Joanna the (not?) mad (1504-1555)

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Ep: 229 – Maximilian I (1493-1519) – How the Habsburgs gained Spain.

“Bella gerant alii, tu felix Austria nube” – ‘Let others wage war; thou, happy Austria, marry’ is one of the few terms that almost anyone with a cursory interest in European history knows, only rivalled by the Voltaire quote thou shall not utter in my presence ever. It evokes the image of a handsome alpine boy full of charm and apple strudel wooing some princess into peacefully handing over the richest lands is Europe. And this narrative of peaceful transition to a benign dynasty is another one of the great propaganda successes of the house of Habsburg.

The saying was attributed to Matthias Corvinus, the king of Hungary who had once occupied Vienna, then to the humanist Ulrich von Hutten, but first evidence of its use dates back to 1654, more than 150 years after the famous marriages that made an empire. From 1680 it was read out at Habsburg weddings to emphasise the peaceful nature of its rulers.

It definitely did not originate in the days of Maximilian I when all these dynastic alliances were formed and bore fruit. Talking about gentle and peaceful transition was preposterous against the backdrop of a 15 -year long war over the succession to the grand Dukes of Burgundy, and the roller coaster ride that is today’s topic, the way the Habsburgs acquired the crown of Spain.

But before we start a quick message on merch. Most podcast offer you merchandise, t-shirts, hoodies, mugs, phone cases. I have not done it yet because – well the economics. If I offer a t-shirt for £30, at a stretch £10 pound goes to me, the rest is taken by the printer, postage, the kneecappers at Paypal and Stripe etc. But I have found a solution – do it yourself. I have put a chunk of the HotGPod episode art on to my website for you to download. Just choose one or as many images as you want, take them to a printer near where you live and put them on your crockery , clothing or communication device as you want. It is – like the show itself – entirely free. Unless of course you fell compelled to join the band of generous knights, princes and electors who are supporting the show on historyofthegermans.com/support, generous souls like Michael R., Joakim C., David M., DANIEL MCG., Thomas J. H., and Ales D.

And with that, back to the show

Today we will be wandering well off the reservation. Most of this episode will deal with Spanish history and since this is the History of the Germans and despite having a sister living in Madrid, my knowledge of Spanish history is patchy to say it mildly. Hence there will be even more mistakes, odd perspectives and butchering of foreign languages than normally. And for that I beg forgiveness in advance. I will let you know next week where I went wrong and will correct as necessary.

But let’s start on familiar territory.

As we heard last week, by 1500 after the humiliation at Livorno, the defeat in the Swabian/Swiss war, and the de facto deposition by the Imperial diet of Augsburg, Maximilian found himself far out in the wilderness. He spent his time reforming the administrative and military structure of his lands in Austria and Tyrol.

His irrelevance in a domestic context was matched by an even more profound irrelevance in a European context. The continent’s politics had descended into a feeding frenzy where the bait were the immensely rich cities and states of the Italian peninsula. In this game there were no friends or allies, everybody was a potential ally and a potential enemy at the same time. I have read through the accounts of the different leagues and treaties between 1496 and 1505 and I had to keep a separate sheet with dates and notes to get my head around it. And quite frankly taking you guys through it will not only be fiendishly complicated but also terribly confusing, and worse – boring.

So, rather than tracing all this who went with who when, let’s take a broad-brush look at it.

There were the two emerging superpowers, Spain and France. They both wanted the whole of Italy. France now held Milan and worked its way north to south. Spain, or more precisely the kingdom of Aragon had Sicily and its main interest lay in Naples and from there wanted to move northwards.

The remaining Italian states were fighting for their survival. Of those two still had significant weight, Venice and the Papacy, the others, including Florence, had to wiggle between these rolling stones, hoping not to be crushed.

As for the nominal feudal overlord of most of Italy, the Holy Roman Emperor, his authority was limited to legitimizing the land transfers and titles. The Imperial Diet at Augsburg had made it apparent that there was an exactly zero chance that a gigantic army of Teutonic knights and Landsknechte was coming across the Alps any moment. Maximilian’s exhausted lands could at best contribute a few thousand soldiers to whoever he had sided with. Good soldiers who may have swayed this or that battle, but for five years at least, Maximilian was no longer sitting at the top table.

