The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 10

by Unknown

CHAPTER VII. THE REGENCIES OF FERDINAND

[1604-1517 A.D.]

The death of Isabella gives a new complexion to our history. We have been made conscious of her presence and parental supervision, by the maintenance of order and the general prosperity of the nation. Her death will make us more sensible of this influence, since it was the signal for disorders which even the genius and authority of Ferdinand were unable to suppress.

[1504-1505 A.D.]

While the queen’s remains were yet scarcely cold, King Ferdinand took the usual measures for announcing the succession. He resigned the crown of Castile, which he had worn with so much glory for thirty years. From a platform raised in the great square of Toledo, the heralds proclaimed, with sound of trumpet, the accession of Philip and Juana to the Castilian throne, and the royal standard was unfurled by the duke of Alva in honour of the illustrious pair. The king of Aragon then publicly assumed the title of administrator or governor of Castile, as provided by the queen’s testament, and received the obeisance of such of the nobles as were present, in his new capacity. These proceedings took place on the evening of the same day on which the queen expired.

A circular letter was next addressed to the principal cities, requiring them, after the customary celebration of the obsequies of their late sovereign, to raise the royal banners in the name of Juana; and writs were immediately issued in her name, without mention of Philip’s, for the convocation of a cortes to ratify these proceedings. The assembly met at Toro, January 11th, 1505. The queen’s will, or rather that portion of it which related to the succession, was read aloud, and received the entire approbation of the commons, who, together with the grandees and prelates present, took the oaths of allegiance to Juana as queen and lady proprietor, and to Philip as her husband. They then determined that the exigency contemplated in the testament, of Juana’s incapacity, actually existed, and proceeded to tender their homage to King Ferdinand, as the lawful governor of the realm in her name. The latter in turn made the customary oath to respect the laws and liberties of the kingdom, and the whole was terminated by an embassy from the cortes, with a written account of its proceedings, to their new sovereigns in Flanders.

All seemed now done that was demanded for giving a constitutional sanction to Ferdinand’s authority as regent. By the written law of the land, the sovereign was empowered to nominate a regency in case of the minority or incapacity of the heir-apparent. This had been done in the present instance by Isabella, at the earnest solicitation of the cortes, made two years previous to her death. It had received the cordial approbation of that body, which had undeniable authority to control such testamentary provisions. Thus, from the first to the last stage of the proceeding, the whole had gone on with a scrupulous attention to constitutional forms. Yet the authority of the new regent was far from being firmly seated; and it was the conviction of this which had led him to accelerate measures.[b]

Ferdinand the Catholic

Before Isabella breathed her last, the dissensions commenced. That, by the Castilian laws, Juana was now both queen and proprietor of the kingdom, and that Philip, in right of his marriage, might claim not only the regal title, but a considerable share in the administration, were admitted by many. On the other hand, the last will of Isabella, who had constituted her husband regent until the majority of Charles, the experience of that prince, the success of his past government, the solid benefits which he had conferred on the state, and the unpopular character of Philip, as well as his ignorance of the language, laws, and manners of Castile—induced all the sober-judging and patriotic part of the nation to wish for a continuance of the present rule. Unfortunately, however, the momentous question was agitated with more prejudice than reason. The efforts of Ferdinand to curb the violence of the aristocracy, his prudent economy, his firm sway, and the aversion of many Castilians to the sole domination of an Aragonese, had created many enemies. More hoped that, under a weak and lenient prince like Philip, their love of power and their avarice would be equally gratified. Hence, it is no wonder that an opposition, at once systematic and violent, was formed to the pretensions of Ferdinand—an opposition too loud to permit the soft whisper of policy or gratitude to be heard.

Ferdinand was fond of power, and his first steps showed that he would strive to maintain it. Not a few of the discontented, because disappointed, nobles retired from Toro in disgust, assembled others of the same faction at Valladolid, and wrote letters to Philip, then governor of Flanders, pressing him to come and assume the administration of the kingdom. The archduke, eager to seize his consort’s inheritance, had the insolence to order his father-in-law to retire into Aragon, against whose every act of government, since the death of Isabella, he equally protested.

Ferdinand replied that the affair must be settled by negotiation; that in no case would he resign the regency until his daughter and son-in-law arrived in Castile. At the same time, he solicited from the queen, then with her husband in Flanders, the confirmation of his powers as regent. She caused the instrument to be prepared; but the treachery of a servant exposed the intrigue to Philip, who placed her in close confinement, and lost even the semblance of respect towards her. The latter also entered into an alliance with Louis XII of France, the enemy of Ferdinand, by whose aid he hoped to make head against the regent. In the meantime, the factious nobles, who, though constituting a minority in point of numbers, were all-powerful from their stations and alliances, continually urged Philip to appear among them and throw every obstacle in the path of the regent. Seeing the ungrateful return of a people for whom he had done so much, whose glory and happiness he had so successfully laboured to promote, and still more offended, perhaps, with the insults of his profligate son-in-law, the king of Aragon seriously planned a suitable revenge: it was to remarry, and leave to the issue arising from it the kingdom of Naples, which he had united with Aragon, or, perhaps, even Aragon itself.[d]

[1505-1506 A.D.]

Robertson[c] explains his plan as follows: “Exasperated at this universal defection, and mortified, perhaps, at seeing all his schemes defeated by a younger politician, Ferdinand resolved, in defiance of the law of nations and of decency, to deprive his daughter and her posterity of the crown of Castile, rather than renounce the regency of that kingdom. His plan for accomplishing this was no less bold than the intention itself was wicked. He demanded in marriage Juana, the supposed daughter of Henry IV.” But this Dunham[d] indignantly denies: “Surely this historian must have known that this pretended negotiation with the Portuguese king was but a calumny, invented by the enemies of Ferdinand, to discredit him with the people. By no contemporary writer is it mentioned otherwise than a rumour, and by all it is treated with the contempt it deserves. The age of the princess, which was full forty-four years, sufficiently exposes the malignity.” Other historians, however, accept the scheme as quite within Ferdinand’s capabilities. Martin Hume[e] shares this opinion with Carbajal,[f] Zurita,[g] Mariana,[h] Sandoval,[i] and Clemencin,[j] while Burke[k] says epigrammatically: “The rights of Juana, surnamed La Beltraneja, born in wedlock and recognised by her father, King Henry IV, as his successor on his throne, had only been subordinated to those of her aunt Isabella by force of arms. And Ferdinand, who had entered Castile in 1469 by marrying her rival and denying her legitimacy, now proposed to remain in Castile in 1505 by asserting her legitimacy and marrying her himself! But the lady refused to entertain his proposals, and the legitimate queen of Spain remained unwedded in her Portuguese convent.”[a]

He solicited the hand of Germaine de Foix, niece of Louis XII, who eagerly granted it. This intelligence was a thunderbolt to Philip, who now consented to negotiate; and it was accordingly agreed, by the agents of the two princes, at Salamanca, that the kingdom should be governed by Juana, Ferdinand, and Philip, each possessing equal authority; and that all public instruments should bear the three names. The Austrian, however, had no intention of observing the treaty: early in 1506, he embarked for Spain with his consort; but contrary winds forced him to England, where he was detained, during three months, by the ungenerous policy of Henry VII. The king of France had refused him a passage through that kingdom until he had come to a better understanding with the regent—in fact, Charles could not, as a close ally of Ferdinand, permit an expedition through his states, evidently hostile to that ally. When Ferdinand heard of the archduke’s embarkation, he caused prayers to be offered up for a prosperous voyage, and ordered a fleet to be equipped to convoy the new sovereigns into the peninsula. He had just celebrated his marriage with the princess Germaine, when his daughter and the archduke landed at Corunna.[d]

PHILIP ENTERS SPAIN

[1506 A.D.]

Ferdinand, who had expected them at some nearer northern port, prepared without loss of time to go forward and receive them. But Philip had no intention of such an interview at present. He had purposely landed in a remote corner of the country, in order to gain time for his partisans to come forward and declare themselves. Missives had been despatched to the principal nobles and cavaliers, and they were answered by great numbers of all ranks, who pressed forward to welcome and pay court to the young monarch. He soon mustered an additional force of six thousand native Spaniards, which, with the chivalry who thronged to meet him, placed him in a condition to dictate terms to his father-in-law; and he now openly proclaimed that he had no intention of abiding by the concord of Salamanca, and that he would never consent to an arrangement prejudicing in any degree his and his wife’s exclusive possession of the crown of Castile.

Ferdinand, at length, finding that Philip, who had now left Corunna, was advancing by a circuitous route into the interior on purpose to avoid him, and that all access to his daughter was absolutely refused, was doomed to experience still more mortifying indignities. By the orders of the marquis of Astorga and the count of Benavente, he was actually refused admittance into those cities; while proclamation was made by the same arrogant lords prohibiting any of their vassals from aiding or harbouring his Aragonese followers. “A sad spectacle, indeed,” exclaims the loyal Martyr,[l] “to behold a monarch, yesterday almost omnipotent, thus wandering a vagabond in his own kingdom, refused even the sight of his own child!” Even his son-in-law, the constable of Castile, had deserted him.

An end was at length put to this scandalous exhibition by an interview. The place selected was an open plain near Puebla de Senabria, on the borders of Leon and Galicia (June 23rd). But even then the precautions taken were of a kind truly ludicrous, considering the forlorn condition of King Ferdinand. The whole military apparatus of the archduke was put in motion, as if he expected to win the crown by battle. Ferdinand, on the other hand, came into the field attended by about two hundred nobles and gentlemen, chiefly Aragonese and Italians, riding on mules, and simply attired in the short black cloak and bonnet of the country, with no other weapon than the sword usually worn. The king trusted, says Zurita,[g] to the majesty of his presence, and the reputation he had acquired by his long and able administration.

The Castilian nobles, brought into contact with Ferdinand, could not well avoid paying their obeisance to him. He received them in his usual gracious and affable manner, making remarks the good-humour of which was occasionally seasoned with something of a more pungent character. Among others was Garcilasso de la Vega, Ferdinand’s minister formerly at Rome. Like many of the Castilian lords, he wore armour under his dress, the better to guard against surprise. The king, embracing him, felt the mail beneath, and, tapping him familiarly on the shoulder, said, “I congratulate you, Garcilasso; you have grown wonderfully lusty since we last met.” The desertion, however, of one who had received so many favours from him touched him more nearly than that of all the rest.

After exchanging salutations, the two monarchs alighted, and entered a small hermitage in the neighbourhood. The conference led to no result. Philip was well schooled in his part, and remained, says Martyr,[l] immovable as a rock. There was so little mutual confidence between the parties that the name of Juana, whom Ferdinand desired so much to see, was not even mentioned during the interview.[66]

A Cavalier in the Time of Ferdinand

But, however reluctant Ferdinand might be to admit it, he was no longer in a condition to stand upon terms; and, in addition to the entire loss of influence in Castile, he received such alarming accounts from Naples as made him determine on an immediate visit in person to that kingdom. He resolved, therefore, to bow his head to the present storm, in hopes that a brighter day was in reserve for him. On the 27th of June he signed and solemnly swore to an agreement by which he surrendered the entire sovereignty of Castile to Philip and Juana, reserving to himself only the grand-masterships of the military orders, and the revenues secured by Isabella’s testament.

