Revolt of The Comuneros - Aftermath

Aftermath

María Pacheco successfully escaped to Portugal, where she lived in exile the remaining ten years of her life. Bishop Acuña, captured in Navarre, was stripped of his ecclesiastical standing and executed after he killed a guard while trying to escape. Pedro Girón received a pardon conditional on him going into exile to Oran in North Africa, where he served as a commander against the Moors. Queen Joanna was locked in Tordesillas by her son. She would remain there for thirty-five years, the rest of her life.

Emperor Charles V would go on to rule one of the largest and most sprawling empires in European history. As a consequence, Charles was nearly constantly at war, fighting France, England, the Papal States, the Ottoman Turks, the Aztecs, the Incas, and the Protestant Schmalkaldic League during his reign. Spain would provide the bulk of the Habsburgs' armies and financial resources over this period. Charles placed Castilians in high governmental positions in both Castile and the Empire at large, and generally left the administration of Castile in Castilian hands. In that sense, the revolt could be considered successful.

Some of the reforms of Isabella I which reduced noble power were reversed as a price for luring the nobility to the royalist side. However, Charles understood that noble encroachment of power had helped cause the revolt, and embarked upon a new reform program. Unpopular, corrupt, and ineffective officials were replaced; judicial functions of the Royal Council were limited; and local courts were revitalized. Charles also adjusted the membership of the Royal Council; its hated president was replaced, the aristocracy's role reduced, and more gentry were added to it. Realizing that the urban elite needed to have a stake in the royal government once more, Charles gave many of them positions, privileges, and government salaries. The Cortes, while not as important as the comuneros had hoped, nevertheless maintained its power; it was still required to approve new taxes and could advise the king. Charles also discouraged his officials from using overly coercive methods, after seeing his heavy-handed treatment of the Cortes of Corunna backfire. If anything, the co-option of the middle class worked too well; when Charles' successor King Phillip II demanded a ruinously large tax increase in the 1580s, the Cortes was too dependent on the Crown for money to effectively resist policies that would wreck the economy.