Isabella of Castile

by Giles Tremlett

  Princess donna Isabella … came very handsomely and richly dressed and sat down beside the King her father at his right hand side, at a little distance from him. Certainly it was a rich sight to see the Queen and her daughter [so] dressed, and twenty-six ladies and maidens all daughters of great noblemen, most of them dressed in cloth of gold, velvet, and silk, very handsomely. The Queen was all dressed in cloth of gold, she wore a head-dress of gold thread, and a fine necklace adorned with huge pearls, and large and very fine diamonds in the centre. Then the sovereigns commanded the princess their daughter to dance. And she immediately rose and went and took a young lady who was Portuguese … This young lady was very gorgeously dressed and danced with her.12

  At the jousting, a few days later, Machado found Queen Isabella wearing a Spanish mantilla ‘all spangled with lozenges of crimson and black velvet, and on each lozenge was a large pearl … [and] a rich balass ruby the size of a beechnut … no man ever saw anything equal to it’.13 Two rubies ‘the size of a pigeon’s egg’ and a large pearl worth 12,000 crowns hung as pendants from her head-dress. Machado was overwhelmed. ‘So rich was the dress she wore that day that there is no man who can well imagine what could be the value of it,’ he said.

  A casual, but obviously stage-managed, encounter with Catherine and Isabella’s third daughter, six-year-old María, followed soon afterwards. Isabella and Ferdinand, together with the elder three children, took the ambassadors into a gallery hung with their best tapestries (many of which must have travelled with them on mule trains) where they encountered the separate ‘junior’ court built around the youngest children. ‘The Queen was very richly dressed. And all her daughters were similarly dressed, and the said two daughters, the Infanta donna Maria, and the Infanta donna Catherine, princess of England, had fourteen maidens … all of them dressed in cloth of gold, and all of them daughters of noblemen,’ reported Machado. ‘The eldest of them was not more than fourteen years old.’ Catherine was too young to dance, but little María took the floor with ‘a young lady of her age and size, and led her to dance’. There was no mention of the female court midget whom Isabella had hired to entertain her daughters.

  The following day the ambassadors witnessed what was already a quintessential part of Spanish royal fiestas, the bullfight. This was a mounted affair, with riders attacking the bulls with lances. It was a gory spectacle that Isabella disliked, not out of concern for the bull but because men sometimes died. One of the few things she was squeamish about was the unnecessary loss of Christian blood.14 The ambassadors also saw mock skirmishes and running with dogs ‘in the way they fought with the Saracens [that is, the Moors]’. Machado spent much of his time watching Isabella, who had little Catherine with her, marvelling at how affectionate and attentive she was. ‘It was beautiful to see how the queen held up her youngest daughter,’ he noted.15

  Two days later, on 27 March, the Treaty of Medina del Campo was signed. England and Spain were allies, with France now discarded.16 The ambassadors stayed a few days longer in Medina, heavy with gifts for themselves – including a Spanish war-horse, a smaller Moorish ‘jennet’ horse, a pair of mules, yards of silk and sixty marks of silver each. First, however, they rode out of Medina for ‘about two bow-shots’, accompanying Isabella and her family as the peripatetic court took off again, accompanied by more than a hundred nobles, knights, bishops and ‘squires’. Ferdinand and Juan rode ahead, while Isabella led her own group of daughters, ladies and maids-in-waiting. Perhaps, as she rode across the meseta, Isabella felt a warm glow of revenge, recalling just how offensive France’s ambassadors had been when they came to seek her own hand in marriage. Since then she had stuck to her opinion that France was ‘abhorrent to our Castilian nation’. Her husband must have been even more delighted to have Castile definitively on his side in Aragon’s long-running feud with the French.