On the following day he executed another instrument of most singular import, in which, after avowing in unequivocal terms his daughter’s incapacity, he engages to assist Philip in preventing any interference in her behalf, and to maintain him, as far as in his power, in the sole, exclusive authority.

Before signing these papers, he privately made a protest, in the presence of several witnesses, that what he was about to do was not of his own free will, but from necessity, to extricate himself from his perilous situation and shield the country from the impending evils of a civil war. He concluded with asserting that, far from relinquishing his claims to the regency, it was his design to enforce them, as well as to rescue his daughter from her captivity, as soon as he was in a condition to do so. Finally, he completed this chain of inconsistencies by addressing a circular letter, dated July 1st, to the different parts of the kingdom, announcing his resignation of the government into the hands of Philip and Juana, and declaring the act one which, notwithstanding his own right and power to the contrary, he had previously determined on executing so soon as his children should set foot in Spain.

It is not easy to reconcile this monstrous tissue of incongruity and dissimulation with any motives of necessity or expediency. Why should he, so soon after preparing to raise the kingdom in his daughter’s cause, thus publicly avow her imbecility, and deposit the whole authority in the hands of Philip? Was it to bring odium on the head of the latter, by encouraging him to a measure which he knew must disgust the Castilians? But Ferdinand by this very act shared the responsibility with him. Was it in the expectation that uncontrolled and undivided power, in the hands of one so rash and improvident, would the more speedily work his ruin? As to his clandestine protest, its design was obviously to afford a plausible pretext at some future time for reasserting his claims to the government, on the ground that his concessions had been the result of force. But, then, why neutralise the operation of this by the declaration, spontaneously made in his manifesto to the people, that his abdication was not only a free but most deliberate and premeditated act? He was led to this last avowal, probably, by the desire of covering over the mortification of his defeat; a thin varnish, which could impose on nobody. The whole of the proceedings are of so ambiguous a character as to suggest the inevitable inference that they flowed from habits of dissimulation too strong to be controlled even when there was no occasion for its exercise. We occasionally meet with examples of a similar fondness for superfluous manœuvring in the humbler concerns of life.

THE REIGN OF PHILIP I (1506 A.D.)

King Ferdinand had no sooner concluded the arrangement with Philip, and withdrawn into his hereditary dominions, than the archduke and his wife proceeded towards Valladolid, to receive the homage of the estates convened in that city. Juana, oppressed with an habitual melancholy, and clad in the sable habiliments better suited to a season of mourning than rejoicing, refused the splendid ceremonial and festivities with which the city was prepared to welcome her. Her dissipated husband, who had long since ceased to treat her not merely with affection, but even decency, would fain have persuaded the cortes to authorise the confinement of his wife, as disordered in intellect, and to devolve on him the whole charge of the government. But the commons could not brook such an indignity to their own “natural sovereign”; and the usual oaths of allegiance were tendered to Juana as queen and lady proprietor of the kingdom, and to Philip as her husband, and finally to their eldest son, Prince Charles, as heir-apparent and lawful successor on the demise of his mother.

By the tenor of these acts the royal authority would seem to have been virtually vested in Juana. From this moment, however, Philip assumed the government into his own hands. The effects were soon visible in the thorough revolution introduced into every department. Old incumbents in office were ejected without ceremony, to make way for new favourites. The Flemings, in particular, were placed in every considerable post, and the principal fortresses of the kingdom intrusted to their keeping.

The style of living at the court was on the most thoughtless scale of wasteful expenditure. The public revenues, notwithstanding liberal appropriations by the late cortes, were wholly unequal to it. To supply the deficit, offices were sold to the highest bidder. The income drawn from the silk manufactures of Granada, which had been appropriated to defray King Ferdinand’s pension, was assigned by Philip to one of the royal treasurers. Fortunately, Ximenes obtained possession of the order and had the boldness to tear it in pieces. He then waited on the young monarch, and remonstrated with him on the recklessness of measures which must infallibly ruin his credit with the people. Philip yielded in this instance.

All this could not fail to excite disgust and disquietude throughout the nation. The most alarming symptoms of insubordination began to appear in different parts of the kingdom. In Andalusia, in particular, a confederation of the nobles was organised, with the avowed purpose of rescuing the queen from the duress in which it was said she was held by her husband. At the same time the most tumultuous scenes were exhibited in Cordova, in consequence of the high hand with which the Inquisition was carrying matters there. Members of many of the principal families, including persons of both sexes, had been arrested on the charge of heresy. This sweeping proscription provoked an insurrection, countenanced by the marquis of Priego, in which the prisons were broken open, and Lucero, an inquisitor who had made himself deservedly odious by his cruelties, narrowly escaped falling into the hands of the infuriated populace. The grand inquisitor, Deza, archbishop of Seville, the steady friend of Columbus, though his name is unhappily registered on some of the darkest pages of the tribunal, was so intimidated as to resign his office. The whole affair was referred to the royal council by Philip, whose Flemish education had not predisposed him to any reverence for the institution; a circumstance which operated quite as much to his prejudice, with the more bigoted part of the nation, as his really exceptional acts.

The minds of the wise and the good were filled with sadness, as they listened to the low murmurs of popular discontent, which seemed to be gradually swelling into strength for some terrible convulsion; and they looked back with fond regret to the halcyon days which they had enjoyed under the temperate rule of Ferdinand and Isabella.

The Catholic king, in the meantime, was pursuing his voyage to Naples. Soon after the conquest he had been earnestly pressed by the Neapolitans to visit his new dominions. He now went, less, however, in compliance with that request than to relieve his own mind by assuring himself of the fidelity of his viceroy, Gonsalvo de Cordova. That illustrious man had not escaped the usual lot of humanity; his brilliant successes had brought on him a full measure of the envy which seems to wait on merit like its shadow. His courteous manners, bountiful largesses, and magnificent style of living, were represented as politic arts to seduce the affections of the soldiery and the people. His services were in the market for the highest bidder. He had received the most splendid offers from the king of France and the pope. He had carried on a correspondence with Maximilian and Philip, who would purchase his adhesion, if possible, to the latter, at any price; and if he had not hitherto committed himself by any overt act, it seemed probable he was only waiting to be determined in his future course by the result of King Ferdinand’s struggle with his son-in-law.

These suggestions, in which some truth, as usual, was mingled with a large infusion of error, gradually excited more and more uneasiness in the breast of the cautious and naturally distrustful Ferdinand. He at first endeavoured to abridge the powers of the great captain by recalling half the troops in his service, notwithstanding the unsettled state of the kingdom. He then took the decisive step of ordering his return to Castile, on pretence of employing him in affairs of great importance at home. Finding that Gonsalvo still procrastinated his return on various pretexts, the king’s uneasiness increased to such a degree that he determined to press his own departure for Naples, and bring back, if not too late, his too powerful vassal.

QUEEN JUANA WITH THE BODY OF HER HUSBAND

After a boisterous and tedious passage, he reached Genoa. Here, to his astonishment, he was joined by the great captain, who, advised of the king’s movements, had come from Naples with a small fleet to meet him. This frank conduct of his general, if it did not disarm Ferdinand of his suspicions, showed him the policy of concealing them; and he treated Gonsalvo with all the consideration and show of confidence which might impose, not merely on the public, but on the immediate subject of them.

DEATH OF PHILIP; JUANA’S MADNESS

After quitting Genoa, the royal squadron was driven by contrary winds into the neighbouring harbour of Portofino, where Ferdinand received intelligence which promised to change his destination altogether. This was the death of his son-in-law, the young king of Castile.

This event, so unexpected and awfully sudden, was occasioned by a fever, brought on by too violent exercise at a game of ball, at an entertainment made for Philip by his favourite, Manuel, in Burgos, where the court was then held. Through the unskilfulness of his physicians, as it was said, who neglected to bleed him, the disorder rapidly gained ground, and on the sixth day after his attack, being the 25th of September, 1506, he breathed his last.[67] He was but twenty-eight years old, of which brief period he had enjoyed, or endured, the “golden cares” of sovereignty but little more than two months, dating from his recognition by the cortes. His body, after being embalmed, lay in state for two days, decorated with the insignia—the mockery of royalty, as it had proved to him—and was then deposited in the convent of Miraflores, near Burgos, to await its final removal to Granada, agreeably to his last request.

Philip was so distinguished for comeliness both of person and countenance that he is designated on the roll of Spanish sovereigns as Felipe el Hermoso, or the Handsome. His mental endowments were not so extraordinary. The father of Charles V possessed scarcely a single quality in common with his remarkable son. As he was naturally indolent and fond of pleasure, he willingly reposed the burden of government on others, who, as usual, thought more of their own interests than those of the public. His early education exempted him from the bigotry characteristic of the Spaniards; and had he lived he might have done much to mitigate the grievous abuses of the Inquisition. As it was, his premature death deprived him of the opportunity of compensating, by this single good act, the manifold mischiefs of his administration.

Juana’s condition had become truly deplorable. During her husband’s illness she had never left his bedside, but neither then, nor since his death, had she been seen to shed a tear. She remained in a state of stupid insensibility, sitting in a darkened apartment, her head resting on her hand, and her lips closed, as mute and immovable as a statue. When applied to for issuing the necessary summons for the cortes, or to make appointments to office, or for any other pressing business which required her signature, she replied, “My father will attend to all this when he returns; he is much more conversant with business than I am; I have no other duties now but to pray for the soul of my departed husband.” The only orders she was known to sign were for paying the salaries of her Flemish musicians; for in her abject state she found some consolation in music, of which she had been passionately fond from childhood. The few remarks which she uttered were discreet and sensible, forming a singular contrast with the general extravagance of her actions.

Finding it impossible to obtain the queen’s co-operation, the council at length resolved to issue the writs of summons in their own name, as a measure justified by necessity. The place of meeting was fixed at Burgos in the ensuing month of November; and great pains were taken that the different cities should instruct their representatives in their views respecting the ultimate disposition of the government. Long before this, indeed immediately after Philip’s death, letters had been despatched by Ximenes and his friends to the Catholic king, acquainting him with the state of affairs, and urging his immediate return to Castile. He determined, however, to continue his voyage to Naples. The wary monarch perhaps thought that the Castilians, whose attachment to his own person he might with some reason distrust, would not be the less inclined to his rule after having tasted the bitterness of anarchy.

Juana

While Ferdinand was thus occupied in Naples, the representatives of most of the cities, summoned by the provisional government, had assembled in Burgos (November, 1506). Before entering on business they were desirous to obtain the queen’s sanction to their proceedings. A committee waited on her for that purpose, but she obstinately refused to give them audience.

