~ Las Reformas Pelagianas ~
Parte III:
- Codex Pelagianus -
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El rey Juan Pelayo a mediana edad, c. 1562
Kings are rarely private intellectuals. There is nothing about the office of kingship that precludes intelligence, but, when confronted by the overwhelming nature of the task presented them, most rulers tend to leave the greater part of their governance to more confidently learned men. There is no reason to suspect that Juan Pelayo possessed any great genius - much like his successors or predecessors, the vast majority of Juan Pelayo’s opinions mirrored those of the dominant intellectual trends in Spain during his lifetime (whether or not said trends were substantially flawed in retrospect) - yet Juan Pelayo was no dimwit either, on occasion showing surprising bursts of creativity and cleverness. Additionally, there is no discounting the value of the Early Modern princely upbringing Juan Pelayo received, an education refined by centuries of experience in shaping future monarchs and by accumulated knowledge touching on subjects as diverse as basic astronomy and the Greek classics. As with other rulers numbered among the greats, Juan Pelayo would be capable of giving his kingdoms the necessary reforms and safeguards to keep them bound together in a coherent fashion thanks to a careful adolescent instruction and a supportive generation of cultivated, forward-thinking Spaniards.
There must have been some precise moment during the countless hours spent being lectured on Roman history that Juan Pelayo first became enamored of the Christian emperors of Late Antiquity. At whatever point in his youth this interest in the political and legal machinations of the likes of Justinian or the two Theodosians was piqued, it proved incredibly constructive for Juan Pelayo in both its practical application as a rubric for Spanish legal reform and in its idealist conceptualization of an absolute, yet egalitarian monarch. This was not an unusual development, as Juan Pelayo's fascination with late Roman jurisprudence coincided exactly with a general intellectual trend in Western Europe that favored a revival of the rediscovered Roman law codes. The two great works of Christian Roman law - the law code of Theodosius II, the
Codex Theodosianus, and the later collection of laws compiled under the emperor Justinian, the
Corpus Iuris Civilis - were also the most accessible to the West due to their being inscribed almost entirely in Latin, and were first translated into Castilian in 1549 by Antonio Agustín, the Bishop of Tarragona.
This early exposure to juridical study would culminate in what was perhaps the seminal accomplishment of Juan Pelayo's reign; the "Código del Fuero Real," known more commonly as the "Leyes Nuevas" or "New Laws" (
Novas Leis in Portuguese or
Noves Lleis in Catalan). Juan Pelayo undoubtedly saw his legal program in the same light as the great
Siete Partidas (“Seven Parts”), a comprehensive, vernacular law code compiled in the 13th century by Alfonso X of Castile which was also deeply influenced by the Roman tradition and was held in high regard across Europe for its symmetry, fairness, and accessibility. However, instead of striving to synthesize the Roman, Visigothic, and Islamic legal traditions of Spain as was the aim of the
Siete Partidas, the Leyes Nuevas intended to synthesize the law codes of Castile, Portugal, and Aragon. It was long and tedious work by a shifting team of clergymen and lawyers over the course of decades, but it was sustained by Juan Pelayo's zeal for the project - more specifically by his zeal for erasing the boundaries between the three kingdoms of Spain and for the passage of additional legislation that he felt (and was advised) would profit both the monarchy and the people of Spain.
As there had been an unceasing stream of new legislation and legislative minutiae flowing from the royal bureaucracy since the early 16th century, the Leyes Nuevas had the added purpose of legal housekeeping in response to concerns such as that of the Castilian Cortes in 1536:
"Litigation has been so much on the increase that cases are not decided with due speed, leading to such great expense and trouble for the litigants that often both parties spend much more than the case is worth and they end up completely ruined, while the advocates and notaries get rich."
