Ferdinand II of Aragon
Ferdinand II of Aragon was the model prince of Machiavelli's argument and half of the partnership that made Spain. Born at Sos in 1452, the son of John II of Aragon, he was campaigning in the Catalan civil war in his teens and was made king of Sicily at sixteen. In October 1469 he crossed Castile in disguise as a servant to marry Isabella in secret, using a papal dispensation that was forged, and fought a four-year war of succession to secure her throne against Portugal. The marriage joined the two crowns in the persons of their holders and left them legally separate; Aragon kept its own cortes, laws and coinage, and Ferdinand ruled Castile jointly with Isabella under the formula that they were equal in all things. His own sphere was war and diplomacy. He completed the ten-year Granada campaign in 1492, ending Muslim rule in Iberia. He conquered Naples from the French by 1504 through Gonzalo de Córdoba, whose reorganisation of infantry into pike-and-shot formations produced the tercios that dominated Europe for a century. He annexed Navarre in 1512. He built the first permanent resident embassies in Europe, and married his children into England, Portugal and the Habsburgs — the alliance that delivered a continental empire to his grandson Charles V. He and Isabella expelled the Jews in 1492 and established the Inquisition under royal rather than papal control. Isabella died in 1504, and he governed Castile as regent for their unstable daughter Joanna against opposition. He died in 1516.
- Lived: 1452 CE – 1516 CE
- Nationality: Spanish
- Roles: king, head_of_state
