghting and dying for the patria the common man displayed little enthusiasm.

contra principe tan guerrero . . . ni por amor ni por premio ni por ayuntamiento de sangre, estando
en sus corazones endurecidos, ninguno en tanto discurso de tiempo se pudiese reducir al verdadero
conocimiento de la perdici de la patria. Zurita, Anales, XVII, lii.
45
Sabien polsar una corda gairab indita en el seu temps: la delitat a la terra, per ella mateixa . . .
en contrast amb la corda tradicional de delitat al rei, que era la que tocava sempre la propaganda de Joan
II. Aix naixia el concepte de ptria, no solament en laspecte territorial, sin, a ms a ms, en el jurdic. La
solidaritat entre els homens dun pas es produa per tenir unes lleis comunes i habitar una mateixa
terra, no com ns ara, pel fet dsser vassalls dun mateix sobir. Sobrequs i Vidal, La guerra civil, i. 260.
46
C. Font Meli, La Diputaci de Catalunya y los payeses de remensa: la sentencia arbitral de
Barcelona (1463), Homenaje a J. Vicens Vives. (Barcelona: Universidad de Barcelona, 1965), i.
Sobrequs i Callic, La guerra civil, i. 44953.
 14
The Portuguese Saviour

How to reconcile their constitutional goals with the need to nd a champion

able and willing to defend them was a conundrum which continually bafed
the rebels. The virtual autonomy achieved under Charles of Viana had offered
one alluring solution, hence the holy aura that enwrapped its protagonist. His
death had left unanswered the question of his ability to preserve Catalonia
unaided against Juans patent determination to subdue it. French intervention
in support of Juan had necessitated the search for a countervailing power in
Castile, whatever the reservations as to the wisdom of calling in one Trastmar
to oust another. Once both France and Castile had quit the eld, and submis-
sion to Juan had been ruled out, there arose again the question: did Catalonia
need a ruler and an ally to maintain its freedom? The poor showing of its forces
during 1463 suggested that it could not survive without such a champion,
whatever pitfalls the choice might present.
Impressed by the power of French arms, and dismayed at the prospect of los-
ing Roussillon and Cerdagne to the French crown, many Catalans concluded
that their best hope of salvation lay in a deal with Louis XI. Should they reject
his sentence, as they were resolved to do, he might be tempted to further
aggression; the ease with which he had swallowed Roussillon and Cerdagne
had, they feared, whetted his appetite for greater gains. On the other hand, at
Bayonne he had given Copons some cause to believe that he was well disposed
towards Catalonia.1 It was, therefore, imperative to probe his intentions, to win
him over, if possible, to a benevolent stance, to avert, at all costs, his hostility.
No time was lost. The council extended the truce with France until Christmas
and, even before receiving certain news of Enriques renunciation, appointed
an embassy led by the archrebel, the abbot of Montserrat, to discover what

1
Calmette, Louis XI, Jean II, 199200. In particular he had promised to lift the ban on trade
between France and the principality.
 152 War, Civil and Foreign
ALFONS IV K. of Aragon d. 1336

PERE IV K. of Aragon CECILIA of Comenge = JAUME, Count of Urgell

d. 1387 d. 1347

PERE of Urgell = 1 BEATRIU de Cardona HUG FOLC II = ISABEL

d. 1408 2 MARGARIDA of Montferrat de Cardona

JOAN I MARTI ELISABET = JAUME II of Urgell

d. 1396 d. 1410 d. 1433

ISABEL = PEDRO Duke of Coimbra

PEDRO Constable of Portugal

Figure 2. The Portuguese connection

might be afoot in the councils of the French king.2 It left Barcelona on 23 June,
but it was August before it caught up with the French court near Chartres
where it found itself faced with a rival mission from the king of Aragon. Both
were kept dancing in attendance until late in the year while Louis watched and
waited for that moment which might deliver the prize to him on his own terms.
It did not take that long for the Catalans to discover their hosts ultimate ambi-
tion: on 2 September they wrote, We have learned for certain, from many
sources, that the King of France and his advisers, among whom are some citi-
zens of that city [sc. Barcelona], are working to the end that the principality
should, by hook or by crook, become French.3 But while ready enough to
parade his Catalan credentials (he had a Catalan grandmother), Louis well
knew that any overt move towards his goal at that moment would earn him the
enmity of both Aragon and Castile, an outcome to be avoided when Burgundy
and England were threatening in the north. So he prevaricated, and eventually
2
The other members were Joan Copons, representing the military order, Pere Savartes for the
commons, and four delegates appointed by the city of Barcelona. Calmette (ibid.) devotes ch. 6 to this
embassy.
3
Nosaltres havem per cert, per moltes vies, que axi per lo rey de Ffrana com per altres quoadju-
dants seus, entre lesquals ne ha alguns ciutedans de aqueixa ciutat, es treballat que, per fas e per nefas,
aqueix Principat sie ffrancs. Ibid. 474.
 The Portuguese Saviour 153
fobbed off the delegation with the promise that, should they shake off all
attachment to Castile, he, as a true Catalan, would do all in his power to suc-
cour them; something that could easily be done because between himself and
the Catalans there are no mountains (noy havia muntanyes).4 With that
phrase he convinced many in Barcelona that their cherished independence
threatened to vanish into the maw of a mighty neighbour, while a pro-French
party gained assurance that with Louis lay the salvation of Catalonia.
Meanwhile an alternative champion had made his appearance, one who had
unsuccessfully put himself forward twelve months earlier. Late in November
1462 had arrived in Barcelona a Portuguese lawyer bearing a message from
Dom Pedro, constable of Portugal.5 His father, the Infante Pedro, had married
Isabel, daughter of that other Catalan icon, Jaume of Urgell, defeated by the
Trastmar Fernando in his bid for the Aragonese throne at Caspe, and in his
subsequent rebellion. With these impeccable credentials Pedro declared him-
self a candidate for the vacant throne. Politely he had to be told that Enrique of
Castile, who had a better claim, had already lled it, but should need arise we
shall make use of your lordship.6 No one among the rebels could then have
dreamt that within a year they would spontaneously be begging him to take the
crown. Having despaired of Castile and France, the Catalan leaders dug out
Pedros letter which was read before the council on 13 October. A fortnight
later, without any further consultation with the gentleman and peoples con-
cerned,7 he was offered not the sovereignty of Catalonia alone, but the crown of
Aragon. Here, surely, was a sign that rebel counsels were losing a grip on reality.8
Two galleys sent to convey the new sovereign had difculty nding him
because he had left Portugal in November to accompany King Afonso V on an
ill-fated expedition against Tangier. Twice an increasingly anxious Barcelona
had to dispatch further pleas before Pedro, discovered in Portugals North
African enclave at Ceuta, answered the call to assume the crown that had
eluded his maternal grandfather. Without further ado and, allegedly, without
his sovereigns consent, he set sail to meet his destiny. He disembarked in his
4
Ibid. 500.
5
L. A. da Fonseca, O Condestvel D. Pedro de Portugal, a Ordem Militar de Avis e a peninsula ibrica
do seu tempo (14291466) (Oporto: Centro de Histria da Universidade do Porto, 1982).
6
. . . si la necessitat ho requeria, nos emprarem de vostra senyoria. Sobrequs i Callic, La guerra
civil, i. 411.
7
On 6 Oct. Pedro had despatched from Avis another letter renewing his bid for the crown, but this
did not reach Barcelona until 13 Nov., too late to have inuenced Catalan deliberations. Some verbal
communication may, however, have preceded it.
8
Zurita, Anales, XVII, liii. Vicens Vives, Juan II, 2902. J. E. Martnez-Ferrando, Pere de Portugal,
(Barcelona: Institut dEstudis Catalans, 1936), 1819.
154 War, Civil and Foreign
new capital on 21 January 1464 to a rapturous welcome. Rejoice, rejoice, wor-
thy Catalans . . . for there has come our natural lord who will love all, not as
vassals, but as sons and brothers.9
Why had Pedro been chosen? Mainly because he was the only candidate
available, partly for his sound credentials as a Catalan and pretender to the
throne, partly for his military experience, and partly because he was expected
to bring the material and moral backing of Portugal and Burgundy (his aunt
Isabel was married to Duke Philip of Burgundy) without the threat of subjec-
tion to a foreign power. Furthermore, at the age of 35 he might be counted
upon to outlast the septuagenarian Juan. In most of these calculations his
champions were to be proved sadly astray.
Pedro was born in 1429. In 1439 his father, the infante Dom Pedro, suc-
ceeded in supplanting the queen-mother, a sister of Alfonso the Magnanimous,
as regent for the young king of Portugal Afonso V. To bolster that position,
Pedro married the king to his daughter Isabel; another Isabel, his niece, married
Juan II of Castile; and in 1443 he conferred on the young Pedro the title of con-
stable of Portugal. Two years later the constable launched his military career by
leading a Portuguese army to aid the king of Castile against Juan of Navarre and
his brother Enrique, but he arrived too late to cross swords with Juan at the bat-
tle of Olmedo. Instead he participated in some skirmishes with Granada then
returned home to face a crisis which engulfed his family. With the regency at an
end, Dom Pedros enemies engineered his banishment, stripped his son of the
ofce of constable, and drove him to a desperate resistance which ended with
his death at the battle of Alfarrobeira (May 1449). The younger Pedro escaped
to many years of a miserable, wandering life as a refugee in Castile; his sister
Queen Isabel of Portugal died, reputedly poisoned. Only when the triumphant
faction judged him completely harmless was he allowed back into the uncer-
tain favour of Afonso V. In those very reduced circumstances he had made his
bid for a Catalan crown and, initially disappointed on that score, embarked on
the expedition to Tangier.
His abrupt departure in January 1464 from Afonsos camp at Ceuta gave
his enemies ample scope to portray him as a deserter at a crucial point in the
campaign, and apparent cause to deny him subsequently any assistance in
Catalonia. He came, then, without money and only a handful of retainers, but
with a personality and appearance that captured the hearts and minds of his

9
Alegrar, alegrar, virtuosos cathalans, alegrar . . . car vengut s lo senyor natural qui a tots amar,
no com a vassalls, mas com a lls e germans. So enthused the Generalitat. Ibid. 19 n. 12.
 The Portuguese Saviour 155
new subjects. Handsome, elegant, rened in manner, fastidious in taste, he
was, like Charles of Viana, a man of culture and seemingly a tting replace-
ment for the lost idol. When he landed in Barcelona on 21 January 1464 the
city greeted this second saviour with ceremonial splendour in the church of
Santa Maria de la Mar; bells rang, bonres blazed in every quarter, and people
danced in the streets.10 What the ecstatic crowds could not perceive was an
introspective temperament (his motto was Peine pour Joie) and the onset of a
fatal sickness, probably pulmonary tuberculosis.
Celebrations and ceremonies concluded, Pedro profoundly impressed the
Catalans by throwing himself immediately into the task of saving the western
bulwarks of insurgency, Lleida and Cervera. The latter had been put in immin-
ent peril when a few townsmen conspired with the royalist captain, Juan de
Cardona, to seize the towns citadel. With such energy and optimism did Pedro
set about his task that on 6 February, barely a fortnight after his arrival, he was
able to lead an army 2,400 strong out of Barcelona to succour the beleaguered
place. A brisk march took him half the wayto Igualadaand there he halted.
Barring the road stood Juans son, Alfonso de Aragon, whose challenge to com-
bat Pedro rejected even though he enjoyed a superiority in numbers. The ini-
tiative thereupon passed to Alfonso who moved upon Vilafranca del Peneds,
so forcing his opponent to turn about in order to defend his line of commu-
nication. By March Pedro found himself back in Barcelona with nothing to
show for all he had staked upon his rst enterprise. It would have been a wholly
humiliating end to an expedition launched with such panache had he not been
able to report that the Cervera fortress had been recovered through local initi-
ative, and to promise that his cousin, Pedro dEa, with Jean de Beaumont, now
serving yet another master, would press on to relieve both Cervera and Lleida.11
That latter assurance soon proved as illusory as did the expectations of those
who had invited him to Catalonia in the belief that they had lighted upon a sea-
soned warrior who would lead them in short term to victory while submitting
to their continued hold upon the levers of state power. They discovered instead
a tough political adversary who threw the blame for his own military short-
comings upon their failure to full promises, especially nancial ones, made
when he was offered the crown.12 The immediate issue was the ever-present

10
Solempnitat de la intrada del senyor rey en Pere, net del Comte dUrgell, Llibre de les solemni-
tats de Barcelona, 2747.
11
For Pedros rst expedition see Martnez-Ferrando, Pere de Portugal, 1722.
12
L. da Fonseca, As nanas reais no governo do Condestvel Pedro de Portugal em Barcelona
(14641466), CHCA, XVII, iii. 3515.
156 War, Civil and Foreign
problem of nding money for the troops. To keep his army together he wanted
it paid two-thirds in cash, one-third in cloth. Without cash in their pockets, he
argued, his men would prey upon civilians and lose all discipline; cloth they
could sell at only half its nominal value.13 Barcelona, swayed by merchant pres-
sure, insisted on the opposite ratio. After much acrimonious correspondence
they compromised on half cash, half cloth. The clergy, too, earned Pedros
wrath by quibbling over its nancial contributions. His return to Barcelona
brought a showdown focused upon the revolutionary Council of Catalonia
which since 1462 had exercised supreme authority, harnessed only in nominal
fashion to that of its selected monarch. Pedro successfully demanded an end to
this diarchy; the council was dissolved, leaving the traditional institutions, the
Generalitat and municipal organs, to speak for the principality. On that basis
he swore, on 21 March 1464, to respect the privileges of Catalonia.14
Only military success could have reconciled his subjects to that display of
authority, and to the heavier taxes which followed it, but the prospect of victory
began to look dimmer than ever. To the north, where Rocabert and Verntallat
held the upper hand, one setback followed another. The desperate inhabitants
of Besal claimed they were reduced to eating cats, rats, horses and mules;15
only by truce could Ripoll and Sant Joan de les Abadesses, so these towns
alleged, save themselves from starvation. A call made in March to barons of the
region to abandon their neutralist (indiferents) stance and show themselves
good and loyal Catalans (bons e leals catalans) fell on deaf ears.16 Some,
among them the widow of Bernat de Vilamar ( he had died in Florence in
August 1463) and her brother Ivany de Castro, instead seized the opportunity
to declare for Juan. Bernat Guillem dAltarriba, a sworn enemy of the Crulles
family, did likewise.17 To the south, Mateu and Pere Ramon de Montcada,
whose estates lay in that region, were extending royalist control along the Ebro.
Most menacing of all, the royalist grip was tightening upon Lleida where the
defenders, commanded by the Portuguese Pedro dEa, found themselves virt-
ually isolated. Juans captains, having taken Torres de Segre on the river south

13
L. da Fonseca, As nanas reais no governo do Condestvel Pedro de Portugal em Barcelona
(14641466), CHCA, XVII, iii. 256. For the common practice of paying armies partly in cloth see
Ryder, Cloth and Credit: Aragonese War Finance in the Mid Fifteenth Century, War and Society,
2/1 (1984), 122.
14
Martnez-Ferrando, Pere de Portugal, 28.
15
Ibid. 27. The towns plight was eased on 31 Mar. 1464 when a relieving force managed to bring
in some foodstuffs.
16
Sobrequs i Vidal, La guerra civil, ii. 161.
17
Martnez Ferrando, Pere de Portugal, 29. Pedros appointment of Bernat Gilabert de Crulles as
his captain-general in the Empord precipitated this defection which led to prolonged ghting in the
region of Vic.
 The Portuguese Saviour 157
of Lleida, frequently raided up to its walls, forcing their way across the bridge
which faced the city. Despite one successful operation to break through with
supplies, Pedro took the desperate step of ordering the expulsion of women,
children, Jews and other useless persons.18
Another attempt to save Lleida, the second city of the principality,19 had
become imperative. To effect it Pedro ordered the proclamation of a general
call to arms (Princeps namque), a measure traditionally resorted to when the
ruler found himself or his state in imminent peril. The edict went forth on 18
May, but far from responding wholeheartedly to the plight of a sister-city,
Barcelona, the necessary heart of any such enterprise, raised many obstacles.
First it questioned the legality of the proclamation; next it sought to limit the
number of men to be raised to one thousand; having been cajoled into dou-
bling that number, it then resolved to pay for only one months service, com-
plaining that other cities were doing their best to avoid any contribution of
either men or money. Those who did march in the rst days of June went as
though they were going to the gallows.20 Barcelonas doubts as to the enthusi-
asm of others appeared justied when no more than a further thousand men
arrived to join its own contingent. At least 15,000, not 3,000, so Pedro main-
tained, should have answered the call. Defeatism hung heavy in the air.
Once again the advance of the Catalan army faltered when it reached
Igualada in mid-June. Pedro put the blame on lack of provisions and the ridicu-
lously brief period of enlistment given to the men from Barcelona; half that
time had already expired; all his enemy Juan had to do was wait another fort-
night and victory would be his. Barcelona must, Pedro insisted, set an example
by paying its troops month by month until the mission had been accom-
plished, and men of honour should freely volunteer their services. In response
the city agreed to pay for one further month; beyond that the counsellors and
right-thinking citizens envisaged the raising of a regular army of a thousand
horse and a thousand foot funded by all loyal cities, So that everyone might go
quietly about his business and no one be forced to go to war or send jewels to
pay for someone to go in his place.21 Hamstrung by this less than enthusiastic
response, Pedro saw desertion whittle away his strength until by mid-July no

18
. . . mujeres, nios, judos y otras personas intiles. Ibid. 31. His order was not executed; large
numbers of women and children were still in Lleida when it fell to the royalists.
19
. . . la segona ciutat del principat. AHB, Consell de Cent, II, Deliberacions, 16. fo. 115 (4 May
1464).
20
. . . que par que anassen a la forcha. Martnez Ferrando, Pere de Portugal, 36.
21
. . . en manera que quiscuna condicio de persones reposadment puixen fer son exercici e algun
no sia forat de anar en la guerra, ne trametrey joyas pagant lo quin vendre a sa part. AHB, Consell de
Cent II, Deliberacions, 16, fo. 131 (15 July 1464).
158 War, Civil and Foreign
more than three or four hundred of the Barcelona Bandera remained with his
standard.
Juan meanwhile had temporarily patched up his dispute with the king of
Castile over that portion of Navarrese territory (Estella) awarded to Enrique by
the Concordat of Bayonne. A settlement signed in Corella on 2 March 1464
not only brought an end to immediate threats of Castilian interference in the
civil war, it also gave Juan the great satisfaction of seeing his queen and daugh-
ter Juana released from the custody of the archbishop of Toledo with whom
they had remained for ten months as sureties.22 Even his own dominions were
beginning to prove more cooperative: Valencia, its own territory free of hostile
forces, offered 200 cavalry,23 Aragon, delivered from the threat from Castile,
responded to a summons of the host.24
All attention now fastened upon Lleida, the bulwark of rebel resistance in
western Catalonia. On 1 May Juan had established himself in the Franciscan
monastery outside the walls to take command of the siege. Shortly afterwards
he was joined there by the queen who had come with the troops raised in
Aragon; these took up position facing the city along the western banks of the
Segre river. Alfonso de Aragon was quartered with his squadrons in the convent
of the Dominicans. Such a gathering of the royal family left no doubt as to its
resolve to subdue Lleida. The citys commander, Pedro dEa, fought bravely
and skilfully. His artillery inicted many casualties as the enemy pressed nearer
the walls, and with constant sorties he endeavoured to hold them back. But he
had no answer to Juans superiority in heavy cavalry; the besiegers drew ever
closer and their sappers began to drive mines beneath the walls. DEa now
found it impossible to make foraging sorties and a desperate hunger gripped
the besieged; those who suffered most, the common people, began to demand
surrender. The remains of the army scraped together by Pedro for their relief
had ventured no nearer than Cervera; its morale and discipline were abysmal.25
A small body sent forward under the command of the count of Pallars managed
to reach Trrega, only to be halted by superior royalist forces under the doughty
22
Zurita, Anales, XVII, liv. Coll Juli, Doa Juana Enriquez, ii. 11620. But, as Vicens Vives
remarks ( Juan II, 291), the ink was scarcely dry on the document before new causes of dissension
erupted between these inveterate antagonists.
23
W. Kchler, Les nances de la Corona de Arag, 176. According to the Dietari (305) a hundred
cavalry received pay in Valencia on 20 June 1464.
24
As Zurita (Anales, XVII, lv) explains, this summons obliged all gente de guerra to follow the
king. Zaragoza, however, had withdrawn its offer of 400 archers and 100 horsemen in protest against
Juans intention to lay waste the country around Lleida.
25
Pedro attributed their shortcomings to a long period of peace which had rendered the Catalans
unused to bearing arms. Martnez Ferrando, Pere de Portugal, 211.
 The Portuguese Saviour 159
count of Prades. Substantial contingents were meanwhile ignoring Pedros
call to join the main host and instead spending their energies on reducing
pockets of royalist allegiance to the rear:26 Jean de Beaumont took the castle of
Montcada; the Portuguese count of Abrantes and Llorens de Montcada busied
themselves with Prats del Rei, Calaf, and Torroja. Another of Pedros captains
collared Berenguer de Requesens in a skirmish. Such petty triumphs, achieved
in blatant deance of Pedros authority, brought no comfort to the famished
defenders of Lleida. On 6 July 1464 they surrendered. Next morning Juan and
his queen entered the city followed by copious quantities of grain. Starving
children and mothers are reported to have thrown themselves with wild lamen-
tations at the sovereigns feet. Moved by their plight, Juana ordered that the
children be sent to her camp and fed. In a further gesture of reconciliation the
king conrmed all Lleidas privileges, with the understandable exception of
the power to muster a military force.27
It was a decisive moment in the struggle: Juans opponents had lost western
CataloniaPedro retired precipitately from Cerveraand though they might
stubbornly defend their eastern redoubts, hopes of victory had vanished.
Pedros biographer, Martinez Ferrando, sums up the situation in these words: a
wave of growing pessimism and mistrust which from now onwards could not
be suppressed and which on all sides continuously fomented lesser and greater
betrayals during the reign of this prince.28 Juans forces pressed on remorse-
lessly, taking Verd, the Esplugues, Guimer, Barber, and Alcover. Alcover, a
place which above all others had chosen to distinguish itself by word and deed
in its rebellion,29 suffered uncharacteristic punishment; for more than a year it
had resisted the forces of Pedro de Urrea, and in August 1464 deed both king
and archbishop, yielding only after the royalists stormed through a breach
opened by a bombard in its walls. The jurats and leading rebels were hanged
and their bodies exposed on the walls; many of its privileges were forfeited; the
archbishop even wanted to obliterate its name. The insurgents had acted with
equal severity against the principal defenders of Cardona. But such acts were

26
Tortosa was among the cities which ignored a summons to send its ghting men to assist in the
relief of Lleida (ibid. 44). All three of Pedros commanders in the Empord disobeyed his orders.
Sobrequs i Vidal, La guerra civil, ii. 162.
27
Juan appointed Bernat de Requesens captain of Lleida.
28
A ms a ms una onada de pessimisme i desconana que dara endavant ja no podrien sser
extirpats i que nodririen per ci per ll, constantment, durant el govern daquest prncep, petites i grans
tracions. Martnez Ferrando, Pere de Portugal, 39.
29
. . . lugar que sobre todos los otros se quiso sealar en dicho y en hecho en su rebelin . . .
Zurita, Anales, XVII, lvii.
160 War, Civil and Foreign
becoming uncharacteristic: both sides usually refrained from ofcial acts of
reprisal and vengeance.
In the wake of military humiliation came a witch-hunt seeking out those of
suspect loyalty, whether it might be from sympathy with Juan or hostility to
Pedro.30 Those detained and tortured or expelled numbered many hitherto
conspicuous as champions of the Catalan cause, among them Joan Bernat de
Marimon (son of the captain of the Bandera), Franci Despl (a deputy of the
military order), Antoni Pere Ferrer (another knight), the baron Francesc de
Pinos, and Juan de Hijar, the most prominent Aragonese rebel.31 Even the ery
abbot of Montserrat, whose dealings with Louis XI were thought to have
inclined him too far towards a French solution, fell into the net. Several more
were driven into exile, ready recruits for the growing body of malcontents gath-
ering around Saportella in Tarragona. Graver still, this round of persecution
served as a pretext for the Navarrese Jean de Beaumont, close friend of Charles
of Viana and Enriques lieutenant in Catalonia, to renounce allegiance to Pedro
(25 August). He is reputed to have demanded the release of two suspects,
Saplana and Pinos, in an angry exchange with Pedro who accused him of
defending traitors. His true motives are to be found in a personal antipathy
towards the Portuguese and a desire to seize the opportunity presented by the
settlement in Navarre to rebuild his fortunes in his native land. A few days after
breaking with Pedro he secured a reconciliation with Juan by delivering to him
the town of Vilafranca del Peneds, barely 30 miles distant from a panic-
stricken Barcelona.32 Far away to the south, in those same bleak days of insur-
gent fortunes, another stalwart of the Catalan cause came to grief: troops
dispatched from Valencia cornered Jaime de Aragon, son of the duke of
Gandia, in his mountain fastness. He surrendered to the Valencians on 19
August after they had cut off his water supply.33
How irreparable was the damage inicted on Pedros authority and reputa-
tion by this chain of disasters became immediately evident, for in that same
30
The Council of Barcelona noted in July that there were those who spoke improperly to the
disservice of the king and the harm of the common weal (alguns parlaven indegudament axi en
desservey del Senyor Rey com en dan de la cosa publica). AHB, Consell de Cent. II, Deliberacions,
16, fo. 131.
31
From the beginning of the conict de Hijar had gured prominently among the leaders of
Catalan armies. That his loyalty was now wavering seems proven by the fact that he was released from
captivity in Barcelona in an exchange of prisoners and soon afterwards threw in his lot with Juan. How
much importance the king attached to his defection is demonstrated by the marriage arranged
between his son and Guiomar Enriquez, rst cousin of the queen.
32
Zurita, Anales, XVII, lvii. Martnez Ferrando, Pere de Portugal, 458.
33
Zurita, Anales, XVII, lviii. He was held prisoner in the castle of Xativa where he died in 1465.
His son Alfonso managed to escape and resumed the struggle.
 The Portuguese Saviour 161
month he had to acquiesce in the restoration of the Council of Catalonia.
Thereafter relations between himself and that alternative seat of power became
ever more strained. On the loyalty and competence of Catalans in general he
placed increasingly less reliance, appointing Portuguese captains in strategic
posts covering the approaches to Barcelona and seeking ever more urgently for
external aid. When choosing him, the Catalans had seemingly concluded that
Juan, stripped of foreign assistance, lacked the means to overcome the principality;
they, therefore, had no need of a master bolstered by external forces. Pedro,
quickly disabused of that notion by lack of men and money, had from the out-
set searched far and wide for succour. His rst appeals to France, Burgundy,
Castile, Portugal, Naples, and Rome had borne no fruit. A glimmer of hope
came in the summer of 1464 in the shape of a Burgundian eet dispatched
to the Mediterranean in response to Pope Pius IIs call to crusade; a visit to
Barcelona by one of its commanders, the Bastard of Brabant, and the popes
death in August 1464 encouraged Pedro to think that many of these crusaders
might be diverted to his service. Some did, on their own initiative, take his pay,
but the eets commander-in-chief, the Bastard of Burgundy, declined to become
involved despite Pedros extravagant offers of Catalan treasure and lands.34
Although Pedros failure to nd allies had consolidated Juans advantage in
their struggle, it happened, as so often in this and other conicts of the age, that
success was not turned into victory because the party holding the upper hand
found its resources temporarily exhausted. Leaving his captains to wage local
campaigns from garrisoned towns, Juan returned in mid-August to his own
Catalan headquarters, Tarragona, in order to renew his forces and conclude
other matters of moment, notably peace with Genoa and a nal settlement in
Navarre to incorporate the newly reconciled Beaumont faction.35 How far
events in Catalonia had moved in his favour was evidenced by his ability to
assemble that November in Tarragona a second Catalan parliament. In return
for the customary royal redress of abuses, mostly occasioned by the war, this
gathering granted him the service of 300 cavalry to counter a threat posed by
the appearance of Burgundians in Pedros service.
The skirmishes and forays of that autumn and winter brought the usual local
swings of fortune, on balance to Juans advantage. The most notable of these
minor actions took place in the north where the captain of Girona, Pere de
Rocabert, inicted a severe defeat on Jofre, viscount of Rocabert, who was

34
Martnez Ferrando, Pere de Portugal, 401, 61.
35
Zurita, Anales, XVII, lix. Vicens Vives, Juan II, 2968.
162 War, Civil and Foreign
besieging Leonor de Castro, widow of Bernat de Vilamar, in her castle at
Palau-Saverdera. Verntallat, the remensa chief, achieved some audacious
coups: after seizing Ripoll, where the veguer opened the gates to him at night,
he went on to take St Joan de les Abadesses, Camprodon, and Olot. Although
he had soon to abandon most of these conquests, he had demonstrated how
fragile was the insurgents hold on this area and the extent of disaffection in
their ranks. Harsh repression had to be used against dissidents in the coastal
town of Palamos; similar measures were taken to quell unrest in Tortosa,
the increasingly isolated southern centre of Catalan resistance. Closer to
Barcelona, treachery raised its head in Igualada, Manresa, and Molins de Rei.
As for the tally of Catalan successes, these amounted to putting down a rebel-
lion by the lord of Centelles, recapturing the castles of Fors, Barber, and Pau,
and negotiating the surrender of Ulldecona, a town in the far south that was
destined to change hands many times.36
Where both parties focused most attention during the winter months was
on the towns of Cervera and Trrega, left dangerously exposed by the fall of
Lleida. Around the former, royalist forces commanded by the count of Prades
had settled to a siege designed to starve it into surrender. Acutely aware that his
reputation could not survive a repetition of the Lleida asco, Pedro threw him-
self into preparations for a rescue. Taking with him whatever troops he could
muster in Barcelona, he left the city late in December and marched westwards
by way of San Cugat, Martorell, and Gelida. And there he came to a standstill.
Just as in the ill-fated expedition to save Lleida, he found that the Generalitat
was making difculties over payment for the men needed to bring his army up
to strength, particularly the cavalry where he had always suffered a marked
inferiority in numbers. Mutual recriminations ew back and forth, the
Generalitat complaining of money wasted and urging prompt action to
succour Cervera, Pedro demanding reinforcements and suggesting that the
Catalans surrender their silverware in order to nance his campaign with an
issue of debased coins. And, lest he become too dependent upon earthly aid,
he kept a lamp burning day and night before the image of the Virgin at
Montserrat. It took a whole month of ill-tempered argument to set the army
once again in motion. Having secured its rear and boosted its morale by a quick
victory over rebels in Manresa on 20 February, it pushed condently on
towards Cervera with the intention of scattering the besiegers and bringing in

36
Martnez Ferrando, Pere de Portugal, 625.
 The Portuguese Saviour 163
a great train of provisions.37 Pedros adversaries had meanwhile been given
ample notice of his intentions and time to reinforce the count of Prades with
the few men available.
With those reinforcements came Fernando, the young prince on whom Juan
had begun to load heavy responsibilities. After two brief excursions to the
Vilafranca del Peneds region in September and October38 the king had spent
ve months in Tarragona, an unprecedented spell for so restless a spirit con-
fronted by such an array of challenges. The explanation may well lie in a wors-
ening of the eye afiction which was leading him into complete blindness and,
one must assume, causing him acute mental anguish. Uncertainty about his
ability to conduct affairs of state would account for the measures taken to pre-
pare Fernando for an active role in government, although still a minor below
the age of 14. The process began with a grand ceremony in Zaragoza cathedral
on 21 September 1464 which recognized the prince as heir to the thrones of
Aragon and Sicily; there followed on 14 October his appointment as governor-
general, and on 20 October the necessary ratication of that act by the
Aragonese Cortes assembled in Zaragoza. Thus was the way cleared for
Fernando to assume nominal command of his fathers army when it prepared
to encounter Pedro in the following February.39 Continuing the process of
delegation, on 6 March 1465 Queen Juana was invested with the authority
of locumtenens generalis with power to exercise all royal functions in her
husbands absence.40 Was this the culmination of a long-nourished ambition
to gain for mother and son complete ascendancy over Aragon, or a further
burden thrust upon shoulders hardly t to bear it?
Any enthusiasm aroused in the army by the princes appearance was damp-
ened by an ill-omen sighted as it marched through a bleak winter landscape
towards Calaf and the enemy: great ocks of storks, normally seen only in summer,
ew across the sky darkening the sun. But whatever the misgivings aroused by
this aberration of nature, Pedro had advanced to nearby Els Prats de Rei and
battle was unavoidable. In raw numbers Pedro had a marked superiority: 130
cavalry, 500 light horse, and 2,000 infantry against 60 cavalry, 600 light horse,
and 1,000 infantry. Against that advantage weighed the problem of coordinating
the motley elements of the insurgent host: newly arrived Burgundians, Navar-
rese, and Castilians left over from de Beaumonts followers, many Portuguese,

37
Ibid. 6670, for detail of Pedros activity during these months.
38
These moves raised fears that he was planning to attack Barcelona in the aftermath of de
Beaumonts defection.
39 40
Coll Juli, Doa Juana Enriquez, ii. 1268. Ibid. 1334.
164 War, Civil and Foreign
and a majority of Catalans. On 28 February 1465, as the sun was setting, the
two armies drew themselves into battle array, Fernandos around a hill, Pedros
based on a hermitage in the plain. According to the chronicles, Pedro called
on his men (we are not told in which tongue) to remember the wrongs of
his grandfather, the count of Urgell, the sufferings of Charles of Viana, the
prospect of booty and the fate awaiting any who were taken prisoner. If
Fernando delivered any battle oration, it has not been preserved for posterity.
Despite his numerical superiority, Pedro left the initiative to the enemy who,
perceiving some disarray among the Burgundians in his vanguard, launched an
attack which scattered that body with heavy casualties. There followed assaults
on the right and left wings with erce combat between the heavy cavalry as
Pedros men gave ground. Both sides still had formations in reserve, especially
the infantry, but it would seem that at this point, seeing his vanguard and wings
mauled and in retreat, Pedro despaired of victory. Stripping off his royal
insignia and exchanging his charger for a light horse, he made his escape into
Els Prats. Most of his cavalry and infantry followed, saved from pursuit by the
early onset of a winter night. Casualties among his men had been compara-
tively light: 60 cavalry dead and 250 taken prisoner. However, among those
prisoners were numbered several of the most prominent Catalan leaders: the
viscounts of Roda and Rocabert, the baron of Crulles, Guerau de Cervell,
and the Portuguese captains Pedro dEa and Juan dAlmeida.41 The loss of so
many men of note, combined with the psychological blow of yet another
defeat, brought Pedro and his adherents close to despair however much they
might assure the public that the battle of Calaf had been an indecisive affair,
and that Hector could not have performed greater feats than their king.42 That
gloss upon the sorry affair did indeed have a little substance. Surprised by the
scale of their triumph, the victors, still inferior in numbers, lacked the strength
to follow it up with a push into the Catalan heartland, or even to prevent
Bertran de Armendriz rallying some fugitives and with them delivering the
promised relief into Cervera. It was but a temporary respite; within days the
count of Prades had again encircled its walls.43
On the eld of Calaf the Portuguese prince had certainly performed no feats
worthy of Greek epic; his credentials as a military leader had, on the contrary,
been torn to shreds. An underlying strength of will could none the less still

41
The prisoners were taken rst to Valencia and thence to the formidable castle of Xativa, the usual
destination of high-ranking captives.
42
Hector no podie fer ms que ell ha fet. So wrote the diputats to San Feliu de Guixols.
43
For the battle of Calaf, Zurita, Anales, XVII, lxii. Martnez Ferrando, Pere de Portugal, 713.
Vicens Vives, Fernando II, 1525.
 The Portuguese Saviour 165
manifest itself in an aggressive defence of his own reputation and of the cause
he had embraced. The heartland of Catalan resistance lay now, he reasoned, in
the northern regions, so it was towards the hills of Empord that he led his dis-
comted army with the intention of eliminating royalist strongholds there.
Confronted by an empty treasure chest, he resorted to paying his men in kind
until such time as he might gather contributions in the Empries and force
the diputats to accept a debased currency. New captains, admittedly of lesser
stature and experience, were found to replace those lost at Calaf. A fresh con-
tingent of Burgundian mercenaries joined him at Castell dEmpries, raising
hopes that the appeals directed to that state might not, after all, be in vain. Not
surprisingly, this concentration of forces in the north did produce some suc-
cesses. First, Besal was relieved, then, in April 1465, Siurana surrendered after
erce resistance, La Bisbal followed in June; in both places savage reprisals were
meted out to defenders and inhabitants alike. Palau-Saverdera, defended by
Vilamars wife and her brother, agreed to submit if not succoured within one
month. These successes owed much to the fact that the enemy lacked the
means to threaten Barcelona and hence force Pedro to concentrate on its
defence; they demonstrated that a civil war fought in this manner might yet
drag on for a very long time.
If his enemies thought that failing sight had permanently dimmed Juans
appetite and capacity for action, they were soon disillusioned. Heartened by
the victory at Calaf, the king took himself in March to Trrega in order that he
might assess for himself the progress of operations against Cervera. His spirits
were further lifted by news of the calamities aficting Castile and France. On
16 July 1465 at the battle of Montlhry a Burgundian-led confederacy of
French princes, proclaiming the Public Good as their cause, plunged France
into civil war. Castile suffered the same fate, thanks in part to Juans own
machinations. Immediately after the fall of Lleida he had entered into a pact
with a cohort of Castilian grandees (among them his old allies the Enrquez
clan, the marquis of Villena, and the archbishop of Toledo) with the purpose
of overthrowing the current royal favourite, Beltran de la Cueva, marquis of
Ledesma, and making Enriques brother Alfonso heir to the throne in place
of his infant daughter Juana whom many considered to be Beltrans child. For
his part Juan had undertaken, if called upon, to enter Castile to aid the plotters in
cornering and coercing Enrique.44 Their pressure forced Enrique to proclaim

44
Zurita, Anales, XVII, lvi. In return Juan was to recover his Castilian patrimony, except for that
part held by Villena and the master of Calatrava. Enrique had obtained his divorce from Blanche of
Navarre on the grounds of impotence but claimed to have recovered his virility with his second wife,
Juana of Portugal.
166 War, Civil and Foreign
Alfonso his heir in November 1464, but in the new year, backed by popular
opinion in the towns and Cortes, he fought back. His enemies responded with
reckless deance: on 5 June 1465, having deposed the king in efgy, they
placed the crown on the head of the 11-year-old Alfonso. Juans detested rela-
tive who had fed the res of rebellion in Catalonia now saw it ablaze in his
own realms.45
Fired with renewed optimism, Juan prepared to throw himself back into the
fray. Late in May he joined his wife in Valencia where she had spent three
months drumming up men and money and supporting Depuig, the master of
Montesa, in his campaign to regain Ulldecona. After collecting 40,000 orins
promised to the queen, he took the bombards of Valencia with 300 horse and
600 infantry to put a speedy end to Ulldeconas stubborn resistance. But
despite the destruction inicted on the walls by the royal artillery, the garrison
repelled a general assault launched on 21 June. Juan thereupon resolved to
spend no more time on this sideshow because messages had come warning that
Pedro might, after his success at La Bisbal, fall upon the forces besieging
Cervera. Taking ship for Tarragona, he hurried north to confront his chief
adversary.46
Juans arrival in the camp outside Cervera brought to an end Fernandos rst
experience of military command, but not his responsibilities, for he was dis-
patched to summon military aid from Aragon.47 Don Alfonso, Juans older,
illegitimate offspring, meanwhile distinguished himself in feats of derring-do
at Igualada. The fall of that town (17 July) on the highway between Barcelona
and Cervera left the latters defenders with little hope of rescue or relief as they
watched the besieging forces systematically sealing every approach and sub-
jecting the city to bombardment by night and day. Their anxiety was matched
in Barcelona where the diputats engaged in acrimonious correspondence with
their monarch over the peril facing Cervera while he reproached them for their
failure to furnish men and money; the trade and manufactures which had in
the past brought wealth to Catalonia now, they protested, lay in ruins, and they
were at their wits end to raise the sums he demanded. Amid such recrimina-
tion Pedro belatedly ventured into Barcelona. On 10 August he made a public
appeal for volunteers to march to the aid of Cervera, an appeal which seems to

45
Enrquez del Castillo, Crnica, 2367. De Valera, Memorial de diversas hazaas, 979. Zurita,
Anales, XVIII, ii. Martn, Enrique IV, 17182.
46
Coll Juli, Doa Juana Enriquez, ii. 1347.
47
Several towns responded, sending companies of men to serve the king, but for only one month.
Zurita, Anales, xviii, p. iii. Vicens Vives, Fernando II, 163.
 The Portuguese Saviour 167
have awoken some spark of patriotism because one week later he was camped
in the vicinity of Manresa with a respectable force. In its ranks were a number
of experienced ghting men recruited in Portugal by Pedros sister Felipa. They
had reached Barcelona in mid-July on a Portuguese otilla which also carried
Ferno da Silva and the younger Jaume dArag who had escaped from impris-
onment in the castle of Xtiva.48
But all this activity came too late; overcome by hunger and despair Cervera
had surrendered to Juan on 14 August. Pedro, as always, blamed everything on
the shortcomings of others (the needless fears of the besieged and the dilatory
behaviour of the Catalan authorities); his own state of mind he portrayed as
one of Ciceronian stoicism: it is the mark of weak minds to display lack of
moderation both in adversity and prosperity.49 He nevertheless retreated pre-
cipitately upon Barcelona where he was assailed with a litany of reproaches. As
he responded in kind, trust and respect crumbled away. Hard on the heels of
defeat came plague which struck Barcelona that summer sowing yet more
gloom and misery among a demoralized population.
Following his now familiar strategy of strangling Catalan resistance by pick-
ing off one by one the major towns which sustained its heartland, Juan next set
his sights upon the great southern city of Tortosa, a wealthy river-port com-
manding the delta of the River Ebro, and the base for damaging forays into the
neighbouring kingdoms of Valencia and Aragon. How much importance the
diputats attached to the city they made plain in a letter to Pedro justifying their
failure to pay Portuguese in his service; the money available, they insisted, must
be spent on defending Tortosa: Tortosa is the right eye, Perpignan the left eye,
and Barcelona the heart of the mystic body of Catalonia.50 Reports of disaffec-
tion among its citizens fostered royalist hopes, ill-founded as it transpired, that
it might be ripe for the plucking.51 On the march towards his prey Juan seized
Els Prats de Rei, Santes Creus, and Vilarodona, swept on through the province
of Tarragona, subduing those areas which had defected in his absence, and by
2 October had joined his army encamped on the Ebro outside the great fortress
of Amposta.

