Warrior Queens

by Antonia Fraser

  It is true that Isabella deferred to her husband publicly, almost ostentatiously, on all military matters in her official guise of Only-a-Weak-Woman: ‘May your lordship pardon me for speaking of things which I do not understand’, she began one intervention. At the same time, she was not above employing the useful Shame Syndrome when necessary to secure her own way. During the reconquest of Granada, some younger nobles were trying to persuade Ferdinand to retreat, against Isabella’s advice. Isabella succeeded in gaining the day: ‘The grandees, mortified at being suspended in zeal for the holy war by a woman, eagerly collected their forces.’19

  Over the organization of supplies, and above all in the founding of the first military hospital in Europe, the Queen had less need of these tricks and ploys, since supply, possibly, and nursing, certainly, were of course traditional female concerns. Isabella has been described as ‘a great general but an even greater quartermaster-general’.20 Pioneers in thousands were recruited by the Queen (as Bernaldez attests) to build roads for the passage of the guns, while it was the King who concentrated on their disposal once they arrived. It was Isabella at the beginning of the Reconquista who engaged Don Francisco Ramirez, known as El Artillero; he saw to it that the Castilian army was equipped with expert smiths and gunners. She approved the sending for seasoned troops in the shape of Swiss mercenaries, a very practical step. As for nursing, the equipment of ‘The Queen’s Hospital’, six vast tents trundling from siege to siege equipped with beds and medicines and bandages, anticipated Napoleon’s ambulances by more than two hundred years.

  Not that the soul was ignored in all this concern to heal the body. One notes that chaplains were an essential part of Isabella’s hospital force, just as Mass was always celebrated in the centre of the camp with prayers for victory, the altar plate being provided by the Chapel Royal. Even where the mercenary Swiss were concerned, Isabella convinced herself that they were good people who only ‘took part in wars that they believe just’.21

  From the first in the Civil War, the Queen did not spare herself. She rode hundreds of miles, often across the bleak Castilian mountain lands, pleading for support, invoking loyalty. Her early history of miscarriages must be attributed to these ordeals; this was especially unfortunate since the birth of a son would as ever in the case of a queen regnant have bolstered up her cause (as the birth of the future Henry II had improved the chances of the Empress Maud). In any case a daughter could not succeed in Aragon. It was not until 1476 that Isabella’s only son, Prince John, was born.

  One of these miscarriages occurred in the summer of 1475 after the Queen herself had taken command at Toledo, riding among her men dressed in full armour, Ferdinand being absent. Her presence – whether or not because she was careful to end each exhortation with a prayer invoking ‘the aid of Thine arm’ – was said to inspire exceptional confidence. But the welcome respite which the Queen’s illness gave to her enemy Alfonso of Portugal illustrates all too neatly the unenviable fate of the Warrior Queen as would-be mother (a complication to which the story of Louise of Prussia will also bear testimony).

  The encouraging victory by which the Castilian troops recaptured the northern castle of Burgos in January 1476 was celebrated in the presence of the Queen. The Castilians now needed to repossess Toro and Zamora, two fortresses on the River Douro which controlled the route into their country from Portugal. Ferdinand however failed to take Zamora and the Portuguese retreated to Toro, an apparently unassailable stronghold. Since Isabella’s new baby was to be born in June, she must once more have been pregnant. Nevertheless it is said that Isabella herself gave the courageous advice to pursue them, into what might well have proved a Portuguese trap. When Toro was taken, boldness paid results: Zamora itself fell shortly afterwards. Then the baby was born and it was a boy.

  The child, symbol of hope, was displayed to his people in the presence of his mother, who abandoned her preferred simplicity for such an important public occasion: ‘The Queen went capering on a white palfrey in a very richly gilt saddle and a very rich harness of gold and silver and she for her dress [wore] … brocade with many pearls of different kinds.’22 Nor was the hope disappointed. The birth of the boy, named John after both his grandfathers, kings of Aragon and Castile respectively, did indeed signal the decline of the Portuguese cause; Juana, the loser, ended by being locked up in a nunnery, abandoned by the rapacious King Alfonso. When Ferdinand succeeded in his turn to the throne of Aragon in 1479, the stage was set for that momentous crusade, the reconquest of the last Moorish kingdom of Spain.

