After the forest of Foixà: a new beginning for the House of Barcelona
- Thread starter Kurt_Steiner
- Start date
Well, some people will feel united to some people but not some other people.
Don't worry. If somebody has some different opinion about being united and with who, there would be plenty of places to try their own model.
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Chapter 29: The setting sun of Eduardo I (1543-1555)
Chapter 29: The setting sun of Eduardo I (1543-1555)
The unexpected death of Joao III of Portugal in 1544 without a male heir₁ left the crown in the hands of Eduardo, Prince of Asturias and Duke of Girona, heir to the Hispanic throne after the death of his elder brother. Married with Joao's elder daughter María (1527-1562), the future María I of Portugal, Eduardo played a minor role in the Portuguese crown, even if the Portuguese distrusted him and came to believe that he was the power behind the crown. In fact, Eduardo and María did not get well together and, after they had three children (María -b. in 1545-, Juan -b. in 1547-, and Isabel -b. in 1548-,), Eduardo departed Portugal never to return, taking with him his two younger children. María, in any case, was determined to rule by herself and put into motion a series of reforms to secure both his hold over the kingdom and also to keep the Hispanic members of the entourage of his husband away from any ruling position. This further helped to worsen the relations between María and Eduardo, who took revenge in 1549 when he send Juan to Barcelona to be educated by his grandfather, Eduardo I of Hispania. Ironically, while his mother would be remembered for his fostering and support of the Portuguese Catholic Church, the young prince would grow close to the Reformed faith, much to the annoyance of his devoted mother.
María wasted little time to show her temper and when he was told that her uncle Luís of Portugal, Duke of Beja (1506-1545) was involved in a conspiracy to depose her and to make Luis king, she had him executed along with the ringleaders in 1545. Many Portuguese noblemen, though, accused Eduardo of being behind the execution, as the Hispanic prince was, allegedly, removing any possible rival in his path to the throne. These rumours and his poor relations with his wife would eventually lead to the prince returning to Hispania in 1549. Ironically, Maria found herself in a difficult position after the plot, as almost all the Privy Counsellors had been implicated in the conspiracy and relied very much on the advice of her husband.
In the month following her accession, María issued a proclamation that she would not compel any of her subjects to follow her religion, but by the end of 1545. After the failed conspiracy, leading Reformed churchmen—including several members of the entourage of Eduardo—were imprisoned. Church doctrine was reinforced and the queen also strengthened her ties with Rome. By the end of 1554 Maria asked help to the pope, Julius III, to fight the "Reformed threat" in Portugal and the Pope reinforced the Portuguese Inquisition, which became an essential part of María's religious settlement. Around 80 Portuguese Reformers fled into exile while those who stayed and persisted in publicly proclaiming their beliefs became targets of Maria's rage. The first executions occurred in February 1555. It was the beginning of a religious persecution that, by the time of the death of the queen, had annihilated the small Reformist movement in Portugal. The religious intolerance of the queen also hit hard the Anglo-Portuguese relations. Edward V was slowly moving towards the Reformist side. This would change with María II (1545-1606, r. 1562-1606), a moderate Catholic with a reforming streak, who worked hard to restore the good relations with London.
In Hispania, Eduardo I, with the help of Felipe of Palma, 3rd Duke of Palma, attempted to bring the Aragonese Parliaments under his thumb. By the early 1540s Palma, with the support of the Lanuza family in Aragon, had streamlined and co-ordinated the Parliamentary and Judicial system of Aragon. In Catalonia, the Requesens controlled the Consell de Cent and thus the Principality was no longer the headache it had been. Valencia, however, remained unmoved but, with the royal control over the Aragonese and Catalan parliaments, and with the Balearic Islands following the Catalan example, Valencia was isolated and powerless. With fairly minor changes, Palma managed to rule unopposed in Aragon, being only busy answering the constant demands for lower taxation and tariffs while the French shadow over their borders and Naples kept the kingdom co-operative and in line.
Meanwhile, Vasco Núñez de Balboa and Francisco Pizarro had finished the conquest of the Inca Empire after a gruelling series of campaigns that lasted from 1544 to 1551 and brought havoc among the Incas. By the end of the conquest, half of the native population had died due to the famine and the diseases that followed the Conquistadores, who resorted to a scorched-earth policy in those areas that they could not conquer immediately. In spite of this, the Incas would still fight the invaders with guerrilla tactics until 1565, when the last Inca,Túpac Amaru I, was hanged in Cuzco. Perú thus became part of the Hispanic empire, which was organized following the European example and where many Castilian and Portuguese Reformed settled after running away from persecution in their homeland. Ironically, neither Balboa nor Pizarro would have to deal with them, as both returned to Hispania to live their last years there. Diego de Almagro the Elder, the first governor of Perú (Virreinato de Perú since 1560), was not only to gladly take those new settlers, but to use them in his conquest of Bolivia and Chile (1553-1555). Almagro would be replaced by Pedro de Valdivia, who became governor of New Extremadura₂, which became the Virreinato de Chile in 1560.
By the end of 1530s, the mental health of Eduardo I began to falter and this forced Prince Eduardo to replace his father when he was unable to rule; thus, by 1540, Prince Eduardo was, in all but name, the ruler of Hispania, leaning heavily on the Castillian and Aragonese Parliaments and reserving to himself the right of appointing the governors and many officials. This had advantages and disadvantages; to manage the affairs of the realm took most of his time, and the control that his father had exercised over the royal court began to falter, turning the royal entourage into a nest of intrigues and factionalism. In foreign affairs, Eduardo, called the Younger, followed the footsteps of his father and immediately reached out to England, as he was worried by the the turn of events in France. The Francis I of France had done much to restore the authority and power of the French Crown and, feeling strong, he had began to clash with the German Emperor and to conspire with some Neapolitean noblemen against the Hispanic rule. However, in an unexpected turn of events, Francis I tried to assuage the Hispanic fears by offering an alliance between Paris and Toledo. The French had many grandsons and his grandaughter Isabel (b. in 1545), the elder daughter of the Dauphin, Henri, seemed the perfect match. She was good match for the prince. They married in Toledo in 1563, they sealed a dynastic link, something that should settle the Hispanic and French affairs.
₁ - ITTL Prince Joao Manuel died in 1440
₄ -OTL Chile
The unexpected death of Joao III of Portugal in 1544 without a male heir₁ left the crown in the hands of Eduardo, Prince of Asturias and Duke of Girona, heir to the Hispanic throne after the death of his elder brother. Married with Joao's elder daughter María (1527-1562), the future María I of Portugal, Eduardo played a minor role in the Portuguese crown, even if the Portuguese distrusted him and came to believe that he was the power behind the crown. In fact, Eduardo and María did not get well together and, after they had three children (María -b. in 1545-, Juan -b. in 1547-, and Isabel -b. in 1548-,), Eduardo departed Portugal never to return, taking with him his two younger children. María, in any case, was determined to rule by herself and put into motion a series of reforms to secure both his hold over the kingdom and also to keep the Hispanic members of the entourage of his husband away from any ruling position. This further helped to worsen the relations between María and Eduardo, who took revenge in 1549 when he send Juan to Barcelona to be educated by his grandfather, Eduardo I of Hispania. Ironically, while his mother would be remembered for his fostering and support of the Portuguese Catholic Church, the young prince would grow close to the Reformed faith, much to the annoyance of his devoted mother.
María wasted little time to show her temper and when he was told that her uncle Luís of Portugal, Duke of Beja (1506-1545) was involved in a conspiracy to depose her and to make Luis king, she had him executed along with the ringleaders in 1545. Many Portuguese noblemen, though, accused Eduardo of being behind the execution, as the Hispanic prince was, allegedly, removing any possible rival in his path to the throne. These rumours and his poor relations with his wife would eventually lead to the prince returning to Hispania in 1549. Ironically, Maria found herself in a difficult position after the plot, as almost all the Privy Counsellors had been implicated in the conspiracy and relied very much on the advice of her husband.
