The Hollow Crown: A History of Hispania from 1295 to 1490

13. Two kingdoms, one crown (1460-1476)

By 1460 Pedro II felt strong enough to retaliate against those who had defied him. He was planning to undo all the reforms that had been imposed upon him and, again, he began to muster his forces to strike against his enemies. However, an unexpected bout of the Black Death killed him un August of that year. leaving his son Enrique (1444-1474) as heir.

Enrique III, who was fifteen years then, proved to be a quite resorceful king, although a bit too machiavelic and too sure about his capabilities. He began by making peace with his subjects, ratifying the changes and using his strenght and resources to improve the country. However, for the next ten years he had to deal with the rebellions León, which led to open warfare from 1460 to 1470. By that time, Enrique III had crushed the resistance and, with most of his leaderse dead, Leon had to surrender. From then on, Enrique stiled himself "King of Castille and Leon".

The king had secured his western borders by marrying Juana of Portugal and by meeting the Portuguese king, Afonso V; and supported the pretender to the Aragonese Crown, the future Pedro V, during the Aragonese civil war (1463-1471). Thus, everything seemed to be falling slowly into place, but for a problem: he lacked any male heir. To make it worse, his two brothers, Alfonso and Juan, had only daughters. Thus, when Enrique III named Isabel, the daughter of his brother Alfonso, his younger brother, Juan, and her daughter, Maria, felt slighted and began to conspire, using the fears of the nobility about the regal uses of trying to ger rid of the Parliament, somethuing that their pretender was not going to do (or at least they said so). As years went on and no male heir came, the tension in the kingdom gew and grew until the king died on 9 May 1474. After his death, Isabel was officially proclaimed heiress to the throne of Castile and created Princess of Asturias. Enrique III, during his lifetime, had the nobles of Castile and Leon swearing allegiance to her and promise that they would support her as monarch. However, when he died, some noblemen recognized Isabel as monarch, while others recognized her cousin Maria as the real queen, thus initiating the War of the Castilian Succession (1476-1477).

Isabel, who embodied the royal status of the annointed queen and the legality of the last will of Enrique III, had the support of King Afonso V of Portugal, and also the help of some of the high Castilian nobility: the Archbishop of Toledo, Alfonso Carrillo de Acuña; the mighty Marquis of Villena, Diego López Pacheco; the Estúñiga family. On the other hand, María was supported by Pedro VI of Aragon, who became her husband, and by most of the Castilian nobility and clergy: the powerful Mendoza family; the Duke of Medina Sidonia, Enrique Pérez de Guzmán. A Portuguese army entered Castile under the command of Afonso V on May 1476, and advanced to Plasencia, where Isabel was proclaimed queen of Castile and were married. From Plasencia, they marched to Burgos. There Afonso hoped to be able to unite with any troops sent by his ally, Louis XI of France. However, Louis backed from joining him, as he had a truce with Pedro VI and he was busy settling accounts with Burgundy.

Even worse, Afonso found fewer supporters in Castile than he expected, and changed his plans, preferring to instead consolidate his control in the area closest to Portugal. Pedro VI wasted little time concentrating his battle-hardened army in Tordesillas, and on July 15 marched against Afonso, who tried to avoid direct combat. Pedro, lacking the necessary resources for a siege, was forced to return to Tordesillas. Afonso V, considering its options, decided to withdraw to Zamora. This lack of aggressiveness debilitated his standing and Isabel's in Castile, and his supporters began to change sides. Supporters of Maria counter-attacked by gaining control of the lands of a significant portion of lands of the Marquisate of Villena, who was taken prisoner by Pedro VI and later on hanged by command of Maria, who also forfeited his lands. On December 4, Zamora rebelled against King Afonso, who was forced to flee to Toro, and, in January 1476, Burgos surrendered to Isabel.