48
Martnez Ferrando, Pere de Portugal, 7782.
49
Sicut, enim, res adversas sic secundas immoderate ferre lenitatis est. In a letter to the diputats.
Ibid. 84.
50
Tortosa s lull dret, Perpiny lo squerra e Barchinona lo cor del cors mstich de Catalunya.
Ibid. 98.
51
Joan de Belloch, the captain of Tortosa, reported on 9 Sept. that all the population was in good
heart except for the conversos ( Jews converted to Christianity) who were being expelled. AHB, Consell
de Cent, X, Lletres Closes, no. 57.
168 War, Civil and Foreign
Rather than attempt an immediate assault on Tortosa, it was decided to iso-
late it by cutting all access by land and sea. On the seaward side this entailed
taking the castle of Amposta which commanded the apex of the Ebro delta.
Ever since 1461 the castellany of Amposta had set Juan at bitter odds with its
former castellan, Pere Ramon Sacosta, who in that year had been elected mas-
ter of the Order of St John in Rhodes. The king had seized upon that opportu-
nity to have the unquestionably loyal Bernat Huc de Rocabert appointed in
his place, only to nd that Sacosta was determined to hold on to the ofce and
its associated possessions. Sacostas instinctive sympathy for the Catalan cause
was thereby converted into active support which carried with it a majority of
Hospitallers within Catalonia and ensured that Amposta was defended by a
resolutely anti-royalist garrison. A full-scale siege was in prospect.52
By the time the king arrived his army had already crossed the broad stretch
of river, the men in small boats, the horses swimming, in order to invest the
town of Amposta on the southern bank. To the north, another force com-
manded by Juan de Aragon using terror tactics (la guerra muy cruel)53 quickly
occupied all the territory between Flix and Gandesa, effectively sealing the
landward approaches to Tortosa. At Amposta, however, the initial lan of the
assault across the river soon lost momentum in face of a defence sustained by
sea as well as by land. Whereas the insurgents could rarely outclass the royalists
in the eld, their sea-power still matched anything mustered against it. Ten gal-
leys sent by Ferrante of Naples to aid his uncle arrived in October but failed to
prevent enemy craft carrying help to the Amposta garrison.54 As the weather
worsened the attack became literally bogged down in the marshy terrain;
wolves, snakes, and polluted water added to the assailants discomfort. And so
the siege dragged on through the winter into the spring of 1466 with Juan
investing more energy in futile negotiations with the master of Rhodes than in
military operations.
Sustaining Amposta served not only to protect Tortosa, it also kept the main
body of Juans forces tied down in the far south, leaving Pedros commanders
free to pursue his strategy of eliminating enemy footholds in their northern
redoubt. The campaign began in promising fashion: Camprodon, Berga, Bag,
and Olot had all been occupied by the time Pedro made his appearance in

52
For Sacosta see Sobrequs i Vidal, La guerra civil, ii, 75. Coll Juli, Doa Juana Enriquez, i, passim.
53
Zurita, Anales, XVIII, vi.
54
Ferrantes nal victory over the Angevins and Neapolitan rebels in 1465 left him free to aid Juan.
The insurgents again demonstrated their continued ability to strike at sea when in Jan. 1466 a brig-
antine captured a vessel carrying provisions from Valencia to the kings camp.
 The Portuguese Saviour 169
Ripoll on 20 October. A few days later he took possession of St Joan de les
Abadesses after its inhabitants had voted by ballot to surrender (those in favour
cast a bean, those against a pea). From there he hastened to shore up the
defences of Camprodon, the frontier town which had come under attack from
French marauders. Success in this north-western sector was not, however,
repeated on the Girona front where the Portuguese captain Ferno da Silvas
attempts on Angls, Amer, and Besal were foiled by the usual robust action of
Pere de Rocabert, a failure which did not deter Pedro from appointing da
Silvas brother Joo captain-general in the places captured to the north-west.
Inevitably that move was seen as marking an undue partiality for Portuguese
and mistrust of Catalans. His nationality apart, Joo da Silva infuriated the
Council of Catalonia by interfering with its jurisdiction in the Empries. His
departure on an embassy to England in January 1466 might have resolved
the issue had not Pedro pointedly replaced him with his brother Ferno.
Furthermore Pedro did nothing to win hearts and minds by his harsh treat-
ment of those who put up any resistance. Olot was burned and its inhabitants
heavily ned; an occupying force of Gascon mercenaries went on the rampage
in St Joan; everywhere an unpaid soldiery pillaged, even in churches, and an
empty treasury exacted a heavy due.55
As winter closed in Pedro took up residence not in Barcelona but in Vic. In
visibly failing health, he was increasingly inuenced by a coterie of Portuguese
who resented Catalan attempts to assert a joint sovereignty; they in turn were
accused of blatantly lling their own pockets at Catalan expense. Pestilence
and bad blood between him and its councils made the Catalan capital unap-
pealing. So, too, did uncomfortably close incursions along the valley of the
Llobregat by enemy raiders led by the formidable count of Prades and Alfonso
of Aragon; on 6 November a large force of their cavalry, with Alfonso at its
head, had spread devastation and panic into the suburbs of Barcelona at Sants
and Hospitalet. More urgently than ever Pedro was driven to seek salvation
from abroad. To gain it he was prepared to barter Catalan sovereignty over
Cerdagne and Roussillon to France. Rather more hopefully he looked for
greater Burgundian support by trying to enlist the services of Duke Philips
son, the Bastard of Burgundy, together with the Bastard of Brabant. But if
earlier appeals to these would-be crusaders had gone unheeded, now less than
ever were they or any other any power inclined to go to the rescue of a visibly
tottering adventurer.

55
Martnez Ferrando, Pere de Portugal, 8890.
170 War, Civil and Foreign
At Amposta Juan had in December handed over command to Pierres de
Peralta, constable of Navarre. He then took up residence in Tarragona where
with Queen Juana he celebrated the Christmas festivities and met the Catalan
parliament he had convoked in November. It promised the services of 300
horse, in effect a continuation of the aid furnished by the previous parliament.
That business concluded, he immediately turned his attention to the kingdom
of Valencia which had of late been generous in support both with men and
money56 and it was in expectation of more that he summoned the Corts of that
kingdom to meet in San Mateu in January 1466. First fruits came when, on
26 February, the kingdoms representatives swore allegiance to Fernando as
primogenitus,57 but they displayed no readiness to shoulder new nancial
burdens. By the beginning of April Juan was left with no choice but to prorogue
the uncooperative gathering in order to concentrate all his attention and
resources against Ampostas stubborn deance. The queen he sent off to
Zaragoza to extract what she could from the Aragonese Cortes.58 Where the
kingdom of Valencia had proved unforthcoming, its capital again demon-
strated a readiness to open its purse by offering a loan of 45,000 sous (15
January 1466) and a royal bodyguard of a hundred archers.59 More he could
not extract despite constant appeals delivered through messengers and mem-
bers of the royal family. Among the latter appeared Don Alfonso adorned with
a long beard which he had sworn not to shave until his father had entered
Barcelona.60
Despite a dearth of funds, Juan was able to throw a strong force by land
and sea against Amposta when he resumed command of operations there
in February 1466: with him came the master of Montesa, the castellan of
Amposta, the archbishop of Tarragona, and a eet commanded by Bernat de
Vilamara much-needed boost to the morale of the weary army of besiegers.
Fernando returned to the eld with a detachment which during the spring
months took control of the whole Ebro valley, so cutting the last land routes by
which any relief must reach either Amposta or Tortosa. Only the sea remained
open, and it was from that direction that the Council of Catalonia, ignoring
Pedro, made a nal effort to save its imperilled southern bastion. Lamentations

56
In addition to 40,000 sous from the city of Valencia, the king received 30,000 from Morela in
June 1465. In May of that same year the kingdom had sent 150 horse to aid the master of Montesa; a
hundred archers joined the siege of Amposta in Dec., followed in Jan. 1466 by a further 64, among
them 30 Moors. Also in Jan. Alzezira contributed 25 archers.
57 58
Vicens Vives, Fernando II, 1635. Coll Juli, Doa Juana Enriquez, ii. 14852.
59 60
Vicens Vives, Historia crtica, 165 n. 520. Miralles, Dietari, 318.
 The Portuguese Saviour 171
over its earlier failure to send aid had poured in from that isolated outpost. We
cannot live on words, for the stomach doesnt brook delay, wrote the captain
of Tortosa on 6 February, adding that the poor had long since been reduced to
eating carob beans and had lost all hope.61 It still took until the end of April to
man and provision four ships, and their rst destination was not the Ebro but
Mahon in Minorca. For six months that last overseas outpost of the insurgent
cause had been under close siege by troops and vessels from Majorca and had
warned that without relief it could resist no longer. It needed only a brief recon-
naissance to convince the eet from Barcelona that it had no hope of breaking
the blockade, so it sailed away leaving Mahon to its fate. On reaching the Ebro,
it found its way to Amposta barred by heavy cannon mounted on both banks
of the river. The commander, Pere Joan Ferrer, countered by lashing together
three of his ships armed with all the guns and men he could muster. With this
oating gun platform he attempted to force his way up-river, supported by the
Amposta garrison which launched a sortie against the enemy camp. It failed to
break through and late in May Ferrer returned to Barcelona, abandoning
Tortosa to hunger and despair. Against the slim chance that it might return
Juan provided by bringing to the Ebro eight Majorcan ships freed by the vic-
tory at Mahon.62
By 17 June all was in place for an assault on the castle of Amposta, its walls
and towers already pulverized by a prolonged bombardment. Pride of place fell
to the titular castellan, Bernat Huc de Rocabert, who led a column which breached
the heavily defended main gate, opening the way for other companies to storm
the fortresss redoubts from within and nally plant the standards of Aragon
upon its walls. Its stalwart commander, Pere de Planella, nding himself at bay
with no more than thirty men in the last crumbling tower, surrendered to the
king. He had hoped for some diversionary attack from Tortosa, but Tortosa had
not stirred and now lay exposed before the mass of the advancing royal army.
Among the citys inhabitants despair of any relief weighed against fear of the
vengeance they might expect from a monarch growing increasingly irate at
Catalonias stubborn resistance. Their apprehension grew when it became
known that Juan had hanged several of Ampostas defenders and threatened
Planella and sixty Tortosans captured there with the same fate if they failed to
arrange Tortosas capitulation within ve days. To buy time they sent a deputa-
tion forty-strong to explore terms of surrender with the king who, after much
61
. . . nosaltres no podem viure de paraula car lo ventre no comporta dilacio. AHB, Consell de
Cent, X, Lletres Closes 35, no. 124.
62
Zurita, Anales, XVIII, vi.
172 War, Civil and Foreign
haggling, agreed that they might send emissaries to Barcelona; if not relieved
by the end of July, they would surrender. That breathing-space the city spent
in preparing itself for a spirited resistance and a spectacular breach of faith.
Without any warning a surprise attack was launched on the kings camp at
daybreak on 7 July, perhaps in the hope of ending the war with one audacious
coup.63 It did succeed in sowing confusion, carrying off two bombards and
several prisoners; it also infuriated the king who ordered the siege to begin
without further delay.
His army took up position on the right bank of the Ebro facing Tortosa. A
company of archers, embarked on a large raft in mid-river, harassed the city at
close range, and the artillery, now securely entrenched almost a mile away,
opened a duel with guns placed on the citys bastions. It was an even match:
while the latter wrought much havoc among the besiegers, the royal cannon
battered walls and buildings and, more importantly, shook morale and
widened those cracks in the body of citizens which had long worried the
authorities. It took little more to sap Tortosas will to resist; the most resolute
gathered in the castle, the majority hastened to negotiate their citys submission
with the kings council. Pleas for clemency on the grounds that they had been
neither instigators nor ringleaders in Catalonias troubles may have softened
royal ire; more probably Juan hoped, by a conciliatory gesture, to reinforce the
message already proclaimed in Lleida and Cervera: Catalans had nothing to
fear from their lawful king. Accordingly, on 15 July the syndics of Tortosa
swore allegiance to Juan in return for pardon and a conrmation of the citys
privileges and liberties. In addition they secured the freedom of Pere de
Planella, who had so resolutely defended Amposta, and others taken prisoner
in operations around the lower Ebro; foreigners who had served in the defence
of Tortosa were guaranteed safe passage out of the country in return for the
castles surrender. All fortresses in the citys jurisdiction were to be commanded
by royal appointees for the duration of hostilities; Tortosa itself Juan entrusted
into the reliable hands of Pedro de Urrea, archbishop of Tarragona. And on
17 July, to set a ceremonial seal upon his victory, he entered Tortosa with great
pomp and pageantry accompanied by his soldiery while the eet bedecked
with his standards thronged the river. In a further symbolic act, on the follow-
ing day, having heard a solemn mass, he ascended a throne and in public took
an oath to observe the Usatges of Barcelona, the privileges of Catalonia and all
63
In Jan. Belloch, the captain of Tortosa, had written to Barcelona, If you were willing this could
be the scene of his destruction and it would bring an end to the war. (Si vosaltres vos voleu aci sera la
sua destruccio e se donara ala guerra.) AHB, Consell de Cent, X, Lletres Closes 35, no. 111.
 The Portuguese Saviour 173
other rights granted by his predecessors, excepting only the Capitulation of
Vilafranca. That very public reafrmation of his commitment to Catalonia,
and probably the hasty surrender of Tortosa, had been prompted by the news
that his rival, Pedro of Portugal, had died on 29 June.64
The winter Pedro spent in Vic had seen everything disintegrate around him.
Desperate for money, he had lashed out at the Diputaci: in ve months it had,
he complained, furnished him with a derisory 200 pounds; unpaid his troops
were deserting to the enemy or plundering the civilian population. Had his
health permitted, he would, he threatened, have come to Barcelona and, fol-
lowing the example of Julius Caesar, seized any cash in private hands to give the
few men left to us (aquesta poca gent que ens resta) some sustenance.65 In
reply the deputies alleged that his Portuguese commanders were too busy dev-
astating the land for their own prot to engage the enemy, and that the money
available had been better spent in efforts to relieve Tortosa than on Pedros mea-
gre entourage of forty or fty, of whom most were court functionaries not
ghting men. The conduct of the war had, in effect, been taken out of his
hands. He was indeed in no condition, physically or mentally, to undertake any
operation. Such hopes of victory as he still nursed were xed upon phantom
foreign legions. A polite letter from his Burgundian cousin, the count of
Charolais, was construed as full of promises, including a force of cavalry; but
Barcelonas envoy in Pedros court was not vouchsafed a sight of it. Similar
expectation and secrecy were woven around a half-page letter in Latin delivered
with great ceremony to Pedro in the bishops palace at Vic by an English ambas-
sador. Presumably it touched upon the proposal mooted by Pedros aunt, the
duchess of Burgundy, that he should marry Margaret, sister of King Edward IV,
for in March 1466 envoys were duly dispatched to England with powers to
conclude the match on terms which would bring 1,000 English men-at-arms
and 3,000 archers to his rescue. It was further suggested that English corsairs
might protably transfer their activities from the Bay of Biscay to the shipping
of his foes in the Mediterranean.66
Weaving these and other fantasies, among them schemes to ll an empty
treasury with the melted silver of churches and monasteries, Pedro installed
himself at the beginning of April in Manresa. There his health rapidly deterior-
ated until on 10 May he fell seriously ill, suffering attacks of fever and losing

64 65
Zurita, Anales, XVIII, vii. Martinez Ferrando, Pere de Portugal, 240 (16 Feb. 1466).
66
Margaret was to be accompanied by as few women as possible, and preferably young girls so that
they might more easily learn the language and nd husbands. She should bring no, or very few,
ofcials, and only men who might soon return to England. Ibid. 2318.
174 War, Civil and Foreign
his appetite. Towards the end of the month, having entrusted the defence
of Manresa to another Portuguese, Gil de Teide, he was carried by litter to
Sabadell. Two days later, ignoring all medical advice, he rode non-stop to
Granollers and arrived there exhausted. His sickness now entered its last stages.
News of further reverses added to his torments: the failure to relieve Amposta,
Camprodon lost, Ripoll and Piera on the verge of surrender. To no avail a
stream of physicians and rare medicines were brought to his bedside;
ineluctably he grew weaker until he could do no more than suck the milk of
two wet-nurses. On 29 June he diedof pulmonary tuberculosisat the
age of 37.
Immediately, and inevitably, rumours began to circulate that he had been
poisoned, a cause commonly assigned to the untimely deaths of powerful men.
The same had happened after the demise of Charles of Viana, but whereas that
calamity had been attributed to the machinations of enemies of the Catalan
cause, in Pedros case the nger of suspicion was pointed at its leaders. Since
arriving in a blaze of hope and glory he had disappointed at every turn and been
temperamentally at odds with his subjects; a sorry string of military reverses
and jurisdictional disputes had strained their relations so near to breaking
point that his death must have come as a relief to those who now despaired of
their choice of monarch. The chronicler Garcia de Santamaria, although hos-
tile to the rebels, hardly erred when he wrote, In their inmost hearts citizens
wore a joyful mourning.67 The town of Palamos, writing to assure Barcelona
of its continuing devotion to the cause, conrms his judgement with the
condent assertion that we shall be delivered from our present misfortune, and
much more quickly than if the king had lived.68 The deputies themselves
notied Tortosa of Pedros death with the assurance that all is for the best.69
They none the less conducted his funeral with full regal ceremony and interred
his body, as he had requested, in the church of Santa Maria de la Mar, the scene
of his rapturous reception but two years before.70

67
Luto de alegria los ciudadanos en sus secretos nimos traan. Martnez Ferrando, Pere de
Portugal, 121.
68
. . . desliurats dela gran fortuna en que som e molt pus prest que si lo Rey fos viu. AHB, Consell
de Cent, X, Lletres Closes 35, no. 174 (2 July 1466).
69
. . . tot esser per lo millor . . . Martnez Ferrando, Pere de Portugal, 249. They went on to
promise the doomed city that everything would now be done to send relief; while Pedro lived, because
of his illness et alias, he had not given it the necessary attention. The phrase et alias glossed over all
the other differences which had arisen between the deputies and their king.
70
The ofcial account of the funeral ceremonies is given in Llibre de los solemnitats de Barcelona, i,
ed. A. Duran i Sanpere and J. Sanabre (Barcelona: Instituci Patxot, 1930), 2805.
 15
In Extremis, France

In the will made on the day of his death Pedro had named a successor, his
nephew Joo, eldest son of his sister Isabel and Afonso V of Portugal, and
hence a scion of that ill-starred house of Urgell. That Joo would jeopardize his
prospective Portuguese throne to follow his luckless uncle into the Catalan
morass was highly improbable; that the Catalans would place any further faith
in rescue from that quarter was equally unlikely. Many, wearied of war and re-
conciled to defeat, voiced a readiness to listen to the overtures coming from Juan
in the shape of assurances that he would respect every constitutional form, the
Capitulations of Vilafranca apart, assurances reafrmed by a delegation from
the Cortes of Aragon which offered its good ofces towards a reconciliation.
Disaffection was not conned to Barcelona. In Castell dEmpries persons
little zealous for the good of the principality were raising their voices and try-
ing to prevent Arnau de Foix reinforcing the town with a body of cavalry. The
counsellors of Manresa lamented the danger they faced for our sins following
the departure of the contingent of Portuguese cavalry which had been defend-
ing them. Palams, where many had died of pestilence, voiced fears that its
long walls and few men could not withstand the expected enemy attack.
Against such waverers was ranged a hard core of irreconcilables who controlled
the organs of government and were resolved to continue the struggle at all cost
and by every means. These diehards seized the herald sent by the Aragonese to
ask for safeconduct, tore up his letters, and threatened similar violence against
the embassy should it venture any further.1 On 2 July 1466 they decreed the
mere utterance of any sentiment in favour of Juan and his family a capital
offence. Was this blind obstinacy in the face of inevitable ruin? The tide of vic-
tory running so strongly in Juans favourafter taking Tortosa he had cleared
the whole passage of the Ebro from Zaragoza to the sea by bribing the defend-
ers of Flix, Miravet, and Asccertainly gives that impression. Had Pedro

1
Zurita, Anales, XVIII, ix. Vicens Vives, Juan II, 308.
176 War, Civil and Foreign
PERE IV K. of Aragon d. 1387

JOAN I MARTI I LEONOR = JUAN I K. of Castile

d. 1396 d. 1410 d. 1382

YOLANDE = LOUIS II of Anjou MARTI K. of Sicily FERNANDO I K. of Aragon

d. 1417 d. 1409 d. 1416

LOUIS III of Anjou RENE of Anjou MARIE = CHARLES VII K. CHARLES Count of Maine
d. 1434 d. 1480 of France d. 1461 d. 1472

JEAN of Calabria LOUIS XI K. of France

d. 1470 d. 1483
Figure 3. The French connection

lived but another year, Juan would almost certainly have gone on to take
Barcelona and bring the war to an end because his opponents would have
exhausted their means of resistance. His disappearance offered them another
chance to seek abroad for the succour which might yet save them from disaster.
Anxiously Juan kept his eyes on the rebel leaders in Barcelona; or rather, his
ears, for the cataracts which for years had been obscuring his sight darkened it
completely in the summer of 1466. The Catalans, having spurned his offers of
peace, urgently needed to nd a new leader both to still public disquiet and to
retrieve a desperate situation on the battlefronts. Sentiment and a desire to
clothe rebellion with a g-leaf of legitimacy led them to search yet again in the
genealogical tree of their ancestral rulers, among whose remaining branches the
only one offering promise of adequate support now ourished in France. It
sprang from Violant (Yolande), daughter of King Joan I of Aragon, who had
married Louis II of Anjou (d. 1417). Her eldest son, also named Louis, had
been a principal contender for the Aragonese throne at Caspe, and had later
fought Alfonso the Magnanimous for the succession to the kingdom of Naples;
in both contests he had been worsted by the Trastmars. After Louiss death in
1434 his brother Ren inherited both the duchy of Anjou and the claims to the
Aragonese and Neapolitan thrones.2 Another of Yolandes children, Marie, had

2
A. Ubieto Arteta, El compromiso de Caspe (Zaragoza: Anubar, 1980). Hillgarth, The Spanish
Kingdoms, ii. 22931.
 In Extremis, France 177
married King Charles VII of France and became mother of Louis XI. Both
Ren and Louis could therefore advance plausible titles to the disputed throne
of Aragon. When it suited, Louis readily aunted his Catalan credentials and
his keen interest in the principalitys fortunes, but more in the manner of a
predator than a protector; he had made it brutally clear after the submission of
Perpignan in 1463 that he had conclu et deliber dunir et joindre lesdits
comts de Roussillon et de Cerdagne a sa couronne sans jamais en tre separs.3
With domestic peace restored, albeit precariously, to his kingdom and Pedro
dead, he might be expected to sh further. Even in extremis the insurgents
shrank from ignominiously ending their crusade for Catalan autonomy by
submission to the crown of France, and yet it was cruelly obvious that only in
that kingdom could they nd the help which might save them from disaster.
Ren of Anjou looked to be the answer to their dilemma. In addition to a
Catalan ancestry, he had an impeccable record of hostility to the Trastmars,
French estates within easy reach of Catalonia, a son and grandson to ensure
dynastic continuity, and above all a claim upon the goodwill of Louis XI in
return for services rendered during the war of the Bien Publique. Moreover, at
this very moment he found his hands freed and his hatred of the Trastmars
increased by the inglorious end of the war waged by his son, Jean of Calabria,
to drive Alfonsos heir, Ferrante, from the Neapolitan throne.4 On the other
side of the balance sheet, a side which probably received only cursory attention
in a Barcelona driven to the verge of desperation, lay Rens age (he was born in
1409), his poor military record, and his scanty resources. What mattered was
the need to engage French power in the conict.
Having concluded the funeral rites for Pedro on 8 July, the counsellors
resolved on 30 July to offer Ren the crown of Aragon, a crown which was not,
of course, in their gift. Two weeks passed before the relevant documents and
instructions to the three ambassadors were ready. They left Barcelona on
27 August, landed at Marseille, then travelled to Angers where the duke
of Anjou gave them private audience on 27 September. Without ado Ren
accepted the proffered crown with the conditions attached: that he or his son
should quickly go to his subjects aid with a substantial military force, and
a point on which the Catalans laid great emphasisthat the son, Jean of

3
P.-R. Gaussin, Louis XI (Paris: Nizet, 1976), 353. Gaussin dubs Louiss argument pure
hypocrisy.
4
A. Ryder, The Angevin Bid for Naples, 13801480, in D. Abulaa (ed.), The French Descent
into Renaissance Italy, 14945 (Aldershot: Variorum, 1995).
178 War, Civil and Foreign
Calabria, should be recognised as primogenitus and assume the role of
locumtenens.5 Immediately afterwards Ren was proclaimed king of Aragon
before his assembled court and the ambassadors performed the customary
ceremony of homage by kneeling to kiss his hand.
That all should have been concluded seemingly without any deliberation on
Rens part is to be explained by the fact that news of the Catalan intention had
long since leaked to all interested parties. As early as 27 August, the day on
which their embassy left Barcelona, Ren had written to assure the Catalans of
his readiness to take up their cause, and had already come to a secret under-
standing with Louis XI promising French support. Two weeks delay in receiv-
ing the ambassadors had given him ample time for nal reection. The
opportunity to bring down the family which had inicted such humiliation on
his own housethe crown of Aragon in recompense for the lost crown of
Naplesproved irresistible. He knew, however, that all depended on substan-
tial aid in men and money from his royal nephew. A mission was accordingly
dispatched from Angers on 5 October to secure a public declaration to that
effect from Louis XI. The Universal Spider promptly obliged by denouncing
the Pact of Bayonne, calling on the Catalans to take up Rens cause, and
branding all who should oppose ( Juan inevitably among them) as enemies of
France. Signicantly he did not accord him the title king of Aragon, only that
of count of Barcelona; the support he gave would be scrupulously measured to
suit the greater interest of France.
News of the Catalans approach to Ren had long since reached the
Aragonese court where it caused no little consternation. Yet, although cataracts
had at the same time nally extinguished his sight, Juan reacted with his cus-
tomary energy and determination. Aware that direct French intervention on
the side of the Angevins represented the true danger, he endeavoured through
conciliatory missions to dissuade Louis from taking that step, and, little
condent of success, he embarked simultaneously on a diplomatic campaign to
rally support from the many states which might feel themselves threatened by
Valois ambition. In Italy he played, without success, on the fears of the dukes
of Savoy and Milan, warned the pope of the Catalan hysteria that sought to
canonize Charles of Viana, and rallied his nephew Ferrante, king of Naples,
who had so recently faced the same foes. In November he turned his attention

5
Zurita, Anales, XVIII, ix. Calmette, Louis XI, Jean II, 26571. The ambassadors were also to urge
Ren to take hostage men loyal to Juan so that they might be exchanged for the captive count of
Pallars.
 In Extremis, France 179
to England where the Yorkist king Edward IV had good reason to fear the
machinations of the exiled Lancastrian Queen Margaret, Rens daughter, with
the king of France. Nothing was needed to persuade the dukes of Burgundy
and Brittany that with Juan they faced a common foe. So did the king of
Aragon, described at this moment of crisis by a German eye-witness as a very
old, little man, quite blind and miserably poor,6 contrive to spin his own web
around a crafty antagonist.7 But he lacked the means to forestall his new foes by
an immediate attack on the remaining strongholds of Catalan resistance.
At the news from Anjou Barcelona burst once more into orchestrated joy,
given some substance by Louiss order (2 Sept. 1466) for the reopening of com-
merce between that city and Roussillon,8 and by his intervention with the duke
of Milan to end Genoese attacks on Catalan shipping.9 Louis succeeded, too,
in stirring up the old hornets nest in Navarre by encouraging the count of Foix
to claim his inheritance there without awaiting his father-in-laws much-
delayed demise. Covering himself with the pretext of regaining Navarrese lands
usurped by Enrique IV, Gaston swept unresisted through the mountain king-
dom and on into Castile where he seized the town of Calahorra as a bargaining
counter. It proved a foolhardy venture for he immediately became mired in
fruitless dealings with both parties in Castiles civil war. Juan raged impotently
at what seemed a re-enactment of Charles of Vianas deance but any armed
response was out of the question when a French army might at any moment
irrupt into Catalonia; he could do no more than keep a distant watch on
Navarre from the town of Alcaiz where he was engaged with the Cortes
of Aragon.10
The French did not, however, immediately sweep across the Pyrenees. Ren,
deciding that his days as a soldier were long past, had delegated the responsib-
ilities of command in Catalonia to his son Jean of Calabria11 with the title of
locumtenens generalis, traditionally bestowed on the monarchs eldest son. But
Jean was busy serving Louis in the pacication of northern France and would

6 7
Hillgarth, The Spanish Kingdoms, ii. 293. Vicens Vives, Juan II, 31214.
8
Louis had forbidden it when Pedro accepted the crown, not to please Juan but because he was
mortally offended by the Portuguese incursion into what he chose to regard as his own sphere of
inuence.
9
If the Genoese did cease hostilities against Catalan vessels they continued to put themselves at
Juans service: in Dec. 1466 Genoese galleys were transporting a great bombard and other royalist
artillery to the Empord. Coll Juli, Juana Enriquez, ii. 166.
10
Zurita, Anales, xviii, p. viii. Enrquez del Castillo, Crnica, ch. 83.
11
The title duke of Calabria was bestowed on the heir to the Neapolitan throne; Jean bore it by
virtue of his fathers claim to that throne.
180 War, Civil and Foreign
not repeat Pedros imprudence in abandoning a lord on whose favour hung the
success of his own enterprise. To reassure the Catalans that succour was indeed
at hand it accordingly became necessary to appoint some other commander
to lead the promised expeditionary force. The choice fell upon Bollo del
Giudice, a minor Neapolitan noble who had long ago thrown in his lot with the
Angevin cause in his homeland; he had fought for Ren against Alfonso, ed
into exile in 1442, followed Jean of Calabria in his war against Ferrante, and
returned with him to renewed exile in 1464. In the interval Ren had rewarded
his loyalty with the ofces of counsellor and chamberlain. Hardly a high-
prole champion of the Angevin cause! Rens military preparations were
equally unimpressive: the end of the year saw del Giudice still in Perpignan
organizing a modest force of 140 lances110 of them furnished by the king of
France, only 30 by the would-be king of Aragon.
Taking advantage of this unexpected breathing-space, Juan sought to con-
solidate his position in northern Catalonia with the hope of holding the French
at the Pyrenees. His forces, led by his indomitable queen and the Infante
Enrique, took their leave of him at Els Prats de Rei at the end of September,
pushed on rapidly north-eastwards through Olot, and within a week had taken
Besal and Bascara. Many other towns prudently switched allegiance to the
side currently wielding the sword in their neighbourhood. Sweeping on
towards the coast, Juana paused at Sant Mori on 15 October to summon cler-
ics, nobles, knights, and commoners to meet her on 26 October, wherever she
might be, in order to discuss the pacication of the region. At this point her
condence was manifestly running high; and justiably so it seemed when on
24 October the conquest of San Pere Pescador brought her army to its goal, the
sea. There they were joined by a galley squadron in which the queen embarked
in pursuit of her next objective, the port of Roses. Don Enrique led the attack
launched on 7 November against determined resistance. In erce ghting
around the bridge which led across the marshes to the town Enrique, Pere de
Rocabert, and other royalist leaders were badly wounded. With the attack
repulsed, several bombards out of action, and news of an approaching enemy
eet, Juana gave the order to retire upon San Pere Pescador, losing in the pro-
cess men and baggage, as well as the ush of victory. None the less she talked of
renewing the attack when reinforcements of men and artillery should arrive by
sea from Tarragona.12 In the mean time she pressed ahead with the parliament
which gathered initially in San Pere (a large proportion of its members were

12
For this campaign see Coll Juli, Doa Juana Enrquez, ii. 15568.
 In Extremis, France 181
already with her in a military capacity), then, late in November, transferred to
Sant Jordi Desvalls, comfortably closer to Girona. Of its deliberations and con-
clusions no record survives. It manifestly failed to breathe new life into the
campaign to secure the Empord and mountain passes against the Angevins.
Still less was there hope of repelling the French, should Louis XI throw his mil-
itary power into the scale. Reports that he had denounced his treaty with Juan
reached the queen in mid-November; by the end of the month all doubt had
vanished, along with any hope of further operations towards the Pyrenees.13 All
Juana could do was attempt to put loyal towns in some state to resist attacka
fruitless effort given a lack of funds and the destruction already inicted on
their walls by passing armiesand retire herself into the Girona redoubt.
There she remained a bare two months until news came that del Giudice had
at last set his army in motion and crossed the Pyrenees. On 23 January she
abandoned Girona, so avoiding the danger of becoming once again, as in 1462,
a hostage to the fortunes of war. On 1 February del Giudice entered Castell
dEmpries; three weeks later a leisurely, unopposed march brought him to
Barcelona.
Although starred with initial successes, the autumn campaign in Empries
had ultimately failed to check, or even delay, the French advance; men and
money had melted away. Equally unsuccessful was an attempt to strike at the
heart of rebellion through a rising in Barcelona; the aborted plot led only to
a further proscription of those suspected of sympathy with the repudiated
dynasty, among them the counsellor Francesc Sescortes who was executed on a
charge of treason.14
Three months later Jean of Calabria, a handsome gure brimming with
condence, but already 50 years of age, followed del Giudice across the moun-
tains, determined to make his mark as locumtenens and saviour of the Catalan
cause with a spectacular victory. Having taken Banyoles and Cervi de Ter, he
advanced upon his chosen target, Girona, nerve-centre and symbol of royalism
in northern Catalonia. On 21 May 1467 that city found itself yet again under
siege. And yet again expectations that it would speedily fall to the assailants
were confounded. Pere de Rocabert, vigorously supported by the bishop, Joan
13
The Aragonese monarchs none the less clung to the hope that an open breach with France might
be avoided. To that end Juana gave orders, in Jan. 1467, for the return of booty seized from lands held
for Louis in Cerdagne: the king and ourselves have ordered that for the present no war or any manner
of action should be taken against lands which are held by the King of France. (. . . lo dit senyor Rey
e nos havem proveyt e manat no esser al present encara feta guerra ni novitat alguna a les terres que.s
tenen per lo rey de Frana.) Coll Juli, Doa Juana Enriquez, ii. 421.
14
Vicens Vives, Juan II, 319.
182 War, Civil and Foreign
Margarit, displayed his customary skill and tenacity in holding the enemy at
bay for three months.15 Jeans problem was that he had come with forces wholly
inadequate to the task before him. Whereas the Catalans were counting upon
formidable French legions paid by the duke of Anjou and the king of France,
Jean, like previous paladins in the separatists cause, was expecting them to
nance their own salvation. Before reaching Girona he had proposed engaging
the services of the count of Armagnac with a formidable host of 400 lances,
1,000 archers, and 2,000 foot soldiers; Barcelona would have to foot a bill run-
ning to 12,000 francs. The city bit the bullet, agreeing to raise the money by an
issue of annuities, only to discover that it could no longer ll its coffers by that
means. A few days later it could not even nd the cash to pay seventy-ve horse-
men to defend the Llobregat at its very gates.16 The duke of Calabria had no
better success in a later, and much more modest, bid for 300 cavalry needed for
the siege of Girona. All Barcelona could supply was a great bombard, some
smaller pieces of artillery, and rearms with the powder to re them. It also
offered, in place of the cavalry, 500 infantry recruited locally and paid for one
month.17 That offer Jean promptly rejected on the grounds that peasants and
people of the towns and cities are quite useless in warfare, and when they are
captured they pay excessive ransoms; he proposed instead that he be given the
money to hire 200 seasoned foot soldiers.18 Once more he gained consent but
not the cash; his messenger, the abbot of Ripoll, was told to explain how
difcult it was for the municipal bank to disburse that amount of money.
By mid-August he had so few infantry left in his camp that the council of
Barcelona proposed sending its veguer into the countryside to call to arms
more of those useless peasants. Little wonder that Jean of Calabria was neither
able to take Girona or prevent the approach of a relieving army accompanied
by a rival primogenitus, the infante Fernando. A two-week march from Els
Prats del Rei through the mountains of central Catalonia had brought the
prince and his thousand horse to Salt on the outskirts of Girona. There on
16 August he was greeted by Rocabert and Bishop Margarit, and by the

