Isabella: The Warrior Queen

by Kirstin Downey

  Princess Isabella was transferred to Enrique’s most secure base, the beautiful city of Segovia, whose solid walls, stout fortress, and perch on a rocky precipice created an air of impregnability. Girón’s death had freed her from her immediate fear, but it had also dealt a blow to the peace negotiations between Enrique and the nobles of Castile. Alfonso remained in the nobles’ custody and continued his claim to the throne, while animosities turned into hostility once again. Isabella sheltered in Segovia, accompanied by Queen Juana, Enrique’s wife, who by now was more her captor than her companion. Isabella’s existence had long been beside the point for the young queen, but now Isabella was an actual threat to her, her husband, and her daughter. It placed Isabella in a most precarious situation, and some courtiers feared the queen would have her killed to get rid of the problem.

  The tensions in Segovia spread all over the kingdom. Everyone was forced to pick sides between Enrique and the young claimant Alfonso, and sporadic violence turned to civil war. “All the realm was arms and blood: no nobleman or city remained neutral,” wrote chronicler Diego de Colmenares.23

  Chaos broke out everywhere, and criminals took advantage of the situation. A group of noblemen visiting Spain from Central Europe that year on pilgrimage had a safe-conduct from a Portuguese princess who had married the Holy Roman emperor but found it provided almost no protection. They reported being attacked by a polyglot gang of Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the far north, on the banks of the Cadagua River, and escaped only by bribing them; in Valmaseda, near Bilbao, they were threatened with murder and again had to pay in order to escape with their lives; and in Olmedo, armed robbers tried three times to force their way into the house where they were staying, pelting them with stones when they ventured outside, in hopes of provoking a response that would permit a more open assault. One member of their group disappeared and was believed to have been sold into slavery in Muslim lands; and in Molins de Rei, near Barcelona, they narrowly escaped execution at the hands of a local vigilante group that was hunting for a stranger who had committed a murder. The pilgrim group found life considerably more peaceful in Italy, where they went after they left the Iberian peninsula.

  The troops of Alfonso and Enrique met in an inconclusive clash of arms near Olmedo, in August 1467. Prince Alfonso, now thirteen and styling himself King Alfonso, fought alongside Alfonso Carrillo, the archbishop of Toledo, who wore his priestly robes over a coat of armor. King Enrique humiliated himself by fleeing the battlefield, hiding out in a nearby village until the fighting was over, but Alfonso fought valiantly. In the following days, some of Enrique’s supporters defected, and most shockingly for Enrique, the city of Segovia, his hometown and the place on which he had lavished his largesse and support, willingly opened its gates to Alfonso and his troops. Even Segovia had repudiated Enrique.

  As Alfonso came to the city, accompanied by the malevolent Juan Pacheco, who had helped foment the rebellion, the boy stopped to take revenge on his older half brother in a particularly unsettling way. Normally a good-natured child, Alfonso ordered the beasts in Enrique’s menagerie slaughtered. Only one animal was left alive—Enrique’s beloved mountain goat, because Juan Pacheco intervened to ask Alfonso to spare that one animal. Alfonso’s strange and disturbing brutality is so unusual that it provides another piece of evidence that Alfonso might indeed have endured some sort of humiliating mistreatment. Cruelty to animals is another common indicator of child sexual abuse; sociologists have found that there is a 90 percent correlation between domestic abuse and animal abuse.

  Alfonso’s arrival put Isabella on the spot. The young princess, who had been sequestered in Segovia with the queen, her hostile sister-in-law, faced a stark choice. She could continue to ally herself with her older brother, King Enrique, which would be a precarious position with the city now about to fall; or she could take her chances with the young upstart, her brother Alfonso. She made her decision. She cast her lot with Alfonso and switched her allegiance to him. Her teenage brother made a triumphant entry into the city, and Isabella rushed to join him. In the next months, she frequently traveled by his side, an enthusiastic supporter of his claim to the throne. They rode together to their first destination: home, to their mother’s side, and to safe refuge once again, in Arévalo.