Apart from consolidating and simplifying the many different legal traditions across Spain, the Leyes Nuevas also included a number of new propositions which were to provide a great deal of controversy. While the bulk of the Leyes Nuevas were more or less treated with indifference by Juan Pelayo's subjects, a few choice articles were especially scrutinized and found disagreeable to the interests of Spain's most powerful inhabitants.
- "Me rindo, pero no obedezco" -
The first source of contention was a clause which drew inspiration from the
Sentencia Arbitral de Guadalupe of 1486, a decree made by Fernando II of Aragon which outlawed in Catalonia the
mals usos ("evil customs"), a set of provisions that allowed nobles to tie their peasants to their land, confiscate their goods in multiple circumstances, and essentially treat them little better than chattel slaves.
Nothing as repressive as the mals usos were part of the written law in Castile or Portugal (outside of those embedded in a few obscure fueros/forais), but similar abuses were to be found almost everywhere in the Iberian Peninsula as an informal understanding of the feudal contract. The Leyes Nuevas therefore extended the terms of the Sentencia Arbitral to the rest of the kingdom of Aragon and the other Spanish kingdoms, reshaping the last remnants of feudalism into a system of free-holding emphyteusis.
Second was a matter of taxation. By the 1540s, the Spanish monarchy had come to rely on a specific tax known as the
servicio in emergency situations. The servicio was a tax put forward by the king to be voted on by one of the Spanish Cortes, usually involving a great deal of negotiation between the king and the Cortes in regards to how much would be payable, over how many years it was to be paid, and on what conditions the king would have to accept to secure its passage. Like all taxes in the realms of Spain, the servicio was only placed upon non-noble taxpayers, known as
pecheros. However, unlike the
alcabala - a fixed 10% tax on all transactions - the servicio was an extraordinary tax that widely varied in amount, meaning that in times of hardship it could push the pecheros to the point of absolute destitution. The long term effects of regular servicios were proving extremely deleterious to Spanish society: those among the merchant class wealthy enough to purchase a noble title usually did so in order to escape the burden of taxation, and with the ranks of non-working, non-taxable hidalgos ever increasing through the sale of titles, the poorer pecheros - Spain's industrial backbone - were having to carry a greater and greater share of the tax burden, and the gulf between the exempt rich and the overburdened poor continued to widen.
It was for this reason that the Leyes Nuevas officially surrendered the Crown's right to vote servicios. The servicio had become an easy and reliable way to raise quick money for the Crown, however, and Juan Pelayo would not have considered abandoning it had he not intended to replace it with a fairer and, more importantly, fatter cash cow - which in this case was a new tax on foodstuffs known as the
sisa. For Juan Pelayo and his advisors in the Council of Finance, the sisa was something of a golden goose in that it offered a way for the Crown to tax its richest subjects without openly violating their noble privileges by instating a tax on income or real property. What was more, it was estimated to provide the Crown with an additional 800,000 ducats every year - a greater single sum of money than was brought in by any other tax, toll, or treasure fleet [1].
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The income of the most powerful nobles of Castile and Aragon c. 1520, untouched by taxation before the passage of the Leyes Nuevas
The sisa was the single greatest objectionable point in the Leyes Nuevas for the Spanish nobility - whether it was levied against foodstuffs or their estates made no difference to them. The cessation of the servicio could not have mattered less to the tax exempt Spanish nobility, although such would not have made a difference considering there were virtually no noblemen appointed to any of the Spanish Cortes except on rare occasions. It was, however, an issue for the towns, which viewed the servicio as the last vestige of the Cortes' legislative authority. As the servicio was both conditional and usually pursued in times of great desperation for the Crown, it served as a check on royal prerogative and offered the possibility of a little representative governance. However, with the purchase of the privileges of hidalguía now impossible, there were very few among the pechero class that would have preferred to keep paying the servicio under any circumstances.
