Both kingdoms, but more especially Castile, were to remain victims of civil wars and of frequent periods of anarchy for another half-century. John II, deprived of his uncle’s wise guidance, devoted his time to composing love-songs and surrendered his weak will to a royal favourite, Alvaro de Luna, without whose consent, tradition says, he dared not even go to bed. The result was incessant turbulence, for the nobles hated the arrogant and all-powerful upstart, who managed the court as he pleased, and steadily added to his own estates and revenues. Yet, having brought about his downfall and death, they had no better government with which to replace his tyranny.
Henry IV of Castile
Under John’s son and successor Castile fared even worse; for Henry IV was not merely weak but vicious, so that he rolled the crown in the mire of scandal and degradation. Government of any sort was now at an end. ‘Our swords’, wrote a contemporary Castilian, recalling this time of nightmare, ‘were employed, not to defend the boundaries of Christendom, but to rip up the entrails of our country.... He was most esteemed among us who was strongest in violence: justice and peace were far removed.’
In their efforts to save something of their lives and fortunes from this wreck, towns and villages formed Hermandades or ‘brotherhoods’—that is, troops of armed men who pursued and punished criminals; but these leagues without support from the crown were not strong enough to deal with the worst offenders, the wealthy nobles, who could cover their misdeeds with lavish bribery or threats.
Ferdinand and Isabel
At this moment in Castile’s history, when she had sunk to a depth from which she could not save herself, Henry IV died, and was succeeded on the throne by his sister, Isabel, a girl in years but already a statesman in outlook and discretion. Henry IV had attempted to secure personal advantages in his lifetime by arranging various marriages for Isabel, first with a French prince, then with the King of Portugal, and finally with one of his own worthless favourites, and his sister had won his dislike by her steady refusal to agree to any of these alliances. Secretly, indeed, she had married her cousin Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Aragon, a youth already distinguished for his military abilities and shrewd common sense.
As joint rulers of Castile and Aragon Isabel and Ferdinand dominated Spain, and were able to impose their will even on the most powerful of their rebellious subjects, taking back the crown lands that had been recklessly given away, organizing a Santa Hermandad, or ‘Holy Brotherhood’, on the model of previous local efforts to ensure order, and themselves holding supreme tribunals to judge important cases of robbery and murder. In this display of authority the land not merely acquiesced but rejoiced, utterly weary of an independence the misuse of which had produced licence instead of freedom.
Thus it was that a strong monarchy, such as Louis XI was able to establish in France at the end of the Hundred Years’ War, and the Tudors in England after the Wars of the Roses, was also organized and maintained in Spain. Under its despotic sway many popular liberties were lost, but peace was gained at home, and glory and honour abroad above all expectations. The perpetual crusade against the Moors had always touched the imagination of Europe—now its crowning achievement, the Conquest of Granada, dazzled their eyes with all the pageantry and pomp of victory so dear to mediaeval minds.
Hardly was this wonder told when news came that a Genoese adventurer had discovered, in the name of Isabel and Ferdinand, a Spanish empire of almost fabulous wealth beyond the Atlantic.[37] To these triumphs were added conquests in Italy, fruits of Ferdinand’s Aragonese ambitions.
The glory of Spain belongs to modern not to mediaeval history; but just as a man or woman is a development of the child, so this, the first nation in Europe as she became in the sixteenth century, proved the outcome of the qualities and vices of an earlier age. Above all things she became, as we should expect, a nation of warriors, inspired with ardour for the Catholic Faith, arrogant and ambitious. To her strength was added a fatal weakness bred of conceit and a narrow outlook, that is the intolerance that admired Ferdinand and Isabel’s ruthless Inquisition and rejoiced in the expulsion of thousands of thrifty Jews and Moors.