Introduction

This chapter argues that the Comunidades, the great uprising of 1520–1521, involved an attempt to establish, through the familiar use of rebellion to force negotiation, a monarchy whose exercise of “absolute royal authority” would sustain good government and justice. Historians have justifiably given more attention to the Comunidades rebellion than to any other violent confrontation in Castilian history prior to the Napoleonic wars of the early nineteenth century. I stress the rebellion's importance because the conflict and its development reveal the nature of this monarchy as a regime in which the character and ability of the sovereign were crucial elements in the effectiveness of the Crown administration and in the degree of support that the royal government enjoyed among the commonwealth's leaders. The early rebel leaders were motivated by the Crown's failure to deliver the benefits of a monarchy that combined in its ruler the roles of supreme legislator, executive, and judge, rather than by a desire to replace it with another form of government. Because it is crucial for an understanding of this type of government, I also want to underline the major limitations on local notables' use of rebellion as a political tool. However, despite such limitations and the defeat of the insurrection, many of the rebel municipal councils' demands shaped Crown policy through the early decades of Charles V's reign as Castilian king.