The expulsion of the French from Naples put an end, as might have been supposed, to The Most Holy League. For the high contracting parties, finding themselves secure from immediate danger, conceived themselves no longer bound by its provisions. Maximilian, ever penniless and generally faithless, had made no attempt to engage in any operations on the French frontier, nor had any one of the allies contributed to defray the heavy charges incurred by the Spanish sovereigns in fulfilling their part of the agreement. The Venetians were rather occupied in securing for themselves as much of the Neapolitan territory as they could acquire, by way of indemnification for their own expenses. The Duke of Milan had already made a separate treaty with Charles VIII. Each member of the league, in fact, after the first alarm had subsided, had shown himself ready to sacrifice the common cause to his own private advantage; and Ferdinand of Aragon, who had already suspended his operations on the frontiers of Spain in October, 1496, had no difficulty in agreeing to a further truce as regarded Naples and Italy, which was signed on the 5th of March, 1497.
The Spaniards had borne the entire burden of the late war. They had been virtually abandoned by their allies, and their unassisted operations had led to the deliverance of Naples, to the safety of the Italian States, and the humiliation and the defeat of the French. Their immediate objects having been thus happily accomplished, Ferdinand and Isabella proposed to Charles VIII., without shame or hesitation, that the French and Spaniards should enter into an immediate treaty of alliance, with a view to drive out the reigning sovereign of Naples, and divide his kingdom between themselves! Meanwhile the Castilian envoy to the Holy See endeavored to induce Alexander VI. to withhold the investiture of his kingdom from Frederic, the new sovereign of Naples, on the ground that he was friendly to the Angevin party in Italy, the hereditary enemies of Spain. But Alexander paid no heed to Garcilaso de la Vega. Charles showed himself not only willing but eager to treat with Fernando de Estrada; but unwilling at once to abandon all his claims to Italian sovereignty, he offered to cede Navarre to Ferdinand, and keep all Naples to himself. Proposals and counter proposals thus passed between France and Spain; but before any definite programme had been agreed to, the negotiations were cut short by the sudden death of the French monarch, in the tennis court at Amboise, on the eve of Easter, 1498.
The success of the Spanish arms under Gonsalvo de Cordova in Italy was but the beginning of a long career of triumph. From the great victory at Seminara, in 1503, to the great defeat of Rocroy, in 1643, the Spanish infantry remained unconquered in Europe. The armies of Castile had been, indeed, as Prescott has it, “cooped up within the narrow limits of the Peninsula, uninstructed and taking little interest in the concerns of the rest of Europe.” But the soldiers and sailors of Aragon and Catalonia had fought with distinction, not only in Italy and in Sicily, but in the furthest east of Europe, for two hundred years before the Great Captain of the United Kingdom set foot on the shores of Calabria. Yet the victories of Gonsalvo were the beginning of a new era, and his life is interesting, not only as that of a brave soldier and an accomplished general, who flourished at a very important period of the history of Europe; but it is further and much more interesting as being the history of a man who united in himself many of the characteristics of ancient and modern civilization, and who himself appears as a sort of middle term between medieval and modern times.
In personal valor, in knightly courtesy, in gaudy display, he was of his own time. In astute generalship, and in still more astute diplomacy, an envoy not an adventurer, the servant and not the rival of kings, he belongs to a succeeding age, when the leader of a victorious army is prouder to be a loyal subject than a rash rebel. The Castilian lords of earlier days had ever been brave knights; their followers had ever been hardy and untiring combatants. But Gonsalvo was not only a tactician, but a strategist. The men whom he commanded were soldiers. Newly armed and admirably disciplined, the regiments were no longer the followers of some powerful nobleman; they formed a part of the national army of Spain. The short sword of their Celtiberian ancestors was once more found in their hands. The long lances of the Swiss mercenaries were adopted with conspicuous success. The drill-sergeant took the place of the minstrel in the camp.
Nor was this revolution in the art of war confined to the conduct of the Spanish troops in the field. Before the close of the campaign a national militia, or rather a standing army, had taken the place of the brave but irregular levies of medieval Spain. A royal ordinance regulated the equipment of every individual, according to his property. A man’s arms were declared free from seizure for debt, even by the Crown, and smiths and other artificers were restricted, under severe penalties, from working up weapons of war into articles of more pacific use. In 1426 a census was taken of all persons capable of bearing arms; and by an ordinance issued at Valladolid, on February 22d of the same year, it was provided that one out of every twelve inhabitants, between twenty and forty-five years of age, should be enlisted for the service of the State, whether in the conduct of a foreign war or the suppression of domestic disorder.
CHAPTER VII
UNITED SPAIN
THE DISCOVERY OF THE NEW WORLD—VASCO DA GAMA—THE ROYAL MARRIAGES—DREAMS OF EMPIRE—THE DEATH OF ISABELLA—FERDINAND’S END
The reign of Ferdinand and Isabella was made immemorial through Columbus and his discovery. The man and the event will, in subsequent chapters, be considered at length. For the present it will suffice to note that on his return from the New World, after being loaded with honors, a question arose as to Isabella’s right to confer the dignities thus bestowed—Portugal claiming the territory by reason of an anterior grant from the Pope, who, in common with all other parties, believed it to be part of India.
The question was referred to a Junta of learned men of both nations, at the same time that application was made to the reigning Pope, Alexander VI., concerning it. The junta decided that the discoveries of Columbus were not included in the Portuguese grant; and his Holiness finally, as he conceived, terminated the dispute by drawing a line across the Atlantic, from pole to pole, and adjudging all lands discovered on the east of that line to Portugal, all on the west to Castile.
In connection with this it should be noted that, in 1497, Manuel of Portugal sent Vasco da Gama with three ships to double the Cape of Good Hope, with a view to tapping India. In the month of November, Gama successfully doubled the formidable Cape, and sailed up the eastern coast of Africa, as far as Mozambique. Here he found a Moor from Fez, who, acting as interpreter between him and the natives, facilitated the conclusion of a treaty, in virtue of which the King of Mozambique was to furnish the adventurous navigators with pilots well acquainted with the course to India. But, while they were taking in wood and water, a quarrel arose with the natives, to whom the fault is of course imputed. The pilots made their escape, and hostilities ensued. They did not last long; the terrors of the Portuguese firearms soon compelling the Africans to submit. Another, and, as the king assured Gama, a better pilot was supplied, and on the 1st of April, 1498, he sailed from Mozambique.