I didn't see an expy of the expulsion, so how's the Jewish Community of Spain. They were quite a large size before the expulsions
A House Made of Gold and Roses.
- Thread starter Kurt_Steiner
- Start date
Thank you very much!
I have in mind a continent divided through religious lines, if I'm able to explain the tale. The new generation of kings and emperors are going to face quite interesting times, and n ot all of them are going to be up the task.
There had been none... yet. However, with the Reform going on, some religious troubles sare going to appear.
Keep in mind that, as the Trastamaras did not get the crown, the anti-Jewish policy that Enrique and his succesors carried out did not take place ITTL. Furthermore, as Pedro "el Cruel" survived and he was quite sympathetic to the Jews, they are in a better position ITTL not only in Castile, but also in Aragon. For starters, no 1391 progrom in Aragon.
It going to be quite interesting, knowing the sheer size of the Jewish population of spain during that time which would be close to 600,000
Chapter 25: Religious troubles in "Las Españas" (1556-1564) -1-
Chapter 25: Religious troubles in "Las Españas" (1556-1564) -1-
The defeat of the last Muslim strongholds in Castile had left a considerable Muslim population ruled by Christian kings. They had been initially tolerated and had received the same treatment given to the Jews: they were allowed to stay in their dwellings, to be judged according to their own laws, they would not be obliged to convert to Christianity. This began to change under Jaime I, who came to see both Muslims and Jews as a danger to the Christian faith in Castile as the Protestant reform expanded all over Europe. Thus, he decided to segregate the Jews and the Muslims "to avoid confusion and damage of our holy faith", as he claimed in the Edicto de Sevilla (1541), which forced both Muslims and Jews to live in separate quarters and to wear a red or a yellow slice on their right shoulder -1-. From 1542 onwards, the Muslim and Jewish quarters were converted into ghettos surrounded by walls and the Jews were confined in them, a process that took two years to finish and which was not exempt from problems and abuses by Christians.
This would take a turn for the worse when in 1556: All the distinctive Muslim and Jewish elements were prohibited, such as the language, the dresses, the baths, the ceremonies of worship, the rites that accompanied them, etc. In addition to this, the Castilian bishops asked the king to increase the control measures, proposing that the Muslim houses were visited regularly on Fridays, Saturdays and holidays, to ensure that that they did not follow the Koranic precepts, and that the notable Moors were closely watched to set an example, and that their children were ordered "to be brought and raised in Old Castile at the expense of their parents so that they could collect customs and Christianity from there and forget those from here until they were men". These proposals were discussed by a board of jurists, theologians and military men meeting in Madrid (presided by the Duke of Alba himself) that agreed to recommend that the king apply the prohibitions agreed by the board. However, the king put the measures on hold in exchange for 80,000 ducats that the Muslims gave him and another 80,000 from the Jews. However, Jaime I appointed Pedro de Deza as president of the Chancery of Granada, a character whose performance would stir the spirits of both Jews and the Moors and would be the direct cause of the tragedies that took place from 1563 to 1564 and the misery it followed, as we shall see.
This turmoil in Castile had its effects also in Aragon as many Jews from Murcia, Andalucia and Navarre fled to that kingdom. From 1541 to 1550, 700 Jews left Castile and settled in Aragon; from 1556 to 1560 this number rose to five thousand Jews. Then, in 1558, the bishop of Seville, Fernando de Valdés y Salas, began to use political anti-Muslim in his speeches, stirring the people up against them. He would interfere with the administration of justice with his prejudices and he even went so far as to write to the nearby authorities and command them to remove the Jews and the Muslims from living among them. By 1560, Jaime I, aware of the Jewish importance to his finances, sided with them and told de Valdés to stop his persecution of the Jews. However, this left him free to preach violence against the Muslims as he abused his power in the religious judiciary. Thus, de Valdés and de Deza actions were to be the source of many troubles and the king, rather than take immediate action, he simply commended de Valdés for his religious zeal but also reminded him and de Deza that the Jews were still under the crown's protection.
De Valdés' refusal to obey the crown's orders only illustrated his zeal for his belief that he was doing the right thing by persecuting the Muslims, and his followers shared the same zeal because he had been riling them up for so long. As his preaching of violence against the Muslims continued, so did the uneasiness of the mob as they were anxiously awaiting the opportunity to attack and raid their quarters. Around March 1562 the mob broke out and plundered and killed Muslims. Soon, the anti-Muslim mentality had already spread to nearby cities and around 4,000 Muslims were murdered in Andalucia, their houses were attacked and destroyed, and those that weren't killed were terrified into converting in an attempt to not be murdered as well. This religious mob spread even to Aragon, as the authorities could do nothing to prevent the same pattern of plunder, murder, and fanaticism (although it did not go completely unpunished). About 500 Muslims in Valencia were murdered and about 10,000 of them converted rather than face death. There were als riots in Barcelona, where several Jewish houses were pillaged in July the angry mob. The younger son of Fernando III, Prince Martín, recorded that nearly 30 Jews had been killed that day while other sources claim around 25 Jews were murdered and 300 were forced to be converted. The king took these events very badly, as it was an attack against his sovereignty over his people. As punishment, Prince Martín had several of the attackers imprisoned and one of them hanged, but his father criticized this minimal punishment for such brazen disobedience to the crown and had then arrested 300 of the attackers.
However, De Valdés actions had its consequences, of course. The bishop himself saw his rise in the ranks of the Catholic church suddenly cut short when he was sent to prison in 1564, and although he was quickly released, he died soon after. In addition to this, a rebellion broke out in Andalucia. Fearing another bout of violence, the Muslims began to prepare their defence. Weapons, flour, oil, and other provisions were stored in caves which were inaccessible and safe, enough for several years. However, these defensive measures soon developed into full rebellion as the principal leaders, including some from the Alpujarra, held meetings in private houses in the Albaicín, and from there issued their orders. Thus, on March 24, 1563 the rebellion started in the village of Béznar, in the Lecrin valley. Numerous other places in the tahas (districts) of Órgiva, Poqueira, Juviles, and other Morisco villages in the Alpujarra followed suit. That very day, in the Albaicín (the Moorish quarter of Granada) a few hundred Muslims joined the rebellion, but the uprising in the capital was a complete failure, dooming the entire campaign.
