The Catalan Civil War, also called the Catalonian Civil War or the War against John II, was a civil war in the Principality of Catalonia, then part of the Crown of Aragon, between 1462 and 1472. The two factions, the royalists who supported John II of Aragon and the Catalan constitutionalists (Catalanists, pactists, and foralists), disputed the extent of royal rights in Catalonia. The French entered the war at times on the side on John II and at times with the Catalans. The Catalans, who at first rallied around John's son Charles of Viana, set up several pretenders in opposition to John during the course of the conflict. Barcelona remained their stronghold to the end: with its surrender the war came to a close. John, victorious, re-established the status quo ante bellum.
For the royalist side, the "rebels" were for having betrayed the fidelity they had sworn to their king; while the anti-royalists considered the royalists "traitors" for not being faithful to the laws of the "land", for being "enemies of public affairs" or simply for being "bad Catalans". Thus, the anti-royalist side developed a new conception of political society in which, according to Catalan historians and , "solidarity among the men of a country was produced by having common laws and inhabiting the same land, not as, until then, by the fact of being vassals of the same sovereign». Thus, the modern concept of homeland had emerged that went beyond mere territorial ascription to take on a legal character, so the Catalan rebellion would be, as the French historian described, "the first of modern revolutions', hundred years before the Dutch Revolt.
Background
When the war started, John II had been King of Navarre since 1425 through his first wife, Blanche I of Navarre, who had married him in 1420. When Blanche died in 1441, John retained the government of her lands and dispossessed his own eldest son, Charles (born 1421), who was made Prince of Viana in 1423.According to , it was Blanche's will that allowed John to postpone his son's succession to Navarre. John tried to assuage his son with the lieutenancy of Navarre, but his son's French upbringing and French allies, the Beaumonteses, brought the two into conflict. In the early 1450s they were engaged in open warfare in Navarre. Charles was captured and released; and John tried to disinherit him by illegally naming his daughter Eleanor, who was married to Gaston IV of Foix, his successor. In 1451 John's new wife, Juana Enríquez, gave birth to a son, Ferdinand. In 1452 Charles fled his father first for France, later for the court of his uncle, John's elder brother, Alfonso V at Naples.In 1459–60 the Sicilian parliament, citing precedent, asked for Charles as their viceroy, but John refused them permission . From 1454 John governed his brother's Spanish realms—the Crown of Aragon—as lieutenant.John, who had previously been lieutenant from 1436 to 1438, replaced the unpopular Galceran de Requesens in 1454 and was thus ruling Catalonia at the time of his succession to it, cf. .
When Alfonso died in 1458, Charles was arrested and brought to Majorca. John succeeded Alfonso as ruler of the Crown of Aragon. In his will, Alfonso named Charles as his heir. Among John's early unpopular acts was to quit the war against Genoa, upsetting the merchants of Barcelona.The Catalans continued the war with Genoa until 1463, when they signed a treaty in order to more fully invest in the war against John II. He also refused to aid his nephew, Ferdinand I of Naples, in securing his throne.
In 1460 Charles left Majorca unauthorised and landed in Barcelona, where he was welcomed by the two chief factions, the Busca, which were merchants, artisans, and laborers, and the Biga, which were honored citizens and landlords. John did not initially react to the situation, but he called Charles to his court at Lleida to discuss the proposed marriage of Charles to Isabella, infanta of Castile. He still refused to recognise Charles as his "first born", probably seeking to reserve that title for Ferdinand, but arousing opposition in the meantime. Charles opened negotiations with Henry IV of Castile, his father's inveterate enemy. At Lleida on 2 December 1460 he was arrested and imprisoned in Morella. This caused an uproar in Catalonia, where Charles was immensely popular, and the king was forced to suspend court. The Generalitat and the Consell de Cent, the municipal council of Barcelona, created a Consell del Principat ("Council of the Principality") to settle the matter of the rightful succession.This "council representing the principality of Barcelona" was in existence by 8 December . The Catalan Courts (the parliament) were called for 8 January 1461.
At the parliament, Joan Dusai, the noted doctor of laws, ruled that the king had violated four of the Usatges de Barcelona, four of the Constitucions de Catalunya, and the Furs (Laws) of Lleida. The parliament then demanded that John name Charles as his first-born son and heir. This he refused, and the parliament assembled an army under the Count of Modica. The army quickly captured Fraga and John capitulated in February. He freed Charles on 25 February and, on 21 June 1461, signed the Capitulation of Vilafranca, whereby Charles was recognised as his first-born son, lieutenant in perpetuity, and heir in all his realms.All of the lands of the Crown voiced support for Charles The king also surrendered his right to enter the Principality of Catalonia without the permission of the Generalitat. He was also forced to surrender royal prerogatives. The appointment of royal officials was to be done only on the advice of representative bodies. The treaty was a victory for the Catalanists (who stressed Catalan independence and pre-eminence), pactists (who stressed the relationship between monarch and Catalonia as a mutual agreement), and the foralists (who stressed the ancient privileges, the fueros, of Catalonia).