The aristocracy were clearly the group that stood to lose if the Leyes Nuevas were ever approved, and, predictably, Juan Pelayo's first attempt in 1541-1542 to present his reformed law code to the individual Cortes of Portugal, Castile, and Aragon was a complete failure, with the deck stacked against him from the start. To illustrate, in the Castilian Cortes called by Juan Pelayo at Alcalá de Henares there were - apart from the procuradores from the eighteen towns represented - twenty-five bishops and archbishops, and no less than ninety-five members of the aristocracy present. The Duke of Benavente, speaking for a class that already felt itself on the defensive, summed up the nobles' attitude: "The real need is to secure liberties and to recover those we have lost - not to give away those that we have." Juan Pelayo would confront Benavente during one of the recesses, half-jokingly remarking to him that "I should like to have you thrown from that window there," to which the duke replied, "I am afraid your Majesty shall find that I am quite heavy, and shall be hard to move indeed."
The outcome of these three Cortes sessions were a matter of acute humiliation for the young Juan Pelayo, who had now established himself as an adversary to the ancient rights of the aristocracy. Yet, Juan Pelayo would refuse to be bowled over by the staunch resistance of Spain's monolithic feudal estate, and would over the years develop a deep psychological thrust behind his campaign against them, which can be chalked up to numerous incidents following his coronation in 1536. Beyond the early animosity formed with the senior nobles in the 1541-1542 Cortes, Juan Pelayo was possibly motivated by his experiences in France, where he fought alongside and was sustained by the rustic Castilian peasants that made up his formidable tercios at Montauban, and where he was notably abandoned by one of his grandee commanders, the Duke of Albuquerque. This favorable disposition towards his non-aristocratic subjects affected his choice of appointees and dispensation of titles, the most outstanding example of which was the creation of a dukedom for his lowborn maestre de campo, Julián Romero de Ibarrola, in Sonseca, a small town roughly 25 kilometers to the south of Toledo - along with with was included the Castillo de Almonacid. The planting of a loyal commander with no ties to any other noble families so close to the royal capital was no mere coincidence.
There were some elements of the Leyes Nuevas that the nobility approved of and found favorable to their interests, in particular the reinforcement of the suspension of the sale of noble titles -
hidalguía - ordered by Juan Pelayo's father, Miguel da Paz, in 1524. This suspension - which was made permanent - restricted the creation of new noble titles to those awarded directly by the monarchy, and carried with it the orders for the creation of an aristocratic registry to prevent the forgery of any proofs of lineage. Additionally, the Leyes Nuevas decreed that any noble title not tied to any real property upon the death of its holder would revert back to the Crown - a provision that would see the troublesome vagrant hidalgos wiped out in a single generation. Yet, these safeguards for the dignity of noble blood did nothing to sway the opinion of their intended beneficiaries so long as they were included in the same package as the sisa or a borderline abolition of serfdom.
The most prominent moment that shaped the Leyes Nuevas' push for peasant emancipation at the expense of the nobility was a revolt that seized a portion of Northwestern Castile in 1543. This uprising was put into motion by the actions of a certain Antonio del Aguila Vela y Paz, an opportunistic churchman who was determined to gain the bishopric of Zamora for himself after the death of its former holder. After ceaselessly petitioning Rome for elevation to the see, Aguila received Papal approval and - deciding not to wait for royal approval (as another successor had already been chosen by Juan Pelayo) - siezed the bishopric himself. Fearing the Crown's reprisal, Aguila quickly sided with the locals in their agitation against royal interference, which was represented by the city's particularly corrupt corregidor, Marcio Pérez. As the corregidores - representatives of royal jurisdiction tasked with administrating towns in conjunction with their elected officials - were forbidden from residing in their corregimiento or holding the same office for more than five years, they were often seen as an alien element in their community. What was worse, corregidores were responsible for the farming of royal taxes, and at the time Zamora, like so many other Spanish towns, was brimming with discontent after the announcement of a 2,000,000 ducat servicio voted at the Cortes in Alcalá de Henares in anticipation of war with France - all to be paid within 2 years. After having Pérez pilloried for three days, Aguila banished him from Zamora. What was supposed to be a token expression of solidarity with the people of Zamora, however, had soon grown beyond Aguila's control and erupted into a wave of violence against royal officials and tax collectors, and the rebellion was almost immediately taken up by thousands of peasants in Norther Castile with an energy that seemed to burst out of nowhere. Similar displays of unrest also sprang up in other parts of the country as well as in Aragon and Portugal, often citing frustrations with the Crown's decision to call off the crusading armada intended for Egypt but always carrying the same complaint against the near-unpayable servicio.
