Isabella: The Warrior Queen

by Kirstin Downey

  Ferdinand was deeply offended, his virility undercut by what he viewed as a public humiliation. He announced he was leaving for Aragon. Isabella begged him to stay, “protesting that she would never for any reason have wanted to cause the least humiliation to her most beloved consort, for whose happiness and honor she would sacrifice willingly not only the crown but her own health.” She said she “would not or could not live separated from him.”

  Isabella had a true marital crisis on her hands, a breach that could have destroyed her marriage and her kingdom. At this point, she might easily have folded under the pressure and given him control of the kingdom, simply to maintain marital harmony.

  She needed a man by her side to help her overcome the gender stigma she was facing. “Women, even those with a clear right of succession, were rarely accepted as monarchs unless they were married,” writes historian Janna Bianchini about Queen Berenguela.17

  And the marriage also needed to be fruitful to establish Isabella’s authority, which also required Ferdinand’s presence. “Medieval queenship might be achieved because a woman was the wife or daughter of a king, but almost inevitably, a successful queen was a mother,”18 writes scholar Miriam Shadis.

  It was essential that Isabella should find a way to keep Ferdinand in tow. So, while she continued to hold her ground, she did it with such suavity and in such soothing terms that Ferdinand’s resistance eventually dissipated. She convinced him that the division of power would be more superficial than real, and that as her husband, he would enjoy personal power and autonomy. She suggested that if he were to oppose her right to reign, he would also undermine the rights of their only child, their daughter, who was also a female. He also had to acknowledge the validity of the prenuptial agreement he had signed with Isabella, in which he had agreed to serve as prince consort rather than as king.19 He had signed in the rush of excitement over the wedding and had not perhaps at the time appreciated its significance.

  Isabella found ways to placate him with a power-sharing agreement he found acceptable. The archbishops of Toledo and Seville helped draft a new contract, called the Concordat of Segovia, that gave Ferdinand little real power but much symbolic importance. Isabella remained “proprietary queen” of Castile, and her children, but not Ferdinand’s children by other women, would inherit the throne. They agreed, however, that Ferdinand’s name would be joined to Isabella’s in documents, in proclamations, and on coins, and that his name would always go first. But sovereignty in Castile and León, as well as the right to appoint officials and decide how to spend money from the treasury, would belong solely to Isabella.

  A motto was crafted to present a unified front to the world: Monta tanto, tanto monta, meaning “as one is, so is the other,” Isabella is as Ferdinand, Ferdinand is as Isabella. This saved face for Ferdinand and allowed him to claim responsibility for much that Isabella did in the rest of their marriage. But it was merely a facade of mutuality, because in fact, as Isabella’s associates noted, Ferdinand’s letters were edited and ripped up if she did not approve of what he said, and his limited proficiency in Latin meant that he could not read letters sent between the Castilian court and other heads of state. Isabella, on the other hand, soon embarked on an intensive program of Latin instruction to make herself more competent in the language of international diplomacy, requiring her daughter and ladies-in-waiting to take the same courses.

  When Ferdinand and Isabella were not together, however, he would enjoy equal power with the queen and the power to act in her place. The negotiations for the concordat were conducted over the Christmas holidays, and he remained in Castile for the next five months.20 It was Ferdinand’s longest stay at Isabella’s side since the first year of their marriage.

  Isabella had held her ground—Castile would be hers to govern—but she had damaged her standing in the eyes of history. During her lifetime, she would hold precedence over Ferdinand, and in fact she ruled in Castile, which was much larger and more important than Aragon. But the nomenclature issue—the fact that his name came first—had long-term effects, for they commonly came to be known as “Ferdinand and Isabella,” which seemed to imply his dominance. The happenstance of the Spanish language exacerbated this situation: in English, husband-and-wife monarchs are known as the king and the queen, but in Spanish they take the male forms in the plural, so Ferdinand and Isabella were known as the Reyes, rather than as Rey and Reyna. English speakers would gain the impression that it was the king in Castile who acted, when actually it was the queen. Isabella’s role in Castile as reigning queen was so rare in world history that observers and commentators seemed unable to comprehend that a woman could be sovereign, and they persisted in identifying Ferdinand as the ruler regardless of the facts. And so it happened that Ferdinand’s name has always been mentioned first, in documents, then in diplomatic circles far from the Iberian peninsula where news accounts arrived secondhand, and finally in history books. In time he began to receive the credit for her accomplishments.

