characteristics of a true civil war rather than just a revolt, as had occurred three decades earlier. Several years of bad crops and plagues provoked the popular revolt. According to testimony from trials after the revolt, the Irmandiños counted some 80,000 troops. Several social classes participated in the organization and direction of the rebellion: peasants, city dwellers, the lesser nobility, and even some members of the clergy (some in the church hierarchy financially supported the Irmandiños). Leading the revolt were hidalgos. Pedro de Osório led the armies in central Galicia, especially the Compostela region. Alonso de Lanzós directed the war in the north of Galicia, and Diego de Lemos in the southern part of the Province of Lugo and in the north of the Province of Ourense. The presence of an "avenging and anti-lord mentality" in medieval Galicia, which portrayed the great lords as "evildoers," made the Irmandiño Wars possible. Opposed to the Irmandiños were the higher nobles, who had castles and forts, and the heads of the principal churches and monasteries. The Irmandiños destroyed about 130 castles and forts during the two years of war. The Lemos, Andrade, and Moscoso families were the main targets of the rebels, who spared the ecclesiastical authorities. At the start of the war, the nobility fled to Portugal or the Castile, but in 1469 Pedro Madruga began a counter-campaign from Portugal with the backing of other nobles, the kings of Castile and Portugal, and the armed forces of the archbishop of Santiago de Compostela. The nobles' army, which had better equipment, such as the latest arquebuses, took advantage of divisions within the Irmandiño movement and defeated them. The leaders of the rebellion were arrested and executed. Aftermath The Irmandiño revolts paved the way for the centralization efforts of the Catholic Monarchs two decades later. They appointed a governor-captain general and created an audiencia for the Kingdom of Galicia that took over the dispensation of justice from local lords and placed it under the auspices of the Crown. They also ordered that none of the castles destroyed by the Irmandiños be rebuilt and had the Galician monasteries placed under the authority of their respective Castilian orders. The Catholic Monarchs also eliminated or neutralized the powerful lords. In particular, it is possible that they had Pedro Madruga—who remained grateful to the king of Portugal and, therefore, supported Xoana A Bertranaxa in her efforts to gain