Fernando II of Navarre

Fernando II
Fernando II depicted in a charter of 1171
King of Navarre, Aragon, and Valencia
Reign	23 August 1127 - 19 October 1177
Predecessor	Fernando I
Successor	Fernando III
King of Aquitaine
Reign	17 June 1129 - 19 October 1177
Successor	Fernando III
Born	1 May 1113 Leyre, Kingdom of Navarre
Died	19 October 1177 (aged 64) Rochechuart, Kingdom of Aquitaine
Burial	Catedral Real de Pamplona
Consort	Elisabeth von Silesia-Glogau (m. 1129; d. 1139) Urraca Jimena (m. 1146; d. 1177)
Issue	Fernando III of Navarre Erramun Fernandez, duke of Barcelona Antso Fernandez, duke of Aquitaine Alfonso Fernandez, duke of Auvergne
House	Jimena
Father	Fernando I of Navarre
Mother	Patricia de Poitou

Fernando II, known as Fernando the Wise (Fernando el Sabio; 1 May 1113 - 19 October 1177), was king of Navarre, Aragon, and Valencia from 1127 and king of Aquitaine from 1129 until his death. Fernando united the eastern Spanish kingdoms with the lands of the de Poitou family in Gascony and Poitou, crowning himself king of Aquitaine and creating a hybrid realm with Basque, Occitan, French, and Castilian cultural influences.

Fernando II spent large portions of his reign in managing domestic political conflict, but he also presided over the expansion of his domain over much of southern Iberia; he is remembered as the king who founded the Knights of Calatrava. In defensive wars against the kingdom of France and the Holy Roman Empire, Fernando wielded effective military power and managed to secure successful diplomatic outcomes.

Early life

Fernando Fernandez was born at Leyre on 1 May 1113, at his birth the only living son of Fernando I of Navarre and Patricia de Poitou, duchess of Gascony and Poitou. An elder brother, Prince Rodrigo, had died in 1110. The prince was kept at Leyre during his infancy. It was there on 14 June 1114, at the age of one, that he was presented with a coronet of opals and garnets and acknowledged as true heir by the nobles of his father's kingdoms. From about 1120 Fernando was raised at the castle of Pamplona and it is likely that he spent time in Gascony with his mother.

Fernando succeeded as duke of Gascony and Poitou after the death of his mother Patricia de Poitou on 1 May 1125. Aged twelve, he was invested as duke at St. Savin and provided Navarrese bodyguards. Real power rested in the hands of Gascon nobles such as Hughes de Lusignan and Bernat d'Armagnac. Fernando's cousin Carlos Ramirez, duke of Murcia and Valencia, enjoyed a similar rise to power in Spain as the health of the widowed King Fernando I began to fail.

Early reign (1127-39)

Fernando's father died at Jaca in Alto Aragón on 23 August 1127, leaving the duke of Gascony and Poitou as legitimate king of Navarre, Aragon, and Valencia. Duke Carlos Ramirez was nominated as regent of the three kingdoms by the "common acclaim" of the nobility. In the absence of any brothers of the young Fernando II he was also heir presumptive to the throne. The new king received three coronations at Pamplona, Barbastro, and Xàtiva, respectively.

Fernando made royal progresses around his Spanish dominions and French lands in the spring and summer of 1128 receiving the acclamation of his people. The regent Duke Carlos accompanied him everywhere, leading some to criticize his control over the court. During these progresses the regency council, acting with the 15 year-old king, consolidated the de Poitou lands now in the hands of the crown by appointing French noblemen to the duchies of Bourbon, Gascony, and Poitou.

Establishment of power in Aquitaine

In the spring of 1129 Fernando attained his majority and assumed the full royal powers from Carlos Ramirez, not without resentment. On 17 June 1129 he arranged his own coronation as king of Aquitaine at Bayonne, reviving an old Carolingian title and asserting his claims to rule all of southern France. The coronation provoked violent opposition from Gunzelin von Zähringen, duke of Aquitaine, who had been recognized as lord of Aquitaine by the king of France. After warfare in 1129-30 the treaty of Cahors, signed on 12 March 1130, provided Fernando with formal recognition as king of Aquitaine.

In September 1130 Fernando arrested Carlos Ramirez for embezzlement and abuse of office. The duke was sent to prison in Nájera, where he remained until his death seven years later. In April 1131 the king travelled to Barcelona, where he replaced the incumbent duke Piarres Enekez with the child Alfons d'Urgell, a great-grandson of Prince Fernando Gartzez, brother of Antso IV. At an assembly of the nobles of Aquitaine convened at Poitiers in the autumn of 1131 Fernando was obliged to appoint the French dukes created three years earlier to dominant positions on his council. Chief among them were Archambaud the Confessor, duke of Bourbon, who became chancellor, and Hughes the Blessed, duke of Poitou. In 1132 a cousin of Archambaud de Bourbon, Aymer de Bourbon, was created duke of Auvergne.

