Similarly, it must have been upsetting to Princess Isabel when she was traded as a hostage to the Portuguese, as a guarantee that her parents would abide by the terms of the treaty. That had happened when she was eight. She had been sent away from her family to live in Portugal for three years. But no matter what happened, Princess Isabel was expected to go forward, without showing weakness or hesitation.
The threat of a suicide attack, meanwhile, was a constant source of fear. When the Spaniards were besieging Málaga, for instance, a Muslim who entered the camp presenting himself as a helpful informant was allowed to wander around while he waited to speak with the queen. When he spied an elegantly attired couple, a man and woman playing chess in a tent, he assumed they were Ferdinand and Isabella and viciously attacked them with a knife. The woman was Beatriz de Bobadilla, and the man was Isabella’s cousin, a Portuguese nobleman. Through good luck both survived the attack. The assailant was caught and killed. But this attack inside their own camp underscored a troubling fact: that people who presented themselves as allies in wartime could actually be threats, and dangers were lurking everywhere.
It is indeed rather surprising that no one in the family was killed. In addition to being at war with the Muslims, they were also angering a great many other people. Jews, wavering conversos, critics of the Inquisition, and Muslims, in Granada and elsewhere, all had ample reason to want to injure the royal family. Some people in Aragon and Catalonia, meanwhile, had never forgiven Ferdinand’s family for the brutal civil war his father had waged in the 1460s.
Knowing themselves to be at risk, the king and queen lived in a constant state of alert. For that reason, when King Ferdinand was attacked in Barcelona by a knife-wielding madman in December 1493, their first assumption was that it was a premeditated attack. The king was stabbed in the back of the neck and survived only because the heavy gold chain he customarily wore blocked the blade from plunging deeper. Queen Isabella’s first thought was that the attack on Ferdinand was the beginning of an uprising by the Catalan nobles. So she first made sure to protect young Juan, the heir to the kingdoms, ordering him rushed away to safety in a ship offshore before heading to her husband.
When they learned that the attack did not appear to have been fatal, Isabella sent out messages reassuring their allies in France, Spain, and Italy. Then she and the girls took up positions at Ferdinand’s side. For about fifty days, burning with fever, he clung to life, his condition now improving and now declining. They called for the best medical advice. “A crowd of physicians and surgeons is sent for,” Peter Martyr anxiously told the Count of Tendilla and archbishop of Granada. “… We labor between fear and hope.”10
Queen Isabella and her daughters used every religious tool at their disposal to plead for the king’s survival. She prayed the stations of the cross every day for his recovery, a process that involves imagining oneself walking in Christ’s footsteps from the time he was sentenced to death until he was laid in the tomb. Each of the steps requires special prayers and a time of quiet contemplation before proceeding to the next. The children made their own sacrifice by going on a barefoot pilgrimage over a nearby mountain; some of them climbed on their bare knees, “having so vowed to God for the safety of the King,” as Peter Martyr wrote a few weeks later.11
In addition, the queen swore that neither she, nor her ladies-in-waiting, nor her daughters, would wear hoop skirts “made of brocade or silk,” one of the queen’s favorite styles but one that was disapproved by the clergy as a troublesome, flamboyant new invention, and deshonesto.12
As a result of all these ministrations, spiritual and medical—and thanks also to Ferdinand’s strong constitution—the king gradually recovered. Queen Isabella must have soon decided that with the war behind them and God’s favor amply secured, her pledge to scorn brocades and silks was no longer necessary, for soon she was busily engaged in making plans for wedding celebrations, and elaborate clothing seemed to be in everyone’s future.
For as the five children approached adulthood in the 1490s, marriages were being arranged for them that would increase the role of Spain on the world stage and secure its borders as well as the religious practices of Spanish society. After all, the Spanish needed help: they ruled over Sicily and Spain, which were open to attack by the Ottomans, and their cousins were ruling the Kingdom of Naples, which had already been hit hard once by the Turks at Otranto. Ferdinand’s sister, Joanna, the queen of Naples, kept them informed about worrisome developments in southern Italy and the eastern Mediterranean.
It was only a matter of time until combined forces would be necessary to protect southern Italy from Ottoman assault. The strait of Otranto, the narrow waterway between Christian Italy and Muslim-occupied Albania connecting the Adriatic and Mediterranean Seas, is only forty-five miles wide, or a day or less under sail or in a ship rowed by galley slaves. Every alliance would help reduce the chances of another Muslim invasion.
To stabilize her kingdom, Isabella used her family as she had her people, her armaments, and her castles—she employed them to make Spain an impregnable fortress, bolstering its defenses by forging ties around Europe that would reinforce the connections and alliances among the Christian nations of western Europe.