Charles died of tuberculosis in Barcelona on 23 September 1461, a fact which threatened the treaty of 21 June. While Charles had inspired unity, his death sparked the reemergence of factionalism.A cult of Sant Karles de Cathalunya (Saint Charles of Catalonia) soon arose, but it did not have the force of the Prince's personal leadership . Though the treaty allowed for the young Ferdinand, only nine years old, to succeed John, Ferdinand's mother was conspiring with the Busca against the Biga to have the treaty overturned.
Revolt of the remences
Civil war broke out with the war of the Remences led by Francesc de Verntallat in February 1462.In contemporary eyes, the remences were chiefly to blame for the entire decade of war. Modern scholarship tended to stress economic factors, but the chronology of the Catalan economy does not easily line up with events in the civil war. The failure of the Busca and the remences, who shared opponents, to unite against them, and the arrogance of the Biga and pactists (the leaders of 1461 and demagogues of 1462 in the words of Jaume Vicens Vives) following Vilafranca have more to do with it. The war was essentially political, cf. . The peasants revolted against the Consell del Principat with the hope of receiving royal support: Juana worked hard to stoke anti-Busca sentiment in Barcelona. In April a plot by some former Busca in support of the queen had been publicised and the deputy leader of the Consell, Francesc Pallarès, along with two former leaders, were executed in May. On 11 March 1462, Juana and Ferdinand left unsafe Barcelona for Girona, hoping to receive protection from the French army there.
John signed two treaties in 1462 at Sauveterre (3 May) and Bayonne (9 May) with Louis XI of France whereby the French king would lend 700 lances (4,200 knights plus their retainers) in military aid to John in exchange for 200,000 écus and, as surety of payment, the cession of the counties of Roussillon and Cerdagne, and the right to garrison Perpignan and Cotlliure.A French army had presciently been established at Narbonne in 1461 . In April, at Olite, the French king had already agreed to acquiesce in John's plan to make Eleanor and her husband his heirs in Navarre and dispossess his eldest daughter, Blanche II of Navarre, who was given over to Eleanor and Gaston's custody. She was poisoned in prison in 1464.
At the same time the Consell del Principat formed an army to put down the rebellion of the remences. The army of the Consell was placed under the command of Hug Roger III, Count of Pallars Sobirà, commander of the army of the Generalitat. After besieging and capturing Hostalric on 23 May 1462, Hug Roger marched on Girona, where he was received warmly on 6 June while the queen and the prince took refuge in the citadel, the Força Vella ("old fort"), throughout June. Gaston of Foix, leading a French army, took Girona on 23 July and rescued the queen and prince.
Throughout the summer the Generalitat and the municipal council of Barcelona worked with the peasant leaders and various noble factions to draw up an agreement and bring an end to the revolt. The king, however, intrigued against it and negotiations were scuttled before a treaty could take effect.
War against John II
John II took his first major offensive against the Principality by occupying Balaguer on 5 June 1462. On 9 June, the Consell declared him an enemy of the people and deposed him.By invading Catalonia he had violated the terms of Vilafranc (Bisson, 151). On 11 August 1462, the Generalitat offered the crown to Henry IV of Castile, who accepted and sent John of Beaumont as his lieutenant.John succeeded in retaining power in Catalonia until early 1464. John II meanwhile marched on Lleida, which he did not besiege. He then defeated an army of the Consell near Cervera at Rubinat on 21–22 July, and proceeded to take Tàrrega. After the victory he joined his forces with Gaston de Foix's at Montcada on 1 September and marched towards Barcelona. The city was besieged until Hug Roger III could arrive with relief troops by sea on 3 October.
John II then marched on Tarragona, where the Archbishop of Tarragona, Pere d'Urrea urged surrender. With the fall of Tarragona (31 October), Henry IV, who was approaching Barcelona by sea, opened negotiations with John and Louis XI. Throughout the winter of 1462–63, both armies were plagued with desertions and neither side could call on more than a few hundred, mostly demoralised, troops. John, though, was supported in Aragon and Valencia, and especially in Sardinia and Sicily. Major concessions to the Sicilian nobility in 1460 ensured Sicilian grain and money to feed and finance the royalist cause in Catalonia after 1462.
In April, John II ceded Estella in Navarre to Castile and on 13 June 1463, Henry formally renounced the Aragonese throne. On 27 October 1463, the Consell offered the throne to the constable of Portugal, a grandson of James II of Urgell, who was acclaimed as Peter V.James had been a candidate for the throne before the Compromise of Caspe in 1410. Probably the pactists thought they could control Peter, but he proved to be more independent-minded then they expected and he was unable to generate a strong following . Partisans of James still existed in Catalonia during the war: one of them wrote the anti-royalist tract La fi del comte d'Urgell. In November a delegation of Catalans approached Louis of France at Abbeville to seek his arbitration, but he loudly proclaimed himself a Catalan dynast and mused that "there are no mountains" between Catalonia and France. The Catalan legates wisely decided to return without his arbitration.