Isabella of Castile

by Giles Tremlett

  In the brief period between Alfonso’s death and the meeting beside the Guisando bulls, Isabella had shown herself worthy of her new status as heir apparent. She had known when to bend, especially in the face of superior might, but she had also shown that she knew when to dig her heels in. Her patron, the archbishop of Toledo, may not have liked it, but she had asserted her authority. She was already displaying some of the qualities that Enrique and her father Juan had famously lacked. Shrewd observers might have realised that something was changing. But there were few such observers. The decades of submissive monarchs and centuries of mostly submissive women weighed too heavily. While her chances of becoming queen had increased dramatically, most would have expected her to reign as little more than a figurehead. Government would be a task for her husband and his advisers. Neither Enrique nor Pacheco, the apparent winners at Guisando, nor her own supporters like the archbishop, showed any sign of understanding the woman they were dealing with. In fact the young Isabella was emerging as a powerfully intense, decisive and sometimes unbending character. She knew how to set her own objectives and, more importantly, how to stand up for herself. Hers was a self-confidence built on simple, straightforward beliefs, unfettered by self-examination or the need to add shades of grey to those things she viewed in black and white.

  An awkward but vital question remained unanswered. Who would Isabella marry? The treaty gave Enrique the right to choose, while the senior nobles still believed they had a right to approve that choice and Isabella herself had, crucially, obtained her own right of veto. The Guisando agreement also stated that Isabella must stay with Enrique and his counsellors until a husband was found.13 As the two siblings and those used to forcing their opinions on Enrique turned their backs on the stone bulls and rode off together, the unity of Castile and of the Trastámara family apparently restored, each already had different thoughts on what all that might mean.

  6

  Choosing Ferdinand

  Colmenar de Oreja, 24 October 1468

  The five horsemen who galloped into the town of Colmenar de Oreja must have looked like just another group of courtiers joining Isabella and Enrique as the apparently happy royal court of Castile settled here and in the neighbouring town of Ocaña to administer a newly peaceful country. The group headed towards the town’s largest church, Santa María, and pinned a document to the door. Having achieved their aim, they fled at full gallop, for they knew that the explosive words laboriously written out would shatter the illusion of calm that had descended on both court and country. News of its contents must have spread like wildfire, with Isabella among the first to know.1

  The riders were led by the Count of Tendilla, a senior member of the Mendoza clan and legal guardian to the six-year-old Princess Juana – now a rival to her cousin and godmother, Isabella. He had brought with him to this town thirty miles from Madrid a formal protest against the agreement that had been silently notarised a month earlier by the stone bulls at Guisando. Pinning it to the church door was a safe way to make it public and, in effect, to serve a writ on both Isabella and Enrique. ‘It is public knowledge that the said lady princess, my ward, as legitimate daughter of the king was long ago proclaimed and accepted, at the time of her birth, as princess and first in line to inherit these kingdoms,’2 the letter stated. It was a reminder to Isabella that her rival had never been declared illegitimate by either her father or her mother.

  Princess Juana was, the count reminded those who gathered at the church door, born into a proper marriage. ‘She is the legitimate daughter of the king and was born into a legitimate marriage approved by our very holy Pope Pius, of great fame, and by Pope Paul II,’ the writ stated.3 And that meant she could not be disinherited without the pope’s direct approval, ‘because he was the source of approval of the marriage into which she was born and within which she was confirmed as the legitimate heiress’.4 Tendilla and his fellow riders5 had chosen to nail the letter to the church door out of fear of reprisals, according to del Castillo, because ‘such was the might of those to whom it was directed that, given the contents of the appeal, they did not dare give it directly to them in person’.6 It was a warning that the coexistence in Castile of a king, a queen consort, the queen’s lover, her future illegitimate child and two potential heiresses to the crown – both seen as needing husbands – was unlikely to be simple.