Policy and family

The Poitiers assembly of 1131 indicated that Fernando was reliant on the nobility, in particular the Occitan and French lords inherited from his mother, to provide a foundation for his authority. During the 1130s Fernando remained unable to make policy without the support or acquiescence of these nobles. In 1133 he made a progress in Aquitaine during which he forced Duke Gunzelin to resign his lands to his vassal Alois de Perigord, an impressive display of the royal will. The king returned to Aquitaine in 1136 to conduct another judicial progress. Until his death in 1138 the elderly Hughes the Blessed, duke of Poitou and head of the Lusignan family, was the preeminent lord in Fernando's French lands. His place was taken by Peire d'Armagnac, duke of Gascony, who received royal support in rebuffing a dynastic challenge in 1139.

King Fernando, Queen Elisabeth, and their son Prince Fernando

The alliance between the eastern and western branches of the Jimena dynasty was renewed in 1132 between Fernando and Alfonso VIII, king of Castile, León, and Galicia. Fernando was obliged to assist Alfonso in a Castilian holy war for the lands of Toledo, held by the Dhunnunid emirate, which raged from 1132 to 1139. Navarrese troops and money were not actively committed to this conflict, although Fernando's knights shared in the humiliation when in 1134 a group of them fought with the Castilian army at the slaughter of Kunka. Muslim raids on Pamplona during late 1136 were roundly defeated.

Fernando's most serious foreign policy challenge during the early years of his reign arose from his commitments to his brother-in-law Mislav, king of Croatia. After an alliance between Navarre and Croatia was agreed in 1133, Fernando agreed to support Mislav in a conflict against the doge of Venice. In 1134 Thibault the Lionheart, king of France, entered the war on the side of Venice, provoking fears of a French invasion of Aquitaine or Navarre. Fernando raised an army of 12,500 men to counter this threat during the winter of 1134-35 but the invasion never materialized.

In 1135-36 Fernando defeated a rebellion in Catalonia, burning La Bisbal d'Empordà and exacting particular justice on Empuries, whose count was banished. In 1138 the king executed hundreds of thieves in Valencia. Fernando was unable to arbitrate a dynastic conflict that broke out in the duchy of Barcelona in 1139 between Duke Alfons d'Urgell and his cousin Nuña d'Urgell. In August 1139 he went to Barcelona to arrest Alfons d'Urgell and impose a radical new settlement in the duchy, whereby Nuña, who may also have been his mistress, was installed as duchess.

Fernando married his first wife, Elisabeth von Silesia-Glogau, at Pamplona on 1 June 1129. Their eldest son, christened Fernando, was born at Lleida on 17 January 1131. The queen was idolized as a symbol of monarchy and received the rare honor of a separate coronation in April 1134. Two more sons, Antso and Alfonso, arrived during the 1130s. Queen Elisabeth died at Zaragoza on 17 July 1139 during her fourth pregnancy, after ten years of marriage to Fernando, and was buried at the monastery of Santa María la Real de Nájera; by all accounts the king and queen were sincerely in love with each other.

Decade of tensions (1140-50)

In 1140 Pope Silvester V declared a crusade for Jerusalem. Fernando arrived at al-Baretoun on the Egyptian coast in February 1141 with 6,000 men and a fleet of 80 ships. The king formed a combined Navarrese-Sicilian army that stormed Abukir on 1 June 1141, sustaining thousands of casualties. Fernando returned to his realm in 1142. For his contribution to the crusade he received little recognition for the pope, although his sister Ermesinda was granted the Negev desert in the Holy Land.

During the 1140s Fernando began to spend noticeably more time in Aquitaine. In 1142-45 he spent his summers in Poitou, Lusignan, or Bordeaux. When the chancellor Archambaud de Bourbon died in 1144 Fernando was content to appoint the duke's son and heir, Edouard de Bourbon, as his successor in the office. In the same year Alois de Perigord, duke of Aquitaine, inherited Sundgau in imperial Alsace, creating a German exclave under Fernando's sceptre.