  As Isabella and her entourage became part of Alfonso’s court, and as the prince engaged in an intense civil war against their half brother, another important figure in Isabella’s life made his first appearance. Most of the rebels surrounding the young people, of course, were adults, some of them very mature, even elderly. But this young man was only about fourteen years old, which made him a year older than Alfonso and a year younger than Isabella. His name was Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba. When the rebellion against Enrique started, Gonzalo’s family had promptly joined the rebels. His older brother was slated to inherit the family’s prosperous estate in Andalusia, and Gonzalo was being groomed for a life as a soldier. In 1467 Gonzalo was sent to Castile, under the care of a tutor, to become a page to Alfonso, with the idea that he would establish ties to the court that could secure his future life. Soon he grew close to both Alfonso and Isabella, who were similarly trying to find their footing in the adult world.

  Traveling from place to place, coping with the uncertainties of the campaign trail, Gonzalo and Isabella developed a deep friendship. The relationship appeared to be platonic—she was going to be a queen, at least through an eventual marriage, and he would always be the second son of a nobleman—but it was an era that romanticized courtly love, where a nobleman of sterling character would pledge undying affection for a noble gentlewoman. Early on, Gonzalo pledged himself to defend Isabella’s interests, and she soon began to do the same for him.

  In many ways, they were mirror images of each other. Gonzalo was idealistic, articulate, and poised, even as a teenager. An avid reader with a gift for language, he was a keen student of military history and viewed military prowess as a manifestation of religious devotion. He chose as his personal motto these words: “For your honor, give your life. For your God, give both honor and life.”24

  He spent hours each day perfecting his soldiering skills, preparing himself for battle, if and when it came. “I used to take a rapier and spend hours fencing in a room all alone where no one would see me,” he later recalled. “For not only did swordsmanship come as naturally to me as walking or running, but it seemed to me an activity perfectly suited to the natural movement of the body.”25

  Gonzalo was attractive and stylish. He was greatly loved by his older brother, who gave him the money to live an elegant life at court. He dressed beautifully, once described as wearing a “carmoisine velvet cloak, lined with sables, which cost 2,000 ducats,” on a day that was “not a major festival either.”26 He had been short as a boy but grew up strong and tall, an excellent horseman, skilled at games of martial arts. He was particularly gifted at a popular medieval game called canes: “He would come… now entering at a gallop, now turning in flight, still riding at top speed, bending over and snatching canes from the ground as he flashed past.… Again he could be seen, wheeling suddenly and galloping, shield up, so that though the others threw a thousand canes at him nothing or no one could harm him.”27

  Isabella came to look on Gonzalo with considerable favor, calling him the Prince of the Caballeros.28 Soon, as a result of his military victories, he became known to others as the Great Captain. Indeed, he was confident of a glorious future.

  His brother, who held the family purse strings, pleaded with him to restrain his extravagance, lest he be “ruined before a year.” But Gonzalo brushed him aside. “Surely you do not wish to abandon the great aspirations God has given me with such vain threats of future poverty,” he wrote to his brother. “But I am as certain that you will never fail to provide for your much-loved brother as I am that God, whose unfailing Providence always seems to favor those who have no goal but honor, will not see me go short of the confidence to achieve that which my stars foretell.”29
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  It was a time of soaring great expectations in the court of King Alfonso, and an exuberant time for the young people who were preparing themselves to govern, imagining themselves as rulers of a better world. Isabella was confident that Alfonso was intended for glory. She organized a great party for his fourteenth birthday, performing in a masque at the celebration, predicting in verse his greatness: that he would go forward in dispensing justice, prove victorious, and be generous to his subjects; that God would find him praiseworthy; and “that his dominions would extend as far as the eye could reach.”30 She said his riches would equal those of King Midas, and his military triumphs would rival those of Alexander the Great. And she foretold eternal fame for him, that his actions would win him both “earthly and celestial glory.”31

  Prince Alfonso returned Isabella’s love and affection and responded warmly to it. In Arévalo, while they were at their mother’s home, he made her a generous gift. He presented to her the jurisdictions and rents of Medina del Campo, one of the cities that had early pledged its support to him. This was a tribute to her and a highly satisfying grant because she had always loved going to the fair there and had enjoyed many happy childhood hours in its abundant and overflowing market stalls and shops.

