Catalonian Civil War - War Against John II

War Against John II

John II took his first major offensive against the Principality by occupying Balaguer on 5 June. On 9 June 1462 the Consell declared him an enemy of the people and deposed. In August the Generalitat offered the crown to Henry IV of Castile, who accepted and sent John of Beaumont as his lieutenant. 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's at Montcada in September and marched towards Barcelona. The city was besieged until Hug Roger III could arrive with relief troops by sea in October.

John II then marched on Tarragona, where the Archbishop 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 that Sicilian grain and money to feed and finance the royalist cause in Catalonia after 1462.

In April 1463 John II ceded Estella in Navarre to Castile and in June Henry formally renounced the Aragonese throne. In October the Consell offered the throne to the constable of Portugal, a grandson of James II of Urgell, who was acclaimed as Peter V. 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.

Peter took ship to Barcelona, where he landed in January 1464. He lifted the siege of Cervera, but failed to duplicate the feat at Lleida, which John captured in July, and several smaller towns. Vilafranca del Penedès, where the Capitulation had been signed three years earlier, fell to the king in August. Cervera, Amposta, and Tortosa fell to John and the count of Praderas. Peter suffered a major defeat at Els Prats del Rei on 28 February 1465, where the count of Pallars Sobirà was captured. Peter died at Granollers in June 1466. Tortosa capitulated shortly after his death, as did some other small places. The king had offered to pardon his enemies and respect the Constitucions and the municipal privileges, so that the Generalitat was debating submission, but a minority on the Consell was deadset against it.

On 30 July 1466 the Consell elected René the Good, the Count of Anjou and Provence and failed claimant to several crowns, as their new king. His election—he was a grandson of John I of Aragon—was designed to fracture the French alliance. René sent as his lieutenant his blind son John II, Duke of Lorraine, with much needed reinforcements. Speedily John besieged Girona, captured Banyoles, occupied the Empordà, and entered Barcelona in August 1466. The entire Empordà, however, did not remain occupied for long.

In October John of Lorraine defeated Prince Ferdinand at Viladamat. The prince sustained heavy losses and John II, who had recently landed at Empúries, fled with his son to Tarragona. When the Duke of Lorraine was shortly forced to return to France to raise troops, Ferdinand campaigned northwards. All the while the king was working to foment a baronial rebellion against Louis XI of France and to foster a tripartite alliance between England, Burgundy, and Aragon. When, in 1468, the brother of the childless Henry IV of Castile, Alfonso de Trastámara y Avís, died, John rushed to propose a marriage between his son Ferdinand and Henry's half-sister Isabella, formerly the proposed wife of Charles of Viana.

In September 1468 Ferdinand took Berga. His proposed marriage won the approval of the Aragonese and Castilian magnates and was celebrated in Valladolid in October 1469. The Duke of Lorraine had returned to Catalonia in May that year and in June took Girona, which he had been holding out through 1467–68, and several smaller places. The Duke died in December 1470, before an attack on the mountainous redoubt of Francesc de Verntallat could be carried out. At a general cortes at Monzón in 1470 the king received the subsidy he requested to carry on the war until the expulsion of the French from Catalonia.

With John of Lorraine dead, René appointed John's eldest bastard son, John of Calabria, Count of Briey, his new lieutenant. In 1471 the French troops fighting with the Catalans retired to France and the advantage shifted decidedly to John II. Joan Margarit, the Bishop of Girona, returned his city to John (October 1471), followed by other towns. René died on 16 December 1470 and the Catalans lost their most important ally.

John II campaigned in the Alt Empordà until June 1472 and then against Barcelona. A naval and land siege lasted from November 1471 to 16 October 1472. By the Capitulation of Pedralbes, Barcelona surrendered to John, John agreed to let John of Calabria leave peacefully and a general pardon was granted. The Count of Pallars, however, was not pardoned. The acts of the Consell and the other organs of Catalan government since the death of Charles of Viana were approved and John swore to uphold the Constitucions. The Capitulation of Vilafranca, however, was rejected.