A House Made of Gold and Roses.

[Kurt_Steiner]

Nimes, October 14, 1598​

Chapter 31: The child-king, Jaime IV of Aragon (1588-1600) -2-

Thus, when Jaime IV was crowned in Barcelona (August 29, 1596), he found himself in war with Castile. The war, however, did not last long as Jaime II suddenly died the next year and his son, also called Jaime (III of Castile), was determined to have good relations with Aragon in order to avoid too many fronts open. Thus, the treaty of Valencia ended the Castilian-Aragonese war. Jaime III of Castile had powerful reasons to act like that, as the first signs of a strong demographic crisis began to be noticed in his kingdom. Too many years and too many foolish foreign adventures had begun to take its toll over the population and over the agriculture, as Pedro III and Jaime II had resorted to massive recruitment of his subjects to wage their wars in Portugal and in France, something that had hit hard the Castilian treasury, too, in spite of the Peruvian silver, which, ironically, ended up in Aragonese coffins as payment of the massive loans of the Castilian crown. Jaime III was determined to put an end to this economic chaos. However, the bad harvests of 1602 were to hit hard the already troubled kingdom. In Andalucia, the struggles for the distribution of benefits from the exploitation of the powers of justice exercised by the lords were thankfully over by 1598-1599, at which time Jaime III asserted his authority over the one of his noblemen.

Meawnhile, Henri IV began another campaign aqgainst his Catholic namesake in 1596. In a peculiar turn of events, the German emperor had sent 30,000 men to support the belagered Henri III. Commanded by a trusted General, Camilo Capizucchi, the Imperial forces gathered at Mons, where Henri IV found them with 21,000 of his own. After suffering 12,000 losses (half of them prisoners), Capizucchi withdrew towards Brugge, with Henri IV, who had lost 9,000 men, in hot pursuit. Further troubles came to the Imperial General when half of his army (3,000 infantry and 2,000 horse) became separated of the bulk of the Imperial forces and marched to Liege. Low on food and morale, the Imperial army fortified itself in Brugge. Throughout the summer of 1596, Henri mercilessly hammered with his guns on the walls of Brugge. On August 24, he stormed the city and butchered Capizucchi's men. The Italian, after loosing 4,000 men, ran away with 2,000 infantrymen, 4,000 horse and his last 50 guns, leaving behind 4,000 men who were taken prisoners by Henri IV, whose losses were barely 1,000 men. In three months, the French Huguenot king had crushed an enemy superior force. Shocked at this, Henri III suddenly felt the the need to redeem himself and, at the head of most of the Catholic army and with the bulk of the Catholic nobilty following him, he departed to the Low Countries with 14,000 men (3,000 on horse) and 42 guns. He met Henri IV, who had been reinforced and had then 13,000 men, 3,500 horse and 30 guns, at Cortique on September 20th, and there the last Catholic army ceased to exist and Henri III lost his crown, while his name would live on in history as a synonym for those fighting a lost cause. Barely 2,000 Catholic soldiers managed to flee the battlefield after begin defeated by Henri IV, who captured 12,000 prisioners. The fate of Henri IIi is unknown but his corpse was found at Wervick, 75 kms to the southwest of the battlefield, two weeks later.

Then, it was the turn of Jaime IV of Aragon to receive a lesson about realpolitik.

As peace returned and the unified France settle to recover from so many years of war, James IV took an interest in many and varied matters, including a series of domestic reforms and improving the Aragonese armaments. New fortresses were constructed under the direction of Dutch engineers. The Aragonese navy was to be expanded to sixty ships by 1610 and the army should become a national one, but this was a more difficult task. Then, in early 1598, Sardinia and Sicily rose in revolt. The old complains about being rule by foreigner administrators were again behind this rebelion, and James IV resorted to diplomay and armed strenght to pacify those lands when, unexpectedly too, Henri IV of France meddled on the issue. As the rebellious spirit spread from Palermo to Naples, the Aragoneses were expelled or murdered by angry mobs of peasants and merchants and republics were proclaimed in both states and mutual letters of recognition were sent. Then, on February 13, 1598, France announced his recognition of the rebels and French gold began to arrive to them. It goes without saying that Jaime IV didn’t react well to this. Suddenly, as Rome send harsh words to teh "loyal Catholic French" and the German emperor took the chance to march straight to the North of Italy. However, the Ottomans forced him to cancel his plans and turn to the East.

Then Henri attacked. He sent 8,000 men under the commando of the well meaning but less talented Denis de Tocqueville. he hoped to take the Aragonese by surprise and to captured Girona with a swift strike. However, de Tocqueville was the one surprised when he found his way blocked by 12,000 Aragonese soldiers led by Jaime IV himself. After making short work of de Tocqueville, the Aragonese king marched north. A bewildered de Tocqueville retreated across the border with only a handful of man servants as the bulk of his army laid dead on the field or crowded the dungeons of the castle of Girona. But as if that wasn’t bad enough, Jaime IV appeared in the Béarn and killed and captured the enemy force which had gathered there. All in all, Henri IV of France lost another 7,000 men. Within a few months of 1598, the main part of the Southern French Army had been destroyed in two decisive engagements. The bells in Barcelona and Zaragona rang with joy. Henri hurried with his his army south to save what still could be saved. Only God could tell how he would fare.

By October 1598, Henri stood before the walls of Nimes. Jaime needed to defeat him there to be able to turn against the rebels, as a two war fronts was impossible to be held and even less if one of the enemies was France, no matter how weak it was. In a long battle that lasted for six hours, the whole Aragonese army, 13,000 strong, was annhilated and, a de Tocqueville had done a few months earlier, James IV barely managed to escape with a little group of survivours. Henri IV had lost 5,600 men of his 23,000 original force, but the main Aragonese army was gone. War could not go on after the defeat of Nimes, and Jaime had to accept the fact. By early December 1598 a truce had been agreed on, which stated that each combatant would keep his spoils until the end of the negotiations which were to be held in Lyon. The negotiations were short, cold, hard and full of undeniable facts. Aragon had been defeated and was not able to follow the war as her navy could not reinforce their forces in Italy was their ships ran into the iron ring that was the French blockade. With such cards on the hand, the French delegation quickly forced their demands through; Aragon would cede Nimes, Lodeve, Rouerge and the Quercy to the French crown. Furthermore, Aragon would acknowledge the independence of the Sicilian Republic and of the Sardinian Commonwealth. The treaty was signed on January 6, 1599.

On the following way, Jaime IV began to plot his revenge. He was not aware of that, but he was preparing the road for the biggest transformation of Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire.