The revolt would be undone quickly during an attempt to seize Valladolid when a night watchman happened upon a meeting near the Colegio de San Gregorio, apprehending a group of conspirators who were questioned by the alcalde and revealed, amongst other things, the location of their arms cache and the names of several other ringleaders. With this stroke of bad luck forcing their hand, the revolt's leaders decided to assemble whatever armed men they could and march to Valladolid themselves, but further bad news arrived after their departure when word was spread that the Crow had approved Antonio del Aguila's episcopacy, prompting the former rogue bishop to abandon the revolt and withdraw his resources. When a royal army met with the poorly-armed, disorganized rebels near the town of Torrelobatón in early 1544, they were dispersed handily.
The disastrous outcome of Torrelobatón sealed the fate of the Zamora Revolt, but had exposed the deep dissatisfaction of a heavily taxed lower class and the harm such dissatisfaction could render. The Crown was thus faced with a dilemma: it could keep the servicio and risk catastrophic levels of unrest and the impoverishment of its peasantry; it could abolish the servicio and slip into dire financial straits; or it could abolish the servicio and seek a tax against the nobility to balance its finances, while currying the favor of the middle and lower classes in whatever way possible so as to use their support to crush any opposition from the nobility. The third option was deemed the most advantageous solution. Surrendering the right to vote servicios would deprive the Crown of one of its most reliable sources of emergency income, but would undeniably make the passage of the Leyes Nuevas by force a possibility.
- Viriatus Resurgentium -
Kings and the nobles they lord over are not necessarily natural enemies. After all, the same power structures that justify the existence of an aristocracy justify a monarchy as well by extension. However, what is obviously inherent to the idea of monarchical power is a desire to render one's subjects utterly obedient, and, as such, the nobility simply absorbs most of the monarch’s attention in this regard, being his most prominent subjects. There were often periods in which the monarchies of Europe found themselves weakened and placed under the thumb of overly powerful aristocracies, to the point of new kings being appointed only with the approval of noble assemblies, leading to the idea of a ‘noble republic’ of sorts which had strong precedence in nearly all of Europe (especially in the Holy Roman Empire and Eastern Europe). The ability - and often the willingness - of feudal aristocracies to depose and impose monarchs, then, was the greatest source of uneasiness in their relationship with the crown. Adding to this uneasiness was the perception of the storied fickleness of dynastic legitimacy and the regular shuffling of ruling dynasties over the centuries. By the Early Modern era, it was already well-established in the minds of European nobles that no one family or individual had a totally inviolable right to rule over them, and given that a considerable number of said nobles came from cadet lines of the ruling dynasties, they could easily leverage their pedigree to usurp the throne.
Such usurpation was the natural recourse for a nobility that felt itself adequately threatened by its monarch, and the statutes of the Leyes Nuevas constituted such a threat. When Juan Pelayo departed in 1549 for the front lines in France, it can be assumed that many Spanish nobles were hopeful that their untested king would fall into the hands of the French - as his ransoming would leave him indebted to his political enemies - or even killed, which would leave the young and impressionable heir, Gabriel, in the hands of powerful court factions and the king’s brother, Fernando, free to accept the Portuguese crown. But when news returned from the front, all were informed that Juan Pelayo had not died and had avoided capture as well. What was more, he had achieved an almost miraculous victory over the French, allowing him to return to Spain with a favorable ceasefire in place. Juan Pelayo had been changed by his experience campaigning in France. Many years later, he would write that at Montauban he had been “clutched from both an early death and a shameful defeat … at the age of our Lord [33 years] I was renewed and invested with a spirit to befit the kingship of All Spain.” When he met with the three Cortes of Spain in 1552, he put everyone on their toes by neglecting to request a servicio and asking for apparently voluntary material contribution from the nobility. This apprehension would be justified in 1556 when Juan Pelayo once more put forward the text of the Leyes Nuevas for consideration, this time adding that he would not be intimidated and his "kingdoms of Spain would not be further beggared by the indolence and cowardice of those I call
primos [2]."