15
Miralles (Dietari, 323) records that in July Rocabert mounted a sortie which caused heavy losses
in the French camp, and in that same month ambushed a large supply train dispatched from
Barcelona.
16
AHB, Consell de Cent II, Registre de Deliberacions, 18, fos. 1314, 1415 May 1467.
17
The money to pay them was to be raised by the sale of wheat from municipal granaries. In order
to deceive the enemy into thinking that a much larger force was being raised, it was proposed to hold
musters of the same ve hundred on two successive days. Ibid., fo. 29, 10 July 1467.
18
. . . los pagesos e poblats en les ciutats e villes son molt inutils ales armes e quant son presos
paguen extrems rescats. Ibid., fo. 35, 26 July 1467.
 In Extremis, France 183
spectacle of an abandoned enemy camp. Jean of Calabria had already taken
himself off in the direction of Barcelona, reaching Hostalric on 21 August and
thence by sea the capital.
However brave a face Barcelona might show with illuminations and festivit-
ies, it could not be disguised that the long-awaited champion had arrived with
a pitifully small following and no great victory to his credit. He had, he claimed
unconvincingly, left the bulk of his men to defend the Empord through which
his brother-in-law Ferry de Lorraine, count of Vaudemont, would very soon
lead a much greater force furnished by the king of France. To disguise his pres-
ent deciency and make a show on his formal entry, the city fathers called on
the guilds to turn out a respectable array of armed men who would march in his
train. And so concerned were they that enemy bands marauding in the vicinity
might do him some mischief while he waited outside the walls for the cere-
monies to be made ready that they waived protocol to get him safely within the
city without any ceremony whatsoever. It therefore became necessary for Jean
to make a second, formal, entry on 2 September when in the Plaa del Born he
swore, in his fathers name, to observe and defend the laws and liberties of
Barcelona.19
In the opposing camp hopes ran high that Louis might not, after all, give the
Angevins anything more than token assistance. Juan had spent the last months
of 1466 in Aragon observing Gaston de Foixs Navarrese escapade run into
the sands and grooming Fernando for his destiny. The infante had celebrated
his coming of age at his fourteenth birthday on 10 March 1466 and took his
rst steps into regal responsibility the following October when, before the
Aragonese Cortes assembled in Zaragoza, Juan invested him with the powers of
locumtenens generalis. In that capacity he might exercise any royal function
which his father chose to delegate; he had become the blind kings eyes.
Together they returned to Catalonia in January 1467 to prepare against the
expected French invasion. Being ill-provided with men and money, they had
rst to seek the means of waging war. A Catalan parliament assembled in
Tarragona during March obliged with an offer of 300 horse nanced by an
annual tax of 20 sous on every hearth. Valencia proved less accommodating: its
Corts, when the king closed it on 20 June 1467, had still not agreed on a sub-
vention; its towns and citizens, individually solicited, professed a desire to help,
but didnt know how.20 Despite that show of reluctance, at the close of August

19
Duran i Sanpere, Llibre de les solemnitats, 28693.
20
. . . mas no sabien com, ni en quina manera. Miralles, Dietari, 324.
184 War, Civil and Foreign
Juan was able to embark for Tarragona with a large sum raised from donations
and borrowings against crown revenues. Castilian grandeesmost especially
the archbishop of Toledo, the admiral, and the marquis of Villenawho were
backing Alfonso against Enrique in their contest for the throne, were
accounted another likely source of military assistance. Those nobles had
proposed, and Juan had accepted, a double marriage designed to cement their
fortunes to those of Aragon: the Aragonese princess Juana should marry
Alfonso while Fernando married Beatriz Pacheco, Villenas daughter. On
1 May 1467 Fernando dutifully assented, whereupon Pierres de Peralta, con-
stable of Navarre, was dispatched to Castile to conclude both the marriages and
drum up aid against the French. For his part Juan still nursed the ambition of
marrying his heir to the Princess Isabel, and was therefore not disappointed
when Villena found it expedient to withdraw his daughter from the marriage
eld. But he was frustrated in his hopes of winning Castilian help against the
French because both parties in the fratricidal conict within Castile spent the
summer gathering all their forces for a show-down that came with the bloody
battle of Olmedo on 20 August.21 The outcome was a defeat for Juans allies and
hence an end to hopes that they might come to his rescue. Salvation came
instead from his own subjects. To the contributions extracted from Catalonia
and Valencia was added that granted by the Cortes of Aragon presided over by
Queen Juana. Despite the ravages of breast cancer which had rst manifested
itself early in the civil war, Juana took over direction of the assembly when her
husband departed for Catalonia and summoned all her reserves of energy and
political skill to cajole it into paying for a cavalry force of 500 men for nine
months; the money was to be raised by a tax on bread and meat. Command of
its host the Cortes entrusted to the kings most experienced captains, the arch-
bishop of Zaragoza, the castellan of Amposta, and the governor of Aragon.
Queen and Cortes concluded the business on 23 May, just as the Angevin jaws
closed upon Girona. By 31 July Juana was able to inform the city that her son
was bringing an army to its relief. Nor was that the only service rendered to her
husband by Juana in the summer of 1467. From Zaragoza she travelled to Ejea
de los Caballeros in order to meet her step-daughter Leonor, wife of Gaston de
Foix. Together they hammered out a pact which guaranteed the Navarrese
succession to Leonor, thereby enabling Gaston to extricate himself without loss
of face from an embarrassing situation in that kingdom and Castile.22 Their

21
Zurita, Anales, XVIII, x. Martn, Enrique IV, ch. 5. Surez Fernndez, Los Trastmara, 2002.
22
Coll Juli, Doa Juana Enriquez, ii. 1928.
 In Extremis, France 185
understanding was consolidated the following year when Gastons eldest son
paid a visit to Zaragoza. Although the count tried to preserve his credit with
Louis XI by pretending that his wife and son had acted on their own initiative,
no one was deceived: Juan had escaped a potentially ruinous distraction.
Although modest in numbers, the royal host was able to exploit its August
success in breaking the Angevin siege of Girona with further victories in the
Empord. The strategy aimed, as in the campaign of the previous autumn,
at cutting enemy lines of communication with France. The key town on
that route, Castell dEmpries, was stormed; others, notably Verges and La
Tallada, opened their gates without resistance. In little more than a month,
most of the territory lost to Pedro the previous autumn had been brought back
to a nominal allegiance; nominal because men could not be spared to garrison
it effectively. Only by winning hearts and minds could military success in the
region be transformed into genuine support for the royalist cause. With that
goal in mind, Juan, accompanied by his sons the archbishop of Zaragoza and
the master of Calatrava, sailed northwards from Tarragona in October to join
Fernando. With all three he made immediately for Girona, the city which
throughout the war had played a critical part in sustaining his foothold in
northern Catalonia. He made his entrance on 27 October, and the next day in
the cathedral swore to respect Gironas laws and liberties, the practice he had
been at pains to follow in other major towns. In a far more substantial gesture,
designed to answer the grievances and ensure the none-too-certain loyalty of
the civil authorities, he sacriced the unpopular governor Rocabert, replacing
him with his son Alfonso, master of Calatrava. In effect control of Girona had
been handed over to the Margarit clan and various civil factions, for it was cer-
tain that the nominal governor would soon be required in other elds.23
Even before the king made his appearance in the northern theatre of war,
opinion abroad was coming to the conclusion that he had successfully weath-
ered the unimpressive Angevin storm. The Milanese ambassador to the French
court reported on 15 October that Jean of Calabria had achieved nothing of
importance, that the king of Aragon had the upper hand, and that domestic
troubles would soon oblige Louis XI to withdraw his support from the
Angevins.24 Jean, it was true, had conspicuously failed to coax Barcelona into
furnishing any troops to defend the Empord, perhaps because in an address to
the Council of a Hundred on 11 September he had rashly asserted that the
23
For Rocaberts unpopularity see Sobrequs i Vidal, La guerra civil, ii. 824. In Oct. 1469 he
made a comeback as deputy to the captain-general in the Empord.
24
Calmette, La Question des Pyrnes, 156.
186 War, Civil and Foreign
region was secure.25 More to the point, the Catalans had expected the money
for the promised succour to come from the treasuries of France and Anjou, not
from their own exhausted coffers. They went so far as to sanction the issue of
bonds to the value of 3,000 against new taxes on cloth and shipbuilding, but
threw the onus of nding takers upon the duke; he soon found there were
none.26 Frustrated in that direction, Jean turned in October to the device of a
general mobilization under Princeps Namque (the state in danger) although it
sat ill with his earlier assertions that the north was secure. Feelings ran very high
when he exempted the two lower orders of citizens from the summons and
insisted that the rst two orders must either serve or purchase exemption.
Vehement objections that he was violating all precedent led to the usual pecu-
niary compromise whereby Barcelona handed over a sum of 3,200 orins in
discharge of its obligations.27 With that money Jean was at last able to hire a
body of seasoned men for a campaign in the Empord. These transactions
soured still further relations which had been none too harmonious since Jeans
arrival. When told that the Council could not consider his business because
several members were ill, he replied that he would give them the medicine they
needed and other rather caustic remarks.28 On a more sombre note, the
Valencian diarist records that he had Franc Desvalls, chief nancial ofcer of
the city, and four other notables of Barcelona executed on 10 October on a
charge that they had corresponded with Juan.29
The Milanese ambassadors prognostications might, therefore, have proved
correct had his third player, Louis XI, not acted contrary to expectation by
deciding to dispatch Jean V, count of Armagnac, into Catalonia at his own
expense. Having so publicly pledged his support for the Angevin enterprise,
Louis could not let it end in swift, ignominious failure with no nger raised
in its defence. With the count went Rens son-in-law, Ferry, count of
Vaudemont, leading an army of 400 lances. Exactly when they entered
Catalonia is unsure but it probably happened early in November 1467 and was

25
AHB, Consell de Cent II, Deliberacions, 18, fo. 47.
26
Ibid., fos. 47 and 52, 28 Sept. 1467. The nancial problem was compounded by the fact that the
city of Barcelona and the principality recruited and paid separate armed forces; this led to endless
wrangles over who should pay for what. In reality few other towns still loyal to the rebel cause were in
a state to contribute anything.
27
Ibid., fo. 63, 29 Oct. 1467. According to Vicens Vives ( Juan II, 319), it was their opposition to
this measure which led to the arrest of Sescortes and the jurist Estopiny.
28
. . . que ells los donaria la medicina que havien necessaria e altres paraules algun tant punyents.
AHB, Consell de Cent II, Deliberacions, 18, fo. 58 (18 Oct. 1467).
29
Miralles, Dietari, 325.
 In Extremis, France 187
almost certainly the reason for Juans withdrawal from Girona to the little port
of Sant Mart dEmpries, a way of escape should need arise.30 No one doubted
that war-torn Girona would be the invaders prime objective. It therefore
became imperative to bolster its defences against yet another siege with men,
arms, and foodstuffs. All available supplies were accordingly assembled at Sant
Mart under the kings direction, and on 21 November 1467 the convoy began
its journey towards Girona escorted by the larger part of the royal army under
Fernandos command. It had progressed barely two miles towards the village of
Viladamat when it was assailed by the combined might of Armagnac and the
duke of Calabria. In the ensuing combat Fernandos forces suffered a total rout;
large numbers of the rank and le were killed and many of its captains were
taken prisoner. Among these captives were some of the most notable royalists:
the master of Montesa, the castellan of Amposta, the son of the justicia of
Aragon, Rebolledo, and Pere Vaca. The prince himself, narrowly escaping their
fate, managed to ee to the coast and the safety of the galleys. So perilous did
they judge their situation in the aftermath of that defeat that Juan and his son
wasted no time in boarding their galleys and abandoning the Empord. The
castellan of Amposta and the son of the justicia later contrived to escape their
captors. The other prisoners of note were led in triumph through the streets of
Barcelona festively decorated in celebration of this rare and seemingly tide-
turning success.31 Calaf had been avenged.
When the fugitive king and prince stepped ashore at Tarragona they found
Queen Juana in the last stages of her fatal illness.32 And there they passed their
last Christmas feast together under the melancholy pall that had enveloped
their lives and fortunes. Shortly afterwards, on 13 February 1468, Juan lost the
cherished companion who had sustained him through so many years of tribu-
lation. Now, if ever, one might have expected that tough old war-horsebereft
of sight, wife, and threatened by the might of Franceto have lost heart. Had
Louis XI at this juncture given Anjou his wholehearted backing, Catalonia
might well have been irretrievably lost. Instead, he seemed more interested in

30
On 20 Nov. Queen Juana ordered the authorities of Montblanc to gather the population of
indefensible places, together with their food supplies and livestock, into fortied towns because news
had come that the count of Armagnac had entered Catalonia and was advancing in that direction. Coll
Juli, Doa Juana Enriquez, ii. 430.
31
Vicens Vives, Fernando II, 18890. In Dec. 1467 negotiations were under-way to exchange the
master of Montesa for Bernat Gilabert, baron of Crulles, and a ransom of 1,000 orins. Rebolledo,
together with his son and nephew, had to wait until Apr. 1468 before they were exchanged for the
viscount of Rocabert and others held prisoner in Xativa.
32
The cancer had spread from the breast to the mouth and throat.
188 War, Civil and Foreign
keeping the conict alive than in ensuring outright victory for his protg.
Before the victorious count of Armagnac could fall upon Girona he found him-
self recalled to France in the winter of 1467, leaving behind Vaudemont with
no more than a hundred lances. Worse still, in the following spring Louis sum-
moned Jean of Calabria himself to France on the pretext that he was needed to
negotiate with the duke of Brittany who had reputedly declared that he would
parley with no one else. Jean quibbled, but eventuallyat the end of July
1468had to set out for France leaving Vaudemont in command; he could
not afford to disobey the one on whose will, or whim, rested the fate of the
Angevin enterprise. Some have detected Juans hand in a turn of fortune so
opportune for himself; certainly he was in contact with Franois II of Brittany
through the Foix family.33 The Catalans themselves were in no position to
make good the decit of men and money created by Louiss complete disregard
of his pledges to Anjou; raising a militia in the autumn of 1467 appears to have
exhausted their extenuated resources and led within a few months (February
1468) to the collapse of that icon of Catalan commercial power, Barcelonas
municipal bank (the Taula de Canvi).34 All therefore depended upon French
money and manpower which at this crucial moment were not forthcoming on
the scale needed to break Juans power and spirit.
Even as the queen lay dying, Juan had sent Fernando in her place to bargain
with the Cortes in Zaragoza for further military subsidies. Playing upon gen-
uine public grief for his mother, the prince extracted from the Aragonese a
promise to abandon their feuding, at least until the war had ended,35 and to
grant the proceeds of the wine and bread duty. Furthermore they sent an emis-
sary to Valencia urging that kingdom to follow the Aragonese example in aid-
ing the king against his enemies. In Tarragona he borrowed and begged what
he could; not soon enough to save the isolated fortress of Castell dEmpries
from surrendering to Jean of Calabria on 17 April after ve months stout re-
sistance, but in time to put the master of Calatrava into the eld against
Vaudemonts French who were besieging Sant Joan de les Abadesses. In an
engagement fought on 23 May they were driven off with heavy losses. Royalist
propaganda trumpeted this action as a famous victory to be celebrated with
33
Franois was married to Gastons sister, Marguerite de Foix.
34
A. M. Adroer i Tasis and G. Feliu i Montfort, Histria de la Taula de Canvi de Barcelona
(Barcelona: Caixa de Barcelona, 1989), 36 et seq. In Sept. 1467 Jean had promised to do all in his
power to sustain the tottering Taula. AHB, Consell de Cent II, Deliberacions 18, fo. 47. On 18 Feb.
1468 the Council issued an ordinance for its reform. Ibid., fo. 90.
35
Despite that undertaking, the factions were again at one anothers throats before two years had
elapsed.
 In Extremis, France 189
processions and services of thanksgiving; bonres blazed across the Aragonese
Mediterranean from the Balearics to the Bay of Naples.
Immediately afterwards Juan delivered another stroke in his political battle
with Ren by proclaiming Fernando king of Sicily, sharing the sovereignty of
that kingdom with his father. The rooted desire of the Sicilians to have their
own king had led the viceroy (Lope Ximnez de Urrea), locked in negotiations
with the island parliament for a subsidy urgently awaited by Juan, to recom-
mend that move. Juan assented, partly to gratify the Sicilians, partly to confer
greater status on the youth who, it seemed, must very soon succeed him, and
partly to render more hollow those pretensions to the Sicilian crown which
Ren continued to maintain among his titles. On 19 June, amid great pomp,
Fernandos coronation as king of Sicily was celebrated in Zaragoza cathedral. In
practice Juan had no intention of heaping new responsibilities on the young
shoulders of an heir already loaded with a multiplicity of burdens; the mach-
inery of government in Sicily would continue to function as before, under
his own ultimate direction. What mattered was the impact in the realm of
international politics.36
Bolstered by his new title and a forced maturityhe was now a battle-
hardened veteran of sixteen yearsFernando left Zaragoza, accompanied by
an experienced body of advisers, to establish his headquarters in Trrega. Once
there, his counsellors determined the army should wait to see what move might
be made by the forces Jean of Calabria was assembling in Hostalric. Should
they strike northwards, as was bruited, against the Infante Alfonso (the master
of Calatrava), Fernando would march through the mountains to support his
brother; otherwise he might employ his men in mopping up centres of resist-
ance in the Urgell region; or elseand this was the tactic favoured by Juan
he might advance towards Barcelona in the hope of encouraging a rising in that
city. The belief, nurtured since the conict began, that Juan commanded the
secret loyalty of large numbers in the capital, had never lacked foundation, as
evidenced by the harsh measures repeatedly decreed against those suspected of
treachery. Now it had greater substance than ever before: the so-called mas-
carats (the masked ones) were showing their faces with increasing boldness,
even within the Consell de Cent where opposition to the war had begun to nd
a voice. Terror no longer sufced to stie dissent.
In the event, the Barcelona strategy had to be abandoned because in July
Jean led his army towards the Empord so that it might reinforce the mauled

36
Vicens Vives, Fernando el Catolico, ch. 5.
190 War, Civil and Foreign
ranks of Vaudemont while he, in obedience to Louiss command, withdrew to
France. In response, Juan, who despite age and inrmity still insisted on exer-
cising overall control of strategy, directed Fernando to go in pursuit, either by
way of Vic, one of the few major strongholds still under enemy control, or by
the road passing through Cardona. On the advice of his council, Fernando
opted for the Cardona route, but determined rst to secure his line of commu-
nication by dislodging garrisons of Portuguese mercenaries from the castles at
Concabella and Sister, and by posting cavalry detachments in Calaf and Prats
de Rei to contain other enemy garrisons. Prudence alone had not dictated such
caution; the army was bogged down by a desperate lack of money. According
to Zurita, Fernando was unable to pay his artillery men, foot soldiers, and
scouts or meet the necessary petty expenses of war.37 In straits such as these the
princes war council declined to take responsibility for any move which might
lead to another Viladamat; direction, they insisted, must come from the king.
Fortunately for Juan, the enemy at that moment was in no better shape, but
the danger remained that the duke of Calabria might soon return from France
with substantial reinforcements. Alfonso, master of Calatrava, became so
apprehensive of nding himself trapped in the Empord should the duke reap-
pear with a much superior force that he sought leave to resign his command.38
Acutely aware that he lacked the means to wage war effectively, Juan was mean-
while struggling to extract from an Aragonese Cortes, which had been sitting
in Zaragoza since 1466, a pledge to maintain 500 cavalry over a long period.
Should they consent, he intended to convoke other cortes in Valencia in the
hope of winning from them another 300. All he could do immediately was to
send Fernando the newly liberated master of Montesa and castellan of Amposta
in order that they might lend the weight of their experience to his council.
Throughout August the king of Sicily, the title now used by Fernando,
moved about between Trrega, Cervera, and Lleida, awaiting developments in
the Empord and supervising the destruction of fortications in nearby places
seized from the enemy. When, by the end of that month, it had become clear
that Jean was not about to lead a formidable host over the frontier, Fernando at
last began his march to Cardona. There on 13 September he held discussions
with his father, as a result of which he pushed on rapidly to Berga and took the
town by storm on 17 September. With equal dispatch he then beat a retreat,

37
Zurita, Anales, XVIII, xvii. Vicens Vives, Fernando II, 2047.
38
He was replaced as captain-general of the province, apparently on Fernandos recommendation,
by Louis de Beaumont, count of Lerin and constable of Navarre. Louis had recently married Juans
illegitimate daughter Leonor, another step in the kings endeavour to settle Navarre.
 In Extremis, France 191
rst to Cardona and from there to Cervera. Reports were coming of a massive
concentration of French troops in Roussillon intended to overwhelm Girona;
every man, every weapon Juan possessed would be required to save it.
Cries for help from that city, left to subsist on its own resources since the
wreck of the relief convoy at Vilademat the previous November, had grown
increasingly strident during the summer. In the mountains to the west,
Verntallat held his own, but had little if any food to spare for the needs of
Girona whose fate therefore came to depend upon succour delivered from far
aeld, whether by land or sea. A lack of resources having, as we have seen, ruled
out any major foray towards the Empord, efforts were concentrated on organ-
izing other forms of relief. From Lleida, at the end of August, Juan ordered
pay to be given to any Catalans possessing arms and horses who might be will-
ing to escort a mule train to the beleaguered city, and, once there, protect its
vital farmland. That anything came of this plan may be doubted. Better success
attended another attempt set in train when the king returned to Zaragoza in
September. It involved sending Rodrigo de Bobadilla with a hundred horse to
reinforce the Girona garrison. Bobadilla did get through after defeating an
enemy force that tried to bar his way, but it does not appear that he brought any
supplies, so his arrival only exacerbated the citys food problem. Meanwhile
attempts to deliver relief from the sea were being made by four galleys sent to
Juans aid by his nephew, King Ferrante of Naples. Under their commander
Bernat de Vilamari, they left Tarragona on 7 September, sailed to the Medes
islands off LEstartit and remained there for a month endeavouring to get food
to Girona in the face of opposition from an enemy who occupied the interven-
ing territory. Zurita implies that they had little success.39 Had Rocabert still
commanded in Girona, the defence of that city would certainly have been con-
ducted in a more aggressive and imaginative manner and its supply problems
have been correspondingly eased. The master of Calatrava, Rocaberts nom-
inal successor, spent little time in Girona, and when he relinquished command
in the Emporda in September 1468, leadership in the city fell entirely into
Margarit hands. For all his other qualities, Bishop Joan Margarit, the head of
that clan, had no military skill, nor had his brother Bernat, titular captain of the
city. The likelihood that Girona would withstand another determined siege
looked increasingly remote.

39
Zurita, Anales, XVIII, xviii.
 16
The Castilian Marriage

The king of Aragon was well aware that he had earlier extricated himself from
a seemingly unavoidable and unequal contestwith the king of Castilenot
with arms but through domestic and international intrigue. That same strategy
he had already begun to deploy against the duke of Anjou and his backer, the
king of France. Just as he had encouraged a party of Castilian grandees in their
rebellion against Enrique IV, so he now sought alliance with the great peers of
France, notably the dukes of Burgundy and Brittany, who were bent on hum-
bling Louis XI. A formal treaty of alliance with Charles the Bold was to follow
on 22 February 1469. In the south of France similar hostility to the Valois was
inclining the counts of Armagnac and Foix more favourably towards Juan.
Further aeld Juan had little difculty in convincing Edward IV of England
that they had a mutual interest in thwarting Angevin ambition; a treaty to that
end was signed in London on 20 October 1468. Among the Italian states, the
king of Naples had needed no persuasion to furnish his kinsman with material
as well as diplomatic aid against a common foe; the duke of Milan remained
committed to the Aragonese dynasty in Naples, and hence benevolently neu-
tral towards Juan; even Florence responded favourably to formal notication of
Fernandos elevation to the Sicilian throne; Venice alone displayed an inclina-
tion to see in the Catalan rising a possible benet for its own Italian ambitions.1
While so much diplomatic activity ensured that the Angevins would receive
no foreign assistance, and that domestic turmoil would limit Louiss ability to
support Ren, it did not, Naples excepted, provide Juan with the means he
needed for outright victory. France had once furnished them, at a high price,
only to turn the tables at a crucial moment. Now he looked to Castile, not
solely as an immediate source of salvation, but as the kingdom where lay his
dynastic roots and ambition. If only the mastery over it, towards which he had
struggled all his life, could be won, the Crown of Aragon need fear no foe. He

1
Calmette, Louis XI, Jean II, 28793. Vicens Vives, Juan II, 33641.
 The Castilian Marriage 193
might go further still, and achieve a goal that had long tantalized his family:
take the crown of Castile from the senior branch, which had produced a cata-
strophic series of kings, into the resolute hands of the junior Trastmares.
Consistently this branch, the Antequeras, had kept its sights on that crown by
taking every opportunity to marry with those who wore it and their close kin;
most recently Juan had proposed marrying his daughter Juana to the Infante
Alfonso whom he was backing to oust Enrique from the Castilian throne. Also
he had repeatedly contemplated a marriage between Fernando and Isabel,
another possible successor to that throne. Other brides for Fernando were, it is
true, given serious consideration: Marie, daughter of the duke of Burgundy,
Beatriz Pacheco in 1467. But the whole scene suddenly changed when, on
5 July 1468, Alfonso of Castile expired in a town near vila after a very brief ill-
ness. The cause of death was probably an outbreak of plague in Arvalo, from
where Alfonso and his sister Isabel had ed at the end of June; gossip inevitably
hinted at poison. The result was to deprive the archbishop of Toledo and his
allies, Juan prominent among them, of the puppet king with whom they had
been undermining Enrique. In response, having installed Isabel in vila, they
proclaimed her princess of Castile; elsewherein Seville, Jerez, and Cordoba
other leaders of the anti-Enrique coalition declared her to be the legitimate
heiress to the crown. It took a meeting of all the grandees of that party, held
in August, to agree on a common strategy: together with Isabel they would
assemble in Cebreros ready to hammer out an agreement on the succession
(favourable, of course, to Isabel) with Enrique and his partisans gathered in
nearby Cadahalso. After much further parleying, brother and sister nally
came face to face, on 19 September, at Los Toros de Guisando, an inn halfway
between their encampments, to ratify an accord which guaranteed the crown
to Enrique for the rest of his life and to Isabel thereafter.2
Immediately the news of Alfonsos death reached Juan in Zaragoza, he had
concluded that Isabel now held the key to the Castilian crown, and that he
must act swiftly to persuade the power-brokers around her to make Fernando
her husband. After a hasty consultation with his son, he dispatched Pierres de
Peralta, by now a seasoned agent in these matrimonial affairs, to offer the
Castilian prelates and grandees any titles to land and revenues he might possess

2
De Valera, Memorial, ch. 42. Enrquez del Castillo, Crnica, 31011. Martn, Enrique IV, pt 3.
Surez Fernndez, Los Trastmara, 2046. Enriques authority within Castile was, at this stage, rein-
forced by the death of his rival, Alfonso, and the military support of the towns organized through the
Hermandades (Brotherhoods).
194 War, Civil and Foreign
in their kingdom in return for their favour in this match. On his arrival in
Castile, Peralta found that Enrique and Isabel had both been spirited away by
the Marquis of Villena, Juan Pacheco, to his stronghold of Ocaa.3 Pachecos
purpose was to frustrate the Antequera marriage, seen as a disaster for himself
and all those who had proted from the liquidation of the vast Antequera pat-
rimony; the means he proposed was a double Portuguese match, marrying
Isabel to Afonso, the widowed king of Portugal, and that kings heir, Joo, to
Juana la Beltraneja. Whatever the outcome of the Castilian succession crisis,
the kingdoms fortunes would thus be tied to Portugal, not Aragon. An
embassy led by the archbishop of Lisbon hastened to Ocaa to seal a pact that
satised not only Pacheco but the innate anti-Antequera sentiments of
Enrique.
Apprised of this menacing turn of events by the archbishop of Toledo,
Peralta made his way to Ocaa where he contrived some meetings with Isabel,
and, with the promise of glittering rewards, won over to his purposes two of
the most inuential among her small circle of advisers: Gonzalo Chacn, her
treasurer, and his nephew Gutierre de Crdenas, her maestresala. The papal
nuncio to the Castilian court was also secured by similar means. Through the
winter months these advocates of the Aragonese marriage had to contend with
the pressure exerted on Isabel by her brother and Pacheco. What nally deter-
mined her choice of husbands has been the subject of endless speculation
because hard evidence for it is wanting. Some have emphasized a romantic
angle: her preference for the youthful, comely Fernando as against two portly,
unprepossessing suitors more than twice her age.4 Others give weight to hard
political motives: a determination not to be spirited away from Castile and its
throne, coupled with a realization that none would prove doughtier champions
of her cause than the king of Aragon and his son. Sentiment and calculation
must both surely have swayed her. By January 1469 it had become clear to all
which way she inclined: Juans envoys wrote condently of success; the nuncio
stood ready to provide the necessary dispensation for a marriage of cousins; the
disillusioned Portuguese were heading home. In February Peralta carried to
Zaragoza the terms dictated by Isabel and her advisers. They appear one-sided

3
A meeting of the Castilian Cortes in Ocaa served as justication for their removal there.
4
In addition to the Portuguese king, another suitor acceptable to Enrique had appeared in the
unfortunate shape of Charles, duke of Guyenne, brother and heir to Louis XI. Even Richard of
Gloucester, brother of Edward IV, had briey entered the frame. Del Val Valdivieso, Isabel la Catlica,
489. Snchez-Parra, Crnica annima, 2613. Zurita, Anales, XVIII, xxxxi.
 The Castilian Marriage 195
in that they are concerned exclusively with dening the role of Fernando
as Isabels consort, and with the wholly unrealistic amounts of aid he was to
furnish in cash and arms. There was no reciprocal pledge of any Castilian assist-
ance to Aragon in its travails. But that mattered not at all to Juan; he was ready
to promise anything in return for the prize he had pursued all his lifethe
kingdom of Castile. On 5 March 1469 in Cervera Fernando signed the mar-
riage contract to which Juan gave his consent on 27 March, adding the proviso
that the undertakings demanded of him should only come into effect when
Isabel had regained her freedom.5
The light that dawned on his Castilian dreams had, at the same time, been
restored to the old kings eyes. While she lived his wife had opposed any
attempt to remove the cataracts, fearing it might irreparably harm his health.
After her death, increasing frustration with a handicap which rendered impos-
sible that tight control over affairs he had always enjoyed steeled him to endure
an operation. It was performed by a Jewish physician from Lleida, Cresques
Abiabar, who, on 11 September 1468 (a day selected as astrologically auspi-
cious) successfully restored the sight of the right eye. A delighted king then
insisted on having the same done to his other eye despite Abiabars objection
that more than a dozen years must pass before the heavens were again so propi-
tious. Under pressure the rabbi identied 3.30 p.m. on 12 October as the suit-
able moment for surgery which brought light back to the left eye. Astonished
contemporaries could only conclude that fortune did indeed favour this inde-
structible old warrior.6
Keeping one rekindled eye on the Pyrenees, where the Angevin might at any
moment reappear, the other on the unfolding drama in Castile, Juan passed an
anxious winter in Zaragoza. With the marriage contract concluded in March,
he could look with relief and immeasurable satisfaction on oneto him the
most importantside. Not everyone shared his euphoria: his counsellors and
the great men among his subjects viewed his apparent absorption in Castilian
business with patent and understandable disquiet: his extravagant proffers of
lands, revenues, and dignities within the Crown of Aragon as well as in Castile,
not only offended their patriotic sentiments, but seemed to betray indifference
to the plight of a country sucked dry of its wealth and menaced with imminent
invasion. From the treasurys well-nigh empty coffers he scraped, in May 1469,
what little he could nd in order that the archbishop of Toledo might spread it

5 6
Vicens Vives, Fernando II, 2429. Idem, Juan II, 3237. Zurita, Anales, XVIII, xviii.
196 War, Civil and Foreign
judiciously among waverers and the well-disposed.7 In their minds lurked, too,
the old fear that royal authority buttressed by the resources of Castile threat-
ened them with impotence. In the last resort Juan would probably have
sacriced Catalonia to his greater ambition, yet he was of a mettle that would
yield not a foot while he had the strength to resist. So, in the spring of 1469, in
concert with Fernando, he made what provision he could to meet the expected
French onslaught.
King Louis of France had been watching events in the Spanish kingdoms
with mounting concern; his cavalier treatment of Enrique had brought about
a dangerous combination of Castile and England (Treaty of Westminster,
September 1467); the betrothal of Fernando and Isabel now threatened to
destroy his Catalan ambitions and unite Castile and Aragon against France.
Belatedly recognizing his error in not having given Ren of Anjou and his son
the aid that might have brought the Catalan war to a swift conclusion, he now
mustered all his strained resources to dispatch the count of Dunois with 400
lances and 5,000 archers into the Empord. On 18 April 1469 Fernando, who
had spent the winter presiding over a Catalan parliament in Cervera, learnt
that the French had taken up positions around Girona. For months the city had
been complaining of a shortage of provisions which grew more desperate as
the French tightened their blockade. In response Fernando sent mule-trains,
escorted by 150 lances under command of the count of Prades, to provision
Olot, Castellfollit, Besal, and such fortresses as were still accessible in the
neighbourhood of Girona. Having accomplished that mission, the count had
orders to attempt to relieve the city through the most convenient gap in the
French lines. As with most armies of this age, the French had insufcient num-
bers to draw an unbroken cordon round a besieged place of any size but there
is no evidence that the count either attempted or succeeded in breaking
through. Meanwhile in Zaragoza, spurred on by his new-found sight, the king
was preparing to take the eld in person at the head of companies of cavalry
furnished by the Cortes of Aragon.8
All this activity came too late. Jean of Calabria, having made peace between
Louis XI and the duke of Brittany, returned to Catalonia hard on the heels of
7
A. de Palencia, Crnica de Enrique IV (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Espaoles, 1973), 2778.
De Valera, Memorial, ch. 48. Vicens Vives, Fernando II, 250. The money was carried to Castile by
Alonso de Palencia, a servant of the archbishop and a major chronicler of these times. With him went
Juans treasurer, Pedro de la Caballeria, who was to tryunsuccessfully as it provedto win over the
powerful Mendoza family.
8
The Infantes Enrique and Alfonso together with the Castellan of Amposta were also summoned
to join in this belated attempt to relieve Girona.
 The Castilian Marriage 197
Dunois. Together their strength was such that the royalist commanders would
venture no move without the promised reinforcements. On 1 June Girona
capitulated, not to the Angevin but to Dunois as lieutenant-general of the king
of France. First the jurats handed him the keys of the outer gates, then none
other than the Bishop Margarit delivered the keys of the fortress which had
so long and triumphantly withstood earlier sieges. Only later in the day, on
the cathedral steps, did Jean of Calabria receive the keys and possession of the
city from Dunois. Lack of food and the means of defence were the reasons
advanced by the Girona authorities for their rapid capitulation. They do not
explain the failure of the Margarits, to whom Juan had entrusted the city, to
garrison the fortress and put up some resistance from its walls. A biographer of
the bishop advances the hypothesis that the surrender had been planned
between Joan Margarit and the king at the time of the royal visit in 1468 as
a form of strategic withdrawal.9 That interpretation of events hardly accords
with our estimate of Juans character. More persuasive is the argument that
Louiss display of military might had convinced the Margarits that Catalonia,
like Roussillon and Cerdagne, were destined to fall to France, and that they
needed to accommodate themselves to the new regime if they were to preserve
their fortunes. They would have become still more convinced of the wisdom of
bowing before the prevailing wind when, soon after the fall of Girona, Tanguy
du Chtel, lieutenant-general of the French king in Perpignan, brought
another 500 lances to swell the already formidable invading force. One after
another key royalist strongholds in northern CataloniaCamprodon, Besal,
Olotfell before them. The duke of Calabria who returned to Barcelona on
17 June in the wake of these triumphs was a very different person from the sad
gure who had rst appeared there two years earlier.
Alongside this military onslaught upon Juan, the French king launched a
diplomatic offensive intended to wreck his rivals Castilian strategy. His agent
was the able, imperious cardinal of Albi, Jean Jouffroy, who achieved one goal
of the mission, a rupture of the Anglo-Castilian alliance and restoration of the
old bond between Castile and France, but failed in the otherto prevent
the marriage of Isabel to Fernando. Jouffroy met Enrique and his controller,
Beltrn de la Cueva, in Andalucia where they were endeavouring to bring
to heel the cities and nobles whose enthusiasm for Isabels cause had reached

9
Tate, Joan Margarit i Pau, 51. In evidence Tate cites a letter sent by Juan to the Neapolitan
ambassador in Sicily after Girona had been recovered in 1471. In that letter the king asserts that
Margarit had remained in the city after its surrender ab voluntat e ordinacio nostra. Vicens Vives
( Juan II, 331) suggests that the Margarits had been in touch with Angevin agents since early in 1468.
198 War, Civil and Foreign
dangerous levels.10 They undoubtedly knew of the contract signed with
Fernando and readily accepted the cardinals proposition that Isabel should be
betrothed instead to Louiss brother and heir, the duke of Guyenne; so might
she be removed from Castile and, with luck, from its throne. To pursue his mis-
sion further, Jouffroy had rst to nd and then persuade the intended bride. As
a precaution, before leaving Ocaa in May 1469, Enrique and Beltrn had
extracted from her an oath to do nothing new with respect to her marriage
during their absence. Oaths, they should have reected from their own experi-
ence, were of little force in great matters of state, and they weighed little with
Isabel whose rst concern, after xing her choice upon Fernando, was to escape
from Ocaa. That she contrived in August 1469 under the pretext of carrying
the body of her brother Alfonso from Arvalo for burial in vila. Denied
entrance to Arvalo by partisans of Enrique, she took refuge with her mother
in Madrigal, her birthplace, and it was there that the cardinal caught up with
her. The advantages of the French marriage he painted for her in the rosiest of
hues, Fernandos character and prospects in much darker tint.11 In brief reply
Isabel stressed only her duty to do whatever the laws of her country and the
honour of its crown might require. Frustrated the cardinal retired to France. A
few days later intercepted letters gave warning that Enrique intended to have
her detained, a threat soon followed by news that the archbishop of Seville was
coming with a large body of soldiers to ensure her arrest. The only hope of
escape lay in an appeal to her champions, the archbishop of Toledo and the
admiral of Castile. Outpacing his rival cleric, Toledo snatched Isabel away to
the comparative safety of Valladolid which she reached on 31 August. Urgently
she sent messengers to warn Fernando that he must come without delay
because the powerful opponents of their marriage would soon devise means
to forestall it.
Isabels emissaries found the king of Sicily in Zaragoza. The early months of
the summer he had spent with his army in its base at Cervera trying to organize
the relief of Girona. After the citys capitulation, engagements developed
between his forces and the advancing French; worsted in one of these encoun-
ters, Fernando again had a narrow escape from the eld. That incident con-
vinced Juan of the perils which threatened his son should he continue to cross
swords with the French. Nothing could better suit Louiss designs than to have
Fernando taken prisoner or killed; nothing could more effectively bring Juan
10
Enrquez del Castillo, Crnica, ch. 128. Seville had proclaimed her queen of Castile.
11
He doubtless knew that the rst two of Fernandos illegitimate offspring had been born in the
spring of 1469. Vicens Vives, Fernando II, 2078.
 The Castilian Marriage 199
to despair and wreck everything upon which he had set his heart. At a meeting
between father and son held in Cervera it was accordingly agreed that
Fernando should retire as far as possible from harms way, to Valencia. Taking
ship down the River Ebro, he reached the southern capital on 16 July, and
remained there until 11 September. The pretext put about for this sudden
withdrawal from the scene of war was that he needed to gather the dowry
promised to Isabel and redeem a fabulous ruby necklace, rumoured to be worth
40,000 orins, bequeathed him by his mother. Heavy borrowing secured some
cash (8,000 orins) and the necklace. Palencia then carried them in haste to
the archbishop of Toledo who in turn put them into Isabels hands when he
rescued her from Madrigal.
The king of Sicilys absence from Catalonia probably made little difference
to the military situation there. On the insurgent side the duke of Calabria was
faring somewhat better than his predecessors in his dealings with the powers of
Barcelona. Whereas earlier difculties had arisen mainly from contentions over
alleged Catalan failures to furnish the resources for war, the local contribution
to the military effort had now become relatively insignicant and the ability
of the insurgent leaders to exercise their cherished control over affairs corre-
spondingly diminished. With a weakened grip on the levers of power went a
growing anxiety as they saw their titular monarch, Ren, absorbed with his
French domains and French politics, his son increasingly the tool of the French
king. Dunoiss behaviour on the surrender of Girona gave ominous warning
that the whole of Catalonia might go the way of Roussillon and Cerdagne into
the maw of the French state. Such apprehensions swelled the ranks of dissid-
ents, prompting further purges and ight.12 The core of hard-liners signalled
their resolve to ght on by decreeing another levy of militia; a scant response
only served to emphasize the fact that military power, and hence the fate of
Catalonia, lay now wholly in French hands.
Through the summer of 1469 it seemed that French arms must prevail as the
tide of war moved relentlessly against Juan. Only at sea was he able to take the
initiative by harrying the coasts of Catalonia and Provence with a eet of
twenty-one galleys and six ships. On land the French seized place after place in
the Empord and around Vic; in the Pyrenees work was afoot to prepare roads
for the passage of more heavy artillery. Jean launched his own successful offen-
sive against those royalist positions which had menaced Barcelona. The