In the month following her accession, María issued a proclamation that she would not compel any of her subjects to follow her religion, but by the end of 1545. After the failed conspiracy, leading Reformed churchmen—including several members of the entourage of Eduardo—were imprisoned. Church doctrine was reinforced and the queen also strengthened her ties with Rome. By the end of 1554 Maria asked help to the pope, Julius III, to fight the "Reformed threat" in Portugal and the Pope reinforced the Portuguese Inquisition, which became an essential part of María's religious settlement. Around 80 Portuguese Reformers fled into exile while those who stayed and persisted in publicly proclaiming their beliefs became targets of Maria's rage. The first executions occurred in February 1555. It was the beginning of a religious persecution that, by the time of the death of the queen, had annihilated the small Reformist movement in Portugal. The religious intolerance of the queen also hit hard the Anglo-Portuguese relations. Edward V was slowly moving towards the Reformist side. This would change with María II (1545-1606, r. 1562-1606), a moderate Catholic with a reforming streak, who worked hard to restore the good relations with London.
In Hispania, Eduardo I, with the help of Felipe of Palma, 3rd Duke of Palma, attempted to bring the Aragonese Parliaments under his thumb. By the early 1540s Palma, with the support of the Lanuza family in Aragon, had streamlined and co-ordinated the Parliamentary and Judicial system of Aragon. In Catalonia, the Requesens controlled the Consell de Cent and thus the Principality was no longer the headache it had been. Valencia, however, remained unmoved but, with the royal control over the Aragonese and Catalan parliaments, and with the Balearic Islands following the Catalan example, Valencia was isolated and powerless. With fairly minor changes, Palma managed to rule unopposed in Aragon, being only busy answering the constant demands for lower taxation and tariffs while the French shadow over their borders and Naples kept the kingdom co-operative and in line.
Meanwhile, Vasco Núñez de Balboa and Francisco Pizarro had finished the conquest of the Inca Empire after a gruelling series of campaigns that lasted from 1544 to 1551 and brought havoc among the Incas. By the end of the conquest, half of the native population had died due to the famine and the diseases that followed the Conquistadores, who resorted to a scorched-earth policy in those areas that they could not conquer immediately. In spite of this, the Incas would still fight the invaders with guerrilla tactics until 1565, when the last Inca,Túpac Amaru I, was hanged in Cuzco. Perú thus became part of the Hispanic empire, which was organized following the European example and where many Castilian and Portuguese Reformed settled after running away from persecution in their homeland. Ironically, neither Balboa nor Pizarro would have to deal with them, as both returned to Hispania to live their last years there. Diego de Almagro the Elder, the first governor of Perú (Virreinato de Perú since 1560), was not only to gladly take those new settlers, but to use them in his conquest of Bolivia and Chile (1553-1555). Almagro would be replaced by Pedro de Valdivia, who became governor of New Extremadura₂, which became the Virreinato de Chile in 1560.
By the end of 1530s, the mental health of Eduardo I began to falter and this forced Prince Eduardo to replace his father when he was unable to rule; thus, by 1540, Prince Eduardo was, in all but name, the ruler of Hispania, leaning heavily on the Castillian and Aragonese Parliaments and reserving to himself the right of appointing the governors and many officials. This had advantages and disadvantages; to manage the affairs of the realm took most of his time, and the control that his father had exercised over the royal court began to falter, turning the royal entourage into a nest of intrigues and factionalism. In foreign affairs, Eduardo, called the Younger, followed the footsteps of his father and immediately reached out to England, as he was worried by the the turn of events in France. The Francis I of France had done much to restore the authority and power of the French Crown and, feeling strong, he had began to clash with the German Emperor and to conspire with some Neapolitean noblemen against the Hispanic rule. However, in an unexpected turn of events, Francis I tried to assuage the Hispanic fears by offering an alliance between Paris and Toledo. The French had many grandsons and his grandaughter Isabel (b. in 1545), the elder daughter of the Dauphin, Henri, seemed the perfect match. She was good match for the prince. They married in Toledo in 1563, they sealed a dynastic link, something that should settle the Hispanic and French affairs.
₁ - ITTL Prince Joao Manuel died in 1440
₄ -OTL Chile
Take care! If a Portuguese noblemen hears you saying that, he's not going to be happy...
Seriously speaking, the slim chance is gone, but you can bet that the Hispanic kings are not willing to let it go.
The Portuguese affaire was a bit like the Aragonese succession when Petronilla married the count of Barcelona. The Aragonese noblemen didn't want to have a Castillian king. Well, the Portuguese nobility weren't too inclined to have Hispanic monarch.
And frankly speaking, I've never seen too many chances about uniting the Peninsula. It's a bit less complicated that an Anglo-French Union but, from my point of view, both are quite impossible to achieve.
Chapter 30: The early years of Eduardo II (1543-1555)
Chapter 30: The early years of Eduardo II (1543-1555)
The fifty years long reign of Eduardo I cast a shadow over the reign of his heir, Eduardo, who also sat for a long time in the throne, until his death in 1602. His beginning as king followed his politics as Regent of his late father. His personal religious convictions soon gave way to some preoccupation among his Catholic nobility, as he was a Catholic, but began by giving more freedom to the Reformed faction and stressed the role of sermons, a key Reformed belief, within the Catholic church. However, seeing the troubles of the English kings, who were under the threat of a Catholic crusade against heretical England. The king worked to find a solution to the Reformed dilemma that would not offend Catholics too greatly. Thus, he kept the royal control over the Spanish church, as it was legislated in the Parliament of 1557: the Reformed were to keep the privileges granted by his father but the Catholic faith would be the main religion over his Hispanic Empire.
The Cortes of his kings supported the proposals, but they met opposition by the representatives of the Church in all of them. This problem was somehow solved by sheer luck, as several bishoprics were vacant at the time, including the Archbishopric of Toledo, and this enabled the king to place his supporters among the peers and to keep the support to his reforms in place. Nevertheless, Eduardo II had to keep the Pope as the Supreme Head of the Catholic Church, even if he kept all the power, leaving the Pope empty handed in Hispanic religious matters. This reform would include a new version of the Bible, in a new translation that was published in 1558.
An issue that would plague the early years of Eduardo was to whom the king would marry. This question won't be solved, as we have already seen, unitil 1563, until he married Isabel, daughter of Francis I of France had done, something that did not please many of the most powerful members of the nobility, who feared that getting close to France would take Hispania away from England. And that was Eduardo II's intention, as the old ally was now a dangerous friend due to his religious reformation. The conflict between the Dutch and Protestant princes of the German empire and the Emperor Maximillian only worsened the situation, as it was feared that Richard IV of England would support the Protestant faction in any future conflict.
The early years of the King’s reign show Eduard II working quietly and diligently, and surrounded himself by people that were noticed by their talent and skill rather than his birthright. In those years the king made his first attempts to built a large, official royal navy. The colonial holdings in the New World claimed for a strong naval power and power projection. Organising a well drilled royal navy was a sensible move forward for the Empire, but quite difficult to achieve. Thus, the first attemps took place as early as 1545 but, distracted by the French Wars of Religion and the victories of the Protestant forces in 1548, the majority of the work on the navy was to be done by advisors and ministers. By 1558 all plans were abandoned, but a new proposal put the wheels afain into motion in 1560. It was a smaller reform more suited to deal with a navy that was still fundamentally medieval.
The increasing size of Hispanic trade networks between between America and Hispania and the long, difficult journey across the Atlantic made current vessels entirely obsolete and proved there was a need for more advanced designs to replace the bulky and inefficient medieval ships. New designs of ships appeared, as the galleons, which were large, multi-decked sailing ships first used as armed cargo carriers; and the carracks, a three- or four-masted ocean-going sailing ship that evolved from the single-masted cog used for European trade from the Mediterranean to the Baltic.
Meanwhile, the ending of the serfdom in Aragon (a process started in 1426 by Alfonso V and completed in 1471 by Jaime V) had led to a similar process in Castile with the reforms of Eduardo I, which was resisted mightily by a handful of determined lords. However, the power of the king and the Aragonese example, where the end of the serfdom had an impressive effect in the growing of the Aragonese economy, led to an agreement between the Castilian nobilty and the king: in 1525 Eduardo I decreed that each serf would be released from any bondage in five years, or earlier, in exchange for payment, allowing serfs to purchase their way out of serfdom. This later measure won the support of many lords, something that eventually settlel the issue. Nevertheless, by 1555 most of the former serfs remained peasants, practically and economically tied to their local landlords. This led to a constant movement from the countryside to the cities or to the New World. The expansion of the cities were to play an essential role in the growing of the Hispanic Empire and its modernization.