 

[Kurt_Steiner]

Chapter 32: Peace and reform in Aragon, troubles abroad (1600-1607)

Catalonia was still deeply divided when it came to religion, although the majority now supported the Catholic faith. Jaime IV knew that the only reason his Reformed subjects remained in calm in line so far had been because of his victories in the field and at the negotiations. However, after being defeated by the French, he was worried that they could rise in revolt. Thus, to safeguard his kingdom from Reformed plots, rebellions and treason from within, James IV issued an edict on the first of July 1600 in Valencia. It gave, again, religious freedom to the Reformed, including freedom to practice and hold their religious rites in everywhere in Aragon. They were granted some castles and fortified towns as safe havens, just like the Huguenots in France had been given years before. Thanks to the Edict, Aragon was finally at peace.

King Jaime promoted Eduald Mas i Duran to his Council. Mas had had fought with Jaime's father and with him in most of the Aragonese campaigns. He had been wounded in one of the many battles and commanded the Aragonese cavalry on numerous occasions during the last campaign in France. He became the right hand of the king when it came to manage the affairs of the state when the king made him Superintendent of the Finances of the kingdom, in addition to the place he had in the Royal Council. Jaime IV had many of these advisory councils, but only those who held his absolute trust were admitted into the Royal Council- Thus, Mas set out to restore the Aragonese economy that had been ravaged by the war though a reformation of the tax system, which was simplified. The reform was well received by the Aragonese people, as they took it as a proof of the government's good will and interest in the welfare of the realm. A staunch believer in absolute monarchy, Jaime IV also believed that the absolute monarch only ruled to further the interests of his subjects, and this resulted in the establishment of local courts in the major provincial capitals. But all the judges were appointed by him in unity with the recommendations from his councillors. He also expanded the Aragonese navy, which in 1596 had consisted of just 22 vessels, in 1610 rose to 60, some of them built after Jaime's own designs.

His English namesake, James I of England and VI of Scotland, began to have troubles with his Parliament around 1600. By 1603 the situation became so tense that King James dissolved the Parliament and began to rule by himself. This would eventually cause a break up in the relations between the king and his subjects that erupted in the civil war that began with an open rebellion in Scotland in 1603, the same year that his sister Sibila married King James to reinforce the friendly relations and the alliance between the two kingdoms. Ironically, a friend and a former enemy came to help the English king, Both Jaime IV of Aragon and Henri IV of France expressed their genuine support for the English and Scottish monarch. so both went ahead and prepared their navies to freight several their soldiers to England that were to be placed under English command. While most of the French forces were made up by French Huguenots, most of the Aragonese troops were Catholic. In any case, the French were fist to land in England without too much trouble and began to march north to join James outside Edinburgh while the Aragonese army marched to embark in Bordeaux while the Aragonese fleet sailed around Hispania to reach the French harbour. However, by then the rebels had surrendered and peace had been restored. Two years later, the three king met in London to celebrate the anniversary of James' victory. Then and there, Henri IV proposed a Grand Alliance to the English and Aragonese kings. He proposed to break the alliance between Castile and the Habsburgs and their power too. It would be a war to the end, until both gave up to their demands and the ones of the German Protestant princes.

Out of the ashes of the old order a new Europe would take its shape. This new continent would be ruled through a joint council. The Grand Alliance aimed at cerating a valid international governing body. However, in spite of the greatness of Henri's idea, in spite of the promise that such an international council kept, both James and Jaime saw it through: it would be a joint council, indeed, but with the French king sitting in the center and dominating it. Thus, Henri only received praise for the idea and nothing more. No compromise was reached and the French king returned to Paris shocked and alarmed. Jaime IV, once in Barcelona, pondered about the Grand Design of the French king and, keeping in mind how Henri had betrayed him, he was convinced that Aragon was to be reduced to a kind of vassal realm in that "great Europe" dominated from Paris. That t his would happen in the ned, Jaime IV had no doubt, wether if this was to be achieved by his own accord or after being defeated and crushed by the French, The question was: how to do it in such a way that he, Jaime, reaped most of the profit while leaving the bulk of the fighting and the expenses to France.

Meanwhile, for several years, French Huguenots had made the journey into Castile and Aragon in order to spread their faith. They had often been either burned at the stake or expelled after a rough treatment at the hands of the Castilian Inquisition while in Aragon had been educately turned back to France or marched under heavy guard to the Reformed cities to remain there for the duration of their travel. In March 1606 a number of villages in Navarre and in the norther provinces of Castille began to show a big Huguenot convert population. Jaime IV of Aragon guessed what would come next. As soon as the Castilian kingdom moved against the "heretics", war with France would erupt at once. If Aragon joined the French side, it would take the spoils of the defeated France while if it didn't, Henri IV could claim his own rights about Navarre and turn Aragon into an enemy. Could he dared to fight both Castille and Aragon?, wondered Jaime IV.

The Aragonese king was sure that Henri was determined to do so to fulfill his dream of an united Europe. Now it was a question of which side to choose. On March 15th, 1607 war finally broke between Castile and France. It was the time for Aragon to choose sides.

Jaime IV of Aragon (around 1605)​

 

[Kurt_Steiner]

Chapter 33: The last years of Henri IV of France (1607-1610)

In the war against Castile, France made a mistake that no one, not even the cunning Henri IV, realized at the time. He asked all his allies to declare war against Castile, including Aragon and England. The former, ruled by James I of England and VI of Scotland, was still recovering from its time of upheavals and turmoil and the king was not interested in foreign adventures that would hit the treasury. The parliamentarians also despised the fact that their country was fighting alongside a largely (in their opinion) autocratic French monarchy. For those reasons, James limited his help to the navy and in a peculiar way as, instead of reinforcing the French blockade of the Castilian harbours, it deployed in America in defence of the English colonies there and, if they had to take any action, was more in protection of the Castilian colonists that in support of their French allies. Of course, this was to damage the Anglo-French relations but James I, frankly speaking, did not bother too much. He considered Henri IV as a man with delusions of grandeur and considered that his fall would take place quite soon. The latter feared the growing power of France and the moment of weakness of England, of course. Thus, Jaime IV opted to choose the French side but waited for his opportunity to put the French king into troubles. Initially, he remained neutral as the French war effort was centered in Germany as the Austrian ally of Castile was throwing his might with ease, even more when Maurice of Nassau honoured his alliance alongside the other Protestant princes and conquered Breda. which left the remnants of the once proud Burgundy divided between the English, the French and the Dutch. The Emperor, on his part, marched 40,000 men divided into two armies towards the French border. He besieged Alsace and forced the protestant prince out of the war. After that, the Habsburgs forces marched again, one army against Metz and the second towards the Netherlands. The first Austrian army stormed the walls of Metz and expelled the French garrison with relative ease, but with considerable losses. The invaders then garrisoned the city lightly and advanced into Barrois.

