Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall of States and Nations (38 page)

On 24 April 1326 the foundation of the Kingdom of Sardinia was proclaimed. Arborea alone offered coherent resistance.

Aragonese rule in Sardinia was not entirely even-handed. The
Coeterum
statute of 1324 abolished Pisan law, introducing legislation that favoured the newcomers. All public offices were reserved for Catalans, Mallorcans and Aragonese. As from 1328, a trumpet was sounded at nightfall from the battlements of Cagliari, warning all Sardinians to leave. A parliament opened, similar to the
Corts
in Barcelona. The three estates of feudal lords, clergy and royal officers met in separate chambers, and exercised an advisory role. In 1354, the port of Alghero was settled by Catalans, and their descendants speak Catalan to the present day.

The life and reign of Pedro IV (1319–87) form the centrepiece to the whole Aragonese fourteenth century. The son of Alfonso IV and of Teresa d’Entença, heiress of Urgell, he succeeded in 1336, inheriting a domain that stretched right across the Mediterranean from Valencia to Athens. He was known as El Ceremonioso from the rigid etiquette of his court, and also as El Punyalet, ‘the Poignard’, after furiously cutting up both a proposed charter of noble liberties and his own finger. His life was filled with warfare: against his relatives, against his nobles, and against his neighbour and namesake, Pedro the Cruel of Castile. Prior to 1348, he prevailed against an armed insurrection of nobles, survived the plague which killed his queen, Leonora of Portugal (the Black Death split his reign into two clear halves), and suppressed the Kingdom of Mallorca. Many of the events of the reign were voluminously recorded in the chronicle which he personally commissioned.
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The two branches of Jaime the Conqueror’s family repeatedly intermarried in the first half of the fourteenth century in the hope of reaching reconciliation, but it never worked. The final suppression of the Kingdom of Mallorca came about through a culmination of complaints. The commercial policy of the Mallorcans irked Barcelona. Their continuing links to France, through Montpellier, aroused suspicions. And the last straw was delivered by news of intrigues with the Genoese. Pedro decided to act. In 1343 troops carried by the Catalan fleet invaded the Balearics. In 1344 an Aragonese army stormed Perpinya. The Mallorcan court was driven into exile. In 1349 the last, desperate Mallorcan ruler, Jaime III, sold Montpellier to raise funds, then staked all on an expedition to recover Mallorca. His gamble failed. He was killed on the field of Llucmajor in southern Mallorca, and his ‘Ephemeral Kingdom’ died with him.
⁸¹
Though the legal claims of the Mallorcan line were kept in circulation for the lifetime of Jaime III’s immediate heirs, his son the nominal Jaime IV lived in Naples as the consort of the notorious Queen Joanna I (see below, p.
211
).

Pedro’s decisive action completed a process of monarchical consolidation. To prevent the fragmentation of the Crown, it had been decided in his father’s time that ‘whoever rules in Aragon rules in Catalonia and Valencia as well’. The king now reincorporated the lands of the ‘Greater Island’ also.

Both in its origins and in its outcome, the noble revolt of the (second) ‘Union of Liberties’, which came to a head in 1347, reflected deep unrest that was no less social than political. The royal justiciar had ruled that ‘a lord can maltreat his vassal whenever there is just cause’, and the nobility’s control over their serfs, who had no recourse beyond the mercy of their oppressor, had become near absolute. Such court records as remain of complaints against lordly malpractices are expressed in the ‘tormented voices’ of a virtually invisible underclass.
⁸²
In best Aragonese fashion, the Union’s leaders also added the legal right of rebellion against the king to their usual litany of petitions and demands. The rebels’ sense of omnipotence was increased by the support of the king’s half-brothers, who feared for the loss of their top positions in the royal line of succession.
⁸³

Yet the Union had picked an agile and obstinate opponent, and one who possessed ready allies, especially in Catalonia. Initially, the rebels made deep inroads into Valencia and Aragon, but they grew disunited when unexpected concessions were made. While they hesitated, the king turned to the prosperous merchant class of Barcelona, which supplied him with money and professional soldiers. The rebellion collapsed in a sea of blood at the Battle of Epila near Zaragoza in July 1348. After his victory, the king rescinded the Privilege of Union of 1287 together with all other charters making reference to the nobles’ right of rebellion. At the same time, he took an oath to respect his subjects’ traditional liberties, while strengthening the powers of the justiciar, whose constitutional pre-eminence dates from this time. He reached a sensible compromise, resisting the temptation to introduce a royal despotism.
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In the midst of these preoccupations, the Black Death struck like the Hand of God. The king was still struggling to restore order after the Union of Liberties:

The great plague began in the city of Valencia in the month of May in the year of Our Lord 1348… By the middle of June over 300 persons died each day. We decided to leave the city and go to Aragon…

As soon as We arrived in Teruel We heard that the Prince En Ferrando was in Saragossa with many [others], discussing the affairs of the Union… All that was discussed tended to Our great disgrace. But [after] some days in Teruel, the great plague began there [too], and We had to leave. And We made Our way to (Saragossa) via Tarazona, where the noble En Lop de Luna was, with an Aragonese armed company, waiting for the troops [which] the king of Castile was to send for Our assistance…

Then We directed Our way to Our Aljaferia… We sentenced thirteen persons to death, with confiscation of their goods, as they had committed the crime of lèse majesté. Those condemned were hanged, some at the Gate of Toledo and some in other places…

The
jurats
[magistrates] of the city [then] begged Us that We should be pleased to discuss the state of the kingdom. Having talked with Our council, we at once agreed to hold
Cortes generals
in the city… The first thing that We [did] was that all the acts made by the Union were judicially condemned; and, in the main building of the monastery of the Preachers, where the
Cortes
were celebrated,
all
the documents and legal processes made by the Union were burnt… so that nothing of its acts should remain…

We went to the Church of Sent Salvador and, standing in the pulpit… We spoke to the people. Our discourse was, in sum, that We considered Ourselves prejudiced and injured by the Union, but that, remembering the mercy [which] the bygone kings of Aragon had been accustomed to show to their subjects, We pardoned them… This was done in the month of August.