The fifty years long reign of Eduardo I cast a shadow over the reign of his heir, Eduardo, who also sat for a long time in the throne, until his death in 1602. His beginning as king followed his politics as Regent of his late father. His personal religious convictions soon gave way to some preoccupation among his Catholic nobility, as he was a Catholic, but began by giving more freedom to the Reformed faction and stressed the role of sermons, a key Reformed belief, within the Catholic church. However, seeing the troubles of the English kings, who were under the threat of a Catholic crusade against heretical England. The king worked to find a solution to the Reformed dilemma that would not offend Catholics too greatly. Thus, he kept the royal control over the Spanish church, as it was legislated in the Parliament of 1557: the Reformed were to keep the privileges granted by his father but the Catholic faith would be the main religion over his Hispanic Empire.
The Cortes of his kings supported the proposals, but they met opposition by the representatives of the Church in all of them. This problem was somehow solved by sheer luck, as several bishoprics were vacant at the time, including the Archbishopric of Toledo, and this enabled the king to place his supporters among the peers and to keep the support to his reforms in place. Nevertheless, Eduardo II had to keep the Pope as the Supreme Head of the Catholic Church, even if he kept all the power, leaving the Pope empty handed in Hispanic religious matters. This reform would include a new version of the Bible, in a new translation that was published in 1558.
An issue that would plague the early years of Eduardo was to whom the king would marry. This question won't be solved, as we have already seen, unitil 1563, until he married Isabel, daughter of Francis I of France had done, something that did not please many of the most powerful members of the nobility, who feared that getting close to France would take Hispania away from England. And that was Eduardo II's intention, as the old ally was now a dangerous friend due to his religious reformation. The conflict between the Dutch and Protestant princes of the German empire and the Emperor Maximillian only worsened the situation, as it was feared that Richard IV of England would support the Protestant faction in any future conflict.
The early years of the King’s reign show Eduard II working quietly and diligently, and surrounded himself by people that were noticed by their talent and skill rather than his birthright. In those years the king made his first attempts to built a large, official royal navy. The colonial holdings in the New World claimed for a strong naval power and power projection. Organising a well drilled royal navy was a sensible move forward for the Empire, but quite difficult to achieve. Thus, the first attemps took place as early as 1545 but, distracted by the French Wars of Religion and the victories of the Protestant forces in 1548, the majority of the work on the navy was to be done by advisors and ministers. By 1558 all plans were abandoned, but a new proposal put the wheels afain into motion in 1560. It was a smaller reform more suited to deal with a navy that was still fundamentally medieval.
The increasing size of Hispanic trade networks between between America and Hispania and the long, difficult journey across the Atlantic made current vessels entirely obsolete and proved there was a need for more advanced designs to replace the bulky and inefficient medieval ships. New designs of ships appeared, as the galleons, which were large, multi-decked sailing ships first used as armed cargo carriers; and the carracks, a three- or four-masted ocean-going sailing ship that evolved from the single-masted cog used for European trade from the Mediterranean to the Baltic.
Meanwhile, the ending of the serfdom in Aragon (a process started in 1426 by Alfonso V and completed in 1471 by Jaime V) had led to a similar process in Castile with the reforms of Eduardo I, which was resisted mightily by a handful of determined lords. However, the power of the king and the Aragonese example, where the end of the serfdom had an impressive effect in the growing of the Aragonese economy, led to an agreement between the Castilian nobilty and the king: in 1525 Eduardo I decreed that each serf would be released from any bondage in five years, or earlier, in exchange for payment, allowing serfs to purchase their way out of serfdom. This later measure won the support of many lords, something that eventually settlel the issue. Nevertheless, by 1555 most of the former serfs remained peasants, practically and economically tied to their local landlords. This led to a constant movement from the countryside to the cities or to the New World. The expansion of the cities were to play an essential role in the growing of the Hispanic Empire and its modernization.
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Chapter 31: An oasis of peace: the Hispanic Empire from 1555 to 1565,
Chapter 31: An oasis of peace: the Hispanic Empire from 1555 to 1565,
The peaceful beginning of Eduardo II's reign came to an end in 1557 when Sayri Tupac launched a widespread insurrection in the Birú that caught the colonial administration by surprise. Andrés Hurtado de Mendoza, sent by the king, pushed back the rebels troops; Tupac was captured by the Hispanic troops and shipped to Spain, where he died in 1561. Meanwhile, the silver discovery at Potosi only intensified the need for labour in the New World. There had been a steady stream of migrants from Europe for the last decades, reinforced by religious persecution and wars, but there were few people interested in back-breaking mining. This led to a blackest chapter of the colonization of the New World: the institution of slavery. In fact, Hispanic had used slaves in south Colombia since the 1510s, but now it reached a new level, as the scale of workers needed at Potosí forced them to look for new sources of manpower; aware of this problem, Eduardo attempted to keep it under control and thus the Real Compañía Del Caribe (The Royal Caribbean Company) was created to import African Slaves. Since 1550 a steady stream of slaves began to arrive at the Silver mines, as we have already seen. The maps, pilots and navigators of the company would prove essential to both royally chartered traders and independent ones. On the eastern bank of the Uruguay River the Conquistadores built a fortress known as Fort Eduardo in 1559, from where they would later on explore the southern tip of the continent.
In 1564, the king was finally blessed with his first child, a healthy daughter named Isabel, something that helped to alleviate the darker humor that had set upon Eduardo for the lack of an heir. That year, the king had to face the rage of the national legislatures. Both the Castilian Cortes and the Aragonese Parliament were quite angered with the king, who seemed to rule without them. Thus, Eduardo spent from 1555 to 1557 addressing the issues of the parliaments and managing their various objections, queries and demands. However, Eduardo used to the old ways of his ancestors, that is, a combination of bribes, personal patronage and some dirty work and backstabbing to put their fears at rest. Most importantly, perhaps, his handling of the hunger that exploded in Hispania. First Castile was hit in 1556 by a severe drought followed by a vicious winter; the drought hit Valencia in 1558 and Catalonia in 1560. By 1571, most of Hispania was suffering from the drought. However, the king demonstrated strength, mercy and intelligence in equal parts to ease the situation and earned his subject's genuine trust. Ironically, part of the famine was solved by an increase in the rise in the number of settlers in the New World. By 1570, the population of the colony of Venezuela had boomed to just over 12,000.
It took longer to appease the Aragonese and thrice in 1556 and 1557, a small cabal led by Catalan and Valencian politicians entered Bills for discussion that would have excluded Isabel from the succession and demanded a monarch of Aragonese birth. However, most of the Aragonese parliaments sided with the king and each of these bills was successively defeated. The most extreme rebel representatives, led by Juan of Urgell, 4th Count of Urgell (1431-1457), who attempted an armed revolt. This rebellion was incredibly unpopular, and its defeat, along with the death of Juan of Urgell, saw Eduardo’s own popularity on the rise. He travelled briefly to Aragone in 1557 and Barcelona in 1558, where he addressed the Parliaments in Catalan. At the same time, the Hispanic economy enjoyed a sudden boom. Searching for the new route to Catai, and using the rivalry between the rulers of Kochi and Calicut, the Hispanic explorers were able to build a post, Fort Eduard (1), and a trading post that was the first European settlement in India. Meanwhile, Portugal had begun to explore the African coast south of Cape Bojador. Eventually, this would lead to some commecial clashes between the two Empires, as both began to explore West Africa, which were joined in mid-17th century by Swedes, Danish, Dutch, English, and French traders, attracted by the boom of the Atlantic slave trade in this area. However, the Portuguese remained centered on the Congo River and until 1549 their explorers did not round the Cape of Good Hope. In 1536 Juan Martín de Ampués, from Zaragoza, departed en route to India via Egypt and Yemen. After reaching India in 1538, Martín de Ampués also visited Madagascar. By then, the Hispanic traders were not only to be involved in the infamous Atlantic slave trade, but also in bringing ivory, jade and spices in abundance to Hispania. By 1542 they had established several outposts on the southwestern Indian coast and Jerónimo Ortal became the first Hispanic Viceroy of India, who he used the ships he had taken with him to India to dominate the surrounding seas, something that reinforced the growing control of the spices market by the Hispanics and deeply worried Suleiman the Magnificent, who soon turned his attention to India. The Hispanic expansion would be stopped at Colombo, when a new ruler, hostile to the European traders, refused first to have deals with them. This route, however, remained unreliable for some time, and, as Eduardo II hoped to greatly increase the regularity and profits of these endeavours (between 1520 and 1550, nine Hispanic expeditions departed to India), he placed a great interest in the new technologies (sextant and astrolabes, for instance), which he hoped would be a great help in the east. Nevertheless, commerce from the New World was the most successful and profitable source of revenue for the Crown.