A conflagration was avoided by the renewal of hostilities with France that same year, and with the peace talks in 1560 and 1562, during which time the Leyes Nuevas remained shelved. After spending the majority of the years 1562-1565 in Navarra with his new bride, Jeanne de Valois, Juan Pelayo once again assembled the three Cortes in their respective realms and presented his law code, but this time showed no interest in continuing the process as a national debate, only inviting the usual appointed procuradores - a sure sign that he only intended to use the Cortes as a rubber stamp.
The result was an aristocratic revolt of a scale not seen since the War of the Castilian Succession. After a formal objection was written up in June of 1565 by a number of Castilian grandees under Francisco Diego de Zúñiga, the 4th Duke of Béjar and Plasencia, and Luis Alonso Pimentel Herrera y Enríquez de Velasco, the 4th Duke of Benavente, received no response, an imposing coalition of Spanish nobles began to mobilize, demanding a declaration from Juan Pelayo that swore unto Christ and the Holy Virgin that there would be no trespass on any of their liberties.
Meanwhile, the death of Manuel de Avis' old rival Jaime de Bragança in 1532 had left his ducal title in the hands of his 22 year old son, Teodósio. While equally cunning, Teodósio was unlike his father in that he was able to put aside any aspirations to take the Portuguese throne himself, possibly mindful of the risk such an ambition posed to his family after the murder of his uncle Dinis by royal agents in 1515. However, this did not mean Teodósio was any more deferential to the rule of the Avís-Trastámaras. With the accession of Juan Pelayo (João Pelágio to his Portuguese subjects) to the throne in 1536, it became apparent to many nervous Portuguese patriots that the personal union with Castile and Aragon was there to stay. The duke of Bragança was therefore once again at the center of a new conspiracy to usurp the throne, although this time putting forward Jorge de Lencastre, the duke of Coimbra and bastard son of king João II and Ana de Mendonça (a maid of Juana de Beltraneja), as claimant.
Due to the precarious position Jorge de Lencastre held in relation to the throne, he had prudently kept his distance from Jaime de Bragança's 1515 conspiracy but was now feeling slighted by the monarchy and interested in the younger Teodósio's offer. Jorge was a more likely contender for the Portuguese throne than any of the Braganças - especially considering he was preferred by João II over Manuel I - but he was certainly no perfect prince. While it was not out of the question to consider a bastard for the Portuguese throne (after all, King João I - the famed defender of Portuguese independence against Castilian encroachment - was himself a bastard), Jorge's candidature would have attracted more support had it been put forward before he succeeded in souring his relations with many of Portugal's movers and shakers. Feeling suspicious, Juan Pelayo was advised to constrain Lencastre before he raised the flag of rebellion, and Jorge was placed under house arrest in Abrantes in 1540. While this was a setback, Teodósio de Bragança hoped it would sufficiently outrage the Portuguese nobility and ignite a full-blown rebellion. Unfortunately for Bragança and his conspirators, many of Jorge's rivals - such as the Da Gamas - had been ennobled since 1515 and were able to keep a large portion of Portuguese society either opposed or indifferent to the Lencastre claim, and the matter subsided for a time with Jorge's death in 1550. Nonetheless, Teodósio de Bragança was a relentless schemer, and maintained a ring of pro-Lencastre loyalists until another opportunity presented itself.