  This was a concession Isabella had been willing to make to try to keep her husband happy. And in some ways, it did. He was still young, only about twenty-two, but he was already cynical, and he may have realized that the perception of power can be almost as valuable as the reality.

  The extended marital renegotiation and reconciliation between Isabella and Ferdinand eventually led to another odd turn of fate. A local churchman, Tomás de Torquemada, the Dominican friar whose uncle had been a powerful cardinal in Rome, played an important role in bringing the couple back together and helping them reach agreement on the thorny issues of joint administration. Isabella had met Torquemada during her childhood, though it is difficult to say to what extent they interacted. Certainly she knew him, for he was a cleric of considerable standing in Segovia as prior of the Convento de Santa Cruz la Real, or the Royal Holy Cross Monastery, which was an ancient Dominican establishment. Torquemada and Ferdinand soon discovered they had a natural affinity for each other; Torquemada became Ferdinand’s favored confessor and a personal confidant. The Dominican friar soon began accompanying the king as he traveled from place to place in Castile, keeping close at hand, to such an extent that his presence came to be noted by other officials. In June 1475, for example, when Ferdinand traveled to Valladolid and Burgos, leaving Isabella behind in Ávila, he was accompanied by Torquemada. Two months later Torquemada was in Valladolid with the king; he is also recorded as traveling with Ferdinand in November of that year. He was in the king’s entourage again in January and February 1476, and he traveled with the king on extended trips at least two more times that year.

  Given the fragility of the marriage at that time, it was not surprising that the couple chose to highlight their unity by showing special favor to Torquemada, who had helped bind their spiritual, marital, and political lives. They ordered an expansion of his monastery, crowning the work with a spectacular new door to celebrate their union. Elaborately decorated with symbols representing them both, and with the inscription TANTO MONTA, MONTA TANTO as a recurring architectural motif, the building was one of the first major construction projects undertaken by the couple. The portal commemorated their accession to the Castilian throne, and in an extraordinary display of royal favor, they gave their closest friends, Andrés de Cabrera and Beatriz de Bobadilla, a conspicuous place in its sculptures. Directly over the great entry doors was a crucified Christ, with the Valencian proselytizing friar Vincent Ferrer, now a saint, at his feet. Below the figure of Christ was a tableau that had as its centerpiece Joseph of Arimathea, Mary the mother of Christ, the infant Jesus, and Mary Magdalene. But Queen Isabella and her friend Beatriz were carved in stone on the right side of the Holy Family, and Ferdinand and Andrés de Cabrera were placed on the left. In that way, Isabella and Ferdinand told posterity of the central role that Beatriz de Bobadilla, Andrés de Cabrera, and Tomás de Torquemada had played in the creation of their reign.

  Queen Isabella certainly needed Torquemada’s help in keeping her marriage on a steady
course, for at times the power-sharing arrangement seemed more a facade than a reality. Isabella attempted to perpetuate the perception of Ferdinand’s significance because it helped ease marital tensions, and because her position was more secure if a man appeared to be playing the dominant role. Once she established herself as the sole wielder of power in the kingdom, she began pretending that she was acting in partnership with her husband. Hernán de Talavera, confessor to the queen, recalled that when she was dictating a royal order for him to draft, she told him to sign it in the form of a joint effort. Pongase rey y reyna, she told him, or “Sign it king and queen.”21

  Isabella promoted an impression that theirs was a happy, unified marriage—two people working together in harness for the betterment of the nation. But we have many indications that the marital bliss may have been illusory, what would later be called a “nuptial fiction.”22 When they were living separately, he had more authority than when they were living together. He frequently took to the road, often heading off in a different direction from her.

