The campaign closed with the surrender on December 22 of the fortress of Baza, when Spain received from Muley Boabdil, the elder of the rival Moorish kings, all the territory which he claimed to have in his power. In February, 1490, Ferdinand and Isabella entered Seville in triumph, and a season of hilarity and splendor followed, signalized in the spring by the celebration with great jubilation of the marriage of the Princess Isabella with Don Alonzo, the heir to the crown of Portugal. These engrossing scenes were little suited to give Columbus a chance to press his projects on the Court. He soon found nothing could be done to get the farther attention of the monarchs till some respites occurred in the preparations for their final campaign against the younger Moorish king. It was at this time, as Irving and others have conjectured, that the consideration of the project of a western passage, which had been dropped when events moved the Court from Salamanca, was again taken up by such investigators as Talavera had summoned, and again the result was an adverse decision. This determination was communicated by Talavera himself to the sovereign, and it was accompanied by the opinion that it did not become great princes to engage in such chimerical undertakings.
Deza impressed.
Delays.
It is supposed, however, that the decision was not reached without some reservation in the minds of certain of the reviewers, and that especially this was the case with Diego de Deza, who showed that the stress of the arguments advanced by Columbus had not been without result. This friar was tutor to Prince Juan, and it was not difficult for him to modify the emphatic denial of the judges. It was the pride of those who later erected the tombstone of Deza, in the cathedral at Seville, to inscribe upon it that he was the generous and faithful patron of Columbus. A temporizing policy was, therefore, adopted by the monarchs, and Columbus was informed that for the present the perils and expenses of the war called for an undivided attention, and that further consideration of his project must be deferred till the war was over. It was at Cordoba that this decision reached Columbus.
Columbus goes to Seville; but is repelled.
In his eagerness of hope he suspected that the judgment had received some adverse color in passing through Talavera's mind, and so he hastened to Seville, but only to meet the same chilling repulse from the monarchs themselves. With dashed expectations he left the city, feeling that the instrumentality of Talavera, as Peter Martyr tells us, had turned the sovereigns against him.
CATHEDRAL OF SEVILLE.
[From Parcerisa and Quadrado's España.]
