466

THE GLORY OF CHRISTENDOM

THE GREAT WESTERN SCHISM 467
a Welsh attack on Usk with Glendower's brother killed and his eldest son captured (he was imprisoned in the
Tower of London for the rest of his life). The French did send 3,000 men to Glendower's aid, but they were
unable to sustain themselves in the rugged and unfamiliar countryside and all left within a year. In 1406 the
Earl of Northumberland escaped from Scotland and joined Glendower, but the young and able Crown Prince
Henry of England was put in command of the English forces in Wales that year and began winning a long
series of victories. Northumberland left Wales on a fruitless mission to France, which as we have seen had its
own serious problems in that period, culminating in the assassination of Duke Louis of Orleans by Duke John
of Burgundy in November 1407. Over the next three years the vastly superior military and economic strength
of England prevailed over Wales. In January 1409 Glendower lost his last stronghold of Harlech Castle; during
the English siege of it his son-in-law Edmund Mortimer died and his wife (Glendower's daughter) and
Glendower's own wife were captured and sent to London as prisoners. By 1410 organized Welsh resistance had
ended. But Owen Glendower was never caught; he fades from history into legend, and his ultimate fate is
unknown.133
In Castile the failure of the attempt to conquer Portugal in 1385 had been followed five years later by
the sudden death of its King Juan I, of a fall from his horse apparently caused by a heart attack or stroke, at the
young age of 32. His son and heir, Henry III, was only eleven; the ensuing three-year regency was full of
disorder, with massacres of Jews in many cities in 1391 causing large numbers of them to convert to
Christianity during the remainder of the decade-some sincerely, but many out of fear or ambition. According to
the law of Castile, Henry III was declared of age in 1393 at fourteen. He was in poor health, but had a strong
will and was highly intelligent and mature for his age; by the end of 1395 he had the country well in hand. In
1402 he sponsored an extraordinary expedition by two Norman French seamen, Jean de Bethencourt and
Gadifer de la Salle, to the Canary Islands off the coast of Africa. They claimed four of the islands for him and
settled one (Lanzarote). By 1404 he was ready to resume the great war of the Reconquest, the longest crusade,
which civil strife in Spain had in effect suspended since Henry III's great-grandfather Alfonso XI had died of
the Black Death besieging Gibraltar in 1350.'s°
He made little progress at first, and a two-year truce was signed with the Muslim kingdom of Granada
in October 1406. Henry vowed to lead the next
campaign in person. Then suddenly he died of one of his many ailments, on Christmas day 1406, leaving as his
successor his 22-month-old son Juan, who was to be the father of the great Queen Isabel. Henry III's brother
Fernando was immediately accepted as regent, and he was as committed to the renewal of the Reconquest as
his brother had been. In October 1407 Fernando took the important border fortress of Zahara from the Moors
of Granada after an impressive bombardment with primitive artillery. The Castilian nobles of the south had not
really taken war against the Moors seriously for two generations; Fernando had great difficulty holding them to
the task, and consequently was not able at this time to advance beyond Zahara. After another truce to gather his
strength and improve discipline, in the spring of 1410 Fernando brought 2,500 knights and 10,000 infantry to
besiege Antequera, one of the principal strongholds of the Moorish kingdom. He decisively defeated an army
sent to relieve Antequera. The Moors in the city fought on all summer, refusing to consider surrender; in
September Fernando stormed it with scaling ladders. It was the first great victory for the Reconquest since
Alfonso XI took Algeciras 64 years before."
In that same year of 1410, an unexpected crisis descended upon the kingdom of Aragon in eastern
Spain. Its King Martin the Humane died without issue, following the death of his son and namesake in Sardinia
the year before, without legitimate issue. Martin had been a strong supporter of his countryman, Antipope de
Luna, in the Great Schism, and Castile had long supported de Luna also. With France so reluctant to obey him,
de Luna depended heavily on Aragon and Castile. Of the seven claimants to the throne that the dying Martin
would leave vacant, the best qualified personally was unquestionably Prince Regent Fernando of Castile,
whose mother was King Martin's sister. His designation as King of Aragon would effectively unite both
countries under a strong ruler favorable to the Antipope. It seems that de Luna pressed King Martin hard to
name Fernando his successor, but Martin had a fondness for his seven-year-old grandson, the illegitimate son
of Prince Martin. Torn between his love for the boy and the pressure of the masterful Antipope, King Martin
took refuge in silence; he died without naming an heir, and civil war immediately threatened.l36
 On April 21, 1407 Antipope de Luna, meeting at Marseilles with envoys of Pope Gregory XII, agreed that
he and Gregory should meet some time during
Jacob, Fifteenth Century, pp. 58-61, 63-66; Lloyd, Glendower, pp. 96-98, 101-102, 106-107, 126, 128-129,
136-138; Kirby, Henry IV, pp. 181, 185-187, 217-218, 220-221, 233-234; Vaughan, John the Fearless, pp. 45-47.
13°
O'Callaghan, Medieval Spain, pp. 536-538, 606-607; Menendez Pidal, Historia de Espana XIV, 303, 311, 315,
325, 340, 374; see Chapter Nine, above, for Alfonso XI before Gibraltar.
35
O'Callaghan, Medieval Spain, p. 541; Derek W. Lomax, The Reconquest of Spain (London, 1978), p. 168; I. I.
Macdonald, Don Fernando de Antequera (Oxford, 1948), pp. 63-80; Men6ndez Pidal, Historia de Espana, XIV, 375;
see Chapter Nine, above, for the reconquest of Algeciras.
136
Macdonald, Fernando de Antequera, pp. 133-145; Menendez Pidal, Historia de Esparia, XIV, 598-603.