Every match was strategic. The oldest daughter, the dependable and trustworthy Isabel, would protect their backs and promote Spanish interests by marrying the heir to the Portuguese throne. Catherine, their youngest, would marry the heir to the throne of England, which would make that island nation more closely attuned to the needs of the Spaniards and the Christian-controlled parts of the Mediterranean. It seemed a fitting match, as young Prince Arthur, born in 1486, was just one year younger than Catherine. María, the fourth child, was still the subject of consideration and negotiation. For her, Isabella was eyeing James, the promising young heir to the throne of Scotland. Isabella believed that if her two daughters were married to the kings of England and Scotland, they could bring peace to the British Isles, and the two countries could be converted into more reliable supporters of Christendom.
The pièce de résistance, however, involved her second and third children, the male heir Juan and his younger sister Juana. A double marriage was arranged, between Juan and Juana and two grandchildren of the Holy Roman emperor, Philip and Margaret, designed to forge iron bonds of codefense and cooperation between Spain and the German and Austrian confederation of states. These matches would mean that the largest single state in central Europe would act with Spain as a bulwark against the inroads of the Ottoman Turks. The Holy Roman Empire, moreover, had a historic role as protector of the Catholic Church, an aspiration shared by Isabella. As an added bonus, Philip and Margaret were also the heirs to the rich Duchy of Burgundy and the Low Countries.
Isabella wasn’t just coldly pragmatic, however. She sought to find her children marriages that had a better-than-average chance of happiness. This was a time when older men with money in their pockets cast covetous eyes on fair young maidens, and families who offered their most beautiful daughters to aging kings often got advantageous benefits from them in terms of cash, lands, or paid court positions for relatives. Isabella was certainly looking for beneficial marriages for her girls; there would be no love matches in this family. But still she hoped to find suitors for all of them who were attractive, approximately the right age, and had attributes that would promote marital happiness, or at least a measure of contentment. No doubt she remembered her own maiden years when one man after another was proposed as a potential bridegroom. There were no weepy eyes or spindly legs among the suitors considered for Isabella’s brood.
Still, these transactions had much in common with buying a piece of livestock. A surviving account in the British Archives details the negotiations that served as the backdrop for the marriage of Catherine to Arthur, the Prince of Wales. Ambassadors from Spain and England met to hammer out the terms of the deal, which involved determining how much dowry should be paid by Catherine’s parents and how much by the Tudor king H
enry VII of England, the father of the prospective bridegroom. Henry VII wanted the marriage to happen quickly so that Catherine’s blue blood would bolster his family’s wobbly claim to the English throne, but he was also notoriously penurious. This account of the meeting was sent back to Spain:
The English commissioners declared that with regard to the alliance there was not much to confer about, and began directly to speak of the marriage. They were exceedingly civil, and said a great many things in praise of Ferdinand and Isabella. That being done, they asked the Spaniards to name the sum for the marriage portion.
The Spanish Ambassadors replied that it would be more becoming for the English to name the marriage portion, because they had first solicited this [marriage] and their party is a [son].
The English Commissioners asked five times as much as they had asked in Spain.
The Spanish Ambassadors proposed to refer this matter to [Ferdinand] and [Isabella], who would act liberally in proportion to the confidence shown them.
The English Commissioners said that such a proceeding would be inconvenient for both parties, and that Ferdinand and Isabella would not agree to it.
The Spanish Ambassadors complained that the English were unreasonable in their demands. Bearing in mind what happens every day to the King of England, it is surprising that Ferdinand and Isabella should dare to give their [daughter] at all. This was said with great courtesy, in order that they might not feel displeasure or be enraged.
The English Commissioners abated one third.
The Spaniards proposed that, as there was sufficient time for it, two or four persons should be selected as umpires.
The English Commissioners declined it, and gave their reasons.
The Spaniards desired the English to name the lowest price.
The English abated one half.
The Spaniards said this marriage would be so advantageous to the King of England that he ought to content himself with what is generally given with Princesses of Spain.
The English desired to have everything defined in order to avoid disputes after the conclusion of the marriage. They asked twice as much as they had asked in Spain.
The Spanish Ambassadors offered one fourth.
The English asked why, as the money was not to come out of the strong boxes of the King and the Queen, but out of the pockets of their subjects, they should not be more liberal? They referred to old treaties with France, Burgundy, and Scotland, proving by them that even higher marriage portions were given.
They also urged that England is a very dear place, the smallest coin being worth eight Spanish maravedis, and that the great men spend large sums. The English aristocracy is rich and prosperous in the Dukedoms of Clarence, Lancaster, Buckingham, Somerset, Norfolk, York, the counties of Warwick, Salisbury and Lincoln, and the Marquisate of Dorset. Such being the case, and there not being a “drop of blood” in existence from which any danger might arise, the English saw no reason to lessen their demands.13
And so it went. For the next twenty years. For while both families wanted the match, both were ferociously angling for advantage. Henry VII was always watching his pennies, which eventually made his son and heir a very rich man, and Isabella had four daughters to dower. The families dickered over the prices each should pay and the terms of the arrangement from 1488 to 1509, from the time Catherine was three years old until she was twenty-four.