Things brightened up a little for our hero in around 1505. As we discussed last week, Maximilian had defeated his domestic opponents in the war of the Landshut succession  and sealed that victory through his magnanimous settlement of the underlying inheritance dispute. With that, he had become more powerful inside the empire than he had ever been before. That does not mean he could command the princes to follow him to Rome, but it meant there was once again a non-zero probability that he could bring the power of the empire to bear.

And another thing had changed in Maximilian himself. For 30 years, ever since his marriage to Marie of Burgundy, Maximilian had fought the French. This struggle had become not just a fight for power but had turned into personal animosity. The string of events, the fight over Marie’s inheritance, the rejection of his daughter Margaret as bride to Charles VIII, the “stealing” of Anne of Brittanny, all that had created so much bad blood, a reconciliation between Maximilian and Louis XII of France was almost inconceivable.

But still, it happened. These years of irrelevance had shifted something. The internal struggle between the desire for revenge and the needs of Realpolitik, was won, surprisingly by rationality. In no small way thanks to the administrations of his son Philip the Handsome, relations between France and the Emperor were thawing.

The fundamental driver of this reconciliation was however not Italy, but Spain, or more precisely the kingdom of Isabella of Castille. Which is why I will now rattle on about Spanish domestic politics for a half an hour.

Let’s wind back to 1496, the double marriage between on the one hand the heir to the Spanish crown, Juan, and Margarete of Austria, daughter of Maximilian, and on the other hand, the heir to Burgundy, Austria and most probably the imperial crown, Philip the Handsome to Juana, the third child of the catholic monarchs of Spain, Isabella and Ferdinand.

As we pointed out in episode 222, this marriage was not the grand diplomatic coup for Maximilian it was later portrayed as. It was in fact a highly risky and imbalanced agreement. Margarete and Philip were the only surviving Habsburgs. All the other lines, the Albertinian and Leopoldinian dukes we encountered in episodes 204 to 208 had all died out, not a single one left.

Hence the rather large territorial complex of Austria and Burgundy plus the option on the imperial crown would go to either Philipp’s or Margaret’s descendants, unless of course Maximilian would have more children with Bianca Maria Sforza, which he did not. And under the agreement, it was specifically stated that if Philip died without heirs, all of his lands would go to Margaret’s heirs, aka, her husband Juan and whoever his heirs were.

On the other hand, if Juan died without offspring, all his lands would go to his elder sister, Isabella. Only if she died without heirs would Juana and her children with Philip inherit.

That was a bit of a long shot. The reason Maximilian agreed to the match was therefore not because he thought it would bring him Spain, but because he needed Spain for his grand plan to crush Louis XII.

As always with these weddings, the process was lengthy and only completed and legally watertight when the marriage was consummated. That meant that even though the proxy marriages were agreed on November 5^th, 1495 in Mechelen with the Spanish ambassador Riojas standing in for both Juan and Juana, nothing was done until the deed was done.

That caused a logistical problem. Spain and the Netherlands were a 1000 miles apart and the fastest route was by sea along the English coast and then down across the bay of Biscay. I am currently planning my summer holiday which includes a trip across the bay and whilst this may be fast, it was certainly not safe to do in a 15^th century vessel in autumn or winter. And then there was the French navy who may be keen to intercept this alliance.

Plus there was the question who would send whose daughter first. I principle they could sail in separate fleets and then cross path’s halfway meaning they each arrive at roughly the same time. But that was rejected on the basis that it was for one too expensive for the cash-strapped Maximilian to furnish a fleet, nor did the two monarchs trust each other to actually send a daughter when they said they would.

The solution was that Ferdinand and Isabella put Juana on a ship to go to the Netherlands, with the proviso that Margaret would travel back on that same fleet. That way Margaret was in the hands of the Spanish as soon as she got on the ship, which meant the time window for misbehavior was supposedly tighter.

