The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic — Volume 3

by William Hickling Prescott

In this universal excitement, the progress of discovery was pushed forward with a success, inferior, indeed, to what might have been effected in the present state of nautical skill and science, but extraordinary for the times. The winding depths of the Gulf of Mexico were penetrated, as well as the borders of the rich but rugged isthmus, which connects the American continents. In 1512, Florida was discovered by a romantic old knight, Ponce de Leon, who, instead of the magical fountain of health, found his grave there. [110] Solis, another navigator, who had charge of an expedition, projected by Ferdinand, [111] to reach the South Sea by the circumnavigation of the continent, ran down the coast as far as the great Rio de la Plata, where he also was cut off by the savages. In 1513, Vasco Nunez de Balboa penetrated, with a handful of men, across the narrow part of the Isthmus of Darien, and from the summit of the Cordilleras, the first of Europeans, was greeted with the long-promised vision of the southern ocean. [112] The intelligence of this event excited a sensation in Spain, inferior only to that caused by the discovery of America. The great object which had so long occupied the imagination of the nautical men of Europe, and formed the purpose of Columbus's last voyage, the discovery of a communication with these far western waters, was accomplished. The famous spice islands, from which the Portuguese had drawn such countless sums of wealth, were scattered over this sea; and the Castilians, after a journey of a few leagues, might launch their barks on its quiet bosom, and reach, and perhaps claim, the coveted possessions of their rivals, as falling west of the papal line of demarkation. Such were the dreams, and such the actual progress of discovery, at the close of Ferdinand's reign.

Our admiration of the dauntless heroism displayed by the early Spanish navigators, in their extraordinary career, is much qualified by a consideration of the cruelties with which it was tarnished; too great to be either palliated or passed over in silence by the historian. As long as Isabella lived, the Indians found an efficient friend and protector; but "her death," says the venerable Las Casas, "was the signal for their destruction." [113] Immediately on that event, the system of repartimientos, originally authorized, as we have seen, by Columbus, who seems to have had no doubt, from the first, of the crown's absolute right of property over the natives, [114] was carried to its full extent in the colonies. [115] Every Spaniard, however humble, had his proportion of slaves; and men, many of them not only incapable of estimating the awful responsibility of the situation, but without the least touch of humanity in their natures, were individually intrusted with the unlimited disposal of the lives and destinies of their fellow-creatures. They abused this trust in the grossest manner; tasking the unfortunate Indian far beyond his strength, inflicting the most refined punishments on the indolent, and hunting down those who resisted or escaped, like so many beasts of chase, with ferocious bloodhounds. Every step of the white man's progress in the New World, may be said to have been on the corpse of a native. Faith is staggered by the recital of the number of victims immolated in these fair regions within a very few years after the discovery; and the heart sickens at the loathsome details of barbarities, recorded by one, who, if his sympathies have led him sometimes to over-color, can never be suspected of wilfully misstating facts, of which he was an eye-witness. [116] A selfish indifference to the rights of the original occupants of the soil, is a sin which lies at the door of most of the primitive European settlers, whether papist or puritan, of the New World. But it is light, in comparison with the fearful amount of crimes to be charged on the early Spanish colonists; crimes that have, perhaps, in this world, brought down the retribution of Heaven, which has seen fit to turn this fountain of inexhaustible wealth and prosperity to the nation into the waters of bitterness.

It may seem strange, that no relief was afforded by the government to these oppressed subjects. But Ferdinand, if we may credit Las Casas, was never permitted to know the extent of the injuries done to them. [117] He was surrounded by men in the management of the Indian department, whose interest it was to keep him in ignorance. [118] The remonstrances of some zealous missionaries led him, [119] in 1501, to refer the subject of the repartimientos to a council of jurists and theologians. This body yielded to the representations of the advocates of the system, that it was indispensable for maintaining the colonies, since the European was altogether unequal to labor in this tropical climate; and that it, moreover, afforded the only chance for the conversion of the Indian, who, unless compelled, could never be brought in contact with the white man. [120]

On these grounds, Ferdinand openly assumed for himself and his ministers the responsibility of maintaining this vicious institution; and subsequently issued an ordinance to that effect, accompanied, however, by a variety of humane and equitable regulations for restraining its abuse. [121] The license was embraced in its full extent; the regulations were openly disregarded. [122] Several years after, in 1515, Las Casas, moved by the spectacle of human suffering, returned to Spain, and pleaded the cause of the injured native, in tones which made the dying monarch tremble on his throne. It was too late, however, for the king to execute the remedial measures he contemplated. [123] The efficient interference of Ximenes, who sent a commission for the purpose to Hispaniola, was attended with no permanent results. And the indefatigable "protector of the Indians" was left to sue for redress at the court of Charles, and to furnish a splendid, if not a solitary example there, of a bosom penetrated with the true spirit of Christian philanthropy. [124]