Splitting the Austrian invasion force was the mistake Henri had awaited from the invading commanders. The French king had fought mainly a defensive war waiting for a chance to destroy part of the enemy forces and thus had the upper hand. Thus, quartered in Champagne, Henri IV assembled his battle hardened Army of Flanders and attacked the Austrian at Barrois (May 18, 1607). To his surprise, the force that had marched towards the Netherlands were closer than he expected and, as his cavalry hit the enemy lines, the second army appeared just on the flank of the French cavalry and decimated it with its guns. Only by the timely arrival of more reinforcements kept the Austrians at bay. The mighty Henri of France had been fooled by his enemies, much to the delight of his Aragonese and English allies. However, his luck soon returned when the Austrians, unrepentant, divided their forces again and sent an army to conquer Luxemburg, which had fallen to the Dutch. Then Henri was able to crush the Austrians at Metz (June 22), but at a high cost. In the south, Claude de Boissieu had received the orders to attack a few days after the declaration of war. However, de Boissieu moved quite slowly and only by early September the large French force crossed the Pyrenees in two places, Navarre and Aragon, where Jaime IV reinforced his ranks with his army, and routed the Castilians defence force in a single stroke. The sheer size of the Allied forces baffled many of the Castilian commanders. Such was the surprise and fear of the huge army that preparations were made for the royal family to seek refuge in Andalucia and, in the worst case, in America. Then, Henri managed to alienate his Aragonese ally and to offend him, giving the English king to withdraw from the alliance in support of his old southern ally while claiming that the French king was neither a reliable nor a honourable ally.

With his troops in Navarre, prior to resuming their advance towards Madrid, de Boisseiue began to act as if Navarre was not Aragonese but French, and offended the local and the Aragonese authorities. As the letters than an angered Jaime IV directed to Paris were returned with vague promises and amends, the Aragonese king lost his last remnants of trust in his ally, which were finally obliterated with the sudden arrival of French reinforcements that entered in Aragon through the Roussillon. With troops marching towards Madrid through Catalonia and Aragón, Jaime IV understood the message that his French "ally" was sending to him: side me or be conquered. Then, a huge Treasury fleet arrived in Castile from Venezuela with enough gold to raise new armies not only in Castile but in Germany too. Henri IV was flabbergasted. How the Castilian ships had escaped not only the English but also his own fleet? When the truth was discovered, Henri fumed. The French admirals had been lied to by their English counterparts who claimed that they had destroyed the bulk of the Castilian fleet off Caracas and were leading back to England the prizes they had taken with them. In fact, the Castilian ships that were sailing along with the English force were carrying a "gift" of gold and silver that James I was to use to by the bulk of his parliamentarian critics and to ensure the loyalty of the most important Scottish lords. Some other Castilian ships "mysteriously" docked in Valencia before following their trip to Italy, leaving some dozens of boxes filled with silver and gold in Aragon. Once the Castilian fleet landed in Italy, part of their shipment departed to Vienna and the remnant would be used to pay the Castilian debts to the Genoese bankers. Meanwhile, the French fleet remained in their harbours, not only unaware of this, but confident that Castile had no fleet to bother about.

Henri IV, venting his anger, retreated to Paris to rest a while with his mistresses and family (more or less in that order) while planning what to do next. He was not aware of how the weak king had recovered his "temper" (his spies claimed that all was due to the influence of Henry Howard, earl of Northampton, and his nephew Thomas Howard, earl of Suffolk, who were the real power behind the English and Scottish thrones. Thus, all the messengers arriving from Vienna to offer peace to the French king were all rejected. Henri intended to profit as much from the war as possible. In an effort to completely rout the Austrians, the king gave permission to the young Guillaume d’Ornano to lead the reinforced Armeé de Flandres across the Rhine and into the Austrian hereditary lands of Württemberg. Unknown to d’Ornano, the Austrians had been gathering new forces in the Rhine thanks to the Castilian gold. Thus, in May 1609 when the French army started to cross the Rhine and readied to advance through Baden and Alsace into Württemberg, the Austrians attacked. D'Ornano, caught by surprise, was killed when he tried to form his army into battle lines. What happened next was the French army retreating back to the other side of the Rhine with the Austrian cavalry in hot persecution. Once the withdrawal was complete, the prestigious Army of Flanders had suffered crushing losses of men (20,000 men) and material (139 guns) in the biggest military disaster in all of Henri’s military career. Within a month. most of French Lorraine was under siege. Henri had no troops to field against the Austrians. Now peace was the only option.

Then, on top of that, due to a feud between opposing sides in Sicily and Sardinia, the Sardinian Commonwealth allied itself with Aragon. The french Sicilian ally was trapped between Sardinia and Naples, which had dropped its French alliance and returned to be in excellent terms with Aragon, as some odd silver coins began to flood the city.

The French traitor had been betrayed, to Jaime I's satisfaction. He was sure that he would have to pay a high price for that, but he was also sure that he had avoided the creation of a French dominated Europe. Then, in 1610, Henri IV of France died, leaving a nine old prince, Louis, to rule his mighty kingdom.

The Flota de las Indias in his last part of the trip, off the coasts of Cádiz.

 

[Kurt_Steiner]

Chapter 34: The road to war (1610-1620)

The "Anales de la Corona de Aragón" (History of the Aragonese Crown),
printed in Zaragoza in 1610 for the Castilian Duke of Alba.
An example of the good relations between the two kingdoms in the early XVII century.​

Jaime IV of Aragon surprised friends and foes by moving closer to Castile, in spite of its weakened state. The Castilian king, Juan II, the grandson of Jaime III, had the same foreign policy of his grandfather and was happy to win Aragon as an ally after so many disasters against France; Juan II would reinforce his position by marrying himself with Filipa de Portugal, the only daughter of King Antonio . Thus, with the Peninsula secured, Jaime IV moved to secure the religious peace of his kingdom. Troubles had began when most of the Reformed Aragonese converted into Calvinism; however, by 1610, after he had equalized the rights of Catholics, Reformed and Calvinists in Aragon, the religious question was almost solved but by some skirmishes between Reformed and Calvininist in Valencia, between Catholics and Calvinist in Aragon and between Catholics and Protestants in Catalonia and the Balearic islands. Ironically, the troublesome Naples remained at peace since the Council of the Republic had put Naples under the protection of Aragon. Jaime IV was still puzzled by this decision, but France, under the regency of the dukes of Sully and of Rohan, had its own problems, as the Catholic rising of 1615 in Paris was to prove .

Sensing England's weakness, Juan II of Castille launched an expedition against Jamaica. The English colony had suffered a devastating rebellion in 1596 that had thrown the island into chaos as most of the English settlers returned in a hurry to Cuba in 1612. Jamaica was easily subdued and then troubles ensued. England was in a dire situation. James I of England and VI of Scotland had entrusted the government of his realms to Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex, who was, in all but name, the first minister of James. However, the young earl was not too gifted for politics and, from 1612 onwards his administration was crumbling. The monopoly of power in his hands had generated numerous envies and the earl and now a lot of enemies; the Castilian seizure of Jamaica, of course, only made matters worse and Essex, to save himself, threatened Castile with war unless the island was returned to James i/VI. Thus, in 1615, a great English force landed in Jamaica and the small Castilian garrison had to withdraw behind the walls of San Juan (1), where barely 2,000 Castilian, German and Italians soldiers held against 20,000 strong English army. The siege lasted for a year and ended with the shameful withdrawal of the English force, who had achieved little. This, of course, led to the fall of Essex and to the rise of a Parliamentarian faction led by William Paulet, 4th Marquess of Winchester, who had full access to the king and had his attention.