The Muslim rebels, full of fanatism, hatred and revenge, tortured and murdered priests and sacristans and destroyed and profanated churches, killing in the process the little simpathies that they had won for the suffering during the progrom. Jaime I wasted little time to put them down. He sent two forces, one from the west of the Alpujarras and the other one from the east and overrun the defenders with ease. The natural obstacles were overrun and the Moors were put on the run. The short but brilliant campaign secured Granada and its surrounding and caused a severe demoralization on the rebels. By the middle of April the rebellion was practically suppressed and their leaders had to hide in caves. Some of them attempted to negotiate surrender terms, but they were refused. Even worse, the campaign went on with a great deal of excesses committed by the troops, most of them untrained volunteers, who were not paid but counted on the loot they could gather. This led to further radicalization of the rebels, who turned even against their own people and killed women who would not uncover their faces. The rebellion practically came to an end towards May. From then until January 1564, only a few minor Muslims attacks and ambushes broke out of the peace around the easter part of the Alpujarras and, by April, the last rebel bands had been crushed. By then the Alpujarras had been wrecked beyond recognition, as houses and crops were destroyed, men put to the sword and all the women, children, and elderly people captured were sold as slaves. The last rebels, after losing the fortress of Juviles, were killed in their caves.
After (and even during) the suppression of the revolt, a significant portion of the Muslim population was expelled from the former Kingdom of Granada. In only three months, 30,000 Muslims, or roughly a quarter of Granada's Muslim population, were transported to North Africa from Andalucia. The deportation caused a big fall in population, which took decades to offset and caused the economy to collapse, as many fields laid uncultivated and many more had been destroyed during the fighting. By 1566 the Castilian authorities had already laid down the basis for repopulation. The land left free by the expulsion of the Moriscos would be given to Christian settlers, who would be supported by the Crown until their land began to bear fruit. The settlers were assured of bread and flour, seed for their crops, clothing, material for cultivating their land, and oxen, horses, and mules. Furthermore, there were various tax concessions. By 1570, however, life was not easy there and many settlers gave up. The Alpujarras would be a wasted land until the beginning of the 17th century.
What was going meanwhile in Aragon?
-1- TTL Edict is a mixture of the measures applied against the Spanish Jews in OTL 1412 and 1480.
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So in Aragon there was no Ghetto's? What is the map of Spain about now? This would cause some interesting effects in Jewish Philosophy and related matters. Because it seems to be a world where the RAmBaN never had to leave Spain, Jews never had to leave Spain, would cause some repercussions. Because Baruch Spinoza without the trauma of the expulsion, would be a much more "traditional" writer, and less of a radical if he can write his books in a much more traditional matter, that would be radical.
In Aragon most the Jewish quarters remain as they were. They were not hit hard by the massacres of 1391 (as there were none) and they have resisted the events of the 1560s quite well. Right now, the only community which had suffered due to their faith it's the Moriscos.
As Spinoza's coming to this world is still 70 years ahead of the current point of this TL (if butterflies doesn't mind), I'm not going to bet too much about his future philosophical career, but I'm afraid we are going to loose his "radicalism"...
A more radical jewish political philosophy would be radical, because of it's effects on the enlightenment. If even a quarter of his political extraction from the Kaballah exists, the effect on European political Philosophy, would be butterflying.
Chapter 26: Religious troubles in "Las Españas" (1565-1570) -2-
Luther at the Diet of Worms
Chapter 26: Religious troubles in "Las Españas" (1565-1570) -2-
While in Castile the main religious worries were centered in the Jew and Muslim communities, in Aragon there was a widespread concern over the increasing number of Protestants within the kingdom due to the tolerance applied by the Crown. This doesn't mean that there were no Reformists in Castile, though. Even if King Jaime I did not directly intervene in their fate, the Castilian Inquisition was too eager to deal with any heresy. By the 1560s, little seemed to change. After the death of his father, the new king, Peter III (r. 1563-1472), trusted (too much) the Inquisition, and the Inquisitors had their way. After the alumbrados (1) were repressed and finished by the Inquisition, the other Protestant groups went underground. However, some alumbrados managed to evade the persecution and a few of them managed to survive in Seville until the 1620s, when they finally left Castille for France and settled in Picardy, where they were joined (1634) by Pierce Guerin, curé of Saint-Georges de Roye, whose followers, known as Guerinets, were suppressed in 1635. From this moment onwards, the exiled Illuminés vanished from the pages of history. The Lutheran groups of Valladolid and Seville were a source of concern for the Inquisition as they introduced in Castille many forbidden books. Only in 1552 the Inquisition confiscated in Seville about 450 Bibles printed abroad. This situation is made worse by the new archbishop of Seville and inquisitor general, Fernando Valdés, who is depicted by Henry Kamen as "an ambitious and implacable man who saw heresies everywhere." Thus. several humanists, like Constantino Ponce de la Fuente, who was also a convert, ended up being arrested by the Inquisition, dying in its dungeons several years later. According to Kamen, none of the humanists who became victims of the Inquisition "can be considered Lutheran." as "none of their opinions was explicitly heretical.” However, after the discovery of the Lutheran group in Seville, they were burned in effigy, because they had already died, in the December auto-da-fe of 1560, for being Lutheran. In England, John Fox in his book Book of Martyrs [Protestants] affirmed that Dr. Gil and Constantino Ponce were "the first to discover the darkness of Spain almost at the same time."
However, in Seville there was a group of Protestants, made up of about 500 people-, which included Cipriano de Valera, Casiodoro de Reina (2), Juan Pérez de Pineda and Antonio del Corro who fled before being discovered, becoming very important figures in the European Protestant Reformation. In principle, these Hieronymite monks, great readers of Luther and Melanchthon, settled in Geneva, but a few of them opted to take root in Aragon while forty Sevillian heretics were captured and burnt down. De Valera would arrive to England around the late 1550s and, eventually, became Professor of Theology of the Magdalene College, Cambridge (3) , but Pérez de Pineda settled in Zaragoza in 1560, where he wrote the so-called Epístola Consolatoria (Consolatory Epistle), intended to strengthen the spirits of the Protestants in the Peninsula who suffered the rigors of the Inquisition. He died in Paris in 1567. The fate of the Castilian Protestants would end by the late 1560s, when after the Valladolid and Seville autos-da-fé of 1559-1562, the "autochthonous Protestantism was practically extinct in Spain" as the Inquisition burnt at the "thousands of Castilians who felt into its nets who, one moment of carelessness, had made some praise of Luther or pronounced anti-clerical demonstrations". Thus a large part of what could have been the Spanish reformers emigrated abroad, either to the Americas or Europe.
But, what about Aragon?
