The Reapers' War and the Loss of Roussillon
Catalan peasants and reapers revolt against royal troops; Catalonia breaks with Philip IV for twelve years, and at the peace France keeps its northern counties.
- The Revolt of the Catalans: A Study in the Decline of Spain, 1598–1640 — J. H. Elliott, Cambridge University Press (1963)
- Scots and Catalans: Union and Disunion — J. H. Elliott, Yale University Press (2018)
- Catalan Nationalism: Past and Present — Albert Balcells, Macmillan (1996)
Philip IV’s chief minister, the Count-Duke of Olivares, wanted Spain’s realms to share the costs of endless war, and Catalonia, which guarded its own laws, resisted. When royal troops billeted in Catalonia during a war with France plundered villages, the countryside rose. On 7 June 1640, the feast of Corpus Christi, reapers in Barcelona killed the viceroy in the riot remembered as the Corpus de Sang (Corpus of Blood).
- The Revolt of the Catalans: A Study in the Decline of Spain, 1598–1640 — J. H. Elliott, Cambridge University Press (1963)
The Generalitat, led by its president Pau Claris, broke with Philip IV and put Catalonia under French protection, briefly as a republic and then under Louis XIII as count of Barcelona. French rule proved little better than Castilian, and Barcelona surrendered to Philip’s forces in 1652; the king agreed to respect Catalan laws. But in the Treaty of the Pyrenees of 1659 Spain ceded to France the counties of Roussillon and northern Cerdanya, and the French state later suppressed the Catalan language there.
- The Revolt of the Catalans: A Study in the Decline of Spain, 1598–1640 — J. H. Elliott, Cambridge University Press (1963)
- Scots and Catalans: Union and Disunion — J. H. Elliott, Yale University Press (2018)
- Catalan Nationalism: Past and Present — Albert Balcells, Macmillan (1996)
Why it matters today
The revolt gave Catalonia its national anthem, "Els Segadors" ("The Reapers"), with its refrain about the sickle, and the Treaty of the Pyrenees split the Catalan lands: Perpignan and the Roussillon remain in France, where they are called "Catalunya Nord".