  The appearance of stability generated at Guisando was only skin deep, and the senior nobles were already manoeuvring to undermine it. Pacheco continued his self-interested scheming, an angry archbishop of Toledo was preparing a bold strategy to win Isabella back and the offended, ambitious Mendozas were looking to turn their possession of her rival Juana to their advantage. Aragon, Portugal and France watched closely, awaiting the opportunities that can be plucked from chaos. The court had moved to Colmenar de Oreja and to the neighbouring town of Ocaña because this was Pacheco territory, controlled by the military order of Santiago of which he was now Master. Pacheco had never been so mighty, or Enrique so dependent. It was here, according to Palencia, that they began plotting to marry Isabella off to a foreign prince, with Portugal’s Afonso V still the favourite. Neither man counted on Isabella being anything other than acquiescent.7

  Isabella spent the Christmas of 1468 in Ocaña with her small court of loyal officials and ladies, a virtual prisoner in Pacheco’s fiefdom. Less than a year had gone by since her brother’s death, but already she found herself having to make one of the most important decisions of her life. She must either bow to Enrique, accept the Grandees’ power over the monarchy and marry the Portuguese king – a widower whose children were older than Isabella herself and who would expect to rule in her place8 – or she could rebel, marry a man of her own choice and risk sparking yet another civil war.

  The obvious alternative candidate was Juan the Great of Aragon’s precocious son Ferdinand, who would soon turn seventeen. The scheming Aragonese monarch ruled over a collection of semi-independent kingdoms that often had a fractious relationship with their bellicose king, who fought frequent border wars with France and had complex interests in Italy. His Italian lands included Sardinia and Sicily, which Juan the Great had gifted to Ferdinand six months earlier, in June 1468 – allowing him to use the title of king of Sicily, though he remained in Aragon and the task of governing the island kingdom was carried out by a viceroy. Among the reasons that Juan the Great, who was two weeks away from celebrating his seventieth birthday, gave for making the appointment was the support Ferdinand had already given him in ‘the sweat of war during his old age’. That same month he had formally appointed Ferdinand as his lieutenant in all his kingdoms, allowing him to exercise royal power during his father’s absence. The Aragonese king now imagined his son, already experienced in battle and accustomed to making important decisions, as future king of a vast part of Iberia. Only Portugal, little Navarre and the Muslim kingdom of Granada would be outside his realms. A single marriage treaty could achieve immeasurably more than the old wars between his branch of the Trastámara family and Isabella’s father. Ferdinand’s future wife, it was assumed, would remain in the background – allowing him to govern alone. He sent Pierres de Peralta, the condestable of Navarre, into Castile as his envoy, his bags full of written offers of gold to Isabella’s closest advisers.9

  While secret negotiations were carried out at night-time meetings with the Aragonese envoys in Isabella’s rooms, the Portuguese king sent the archbishop of Lisbon to finalise a wedding treaty that he had been led to believe was a mere formality. His envoys were entertained lavishly by Pacheco, but Isabella politely refused to commit herself to them, while also avoiding an outright ‘no’. As the procuradores, representing the cities, and the Grandees gathered for a Cortes meeting called by Enrique at Ocaña, the town seethed with plots and counter-plots. Everybody seemed to sense this was an historic moment. The king’s grip on power continued to weaken, with the rebels who had raised Alfonso as a rival monarch now governing in Enrique’s name. Some of Spain’s po
werful cities pinned their hopes for the future on Isabella. Those procuradores who were worried about growing Grandee power over the cities, and over the kingdom, found Isabella ready to listen to their complaints, if powerless to do anything about them. They were not even offered the opportunity of fulfilling the terms of the Guisando agreement by publicly swearing loyalty to Isabella as heiress. A campaign of bullying was then ordered with a thuggish noble called Pedro de Velasco sent to threaten Isabella with imprisonment if she did not agree to the Portuguese match. ‘Velasco expressed himself in such excessive terms that he forced tears from the lady and she, full of embarrassment, begged God’s protection from such shamefulness and cruel infamy,’ wrote Palencia, who also claimed that an angry Enrique ordered his soldiers to arrest anyone singing pro-Aragonese songs on the streets of Ocaña.10