As we have already seen, Fernando III was tolerant to the Protestant factions and strived to have peace between their subjects, disregarding their faith. Many observers believed that, in his inner soul, the Aragonese king was a Protestant himself, but, to this day, there is no proof of that. His education of son and heir, Jaime III, had been profound and thorough, and focused on the catholic doctrine, However, his father had instilled in his issue the same tolerance he had displayed with his subjects, and Jaime III followed his example to the letter when he rose to the throne in 1559. In spite of his good feelings and intentions, fate was to force his hand several times. The religious tensions flared in his kingdoms due to the religious strife that was on the verge to turn France into a battlefield when the tension finally exploded in 1572 with the massacre of a protestant congregation in Vassy. France would be divided into a terrible civil war, as the French Protestants, the so-called Huguenots, were supported by England, which openly joined the war in 1574. However, the intervention of the German Protestant princes would turn the French war into an European conflict that would last until 1599, as we shall see.
However, until that terrible moment took place, the peace dominated the Aragonese religious settlement until the influence of the Navarrese and French Protestant were felt in the northern provinces of Aragon, specially in Catalonia, where a strong "aganau" (4) after the arrival of the first French refugées in the 1560s, who were accepted without problems. By the 1520s we have news of Protestant groups settled in Tortosa, Barcelona, Valencia and the Balearic Islands. Protestantism in Aragon is not the product of the historical Reformation process that takes place in Europe by that time, but as the consequence of subsequent reforms or "spiritual awakenings''. They were the fruit of the so-called free churches, which assume the mission of embodying the Protestant witness in Catalonia, both with their own names and thanks to the generous collaboration of prominent foreign pastors and missionaries from the main denominational families. In Aragon, Protestantism would enter through the trade routes that link that kingdom to Navarre, to Castile and to the other countries of the Aragonese Crown. A decade later, the situation had changed. Jaime III was worried by the violence that struck France during the "first" (1576–1577), the "Armed Peace" (1578–1583), the "second" war (1584–1585) and the "third" war (1588–1590), which led to many French Hugenots to flee to Aragon and causing fear and concern in the northern provinces, who were witness of the violence that rocked the northern neighbour. Nevertheless, peace remained in Aragon, even if 26 "Aganaus" were tried in Barcelona on September 10, 1570 after being accused of public offenses to Catholic religion and were heavily fined as a punishment.
In adittion to this, the attention of the king was also fixed in Naples. There, is policy of trusting the local government to the Neapolitean nobility had utterly failed. After the many complaints received by the Neapolitean nobles and also by his governors of the kingdom themselves, Fernando III placed his trust in the reforms proposed by the Neapoliteans and made Cardinal Pompeo Colonna as the new viceroy of the kingdom (1530-1532). However, Colonna had used the chance to rule with the support of his family and friends and sidelined all the remaining families, who bitterly complained to Fernando, headed by Ferrante de Sanseverino, prince of Salerno. This led to the fall of Colonna without the local nobilty enjoying it, as an Aragonese was placed at the head of the Neapolitean government. Naples was thus tamed and became the strongest and safest province of the Crown after an wide and ambitious program of reinforcement of the fortifications was carried out in the 1540s. However, the unrest for the hard Aragonese rule led to a change in the guard in 1553, which was reinforced when Jaime III rose to the throne, even if the government of Sicily and Naples was still trusted to Aragonese men even if in 1565 a Consejo de Italia (Council of Italy) was created to study a reform of the goverment of those lands.
-1- a term used to loosely describe practitioners of a mystical form of Christianity in Spain during the 15th-16th centuries. Some alumbrados were only mildly heterodox, but others held views that were clearly heretical, according to the contemporary rulers. Consequently, they were firmly repressed and became some of the early victims of the Inquisition.
-2- IOTL, a Spanish religious convert to Protestantism, famous for making the well-known Spanish translation of the Bible called the "Bible of the Bear" because a drawing with this animal appeared on the cover; this bible was published in Basel, in 1569.
-3- Perhaps the most well-know Protestant heretic in the history of Spain. He was named in the Index librorum Prohibitorum (Madrid, 1667, p. 229) as "the Spanish heretic" par excellence. De Valera was a Hieronymite monk and humanist, author of the so-called Bible of the Pitcher (1602), considered as the first Corrected edition of the "Bible of the Bear" of 1569, known until today as the Reina-Valera Bible.
-4- Catalan word for Protestant
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Chapter 27: The Holy League (1565-1580)
Chapter 27: The Holy League (1565-1580)
In 1567 Portugal and Aragon signed the Treaty of Ormuz, which gave rise to the formidable Aragonese-Portuguese that would dominate much of the southern Persian Gulf for the next hundred years. Weakened by its failed expeditions in the previous decades, the Ottoman Empire had turned its attention to the Mediterranean Sea under Suleiman the Magnificient However, the failed Great Siege of Malta (1565) greatly damaged the Ottoman navy, which was damaged by a storm at the beginning of the campaign, which wrecked not ontly the ships, but also the attack against St. Elmo. This would, eventually, lead to creation of the Holy League, when Castille, France, Venice and the Papal States joined against the Ottomans. Aragon would also join them, but for a different reason. While Castille and France wanted to end with the Ottoman threat and thus release the Imperial forces in a final campaign against England, Aragon wanted to secure their shores and their Eastern trade. Thus, they all joined hands against their common enemy after the Imperial defeat in the Habsburg-Ottoman war (1526–1568).
Then. Suleiman attacked Cyprus in 1570. France and Castile rushed to help Venice, as well as Aragon. Both sides gathered two massive fleets and preapred themselves for the fight. The Republic of Venice contributed with 109 galleys and six galleasses, Castile with 33 galleys and Aragon with 29 plus 27 galleys of the Genoese fleet, seven galleys from the Papal States, five galleys from the Order of Saint Stephen and the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, three galleys each from the Duchy of Savoy and the Knights of Malta, and some privately owned galleys in Spanish service. This fleet of the Christian alliance was manned by 40,000 sailors and oarsmen. In addition, it carried approximately 20,000 fighting troops: 7,000 Castlian regular infantry of excellent quality, 7,000 German mercenaries, 6,000 Aragonese, all good troops, in addition to 5,000 professional Venetian soldiers. Ali Pasha, the Ottoman admiral, supported by the corsairs Mehmed Şuluk and Uluç Ali, commanded an Ottoman force of 215 war galleys, 45 galliots, and some smaller vessels. The number of oarsmen was about 37,000, virtually all of them slaves, many of them Christians. The Ottoman galleys were manned by 13,000 experienced sailors—generally drawn from the maritime nations of the Ottoman Empire—mainly Berbers, Greeks, Syrians, and Egyptians—and 34,000 soldiers. It was an impressive force, in spite of the losses suffered in Malta. However, the Holy League had an ace upon its sleeve: their guns. It is estimated that the Christians had 1,815 guns, while the Turks had only 750 with insufficient ammunition.