She still continued plunged in moody melancholy, exhibiting, however, occasionally the wildest freaks of insanity. Towards the latter end of December, she determined to leave Burgos and remove her husband’s remains to their final resting-place in Granada. She insisted on seeing them herself before her departure. The remonstrances of her counsellors, and of the holy men of the monastery of Miraflores, proved equally fruitless. Opposition only roused her passions into frenzy, and they were obliged to comply with her mad humours. The corpse was removed from the vault; the two coffins of lead and wood were opened, and such as chose gazed on the mouldering relics, which, notwithstanding their having been embalmed, exhibited scarcely a trace of humanity. The queen was not satisfied till she touched them with her own hand, which she did without shedding a tear or testifying the least emotion. The unfortunate lady, indeed, was said never to have been seen to weep since she detected her husband’s intrigue with the Flemish courtesan.

The body was then placed on a magnificent car, or hearse, drawn by four horses. It was accompanied by a long train of ecclesiastics and nobles, who, together with the queen, left the city on the night of the 20th of December. She made her journeys by night, saying that a widow, who had lost the sun of her own soul, should never expose herself to the light of day. When she halted, the body was deposited in some church or monastery, where the funeral services were performed as if her husband had just died; and a corps of armed men kept constant guard, chiefly, as it would seem, with the view of preventing any female from profaning the place by her presence. For Juana still retained the same jealousy of her sex which she had unhappily had so much cause to feel during Philip’s lifetime.

In a subsequent journey, when at a short distance from Torquemada, she ordered the corpse to be carried into the courtyard of a convent, occupied, as she supposed, by monks. She was filled with horror, however, on finding it a nunnery, and immediately commanded the body to be removed into the open fields. Here she encamped with her whole party at dead of night; not, however, until she had caused the coffins to be unsealed, that she might satisfy herself of the safety of her husband’s relics; although it was very difficult to keep the torches, during the time, from being extinguished by the violence of the wind, and leaving the company in total darkness.[68]

These mad pranks, savouring of absolute idiocy, were occasionally checkered by other acts of more intelligence, but not less startling. She had early shown a disgust to her father’s old counsellors, and especially to Ximenes, who, she thought, interfered too authoritatively in her domestic concerns. Before leaving Burgos, however, she electrified her husband’s adherents by revoking all grants made by the crown since Isabella’s death. This, almost the only act she was ever known to sign, was a severe blow to the courtly tribe of sycophants on whom the golden favours of the late reign had been so prodigally showered. At the same time she reformed her privy council by dismissing the present members.

These partial gleams of intelligence, directed in this peculiar way, led many to discern the secret influence of her father. She still, however, pertinaciously refused to sanction any measures of cortes for his recall; and when pressed by that body on this and other matters, at an audience which she granted before leaving Burgos, she plainly told them “to return to their quarters, and not to meddle further in the public business without her express commands.” Not long after this, the legislature was prorogued by the royal council for four months.

THE RETURN OF FERDINAND

[1506-1507 A.D.]

The term assigned for the provisional government expired in December, and was not renewed. No other regency was appointed by the nobles; and the kingdom, without even the shadow of protection afforded by its cortes, and with no other guide but its crazy sovereign, was left to drift at random amidst the winds and waves of faction. This was not slow in brewing in every quarter, with the aid especially of the overgrown nobles, whose license, on such occasions as this, proved too plainly that public tranquillity was not founded so much on the stability of law as on the personal character of the reigning sovereign.

The king’s enemies, in the meantime, were pressing their correspondence with the emperor Maximilian, and urging his immediate presence in Spain. Others devised schemes for marrying the poor queen to the young duke of Calabria, or some other prince, whose years or incapacity might enable them to act over again the farce of King Philip. To add to the troubles occasioned by this mesh of intrigue and faction, the country, which of late years had suffered from scarcity, was visited by a pestilence that fell most heavily on the south.

But although the storm was thus darkening from every quarter, there was no general explosion, to shake the state to its foundations, as in the time of Henry IV. Orderly habits, if not principles, had been gradually formed under the long reign of Isabella. The great mass of the people had learned to respect the operation and appreciate the benefits of law; and notwithstanding the menacing attitude, the bustle, and transitory ebullitions of the rival factions, there seemed a manifest reluctance to break up the established order of things, and by deeds of violence and bloodshed to renew the days of ancient anarchy.

Much of this good result was undoubtedly to be attributed to the vigorous counsels and conduct of Ximenes, who, together with the grand constable and the duke of Alva, had received full powers from Ferdinand to act in his name. Much is also to be ascribed to the politic conduct of the king. Far from an intemperate zeal to resume the sceptre of Castile, he had shown throughout a discreet forbearance. The great mass of the common people, too, notwithstanding the temporary alienation of their feelings from the Catholic king by his recent marriage, were driven by the evils they actually suffered, and the vague apprehension of greater, to participate in the same sentiments; so that, in less than eight months from Philip’s death, the whole nation may be said to have returned to its allegiance to its ancient sovereign. The only considerable exceptions were Don Juan Manuel and the duke of Najara. The former had gone too far to recede, and the latter possessed too chivalrous or too stubborn a temper to do so.

At length, the Catholic monarch, having completed his arrangements at Naples, and waited until the affairs of Castile were fully ripe for his return, set sail from his Italian capital, June 4th, 1507. He proposed to touch at the Genoese port of Savona, where an interview had been arranged between him and Louis XII. On the 28th of June the royal fleet of Aragon entered the little port of Savona, where the king of France had already been waiting for it several days. During their interview the monarchs held repeated conferences. The subject of discussion can only be conjectured by the subsequent proceedings, which make it probable that it related to Italy; and that it was in this season of idle dalliance and festivity that the two princes who held the destinies of that country in their hands matured the famous League of Cambray, so disastrous to Venice, and reflecting little credit on its projectors, either on the score of good faith or sound policy.

At length, after enjoying for four days the splendid hospitality of their royal entertainer, the king and queen of Aragon re-embarked, and reached their own port of Valencia, after various detentions, on the 20th of July, 1507. Ferdinand pressed forward to Castile. How different from the forlorn and outcast condition in which he had quitted the country a short year before! He intimated the change in his own circumstances by the greater state and show of authority which he now assumed.

At Tortoles he was met by the queen, his daughter, accompanied by Archbishop Ximenes. The interview between them had more of pain than pleasure in it. The king was greatly shocked by Juana’s appearance; for her wild and haggard features, emaciated figure, and the mean, squalid attire in which she was dressed, made it difficult to recognise any trace of the daughter from whom he had been so long separated. She discovered more sensibility on seeing him than she had shown since her husband’s death, and henceforth resigned herself to her father’s will with little opposition. She was soon after induced by him to change her unsuitable residence for more commodious quarters at Tordesillas. Her husband’s remains were laid in the monastery of Santa Clara, adjoining the palace, from whose windows she could behold his sepulchre. From this period, although she survived forty-seven years, she never quitted the walls of her habitation; and although her name appeared jointly with that of her son, Charles V, in all public acts, she never afterwards could be induced to sign a paper, or take part in any transactions of a public nature. She lingered out a half century of dreary existence, as completely dead to the world as the remains which slept in the monastery of Santa Clara beside her.[b]

WAS QUEEN JUANA INSANE?

[1507-1554 A.D.]

The pendulum of historical criticism to which we have had such frequent occasion to refer has swung back to the original tradition in another instance. Juana was generally accounted mad by her contemporaries though she had admittedly intervals of lucid thought. In the latter half of the nineteenth century papers were turned up which emphasised her aspects of sanity and the theory was raised that she was the victim of slander and cruelty.

It was claimed that her only abnormality was her freedom from the bigotry that bloodied the reign of her father and mother; and that it was her stay in Flanders that liberalised her creed. This theory fascinated the iconoclasts who always hunt the evil side of a glorious period, and her mother and father were openly accused of a hideous disregard of the first instincts of humanity, of blackening her fame and robbing her of her royal heritage. The motive of this unnatural crime imputed to Ferdinand and Isabella was given as a mixture of religious intolerance and of selfishness, though it might as well have been said that they called her insane to keep her from undergoing the torture and fire of the Inquisition which ransacked the kingdom for the most minute heterodoxy. Burke[k] especially is unsparing in his denunciations of a cruelty which could not be exceeded if true. He claims that Ferdinand’s letters show that he knew Juana to be sane, but simply “unmanageable as she had ever been.”

But in this instance as in so many others, the histories of a few years ago are put out of date and the histories of long ago brought again into timeliness. The story of Juana’s rise and fall in history is as follows:[a]

For a long time writers who spoke of Juana the Mad stuck to tradition without going back to the original documents. It was only in 1858 that important documents were discovered in the archives at Simancas. Most of them confirmed tradition, but some of them left doubts in the mind of a German scholar, Bergenroth,[u] who collected and published them with an interesting dissertation in the “state papers.” Interpreting these documents, which were incomplete and often ambiguous, in a way contrary to general opinion, he tried to prove that Juana was not insane, but that she was rather the victim of the ambition and fanaticism of her father and of her son.

We are to-day better informed, having contemporary texts, some from Simancas, others from the archives of the historical academy at Madrid, others from private collections. An eminent Spanish writer, Rodriguez Villa,[v] has collected, and commented upon them in a work which one may safely affirm says the last word on this subject and completely contradicts Bergenroth’s opinions. The new historian on the one hand introduces elements hitherto unknown into the question, on the other explains differently those which were known. His circumstantial account, well supported by facts, upholds tradition for the most part and exculpates Ferdinand the Catholic as well as Charles V of the accusation brought against them. In the meantime Gachard[w] had shown like tendencies in a monograph on the subject, and De la Fuente[x] in a substantial pamphlet had peremptorily denied the heretical opinions attributed to the queen of Castile.

[1479-1503 A.D.]

The facts are doubly interesting, first because of their romance and peculiar nature, secondly because of their intimate relations with political events which, at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century, changed the internal form and diplomatic policy of the Spanish monarchy.

As to the real causes of her mental state, they cannot of course be determined with actual certainty, being hidden in the depths of the human organism. Villa[v] considers that Juana became “mad through love,” exasperated first by the infidelities of her husband.

Juana’s early life had passed in peaceful obscurity. She received a careful and kind training. Did she at that time show any distressing symptoms? Nothing precisely indicates such a thing. If, to judge from certain anxieties afterwards manifested by Isabella, it would seem possible that such symptoms might have appeared, one may suppose that they were considered at that time as passing incidents and of no importance. It is difficult to portray her physically or mentally at the time of her marriage. There is a portrait of her made a few years later when cares had already begun to mark her face.