  That was the high point for Alfonso and his allies, for afterward the political tide began to run against the prince-turned-king. When Gonzalo Chacón, the long-time family friend who now served as Isabella’s chief of staff, went to Medina del Campo to take possession of the city on her behalf, he encountered resistance to the transfer. Medina del Campo’s residents were shifting sides and returning to their support of King Enrique.

  Then bad tidings arrived from Toledo, which had been one of Alfonso’s strongest bases and where his ally, Carrillo, served as archbishop. An explosive set of events had erupted into warfare in the streets, in such a way that Alfonso’s good character would become a political handicap to him. The facts were murky and complicated, but they went to the heart of the religious dissensions that were pulling Castilians in different directions. Toledo had early declared its allegiance to Alfonso, but as the civil war wore on, the absence of an effective central government invited social disruptions.

  The most thorough account of the key events comes from the Israeli historian Benzion Netanyahu, who traced their origin to the summer of 1467, when church officials in Toledo hired a Jewish tax collector to seek payment of some debts owed to the church. A pro-Alfonso judge who was a converso, a man of Jewish descent who had converted to Christianity, opposed the appointment of this individual, saying he had not authorized it. Church officials responded by excommunicating the judge. Enraged and indignant, he gathered a band of heavily armed conversos and attacked a church during worship services, killing two of the officials who were involved in the dispute. Some longtime Christians began preparing for war against the conversos, fearing a broader assault by people who were only posing as Christians.

  The conversos, for their part, began to fear another anti-Semitic massacre like the one that had happened in 1391; they mobilized four thousand recruits, using the cathedral as a base, placing artillery at its gates and firing upon passersby and people they suspected might be preparing an attack. They maintained this position for almost a day, causing many injuries. But then Christian mobs organized a response, and they greatly outnumbered the converso group. Pitched battles broke out between roving bands of longtime Christians and conversos. Entire blocks of streets were put to the torch. More than 150 conversos were killed in the ensuing battles, and many more had their homes and possessions stolen. Others were protected from injury by their neighbors who were longtime Christians and believed they were being unfairly attacked.

  Tensions were so high that many people believed peace between the religions was no longer possible in Toledo. In the aftermath of the riots, a great many conversos left Toledo and moved elsewhere. Greedy Christian officials took advantage of the situation and passed regulations that stripped all conversos of government positions and allowed their assailants to keep stolen goods.

  Christian officials in Toledo wrote to Alfonso and asked him to confirm the new rules and pardon them for any wrongdoing done to the conversos. They reasoned that Alfonso was so weak and young that he would simply agree. Instead, however, he told them that the actions in Toledo had been “dishonorable and shameful” and that he would rather risk losing Toledo from his camp than condone what they had done. King Enrique struggled with the issue as well but ultimately agreed to the demands set by the Christians and authorized them to keep the goods taken from the converso families. Consequently, Toledo moved back to Enrique’s side in the civil war. This was a major blow to Alfonso, because of the strategic and historic importance of the city.

  Alfonso and Isabella had been enjoying a day at the fair at Medina del Campo when they learned what had happened in Toledo and how city officials had repudiated him. Alfonso decided to hurry to Toledo to lay siege to the city and reclaim it. Isabella rode with him southward toward the great walled city of Ávila, a way station on their path to Toledo.