The 1565 uprising was such an opportunity, and Bragança was quick to join his dissent across the border with the leaders of the Castilian opposition, bringing with him a number of like minded Portuguese noblemen. Bragança and his lieutenant Lopo de Almeida, the 3rd Count of Abrantes, organized a meeting at the city of Olivenza with the Dukes of Béjar and Benavente and a representative of the Duke of Escalona to form a provisional military junta and coordinate their efforts - the Portuguese agreeing to fight the Crown as a united front with the Castilians in exchange for their political severance from Castile. Extremadura thus formed the center of gravity for this rebellion, although allies and sympathizers of the Olivenza Junta - also known as
antirrealistas - were to be found all over Spain, seizing what arms and funds they could while terrorizing any royalists they came across. Sevilla and would be put to siege by Benavente, with Bragança and Béjar heading towards Toledo while Almeida headed for Lisbon. Assembling 13,000 retainers, mercenaries, and peasant tenants, the junta decided that Sevilla and would be put to siege by Benavente in order to tie down the royal garrison there, with Bragança and Béjar heading towards Toledo while Almeida and Teodósio's son Jaime headed west to disperse the Cortes at Abrantes, capture Lsibon, and give the crown to Jorge de Lencastre's son, João.
In a previous generation, this rebellion - known to posterity merely as the "Revolt of the Grandees" - might have been successful, but while the long awaited push had finally materialized for the movements represented by the Junta of Olivenza, it would ultimately prove insufficient. By the 1560s, Juan Pelayo found that he no longer had to tiptoe around his opponents as he had much earlier in his reign. For one, the onrush of silver across the Atlantic and into the Crown's purse had enabled an unprecedented consolidation of royal power across the board. Apart from growing more bullion-rich over the course of Juan Pelayo's reign, the Crown likewise had grown even more land-rich through confiscations of collateral through the Casa de Prestación as well as through occasional buying sprees of primarily ecclesial property - an example of the latter being through a million ducat loan offered in 1542 to Charles von Hapsburg by the Pope (ostensibly to support his campaign against the heretics in the Empire) which was secured against the purchase of Church lands. In some cases, the Crown found it simpler to put its policies into place by purchasing noble lands directly, putting quick cash in the hands of a hard up count or marquis in exchange for the redemption of their titles. The Count of Ribagorça was an example of one such redemption, receiving 13,000 ducats in restitution for the reversion of his county to the Crown.
Crucially, there was no serious chance of the Spanish nobility challenging the monarchy militarily. A large share of the aristocracy was in debt to the Crown through the silver loans of the Casa de Prestación, and consequently the men-at-arms that comprised many of their private armies were essentially on the Crown's payroll. The conspicuous absence of the Aragonese nobility from the revolt can be attributed to this private debt, as most of the landowning class in Catalonia and Valencia held lines of credit with the Casa de Prestación and were also noticeably poorer than their Castilian or Portuguese counterparts. The Aragonese nobility also had less to lose in the passage of the Leyes Nuevas, as the nearly all of the kingdom's peasantry had already been emancipated. There was also, of course, a deterrent to rebellion in the presence of several veteran tercios in Navarra and Catalonia at the time, as well as a promising sign of royal cooperation in the attendance of Juan Pelayo himself at the Cortes of Monzón in 1565.
Additionally, the Revolt of the Germanies in 1520 and 1525, the Zamora Revolt of 1543, a spate of small-scale Morisco revolts in the kingdom of Granada, and the regular threats of banditry and Berber piracy had led to a general expansion of the size and function of the royal police force known as the
Santa Hermandad. What was once a fairly disorganized system of local militias subsidized irregularly by the Crown had grown into a vast network of infantry reserves, working in tandem with the local militias while being sustained by consistent pay when mustered and granted a decent stipend when off-duty. The importance of money to this entire domestic re-balancing of power was clear to Juan Pelayo, and, being aware of the inevitability of this conflict, he had ordered a moratorium in early 1565 on American treasure convoys and had posted large garrisons in Toledo, Sevilla, and Medina del Campo - the three cities which just so happened to house the Crown's silver vaults maintained by the Casa de Contratación.