During the [continuing] discussions, the great plague began [again]… and increased daily… The
Cortes
being in agreement, We prorogued them [to] the city of Teruel… And then the
Cortes
graciously accorded Us a
morabati
or
monedatge
[tax], which We had collected in all parts of the kingdom.

We left the city of Saragossa with the queen, Our wife, who was ill. Many days had passed since the illness started but she was better… [So] We went to Exérica. And the illness of the queen increased so much that in a few days she passed from this life in Exérica. As soon as she was buried and We had dined, We mounted and went to Segorbe where the plague had come to an end.
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The king was obviously too busy to tarry or to mourn. It is notable that the
Cortes
waited until the end of the session before ‘graciously’ granting the king his taxes, which were payable in a seven-year cycle. (In Castile, as in England, the king demanded his taxes
before
agreeing to hear representations.) In the opinion of one leading scholar, this practice explains why the royal power in such a rich country suffered from financial weakness.
⁸⁶

In the second half of his reign, Pedro IV’s troubles were religious as well as financial; he fell into a lengthy feud with the inquisitor-general and head of the Dominican Order in Aragon, Nicolau Eymerich (1320–99), author of
Directorium Inquisitorium
(1376), an authoritative handbook for defining and combating witchcraft, which was defined as a form of heresy.
⁸⁷
The inquisitor was a zealot who refined the use of torture and persecuted both the Jews of Aragon and the followers of Ramon Llull. He was twice banished to Avignon, and twice returned.

A century after its birth, the Aragonese navy was the third biggest in the western Mediterranean, after those of Genoa and the Moorish emirates of North Africa. Its galleys were half as big again as in the thirteenth century, carrying an average complement of 223 rowers and crewmen; its shipyards at Barcelona, Valencia and Palma, drawing on the oak woods of Montseny, were virtually self-sufficient except for oars. Its increased capacity made it possible for a fleet to extend the standard four-month tour of summer duty to twelve or even eighteen months. A fleet of twenty-eight galleys, for example, which put to sea in 1341 under Admiral Pere de Moncada (grandson of Ruggiero di Lauria), wintered on station, only returning to Barcelona the next year.

The main threat at that time came from the North African Moors. The Christian navies, commanded by Admiral Boccanegra of Genoa, joined forces to isolate Muslim Granada from the Marinid rulers of Morocco and to keep the Strait of Gibraltar open. The Castilians in particular suffered great losses, and were obliged to hire fifteen replacement galleys from Genoa at 800 gold florins per month. For logistical reasons, however, the Aragonese were unable to fight for long without allies, since their plans to assemble a fleet of forty heavy and twenty light galleys were not realized. The prospect that Genoa might ally itself with the Moors proved especially worrying. Aragon remained a major naval force until the utility of galleys declined through the introduction of gunpowder in the late fifteenth century.

Aragon’s overseas territories suffered not only from the Black Death but also from the social ills that had wracked the heartland. The most distinguished historian of Sicily, for example, has written of the rise of a ‘New Feudalism’.
⁸⁸
The barons rampaged with impunity; the serfs toiled without relief; the towns withered; and the monarchy was helpless. In 1377, Pedro IV of Aragon invaded Sicily in order to bring it under direct control.

Conditions in Sardinia, where Aragon waged three wars against Arborea, were no healthier. Arborea received support from Genoa, but not enough to produce a clear victory. Remarkably, despite the upheaval, one of the most talented women of the Middle Ages, Eleonora d’Arborea (1347–1404), was able to flourish both in government and in science.
⁸⁹
Wife of a Genoese, and mother of successive Sardinian judges, she defended her birthright with spirit both against Aragon and against local republicans. She was an unlikely pioneer of ornithology and bird-protection – the
falco eleonora
is named in her honour – and she is remembered as the author of a famous law code, the
Carta de Logu
, which remained in force from 1395 to 1861.
⁹⁰

The death of Pedro IV in 1387 marked the culmination of a century-long period of evolution in the institutions of the Crown of Aragon. The monarchy, the administration and the political culture of the state had all been forced to respond to the growing ‘empire’, and all had been systematically transformed. The ‘Arago-Catalan Court’, as one historian calls it, provided the key to ‘the rise of administrative kingship’.
⁹¹
The Royal Chancery, the ‘King’s Memory’, kept copies of all laws and letters, leaving a vast store of documentary treasures in Barcelona’s
Arxiu de la Corona d’Arago
.
⁹²
Its paper-based technology can be traced to Jaime the Conqueror’s capture of Europe’s first Muslim-owned paper factory at Xativa in Valencia.
⁹³
The Royal Treasury, the ‘King’s Purse’, kept detailed, daily records of all financial transactions. And the Royal Household, the ‘King’s Body’, revealed ‘a discreet society’ of royal relatives, specialized bureaucrats and highly trained servants, who ran the state. One scholar’s conclusion, which seems to regret the polity’s ultimate demise, is unnecessarily pessimistic:

The question might be asked… whether an examination of the changes within the administrative system [of the Crown of Aragon] might not be an exercise in futility. After all, [the system] left few lasting traces… But its ultimate lack of success does not affect its value… We have witnessed the truth that modernisation, no matter how visionary, is not enough to guarantee the survival of the state.
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