Juana set off from Laredo, Laredo in Spain, not in Texas, in the middle of the night on August 22^nd. Though this was supposed to be a reasonable time of year, the 22 ships were bashed about by storms and had to seek refuge in England. It took them until September 19^th , so almost a month before Juana arrived in Holland. On the approach to the harbour, one ship with 700 men and the princesses’ wardrobe sank after hitting a sandbank. Nobody was prepared for their arrival, the groom was travelling in the empire. So she waited in Antwerp until on October 19^th the most consequential European wedding took place in the small town of Lier. Apparently the bride and groom were instantly attracted to each other and the marriage was consumed that same night. More about that story later.

Then it was time for Margaret to get on board the fleet and sail down to Spain. But that did not happen right away. The ships that Juana had travelled on had sustained severe damage during the journey and needed to be fixed. Plus we are now in late autumn. Nobody in their right mind goes out in November to brave the English channel and the bay of Biscay – at least nobody sensible.

So they did the sensible thing, they waited until the end of January. If Juana’s trip was tough, this one was worse. Again, a bit of weather routing could have helped. But neither did they have weather routing at the time, nor would it have been politically possible for Margaret to wait until May when the crossing could be more comfortable. Ferdinand and Isabella would have concluded that they had been duped and would refuse to participate in Maximilian’s grand plan.

So, the poor girl was sent off. This journey was even worse than that of her sister-in-law. They sought shelter in Southampton in February, but they had to go out again as soon as the weather had calmed down at least somewhat. During one of these storms, Margaret was certain to die and wrote her own epitaph: “Here lies Margaret, the willing bride, twice married– but a virgin when she died.”

Still , she made it to Santander in March, having spent more than a month at sea. After a few days of recovery, Juan and Margaret were made husband and wife in Burgos on April 3^rd, 1497 in a tremendously opulent ceremony, as the Venetian ambassador reported back home.

There is something unusual about this set of siblings. Because not only did Juana and Philip had the hots for each other, Margaret and Juan appeared almost immediately to be deeply in love.

Such passion between recipient of dynastic marriage arrangements was unusual, even though Maximilian and Marie had experienced something similar. The young couple, she was 17 and he was 18 were taking to long breakfast in bed and spending more time than protocol demanded in each other’s company.

Courtiers became concerned about the state of health of the young prince. He had always been frail, suffering from a range of ailments, and was now pale and out of breath. They wrote to Juan’s mother, Isabella of Castile, that the couple should be told to take it down a notch – at least for a while. The queen refused, even overruling her husband, king Ferdinand, arguing that marriage was sacrosanct.

By September Juan was already too weak to accompany the court to the wedding of his sister Isabella to king Manuel of Portugal. Juan and Margaret travelled to Salamanca to recover at the palace of the local bishop. He probably suffered from a combination of Tuberculosis and Smallpox. Things deteriorated into late September, so that Ferdinand was so alarmed he travelled to his son’s sickbed only to see him die on October 4^th.

Contemporaries blamed the sexual demands of young Margaret for the death of the prince. This idea that the prince and with it the Spanish monarchy died of love has been recounted again and again and makes for good podcast material. But it is largely dismissed by modern historians as a case of finding a moral answer to a random event. There is no indication throughout her long life that Margaret had particularly excessive sexual desires, plus “death by love”  does not kill healthy young men, at best it can accelerate existing conditions.

So, no she did not shag him to death, but dead he was.

His death was however not yet enough to propel the Habsburgs to the throne of Spain.

With Juan dead, the next in line was his oldest sister, Isabella who had just married king Manuel of Portugal. And Isabella soon gave birth to a boy, Miguel who was set to inherit the whole of the Iberian peninsula and all the lands the Spanish and Portuguese were taking over in America, Africa and Asia right around now.

But Isabella died in giving birth to little Miguel. And then little Miguel passed away, just 2 years old in the arms of his desolate grandmother Isabella of Castile.

And at that point the next eldest daughter, Juana became the heir to the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon. Ad after her, her son with Philip the Handsome, a boy named Charles, the future emperor Charles V.

At least on paper. For now Isabella and Ferdinand were still very much alive, and their two kingdoms weren’t yet absolutist states where any odd ruler was acceptable, as long as he or she had the right lineage.