Jaime I of Aragon found himself with a close ally being attacked by a desirable but dangerous ally and wondering how to make Juan II to grow some common sense. Thankfully for him, Jamaica would be the last military action of the Castilian king, who turned his attention to rebuild his country from then on. By then, France after half a decade of peace and reconstruction, was ready to continue with the Grand Plan designed by the late Henry IV. It began with a seemingly small affair: the French conquest of the Prince-Bishopric of Liege, which lay in dangerous close proximity to the French and Flanders border. To the surprise of many, the German Emperor, Ferdinand, did not move. His bad relations with that "turbulent priest" were the official reason for the attitude of Vienna. In fact, they were waiting for France to make a real mistake. Apparently, the regency council fulfilled the Austrian hopes by invading Italy when Savoy was forced to allow French passage into Lombardy. It was the moment to clean the stain on the French military honour that the Italian Wars represented. That the new France repeated old mistakes to avenge past deeds awoke old fears in London, as James I/VI and Winchester kept the country of the war in spite of the French promises, bribes and threats (in that very order). However, when the French army prepared to leave Lombardy, bad news arrived to his commander: an Imperial army had camped in the Veneto. La Vecchia Signora had decided that an Austrian alliance was better than being merely a pawn in the French game.

Sully and Rohan decided to gamble and, while a diplomatic mission went to Vienna to appease Ferdinand, the French army secured Milan before turning south, towards Parma. The French commander, Claude de Torqueville, left 12,000 men in Milan and took with him 32,000 men and 25 guns. A token force of 5,000 Italian mercenaries made a symbolic attempt to block their way at Ponte Taro and then withdrew, leaving Parma undefended. However, Sully was astonished when some surprising news arrived from Rome: 7,000 Castillian soldiers had landed in Ostia and marched north to join hands with the Papal army, barely 8,000 men, which were reinforced by half of the mercenaries that had fled from Ponte Taro. Then the ground began to shake under Sully and de Rohan's feets as the Italian princes eagerly cast themselves into their favourite theatre of war: the negotiation tables and their endless plots and schemes. The war was ended by several treaties: the Treaty of Florence between Tuscany and France, the Treaty of Mantua between that city and France and the Treaty of Ravenna between France and Venice and the Empire.

By New Year’s Eve 1618 peace had returned and Paris was left in control of Milan, thus fulfilling the first part of the old dream of French expansionism.





(1) OTL Kingston.

 

[Kurt_Steiner]

Chapter 35: The "French" war: first moves (1620-1625) -2

The death of the Dauphin had been a terrible source of grief for his father, Henri IV. Nicolas Henri, Duke of Orléans. Although he was only 14 years of age, he had a troubled youth, suffering from a series of epileptic attacks since he was 4 four years old. In spite of this, he managed to grow and to become a quite healthy young man. Even if he was not a warrior himself, he was a quite accomplished tactician, like his father, but more stubborn than him, something that his tutors had learnt to their dismay. Thus, in 1620 he demanded to be included in the regency council and to become part of the governing process. Rohan was perplexed, Sully surprised but the other regent, de Bonne, saw it as a chance to teach statesmanship and warfare to the future king. Eventually, Rohan and Sully reluctantly agreed.

Then, in 1623, a Catholic riot against the Reformed took place in Girona, and soon violence spread from the city to Toulouse and then jumped to the neighbouring country. Suddenly, to the surprise of the Regents and the Dauphin, many French Catholics (very much more than expected) rose in arms and allied with their brethren in Aragon. Many French and Catalan Reformed were murdered in those days. Bordeaux fell to the French Catholic rebels In June 23, 1623 and the regent sent Barthélémy de Beauharnais 11,000 men and 100 guns to crush the rebels. To their dismay, de Beauharnais was beaten, losing a third of his force and having to withdraw in shame (July 19). Thinking that this would be the excuse for a Castilian invasion, de Bonne dispatched the Royal Army under Guillaume d’Ornano to Bordeaux, first to crush the rebels and then to block any foreign army. Just in time, as Juan II had massed an army in Navarre and then crossed the Pyrinéés (July 20). However, the Castilian force marched too slowly to link with the rebel allies due to their huge baggage train and d'Ornano simply bypassed the rebel city, which was left under siege by a small force and marched south with more than double the size of the invaders and quickly routed them (September 8).

The Castilians attempted to make a stand a few miles from the city, but the French superiority in numbers and firepower forced them to flee back to Castile after losing two thirds of their force (September 13). Meanwhile, Jeroni de Guimerà had recovered the control of Girona (August 30) and marched north to put an end to the revolt in the Occitan lands. Seeing the Aragonese army marching towards them, most of the Aragonese Catholic rebels fled to either Bordeaux or Castile or began to fight a guerrilla campaign and by early October the Aragonese Occitania was again under the royalist control, with a few guerrillas bands still acting in the Argennais and the Quercy. The fall of Bordeaux in January 1624 ended the Catholic rebellion.

Then, the Bohemian Revolt (1625) took everyone by surprise and led Europe to war. Since Emperor Ferdinand II reconfirmed Protestant religious freedoms after being elected king of Bohemia in May 1617, many feared that he would overturn them at the first opportunity. In 1618 there were some troubles in Prague but Ferdinand, quite prudently, had adopted a lenient approach towards his stubborn Protestant vassals seeing that he lacked the force to put them down. However, by 1625, in spite of the dire situation of his Castilian ally, he thought himself strong enough to strike. And strike he did. He sent two Catholic councillors as his representatives to Prague Castle to administer the government in his absence. On 23 May, an assembly of Protestants refused them access to the city and thus Ferdinand had the war he had craved for. Paris began to muster their forces. Savoy rushed to join the French side but Castile, with her economy in ruins, armed itself for war. It was a nasty surprise, which, in the end, only delayed the French campaign against Austria.

Jaime IV of Aragon, who was then 46 years old, saw little reasons to join the war, much to the chagrin of Paris. He had little to win in neither the Rhine nor in Bohemia and his dreams of reannexing Navarre had been cut short by the French Regency council: they told him that Navarre was French, and Aragon had nothing to do there. Thus, Jaime IV stood idle as Juan II of Castile marched north again. After defeating the Castilian forces in Navarre, the invading French army splitted into three main forces: one marched towards Galicia, the second towards Leon and the Portuguese border and the third towards Toledo, keeping a close eye to the Aragonese border, as Sully felt a possible Aragonese betrayal. The French advance into Castilian rolled like a great wave over the defenceless countryside. No opposition was met and the few captured officers from the Castilian army said little to their captors but for the demoralization of the soldiers and the utter incapability of their officers. Apparently, apart from the forces defending Toledo, the only field army in Castile still capable of offensive operations had taken up positions in Galicia close to the Portuguese border. This army was cut from the rest of the country around October 1625 and Salamanca was under siege from December 1625 to March 1626.