  Isabella and Ferdinand jointly appointed officials for their household and administrative staffs. Isabella’s longtime friend Gonzalo Chacón was named primary financial officer, and Gutierre de Cárdenas was secondary financial officer. Gabriel Sánchez, of Aragon, was appointed to handle household finances. Many of the leading official posts were given to highly educated conversos of proven ability—people who received their jobs through their own merits and not through inherited position. The Castilian Alonso de Burgos, for example, grandson of the former rabbi of Burgos, served as a political and spiritual adviser to the court and as confessor to Isabella. Just as close to Isabella was Andrés de Cabrera, also of converso background, who was married to her friend Beatriz de Bobadilla.

  But even as Isabella eased tensions with one man in her family, problems erupted with another.

  King Afonso V of Portugal, who was her cousin and the brother of Enrique’s second wife, Queen Juana, still felt that Isabella’s elopement with Ferdinand had shorn him of his prize—Isabella and the crown of Castile. In the four years since Ferdinand and Isabella were wed, Afonso’s reputation had grown. He had won an important set of victories in 1471, with the invasion and conquest of Asilah and Tangiers, both in North Africa, giving him control of rich gold mines there. Afonso had become wealthy. A vain and proud man, he memorialized his victories in triumphant tapestries, woven from wool and silk, that depicted his troops swarming over the walls of the cities, seizing them, and setting the women and children to flight from their homes.

  Afonso depicted himself heroically in these tapestries, showing himself and his son João on horseback at the center of the battle, bedecked in fine suits of armor, jostling among the crush of soldiers who marched alongside them on foot. His actual performance was considerably less glorious than presented. The Muslims at Asilah had wanted to surrender, but while Afonso was negotiating the terms of the truce with them, his adrenaline-fueled soldiers had decided to attack the walls of the city on their own rather than accept an orchestrated victory. Afonso was quickly swept up in the melee, storming the ramparts with his men. The Muslims were unprepared for hand-to-hand combat, and Afonso and his soldiers slaughtered some two thousand of them and took five thousand captive, engaging in a particularly brutal assault on a mosque where some residents had taken refuge.23 Afonso could keep the captives as slaves, because he had gotten a special ruling from Pope Nicholas V that exempted him from the Christian ban on slavery, as long as the people who were being enslaved were “Saracens, pagans and other non-believers.”

  Afonso was headstrong, impetuous, and tenacious. He had set a particular day for his landing from the sea, and when that morning dawned cloudy, windy, and stormy, he insisted on heading for the beach anyway. His men followed him, boarding unseaworthy boats that were swamped by the waves or crashed on the rocks. Some two hundred knights and infantrymen drowned that day, their heavy equipment dragging them underwater. The terrible incident was recorded in a section of one of the tapestries: it told viewers that Afonso was willing to pay a high price in human lives to secure a glorious victory for himself.

  Because he was accustomed to getting his own way, Afonso still felt “personal rancor” toward Isabella for what he perceived as a rejection, and he was not the sort of man who could easily forget a slight.24 Now Isabella’s enemies saw a way to stir up his old resentment to their own advantage, by offering to make him king of Castile, long a rival to Portugal. Castile would have been a valuable plum to him: it encompassed about two-thirds of the Iberian peninsula and population; Portugal held only about one-quarter.25 Gaining control of Castile and León would have turned Afonso, already heady with his recent victory in North Africa, into one of the leading rulers of Europe.

  They could even hold out the promise of a replacement bride, because little Juana, the daughter of the late Enrique IV and the Portuguese queen, who had a claim to the Castilian throne, was available to be married. Juan Pacheco, the son and namesake of King Enrique’s old ally, had taken control of Princess Juana when his father died. The princess, now thirteen years old, was offered in marriage to King Afonso of Portugal. Isabella and Ferdinand tried to counter the offer by proposing that Afonso instead marry Ferdinand’s younger sister, who was at home in Aragon.