  24

  Granada Falls

  Moclín, May 1490

  The twelve shiny Castilian doblas that Isabella handed to Juan were a mark that her son and heir, who was about to turn twelve, was growing up and ready to ride to war. The heavy gold coins were for Juan to give away at the religious service to mark his new status as a caballero, or knight. That had been confirmed at a solemn ceremony by the Acequia Gorda – one of the main channels of a complex irrigation network built and maintained by Granada’s Moors – as Juan rode with her husband while he prepared to lay waste to the agricultural land around the city in May 1490. There the young prince had been formally knighted and handed his chain mail, dagger, helmet and campaign boots. Juan could now ride with his father and learn about war from him, though he was not expected to fight in the front line. Until now Isabella had overseen her son’s upbringing and education and would continue as his ‘tutor, carer and legitimate administrator’ for another two years, but her work with him was mostly done.1

  She must have felt proud, not just of her son but of the legacy she was preparing for him as future sovereign of a united Spain. Isabella had taken an unprecedentedly firm grip on the crown. Her unique alliance with Ferdinand had created a dual monarchy that not only spanned most of the Iberian peninsula but had enlarged its territory further in Granada while also proving to be Christendom’s most effective defender in its continuing battle with expansionist Islam. A parallel battle to purify Castile by imposing order and justice, chasing down supposed heretics among the conversos and reforming the church was already under way – though there was much more to do. Juan would be the heir to all that. Little wonder that, as messianic predictions continued to sweep through Iberia,2 many saw him as the promised Lion King – the man who would finish the task started by his parents and drive the Muslim heresy out of north Africa and, eventually, out of the Holy Land itself.3 In three years’ time, too, Juan would be old enough to marry, give Isabella grandchildren and ensure the continuity of her work for generations to come.

  This was not the only major family event of the year. A few weeks earlier her eldest daughter Isabella had finally married the heir to the crown of Portugal – the now fifteen-year-old Prince Afonso, whose father João II had inherited the throne shortly after the end of the war with Isabella in 1481. The marriage fulfilled the terms of the Alcáçovas Treaty that had brought the civil war to an end, cementing a lasting peace with Portugal and keeping Juana la Beltraneja – who still obstinately signed letters as ‘I, the Queen’4 – firmly in her place. The partying in Seville for her daughter’s proxy ‘wedding by powers’ (when Portuguese representatives came to confirm the final terms of marriage) that spring and her eventual send-off for the full wedding ceremony in Portugal had lasted fifteen days. Isabella had purchased an impressive trousseau and spent freely on the celebrations. There was jousting, mummery and tilting at the ring, with young Juan performing both on the stage and in the tiltyard. Her daughter’s husband was five years her junior, but the younger Isabella had, from the ages of ten to twelve, spent two years with him when they had been confined together in Portugal under the terms of the peace treaty that ended their war. The partying in Seville was, in part, the celebration of a kingdom on the rise which was provoking admiration, respect and fear in other parts of Europe. Isabella’s personal reputation was also soaring. Two years had gone by since the fall of Málaga and, though the war was still not finished, it was only a matter of time before her crusade to oust the Moors was over.5

  Isabella rode from Moclín, where she had been enjoying the company of Boabdil’s little son Ahmed el infantico, back towards Córdoba in June of 1490. Granada itself, the most populous city in the peninsula, was not yet hers. Boabdil had proved as unreliable an ally to the Spanish monarchs as he had been to his own father and uncle. They had expected him to accept the gift of the region based on Baza and Guadix in exchange for the keys to the Alhambra and the city. Yet magnificent Granada, the symbol of centuries of Muslim history, was a difficult prize to give up. Not only was Boabdil reluctant to hand over the palace complex that his Nasrid dynasty had so lovingly built, he
was also aware that the city-folk and thousands of refugees who had flocked there over the previous half-dozen years were not ready to accept what, for them, was the end of history – the surrender of a place whose soil held the remains of thirty generations of forebears. Rather than give up Granada, Boabdil now made war again.6

  The monarchs were not in a hurry. As hostilities broke out again in May 1490 Zagal himself was pressed into service, willingly turning against his rebellious nephew. One of the cleverer pieces of trickery of that summer’s campaign saw his men take a fortified tower by pretending to be driving cattle and Christian captives towards Granada. They asked for shelter in the tower and, once the doors were unlocked, stormed in and captured those manning it – who were then sent running off to the city of Granada. It was not until April the following year, however, that the campaign to take the city itself received the money, men and might it needed. Isabella, never quite as patient as her husband, took extreme measures, issuing a wide-ranging call-up as she sought overwhelming force. She also knew that this siege might last and one of her most important decisions was to construct something far more solid than the usual siege camp of tents and roughly made huts. The Santa Fe camp, set up outside Granada, was a small fortified town in itself, attached to a much larger camp of tents surrounded by ditches and barriers, with buildings that were designed to remain standing after the war. In the space of just a few months a square, white-walled town appeared within sight of Granada, with towers and other defences that would enable it to operate through the winter. It was a symbol of her determination and sent a message to those in the city that Isabella, Ferdinand and their armies were here to stay. Isabella was so proud of her little improvised city that she had a tapestry made of the scene and sent to the court in Portugal. Just as at Málaga, she could no longer bear to be away from the action. She moved to Santa Fe in early July, two months after her husband had begun setting up the siege.7 Again, her front-line hospital came with her and one of her ladies, Juana de Mendoza, was put in charge of supplying it.

