Columbus and Ferdinand.
In May, 1505, Columbus, with the friendly care of his brother Bartholomew, set out on his journey to Segovia, where the Court then was. This is the statement of Las Casas, but Harrisse can find no evidence of his being near the Court till August, when, on the 25th, he attested, as will appear, his will before a notary. The change bringing him into the presence of his royal master only made his mortification more poignant. His personal suit to the King was quite as ineffective as his letters had been. The sovereign was outwardly beneficent, and inwardly uncompliant. The Admiral's recitals respecting his last voyage, both of promised wealth and of saddened toil, made little impression. Las Casas suspects that the insinuations of Porras had preoccupied the royal mind. To rid himself of the importunities of Columbus, the King proposed an arbiter, and readily consented to the choice which Columbus made of his old friend Deza, now Archbishop of Seville; but Columbus was too immovably fixed upon his own rights to consent that more than the question of revenue should be considered by such an arbiter. His recorded privileges and the pledged word of the sovereign were not matters to be reconsidered. Such was not, however, the opinion of the King. He evaded the point in his talk with bland countenance, and did nothing in his acts beyond referring the question anew to a body of counselors convened to determine the fulfillment of the Queen's will. They did nothing quite as easily as the King. Las Casas tells us that the King was only restrained by motives of outward decency from a public rejection of all the binding obligations towards the Admiral into which he had entered jointly with the Queen.
1505. August 25. His will.
Columbus pleads for his son.
Rejects offers of estates.
Columbus found in all this nothing to comfort a sick and desponding man, and sank in despair upon his couch. He roused enough to have a will drafted August 25, which confirmed a testament made in 1502, before starting on his last voyage. His disease renewed its attacks. An old wound had reopened. From a bed of pain he began again his written appeals. He now gave up all hopes for himself, but he pleaded for his son, that upon him the honors which he himself had so laboriously won should be bestowed. Diego at the same time, in seconding the petition, promised, if the reinstatement took place, that he would count those among his counselors whom the royal will should designate. Nothing of protest or appeal came opportunely to the determined King. "The more he was petitioned," says Las Casas, "the more bland he was in avoiding any conclusion." He hoped by exhausting the patience of the Admiral to induce him to accept some estates in Castile in lieu of such powers in the Indies. Columbus rejected all such intimations with indignation. He would have nothing but his bonded rights. "I have done all that I can do," he said in a pitiful, despairing letter to Deza. "I must leave the issue to God. He has always sustained me in extremities."
"It argued," says Prescott, in commenting on this, "less knowledge of character than the King usually showed, that he should have thought the man who had broken off all negotiations on the threshold of a dubious enterprise, rather than abate one tittle of his demands, would consent to such abatement, when the success of that enterprise was so gloriously established."
Columbus at Salamanca.
Mendez and Columbus.
The Admiral was, during this part of his suit, apparently at Salamanca, for Mendez speaks of him as being there confined to his bed with the gout, while he himself was doing all he could to press his master's claims to have Diego recognized in his rights. In return for this service, Mendez asked to be appointed principal Alguazil of Española for life, and he says the Admiral acknowledged that such an appointment was but a trifling remuneration for his great services, but the requital never came.