Let us turn from this gloomy picture to the brighter season of the morning and meridian of his life; when he sat with Isabella on the united thrones of Castile and Aragon, strong in the love of his own subjects, and in the fear and respect of his enemies. We shall then find much in his character to admire; his impartial justice in the administration of the laws; his watchful solicitude to shield the weak from the oppression of the strong; his wise economy, which achieved great results without burdening his people with oppressive taxes; his sobriety and moderation; the decorum, and respect for religion, which he maintained among his subjects; the industry he promoted by wholesome laws and his own example; his consummate sagacity, which crowned all his enterprises with brilliant success, and made him the oracle of the princes of the age.
Machiavelli, indeed, the most deeply read of his time in human character, imputes Ferdinand's successes, in one of his letters, to "cunning and good luck, rather than superior wisdom." [71] He was indeed fortunate; and the "star of Austria," which rose as his declined, shone not with a brighter or steadier lustre. But success through a long series of years sufficiently, of itself, attests good conduct. "The winds and waves," says Gibbon, truly enough, "are always on the side of the most skilful mariner." The Florentine statesman has recorded a riper and more deliberate judgment in the treatise, which he intended as a mirror for the rulers of the time. "Nothing," says he, "gains estimation for a prince like great enterprises. Our own age has furnished a splendid example of this in Ferdinand of Aragon. We may call him a new king, since from a feeble one he has made himself the most renowned and glorious monarch of Christendom; and, if we ponder well his manifold achievements, we must acknowledge all of them very great, and some truly extraordinary." [72]
Other eminent foreigners of the time join in this lofty strain of panegyric. [73] The Castilians, mindful of the general security and prosperity they had enjoyed under his reign, seem willing to bury his frailties in his grave. [74] While his own hereditary subjects, exulting with patriotic pride in the glory to which he had raised their petty state, and touched with grateful recollections of his mild, paternal government, deplore his loss in strains of national sorrow, as the last of the revered line, who was to preside over the destinies of Aragon, as a separate and independent kingdom. [75]
FOOTNOTES
[1] Mariana, Hist. de España, tom. ii. lib. 29, cap. 21.—Zurita, Anales, tom. vi. lib. 8, cap. 45, 47. 834.
[2] Zurita, Anales, tom. vi. lib. 10, cap. 55, 69.—Peter Martyr, Opus Epist., epist. 531.
[3] Peter Martyr, Opus Epist., epist. 486.—Chrónica del Gran Capitan, lib. 3, cap. 7.—Zurita, Anales, tom. vi. lib. 10, cap. 2.—Giovio, Vita Magni Gonsalvi, lib. 3, p. 288.
[4] Opus Epist., epist. 487.—Pulgar, Sumario, p. 201.
[5] Giovio, Vita Magni Gonsalvi, lib. 3, p. 289.—Chrónica del Gran Capitan, lib. 3, cap. 7, 8.—Ulloa, Vita di Carlo V., fol. 38.—Peter Martyr, Opus Epist., epist. 498.—Pulgar, Sumario, p. 201.
[6] Mariana, Hist. de España, tom. ii. lib. 30, cap. 14.—Giovio, Vitae Illust. Virorum, pp. 290, 291.—Chrónica del Gran Capitan, lib. 3, cap. 7, 8, 9.—Zurita, Anales, tom. vi. lib. 10, cap. 28.—Quintana, Españoles Célebres, tom. i. pp. 328-332.—Abarca, Reyes de Aragon, tom. ii. rey 30, cap. 20.—Pulgar, Sumario, pp. 201-208.