  As at any military camp, daily life in Santa Fe mixed occasional moments of danger and heroism with long spells of boredom and frustration punctuated by infighting, self-inflicted accidents and even desertions. On the night of 14 July 1491, Isabella and her second daughter Juana had not yet moved into a proper house and were still sleeping in the spacious tent that the Marquess of Cadiz had lent them. It was a large, Moorish-style alfaneque campaign tent, another element of Arab culture that had been effortlessly taken up by Christian Spaniards, and was the most luxurious in the whole camp. ‘The Queen ordered one of her maids to move a candle that was preventing her from sleeping from one end of the tent to the other,’ wrote Bernáldez. ‘Either something fell on the candle, or the flame [somehow] reached the tent itself, which caught fire and began to erupt into flames.’ The blaze immediately spread through the tents and primitive thatched huts near by. ‘When the Queen noticed, she fled to the tent of the king, who was asleep, to warn him, and they rode off together on horses,’ said Bernáldez.8

  As her children also ran from the fire and men started fighting the flames, the Marquess of Cadiz rode out with his men to form a defensive line in case the camp was under attack. Isabella was clear about what had happened. ‘The queen said that she only harboured one opinion, which was that the fire had been started by mistake, by one of her own ladies,’ said Bernáldez.9 Silk curtains, priceless tapestries and bedding had all gone up in flames. One version of the story has Isabella herself grabbing her secret documents before rushing out with them in her arms, the infanta Juana – her second daughter – behind her.10 The monarchs now speeded up the construction of the buildings at Santa Fe, though Isabella and Juana would have to wait some time before their house was ready in a camp where, in the space of just a few months, historic decisions that would affect the future of Castile, Spain and as yet undiscovered parts of the world would be taken.

  Sieges are dull, and only the idea that an epic moment in the history of Christendom was being written kept spirits high. Inside the camp, poets and priests turned the almost daily brushes with the enemy into heroic feats of chivalry magnified in their greatness by the glorious prize that awaited. The defenders, meanwhile, sallied out to raid the Christian camps and supply trains and were so successful that the city ended up with an abundance of cheap meat. But each raid cost the lives of some of those who, with little to lose, were prepared to fight almost to the last. And with no reinforcements, the dwindling numbers of soldiers available to defend the city became at least as much of a problem as the lack of food that had brought Málaga to its knees. Only a tenth of the original mounted fighting men were left after eight months.11 Many fled across the Sierra Nevada and into the impenetrable, steep-sided valleys and sierras of the nearby Alpujarra region, a route that also allowed provisions of oil, cereals, animal feed and dried fruits to reach the besieged city.

  Isabella herself seems to have sparked the biggest battle between defenders and besiegers, after asking that she be taken closer to Granada so that she could study the city better. Accompanied by Ferdinand, Juan and Juana, she rode into the hamlet of La Zubia, which was little more than a collection of huts. There she dismounted and climbed up to the second storey of a house to look out at Granada and, perched above it, the rust-red walls of the Alhambra complex. Such a risky outing by almost the entire royal family required the company of a large force of cavalry and footsoldiers, who spread out in a defensive formation in front of La Zubia. The Moors may have realised that the monarchs were close or simply decided that a force that size was a threat to the city. Either way, a similar-sized force soon rode out from Granada, towing cannon behind them. Isabella and her daughter, tradition has it, spent much of the ensuing battle on their knees praying, though Isabella’s appetite for chivalric tales suggests that she might have preferred to be watching her knights in action. Whatever her vantage point, she would have seen up to 600 of Granada’s defenders die that day as ‘not a single Christian knight there failed to plunge his lance into a Moor’. The Christians claimed victory and Isabella vowed to build a convent on the spot she had watched from. A group of besiegers were then captured as they tried to ambush those who went to gather up the dead and injured. This time the Moors used the sophisticated network of irrigation channels in the fields outside the city to flood the land and trap them.12

