With this moral development of the nation, the public revenues, the sure index, when unforced of public prosperity, went on augmenting with astonishing rapidity. In 1474, the year of Isabella’s accession, the ordinary rents of the Castilian crown amounted to 885,000 reals;[76] in 1477, to 2,390,078; in 1482, after the resumption of the royal grants, to 12,711,591; and finally, in 1504, when the acquisition of Granada and the domestic tranquillity of the kingdom had encouraged the free expansion of all its resources, to 26,283,334; or thirty times the amount received at her accession. All this, it will be remembered, was derived from the customary established taxes, without the imposition of a single new one. Indeed, the improvements in the mode of collection tended materially to lighten the burdens on the people.
The territorial limits of the monarchy, in the meantime, went on expanding beyond example—Castile and Leon, brought under the same sceptre with Aragon and its foreign dependencies, Sicily and Sardinia; with the kingdoms of Granada, Navarre, and Naples; with the Canaries, Oran, and the other settlements in Africa; and with the islands and vast continents of America. To these broad domains the comprehensive schemes of the sovereigns would have added Portugal; and their arrangements for this, although defeated for the present, opened the way to its eventual completion under Philip II. The names of Castilian and Aragonese were merged in the comprehensive one of Spaniard; and Spain, with an empire which stretched over three-quarters of the globe, and which almost realised the proud boast that the sun never set within her borders, now rose, not to the first class only, but to the first place, in the scale of European powers.
The extraordinary circumstances of the country tended naturally to nourish the lofty, romantic qualities and the somewhat exaggerated tone of sentiment which always pervaded the national character. The age of chivalry had not faded away in Spain, as in most other lands. It was fostered, in time of peace, by the tourneys, jousts, and other warlike pageants which graced the court of Isabella. It gleamed out, as we have seen, in the Italian campaigns under Gonsalvo de Cordova, and shone forth in all its splendours in the war of Granada.
The Spaniard was a knight-errant, in its literal sense, roving over seas on which no barque had ever ventured, among islands and continents where no civilised man had ever trodden, and which fancy peopled with all the marvels and drear enchantments of romance; courting danger in every form, combating everywhere, and everywhere victorious. The very odds presented by the defenceless natives among whom he was cast, “a thousand of whom,” to quote the words of Columbus, “were not equal to three Spaniards,” was in itself typical of his profession; and the brilliant destinies to which the meanest adventurer was often called, now carving out with his good sword some Eldorado more splendid than fancy had dreamed of, and now overturning some old barbaric dynasty, were full as extraordinary as the wildest chimeras which Ariosto ever sang or Cervantes satirised. His countrymen who remained at home, feeding greedily on the reports of his adventures, lived almost equally in an atmosphere of romance. A spirit of chivalrous enthusiasm penetrated the very depths of the nation, swelling the humblest individual with lofty aspirations and a proud consciousness of the dignity of his nature.
In noticing the circumstances that conspired to form the national character, it would be unpardonable to omit the establishment of the Inquisition, which contributed so largely to counterbalance the benefits resulting from Isabella’s government; an institution which has done more than any other to stay the proud march of human reason; which, by imposing uniformity of creed, has proved the fruitful parent of hypocrisy and superstition; which has soured the sweet charities of human life, and, settling like a foul mist on the goodly promise of the land, closed up the fair buds of science and civilisation ere they were fully opened. Alas, that such a blight should have fallen on so gallant and generous a people! That it should have been brought on it, too, by one of such unblemished patriotism and purity of motive as Isabella!
[1492-1524 A.D.]
The immediate injury inflicted on the nation by the spirit of bigotry in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, although greatly exaggerated, was doubtless serious enough. Under the otherwise beneficent operation of their government, however, the healthful and expansive energies of the state were sufficient to heal up these and deeper wounds, and still carry it onward in the career of prosperity. With this impulse, indeed, the nation continued to advance higher and higher, in spite of the system of almost unmingled evil pursued in the following reigns. The glories of this later period, of the age of Charles V, as it is called, must find their true source in the measures of his illustrious predecessors. It was in their court that Boscan, Garcilasso, Mendoza, and the other master spirits were trained, who moulded Castilian literature into the new and more classical forms of later times. It was under Gonsalvo de Cordova that Leyva, Pescara, and those great captains with their invincible legions were formed, who enabled Charles V to dictate laws to Europe for half a century. And it was Columbus who not only led the way, but animated the Spanish navigator with the spirit of discovery. Scarcely was Ferdinand’s reign brought to a close, before Magellan completed (1520), what that monarch had projected, the circumnavigation of the southern continent; the victorious banners of Cortes had already (1518) penetrated into the golden realms of Montezuma; and Pizarro, a very few years later (1524), following up the lead of Balboa, embarked on the enterprise which ended in the downfall of the splendid dynasty of the Incas.
Thus it is that the seed sown under a good system continues to yield fruit under a bad one. The season of the most brilliant results, however, is not always that of the greatest national prosperity. The splendours of foreign conquest in the boasted reign of Charles V were dearly purchased by the decline of industry at home, and the loss of liberty. The patriot will see little to cheer him in this “golden age” of the national history, whose outward show of glory will seem to his penetrating eye only the hectic brilliancy of decay. He will turn to an earlier period, when the nation, emerging from the sloth and license of a barbarous age, seemed to renew its ancient energies, and to prepare like a giant to run its course; and glancing over the long interval since elapsed, during the first half of which the nation wasted itself on schemes of mad ambition, and in the latter has sunk into a state of paralytic torpor, he will fix his eye on the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella as the most glorious epoch in the annals of his country.[b]
FOOTNOTES
[66] [Burke[k] gives Baudier[a] as authority for claiming that Ferdinand did not care to see his daughter, and says, “it must be admitted that if Ferdinand was a detestable father, Philip was a very sorry husband.”]