In February 1476, the reinforced Portuguese army, left its base in Toro and marched against Pedro VI in Zamora. However, the Castilian winter hit hard the invading army, that was slowed down and then caugh by surprise by the Aragonese near of Alba de Tormes. After three hours of fighting under the cover of rain and nightfall, Afonso V withdrew to Portgual with part of his troops. The rest of his forces, along with his son Joao, perished on the battlefield.

The war was over and María was queen of Castille.
 
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So why did the Castilian Nobles betrayed their oaths to the King? Are they getting some kind of benefits from supporting Isabel instead of Maria?
 
My fault. I forgot to write that part. Basically, there were those who prefered the more "parlamentarian way" of the Aragonese crown (Isabel side) and those who were simply loyalist and joined Maria because he was the annointed heir.
 
The loss of the "Perfect prince" might means for Portugal a stronger aristocracy, a lesser degree of absolutism and perhaps more important Cortes.
 
14. The dawn of a new age (1476-1490)

With Maria as queen of Castille, the power behind the trone was her husband, Pedro V of Aragon, something that was resented by the Castillian nobility. However, both María and Pedro secured ttheir place principally by dividing and undermining the power of the nobility. There were some rebellions, though. The first one, in 1477, collapsed without any fighthing, but in 1479 another rebellion, led by Diego López Pacheco y Portocarrero (1447 - 1490), marquis of Villena and duke of Escalona, was more difficult to put down as it was supported by Portuguesde troops. Once the rebels were defeated, Maria showed remarkable clemency to the surviving rebels. A third attempt, in 1481, would end up with the beheading of the main rebel leaders. In 1490, Maria had the marquis of Villena executed. However, he spared his son and heir.

Maria and Pedro VI were resented by the country for the introduction of ruthlessly efficient mechanisms of taxation. However, the stability and order that they borught to the kingdom made up for the dissent caused. To strengthen her position Maria subsidised shipbuilding, so strengthening the navy and improving trading opportunities. She concluded the Treaty of Medina del Campo (1489) with Henry VII of England (1457-1409), by which his second male son, Jaime, Duke of Girona, was married to Mary Tudor and his daughter Catherine of Aragon was married to Henry's heir, Arthur. The two Spanish monarchs also concluded the Treaty of Perpetual Peace with Portugal, which betrothed his daughter Isabel to to Alfonso, Prince of Portugal. They also formed an alliance with Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I (1493–1519).

Thus, by 1490, the Spanish Peninsula was on the verge of a new era.
 
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Well, actually, I have one (or two additional chapters), to show how the rest of Europe is going on at this time, so this may not be the last chapter yet.

About a trilogy... indeed. If I maange to achieve what I want to do, perhaps even longer than that ;)
 
15. Europe (1295-1390)

In this period of time, the first stage of the Hundred Years War had seen a string of English victories over the French. After the chaos brought by Edward II, his son Edward III had managed not only to bring back order and stability to his kigdom, but also to make it strong enough to defy France with his bid for the French crown. The issue was embroilled when king Phillip IV of France began a personal vendetta against his half-brother, Louis, count of Évreux. Persuaded that her stepmother, Marie of Brabant, had poisoned his older brother Louis and tried to kill him to eliminate successively the sons of Isabella, the first wife of Phillip III of France, to ease the path of her own children to the throne. In that he showed the same skill that he used to fool Edward II of England and to cause the fall of the Templar Order, but with less success, and, eventually, he planned to murder his half-brother. Only his death stopped his plans.

However, this vendetta was to be taken by Phillip VI, who wanted to secure his throne after the death of Charles IV without a male heir in 1328, and later on by his son Jean II, who was the one who actually turned the vendetta into an open war with his actions. It all began with the murder of Phillip, count of Longeville, the younger brother of Charles II of Navarre, in 1358. This murder made Navarra to join hands with Edward III against Jean II. But the revenge was not over: in 1358, he murdered the other brother of Charles II, Louis, count of Beaumont-le-Roger. Thus, when Jean II was defeated at Poitiers and captured by Denis de Morbecque, a French exile who fought for England, when the king was led to the tent of the Black Prince, he met there Charles II. A brief fight ensued and Charles killed Jean (According to the chronicles of the time, this action was so awful in God's eyes that Charles was later on punished with his own horrific death). That opened a chaotic stage of the Hundred Years War that, eventually, was to see the Valois house replaced by a junior line, the Valois-Berry, with Jean de Berry becoming Jean III of France, who was able to turn the tide of the war to his advantage.

