{426} [Sidenote: Ferdinand, 1479-1516 and Isabella, 1474-1504]
The foundation of her national greatness, like that of the greatness of so many other powers, was laid in the union of the various states into which she was at one time divided. The marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile was followed by a series of measures that put Spain into the leading position in Europe, expelled the alien racial and religious elements of her population, and secured to her a vast colonial empire. The conquest of Granada from the Moors, the acquisition of Cerdagne and Roussillon from the French, and the annexation of Naples, doubled the dominions of the Lions and Castles, and started the proud land on the road to empire. It is true that eventually Spain exhausted herself by trying to do more than even her young powers could accomplish, but for a while she retained the hegemony of Christendom. The same year that saw the discovery of America [Sidenote: 1492] and the occupation of the Alhambra, was also marked by the expulsion or forced conversion of the Jews, of whom 165,000 left the kingdom, 50,000 were baptized, and 20,000 perished in race riots. The statesmanship of Ferdinand showed itself in a more favorable light in the measures taken to reduce the nobles, feudal anarchs as they were, to fear of the law. To take their place in the government of the country he developed a new bureaucracy, which also, to some extent, usurped the powers of the Cortes of Aragon and of the Cortes of Castile. [Sidenote: Francis Ximénez de Cisneros, 1436-1517] In the meantime a notable reform of the church, in morals and in learning if not in doctrine, was carried through by the great Cardinal Ximénez.
[Sidenote: Charles V, 1516-1556]
When Charles, the grandson of the Catholic Kings, succeeded Ferdinand he was already, through his father, the Archduke Philip, the lord of Burgundy and of the Netherlands, and the heir of Austria. His election as emperor made him, at the age of nineteen, the {427} greatest prince of Christendom. To his gigantic task he brought all the redeeming qualities of dullness, for his mediocrity and moderation served his peoples and his dynasty better than brilliant gifts and boundless ambition would have done. "Never," he is reported to have said in 1556, "did I aspire to universal monarchy, although it seemed well within my power to attain it." Though the long war with France turned ever, until the very last, in his favor, he never pressed his advantage to the point of crushing his enemy to earth. But in Germany and Italy, no less than in Spain and the Netherlands, he finally attained something more than hegemony and something less than absolute power.
[Sidenote: Revolt of the Communes]
Though Spain benefited by his world power and became the capital state of his far flung empire, "Charles of Ghent," as he was called, did not at first find Spaniards docile subjects. Within a very few years of his accession a great revolt, or rather two great synchronous revolts, one in Castile and one in Aragon, flared up. The grievances in Castile were partly economic, the servicio (a tax) and the removal of money from the realm, and partly national as against a strange king and his foreign officers. Not only the regent, Adrian of Utrecht, but many important officials were northerners, and when Charles left Spain to be crowned emperor, [Sidenote: 1520] the national pride could no longer bear the humiliation of playing a subordinate part. The revolt of the Castilian Communes began with the gentry and spread from them to the lower classes. Even the grandees joined forces with the rebels, though more from fear than from sympathy. The various revolting communes formed a central council, the Santa Junta, and put forth a program re-asserting the rights of the Cortes to redress grievances. Meeting for a time with no resistance, the rebellion disintegrated {428} through the operation of its own centrifugal forces, disunion and lack of leadership. So at length when the government, supplied with a small force of German mercenaries, struck on the field of Villalar, the rebels suffered a severe defeat. [Sidenote: April, 1521] A few cities held out longer, Toledo last of all; but one by one they yielded, partly to force, partly to the wise policy of concession and redress followed by the government.
In our own time Barcelona and the east coast of Spain has been the hotbed of revolutionary democracy and radical socialism. Even so, the rising in Aragon known as the Hermandad (Brotherhood) [Sidenote: The Hermandad] contemporary with that in Castile, not only began earlier and lasted longer, but was of a far more radical stamp. Here were no nobles airing their slights at the hands of a foreign king, but here the trade-gilds rose in the name of equality against monarch and nobles alike. Two special causes fanned the fury of the populace to a white heat. The first was the decline of the Mediterranean trade due to the rise of the Atlantic commerce; the other was the racial element. Valencia was largely inhabited by Moors, the most industrious, sober and thrifty, and consequently the most profitable of Spanish laborers. The race hatred so deeply rooted in human nature added to the ferocity of the class conflict. Both sides were ruined by the war which, beginning in 1519, dragged along for several years until the proletariat was completely crushed.
[The Cortes]
The armed triumph of the government hardly damaged popular liberties as embodied in the constitution of the Cortes of Castile. When Charles became king this body was not, like other parliaments, ordinarily a representative assembly of the three estates, but consisted merely of deputies of eighteen Castilian cities. Only on special occasions, such as a coronation, were nobles and clergy summoned to participate. Its great {429} power was that of granting taxes, though somehow it never succeeded, as did the English House of Commons, in making the redress of grievances conditional upon a subsidy. But yet the power amounted to something and it was one that neither Charles nor Philip commonly ventured to violate. Under both of them meetings of the Cortes were frequent.
Though never directly attacked, the powers of the Cortes declined through the growth of vast interests outside their competence. The direction of foreign policy, so absorbing under Charles, and the charge of the enormous and growing commercial interests, was confided not to the representatives of the people, but to the Royal Council of Castile, an appointative body of nine lawyers, three nobles, and one bishop. Though not absolutely, yet relatively, the functions of the Cortes diminished until they amounted to no more than those of a provincial council.