Isabella dictated many terms of the dowry negotiations, specifying the details of the dowry and deciding which Castilian officials would accompany Catherine to England, according to correspondence and documents in the British Archives.
This set of records demonstrates that Isabella was the driving force in handling international affairs, including organizing military alliances, negotiating trade pacts, and arranging marriages. In the 1850s a German scholar living in England, Gustav Bergenroth, would spend years investigating correspondence between Spain and England. To do so, he had to break the ciphers and code language that Isabella had used to communicate with her envoys in England. Her hand is visible in many places, while Ferdinand’s is seldom to be found, except on the boilerplate introductions to the letters. These introductions typically presented the correspondence as coming from both the king and queen, but inside some of the lengthy letters, Isabella forgot the fiction she was creating and referred to herself in the singular as “Yo, la Reyna,” or “I, the Queen.” These references slipped through in letters ostensibly from both regents at least twice, once in January 1497 and again in December 1502.14
Isabella used the same mixture of flattery and manipulation in her international negotiations as she did in domestic affairs. In September 1496, for example, in a letter to her ambassador in England, she referred to King Henry as a “prince of great virtue, firmness and constancy,” praise that she clearly assumed would be repeated to the English king, who was insecurely perched upon a throne he had usurped.15 She promised in the letter that she expected the relationship between England and Spain to become much closer once their children married—knowing that Henry was eager to form an alliance with an old and respected blue bloodline.
She was simultaneously angling to improve relations between England and Scotland, something that would have thrown France off balance and bolstered northern European support for the problems of southern Europe, particularly the threat posed by the Turks. Dangling the prospect of the marriage between Arthur and Catherine, Queen Isabella pressured Henry to improve his own relations with King James. “Henry must marry one of his daughters to the King of Scots,” she told González de Puebla after all Isabella’s own daughters were wed, and indeed, Princess Margaret of England was married to King James in 1503.16
Despite the complexities of the negotiations, however, all the marriages seemed very promising, both from the standpoint of Spain’s position in Europe and for the young people being betrothed. All, however, also ended up presenting challenges, as marriages, even the happiest, always do.
Isabel, the oldest, was the first to marry, in 1490. At twenty, she married Prince Afonso, King João’s son, who was fifteen. She knew him well. For the three years when Portugal and Castile had exchanged children as a peace guarantee, the two youngsters had lived in Moura under the care of Isabella’s Portuguese aunt Beatriz, her mother’s sister. The children, Afonso and Isabel, had spent time together during those years beginning when she was eight and he was three, and became fond of each other. To ensure Doña Beatriz’s commitment to caring properly for the children, Don Manuel, who was Beatriz’s son, had gone to live in Castile, where he had met Queen Isabella and come to trust her.17 He was a pleasant and affable boy, something that Isabella probably saw as an insurance policy for the future. It was always good to have an ally in a foreign court. And if anything happened to Prince Afonso of Portugal, the king’s heir, Manuel, could one day become king.
The two Iberian families had had their differences. They had even gone to war. But King João had come to the conclusion that a marriage between Portugal and Castile would be ideal. Afonso was more than amenable, and soon so was young Isabel. Portugal’s new possessions were bringing the kingdom unprecedented wealth, and the reports about Afonso, though no doubt exaggerated by slavish courtiers, described the young prince as “the handsomest and best looking known to the world.”18
In August 1488 the Portuguese nobleman and chronicler Ruy de Sande traveled to Castile bearing a letter discussing the marriage of Afonso and Isabel. Isabella and Ferdinand received him warmly, despite the fact that the queen had grave reservations about the character of the boy’s father. The plans led to happy celebration. There was revelry in Seville. The court stayed up late dancing; Isabella and her daughters were known for their graceful movements on the floor. At last Isabel said, “It is now late,” to the Portuguese ambassador to signal the party was over. “Not late, but very early, Lady!” he responded, for the first daylight was coming through the windows.19
According to the French courtier Philippe de Commynes, Isabe
lla and Ferdinand agreed to the match to improve the security of the Iberian peninsula: “They had married their eldest daughter to the King of Portugal, that all Spain might be in peace, for they were entirely possessed of all the provinces, except the kingdom of Navarre.”20 It was the first royal wedding of a generation for both families. An exciting schedule of festivities was planned and coordinated in both kingdoms. First there were several weeks of celebrations in Seville, which were attended by young Isabel’s parents and sisters. Then a procession of Spanish and Portuguese grandees conducted the bride from Castile to the city of Évora in Portugal. Princess Isabel’s entourage was led by the archbishop of Toledo, Cardinal Pedro Mendoza, who had been an important ally of her mother’s ever since King Enrique died and Isabella had taken the throne of Castile.
Isabella: The Warrior Queen Page 39
