Although to a certain extent deserted and discredited, Columbus determined to make one more desperate effort to draw himself clear of the oblivion which was now enveloping him. With a fleet of four small vessels he set sail from Cadiz on May 9, 1502. Perhaps on this occasion his mortification was greater than ever before. Ovando, the Governor, would have nothing to do with him. Having suffered shipwreck and numerous other calamities besides, the great navigator, embittered and downcast, turned the bows of his ships towards Spain. On landing he learned of the death of Queen Isabella, the only person of influence who had shown him a consistent friendship. Realizing now that his influence and chances had finally departed, he retired into seclusion in the neighbourhood of Vallodolid, where he died in his sixtieth year on May 20, 1506.
CHAPTER III
THE SPANISH CONQUISTADORES
The pioneer conquistadores of South America afford an interesting study. Such men as those who took their lives in their hands and sailed out into the unknown were actuated by two motives—the love of adventure and the desire of gain. There is no doubt that the second consideration by far outweighed the first. A man of the period left Spain or Portugal for the New World for one cogent reason only, to seek his fortune. If he won fame in the achievement of this, so much the better. Indeed, as a matter of fact, it was generally impossible to achieve the one without the other, although this fame might frequently have its shield sullied and blackened by a number of wild and terrible acts; for circumstances tended to make the conquistador what he almost invariably became, a daring being who let the lives of no others stand in the way of his own interests.
He was not, as was the case with corresponding officials of a later epoch, sent out on an accurately defined mission for which his emoluments were definitely fixed and guaranteed by the Home Government. The conquistador nearly always risked much of his own before he set sail from his native land. A man was seldom given a Governorship, even of an unknown region in the New World, unless he showed himself prepared to finance in part an expedition which should be of sufficient importance to furnish the new territory with men and live-stock, and everything else of the kind.
The conquistador, in fact, was generally the active partner in an enterprise which was largely commercial. Sometimes his sleeping partners were the merchants of Spain; sometimes it was the King himself who joined in the venture; at others it was both King and merchants who jointly assisted the pioneer. But it was very seldom that an adventurer of the kind succeeded in obtaining an important concession unless he were prepared to subsidize it heavily from his own pocket.
We may instance Pedro de Mendoza. It was the part he had played in the sack of Rome which enabled this wealthy adventurer to organize the great expedition which set sail for the Provinces of the River Plate. Here we have the curious anomaly of the Church being robbed by a mercenary, and the money obtained by the loot employed in an object which was ostensibly in the interests of the Church in the New World. In order to satisfy the public nearer home, it is true that the conquistadores were almost invariably accompanied by priests; but once well without the jurisdiction of Rome, Spain, and Portugal, they took very good care that the priests should not interfere in their concerns. Having been accepted as a guarantee of good faith, their sphere of utility had ended with the arrival in the New World so far as the conquistadores were concerned. Many of them became active participants in the wild deeds of the conquistadores. Did they, on the other hand, show themselves desirous of protesting, the more reckless pioneers made strenuous attempts to muzzle their eloquence.
When the spirit of the age and the circumstances in which these adventurers sailed to the South-West are considered, many of the atrocities committed are less to be wondered at than would otherwise be the case. It may be taken for granted, in the first place, that the temperament of these men was sufficiently wild and reckless to cause them to embark in any extraordinarily perilous enterprise of the kind. With all they had in the world sunk in the venture, they would move heaven and earth, and squander countless human beings, before admitting defeat. The failure of Indian labour meant financial ruin; this was frequently staved off at the cost of thousands and tens of thousands of lives. Such characteristics as these were by no means confined to the Spaniards and Portuguese. We have some terribly vivid examples of it on the part of the Welzers, the German merchant princes who contracted with Charles V. to subdue and settle Venezuela. Sir Clements Markham relates that the first Governor of the new colony, an official of the name of Alfinger, came out with a strong force in 1530. On his marches he would employ many hundreds of native porters; these men were chained together in long lines, each slave having a ring round his neck made fast to the chain. When one of the slaves was too ill or too exhausted to proceed any farther, Alfinger had the unfortunate wretch's head severed from his body, so that the body dropped away from the chain without the march being hindered. It is difficult to imagine a more callous or atrocious proceeding than this, but undoubtedly financial considerations lay at the bottom of it. The thing was done, perhaps, pour encourager les autres, and certainly many a poor staggering wretch marched on mile after mile, when under ordinary circumstances he would have dropped exhausted at an earlier stage. Thus the last atom of physical energy was wrenched by terror from the slaves—a species of economy which, if worked out wholesale, may have proved sufficiently profitable from their owner's point of view!