Meanwhile, the Reformed Church had begun to organize itself in the Crown of Aragon. It was a common, down to earth church which rejected the Catholic approach for a faith and focused above all on local communities, humility and had a pragmatic approach to earthly affairs. It lacked a tightly held structure and this allowed a great plurality within the faith itself. Aragon thus enjoyed a more peaceful reformation than some other countries, but Eduardo II began to be worried by the rising importance of the Reformed Church in the eastern part of his kingdoms, even more as the religious bloodshed in France reached new heights during the initial phase of the war (1545-1550), when the French Reformed had the upper hand, which was confirmed by the victorious years that went from 1551 to 1554, when most of the Catholic resistance was been wiped out and the Reformed King Antoine de Bourbon came to rule over France. However, the Catholic reaction fired the third phase of the war (1558-1561). Antoine was deposed and died in the battle of Rouen (1560), but his son Henry managed to crush his enemies in the battle of Orleans (1561). Henry IV initially kept the Reformed faith (the only French king to do so) and had to fight against the Catholic League, which denied that he could wear France's crown as a Protestant. After four years of stalemate, he converted to Catholicism in 1563. This was to keep France in peace for the next decade, until the sudden death of Henri IV in 1575 led to a new start of the war and the final victory of the Catholic Valois with Henri V (r. 1624-1660). When the last Valois king died in 1692, France would remain Catholic after one of the most vicious persecutions suffered by the Reformed Church in Europe.
Then in 1561, Eduardo II added a powerful figure to his Council of State. It was Fadrique Álvarez de Toledo y Osorio, 3rd Marquess of Villafranca del Bierzo and grandson of Fadrique Álvarez de Toledo, 2nd Duke of Alba. Fadrique became a key element of Eduardo's policy until he died in 1569 and even afterwards, as he used his position within the Council and his social connections to further shape and improve the Imperial Exchequer and the complicated system of taxes and tariffs that sustained the ambitious Imperial expansion carried out by the king. The peaceful times and the success of the American colonies just helped Fadrique's reforms. In 1564 he felt confident enough to implement his next greatest idea: the Royal Exchange, a trading floor for investment and ‘shares’ of a company, which was thus formalized and regulated. This Exchange was only possible due to the massive expansion of the existing bureaucracy carried out by Fadrique. It was such a succesful measure thata, by 1570, half of the American trade operations and a quarter of the Asiatic ones were funded by the Exchange and soon it was extended to cover the Hispanic trade with Europe.
(1) IOTL Kochi.
The peaceful beginning of Eduardo II's reign came to an end in 1557 when Sayri Tupac launched a widespread insurrection in the Birú that caught the colonial administration by surprise. Andrés Hurtado de Mendoza, sent by the king, pushed back the rebels troops; Tupac was captured by the Hispanic troops and shipped to Spain, where he died in 1561. Meanwhile, the silver discovery at Potosi only intensified the need for labour in the New World. There had been a steady stream of migrants from Europe for the last decades, reinforced by religious persecution and wars, but there were few people interested in back-breaking mining. This led to a blackest chapter of the colonization of the New World: the institution of slavery. In fact, Hispanic had used slaves in south Colombia since the 1510s, but now it reached a new level, as the scale of workers needed at Potosí forced them to look for new sources of manpower; aware of this problem, Eduardo attempted to keep it under control and thus the Real Compañía Del Caribe (The Royal Caribbean Company) was created to import African Slaves. Since 1550 a steady stream of slaves began to arrive at the Silver mines, as we have already seen. The maps, pilots and navigators of the company would prove essential to both royally chartered traders and independent ones. On the eastern bank of the Uruguay River the Conquistadores built a fortress known as Fort Eduardo in 1559, from where they would later on explore the southern tip of the continent.
In 1564, the king was finally blessed with his first child, a healthy daughter named Isabel, something that helped to alleviate the darker humor that had set upon Eduardo for the lack of an heir. That year, the king had to face the rage of the national legislatures. Both the Castilian Cortes and the Aragonese Parliament were quite angered with the king, who seemed to rule without them. Thus, Eduardo spent from 1555 to 1557 addressing the issues of the parliaments and managing their various objections, queries and demands. However, Eduardo used to the old ways of his ancestors, that is, a combination of bribes, personal patronage and some dirty work and backstabbing to put their fears at rest. Most importantly, perhaps, his handling of the hunger that exploded in Hispania. First Castile was hit in 1556 by a severe drought followed by a vicious winter; the drought hit Valencia in 1558 and Catalonia in 1560. By 1571, most of Hispania was suffering from the drought. However, the king demonstrated strength, mercy and intelligence in equal parts to ease the situation and earned his subject's genuine trust. Ironically, part of the famine was solved by an increase in the rise in the number of settlers in the New World. By 1570, the population of the colony of Venezuela had boomed to just over 12,000.
It took longer to appease the Aragonese and thrice in 1556 and 1557, a small cabal led by Catalan and Valencian politicians entered Bills for discussion that would have excluded Isabel from the succession and demanded a monarch of Aragonese birth. However, most of the Aragonese parliaments sided with the king and each of these bills was successively defeated. The most extreme rebel representatives, led by Juan of Urgell, 4th Count of Urgell (1431-1457), who attempted an armed revolt. This rebellion was incredibly unpopular, and its defeat, along with the death of Juan of Urgell, saw Eduardo’s own popularity on the rise. He travelled briefly to Aragone in 1557 and Barcelona in 1558, where he addressed the Parliaments in Catalan. At the same time, the Hispanic economy enjoyed a sudden boom. Searching for the new route to Catai, and using the rivalry between the rulers of Kochi and Calicut, the Hispanic explorers were able to build a post, Fort Eduard (1), and a trading post that was the first European settlement in India. Meanwhile, Portugal had begun to explore the African coast south of Cape Bojador. Eventually, this would lead to some commecial clashes between the two Empires, as both began to explore West Africa, which were joined in mid-17th century by Swedes, Danish, Dutch, English, and French traders, attracted by the boom of the Atlantic slave trade in this area. However, the Portuguese remained centered on the Congo River and until 1549 their explorers did not round the Cape of Good Hope. In 1536 Juan Martín de Ampués, from Zaragoza, departed en route to India via Egypt and Yemen. After reaching India in 1538, Martín de Ampués also visited Madagascar. By then, the Hispanic traders were not only to be involved in the infamous Atlantic slave trade, but also in bringing ivory, jade and spices in abundance to Hispania. By 1542 they had established several outposts on the southwestern Indian coast and Jerónimo Ortal became the first Hispanic Viceroy of India, who he used the ships he had taken with him to India to dominate the surrounding seas, something that reinforced the growing control of the spices market by the Hispanics and deeply worried Suleiman the Magnificent, who soon turned his attention to India. The Hispanic expansion would be stopped at Colombo, when a new ruler, hostile to the European traders, refused first to have deals with them. This route, however, remained unreliable for some time, and, as Eduardo II hoped to greatly increase the regularity and profits of these endeavours (between 1520 and 1550, nine Hispanic expeditions departed to India), he placed a great interest in the new technologies (sextant and astrolabes, for instance), which he hoped would be a great help in the east. Nevertheless, commerce from the New World was the most successful and profitable source of revenue for the Crown.