  Enrique must have been aware of the presence of Pierres de Peralta, who based himself at the archbishop of Toledo’s residence in nearby Yepes. He had been sent with blank pieces of paper signed by Juan the Great, so desperate was the Aragonese king to make this marriage happen. The archbishop’s illegitimate son Troilo, now Peralta’s son-in-law, acted as go-between. One legend talks of a secret meeting between Isabella and the intrepid ambassador, who had waded across the strong-running River Tagus in the dark, at which the future queen finally swore to marry Ferdinand. In fact, the exact moment when Isabella decided to marry Ferdinand is impossible to pinpoint, but she had clearly made her mind up by the end of January 1469, only four months after signing the Guisando bulls’ accord, when one of Juan the Great’s envoys wrote informing him of her choice. ‘It must be him [Ferdinand] and no other,’ the envoy said. A few days later Isabella sent a trusted adviser, Gómez Manrique, with Peralta to Ferdinand in the Catalan town of Cervera. She was not prepared, however, to put her pledge in writing, in case it was intercepted. Instead, she wrote him a cryptic note.

  To my cousin, the king of Sicily. Señor cousin: as the condestable is on his way to you it is not necessary for me to put this in writing, but only to ask forgiveness for the late reply. He will explain the delay to your majesty. I beg you to trust him and you must now order me to do your will, and I will have to do it. And the reason for that you will find out from him this very day, because it is not something that should be written down. From the hand that will now do whatever you command. The princess.11

  Enrique and his privado Pacheco remained convinced that they had the eighteen-year-old princess under control. After all, the Guisando treaty stated that the king must choose, that his counsellors must approve and that, only then, Isabella herself could agree, or not, on her husband. The king and his entourage now set out southwards for Andalusia, making Isabella swear not to move from Ocaña or make marriage plans without them. Some of Isabella’s officials were bribed to spy on her and Pacheco’s men were ordered to ensure that she stayed put. As Isabella plotted for herself, she had a distinct advantage over the men she was dealing with. They simply could not imagine that a young woman, however royal her blood, might operate independently of them. That also went for those, like Palencia, who were now in favour of the Ferdinand match. The defect was not in her individually, but in women as a whole. ‘Women have been the downfall of Spain,’ is how Palencia, attributing the idea to the people of Burgos, would put it.12

  In later years a romantic narrative of Isabella’s choice evolved which saw her excitedly and girlishly fall in love with the dashing young Ferdinand from a distance. In fact, Isabella was a far harder-nosed political player than that. Her choice was pragmatic, not emotional. A Portuguese marriage would place Isabella firmly, perhaps permanently, in the hands of Pacheco’s power-hungry band of Grandees. These were already secretly offering to proclaim Afonso of Portugal heir, and Isabella a mere consort, just as soon as she was wedded to the Portuguese king. But marriage to Ferdinand brought similar problems. She would place herself in the self-interested hands of Juan the Great and the archbishop of Toledo – two bullying old men who also expected her to cede all protagonism to her husband. The kingdom of Aragon did not allow women to occupy the throne and Ferdinand, as one of the few male Trastámaras available to rule Castile, was a direct rival to Isabella as well as a potential ally, even within marriage. Several of her senior advisers, like Chacón and Gutierre de Cárdenas, had been handsomely bribed by the Aragonese king, but he needed the match far more than Portugal. That put Isabella in a stronger bargaining position. The desire of the archbishop of Toledo and her other allies to keep as much power as possible in Castile rather than giving it away to Aragon also played in her favour. Like the Grandees who dominated Enrique, they imagined themselves exercising power for her. So when it came to bargaining with Juan the Great they could be trusted to press hard for Castile’s rights, which were also hers.13

  Once again, Isabella was aided by the basic belief among the men involved that – whatever was pledged or written down on paper – it was inconceivable that, once married, she would not simply hand power over to her husband, a council of Grandees or both. Nor was there anything in her calm and apparently demure outward demeanour – a cloak under which Isabella was learning to hide her steely character – to make them think otherwise. On 7 March, exactly two months before Enrique set out for Andalusia, a secret marriage agreement was finalised in Cervera.14 It permitted Ferdinand, who would turn seventeen two days later, to administer justice in Castile, but everything else would have to be agreed, signed or done with the permission of his wife. He could not even leave Castile without her permission. He would also provide 100,000 florins once the marriage was consummated and an army of 4,000 lancers to defend Isabella against the enemies she was now creating. A further 20,000 florins must be paid up front along with a valuable pearl and ruby necklace which the cash-strapped Aragonese royals had pawned in Valencia.15