The news of the Christian fleet leaving for Cyprus forced Selim II, who had suceeded Syleiman, to abandon the siege of Famagusta. On September 9, 1570, the two fleets engaged in a battle off Lepanto, which resulted in a crushing victory for the Christian fleet, while the Ottoman fleet was effectively destroyed, losing some 25,000–35,000 men in addition to some 12,000 Christian galley slaves who were freed. The Ottoman naval hegemony established after the Battle of Preveza in 1538 was no more. Selim II was able to rebuilt quickly the fleet in number but at Lepanto he had lost he almost total loss of the fleet's experienced officers, sailors, technicians and marines. Even worse, the Venetian Cyprus remained as a thorn in the Ottoman side that would not be removed until the Ottoman-Venetian war of 1645. However, Selim Ii had also reason to rejoice, as when his forces reconquered Tunis from the Castilians in 1574. After that, the Ottoman attention would be fixed in the empire's western and eastern fronts for the next century. The Holy League, however, was not to last for so long. Once the Ottoman threat diminished its shape and then faded away, Charles IX of France lost his interest in the western Mediterranean and fixed his eyes on England for a short while as the Hugenots, who had been kept under control by his father, rose in revolt, generously supported by England, demanding religious freedom. The dreamed war against England was forgotten as France fought against itself from 1576 to 1590.
Meanwhile, Jaime III of Aragon, who had attempted to force his royal authority over the nobility, was forced in 1565 to sign the Carta Real (a curtailment of the monarch's power, am Aragonese parallel to the Magna Carta). In spite of this defeat, the relations of the king with the Parliaments of his kingdoms improved relatively quickly however, as all the parties involved quickly learned to work together because their interests, and the Kingdom's, required that they did so. From an early time, the council returned to the king much of his former power, but for Naples, that remained a problematic part of his kingdoms for much of his life. Howe,ver clever as he was, Jaime III would soon learn how to play the constitutional game, namely to keep the Parliaments happy without sacrificing his own royal interests. This meant showing generosity to the conciliar aristocracy through various gifts and concessions, which he did in grand style. However, this reform would become a fatal move for the Crown as the powerful Parliaments of each kingdom could become almost independent of the royal will.
By that time, Castile had laid his claim over Portugal. The son and heir of Jaime I, Pedro III (r. 1565-1574), who was married to Constança de Portugal, daughter and heiress of King Sebastiao I (r. 1554-1578). However, when Sebastaio died, Pope Gregory XIII ( supported Henrique, the younger brother of king Joao III, who became Henrique I, in spite of the claim of Pedro's son, Alfonso XII (r. 1574 to 1580). However, Henrique was old and died without issue in 1580 and António, Prior of Crato, a grandson of King Manuel I of Portugal, was King of Portugal as António I (July 24, 1580). Then, Jaime II of Castile (r. 1580-1597), younger brother of Alfonso XII, who had died without issue, put ahead his claim and, to win the support of his Aragonese namesake, asked him for the hand of his elder daughter, Isabel, who was only seven at the time, while Jaime II was 18. In any case, the marriage was arranged and Aragon found itself still allied with England and, additionally, with Castille. With the Aragonese friendship achieved, Jaime II wasted no time and invaded Portugal and defeated António. Pope Sixtus V found himself in a tricky situation, as he could neither excommunicate the Castilian king, who was a close ally in the war against the heretic England, nor drop the support of the Holy See towards António. In the end, a solution was carved with the Acuerdo de Toro (Agreement of Toro), signed in 1584: António would keep the Portuguese crown but Jaime II's younger brother, Alfonso, Duke of Cádiz, would marry the elder daughter of António. This would be Luisa, born in 1588.
However, as we shall see, the situation would make an unexpected turn in 1602 when Manuel II, the son of António I of Portugal signed an alliance with King Henri IV of France and married his daughter Maria to Henri's heir, Louis. But, before we see that, we shall learn how Henri of Navarre became king of only half of France as Henri IV.
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Chapter 28: The French Wars of Religion (1576-1590)
Henry, king of "France" and Navarre
Chapter 28: The French Wars of Religion (1576-1590)
The harsh anti-Huguenots measures used by Henri II to keep the Reform away from France had ultimately strengthened the Reformist resolve and , eventually, a group of Protestant nobles, led by Louis, Prince of Condé, demanded to the king to be guaranteed freedom of conscience and private worship, but the ultra-Catholic faction led by François, Duke of Guise, vehemently opposed any concession to the Huguenots and, eventually, Condé and Guise clashed. it was the "first war" (1576-1577). Strictly speaking, it was not a war, but a lond period of civil disturbances which rose to the climax in the battle of Rouen (May 22, 1576), when a group of Huguenots were attacked by men of Guise and Condé rushed to help them. In the bloody fighting that followed through the narrow streets of the city, Conde's forces forced the Catholics to flee, killing the Bailli of Rouen, Guisard Villebon d'Estouteville, in the process. After hearing what had happened at Rouen, Charles IX mediated a truce between both sides and attempts at reconciliation between both sides were made, enjoying a marginal success. However, both sides became increasingly wary of each other and by 1481 began to recruit armed supporters. Catherine of Medicis continued to raise support for his son, Charles IX while Condé gathered supporters all around the country, but mainly in the south.
Eventually, as the Catholics tried to turn the mostly Huguenot city to the king, they clashed with their enemies. The violence caused between 300–500 deaths on both sides, and Condé and Guise rushed to the south with their retinues to support their factions, but they met halfway, in Cahors (September 23, 1577). Guisa was routed and had to flee, and Condé entered Toulouse, where he was given a hero's welcome by the citizens. In the Rhône River valley, Protestants under François de Beaumont, baron des Adrets, captured Lyon and proceeded to demolish all Catholic institutions in the city. As the riots had escalated almost to a full war and Guisa had been mauled, Charles IX rushed again to mediate between both sides. Condé was in control of most of the south of France and Charles IX could do little about it as his own men were failing to prevent the spread of lawlessness in the rest of the country. A truce was reached and resulted in the Edict of Amboise on December 19, 1577.
