Fernando II of Aragon (10 March 1452-23 January 1516) was the King of Castile and Leon from 1475 to 1504, King of Aragon from 1479 to 1516, King of Naples and Sicily from 1504 to 1516, and King of Navarre from 1512 to 1516. He succeeded his wife Isabella of Castile in Castile and Leon and Juan II of Aragon in Aragon, and Joanna the Mad succeeded him in both titles. During his reign, Ferdinand "the Catholic" and Isabella restored Christianity to the Iberian Peninsula by conquering the Emirate of Granada in 1492 (Ferdinand had taken part in the earlier Siege of Setenil as the commander), and Ferdinand launched a series of wars in Italy to take over southern Italy and the Pyrenees from France.
Biography[]
Ferdinand de Trastamara was the son of Juan II of Aragon and Juana Enriquez, born in 1452. At the age of 23 in 1475, Ferdinand became the king of Castile and Leon by marrying Isabella of Castile. He inherited the throne of Aragon in 1479, and during this time, he personally led campaigns against the Moors in the south in the 1480s, conquering Setenil in a bloody siege in which his army employed Castilian artillery. Ferdinand was also responsible for the capture of Granada in 1492, ending the Reconquista and driving the Moors out of Spain.
After the Iberian Peninsula was fully in Christian hands, Ferdinand II focused on bringing his neighbors under his control. The Kingdom of France to the north was a rival of Spain ever since the Aragon-Anjou feuds of the Wars of Guelphs and Ghibellines (1159-1529), and Ferdinand attempted to stop their incursions into Italy. Ferdinand was given free rein in the provinces of Bearn and Roussillon in the Pyrenees in exchange for allowing France to invade southern Italy. King Charles VIII of France invaded Italy in 1494-1495, defeating Alfonso II of Naples and annexing his kingdom. However, Spain and France argued over the ownership of the Kingdom of Naples, so from 1499 to 1504 there was a contest over the rule of Naples. He took over Naples after victories at Cerignola and Garigliano in 1503, and in 1504 he was made King of Naples and Sicily. However, with the death of Isabella in 1504, Ferdinand lost the throne of Castile and Leon to his daughter Juana I of Spain. Ferdinand became ruler of Navarre in northern Spain in 1512 after the Siege of Viana and other actions, defeating France again in the War of the League of Cambrai (1509-1515).
In 1516, Ferdinand died, leaving the throne to Joanna and his grandson Carlos I.