It is a picture in the somewhat stiff style of the first Flemish school. The features are fairly regular, a forehead high and a little prominent, long eyes with no brilliancy, nose and mouth without character. There are no striking defects, nor is there beauty of line or of colour. A sad physiognomy, the eyes reveal only a kind of intellectual lassitude, a vague and dolorous obstinacy. Force and vitality seem to have been pressed inward and the soul appears drowned in a morbid dream; the whole face, half archaic, remains a puzzle. The features are without doubt those of Juana, but immobile and cold. The portrait shows only a melancholy woman, without charm, sickly, and lacking in thought.[y]

Isabella and Ferdinand wanted their son-in-law, Philip, to become acquainted with the country over which he would some time rule. But the measure of family misfortune which balanced the weighty political success of the Catholic kings was not yet full. The first months of the stay of Juana and Philip in Spain brought indeed only rejoicing and splendour. In Toledo the Castilian cortes proclaimed allegiance, in Barcelona the Aragonese. But the archduke Philip soon tired of Spanish life, he longed to get back to Flanders. Juana could not follow him on account of the state of her health. In vain she pleaded, in vain her parents urged the flighty gentleman not to leave her so pitilessly.

[1503-1506 A.D.]

Juana had already shown the beginnings of melancholia, accompanied by outbreaks of jealousy over her inconstant husband to whom she offered few attractions. What would happen if he separated himself from her might have been foreseen; but nothing could keep him. Then a deep melancholy settled upon the poor soul. “She does not raise her eyes from the ground,” writes Peter Martyr[l] in the first days of 1503. “Wealth, power, dominion, even her parents are of no account to her. With clouded brow she thinks only of her husband, he only is her care and passion.”

In the spring of 1504 it became necessary to let her have her way and go to the Netherlands. Here Philip’s heartlessness deepened the cloud of darkness which obscured the brain of the poor unfortunate, which had never been very strong. This sad news gave the last blow to Queen Isabella, who had long been failing; on November 26th, 1504, this woman who had created Spanish power died.

Juana was now queen of Castile. The cortes took the oath of allegiance to her and her husband, but at the same time in accordance with Isabella’s will, since Juana was not able to govern, recognised her father Ferdinand as regent. Juana declared herself perfectly willing to have her father govern for her. But Philip was deeply offended, placed his poor wife under strict surveillance, and made up his mind to get the rule over Castile into his own hands, pretending that he, as Juana’s husband, had better right to it than her father. In April, 1506, he appeared with her in Spain. But on September 25th, 1506, the last hour sounded for the young king, and his widow sank into the depth of insanity.[aa]

Had Juana’s insanity been accidental it would not have affected her descendants. Heredity here is incontestable. Most of the symptoms we have seen in the queen appeared in different degrees and in different forms in her posterity. Was it not she, was it not her shade which lived again in the old Charles V, who was tormented with peculiar attacks during his reign, and then condemned himself to a cloister out of a morose caprice, disgusted with everything, not from philosophy but from the continuity of his lugubrious dreams?

Do we not find her again in the fierce Philip II, like her seeking solitude and darkness in the depths of the Escurial where he combined his sinister policy with a sickly obstinacy? Is it not again Juana’s diseased mind which comes to life in the young Don Carlos, like her a prey to a derangement sometimes furious, sometimes melancholy? He also was confined and kept from sight; but was more fortunate than his grandmother, having been more promptly delivered by death. Consider also the cerebral anæmia which manifested itself in Philip III and Philip IV, both of them weak physically and mentally, in fever and melancholy; and in the pale spectre of Charles II, in the exhaustion of his vitality and intermittent hallucinations. These are not coincidences, they are the results of the transmission, historically attested, of an organic vice, which is reproduced from generation to generation by analogous phenomena.

It was the awful fate of Juana, endowed at her birth with all the gifts of fortune, to endure for fifty years the most lugubrious and degraded fate imaginable. Other persons may have had more dramatic reverses, but they at least moved in the current of events of their age; they lived and acted in the human mêlée. The daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella passed long years of suffering and neglect in ignorance of contemporary events, sufficiently intelligent to comprehend her mental feebleness but powerless to act against it; buried alive, so to speak, at once feverish and inert, condemned by her own weakness, and bowed down by the weight of fatality, struggling in vain against the clouds of her intellect and the torments of her life.

But we, while recognising that these events had a fateful effect on the brain of the princess, cannot accept this explanation in full. We must not forget that her grandmother on her mother’s side had been confined on account of insanity at the castle of Arevalos; also before marriage she caused disquietude to her family, which was kept secret. Ferdinand and Isabella had certainly noticed strange predispositions in her mind; they did not emphasise them, hoping that time, marriage, and distraction might attenuate them, but it is an incontestable fact that they never showed any surprise when their agents informed them of later events—they spoke of them as natural results of a diseased state they had long suspected.[y]

FERDINAND’S SECOND REGENCY (1507-1516 A.D.)

[1507-1512 A.D.]

Ferdinand’s second administration was signalised by the same splendid effects as the first. In 1509, at the suggestion of Cardinal Ximenes, he proposed an expedition against Oran on the African coast. The cardinal not only defrayed the expenses, but accompanied it. It was completely successful: Oran was stormed, and forced to receive a Christian garrison. The following year, Bugia, a city on the same coast, was reduced; Algiers, Tunis, Tremecen, and other places, consented that their native governors should be the vassals of Ferdinand. Another expedition reduced Tripoli.

In 1511, he himself was preparing to embark with a formidable armament, to pursue his conquests in that country,—conquests, however, which his own experience proved to be fleeting,—when he was pressed by Pope Julius to aid the church against the schismatics under the protection of the king of France and the emperor. As he was even more proud of his title of Catholic king than desirous of glory, he despatched an armed force to aid the chief of the church. Into the interminable affairs of Italy, however,—the critical wars which Ferdinand carried on in that country in defence of his Sicilian and Neapolitan possessions,—we cannot enter in this place; they will be found in the Italian volume. It is sufficient here to observe that the war was for some time in favour of the French (the emperor had withdrawn from them), and that the papal allies were defeated.

But this war led to one memorable result, and one not very glorious to Ferdinand. Wishing to carry hostilities into France, he demanded from Jean d’Albret, king of Navarre, permission to march his troops through that country. The Navarrese refused, but at the same time professed his determination in no way to aid the French monarch, and to remain perfectly neutral. Scarcely, however, had he given this answer, than he entered into an alliance, offensive and defensive, with the French king. Resolving to attain his end by force and to punish the duplicity of the Navarrese, Ferdinand assembled his forces at Vittoria, invaded Navarre, and in a short time obtained possession of the whole kingdom, the royal family taking refuge in France. This new conquest he annexed to his kingdom of Aragon, and successfully defended it against the invasion of the French. From the blood-stained house of Foix the sceptre had forever departed; nor could all the armies of France, during the reigns of the emperor Charles and his son Philip, restore it to the descendants of Jean.

The conquest of Navarre, however necessary to the tranquillity of Spain, can be characterised in no other terms than as an act of unblushing rapacity; yet attempts have been made to justify it, and by writers who would not willingly be considered the advocates of a criminal abuse of power. According to Peter Martyr,[l] the king of Navarre had been excommunicated by the pope as a schismatic,—as one of the league formed by the emperor and France against the papal pretentions to the duchy of Ferrara,—and bulls, absolving the Navarrese from their oath of allegiance, deposing Jean, and conferring the kingdom on the first that took possession of it, were sent to Ferdinand; in other words, the enterprise was sanctioned by the head of the church in gratitude for the aid which, in conjunction with the Venetians, he afforded the successor of St. Peter. As such a title, however, will not be admitted at this day even beyond the Pyrenees, the conquest must be designated as one of the most flagitious transactions of a lawless age.

[1512-1516 A.D.]

Towards the close of his life, Ferdinand still indulged the hope of seeing an heir who should inherit Aragon, Navarre, Naples, and Sicily. This wish arose both from his dislike to the emperor, the grandfather of the archduke Charles, and the whole house of Austria, and from the aversion shown by his hereditary subjects to a union of the crowns. In 1509 his young queen had been delivered of a son, who died in a few days. In 1513 he took a potion which he was persuaded would restore his masculine vigour, but which destroyed his constitution, and produced a lingering illness, that ended in death. In his last will he declared his daughter Juana heiress to all his dominions in Spain and Italy, and after her his grandson Charles. The regency of Castile, until his grandson should arrive in Spain, he confided to Cardinal Ximenes; and that of Aragon, with the states dependent on it, to his natural son, the archbishop of Saragossa.[d]

DEATH AND CHARACTER OF FERDINAND

[1516 A.D.]

On the evening of the 22nd of January, 1516, he executed the instrument; and a few hours later, between one and two of the morning of the 23rd, Ferdinand breathed his last. The scene of this event was a small house belonging to the friars of Guadalupe. “In so wretched a tenement,” exclaims Martyr[l] in his usual moralising vein, “did this lord of so many lands close his eyes upon the world.”

Ferdinand was nearly sixty-four years old, of which forty-one had elapsed since he first swayed the sceptre of Castile, and thirty-seven since he held that of Aragon. A long reign; long enough, indeed, to see most of those whom he had honoured and trusted of his subjects gathered to the dust, and a succession of contemporary monarchs come and disappear like shadows. Since Ferdinand had ascended the throne, he had seen no less than four kings of England, as many of France, and also of Naples, three of Portugal, two German emperors, and half-a-dozen popes. As to his own subjects, scarcely one of all those familiar to the reader in the course of Spanish history now survived, except, indeed, the Nestor of his time, the octogenarian Cardinal Ximenes.

He died deeply lamented by his native subjects, who entertained a partiality natural towards their own hereditary sovereign. The event was regarded with very different feelings by the Castilian nobles, who calculated their gains on the transfer of the reins from such old and steady hands into those of a young and inexperienced master. The commons, however, who had felt the good effect of this curb on the nobility in their own personal security, held his memory in reverence as that of a national benefactor.

By his dying injunctions all unnecessary ostentation was interdicted at his funeral. His body was laid by the side of Isabella’s in the monastery of the Alhambra; and the year following, when the royal chapel of the metropolitan church was completed, they were both transported thither. A magnificent mausoleum of white marble was erected over them by their grandson, Charles V.

Of King Ferdinand’s personal appearance Marineo,[m] a contemporary who knew him well, says: “He was of the middle size. His complexion was fresh; his eyes bright and animated; his nose and mouth small and finely formed, and his teeth white; his forehead lofty and serene; with flowing hair of a bright chestnut colour. His manners were courteous, and his countenance was seldom clouded by anything like spleen or melancholy. He was grave in speech and action, and had a marvellous dignity of presence. His whole demeanour, in fine, was truly that of a great king.” He was esteemed one of the most perfect horsemen of his court.

He was naturally of an equable temper, and inclined to moderation in all things. The only amusement for which he cared much was hunting, especially falconry. He was indefatigable in application to business. He had no relish for the pleasures of the table, and, like Isabella, was temperate even to abstemiousness in his diet. He was frugal in his domestic and personal expenditure; partly, no doubt, from a willingness to rebuke the opposite spirit of wastefulness and ostentation in his nobles. He lost no good opportunity of doing this. No one has accused him of attempting to enrich his exchequer by the venal sale of offices, like Louis XII; or by griping extortion, like another royal contemporary, Henry VII. He amassed no treasure, and, indeed, died so poor that he left scarcely enough in his coffers to defray the charges of his funeral.