  As winter closed in, Isabella’s decision to build a town from which they could besiege Granada seemed increasingly sensible. The siege had started in April 1491. It was still going in November as the nights shortened, temperatures dropped closer to freezing and the white blanket covering the Sierra Nevada spread wider and lower down the mountainside. ‘Winter arrived, with the snow that had fallen on the mountains cutting off communications with the Alpujarra,’ explained the anonymous Muslim chronicler. ‘That produced such a shortage of foodstuffs in the markets of Granada that many began to suffer hunger and the number of beggars increased dramatically.’ With the besiegers now controlling the fertile lands outside the city walls, the Muslims were unable to sow their fields and it became clear that their supplies would be even more meagre the following year.13

  Hernando de Baeza describes a scene in which Boabdil, warned that the Christians were preparing an all-out assault on the city, prepare for a definitive battle by taking his army into the field in front of Granada. The king donned his armour and asked his mother Fatima for her blessing. He then went through his normal pre-battle ritual of kissing the women and children of his household, including his sister, his wife and one of his smaller sons and asked them to forgive any grievances they held against him. When his frightened mother demanded to know what was happening, Boabdil explained that this might be the final battle, with all involved fighting to the death. Her reply was to scold him. ‘So, my son, who will look after your sad mother, wife, sister and children, relatives and servants as well as this city and all the other places that you rule over? How will you explain to God that you left t
hem so poorly protected, giving the order that we must all die by the sword or end up as captives? Think carefully about what you are doing.’14

  ‘My lady, it is far better to die once than to die many times while still alive,’ Boabdil replied.

  ‘That would be true, my son, if only you died and the rest of us were saved and the city freed,’ the weeping mother retorted.15 ‘But such a huge loss would not be a task well done.’ Baeza must have heard this version of the story from the Moorish king himself, though nothing is known about the battle that followed, if there was one. Either way, the story illustrates the problem faced by Boabdil. He must now decide whether Muslim Granada should die fighting, or seek favourable terms for surrender.

  As supplies ran short in the frozen city, a group of senior Granadans went to see Boabdil. ‘None of our Muslim brothers who live on the [north] coast of Africa have come to help us, despite the requests that we have sent,’ they reminded him.16 ‘In the meantime our enemies have erected buildings which they live in and from which they can attack us. As their strength grows, ours diminishes. They receive aid from their lands, and we have no aid at all. Winter has started and that means that the enemy forces have been dispersed, are much weaker and have suspended their attacks on us. If we negotiate with the enemy now, they will accept our proposals and agree to our demands. But if we wait until spring, their army will come together again and, on account of our weakness and lack of provisions, they will no longer be ready to accept our demands.’ Boabdil listened carefully and acquiesced. In fact, he had been negotiating since September, keeping the talks secret in case the people of Granada turned on him. The constant delivery of messages and gifts to the captive Prince Ahmed in Moclín provided an excuse for the negotiators to ride back and forth from the city. The negotiations contained, as always, two elements: the terms for the general population, and those for the negotiators themselves and the other elite families of the city. ‘I ask for very little,’ wrote one of them, Abulcacim el-Muleh.17 ‘Please ask their majesties if I can have the fish market, with all the rights that go with it, and if not the shoemaker’s square and rights over the slaughter of cattle.’ He also wanted 10,000 castellanos (the gold coin valued at 465 maravedís) each for himself and another negotiator, Aben Comixa, as well as 30,000 for Boabdil. In the meantime, Isabella and Ferdinand answered their requests for the expensive cloth that they were used to dressing in. There was olive, red and purple cloth from Florence, thick black, green and blue silks, crimson from London, green and black velvets, brocades and other materials ordered up for the jackets, dresses, gowns, cloaks, hats, hoods and leggings of Granada’s proud aristocracy. These were probably delivered by the translator Baeza or by their chief negotiator Hernando de Zafra, who made frequent visits to the Alhambra before an agreement was finally signed at Santa Fe on 25 November 1491.18 Boabdil promised to hand over the city at the beginning of January, on condition that Granada’s Moors would enjoy almost exactly the same rights as the old mudéjar communities of Castile – and that both he and the city’s elites receive preferential treatment.