Then, the French supply lines began to have problems with sudden attacks by Castilian light forces. Officers and soldiers housed in Castilian villages began to disappear and not even the French reprisals stopped that. Thankfully for Paris, Austria was kept busy by the Bohemian rebels and Gabriel Bethlen, prince of Transylvania, who invaded Hungary. However, Ferdinand was able to bribe the Ottomans and Bethlen deprived of support and powerless to hurt Austria.

The battle of the White Mountain (1626),
where Ferdinand crushed the last Bohemian army​

 

[Kurt_Steiner]

Chapter 36: The "phoney" war (1626-1631)

Too late Paris discovered that invading Castille had been a mistake as it had taken precious time and forces away from Germany. In spite of the destruction of the last Castilian army in late November 1626 and the successful end of the siege of Madrid in February 1627, the humbling of Castile had little strategic purpose other than protecting the southern flank of France, which had never been in danger. Mansfield had managed to gather a new army and gave a hard time to Ferdinand, but the game was over when the Protestant Union proclaimed its neutrality and John George of Saxony sided with Vienna in exchange for the Lusatia and a promise to safeguard the rights of Lutherans in Bohemia. Frederick fled Bohemia and the revolt collapsed. By 1627, Bohemia was firmly under Imperial control.

Then, France unwittingly helped Austria. In the early summer of 1627, France had crushed the wicked Catholic enemies that had caused so much pain and suffering in France. Castile had been crushed beyond the wildest imagination of the wildest Frenchmen. The Dauphin, Nicolas Henri, saw the country once more united against the enemy. The future king was filled with pride as he had accomplished one of his father’s dreams and had also managed to please the divine Lord by smashing His enemies. Now, being 20 years old, he made his move to secure the French crown for himself. In a banquet held in Paris, he thanked the three Regents for their services to France, to the Gallic Church and to him. Then, he told them that there was no need for their guardianship of the realm as he was ready to sit in the throne of his father. One month later, on July 14, 1627, Nicholas Henri was crowned as Henri V of France.

Meanwhile, Jaime IV of Aragon watched how events unfold while he carefully groomed the consolidation of the Aragonese holdings in Africa and Asia and kept an eye on the Ottoman Empire. Then when Alsace became a vassal state of France in 1628, Jaime IV knew that another war was looming in the horizon. The principality of Alsace was, without a shred of a doubt, the key to opening the door to the Rhine and France had been swift to secure it. All the protestant states of the Rhineland were offered protection by the French court and none rejected it. However, Henri V felt slighted when the Venetian Republic refused to accept the French protection against possible assaults from both the Muslim Turks and Vienna. The French aggressive foreign policy made only a question of time that Ferdinand became by how France was undermining his authority. However, few German princes had any interest in replacing Imperial domination for the French one.

In 1629 as Jaime IV had feared, Henri V turned his attention to him and demanded the return of the Occitan lands to France. With half of the French army deployed on the other side of the Pyrenées, the alternative was clear: surrender the lands or war. Not even the Danish invasion of the Imperial lands in 1630 changed the will of Henri V and, to the great chagrin of Jaime IV, the old Occitans lands were lost again to France in exchange for a paltry sum of gold. It was a humiliation that Jaime IV swore to revenge. Henri V would manage to further alienate another ally when, that same year, a rebellion broke in the English continental lands. The army that he had on the Rhine swiftly marched north and crushed the rebels and, when London thanked the help and demanded the withdrawal of the French troops, Henri V replied that those lands had been legally and truthfully returned to France. Only Calais remained in English hands. The great achievements of the Yorkist kings of the past had been lost again.

Meanwhile, Ferdinand had managed to keep Christian IV of Denmark at bay first and then pushed him back. However, in 1630, when the Mantuan Succession threatened to explode in a violent clash, Henri V made an unexpected move: he sent one of his trusted ministers, Cardinal Richelieu, to persuade Charles, Duke of Nevers, from pushing his claim to the Dukedom. He claimed that there would be time to do so, but, for the moment, he needed Austria to defeat Denmark. From his point of view, there was only one king that should save Germany and the true Faith. Of course, from Henri V's point of view, it was no one else but himself. Thus, Ferdinad simply smashed the Danish king and his allies. In France, Henri's ministers began to wonder if their king had made a mistake and allowed his enemy to become too powerful.

Then, unexpectedly, Emperor Ferdinand died in 1631 and Henri V made his move: he wanted to be elected Emperor of the Sacred German Empire. Jaime IV of Aragon, used to the exaggerated concept that the French king had about himself, was mighty aghast by this move. Then, his foreign minister, his cousin Joan, Cardinal of Catalonia, explained in the Aragonese council his cunning plan.

Peter Capaldi brought life to
Joan, Cardinal of Catalonia (1595-1657)
in the BBC series "Game of Thrones".​

 

[Kurt_Steiner]

Chapter 37: France in turmoil (1632-1636)

The election of Albrecht in 1632 as head of the Holy Roman Empire took by surprise Paris and enraged Henri V to no end, but, for the moment, the French king was powerless to do anything about it. Furthermore, Henri V's foreign policy had led him to ignore the troubles and tribulations that his policies had caused to his subjects. Thus, when the first Fronde erupted in Guyenne, Poitou and Picardy, the king was taken by surprise. Aimed to protect the ancient liberties from royal encroachments and to defend the established rights of the parlements – courts of appeal rather than legislative bodies like the English parliaments – and especially the right of the Parlement of Paris to limit the king's power by refusing to register decrees that ran against custom, the Fronde was a threat that Henri could not ignore. The situation became even more complicated when the main advisor of Henri, Sully and Rohan, fought each other to win the royal interest in their solutions to the matter. Thus, by late 1632, it seemed as if Rohan had the upper hand as Henry V's eyes turned to Navarre, where, he was told, the Protestant faith was in danger of being persecuted by the Catholic authorities.

When the nobility refused to be taxed to pay for the Navarrese expedition and appealed to their old liberties, the economic brunt fell upon the bourgeoisie, who loudly complained to the king. In May 1633 the crisis came to a head when the Parlement of Paris not only refused to pay a new tax but also demanded constitutional reforms framed by a united committee of the parlement (the Chambre Saint-Louis), composed of members of all the sovereign courts of Paris. When Rohan suddenly arrested the leaders of the parlement, Paris broke into insurrection and barricaded the streets. In June, Henri released the prisoners and promised reforms; then, he forgot about Navarre and mustered the Southern army to be ready to crush at his enemies. Thus started the second phase of the Fronde.