Meanwhile, the Reformed Church had begun to organize itself in the Crown of Aragon. It was a common, down to earth church which rejected the Catholic approach for a faith and focused above all on local communities, humility and had a pragmatic approach to earthly affairs. It lacked a tightly held structure and this allowed a great plurality within the faith itself. Aragon thus enjoyed a more peaceful reformation than some other countries, but Eduardo II began to be worried by the rising importance of the Reformed Church in the eastern part of his kingdoms, even more as the religious bloodshed in France reached new heights during the initial phase of the war (1545-1550), when the French Reformed had the upper hand, which was confirmed by the victorious years that went from 1551 to 1554, when most of the Catholic resistance was been wiped out and the Reformed King Antoine de Bourbon came to rule over France. However, the Catholic reaction fired the third phase of the war (1558-1561). Antoine was deposed and died in the battle of Rouen (1560), but his son Henry managed to crush his enemies in the battle of Orleans (1561). Henry IV initially kept the Reformed faith (the only French king to do so) and had to fight against the Catholic League, which denied that he could wear France's crown as a Protestant. After four years of stalemate, he converted to Catholicism in 1563. This was to keep France in peace for the next decade, until the sudden death of Henri IV in 1575 led to a new start of the war and the final victory of the Catholic Valois with Henri V (r. 1624-1660). When the last Valois king died in 1692, France would remain Catholic after one of the most vicious persecutions suffered by the Reformed Church in Europe.
Then in 1561, Eduardo II added a powerful figure to his Council of State. It was Fadrique Álvarez de Toledo y Osorio, 3rd Marquess of Villafranca del Bierzo and grandson of Fadrique Álvarez de Toledo, 2nd Duke of Alba. Fadrique became a key element of Eduardo's policy until he died in 1569 and even afterwards, as he used his position within the Council and his social connections to further shape and improve the Imperial Exchequer and the complicated system of taxes and tariffs that sustained the ambitious Imperial expansion carried out by the king. The peaceful times and the success of the American colonies just helped Fadrique's reforms. In 1564 he felt confident enough to implement his next greatest idea: the Royal Exchange, a trading floor for investment and ‘shares’ of a company, which was thus formalized and regulated. This Exchange was only possible due to the massive expansion of the existing bureaucracy carried out by Fadrique. It was such a succesful measure thata, by 1570, half of the American trade operations and a quarter of the Asiatic ones were funded by the Exchange and soon it was extended to cover the Hispanic trade with Europe.
(1) IOTL Kochi.
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Chapter 32: Years of Peace and Colonial Expandsion (1565-1570)
Chapter 32: Years of Peace and Colonial Expansion (1565-1570)
Historians agree that Eduardo II was always quite cold to his French wife. In turn, Isabel attempted to catch the attention of her husband by all means, until he managed to give birth to a boy in 1565 and then she simply gave up. It is claimed that she embarked in a series of love affairs with several noblemen of the royal court, but there is no firm evidence of that, and it only proves that the queen was quite maligned from the very beginning. In the end, the death of the queen, who died in 1569 after falling from her horse. Born December 18, 1565, Jaime was an unassuming prince, well behaved and with a rather unexpected devotion to the church, something that annoyed his father to no end. Growing up during the late stages of the French Civil War and the religious tumult that was breaking the country away and the internal strife that marked the rise of the Reformed Church in Aragon, perhaps it was just a logical solution that he turned away from the Roman Church in an even more radical way that his his father, who kept the distances from the Papacy to shape the Hispanic Church as he saw fit. This would be the source of several arguments with his father, until Eduardo decided to keep his thoughts to himself. His homosexuality, a complicated matter for historias who has been confirmed by modern studies after centuries of debate, just added more pressure to the future heir, something that was to transform the young prince into a tragic figure, even more when his brother Alfonso (born in 1567) came of age and became a bitter rival for the crown.
However, before that could happen, Eduardo II suddenly moved closer to Rome, making many think that he had abandoned his way of religious reform and his intention of creating an independent Hispanic Church. By the Royal Bull of 1568 he defined the Hispanic Empire as being ruled "by the law of God and the guidance of his Holiness the Pope In Rome”. The second article of the Bull, however, made crystal clear the real intentions of Eduardo, as it claimed that “The extant model of Church administration and management shall remain in place”. Thus, the reforms and the reorganization of the Hispanic Church carried out by the king remained in place, and Eduardo further refined his ideas and his reforms and moved to organise it as an autonomous branch of the Catholic church. In this he was greatly helped by Cardinal Armando de Cisneros (1515 – 1592), Archbishop of Toledo and Primate of Spain. He had been appointed Foreign Secretary in 1560 and continued to rise through the hierarchy of both the Catholic Church and the Spanish government by becoming a cardinal in 1566 and chief minister to Eduardo II in 1568. Indeed, Pope Pius V was somewhat angered by the proposals but, outwitted by de Cisneros, he opened secret negotiations on the matter throughout 1570-1572. Eventually, his successor, Gregory XIII, accepted the proposal but demanded that the translation of the bible would be curtailed and priestly marriage would be kept banned, which was agreed to, as Eduardo had no real intention to turn the Hispanic Church upside down, but just to control it. With the right to appoint priests, he would be able to stamp out his ideas over the church one by one. However, busy with his reforms of the Church following the recommendations of the Council of Trent, Gregory XIII had accepted the Hispanic demands just a temporary defeat, as he was determined that the "Hispanic Autonomy” would be a temporary status.
Cardinal Armando de Cisneros (1515 – 1592)
Archbishop of Toledo and Primate of Spain.
Meanwhile, de Cisneros was to become the power behind the throne. Too intelligent to be just the willing tool of Eduardo II to put the Hispanic Church under his control, he became the main councillor of the king or, as some of his political enemies defined him, the "dark shadow" of Eduardo. Thankfully, de Cisneros' policy followed and reinforced the efforts of the king, as the Cardinal had two primary goals: centralization of power in Hispania and opposition to any European power which may become a rival of Hispania. Thus, when Sir Francis Drake established three trading posts at Calcutta, Dhaka and Madras in 1568 and thus made England a rival of the Hispanic Empire, de Cisneros decided to undermine the former ally. Carefully chosen to avoid any direct conflict with England, de Cisneros persuaded the Portuguese to reduce the English trade in those ports and thus their role in the Indian trade. Eventually, Drake would become a thorn in de Cisneros' side until the English sailor suddenly died in 1572 (it was claimed that de Cisneros had him poisoned); his replacement, John Norreys, wasted little time to reach and agreement with Lisbon and Madrid: in exchange for some trade privileges concerning tea and textiles, Norreys agreed that the English would not trade south of Cochin. When he returned to England in 1573, Edward VI sent him to Ireland, angered by his mismanagement of the negotiations. Ironically, Norreys would be vindicated when Ceilan became an English colony in 1580 by the Treaty of Lille, which ended the Two Years' War or Dutch Revolt (Dutch: Nederlandse Opstand) (1578-1580).
In the New World, while consolidating its dominion over Peru, the Hispanic sailors used its ports to explore the Pacific Ocean (1555) and the coast of California (1558), In Africa, Hispanic sailors were the first to explore the southern tip of Madagascar in 1559 and then to slowly move inland. However, the conquest of Madagascar was abandoned towards 1575 to focuse more in India, as the Portuguese presence in the sub-continent began to grown in the 1560s after they built some enclaves in the so-called Portuguese East Africa (1). However, that rivalry was still lost in the midsts of future events, and in 1560 an Hispanic fleet supported Portugal in its defence of Malacca against the Sultan of Johor and the regent of Jepara, achieving a crushing victory over their enemies. Four years later, in 1564. Hispanic traders contacted the Ming dinasty. There they were granted some trade outposts after their ships helped the Chinese fleet to defeat the local pirates and, by 1570, a permanent settlement was built in Nueva Zaragoza (2), mostly with settlers from Aragon.