These were still two very much separate kingdoms with separate representative bodies, the cortes, different cultures and historically, different political alliances. More importantly, royal succession in both, but particularly in Castile had been a mess. Not too long ago Queen Isabella of castile had herself risen to the throne in a civil war. She had disputed the rights of king Henry IV’s daughter who she argued was illegitimate. This was the last gasp of a rather complex set of wars of succession that date back to the expiry of the House of Barcelona in 1410. Aragon was a bit more stable, but they too had had their internal conflicts.

What I am trying to say here is that being the eldest child of the rulers of Castile and Aragon is a great starting point, but no guarantee of succession.

One of the ways to improve the chances of succession is of course showing up, shaking hands, making speeches, reassuring people of their positions, just generally, pressing the flesh.  Which is why Philip and Juana boarded the next best ship for Spain as soon as they heard the sad news of the unexpected passing of little prince Miguel.

Ahh – no. It took them 2 years to get there. What had gotten into the way was one of the whackiest marriage alliances ever contemplated. King Louis XII had offered to marry his only child, his daughter Claude, to Charles, the aforementioned two-year old son and heir to Philip and Juana and future emperor. This marriage would have united France, Spain, Italy and the Empire into one colossal monarchy. Imagine if that had happened and if that had worked, the continent would have been spared centuries of internecine warfare, Martin Luther would have ended up on a pyre, his name a footnote in the eternal list of failed church reformers. And together with the colonies, it would have created a world power, rivalling only with India and China. Or the continent would have atrophied into a gently declining, uncompetitive state where independent thought had difficulty to cut through and all resources were sucked up into its capital, wherever that was.

Anyway, this idea was so utterly bonkers, nobody really believed that Charles and Claude would ever get married. They were 2 and 3 years old at the time and who knows what would happen in the 10 years before that marriage could be consummated. Still negotiations took place and a detailed treaty was slowly taking shape. That treaty involved all the major players, Louis XII and Philip the Handsome as the fathers of bride and groom, Maximilian and Ferdinand of Aragon as the grandparents, as well as the pope, first Alexander Borgia and from 1503 onwards Julius II. All the parties had their own interests, much of which involved freezing out, if not destroying the Republic of Venice.  But only one of them thought it would actually happen, and that was Philip the Handsome.

Philip was, as it happened, mostly handsome. His political nous was seriously underdeveloped. In his lifetime he was not known as Philip the handsome, but as Philip “qui croit conseil”, Philip who follows his counsellors. The Spanish ambassador wrote back in 1500 that Philip was obeying his main advisor, the archbishop of Besançon quote “more than I have seen a monk obey his superior”. And these Netherlandish counsellors were either genuinely convinced that France was a reliable ally or had been excessively bribed by Louis XII, or both. Philip did not mind. He liked to hunt and party, he was charming and well liked, but he had no own political convictions, and he did not ever understand that France could never tolerate an assertive, strong Burgundian state in its rear.

And that is why he spent most of 1501 discussing this mega marriage with Louis XII, instead of making for Spain and making friends. Cosying up to France was much more up his street than the complexity of Spanish politics, a place he had not yet visited, where he did not speak the various languages and just generally had no interest in. Moreover, his advisors wanted to keep him in the still fragile and fragmented Netherlands, fearing a prolonged absence of the prince could result in uprisings or invasions.  And there was an intense debate between him and Ferdinand of Aragon over the route they were to take. Ferdinand feared that the French king, who he was about to fight a war over Naples with, would heavily influence, even apprehend the heirs to the Spanish crown. But Philip did not fancy a winter crossing of the Bay of Biscay and he believed Louis XII, his chosen ally and future father in law of his son. And so they travelled overland, enjoyed balls and festivities at the French court before they finally, finally appeared in Spain in January 1502.

On the face of it, things went alright. Juana was recognised as the heir to Castile and Leon and Philip as her prince consort. They celebrated grand entries into cities and confirmed ancient rights, thereby gaining the approval of the key players for their succession. The same happened in Aragon towards the end of that year.