  Ferdinand and Isabella gave their own version of the motives behind the Reconquista: it was not undertaken in order to ‘lay up treasure’, for they could have stayed at home ‘with far less peril, travail and expense’. But ‘the desire which we have to serve God and our zeal for the holy Catholic faith has induced us to set aside our own interests and ignore the continual hardships and dangers to which this cause commits us’.23

  It is true that at one level this explanation (given incidentally to the Pope) is evidently too simple. In the words of J. H. Elliott, ‘The Reconquista was not one but many things. It was at once a crusade against the infidel, a succession of military expeditions in search of plunder, and a popular migration.’ This southwards migration suited the Queen of Castile, whereas the King of Aragon for obvious geographical reasons remained preoccupied with his northern French neighbour. Then there was the question of the restless Castilian nobles: as Queen Tamara had discovered in Georgia, repeated conflicts against foreign neighbours constituted one good way of occupying them and maintaining perforce their loyalty to the crown.24

  But given the millenarian atmosphere of fifteenth-century Europe following the capture of Constantinople in 1453, ANd given the devout character of Isabella herself (Prescott called her ‘the soul of this war’), the statement of the ‘Catholic Kings’ should never be dismissed by a later age as in itself insincere. ‘It is very true that your war is a just one,’ wrote Isabella to Ferdinand of his French involvements, ‘but my war is not only a just one but a holy one.’25 She made much of the distinction.

  In 1482 the Christians captured Alhama, south-west of Granada, and from that date onwards there was a series of campaigns, as the Moors were stalked through their once proud kingdom by the predatory Spanish tigers. These were stirring days for Christians, particularly those who had long been held as prisoners of the Moors. When Ronda was recaptured, the filthy and emaciated prisoners who emerged from its dungeons were comforted by the Queen herself. The royal entry into recaptured Moclín was marked by a solemn Te Deum sung in the royal chapel; as the words were being intoned, those present heard faint underground echoes and it was gradually realized that the dungeons lay somewhere beneath the chapel. In a scene reminiscent of the prisoners’ emergence in Fidelio, the Christian captives, long incarcerated in darkness, were led forth.

  It was helpful however that the Moors were disunited by this date. A feud within the family of the aged Nasrid King Mulay Hassan meant that the realm itself was split. When Mulay Hassan’s son Boabdil was captured in April 1483, he thought it worth his while to bow as a secret vassal in order to combat his father, just as Ferdinand, in those negotiations at which he was expert, thought it worth his while to accept the notion of a two-year truce. Boabdil was a faltering ally at best – at the final siege of Granada in late 1491 it was once again Boabdil who would defy the Spaniards after various changes of side in between. But his vacillations, besides giving strength to his enemies, enraged his family. His father’s brother, the champion known as El Zagal (‘the Valiant’) preferred in his turn to surrender to the Christians after the fall of Baza in 1480, rather than to Boabdil.

  This is not however to denigrate the staunchness of the Spaniards. They were obliged to mountaineer as much as fight in stark and inhospitable country, at least in the early stages of the campaign. And if Boabdil was no great general, El Zagal on the contrary justified his name by inflicting a crushing defeat on the Christians i
n 1483.

  Isabella’s own efforts divided, like those of Queen Tamara, into her private strategic contributions and her public ‘Figurehead’ appearances. The latter included the ceremonial occasions, such as that at Seville, when the militia were reviewed in full battle array, with successive battalions lowering their standards as the Queen passed. Isabella was seated in a saddle-chair embossed in gold and silver, borne by a chestnut mule whose bridle was of crimson satin covered in gold embroidery. At this review Isabella formally raised her hat to her husband (which meant that her head was still covered by her coif) and the ‘kings’ bowed to each other thrice.

