CHAPTER XXXIII.

ALFONSO OF ARAGON AND NAPLES.

(1416-1453.)

THE early death of Ferdinand I., after his brief but worthy reign of only four years, was in every way disastrous to Aragon. For Ferdinand, who had been one of the best Regents of Castile, and one of the best Kings of Aragon, was not a man to be easily replaced. And his son and successor, partly from his adventurous disposition, and partly from the force of circumstances, was led to embark once more upon the stormy sea of Italian politics, and to waste the blood and treasure of Aragon and Catalonia in enterprises without interest or advantage to Spain. The record of the reign of Alfonso V. is Italian rather than Spanish; and Aragon, ably administered by Queen Maria during the king's absence beyond the sea, prospered as a country that has no history.

King Alfonso's surname of The Magnanimous is said to have been earned by a refusal to investigate an alleged conspiracy against his succession, when he found himself firmly seated upon the throne; but the first act of his reign was unworthy of so noble a title. Jealous of the influence and popularity of his brother John in Sicily, where he resided as viceroy of the kingdom, Alfonso recalled him to Spain. And the prince, deprived of his honourable occupation in the peaceable administration of an important province, was led, most unhappily, to engage in intrigues and armed interference, in company with his brothers Henry and Peter, in the troubled affairs of neighbouring Castile. It was in Italy, in his maturer years, that Alfonso was at once more magnanimous and more successful in his dealings with his fellow-men; and well deserved the proud title by which he is known in the history of two countries. The years of his personal rule in Aragon were neither many nor glorious; and if it could be asserted, with any show of truth, that he was "the most excellent prince that had been seen in Italy from the time of Charlemagne," the best that may be said of his rule in Aragon is

Zurita, lib. xvi., cap. 42.

that it was superior to that of his cousin in Castile. In 1420 he turned his attention to his Eastern possessions, and undertook an expedition against Corsica and Sardinia, whence he retired the next year without having materially advanced the interests of Aragon. A dispute with the Justiciary of the kingdom in the same year was less honourable to the king than to the judge. And it is chiefly interesting in that the Cortes of Alcañiz took advantage of the opportunity to formulate a decree that the Justiciary should in future hold his office independent of the king's pleasure.1 But it was in 1421 that Alfonso undertook the expedition which determined the course of his future life, and had a far-reaching influence on the future history of United Spain.

Joanna of Naples, sometime the affianced bride of John of Sicily-the self-willed Queen who had so hastily married his rival, the French Count de la Marche-had soon grown tired of her chosen husband, and had relieved herself of his distasteful presence by throwing him into prison; and then turning her eyes once more to Aragon, she proposed to Alfonso, who had so narrowly escaped being her brother-inlaw, that he should become her adopted son, with a right of succession to the Crown of Naples. Alfonso accepted the tempting offer, which was confirmed by a formal treaty, sanctioned by a Bull of Martin V.; and despite the expected opposition of the Angevin, he proceeded to establish himself at Naples. His adopted mother, as a matter of course, soon changed her mind; and disinheriting Alfonso as formally as she had previously accepted him as her chosen successor, she adopted as her son and heir his rival and hereditary enemy, Louis of Anjou. Alfonso had already taken possession of Naples (June, 1423), but his position was uncertain and embarrassing; new intrigues were set on foot in Italy; and after war and siege with varying fortune, the King of Aragon was glad to return to Spain. Sailing near Marseilles with his well-equipped fleet, he took advantage of the opportunity to attack and plunder the city. The town was burned. The inhabitants were massacred. But we are told that the relics of St. Louis of Toulouse were piously rescued by the assailants from the general destruction, and were welcomed on board the king's ship with the utmost consideration and reverence. (November, 1423).2

The Infante Peter, left by his brother to maintain the authority of Aragon at Naples, found himself soon reduced to the possession of the two notable forts-the Castel Nuovo

1 Like our own judges, quamdiu se bene gesserint.

2 El rey ordenó que con toda reverencia fuese llevada y depositada en su galera tan preciosa joya. Lafuente, viii. 291.

and the Castel D'Uovo-so celebrated in the subsequent history of Central Italy; and for twelve years the war was continued with varying fortunes and ever changing policies, leagues and counter-leagues, excommunications, disappointments, lies, and intrigues of ever kind, Papal, royal, noble, Italian, Spanish and French.

At length, in November, 1434, Louis of Anjou died; and his adoptive mother, who had been faithful to him for nearly twelve years, did not long survive him.1 René of Anjou, the brother and legitimate successor of Louis, was a prisoner in the hands of the Duke of Burgundy; and Alfonso was free to assert his claim to the vacant throne. But the Pope was hostile, and the Duke of Milan was chosen to oppose the Aragonese, who had invested Gaeta by land and by sea.2 The king was an unskilful admiral; the Italian leaguers were favoured by fortune; and the Spaniards were defeated off the coast near Terracina 3 with the loss of their entire fleet. The king and his two brothers, with the flower of the nobility of Aragon, were taken prisoners on that fatal day (August, 1435), and the generous treatment accorded to the captives by the Duke of Milan, is one of the pleasantest features in the story of the long and ignoble struggle for the supreme power in Italy.