The irresistible prospect of favorable tax reform and the protections and expansion of peasants' rights meant that those who had risen up against the passage of the Leyes Nuevas could not expect any grassroots support and had to function in what was practically enemy territory. The rebellion failed to spread to the more urban northern halves of Castile and Portugal, where royal officers counteracted noble discontent with greater ease thanks to the support of the powerful towns. Similarly, even for the most patriotic of the Portuguese, the prospect of Portuguese independence - or at least of immediate independence - had significantly lost its luster. While some of the Portuguese grandees and lower clergy remained committed to finally liberating their homeland, the lesser nobility and the middle class were much less enthused. Portugal's international credit would be decimated, its trade contracts null, and decades of useful cooperation with its Iberian brother kingdoms would be undone.
- Imperator totius Hispaniae -
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The three great uprisings in Spain from the years 1520 to 1566
(Red - Revolt of the Germanies, 1520-1525; Green - Zamora Revolt, 1543-1544; Gold - Revolt of the Grandees, 1565-1566)
All of these factors would come to bear on Juan Pelayo's opponents very quickly. Garrisons pulled up from North Africa and Granada would link up under Íñigo López de Mendoza, Duke of the Infantado, who relieved the city of Sevilla with little trouble in early September. Later that month, with Bragança and Béjar on the outskirts of Toledo, the plot to surrender the city without a fight via the complicity of the noble Ayala family was exposed by the rivals, the Riberas, who called up the city guard to arrest whoever they could catch and drive out those they could not. Toledo would hold against the besieging army outside its gates for the three weeks until the arrival of Álvaro de Sande and the Tercio de Cuenca. Bragança and Béjar momentarily abandoned this rush to the beating heart of the monarchy, and withdrew south to secure and then fortify Ciudad Real against the vanguard of the approaching royal army. Hoping to prop up all of their strength against the bulk of the assembling royalist forces, the Duke of Benavente opted to vacate the Guadalquivir basin (allowing the Duke of the Infantado to retake Córdoba unopposed) and join the defense of Ciudad Real. Juan Pelayo would arrive shortly after Benavente in late October, accompanied by 9,000 troops and the 5th Duke of Albuquerque, Gabriel de la Cueva, who was eager to ameliorate relations with the Crown after the actions of his late father, Beltrán, in France. Upon their arrival, the antirrealistas still had not taken the city.
There had been some victories for the grandees amidst their defeats - with royal garrisons forced to surrender the cities of Badajoz, Huelva, and Beja - but no matter the storied martial tradition of the Spanish nobility, there was little it could do to impress when confronted by hardened, veteran tercios in an open field. The battle of Ciudad Real shattered the Junta's army in two, with Bragança and Béjar driven westwards while Benavente fled east to Albacete. Concurrently, a surprising number of Juan Pelayo's Portuguese subjects - especially from the houses of Meneses, Noronha, and Pereira - had shown their loyalty to the king by forming a royalist faction of their own headed by Miguel de Meneses, the Marquis of Vila Real, and by kidnapping João de Lencastre ahead of the Bragança army, carrying him north to Tomar. However, despite this impediment the Braganças were still the most powerful noble house in all of Portugal and carried with them much more popular support than their allies in Castile. The Count of Almeida thus managed to break the royalists at Canha in early October, leaving Lisbon wide open.