  But there are also numerous glimpses of her, splendidly serene and courageous before sieges: it was lucky for her, perhaps, in terms of public display of her person, that the Reconquista was predominantly a war of sieges. The latter created their own mythology by which the arrival of the Queen was said to spur on the Castilian troops, to the extent that victory, previously in doubt, became certain. Her visit to Málaga for example, in the summer of 1487, came as it turned out at the end of three months’ arduous siege: for on 18 August Málaga finally surrendered, a turning-point in the Reconquista, after which it was doubtful that the Moors could long preserve their kingdom. The arrival of the Spanish mascot – or rather Holy Figurehead – came to spell doom to the Moors. It was the arrival of Isabella before the walls of Baza late in 1488 which broke the gloomy news to the inhabitants (led by El Zagal) that the siege was to be prosecuted with renewed vigour.

  We hear of the Moors craning their necks over the walls of the city in order to catch a glimpse of the legendary Queen. They must have felt shock as well as curiosity. Certainly Isabella in her mail (‘No bad personification of chivalry’ in this attire, Prescott called her) constituted a very different feminine image to that of the bewitching Sultana Soraya, Boabdil’s mother. Although originally a Christian captive, Soraya had accepted the rich opportunities for intrigue and influence – but not for overt warfare – presented by the world of the royal harem. ‘Weep for it like a woman, since you have failed to defend it like a man’, Boabdil was told by the Sultana when he finally left Granada and turned back for one last melancholy look towards the lost Paradise.26 But the woman at whom the Moors gaped from the walls of Baza did not weep; on the contrary, she passed her whole army in review mounted on a spirited Andalusian horse with a flowing mane. The cry which sprang from the lips of her soldiers will come as no surprise to those who have followed the fortunes of Tamara, King of Kartli: ‘Castile, Castile, for our King Isabella!’27

  And so the Christian campaign moved forward inexorably to the final siege of the city of Granada late in 1491. For this siege that celebrated camp – as it was then – of Santa Fe, to which Columbus would repair, was specifically created. To the last Isabella maintained the traditionally double role of a Warrior Queen: on the one hand she continued to plot the final strategy to secure Granada with Ferdinand, and has sometimes been credited with the idea of encirclement which proved so successful. On the other hand she maintained her figurehead’s role: the chivalrous ‘Queen’s Skirmish’ took place when Isabella was spied aloft with her children, out to view the exotic palace of the Alhambra (curiosity was not all on the Moorish side). A javelin with an insulting message ‘for the Queen of Castile’ affixed to it had been hurled in the direction of her quarters; single combat between the Moorish champion Yarfe and the Christian Garcilaso de la Vega, which the Christian won, was held to settle the matter.

  Boabdil formally surrendered on 2 January 1492. Four days later, on the feast of the Epiphany, Ferdinand and Isabella entered the city of Granada in triumph. By this time – in a gesture which was both symbolic and practical – the principal mosque had been reconsecrated as a church; here Mass could be celebrated and thanks for the great victory could be given. After that the two ‘kings’ processed to the Alhambra and in the Mexuar or presence chamber in another symbolic gesture possessed themselves of the seats of the Moorish rulers of Granada. Soon the flag of St James, Christian patron of the crusade, would fly above the town; and the traditional cry of ‘Santiago! Santiago!’ would join the universal acclamation: ‘Granada, Granada, for the illustrious kings of Castile!’ An eyewitness termed it ‘the most distinguished and blessed day there has ever been in Spain’.28

  • • •

  The imperialist energies of the ‘Catholic kings’ (the Pope gave them the title following the Reconquista) were naturally released by the end of the military engagements which had preoccupied them for the last eighteen years. On the one hand Columbus was sponsored in his western venture. On the other hand Ferdinand began to look elsewhere in Europe; not only towards neighbouring Navarre, but to the south of Italy. Here he desired to establish the kingdom of Naples as an appurtenance to that of Aragon, much as Isabella had added Granada to Castile. In so doing, he introduced the influence of Spain into that mess of duchies, despotisms, cardinals and condottieri which constituted late-fifteenth-century Italy. One of the duchies was the Sforza duchy of Milan. When Ludovico Sforza invoked the aid of the French King to bolster up his doubtful claim to rule it, he did more than merely add to that general central Italian turmoil. For France – the House of Anjou – as well as Spain, had its pretensions towards the debatable kingdom of Naples.