But at the same time things had not been alright. The mutual infatuation of the couple had become increasingly one-sided. Philip, handsome as he was, attracted the attention of many a lady at his court and not being a serious person, indulged heavily. This was something not at all uncommon and the wives of reigning princes had been trained to endure it all with a smile. Juana may have received that same training, but it had not stuck. Juana did not accept the presence of mistresses, something her mother had been known to have done as well.

But her powers were very limited, even compared to other princely consorts. Though she was promised an annual sum to support her household, that money was never paid. Without such funds she was unable to establish her own circle of patronage which would have given her influence over the politics of her husband. This combination of political agony and inability to control her husband’s philandering seemed to have weighed heavily on her. Her behaviour became increasingly erratic. She once cut off the hair of one of Philipp’s mistresses and even allegedly disfigured her with scissors. She had tantrums, screaming uncontrollably at her household and Philip, who then locked her up in her room. There she resorted to what we call today hunger strikes as way force her readmittance to court.

Juana is best known by her moniker “the Mad” of “Juana la Loca” suggesting she was suffering from serious mental health problems. Historically this was diagnosed as schizophrenia, mainly based on an analysis by the German scholar Ludwig Pfandl. But this notion was challenged by Bethany Aram in her excellent book: Juana the Mad: Sovereignty and Dynasty in Renaissance Europe.  Aram argued that Juana’s sense of helplessness and desperation pushed her into these behaviours, like fasting, that had religious, if not saintly connotations, rather than suggesting madness. Her alleged madness was – according to Aram – predominantly a political tool employed by the men in her life, her husband, her father and finally her son, as a means to keep her away from actual power.

I can only recommend reading her book, if only for the parallels she draws with Ernst Kantorowicz idea of the two bodies of the king, and anyone who refers to him gets my thumbs up!

Most recent scholarship tries to tread a middle path. There are sufficient signs of excessive behaviour that suggests inherent mental health issues but that the treatment of her had exacerbated those until she reached full scale psychosis.

I do not have the time, nor is it the job of this podcast to offer an opinion on this heatedly debated question. What interests us here is how the Habsburgs got hold of Spain, and it is in this context that Juana is important.

Therefore let’s go back to the first journey of Philip and Juana to Spain. One thing that irritated Philip was his role as prince consort, pointing out again and again that his position in Spain derived solely from the claims of his wife. And then there was the broader political situation. France and Spain had initially agreed to split Naples up between themselves, but that agreement was falling apart during the course of 1502 and in 1503 all out war broke out between France and Spain. Philipp now found himself in an awkward position given he was consort of the heir to the Spanish kingdoms and a close ally of Louis XII. Ferdinand and Isabella tried to convince him to declare for Spain, after all his son’s future realm. Louis XII at the same time dangled the prospect of the marriage of little Claude and Charles before him.

Philip, as always dependent in his Burgundian advisors, decided he would return to Flanders before hostilities broke out in full. His wife was heavily pregnant and her parents refused to let her join Philip on the journey. For the following 10 months Juana was prevented from going to Flanders and rejoin her husband, presumably as a tool to force Philip to declare for Spain. Juana tried to leave in secret. So Isabella locked her daughter up in a castle. Juana was incensed and oscillated between again hunger strikes and standing on the walls of the castle all through the night.

Juana also gave birth to a son whilst Philip was away. The boy was called Ferdinand after his Spanish grandfather and would grow up at his court, whilst the other children grew up in the Netherlands, at the court of Philip’s sister, Margaret of Austria, she who everybody believed had vigorously helped propel Prince Juan to the afterlife. Only in 1503 after Ferdinand’s armies had fought a great victory over the French did Juana finally get permission to return to the Netherlands.

The next key moment in the saga came when the formidable Isabella of Castille, wife of Ferdinand of Aragon and mother of Juana died in 1504. Remember that she was the queen of Castile in her own right. Her husband, Ferdinand of Aragon had no legal right to the throne of Castile. As established by the Cortes in 1502, the heir to the throne was Juana, and after her, her eldest son, Charles.