Ferdinand was devout; at least he was scrupulous in regard to the exterior of religion. He was punctual in attendance on mass, careful to observe all the ordinances and ceremonies of his church, and left many tokens of his piety, after the fashion of the time, in sumptuous edifices and endowments for religious purposes. Although not a superstitious man for the age, he is certainly obnoxious to the reproach of bigotry; for he spared no effort to fasten the odious yoke of the Inquisition on Aragon; and subsequently, though happily with less success, on Naples.

Ferdinand has incurred the more serious charge of hypocrisy. His Catholic zeal was observed to be marvellously efficacious in furthering his temporal interests. His most objectionable enterprises even were covered with a veil of religion. In this, however, he did not materially differ from the practice of the age. Some of the most scandalous wars of that period were ostensibly at the bidding of the church, or in defence of Christendom against the infidel. This ostentation of a religious motive was indeed very usual with the Spanish and Portuguese.

It will not be so easy to acquit Ferdinand of the reproach of perfidy which foreign writers have so deeply branded on his name, and which those of his own nation have sought rather to palliate than to deny. It is but fair to him, however, even here, to take a glance at the age. He came forward when government was in a state of transition from the feudal forms to those which it has assumed in modern times; when the superior strength of the great vassals was circumvented by the superior policy of the reigning princes. It was the dawn of the triumph of intellect over the brute force which had hitherto controlled the movements of nations, as of individuals. The same policy which these monarchs had pursued in their own domestic relations they introduced into those with foreign states, when, at the close of the fifteenth century, the barriers that had so long kept them asunder were broken down. Italy was the first field on which the great powers were brought into anything like a general collision. It was the country, too, in which this crafty policy had been first studied and reduced to a regular system.

Such was the school in which Ferdinand was to make trial of his skill with his brother monarchs.[69] He played the game with more adroitness than his opponents, and he won it. Success, as usual, brought on him the reproaches of the losers.

Ferdinand, unfortunately for his popularity, had nothing of the frank and cordial temper, the genial expansion of the soul which begets love. He carried the same cautious and impenetrable frigidity into private life that he showed in public. “No one,” says Giovio,[n] a writer of the time, “could read his thoughts by any change of his countenance.” Calm and calculating, even in trifles, it was too obvious that everything had exclusive reference to self. He seemed to estimate his friends only by the amount of services they could render him. He was not always mindful of these services. Witness his ungenerous treatment of Columbus, the great captain, Navarro, Ximenes—the men who shed the brightest lustre and the most substantial benefits on his reign. Witness also his insensibility to the virtues and long attachment of Isabella, whose memory he could so soon dishonour by a union with one every way unworthy to be her successor.

Ferdinand’s connection with Isabella, while it reflected infinite glory on his reign, suggests a contrast most unfavourable to his character. Hers was all magnanimity, disinterestedness, and deep devotion to the interests of her people. His was the spirit of egotism. The circle of his views might be more or less expanded, but self was the steady, unchangeable centre. Her heart beat with the generous sympathies of friendship, and the purest constancy to the first, the only object of her love. We have seen the measure of his sensibilities in other relations. They were not more refined in this; and he proved himself unworthy of the admirable woman with whom his destinies were united, by indulging in those vicious gallantries too generally sanctioned by the age. Ferdinand, in fine, a shrewd and politic prince, “surpassing,” as a French writer, Varillas,[o] not his friend, has remarked, “all the statesmen of his time in the science of the cabinet,” may be taken as the representative of the peculiar genius of the age; while Isabella, discarding all the petty artifices of state policy, and pursuing the noblest ends by the noblest means, stands far above her age.

In his illustrious consort Ferdinand may be said to have lost his good genius. From that time his fortunes were under a cloud. Not that victory sat less constantly on his banner; but his ill-advised marriage disgusted his Castilian subjects. The beauty of his young queen opened new sources of jealousy; while the disparity of their ages, and her fondness for frivolous pleasure, as little qualified her to be his partner in prosperity as his solace in declining years. His tenacity of power drew him into vulgar squabbles with those most nearly allied to him by blood, which settled into a mortal aversion. Finally, bodily infirmity broke the energies of his mind, sour suspicions corroded his heart, and he had the misfortune to live long after he had lost all that could make life desirable.

Let us turn from this gloomy picture to the brighter season of the morning and meridian of his life; when he sat with Isabella on the united thrones of Castile and Aragon, strong in the love of his own subjects, and in the fear and respect of his enemies. We shall then find much in his character to admire—his impartial justice in the administration of the laws, his watchful solicitude to shield the weak from the oppression of the strong; his wise economy, which achieved great results without burdening his people with oppressive taxes; his sobriety and moderation; the decorum, and respect for religion, which he maintained among his subjects; the industry he promoted by wholesome laws and his own example; his consummate sagacity, which crowned all his enterprises with brilliant success, and made him the oracle of the princes of the age.

Macchiavelli,[p] indeed, the most deeply read of his time in human character, imputes Ferdinand’s successes, in one of his letters, to “cunning and good-luck rather than superior wisdom”; but has recorded a riper and more deliberate judgment in the treatise which he intended as a mirror for the rulers of the time. “Nothing,” says he, “gains estimation for a prince like great enterprises. Our own age has furnished a splendid example of this in Ferdinand of Aragon. We may call him a new king, since from a feeble one he has made himself the most renowned and glorious monarch of Christendom; and, if we ponder well his manifold achievements, we must acknowledge all of them very great, and some truly extraordinary.”

THE REGENCY OF CARDINAL XIMENES

The personal history of Ferdinand the Catholic terminates, of course, here. In order to bring the history of his reign, however, to a suitable close, it is necessary to continue the narrative through the brief regency of Ximenes, to the period when the government was delivered into the hands of Ferdinand’s grandson and successor, Charles V.

By the testament of the deceased monarch, as we have seen, Cardinal Ximenes de Cisneros was appointed sole regent of Castile. He met with opposition, however, from Adrian, the dean of Louvain, who produced powers of similar purport from Prince Charles. The misunderstanding which ensued was finally settled by an agreement to share the authority till further instructions should be received from Charles. It was not long before they arrived (February 14th, 1516). They confirmed the cardinal’s authority in the fullest manner, while they spoke of Adrian only as an ambassador.

The first requisition of Prince Charles was one that taxed severely the power and popularity of the new regent. This was to have himself proclaimed king; a measure extremely distasteful to the Castilians, who regarded it not only as contrary to established usage, during the lifetime of his mother, but as an indignity to her. It was in vain that Ximenes and the council remonstrated on the impropriety and impolicy of the measure. Charles, fortified by his Flemish advisers, sturdily persisted in his purpose. Ximenes peremptorily declared: “I will have him proclaimed in Madrid to-morrow, and I doubt not every other city in the kingdom will follow the example.” He was as good as his word; and the conduct of the capital was imitated with little opposition, by all the other cities in Castile.

[1516-1517 A.D.]

One of the regent’s first acts was the famous ordinance encouraging the burgesses, by liberal rewards, to enrol themselves into companies, and submit to regular military training at stated seasons; and a national corps was organised, competent, under proper guidance, to protect the liberties of the people, but destined, unfortunately, to be ultimately turned against them. Armed with this strong physical force, the cardinal now projected the boldest schemes of reform, especially in the finances, which had fallen into some disorder in the latter days of Ferdinand. Unfortunately, the state was not materially benefited by these economical arrangements, since the greater part of what was thus saved was drawn off to supply the waste and cupidity of the Flemish court, who dealt with Spain with all the merciless rapacity that could be shown to a conquered province. The foreign administration of the regent displayed the same courage and vigour. Arsenals were established in the southern maritime towns, and a numerous fleet was equipped in the Mediterranean against the Barbary corsairs. A large force was sent into Navarre, which defeated an invading army of French (March 25th, 1516); and the cardinal followed up the blow by demolishing the principal fortresses of the kingdom; a precautionary measure, to which, in all probability, Spain owes the permanent preservation of her conquest.

It is with less satisfaction that we must contemplate his policy in regard to the Inquisition. As head of that tribunal, he enforced its authority and pretensions to the utmost. He extended a branch of it to Oran, and also to the Canaries and the New World. In 1512, the “new Christians” had offered Ferdinand a large sum of money to carry on the Navarrese war, if he would cause the trials before that tribunal to be conducted in the same manner as in other courts, where the accuser and the evidence were confronted openly with the defendant. To this reasonable petition Ximenes objected, on the wretched plea that, in that event, none would be found willing to undertake the odious business of reformer. He backed his remonstrance with such a liberal donative from his own funds as supplied the king’s immediate exigency and effectually closed his heart against the petitioners.

Cardinal Ximenes

The cardinal not only assumed the sole responsibility of the most important public acts, but, in the execution of them, seldom condescended to calculate the obstacles or the odds arrayed against him. He was thus brought into collision, at the same time, with three of the most powerful grandees of Castile—the dukes of Alva and Infantado, and the count of Ureña. They took refuge in the little town of Villafrata, which they fortified and prepared for a defence. The cardinal without hesitation mustered several thousand of the national militia, and, investing the place, set it on fire and deliberately razed it to the ground. The refractory nobles, struck with consternation, submitted.

But neither the talents nor authority of Ximenes, it was evident, could much longer maintain subordination among the people, exasperated by the shameless extortions of the Flemings, and the little interest shown for them by their new sovereign. The most considerable offices in church and state were put up to sale; and the kingdom was drained of its funds by the large remittances continually made, on one pretext or another, to Flanders. On the 17th of September, 1517, Charles landed at Villaviciosa, in the Asturias. Ximenes at this time lay ill at the Franciscan monastery of Aguilera, near Aranda on the Douro. The good tidings of the royal landing operated like a cordial on his spirits, and he instantly despatched letters to the young monarch, filled with wholesome counsel as to the conduct he should pursue in order to conciliate the affections of the people.

Charles showed a facility to be directed by those around him in early years, which gave little augury of the greatness to which he afterwards rose. By the persuasions of his evil counsellors, he addressed that memorable letter to Ximenes, which is unmatched, even in court annals, for cool and base ingratitude. He thanked the regent for all his past services, named a place for a personal interview with him, where he might obtain the benefit of his counsels for his own conduct and the government of the kingdom; after which he would be allowed to retire to his diocese and seek from heaven that reward which heaven alone could adequately bestow!

Such was the tenor of this cold-blooded epistle, which, in the language of more than one writer, killed the cardinal. This, however, is stating the matter too strongly. The spirit of Ximenes was of too stern a stuff to be so easily extinguished by the breath of royal displeasure. He was, indeed, deeply moved by the desertion of the sovereign whom he had served so faithfully, and the excitement which it occasioned brought on a return of his fever, according to Carbajal,[f] in full force. But anxiety and disease had already done their work upon his once hardy constitution.[70]

DEATH AND CHARACTER OF XIMENES

[1517 A.D.]

Death may be supposed to have but little terrors for the statesman who in his last moments could aver that he had never intentionally wronged any man, but had rendered to everyone his due, without being swayed, so far as he was conscious, by fear or affection. Yet Cardinal Richelieu on his death-bed declared the same.