12
Among those who ed was Joan Bosc, a citizen who had played a prominent part in the early
days of the rising.
200 War, Civil and Foreign
autumn promised to be still more perilous for the king because pay for his
Aragonese contingents ran out on 6 October and that of those hired by the
Catalan parliament on 15 November. Only by the uncertain expedients of
selling towns, soliciting loans, and extorting money from those without legal
protection could he hope to nd the means of keeping an army on foot.
In the midst of these anxieties came news of Isabels ight to Valladolid,
news which brought Fernando post-haste from Valencia to Zaragoza. There
he learnt from Toledos emissaries, the ever-diligent Palencia and Guttiere
de Cardenas, that efforts to secure him a safe passage to his bride through
Mendoza territory had come to naught. Any attempt to pass unescorted ex-
posed him to certain danger among lords whose loyalty was to Enrique; delay
put Isabel and the whole enterprise at risk. Everything hung upon the decision
of Juan who was far away at Guissona wrestling with the worsening military
position in Catalonia. From that quarter came two suggestions: one imprac-
tical, given the urgency of the matter, that Fernando should make further efforts
to win over the count of Medinaceli and others of the Mendoza clan; one more
realistic, that he devise with his inner council a plan to get to Valladolid quickly
and without alerting his enemies. They duly elaborated a scheme whereby he
would venture into Castile in disguise and with only a handful of companions;
to cover his tracks it would be given out that he had to leave for Calatayud in
order to suppress a feud that had erupted there. Although the enterprise
appears to have red Fernandos imagination,13 it aroused in his father
profound misgivings, heightened by reports of cavalry movements on the
Castilian frontier. Only after a conference with Palencia and de Cardenas in
Lleida was Juan nally convinced that the risks must be accepted. With much
misgiving he wrote the letter that dispatched his son on a fateful journey.14
With his four companions in the guise of merchants, and himself dressed as
a carter, Fernando set out for Valladolid at the beginning of October. Once over
the frontier, they took a direct route, the road from Gomara to Burgo de Osma.
Nightfall on the rst day brought them to a village inn where they halted
for rest and a meal, with Fernando playing his role by serving at table. Another
two days and nights of travelling at the modest pace suited to their merchant

13
Palencia, who was present in Zaragoza, thought that the archbishop of Zaragoza, Fernandos
half-brother, and the most senior in his council, displayed overmuch enthusiasm for the scheme in the
expectation that any mishap might eventually put the crown of Aragon on his own head. Palencia,
Crnica, 292. De Valera, Memorial, ch. 50.
14
M. P. Snchez-Parra (ed.), Crnica annima de Enrique IV de Castilla 14541474, 2 vols.
(Madrid: Ediciones de la Torre, 1991), ii, ch. 14. Vicens Vives, Fernando II, 25860.
 The Castilian Marriage 201
character saw them reach Burgo at dusk on 6 October. There reassuring news
awaited them; quartered nearby lay the count of Trevio with 200 horse sent
by the archbishop of Toledo. But, still apprehensive of betrayal, the party main-
tained its disguise and tireless pace for another night and day until it gained
shelter in the castle of Gumiel and a festive welcome from the countess of
Castro. All concealment could now be dropped as on 9 October, escorted by
Trevio, Fernando made his way to Dueas, a fortress belonging to the arch-
bishops brother and situated a few miles from Valladolid, to await what Isabel
might advise.15
Galloping full tilt from Burgo, Cardenas and Palencia had gone ahead to
reassure the princess that her anc had come safely through the most danger-
ous stage of his journey. News that he had reached Dueas dispelled all her
fears. On 12 October she wrote to her brother Enrique announcing Fernandos
arrival and her xed resolve to marry him; the king, she insisted, need have no
fears for the peace of his realm. The same message went out to all the prelates,
nobles, and cities of Castile. Letters of similar tenor under Fernandos signature
were dispatched from Dueas. There remained some questions over the proto-
col that was to govern relations between the spouses, questions that threatened
to get out of hand. To settle them the archbishop of Toledo arranged a secret
meeting between the two on the night of 14 October, a meeting witnessed only
by himself and Fernandos four companions. All agreed that the marriage be
celebrated without delay because even within Valladolid there were many great
men opposed to it. Accordingly, on 18 October the archbishop conducted the
betrothal ceremony during which he read a papal bull granting dispensation
for marriage between cousins. The bull, allegedly issued by Pius II, was forged
for the occasion; Juan had been pressing Rome for the requisite document,
thus far in vain, and neither he nor his Castilian allies were prepared to see
the whole enterprise founder on such a technicality. On the following day,
19 October 1469, the marriage was celebrated and consummated.16
Four days later Guillen Snchez, one of Fernandos four companions,
brought the news to Juan, waiting in Zaragoza. Relief and rejoicing at the suc-
cessful outcome of so many years scheming mingled with cold reality: the king
of Aragon could harbour no illusion that this coup had put an end to his prob-
lems in Castile or, much less, in Catalonia. He had, in fact, compounded his
difculties in both directions, as other letters carried by Guillen Snchez made
15
Palencia, Crnica, 2924, and the Crnica annima (ch. 14) give accounts of this journey.
16
Palencia, Crnica, 296, and Crnica annima, ch. 16. The text of Isabels letter to her brother is
given by Enrquez del Castillo, Crnica, ch. 136.
202 War, Civil and Foreign
painfully evident. A council presided over by the archbishop on the eve of
Snchezs departure had resolved that Fernando must for one year maintain a
force of 1,000 cavalry to protect himself and Isabel. The cost, 40,000 orins,
would have to be met by Juan because the son had arrived penniless, and Isabel
had no money of her own; in addition, Juan was reminded, 100,000 orins of
the dowry remained undelivered, and Isabel wanted possession of the estates in
Sicily, Aragon, and Valencia traditionally assigned to a queen of Aragon.17 Any
hope that these impossible burdens might be offset by massive Castilian inter-
vention against the Catalan rebels was quickly dispelled by the prospect of
renewed civil war in the neighbouring kingdom. Enrique was hufly rejecting
every olive branch held out by the newly-weds; an enraged Juan Pacheco, mar-
quis of Villena, had begun to plan how Enriques disputed daughter, Juana,
might be re-established as a formidable rival to Isabel for the Castilian throne.
To that end he immediately set in train negotiations to marry the 8-year-old
Juana to that same duke of Guyenne whom Isabel had so brusquely rejected. A
resort to arms looked inevitable. Fernando and too many of Aragons scant
resources would be tied down in Castile.
Insurmountable though his difculties may have seemed in the autumn of
1469, Juan had some grounds for optimism. He was well-versed in the art of
manipulating the timing and manner of discharging the extravagant dowry set-
tlements commonly negotiated among European royalty. No one would have
expected punctual, or even eventual, delivery of everything promised in
Castile. On the home front, despite losing the Empord, he still controlled the
greater part of Catalonia whose representatives he was able to summon to a
general Cortes of all his realms in the Aragonese town of Monzn. Like the earl-
ier gathering in Cervera, such an assembly visibly rebutted the claims of the
Barcelona-based organs to speak for all Catalans. This was a theme which Juan
took up in a long and eloquent address to the opening session of the Cortes on
13 November. After a detailed rehearsal of events in Catalonia, he praised in
turn the loyalty of his kingdoms, coming lastly to the Catalans.
And what, O Catalans! should I say of you? Only that the perversity and faithlessness
of the rebels has not matched the loyalty and sincerity of those who, like yourselves,
have remained faithful to us. Not only have you spilled your blood and many a time
risked your lives for the safety of our state, but also, prising honour above everything,
you have sacriced your wealth, abandoned your patrimony, left your parents, your

17
Zurita, Anales, XVIII, xxvi. Among the other points in the letters delivered by Snchez was a
request that Juan use every means to obtain the genuine papal bull needed to validate the marriage.
 The Castilian Marriage 203
wives, your children. You have given us all the aid your means permit and we can
condently assert that there never has been, nor ever will be, any lord better served
by his vassals. With you we have gained Lleida, taken Cervera, reconquered Tortosa,
and nally recovered a great part of the principality. In you we have found delity as
vassals, help as friends, obedience as sons.

He went on to warn that rebel designs threatened them all with subjugation
to France.
Their arrogance has reached such a point that, not content with being dragged into an
iniquitous rebellion against us, they seek to impose masters on such notable kingdoms,
on such eminent persons as yourselves whose very servants are often more worthy than
they. Now, far from abandoning their plots, they are ceaselessly working to the end
that you, conquerors of so many nations, should be vanquished and subjected by the
French, your enemies of old, whose harsh and proud overlordship has never been tol-
erated by any people. They [sc. the French], certainly, remember the victories you have
won; they remember the blood spilt in the time of our forebears. To avenge it they are
already in arms, not only in our territory [sc. Catalonia], but very close to you.

Finally he appealed for the aid needed to avert these perils and put an end to
rebellion.
As for nding soldiers, there is no need to search, for assuredly, of all the nations on
earth, you are the most gifted in bearing arms. Likewise, we are amply supplied with
provisions. What we principally lack is money. It is a question of furnishing it in order
to hire troops and make a great effort, by sea as well as by land, to achieve the nal rout
of our enemies and the submission of those misguided vassals who have dared deny the
house of Aragon. The task is easy if we march ahead in unity; otherwise it is well-nigh
impossible.18

The fruit of his eloquence was a substantial aid, including a Catalan offer of
300 horse for four years and a general levy of one man for every ten families,19
but it matured only in May 1470 after several months of debate. This gathering
also saw a cautious step taken towards constitutional normality in Catalonia
when Saportellas one-man Generalitat was replaced by the traditional three
diputats chosen by lot; they took up residence in Lleida, another mark of royal
condence that the loyalty of once hostile cities could now be trusted.20

18
The full text of the speech, delivered in Castilian is in ACA, Cortes, 45, fo. 170 et seq. A French
version in Calmette, Louis XI, Jean II, 30413.
19
Cortiella i dena, Una ciutat catalana, 373. Measures to raise the levy were set in train in July
1470.
20
However, as a precaution, Saportella selected all the names entered in the ballot.
204 War, Civil and Foreign
An exceptionally severe winter, combined with empty war chests, had by this
time driven both sides to disband their armies. The very scale of the numerical
superiority enjoyed by the French put correspondingly greater strains on their
paymasters and provisioners. It nonetheless seemed inevitable that Louis XI
would renew his support for Anjou in the coming year so, as well as soliciting
nancial aid from his subjects, Juan took measures to strengthen his frontier
with France. The Pyrenean county of Ribagora, hitherto in the possession of
Fernando, he transferred in November to another, and in military skills, the
most able of his sons, Alfonso, master of Calatrava, who would be able to
attend in person to its defence. Developments on the international scene,
always prominent in Juans calculations, also cast some light into the domestic
gloom. In August an embassy to Naples had secured from Ferrante the promise
of two ships and 500 men. In October a treaty with Genoa put an end to that
republics naval support for the Catalans. In November the bishop of Sessa
departed on a mission to all the major states of Italy which, among other
benets, was eventually to cajole from Rome that vital bull of dispensation.
Juans anxieties over French intentions were shared, if from an opposite
viewpoint, by his Angevin antagonist. Would Louis XI continue to furnish and
fund the troops for another campaign in Catalonia? The omens were not reas-
suring. Tanguy du Chtels force had spent only a little time campaigning
before it was withdrawn to counter a rebellion by the count of Armagnac, a
rebellion to which the king of Aragon had readily lent a hand. Their period of
engagement having expired, Dunoiss men, too, had retired across the Pyrenees
in the late autumn, leaving Jean of Calabria with little more than a rag-tail force
of native militia. On 12 January 1470 he in turn crossed the Pyrenees to probe
Louiss intentions and seek help from his father in Provence, transferring his
powers to his cousin Jean de Lorraine, but leaving the conduct of affairs effec-
tively in the hands of the ever more eccentric Consell and Diputaci. Eight
months were to pass before he returned empty-handed.
Why, at this crucial moment, did Louis XI abandon his design to drive Juan
from Catalonia? It had become a question of priorities. A rift between Warwick
the kingmaker and Edward IV of England presented Louis with an opportu-
nity to restore the Lancastrians to the English throne (with them Rens daugh-
ter, Queen Margaret), and so break the menacing coalition between England
and Burgundy. That prospect proved irresistible, and the resources which
might have conquered Catalonia poured instead into an expedition against
England. Where Louis did persevere in his contest with Juan was in his resolve
to prevent the marriage of Fernando and Isabel taking Castile irrevocably into
a camp hostile to France. Seizing on the proposal to marry his brother, the duke
 The Castilian Marriage 205
of Guyenne, to the rehabilitated infanta Juana, he sent the cardinal of Albi back
to Castile with orders to conclude the match. A ceremony of betrothal accord-
ingly took place on 26 October 1470, accompanied by a declaration in which
Enrique revoked his recognition of Isabel as heir to the throne, putting in her
place his daughter Juana. Given the infantas age8 yearsthis was a long-
term strategy which swiftly came to grief on the twin rocks of Guyennes pref-
erence for an alliance with the duke of Burgundys daughter followed soon by
his death in May 1472.21
Juan might have been expected to have turned this abrupt change of fortune
to account by throwing all he could muster against a crippled foe. Instead he
found himself drawn yet again into the black hole at the heart of all his
schemesNavarre. Continued feuding between the factions there had so exas-
perated him that in December 1469 he took the drastic step of replacing
Gaston de Foix and his wife as locumtenentes in that kingdom with their eldest
son, also named Gaston. The action seems stamped with that rash ill-judge-
ment which characterized most of his actions touching Navarre. Rather than
submit to such a rebuff, the count of Foix, supported by the Beaumont faction,
renewed his attempts to gain control of the kingdom, forcing Juan to employ
the 400 cavalry raised by the kingdom of Aragon that autumn in combating
the count rather than pursuing the unexpected advantage in Catalonia. The
war-like archbishop of Zaragoza had likewise to be transferred from Catalonia
in order to take command of the threatened Navarrese city of Tudela until Juan
arrived in person with a force sufcient to compel Gaston to raise his siege. He
left behind only small numbers of men widely dispersed in garrisons between
Olot, Peralta, and Vilafranca. This determined response surprised Gaston who
had calculated that Juan would of necessity have to keep most of his strength in
Catalonia. Disabused he withdrew from Navarre. Both parties were shortly
afterwards disentangled from the issue of high authority in that kingdom by
the death in bizarre circumstances of the younger Gaston in November 1470;
he was killed in a tournament staged by Louis XI to celebrate the betrothal
of his brother, the duke of Guyenne, to Juana of Castile.22 By May 1471 differ-
ences had been patched up and the status quo restored; Gaston and Leonor
were once again heirs and locumtenentes in the kingdom.23

21
Enrquez del Castillo, Crnica, ch. 147.
22
Louis made himself guardian of the deceased princes two children, and thereby ensured sub-
sequent French inuence over Navarre, another trophy plucked from his Spanish rival.
23
Zurita, Anales, xviii, p. xxxii. Vicens Vives, Juan II, 3412. The immediate cause of the new out-
break of violence in Navarre had been the murder of the archbishop of Pamplona by Pierres de
Peraltas henchmen.
206 War, Civil and Foreign
Preoccupation with the affairs of Navarre and Castile necessarily distracted
Juan from Catalonia to the extent that, at the outset of 1470, he delegated
his authority in that theatre to his illegitimate son Alfonso, the master of
Calatrava. With few resources to hand, Alfonso in his capacity as lieutenant-
general achieved nothing more than the taking of the small town of Sarral in
April. The only other royalist success sprang from the enterprise of Verntallat
who seized the castle of Castella in May, and followed this up with two attacks
upon Girona. Jean of Calabria meanwhile was labouring with his father to
extract from the estates of Provence an aid of 70,000 orins. Monies raised in
this fashion always took long to negotiate and long to gather, so Jean returned
to Barcelona in August still awaiting the men and instruments of war they were
expected to furnish. Nor could the empty coffers of the Generalitat make good
the deciency. He was consequently in no better shape than Juan to undertake
signicant operations, yet worse placed to endure a stalemate. After so many
years of war and reverses, rebel spirits stood in desperate need of assurance that
the tide might turn, and turn without delivering them into the clutches of
France. Failing that, ever larger numbers saw submission to Juan as their only
salvation. Symptomatic of this mood was the defection in September 1470
of Cadaqus, a port in the heart of territory hitherto devoted to the cause,
soon after Jean had returned seemingly empty-handed. Joan de Vilamar had
appeared off the port with four galleys, bribed the captain, and hoisted the
royal standard. As a result the Empord found itself threatened on the one side
by remensa forays from the mountains, on the other by attack from this royal-
ist bridgehead on the coast. To make matters worse, Jeans health had deterior-
ated to a degree where he could no longer take the eld. Operations to recover
Cadaqus, whose loss the diputats lamented as a nger in the eye,24 had to be
delegated to the count of Campobasso and Jacobo Galioto, Neapolitan exiles
in Angevin service, supervised by a committee of counsellors. The bishop of
Girona went with them as the dukes representative.
The siege of Cadaqus, begun in October, was still in progress when another
thunderbolt struck the Catalan camp: the duke of Calabria died of a stroke in
Barcelona on 16 December 1470. Stunned disbelief fell upon the rebel ranks.
Unlike Pedro, he had seldom crossed swords with the Catalan leaders, behav-
ing, in Calmettes words more like a champion than a chief .25 His military

24
el dedo en el ojo. Zurita, Anales, XVIII, xxxiii. Their concern arose from the fact that the port
gave the enemy a base from which to threaten Barcelonas sea communications, and hence the vital
supply of grain.
25
Calmette, La Question des Pyrnes, 172.
 The Castilian Marriage 207
reputation survived untarnished, and his affable manner had won him popu-
larity. If, as Zurita asserts his death aroused very little reaction, no more than
would have greeted the death of any respected gentleman,26 this might be
put down to a concern, on the part of the authorities, for public morale. His
exequies did, in fact, follow the protocol appropriate to the heir apparent, and
were marked, according to the notary afont, by open shows of grief during
the ceremony in the cathedral: the sorrow and grief were such that all present
burst into tears, and in the great nave was heard nothing but sobs and cries.27
What hope remained for the Catalan cause after this third hammer-blow of
fate? Their phantom monarch Ren wrote assuring Barcelona that he would
not abandon them;28 Louis XI sent messengers with promises in the same
vein;29 neither delivered the men and money so desperately needed. Even the
quest for a new leader fell foul of unforeseen calamities. On the morrow of the
dukes death a summons was dispatched from Barcelona to his son Nicolas,
marquis of Pont--Mousson, calling him to come with all speed to assume the
roles of primogenitus and Rens lieutenant. But the letter found him savour-
ing more promising pastures in Lorraine, and wholly averse to any venture into
the miseries of Catalonia. Ren, then, had no choice but to entrust command
to the deceaseds bastard son, also named Jean and now decorated with the
same title, duke of Calabria. His letter of appointment was dated 5 April 1471.
It caused much division of opinion and heart-searching among the diputats
who only accepted it after he had agreed not to exercise many of the sovereign
powers nominally attributed to a locumtenens without the express approval of
the city. Only when those doubts had been laid to rest was he able to make his
formal entry into Barcelona on 20 June accompanied by the usual brave show
of pageantry, an occasion marred by murmurs in the crowd that such ceremony
ill-betted such a personage. Doubt also hovered over the title of primogen-
itus which the authorities found it expedient to bestow upon him. Effective
control of what men still remained under arms had in the interim been dis-
persed among an assortment of captains, many of them foreigners: Dionis de
Portugal i de Ea, a shady Portuguese cousin of Pedro who had briey taken

26
. . . hizose muy poca demonstracin de su muerte, y no fue mas que si hubiera muerto algn
caballero estimado . . . Zurita, Anales, XVIII, xxxiii.
27
Alors la douleur et langoisse furent telles que tous les assistants fondirent en larmes, et dans lim-
mense nef on nentendit plus que gmissements et sanglots. Calmette, La Question des Pyrnes, 173.
One may suspect that the lamentation was more ritual than heartfelt.
28
His letter was dispatched from Angers on 3 Jan. 1471 and read in Barcelona on 4 Feb.
29
Letter delivered in Barcelona by a French ambassador on 20 Feb.
208 War, Civil and Foreign
service with Juan,30 and a group of Neapolitan exiles (Cola Gambatesa
Monforte, count of Campobasso, Giacomo Galeota, Gaspar Cossa, Joan
Torrelles, count of Ischia), lately arrived with the reinforcements Jean had
sought from Provence. Only one Catalan military gure of note remained to
give a national character to warfare which saw Catalonia a prey to these foreign
mercenaries: he was the irreducible Hug Roger, count of Pallars. Taken pris-
oner in 1465, he had remained in captivity for ve years until family pressure
(all his close relatives were staunch royalists) persuaded him to gain his freedom
with a promise to work secretly for the royalist cause. Instead, on being released
in December 1470, he made immediately for Barcelona, arrived a few days
before Jeans death, and offered his sword to the rebels.31
Hug Rogers reappearance breathed another two years of agonized life into a
conict which was on the point of dying from exhaustion. Campobasso and
Galeota did indeed pursue the siege of Cadaqus to a successful conclusion at
the end of December, while Dionis took himself into winter quarters in the
Urgell region, but the French and Angevins under their command would soon
be straggling back across the Pyrenees as their service expired. Some captains
took the same route, among them Gaspar Cossa whose condotta of a hundred
horse had disbanded unpaid. On 10 March 1471 Ren wrote to the Catalan
diputats begging them to nd money for Cossas past and future services.32 His
own efforts in that direction became ever more despairing: by June he was
trying to borrow from the duke of Milan on the security of towns in Catalonia
and Aragon!
Juan observed all this with remarkable sang-froid. Evident disarray in the
Angevin camp and reports from spies scattered around rebel territory con-
vinced him that his enemies were on their last legs: he had only to wait a little
before dealing them a decisive blow. So he continued imperturbably to settle
the affairs of Navarre. Once again talks with his daughter Leonor resulted in an
agreement (Olit, 30 May 1471) that left him with the crown for life, Leonor
with the succession, and royal authority in the kings absence deputed to
Leonor and her husband, Gaston de Foix. Some effort was also made to settle
the endemic faction strife that lay at the heart of Navarres troubles; the omens
were not promising, but enough had been done to neutralize the count of

30
From the Generalitat Dionis had received the title duke of Montblanc (traditionally bestowed
on the heir to the Aragonese throne), and from Juan the lordships of Cambrils and Sarral.
31
Immediately on his arrival in Barcelona, Pallars demanded compensation for his ransom money
and other expenses incurred during his captivity. Pelez, La actuacin politico-militar de Hugo Roger III.
32
Lecoy de la Marche, Le Roi Ren, ii. 345.
 The Castilian Marriage 209
Foix.33 Another cause for Juans condence arose from progress made with a
network of alliances designed to gain him support among the many other
powers fearful of France. Yorkist England had already been secured, an ally of
inestimable value in 1471 when Louiss ill-judged attempt to restore Henry VI
to the English throne brought upon France the implacable enmity of Edward IV.
Another ally, Burgundy, openly aided the Yorkists and was keeping France
under constant threat of war. In Italy Juans diplomacy, vigorously seconded by
his nephew, King Ferrante of Naples, had won over all the major states. The
crowning piece of the edice was to be put in place with the treaty of Abbeville
(7 August 1471) which established a formal alliance between Aragon and
Burgundy. On its fringe hovered the formidable presence of Castile in the per-
son of Isabel, casting deance at Louis, the champion of her rival Juana.34
Castile was, in truth, at this juncture the weakest element in Juans diplomatic
armoury. Far from securing his great neighbour as a trusty ally, Fernandos mar-
riage had cost him dear, and the young couples future looked decidedly uncer-
tain. Heedless of Juans warnings, they had quickly fallen out with Archbishop
Carrillo, resenting his imperious manner and evident desire to subject them to
the tutelage that the great men of Castile thought proper to impose on their
princes. Carrillo, however, held all the strings and kept his protgs virtually
captive throughout 1470 in his town of Dueas.35 In December 1470 they
exchanged subjection to Carrillo for a similar plight in Medina del Rioseco
where they came into the hands of Fernandos maternal clan, the Enriquez. The
king of Castile meanwhile continued to maintain the right of his daughter
Juana to the succession, rejected all overtures from Isabel and Fernando, and in
1471 contemplated calling in the duke of Guyenne with a French army to
expell them from the kingdom. Juan must have wondered whether his gamble
on the Castilian crown would ever bear fruit.36

33 34
Zurita, Anales, XVIII, xxxvi. Vicens Vives, Juan II, 33840.
35
On 2 Oct. 1470, while in Dueas, Isabel gave birth to her rst child, the Infanta Isabel.
36
Vicens Vives, Fernando II, 27993.
 17
A Rebellion in Ruins

While the king remained preoccupied with Navarre and Castile during the
spring and summer of 1471, the edice of Catalan resistance began to crum-
ble. Even its ardent champions saw that the duke of Calabrias death had
destroyed their last hopes of victory. Ren could, and would, do no more.1
They could extract nothing more from their own ruined land. The time had
come to consider how they might make their peace. Those less ardent, the
time-servers, moved with the greater alacrity. Prominent among them was the
wily bishop of Girona who had so recently been persuaded to embark on
the high tide of Angevin success. In 1470 he had willingly agreed to represent
the duke at the siege of Cadaqus; in 1471, by contrast, he repeatedly wriggled
out of requests that he should lead a delegation to Ren and Louis. He remained
instead in Girona, awaiting the opportune moment to change his allegiance.
With the bishop was his nephew by marriage, Joan Sarriera. A minor noble of
the Girona region, Sarriera well represents those who had from the beginning
enthusiastically supported the rebellion. Prominent at the siege of Gironas
citadel in 1462, he had ever since fought against royalist forces in the north, so
that when the Angevins took Girona in 1469 the bishop had no difculty in
persuading Jean of Calabria to appoint Sarriera captain of the city. That post
brought him, like all his fellows in such positions, face to face with a chronic
lack of the funds needed to sustain it. Inevitably that awareness drew him into
clashes with the Generalitat and its local agents when he used strong-arm tac-
tics to extract money and exchanged angry letters with the central authorities.
By the end of 1470 the latter were complaining your letters contain words not
betting a man such as you.2 Differences sharpened in the following year to
the point where the Generalitat baldly rejected his requests for more cavalry to

1
In a letter written from Angers on 24 Mar. 1471, but not delivered in Barcelona by the abbot of
Ripoll until 9 May, Ren held out vague promises of a visit to Catalonia. No more was heard of this
project. AHB, Consell de Cent II, Deliberacions 20, fo. 84.
2
en vostres letres ha algunes peraules no convinents a tal home. Tate, Joan Margarit i Pau, 56.
 A Rebellion in Ruins 211
protect the harvest and hold off enemy marauders, while the Bastard of
Calabria ordered an investigation into reports that some great treachery and
evil would be committed by this gentleman Joan Sarriera.3
By this juncture many other captains in the northern regions, of hitherto
impeccable devotion to the Catalan cause, were coming round to Sarrieras way
of thinking. Prominent among them were Bertran dArmendriz (the hero
of Lleida, Calaf, and Cervera), and Pere Joan Ferrer (nephew of the abbot of
Montserrat and from 1467 captain-general of the Empord). All around them
they saw a country sinking into chaos, ruin, and despair. For ten years the
Empord had been the main theatre of war, the corridor through which
tramped army upon army, all given to pillage and brutality whatever the cause
they served; repeated changes of fortune had set town against town, neighbour
against neighbour, creating a tattered patchwork of unchecked violence and
vendettas. The diputats had to confess that the inhabitants hardly know to
whom they owe allegiance, and thus they attack and rob each other continu-
ally.4 Their remedy, a new war tax on our, decreed at the beginning of 1471,
served only to exacerbate disaffection among these aficted people. Sarriera
capitalized upon their unrest by calling the syndics of the affected towns
(Peralada, Castell, Torroella, Sant Feliu, and Palamos) to a meeting in Girona;
it rejected the impost out of hand. Without money the captains knew that the
cause was lost.
On all sides in the spring of 1471 defection hovered in the air. Pallars voiced
his suspicions of Sarriera, accusing him of making overtures to the royalists
under pretext of protecting the crops. The diputats, in a letter sent to Ren in
March, warned that on the coast or in some part of the Empord a plot is
afoot.5 Plotting was indeed afoot, its centre Girona, and the chief conspirators
Bishop Margarit and Sarriera. By late June their plans were far enough
advanced for Juan to appoint his most seasoned counsellor, Luis Despuig, to
settle the details. On 8 August Despuig felt sufciently condent of his success
and safety to visit Girona in person, a visit which led to a formal agreement
signed in Zaragoza on 30 August by Sarriera, Armendriz, and the bishops
brother, Bernat Margarit. All the defectors, most especially the Margarit fam-
ily, secured rich pickings in lands, ofces, and revenues. It was to serve as a sig-
nal to other notable rebels that they had much to gain, and nothing to lose, by
making their peace with the king.

3
per lo dit mossen Johan ariera seria feta una gran traicio e malvestat. Ibid.
4 5
Ibid. Ibid. 567.
212 War, Civil and Foreign
But some there were whose loyalty remained unshaken. Foremost among
them ranked Hug Roger de Pallars, animated still by personal hatred of the
Antequera dynasty rather than by faith in the pactista cause. His reappearance
in the Empord at this stage with a small force raised in his ancestral lands
served only to antagonize local commanders; his strident, and well-founded,
denunciations of their incipient treachery helped push them along that path.
So bitter did the dissension become that it sparked a civil war within the civil
war: Pallars in arms against Sarriera and Armendriz; the Angevin regent
championing the former, the Catalan diputats the latter. As a result the rebels
military capacity in the Empord lay paralysed throughout the summer and
autumn of 1471. Elsewhere their commanders displayed a sorry lack of will and
condence. At Sarral, for example, with 600 good horse (bons rocins) and 200
foot they faced an enemy numbering between 300 and 400 horse and 800 foot
but were unwilling to risk any engagement unless furnished with at least another
600 infantry.6 Only in the very north of the province did the count of Campo-
basso and his fellow Angevin captains maintain an effective, if foreign, presence.
The springing of the pact made in Zaragoza waited upon an offensive which
Juan would launch as soon as he had collected a loan approved by the loyalist
Generalitat on 26 August. By October all was ready for a decisive campaign.
Abandoning earlier tactics of mopping up territory fortress by fortress, the
kings forces would strike to isolate Barcelona, the heart of rebellion, by land
and by sea. Sarriera and Armendriz had prepared the way by seizing the port
of Blanes on 17 September; a few days later Despuig appeared to receive the
surrender of Hostalric from its captain, no other than Sarriera. Barcelonas
communications with the north had been severed. Simultaneously Juan with
700 horse moved directly upon the capital; by 10 October he was camped near
Martorell. On 11 October the dissidents threw off the mask; from Blanes the
bishop of Girona, Sarriera, Armendriz, Pere Joan Ferrer, Jaume Alemany,
Bernat Margarit, and Bernat Senesterra dispatched a long letter to Barcelona
justifying their change of allegiance; it came, almost certainly, from the bishops
pen. A succession of self-seeking foreign monarchs had, they alleged, ruined
Catalonia. Since Jean of Calabria died they had received nothing but false
promises from Ren and his agents.7 Only a reconciliation with Juan could

6
Barcelona agreed to nd 200 of these infantry, not, apparently, in any condence that it would
lead to a victory, but from fear that the army would otherwise retire to take up quarters near Barcelona,
to the great detriment of the city. AHB, Consell de Cent II, Deliberacions 20, fo. 87, 17 May 1471.
7
In a separate letter of justication, Ferrer wrote, car mort ell se es mostrat clarament esser morta
la de sa empresa. Sobrequs i Vidal, La guerra civil, ii. 105.
 A Rebellion in Ruins 213
bring peace to the ravaged land.8 On the same day this letter was written,
Despuig arrived in Girona to receive its submission on terms similar to those
previously granted to other cities: a general conrmation of privileges and
property; revocation of all acts of the Generalitat. To legitimize the surrender,
Bishop Margarit summoned his chapter to the episcopal palace, over which he
had already hoisted the royal standard. There he asked them to annul the oath
of allegiance to the duke of Calabria on the grounds that it had been sworn
under duress, and that the Angevins were no longer capable of defending
Girona. The chapter, followed by the town authorities, acquiesced.9
From that moment the worm-eaten fabric of rebellion crumbled away. From
Martorell Juan went on to take Sabadell on 17 October, Montmel capitulated
on 21st, followed by Sant Cugat del Valls. Having thus drawn a noose tightly
around Barcelona and, in the process, cut its water supply,10 Juan left his son
Alfonso and the count of Prades to harry its despairing inhabitants, while he
marched north to deal with the Empord. Towns which had hitherto stoutly
deed him offered no more resistance. It took only the threat of an attack, cou-
pled with the offer of good terms, to open the gates of Sant Feliu de Guixols.11
Within the capitals walls news of the great desertion, received on 13 October,
had sown consternation. In the royal palace diputats and the Bastard of
Calabria wrestled with the crisis. An embassy should leave post-haste for
Provence with a nal appeal to Ren: if he and the primogenitus did not come
swiftly to its aid, the principality was lost. Against the infamous betrayal12
they could do little more than launch a furious invective, followed in November
by a formal process of indictment which ended with a sentence of execution in
efgy and a reward for the capture of Margarit and his fellows dead or alive.
Criers proclaimed that sentence in the streets of Barcelona on 23 November.
Efgies of the Empord seven, a purse symbolic of Judass betrayal around
their necks, were then publicly hanged. Who else might be contemplating
treachery? Suspicion fell upon two great stalwarts of the revolution, the abbots

8
The text of the letter is in Tate, Joan Margarit i Pau, appendix 3.
9
Zurita, Anales, XVIII, xxxvii. Vicens Vives, Juan II, 3445.
10
The city was consequently forced to rely upon mills worked by animals to grind its cereals, thus
exacerbating an already serious bread shortage. Many of these mills, long out of use, were found to be
in a rotten condition and in need of expensive repairs. A further crisis ensued when many inhabitants
took to grinding corn in their homes, so avoiding the milling tax which was one of the few sources of
revenue left to the municipality.
11
29 Oct. 1471. Sant Felius council excused itself to Barcelona with the plea that many stronger
places had resisted only to fall with great loss. AHB, Consell de Cent II. Deliberacions 20, fo. 162.
12
indelitat nephandissima, in a letter addressed by the city of Barcelona to the cities still loyal to
the cause. Calmette, Louis XI, Jean II, 323 n. 7.
214 War, Civil and Foreign
of Montserrat and Sant Cugat; detained on 19 November, they were shipped
to safe custody in Provence. The beleaguered city next summoned all its
strength in a bid to break the royalist stranglehold.
The action began on 25 November with a feint: sixty horsemen led by a
French captain, Gracian de Guerri, made a sortie towards the enemy head-
quarters in Sant Cugat. When confronted by Alfonso of Aragon at the head of
300 cavalry supported by companies of foot, they fell back to the Torre de
Fabregues, a fortication on the River Besos near Sant Adrian and close to
the city walls. All the men Barcelona could muster120 horse and 4,000
infantrythen surged from the Port Nou to begin a general action. In the
opposing ranks appeared fresh contingents commanded by several of Juans
most distinguished captains: Joan de Cardona, constable of Aragon, Bernat
Hug de Rocabert, castellan of Amposta, Gil de Heredia, and Martin de
Lanuza. In a hand-to-hand struggle Alfonso drove his opponents back towards
the river at Santa Coloma de Gramenet, until nally they broke and ed across
the Besos in the direction of Badalona. The victors claimed to have killed 700
in the battle; more decisive still, they took some 3,000 prisoners, among them
the principal foreign captains, Jacobo Galioto, Dionis de Portugal, and de
Guerri. At a stroke the heart had been torn out of Barcelonas resistance. Two
days later Granollers capitulated.13
Had the royalist commanders wished, they might have stormed the rebel
city or even marched in unresisted. But it was Juans intention that the conict
should end not in violence but with an overture for peace as more and more in
the opposing camp became persuaded of the futility of prolonging their agony;
the time was near when Barcelona would open its gates of its own free will.14
Accordingly, he summoned Alfonso with most of his men to join in the cam-
paign against the Empord, the only substantial part of the principality still
outside his obedience; a small force on land and sea now sufced to isolate
Barcelona. To the north town after town had already scrambled to submit
in the wake of Gironas defection: early in November Calonge, Palams,
Palafrugell, Pals, Verges, Bellcaire, La Tallada, and La Bisbal all followed Sant
Felius example. Reinforced but slowed by bitter weather and stiffening
13
Zurita, Anales, XVIII, xxxvii.
14
On 6 Nov. 1471 the city council had acknowledged that almost all the peasants living in outly-
ing parishes supported the royalists (tenen a lur favour quasi tots los pagesos habitants en les parro-
ques foranes). AHB, Consell de Cent II, Deliberacions 20, fo. 167. Earlier, in instructions given to
the embassy sent to Ren, they had described Juans policy towards this population as one of recon-
ciliation through bones paraules e fames. Ibid., fo. 154. Within the city, those assigned to night
patrol on the walls were refusing duty on the grounds that it was too cold.
 A Rebellion in Ruins 215
resistance, Juan pressed northwards to take Vilabertran on 7 January 1472 and,
ve days later, Figueres. These conquests gave him command of the roads along
which must pass any aid sent from Roussillon to save Barcelona.15 Coinciding
with the kings offensive came a push through the central mountains organized
by Verntallat; on 14 December the remensa captain celebrated his entry into Olot.
Expectation that the remaining northern slice of the province might submit
with little ado was confounded by a still considerable French presence. Calls
on the larger, still deant, townsPerelada, Castell, Torroella, and Besal
to parley having met with no response, Juan accordingly turned his arms
against them. They made encouraging progress. During February the castellan
of Amposta stormed Espolla, a strategic point on the trans-Pyrenean route,
while his companion in arms, the count of Prades, scored a signicant victory
near Torroella over the main body of French led by the count of Campobasso
and Bolo del Giudice. Sensing that the way now lay open to take control of
the coastal plain, Juan threw himself upon Torroella which surrendered after a
stiff resistance. He went on to consolidate his grip upon the Gulf of Roses by
seizing Roses itself on its northern point (28 March). His next objective was
Peralada, a strongly fortied little town uncomfortably close to Figueres, and
seat of Jofre, viscount of Rocabert, who had been in captivity since being taken
prisoner at Calaf in 1465. At the beginning of April the royal army settled
condently around its walls. They suffered a rude awakening when, before
dawn on 4 April, Campobasso with all his remaining strength (400 horse
and 600 infantry) fell on the sleeping camp. Juan escaped by horse to Figueres
wearing nothing more than a sheepskin doublet thrown over his nightshirt
and leaving behind all his baggage; the rest of his army fared little better.
Campobasso trumpeted a famous victory:16 among the booty he counted over
300 horses and more than 100 suits of armour. On the royalist side, to explain
so dramatic a reversal, a story began to circulate that during the siege of
Torroella a renowned captain, killed in the wars, had appeared to the king in a
dream and admonished him not to risk any further operations because fate was
against him. Juan had rashly ignored this ghostly warning.17 In the event it
proved a hollow victory because, instead of being able to press home his advant-
age, Campobasso was obliged to send the bulk of his men to counter a rising
15
According to Calmette (La Question des Pyrnes, 180), Juan held a parliament in Figueres
between 22 Jan. and 2 Feb. 1472. No record survives of such a gathering, so it was probably a hastily
convoked assembly of regional representatives.
16
Los havem romputs e fets fugir a qui ms no podia, he wrote to the Generalitat. Sobrequs i
Vidal, La guerra civil, ii. 173.
17
Zurita, Anales, XVIII, xxxviii.
216 War, Civil and Foreign
against French rule in Roussillon. With the few that remained he withdrew to
his base at Castell until, on 20 June, the townsfolk rose, threw them out, and
returned to their old allegiance. Juan by contrast, determined not to forfeit
the initiative, reacted with extraordinary vigour. To quote Zurita, he was so
schooled in the perils and uncertainties of war that no setback could cause him
to falter or be faint of heart, and he ventured his person as though he were in
the full ush of youth.18 Within a week he had renewed the siege of Perelada
which on 19 May made its peace on the most generous of terms, including the
freedom of its viscount without any form of ransom. Juan was ever more deter-
mined that the Catalans should see every advantage in returning to their alle-
giance and none whatsoever in maintaining a forlorn resistance.
The futility of further struggle was driven home by the failure of Louis XI to
deliver any of the aid he had so readily promised. A last icker of hope had
sprung up in March 1472 with a letter in which he assured Ren that 2,000
cavalry and 1,000 archers were on their way.19 The only fragment of this phan-
tom host ever to appear was a small body of men smuggled into Barcelona by
sea in the summer. Threats from Burgundy and England looming over France
deterred him from committing an army beyond the Pyrenees, and when in
May 1472 Rens grandson, Nicolas of Lorraine, titular primogenitus in
Catalonia, made a pact with the duke of Burgundy (15 May 1472), Louis
Angevin sympathies waned altogether.20 Even more strikingly, he appeared
incapable of defending those Catalan territories he had appropriated in the
name of France. News of Juans victories in the Empord, combined with a
recall of substantial numbers of French troops from Roussillon and Cerdagne,
brought hostility to foreign occupation into the open in April 1472. An
abortive plot in Perpignan was closely followed by successful risings in Elne,
Llivia, and the Vallespir; many nobles from the most prominent families
(among them the Oms and the Ortaf) raised the Aragonese standard over
their castles. Most notable among these defectors was Bernat dOms, the man
who had enjoyed Louis complete condence, the man to whom he had

