[1501-1510 A.D.]
While the French troops on one side, and the great captain on the other, were seizing his provinces, it was impossible for Frederick, with a people so disaffected as the Neapolitans, to make head against them. As Louis promised to allow him a pension suitable to his rank, he sought an asylum in France. Scarcely were the armies in possession of the country, when their leaders began to quarrel about the precise extent of their respective territories. A bloody war followed, the details of which may be found in the Italian history of the period. It exhibits little beyond a continued succession of victories for the great captain, who triumphed over the veteran general and armies of France; it ended, in 1504, in the entire subjugation of the kingdom by the Spaniards.
The brilliant success of the Spanish general now roused the envy of a few brother officers, who represented him to the sovereign as meditating designs inconsistent with the preservation of the new conquest to the Castilian crown. In the frequent orders he received, he but too plainly saw the distrust of Ferdinand, whom, however, he continued to serve with the same ability and with unshaken fidelity.[59] In 1506, Ferdinand arrived at Naples, and his distrust was greatly diminished by his frequent intercourse with the general. But, as his own heart taught him that human virtue is often weak, he brought Gonsalvo with him to Spain, leaving the viceregal authority in the hands of Don Raymond de Cardona.
Into the interminable affairs of Italy, from this time to the death of Ferdinand, the ever varying alliances between the pope, the emperor, the Venetians, and the kings of France and Spain, and their results, as they had not any influence over Spain—scarcely, indeed, any connection with it—we forbear to enter. We need only observe that Spain retained uninterrupted possession of her conquest; the investiture of which, in 1510, was conferred by the pope, as a fief of the church, on Ferdinand.
The happiness of the Catholic sovereigns was not commensurate with the splendour which surrounded them. To whom must their magnificent empire devolve? In 1497, the infante Juan, their only son, whom they had just married to the archduchess Margaret of Austria, died, and his widow was soon afterwards brought to bed of a still-born child. Hence their daughters only remained through whom they could hope to transmit their sceptre to posterity; but even in this expectation they were doomed to much disappointment.
Doña Isabella, the eldest of the princesses, who was married to the heir of the Portuguese monarchy, was left a widow as soon as the archduchess Margaret; and though she was next given to her brother-in-law, Dom Emmanuel, now become king of Portugal, and the following year was delivered of a son, she died at the time; nor did the young prince, the acknowledged heir of the whole peninsula, Navarre excepted, long survive her. Still, to be prepared against every possible contingency, they married another daughter, the princess Maria, to the Lusitanian widower; and their youngest, Catherine, destined to be so famous from her connection with the English reformation, first to Arthur prince of Wales, and next to Henry, his brother, afterwards Henry VIII.
Their hopes of an heir, however, rested in their second daughter, the wife of Philip archduke of Austria, Juana, who, in 1500, was delivered of a prince, afterwards the celebrated Charles V.
Thus, the crown of Spain was to devolve on a foreign brow—the first example of the kind which had occurred from the foundation of the monarchy by Pelayo. Their disappointments, too, were embittered by the unhappiness of their children. The princess Isabella, who had always shown more affection for the cloister than for the throne, had been forced into the marriage, and died a premature and painful death. Juana, though extravagantly fond of her husband, was treated by him with the most marked neglect; and the fate of Catherine is but too well known. The misfortunes of her children sank deeply into the heart of the queen, and brought on a melancholy which ended in her death.[j]