Vengeance (1520–1522)

Abstract

Following comunero defeat at the battle for Tordesillas, heated argument broke out among the conquering nobility as to whether to allow the ‘liberated’ queen to issue orders as a monarch fit to govern, or whether to prevent any move that might damage Charles’ interests as king. Juana herself remained unwilling to sign documents while she remained a hostage or prisoner but was persuaded to issue orders verbally. These orders were, however, blocked by the emperor’s most loyal supporters. When he returned to Tordesillas, the marquis of Denia had Charles’ backing to return the queen to a state of close confinement and isolation, and to carry out a purge of ‘malign’ forces within the palace. The subsequent dismissal from Juana’s service of her confessor, Fray Juan de Ávila, seriously affected her religious practices, while beyond the palace armed conflict continued. The Junta moved to a radicalised Valladolid, but comunero forces failed to take advantage of their audacious capture of the admiral’s stronghold of Torrelobatón and three military leaders, Juan de Padilla, Juan Bravo and Francisco Maldonado, were executed after defeat at the battle of Villalar in April 1521. Although comunero forces held out for almost another year at Toledo under the leadership of Antonio de Acuña, and subsequently of Padilla’s widow, María Pacheco, the city’s collapse marked the beginning of the end for the war of the Comunidades. I indicate that repression was more severe than the terms of the general amnesty of 1522 suggest and that the memory of the events of 1520–1522 left wounds in the body politic that never truly healed.