18
. . . estaba tan ejercitado en los peligros y sucesos dudosos de la guerra que por nonguna adver-
sidad se conoca desmayo ni aqueza en su corazn, y de la misma manera aventuraba su persona como
si estuviera en el hervor de su mocedad. Ibid.
19
The text of the letter, dated 12 Mar. 1472, is in Calmette, La Question des Pyrnes, 180. Possibly
it was this message that Rens ambassadors delivered to the Consell de Cent on 7 Apr. 1472. AHB,
Consell de Cent II, Deliberacions 21, fo. 39.
20
Nicolas had been betrothed at an early age to Louiss daughter Anne and had collected advance
payments of her dowry; now he was seeking the hand of Duke Charless daughter Marie. Calmette,
Louis XI, Jean II, 336. Gaussin, Louis XI, 359.
 A Rebellion in Ruins 217
entrusted effective control of the province in partnership with a series of tran-
sitory French governors.21
Juan unhesitatingly seized the occasion; two of his most trusted captains, the
castellan of Amposta and the count of Prades, were dispatched to aid the anti-
French forces around Perpignan; Pere de Rocabert and the newly acquired
Bertran de Armendriz went to support the rising of local nobles in the moun-
tains. By the summer, French authority did not extend beyond their principal
fortresses and those areas of the plain where the governor, Antoine de Lau, was
able to deploy the forces he had summoned from the Empord. Even that ten-
uous hold was threatened when de Lau was ordered to take his troops by sea to
shore up the tottering defences of Barcelona.
Condent that the north was secure, Juan had already turned to the task of
mopping up the remaining, isolated centres of resistance. Prospects of immin-
ent victory were lling his coffers and swelling his ranks with those anxious to
demonstrate loyalty or reap rewards.22 His opponents, by contrast, had lost all
heart and offered scant resistance; Vic and Manresa, their remaining bastions
outside Barcelona, capitulated on 5 and 8 June.23 The abbey of Montserrat had
already fallen on 13 May. The moment had arrived to suffocate the last pangs
of rebellion in the heart of Catalonia. Even as the king concentrated his forces
to clear the northern regions, those left in watch around the capital had tight-
ened their grip upon its suburbs. Having gained control of Pedralbes in April,
they transferred their headquarters from San Cugat to its great monastery; and
it was there that Juan established himself when in June he arrived to direct the
nal act in this long drama. Off the port hovered a menacing ring of sixteen
ships and twenty galleys commanded by Bernat de Vilamar.24
Trapped within this encircling re were the faltering organs of rebel gov-
ernment (Generalitat and Consell), Rens helpless representative ( Jean of
Calabria), and a fearful, restless populace. Mistrust of public opinion and a
growing reluctance of its elected representatives to associate themselves with
the actions of the governing clique had led to ever more infrequent and merely

21
Calmette, Louis XI, Jean II, 3536.
22
Conspicuous among these were the vassals of Joan Margarit.
23
That revolutionary stalwart, the Canon Planella, was accused of betraying Manresa and of writ-
ing letters urging other places to surrender. On appearing in Barcelona, he was briey imprisoned by
the locumtenens and then released amid loud protests from the counsellors. In Aug. they succeeded in
having him dispatched to Provence. AHB, Consell de Cent II, Deliberacions 21, fo. 71, 4 Aug. 1472.
24
Barcelona had been under threat from the sea since the previous autumn when Junas conquest
of all the ports to the north had allowed him to concentrate his naval power upon the capital, with dire
consequences for its food supply.
218 War, Civil and Foreign
formal meetings of the full Consell; by 1471 all business had fallen into the
hands of the restricted Council of Thirty and the executive counsellors. The
ruling circle itself was fracturing, as manifested by a bout of sticuffs which
broke out in the palace on 29 May: The pig is loose in the kitchen25 ruefully
commented that old stalwart of pactisme, afont. Such means of defence as
could still be mustered lay in the hands of the count of Pallars, nominated
grand constable by the Angevin regime in October 1471, and animated still by
his inveterate hatred of the Antequeras. Throughout May he had fought
stoutly to hold back the besiegers in the Pedralbes sector; on 13 May he even
came close to burning their camp. But the ghting thinned his already
shrunken ranks which he could replenish only with broken-spirited militia-
men and the small body of French newly arrived from Roussillon under de Lau.
Barcelona lacked not only ghting men; food too began to disappear from the
markets as market gardens in the suburbs were lost and the enemy eet cut off
supplies by sea. A promise that ships hired from Genoa were bringing some
relief was contained in a letter written on 4 June by the primogenitus Nicolas
who, late in the day, had rejoined his grandfather in Provence. The Genoese
duly appeared, and, after one failure to break the blockade, did succeed on
22 July in landing some wheat. It came when the citys stocks could have lasted
barely a month. Not only had it become well-nigh impossible to nd vessels
capable of running the blockade with adequate supplies,26 merchants too were
loath to nance cargoes which might well be lost and for which the city could
offer no sure guarantee of reimbursement. By August 1472 compulsion against
merchants was being mooted along with measures to x all food prices, requi-
sition private stocks, and introduce rationing.
A week before the Genoese brought temporary relief on the provision front,
the royalists had gained control of Montjuich, the hill which towers above
Barcelona and its harbour. The city seemed at Juans mercy, but his inten-
tion was still to refrain from an assault with the bloodshed and destruction it
would entail. Given time, he rmly believed, the beleaguered citizens would

25
Lo porch anava per la cuyna. A Catalan proverb. Calmette, Louis XI, Jean II, 329.
26
In Nov. 1471 it was proposed that the ships of the merchants Angls and Setant be dispatched,
heavily armed and manned and in convoy, to load grain. At least two months passed before they sailed
and when it returned in Apr. 1472 Setants ship had suffered such a battering, whether from the
enemy or the elements is uncertain, that it was judged unseaworthy. Anglss ship had presumably
been lost for it disappears from the record. It subsequently became necessary to rely on small vessels
which could carry little cargo. The Consell de Cents register of Deliberacions (no. 21) for 1472
records the citys increasing desperation to nd provisions and exercise control over the scant stocks
available.
 A Rebellion in Ruins 219
voluntarily come to terms, and the foundation be laid for reconciliation
between sovereign and subjects. Some of those citizens were already undoubtedly
in clandestine contact, assuring him that they would soon nd means to deliver
Barcelona into his hands. So condent of that outcome was he, that he con-
voked a parliament to meet there in July. However, the arrival of the Genoese
having eased the food crisis which might have served as a pretext for immedi-
ate surrender, the gathering had to be transferred to the monastery of Pedralbes
where it assembled on 16 August. In his opening address Juan called on his sub-
jects for a supreme effort to win a nal victory. What he required, and obtained,
was the services of 500 horse for two years in order to regain Barcelona and
other territories of the principality which are outside our obedience.27 Since
he expected Barcelona to capitulate at any moment and had no intention of
storming it, the objective he had in mind can only have been French-held
Roussillon and Cerdagne. Beyond the close of conict in Catalonia began to
loom the shadow of war with France.
To the weight of land and sea encirclement upon Barcelona was now added
fresh psychological pressure. It came in the form of papal and Burgundian del-
egations seeking to reconcile king and rebels.28 The papal party, led by Cardinal
Rodrigo Borja, arrived in Valencia in June 1472 charged with the herculean
task of uniting Spain against the Turks. Borja was also the bearer of a papal
letter authorizing the archbishop of Toledo to legitimize the marriage of
Fernando and Isabel, thus bringing to an end the saga of the false bull and three
years of technical incest.29 Fernando, after a brief consultation with his father
in the camp at Pedralbes, went in mid-August to meet the cardinal at
Tarragona. Together they urged Juan to abandon Barcelona for a few days so
that he might discuss with them and a newly arrived party of ambassadors from
Burgundy the great matters that concerned them all, but he was unwilling to
take his eyes off his prey and instead invited Borja and the ambassadors to join
him at Pedralbes. Escorted by the archbishop of Tarragona, the cardinal
accordingly went to Barcelona where he was lodged in Bellesguart, a summer
palace of the kings of Aragon. His business with Juan took only a few days; his

27
Text of the speech in Calmette, Louis XI, Jean II, appendix 31.
28
The pro-Angevin Pope Paul II had been succeeded in August 1471 by Sixtus IV who, probably
inuenced by Cardinal Rodrigo Borja, gave his backing to the Antequera cause in Aragon and Castile.
29
Rodrigo Borja came surrounded by astounding pomp into these war-weary lands. I neither wish
to speak nor write of the dinner, the array of dishes and the festivity so as not to shame St Peter, wrote
Miralles, an eye-witness of the banquet given by the cardinal for the dignitaries of Valencia. Dietari,
344. Palencia is still more scathing in his lengthy denunciation of Borjas pomp and venality. Crnica,
ii. 7980.
220 War, Civil and Foreign
attempt to deal with the embattled city led to a sorry asco. On 26 August the
bishop of Assisi presented himself, in the legates name, before the gate of
St Antoni asking in vain to be admitted. Renewing his efforts a few days
later, he was seized and carried in a prisoner. It took the forceful intervention
of the duke of Calabria to set him free. Borja tarried no longer; on 4 September
he departed, leaving Juan to deal with these hardened souls.
In his wake came the two Burgundian envoys.30 Playing on a former close
acquaintance with the French captain de Lau, they sent him a letter through
their herald. In it they urged the wisdom of forsaking the service of a reviled,
discredited king of France for that of Aragon and its rm allies, Burgundy and
Brittany, concluding with a veiled warning: He who will not when he can,
clearly will not be able when he wishes.31 To the Angevin regent, Pallars, dipu-
tats, consellers, and city ofcials the herald carried other letters requesting
audience for the ambassadors. Twice this was denied, as was a subsequent pro-
posal for a meeting outside the walls.32 An exculpatory letter written to the
Burgundians on 15 September by Jean of Calabria questioned their good faith,
and insisted that any proposals they wished to make touching Catalonia must
be addressed to its lawful sovereign, Ren of Anjou.
This double rejection of outside mediationpapal and Burgundian
might be interpreted as a demonstration of uninching resolve. In truth it
masked an agonizing struggle between a knot of last-ditch diehards and a grow-
ing majority seeking an end to their nightmare. On the one side stood Hug
Roger, count of Pallars, with a few faithful friends and retainers; alongside
them, Jean of Calabria, his small entourage and de Laus French company. On
the other were ranged most members of the ruling councils and the mass of the
population. A bizarre accusation of treachery against Pallars signalled the start
of battle between them. On 18 September, having listened to the charges of
certain dealings conducted with the enemy,33 the council voted nem. con. for
his imprisonment, an order changed at his own request to one of immediate
expulsion from the city. Jean of Calabria, who could well understand what was
afoot, employed what little authority he still possessed to aid Hug Roger, tak-
ing him into the royal palace, and refusing to cast him out of the city when he
stood in danger of being captured, until mounting pressure from the councils

30
The main purpose of their mission was to secure Juans ratication of the 1471 treaty.
31
. . . quien no quiere cuando puede, razn era que no pudiese cuando quera. Zurita, Anales,
xviii, p. xli.
32
It appears that the letters were never presented to, or discussed by, the city council.
33
cert tracte manejat ab los inimichs. AHB, Consell de Cent II, Deliberacions 21, fo. 86.
 A Rebellion in Ruins 221
forced him to smuggle the count out through the Porta Nova on 24 September.
With him went any possibility that Barcelona might still choose to ght on.34
To precipitate the end, on the heels of Pallarss expulsion, came the spectre of
hunger. Hope had lingered that the Genoese might reappear; ships had been
hired and their cargoes loaded, but on 6 October news came that Galeazzo
Maria, duke of Milan, had ordered them home. After years spent dodging
appeals from Ren and Louis for men, money, and ships, the duke had decided
to throw in his lot with their visibly prospering enemies. The blow fell on a city
already suffering strict rationing and with barely a weeks stock of grain left in
its stores. The ground was thus well prepared for the surrender that came only
ten days later.35
Late in the afternoon of 8 October Lluis Setant, rst counsellor, addressed
a meeting of the full Council of a Hundred. Without Genoese aid, he declared,
Barcelona faced starvation; a few small privateer vessels might run the blockade
but could never deliver the amount needed to feed so great a city. Jean of
Calabria recognized this and had assured him that Barcelona had amply proved
its devotion. He then revealed that on his own initiative he had made contact
with Juan to ascertain whether the king would accept a capitulation based
upon an amnesty for all that had passed since the prince of Vianas arrest. In
reply, through his confessor, Gaspar Ferreres, Juan had made known his inten-
tion to display mercy and forgiveness to all. Setant no doubt had in his posses-
sion a letter to that effect dispatched from Pedralbes on 6 October.36 In it Juan
began by urging an end to war so that Catalonia and Barcelona might be raised
from the ruin and desolation into which they had fallen. Should they submit,
we shall receive you and treat you as our children with all charity and love,
and, under solemn oath, we shall forget everything that has passed. But,
should they reject his offer, he would use every means necessary to subdue the
city by force.37 Convinced by these arguments, the council voted to begin
immediate negotiations, which it entrusted to a committee of twelve. No time

34
The municipal council had insisted on placing its own guards around Pallars while he remained
in the palace. An attempt to take him to Sitges aboard a brigantine was foiled by the appearance of two
enemy galleys. Calabrias efforts to secure an indenite postponement of the expulsion met with erce
opposition. Ibid., fos. 8691.
35
Although stocks of grain had fallen dangerously low and other foodstuffs, such as meat and oil,
were scarce and costly, it does not appear that Barcelona had yet reached a stage where real hunger
stalked its streets.
36
AHB, Consell de Cent II, Deliberacions 21, fo. 92. The rst steps towards negotiation had prob-
ably been taken as soon as Pallars was safely out of the way.
37
. . . os recibiremos y trataremos como a hijos con toda caridad y amor . . . nos olvidaremos todas
las cosas pasadas. Zurita, Anales, XVIII, xliii.
222 War, Civil and Foreign
was lost; the committee, assisted by its legal ofcers, sat all day and night
to draft the terms of capitulation which it presented to a full council on the
following day. With little discussion the document was approved and carried
to the king by his chaplain, Ferreres.
Quite remarkably, Juan had left the initiative in this all-important matter to
the hard-core rebels who were now at his mercy. He contented himself with
returning the draft, annotated with amendments in his own hand, especially
on points which concerned private rather than royal interests, and with the
suggestion that Barcelona appoint persons to negotiate on the matters at issue.
The committee duly nominated Setant and his fellow counsellor Joan Mateu,
a lawyer, for that purpose with the proviso that they must swear not to solicit or
accept any favour or ofce for themselves.38 On the morning of 12 October
these two came face to face with Juan and his advisers in the sacristy of the
chapel of Nossa Senora de Jesus where they spent ve hours in discussion.
Negotiations continued over the following three days in the monastery at
Pedralbes; each morning Setant and Mateu made their way there under an
escort of royal guards, took the midday meal at the kings table, and returned to
report to their colleagues in the evening. By 15 October all had been agreed;
late that night the council approved the terms of surrender, giving thanks to
Our Lord God who, by His great mercy, has carried these affairs to so quiet and
safe a haven.39 It fell to Setant and the other four counsellors to present them-
selves before Jean of Calabria the following morning in order to make a formal
declaration that Barcelona renounced its allegiance to Ren. That done,
Setant and Mateu took horse to Pedralbes for the nal act. Once the docu-
ments had been drafted, Juan summoned the prior of the monastery to bring
the Gospels to his private apartment and, placing his hand upon them, swore
to observe their content. To witness that oath he gathered around him, besides
the plenipotentiaries of Barcelona and his vice-chancellor, a number of Catalan
dignitaries: Joan-Ramon Folc de Cardona, count of Prades, Miquel Delgado,
abbot of Poblet, Mateu de Montcada, Joan Margarit, bishop of Girona, Anton
de Cardona, and Artal de Cardona, count of Golisano in Sicily. All then fol-
lowed the king into the great hall of the monastery. Outside a large crowd from
Barcelona had gathered eager to demonstrate its loyalty. As these repentant

38
AHB, Consell de Cent II, Deliberacions 21, fo. 94, 11 Oct. 1472.
39
dad lahor a nostre Senyor deu lo qual per sa gran clemencia ha volgut portar los affers a tant
reposat e segur port. Ibid., fo. 94, 15 Oct. 1472. The terms of the agreement are summarized by
Zurita, Anales, XVIII, xliv.
 A Rebellion in Ruins 223
subjects led past, kissing the royal hand, Setant and Mateu took their leave
and rode back into a city lit by celebratory res. The drama was done.
The capitulation, it will be noted, had been negotiated in the name of
Barcelona and the whole principality by the dignitaries of that city without any
reference to the organs which since 1462 had claimed to represent Catalonia.
Only briey had Juan recognized their authority and, since Saportella had
brought into being a rival Generalitat, he had rejected it altogether. Moreover,
as his control extended over the greater part of the principality, the rebel
Generalitat shrivelled until its membership was conned very largely to citi-
zens of Barcelona. Hence by 1472 the only reason for including and reference
to that phantom body in the capitulation was to solve the practical and jurid-
ical problems posed by its mere existence; Barcelona had conveniently assumed
the authority to act in its name, and no one raised a voice in contradiction.
Historians from Zurita to Vicens Vives have lauded the magnanimity of
Juans treatment of Barcelona.40 That policy of forgiveness and reconciliation
had, as we have seen, developed some years earlier as Juan reduced the major
cities and towns one by one to his obedience. Rarely had he wreaked vengeance
on the defeated, preferring instead to woo back rebellious subjects to their alle-
giance by demonstrating a readiness to pardon and conrm communal rights
and liberties. It was indeed, as Vicens Vives insists, a path followed by few of his
contemporary monarchs. His own daughter-in-law, Isabel of Castile, when
sending her congratulations, looked forward to the vengeance he would now
be able to wreak on his enemies.41
The Capitulation of Pedralbes took the form traditional in dealings between
Catalan subjects and their ruler, namely of articles proposed by the former and
approved, modied, or rejected by the latter. Adherence to that formula made
it easier for both sides to maintain the ction that there had been no civil war,
rebellion, or repudiation of the sovereign. So it began with an acceptance
by Juan that Barcelona and the Catalans had acted in good faith when cham-
pioning the cause of Charles; he held them accordingly to be good, loyal and
faithful vassals (buenos, leales y eles vasallos), and would have that proclaimed
throughout his realms. No word of their subsequent desertion to Enrique
of Castile, Pedro of Portugal, and Ren of Anjou! To all he extended a general
pardon for actions, criminal and civil, including high treason, and excepting
only the count of Pallars who had violated the oath taken on his release from
captivity. The Bastard of Calabria, de Lau, and all in their company were

40 41
Ibid. Vicens Vives, Els Trastmares, 187. Vicens Vives, Juan II, 350.
224 War, Civil and Foreign
granted safe passage with all arms and property. Next the king undertook to
conrm, under oath, the Usatges and Constitutions of Barcelona, the acts
of the Catalan Corts, the privileges and liberties of the principality, and, in
particular, the privilege governing the municipal Taula which guaranteed
the money, bullion, and jewels deposited there. He would also approve taxes
imposed by the diputats during the war and all obligations arising from them.
(Many prominent citizens had large sums at stake!) Barcelonas request for the
return of outlying towns and estates which had been under its control at the
time of Charless death met with general approval save for a number of proper-
ties previously granted to the defunct queen, the kings son Alfonso, the castel-
lan of Amposta, and various adherents of the royal cause. Roses and Cadaqus
in the Empord returned to the Generalitat of Catalonia; Juan had indeed
already put them under the jurisdiction of the loyalist Generalitat operating in
Lleida. The awkward fact of the existence of two Generalitats, both now
deemed legitimate, was overcome by a masterly compromise: they were
merged into one, with six diputats instead of the statutory three until their
term of ofce should expire.42 Much thornier, and the source of bitter litigation
for years to come, was the provision that, with many exceptions, property and
revenues should return to those who held them at the death of the prince of
Viana. All still professing loyalty to Ren of Anjou were given one month to
submit; those who preferred to leave Catalonia might depart within the space
of a year taking all their goods. Finally, it was stipulated that the Capitulation
be conrmed under oath not only by the king, but also by his sons, by the king-
doms of Aragon, Valencia, and Mallorca, and by a number of prelates and
barons nominated by Barcelona. Only in the article which asked Juan to con-
sider the fateful Capitulation of Villafranca as revoked did Barcelona offer
amends for so prolonged a deance.
Saturday 17 October 1472 saw Juan reap the reward of this amazingly gen-
erous if, at the same time, wise settlement, when he entered Barcelona amid the
delirious acclamations of a population many of whom, be it remembered, had
long harboured sentiments of loyalty, and all of whom suddenly found them-
selves delivered from hunger and fear. A week later, in the great hall of the royal
palace, he renewed the oath, taken when he had rst entered Barcelona as king,
to observe the laws and privileges of Catalonia. For a brief spell all could put

42
The loyalist Generalitat protested against this article as unconstitutional. To satisfy it Juan
agreed that it alone should control the election of its successors. Sobrequs i Vidal, La guerra civil,
i. 435.
 A Rebellion in Ruins 225
aside thought of the toll that war had exacted and the price still to be paid for
peace.
Assured that further struggle was futile, and heartened by the clemency
extended to Barcelona, all other centres of resistance hastened to make their
submission. Barons and knights had been given a month, by the terms of the
Capitulation, to do likewise. Many duly appeared at a ceremony organized in
the palace on 7 November to swear homage before the king; chief among them
were the three sons of the late duke of Gandia and Joan Torrelles, known as the
count of Ischia. Royal commanders in the eldthe admiral Vilamar, Bertran
de Armendriz, and Joo Gonsalezreceived the oaths of many others anxious
to establish their loyalty beyond question.
 18
The Lost Lands

Juans readiness to forgive and forget, to embrace all those who had so long
and bitterly fought against him, owed much to his desire to unite all Catalans
against the detested king of France, usurper of Roussillon and Cerdagne. Never
one to relinquish a title or territory, whatever the cost and however long the
battle, Juan would not rest until he had won back those lost provinces. It was a
cause equally dear to his Catalan subjects, victors and vanquished alike; none
could accept an outcome that left their principality dismembered. Success
looked assured. Insurrection against the French had already freed large areas of
the counties. The formidable might of France, which Juan could never have
combated alone, lay enmeshed in the coalition he had spent many years cultiv-
ating; England, Burgundy, and Brittany looked poised to fall in unison upon
Louis, giving him no choice but to mass his land and naval forces in his north-
ern provinces.
In earnest of his determination, the rejuvenated septuagenarian spent a few
days at the end of October taking stock of the situation in the Empord, the
base for any expedition to the north. He then returned to Barcelona to hold a
parliament and complete preparations for the coming campaign, preparations
which included a solemn procession through the city designed to excite pub-
lic fervour. The Christmas celebrations ended, Juan left Barcelona on 29
December to join his army which had left a few days earlier under the com-
mand of the castellan of Amposta. They began their march northwards on
8 January 1473, crossed the Pyrenees unopposed and by 25 January were in
Boulou. In Perpignan news of the kings approach triggered premature, unco-
ordinated demonstrations by the well-to-do in the Place de la Loge and near
the St Martin gate. These zzled out when the mass of the population failed to
respond to cries of Aragon and de Laus troops cleared the streets (he had
returned from Barcelona in October). But the French captain warned his
sovereign that, had the whole city erupted, he would have been powerless to
 The Lost Lands 227
hold it, just as he had been unable to prevent large numbers of demonstrators
escaping.1
His forebodings were soon fullled. On the evening of 31 January Juans
army appeared under the walls, to be joined during the night by Bernat dOms
and those who had recently ed the city. At 3 oclock in the morning, the
consuls, primed of what was afoot, opened the Canet gate, and the king made
his way by torchlight through the narrow streets and a tumultuous crowd to a
lodging already prepared.2 Over one hundred of the French garrison, caught
unawares in their beds, were taken prisoner; the rest managed to take refuge
in the castle. Throughout the two counties towns and villages spontaneously
followed suit, so that within a few days nothing remained to the French but the
fortresses of Collioure, Salses, Bellegarde, and Perpignan.
In his preoccupation with greater menaces Louis XI had grievously under-
estimated the danger to his newly acquired Catalan provinces. Warnings of dis-
affection among the population went unheeded until Barcelonas surrender
and reports of Juans intentions convinced him that something must be done.
A truce with Burgundy in November 1472 made it possible to begin gathering
an army in the south, an army which initially he proposed to throw across the
Pyrenees with the object of taking Barcelona, thus breathing new life into the
Angevin cause and the civil war. Such were the orders given to his brother-in-
law, Philippe de Bresse, newly appointed governor of the counties. But by
March 1473, when de Bresse had assembled his mercenary army of Germans,
Swiss, and Savoyards and conferred with de Lau in Narbonne, a triumphant
king of Aragon stood deant in Perpignan. The odds, none the less, appeared
to favour France: to the host under de Bresse was joined, in that same month,
the force which had recently crushed Armagnacs rebellion.3 A powerful army,
perhaps some 30,000 strong, was thus assembled early in April with the mis-
sion of reimposing French authority over the counties and driving the king of
Aragon from Roussillon.
Juan nevertheless awaited the encounter in a seemingly condent spirit.
Within Perpignan he had gathered his veteran captains with all the troops
he could muster, including 300 archers furnished by Majorca. Around the

1
Calmette, Louis XI, Jean II, 34859.
2
In letters to Barcelona and Girona describing these events, Juan maintained that it had taken four
hours to reach his lodging, so great was the press of an enthusiastic crowd. Ibid. 360 n. 1.
3
On 5 Mar. 1473 a force commanded by the cardinal of Albi had stormed the fortress of Lectoure
and killed Jean dArmagnac, so ridding Louis of a most troublesome vassal.
228 War, Civil and Foreign
French-held castle he had constructed a deep ditch, reinforced by a wooden
palisade, thereby isolating the garrison and safeguarding the city from sorties.
Artillery brought from Barcelona began to batter the castle walls. Nor did
he fail to grasp the opportunity to rally Catalan patriotism to his banner; on
26 February letters went out summoning the Corts to meet at the end of March
in the newly liberated city. But, before the customary delays in the opening of
such an assembly had been overcome, the French army had crossed the frontier,
thrust aside all resistance, and, on 21 April, laid siege to Juan himself and the
delegates within the walls of Perpignan. Resisting pleas from his advisers that
he transfer command to a subordinate, the king had insisted that his presence
would inspire the defenders and, in earnest of his determination, took an oath
before a great multitude in the cathedral of St Jean, swearing that he would not
leave until all danger had passed.4 He demonstrated the same resolution in his
opening address to the Catalan Corts gathered in the refectory of the Carmelite
convent on 7 May: whatever hardships might come, he would share them; let
his subjects venture all with an old man who would shrink from neither suffer-
ing nor danger; what he asked from them was the means to sustain the troops
he had and to recruit more. The bishop of Girona, in reply, assured him of the
assemblys devotion and patriotism, but nothing could be decided by so sparse
an assembly meeting under siege.5 Its deliberations could not begin in earnest
until July when it moved to Argels. There it quickly became mired in wrangles
over settlement of those innumerable disputes occasioned by ten years of civil
war, demanding that the king administer justice to the aggrieved. It took until
September to agree on an offer of 23,000 for the defence of the counties, at
which point Juan prorogued it to reconvene in Barcelona later that year.6 The
pactista spirit had manifestly survived the war undimmed.
Juans resolve to stay put in Perpignan was not dictated solely by a sense of
duty combined with warrior instincts; he knew that the great diplomatic
machine, of which he formed part, was working hard to frustrate Louis. The
allied offensive against France having still not materialized and a Burgundian
incursion having ground to a halt, Charles the Bold, England, and Brittany had
negotiated with France a truce (Brussels, 22 March 1473) which named
4
Zurita, Anales, XVIII, liii.
5
Text of the kings address in Albert and Gassiot, Parlaments, 21820. Those present were the
bishop of Girona, the castellan of Amposta, three abbots, nine members of the military order, and the
syndics of Barcelona and Perpignan. The syndics of Barcelona immediately protested against the con-
vocation of a Cort in Perpignan in violation of Juans undertaking, in the recent parliament at
Barcelona, that he would, in accordance with custom, summon all such gatherings to the capital.
6
AHB, Consell de Cent XVI, Corts 1473. fo. 21.
 The Lost Lands 229
Aragon as a confederate covered by its terms. A Burgundian herald duly pre-
sented himself at Perpignan on 23 May, proclaimed the truce, and called upon
the French commanders to desist from action against the king of Aragon.
Doubtless aware that Louis was contesting the validity of the summons, de
Bresse chose to ignore it in the hope that hunger would soon bring about
Perpignans capitulation. With so many extra mouths to feedthe court, large
numbers of soldiers, refugees from the countrysidestocks of food were near-
ing exhaustion despite some success in smuggling a few pack-horse loads under
cover of darkness.7 Scenes of disorder multiplied around the ovens, public and
private, still able to bake some sort of bread; horses, mules, and donkeys had to
be slaughtered to sustain a small ration of meat. Nor was hunger the only ally
working for the French inside Perpignan; they counted too upon a fth col-
umn of inuential sympathizers. To the house of one such they dug a tunnel
through which an armed party entered the city under cover of darkness. All
however were soon taken or killed because the king, anticipating such an
attempt, had constructed counter-mines in every street and stationed guards
in every quarter.8
Despite their privations, the besieged, among them the pick of Juans cap-
tains and men, mounted a spirited defence; frequent sorties inicted sensible
loss on the French; from the walls they maintained a harassing re with cross-
bows and new-fangled rearms. Far more damaging to de Bresses ranks how-
ever were heat, disease, and hunger. Suffocated in the open by an exceptionally
hot and early summer, they found that their systematic devastation of the sur-
rounding countryside had destroyed the very crops that might have fed them;
venturing further aeld in search of supplies exposed them to crippling
encounters with forces based in Elne and numerous local guerrillas. Pierres
de Peralta, the ageing constable of Navarre, is said to have played a key role in
harassing the French: his knowledge of their language enabled him to discover
their troop dispositions by moving freely among them in the guise of a friar.
In company with his fellow-countrymen, the brothers Bertran and Juan
dArmendriz, and a small force of chosen cavalry he was thus able to spring
surprise attacks which spread panic among the French. They even attempted
to assault the main enemy encampment, with disastrous results for Juan
dArmendriz and three companions who were captured and slaughtered by

7
The kings son, Alfonso, organized this assistance from his base at Elne. Some reinforcements
also managed to break through the besiegers lines, among them a hundred horse led by the Maa
brothers from Valencia. Miralles, Dietari, 356.
8
Snchez-Parra, Crnica annima, ch. 73.
230 War, Civil and Foreign
the enraged defenders. Juans reaction was to order the execution of some of
his prisoners, but he relented on pleas from the French that their ofcers
had had no part in the killings, and that the laws of war would henceforth be
strictly observed.9
A logistical crisis combined with diplomatic constraint to push the French
commander into a full-scale assault. It was precipitated by the approach of a
relieving army led by Fernando. Preparations to assemble an expeditionary
force for Roussillon had begun in Castile well before the French laid siege to
Perpignan. The ever-dependable archbishop of Toledo had contributed 200
horse, the Admiral Enriquez 70; with other volunteers, Fernando had mus-
tered some 400 lances in Talamanca by the end of April. Much of May he had
spent in Zaragoza bargaining for support from the diputados of Aragon who
obliged with a hundred horse. Then, pausing only briey in Barcelona, on
7 June he reached Girona, a place of bright and bitter memories. There he
took the customary oaths as prince of Girona before hurrying on to Castell
dEmpries. At this point it became necessary to call a halt in order that sup-
plies, stragglers, and contingents from other quarters, including 300 from
Valencia, might assemble with the main body. By 23 June all was ready to
resume the march and on the following day the army crossed the Pyrenees by
the trackless Coll de la Maana in a howling gale. The weight of Castile had at
last been thrown into the scales against France.10
The French had launched their attack on Perpignan at dawn on 19 June. It
was preceded by a sortie from a tunnel inside the walls dug by the garrison still
holding the citadel. At a signal, soldiers carrying ladders burst from the mine
and threw themselves at the adjacent wall with the intention of opening a way
to their comrades outside. They failed; alerted in time, the garrison overpow-
ered them, killing many and taking the rest prisoners. That stratagem having
miscarried, the columns ranged around the city battered in vain against its
walls. Two days later came a still more stinging reverse in open battle. De Lau
had planned to ambush an armed convoy bringing provisions to Perpignan,
but instead found himself caught between troops sallying from the city and a
force of local militia. In the ensuing rout de Lau, the seneschals of Toulouse
and Poitou, and many more French captains were captured; large numbers of
common soldiers, who had no ransom value, were put to the sword.
De Bresse decided he could do no more; his army, though not inferior in
numbers, was in no condition to meet that led by Fernando. Accordingly, on

9 10
Zurita, Anales, XVIII, liv. Vicens Vives, Fernando II, 33943.
 The Lost Lands 231
the very day the king of Sicily debouched from the mountains towards Elne
(24 June), the French general red his camp and fell back upon Canet and
Claira; other units retired to the frontier at Salses. Juans great gamble had paid
off: he had displayed all the qualities of a great monarch and commander in his
defence of Perpignan; risking captivity and ruin, he had proved himself the
champion of Catalonia. Castile, moreover, had at long last yielded the dividend
promised his Catalan subjects in the succour brought by Fernando. Father and
son met that same day between Elne and Perpignan, but postponed Fernandos
entry into the delivered city until 28 June when all was ready for a tting dis-
play of celebration.
With the prince came the cavalry and infantry which had passed the pre-
vious days widely dispersed in the villages around Elne because the exhausted
countryside could not easily provision so large a host. Spending only a day in
Perpignan, which still suffered from a great want of food, Fernando led his
army northwards to the French frontier where he encountered a force com-
manded by that old antagonist Dionis of Portugal well entrenched, after the
French manner, in an encampment behind a palisade and ditches. Unable to
provoke a general engagement or advance further, he then returned to
Perpignan and dismissed the bulk of his men; their pay had expired and fodder
was scarce. His father meanwhile had been trying, without success, to take the
castle of Perpignan.11
The antagonists had reached a stalemate which left them with no choice but
to embark upon negotiations. De Bresse took the initiative, Juan readily fol-
lowed, with the result that on 14 July in Canet his representative, the count of
Prades, signed a truce valid until October. It left both parties in possession of
the territory and fortresses they then held, with the right to provision and for-
tify them. Juan, established in Elne, ratied the truce that same day; Fernando,
satised of his fathers safety, departed for Barcelona in order to organize sup-
plies for the famished counties. Ample stocks soon began to ow in by land and
sea, some from as far away as Naples, but how to provide for the long-term
defence of those territories was a question that gave great anxiety to both
Fernando and the kings counsellors. It had quickly become evident that Louis
XI was less than half-hearted in accepting the humiliation he had suffered.
Even as de Bresse negotiated a truce, the king of France was dragooning his
reluctant southern vassals into another army, 400 lances strong, destined for
Roussillon. Nor had conclusion of the truce deterred him from dispatching

11
Snchez-Parra, Crnica annima, chs. 75 and 76.
232 War, Civil and Foreign
advance units, under the command of Louis de Crussol, governor of the
Dauphin, on the pretext of replenishing de Bresses depleted forces. Bypassing
Perpignan and Elne, they struck towards Argels where, in clear violation of the
truce, they battered the town into surrender. They next tried to seize Palau del
Vidre, only to suffer a decisive check at the hands of its redoubtable captain,
Bertran dAlmendriz. Another setback followed early in August when de
Crussol himself met his death in a minor skirmish. Roussillon was living up to
its reputation as the graveyard of the French.12 In a further manifestation of
bad faith Louis sent another force, composed mainly of Gascons, striking
imprudently into the heart of the Pyrenees with the intention of penetrating
the Vall dAran and so diverting Aragonese attention from Roussillon. With
the advantage of surprise they initially overran the valley and gathered much
booty but were then drawn into an ambush and totally defeated by a militia
band from the neighbouring county of Ribagora organized by its lord, the
ubiquitous Alfonso of Aragon. All the French captains, among them three
seneschals, were taken prisoner and large numbers of the foot soldiers killed.13
No one believed that these latest setbacks would long deect Louis from his
Pyrenean goals. Accordingly Fernando, echoing arguments pressed upon him
in Barcelona, urged his father to reconvene in that city the Corts earlier inau-
gurated in Perpignan, hoping that the upsurge in patriotic fervour sparked by
the recovery of the lost Catalonian counties would yield the resources required
for their defence.14 Better still, with the backing of the Corts, a way might be
found to reach a settlement with Louis:
furthermore he will have as much as he wants to be able to recover the counties of
Roussillon and Cerdagne peacefully and by agreement. And however much the
Catalans might spend for that purpose, they believe they will spend much more in an
all-out war. In the last resort, there is no doubt that the matter will have to be settled by
agreement, (otherwise) in addition to the great expenditure would ensue the loss of
many lives which could not be avoided.15