As a last attempt he began a letter to the king. His fingers refused, however, to perform their office, and after tracing a few lines he gave it up. The purport of these seems to have been to recommend his university at Alcalá to the royal protection. He now became wholly occupied with his devotions, and manifested such contrition for his errors, and such humble confidence in the divine mercy, as deeply affected all present. In this tranquil frame of mind, and in the perfect possession of his powers, he breathed his last, November 8th, 1517, in the eighty-first year of his age and the twenty-second since his elevation to the primacy.

Such was the end of this remarkable man; the most remarkable, in many respects, of his time. His character was of that stern and lofty cast which seems to rise above the ordinary wants and weaknesses of humanity; his genius, of the severest order, like Dante’s or Michelangelo’s in the regions of fancy, impresses us with ideas of power that excite admiration akin to terror. His enterprises were of the boldest character; his execution of them equally bold. He disdained to woo fortune by any of those soft and pliant arts which are often the most effectual. He pursued his ends by the most direct means. In this way he frequently multiplied difficulties; but difficulties seemed to have a charm for him, by the opportunities they afforded of displaying the energies of his soul.

With these qualities he combined a versatility of talent usually found only in softer and more flexible characters. Though bred in the cloister, he distinguished himself both in the cabinet and the camp. For the latter, indeed, so repugnant to his regular profession, he had a natural genius, according to the testimony of his biographer Gómez;[q] and he evinced his relish for it by declaring that “the smell of gunpowder was more grateful to him than the sweetest perfume of Arabia!” He had a full measure of the religious bigotry which belonged to the age; and he had melancholy scope for displaying it, as chief of that dread tribunal over which he presided during the last ten years of his life.

He carried the arbitrary ideas of his profession into political life. His regency was conducted on the principles of a military despotism. It was his maxim that “a prince must rely mainly on his army for securing the respect and obedience of his subjects.” It is true he had to deal with a martial and factious nobility, and the end which he proposed was to curb their licentiousness and enforce the equitable administration of justice; but, in accomplishing this, he showed little regard to the constitution, or to private rights.

His first act, the proclaiming of Charles king, was in open contempt of the usages and rights of the nation. He evaded the urgent demands of the Castilians for a convocation of cortes; for it was his opinion that freedom of speech, especially in regard to their own grievances, made the people insolent and irreverent to their rulers. The people, of course, had no voice in the measures which involved their most important interests. His whole policy, indeed, was to exalt the royal prerogative at the expense of the inferior orders of the state; and his regency, short as it was, and highly beneficial to the country in many respects, must be considered as opening the way to that career of despotism which the Austrian family followed up with such hard-hearted constancy.

His administration provoked numerous lampoons and libels. He despised them, as the miserable solace of spleen and discontent, and never persecuted their authors. In this he formed an honourable contrast to Cardinal Richelieu, whose character and condition suggest many points of resemblance with his own.

An anecdote is told in relation to his dress. Over his coarse woollen frock he wore the costly apparel suited to his rank. An impertinent Franciscan preacher took occasion one day before him to launch out against the luxuries of the time, especially in dress, obviously alluding to the cardinal, who was attired in a superb suit of ermine, which had been presented to him. He heard the sermon patiently to the end, and, after the services were concluded, took the preacher into the sacristy, and, having commended the general tenor of his discourse, showed under his furs and fine linen the coarse frock of his order next his skin. Some accounts add that the friar, on the other hand, wore fine linen under his monkish frock. After the cardinal’s death, a little box was found in his apartment, containing the implements with which he used to mend the rents of his threadbare garment with his own hands.

He seldom slept more than four hours, or at most four and a half. He was shaved in the night, hearing at the same time some edifying reading. He followed the same practice at his meals, or varied it with listening to the arguments of some of his theological brethren, generally on some subtile question of school divinity. This was his only recreation. He had as little taste as time for lighter and more elegant amusements.

THE TWO CHIEF WORKS OF XIMENES

[1497-1517 A.D.]

As far back as 1497, Ximenes had conceived the idea of establishing a university in the ancient town of Alcalá, where the salubrity of the air, and the sober, tranquil complexion of the scenery, on the beautiful borders of the Henares, seemed well suited to academic study and meditation. Other engagements, however, postponed the commencement of the work till 1500, when the cardinal himself laid the corner-stone of the principal college, with a solemn ceremonial. From that hour, amidst all the engrossing cares of church and state, he never lost sight of this great object.[71] The city of Alcalá underwent many important and expensive alterations, in order to render it more worthy of being the seat of a great and flourishing university. The stagnant water was carried off by drains, the streets were paved, old buildings removed, and new and spacious avenues thrown open.

At the expiration of eight years, the cardinal had the satisfaction of seeing the whole of this vast design completed, and every apartment of the spacious pile carefully furnished with all that was requisite for the comfort and accommodation of the student. It was, indeed, a noble enterprise, more particularly when viewed as the work of a private individual. As such it raised the deepest admiration in Francis I, when he visited the spot, a few years after the cardinal’s death. “Your Ximenes,” he said, “has executed more than I should have dared to conceive; he has done, with his single hand, what in France it has taken a line of kings to accomplish.”

Two provisions may be noticed as characteristic of the man: one, that the salary of a professor should be regulated by the number of his disciples; another, that every professor should be re-eligible at the expiration of every four years. It was impossible that any servant of Ximenes should sleep on his post. Liberal foundations were made for indigent students, especially in divinity. Indeed, theological studies, or rather such a general course of study as should properly enter into the education of a Christian minister, was the avowed object of the institution; for the Spanish clergy up to this period, as before noticed, were too often deficient in the most common elements of learning. But in this preparatory discipline the comprehensive mind of Ximenes embraced nearly the whole circle of sciences taught in other universities.

In July, 1508, the cardinal received the welcome intelligence that his academy was open for the admission of pupils; and in the following month the first lecture, being on Aristotle’s Ethics, was publicly delivered. Students soon flocked to the new university, attracted by the reputation of its professors, its ample apparatus, its thorough system of instruction, and, above all, its splendid patronage, and the high character of its founder. We have no information of their number in Ximenes’ lifetime; but it must have been very considerable, since no less than seven thousand came out to receive Francis I, on his visit to the university, within twenty years after it was opened.

In the midst of his pressing duties, Ximenes found time for the execution of another work, which would alone have been sufficient to render his name immortal in the republic of letters. This was his famous Bible, or Complutensian Polyglot, as usually termed, from the place where it was printed.[72] It was on the plan, first conceived by Origen, of exhibiting in one view the Scriptures in their various ancient languages. It was a work of surpassing difficulty, demanding an extensive and critical acquaintance with the most ancient, and consequently the rarest manuscripts. The character and station of the cardinal afforded him, it is true, uncommon facilities. The precious collection of the Vatican was liberally thrown open to him, especially under Leo X, whose munificent spirit delighted in the undertaking. He obtained copies, in like manner, of whatever was of value in the other libraries of Italy, and, indeed, of Europe generally; and Spain supplied him with editions of the Old Testament of great antiquity, which had been treasured up by the banished Israelites. Some idea may be formed of the lavish expenditure in this way, from the fact that four thousand gold crowns were paid for seven foreign manuscripts, which, however, came too late to be of use in the compilation. The difficulties of the undertaking were sensibly increased by those of the printing. The art was then in its infancy, and there were no types in Spain, if indeed in any part of Europe, in the oriental character. Ximenes, however, careful to have the whole executed under his own eye, imported artists from Germany, and had types cast in the various languages required, in his foundries at Alcalá.

The work when completed occupied six volumes folio; the first four devoted to the Old Testament, the fifth to the New; the last containing a Hebrew and Chaldaic vocabulary, with other elementary treaties of singular labour and learning.[73] It was not brought to an end till 1517, fifteen years after its commencement, and a few months only before the death of its illustrious projector.

COMPARISON OF XIMENES AND RICHELIEU

[1502-1507 A.D.]

The resemblance which Ximenes bore to the great French minister, Cardinal Richelieu, was, after all, more in the circumstances of situation than in their characters, though the most prominent traits of these were not dissimilar. Both, though bred ecclesiastics, reached the highest honours of the state, and, indeed, may be said to have directed the destinies of their countries. Richelieu’s authority, however, was more absolute than that of Ximenes, for he was screened by the shadow of royalty; while the latter was exposed, by his insulated and unsheltered position, to the full blaze of envy, and, of course, opposition. Both were ambitious of military glory, and showed capacity for attaining it. Both achieved their great results by that rare union of high mental endowments and great efficiency in action which is always irresistible.

The moral basis of their characters was entirely different. The French cardinal’s was selfishness, pure and unmitigated. His religion, politics, his principles in short, in every sense, were subservient to this. Offences against the state he could forgive; those against himself he pursued with implacable rancour. His authority was literally cemented with blood. His immense powers and patronage were perverted to the aggrandisement of his family. Though bold to temerity in his plans, he betrayed more than once a want of true courage in their execution. Though violent and impetuous, he could stoop to be a dissembler. Though arrogant in the extreme, he courted the soft incense of flattery. In his manners he had the advantage over the Spanish prelate. He could be a courtier in courts, and had a more refined and cultivated taste. In one respect he had the advantage over Ximenes in morals; he was not, like him, a bigot. He had not the religious basis in his composition which is the foundation of bigotry. Their deaths were typical of their characters. Richelieu died, as he had lived, so deeply execrated that the enraged populace would scarcely allow his remains to be laid quietly in the grave. Ximenes, on the contrary, was buried amid the tears and lamentations of the people; his memory was honoured even by his enemies, and his name is reverenced by his countrymen to this day as that of a saint.

REVIEW OF THE REIGN OF FERDINAND AND ISABELLA

[1474-1516 A.D.]

We have now traversed that important period of history comprehending the latter part of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century; a period when the convulsions which shook to the ground the ancient political fabrics of Europe roused the minds of its inhabitants from the lethargy in which they had been buried for ages. Spain, as we have seen, felt the general impulse. Under the glorious rule of Ferdinand and Isabella we have beheld her emerging from chaos into a new existence, unfolding, under the influence of institutions adapted to her genius, energies of which she was before unconscious; enlarging her resources from all the springs of domestic industry and commercial enterprise; and insensibly losing the ferocious habits of a feudal age in the refinements of an intellectual and moral culture.

In the fullness of time, when her divided powers had been concentrated under one head, and the system of internal economy completed, we have seen her descend into the arena with the other nations of Europe, and in a very few years achieve the most important acquisitions of territory, both in that quarter and in Africa; and finally crowning the whole by the discovery and occupation of a boundless empire beyond the waters. In the progress of the action we may have been too much occupied with its details to attend sufficiently to the principles which regulated them. But now that we have reached the close, we may be permitted to cast a parting glance over the field that we have traversed, and briefly survey the principal steps by which the Spanish sovereigns led their nation up to such a height of prosperity and glory.