That being said, the testament Isabella left behind was an extraordinary document. In it she acknowledged that Juana was the heir to the kingdom and after her, her son Charles. But she included a clause that read as follows: quote: “And also, in case upon my death the said Princess, my daughter, is not to be found in my kingdoms […] or being in them does not wish to or cannot govern them, [..], it is established that in such cases the King, my lord, should rule, govern and administrate my kingdoms and estates on behalf of the aforementioned princess, my daughter. End quote.

Basically, her mother gave carte blanche to everyone to sideline Juana. If she rebelled in her usual way, the only way she had in the absence of money, people could take that as s sign of her madness, whilst if she did not rebel, well then she would be sidelined anyway. That is enough to make one mad.

It was also a slap in the face of Philip, who, as prince consort and father of the heir Charles, should be the administrator of the kingdom in case of Juana’s incapacity, not her father Ferdinand.

So why did she do that? Isabella realised that Juana was clearly under Philip’s spell and would ultimately do what Philip wanted. She and her husband were concerned that a foreign ruler would treat Spain as a secondary holding, like Spain treated Naples and Sicily. And Philip had made quite clear that he did not care much about Spain and Spanish customs. Even more importantly, Philip’s insistence to return to Flanders in 1502 and reluctance to back his in-laws in their conflict with France had made him out as someone whose interests, instincts and allegiances were at odds with Ferdinand’s. Hence if Philipp ruled Castile and Ferdinand Aragon, the two kingdoms would once again drift apart, undoing decades of consolidation work.

In practice Isabella’s testament now pitted Philip against Ferdinand and placed Juana in-between her husband and her father. If Ferdinand wanted to rule Castile, he needed to prove that Isabella was unfit to rule, whilst Philip, who until now had insisted that Juana was incapacitated, now had to take the opposite position, whilst at the same time keeping her under tight control.

This latter strategy became increasingly hard to sustain. Ever since Juana had returned from Spain, marital relationships had deteriorated even further. Philippe tried to constrain Juana by cutting her off from her Spanish entourage. Juana responded by sending a letter to her father, endorsing his takeover of the kingdom of Castile on her behalf. Hearing of that, Philip then placed his wife in solitary confinement with no contact to the outside world. She did manage to call one of Philipp’s senior advisors to come in for a meeting and when the elderly gentleman arrived, attacked him with a metal bar.

By early 1506 Philippe was of the view that he had finally broken his wife’s will, making it possible for him to travel to Castile and claim the throne. What is totally bewildering to me is that despite these constant fights and her mistreatment, Juana was almost constantly pregnant throughout her marriage, suggesting that there were at least occasional moments of conjugal harmony, or at  least one hopes so.

This time they went by ship, assuming it would be quicker. Time was of the essence since the grand plan of a marriage between the little boy Charles of Burgundy-Austria and Claude of France had been called off. All the negotiations and promises of world domination for the house of Habsburg had been nothing but smoke and mirrors. All that Louis XII had wanted was recognition from Maximilian as rightful duke of Milan, which he received, and time to recover from the loss of Naples in 1504. Once both of these objectives were achieved, Louis married Claude to Francis of Angouleme, the future king Francis I.

And Louis got involved in the struggle over the Spanish inheritance. The king of France now sided with his previous archenemy, Ferdinand of Aragon, against his former best friend, Philip the Handsome. This is again Machiavelli in action. And to drive a dagger into Habsburg ambition, Louis had furnished the aged Ferdinand with a new wife, Germaine de Foix. If she were to bear the old king of Aragon a son, that son would inherit Aragon, and may even seize Castile as well.

Bottom line was that Philip needed to get down the Bay of Biscay pronto. He set off in January 1506 from Holland, but got caught in one of the worst storms anyone had seen, that pushed them all the way back to England where the badly damaged flagship made landfall. That was a godsend for king Henry VII. The English king had been nagging the Habsburgs for two things, one was the handover of another Yorkist pretender, Edmond de la Pole, the Earl of Suffolk who had found refuge in the Netherlands. And a favourable trade deal with Flanders. Neither of these were things Philipp wanted or should have parted with easily. So he refused. Ignoring his refusal, king Henry VII kept entertaining the couple in a lavish fashion, but told his shipyards to delay the repair of the Burgundian fleet and instructed the coastguard to intercept any of their ships trying to leave. For months Philip and Juana were stuck in England, effectively very well treated hostages. Only when Philip signed a massively disadvantageous trade agreement, quickly dubbed the “malus intercursus”, and handed over the unlucky Earl of Suffolk, were they allowed to leave.