12
le cimetire aux Franais. Calmette, La Question des Pyrnes, 207, quoting the contemporary
French chronicler, Thomas Basin.
13
Zurita, Anales, XVIII, lix.
14
The authorities of Barcelona had striven mightily to ingratiate themselves with Fernando, see-
ing in him another primogenitus who might serve their purposes. Vicens Vives, Fernando II, 34651.
15
. . . mas aun haur quanto querr para poder pacicamente y por medio de concordia cobrar los
dichos condados de Roselln y Cerdanya. E por mucho que los cathalans en ello despiendan, creen
mucho ms despender en guerra guerreada, y a la postre non se dubda las cosas haverse de quitar por
concordia, y allende los grandes gastos, quedar la prdida de muchas personas que excusar non se
pueden. Ibid. 34950.
 The Lost Lands 233
At bottom lay the conviction, expressed in an earlier letter from Fernando
(16 July), that Aragon had not the power to resist the king of France.16
Without mincing words, the city put the matter bluntly to Juan in a resolution
agreed on 26 July: he should have an aid of 23,000, but only on condition that
he transferred the Corts to Barcelona and allowed them to debate domestic as
well as military problems. The old war-horse of a king, however, saw things
very differently and refused to leave Roussillon when the French were patently
building up their strength for a renewed attack and the truce had barely two
months to run. He called instead (27 July) on his sons to rejoin him forthwith
to meet the challenge posed by de Crussol. But he called almost in vain because
the Castilian, Aragonese, and Valencian contingents assembled in June had all
dispersed. The archbishop of Zaragoza did return to Elne early in August, but
he brought with him hardly more than the men of his household. Fernando,
having failed to persuade his father to leave Perpignan, decided that he could
best aid him by raising funds and contingents elsewhere. He left Barcelona on
2 August, hoping to coax them from the deep pockets of Valencia.
Marooned in Perpignan, the king again appeared to be in some peril, and
not only from the French, for his recent ordeals had so strained his aged frame
that he succumbed to an illness which threatened his life. The news brought
Fernando galloping back to Barcelona, but yet again death passed Juan by to
seize instead upon yet another of his foes, on this occasion the French com-
mander, de Crussol. More providentially still, Louis XI showed readiness to
convert the brief truce into a treaty, for the good reason that he had no imme-
diate hope of raising another army for action in Roussillon and some fear that
Fernando might reappear with force sufcient to sweep the French from all
their footholds in that province. Negotiations accordingly got under way with
Pere de Rocabert, newly released from French captivity, and Jean de Lude act-
ing as plenipotentiaries. Within the brief time at their disposal they drafted a
treaty which, at Juans insistence, took as its basis the pact of Bayonne which a
decade earlier had rst brought Louiss armies across the Pyrenees to his rescue.
The treaty, while recognizing Aragonese sovereignty in the disputed counties,
was, as Louis doubtless appreciated, a recipe for future conict: Juan renewed
his undertaking to pay the king of France 300,000 cus, with the two contested
counties pledged as guarantees; pending that settlement, they were to come
under the control of a governor chosen by Louis from a list submitted by the
king of Aragon. Castles held by the French would meanwhile remain in their

16
. . . no era potente a resistir al rey de Francia. Ibid. 345.
234 War, Civil and Foreign
hands with captains selected by Juan from a French list. Neither monarch might
enter the territories or interfere with the authority of the governor whose power
would be buttressed by 400 cavalry paid by Aragon. All other troops must
withdraw from the counties. Should the promised sum be paid within the stipu-
lated space of one year, Juan was to regain full sovereignty in the counties; noth-
ing was said as to the consequences of an all-too-likely failure to meet that deadline.
Concluded in Perpignan on 17 September 1473, the treaty was ratied by Juan
on 10 October, by Louis on 10 November; the choice of governor fell upon
Pere de Rocabert, that of captain of the French garrisons upon de Lude.17
At the end of September Juan, fully recovered, had taken leave of his faithful
city, Perpignan, after conrming all its existing privileges and granting some
new in recognition of the heroic service it had rendered to his crown. He then
made his way to Barcelona where a triumphal reception awaited. Seated on a
carriage drawn by four white horses, anked by a host of nobles and civic dig-
nitaries, he entered by the Sant Daniel gate and, amid clamorous acclamation,
proceeded to his lodging in the bishops palace. All were aware nonetheless that
these were the premature trappings of victory: the trans-Pyrenean counties had
been neutralized, not regained, and little time remained to gather either the
money for their redemption or else the means to recover them by force of arms.
Expectation that Juan intended to strain every nerve to raise funds against
either eventuality had been raised by appeals addressed to all his states before
he left Perpignan. It was anticipated that he would lose no time in reconvening
the Corts in Barcelona, Fernando was charged with seeking aid from the king-
doms of Valencia and Aragon; there was even talk of a royal fund-raising visit
to Majorca. However, progress did not match these expectations: not until 20
December was the king able to open the Catalan assembly in the cathedral of
Barcelona with an address in which he declared his desire to give Louis his
money, in order to avoid further war, and to devote himself instead to justice
and recovery in Catalonia.18 All he had managed to extract by February 1474
was a modest grant towards paying the arrears of his troops in Roussillon.19 As
for Fernando, after being detained for several weeks by sickness in Tortosa,
he reached Zaragoza only at the very end of October, too late to gather the
Aragonese Cortes before the Christmas festival which, with his fathers leave,
he intended spending with Isabel in Castile. The prospects of cajoling the states

17
The articles are summarized by Calmette, Louis XI, Jean II, 3736.
18
AHB, Consell de Cent XVI, Corts, 1473, fo. 28: no volents mes subintrar en pratiches de
guerra.
19
His address to the Corts on 21 Feb. 1474 in Albert and Gassiot, Parlaments, 21518.
 The Lost Lands 235
of Valencia into further nancial sacrice were beginning to look exceedingly
dim. Great effort was therefore invested in diplomacy as the alternative weapon
against French machinations in the belief that the much-heralded Anglo-
Burgundian onslaught on Francenothing less than a renewal of the Hundred
Years Warwas about to remove all threat from that quarter. In that spirit Juan
renewed his alliance with Burgundy on 15 November 1473. Neapolitan aid he
sought to ensure through negotiations to marry his daughter Juana to either
King Ferrante or his son Federico. Brightest of all was the hope that dawned
eetingly in Castile: Fernando, Isabel, and Enrique IV celebrated the New Year
festivities together in Segovia amid every sign of cordiality; if that gathering
signalled an end to the succession crisis, then those Castilian hosts which had
played a large part in saving Roussillon in 1473 might again appear to chal-
lenge the might of France.20
What he could not hope to do was to extract from his exhausted kingdoms
the sums needed to buy off Louis XI, always on the doubtful assumption that
Louis intended to release his prey at any price; Fernando had been ingenuous
in allowing Barcelona to convince him otherwise. Proceedings in the Catalan
Corts and soundings in his other states soon brought Juan face to face with real-
ities on that score. But in the belief, mistaken as it proved, that he held the
French king over a diplomatic barrel, he dispatched a magnicent embassy
charged with securing either the cancellation or a great reduction in the debt,
and hence a renunciation of French claims on the counties, on the grounds that
Louis had repeatedly violated the Bayonne agreement. Two veterans of the civil
war, the count of Prades and the castellan of Amposta, supported by a seasoned
diplomat, Arnau Roger de Pallars, bishop of Urgell and patriarch of
Alexandria, were to lead the delegation. Their train, intended to demonstrate
that Aragon had not exhausted its wealth and power, is said to have numbered
over 300 richly caparisoned horsemen. This cavalcade left Barcelona on
4 February 1474 without the patriarch who vainly awaited a safeconduct. The
machinations of his kinsman, Hug Roger, may have had something to do with
this. Louis had his own reasons for seeking to undermine the embassy; to his
castellan in Roussillon he wrote: They want to deceive us; instead we shall
show ourselves cleverer than they are.21

20
Zurita, Anales, XVIII, lxiii. The Crnica annima (432) maintains that Enrique was only con-
cealing his resentment against Fernando and Isabel. How faction struggles in Castile, rather than
Enriques personal inclinations, governed the outcome of these encounters is well explained by Vicens
Vives, Fernando II, 36570.
21
Calmette, La Question des Pyrnes, 213. For the embassy, Zurita, Anales, XIX, i.
236 War, Civil and Foreign
Which way the wind was blowing quickly became clear. Once past the front-
ier, they observed more preparations for war than for festivals of peace22 and
in Montpellier their protest to the governor of Languedoc against a ban on
trade with the Catalan territories, a ban which violated the Treaty of Perpignan,
met with no response. In Paris, while the royal council erected another stone
wall against their arguments, they were repeatedly denied audience with the
king. Convinced that they could make no headway, they left Paris on 12 May
but had gone no further than Lyon when they found themselves detained for
several weeks on Louis orders. It was late July before they were permitted to
resume their journey and then only to be put under arrest again in Montpellier.
For two months Juan received no word from his ambassadorsLouis took care
that all communications were interceptedbut he knew well what was afoot.
Warned of the military movements under way near the frontier, he had spent
some days in the Empord at the end of February 1474 putting his defences in
order. Attention had also to be paid to the provisioning and fortication of
Perpignan where the French garrison were strengthening the castle and extend-
ing their eld of re. By May all pretence of adhering to the treaty had been
thrown to the winds. With reports of the diplomatic asco in Paris came
rumours that Louis had sworn to make himself master of the counties. Nor
was clear evidence of his intention wanting: 400 lances and 4,000 infantry
were gathering in Narbonne; within Roussillon his troops were destroying
growing crops; off the coast at Canet, scene of an abortive land attack, French
vessels were intercepting supplies for Perpignan. Juan took vigorous counter-
measures, including the stationing at Elne of 500 Neapolitan men-at-arms
sent by his nephew Ferrante. On 9 April he ordered the expulsion from
Perpignan of all French nationals and any others of suspect loyalty.
With summer came the storm. On 14 June a formidable French army
crossed the frontier in the guise of a force ghting for the Angevin cause; thus
did Louis try to wriggle out of a agrant treaty violation, but little attempt was
made to conceal its true mission. Its commander (de Lude) had learnt the
lessons of the previous year, so, instead of tying himself down in a siege of
Perpignan, he swept round the city to cut its supply links with the sea. Within
a week the French had advanced to the gates of Elne.23 Simultaneously, the ery
count of Pallars, ensconced since his expulsion from Barcelona in his ancestral

22
. . . por todas partes haba ms provisiones de guerra que de estas de paz . . . Ibid.
23
A letter, dated 19 June, in which the consuls of Perpignan notied Barcelona of the French
progress is in Calmette, La Question des Pyrnes, 216. Vicens Vives, Juan II, 3635.
 The Lost Lands 237
Pyrenean lands, mounted diversionary raids with 800 Gascon mercenaries into
the mountain valleys and against the estates of his Cardona enemies. To com-
plete Juans tale of woes, civil war once more erupted in Navarre between the
Beaumont and Agramont factions. It took the invaders barely a fortnight to
make themselves masters of Roussillon up to the Pyrenees. Garrisons which
resisted were put to the sword; whoever became a prisoner lost his life.24 Against
the onslaught only Elne and Perpignan, isolated by land and sea, stood rm.
At this crucial moment Juan was laid low with fever. At the end of April he
had announced his intention of taking himself to the Empord and trans-
ferring the Corts to Girona in readiness for the expected French invasion; the
Treaty of Perpignan, it will be remembered, prohibited him from entering the
disputed counties. But the sickness which struck him soon afterwards made it
impossible for him to stir from Barcelona when the crisis came. He was even
too weak to sign the proclamation Princeps Namque (19 June) mobilizing the
militia of Catalonia against the invader. His illness undoubtedly dampened
the response to that call from a people already crippled by a universal war-
weariness and the exhaustion of its material resources. It took the personal pleas
of a monarch, miraculously back on his feet in July, to galvanize the muni-
cipalities into some semblance of action. All realistic hope was focused upon
Fernando to whom both the king and Barcelona directed anguished appeals.
Unhesitatingly he promised to come to the rescue, only to nd that his
Castilian allies did not respond to his call as they had done a year earlier. The
key gure, as always, was the archbishop of Toledo. Increasingly alienated from
Fernando and Isabel by their reluctance to accept his tutelage or accord him
supremacy in their council, in August he sent a messenger to Juan to complain
that his services had not been worthily appreciated and went on to declare that
henceforth he had decided to consider himself entirely free [scil. of all obliga-
tion to the king of Aragon].25 The consequence of this spectacular turnabout
was that Fernando arrived in Zaragoza on 16 August unaccompanied by a
Castilian army. Rather than suffer the embarrassment of having him enter
Catalonia without a substantial force, his father ordered him to remain in the
Aragonese capital until he had gathered at least 200 lances. That proved no easy
task; not until 29 September did he reach Barcelona.

24
. . . el que era prisionero perda la vida. Zurita, Anales, XIX, iii. From its outset the war in
Roussillon had witnessed a degree of ferocity rarely seen in the earlier phases of the conict.
25
. . . ava deliberado de se poner en entera libertad . . . Zurita, Anales, XIX, iv.
238 War, Civil and Foreign
Fortunately for Juan, the French offensive slackened during these summer
months while Perpignan and Elne were still defending themselves vigorously.26
But this threatened to be but a temporary respite for Louis was reported to
be massing a yet more formidable army at Narbonne900 lances, 10,000
infantry, and a great train of artillery. In the ports of Provence was gathering a
large eet of ships and galleys to support the land forces. That the French king
was resolved to annex the counties lay beyond all doubt; whether he intended
to achieve his end solely by force was brought into question when, in October,
he presented through Pierres de Peralta a proposal to betroth Fernandos infant
daughter, Isabel, to the Dauphin with the counties as her dowry. Instead of
playing for time, Juan and Fernando, conferring together in Barcelona,
rejected the project out of hand, declaring that it was the Aragonese custom to
give money, not provinces, as dowry. At the same time they threw down the
gauntlet to Louis by asserting that they had no intention of paying the sum he
was demanding as the price for renouncing his claims on their territory.27 Their
seemingly rash deance rested partly upon the earlier French failure to seize
Elne and Perpignan, together with Juans assessment of the defensive capabil-
ities of fortresses in the Empord.28 A further reason to believe they might
weather the storm had come with the news that their arch-enemy in Castile,
Juan Pacheco, marquis of Villena, had died on 4 October, thus bringing the
coveted crown more nearly within their grasp. In that mood of condence the
council-of-war meeting in Barcelona sent Gascon, Navarrese, and Italian rein-
forcements to Elne; Fernando returned to Zaragoza so that he might keep close
watch upon Castile and endeavour to prise some aid from the Aragonese
Cortes; Juan departed to direct the defence of Catalonia from Castell
dEmpries; Fernandos half-sister, Juana, was to ensure continued support
from Naples by marrying its widowed king, Ferrante.29
All this optimism was swiftly blown to the winds. Defying the rigours of
winter, the French army gathered at Narbonne crossed the frontier on the rst
day of November 1474. Its strategy, in line with that adopted in June, was to
isolate Perpignan completely by seizing Elne, the base from which it had been

26
Zurita went so far as to claim that within that county [sc. Roussillon] the kings power equalled
that of the enemy. Anales, XIX, viii.
27
Ibid., ix.
28
He had made a tour of inspection there and around Girona in Sept. 1474.
29
It had earlier been proposed that Juana should marry Ferrantes son, Federico, but it was now
apparent that the Neapolitan king was seeking a Burgundian match for Federico. In the mean time, at
Catalan insistence, Juana was to preside over the Corts in Barcelona.
 The Lost Lands 239
succoured during the previous siege. Against such overwhelming odds drawn
around them in an impenetrable circle the defenders of Elne were helpless.
Having endured a month of continual attack and bombardment, they surren-
dered at midday on 5 December. Captains and men from Valencia, Aragon,
and Naples were allowed to march away; the Catalans were taken prisoner,
among them Bernat dOms who was shortly afterwards beheaded as a traitor to
the king of France.30 Following that success, a French column, forcing its way
through the pass at El Ports, took the town of Figueres against token opposi-
tion, probably with the intention of blocking any attempt to relieve Perpignan
rather than of launching an invasion of Catalonia.
Juan stood well-nigh defenceless before the storm. Appeals to his subjects
did bear some fruit: in December the Aragonese Cortes, under pressure from
Fernando, offered to raise 200 men-at-arms and 300 light horse to serve for
four months; the Catalan Corts in the same month approved a levy of 20 sous
on every household in place of feudal service and general mobilization under
Princeps Namque. But however much they strained their resources, worn away
by more than a decade of war, they could not come near to matching the power
of Francea fact of which Juan had always been aware. Only with the aid and
alliance of other powers, which he had assiduously and skilfully cultivated,
could he stand against Louis XI. At this crucial moment that supporting net-
work disintegrated. In Castile the death of Villena had not resulted in an end
to faction and universal recognition of Fernando and Isabels claim to the
throne; rather it had precipitated a wild scramble for his lands and ofces, thus
throwing yet another apple of discord among the high nobility. Hard on the
heels of that upset came the death of Enrique IV on 12 December 1474, tid-
ings of which reached Fernando with a letter from the archbishop of Toledo,
warning that he must at once return to Castile. On 19 December he sped away
from Zaragoza to claim a crown and, so he assured an anxious father, return
with a great army to recover Roussillon. Instead he soon found himself
enmeshed in another bitter civil war which dashed all immediate prospect of
Castilian arms coming to the rescue of Aragon.31 Juans other hope of salvation,
an Anglo-Burgundian descent on northern France, had also vanished.
Although Charles the Bold had in July 1474 signed the Treaty of London in
which he and Edward IV sketched out a partition of France, he had already

30
Rumour had it that the Neapolitans had undermined the defence by calling for surrender.
Zurita, Anales, XIX, xi. De Valera, Memorial, ch. 98. A detailed account of the siege in Palencia,
Crnica, ii. 14950.
31
Surez, Fernando, 4750.
240 War, Civil and Foreign
turned his ambition towards a different goal: elevating his duchy into a king-
dom. To achieve that end he needed to cultivate the man who could confer the
crown, the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick III; to weld his would-be king-
dom into a territorial whole, he embarked on a campaign of conquest in the
Rhineland, and, in order to free his hands in that direction, extended his truce
with Louis XI to May 1475.32 Pleas for help from Aragon raised nothing but
words. As for England, Edward IV could not contemplate an invasion of
France without the support of Burgundy or Brittany, and he was struggling to
raise the money for an expedition. The enterprise would have to be postponed
to another year; not until July 1475 would Edward land at Calais. Louis now
had time enough to nish his business in the south, provided that he restricted
his ambitions to the two counties and did not become embroiled in a wider
conict beyond the Pyrenees.
Strangling Perpignan into surrender proved no easy task. Its inhabitants,
though cut off by land and sea from every avenue of aid, displayed greater res-
olution in resisting the French than had any Catalan city or town against
Juan.33 But the besiegers knew that they had only to maintain a tight blockade
until hunger did its work. Legends grew up of citizen suffering and heroism.
One told of a mother with two sons; when one died, she gave his esh to the
other so that he might survive.34 Away from legend, the name rat eaters long
afterwards stuck to the people of Perpignan in remembrance of the straits to
which they were reduced.35 As winter passed, Juan had to accept that he could
not nd the means, either military or diplomatic, of saving the city. To such
straits was he reduced that his trek to Castell dEmpries in mid-January had
necessitated pawning a fur cloak from the royal wardrobe to pay for the hire of
mules. Once there, having awaited in vain the arrival of troops promised by
Aragon and Barcelona, he made a last, desperate attempt to relieve Perpignan
by dispatching across the Pyrenees the few companies at his disposal under the
command of Rodrigo de Bobadillo. They failed to break through the French
lines, and even had they succeeded they would have found themselves in the
same trap of hunger. It was, nally, at the kings command that Perpignan
surrendered on 10 March 1475. The French leaders, anxious to bring their
campaign to a speedy end, agreed to generous terms which did not please
32
R. Vaughan, Charles the Bold (London: Longman, 1973). Schnerb, Burgundy, in New
Cambridge Medieval History, vii. 4505.
33
The defence was directed by Galcern de Requesens, governor-general of Catalonia.
34
Zurita, Anales, XIX, xx.
35
Calmette, La Question des Pyrnes, 217. Zurita, more prosaically, has them eating horse-esh as
a last resort (Anales, XIX, xx). One thousand are said to have died of hunger.
 The Lost Lands 241
their master.36 Determined that there should be no repeat of the popular
revolt against French rule, Louis instituted a regime of harsh repression; as a
result, thousands ed south to seek refuge in Catalonia.
Distinguished historians, among them Calmette and Vicens Vives, have
suggested that Juan sacriced Perpignan and the counties in order that his son
might take the throne of Castile. That interpretation sits ill with the facts, for
it assumes that he might otherwise have found the means to defend those
territories against Louiss patent determination to annex them. Nothing in the
chronicle of events which had unfolded since 1462 gives any cause to believe
that he could have done so without the assistance, direct or indirect, of foreign
powers, foremost among which stood Castile. Placing his son on the Castilian
throne was not a prize secured at the cost of Roussillon and Cerdagne, it
was, rather, a necessary step towards their recovery and subsequent security.
Immediate relief from that quarter was not, however, in prospect. At a meeting
of his council held in Segovia on 18 January 1475 Fernando had won agree-
ment to send no fewer than 2,000 lances to Catalonia, but it was an empty ges-
ture; none of the force at his disposal could be diverted from the civil war
looming in Castile. Whether from bodily weakness or in an ultimate display of
vacillation we do not know, but on his deathbed Enrique had made no written
will nor, despite much urging by his confessor, had he uttered the name of his
chosen successor.37 The way was thus left open to those, led by Pachecos son
the new marquis of Villena, who championed his daughter Juana as heir to the
throne to push ahead with the projected alliance with her uncle Afonso V, king
of Portugal. Their clear purpose was to oppose the CastileAragon partnership,
represented by Fernando and Isabel, with an alternative which would imme-
diately bring into play the considerable military and material resources of
Portugal. A long struggle was in prospect, one in which the omens for
Fernando and Isabel were not favourable.
Aware, after the fall of Perpignan, that he could not unaided continue the
war, Juan reconciled himself to a six-month truce with France. If he nursed any
hopes that, on its expiry, he would be able to renew the contest, they became
increasingly dim as the year advanced. Edward IV did launch his invasion of
France in July 1475, but only to nd the duke of Burgundy unprepared to
cooperate; left in the lurch, the king of England signed a treaty with Louis in

36
He must, however, have been satised that the city was obliged to acknowledge his sovereignty.
The surrender of Perpignan led to the release of the Aragonese ambassadors held in virtual captivity
since May 1474.
37
Zurita (Anales, XIX, xiii) summarizes contemporary chroniclers accounts of Enriques last hours.
242 War, Civil and Foreign
August. Brittany too made peace, followed in September by Charles the Bold
who committed himself to a nine-year truce. Juans diplomatic arsenal had
suddenly been blown to smithereens. Castile offered him little better cheer.
Open hostilities had broken out there in May 1475 when Afonso of Portugals
army crossed the frontier to champion Juanas cause and, by marrying her, take
the Castilian throne. Louis XI, free of anxiety in the north, found himself able
to contemplate either an overwhelming attack upon Catalonia or an operation
to support Juana and Afonso in the battle for the Castilian succession. He
rightly calculated that the surest route to uncontested possession of the coun-
ties and, possibly, a much larger slice of Aragonese territory, lay through
Afonsos triumph over Fernando. In September, hard on the heels of the
Burgundian truce, he accordingly made a pact with Portugal, promising
Afonso aid in Castile and envisaging the partition of Aragon between them.38
Juan, conversely, pinned all his hopes of averting disaster upon the victory of
Fernando and Isabel. Almost every day his letters bearing advice crossed with
those from his son keeping him up to date with events unfolding in Castile.
Material aid he could furnish only on the most modest scale: troops from
Valencia, led by the governor, attacked the marquis of Villenas lands; four
galleys patrolled the Guadalquivir River; a few siege engines. Much more
signicant was the arrival in November 1475 of Alfonso of Aragon, sent at his
brothers request to take command of the Isabeline forces. He brought with
him only fty lances and a hundred light horse, but his military experience and
reputation, gained in the Catalan wars, put him head and shoulders above his
opponents and did much to turn the tide in Castile.39
So anxious was he to be as near as possible to the scene of action in Castile
that early in August Juan declared his intention of leaving Catalonia for
Aragon. However, he had still to complete his preparations when, in the mid-
dle of that month, several companies of French troops, defying the truce,
crossed the Pyrenees and took the small town of Sant Lloren de la Muga, west
of Figueres, which other invaders had occupied earlier in the year. Was this
a manuvre designed to distract the king of Aragon from intervention
in Castile, or did it herald a full-scale invasion of Catalonia when the
truce expired? Having no means of reading Louiss intentions, Juan took the

38
Vicens Vives, Juan II, 3701.
39
Alfonso also resumed the ofce of master of Calatrava, a dignity of which he had been deprived
by Enrique IV although he never ceased to use the title, and in which he was now conrmed by
Fernando and Isabel. Juan had intended that he should take with him 100 lances and 250 light horse,
but was unable to raise that number (Cortiella i dena, Una ciutat catalana, 380).
 The Lost Lands 243
precaution of ordering the veguer of Barcelona to call out all the militia of the
principality, only to have the Catalan Corts question the measure as over-
reaction to a relatively minor incursion. The kingdoms of Aragon and Valencia,
preoccupied with particularly virulent outbreaks of noble-inspired violence,
exhibited still less readiness for another round of hostilities with France. The
Aragonese Cortes, which had been continued in Zaragoza by his sister Juana
after Fernandos departure, proved so recalcitrant that it had to be dissolved. In
Valencia the Corts ended unfruitfully for the crown when illness forced Juans
son, the archbishop of Zaragoza, to bring it to a close.40
Catalan scepticism as to the reality of a French threat seemed justied by the
events of the autumn of 1475: no more raiders came over the mountains and
Louis agreed to prolong the truce to July 1476. Instead, violence of a different
kind came to plague these long-suffering lands. There had gathered under
French protection in Sant Lloren a motley band of Gascons, Castilians,
Navarrese, and Catalans, the detritus of armies whose only aim was pillage. In
February 1476 they launched a series of raids into the Empord, seized the cas-
tle of Ponts and so cut the road between Girona and Figueres. Another more
formidable band of marauding adventurers led by Luis de Mudarra, a captain
who had faithfully served Juan until his pay ran out, were ranging as far aeld
as Vic, Granollers, and Sant Cugat during January. They went on to fortify
themselves in Igualada from where they struck far west to take Tremp and
Talarn. Fears grew that they might make common cause with the count of
Pallars, still hovering in his mountain redoubt. These audacious raids across
the principality came to an end only at the close of May 1476 when, through
the intervention of the Corts, Mudarra and his men agreed to leave the coun-
try in return for a promised payment of 7,000.41
Mudarra and his like had, almost certainly, acted independently of France.
However, their exploits had cruelly exposed Juans weakness and signalled to
Louis that an invasion of Catalonia might meet with little effective opposition.
The spring of 1476 saw French armies seemingly menacing all the northern

40
Snchez Aragons, Las Cortes de la Corona de Aragn. The archbishop, Juan of Aragon, died on
19 Nov. 1475. Never having taken holy orders, his tenure of the archbishopric had been that of an
administrator. His death deprived his father of one of his most able and trusted servants.
41
Included in that sum was compensation for his horses which had been slaughtered to feed
Perpignan during the siege. There is some doubt whether Mudarra received any money because on 13
July 1476 the Catalan Corts offered Juan 7,600 on certain conditions, among them the cancellation
of the payment to Mudarra. The Corts further resolved that anyone committing robbery, by land or
sea, on the pretext of waging war should be outlawed. Ibid. 524. AHB, Consell de Cent XVI, Corts.
1476, fo. 159.
244 War, Civil and Foreign
borders of Spain from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. But only on one front
could they gather the numbers needed for a large-scale operation; Louis had to
choose between invading Catalonia and going to the aid of Juana and Afonso
in Castile. Like Juan, he came to the conclusion that the decisive struggle
would be waged in Castile and deployed his armies accordingly to the west. He
nonetheless dispatched a subsidiary force of 300 lances and 400 infantry into
the Empord in June. They took Vilanova de la Muga and subsequently the
fortresses of Vilar and Marza i Pedret, raising fears for the safety of Girona.
Until late in August they continued to forage far and wide against feeble re-
sistance, causing great destruction to the harvest. The small garrison left in
Vilanova (80 horse and 200 infantry) were able to ravage at will, as though they
had been a thousand strong.42 Their depredations extended as far as Foix,
Rupi, and Madredmanya, again uncomfortably close to Girona. In response
to these acts of aggression, some Catalan lords launched raids into Roussillon
and Cerdagne from their castles in the Pyrenees. They represented their actions
as reprisals against the French but they were hardly better than freebooters and
almost all their victims the hapless natives of those counties.
Despite all this bellicose activity, the truce between France and Aragon
remained nominally in force throughout the summer of 1476 and was renewed
for a further three months from 11 July. The French troops wreaking havoc in
the Empord were supposedly freelancers aiding Catalan dissidents in a con-
tinuing struggle against the king of Aragon, and it suited Juan to fall in with a
ction which averted an open breach with Louis. Catalans there undoubtedly
were in these roving bands. One of their leaders was Ramon de Planella, for
long a notorious stalwart of Catalan feuding and subsequently a staunch cham-
pion of the insurgent cause. His presence aroused well-founded suspicion that
he was plotting with those of like sympathies in that troubled territory where
the embers of civil war had patently not been extinguished. Nor could royal
authority do anything to suppress the anarchy which reigned in a region where
its writ no longer ran. For more than a decade armies had tramped and fought
across the Empord, tearing the fabric of society to shreds. All the old civic and
family enmities and feuds now burst forth unrestrained. From his castle in
Foix, Juan de Salcedo was devastating the lands of his Sarriera enemies and
their allies, the fortress of Torroella de Montgr served as a base for similar
depredations by the Pon family; the town of La Garriga preyed on the inhab-
itants of Castell who in turn aided the outrages perpetrated by those in

42
. . . como si fueran mil de caballo. Zurita, Anales, XIX, xlix.
 The Lost Lands 245
Vilanova de la Muga. Llevi, the stronghold of Salcedos cousin, and Casavells
were turned into robber dens working in league with the foreign soldiery hold-
ing Ponts. Travel through the mountains by the Ports pass became hazardous
in the extreme thanks to the brigands in the castle of Requesens who robbed
and held to ransom any who dared venture on that road. A stain of reciprocal
violence had spread throughout the Empord. From its midst the baron of
Crulles sent a lamentation to the counsellors of Barcelona: Some are feuding,
others warring, others uttering threats and laughing at any who take it ill.
Cursed be the ill-fortune that permits such acts, that allows us to be thus ruled
and governed that we have so little fear of king or God.43 To his brother the
captain of Girona wrote: the land is ruined . . . everything is in chaos.44
In the central Pyrenees the endemic conict between Beaumonts and
Agramonts rumbled on its customary violent course, giving rise to fears that
it would open the way to a French attack.45 But it was in the west that Louis
had decided to concentrate his strength in support of his Castilian allies.
Operations began in March 1476, immediately ran into stubborn Basque resist-
ance on the frontier, then ground to a halt in a fruitless two-month siege of
Fuenterrabia. French intervention had, in any case, come too late; the battle of
Toro, fought on 1 March 1476, had turned the tide irrevocably against the king
of Portugal who in June abandoned Castile. A second attempt on Fuenterrabia
having come to nothing, Louis, too, gave up the struggle and agreed to a three-
month truce which came into force on 7 September 1476. Although another
year was to pass before peace nally settled upon Castile, Fernando and Isabel
could henceforth feel assured of victory.46
The salvation which Juan had so long awaited from Castile had arrived at the
very last moment, just when French incursions and internal lawlessness threat-
ened to reignite civil war and reduce Catalonia to ashes. In Barcelona reigned a
deep pessimism over the ability of a frail, aged king to save the principality from
destruction; he seemed, rather, to have abandoned it, with royal authority del-
egated to the Princess Juana and even the powers of governor in the hands of a

43
Los uns bandolegen, los alters garregen, los alters bravegen de paraula e riuhen-se daquells qui
prenen mal.Maleyta sia la fortuna qui tals actes consent que axi siam regits e governats e tan poca
temensa ajam de rey ni de S[enyor]. Sobrequs i Vidal. La guerra civil, ii. 61. Despite these sentiments,
Crulles himself resorted to piracy in the following year.
44
la terra es perduda . . . tot va a regne solta. AHB, Consell de Cent XVI, Corts, 16 Sept. 1476,
fo. 170.
45
Zurita, Anales, XIX, xv, xxxix. Vicens Vives, Fernando II, 4446.
46
Vicens Vives, Fernando II, 40840. Surez, Fernando el Catlico, 4760. Idem, Los Trastmara,
21522. Hillgarth, The Spanish Kingdoms, ii. 35860.
246 War, Civil and Foreign
subordinate. Eyes turned instead to the son who must soon succeed him.
Fernando had indeed taken pains to manifest his concern for the fate of
Catalonia in a regular correspondence with its capital; repeatedly he gave assur-
ances that he intended to join his father in dealing with its problems as soon as
he might safely absent himself from Castile. But that he would soon be free of
Castilian concerns looked doubtful because, although Afonso of Portugal had
withdrawn from the fray, many great nobles were persisting in their deance or
were seizing the opportunity to pursue ancient vendettas. The burden of bring-
ing peace and order to the Crown of Aragon therefore rested still upon Juans
bent shoulders. The perennial problems of Navarre had kept him hovering in
that region for most of the summer, with occasional excursions to Zaragoza in
the hope of extracting some aid from the Cortes of Aragon, and in the constant
expectation that Fernando would soon join him to remedy the ills of Catalonia.
When it became clear that Fernando could not prudently leave Castile, the two
agreed to meet in Vitoria at the end of August.
In Juans train went powerful Catalan voicesthe count of Prades, Joan
Margarit, and four delegates from Barcelona. Their deliberations ranged, of
course, over the whole Iberian and international scene, with Catalonia not,
apparently, occupying centre-stage. A joint appeal was addressed to the
Catalan Corts asking for 300 horse to ensure the safety of Girona,47 but it was
the explosive situation in Navarre which caused them to suspend their talks
in order that Fernando might go there in person. When in September they
resumed their meeting in Logroo, Catalonia became very much more the
focus of their anxieties. Reports had come that King Afonso of Portugal with
a powerful eet had appeared at Collioure. Having been worsted in Castile, he
had, it seemed, turned his attentions to Aragon. He would, so rumour had it,
lead 500 lances from Roussillon. (In truth, he was already far away, vainly soli-
citing Louis assistance to pursue his Castilian ambitions.) At the same time came
reports of a French army massing in Narbonne, of new attacks in the Empord,
and of Louis intention to attack Barcelona during the winter. All presaged an
imminent threat to Catalonia. In response, the two monarchs gave assurances
that all the armed might of Castile would soon be deployed against any such
aggression:48 they further promised that Fernando would come to wind up the
Aragonese Cortes in Zaragoza and that Juan would likewise bring the Catalan

47
Juana delivered this request to the Corts, meeting in Cervera, on 16 Sept. It was granted, with
most unusual dispatch, on 20 Sept. Snchez Aragons, Las Cortes, 516.
48
Assurances contained in a letter from Fernando to Barcelona, 24 Sept. 1476. Vicens Vives,
Fernando II, 462.
 The Lost Lands 247
Corts to a conclusion, an undertaking which implied the satisfaction of griev-
ances. However, no timetable was attached to this programme and it quickly
became clear that their immediate priority was to settle Castile and Navarre.
Vicens Vivess comment on these proceedingsthat the future of Catalonia
was subordinated to the advantage of all Spain49fails to acknowledge that
the other states of the peninsula were in no better case than the principality.
Had a great French army, with or without the king of Portugal, fallen upon
the Catalans, there is no reason to doubt that Fernando would have lived up to
his promise; it was very much in his own interest as future king of Aragon to
prevent Louis from gaining a foothold south of the Pyrenees. But no such
onslaught did materialize; no more than 60 horse and 300 foot struck through
Pallars and Andorra, followed in December by a similar number sent to rein-
force the garrison at Vilanova. In these circumstances it was left to a group of
northern nobles led by lvaro de Madrigal (captain of the threatened Castell
dEmpries), Joan Sarriera, and Joan de Vallgornera, to seek some means of
mastering the chaos that had engulfed that region. Meeting in Castell in
November 1476, they realized that the only solution lay in the organization of
an adequate ghting force and that this required funds which the Corts were
failing to nd. They referred the problem to Juan in Zaragoza, only to have it
thrown back with the advice that they should themselves look to the defence of
the Empord, using the revenues of the Generalitat if need be. Whereupon
they summoned a regional meeting of estates in Girona under the presidency
of Joan Margarit in January 1477 and, by its authority, proceeded to appropri-
ate those revenues. The outcome was not an effective ghting force but a furi-
ous denunciation of this Girona parlament by the Catalan Corts, in face of
which Juan had to claim that he had been misunderstood. The count of Prades
and the governor of Catalonia had to be sent to resolve the dispute.50 While
they laboured at that task a French incursion up to the very walls of Girona
drove home the inanity of Catalan parochialism and legalism. Unopposed the
invaders swept south as far as Caldas de Malavella where they burnt one of its
defensive towers with all its defenders and then exacted a ransom from the
terried population. From there they turned back in leisurely fashion towards
the Empord, levying tribute as they went. All this the French represented not
as an outright act of war but as a reprisal for raids by Catalan border barons into
Roussillon. The combination of military and political crises served, however,

49
El futuro de Catalua quedaba subordinado al benecio de toda Espaa. Ibid.
50
Zurita, Anales, XX, ii.
248 War, Civil and Foreign
to convince Juan that Catalonia could not, or would not, see to its own inter-
nal and external defences. Although still persuaded that France posed no immi-
nent threat, he accordingly hired a hundred lances for two months which he
dispatched into the troubled provinces under the command of a minor royal,
Felipe de Aragon, a bastard son of the prince of Viana. In earlier times the
appearance of such a personage might have risked rekindling the embers of
Catalan separatism, but those days were now well past. Operating from
Figueres, this young man and his small army sufced to ush the French out of
their base at Vilanova de la Muga, restore a semblance of order to the region,
and put the other French stronghold, at Ponts, under siege. In June 1477 its
defenders agreed to evacuate the castle on payment of 800 orins. Thus was the
truce with France renewed and the Empord cleared of foreign intruders.
Why had Louis XI broken off so long and bitter a struggle in this tame fash-
ion? If one accepts that his ultimate aim had always been the acquisition of
Roussillon and Cerdagne, it may be argued that he was now convinced that
Juan had no hope of recovering them and could safely be left for his few
remaining years mired in the problems of Catalonia. In the longer term, Louis
needed to look to his relations with the next king of Aragon through whom he
must endeavour to rebuild the old understanding between France and Castile.
A more immediate reason for disengaging from war on the southern frontiers
of France was the golden opportunity presented by the defeat and death of
Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, in the battle of Nancy on 5 January 1477.
Immediately Louis bent all his power towards the conquest of Burgundy and
Flanders, prizes immeasurably richer than anything he could hope to wrest
from his Spanish neighbours with whom he gladly extended truce after truce
until, on 9 October 1478, he secured a renewal of the Franco-Castilian alli-
ance. Throughout this passage of diplomacy, Juan had no choice but to follow
in his sons footsteps, protesting all the while that he would never surrender his
title to the counties. He would not do it even if he were given two hundred and
fty times the price of as many Roussillons. He valued honour above life and
kingdoms, and in that mind meant to go to the other world if in his lifetime he
could not recover them.51 He was particularly incensed by a proposal, eman-
ating from France and canvassed in the Castilian court, that the counties be
put in the hands of the king of Naples (now his son-in-law) until such time as
arbitration should resolve the issues in dispute between himself and Louis.
51
. . . l no lo hara si le diese docientos y cincuenta cuentos de ms de lo que valdran otyros tan-
tos Rosellones. Que l estimaba en ms la honra que la vida y los reinos; y con aquella opinin se
entenda ir al otro mundo si en sus das no se pudiesen cobrar. Zurita, Anales, XX, xvi.
 The Lost Lands 249
He said he would not entrust his honour to any man in the world, even to the king his
father if he were still alive; this was a proverb always employed by his great-grandfather,
the good king Enrique. He would rather this land were lost to his enemy with no fault
on his part, as was then the case, than have it given into the hands of another who might
dispose of it at his will.52

