Joan Ramon III, Count of Cardona

The 6th Count of Prades and the 4th Count of Cardona, Joan Ramon III Folc de Cardona i de Prades (9 January 1418 – 1485), was a Catalan nobleman in the late Middle Ages, Admiral of Aragon and Captain-General of Catalonia as well as 1477-79 Viceroy of Sicily. His titles included Count of Prades, Count of Cardona and Viscount of Vilamur and Baron of Entenza. Comte de Prades, comte de Cardona, baro de Entenza i vescomte de Vilamur. Juan Ramón Folch de Cardona y Ximenez de Arenós'.

His parents were Joan Ramon II, 3rd Count of Cardona (14 June 1400 – 1471), and his wife Joana de Prades, heiress of Prades and Entenza.

=Biography=

He became the sixth count of Prades and viscount of Vilamur upon the 1445 resignation of his parents to his favor.

He actively participated in the cortes parliaments from 1449 to 1455.

He was in the service, in Italy, of king Alfonso V, ruler of Catalonia-Aragon, and he was his ambassador to the pope.

At the beginning of the 1461 revolution, Joan Ramon IV was a member of the Council of the Catalan Principality. The count negotiated the proclamation of Prince Ferran as king Juan's "firstborn", but his rivalry with the Count of Pallars, his own nephew, and his inclination towards don Juan the Unreliable separated him from the Catalan movement.

Shortly before beginning of the civil war, he joined in May 1462 the party of don Juan. He was Captain-General of the armies of Juan II, and in that way he was the greatest military figure in the civil war. His name is linked with all the great actions favorable to don Juan II: Rubinat, Calaf, Cervera, Berga, Sabadell, Sant Cugat, Martorell and the campaign of Emporda in 1472.

Juan II, battling against his own rebelling Catalan subjects, experienced extreme difficulties in 1467, but in 1468, the younger son of later king (since 1479) John II of Aragon, 16-year-old Ferdinand II of Aragon, received the military help of his father, the 3rd Count of Cardona, who died in 1471. When his father, the 3rd Count of Cardona, died in 1471, he inherited the title of Admiral of Aragon.

In 1467 the count had his heir, Joan Ramon IV, the future first duke of the house, to marry with Aldonza Enríquez, younger half-sister of Queen Joana and therefore an aunt to Ferdinand II. Aldonza Enriquez was sister of Juana Enriquez, herself the mother of king Ferdinand II of Aragon, and both sisters came from the House of Enríquez, hereditary Admirals of Castile since about 1404.

Upon the death of his (already retired) father, in 1471 he succeeded as the Count of Cardona.

In 1445, Joan Ramon III married Juana de Urgel y Aragón, daughter of the Jaime de Urgel, Count of Urgel and Royal Princess Isabella of Aragon (1380–1424), a daughter of King Peter IV of Aragon, a widow of the Count of Foix.

His second wife Elisabet de Cabrera, brought him the revenues of the viscountcies of Cabrera and Bas when his father-in-law, Bernat Joan de Cabrera died in 1466. However, Joan Ramon had to renounce these properties, to please don Juan II, who divided these spoils between J de Sarriera and B de Armendaris, to pay for their 1471 defection. As compensation, don Juan II made count Joan Ramon III one of the three tenants of the generalitet.

The count's great fortune allowed him to make frequently loans to the monarch.

After the Catalan war, the count accompanied Ferran, Prince of Girona, in 1473 to the campaign of Roussillon. He went on to fight successfully in 1473 against the French troops in the Ampurdan area and the battle of Besós. In 1474 he took part in a mission to arrange peace and truces with king Louis XII of France, (1462–1515). He also acted as ambassador together with Bernabé Assam, to make Cavalry Treaty with king Louis XI of France. However, the French king had not the papers and kept the ambassadors until 1475.

He was a great figure in the parliaments from 1475 to 1477.

In 1477 he was sent as a Viceroy of Sicily where he stayed until 1479. Accordingly, in 1477 he moved to Italy accompanied by the infanta Joana, and was made viceroy of Sicily (1477-79), where managered the repression of the revolt of Leonard de Alagon and Arborea in Sardinia.

In 1479 he returned to Catalonia and was the trusted man of the new king Fernan II, whom he accompanied for a few years in Castile and Extremadura. In 1484 the king entrusted him with the command, as captain-general, of the campaign against the count of Pallars, and then he also commanded the fight against the serfs of Pere Joan Sala.

The negotiation of the Guadalupe ruling represented a most reactionary tendency.

He died in 1485.

For his? actions he was awarded by Alfonso V of Aragon brother, king John II of Aragon, (king successor 1458 - 1479) the Sicilian town of Termes, in 1463, during which time King John II was at Tudela, kingdom of Navarre, where he was disputing with his son, Charles of Viana, the Navarrese throne, illegally, in spite of being a widower of Queen Blanca I of Navarre, (1385–1441).

The hereditary title of Admiral of Castile disappeared in 1711 when Luis Francisco de la Cerda, Duke of Medinaceli, died in the prison in Pamplona Castle. Yet, the title of Admiral of Aragon continued by inheritance through different families, with, for instance, the Palafox family using such a title at the beginning of the 19th century.

A palace in Granada, now used as a Faculty of Architecture and former military hospital, is still named "La Casa del Almirante", "the House of the Admiral", on account of Mendoza family members living there in the 17th century.

=Family=

In 1445, count Joan Ramon III married the dowager countess of Foix, Joana de Urgell i Arago, daughter of Jaume, Count of Urgell, the 1410-1412 claimant to the royal throne who revolted in 1413, and his wife Isabel of Aragon. She was the widow of John I, Count of Foix. Their adult children included the 1st Duke of Cardona - the next Admiral of Aragon, the 5th Count of Cardona and Count of Prades,, though only until 28 September 1486, when King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabel I of Castile granted the title to his young son Ferdinand.