Ferdinand, after taking an important part in the Italian wars, where his general, Gonsalvo de Cordova, the Great Captain, signalized his military skill against the French, died in 1516, and an Austrian prince ascended the Spanish throne.
Mary of Burgundy, daughter and heiress of that fiery Duke who fell fighting against the Swiss, became wife of Maximilian, afterward Emperor of Germany. In the month of February, 1482, that noble lady was holding her court in the city of Bruges, in Flanders, then a great commercial emporium of Europe; and, mounting her palfrey one day, she rode forth, with a small retinue, to fly her hawks at the herons, which abounded in the vicinity. While pursuing the sport and leaping a fence, the girths of her saddle burst, and she was thrown violently against a tree. Dying from the effects of the accident, Mary left a son, named Philip, who espoused Ferdinand’s daughter, Jane the Foolish, and had a son Charles, born at Ghent in 1500. On the demise of Isabella, Jane, as her daughter, became Queen of Castile; but immediately after, the sudden death of Philip bereft his young widow of her reason. Her case was hopeless; and on Ferdinand’s death, young Charles of Austria was associated with his insane mother on the Spanish throne, while the aged Cardinal Ximenes, a consummate statesman, grasped the reins of government with vigor and dexterity. Three years later, on the death of his grandfather Maximilian, the ambitious King of Spain was elected Emperor of Germany; and thus becoming the most powerful monarch in Europe, he commenced that long and arduous struggle with Francis I of France, which has been previously sketched.
At the time when Charles received the imperial crown there was residing on the island of Cuba a Spaniard, named Hernando Cortez, the scion of an ancient and honorable family. He had left the mother country at nineteen, became proprietor of a flourishing plantation, married a young woman of beauty and excellence, and acquired high favor with Velasquez, governor of the colony. Yet, though apparently destined to a prosperous and peaceful career, so adventurous was the spirit of Cortez, that he sought and obtained the command of a squadron which the governor was fitting out for a voyage of discovery to the American continent. Dreading the bold and ambitious nature of Cortez, the governor recalled this promise, and appointed another as captain; but Cortez got under way in the night, with the ships half-stored and equipped, and sailed from Cuba, never more to return. Arriving in the river Tabasco, he landed in spite of a desperate resistance, made the natives swear allegiance to the King of Spain, caused mass to be celebrated in the principal temples, formed an alliance with the Tlascalans, a warlike Indian tribe, and rolled the tide of conquest toward the capital of Mexico.
Montezuma, the Mexican Emperor, received the strangers with veneration, swore fealty to Spain, placed himself in the custody of Cortez, and assigned a temple as a Christian place of worship. This last concession was too much for his heathen subjects, who, instigated by their priests, declared that the Spaniards must perish on the altars they had violated. Cortez was preparing for a fierce struggle, when informed that a fleet had anchored off the coast, commanded by Narvaez, commissioned by the Governor of Cuba to supersede him. Aware that his only chance lay in a sudden stroke, Cortez, with seventy picked men, set out for the camp of Narvaez, and after arresting his rival in a dark night, allured the soldiers to his standard, and returned to the capital. There the fury of the Mexicans had become so great, that Montezuma in vain attempted to allay the storm; and mortified at his loss of authority, the Emperor expired, while the streets were thronged with countless multitudes, who for successive days besieged the palace where the Spaniards were lodged.
In this terrible situation, Cortez resolved to cut his way to the territory of his Tlascalan allies; and on a July night, after hearing mass, he led his followers from their quarters in the centre of the city. After a bloody fight on the causeway he effected an escape, and reached the open country; but there his little army was suddenly attacked by an overwhelming force. The position of the Spaniards seemed desperate, when Cortez, ever cool and courageous, suddenly penetrated to where the enemy’s banner was displayed, killed with his own hand the Mexican general, and instantly changed the fortune of the day. Resting from his fatigues till the autumn, he returned to the capital, where Gautemozin now reigned as Emperor, and commenced warlike operations. But in May, 1521, Cortez, hopeless of otherwise accomplishing his object, took the terrible resolution of destroying every house as he advanced. Burning palaces and temples, he gradually made his way into the market-place, and then reluctantly gave orders for a general assault. The battle, which lasted for two days, was decisive: the youthful Emperor, being taken in a canoe, was executed: and the independence of Mexico was extinguished.
Soon after the conquest of Mexico, Francis Pizarro, landing in Peru with a formidable force, subdued that large, powerful, and flourishing empire, compelled the Peruvians to work the mines for their advantage, and added the conquered territory to the possessions of the Spanish crown.
While his gallant subjects, stimulated by the desire of wealth, were winning for Charles an empire on which the sun never set, war was carried on in Europe; and his great rival, Francis, taken at Pavia, was lying at his mercy in Madrid. But though the might of the Emperor overshadowed the princes of Europe, the Spaniards, regarding him as a stranger and foreigner, revolted in defense of their political rights; the civil wars of the Communeros were the consequence; and Charles, having excluded the grandees from the representation, succeeded in withering by his despotism the free spirit that had long animated the ancient institutions of Castile and Arragon.
While the religious reformation was agitating the other states of Europe, the Spanish nation remained unmoved by the shock, and out of it came Ignatius Loyola, destined not only to rescue the imperiled Papacy, but to breathe new life into the expiring system by which Rome had for centuries held the human intellect in sacerdotal bondage.
Eight years after his rival Francis had gone to the grave, Charles, in 1556, abdicated the Spanish throne in favor of his son Philip, and a few months later, weary of war and disgusted with grandeur, he resigned the imperial crown to his brother Ferdinand, and retired to indulge his melancholy mood in the monastery of St. Just, on the frontiers of Castile. While there he is reported to have enacted no less extraordinary a scene than the celebration of his own funeral obsequies. After causing a tomb to be erected in the chapel, and making his attendants walk thither in procession, the ex-Emperor followed in his shroud, and was laid in his coffin. The monks then chanted the service for the dead, prayed for the repose of his soul, and shed tears for his departure. This singular ceremony is said to have thrown Charles into a fever, of which he expired in his fifty-ninth year.
Philip II, inherited one of the wealthiest and most magnificent empires on which the sun ever shone, and he sought to increase his hereditary influence by espousing Mary, queen of England, who loved him with the utmost tenderness. But, notwithstanding her displays of affection, Philip, tiring of the society of a spouse so destitute of attractions, and indignant that her subjects would not allow England to be made a fief of Spain, escaped to his Continental dominions. However, when the Pope, jealous of the King’s enormous power, formed an alliance with Henry II of France, to detach Milan and the Sicilies from the crown of Spain, Philip considered it expedient to feign some esteem for his Queen, and paying her a visit at Greenwich, obtained the aid of England in his struggle. His army was victorious over the French, led by the Constable Montmorency, at St Quentin; and at Gravelines the Count Egmont vanquished the old Marshal Thermes; after which the King of France, by the Treaty of Cambresis, surrendered to Spain eighty-nine fortified towns in Italy and the Low Countries.