Ferdinand and Isabella, on their accession, saw at once that the chief source of the distractions of the country lay in the overgrown powers and factious spirit of the nobility. Their first efforts, therefore, were directed to abate these as far as possible. A similar movement was going forward in the other European monarchies; but in none was it crowned with so speedy and complete success as in Castile.

Another practice steadily pursued by the sovereigns was to raise men of humble station to offices of the highest trust; not, however, like their contemporary, Louis XI, because their station was humble, in order to mortify the higher orders, but because they courted merit wherever it was to be found—a policy much and deservedly commended by the sagacious observers of the time. The history of Spain does not probably afford another example of a person of the lowly condition of Ximenes attaining, not merely the highest offices in the kingdom, but eventually its uncontrolled supremacy.

The queen’s government was equally vigilant in resisting ecclesiastical encroachment. It may appear otherwise to one who casts a superficial glance at her reign, and beholds her surrounded always by a troop of ghostly advisers, and avowing religion as the great end of her principal operations at home and abroad. It is certain, however, that, while in all her acts she confessed the influence of religion, she took more effectual means than any of her predecessors to circumscribe the temporal powers of the clergy. The volume of her pragmáticas is filled with laws designed to limit their jurisdiction and restrain their encroachments on the secular authorities.

Convent of the Martyrs, Granada

By vigilant measures she succeeded in restoring the ancient discipline of the church, and weeding out the sensuality and indolence which had so long defiled it.[74] Few of the Castilian monarchs have been brought more frequently into collision, or pursued a bolder policy, with the court of Rome. Still fewer extorted from it such important graces and concessions.

The condition of the commons under this reign was probably, on the whole, more prosperous than in any other period of Spanish history. New avenues to wealth and honours were opened to them; and persons and property were alike protected under the fearless and impartial administration of the law. “Such was the justice dispensed to everyone under this auspicious reign,” exclaims Marineo, “that nobles and cavaliers, citizens and labourers, rich and poor, masters and servants, all equally partook of it.” We find no complaints of arbitrary imprisonment, and no attempts, so frequent both in earlier and later times, at illegal taxation. In this particular, indeed, Isabella manifested the greatest tenderness for her people. By her commutation of the capricious tax of the alcabala for a determinate one, and still more by transferring its collection from the revenue officers to the citizens themselves, she greatly relieved her subjects.

Finally, notwithstanding the perpetual call for troops for the military operations in which the government was constantly engaged, and notwithstanding the example of neighbouring countries, there was no attempt to establish that iron bulwark of despotism, a standing army; at least, none nearer than that of the voluntary levies of the hermandad, raised and paid by the people. The queen never admitted the arbitrary maxims of Ximenes in regard to the foundation of government. Hers was essentially one of opinion, not force.

There is no country which has been guilty of such wild experiments, or has shown, on the whole, such profound ignorance of the true principles of economical science, as Spain under the sceptre of the family of Austria. And as it is not always easy to discriminate between their acts and those of Ferdinand and Isabella, under whom the germs of much of the subsequent legislation may be said to have been planted, this circumstance has brought undeserved discredit on the government of the latter. Undeserved, because laws mischievous in their eventual operation were not always so at the time for which they were originally devised; not to add that what was intrinsically bad has been aggravated tenfold under the blind legislation of their successors. It is also true that many of the most exceptionable laws sanctioned by their names are to be charged on their predecessors, who had engrafted their principles into the system long before; and many others are to be vindicated by the general practice of other nations, which authorised retaliation on the score of self-defence.

It would be unfair to direct our view to the restrictive measures of Ferdinand and Isabella without noticing also the liberal tenor of their legislation in regard to a great variety of objects. Such, for example, are the laws encouraging foreigners to settle in the country; those for facilitating communication by internal improvements, roads, bridges, canals, on a scale of unprecedented magnitude; for a similar attention to the wants of navigation, by constructing moles, quays, lighthouses, along the coast, and deepening and extending the harbours, “to accommodate,” as the acts set forth, “the great increase of trade”; for embellishing and adding in various ways to the accommodations of the cities; for relieving the subject from onerous tolls and oppressive monopolies; for establishing a uniform currency and standard of weights and measures throughout the kingdom, objects of unwearied solicitude through this whole reign; for maintaining a police which, from the most disorderly and dangerous, raised Spain, in the language of Martyr,[l] to be the safest country in Christendom; for such equal justice as secured to every man the fruits of his own industry, inducing him to embark his capital in useful enterprises; and, finally, for enforcing fidelity to contracts, of which the sovereigns gave such a glorious example in their own administration as effectually restored that public credit which is the true basis of public prosperity.

The most important of the foreign acquisitions were those nearest home, Granada and Navarre, at least they were the only ones capable, from their position, of being brought under control and permanently and thoroughly identified with the Spanish monarchy.

DISCOVERY AND COLONISATION

[1492-1517 A.D.]

But far the most important of the distant acquisitions of Spain were those secured by the genius of Columbus and the enlightened patronage of Isabella. Imagination had ample range in the boundless perspective of these unknown regions; but the results actually realised from the discoveries, during the queen’s life, were comparatively insignificant. In a mere financial view, they had been a considerable charge on the crown. This was, indeed, partly owing to the humanity of Isabella, who interfered, as we have seen, to prevent the compulsory exaction of Indian labour. This was subsequently, and immediately after her death indeed, carried to such an extent that nearly half a million of ounces of gold were yearly drawn from the mines of Hispaniola alone. The pearl-fisheries, and the culture of the sugar-cane, introduced from the Canaries, yielded large returns under the same inhuman system.

Ferdinand, who enjoyed, by the queen’s testament, half the amount of the Indian revenues, was now fully awakened to their importance. It would be unjust, however, to suppose his views limited to immediate pecuniary profits; for the measures he pursued were, in many respects, well contrived to promote the nobler ends of discovery and colonisation. He invited the persons most eminent for nautical science and enterprise, as Pinzon, Solis, Vespucci, to his court, where they constituted a sort of board of navigation, constructing charts and tracing out new routes for projected voyages. The conduct of this department was entrusted to the last-mentioned navigator, who had the glory, the greatest which accident and caprice ever granted to man, of giving his name to the new hemisphere.

In this universal excitement, the progress of discovery was pushed forward with a success, inferior, indeed, to what might have been effected in the present state of nautical skill and science, but extraordinary for the times. The winding depths of the gulf of Mexico were penetrated, as well as the borders of the rich but rugged isthmus which connects the American continents. In 1513 Florida was discovered by a romantic old knight, Ponce de Leon, who, instead of the magical fountain of health, found his grave there. Solis, another navigator, who had charge of an expedition, projected by Ferdinand, to reach the South Sea by the circumnavigation of the continent, ran down the coast as far as the great Rio de la Plata, where he also was cut off by the savages. In 1513, Vasco Nuñez de Balboa penetrated, with a handful of men, across the narrow part of the isthmus of Darien, and from the summit of the Cordilleras, the first of Europeans, was greeted with the long-promised vision of the southern ocean.

Our admiration of the dauntless heroism displayed by the early Spanish navigators, in their extraordinary career, is much qualified by a consideration of the cruelties by which it was tarnished; too great to be either palliated or passed over in silence by the historian. As long as Isabella lived, the Indians found an efficient friend and protector; but “her death,” says the venerable Las Casas, “was the signal for their destruction.” Immediately on that event, the system of repartimientos, originally authorised by Columbus, who seems to have had no doubt, from the first, of the crown’s absolute right of property over the natives, was carried to its full extent in the colonies. Every Spaniard, however humble, had his proportion of slaves; and men, many of them not only incapable of estimating the awful responsibility of the situation, but without the least touch of humanity in their natures, were individually entrusted with the unlimited disposal of the lives and destinies of their fellow-creatures. They abused this trust in the grossest manner; tasking the unfortunate Indian far beyond his strength, inflicting the most refined punishments on the indolent, and hunting down those who resisted or escaped, like so many beasts of chase, with ferocious bloodhounds.

Every step of the white man’s progress in the New World may be said to have been on the corpse of a native. Faith is staggered by the recital of the number of victims immolated in these fair regions within a very few years after the discovery; and the heart sickens at the loathsome details of barbarities recorded by one [Las Casas[r]] who, if his sympathies have led him sometimes to overcolour, can never be suspected of wilfully misstating facts of which he was an eye-witness. A selfish indifference to the rights of the original occupants of the soil is a sin which lies at the door of most of the primitive European settlers, whether papist or puritan, of the New World. But it is light in comparison with the fearful amount of crimes to be charged on the early Spanish colonists; crimes that have, perhaps, in this world, brought down the retribution of heaven, which has seen fit to turn this fountain of inexhaustible wealth and prosperity to the nation into the waters of bitterness.

A War Vessel of the Fifteenth Century

Ferdinand openly assumed for himself and his ministers the responsibility of maintaining this vicious institution, and subsequently issued an ordinance to that effect, accompanied, however, by a variety of humane and equitable regulations for restraining its abuse. The license was embraced in its full extent; the regulations were openly disregarded. Several years after, in 1515, Las Casas,[r] moved by the spectacle of human suffering, returned to Spain, and pleaded the cause of the injured natives, in tones which made the dying monarch tremble on his throne. It was too late, however, for the king to execute the remedial measures he contemplated. The efficient interference of Ximenes, who sent a commission for the purpose to Hispaniola, was attended with no permanent results. And the indefatigable “protector of the Indians” was left to sue for redress at the court of Charles, and to furnish a splendid if not a solitary example there of a bosom penetrated with the true spirit of Christian philanthropy.

The supply of precious metals yielded by the colonies proved eventually far greater than had ever entered into the conception of the most sanguine of the early discoverers. Their prolific soil and genial climate, moreover, afforded an infinite variety of vegetable products, which might have furnished an unlimited commerce with the mother-country. Under a judicious protection, their population and productions, steadily increasing, would have enlarged to an incalculable extent the general resources of the empire. Such, indeed, might have been the result of a wise system of legislation.

But the true principles of colonial policy were sadly misunderstood in the sixteenth century. The discovery of a world was estimated, like that of a rich mine, by the value of its returns in gold and silver. Much of Isabella’s legislation, it is true, is of that comprehensive character which shows that she looked to higher and far nobler objects. But with much that is good there was mingled, as in most of her institutions, one germ of evil, of little moment at the time, indeed, but which, under the vicious culture of her successors, shot up to a height that overshadowed and blighted all the rest. This was the spirit of restriction and monopoly, aggravated by the subsequent laws of Ferdinand, and carried to an extent under the Austrian dynasty that paralysed colonial trade.

Under their most ingeniously perverse system of laws, the interests of both the parent country and the colonies were sacrificed. The latter, condemned to look for supplies to an incompetent source, were miserably dwarfed in their growth; while the former contrived to convert the nutriment which she extorted from the colonies into a fatal poison. The streams of wealth which flowed in from the silver quarries of Zacatecas and Potosí were jealously locked up within the limits of the peninsula. Agriculture, commerce, manufactures, every branch of national industry and improvement, languished and fell to decay; and the nation, like the Phrygian monarch, who turned all that he touched to gold, cursed by the very consummation of its wishes, was poor in the midst of its treasures.[75]

THE GOLDEN AGE OF SPAIN

[1474-1516 A.D.]