Meanwhile, the Hispanic India was slowly taking shape around its West Coast , from Mutton to Porbandar, specially around their settlements at Nova Valencia (1547) and Nova Alcant (1548) with settlers from Valencia and Alicante, and Nova Barcelona, with Catalan and Balearic settlers (1551) -3-, plus their trade post at Cannamore, Chaul and Chittagong. On the eastern shores were the Portuguese, in a more modest fashion, covering the Indian Coast from the island of Ceilan to Mylapore. Thus, theoretically, everybody was happy with their colonies. The English had the Mexican gold, the Hispanic the Peruvian silver and the Hispanic and Portugese a fair share of the Indian spices, with the English beginning to set their attention on the subcontinent and the Portugese moved far east, towards Indonesia, China and Japan. Of course, France and the Empire resented that, specially the later, as the Imperial economy was suffering a great lot with the ongoing war with the Ottomans (1548-1565) and with the Protestant princes, ended with the Peace of Augsburg (1556). The agreements led to the religious division of Germany between Catholic and Protestant princedoms; however, for the next decades, the Empire was at peace.
Wih the treasury refilled thanks to the Indian trade, Eduardo II enjoyed the years of peace and celebrated it by rebuilding the royal palaces of Toledo, Zaragoza and Barcelona in the new Renaissance syle, between 1549 and 1557. Just as the international scenario burst in flames when England supported the Protestant princes against Charles and Ferdinand, the Hispanic Empire refused to join any side. The Hispanic diplomats threaded carefully their way in the court of Richard IV of England and refused to join the German war while justifying the Hispanic attitude due to the increasing threat represented by Suleiman the Magnificient in the Mediterranean Sea and in the Indian Ocean.
(1) OTL Mozambique.
(2) OTL Macau
(3) OTL Vasai, Mumbai and Calicut, respectively
Historians agree that Eduardo II was always quite cold to his French wife. In turn, Isabel attempted to catch the attention of her husband by all means, until he managed to give birth to a boy in 1565 and then she simply gave up. It is claimed that she embarked in a series of love affairs with several noblemen of the royal court, but there is no firm evidence of that, and it only proves that the queen was quite maligned from the very beginning. In the end, the death of the queen, who died in 1569 after falling from her horse. Born December 18, 1565, Jaime was an unassuming prince, well behaved and with a rather unexpected devotion to the church, something that annoyed his father to no end. Growing up during the late stages of the French Civil War and the religious tumult that was breaking the country away and the internal strife that marked the rise of the Reformed Church in Aragon, perhaps it was just a logical solution that he turned away from the Roman Church in an even more radical way that his his father, who kept the distances from the Papacy to shape the Hispanic Church as he saw fit. This would be the source of several arguments with his father, until Eduardo decided to keep his thoughts to himself. His homosexuality, a complicated matter for historias who has been confirmed by modern studies after centuries of debate, just added more pressure to the future heir, something that was to transform the young prince into a tragic figure, even more when his brother Alfonso (born in 1567) came of age and became a bitter rival for the crown.
However, before that could happen, Eduardo II suddenly moved closer to Rome, making many think that he had abandoned his way of religious reform and his intention of creating an independent Hispanic Church. By the Royal Bull of 1568 he defined the Hispanic Empire as being ruled "by the law of God and the guidance of his Holiness the Pope In Rome”. The second article of the Bull, however, made crystal clear the real intentions of Eduardo, as it claimed that “The extant model of Church administration and management shall remain in place”. Thus, the reforms and the reorganization of the Hispanic Church carried out by the king remained in place, and Eduardo further refined his ideas and his reforms and moved to organise it as an autonomous branch of the Catholic church. In this he was greatly helped by Cardinal Armando de Cisneros (1515 – 1592), Archbishop of Toledo and Primate of Spain. He had been appointed Foreign Secretary in 1560 and continued to rise through the hierarchy of both the Catholic Church and the Spanish government by becoming a cardinal in 1566 and chief minister to Eduardo II in 1568. Indeed, Pope Pius V was somewhat angered by the proposals but, outwitted by de Cisneros, he opened secret negotiations on the matter throughout 1570-1572. Eventually, his successor, Gregory XIII, accepted the proposal but demanded that the translation of the bible would be curtailed and priestly marriage would be kept banned, which was agreed to, as Eduardo had no real intention to turn the Hispanic Church upside down, but just to control it. With the right to appoint priests, he would be able to stamp out his ideas over the church one by one. However, busy with his reforms of the Church following the recommendations of the Council of Trent, Gregory XIII had accepted the Hispanic demands just a temporary defeat, as he was determined that the "Hispanic Autonomy” would be a temporary status.
Cardinal Armando de Cisneros (1515 – 1592)
Archbishop of Toledo and Primate of Spain.
Meanwhile, de Cisneros was to become the power behind the throne. Too intelligent to be just the willing tool of Eduardo II to put the Hispanic Church under his control, he became the main councillor of the king or, as some of his political enemies defined him, the "dark shadow" of Eduardo. Thankfully, de Cisneros' policy followed and reinforced the efforts of the king, as the Cardinal had two primary goals: centralization of power in Hispania and opposition to any European power which may become a rival of Hispania. Thus, when Sir Francis Drake established three trading posts at Calcutta, Dhaka and Madras in 1568 and thus made England a rival of the Hispanic Empire, de Cisneros decided to undermine the former ally. Carefully chosen to avoid any direct conflict with England, de Cisneros persuaded the Portuguese to reduce the English trade in those ports and thus their role in the Indian trade. Eventually, Drake would become a thorn in de Cisneros' side until the English sailor suddenly died in 1572 (it was claimed that de Cisneros had him poisoned); his replacement, John Norreys, wasted little time to reach and agreement with Lisbon and Madrid: in exchange for some trade privileges concerning tea and textiles, Norreys agreed that the English would not trade south of Cochin. When he returned to England in 1573, Edward VI sent him to Ireland, angered by his mismanagement of the negotiations. Ironically, Norreys would be vindicated when Ceilan became an English colony in 1580 by the Treaty of Lille, which ended the Two Years' War or Dutch Revolt (Dutch: Nederlandse Opstand) (1578-1580).
In the New World, while consolidating its dominion over Peru, the Hispanic sailors used its ports to explore the Pacific Ocean (1555) and the coast of California (1558), In Africa, Hispanic sailors were the first to explore the southern tip of Madagascar in 1559 and then to slowly move inland. However, the conquest of Madagascar was abandoned towards 1575 to focuse more in India, as the Portuguese presence in the sub-continent began to grown in the 1560s after they built some enclaves in the so-called Portuguese East Africa (1). However, that rivalry was still lost in the midsts of future events, and in 1560 an Hispanic fleet supported Portugal in its defence of Malacca against the Sultan of Johor and the regent of Jepara, achieving a crushing victory over their enemies. Four years later, in 1564. Hispanic traders contacted the Ming dinasty. There they were granted some trade outposts after their ships helped the Chinese fleet to defeat the local pirates and, by 1570, a permanent settlement was built in Nueva Zaragoza (2), mostly with settlers from Aragon.
Meanwhile, the Hispanic India was slowly taking shape around its West Coast , from Mutton to Porbandar, specially around their settlements at Nova Valencia (1547) and Nova Alcant (1548) with settlers from Valencia and Alicante, and Nova Barcelona, with Catalan and Balearic settlers (1551) -3-, plus their trade post at Cannamore, Chaul and Chittagong. On the eastern shores were the Portuguese, in a more modest fashion, covering the Indian Coast from the island of Ceilan to Mylapore. Thus, theoretically, everybody was happy with their colonies. The English had the Mexican gold, the Hispanic the Peruvian silver and the Hispanic and Portugese a fair share of the Indian spices, with the English beginning to set their attention on the subcontinent and the Portugese moved far east, towards Indonesia, China and Japan. Of course, France and the Empire resented that, specially the later, as the Imperial economy was suffering a great lot with the ongoing war with the Ottomans (1548-1565) and with the Protestant princes, ended with the Peace of Augsburg (1556). The agreements led to the religious division of Germany between Catholic and Protestant princedoms; however, for the next decades, the Empire was at peace.
Wih the treasury refilled thanks to the Indian trade, Eduardo II enjoyed the years of peace and celebrated it by rebuilding the royal palaces of Toledo, Zaragoza and Barcelona in the new Renaissance syle, between 1549 and 1557. Just as the international scenario burst in flames when England supported the Protestant princes against Charles and Ferdinand, the Hispanic Empire refused to join any side. The Hispanic diplomats threaded carefully their way in the court of Richard IV of England and refused to join the German war while justifying the Hispanic attitude due to the increasing threat represented by Suleiman the Magnificient in the Mediterranean Sea and in the Indian Ocean.