Six years of military build-up by both sides followed. England openly sided with the Huguenots, the German Emperor had problems to keep his Protestant princes out of the war and, by 1581, Castile began to reinforce its defences along the French border. Aragon stood aside for the moment, even if Jaime III was more than willing to join England in the war that was to take place. However, the leading councillors of the realm, Fernando de Gurrea, duke of Villahermosa, and Luis Ximénez de Urrea, 4th count of Aranda, foremost among them, had feared a Castilian onslaught for several years. Now, with France in tatters, a confrontation appeared inevitable. Still, few councillors wanted war, and they preferred to wait until it was forced upon them, while Jaime preferred to wage a war on his own terms and pressed for a preemptive strike. Despite its initial opposition to the war, the Valencian and Catalan Parliaments went along with the king. Then, in France, Charles IX went on a Grand Tour of the kingdom between 1579 and 1580, designed to reinstate crown authority, but the king fell ill during the Tour and had to rest for a while in Orléans. From then on, the health of the king would slowly deteriorate in spite of the best efforts of his doctors.
Suddenly, a wave of iconoclasm in Northern Catalonia in 1583 would rush a crisis. Jaime III took matters in his own hands and attempted to reach a peaceful solution that, in the end, had to be solved with the execution of some of the Catalan Protestant that went on with his rampage in spite of the warnings received. In France, Charles IX, who was dying by then, feared that the events in Catalonia could cause the re-mobilisation of the French Huguenots against the Catholic, and searched an alliance with Castille for a joint attack against the French southern Protestant counties. Eventually, when protesters attacked and massacred Catholic laymen and clergy in Nîmes, (september 29, 1584), war broke again. The war, however, was to be decided on July 10, 1585 by a single battle, when the Protestant armies crushed the royalist force in Mons. Henry I, Duke of Guise, and Albert de Gondi, Comte de Retz, died trying to save Charles IX from the Huguenots closing on his tent. After this, the Peace of Longjumeau (August 5, 1585), which was a reiteration of the edict of Amboise, once again granted significant religious freedoms and privileges to Protestants.
However, this peace was only a truce. The death of Charles IX in 1586 seemed to bring the end of the religious strife as his brother, Henri III, moved towards a peaceful settlement with the Huguenots as the Catholic side had been severely weakened after the disaster of Mons. With no one in position to defy him, the absolutist ambitions of the king put aside all the opposition to his "peace offensive" until 1588, when it was known that Henri III could not sire an heir. The Catholics supported in mass the brother of the king, Francis, Duke of Anjou and Alençon, who became a central figure in French politics, to the point that his foolishness and his hatred towards the Huguenots forced the crisis that led to the third and final war in 1588. Determined to strike first and hard, Louis, Prince of Condé, departed Toulouse and marched north to attack the Catholic forces led by the young Charles, Duke of Guise. However, be it for treachery by some nobles or simple rashness or miscalculation by Condé, his army was ambushed and destroyed in Sancerre (December 3, 1588). Condé himself was killed in the rout, with many of the prominent Huguenot leaders dying in the battle or being captured and executed. Then, the Calvinist Prince Henri of Navarre became the new Huguenot leader and crowned himself as King Henri IV of France in Toulouse. This was just what Jaime II of Castile waited for and invaded the French Navarre in February 1589 to join hands with Charles of Guise, the victor of Sancerre. To avoid that, Henri (IV) of Navarre mustered his troops — including 14,000 mercenary reiters led by the Calvinist Duke of Zweibrücken under English pay- and rushed to face them. However, he was unable to avoid Jaime and Guise joining hands and found himself hopelessly outnumbered. However, to his great delight, he was reinforced by the timely arrival of Jaime III of Aragon, and both marched together to face their enemies.
The Aragonese intervention had been a close thing, as the Aragonese intervention caused a constitutional crisis. The councils of the realms were unwilling to provide the king with any grant of taxation as they feared that the war was going to be long and costly, both in lives and in gold to no appreciable gains. However, Jaime was determined to go to war and pressed his noblemen. The councils, in cutting off financial support, had hoped to coerce the king into not going to war, but Jaime, who felt betrayed, and after some reflection, wrote his letter of abdication and returned to his hunting lodge in Barcelona. This caused a crisis, as the king, still unmarried, had no heir, and consequently the Councils of the Realm had good reason to fear another leaderless interregnum and even a civil war. It played into the king's hands; the Councils begged for his return to the throne and allowed him to summon a Diet to consider additional tax levies. In the end, the letter of abdication vanished without trace and Jaime III went to war.
On reaching the battlefield in La Rochelle (March 29, 1589), the Navarrese-Aragoneses found themselves heavily outnumbered. Part of their force under the Duke of Urgell had yet to arrive, but an one-sided gun and arrows exchange, broke havoc in the enemy lines. The ensuing hand-to-hand combat lasted hours, exhausting the combatants. The arrival of Urgell turned the tide and Jaime III led a charge that routed their foes. From then on, the war became stalemated, with no side able to win a decisive battle. The Royalist victory in Dormans (April 14, 1590) was followed by a Huguenot success (Coutras, May 4), and then by another Royalist triumph (August 22, 1590). By then both sides were exhausted. A Castilian fleet was destroyed by the Aragonese ships in the Balearic Islands when Jaime II attempted to conquer the islands (November 21, 1590) and, after that, there were no more battles. By early 1591, Henri IV of France was virtually the king of Aquitaine while Henri III was reduced to the north of France. Neither side was able to crush its enemy and, as the two Jaimes withdrew from the war, the two French kings left the battlefield and began to rebuild their countries. This time there were no peace treaties to mark the end of the conflict but peace would last longer than with the previous settlements.
I'm not quite clear why Henri of Navarre has proclaimed himself King of France here.
Due to the sheer weakness of the French crown and the incapacity of Charles to crush him. All in all, Henri calls himself to be king of France. The question is how many people give credit to that claim.
Is he claiming the current king is invalid? Or the lineage that led to this king?
His reasons could be a reversed version of what Phillip II of Spain said about Elizabeth I of England.
France do NOT work line that. Their line of succession is impossible to challenge. “Henry IV“ can not be anything but a traitor, rebel and usurper without ANY legitimacy while the line of Francis I is still alive
Old Catholic France works like that, but the New Reformed One is done with that way. Of course, their irreconciliable points of view are going to leave a deep trace in future events.
