The dignified sadness of her story as Queen Katharine—insulted, divorced, and abandoned—the unwilling heroine of the great tragic drama that was played in the reign of Henry VIII. of England, is known to all men, who extend to her, with one consent, their pity and their respect. But those only who know something of the seven dreary and disgraceful years that she spent in the palace of her father-in-law, before she was permitted to know, even for a season, the happiness of a husband’s love, or to enjoy the great position of Queen of England, may alone understand the fullness of the measure of her wretchedness.
In June, 1504, Isabella, who had for some time been ailing, and who seems to have suffered from some nervous disease, was struck down suddenly by fever. She had lived a hard life. She had never spared herself, or others. The unhappy marriages of her children had cast a dark shadow over her life. But hers was not the nature to repine. Diligent, abstemious, resolute, she had borne pain and suffering, and she was not afraid to face death. Unable at length to rise from her couch, as the autumn drew to a close, she continued to transact her accustomed business, gave audience to embassadors, chatted with privileged visitors, and, in the words of an astonished stranger, governed the world from her bed.
At last, on the 26th of November, 1504, as the church bells of Medina del Campo were ringing out the hour of noon, the spirit of Isabella of Castile flitted away from this world; and her mortal remains were conducted by a mournful company to their last resting place under the shadow of the red towers of Alhambra. Through storm and tempest, amid earthquake and inundation, across mountain and river, the affrighted travelers wended their way. For the sun was not seen by day nor the stars by night, during three long and weary weeks, as if the very forces of nature were disturbed at the death of a giant among the princes of the earth.
The character of Isabella has suffered to an uncommon extent from an ignorant glorification of virtues that she was far from possessing, and the concealment of those transcendent powers that made her not only one of the greatest rulers of Spain, but one of the greatest women in the history of the world. Until the opening of the treasure-house at Simancas displayed her correspondence to the world, she was only known from the extravagant but somewhat colorless panegyrics of contemporary chroniclers, who recognized at least that she was a royal lady, compelling their gallant admiration, and that she was immensely superior to her husband, whom it was necessary also to glorify, as the last Spanish sovereign of Spain.
Isabella was one of the most remarkable characters in history. Not only was she the most masterful, and, from her own point of view, by far the most successful ruler that ever sat upon the throne of Spain, or of any of the kingdoms of the Peninsula; she stands in the front rank of the great sovereigns of Europe, and challenges comparison with the greatest women who have ever held sway in the world. A reformer and a zealot, an autocrat and a leader of men, with a handsome face and a gracious manner, scarce concealing the iron will that lay beneath, Isabella was patient in adversity, dignified in prosperity, at all times quiet, determined, thorough.
In one particular she stands alone among the great ruling women, the conquerors and empresses of history. She is the only royal lady, save, perhaps, Maria Theresa of Hungary, who maintained through life the incongruous relations of a masterful sovereign and a devoted wife, and shared not only her bed but her throne with a husband whom she respected—a fellow-sovereign whom she neither feared nor disregarded. To command the obedience of a proud and warlike people is given to few of the great men of history. To do the bidding of another with vigor and with discretion is a task that has been but rarely accomplished by a heaven-born minister. But to conceive and carry out great designs, with one hand in the grasp of even the most loyal of companions, is a triumphant combination of energy with discretion, of the finest tact with the most indomitable resolution, that stamps Isabella of Spain as a being more vigorous than the greatest men, more discreet than the greatest women of history. Semiramis, Zenobia, Boadicea, Elizabeth of England, Catherine of Russia, not one of them was embarrassed by a partner on the throne. The partner of Isabella was not only a husband but a king, jealous, restless, and untrustworthy. It is in this respect, and in the immense scope of her political action, that the great Queen of Castile is comparable with the bold Empress-King of Hungary rather than with any other of the great queens and royal ladies of history.
The husband of Zenobia indeed enjoyed the title of Augustus; but it was only after his assassination that the lady earned her fame as a ruler. Catherine caused her imperial consort to be executed as a preliminary to her vigorous reign in Russia; Boadicea was the successor and not the colleague of Prasutagus; and Semiramis, though herself somewhat a mythical personage, is said to have slain both her husband and his rival, in her assertion of her absolute power. Yet Isabella revolutionized the institutions of her country, religious, political, military, financial, she consolidated her dominions, humiliated her nobles, cajoled her Commons, defied the Pope, reformed the clergy; she burned some ten thousand of her subjects; she deported a million more; and of the remnant she made a great nation; she brooked no man’s opposition, in a reign of thirty years, and she died in the arms of the king, her husband!
Ferdinand of Aragon was no hero. But he was a strong man; a capable ruler; a clever if a treacherous diplomatist. And to this husband and consort was Isabella faithful through life, not merely in the grosser sense of the word, to which Ferdinand for himself paid so little heed; but in every way and walk of life. She supported him in his policy; she assisted him in his intrigues; she encouraged him in his ambitious designs; she lied for him, whenever prudence required it; she worked for him at all times, as she worked for Spain. For his policy, his intrigues, his designs were all her own. Whenever the views of the king and queen were for a moment discordant, Isabella prevailed, without apparent conflict of authority. In her assumption of supremacy in the marriage contract; in her nomination of Gonsalvo de Cordova to the command of the army; in her choice of Ximenez as the Primate of Spain, she carried her point, not by petulance or even by argument, but by sheer force of character; nor did she strain for one moment, even in these manifestations of her royal supremacy, the friendly and even affectionate relations that ever subsisted between herself and her husband.
The love and devotion of Isabella was a thing of which the greatest of men might have well been proud. And though Ferdinand the Catholic may not fairly be counted among the greatest, he was a man wise enough to appreciate the merits of his queen, and to accept and maintain the anomalous position in which he found himself as her consort.
In war at least it might have been supposed that the queen would occupy a subordinate position. Yet in no department of State did Isabella show to greater advantage than as the organizer of victorious armies; not as a batallador after the fashion of her distinguished ancestors in Castile and in Aragon; but as the originator of an entirely new system of military administration.