(1) OTL Mozambique.
(2) OTL Macau
(3) OTL Vasai, Mumbai and Calicut, respectively
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Chapter 33: Religious troubles in "Las Españas" (1550-1570)
Chapter 33: Religious troubles in "Las Españas" (1550-1570)
By 1570 Cardinal de Cisneros was in the apex of his power. Whilst as a prime minister in all but in name, he brought god into all he did. However, he was an oddity in himself. Whilst Medieval Hispania had often been defined by the huge role of the Catholic Church in secular affairs, by the late 16th century it has been replaced by the secular bureaucracy. De Cisneros attempted to turn the clock back by filling the court and the government with loyal Bishops and priests. As Eduardo II centered his attention in the buidling projects that were taking place all over the Empire, from new palaces to new universities and shipyards, and in the foreign policy, de Cisneros was free to govern Hispania as he pleased. However, the king and his chancellor soon came to grips. After the reorganization of the Hispanic church as an autonomous branch of the Catholic church, de Cisneros waited for his nomination as its head. However, time went on and nothing of that sort happened. Thus, in March 1572, when Bartolomé Carranza de Miranda, Archbishop of Toledo died, the king replaced him with Gaspar de Quiroga . De Cisneros felt insulted by this move, and even more when Eduardo II secured the Cardinalship for de Quiroga in 1574,
De Quiroga and de Cisneros despised each other for the last twenty years. The Edicto de Sevilla (1541) had 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, led by de Quiroga, 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, persuaded by de Cisneros, put the measures on hold in exchange for 80,000 ducats that the Muslims gave him and another 80,000 from the Jews. Then Eduardo II 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.
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 1555 to 1570 this number rose to ten thousand Jews. Then, in 1558, Fernando de Valdés y Salas, the bishop of Seville and a protegée of de Quiroga, began to launch anti-Muslim 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 de Cisneros, aware of the Jewish importance to the royal finances, sided with them and told de Valdés to stop his persecution of the Jews. However, he kept preaching violence against the Muslims as he abused his power in the religious judiciary in spite of de Cisneros' instructions. De Valdés' belief that he was doing the right thing by persecuting the Muslims was shared by his followers, who anxiously waited for the opportunity to attack and raid their quarters. This eventually led to the Riots of March 1563, when the mob broke out and killed Muslims and plundered their houses. Soon, the riots had already spread to nearby cities and around 4,000 Muslims were murdered in Andalucia, tand those that weren't killed were terrified into converting in an attempt to not be murdered as well. The riots 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 5,000 of them converted rather than face death. There were als riots in Barcelona, where several Jewish houses were pillaged in July by the angry mob, around 25 Jews were murdered and 300 were forced to convert. Eduardo II and de Cisneros took these events very badly, as it was an attack against their authority. As punishment, several of the leaders attackers were imprisoned and one of them hanged, but the royal anger did not end there; eventually 300 of the attackers were arrested and jailed. The king was not to forget de Valdés' actions and, when Archbishop Carranza died in 1572, Eduardo II not only ignored de Valdés as the obvious replacement for the late archbishop, but made de Valdés aware of the fact. Many point out that the old bishop died a few months later heartbroken for this treatment.
However, Eduardo II turned a blind eye when de Cisneros acted against the alumbrados (2). This heretic group had been persecuted and repressed in the second half of the XVI century but, in spite of the persecution, some groups went underground and survived; furthermore, some alumbrados managed to evade the persecution and a few of them managed to survive in Seville until the 1570s, when they finally left Castille for either Aragon or France. From 1574, Inquisitorial courts were established throughout Castille (and in 1576 in Navarre) and Eduardo II made pains to ensure they were legal and comtrolled by the Crown. Then de Cisneros fixed his attention in the Lutheran groups of Valladolid and Seville. They 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. 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. Most cases that ended facing a Inquisitorial court were anti-Catholic crimes or against radical Reformers who openly refused to accept the Catholic dogma. Even these men avoided execution, however, as the King was always keen to prevent undue brutality. De Cisneros, on his part, was happy "seeing the heretics fled, thus cleaning Castille from their pestilence". When some emboldened Catholics attacked outspoken Reformers, he reacted slowly and with a constant and vigilant tolerance until 1575, when the violence also spread against the large Jewish community of Castille. Soon armed parties were deployed to protect the Jweish quarters and, in some extreme cases, a few rioters were killed in the resulting street confrontations.
When some of the Reformers fled to Aragon, de Cisneros attempted to arrest them there, but the local Parliaments denied him any authority over the Aragonese subjects and blocked his attempts with their old traditions and uses. If there were going to be any 'geretic' tried, it would be following the Aragonese law. Thus, from 1560 to 1570 there were several trials of the so-called "aganaus" (3) until the Cortes of Aragon discarded taking any measures against them as "none of their opinions was explicitly heretical.” Even if de Cisneros was victorious and destroyed the Lutheran group in Seville, he resented the Aragonese blockade and swore to himself that he would "iluminate the Parliaments to make them see how wrong they were". The Hispanic Cardinal was clearly worried by the spread of Reformist ideas in Aragon, reinforced in the 1520s by the arrival of French Reformist groups that settled in Tortosa, Barcelona, Valencia and the Balearic Islands. However, in spire of de Cisneros' fears, Reformism in Aragon was not the product of the same historical process that took place in Europe by that time, but the consequence of subsequent reforms or "spiritual awakenings'' that began in the 1540s, as we have already seen in Chapter 26. They were the fruit of the so-called free churches, which assume the mission of embodying the Reformation in Catalonia, both both with local priests and the generous collaboration of prominent foreign pastors. In Aragon, the Reformist ideas would enter through the trade routes that link that kingdom to Navarre, to Castile and to the other countries of the Aragonese Crown. Nevertheless, de Cisneros' presssure would lead to the 'Barcelona trials of 1570', when 26 "Aganaus" were tried in that city on September 10, 1570 after being accused of public offenses to Catholic religion and were heavily fined as a punishment.
However, it was in Seville where de Cisneros made his great show of power. There was a Reformist group made up of about 500 people, which included Cipriano de Valera, Casiodoro de Reina (4), Juan Pérez de Pineda and Antonio del Corro who fled before being discovered. Some of them went to Aragon and most of them fled abroad, becoming very important figures in the European Protestant Reformation. Initially, 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 when they tried to fled to France through Navarre. De Valera would arrive to England around the late 1570s and, eventually, became Professor of Theology of the Magdalene College, Cambridge (5), 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. Henry Kamen states that the Castilian Protestants were finished by the late 1580s, when after the Valladolid and Seville autos-da-fé of 1569-1572, the "autochthonous Protestantism was practically extinct in Spain" as the Inquisition burnt at the "thousands of Castilians whowere trapped 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 Hispanic reformers emigrated abroad, either to Aragon, the Americas or Europe. De Cisneros would attempt, in several ocassions, to extend his authority to the New World and to Aragon. In both cases, the local authorities blocked his attempts and only acted against some conspicuous heretics after much pressure exerted upon them. By then, the heretic in question had either fled to Europe or went underground. This clashes with the Aragonese Parliaments would cause a breach between de Cisneros and those councils, and would, from time to time, force Eduardo to intervene to persuade the Aragonese to collaborate with the angered Chancellor
Meanwhile, one of the darkest chapters of Hispanic history was shamefully written. Still persecuted and hated by his Christian neighbours, the Muslims of the south of Hispania had to endure many hardships that, eventually, led to the Emigration Crisis of 1568-1571, when a significant portion of the Muslim population fled from the former Kingdom of Granada. In the next three years, 30,000 Muslims, or roughly a quarter of Granada's Muslim population, crossed to North Africa. The emigration caused a big fall in population, which took decades to offset and caused the economy to collapse, as many fields laid uncultivated. By 1576 the Hispanic 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 1590, 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.
-1- TTL Edict is a mixture of the measures applied against the Spanish Jews in OTL 1412 and 1480.
-2- 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.