Charged to collect taxes in Aquitaine, Duke Alois was murdered by a mob of angry peasants at Chancelade in the Dordogne in March 1145. His successor Alois the younger was never on good terms with Fernando. The king was probably also alarmed at the intransigence of Peire d'Armagnac, duke of Gascony, described by one contemporary as "an unruly lord". In November 1145 Fernando presented his eldest son to the nobility of his kingdoms in a massive open-air ceremony at Zaragoza to win support for his regime. In May 1146 the king took his cousin Urraca Carlosez, duchess of Murcia and Valencia, as his second wife; their first son Fadriquez (b. 1147) was installed as heir to both duchies.

Civil war; war with France

Fernando II defeats the army of Barcelona at Cervera in 1147

Neither of these bids for support among the nobility were sufficient to prevent the outbreak of civil war in Fernando's kingdoms during the late 1140s. The spark for conflict was provided by a quarrel between Fernando and Nuña d'Urgell, duchess of Barcelona, in April 1147. The duchess refused to resign the county of Rosello to the king and was unexpectedly joined in revolt by the dukes of Aquitaine, Auvergne, Bourbon, and Gascony. Only the duke of Poitou remained loyal among Fernando's French nobility.

Fernando was lucky to receive the support of Alfonso VIII, a beneficiary of Navarrese military aid for many years. Although the army of Barcelona invaded Lleida and made initial gains, they were roundly defeated at Cervera on 27 June 1147. Fernando marched rapidly to capture the castle of Tarragona, while Prince Fernando subjugated pockets of rebellion in Murcia and Alfonso VIII invaded rebel Aquitaine. On 21 December 1147 the two kings united to utterly destroy the rebel army at the second battle of Cervera, in which over 7,000 men were killed or wounded. By February 1148 the rebellion of five dukes and duchesses had been subdued.

Fernando was relatively magnanimous in victory. The dukes of Auvergne and Bourbon were pardoned, while the duke of Gascony was pardoned for a ransom. Alois the younger, duke of Aquitaine, was imprisoned at Zaragoza. Only Nuña d'Urgell truly suffered. Her son and husband were executed and she was forced to enter the convent of Calahorra, while the king installed his illegitimate son Erramun Fernandez as duke of Barcelona.

The second phase of the civil war began in the summer of 1148 when Peire d'Armagnac, duke of Gascony, launched another rebellion, this time joined by Alfons d'Urgell, the man with the strongest claim to rule Barcelona. Fernando invaded Gascony with 10,000 men and crushed all resistance; Duke Peire was beheaded in March 1149, the first nobleman to be executed in living memory. Prince Fernando was installed as duke of Gascony, while Prince Antso was made duke of Aquitaine.

In the years 1147-49 Fernando effectively destroyed the nobility of his kingdoms, asserting royal authority in his Spanish and French dominions and transforming three of his sons into powerful dukes. The outbreak of war between Castile and France in December 1149 threatened to test the stability of Fernando's status quo, as he was required to enter the war against France as an ally of Alfonso VIII. A French army of 19,000 men invaded Catalonia in April 1150 and plundered the duchy of Barcelona before moving into Aragon. On 8 September 1150 Fernando's army of 21,000 men defeated the French at Tudela, routing their army and killing over 12,000 Frenchmen, including almost 200 knights. After this immensely prestigious victory the war ended in the spring of 1151.

El Rey Sabio (1150-1164)

During the 1150s Fernando enjoyed stability and prosperity in his kingdoms, but his health was failing. Having taken the field to defeat rebel and French armies, Fernando found himself bedridden on occasion as he entered his forties. In the autumn of 1152 he was desperately tired and beset by digestive problems, while in 1153 he was described by one observer as very ill. In the last months of 1157 Fernando again suffered from a severe affliction, during which his sons were called to his bedside in Pamplona. The king clung to life and achieved some measure of health in the following decade, but he was never to be truly physically well again.

In 1153 the king disinherited the Bourbon family of Auvergne and installed his third son Prince Alfonso as duke of Auvergne, a controversial act which he underlined by visiting Aquitaine in the summer of 1154, hosting a tournament at Armagnac and hunting in the Limousin. After the death of Fernando's illegitimate son Erramun, duke of Barcelona, in January 1155 he displayed a more conciliatory policy, allowing Alfons d'Urgell to return to power in the duchy of Barcelona. An assembly of the nobles of Aragon, held at Lleida in May 1155, confirmed the new ascendancy of Duke Alfons. Far from being grateful to the king, Alfons aggressively lobbied for the exclusion of Prince Fernando from the council in his own favor in 1157, offending both king and prince. In 1160 the duke used his local power to overturn Fernando's decision to install a new count in Empuries.

Fernando II displayed in a charter of 1159