As soon as the news of the defeat at Terracina reached Spain, Queen Maria, who was acting as Regent of Aragon during the absence of her husband, summoned a Cortes at Monzon, and prepared an army and a fleet to restore the fortunes of her country. But, after a few months captivity, Alfonso and his brother were set at liberty; and the king was able once more to take the field in person. For so rapid were the changes in Italian politics that the Duke of Milan, his captor, had already changed sides on the question of the sovereignty of Naples, and was soon (1439) an ardent supporter of his opponent of two years before. Gaeta was given up to the King of Aragon. René of Anjou, who had been ransomed in 1438 from the hands of the Duke of Burgundy, was now to be opposed at all hazards. Alfonso threw himself heart and soul into the struggle. He purchased the support of the new Pope by a promise of his assistance in the recovery of certain territory, and by a money payment of two hundred thousand ducats;

1 Queen Joanna died in November, 1435.

2 Some accounts and papers, with lists of ships and names of officers and nobles, with the number of men at arms provided by each, for Alfonso's second Neapolitan expedition in 1432, will be found in vol. xiii. of Documentos Ineditos (1848), p. 477. Libre ordinari de dates, Fetes per en Bernat Sirvent, tesorer general, desde maig de 1432 fins le derrer die de Decembre apres seguent.

3 The Isla de Ponza. This battle is the subject of the celebrated dramatic poem of the Marquis de Santillana.

They were treated no como prisioneros sino como principes.

he conciliated many of the Italian princes by diplomatic concessions; and, if ill fortune at first attended his arms, he was in the end completely successful. On the 2nd of June, 1442, Naples was taken and sacked, and René of Anjou driven into the accustomed refuge of the Castel Nuovo. Escaping thence, he made his way to Florence, where Pope Eugenius was bold enough to embrace the opportunity of formally investing him with the sovereignty of Naples, while his rival of Aragon made his triumphant entry into the city in February, 1443. A Parliament was summoned after the good old Aragonese fashion. The victor granted an amnesty to all his vanquished enemies, a fashion no less good, and by no means so old, in either Aragon or Italy; and he reigned over Naples, in spite of Popes and leaguers, to the day of his death in 1458, as Alfonso the Magnanimous, King of Aragon and of the Two SICILIES.

Within six months of the conquest, Pope Eugenius had invested him (July, 1443), with the sovereign rights that he had already acquired, and had recognized his bastard son, Ferdinand, as his legitimate child and successor on the throne of Naples. Alfonso, in return for these favours, assisted the Pope in his struggles against his old allies the Sforzas; and he was at once so discreet and so successful that he was soon recognized as the "pacificator general of Italy" (1446). Every State and every signor sought his alliance or his protection. The Duke of Milan, dying in August 1447, bequeathed to him the whole of his dominions; and Alfonso's noble and prudent conduct with regard to his succession, raised his reputation still higher in the eyes of all his contemporaries. He not only abandoned the Duchy to Francisco Sforza and his wife, the daughter of the late duke, but he actually assisted them by force of arms against the attacks of the Florentines and the Venetians. Occupied thus worthily in the affairs of Italy, Alfonso turned his back, unhappily, upon Spain. His rule over Aragon was the rule of the absentee; and far from seeking, even after his renunciation of Milan, to turn his steps to the west, he was actually projecting an expedition to succour the Christians in the extreme east of Europe,1 when the taking of Constantinople by Mohammed II. (May 29th, 1453), put an end to all further schemes of protection.

For eleven hundred years no Spaniard had ruled the world from Rome. Pope Damasus, celebrated for his share in the persecution of Priscillian had died in 367. An obscure

1 Alfonso, in 1456, proposed to Calixtus III., the Spaniard, Alfonso Borgia, that he should be intrusted with the command of a crusade against the Turks. But Calixtus viewed the scheme with little favour. And nothing was done until Lepanto.

1

scholar known as Peter of Lisbon, Bishop of Braga, who took the title of John XXI. in 1276, may possibly have been a native of the Peninsula. But his tenure of office did not extend beyond a few months, and his identity is supremely uncertain. Pedro de Luna himself never entered the Vatican, and was never recognised as Pope by more than a portion of Christendom. But on the death of Nicholas V., Alfonso de Borja, a poor priest of Xativa, who had been consecrated Bishop of Valencia, was elevated to the Papal throne, and assumed the title of Calixtus III. His name, in the Italian form of Borgia, descended to his nephew, who had been created a Cardinal, within a year of the elevation of his uncle Calixtus to the Papacy; and Roderic Borgia, succeeding after a lapse of some thirty years to his uncle's Tiara, earned for himself and his family an imperishable notoriety under the name of Alexander VI. The earlier Borgia has no such title to fame. But he took good care of all nephews,1 Borgias and Valencians at Rome. Nor were the interests of his native province forgotten in his canonization of the last of the titular Saints Vincent-Saint Vincent Ferrer, the most worthy of the nine arbitrators of 1412.

One of the twenty-seven saints of the Romish Church who bear the name of Vincent, of whom nine are natives of Spain, Vincent Ferrer is one of the last of his countrymen who has attained the honour of canonization.2 He was born at Valencia in 1357, and assumed the habit of a Dominican in 1374. At the age of twenty-four he proceeded to the University of Barcelona, and afterwards to Lerida, where he studied with uncommon diligence and success. Invested by Pedro de Luna with the degree of Doctor of Divinity, he continued the friend of that distinguished ecclesiastic for many On the death of Clement VII., in 1394, and the election of his patron to the anti-Papacy, Vincent repaired to

1 The following list of the members of the family of Calixtus, invested with the scarlet hat in half a century, is interesting and instructive :

2 The most celebrated of the various Saints Vincent was a Frenchman, Bishop of the Islands of the Lerins, opposite the little fishing village so well known to the modern frequenter of the French Riviera as Cannes. For a further account of Spanish Saints, see post, vol. ii., chap. xlii., and Appendix on THE SPANISH POPES AND CARDINALS, and M. le Comte de Mas Latrie, Trésor de Chronologie (Paris, 1889), pp. 893-4.

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