  King Afonso rebuffed that offer and demanded that Isabella and Ferdinand step down, asserting that his niece, little Juana, was the true queen. Isabella responded that the people who were now asserting Juana’s right to rule were the same people who had previously insisted that the child was illegitimate.

  The dispute with Portugal was clearly a ground for concern. But at this early point in her reign—still only a few months after the coronation—Queen Isabella had other, higher priorities. Needing to assert her authority over her own kingdom, she launched her reign with pageantry designed to boost the status of the monarchy and her right to rule. She was finally free, and had the resources, to dress splendidly, as did Ferdinand. Golden threads were woven into their garments, and they wore jewels and furs. They had the gratifying opportunity to circulate in places they had known in their earlier lives, receiving adulation and admiration from the crowd. They traveled to Valladolid, where they had been married so hastily to evade Enrique’s guards and soldiers, but this time they were feted with parties of all kinds, jousts and bullfights, great banquets and musical entertainments, where the young people could perform the latest popular dances.

  But the celebration ended on a jarring note when the two monarchs learned that King Afonso’s troops were massing on the border with the intention of invading Castile. Juana had accused Isabella of poisoning her father and illegally seizing the throne. King Afonso of Portugal had decided this wrong needed to be avenged and that the Castilian crown was his to take.

  In late May the war commenced. Afonso surged into Castile with more than ten thousand warriors on foot and horseback, supplied with two hundred cartloads of provisions, heavy artillery, and other baggage. His wealth was conspicuously on display, as he hauled a vast cache of golden crosses, coins, and engraved silverplate, intending to demonstrate his superior strength and resources. “He spent a great sum of gold” to win the support of Castilian nobles who would accept his proposed marriage to his niece Juana and have him as their king.26 Their close familial relationship required a papal dispensation, but the king pressed on with his plans nonetheless. King Afonso celebrated his engagement to Juana and then their wedding with lavish festivities in Extremadura, near the Portuguese border, then returned to the work of preparing for war.

  Isabella and Ferdinand readied themselves for battle as well. As would soon become their pattern, she handled logistics while he led the troops in the field. She urged him on ferociously; he set out almost immediately.

  Isabella commanded her subjects to carry the war to Portugal and to attack its cities and towns, not just to wait until the Portuguese troops surged into view. “You are aware that Don Afonso, King of Portugal,” and his troop
s have invaded Castile, with the goal of provoking “outrages” against the kingdom, she wrote in a letter circulated around the kingdom. And so, she announced, she had ordered Don Alfonso de Cárdenas “to make war, by fire and by blood, against that King of Portugal,” to enter his kingdom, and to destroy towns and places there. She expected her subjects to pick up arms in defense of Castile, she added, to demonstrate their “ancient and accustomed loyalty” to the throne.27

  Nine months of intense border raids ensued, with battle lines shifting from place to place. Isabella and Ferdinand mobilized fairly quickly but still seemed at a disadvantage because of King Afonso’s reputation as a wily and experienced soldier. The odds seemed stacked against them. The grandees of Castile were compelled to take sides once again, this time in what became known as the War of 1475 to 1479. Many remained loyal to Isabella, while others were more equivocal, and one important former ally defected altogether—Alfonso Carrillo, the mercurial archbishop of Toledo. The powerful prelate had grown angry at both Ferdinand and Isabella. He was annoyed by Ferdinand’s lack of deference to him; he was insulted by their growing collaboration with his rival Mendoza, who had been given the cardinal’s hat; and he had had that embarrassing public clash with Isabella over the alchemist. Now when Isabella most needed Carrillo’s help and support, he turned against her.

  Isabella rode to Carrillo’s stronghold, hoping he would join in her defense. Instead the archbishop rudely informed her, through a messenger, that he had switched sides. “If the queen comes in one gate, I will go out another,” he told his servant.28 She was stunned by this abrupt reversal, as Archbishop Carrillo had been her ally for almost a decade. Observers said she fell to her knees, praying to God for help, feeling abandoned. Archbishop Carrillo had been at her side ever since they had traveled together in support of her brother Prince Alfonso, and his defection wounded her deeply.