It took until April 1506 before they arrived in Spain. But that is where their fortune improved. The senior lords of Castile had found the hasty marriage of Ferdinand an affront to their former queen Isabella. Moreover, Ferdinand had tried to implement administrative reforms that reversed some of the handouts to the senior nobles under Isabella’s reign and generally aimed at tying the two kingdoms closer together.

When Philip arrived, the Castilians saw an opportunity to get rid of the old wily fox of Aragon and fleece the feeble Philip for all he, or more precisely his wife, was worth. Most likely to their own surprise the couple were welcomed by all the high and mighty lords of castile. They swore allegiance to their queen Juana and her handsome consort. They entered one grand city after another in great pomp and within just weeks they had control of the kingdom.

And then Philipp did something that terminally tainted his already not exactly splendid reputation. Given the marital tensions were not likely to resolve themself any time soon and Isabella’s testament had been unambiguous in as much as it did not allow for his guardianship of Castile, he needed his wife – who was, once again, pregnant, to be neutralised. And so he got together with Ferdinand and made a deal. Ferdinand who saw little chance to shift opinion in Castile and also had issues in Naples to deal with, recognised Philip and Juana as king and queen of Castile. He received a generous pension in return that cut deep into Philip’s pockets. And, her husband and her father together declared Juana insane and confined her to the palace of Tordesillas. Juana reacted by oscillating between uncontrolled rage and deep depression. This ultimate betrayal by the husband she loved and the father she admired was probably what tipped her over the edge.

The succession crisis resolved in a manner of speaking, Philipp settled into his role as sole ruler  of Castile. The nobles who had received him so enthusiastically soon cooled in their affections. Philipp only really trusted his Netherlandish advisors who he rewarded lavishly with Spanish lands and titles. His court was an unending sequence of dazzling festivities, all funded by rising taxes. The Flemings as they called them were quickly hated by everyone and Philip’s reign was about to descend into crisis. And by the way, Ferdinand had gathered his key advisors right after his deal with Philip and made them witness him declaring to have been forced to sign and that he would continue to fight for the rights of his beloved daughter..etc., etc..

A civil war was literally about to break out when Philipp suddenly caught a severe fever. He had always been prone to stress related illnesses and  this time the combination of the hostility of his father in law, the lost grip on the Castilian nobles, demands of the father to facilitate his coronation journey to Rome, the Spanish climate and some kind of viral infection did it for him. Or maybe he was poisoned.

In any way, he was gone. What followed is the most famous part of this story. Juana was released from her jail and was now queen of Castile. She ordered that her beloved husband was not yet to be buried. She travelled all over her kingdoms with the coffin and had it opened -only at night to kiss the man she had loved on his cold lips, and who she now had all to herself. I have no intention of going any further into this gory story, but suffice to say, the Castilian nobles realised that their queen was indeed no longer able to rule. They reluctantly called on Ferdinand to take the reins of the kingdom on behalf of the ultimate heir.     

At this point Spain could well have been lost to the Habsburgs. Ferdinand was back in control of Castile. Maximilian was a thousand miles away in Austria with no money or allies to intervene, plus he had to shore up the family position in the Netherlands first. Just to get an idea how poor Maximilian was, funding the cost of the cloth to clad his court in mourning was a major issue. Meanwhile Ferdinand was 54, old for the age, but he still had another 10 years in him. His wife, Germaine de Foix was 18. So children from this relationship were possible, even though their first child died within just 2 days.

And even if that did not work out and if Ferdinand had cared only about keeping the Habsburgs out, there would surely have been some remote cousin in the Trastamara family who could be dressed up as the true born Spanish heir. And last but not least, there was little Ferdinand, the second son of Philip and Juana who was growing up as a Spaniard at the court of his grandfather.