  Attempts were made to limit the damage to Enrique’s royal pride. In an early draft, signed only by Ferdinand and his father, the young prince had pledged ‘to observe and uphold the peace signed between King Enrique and her [Isabella], and allow and ensure that his highness reigns peacefully for the rest for his days’. Both he and his father would forget any previous insults from their past enemies in Castile, including Enrique, and ‘forgive all, in the service of God and out of consideration for her serene princess’. Enrique was also to be given ‘full filial obedience’ by his future brother-in-law. ‘We will go personally to live in those kingdoms to be there with the princess, and we will not leave without her approval, nor will we take her from those kingdoms without her consent,’ Ferdinand had pledged, with their offspring also to remain in Castile.16 ‘We will never take them away from her, nor take them out of those kingdoms against her will.’

  By Aragonese standards, it was a humiliating document. It left Ferdinand a virtual prisoner in the hands of Isabella and her counsellors. The idea that a prince of Aragon and king of Sicily should need a wife’s permission to be in his own kingdoms, or those of his father, was shocking. But it was just the start, and a man could still be expected to prevail over his wife. Juan and Ferdinand were, in any case, not in a position to demand any more. They could not, at first, even provide the necklace that was meant to be given to Ferdinand’s fiancée. Isabella now had to keep her part of the bargain. Promises had been given, but in the liquid, turbulent world of Castilian politics, alliances were made and unmade with exasperating ease. Aragonese messengers were ready with money to buy support among the nobility, but she had to prove that she was committed by openly rebelling against Enrique and fleeing Ocaña. Her eventual excuse for leaving the town was that she wanted to oversee preparations for the ceremonies in Arévalo, her mother’s town, to mark the anniversary of her brother Alfonso’s death. Arévalo had been occupied by Enrique’s allies, however, so she and her mother travelled on to her birthplace of Madrigal de Las Altas Torres.17 Once more, her choice was to return to the landscapes, people and simple certainties of her childhood.

  The decision, however, was anything but childlik
e. Isabella had left the historic Guisando agreement in tatters and civil war now threatened. Worse still, she had allied herself with Juan the Great, a long-time foe of both Enrique and her father. Castile could remember still the awful, uncertain days of the wars against the infantes of Aragon. Juan the Great, now aged seventy, was one of those infantes. The engagement to Ferdinand, however, remained a secret and Enrique’s reaction to Isabella’s disobedient departure from Ocaña was not nearly as aggressive as it might have been. His appetite for bloody confrontation was limited and he preferred to leave things in the hands of Pacheco, who had a natural liking for ill-defined, chaotic situations. These were the moments when the king needed him most, and which could best be played out to his personal benefit.

  Rather than make war on a princess whose only crime so far was to disobey his instructions and leave Ocaña, Enrique now sent her a different marriage proposal. This time it came from France’s King Louis XI, who wanted her to marry his brother, and heir apparent, the Duke of Berry. A French ambassador, the bishop of Arras, arrived in Madrigal, hoping that a marriage would help him settle an alliance with Castile against England’s King Edward IV. The self-important bishop so maddened Isabella with his pomposity, arrogance and sly verbal attacks on Ferdinand that she could barely contain herself. She kept calm, however, making non-committal replies that left the bishop thinking he had received a half-promise. Palencia later claimed that Isabella had sent her chaplain, Alfonso de Coca, to cast an eye over both the French duke and Ferdinand. ‘He described the immense advantages that don Ferdinand had over the other, given that – even discounting the larger size of his dominions and the union of the kingdoms – he was far better looking. The Duke [of Berry] scarcely warranted comparison, as he was made ugly by the extreme thinness of his legs and a certain accumulation of liquids that made him half-blind.’ Palencia claimed a ‘bloated and arrogant’ France would force Castile to submit to its will while warning that its ‘repugnant customs’ clashed with Castile’s supposed seriousness. Isabella appears to have carried away from the meeting a life-long dislike of France. ‘You showed that you desired any other, less useful, marriage to be arranged in order to prevent a wedding with the honest and dutiful prince [Ferdinand],’ Isabella scolded Enrique later.18