Chapter 29: The last years of Jaime III (1580-1588)
Chapter 29: The last years of Jaime III (1580-1588)
From 1585, Jaime III would come to take a more neutral and passive stance in foreign matters and devoted himself to his great pleasure: hunting. This allowed him the opportunity to meet members of the Council individually and informally, and the king used this chance to try to divide the different factions that made the Council as much as he could. Indeed, as he was required, he summoned the Council of the Realm once annually but he managed to use his personal bonds with its members and to play with their interest to avoid having the council united against him as a full body. He hunted, feasted and drank not only with his friends, but also with his noble councillors and advisers, and even with visiting foreign dignitaries, treating them as his equal peers. Jaime III is regarded today as the less unsophisticated and "royal" monarch of Aragon, but this friendly manner to meet with his noblemen and councilors was nothing else but a way to achieve Jaime III's political purposes.
His reluctance to get involved in foreign events, not to mention wars, was clearly seen in 1525, when his English ally, Edward V, forced the Scottish lords to accept his younger son, Richard, duke of York, as their king. This had led to the temporary union of the English and Scottish crowns when Richard's brother, Edward VI of England, died unexpectedly in 1571 without a heir and Richard was crowned as Richard IV of England and I of Scotland. In 1575, Richard made known that his elder son William was to inherit the English crown while the Scottish throne would go to his younger brother George; however, when a third son, James, was born in 1576, the kingdoms were further divided and the newborn was given the Irish crown, even if the Emerald Isle was only nominally loyal to the Yorkist king. Then, the deaths of William (1571 – 1578) and George (1575 – 1582) made the young James the heir to the three crowns. Then, the Irish lords rose in rebellion again, as they had done in 1568. Richard IV, who was 65 years old then, rose to the challenge with the fury and the energy of a younger man and led himself to the English army that invaded Ireland. It was then when the Scottish noblemen turned to James Stewart, 2nd Earl of Moray (1531 – 1595) -1- and offered him the crown.
Richard IV wasted little time in Ireland. Leaving the army there under the command of one of his most trusted counselors, Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, departed at once to England, and, then, with another army, marched into Scotland and crushed Moray's in the Battle of Flodden. The Scottish suffered 4,000 killed, wounded, or captured, while the English sustained only 500 casualties. Then, Richard entered Edinburgh and forced the Scottish lords to acknowledge him again, in exchange for their lives and titles. Then, he departed back to England, leaving his nephew Edward, Duke of York as his viceroy in Edinburgh. In 1569 Richard he established a Council of Scotland to advise him on Scottis affairs, giving prominent positions to several Scottish nobles in the English courts, while allowing Scotland to maintain a certain degree of autonomous government. After his death, his son and heir, Edward VI, would face another Irish rebellion in 1582, which was to be crushed by 1584. Ireland would remain as a nightmarish land for England, in permanent rebellion from 1588 to 1595.
Until his death in 1588, Jaime III would remain away from any conflict. He watched France to drown itself in her own blood with the fratricide wars, much to the chagrin of part of his Council, which suddenly became interested in foreign adventures in France. However, Jaime III considered that the times of Aragonese triumphs in France were past and gone, and even more with his English ally's attention trapped in Ireland. Thus, while Richard III and Edward VI began to suffer the attacks of the Castilian (and later on, Catholic French) pirates, Aragon focused on her Asian colonies. The Aragonese settlements in Madagascar had been abandoned in 1563 due to the intense local attacks and the Aragonese explorers centered their attention in the African continent. Thus, in 1575 the Aragonese settlement in Zanzibar began. It initially became part of the Aragonese empire and it was administered by a governor general; however, it seems that Aragon soon lost interest in the area and by 1601 the first French ship to visit the area found no Aragonese fort or garrison, only a trade depot.
However, the main Aragonese settlement was further south, in Nou Palerm, in the Golf de Montserrat (3). Initially, Nou Parlerm had been a small trade post which was enlarged with the arrival of Sicilian settlers, mainly from Palermo. It became a small post, however, as the Aragonese interest moved further south, creating outpost in the Cape area and further west in their quest to reach India. The wealthy spice trade would help to the creation of a small city in the Cape, Sant Esteve de les Roures (4). Its fertile soil and the benigne local tribes favoured the settlement of many farmers from 1552 onwards. It also became a thriving market of slaves, as the Aragonese settlers used them by the thousands and then sold many more to the European colonies in America. To the north another Aragonese settlement was created, close the St. Helena Bay, Sucot (5), where many Aragonese and Castilian jews arrived around that time and would become a "Jew city". Its first sinagoga, Mayorka, was built in 1575. Fifty years later, two more joined the first one: Kastilla and Aragon.
In their effort to fight the Pirates that attacked their ships in the way to or from India, a strong Aragonese fleet attacked and destroyed the city of Mogadishu and sacked Barawa in 1585. After that, they established a trading post in Malindi that served as a rest stop on the way to and from India, they were eagerly welcomed by the wazee who sought to use the Aragonese military might to establish themselves over their rivals in Mombasa, which was conquered by the Aragonese in 1590. Soon Malindi and mombasse flourished as other Swahili, as well as Arab, Persian, and Indian, merchants, craftsmen, sailors, and laborers flocked to those cities. In 1595, Malindi became a vassal of Aragon.
It would be up to Jaime IV, the elder son of Jaime III, to complete the exploration of India.
(1) ITTL, son of James Stewart, 1st Earl of Moray
(2) ITTL, son of Richard of Shrewsbury, 1st Duke of York (1474–1568)
(3) OTL Walvis Bay
(4) OTL Cape Town
(5) OTL Vredenburg
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Chapter 30: The child-king, Jaime IV of Aragon (1588-1600) -1-
Chapter 30: The child-king, Jaime IV of Aragon (1588-1600) -1-
At the death of his father, Jaime IV was 11 years old. Thus, a regency council ruled his kingdoms and helped to prove the maturity of the royal power and of its subjects. Thus, by the time he began his personal rule of Aragon in 1596 at the age of 19, the world had changed from the one of his father. King Edward VI of England and II of Scotland did not follow the warrior-king tradition of his ancestors and relied on council to rule his kingdoms. He was described as 'dynamic, good-natured and earnest,' suitably pious, having a 'lively body and a peaceful disposition,' albeit with a relatively weak constitution. Even if there were some claims saying that the less intelligent and politically competent than his late father, he was well educated -in fact, he was a competent astronomer himself- and was also described as having a distinctive cautious streak in his decision making, he also proved to be 'astute and very skillful' in his political dealings. Thus, even if he discharged the brunt of day-to-day politics to the royal council - the most significant of these were the Councils of State and its subordinate Council for War-, he had always the last word on every matter of state.