-3- ITTL an Old Catalan word for Protestant. It comes from the Sanscrit word agnau—in the fire
-4-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.
-5- Perhaps the most well-know Protestant heretic in OTL 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.
By 1570 Cardinal de Cisneros was in the apex of his power. Whilst as a prime minister in all but in name, he brought god into all he did. However, he was an oddity in himself. Whilst Medieval Hispania had often been defined by the huge role of the Catholic Church in secular affairs, by the late 16th century it has been replaced by the secular bureaucracy. De Cisneros attempted to turn the clock back by filling the court and the government with loyal Bishops and priests. As Eduardo II centered his attention in the buidling projects that were taking place all over the Empire, from new palaces to new universities and shipyards, and in the foreign policy, de Cisneros was free to govern Hispania as he pleased. However, the king and his chancellor soon came to grips. After the reorganization of the Hispanic church as an autonomous branch of the Catholic church, de Cisneros waited for his nomination as its head. However, time went on and nothing of that sort happened. Thus, in March 1572, when Bartolomé Carranza de Miranda, Archbishop of Toledo died, the king replaced him with Gaspar de Quiroga . De Cisneros felt insulted by this move, and even more when Eduardo II secured the Cardinalship for de Quiroga in 1574,
De Quiroga and de Cisneros despised each other for the last twenty years. The Edicto de Sevilla (1541) had 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, led by de Quiroga, 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, persuaded by de Cisneros, put the measures on hold in exchange for 80,000 ducats that the Muslims gave him and another 80,000 from the Jews. Then Eduardo II 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.
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 1555 to 1570 this number rose to ten thousand Jews. Then, in 1558, Fernando de Valdés y Salas, the bishop of Seville and a protegée of de Quiroga, began to launch anti-Muslim 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 de Cisneros, aware of the Jewish importance to the royal finances, sided with them and told de Valdés to stop his persecution of the Jews. However, he kept preaching violence against the Muslims as he abused his power in the religious judiciary in spite of de Cisneros' instructions. De Valdés' belief that he was doing the right thing by persecuting the Muslims was shared by his followers, who anxiously waited for the opportunity to attack and raid their quarters. This eventually led to the Riots of March 1563, when the mob broke out and killed Muslims and plundered their houses. Soon, the riots had already spread to nearby cities and around 4,000 Muslims were murdered in Andalucia, tand those that weren't killed were terrified into converting in an attempt to not be murdered as well. The riots 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 5,000 of them converted rather than face death. There were als riots in Barcelona, where several Jewish houses were pillaged in July by the angry mob, around 25 Jews were murdered and 300 were forced to convert. Eduardo II and de Cisneros took these events very badly, as it was an attack against their authority. As punishment, several of the leaders attackers were imprisoned and one of them hanged, but the royal anger did not end there; eventually 300 of the attackers were arrested and jailed. The king was not to forget de Valdés' actions and, when Archbishop Carranza died in 1572, Eduardo II not only ignored de Valdés as the obvious replacement for the late archbishop, but made de Valdés aware of the fact. Many point out that the old bishop died a few months later heartbroken for this treatment.
However, Eduardo II turned a blind eye when de Cisneros acted against the alumbrados (2). This heretic group had been persecuted and repressed in the second half of the XVI century but, in spite of the persecution, some groups went underground and survived; furthermore, some alumbrados managed to evade the persecution and a few of them managed to survive in Seville until the 1570s, when they finally left Castille for either Aragon or France. From 1574, Inquisitorial courts were established throughout Castille (and in 1576 in Navarre) and Eduardo II made pains to ensure they were legal and comtrolled by the Crown. Then de Cisneros fixed his attention in the Lutheran groups of Valladolid and Seville. They 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. 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. Most cases that ended facing a Inquisitorial court were anti-Catholic crimes or against radical Reformers who openly refused to accept the Catholic dogma. Even these men avoided execution, however, as the King was always keen to prevent undue brutality. De Cisneros, on his part, was happy "seeing the heretics fled, thus cleaning Castille from their pestilence". When some emboldened Catholics attacked outspoken Reformers, he reacted slowly and with a constant and vigilant tolerance until 1575, when the violence also spread against the large Jewish community of Castille. Soon armed parties were deployed to protect the Jweish quarters and, in some extreme cases, a few rioters were killed in the resulting street confrontations.
When some of the Reformers fled to Aragon, de Cisneros attempted to arrest them there, but the local Parliaments denied him any authority over the Aragonese subjects and blocked his attempts with their old traditions and uses. If there were going to be any 'geretic' tried, it would be following the Aragonese law. Thus, from 1560 to 1570 there were several trials of the so-called "aganaus" (3) until the Cortes of Aragon discarded taking any measures against them as "none of their opinions was explicitly heretical.” Even if de Cisneros was victorious and destroyed the Lutheran group in Seville, he resented the Aragonese blockade and swore to himself that he would "iluminate the Parliaments to make them see how wrong they were". The Hispanic Cardinal was clearly worried by the spread of Reformist ideas in Aragon, reinforced in the 1520s by the arrival of French Reformist groups that settled in Tortosa, Barcelona, Valencia and the Balearic Islands. However, in spire of de Cisneros' fears, Reformism in Aragon was not the product of the same historical process that took place in Europe by that time, but the consequence of subsequent reforms or "spiritual awakenings'' that began in the 1540s, as we have already seen in Chapter 26. They were the fruit of the so-called free churches, which assume the mission of embodying the Reformation in Catalonia, both both with local priests and the generous collaboration of prominent foreign pastors. In Aragon, the Reformist ideas would enter through the trade routes that link that kingdom to Navarre, to Castile and to the other countries of the Aragonese Crown. Nevertheless, de Cisneros' presssure would lead to the 'Barcelona trials of 1570', when 26 "Aganaus" were tried in that city on September 10, 1570 after being accused of public offenses to Catholic religion and were heavily fined as a punishment.
However, it was in Seville where de Cisneros made his great show of power. There was a Reformist group made up of about 500 people, which included Cipriano de Valera, Casiodoro de Reina (4), Juan Pérez de Pineda and Antonio del Corro who fled before being discovered. Some of them went to Aragon and most of them fled abroad, becoming very important figures in the European Protestant Reformation. Initially, 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 when they tried to fled to France through Navarre. De Valera would arrive to England around the late 1570s and, eventually, became Professor of Theology of the Magdalene College, Cambridge (5), 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. Henry Kamen states that the Castilian Protestants were finished by the late 1580s, when after the Valladolid and Seville autos-da-fé of 1569-1572, the "autochthonous Protestantism was practically extinct in Spain" as the Inquisition burnt at the "thousands of Castilians whowere trapped 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 Hispanic reformers emigrated abroad, either to Aragon, the Americas or Europe. De Cisneros would attempt, in several ocassions, to extend his authority to the New World and to Aragon. In both cases, the local authorities blocked his attempts and only acted against some conspicuous heretics after much pressure exerted upon them. By then, the heretic in question had either fled to Europe or went underground. This clashes with the Aragonese Parliaments would cause a breach between de Cisneros and those councils, and would, from time to time, force Eduardo to intervene to persuade the Aragonese to collaborate with the angered Chancellor
Meanwhile, one of the darkest chapters of Hispanic history was shamefully written. Still persecuted and hated by his Christian neighbours, the Muslims of the south of Hispania had to endure many hardships that, eventually, led to the Emigration Crisis of 1568-1571, when a significant portion of the Muslim population fled from the former Kingdom of Granada. In the next three years, 30,000 Muslims, or roughly a quarter of Granada's Muslim population, crossed to North Africa. The emigration caused a big fall in population, which took decades to offset and caused the economy to collapse, as many fields laid uncultivated. By 1576 the Hispanic 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 1590, 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.
-1- TTL Edict is a mixture of the measures applied against the Spanish Jews in OTL 1412 and 1480.
-2- 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.
-3- ITTL an Old Catalan word for Protestant. It comes from the Sanscrit word agnau—in the fire
-4-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.
-5- Perhaps the most well-know Protestant heretic in OTL 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.
I'm trying to find a way to solve the religious question in a more peaceful and friendlier way that IOTL but, sometimes, history repeats itself...