Nonetheless he had to face the harsh reality that he had, at that juncture, no
choice but to lay down arms in the hope that further turns of fortunes wheel
might offer an opportunity to redeem the lost lands and his honour. A peace
treaty being out of the question, he authorized his captains to bring hostilities
to an end with an extended truce. With Hug Roger de Pallars still doggedly
defending his lands from the castle at Sort, they concluded a truce to run for
twelve months from 1 April 1478.53 On the Roussillon front it proved more
difcult because Juan had no control over the frontier barons who were taking
advantage of the general chaos to raid and loot in French-controlled territory.
An initial agreement made in June with Bollo del Giudice, Louiss governor in
Perpignan, broke down when these Pyrenean warlords continued their depre-
dations, provoking reprisals from the other side. A similar fate befell a second
truce agreed in July. From his mountain stronghold at Rocabruna a certain Bac
persisted with plundering forays led by his son Callar. Louis is said to have
quipped that he would put no faith in anything signed by the king of Aragon
unless it also bore the signatures of King Bac and King Callar. Measures were
taken to lay hands on Bac, even to assist del Giudice in reducing his castle
(a confession that the royal writ no longer ran in these regions), but it fell to the
Castilians, negotiating an extension of their own truce with France, to insist
that Aragon be included, as it was in the later peace treaty signed in October
1478.54 There remained the phantom conict with Ren of Anjou which was
ended by a truce of indenite duration made on the very day of Juans death
19 January 1479.55

52
. . . deca que no dejara en persona del mundo ni aun del rey su padre si viviese, su honra, y que
ste era proverbio que siempre usaba el buen rey don Enrique su bisagelo, y quera ms que aquella
tierra se perdiese en poder de su enemigo sin falta suya como lo estaba entonces que no fuese a dar en
poder de otri que pudiese disponer della a su voluntad. Ibid. XX, xix.
53
Santiago Sobrequs, Els barons de Catalunya, 197.
54 55
Zurita, Anales, XX, xix. Ibid., xxix.
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 PART III
FERNANDO THE CATHOLIC
This page intentionally left blank
 19
The Monarch Triumphant

Through the last two years of the old kings life control of events was visibly
slipping away into the condent grasp of his son. Fernando continued never-
theless to show his father every mark of respectful devotion and struggled to
keep their often divergent views on a common course. It was to consult upon
their relations with France, the torments of Navarre, and the conduct of their
Neapolitan relative that they agreed to meet on the Aragonese frontier early in
1479. Juan had intended to travel by way of Tortosa and the River Ebro but,
before he could take leave of Barcelona, he fell ill and within a few days died in
the bishops palace, more of old age than from sickness.1 He had lived eighty
tempestuous years. With amazing tenacity he had fought for ten of those to
impose his will on Catalonia and, for the last six years of his life, to no avail to
escape the consequences of that fatal bargain with France.
Juans single-minded pursuit of the latter quest had meant that Catalonia
remained upon a war-footing, governed, or more often misgoverned, by
regional captains, and that scant attention had been paid either to the issues
which had provoked civil war or to the grave consequences of that conict. A
tired mind and body, however undaunted, lacked the will and vision to engage
with so vast an array of problems; redeeming the lost counties served, in some
measure, as an excuse to push them aside. His heir, widely hailed as the coming
saviour of Catalonia, remained caught in the turbulence of Castile and unable
to do more than offer advice by letter or messenger. Nor did the Catalan Corts,
convoked in the dramatic setting of Perpignan in 1473 and continued in other
cities to the end of the reign, play a constructive role. Partly this was because the
king saw them primarily as an instrument for nancing his wars, but, above all,
because the old rivalries and divisions resurfaced with all their familiar virul-
ence. A recognition that these dissensions were paralysing the Corts led in
October 1477 to the creation of a commission forty-ve strong (fteen from

1
. . . ms de vejez que de dolencia . . . Zurita, Anales, XX, xxvii. Vicens Vives, Juan II, 3846.
254 Fernando the Catholic
each estate) to which the full assembly entrusted all its powers for a period of
three months in the hope that it might break the deadlocks.2 The commission
achieved nothing, leaving the Corts to lapse into a state of hibernation, await-
ing the arrival of new life with a new king.
Among the great issues left unresolved by this paralysis of authority loomed
large the remensa question. After wrestling with it inconclusively at the outset
of his reign, Juan had left it in suspension since 1462, pleading the overriding
demands of war. Although he could claim that he was never subsequently free
of those demands, the end of internal conict in 1472 brought renewed clam-
our from both sides for a resolution. And yet, for the king, the way forward was
no clearer than it had been in pre-war days. Verntallats victorious remensas had
done him sterling service and expected a due reward,3 so, too, did many of their
adversaries such as Joan Margarit, bishop of Girona and lord of wide stretches
of the Montana. His fellow lords, impoverished by a decade of war, expected
nothing less than the recovery of their revenues and the settlement of arrears
accumulated since the outbreak of hostilities. Their prospects did not look
bright. On taking possession of Olot in 1471, Verntallat had approved a total
exemption from all feudal dues and services for the peasants of the Montana;
Juan had found it prudent to do no more than make the measure dependent on
a future general settlement. A judgement could only come from the crown and
must inevitably alienate one party or the other; Juan had neither the will to
deliver a judgement nor the authority to impose it. He was far from achieving
that authoritarian monarchy which Vicens Vives maintains was the immedi-
ate outcome of the civil war.4 What he could do, without venturing into a judi-
cial quagmire, was to heap rewards of a material and honoric nature upon
individual remensa leaders, most especially upon Verntallat who in 1474
received the title of viscount of Hostoles with an estate in the Vall dHostoles
west of Girona. Some have represented this as a cynical device to bring the most
prominent remensa into the seigneurial camp and so alienate him from his
followers. There is no evidence that Juan harboured any such design; if he did,

2
Juan had asked for the appointment of such a body when he met the Corts in Barcelona in
July 1477. In Oct. illness prevented him confronting the Corts which was informed by his doctor that
an attack of gout and pains in his chest had conned him to bed in great pain and in danger of death.
AHB, Consell de Cent XVI, Corts.
3
During the war years the king had assured them of his resolve to administer justice in their case;
e.g. in a letter to Verntallat written in 1464: as for the other matters [the mals usos], do not worry
about them at present, for they [the remensas] should be satised with what justice decides. Vicens
Vives, Histria de los remensas, 112.
4
monarqua autoritaria. Ibid. 108.
 The Monarch Triumphant 255
it failed in its purpose for Verntallat remained a champion of the peasant cause
until Fernando imposed a settlement many years later.5
Unlike their leader, the remensa masses reaped little reward for their loyalty
and sacrice. They were required to surrender all the fortresses they had occu-
pied in the kings name, a measure which might have been inspired by mistrust
or by a need to restore property to its erstwhile owners. More worrying to the
peasants was the threat to their de facto exemption from feudal dues won at
Olot in 1471. When Verntallat issued a proclamation of the same tenor at
Constantins in 1475 it was swiftly disavowed by the monarch with a warning
that his pre-war ruling still stood: only the mals usos had been suspended, all
other dues and services must be punctually rendered. Having tasted liberty for
a whole decade, the peasantry rebelled against a return to the uncertain status
which had been theirs before 1462. Their resentment boiled over into violence
during 1475. The trouble, which began in Cor, had its origins as far back as
1444 when the town bought its freedom from the bishop and chapter of
Girona and was incorporated into the royal desmesne. In 1465 a cash-strapped
king sold the jurisdiction back to Bishop Margarit for 17,000 sous, a trans-
action which had no immediate effect because Cor was at that time in the
opposing camp. Once the conict had ended, Margarit tried to reconcile its
inhabitants to ecclesiastical jurisdiction by offering to reimburse the sum they
had earlier paid to escape it. His chapter, however, which had never recognized
the 1444 transaction, refused to pay a sou and, to make matters worse, strove
to recover arrears of dues from the beginning of the civil war. Infuriated by such
treatment, the townspeople rose on 19 March 1475, seized the castle with
Verntallats assistance and held it against the forces of Bishop Margarit for three
weeks.6 It required a force of 2,000, a large train of artillery, and the presence of
Alfonso de Aragon to bring them to submission. And far from cowing peas-
ant unrest, that episode sparked further agitation, including demands for a
reformed sagramental or militia open to all vassals of the king and church; in
other words, an armed peasantry. His enemies saw Verntallats hand in all of
this but his was more a supportive than a guiding spirit. Juan had reacted to the
tumult with a mixture of coercion and exhortation; the church of Girona with
the excommunication of its recalcitrant peasants (6 April 1475). Neither was
effective. In the following year remensas seized Sant Lloren de la Muga and
Ponts, both possessions of the Girona chapter, while guerrilla bands attacked

5
Ibid. 11011.
6
Sobrequs i Vidal, La guerra civil, ii. 3434. Vicens Vives, Histria de los remensas, 115.
256 Fernando the Catholic
its minions on the road to Barcelona. Fernando, in his capacity as primog-
enitus, muddied the waters still further by declaring in the spring of 1476 that
all places under Verntallats jurisdiction were exempt from all dues, thereby
creating a free remensa zone in the Montana. In this atmosphere of violence,
uncertainty, and simmering discontent the reign of Juan II came to its end.
His successor tried initially to hold on to the course pursued by the monar-
chy since the Interlocutory Sentence of 1455: in effect, the indenite suspen-
sion of the mals usos and indenite postponement of a nal sentence which
must create bitter resentment in one of the parties. Within those limits,
Fernandos early measures favoured the remensas but his rst encounter with
the Catalan Corts in 1480 drove him into a very different path. All three estates
united to demand, as the price of a very substantial aid (300,000), the full
restoration of remensa obligations to their lords. In response Fernando
declared the 1455 sentence, and hence the suspension of the mals usos uncon-
stitutional; the only crumbs of comfort offered to the remensas were his decla-
ration that a nal judgement still rested with the crown, the continued right to
form syndicates to press their case, and a forlorn effort to solve the problem by
way of compromise between the parties. A further sop thrown to them in
August 1483 in the form of permission to hold meetings, raise funds, and
appoint syndics to pursue their campaign against the mals usosin effect a
resuscitation of Alfonsos pre-1455 policyserved only to exacerbate noble
and clerical suspicion of royal motives.7
Some remensas, inuenced by Verntallat and other moderates, kept to the
tortuous path towards reconciliation and the distant prospect of justice;8
others found an uncompromising voice in a demagogic leader, Pere Joan Sala,
a former lieutenant of Verntallat.9 Unrest mounted in the Girona and
Empord regions during August 1484, manifested in unauthorized gatherings
and placards afxed to the doors of churches and public buildings threatening
any who attempted to exact rents and dues. The locumtenens reaction was to
organize punitive operations against Sala and all remensas withholding pay-
ments authorized by the decree of 1481, a reaction which led to the rout of the
7
Vicens Vives, Histria de los remensas, 11930, 13741. Many Catalan historians maintain that
Fernandos motive in making this concession was to extract from the remensas the 60,000 orins still
owing of the 100,000 promised to Alfonso. Vicens Vives disagrees, seeing it as evidence of Fernandos
fundamentally pro-remensa stance. All agree that the locumtenens, Enrique de Aragon, to whom
Fernando had entrusted this balancing act, leaned far towards the proprietors being himself a great
landowner in northern Catalonia.
8
In Nov. 1484 those of this persuasion elected nine syndics to present their grievances direct to the
king.
9
Ibid., ch. 5, La guerra de Pedro Juan Sala.
 The Monarch Triumphant 257
ofcers charged with that task by Salas irregulars near Mieres in the Empord
on 22 September 1484. A second remensa war had erupted, with Sala promis-
ing freedom from every feudal obligation, and the lords of northern Catalonia
resolved to reimpose the full burden of peasant servitude.
Don Enriques call upon local authorities to suppress what he termed the
revolution proved as ineffectual as earlier measures against disorder in the same
regions. To the cry of Sala, Sala, Long live the king, Long live the king (Sala, Sala,
Visca el Rey, Visca el Rey), the small remensa army, battle-hardened by long
years of combat, roamed almost at will, taking many small towns, threatening
Vic, and even venturing a full-scale attack upon Girona on 14 December 1484.
Although that stroke failed, the revolt took on a still more menacing aspect as
Salas nephew, Bartolomeu Sala, raised the remensas of Vic and the Valls region
north of Barcelona. With the problem on its doorstep, the capitals authorit-
ies displayed far more concern than hitherto but, conscious of how their
behaviour in 1462 had unleashed a catastrophe and distrustful of the common
people, they hesitated to do more than appeal to the king to intervene. There,
as elsewhere in the principality, suspicion was growing that the remensas had,
as they often claimed, a secret understanding with their monarch.
For Fernando, far away in Seville preparing for his encounter with the king-
dom of Granada, the remensa rising awoke painful childhood memories; those
same peasants had come to the rescue of himself, his mother, and the crown
itself in their extremity. His instinct was to tread the tightrope towards an
acceptance of royal arbitration by both parties, a solution agreed by syndics
representing the moderate remensas with a concord signed in Seville on 8
January 1485, while, at the same time, ordering the condign chastisement of
rebels and authorizing, if need be, the revocation of the concessions granted in
1483. The arrival of these provisions in Barcelona came only a few days after
another remensa triumph uncomfortably close to the capitalBartolomeu
Salas victory over the citys veguer at Montorns del Valls (4 January 1485).
Don Enrique and his council unhesitatingly seized the moment to proclaim
the revocation, to disavow negotiations which the governor Requesens de Soler
had been conducting with Pere Joan Sala, and to summon all the forces at their
disposal that they might crush the insurrection.10 Of the concord neither side
10
The long-established sympathy of the Requesens family for the remensa cause inclined the gov-
ernor to a mediatory role with, one may assume, the kings blessing. At the same time Fernando was
negotiating with the remensa syndics in his court; those negotiations resulted in the abortive Concord
of Jan. 1485 which envisaged abolition of the mals usos in return for a payment to the lords of ve
pounds from each peasant household. At that moment he believed he had found a way out of the
remensa quagmire.
258 Fernando the Catholic
took heed: the proprietors taking it as proof that Fernando was hand in glove
with the remensas, Sala and his chiefs seeing that it went nowhere near fullling
the extravagant hopes with which they had lled their followers heads. The
war would continue and the Salas struck rst. On 3 February their combined
forces stormed and sacked Granollers. Four days later the formidable count of
Prades and his son, the constable of Aragon, reached Barcelona accompanied
by the cavalry which was to give the locumtenens a decisive advantage over
the remensas.
Even in face of these setbacks and Salas subsequent occupation of Sabadell
and Terrassa, Fernando stuck to his conviction that the agrarian problem
could, ultimately, only be settled by way of an agreed arbitration. Under
intense pressure from his authorities in the principality he had, however, to give
Enrique authority to do whatever he deemed necessary to quell the revolt. On
1 March 200 horse and 700 infantry furnished by the nobility, the clergy,
and Barcelona, and commanded by the constable of Aragon, marched out
to confront Sala. After quickly recovering Sabadell and Granollers, where on
10 March they inicted a heavy defeat on the remensas, the constables army,
reinforced by the Bandera of Barcelona, brought Pere Joan Sala to battle a little
to the north of Granollers on 24 March. The remensas fought bravely but were
no match for cavalry; half died or were taken prisoner, among the latter Sala
who, four days later, was executed in Barcelona. So perished this charismatic
demagogue who had been, in Vicens Vivess words, both the idol and the
terror of large parts of Catalonia.11
Remensa deance did not perish with the meteoric gure of Sala; it con-
tinued among the fastnesses of the Montana and Pyrenees, and even in the
environs of Barcelona where Bartolomeu Sala, donning his uncles mantle,
sacked Montcada at the end of June.12 But the peasants were divided between
these militants still pursuing a maximalist agenda and moderates hoping to
arrive at an agreed settlement. The latter found a spokesman in Verntallat and
champions in Requesens and the king himself. Throughout the storms of
February and March the governor had persevered in his attempts to have the
concord accepted. Fernando, on learning of Salas overthrow, wrote to Enrique
again urging a policy of compromise:
11
. . . a la vez, el dolo y el terror . . . Vicens Vives, Histria de los remensas, 208.
12
Ibid. 223. Many other places were seized or attacked during the summer of 1485, including the
castle of Angls near Girona and the monastery of San Feliu de Guixols. In Oct. Sala took the castle of
Castellbell, near Montserrat, killing the owner, then burning and looting the buildings. What particu-
larly concerned the authorities was the sympathy, often open support, towards these acts of violence
displayed by the population at large and even municipal ofcials.
 The Monarch Triumphant 259
for the settlement of these differences . . . lies not solely in the punishment of the peas-
ants, which as is right should be duly executed, but also in establishing a rm and clear
legal basis for the payment of dues to be rendered from this time forward, so that they
(sc. the disputes) may never again arise and may be extinguished for ever.13

Even remensa proprietors were by now anxious for some settlement which
would, after so many tempestuous years, guarantee them the payment of their
rents and dues; to that end they were ready to come to an agreement on aboli-
tion of the mals usos, but nothing more. Against this background of continu-
ing violence and mistrust the kings envoys struggled with little success to steer
the parties towards the elusive goala formal pledge to accept royal arbitra-
tion.14 It took the dispatch of another, more prestigious and non-Catalan
gure, Don Iigo Lpez de Mendoza, in October 1485 to drive the process for-
ward.15 With such vigour did Mendoza throw himself into the task that within
a month he had secured from a remensa assembly acceptance of arbitration,
a pledge to hand over no fewer than fteen castles seized in the preceding
months, and the election of delegates, among them Verntallat, to present their
case before the king. The nobility and clergy, too, he had earlier brought into
line, although the counsellors of Barcelona continued to call stridently for
harsh repression of the peasantry; we are without king or law (sens rey e
sens ley) they lamented.16
Delegates of the nobles, clergy, and peasants began arriving in the royal court
during January 1486 to put their case and followed its peregrinations until, in
April, it settled in the monastery of Santa Maria de Guadalupe in Extremadura,
far removed from the passions of Catalonia. There, on 21 April 1486, was pro-
mulgated the long-awaited royal judgement on the issues which had sown civil
war among the Catalans. And a royal judgement it undoubtedly was, for while
the work of consultation and drafting fell largely upon the shoulders of Alfonso
de la Cavalleria, vice-chancellor of Aragon, the inspiration came from a king
who had a deep, personal knowledge of the problems and a resolve to settle
them. The essential element of the Sentence of Guadalupe was the abolition of

13
Ca la conclusion de aquestas differencias . . . no solamente consiste en el castigo de los dichos
pageses, que es razon se faga debitamente, mas ahun en poner ley cierta y determinada sobre la paga de
los derechos que deven fazer daqui adelante, porque en ningun tiempo mas susciten y sean extinctas
para siempre. Ibid. 214.
14
Fernando sent Luis Margarit, a nephew of the bishop of Girona, and a royal secretary, Jaume
Ferrer, to join Requesens in these negotiations.
15
Mendoza, count of Tendilla, was a man of exceptional political and military talents. H. Nader,
The Mendoza Family (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1979), 152.
16
Vicens Vives, Histria de los remensas, 249.
260 Fernando the Catholic
the six mals usos and a long list of other exactions laid upon the remensas, so
guaranteeing the peasant personal freedom, the right to dispose of his move-
able goods, and the right to move when he pleased. Equally important, he was
secured in possession of his land against payment of an annual rent to the
landowner who retained the freehold. Thanks to these measures the Catalan
peasant had won his freedom centuries before most of his fellows elsewhere in
Europe. All this did not come without a price: he was to compensate his lord at
the rate of 10 sous for each of the mals usos to which he had been subject and
the whole remensa community was to pay the lords 6,000 for loss sustained
during the recent upheavals. Nor did the crown ignore its own interest in these
acts of rebellion: all peasants, whether remensa or not, were to pay a ne of
50,000 over ten years as punishment for acts in which all were alleged to have
participated.17 Some seventy individuals, notorious for their excesses, were
condemned to death.18
War-weariness eased the path towards implementation of the Sentence in
Catalonia. Most peasants and landholders accepted it in a spirit of resignation
rather than enthusiasm. But peace did not return immediately to this tortured
countryside; bands of desperadoes, grown hardened to a life of banditry, con-
tinued their depredations, often with the connivance of the localities in which
they operated. Also, those condemned to death in the Sentence had little to
lose by carrying on a guerrilla warfare until in 1488 a general amnesty reduced
their number to twelve.19 Thereafter a hard core of outlaws continued, for
a time, audacious attacks upon ofcials and landowners20 but they were no
longer able to arouse the peasantry with their inammatory slogans; deprived
of popular support, they succumbed to a vigorous police operation mounted
by the authorities in the autumn of 1489. With the extension of the amnesty
to the last survivors of the condemned, peace nally returned to a people who
had known none for three decades. It took until the end of the century to
discharge all the nancial burdens arising from the sentence. As the last echoes
of the remensa struggle died away, a new era of prosperity opened to the
17
At the same time, Fernando cancelled the debt of 60,000 orins which had been hanging over
the remensas since the days of Alfonso the Magnanimous. The two sums were roughly equal.
18
Zurita, Anales, XX, lxvii. Vicens Vives, Histria de los remensas, 25664. Freedman, Origins of
Peasant Servitude, 1924. J. Edwards, The Spain of the Catholic Monarchs (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000),
15960.
19
Several ed to Roussillon; attempts to have them extradited proved fruitless. Many others, how-
ever, were arrested and executed.
20
In July 1489 a band led by Goxat sacked and burnt the house of Joan Pere de Crulles in Caldes
de Malavella to cries of Death to all gentlemen (Muyren, muyren gentilshomens!). Vicens Vives,
Histria de los remensas, 308.
 The Monarch Triumphant 261
wealthier peasantry of Catalonia; for the rest the Sentence made little material
difference.
Whereas the end of civil war had resuscitated the agrarian problem in a form
almost unchanged from that which had existed before 1462, urban conict, as
exemplied by the struggle between Busca and Biga, emerged fundamentally
altered in nature. The onset of war had seen popular support for the Busca
cause harshly repressed and its leadership violently purged. Surviving Busca
notables had ed into the royalist camp, followed over time by many moder-
ates from the Biga ranks. Dissension in the representative bodies had met
with equally rm treatment, with the result that the Consell de Cent rarely
assembled during the nal years of the conict. Political life was stied as power
accumulated in the hands of hard-line Bigas.
The Capitulation of Pedralbes brought back many prominent exiles to
Barcelona, but not all. And not only patricians had ed; thousands of others
artisans, craftsmen, tradesmen, professionalshad sought refuge and fortune
elsewhere as war destroyed the citys economy and their livelihood. Most did
not return and emigration continued apace in the aftermath of war. The popu-
lation of Barcelona sank to 20,000, a level not touched since the thirteenth
century.21 Amid such depression and depopulation pre-war civic politics could
nd no place. Although the most prominent gure in this era, Jaume
Destorrent, was the brother of the Busca leader executed in 1462,22 he led a
municipal government largely unaffected by the old antagonisms; the urban
aristocracy, as a class, were intent only on salvaging what they could from the
wreckage of their fratricidal strife. The result was the emergence of a closed
oligarchy of citizens and merchants whose members were to be found almost
permanently and protably ensconced in all municipal ofces and councils.23
An ordinance of November 1479 consolidated their grip upon the city by
restricting membership of the two orders to those whose families had for many
generations been active in government and to any who might be admitted by a
majority vote. Only a handful of aspirants ever jumped this hurdle. Towards
the crown the oligarchs displayed a prudent submissiveness, determined as
they were to avoid the collisions which had so recently brought ruin upon
them.
21
Vicens Vives, Els Trastmares, 191.
22
For the multiplicity of civic ofces occupied by Destorrent see Vicens Vives, Ferran II i la ciutat
de Barcelona, i. 1456. He was also a boss of the butchers trust which kept the price of meat
articially high. Ibid. 252.
23
In practice, the active nucleus of the oligarchy consisted of no more than ten citizen and six
merchant families.
262 Fernando the Catholic
Small wonder that such a group lacked both will and authority to tackle the
dire nancial crisis which threatened the city. Heavy borrowing over many
decades had accumulated a crippling debt which saw the municipality fall ever
further into arrears with its annuity payments (eighteen months by 1482, two
years in 1483) and forced to withdraw all funding from such institutions as the
Hospital of Santa Creu. In such an atmosphere corruption ourished and pro-
posals to remedy the situation by raising additional revenue, as through a con-
tribution from the clergy, or by reducing the burden, for example by cutting
interest rates or reducing salaries,24 met with a predictably negative response.
One calamity which could not be laid at the oligarchs door was the appear-
ance in Barcelona of the new inquisition. The diocese of Barcelona had had its
own inquisitor, appointed by Rome at the citys request, since 1459. He had
found little to do. In 1484 the authorities learned, to their consternation, that
Fernando intended to remove this local worthy and impose on Catalonia in his
place the inquisitorial system established in Andalucia in 1480. Their anxiety
arose from the knowledge that the target of this inquisition was the alleged
persistence of Jewish religious practices among converted Jews (conversos) and
from the experience of the havoc which its activities had already wrought
in Castile and Valencia: large numbers of conversos, bulwarks of commerce and
administration, had ed in fear. Not only would the introduction of such
an inquisition to Barcelona violate laws and privileges, it would also, they
protested, inict further grievous harm upon the economy of a city already in
dire straits. The king of France was already offering refuge to any eeing
unmerited persecution.25 Their arguments made no impression on Fernando
who in May 1484 conrmed the appointment of two inquisitors for Barcelona
and subsequently rejected the counsellors vehement protests. The spiritual
health of cities and subjects must, he maintained, if need be take precedence
over their material well-being. With the pope they were equally unsuccessful.
On 6 February 1486 Innocent VIII revoked all earlier commissions to inquisitors
within the Crown of Aragon and named Torquemada inquisitor for Barcelona
24
Some modest reductions were agreed in Aug. 1483; signicantly they did not touch the salaries
of the ve counsellors. Vicens Vives, Ferran II i la ciutat de Barcelona, i. 262.
25
In Dec. 1485 a ship left Barcelona carrying more than 200 conversos with all their property.
Another sailed in Jan. 1486 with the greater part of those who remained. According to the counsel-
lors the year had seen more than 500 families take ight, a gure doubtless exaggerated for the kings
benet. The remensa rising and the citys commercial decay would also account for the exodus of
craftsmen as well as conversos. Vicens Vives, Ferran II i la ciutat de Barcelona, i. 385. The fugitives fears
were justied for, once established, the inquisitor forbade them to leave the city. E. Fort i Cogui,
Catalunya i la Inquisici (Barcelona: Editorial Aedos, 1973). H. Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition
(London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1965).
 The Monarch Triumphant 263
with powers of delegation. For some months more the counsellors fought on
until, abandoned by the clergy and ofcialdom, those elected in November
1486 decided that the time had come to accept the inevitable; the days were
past when a proud city could defy a king. On 5 July 1487 Torquemadas
nominee, the Castilian Alonso Espina, made his entry into the city, an event
boycotted by the Diputaci and the counsellors. By December he was ready to
parade through its streets his rst clutch of fty penitents, and soon his reach
extended throughout Catalonia. Barcelona did not, in the event, suffer as badly
as other cities in the number of its victims: the inquisition tribunal there
conned its heretic-hunt almost exclusively to the conversosmost of whom
had ed;26 in eighteen years it executed thirty-eight and imprisoned one
hundred and forty-nine. But Fernandos uninching insistence on imposing
the new inquisition undoubtedly dealt a heavy blow to an ailing community
which had looked to him for salvation. Five years later he completed the task of
purication (it would now be described as ethnic cleansing) with the edict
expelling all unconverted Jews: 3,000 were driven from Catalonia.
Did the king, as alleged by many writers of the nationalist school, harbour
an animus against Catalonia because of its rebellion?27 Assuredly not against all
Catalans, large numbers of whom had loyally supported him and his father.
Cardona, Montcada, Requesens, Vilamari are names which were to gure pro-
minently in future service to the new monarchy. The principalitys institutions
Corts, Generalitat, the municipality of Barcelonawere another matter;
manipulated by an oligarchy, they had drawn swords against the crown and
brought it perilously close to disaster. Although guaranteed an existence by
Fernandos oath to observe the Catalan laws and constitutions, they could
not expect anything but rigorous scrutiny and a heavy royal hand. Perennial
divisions among the oligarchy assisted Fernando in taming Catalonias institu-
tions. So it was that vociferous complaints from Barcelona against the manage-
ment of the Generalitat gave him the occasion, in 1488, to suspend the election
of diputats and appoint his own nominees headed by the Castilian abbot of
Montserrat. Two years later the same medicine was applied to Barcelona with
a royal decree cancelling the annual elections of counsellors and ofcials,

26
Vicens Vives (Ferran II i la ciutat de Barcelona, i. 424) thinks the best estimate of those who ed
before the Inquisitor entered Barcelona to be 480. It is unclear whether this gure refers to whole fam-
ilies or to heads of families; in the latter case the total would be approximately 2,000; the counsellors
claimed the number to be 3,000.
27
e.g. A. de Bofarull i Broc, Historia crtica civil y ecclesitica de Catalua, 9 vols. (Barcelona,
18768).
264 Fernando the Catholic
putting the outgoing council members under house arrest and nominating
men of the kings own choosing to form the executive council. Its leader was to
be the omnipresent Jaume Destorrent, its members a kind of municipal party,
aristocratic and royalist gathered around him.28 Municipal ofces, too,
became the exclusive preserve of that same faction which thus achieved total
domination over the city. Twice more the king imposed the partys nominees
upon Barcelona until during the course of his residence there in 1493 he
restored a form of elected government modied to favour the aristocracy of
ciutadans (citizens): its representation in the Consell de Cent was increased by
50 per cent to forty-eight and it was given a majority of three seats on the ve-
man executive council. Fernando had decided that a class which had formerly
been the heart and soul of opposition to the crown could, in this new world, be
trusted to serve its interests. The new balance also reected a marked increase
in the inuence of this citizen aristocracyreinforced by an inux of military
families from the rural areas29against that of merchant and artisan classes
undermined by economic collapse. Reform of the citys government was com-
pleted in December 1498 by introducing the system of appointment by lot for
all its institutions and ofces.30 One is not surprised to discover that Jaume
Destorrent had a large hand in drawing up the initial lists of those entered in
the ballot, although the king did insist on the inclusion of many who had
shown themselves hostile to his party. He also decreed that the military be
treated as ciutadans in the allocation of ofces.31 Subsequent additions to the
lists were only to be made by the counsellors on the death of a candidate and
subject to royal approval;32 those who proved too awkward could always be
excluded. For another two hundred years the government of Barcelona was
to remain in the hands of this tightly restricted circle. The Biga ethos had

28
. . . una espcie de partit municipal, aristocrtic i realista. Vicens Vives, Ferran II i la ciutat de
Barcelona, ii. 101. The king expressly authorised Destorrent to pack the Consell de Cent with jurats
drawn from this faction. Ibid. 134. In 1491 Destorrents inuence grew still further with his appoint-
ment to the ofce of Regent of the Chancellery. Catal i Roca and Gala i Fernndez, Tres consellers
en cap de Barcelona imposats pel rei (14901492), CHCA, XVII, iii. 16174. C. Batlle, Vida i insti-
tucions poltiques (segles xiv i xv), Histria de Barcelona, 3.
29
The remensa troubles of the 1480s had seen a new wave of impoverished gentlemen of military
status ocking into Barcelona where they sought to mend their fortunes by alliance with the wealthy
bourgeoisie.
30
This practice had been imposed on many smaller towns earlier in the century with the object of
mitigating factional strife, e.g. Vic in 1450.
31
The blending of the two elements into a single urban aristocracy was carried further in 1510
when Fernando conferred the privileges of knighthood upon all 94 honoured citizens.
32
Another important feature of the 1498 reform was the inclusion of the military resident in
Barcelona in the order of citizens.
 The Monarch Triumphant 265
triumphed, not as master but as lackey of the crown.33 Shortly afterwards the
same system of lot was introduced into other cities: Lleida (1499), Manresa
and Balaguer (1500), Cervera (1501), and Tortosa (1506).
In order to justify their interventions in Barcelonas affairs Fernando and his
partisans had repeatedly cited the urgent need to bring order to the citys
nances. Plans for reform, stalled during the 1480s, were indeed forced
through by Destorrent in 1491only the clergy managed to escape making a
contributionresulting in savings of 500 pounds a month which were to be
used exclusively to redeem the existing municipal debt of 40,000 pounds over
a period of twelve years. That goal they achieved together with a surplus on the
annual budget which made possible some reductions in the additional taxes
heaped on the citizens over many decades. In this more favourable scal clim-
ate the population began to rise: a census of 1496 recorded 5,700 households,
another in 1503 nearer 6,000, and this in spite of severe epidemics which had
killed 3,744 in 1490, and 2,700 in 1501. New buildings arose to embellish the
city, not, be it noted, public edices, but the mansions of powerful menclergy,
ofcials, and merchants.
Following the interlude of direct royal nomination, the practice of election
by lot was applied in 1493 to the Generalitat with consequences similar to
those observed in Barcelona: partisan politics in its old form disappeared and,
through his ultimate control over the lists of eligible candidates, the king held
that hitherto formidable institution in check. It nonetheless retained its func-
tion as the watchdog of Catalan laws and liberties, and, like the reformed
regime in Barcelona, managed to bring its nances into order.34
Although not directly subjected to reform in the manner of the municipalit-
ies and Generalitat, the Catalan Corts was affected by the changes imposed on
those other institutions. Election of syndics representing the major cities and
towns was determined by lot and hence subject to a degree of state control. As
for the military order, the crowns most resolute opponents in its ranks had
been eliminated by the civil war. The most implacable of all, Hug Roger, count
of Pallars, had submitted to Fernando in 1480 only to become embroiled with
his Pyrenean neighbours four years later in such a manner that in 1491 the king

33
Vicens Vives (Els Trastmares, 218) well characterizes the oligarchy as A group with few pure
ideals (as often happens after great revolutionary earthquakes), too fearful of the past not to consolid-
ate the present, with an inevitable tendency towards conformism and lassitude (Un grup amb pocs
ideals purs (aix sol esdevenir-se desprs dels grans terratrmols revolucionaris), amb molta temena
del passat per a no consolidar el present, amb una inevitable tendncia al conformisme i a la lassitude).
34
Ibid. 22930.
266 Fernando the Catholic
stripped him of lands and title.35 Sterile feuding continued as before to absorb
the energies of many of the minor nobility, but an increasing number found
an outlet for their ambitions in the military apparatus of the Spanish empire.
Royal inuence over ecclesiastical appointments ensured that the clerical order
in the Corts posed no threat; the affair of the inquisition demonstrated that the
clergy was no more able than other Catalan institutions to stand against the
royal will. Proof of the changed relationship between crown and Corts may be
found in the brief duration of those held during Fernandos reign: the rst, and
longest, lasted only twelve months, subsequent Corts much less. In previous
reigns sessions had dragged on for years in bitter acrimony and often without
any conclusion. Now the Corts did their business with dispatch and delivered
the expected subsidies.
Extracting money for his continual wars was indeed a prime consideration
in Fernandos dealings with Catalonia. Its post-civil war nancial and eco-
nomic exhaustion had diminished its wealth to the point where it contributed
less than any of his other states to the Granada war; Barcelona managed to send
nothing more than a few hundredweight of gunpowder. Hence the kings
pressing concern to see the principality put back on its economic feet. His cho-
sen weapon was the familiar strategy of protectionism bolstered by reform of
the coinage, action against a plague of pirates, both nationals and foreign, and
a restoration of Catalan consuls in the Levant. Some ground was regained espe-
cially in textile manufacture thanks, in large measure, to a relaxation of guild
control, but the volume of production and commerce at the end of the century
had recovered to only half the levels attained during the reign of Alfonso.
Rivals, domestic and foreign, had entrenched themselves in the spaces vacated
by Catalans. Capital and skills eeing to Valencia had helped give that city the
economic primacy once enjoyed by Barcelona. Genoese and French ships now
carried the freight which had sustained Catalan eets before the civil war
destroyed them. Rival merchants had taken over their export markets and
secured control of vital imports such as ne wool; Catalan weavers were
reduced to making inferior, cheaper cloth. Even within Catalonia economic
recovery owed much to the reappearance of foreign merchants, among them
the Rosembachs, German printers who set up presses in Barcelona,
Montserrat, Perpignan, and Tarragona. Finally, note must be taken of a

35
The county was given to the son and heir of the faithful count of Cardona. After spending some
years of exile in France, Hug Roger sought another confrontation with his old enemies in Naples.
Taken prisoner by Fernandos general, the Gran Capitan, he was taken back to Spain in 1503 and died
shortly afterwards in the castle of Xativa.
 The Monarch Triumphant 267
fundamental shift in Catalonias economic orientation brought about by the
shrinking of its Mediterranean commerce and an increasing reliance upon
Castile for its vital supplies of grain; trade, as well as politics, was binding the
principality to its mighty neighbour.36
What the Catalans had most resented in the reign of Alfonsohis absen-
teeism and his transfer of the seat of government to a foreign city, Naplesthey
had now to accept as something xed and inescapable. During his long reign of
thirty-seven years Fernando visited Catalonia only six times, spending a total
of three years there. A people which had proudly insisted that it be governed by
no one less than king, queen, or heir apparent had to submit to the rule of
a royal cousin (Don Enrique of Empries) or, worse still, to mere nobles.
Fernando went a little way to close this gap between himself and subjects by
creating, in 1494, the Council of Aragon, a body which was to be always in
attendance upon him in order to deliberate on matters touching his hereditary
states, but of the ve regents who composed it, only one represented Catalonia,
and he was a jurist chosen by the king.37
One other great Catalan issue had been bequeathed to his son by Juan II: the
question of the lost counties, Roussillon and Cerdagne. No more than his
father would Fernando renounce one tittle of his territorial rights, as he imme-
diately made plain by styling himself count of Roussillon and Cerdagne. Any
military action was, however, out of the question while Catalonia remained in
turmoil and a Portuguese pretender still threatened Castile. The possibility
that France might voluntarily return the counties surfaced briey in 1483
when Louis XI, on his deathbed, appeared to countenance it in order to purge
his conscience.38 If Louis truly had such an intention, the regents acting for his
son, Charles VIII, quickly backtracked. A frustrated Fernando assured the
Corts of his Aragonese states meeting at Tarazona in December 1483 that he
remained resolved to win back the counties and invited their cooperation, but
he was by then fully committed to the war against Granada which absorbed all
his resources for another ten years.39

36
Vicens Vives, Ferran II i la ciutat de Barcelona, ii. Hillgarth, The Spanish Kingdoms, ii. 5213.
37
Elliott, Imperial Spain, 712.
38
Louis was brought to this state of mind by a Neapolitan hermit, Francesco di Paolo, summoned
to the dying king because of his reputation for sanctity. For the likelihood that he had been briefed on
the question of the counties see Calmette, La Question des Pyrnes, 2312. Gaussin, Louis XI, 4356.
39
All that could be done during this interval was to put pressure upon France through an alliance
with Maximilian of Austria and Henry VII of England in support of Breton autonomy, a policy which
came to grief in 1491 with the marriage of Anne of Brittany to Charles VIII. Edwards, The Spain of
the Catholic Monarchs, 2489.
268 Fernando the Catholic
The fall of Granada in 1492 might have brought the formidable power of
Spain to bear against France had it not coincided with Charles VIIIs belated
escape from the tutelage of the regent, his sister Anne of Beaujeu. While the lat-
ter had refused to surrender the counties as the price of peace with Fernando
and Isabel, her brother, dazzled by the lure of Italian glory, was resolved to make
the sacrice.40 Cautious soundings made early in 1492 led to open negoti-
ations, begun in Narbonne in July then transferred to Figueres where a prelim-
inary agreement was concluded on 23 August 1492. It declared that Charles
would surrender his legitimate possession of the counties in return for a treaty
of peace and alliance, and a face-saving undertaking by the Spanish monarchs
to submit, if requested, the issue of legal right to the territories to binding arbi-
tration. A nal pact was delayed for some months by a tussle at the French court
between those urging the Italian adventure and those who, for reasons of pol-
icy or self-interest, opposed the surrender of territory. The balance having
swayed in favour of the former party, a denitive deal, almost identical to the
Figueres terms, was struck in Barcelona in January 1493. Even then the trans-
fer of the counties ran into such delays over Charles attempts to extract explicit
guarantees that Fernando and Isabel would not oppose his Italian project that
a war on the Pyrenees began to look more probable than one beyond the Alps.41
Only in July did the king of France decide to break the deadlock; within a
month his envoy had settled the last details with the Spanish monarchs in
Barcelona; on 13 September 1493 Fernando and Isabel made their triumphal
entry into Perpignan amid wild popular rejoicing nothing dampened by pour-
ing rain. Those who had no cause to celebrate were the Jews and the many
Catalans who had ed there to escape the inquisition; again they had to tread
the path of exile.
Less than a hundred years after Fernando of Antequera rst set foot on
Aragonese soil his grandson had brought to triumphant fullment the ambi-
tions nursed by the junior branch of the Trastmares: he had placed himself
on the Castilian throne; he had brought together Castile and the Crown of
Aragon; he had completed the Reconquista; he had brought Catalonia to heel.