However, when Edward VI began to fill the Councils with his most trusted advisers and his relative and political friends, this new system of government became increasingly unpopular very quickly, and most of this hatred was directed at Edward's chief minister, Sir Robert Cecil. The restless Ireland rebelled again in 1588 and forced a new English intervention on the island, which soon became a headache for the English monarch. The English commander on the field, George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, had a string of successes. Buckingham soon began to act on his own and started to propose and implement policies almost independently of the central councils in London. Backed by his military success, that made him too valuable for the king, Buckingham began to subdue the island. However, Cecil was scared of his potential to destabilise him at court, and by the time that the Irish lords surrendered in 1596, he was determined to bring down Buckingham.
The divided France, finally at peace after the violence of the Wars of Religion, began to move in separate ways. While in the north King Henri III saw his personal rule of his lands crumbling towards 1597 and saw himself forced to rely in royal councils where the French nobility led by Charles of Lorraine, Duke of Mayenne had the upper hand, in the southern protestant half of France enjoyed a time of prosperity as Henri IV surrounded himself with capable man like his faithful right-hand man, Maximilien de Béthune, Duke of Sully, who regularized the state finances, promoted agriculture, drained swamps, undertook public works, and encouraged education. Thus, while the north stagnated, the south prospered. Then, in 1590, Henri IV addressed his subjects and sent them a quite clear message: he had no intentions of removing Catholicism from (his part of) France, but, on the other hand, he had no intentions of granting favours to the Catholic gentry opposing him. The official stance towards Catholicism resulted in the hardening of tensions between Northern and Southern France, but it also provided the moderate Catholics with a greater sense of security. They would no longer have to fear persecution, as, following the promise of the king, “free to revel in the te deum”, even if the had ended his speech by stating that "not until you have accepted my doctrines and given yourself to the path of Christ can I consider your my brethren”. On top of that, many Catholics decided to convert to the Gallic (Huguenot) church in order to secure the benefits provided within the State, even if many did so out of sheer faith in the reformed church.
Castile, under Jaime II of Castile (r. 1580-1617) had not experienced any breathteaking change at the beginning. The exploration of South America had proceeded at a slow pace once the Inca Empire had been demolished by the Castilian conquerors and the Peruvian silver began to flood Castile. It was then when Alfonso's nobility had attempted to assert their influence by forestalling the royal authority, as they had attempted with Jaime's brother, Alfonso XII, in the Castilian Cortes in 1576, however, using the splits between the different factions and with the support of the Andalusian and Leonese noblemen, the king had the upper hand over his kingdoms and in the Cortes by 1578. When the troubles began again, Jaime II acted quickly and resorted to the same strategies that had been so successful in the past. A clever and well educated king, Jaime II doubted about the promises of António I of Portugal but, eventually, he would be surprised by the turn of events when the Lusitan king allied himself with Henri IV of France, as we shall see.
For many foreign observers, it was only a question of time until Henri IV conquered his enemies and unified the country. In May 1593 war finally erupted and the duke of Mayenne marached south with 10,000 men. The advance of the Catholics armies was one of pomp and splendour... and of horror and massacre. as they commited several atrocities towards the Huguenots who lived in the previously Catholic domains of the kingdom. A second army (4,000 strong) under De la Barthie invaded Auvergne. Once there, the Northern French commander began to purge all of the reformed converts living within the province, until Francois de Bonne, at the head of a a relief army consisting of 8,000 men, fell upon the exposed flanks of the Catholic army and crushed it. Caught by surprise, De la Barthie's forces were annhilated while the Protestant loses were minimal. When Mayenne arrived to Dijon, Henri IV was waiting for him with 15,000 men and twice the guns. The first salvos from the Reformed artillery broke the spirit of the Catholic cavalry and the large force of Henri quickly utilized the weakness of the Catholic infantry to kill or captured the entire Catholic army. De Mayenne barely escaped wit ha few followed and raced back to Lorraine. Then, by November, Anjou, Normandy, Othe and Morhiban rose in rebellion against Henri III, who released the best of his armies against them. Henri IV drove his tired army against the Catholic’s vanguard in a battle outside Tours. Ending in a clear, but not decisive, victory for the Huguenots, the enemy commander, Jean-Antoine de Chevigny, managed to withdraw and organize his army outside Angers.
1594 would see Henri IV repelling with ease the attacks of his Catholic enemies as the Picardie also rose in rebellion and joined him that summer. Then, in July 1595, a Castilian army crossed the Pyrenées. Convinced that nothing by a demostration of brute force would force Aragon to stand aside, Jaime II of Castile send a shamfeul ultimatum to the Aragonese Regency council, demanding that Aragon remained neutral in the war and then, to grant this neutrality, he demanded that Toulouse was put under his protection for the duration of the war. When Aragon refused that demand, Jaime II, enraged, invaded the Occitan lands of Aragon in early June 1595 and immediately started its siege of the various smaller castles that dotted the countryside. As the local forces were to small to face such a large invading a rmy, they limited themselves to launch raids against his supply lines hoping to as much damage as possible before withdrawing. On the first of July 1595, Manuel Amat i Juniet led the Aragonese army roaming through countryside of Toulouse. While the Castilian army numbered some 20,000 men while Amat only had 15,000 men and llittle artillery, the Aragonese commadner managed to attack one of the invading corps which didn’t have the time to organize a proper defence as Aragonese cavalry fell upon them. The battle ended in an Aragonese victory, but the fighting had only inflicted minimal loses upon the Castilians, who retreated into the Béarn.
Jaime II had no intentions of losing another battle in such an awful mood and reorganized his forces, concentrating them in a single place and waited for the enemy to attack his fortified position. However, he made another mistake in doing that, as he gavfe time to the Aragoneses to send reinforcements. When Amat attacked, Jaime II had no other optin but to withdraw his entire army, loosing 2,000 men in the process for 700 Aragonese casualties. However, the real loss were not the dead, but rather the demoralizing effect of having to withdraw time upon time in the face of a numerical inferior enemy. In the north, Henri IV had infflicted another tremendous defeat upon his Catholic enemies thanks his superior cavalry.
A highly idealized view of Jaime IV
in his childhood in the BBC serie "The Age of the Reform" (2002)
At the death of his father, Jaime IV was 11 years old. Thus, a regency council ruled his kingdoms and helped to prove the maturity of the royal power and of its subjects. Thus, by the time he began his personal rule of Aragon in 1596 at the age of 19, the world had changed from the one of his father. King Edward VI of England and II of Scotland did not follow the warrior-king tradition of his ancestors and relied on council to rule his kingdoms. He was described as 'dynamic, good-natured and earnest,' suitably pious, having a 'lively body and a peaceful disposition,' albeit with a relatively weak constitution. Even if there were some claims saying that the less intelligent and politically competent than his late father, he was well educated -in fact, he was a competent astronomer himself- and was also described as having a distinctive cautious streak in his decision making, he also proved to be 'astute and very skillful' in his political dealings. Thus, even if he discharged the brunt of day-to-day politics to the royal council - the most significant of these were the Councils of State and its subordinate Council for War-, he had always the last word on every matter of state.
