Confrontation between 1446 and 1450 Juan II of Castile and the lieutenant of Aragon Juan II of Navarra, the IV count of Medinaceli , Gastón de la Cerda y Sarmiento[1], would be named Captain General of the border with Aragon by the Castilian King. Quartered in the fortress of Gómara, his mission would be to cause as much damage as possible in Aragonese territory and try to take the Plaza de Peña Alcázar[2], a fortress located in the land of Soria, occupied by the Navarrese since 1447. Faced with this threat, Juan II of Navarre would be appointed general of the Aragonese, approving an expense of 20,000 guilders to pay for the 400 knights who for three months would reinforce the border threatened by the count.
The battle between the Aragonese and the Castilians would take place in 1448 near Gómara, resulting in the victory of the former and the capture of the count of Medinaceli. Captive, the count would be transferred to Villarroya , in the Community of Calatayud, and then to Zaragoza and Bardallur, where he would remain imprisoned for almost two years.
The negotiations for the ransom of the count of Medinaceli would be long and complicated, finally agreeing to release him for 60,000 guilders from Aragon. Thirty thousand were paid in cash, and the border castles of Montuenga, Arcos and Cihuela, owned by the count, remained in Aragon's possession as collateral.
After the count[3] was released, a general peace between Castilians and Aragonese seemed to be foreseen. However, the war would intensify only a year later.
Don Gastón, very offended by the infamous ransom conditions imposed, would not stop planning as revenge the taking of some castle and strong frontier place of Aragon. The chosen one would be Villarroya [4], the count's first prison after his capture. To achieve this, he would bribe one of his neighbors, Florent Melero[5], in 1452, in exchange for taking advantage of the scarcity of neighbors on a market day in Calatayud, at the agreed signal and time, he would open the doors of the place to his troops[ 6].
Two days after taking Villarroya, they also occupied the nearby village of Villalengua.
When this news arrived in Zaragoza, the Cortes would organize and pay for the recruitment of eight hundred horsemen and five hundred crossbowmen. His mission was very specific:recover the lost squares and attack only the most belligerent towns and manors, including the county of Medinaceli.
This army, with the support of the Calatayud militias, would quickly recover Villalengua, but would be unable to reconquer Villarroya, resisting the count's troops for almost a year and a half of siege. Given this, Juan II of Navarra would choose to withdraw to fight in the county of Medinaceli.
We have news of the result of the cavalcades carried out as revenge by the Aragonese troops on the villages of Medinaceli thanks to a document preserved in the Ducal Archive[7]. This manuscript has great historical value since it details all the villages in the county that were attacked, with their inhabitants before and after the taking of Villarroya and the state in which they remained, constituting a kind of population census. To write it, information was collected from at least 25 witnesses from different locations in the County, who after being sworn in answered Pedro de la Concha's questions. Thus, the first witness, the cleric Gil Martínez, stated:
We also transcribe part of the responses of the second witness, the cleric Pedro Alfon:
All the villages in the county closest to Aragón were attacked, looted and burned.[21]. Those who could not flee to other areas of the county or outside of it, perished at the hands of the Navarrese-Aragonese troops. It seems that Juan II of Navarre, seeing that Medinaceli was only supplied with water from a source, planned to besiege it to force its surrender or provoke the abandonment of Villarroya by the Count's troops. However, the Aragonese nobles did not agree, limiting themselves to looting the county.
Despite the destruction and depopulation suffered, the effort made in subsequent decades would quickly make almost all Castilian villages return to normal. This is confirmed by the census[22] of 1488 ordered by Luis de la Cerda[23], Gastón's son and heir.
The Aragonese, faced with the impossibility of recovering Villarroya and financing the army for longer, would seek an agreement to exchange the occupied positions. Finally, the "Concord of Valladolid" signed on December 7, 1453, would put an end to the war. Barely 6 months later, the Count of Medinaceli, Gastón de la Cerda y Sarmiento would die.
Bibliography
- File 50-4 . Medinaceli ducal archive. Seville.
- Annals of Aragon . Electronic book in Acrobat pdf format. Edition of Angel Canellas Lopez. Electronic edition by José Javier Iso (coord.), María Isabel Yagüe and Pilar Rivero. Year 2003.
