This brief outline of family life, with its joys, disappointments, and heart-breaking sorrows, brings into clearer relief the mental strength and moral courage of Isabella, who, while carrying this burden on her heart never relaxed for a moment her vigilant, vigorous rule over a mighty empire; and this brings us at last to the
GREAT HISTORIC QUEEN.
From the very beginning of the reconquest of Spain from the Arab-Moors in 718, when the brave band of refugees who had not bowed to the Saracen yoke issued from the mountains of Asturias in the extreme northwest corner of Spain, under Pelayo, with vows resting upon them "to rid the land of its infidel invaders and to advance the standard of the cross until it was everywhere victorious over the crescent," the "Expulsion of the Moors" had been the hereditary appanage of the crown of Castile and Leon, the first fruits of the reconquest.
The crown was heavy and the burden was great that descended to Isabella in 1474, for although she came to the throne through Gothic ancestry and in conformity with Gothic law, her father's heir and the chosen of the people, yet the nation had already poured out its blood in defence of her "succession" and the war of her "accession" was pending. No wonder that Isabella never forgot that it was through the people and for the people, and in defence of the cross, that she wore the crown and sat upon the throne of Leon and Castile.
During the preceding reigns the laws of the country had been so constantly defied that they had become of no effect. The one law of barbarism seemed the only law that governed,
"He can take who has the power,
And he may keep who can."
The country was infested with lawless banditti, and even the cities were powerless to protect individuals or property. The prisons were overcrowded with suspected criminals who had never been brought to trial; the immorality of the court had spread like a deadly poison through the lower grades of social life; even the priests had become tainted with the general demoralization. The coin of Castile had been debased until the most necessary articles of life were enhanced from three to six times their value; the late civil wars had exhausted the treasury, and the country seemed on the verge of bankruptcy. The Moors had even ceased to pay tribute and were making frequent forays into the surrounding country, taking men, women, and children into Mussulman captivity with the hope of exacting a ransom. Public confidence was dead. No wonder that Isabella felt her crown heavy and the burden of her kingdom great.
But the brave, resolute woman, making choice of wise and able counsellors, entered at once upon a vigorous crusade of reform. The first measure proposed to the cortes, in 1476, was the re-establishment of the celebrated Hermandad, or Holy Brotherhood, which was carried into effect the same year. The new institution differed from the ancient, inasmuch as its power proceeded from the crown and was disbanded by it in 1498. The Hermandad in our day would be called a mounted police, but in the days of Isabella every organization came under the sanction of the Church. The duties of the Holy Brotherhood were to arrest offenders throughout the kingdom and to enforce the law. Every one hundred householders throughout the kingdom maintained one Hermandad. Upon the flight of a criminal tocsins were sounded, and the officers of the Brotherhood stationed within hearing took up a pursuit that left little hope for escape. Thus a body of cavalry, two thousand in number, fully equipped and supported, was at the disposal of the crown to enforce the law and to suppress insurrections. In a few years the country was cleared of banditti and the blessing of personal security under the government was restored.
Isabella revived also another ancient custom of her forefathers, that of presiding in person over courts of justice. From city to city she travelled on horseback, making the circuit of her kingdom, regardless of personal fatigue. Side by side with Ferdinand, when he had leisure from foreign complications to accompany her, she sat (not unmindful of the dignity belonging to the crown) with her courtiers around her, to listen with interest, that she might redress wrongs, punish the wrongdoers, and administer justice even to the lowliest of her subjects. Her personal address, and the unbounded respect which her integrity inspired; her proclamation throughout the kingdom that the interests of her people were her interests, re-established such public confidence that, says a writer of that age, "Those who had long despaired of public justice blessed God for their deliverance, as it were, from deplorable captivity." Nor did the sovereigns relax their personal efforts for the restoration of law and order until the cortes had passed measures for the permanent administration of justice. Thus in a few years, from a state of anarchy and misrule, Castile entered upon her "Golden Age of Justice."
The golden age of literature, developed in the next century, has been justly ascribed to the impetus given by Isabella to liberal education, classical and scientific. Under her patronage schools were established in every city, presided over by learned men. The printing press, lately invented, was introduced; foreign books were imported free of duty, while such precedence was given to native literature as led on to the brilliant achievements of the sixteenth century. In social reform precept was enforced by example. In all that was pure, in all that was true, in all that was noble and magnanimous, Isabella, in private life, was a witness unto her people. No calumny of any kind, even in a depraved age, was ever cast upon Isabella of Castile or upon any one of her royal children. But the strongest characteristic of Isabella, that which colored her whole life and gave force to every public action, was her fervent piety and her unfaltering [perhaps blind] faith in the divine authority of the Roman Catholic Church. For all the evils that grew out of the latter she is still branded, even among the liberal-minded of to-day, regardless of her illiberal age, with that worst of all brands, "a religious bigot." This side of her character we will not discuss, but refer our readers to the history of Christianity during the fifteenth century, when the great flood-tide of religious intolerance reached its height.