However, when Edward VI began to fill the Councils with his most trusted advisers and his relative and political friends, this new system of government became increasingly unpopular very quickly, and most of this hatred was directed at Edward's chief minister, Sir Robert Cecil. The restless Ireland rebelled again in 1588 and forced a new English intervention on the island, which soon became a headache for the English monarch. The English commander on the field, George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, had a string of successes. Buckingham soon began to act on his own and started to propose and implement policies almost independently of the central councils in London. Backed by his military success, that made him too valuable for the king, Buckingham began to subdue the island. However, Cecil was scared of his potential to destabilise him at court, and by the time that the Irish lords surrendered in 1596, he was determined to bring down Buckingham.
The divided France, finally at peace after the violence of the Wars of Religion, began to move in separate ways. While in the north King Henri III saw his personal rule of his lands crumbling towards 1597 and saw himself forced to rely in royal councils where the French nobility led by Charles of Lorraine, Duke of Mayenne had the upper hand, in the southern protestant half of France enjoyed a time of prosperity as Henri IV surrounded himself with capable man like his faithful right-hand man, Maximilien de Béthune, Duke of Sully, who regularized the state finances, promoted agriculture, drained swamps, undertook public works, and encouraged education. Thus, while the north stagnated, the south prospered. Then, in 1590, Henri IV addressed his subjects and sent them a quite clear message: he had no intentions of removing Catholicism from (his part of) France, but, on the other hand, he had no intentions of granting favours to the Catholic gentry opposing him. The official stance towards Catholicism resulted in the hardening of tensions between Northern and Southern France, but it also provided the moderate Catholics with a greater sense of security. They would no longer have to fear persecution, as, following the promise of the king, “free to revel in the te deum”, even if the had ended his speech by stating that "not until you have accepted my doctrines and given yourself to the path of Christ can I consider your my brethren”. On top of that, many Catholics decided to convert to the Gallic (Huguenot) church in order to secure the benefits provided within the State, even if many did so out of sheer faith in the reformed church.
Castile, under Jaime II of Castile (r. 1580-1617) had not experienced any breathteaking change at the beginning. The exploration of South America had proceeded at a slow pace once the Inca Empire had been demolished by the Castilian conquerors and the Peruvian silver began to flood Castile. It was then when Alfonso's nobility had attempted to assert their influence by forestalling the royal authority, as they had attempted with Jaime's brother, Alfonso XII, in the Castilian Cortes in 1576, however, using the splits between the different factions and with the support of the Andalusian and Leonese noblemen, the king had the upper hand over his kingdoms and in the Cortes by 1578. When the troubles began again, Jaime II acted quickly and resorted to the same strategies that had been so successful in the past. A clever and well educated king, Jaime II doubted about the promises of António I of Portugal but, eventually, he would be surprised by the turn of events when the Lusitan king allied himself with Henri IV of France, as we shall see.
For many foreign observers, it was only a question of time until Henri IV conquered his enemies and unified the country. In May 1593 war finally erupted and the duke of Mayenne marached south with 10,000 men. The advance of the Catholics armies was one of pomp and splendour... and of horror and massacre. as they commited several atrocities towards the Huguenots who lived in the previously Catholic domains of the kingdom. A second army (4,000 strong) under De la Barthie invaded Auvergne. Once there, the Northern French commander began to purge all of the reformed converts living within the province, until Francois de Bonne, at the head of a a relief army consisting of 8,000 men, fell upon the exposed flanks of the Catholic army and crushed it. Caught by surprise, De la Barthie's forces were annhilated while the Protestant loses were minimal. When Mayenne arrived to Dijon, Henri IV was waiting for him with 15,000 men and twice the guns. The first salvos from the Reformed artillery broke the spirit of the Catholic cavalry and the large force of Henri quickly utilized the weakness of the Catholic infantry to kill or captured the entire Catholic army. De Mayenne barely escaped wit ha few followed and raced back to Lorraine. Then, by November, Anjou, Normandy, Othe and Morhiban rose in rebellion against Henri III, who released the best of his armies against them. Henri IV drove his tired army against the Catholic’s vanguard in a battle outside Tours. Ending in a clear, but not decisive, victory for the Huguenots, the enemy commander, Jean-Antoine de Chevigny, managed to withdraw and organize his army outside Angers.
1594 would see Henri IV repelling with ease the attacks of his Catholic enemies as the Picardie also rose in rebellion and joined him that summer. Then, in July 1595, a Castilian army crossed the Pyrenées. Convinced that nothing by a demostration of brute force would force Aragon to stand aside, Jaime II of Castile send a shamfeul ultimatum to the Aragonese Regency council, demanding that Aragon remained neutral in the war and then, to grant this neutrality, he demanded that Toulouse was put under his protection for the duration of the war. When Aragon refused that demand, Jaime II, enraged, invaded the Occitan lands of Aragon in early June 1595 and immediately started its siege of the various smaller castles that dotted the countryside. As the local forces were to small to face such a large invading a rmy, they limited themselves to launch raids against his supply lines hoping to as much damage as possible before withdrawing. On the first of July 1595, Manuel Amat i Juniet led the Aragonese army roaming through countryside of Toulouse. While the Castilian army numbered some 20,000 men while Amat only had 15,000 men and llittle artillery, the Aragonese commadner managed to attack one of the invading corps which didn’t have the time to organize a proper defence as Aragonese cavalry fell upon them. The battle ended in an Aragonese victory, but the fighting had only inflicted minimal loses upon the Castilians, who retreated into the Béarn.
Jaime II had no intentions of losing another battle in such an awful mood and reorganized his forces, concentrating them in a single place and waited for the enemy to attack his fortified position. However, he made another mistake in doing that, as he gavfe time to the Aragoneses to send reinforcements. When Amat attacked, Jaime II had no other optin but to withdraw his entire army, loosing 2,000 men in the process for 700 Aragonese casualties. However, the real loss were not the dead, but rather the demoralizing effect of having to withdraw time upon time in the face of a numerical inferior enemy. In the north, Henri IV had infflicted another tremendous defeat upon his Catholic enemies thanks his superior cavalry.
A highly idealized view of Jaime IV
in his childhood in the BBC serie "The Age of the Reform" (2002)