Before he moved to strike, on January 6th, 1634, Henri V arrested Louis II, Prince de Condé and his brother Armand, Prince of Conti; Frédéric, Duke of Bouillon, and his brother Henri, Viscount of Turenne; her own daughter, Mademoiselle de Montpensier (La grande Mademoiselle); Condé's sister, Madame de Longueville; Madame de Chevreuse; and the astute intriguer Jean François Paul de Gondi. Then he let military operations fell into the hands of the war-experienced Sully and war followed. However, a few weeks later, Bouillon and Turenne managed to fled along Madame de Longueville while de Gondi managed to reach England and met king James II of England and VII of Scotland in London. However, to de Gondi's astonishment, King James had him arrested on the spot and returned to France, while starting their loyalty to his "French brother". Furthermore, some weeks earlier, in December 1633, during the wedding celebrations of Albrecht IV of the Holy Roman Empire and Tsarevna Irina of Russia, a deranged Bohemian attempted to murder the Emperor, but he only wounded the Emperor, the Empress. Vienna became so violently furious that the insane Bohemian was forcefully seized by a mob that to beat and quarter him in a terrfying display of popular anger. Soon some fingers began to point at Henri V of France as the instigator of the attempted attack. Even if the French king protested and proclaimed its innocence, no one trusted his words. In part, this French failure had been seeded by the campaign of slander that Joan, Cardinal of Catalonia had put into motion in 1631.

Eventually when, in May 1635, Austria broke all diplomatic ties with France, followed by Russia, Castile and most of the Empire. Only three Protestant states (Brandenburg, Saxony and the French-protected Palatinate (refused to do so. Henri V, who had managed to defeat the Frondeurs in December 1635, began to prepare to go to war against Austria, just to have another Frondeurs rising in Guyenne (February–March 1636), Soon, the rebellion extended to the Loire Valley and Condé managed to escape from his prison. It followed a vicious and terrible confrontation between the royalists and the Frondeurs that lasted until February 1637. It ended as a small royalist victory that, nevertheless, prepared the way to the French Revolution of 1651.

(From left to right), Frédéric, Duke of Bouillon (played by Pascal Greggory) and
Henri, Viscount of Turenne, (played by Miguel Bosé) in the French Film
Haenricus Rex (1994).​

 

[Kurt_Steiner]

Chapter 38: Jaime IV - The Great King (1636-1642)

Suddenly, France found itself in an interesting situation, as out of the blue, Russia had joined Austria in its war against the Protestant states, while, at the same time, Albrecht IV was unable to restore Imperial order. The political and religious situation was derailing further as each day passed. The bishop of Würzburg was dethroned by Calvinist Germans funded by France while the Protestants in Württemberg and Bohemia were burned en masse by their Austrian overlords. And while the empire trembled, Albrecht IV decided to settle the issue once and for all. Using the strength of the Catholic armies as an dissuassory tool, he then made an offer to the almost-independent rebel Imperial rulers: Fist, from then on, they could henceforth choose their own official religions; second, Catholics and Protestants were equal before the law, and Calvinism was given legal recognition as an official religion. Third, the Old Swiss Confederacy and the Dutch Republic were formally recognised as independent from the Holy Roman Empire. Fourth, the Palatinate was to be divided between the re-established Elector Palatine Charles Louis (son and heir of Frederick V) and Elector-Duke Maximilian of Bavaria, and thus between the Protestants and Catholics.

All in all, it was too good an offer to be rejected, and only France and Sweden were excluded from it. However, this did not bother Albrecht at all. He was ready to have them as enemies now he had the Russian support if he could pacify the Empire. And this he achieved with the Treaty of Münster (June 1st, 1637). Suddenly, Henri V had lost all of his German allies, even if, for the moment, the French king was not worried at all as he thought he was strong enough to defeat Austria even if Albrecht IV had some Cossacks by his side. In this situation, Jaime IV of Aragon decided to remain neutral. Thus, he left the government of his lands to his ministers and his chancellor, Pau Claris i Casademunt, and withdrew to his castle in Balaguer where he lived in retirement until his death in 1640. He was succeeded by his far more accomplished son, Jaime IV.

Jaime, who was called "El Grande" in Aragon and "El Gran" in Catalonia, the Balearic Island and Valencia (The Great) because of his military and political achievements, was very different from his father. He was a staunch pillar of the Catholic faith and associated himself with the rising commercial class. Aware of the importance of trade, he promoted it vigorously, turning his back to Europe to focus on his Empire in Asia. A shrewd reformer, Jaime IV was to give Aragon a strong position in the post-Münsterian political order in Europe. Meanwhile, Henri V had determined to destroy Austria for once and all but to do this he needed to summon his allies, who flocked to his banner, but first he decided to settle accounts with Aragon, to avoid having a dangerous enemy in his flank. Thene, once Aragon was crushed and divided, he would turn against Savoy and this would spark the war with Austria.

Jaime IV focused on rebuilding his realms, which benefited from his policy of religious tolerance; he also used the Austrian subsidies to rebuild the army and the navy and prepared for the worst, too. Aware that all the Aragonese posts in the Persian Gulf had been finally lost in the 1620s, he prepared for another bout of war with the Ottomans while keeping an eye on the French. "To be great", his father had told him, "you need a big army, a big economy and a big empire... and some luck". Some of Jaime's greatness was to be seen when, unexpectedly, Henri V of France changed his mind and attacked Savoy first when Alexandre de Crussol took charge of the Army of the East and spearheaded the first French offensive into Savoy. On the roads leading to Turin his army decimated the much smaller army of Savoy, and Turin was taken 10 days later without too many French lives lost in the process. A few days later, the French forces invaded Wüttenberg. However, two weeks later, the French armies were withdrawing in confusion after being defeated by the Austria army. Faced with an enemy more than double the size of his own army, Henri V conducted a tactical withdrawal from Baden back to France. Ironically, Albrecht IV vindicated himself by stating that he had just helped Baden-Wüttemberg from the French invasion, and Henri V found himself on the wrong side of the equation for the first time in his life as king of France.

Then, he demanded help for Castile and Aragon, asking them to send 45,000 men to support his campaign against Austria. Castile, defeated and humbled by France, might have felt forced to do so, but Aragon, of course, saw no reason to act as a vassal of France. Jaime IV knew that he could no longer rely on the support of his English ally, who was on best terms with Henri V and quite busy managing his American empire. Fighting alone against France was too much for Aragon, and he knew it, but to surrender to Henri's demands only spelled doom for his reign and for him. Thus, he simply ignored Henri's demands. Thankfully for him, Henri V of France was too obsessed and too busy with Austria to pay attention to the Aragonese refusal. Meanwhile, Jaime IV made sure he could raise an army of 40,000 men if needed. Then, as he was an advocate of mercantilism, monopolies, subsidies, tariffs, and internal improvements, he worked hard to reinforce the economical structure of Aragon, which was somehow helped, albeit unwillingly, by Henri V, who expelled some hundreds of skilled French and Breton catholics, who were forced to emigrate to Aragon, bolstering the country's technical and industrial base. Jaime exempted the nobility from taxes and, in return, they agreed to dissolve the Parliament. He also improved the roads of Aragon, above all the ones connecting Catalonia with Aragon and Valencia.

