The king of Aragon had entered into such close relations with France chiefly because he needed her help against his own people. Far from the rebellious movements subsiding on the death of the prince of Viana, the indignation against the king and queen mounted still higher amongst the excitable Catalans. The imagination of the people painted the tragic fate of the king’s unfortunate son in the liveliest colours. Charles’ ghost was seen to glide by night through the streets of Barcelona; he was heard lamenting in piteous tones over his untimely end and calling for vengeance on his unnatural murderer. At last he came to be honoured as a saint. When Queen Juana took her ten-year-old son Ferdinand to Barcelona, that he might receive the homage of the Catalan estates, she soon saw herself threatened with a rising, so that she sought refuge in Gerona. The Catalan troops followed her, made themselves masters of the town and besieged the fortifications where Juana and the prince were bravely defended by a small garrison. Thereupon the king of Aragon concluded a treaty with Louis XI (1462), in consequence of which that monarch sent seven hundred lances with archers and fieldpieces to the aid of the beleaguered queen. In return for this Juan promised him 200,000 gold crowns and gave him the counties of Roussillon and Cerdagne in pledge. The Catalans could not withstand such a force. They retreated to Barcelona for the purpose of organising more crushing resistance in that excitable town. They sought to represent in a memorial that the liberties of their commonwealth had been betrayed, and that therefore, since the good of the state must be the highest law, they were justified in repudiating their allegiance. They summoned the young men to take arms, and turned to Castile and then to Portugal to win their support in the secession from Aragon (1463). Don Pedro, constable of Portugal, did actually enter the country with a small force, to lay claim to the government of Catalonia, to which, as a scion of the house of Barcelona, he asserted an ancient hereditary right. But the enterprise did not prosper; little by little, partly with the sword, partly by means of gold, King Juan gained possession of the most important towns in the country, such as Lerida, Cervera, Amposta, and Tortosa. Still he could not succeed in breaking Barcelona’s bold spirit of resistance; even when the Portuguese infante died suddenly, the town would not hear of conciliation, and two distinguished burghers were beheaded in the market-place for their sympathy with Aragon (1466).