In the German Empire, Charles IV was elected as King of the Romans in 1346 and centered his efforts in creating a base of power that ensure the election of his son as the next heir, something that, eventually, was to led to a civil war and the fall of the Luxembourg dinasty in the 15th century.
 
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16. Europe (1390-1490)

In spite of the chaos that the death of Jean II unleashed over France, with the civil war for the throne, that put Armagnacs against Burgundians, as the former helped Jean de Berry and the latter aiming at winning the crown for themselves. Jean de Berry (1340 - 1416) became king in 1362 after the death of Charles V, from a side-effect of an attempted poisoning in 1359 and became involved in the fight between Philip the Bold and Louis d'Orleans, who soon began to conspire openly against the king. Thus, while the Treaty of Brétigny stopped the war with England, it caused an internal strife that Louis used to claim the crown from himself, thus beginning the French civil war (1366-1370). Initially, Louis was succesful, defeating Jean III and forcing him to flee. He was crowned as Louis XI in 1368, but he was defeated and forced to flee to England in 1370. The next year the French began their successful campaign against the English, that would help them to recover Poitou, Lemoges, Perigord, Armagnac and the Rouergue by 1375. By 1380, the English only held Calais.

Richard II of England kept the peace, but, after his deposition by Henry IV, it was a question of time until the war started again, something that took place in 1415 with his son, Henry V, that brought havoc over France. The defeat of Agincourt (1415) deeply affected Jean III, who died on the next year. His second son, Jean IV (b 1363– d 1434), had to face not only Henry V, but also the return of the d'Orleans, with Charles, son of Louis, who stilled himself Charles VI. Once he was killed during the siege of Meaux (1422) his claim passed to Jean d'Orléans, Count of Angoulême and of Périgord; the death of Henry V, however, changed the course of the war and, by 1453, the English had been expelled from France but for Calais.

Henri II (b 1392- d 1474), the heir of Jean IV, finished the Hundred Years War, but that was his only success. Weak and feble, he was the toy of the big noble houses and his own family. His long life became a nightmare after the end of the waras it saw the recovery of power by the nobility and the complete powerlessness of the King, that was only to be restored by her grand daughter, Marie I (b 1441- d 1494), that had to win a civil war (1474-1477) to keep the crown and then to crush the powerful nobility, reorganized administration and prepared France to become the great colonial power that was to be in the next century.

England, after the Hundred Years War, was engulfed by a crisis that led to another war, the War of the Roses, that saw the Lancaster dinasty annhilated and replaced by the house of York after a short but bloody conflict that lasted from 1460 to 1464. Richard III (1411 – 1465) and his elder son, Edward IV (1442-1493), were tasked with healing the country from the damaged inflicted by this two wars, thus settling the path to become one of the great powers of the 17th, century.

In Germany, the reforms introduced by Karl IV ended up in a three-sided war that lasted from 1401 to 1419. The Luxembourg house was pitted against the Habsburgs and the Wittelsbachs and ended with the victory of Albrecht II von Habsburg and the defeat of the other two houses. He and his son Friederich III ruled as absolute masters, fully enjoying the situation of chaos that the war had left in the Empire. Friederich's taste for intrigue and his intense diplomatic activity helped him to subdue or eliminate all the possible claimants or rivals and to ensure his complete dominion of the Empire. This power was to be fully enjoyed by his son, Maximilian I (1459 – 1519), but his intervention in Italy was to prove a fatal mistake.
 
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