By 1640, France had managed to make some inroads into Bavaria and to hold some strongpoints there. However, Henri V had been blocked by Milan and his double pincer move failed. Furthermore, the arrival of Russian reinforcements ment that Austria had enough manpower to bleed France white. It was the moment, many thought, to cut losses and to end the war. However, Henri V did not agree with that opinion.

Jaime IV and his wife, Mary of England,
daughter of James III of England and VIII of Scotland, ​

 

[Kurt_Steiner]

Chapter 39: Jaime IV - The Great King (1642-1653)

By 1644, the German front was stalemated. Austria had stormed across the Rhine and the Armée Royale had managed to avoid being encircled and destroyed just by the sheer will and strategic genius of his commander, Turenne. Meanwhile, Crussol had managed to smash the enemy forces in Bohemia, even if his position was threatened by the Austrian holdings. However, most of the northern German states had supported King Henri V of France with a great reluctance, backing him only because of their common faith. Then, Juan II of Castile decided to take profit from the delicate situation of Henri V and mustered an army of 40,000 men, even if this force included only 4,500 horses. Henri V, aware of this move by his spies in Madrid, first demanded and then pleaded Jaime IV of Aragon help, offering him to recover Navarre. Jaime IV wasted little time considering the French offer. He knew too well that Henri V was not to be trusted, but he was also convinced that if the Castilian king managed to defeat the French or to cause them enough trouble to help the Austro-Russian alliance to crush their enemy, Castile would at once turn against him. Furthermore, Castile seemed to be recovering quite well for the past defeats and that was something that Jaime Iv could not allow to happen. Thus, commanding an army which was only 18,000 strong, comprising 12,500 cavalry and 5,500 infantry, which included 8,500 Napolitean men, plus 80 cannons invaded Navarre to cut the march of the Castilian forces.

Juan II met the approaching Aragonese force about five kilometers to the south of Puente de la Reina. Jaime IV had initially hoped to destroy the enemy vanguard before the bulk of the army joined up with them, but this plan failed. Some Aragonese officers considered the Castilian forces to be overwhelming in numbers and instead advocated a retreat, but Jaime IV wanted none of this. Knowing the arrival of the Aragonese, Juan II ordered his infantry to dig in, which prevented them from being dislodged on the first day of the battle (July 28, 1644). On the following day, Jaime IV moved his entire army to the Castilian right and consolidated his position before the enemy cavalry could react. Apparently, Juan II was unwilling to get out for his trenched camp and hoped that Jaime IV would launch against it and be massacred there. Then, the Aragonese cannons opened fire and Juan II changed his idea when he saw his own guns being silenced by the accurate enemy fire, which then moved against the reserve forces, which were too close to the frontline. Juan II, guessing that the enemy forces were to assault their trenches while their guns prevented the bulk of his army to help the frontlines, waiting for the dark to arrive and then, with the cavalry guarding their flanks and their backs, withdrew back to Castille.

Jaime IV entered Pamplona on August 2. but then Henri V turned against him and invaded Navarre. Trusting himself too much, Henri V thought that his former ally had suffered great losses in the previous battle and had raced to Navarre with barely 7,000 men and 13 cannons. In fact, while the Castilian army had lost around 4,000 men, the Aragonese casualties were barely 1,200 and Jaime's guns had plenty of ammunition and balls in store. Thus, the Aragonese king marched north to meet his enemy with part of his force, 7,000 men with 28 guns, leaving the rest in Pamplona In case that Juan II of Castile attempted another foolish move. Aoiz opened its gates to the French army on August 20. Jaime IV, feigning a retreat, marched to Sangüesa, as if he was leaving his army at Pamplona on its own and ready to cross to Aragon. Then, he allowed himself to be "caught" by Henri V at Aibar. These guns opened fire around noon on August 24th and caused heavy casualties on the French right flank. Henri V, fully aware of the threat that the Aragonese guns meant, attempted several times to silence them with its cavalry, but he was stopped each time by the Aragonese cavalry. This continued for some hours until Jaime IV launched an assault on the enemy right flank. The French cavalry broke under the pressure of the enemy mounted wing and fled, exposing their lines to a flank attack. In spite of this, the French held enough though for Henri V to withdraw a large portion of his army before darkness fell. The Aragoneses lost about 500 men, while the French casualties lost around 600 killed and wounded plis 300 captured.

The Aragonese king pondered about his next move. He could claim back the Navarre crown but he knew too well that he was supported only in the south and that the northern cities were in favour of Juan II which would put him between two fires, something dangerous now that Henri V of France had dropped all pretensions of friendship, even if Castile was again in crisis. Thus, he withdrew from Navarre and began to court Juan II to settle the issue. However, Juan II was too proud to forget what had "just" happened and only his own troubles with his nobility, that were to last until 1648, kept him from invading Aragon and forced him to sign a peace treaty that he was willing to break at the first chance he had. In his defence, we can state that Jaime II had the same idea in mind. However, Henri V of France hit first. With the German front absolutely blocked and unable to make ways, the French king was determined to "free his brothers in Christ'' (that is, the Aragonese Reformed of the Languedoc) and invaded those lands in 1646. It was the beginning of a bloody war that almost ruined Aragon as a vengeful Juan II of Castile joined the fight in 1649.

The war lasted until 1651 and it could be said that Jaime IV was saved by the French revolution that happened that year. His armies had fought well, but, in front of the overwhelming superiority in numbers, he could not defend all the fronts at the same time and was slowly pushed out of the Languedoc: Albi was lost in 1648, Bezièrs and Narbonne in 1649 and Toulouse in 1651 as the count of Comminges deserted to the French camp that year. By September 1651, the Aragonese holding in Languedocian lands were reduced to Foix, Carcassone and Rosellón. Then, Jaime IV had his revenge when France erupted in flames.

In March 1650, several French Parliaments sent a Petition of Redress to Henri V. The war expenses were too great for the French people to withstand and the increased centralization had awoken some elements of internal resistance, as we have already seen. However, this was different. It was not a few local nobles rising in revolt, but a concerted effort to limit the royal power by an united front of local communities willing to free themselves from royal tyranny. There was not a collective leadership, indeed, but a galaxy of different charismatic leaders. However, all put their difference aside in defence of their rights. When it became obvious that the King and his government were unwilling to hear their demmands, they began to plan a revolt, Then, in September 1651, the nobility and the Parliaments of Brittany, Normandy and Guyenne rose in revolt . Then Bourgogne and the Dauphiné joined the rebellion and, on October 13, Paris also rose against the king. Louis II Bourbon, Prince de Condé, made a clear threat to Henri V: listen to your subdits or you will not have subdits to order. Thus, the French king hurried to settle a peace treaty with Jaime IV.