From this sad picture let us turn to that presented by the period of our history when, the clouds and darkness having passed away, a new morn seemed to break upon the nation. Under the firm but temperate sway of Ferdinand and Isabella, the great changes we have noticed were effected without convulsion in the state. On the contrary, the elements of the social system, which before jarred so discordantly, were brought into harmonious action. The restless spirit of the nobles was turned from civil faction to the honourable career of public service, whether in arms or letters. The people at large, assured of the security of private rights, were occupied with the different branches of productive labour. Trade, as is abundantly shown by the legislation of the period, had not yet fallen into the discredit which attached to it in later times. The precious metals, instead of flowing in so abundantly as to palsy the arm of industry, served only to stimulate it.

The foreign intercourse of the country was every day more widely extended. Her agents and consuls were to be found in all the principal ports of the Mediterranean and the Baltic. The Spanish mariner, instead of creeping along the beaten track of inland navigation, now struck boldly across the great western ocean. The new discoveries had converted the land-trade with India into a sea-trade; and the nations of the peninsula, who had hitherto lain remote from the great highways of commerce, now became the factors and carriers of Europe.

The flourishing condition of the nation was seen in the wealth and population of its cities, the revenues of which, augmented in all to a surprising extent, had in some increased forty and even fifty fold beyond what they were at the commencement of the reign: the ancient and lordly Toledo; Burgos, with its bustling, industrious traders; Valladolid, sending forth its thirty thousand warriors from its gates, where the whole population now scarcely reaches two-thirds of that number; Cordova, in the south, and the magnificent Granada, naturalising in Europe the arts and luxuries of the East; Saragossa, “the abundant,” as she was called from her fruitful territory; Valencia, “the beautiful”; Barcelona, rivalling in independence and maritime enterprise the proudest of the Italian republics; Medina del Campo, whose fairs were already the great mart for the commercial exchanges of the peninsula; and Seville, the golden gate of the Indies, whose quays began to be thronged with merchants from the most distant countries of Europe.

The resources of the inhabitants were displayed in the palaces and public edifices, fountains, aqueducts, gardens, and other works of utility and ornament. This lavish expenditure was directed by an improved taste. Architecture was studied on purer principles than before, and, with the sister arts of design, showed the influence of the new connection with Italy in the first gleams of that excellence which shed such lustre over the Spanish school at the close of the century. A still more decided impulse was given to letters. Ancient seminaries were remodeled; new ones were created. Barcelona, Salamanca, and Alcalá, whose cloistered solitudes are now the grave rather than the nursery of science, then swarmed with thousands of disciples, who under the generous patronage of the government found letters the surest path to preferment. Even the lighter branches of literature felt the revolutionary spirit of the times, and, after yielding the last fruits of the ancient system, displayed new and more beautiful varieties under the influence of Italian culture.

With this moral development of the nation, the public revenues, the sure index, when unforced of public prosperity, went on augmenting with astonishing rapidity. In 1474, the year of Isabella’s accession, the ordinary rents of the Castilian crown amounted to 885,000 reals;[76] in 1477, to 2,390,078; in 1482, after the resumption of the royal grants, to 12,711,591; and finally, in 1504, when the acquisition of Granada and the domestic tranquillity of the kingdom had encouraged the free expansion of all its resources, to 26,283,334; or thirty times the amount received at her accession. All this, it will be remembered, was derived from the customary established taxes, without the imposition of a single new one. Indeed, the improvements in the mode of collection tended materially to lighten the burdens on the people.

The territorial limits of the monarchy, in the meantime, went on expanding beyond example—Castile and Leon, brought under the same sceptre with Aragon and its foreign dependencies, Sicily and Sardinia; with the kingdoms of Granada, Navarre, and Naples; with the Canaries, Oran, and the other settlements in Africa; and with the islands and vast continents of America. To these broad domains the comprehensive schemes of the sovereigns would have added Portugal; and their arrangements for this, although defeated for the present, opened the way to its eventual completion under Philip II. The names of Castilian and Aragonese were merged in the comprehensive one of Spaniard; and Spain, with an empire which stretched over three-quarters of the globe, and which almost realised the proud boast that the sun never set within her borders, now rose, not to the first class only, but to the first place, in the scale of European powers.

The extraordinary circumstances of the country tended naturally to nourish the lofty, romantic qualities and the somewhat exaggerated tone of sentiment which always pervaded the national character. The age of chivalry had not faded away in Spain, as in most other lands. It was fostered, in time of peace, by the tourneys, jousts, and other warlike pageants which graced the court of Isabella. It gleamed out, as we have seen, in the Italian campaigns under Gonsalvo de Cordova, and shone forth in all its splendours in the war of Granada.

The Spaniard was a knight-errant, in its literal sense, roving over seas on which no barque had ever ventured, among islands and continents where no civilised man had ever trodden, and which fancy peopled with all the marvels and drear enchantments of romance; courting danger in every form, combating everywhere, and everywhere victorious. The very odds presented by the defenceless natives among whom he was cast, “a thousand of whom,” to quote the words of Columbus, “were not equal to three Spaniards,” was in itself typical of his profession; and the brilliant destinies to which the meanest adventurer was often called, now carving out with his good sword some Eldorado more splendid than fancy had dreamed of, and now overturning some old barbaric dynasty, were full as extraordinary as the wildest chimeras which Ariosto ever sang or Cervantes satirised. His countrymen who remained at home, feeding greedily on the reports of his adventures, lived almost equally in an atmosphere of romance. A spirit of chivalrous enthusiasm penetrated the very depths of the nation, swelling the humblest individual with lofty aspirations and a proud consciousness of the dignity of his nature.

In noticing the circumstances that conspired to form the national character, it would be unpardonable to omit the establishment of the Inquisition, which contributed so largely to counterbalance the benefits resulting from Isabella’s government; an institution which has done more than any other to stay the proud march of human reason; which, by imposing uniformity of creed, has proved the fruitful parent of hypocrisy and superstition; which has soured the sweet charities of human life, and, settling like a foul mist on the goodly promise of the land, closed up the fair buds of science and civilisation ere they were fully opened. Alas, that such a blight should have fallen on so gallant and generous a people! That it should have been brought on it, too, by one of such unblemished patriotism and purity of motive as Isabella!

[1492-1524 A.D.]

The immediate injury inflicted on the nation by the spirit of bigotry in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, although greatly exaggerated, was doubtless serious enough. Under the otherwise beneficent operation of their government, however, the healthful and expansive energies of the state were sufficient to heal up these and deeper wounds, and still carry it onward in the career of prosperity. With this impulse, indeed, the nation continued to advance higher and higher, in spite of the system of almost unmingled evil pursued in the following reigns. The glories of this later period, of the age of Charles V, as it is called, must find their true source in the measures of his illustrious predecessors. It was in their court that Boscan, Garcilasso, Mendoza, and the other master spirits were trained, who moulded Castilian literature into the new and more classical forms of later times. It was under Gonsalvo de Cordova that Leyva, Pescara, and those great captains with their invincible legions were formed, who enabled Charles V to dictate laws to Europe for half a century. And it was Columbus who not only led the way, but animated the Spanish navigator with the spirit of discovery. Scarcely was Ferdinand’s reign brought to a close, before Magellan completed (1520), what that monarch had projected, the circumnavigation of the southern continent; the victorious banners of Cortes had already (1518) penetrated into the golden realms of Montezuma; and Pizarro, a very few years later (1524), following up the lead of Balboa, embarked on the enterprise which ended in the downfall of the splendid dynasty of the Incas.

Thus it is that the seed sown under a good system continues to yield fruit under a bad one. The season of the most brilliant results, however, is not always that of the greatest national prosperity. The splendours of foreign conquest in the boasted reign of Charles V were dearly purchased by the decline of industry at home, and the loss of liberty. The patriot will see little to cheer him in this “golden age” of the national history, whose outward show of glory will seem to his penetrating eye only the hectic brilliancy of decay. He will turn to an earlier period, when the nation, emerging from the sloth and license of a barbarous age, seemed to renew its ancient energies, and to prepare like a giant to run its course; and glancing over the long interval since elapsed, during the first half of which the nation wasted itself on schemes of mad ambition, and in the latter has sunk into a state of paralytic torpor, he will fix his eye on the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella as the most glorious epoch in the annals of his country.[b]

FOOTNOTES

[66] [Burke[k] gives Baudier[a] as authority for claiming that Ferdinand did not care to see his daughter, and says, “it must be admitted that if Ferdinand was a detestable father, Philip was a very sorry husband.”]

[67] [According to Bergenroth,[u] however, “the general opinion was that he had been poisoned,” and he insinuates that Louis Ferrer, Ferdinand’s envoy to Philip, was the person who rendered his master this service. But the suspicion is unsupported by a particle of evidence, and seems to be sufficiently refuted by a description of the symptoms and course of the disease, to be found in a letter addressed to Ferdinand by a Dr. Parra, one of the consulting physicians.]

[68] A foolish Carthusian monk, “levi sicco folio levior,” to borrow Martyr’s[l] words, though more knave than fool probably, filled Juana with absurd hopes of her husband’s returning to life, which, he assured her, had happened, as he had read, to a certain prince, after he had been dead fourteen years. As Philip was disembowelled, he was hardly in a condition for such an auspicious event. The queen, however, seems to have been caught with the idea. Martyr loses all patience at the inventions of this “blactero cucullatus,” as he calls him, in his abominable Latin, as well as at the mad pranks of the queen, and the ridiculous figure which he and the other grave personages of the court were compelled to make on the occasion. It is impossible to read his jeremiads on the subject without a smile.

[69] [Martin Hume[t] credits Ferdinand with being the founder of the school of diplomacy ordinarily called Italian. He blames him also for commencing the long wars between the Spanish and the French.]

[70] [Oviedo[s] notices a rumour of his having been poisoned by one of his secretaries but vouches for the innocence of the individual accused, whom he personally knew.]

[71] [“Neither to the buildings nor the endowment did queen or king contribute a single maravedi.”[k]]

[72] Alcalá de Henares was called Complutum by the Romans. This name has been variously derived.

[73] [The original manuscripts were, it seems, sold as waste paper to a manufacturer of skyrockets, and were destroyed wantonly though brilliantly.]

[74] [To accomplish this she and the austere Ximenes must needs defy even the pope Alexander VI. The result was as Hume[e] observes: “It is unquestionable that the worst abuses in the church of which the early reformers complained, had been purged from the Spanish church by Isabella, and that, at a time when the rest of the clergy of Europe were grossly licentious, the Spanish priests were generally virtuous and devout.”]

[75] [Martin Hume[e] says: “Spanish gold and silver coin, in a few years, was plentiful in every country but in Spain itself.”]

[76] The sums in the text express the real de vellom; to which they have been reduced by Señor Clemencin,[j] from the original amount in maravedis, which varied very materially in value in different years.