40
On the death of Ren of Anjous only surviving nephew, Charles duke of Maine, in 1481,
Provence together with the Angevin claims to Naples (and Aragon) had passed to Louis XI and hence
to Charles VIII. The young king of France found himself surrounded by a clamorous crew of
Neapolitan exiles, Italian malcontents, and Angevin veterans all urging him to cross the Alps, a ven-
ture which would be impossible without rst making a secure peace with Spain. J. S. C. Bridge, A
History of France (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1921), i.
41
In anticipation of such an outcome Fernando moved troops into the Empord and had his admi-
ral Vilamar muster a eet off the coast. Calmette, La Question des Pyrnes.
 The Monarch Triumphant 269
In the new Spanish state of the Catholic monarchs the Aragonese component,
with a population of no more than a million, inevitably weighed less than
its Castilian partner, numbering over four million.42 The principality of
Catalonia, wrecked by civil war, suffered a disproportionate decline in import-
ance and inuence. Had it sustained its dominant role within the Crown of
Aragon and in the commerce of the western Mediterranean, it would have
remained a major focus of economic and political power. Had it not thrown
down the gauntlet to its ruler and so forced him into endless foreign embroil-
ments, Juan might never have found his way into the Castilian alliance. Blind
arrogance43 matched with political recklessness and military ineptitude had
toppled Catalonia from its proud eminence and left it condemned to centuries
of provincial obscurity.

42
As many historians have argued (e.g. Elliott, Imperial Spain, 72), the structures evolved to
govern the Aragonese empire were extended to the greater dominions of Spain, but the Crown of
Aragon derived no benet therefrom, rather it became a still more junior partner in the imperial
scheme of things.
43
Carrre writes of legoisme dels rendistes which cost a Catalunya un llarg eclipsi (egoism of
the rentiers which condemned Catalonia to a long eclipse), Barcelona, ii. 417. Vicens Vivess verdict:
El Principat, que havia consumit les seves forces en la contesa poltica del segle xv, era una ombra del
que havia estat dos segles abans (The Principality, which had consumed its strength in the political
struggle of the fteenth century, was but a shadow of what it had been two centuries before). Els
Trastmares, 243.
 Bibliography

PRIMARY SOURCES
Barcelona boasts two archives holding rich documentation for the fteenth century:
they are the Archivo de la Corona de Aragon and the Arxiu Histric de la Ciutat de
Barcelona. The rst is the repository for the records produced by the royal administra-
tion; in addition it houses the records of the Diputaci del General de Catalunya. The
second is the archive of the municipality of Barcelona where are to be found the regis-
ters of the governing councils and municipal ofces as well as an abundance of letters
received and dispatched by the city. For details of their holdings see J. E. Martnez
Ferrando, Guia del Archivo General de la Corona de Aragn (Madrid, 1958) and Arxiu
Histric de la Ciutat de Barcelona: Guia (Barcelona: Ajuntament de Barcelona, n.d.).
The archival sources drawn upon for the present work are as follows.

Archivo de la Corona de Aragon

Cancillera Real. The registers Curiae, Secretorum, Itinerum, Pecunie for the reigns of
Alfonso V and Juan II, including those relating to the years during which Queen Maria
and Juan acted as locumtenentes for Alfonso. The reference numbers of the registers
cited are given in the footnotes.

Arxiu Histric de la Ciutat de Barcelona

In the section Consell de Cent: Registre de deliberacions, Lletres closes, Lletres comunes
originals and Corts. Rich veins of material remain to be exploited in these archives, as
they do in the records of other Catalan cities, in particular Girona, Lleida, Tortosa.
Those of Perpignan would also repay investigation.

DOCUMENTARY PUBLICATIONS
The nineteenth-century archivist Prspero de Bofarull y Mascar launched an ambi-
tious project which aimed to publish what he deemed to be the most important docu-
ments in the Archivo de la Corona de Aragn. His son and successor, Manuel de
Bofarull y de Sartorio, pursued the enterprise, with the result that nine volumes relat-
ing to the civil war appeared under his editorship between 1860 and 1864. Coleccin
de documentos inditos del Archivo General de la Corona de Aragn, xviiixxvi
(Barcelona, 18604) is an invaluable source of material for this period.
 Bibliography 271
Other useful collections of documents include:

Calmette, J., Louis XI, Jean II et la rvolution catalane (14611473) (Toulouse: Privat,
1903), pices justicatives, 413581.
Coll Juli, N., Doa Juana Enriquez, lugarteniente real en Catalua, 14611468,
2 vols. (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientcas, 1953), ii,
apndice documental, 241439.
Durn i Sanpere, A., and Sanabre, J. (eds.), Llibre de les Solemnitats de Barcelona,
i. 14241546 (Barcelona: Instituci Patxot, 1930).
Madurell Marimn, J. M., Mensajeros barceloneses en la corte de Npoles de Alfonso V de
Aragn (14351458) (Barcelona: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientcas,
1963).
Manual de Novells Ardits, vulgarment apellat Dietari del Antich Consell Barcelon,
i. 13901446; ii. 14461477 (Barcelona, 18923).
Martnez Ferrando, J. E., Pere de Portugal, Rei dels Catalans vist a travs dels registres de
la seva cancelleria (Barcelona: Institut dEstudis Catalans, 1936), appendix,
177255.
Sobrequs Callic, J., Catlogo de la cancillera de Enrique IV de Castilla, Seor del
Principado de Catalua (lugartenencia de Juan de Beaumont, 14621464)
(Barcelona: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientcas, 1975).

CHRONICLES
The greatest of the Aragonese chroniclers is undoubtedly Jernimo Zurita who, as
royal archivist in the sixteenth century, had full access to the records, including some
which have since disappeared. A comparison of his account with extant documents
shows that he was both scrupulous and exact in his use of them. I have used the most
recent edition, Anales de la Corona de Aragn, ed. A. Canellas Lopez, vviii (Zaragoza:
Institucin Fernando el Catlico, 198090). To avoid problems for those using
other editions, references are given to the books and chapters into which Zurita
divided his work.
The only noteworthy Catalan chronicle of the fteenth century is the Dietari del
Capell dAlfons V el Magnnim, ed. M. A. Cabanes Pecourt (Zaragoza, 1991). This
work is now attributed to Melchor Miralles, a royal chaplain who for many years
accompanied Alfonso V in his Italian campaigns. From 1466 he settled in Valencia
where he assiduously jotted down in his diary events of local and national signicance.
Castile was much better served by its chroniclers, most of whom paid close attention to
events in the neighbouring Aragonese territories because of the impact these had upon
Castile. All were drawn into the internecine struggles of the Trastmara family thereby
colouring their narratives with a partisan bias for or against the contending parties.
Alonso de Palencia stands foremost among those championing Juan and Fernando
272 Bibliography
against Enrique. His Crnica de Enrique IV, 2 vols. (Biblioteca de Autores Espaoles,
2578; Madrid: Atlas, 19735) is valuable as an eye-witness account of many of the
events recorded. Also pro-Juan is the Memorial de diversas hazaas: Crnica de Enrique
IV, by Diego de Valera, ed. J. de M. Carriazo (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1941). Parts of
his narrative are clearly borrowed from Palencia. Another Castilian chronicle favour-
able to the Aragonese cause is the recently published Crnica annima de Enrique IV de
Castilla 14541474, ed. M. P. Snchez-Parra (Madrid: Ediciones de la Torre, 1991).
Enrique nds his stoutest, though not uncritical, champion in his chaplain, Diego
Enrquez del Castillo. His Crnica de Enrique IV, ed. A. Snchez Martn (Valladolid:
Universidad de Valladolid, 1994) relates events through the eyes of the Castilian court.
Guillaume Leseur, a courtier in the service of Gaston, count of Foix, was the author
of a chronicle entitled, Histoire de Gaston IV, comte de Foix, ed. H. Courteault, 2 vols.
(Paris, 1869). It contains a useful account of Gastons campaigns in Catalonia.

SECONDARY SOURCES
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Catalonia there is the bibliography in Batlle, Lexpansi baixmedieval. For the civil war
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i Vidal, La guerra civil, ii.
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 Bibliography 273
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 Index

Abbeville, Treaty of 209 Aragon, kingdom 5, 45, 90, 105, 126, 146,
Abiabar, Cresques 195 158, 163, 167, 234, 240
Afonso V, king of Portugal 153, 154, 175, disorder 75, 243
194, 241, 242, 245, 246 economy 5
Agramonts 45, 91, 237, 245 population 5
agriculture architecture 5
Catalan 4, 10 Argels 228, 232
Valencian 6 Armagnac, Jacques d, duke of Nemours
Agull, Joan 119 139
Aids/subsidies 18, 24, 29, 43, 44, 52, 77 8, Jean V d, count of 182, 186, 187, 188,
170, 183, 189, 203, 206, 256, 266 192, 204, 227
Albret, Amanieu d 139, 140 Armendriz, Bertran d 164, 211, 212, 217,
Alcal de Ebro 144 225, 229, 232
Alcaiz 144, 179 Juan d 229
Alcntara, military order 14 vila 193, 198
Alcover 159
Alfonso V, king of Aragon passim 16, 68, Balaguer 118, 122, 136, 265
729, 80, 116, 176, 267 Bandera, Barcelona militia 118, 146, 158,
Alfonso, bastard son of Juan II, Master of 258
Calatrava 75, 242 n. 39 banditry 102
in Castile 242 Banyoles 125, 181
and civil war 89, 132, 155, 158, 166, Barbera 159, 162
169, 170, 185, 188 91, 196 n. 8, Barcelona 20 2, 24, 27 8, 234, 262
2046, 21314, 224, 229 n. 7, 232, arsenal 5
255 Busca and Biga chs 5 & 7, 82, 100 1,
Alfonso of Castile, brother of Isabel and 261
Enrique 80, 165 6, 184, 198 and Charles of Viana 83, 89
Almeida, Juan de 164 end of civil war 21223
Almogver, Joan 132 government 17, 47, 57, 82, 97, 261,
Altariba, Bernat Guillem d 66, 156 2634
Amer 169 guilds syndicate 81
Amposta 1678, 1701, 174 Inquisition 262 3
castellan of, see Rocabert, Huc and Jean of Calabria 182, 186, 207
Andalucia 197, 262 and Juana Enriquez 96, 98
Andorra 247 opposition to war 189
Angers 177, 178 and Pedro of Portugal 155, 156, 157,
Angls 164 162, 169
Anglesola 145 plague 167, 265
Anjou, dynasty 18, see also Ren population 3, 132 n. 24, 261, 265
Isabelle, duchess of 24 relations with Fernando 232 n. 14, 237,
Anne of Beaujeu, regent of France 268 246, 264
Antequera, dynasty 12 n. 6, 20, 21, 27, 68, and remensas 33, 34, 37, 38, 102
79, 193, 194, 212 repression 149, 175, 181, 186, 261
 Index
siege 1303
Taula de Canvi 5, 147, 188, 224
textile industry 10, 56, 58, 59
trade 4, 93, 146, 166, 179
Bascara 122, 180
batlle of Barcelona 58, 100 n. 57
Bayonne 141, 151
Sentence of 1412, 158, 178
Treaty of 105, 233, 235
Beaumont
family 45, 104, 129 n. 18, 161, 205, 237,
245
Jean de 53 n. 11, 89, 90, 91, 92, 128
locumtenens in Catalonia 129, 133,
134, 1356, 137, 138, 140 n. 11,
1434
and Pedro of Portugal 155, 159, 160,
163
Louis de, constable of Navarre 190 n. 38
Belchite 139
Belloch, Joan de 167 n. 51, 171, 172 n. 63
Benedict XIII, pope 11, 12, 16, 17, 26, 30
Berga 168, 190
Besal 103, 113, 125, 156, 165, 169, 180,
196, 197
Biga chs. 5 & 7, 73, 86, 87, 90, 92, 98, 149,
150, 261, 264
Blanche, d. of Juan II 76, 80 n. 2, 97 n. 51,
104 n. 65, 139 n. 9, 165 n. 44
Blanche, queen of Navarre 22 n. 17, 45
Blanes 212
Bobadilla, Rodrigo de 191
bombards 119, 132, 166, 172, 180, 182
Boquet, Pere 135 n. 33
Borja, Rodrigo, cardinal 219 20
Boulou 121, 226
Bresse, Philippe de 227, 229, 230, 231
Brittany, duke of see Franois II
Burgo de Osma 2001
Burgundy 152, 154, 161, 165, 204, 209,
216, 219, 220, 226, 227, 235, 248
Busca chs. 5 & 7, 73, 812, 98, 116, 149,
150, 261
Cabrera, Bernat Joan de, viscount of Cabrera
and count of Mdica 37, 90, 113,
116
Cadaqus 206, 208, 210, 224
afont, Jaume 48, 58, 59, 60, 80, 81, 83,
96, 99, 100, 207, 218
Cagliari 7
279
Calaf 190
battle 163 4, 187
Calahorra 179
Calatayud 133, 200
Caldas de Malavella 247
Campobasso, count of see Monforte
Camprodon 125, 162, 168, 174, 197
Canet 121, 125 n. 5, 231, 236
Capitulation of Vilafranca 912, 98, 100,
110, 118, 128, 142, 148, 173, 175
Cardenas, Gutierre de 194, 200, 201
Cardona, family 116, 263
count of 19, 37, 50
Guillem de 123
Huc de 123
Jaime de, bishop of Urgell 148
Joan de, constable of Aragon 133, 214,
258
Joan-Ramon Folc de, count of Prades
92, 119, 135, 145, 148, 159,
162, 163, 164, 169, 196, 213,
215, 217, 222, 231, 235, 246,
247, 258
Miquel 141
Carrillo de Acua, Alonso, archbishop of
Toledo 84 n. 14, 136 n. 36, 138,
139 n. 9, 140, 141, 142, 158, 165,
184, 193, 209, 230, 237, 239
and marriage of Fernando and Isabel 194,
195 6, 198, 219
Caspe, Sentence of 12, 17, 153, 176
Castellar de la Muntanya 145
Castelldasens 119
Castellfollit de la Roca 102, 103, 125 n. 3,
145, 196
Castell de Farfanya 136
Castell dEmpuries 3, 147 8, 165, 175,
181, 185, 188, 211, 216, 230, 238,
240, 247
Castile 12, 14, 20, 21, 23, 104, 129, 161,
165, 192, 209, 230
civil war 179, 184, 239, 241, 242,
267
Castro, Jofre de 123
Ivany de 156
Leonor de 162, 165
Cavalleria, Alfonso de la, vicechancellor of
Aragon 259
Joan 62
cavalry 118, 119, 129, 148, 161, 162, 175,
184, 190, 258
280
cens 30
censos 11, 113 n. 13
Centelles, family 12
Cerdagne 105, 138, 139, 151, 169, 177,
219, 241, 2678
Cervell, family 11
Guerau Alemany de 89, 124, 146 n. 33,
164
Cervera 118, 143, 145, 148, 155, 158,
159, 162, 164, 172, 190, 191, 199,
265
siege of 1667
trade 3
Cervi de Ter 181
Ceuta 153, 154
Chacn, Gonzalo 194
Charles VII, king of France 76
Charles VIII, king of France 267, 268
Charles of Viana 45, 53, 67, 79, 126, 128,
150, 155, 164, 174, 221, 223
cult of 945, 96, 100, 117, 132, 178
locumtenens in Catalonia 93 4
and succession crisis 823, 84, 85 91
Charles, duke of Berry (1446 65), duke of
Guyenne (146972) 140, 194 n. 4,
198, 202, 205, 209
Charles, duke of Burgundy 192, 228,
23940, 241, 242, 248
Chtel, Tanguy du 200, 204
clergy 26, 31, 74, 115, 156, 265, 266
Collioure 4, 105, 227, 246
Colomers 133
Conomines, Pere de 132
Consell de Cent Jurats 17, 40, 42, 47, 49,
55, 57, 82, 85, 88, 147, 160 n. 30,
185, 189, 218, 221, 261, 264
Consell Representant lo Principat de
Catalunya 87, 89, 92, 97, 98, 99,
102, 109
and Pedro of Portugal 156, 161
and remensas 103, 11415
and war 121, 124, 125, 127, 147, 151,
169, 170, 204, 217
Consolat del Mar 42 n. 7, 49
Constitutions of Catalonia 18, 37, 40, 51,
52, 88
Copons. Joan de 127, 128 9, 141, 151,
152 n. 2
Cor 255
Cordoba 193
Corsica 7, 17, 22
Index
Cortes, of Aragon 12, 24 n. 24, 84, 87,
96 n. 50, 163, 170, 175, 179, 183,
184, 188, 190, 196, 234, 238, 239,
243, 246
general 21 n. 12, 24, 202
Corts, of Catalonia see also Generalitat 14,
17, 18, 21, 22, 23, 25, 29, 32, 35,
44, 45, 50, 52, 58, 59, 92 n. 34,
224, 228, 232, 234, 237, 239, 243,
246, 247, 253 4, 256, 263, 265,
267
delegations to Naples 37, 38, 51, 53 4,
79
in Lleida 84, 85 6, 104
session 1454 8 72 9
Corts, of Valencia 1718, 27, 170, 183,
190, 243
Cossa, Gaspar 208
Council of Aragon 267
Council of Basle 26
Crexells, Bertran 34, 35
Crown of Aragon 5, 7, 18, 128, 140, 153,
268, 269
Crulles, family 65 6, 116, 156
Bernat-Gilabert de, baron of Crulles 124,
147, 156 n. 17, 164, 187 n. 31, 245
Marti-Guerau de 124, 125
Crussol, Louis de 232, 233
Cuenca 136
Cueva, Beltran de la, marquis of Ledesma,
Master of Santiago 138 n. 1, 165,
197
currency problems 10, 11, 41, 56, 74
Delgado, Miquel, abbot of Poblet 90, 92,
116, 222
Despl, Miquel 131
Franc 160
Despuig, Lluis, Master of Montesa 117,
121, 129, 141, 148, 166, 170, 187,
190, 211, 212, 213
Destorrent, Jaume 261, 264
Desvalls, Franc 186
devaluation 412, 48
Dionis, de Portugal i de Ea 207, 214, 231
Diputaci 14 15, 34, 36, 58, 72, 81, 86,
90, 92, 93, 100, 102, 109, 127, 173,
204, 263
military preparations 110
and remensas 115
in Tarragona 149
 Index
diputats 35, 36, 56, 166, 167, 203, 207,
211, 212, 213, 224, 263
Dueas 201, 209
Dunois, Jean 196, 197, 204
Dusay, Ramon, canon of Barcelona 126
Joan Galceran 132
Galceran 132
Guillem Pere 132
Ebro, river 156, 167, 168, 170, 171, 172,
175
Ea, Pedro d 155, 156, 158, 164
Edward IV, king of England 139, 173, 179,
192, 204, 209, 239, 240, 241
Elne 216, 229, 231, 233, 236, 237, 238,
239
Els Prats de Rei 163, 164, 167, 180, 182,
190
Empord 32, 63, 64, 114, 145, 146 n. 33,
147, 159 n. 26, 165, 181, 183,
185, 190, 199, 202, 206, 211, 212,
213, 214, 226, 238, 243, 244, 247,
248
Empuries, county 36, 58, 103, 165, 169
peasants of 115
England 152, 169, 179, 196, 204, 209, 216,
226, 228
Enrique IV, king of Castile 45, 77 n. 12, 78,
80, 84 n. 14, 90, 92, 94, 104 n. 67,
126, 1412, 165 n. 44, 239, 241
civil war in Castile 166
lord of Catalonia 1279, 133, 136, 140,
143, 153, 223
and marriage of Isabel 198, 202
and Navarre 133 n. 27, 158, 179
succession question 193, 205, 209, 235
Enrique, son of Fernando I of Aragon 14,
20, 23, 154
Enrique, infante of Aragon 180, 196 n. 8
locumtenens in Catalonia 256 n. 7, 257,
258, 267
Enrquez, family 165, 209
Alfonso, admiral of Castile 184, 198,
230
Erill, Roger d 123
Espina, Alonso 263
Esplugues 159
Estella 142, 158
Felipe de Aragon, illeg. son of Charles of
Viana 248
281
Fernando, son of Juan II 76, 78, 80, 84, 88,
95, 128, 166, 170, 184, 219, 232,
234, 235, 237, 238, 239, 246, 256,
268
against French in Catalonia 182, 187,
189, 190, 198
in Barcelona 96 100
expedition to rousillon 230 1
first campaign 163 4
in Girona 109, 120
and Inquisition 262 3
king of Aragon 263, 267
king of Castile 241, 268
king of Sicily 189, 192
marriage 193, 194 201, 219
recovery of Roussillon and Cerdagne
267 8
relations with Barcelona 264
and remensas 256 60
Fernando I of Trastmar, king of Aragon 11,
12, 14 16, 17, 18, 72, 153, 268
Ferrante, king of Naples 80, 126, 168, 177,
178, 180, 191, 192, 204, 209, 235,
236, 238, 248
Ferrer, Vicent 12
Antoni Pere 160
Pere Joan 171, 211, 212
Ferreres, Gaspar 221, 222
Ferry de Lorraine, count of Vaudemont 183,
186, 188, 190
feuding 66 7, 188, 244 5, 266
Figueres 122, 215, 239, 248, 268
Flix 168, 175
Florence 192
Foix, family 188
Gaston de, count of Foix 53 n. 11, 104,
136, 140
and count of Pallars 69
and Navarre 76, 78, 91, 94, 133 n. 27,
140, 179, 183, 184 5, 205, 208
relief of Girona 105, 119, 122
siege of Barcelona 129 33
and Vic 64, 65
Fonolleda, Arnau 28, 38, 50
Fors 162
Fraga 84, 87, 89, 90, 91
Franois II, duke of Brittany 179, 188, 192,
196, 228
Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor 240
Frederico, count of Luna 19 n. 9
Fuenterraba 140
282 Index
Gaeta 25 Isabel of Castile 80, 83, 85, 91, 94, 140,
Galeota, Giacomo 208 193, 223
Galioto, Jacobo 206, 214 and Louis XI 209
galleys 89 n. 28, 98, 180, 199 marriage 194 201
Castilian 129 princess of Castile 193
French 130, 132, 238 and succession 193, 235
Neapolitan 168, 191 Isabel, d. of Fernando and Isabel 238
Gandesa 168 Isabel, d. of Jaume of Urgell 153
Gascons 3, 70, 169, 232, 237, 238, 243 Isabel, duchess of Burgundy 154, 173
Gelida 162
Generalitat 28, 32, 50, 118, 154 n. 9, 156, Jaime de Aragon 139, 144, 160
162, 203, 206, 210, 212, 217, 223, Jaume II, king of Aragon 7
224, 247, 263, 265 Jaume, count of Urgell 11, 12, 15 16, 76,
Genoa 4, 17, 23, 24, 25, 77, 161, 179, 204, 153, 164
218 Jean of Calabria, son of Ren of Anjou 177,
Giovanna II, queen of Naples 18, 19, 179
23 locumtenens in Catalonia 181, 185, 187,
Girona 137, 147, 181, 185, 206, 210, 211, 188, 189, 190, 196, 197, 199, 204,
213, 230, 244, 246, 247 206 7
bishop of 34, 36 Jean, illeg. son of Jean of Calabria, regent in
civil unrest 614 Catalonia 207, 210, 212, 213, 217,
electoral reform 64 220, 221, 222, 223
Fora 113, 114, 117, 118, 120, 122 Jean de Lorraine 204
and peasant unrest 1023, 109, 255, 256, Jews 3, 118, 119, 167 n. 51, 262, 263,
257 268
population 61 Joo of Portugal 194
sieges 130 n. 21, 145, 1813, 184, 187, Jouffroy, Jean, cardinal of Albi 197, 198,
191, 1967 205, 227 n. 3
trade 3, 4, 32, 61 Juan II, king of Aragon
Giudice, Bofillo del 180, 181, 215, 249 blindness 163, 165, 176, 178, 195
Granada 257, 266, 267 Castilian marriage 192 6, 200 2
Granollers 130, 174, 214, 243, 258 and Charles of Viana 53, 75 6, 82,
Guadalupe, Sentence of 259 60 83 92
Guimer 159 end of civil war 21223
Guissona 145, 200 first campaign in Catalonia 11723,
134 5, 137
Hijar 133, 139 and France 192, 235 6, 241 n. 36
Juan de 133, 136, 139, 144, 160 king of Navarre 154, 185, 205, 269
Luis de 139 n. 7 last years 245 9, 253
honoured citizens (ciutadans honrats) 33, locumtenens in Aragon 45, 52, 59, 62,
40, 41, 42, 55 63, 66, 77, 78
Hospitallers 168 preparations for war 104, 112
Hostalric 113, 116, 130, 184, 189, 212 relations with Castile 158, 165, 192
and remensas 254 5
Igualada 123, 137, 155, 157, 162, 166, and Ren of Anjou 178, 192, 208
243 siege of Amposta 167 8, 170 1
Illa, family 11 siege of Barcelona 129 33
Pins i Fenollet, Galceran de, viscount of siege of Cervera 166
Illa-Canet 36, 50, 121, 125 siege of Lleida 158 9
Innocent VIII, pope 262 struggle for Roussillon and Cerdagne
Inquisition 262, 268 226 41, 248
 Index
Juan II, king of Castile 16, 20, 45, 49, 154,
200 n. 13
Juan de Aragon, archbishop of Zaragoza,
illeg. son of Juan II 148, 168, 184,
185, 233, 243
Juana Enriquez, queen of Aragon 80 n. 1,
92, 136, 166, 170, 184, 187, 195
and Charles of Viana 84, 85, 87, 90 1
in Girona 10922
and Louis XI 1412, 158
regent/locumtenens in Catalonia
95100, 163
war in Catalonia 12931, 158 9, 180
Juana of Portugal, queen of Castile 165 n. 44
Juana, illeg. d. of Juan II 138, 158, 184,
238, 243, 245
Juana (la Beltraneja) d. of Enrique IV 165,
194, 202, 205, 209, 241, 242
justice 30, 35
La Bisbal 165, 214
La Junquera 122
La Llacuna 131
Lanuza, Ferrer de 141 n. 12
Martin de 214
La Palma dEbre 148
La Roca del Valls 134
La Tallada dEmpuries 185, 214
Lau, Antoine de 217, 218, 220, 223, 226,
227, 230
Leonor, countess of Foix 53 n. 11, 76, 80,
184, 205, 208
LEspluga de Francol 136
Levant 4, 27
Lleida 88, 89, 96, 119, 133, 145, 155, 172,
190, 191, 203, 265
Corts in 84, 86
siege of 1569
trade 3
Llivia 216
Logroo 246
Los Toros de Guisando 193
Louis XI, king of France 94, 97, 104 5,
114, 130, 137, 177, 178, 242, 262
and Castile 140, 197, 242, 244, 245, 248
and Catalonia 141, 1513, 186, 187 8,
196, 204, 207, 216
and Navarre 133 n. 27, 205 n. 22
opposition in France 192
and Roussillon and Cerdagne 227 41,
248, 267
283
Louis III, duke of Anjou 11, 19 n. 7, 22, 23,
176
Lude, Jean de 233, 234, 236
Luna, family 11
lvaro de 20, 21 n. 11, 49
Madrigal 198, 199
lvaro de 247
Mahon 171
Majorca 5, 6, 7, 38, 42, 44, 45, 83, 126,
171, 227, 234
mals usos 30 1, 34, 35, 36, 37, 51, 54, 79,
81, 93 4, 101, 150, 254 n. 3, 256,
259, 260
Manresa 148, 162, 167, 173, 175, 217, 265
Margaret, d. of Ren of Anjou, queen of
England 179, 204
Margaret, sister of Edward IV 173
Margarit, family 185, 191, 211
Bernat 63, 191, 211, 212
Joan, bishop of Elne 29, 73, 75
bishop of Girona 101, 110 n. 5, 115,
125, 182, 191, 197, 210, 211, 212,
213, 222, 228, 246, 247, 254, 255
Luis 259 n. 14
Maria, queen of Aragon 19 n. 6, 22, 23, 24,
25, 43, 49
and Barcelona 48, 50
and count of Pallars 69 70
and remensas 31 n. 3, 34, 35, 38, 39, 51
and Vic 65 6
Marimon, Joan de 118, 123 n. 41
Joan Bernat de 160
Marseille 19, 177
Martin, king of Aragon 11
Martorell 131, 162, 212
Mateu, Joan 222, 223
Mayans, Joan 109
Medes, islands 191
Medinya 122
Mendoza, family 196 n. 7, 200
Iigo Lpez de, count of Tendilla 259
Juan Hurtado de 136, 144
Ruy Diaz de 136, 144
Mercader, Perot 35 6
Milan, duke of, see Sforza, Galeazzo Maria
militia see also Bandera
Catalan 21, 121, 125, 146, 188, 199,
237, 243
of Lleida 119
of Perpignan 121
284 Index
Minorca 126 Palau del Vidre 232
Molins de Rei 44, 90, 162 Palau-Saverdera 162, 165
Monforte, Cola Gambatesa, count of Palencia, Alonso de 196 n. 7, 199, 200,
Campobasso 206, 208, 212, 215 201
Montagut 145 Pallars, Francesc 97, 101, 135 n. 33
Montana, region 113, 125, 254, 256, 258 Pallars, family 11, 68
Montblanc 3, 115, 136, 187 n. 30 Arnau Roger de, bishop of Urgell 70,
Montcada 37, 130, 132, 137, 159, 258 235
Montesa, Order of 144 Arnau Roger de, count of Pallars 39,
Montjuich 132, 218 68 70
Montlhry, battle 165 Hug Roger de, count of Pallars 99, 110,
Montmel 130, 213 113 n. 11, 116, 11722, 129, 131,
Montpellier 236 145, 146 n. 30, 158, 178 n. 5, 208,
Montserrat, abbot of 312, 151, 160, 214, 211, 212, 218, 220, 223, 235,
263 236 7, 243, 249, 265, 266 n. 35
monastery 84, 162, 217 Paris 236
Montserrat, Cosme de, bishop of Vic 115 parliament 86, 88, 149, 161, 170, 180 1,
Moors 3, 6 183, 196, 215 n. 15, 219, 226
Mora dEbre 133 Pau 162
Morella 90, 91 peasants 9, 10, 35, 37, 38, 93, 254, 260
Mudarra, Luis de 243 insurrection 101, 103, 109 10, 255,
25660
Naples, kingdom 16, 18, 22 n. 15, 23 n. 19, Pedralbes, monastery 217, 219, 222
24, 26, 27, 80, 161, 231 Capitulation of 223 4, 261
city 16, 19, 27, 73, 189, 267 Pedro, infante of Portugal, lord of Catalonia
Narbonne 119, 227, 236, 238, 246, 268 ch. 14 175, 176, 177, 179 n. 8, 180,
Navarre 22, 45, 53 n. 11, 75, 77, 83, 90, 91, 223
97, 104, 133 n. 27, 140, 160, 161, Pedro of Aragon 19, 20
179, 205, 208, 237, 246 Peralada 124, 211, 215, 216
Navarro, Anton 144 Peralta, Pierres de 141, 170, 184, 193, 229,
Navata 145 238
Nicolas of Lorraine, marquis of Pont-- Pere III, king of Aragon 7
Mousson 207, 216, 218 Perells, Francesc de, viscount of Roda 164
Perpignan 37, 43, 105, 116, 121, 125, 137,
Ocaa 194, 198 139, 167, 216, 234, 236, 237, 238,
Olmedo, battle 184 268
Olot 125 n. 3, 162, 168, 169, 180, 196, consols 113, 227
197, 205, 215, 254, 255 sieges 226 31, 240
treaty of 104 trade 3, 4
Oms, family 216 Philip, duke of Burgundy 154, 169, 179
Berenguer d 121 Piera 174
Bernat d 216, 227, 239 Pinos, Francesc de 160
Carles d 121 plague 9, 60, 167, 175, 265
Ortaf, family 216 Planella, Ramon de, canon 125 n. 6, 217
n. 23, 244
Pacheco, Juan, marquis of Villena 136 n. 36, Pere de 171, 172
138, 139 n. 9, 140, 141, 142, 165, Poblet, abbot of 90, 92
184, 194, 198, 202, 238, 239 and see Delgado, Miquel
Beatriz 184, 193 Ponza, battle 23
pactisme 14, 228 population 3, 9, 10
Palamos 162, 174, 175, 211, 214 Portugal 154, 161, 175, 194
 Index
Prades, count of 92, 102
Princeps Namque 157, 186, 237, 239
Puigcerd 139
Pujades, Matteu 28
Rebolledo, Rodrigo de 135, 187
redemption, peasant 32, 34 9, 53, 81
remensas 22, 30, 34, 35, 37, 51, 52, 55, 74,
93, 98, 101, 109, 115, 150, 254,
25560
pro-royalist forces 112
Ren, duke of Anjou 24, 69, 176, 206, 224,
249
king of Aragon 177, 199, 207, 208, 210,
213, 216, 220, 222, 223
king of Sicily 189
Requesens, family 263
Berenguer de 159
Bernat de 159
Galceran de, arrest 90, 92, 93
and conflict in Barcelona 43, 44, 46,
47, 55, 56, 58, 59
and Corts 79, 86
and count of Pallars 70-1
governor of Catalonia 81, 82, 85, 87
locumtenens in Catalonia 49, 50, 52,
74
and remensas 334, 35, 36, 38, 39, 51,
52
Requesens Dessoler, Galceran 143, 240
n. 33, 257, 258
Reus 3
Ribagora, county 204, 232
Ripoll 156, 162, 169, 174
abbot of 182
Rocabert, family 116
Bernat Huc de 168, 170, 171, 184, 187,
190, 196 n. 8, 214, 215, 217, 224,
226, 228 n. 5, 235
Jofre de, viscount 1212, 145 n. 28, 161,
164, 187 n. 31, 215
Pere de 125, 130 n. 21, 145, 147, 156,
161, 169, 180, 1812, 185, 191,
217, 233, 234
Rohan, Jean de 140, 141
Roses 120, 180, 215, 224
Rotllan, Melchior 132
Roussillon 97, 105, 119, 121, 125, 1389,
151, 169, 177, 179, 191, 199, 216,
219, 226, 237, 241, 247, 267 8
Rubinat, battle 1223, 124, 130
285
Sabadell 37, 174, 213, 258
Sacosta, Pere Ramon, master of Rhodes 168
sagramentals 32, 63, 74, 255
Sala, Bartolomeu 257, 258
Pere Joan 256, 257, 258
Salses 121, 227, 231
Samps, Francesc 63, 116, 117
Snchez, Guillen 201
San Pere Pescador 180
Santa Coloma de Queralt 123, 130
Santamaria, Garcia de 174
Santa Maria de Guadalupe, monastery 259
Sant Andreu 130, 132
Santa Pau 103, 109
Sant Celoni 130
Sant Cugat del Valls 213
Santdionis, Narcis de 62
Santes Creus 167
Sant Feliu de Guixols 114, 211, 213
Santiago, Order of, see Cueva, Beltrn de la
Sant Joan de les Abadesses 156, 162, 169,
188
Sant Joan les Fonts 145
Sant Jordi Desvalls 181
Sant Lloren de la Muga 242, 243, 255
Sant Mart dEmpries 187
Sant Mori 180
Sant Pere de Galligants, monastery 62,
63
Saportella, Bernat 149, 160, 203, 223
Sardinia 4, 7, 17, 18
Sarral 212
Sarriera, family 244
Joan 210 11, 212, 247
Savoy, duke of 178
Schism, papal 11, 26
Segovia 129, 241
Sescortes, Francesc 181, 186 n. 27
Setant, Lluis 221, 222, 223
Seville 193, 257
Sforza, Galeazzo Maria, duke of Milan 178,
179, 192, 208, 221
sheep rearing 4
shipping 5, 25
Sicily 4, 18, 23, 82, 126, 163, 189
Sicilian Vespers 7, 18
Silva, Ferno da 167, 169
Joo de 169
silver coinage 412, 48
Sirvent, Jofre 47
Siurana 165
286 Index
Sobrequs i Vidal, Santiago 131, 146, 147, Valladolid 198, 200, 201
150 Vall dAran 232
Solsona 148 Vallespir 216
spingards 118 Valls 3
syndicates, remensa 31, 32, 34, 37, 44, 51, veguer of Barcelona 58, 100, 102, 116, 243,
52, 113, 256, 257 257
in Barcelona 43, 46, 48, 49, 55, 57, 81, Venice 192
85, 87, 989 Verges 129, 133, 185, 214
Verntallat, Francesc 112 14, 125, 145, 156,
Tamarit 134 162, 191, 206, 215, 254
Tangier 153, 154 as viscount of Hosteles 254, 255, 256,
Tarazona, bishop of 126 258, 259
Tarragona 3, 137, 148, 180 Vic 3, 113, 169, 173, 190, 199, 217, 243,
archbishop see Urrea, Pedro Ximenez de 257
as royalist capital 135, 149, 160, 161, civil strife 64 6
163, 170, 187, 188 chapter 109
siege 1345 Vicens Vives, Jaume 97, 103, 137, 223, 241,
Trrega 118, 119, 123, 136, 145, 148, 158, 246, 254, 258, 269 n. 43
162, 165, 189 Viladamat 187, 190, 191
taxes 147, 156 Vilafranca del Peneds 92, 131, 133, 135,
Terrassa 37, 258 148, 155, 160, 163, 205
textiles 4, 10, 44, 56, 266 Capitulation of 912, 128, 142, 224
Torquemada, Juan de 262, 263 Vilafranca dEmpries 3
Torregrossa 136 Vilamar, family 263
Torrelles, Joan, count of Ischia 208, 225 Bernat de 98, 120, 130, 156
Torres, Juan de 136, 145, 146 n. 30, 148 Bernat de, son of above 170, 191, 206,
Torres de Segre 156 217, 225, 268 n. 41
Torroella de Montgr 129 30, 211, 215, Vilanova de lAguda 145
244 Vilanova de la Muga 244, 245, 247, 248
Tortosa 3, 4, 90, 133, 136, 139 n.7, 148, Vilarodona 167
159 n. 26, 162, 167, 1713, 174, 265 Vinyes, Antoni 44, 45 6, 47
captain, see Belloch, Joan de Visconti, Filippo Maria, duke of Milan 23,
trade 3, 45, 18, 25, 44 24
Trastmara, dynasty 1314, 16, 17, 40,
128, 176, 177, 193, 268 wages 9, 10
Tudela 80, 205 wool 4, 5, 59, 266
Tunis 23
Xativa, castle 90, 164 n. 41, 167
Ulldecona 162, 166 Ximnez de Arvalo, Juan 138
Urgell, bishop 58 Ximnez de Urrea, Pedro, archbishop of
Urrea, family 12 Tarragona 36, 87, 92, 99, 100 1,
Lope Ximnez de 189 102, 116, 134 5, 159, 170, 172,
Usatges of Barcelona 51, 88, 172, 224 219

Vaca, Pere 187 Zaragoza 6, 64, 87, 90 1, 133, 136 7,

Valencia, kingdom 6, 7, 27, 28, 32, 105,
126, 144, 146, 148, 158, 167, 170,
188, 234, 243
city 6, 21, 90, 116, 132, 148, 166, 170,
199, 219, 266
144, 158 n. 24, 163, 189, 195,
237
Archbishop, see Juan de Aragon
Zurita, Jernimo 128, 131, 134, 149, 190,
191, 207, 216, 223