I have elsewhere examined the policy pursued by the Catholic sovereigns in the government of their colonies. The supply of precious metals yielded by them eventually proved far greater than had ever entered into the conception of the most sanguine of the early discoverers. Their prolific soil and genial climate, moreover, afforded an infinite variety of vegetable products, which might have furnished an unlimited commerce with the mother country. Under a judicious protection, their population and productions, steadily increasing, would have enlarged to an incalculable extent the general resources of the empire. Such, indeed, might have been the result of a wise system of legislation.

But the true principles of colonial policy were sadly misunderstood in the sixteenth century. The discovery of a world was estimated, like that of a rich mine, by the value of its returns in gold and silver. Much of Isabella's legislation, it is true, is of that comprehensive character, which shows that she looked to higher and far nobler objects. But with much that is good, there was mingled, as in most of her institutions, one germ of evil, of little moment at the time, indeed, but which, under the vicious culture of her successors, shot up to a height that overshadowed and blighted all the rest. This was the spirit of restriction and monopoly, aggravated by the subsequent laws of Ferdinand, and carried to an extent under the Austrian dynasty, that paralyzed colonial trade.

Under their most ingeniously perverse system of laws, the interests of both the parent country and the colonies were sacrificed. The latter, condemned to look for supplies to an incompetent source, were miserably dwarfed in their growth; while the former contrived to convert the nutriment which she extorted from the colonies into a fatal poison. The streams of wealth which flowed in from the silver quarries of Zacatecas and Potosí, were jealously locked up within the limits of the Peninsula. The great problem, proposed by the Spanish legislation of the sixteenth century, was the reduction of prices in the kingdom to the same level as in other European nations. Every law that was passed, however, tended, by its restrictive character, to augment the evil. The golden tide, which, permitted a free vent, would have fertilized the region through which it poured, now buried the land under a deluge which blighted every green and living thing. Agriculture, commerce, manufactures, every branch of national industry and improvement, languished and fell to decay; and the nation, like the Phrygian monarch, who turned all that he touched to gold, cursed by the very consummation of its wishes, was poor in the midst of its treasures.

From this sad picture, let us turn to that presented by the period of our History, when, the clouds and darkness having passed away, a new morn seemed to break upon the nation. Under the firm but temperate sway of Ferdinand and Isabella, the great changes we have noticed were effected without convulsion in the state. On the contrary, the elements of the social system, which before jarred so discordantly, were brought into harmonious action. The restless spirit of the nobles was turned from civil faction to the honorable career of public service, whether in arms or letters. The people at large, assured of the security of private rights, were occupied with the different branches of productive labor. Trade, as is abundantly shown by the legislation of the period, had not yet fallen into the discredit which attached to it in later times. [125] The precious metals, instead of flowing in so abundantly as to palsy the arm of industry, served only to stimulate it. [126]

The foreign intercourse of the country was every day more widely extended. Her agents and consuls were to be found in all the principal ports of the Mediterranean and the Baltic. [127] The Spanish mariner, instead of creeping along the beaten track of inland navigation, now struck boldly across the great western ocean. The new discoveries had converted the land trade with India into a sea trade; and the nations of the Peninsula, who had hitherto lain remote from the great highways of commerce, now became the factors and carriers of Europe.

The flourishing condition of the nation was seen in the wealth and population of its cities, the revenues of which, augmented in all to a surprising extent, had increased, in some, forty and even fifty fold beyond what they were at the commencement of the reign; [128] the ancient and lordly Toledo; Burgos, with its bustling, industrious traders; [129] Valladolid, sending forth its thirty thousand warriors from its gates, where the whole population now scarcely reaches two-thirds of that number; [130] Cordova, in the south, and the magnificent Granada, naturalizing in Europe the arts and luxuries of the east; Saragossa, "the abundant," as she was called from her fruitful territory; Valencia, "the beautiful;" Barcelona, rivalling in independence and maritime enterprise the proudest of the Italian republics; [131] Medina del Campo, whose fairs were already the great mart for the commercial exchanges of the Peninsula; [132] and Seville, [133] the golden gate of the Indies, whose quays began to be thronged with merchants from the most distant countries of Europe.