The Cambridge Modern History. R. Nisbet Bain
and Philip should rule jointly, and divide the revenues and patronage. In the following spring Philip was obliged by stress of weather to land at Corunna. It had been his intention to sail round to Seville and collect his partisans, since neither party meant to abide by the agreement. Ferdinand hastened to meet his son-in-law; but Philip evaded an interview, for every day more grandees joined him, and he would soon be able to dictate his own terms. When the meeting actually took place (June), Ferdinand’s following was reduced to three or four old friends, and he was compelled to declare that, owing to Juana’s infirmity, her interference would be disastrous to the kingdom. In consideration of a pension he gave up the regency, and sulkily withdrew into Aragon with his young wife, and otherwise unaccompanied, “holding it unworthy to exercise delegated powers in realms over which he had been absolute King.” He was welcomed by the Aragonese, who rejoiced to have shaken off the union with the preponderating power of Castile. Shortly afterwards he sailed for Naples, where the conduct of Gonzalo de Cdrdova had excited his suspicions.
In July Philip met the Castilian Cortes at Valladolid. Aided by Ximenes, he attempted to have his wife declared incapable of governing; but he was successfully opposed by a party led by the Admiral of Castile. Juana was acknowledged as Queen in her own right, Philip as King by right of marriage, and their infant son Charles as heir to the throne. Acting in his wife’s name, Philip hereupon conferred the offices of State and wardenships of the royal castles on members of his own party. The malcontents began to draw together to liberate the Queen, whom they believed to be sane and a prisoner in the hands of her husband. The threatened rebellion was, however, for the moment arrested, and Philip was called away northward to watch the frontier. He evaded the danger of invasion by means of a treaty with the French King, from which Ferdinand was excluded. In September, 1506, Philip died suddenly at Burgos leaving Spain in a ferment of rival factions. Within Castile no authority existed; for Juana refused to act. The grandees nominated Ximenes with six members of the Council to carry on the regency until the guardianship of the infant heir to the throne should be decided. They summoned the Cortes; but their summons was disregarded as unconstitutional. Ferdinand had already reached Italy, when the news overtook him. He sent a commission to Ximenes to carry on the government during his absence. On his return to Spain (July, 1507) he crushed the party, headed by Juan Manuel, which supported the claim of Maximilian to act as regent for his daughter-in-law and grandson. Ferdinand’s position was a strong one, for the event foreseen in Isabel’s will had come to pass: Juana, wandering from village to village with the weird procession that bore her husband’s corpse, stubbornly refused to sign papers of State. Most of the Flemish party fled; then Burgos and Jaen, held for a time in Maximilian’s interest, submitted, and “calm fell upon Castile”; for the majority welcomed the prospect of speedy repression of the disorder which had broken out during Ferdinand’s absence. After a meeting with Juana, who refused to lend herself to his schemes by marrying Henry of England, he gave out that she had resigned the government to him, and thus remained undisputed master of the kingdom. Ferdinand showed no wish to avenge himself upon those who had driven him with ignominy from the kingdom, but bore himself ruthlessly towards those who now questioned his authority. Don Juan Manuel had fled. The Duke of Nagera refused to deliver up his fortresses; but, when an army was sent against him, he submitted, and his lands and titles were given to his eldest son. At Cdrdova the Marquis of Priego revolted. Ferdinand called out all Andalucia to crush him. He threw himself on the King’s mercy, but was condemned to death. The interest of the Great Captain, his kinsman, availed only to obtain a commutation of his sentence to confiscation, fine and banishment.
Although the suspicions against him were probably groundless, the Great Captain felt the weight of Ferdinand’s jealousy. They had returned from Italy together, and Ferdinand had shown him all deference and had promised him the Grand Mastership of Santiago. But the promise was never fulfilled; he was treated with marked coolness, and withdrew to his estates near Loja, where he ended his days in haughty and magnificent retirement. Once only-after the battle of Ravenna (1512), when it was believed that he alone could save Spain’s possessions in Italy, he received a commission to enlist troops. Thousands had already joined his banner, when the danger passed away, and Ferdinand, alarmed and jealous, withdrew his commission.