  Then in Cardenosa, a small village almost within sight of Ávila, Alfonso fell ill. A chronicler recounted the events:

  With the king, Don Alfonso[,]… was Her Most Serene Highness, the Princess, Doña Isabella, his sister. And as they sat at dinner, among the other viands was brought a trout pastry, which he partook of willingly, though he ate only a little of it. And afterward he fell in a heavy sleep, most unusual for him, and went off to bed without speaking to anyone, and slept until the hour of terce [nine a.m.], a thing he never did.

  And those of his bedchamber came and felt him with their hands and there was no heat in him. As he did not waken they began to call loudly and yet he did not respond. And their shouts made such a din that the archbishop of Toledo and the Master of Santiago [Juan Pacheco, the Marquess of Villena] and My Lady the Princess came, but he answered them not. And they felt all his members but found no swellings.

  The physician, coming in haste, ordered him to be bled, but no blood came; his tongue was swollen, and the mouth seemed black, yet no sign of plague appeared. So, despairing of the life of the King, those who so greatly loved him, their wits forsaking them, began shouting out, begging Our Lord for his life. Some made vows to enter religion, some to go on distant pilgrimages. Others made different promises. And, no remedy availing, the innocent King gave his soul to Him who created it on July 5, 1468.… His death was believed to have been brought about by poisonous herbs because, though young in years, he seemed to his followers more likely to become a more vigorous governor than his brother.32

  It was unclear whether Alfonso had plague—in which case no one knew where it might strike next—or even worse, that he had been poisoned. Suddenly Isabella was alone and exposed, after having defied Enrique in the most dramatic way. Her grandmother by now was dead; her mother could provide no assistance. And Isabella was now dangerously high in the line of succession in a kingdom where the heirs to the throne frequently suffered untimely deaths. Certainly many were hoping she would soon be gone as well.

  FOUR

  ISABELLA FACES THE FUTURE ALONE

  Human life in the Middle Ages could end abruptly at any time—something Isabella had already repeatedly experienced. Her father’s death at forty-nine had left her nearly an orphan; her would-be husband Pedro Girón had contracted a throat ailment and was dead within hours.

  But the death of the young, robust, and healthy Alfonso, in the midst of galloping across the plain on a cross-country journey, left many people pondering dark questions of how and why it had happened. One day he had been in the prime of his life; just a few days later his companions had to decide how to transport his corpse. Alfonso’s body was taken to his hometown of Arévalo, for burial in the convent of San Francisco, whose priests had played a steadying role in the children’s lives during their youngest years.

  The details of his last hours were seared in the memory of those around him: Had he somehow ca
ught the plague, while others in the party were miraculously untouched? Had he eaten something unhealthy? And most alarming of all: Was there a chance he had been poisoned?

  The idea was not far-fetched. For thousands of years, toxic substances had been tools of succession in treacherous times; one early poison recipe was written on an Egyptian papyrus. The ancient Greeks, ancestors of the Spaniards, had long used poison to execute criminals or for suicide. Hercules was believed to have been killed by poison spread on the inside of his tunic, and one of the most famous accounts of self-inflicted death was that of Socrates, carried out by hemlock in 402 B.C. During Isabella’s time, people talking about death by poisoning often referred to the use of “herbs,” such as hemlock, but also including wolfsbane, foxglove, or wormwood. Chroniclers quickly speculated that Alfonso had died from the administration of what they called “hierbas.”

  It would have been easy enough to arrange. Poisons are portable and easy to disguise, simple to mix and match to cause strange and mystifying symptoms. Most are administered through food and drink, with surprising ease. Some poisons are so toxic that even a taste—less than seven drops—can induce death.1 Many others require less than one ounce. Arsenic can be ground into a powder; toxic mushrooms can be dried and whipped into a tasty meat sauce; and some poisons can be absorbed through the skin, perhaps as the victim takes a stroll wearing a handsome but doctored set of gloves presented as a gift.