The Basque History of the World - Mark Kurlansky [28]
In 1516 Ferdinand was in a deep depression. According to some accounts, Germana fed him “aphrodisiacs” to lift his spirits, though it is not clear what substance that might have been. On January 23, he died. Juan Velázquez de Cuéllar, who presided at the reading of Ferdinand’s will, was soon to lose favor in court, and, in August 1517, he too suddenly died.
At the age of twenty-five, lacking a patron, Iñigo left his pretty court and went to serve his cousin, the viceroy of Navarra. He tried to continue his vain, self-indulgent court life, but this was a difficult time in the history of Navarra.
The deposed Catherine and Jean d’Albret, Ferdinand’s inlaws in Basse Navarre, decided that Ferdinand’s death was the moment to retake their kingdom. Jean d’Albret led an army from St.-Jean-Pied-de-Port up through the rocky pass to Ibañeta and there, in that historic and deceptively serene pine forest that descends to Roncesvalles, met spectacular defeat.
D’Albret, the last king of Navarra, died that year, like Ferdinand, in deep depression. Catherine, the queen-in-exile, died the following February. The only Basque kingdom in history ceased to exist.
IN 1517, with great reluctance, Charles came to Spain to ceremoniously tour his kingdom, region by region, as a monarch was expected to do. Before he ever reached Navarra, his other grandfather, Emperor Maximilian, died, and the new King Carlos I was off to Germany to become Emperor Charles V, the new Holy Roman Emperor. In his absence, rebellion broke out in towns throughout Iberia. The Basques of Navarra started to demand their independence.
The king of France, Francis I, was not a Basque sympathizer but a frustrated young man who also had wanted to be the Holy Roman Emperor. Now, to spite Charles, he took on the cause of Henri d’Albret, son of Catherine and Jean. On April 15, 1521, Hernán Perez, the mayor of Behobia, a Guipúzcoan border town on the Bidasoa, reported, “King Jean’s son is raising a mighty army with the help of the King of France to march on Navarra, and he is bringing seven thousand Germans and formidable artillery.”
Germans, Basques, as well as volunteers from neighboring Gascony and Béarn—in all an army of 12,000 men with twenty-six pieces of heavy artillery—overran St.-Jean-Pied-de-Port, the stone-walled mountain village on a fog-bound crook of the Nive. Once again, a French army climbed through the narrow pass to Roncesvalles and dropped down the piney slopes toward Pamplona.
This time they met no resistance. As they approached, Basque villagers overthrew their towns and joined the invading army. When they reached Pamplona, the townspeople opened the gates for them. Castilians fled the city, while the Navarrese sacked the ducal palace, tearing down the Spanish coat of arms. It was a great day for the Basques—or at least, for some of the Basques.
At this moment, pro-Castilian reinforcements arrived from Guipúzcoa under the command of Martín de Loyola, Iñigo’s brother. Iñigo joined him. They were part of a larger Castilian force that tried to liberate Juana and her daughter, Iñigo’s fantasy princess, Catalina, from their dank Tordesillas castle where local rebels were holding them hostage.
While most of the Navarrese saw the French-led army in Pamplona as liberators, these Guipúzcoans saw them as invaders. Martin was so disgusted with what to him was a betrayal by the townspeople that he refused to enter the city. Iñigo and some of his men entered the fortress, the unfinished castle Ferdinand had ordered before his death. As they went in, others were fleeing. He persuaded the commander to stay and fight. In his autobiography, which he wrote in the third person several decades later, Iñigo noted, “While everyone else clearly saw