Juan Pelayo needed to resolve the Portuguese problem before this independence movement embedded itself in Lisbon, and hoped to finally capture or kill his opponents at Almendralejo, where the main arm of the antirrealista army had been forced to take the field in early March after a series of numerous inconclusive skirmishes which had punctuated their pursuit. The battle that followed brought another royal victory and the fortuitous ensnarement of the Duke of Béjar along with several others, but without Bragança the Portuguese insurrection threatened to evolve into something unmanageable. Luckily for Juan Pelayo, the Braganças' characteristically conniving behavior had earned them many enemies of their own within Spain. Juan Pelayo found a ready collaborator against them in Juan Alfonso Pérez de Guzmán, the 6th Duke of Medina Sidonia, who despised the Braganças ever since Jaime de Bragança, Teodósio's father, had had his wife Leonor - Pérez de Guzmán's sister - murdered in 1512 on the suspicion of infidelity. The Duke of Medina Sidonia had been the reluctant comrade of Bragança as part of the revolt, and after his capture at Almendralejo the promise of amnesty and generous re-compensation was enough to convince him to act on his grudge and assist with luring Teodósio de Bragança into a trap.
The Duke of Medina Sidonia was released alongside all of his retainers with the instruction to link up with the Duke of Bragança (who was headed for Lisbon) and induce him to meet with Juan Pelayo to discuss terms. A no-man's land would be established at the city of Elvas, and both sides would meet in the cathedral rectory unarmed and with a complement of no more than 5 men-at-arms. Beginning to feel desperate with royal troops on his tail, Bragança elected to accept this offer. However, instead of his king, Teodósio de Bragança found himself face to face with Juan Pelayo's notorious enforcer, Emilio de Berja, who had brought a much larger complement of men who seized the duke and his attendants from behind while Berja slit his throat. The duke’s illegitimate son, Calisto de Aveiro, shouting and struggling in desperation, was bludgeoned over the head with a sword hilt, cracking his skull and rendering him invalid. The gasping duke would be left on the floor of the rectory to bleed out.
Beyond Bragança's murder, the remainder of the rebellious nobles were treated with significantly greater clemency after their surrender (the Duke of Benavente - having continued the fight from the hills of eastern La Mancha - finally surrendering in October of 1566). No grandees were executed and none of their titles were stripped from them nor their lands redistributed. The punishment came in the form of fines so massive that each and every offender was practically guaranteed to be either completely ruined or have their house in an abysmal level of debt to the Crown for generations. The consequences of rebellion were therefore most ripely observed by the house of Bragança, with Teodósio's son Jaime accepting a redemption of 27,000 ducats for his titles in 1579 - an outrageously low price for the properties held. Juan Pelayo further safeguarded the Portuguese succession by tying his bloodline to his greatest competitor, forcing João de Lencastre's son, Jorge, to marry the king's daughter, Juana Manuela, or risk the revocation of his titles. João accepted, and was likewise convinced to settle down in the Açores. Juan Pelayo's final victory over the secessionists and their sympathizers in his lifetime would come in 1570, when he declared with confidence and supreme authority an everlasting "Edict of Union," a long overdue proclamation binding the three crowns of Spain in perpetuity and forbidding their alienation to a foreign prince.
Ultimately, the Junta of Olivenza found itself in the minority amongst its peers, as most of the Spanish nobility simply did not feel confident challenging a monarchy that seemed to be at its most vigorous, or felt they had more to gain by throwing their lot in with the royalists in this moment of crisis - namely in the form of land and title grants or the exoneration of debts owed to the Crown. Yet, with the tricameral ratification of the Leyes Nuevas in 1568 and even with the new rivalries, bitterness towards the Crown, and destruction of property brought about by the Revolt of the Grandees, there was still little visible change. In many cases, the new laws were no longer protested but also not observed, bet summed up by an expression of the rebellious Duke of Benavente - "I submit, but I do not obey." Nevertheless, a precedent had been set and a prodigious foundation laid for an order in Spain that strove to be both efficient and fair.
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[1]
An identical tax was proposed by Charles V IOTL.
[2]
Meaning "cousins," the customary manner in which the kings of Spain addressed the grandees IOTL.