- History of Guadalajara and its Mendozas in the XV and XVI centuries . Francisco Layna Serrano. Aache editions. Guadalajara, 2013.
- Acta Curiarum Regni Aragonum . Volume XI. Volume 1. Records of the process of Cortes de Zaragoza (1451-1454). Edition by Guillermo Tomás Faci – Zaragoza, 2013.
- Manuscript copy of the s. XVI , on the sentence of King Juan II and Cortes de Aragón to Florent Melero . Salazar and Castro Collection. ES/RAH – 09-00888 (M-82), fs. 267-268 – Royal Academy of History.
Notes
[1] IV count of Medinaceli, son of Luis de la Cerda y Mendoza and Juana Sarmiento, lady of Enciso. He married Leonor de la Vega y Mendoza, lady of Cogolludo, in Yunquera de Henares. Two sons and one daughter were born from this marriage.
[2] Fortress located between the Deza and Costanazo mountains, province of Soria. Today only its ruins remain.
[3] According to Jerónimo Zurita on July 11, 1449.
[4] Today Villarroya de la Sierra. Aragonese population belonging to the Community of Calatayud of about 500 inhabitants. It was reconquered from the Muslims around 1120 with the taking of Calatayud by Alfonso I the Battler. The village, configured around two castles, was delimited at that time by a high wall that has been preserved well into the 20th century; You can still see two of its doors, called "Baja" and "Sumo Aldea".
[5] Juan II and the Aragonese courts would declare him a traitor of the kingdom, condemning him if he was captured, to the confiscation of his assets and to the death penalty. Once dead he should be dismembered and his remains hung by the foot on a gallows on the wall of the Diputación del Reino and in Calatayud, for a year as a memory of his crime. For his capture a hefty reward was offered:3,000 guilders if he was taken alive, 1,000 dead and the assassin presented his corpse, or five hundred if Whoever killed him could prove his death, even if he didn't present the body. The ecclesiastical arm voted against this sentence. We do not know if he was finally captured or not.
[6] This is how Zurita recounts the taking of Villarroya in 1452 by the Count in his “Annals of the Crown of Aragon”:
“That place had two castles in medium defense for any attack and attack of the enemies of the border, and Melero put in them some of the Count's men that he had in his hidden house, and taking out his banner and surnamed the name of Castile, the Count then entered the place with his men on horseback and on foot who were in ambush, and they were up to six hundred men in number; which Melero gave entrance through a door that was between the castles. This was on March 21 of this year; and as the place was fortified with a good wall and had those two castles that were provided with weapons and provisions and a lot of ammunition, he drove out all the people who were in the place; and he arrested some women and ransacked the place; and the dispossession was such that it was considered certain that it was worth more than one hundred thousand guilders, of which more than twenty thousand remained in the possession of the one who committed the treason.”
[7] “Information made by Pedro de la Concha, Chamber Porter of S.M. and by his mandate, of the places that in the County of Medinaceli were completely depopulated and more destroyed due to the War with the Aragonese and Navarrese and the taking of Villarroya”. File 50-4. Ducal Archive of Medinaceli. Seville.
[8] Aguilar de Montuenga, Zaragoza province.
[9] Velilla de Medinaceli, province of Soria.
[10] Urex from Medinaceli, province of Soria.
[11] Depopulated area of the province of Soria near Layna.
[12] Balbacil, province of Guadalajara.
[13] Mazarete, province of Guadalajara.
[14] Luzon, province of Guadalajara.
[15] Azcamellas, province of Soria.
[16] Garbajosa, province of Guadalajara.
[17] Benamira, province of Soria.
[18] Urex from Medinaceli, province of Soria.
[19] Azcamellas, province of Soria.
[20] Fuencaliente, province of Soria.
[21] See attached map.
[22] Pérez Arribas, J.L.; "Population of the Land of Medinaceli, according to the 1488 Census, ordered by the I Duke of Medinaceli D. Luis de la Cerda".
[23] Firstborn of Gastón de la Cerda, he would hold the titles of V Count of Medinaceli, I Count of El Puerto de Santa María and, from 1479, I Duke of Medinaceli by concession of Isabel the Catholic.