Unfortunately for King John, popular belief ran in a contrary direction, and his son’s release was soon demanded by all parts of the kingdom. In Barcelona, the citizens rose, tore down the royal standard and took the Governor prisoner. Revolt flamed through the land; but even more alarming was the sudden declaration of war by Henry IV., who, taking advantage of the King of Aragon’s embarrassments, hastily dispatched a force to invade Navarre, where the Beaumonts were already in the field. It was a bitter moment for King John. Realizing his critical position, he agreed to his son’s release; and Charles of Viana passed in triumph to Barcelona. For once, almost without his intervention, Fortune had smiled on him; but it proved only a gleam before the final storm. Three months after he had been publicly proclaimed as his father’s heir, the news of his sudden illness and death fell on his supporters with paralysing swiftness. Nothing, on the other hand, could have been more opportune for King John and his Queen; and their joy can be gauged by the haste with which they at once proclaimed the ten-year-old Ferdinand heir to the throne, demanding from the national Cortes of the three kingdoms the oath they had so long denied his elder brother. Yet Queen Joanna’s maternal ambitions were not to be satisfied by this easy assumption of victory. Charles of Viana dead was to prove an even more potent foe than Charles of Viana living. Gentle and unassuming, yet with a melancholy dignity that accorded well with his misfortunes, he had been accepted as a national hero by the impulsive Catalans; and after death they translated the rather negative qualities of his life into the attributes of a saint. Only the halo of martyrdom was required to fire the general sympathy into religious fervour; and this rumour supplied when it maintained that his tragic end had been due to no ordinary fever, but to poison administered by his stepmother’s orders. The supposition was not improbable; and the inhabitants of Barcelona did not trouble to verify the very scanty evidence for the actual fact. They preferred to rest their accusations on the tales of those who had seen the Prince’s unhappy spirit, like Hamlet’s father, walking abroad at midnight demanding revenge. Soon his tomb became a shrine for pilgrims, and there the last touch of sanctity was added. He who in life had suffered acutely from ill-health became in death a worker of miracles, a healer whom no absence of papal sanction could rob of popular canonization.