Why none of this happened is a true mystery. Most books I read on this simply say that Ferdinand and Maximilian came to an agreement whereby Ferdinand accepted his grandson Charles’ right to inherit both Castile and Aragon in exchange for his lifelong regency over Castile. Even Hermann Wiesflecker, and apologies for calling him Wiesecker in the last episode, devotes merely two paragraphs in his five volume, 2,500 page magnum opus to this event. Given the long term repercussions of Habsburg’s inheritance of Spain, digging into this looks to me like the mother of all dissertations.  

Whilst we do not know how it happen, we know that it did happen. Ferdinand ruled both Castile and Aragon until his death in 1516 without interference by Maximilian or any other Habsburg. And quite successfully so. His political and administrative measures forged the two kingdoms ever closer together. Through his second wife he acquired the part of the kingdom of Navarre south of the Pyrenees, thereby completed the consolidation of Spain. And, of course, he promoted the expansion of the Spanish empire in the Americas, though the great riches of Mexico and Peru would only be seized after his death.

When the heir to all of this, Charles, arrived in Asturias in 1517, his subjects initially thought they had seen an enemy fleet arriving. The young man, who had grown up in the Netherlands and did not speak a single word in any Iberian language was received hesitantly by his new subjects. The dreaded notion that a foreigner would take over and make Spain an appendix and a mere source of men and material for adventures in Italy and Germany, was about to become reality. They quickly gathered around Charles’ brother, young Ferdinand, who was more Spanish than Habsburg in any respect.

Hence one of Charles’ first acts was to send Ferdinand away to Austria where he would spend most of his career. Charles himself only stayed two years, irritating everybody by appointing his trusted Netherlandish advisors – them again – to all the key positions. N 1519 Maximilian died and Charles headed back to Germany for his coronation in Aachen. As soon as he was gone revolt broke out. This revolt, known as the revolt of the Comuneros was driven mainly from the cities, Valladolid, Tordesillas and Toledo. They objected to the expense of the court, the taxes raised to fund Charles’ election as Holy Roman Emperor and the appointment of the Netherlanders to high office, in particular that of a 20-year-old Flemish nobleman as archbishop of Toledo. All this weighed heavily on a country whose economy had suffered from the expulsion of the Jews and Muslims. But underneath were even deeper sources of discontent about the rapacious Castilian nobles who were encroaching on the rights and territories of the cities. So the revolt took on a distinctly anti-aristocratic tinge, making some people call it the first real revolution.

Still they sought legitimacy for their actions. They claimed they were acting in defence of the rights of – drumroll – Juana of Castile, Charles’ mother and officially the Queen alongside her son. Juana had spent the previous 10 years locked up in the palace of Tordesillas. But when they approached her, Juana refused to turn on her son and she was brought back to her cell.

Though the revolt gained traction amongst many of the cities in the centre of the Iberian peninsula, ultimately the royalist forces effectively the nobles of Castile won out. At the battle of Villalar in 1521 the revolutionaries were defeated and the centre of the uprising, Toledo, surrendered the following year.

When Charles returned to Spain in 1522 he had learned his lesson. By now he had mastered Castilian Spanish, replaced his Netherlandish advisors with locals and spent the next 7 years consolidating his power over Spain, a power the Habsburgs would maintain for almost 200 years and that gave them the resources to rise to the top of the political tree in Europe.

And what about Juana? Her son visited her only twice and gave the order that quote: “It seems to me that the best and most suitable thing for you to do is to make sure that no person speaks with Her Majesty, for no good could come from it”. She spent the rest of her life in isolation in the palace of Tordesillas until her death in 1555, aged 75, her condition deteriorating further and further.

Next week we will look at what our friend Maximilian was up to during that period, namely how he navigated the still ongoing Italian wars, in particular his fight with the King of Fish as he called the doge of Venice in his fictional autobiography, the Weisskunig. Join us again in another tale of highfalutin plans and dismal execution.

And in the meantime, go get printing History of the Germans artwork on your mugs, phones and outerwear. I have put a link into the show notes. And whilst you are at it stop by historyofthegermans.com/support.