  The story of Ludovico’s niece, Caterina Sforza, bold and tragic, both virago and victim, provides a melancholy footnote to these Spanish endeavours, which were ultimately successful and went towards establishing the vast Habsburg Empire, including Spain, Spanish America and Naples, which was ruled over by Isabella’s grandson Charles V.* In a sense the fortunes of Isabella the Catholic and Caterina Sforza are as much a counterpoint to each other as were those of Matilda of Tuscany and the Empress Maud. Unlike the latter pair, Isabella and Caterina were in effect contemporaries. But Caterina, subject throughout her life to convenient scorn on the ground of her sex by her political enemies, ended by being violated at the hands of her conqueror. Isabella, as has been noted, was not only a possible early candidate for canonization soon after her death but remained one.

  As with Matilda and the Empress Maud, it was religious purpose which was the apparent difference. To Isabella in August 1492 the Borgia Pope Alexander VI could write: ‘Your serenity, as greatly befits a monarch, from whom others must copy the example of virtuous living, desires to protect and defend the Catholic faith …’.30 This was not the language which the Pope felt inclined to use towards Caterina Sforza, who ruled Forlì and Imola, part of the territory stretching from Ravenna through the Romagna over which the Pope claimed overlordship. Caterina was on the contrary in one papal bull ‘the daughter of iniquity’ and in another communication ‘the daughter of perdition’. But it was not in fact the relative morality of the two ladies (far apart as that might be) which was at issue. The truth was more cynical, or perhaps one should say more political.

  Alexander VI (by birth from Valencia and thus a subject of Ferdinand) passionately needed the support of the ‘Catholic kings’ in his papal campaigns and intrigues: Spain was finally part of the Holy League including the Pope and the Emperor which would drive the French out of Naples and establish Ferdinand’s claim to southern Italy. On the other hand Alexander’s son, Cesare Borgia, needed those lands ruled over by Caterina on behalf of her young son in order to form a powerful central Italian bloc. The sexual freedom of choice which Caterina Sforza determinedly exercised gave useful ammunition to those opposed to her for quite different reasons; here was a Warrior Queen whose lustfulness could be denounced to good effect. For Isabella there was the Warrior Queen’s other potential reward of the halo.

  Caterina Sforza was born in 1462, the illegitimate daughter of Galeazza Maria Sforza, later Duke of Milan, and his mistress.31 She was brought up by her grandmother Bianca Visconti-Sforza. Her father was assassinated by the Viscontis in 1474, the year in which Isabella ascended the throne of Castile. Three years later, Caterina was married off by proxy to Girolamo Riario, nephew of the then Pop
e Sixtus IV.

  Caterina was well educated according to the humanist tradition, and even in youth was said to have been fascinated by the deeds of famous men and women. The Tomboy Syndrome is here seen at work. Unlike Isabella, Caterina is said to have excelled at boisterous athletic sports: she was obsessed by hunting and dogs – big dogs such as bloodhounds, setters and greyhounds. (And unlike Isabella, Caterina was beautiful.) Her earliest soldiering was in 1483 when she defended her husband’s territory of Forlì from the Venetian threat. From the first Caterina relished such martial activity as she had once relished hunting; she maintained an iron discipline, not always without the aid of cruel punishments. The death of the Pope, her husband’s uncle (and the fear of the decline in the Riario cause) found Caterina, riding at the gallop with a cry of ‘Duca, duca, Girolamo! Girolamo!’, to hold the fortress of Sant’ Angelo until it could be handed over to the legal successor of Sixtus. Significantly, Caterina, once inside the fortress, invoked the name of Galeazza Maria Sforza – the nearest strong male figure – to illustrate her defiance. She had as much brains as her father, she shouted to those who wished her to admit a plenipotentiary to negotiate.

  Caterina was seven months pregnant at the time and in her gold satin gown with a vast train, a huge velvet hat with long plumes, a contemporary wrote that ‘only her belt with the curved sword and bag of gold ducats hanging down from it was masculine’. He might have added: that and the free cursing towards the soldiers in which Caterina on that occasion and many others indulged.