Aragon had been devastated by the war. The Castilian front had been broken many times by the Castilian forces and entered many times in Aragon, reaching Valencia and Zaragoza and plundering the countryside. Even if in the end they were eventually defeated and forced back, this put a severe strain over the kingdom, as, by the end of the war, 6 towns and 500 villages had been destroyed. Aragon had lost around 20% of its population, specially in the rural areas. In Valencia, the population drop was around one third, reaching two-thirds in the ravaged areas of Murcia and Alicante. Valencia, once among the wealthiest cities of the kingdom, had been stormed, burned and sacked so many times that his population had been reduce to barely a 10%. Least hit were Catalonia, the Italian lands and the Ballearic Islands, which were hit, from time to time, by some piratic raids. Despite the repeated efforts to resettle the devastated territories, it took some of them until the mid-18th century to reach the pre-war population density.

However, with France in turmoil and Juan II's treasury needing some recovering, Aragon was to have time to recover. In spite of the dire situation, Jaime IV of Aragon was convinced that Aragon would only prevail with a standing army and in 1653 he succeeded in getting the necessary financial contributions from the local Parliaments of his kingdoms. He compensated them with the royal decree of August 7, 1653, by which the nobility saw several privileges confirmed, including tax exemption, assertion of jurisdiction and police powers on their estates and the upholding of serfdom. This last was a shame that Jaime IV swore to himself to redress as soon as possible as it's remembered today as a stain in the memory of the great king. However, his hatred towards Castile took the best of him.

Robert Mesura (King Jaime IV) and Alexanda Dolera (Queen Mary of England)
here seen in the Catalan serie "Princep de Viana" (Prince of Viana)
based on the life of the second son of the royal couple.​

 

[Kurt_Steiner]

Chapter 40: Local reforms, foreign revolts (1654-1664)

The years that followed saw the rising troubles of Henri V. His clashes with part of the nobility and the Parliaments increased with time as the king thought that they were putting commitments he considered forced on him. Eventually, in 1654, Henri V simply refused to acknowledge any authority on the Parliaments and began to rule without them. Paradoxically, even with France wrecked by this instability, the apparent strength of the French crown thwarted Jaime IV's ambitions to regain control over Occitan and Navarre. Politically isolated and unable to put his plans into action, Jaime IV waited for his time, nurturing a growing anger towards Castile and France. Then, fate knocked on his door.

In 1625 Juan II of Castile took part in the Succession war that erupted in the Saaid Sultanate after the death of Ahmad al-Mansur and supported Abd al-Malik al-Mu'tasim, grandson of al-Mansur and son of his her, Muhammad al-Sheikh al-Ma'mun, against his uncle, Moulay Zaydan, who had English and Dutch support. By 1627 Zidan Abu Maali, second son of al-Ma'mun, had the upper hand after Zaydan died, but soon France began to meddle in the affairs of the country and supported Zaydan's son, Abu Marwan Abd al-Malik II. Eventually, after a series of betrayals, unfulfilled pacts and mutual mistrust, Castile sided with Abd el-Malik II and Abdul Maali escaped to France in the ship of a French privateer, Jehan Philippe de Castelane, where he would be murdered in 1634. However, that did not mean the end of the troubles in North Africa and Abd el-Malik II would suffer continuous rebellions by the supporters of Abdul Maali and his sons. From 1638 until 1659, Morocco would become a thorn in the Castilian side and a continuous drain of his treasury. To this mess, Jaime IV of Aragon added his small contribution. The death of Juan II in 1660 seemed to bring peace to both Morocco and the Castilian-Aragonese relations, at least on the surface, but Morocco would keep troubling the Castilian finances with its chronic instability.

His son, Enrique III, would not be so keen in foreign wars; however, he would not find the way to end them. Thus, as he dedicated a considerable part of his incomes to keep a refined but expensive court, which gave rise to the corruption of the councilors and the royal clientele, which diverted parties that were destined to quell the Moroccan riots, the royal estates began to be squandered to do so. The king, devoted to arts and hunting, went as far as reducing the garrisons in the Aragonese border as a means of mitigating the administrative hardships. Eventually, the Castilian Cortes ended up refusing to give more money to the king, unwilling to pay the parties and merriment of the court while the country suffered from scarcity and the economy was going through a crisis. Enrique III simply reacted by loaning from Italian bankers, which further damaged the Castilian economy. Castile came to greet with joy the news of the death of Enrique in a hunting accident in 1669.

By then, matters were reaching a boiling point in France. Due to some Huguenot influence or by a reaction towards the authoritarian ways of Henri V, many Catholic French rejected the very idea of state-mandated religion. The king could be their master, but there was only one Lord. To make matters more complicated, they also opposed the appointment of Huguenot officers. Of course, Henri V wanted to have all the French Cardinals and Bishops under his thumb. They acted as state censors, able to ban sermons and writings considered objectionable. They also sat in the Parliaments and could block legislation opposed by the Crown. Thus, when Henri V attempted to reform the French church to bring it into line in 1662, this met with immense opposition and negotiations broke down. France was on the verge of a military confrontation. Even the Huguenots sided with the Catholics in this matter; they felt that they would be next after the Catholic Church was reformed following the lines of the king. Widespread social distress led to the convocation of the Estates General in February 13, 1663, which had not been called since 1614. However, it was a short-lived affair and by March 5, the king dissolved it. The situation forced him to call it again in November that year.

In Zaragoza, Jaime IV watched those events with great interest. He had bribed some Castilian and French "rebels" that took the Aragonese money with pleasure, of course. After all, the money received only pushed them to play harder in the direction that they had already taken. Meanwhile, he kept reforming the country. As we have already seen, he persuaded the Parliaments of his states to contribute to the creation of an standing army in 1653 in exchange of several concessions. Then, in 1657, the towns had to contribute not with soldiers, but with monetary payments to the army, and, from 1665 onwards, the estates were able to free themselves from contributing soldiers by additional payments. Thus, the initial army size of 8,000 men had risen to 30,000 men by 1688. By then, Jaime IV was able to finance the army independently of the estates, even if, by then, the military costs amounted to half of the state budget.

By 1664, the French "rebels" had forced the king to accept their will. They ruled the country through the General States. Peace and stability returned to France, until October of that year. When the General States passed an ordinance that would assert Parliamentary control over the appointment of royal ministers and of army and navy commanders, Henri V refused to give his assent. The moderate faction, fearing that the radicals were going too far, changed sides and joined the king. On December 23, the radicals, with a few members of the moderate faction, called themselves the National Assembly of France and swore not to disperse until a new constitution had been agreed. Thus, Henri V sent the elite Gardes Françaises regiment to arrest the leaders of the Assembly. When the soldiers refused to follow the orders of their officers, the king fled Paris and marched to Orleans. There, he declared the General States in rebellion and began raising an army. The French Civil War had started.