The Barbary pirates not only rendered the sea unsafe, but acting in concert with the Moriscos, made frequent descents upon the Spanish coast, spreading terror and devastation far inland. In 1505, at the instigation of Ximenes, Mers-el-Kebir, one of their strongholds, had been captured. The disturbed condition of Spain made it impossible immediately to follow up this success, but Ximenes had not lost sight of his policy of African conquest. A war against the Infidel always stirred the crusading spirit of the Spaniards, and Ferdinand saw in it a way of turning public attention from late events. In 1508 a small expedition under Pedro Navarro captured Penon de la Gomera. In the following year a larger one was prepared. Ximenes lent money out of the vast revenues of his see, and himself accompanied the army of 14,000 men to Oran (May, 1509). The city was captured, and many Christian captives were set free; but the glory of the victory was stained by a brutal massacre of unarmed inhabitants. Within a month Ximenes was back in Spain. He had quarrelled with Pedro Navarro, the general in command of the expedition, and was moreover alarmed by reports that Ferdinand was plotting to deprive him of his archbishopric in favour of his illegitimate son, the Archbishop of Saragossa. Pedro Navarro remained behind, and in a few months effected a series of brilliant conquests. Bugia fell after a siege; Algiers and Tlemcen surrendered; Tripolis was stormed. Grown overbold, Navarro fell into an ambuscade among the sandhills of the waterless island of Gelves; the greater part of his army perished; and the tide of Spanish conquest in Africa was stayed for a time (August, 1510).
The recovery of Roussillon and Cerdagne gave Ferdinand command of the eastern passes of the Pyrenees; but Spanish unity was still incomplete, while the kingdom of Navarre lying astride-of the western end of the range held the keys of Spain. Torn by the continual wars of her two great factions, the Beaumonts and Grammonts, and crushed by the neighbourhood of more powerful States, Navarre could not hope to preserve her independence. She was, moreover, ruled by a feeble dynasty that had not taken root in the soil. Navarre had belonged to Ferdinand’s father in right of his first wife, but had passed by right of marriage to her great-grandson Fra^ois Phebus Count of Foix, and, later, to his sister Catherine. Ferdinand sought to secure the prize by marrying his son to Catherine. The scheme was frustrated by her mother Madeleine, sister of Louis XII; and Catherine married Jean d’Albret, a Gascon nobleman whose large estates lay on the border of Lower Navarre. Nevertheless Ferdinand found means of frequently interfering in the affairs of his neighbours. He protected the Beaumont faction and the dynasty against King Louis, who supported the claims of a younger branch of the House of Foix, represented first by the Viscount of Narbonne, and later by Gaston Phebus, brother of Ferdinand’s second wife.
In 1511 Pope Julius II, the Emperor, the Venetians, Ferdinand, and Henry VIII of England formed the Holy League for the purpose of crushing France. Bent on his scheme of recovering Guyenne Henry sent an army to Guipuzcoa to cooperate with the Spaniards (1512). Ferdinand’s opportunity had now come. He demanded a free passage for his troops through Navarre, and the surrender of fortresses as a guarantee of neutrality. Jean d’Albr’et tried to evade compliance by allying himself with the French. Ferdinand retaliated by a manifesto declaiming against his faithlessness and ingratitude, and by ordering the Duke of Alva to invade Navarre (July, 1512). Five days later the Spaniards, aided by the Beaumontais, encamped before Pamplona, and Jean d’Albret fled to seek help from the French army encamped near Bayonne. Pamplona surrendered on receiving guarantees of its liberties, which it held dearer than its foreign dynasty.
Failing to get help from the French, Jean d’Albret, though his capital was already in the enemy’s hands, attempted negotiation, professing his readiness to accept any terms that might be dictated. Ferdinand, however, insisted on his claim to hold Navarre until he should complete his holy enterprise against France. Most of the Navarrese towns and fortresses now surrendered; Tudela was besieged by the Aragonese under the Archbishop of Saragossa. Early in August Ferdinand renewed his promise to give up the kingdom at the end of the war. His messenger was seized and imprisoned, and on the 21st of the month he published at Burgos the bull Pater ille coelestis, excommunicating all who resisted the Holy League, and declaring their lands and honours forfeited to those who should seize them. Although Jean d’Albret and Catherine were not named, the bull specially