William Hickling Prescott - The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic (Vol. 1-3)

On one occasion the duke of Medina Sidonia mustered an army of twenty thousand men against his antagonist; on another, no less than fifteen hundred houses of the Ponce faction were burnt to the ground in Seville. Such were the potent engines employed by these petty sovereigns in their conflicts with one another, and such the havoc which they brought on the fairest portion of the Peninsula. The husbandman, stripped of his harvest and driven from his fields, abandoned himself to idleness, or sought subsistence by plunder. A scarcity ensued in the years 1472 and 1473, in which the prices of the most necessary commodities rose to such an exorbitant height, as put them beyond the reach of any but the affluent. But it would be wearisome to go into all the loathsome details of wretchedness and crime brought on this unhappy country by an imbecile government and a disputed succession, and which are portrayed with lively fidelity in the chronicles, the letters, and the satires of the time. [12]

While Ferdinand's presence was more than ever necessary to support the drooping spirits of his party in Castile, he was unexpectedly summoned into Aragon to the assistance of his father. No sooner had Barcelona submitted to King John, as mentioned in a preceding chapter, [13] than the inhabitants of Roussillon and Cerdagne, which provinces, it will be remembered, were placed in the custody of France, as a guaranty for the king of Aragon's engagements, oppressed by the grievous exactions of their new rulers, determined to break the yoke, and to put themselves again under the protection of their ancient master, provided they could obtain his support. The opportunity was favorable. A large part of the garrisons in the principal cities had been withdrawn by Louis the Eleventh, to cover the frontier on the side of Burgundy and Brittany. John, therefore, gladly embraced the proposal, and on a concerted day a simultaneous insurrection took place throughout the provinces, when such of the French, in the principal towns, as had not the good fortune to escape into the citadels, were indiscriminately massacred. Of all the country, Salces, Collioure, and the castle of Perpignan alone remained in the hands of the French. John then threw himself into the last-named city with a small body of forces, and instantly set about the construction of works to protect the inhabitants against the fire of the French garrison in the castle, as well as from the army which might soon be expected to besiege them from without. [14]

Louis the Eleventh, deeply incensed at the defection of his new subjects, ordered the most formidable preparations for the siege of their capital. John's officers, alarmed at these preparations, besought him not to expose his person at his advanced age to the perils of a siege and of captivity. But the lion-hearted monarch saw the necessity of animating the spirits of the besieged by his own presence; and, assembling the inhabitants in one of the churches of the city, he exhorted them resolutely to stand to their defence, and made a solemn oath to abide the issue with them to the last.

Louis, in the mean while, had convoked the ban and arrière-ban of the contiguous French provinces, and mustered an array of chivalry and feudal militia amounting, according to the Spanish historians, to thirty thousand men. With these ample forces, his lieutenant-general, the duke of Savoy, closely invested Perpignan; and, as he was provided with a numerous train of battering artillery, instantly opened a heavy fire on the inhabitants. John, thus exposed to the double fire of the fortress and the besiegers, was in a very critical situation. Far from being disheartened, however, he was seen, armed cap-a-pie, on horseback from dawn till evening, rallying the spirits of his troops, and always present at the point of danger. He succeeded perfectly in communicating his own enthusiasm to the soldiers. The French garrison were defeated in several sorties, and their governor taken prisoner; while supplies were introduced into the city in the very face of the blockading army. [15]

Ferdinand, on receiving intelligence of his father's perilous situation, instantly resolved, by Isabella's advice, to march to his relief. Putting himself at the head of a body of Castilian horse, generously furnished him by the archbishop of Toledo and his friends, he passed into Aragon, where he was speedily joined by the principal nobility of the kingdom, and an army amounting in all to thirteen hundred lances and seven thousand infantry. With this corps he rapidly descended the Pyrenees, by the way of Mançanara, in the face of a driving tempest, which concealed him for some time from the view of the enemy. The latter, during their protracted operations, for nearly three months, had sustained a serious diminution of numbers in their repeated skirmishes with the besieged, and still more from an epidemic which broke out in their camp. They also began to suffer not a little from want of provisions. At this crisis, the apparition of this new army, thus unexpectedly descending on their rear, filled them with such consternation, that they raised the siege at once, setting fire to their tents, and retreating with such precipitation as to leave most of the sick and wounded a prey to the devouring element. John marched out, with colors flying and music playing, at the head of his little band, to greet his deliverers; and, after an affecting interview in the presence of the two armies, the father and son returned in triumph into Perpignan. [16]

The French army, reinforced by command of Louis, made a second ineffectual attempt (their own writers call it only a feint) upon the city; and the campaign was finally concluded by a treaty between the two monarchs, in which it was arranged, that the king of Aragon should disburse within the year the sum originally stipulated for the services rendered him by Louis in his late war with his Catalan subjects; and that, in case of failure, the provinces of Roussillon and Cerdagne should be permanently ceded to the French crown. The commanders of the fortified places in the contested territory, selected by one monarch from the nominations of the other, were excused during the interim from obedience to the mandates of either; at least so far as they might contravene their reciprocal engagements. [17]

There is little reason to believe that this singular compact was subscribed in good faith by either party. John, notwithstanding the temporary succor which he had received from Louis at the commencement of his difficulties with the Catalans, might justly complain of the infraction of his engagements, at a subsequent period of the war; when he not only withheld the stipulated aid, but indirectly gave every facility in his power to the invasion of the duke of Lorraine. Neither was the king of Aragon in a situation, had he been disposed, to make the requisite disbursements. Louis, on the other hand, as the event soon proved, had no other object in view but to gain time to reorganize his army, and to lull his adversary into security, while he took effectual measures for recovering the prize which had so unexpectedly eluded him.

During these occurrences Isabella's prospects were daily brightening in Castile. The duke of Guienne, the destined spouse of her rival Joanna, had died in France; but not until he had testified his contempt of his engagements with the Castilian princess by openly soliciting the hand of the heiress of Burgundy. [18] Subsequent negotiations for her marriage with two other princes had entirely failed. The doubts which hung over her birth, and which the public protestations of Henry and his queen, far from dispelling, served only to augment, by the necessity which they implied for such an extraordinary proceeding, were sufficient to deter any one from a connection which must involve the party in all the disasters of a civil war. [19]