against ignorance and also, unfortunately, against innocent savages, has
a vital bearing, it is true, upon the fortunes, the glory, and the wars
of Spain. But since almost every country in Europe was soon involved
in the same cry of “Westward, ho!” and since the general outlines are
familiar to everybody, it will be permissible to defer the account until
the volume on America, where the details can be given with fullness,
consecution, and a proper sense of proportionate value.
None the less, the reader must not forget that the period of discovery
and the encouragement given it by Isabella and her consort form one of
the most important as one of the most beautiful major features of their
reign.
Leaving it to the reader’s imagination to give this better element
its due brilliance and its right significance as a partial atonement
to history, we must turn to the evil side of the reign, an evil so
tremendous and loathsome that it seems incredible when associated
with the noble deeds of the sovereigns. This is the persecution of
the non-orthodox in the name of religion and without a shadow of that
gentleness and mercy which one associates with that name, little as
history may have to substantiate that association.
The Inquisition we shall leave to a separate chapter in the appendix in
which its origin in other countries will be taken up and its history
traced in entirety until its end in the last century. A few words of
allusion will not, however, be amiss in this place.[a]
THE EXPULSION OF THE JEWS
While the Spanish sovereigns were detained before Granada, they published
their memorable and most disastrous edict against the Jews; inscribing
it, as it were, with the same pen which drew up the glorious capitulation
of Granada and the treaty with Columbus. The envy raised by their
prosperity, combined with the high religious excitement kindled in the
long war with the infidel, directed the terrible arm of the Inquisition
against this unfortunate people; but the result showed the failure of the
experiment, since comparatively few conversions, and those frequently
of a suspicious character, were effected, while the great mass still
maintained a pertinacious attachment to ancient errors. The inquisitors
asserted that the only mode left for the extirpation of the Jewish heresy
was to eradicate the seed; and they boldly demanded the immediate and
total banishment of every unbaptised Israelite from the land.
The Jews tendered a donative of 30,000 ducats towards the expense of
the Moorish war. The negotiations, however, were interrupted by the
inquisitor-general who held up a crucifix, exclaiming: “Judas Iscariot
sold his Master for thirty pieces of silver. Your highnesses would sell
him anew for thirty thousand. Here he is; take him and barter him away!”
So saying, the frantic priest threw the crucifix on the table, and left
the apartment. The sovereigns, instead of chastising this presumption, or
despising it as a mere freak of insanity, were overawed by it.
The edict for the expulsion of the Jews was signed by the Spanish
sovereigns at Granada, March 30th, 1492. It decreed that all the
unbaptised Jews, of whatever age, sex, or condition, should depart
from the realm by the end of July next ensuing; prohibiting them from
revisiting it, on any pretext whatever, under penalty of death and
confiscation of property. It was, moreover, interdicted to every subject
to harbour, succour, or minister to the necessities of any Jew, after
the expiration of the term limited for his departure. The persons and
property of the Jews, in the meantime, were taken under the royal
protection. They were allowed to dispose of their effects of every kind
on their own account, and to carry the proceeds along with them, in bills
of exchange, or merchandise not prohibited, but neither in gold nor
silver.
The doom of exile fell like a thunderbolt on the heads of the Israelites.
A large proportion of them had hitherto succeeded in shielding themselves
from the searching eye of the Inquisition, by an affectation of reverence
for the forms of Catholic worship, and a discreet forbearance of whatever
might offend the prejudices of their Christian brethren. They had even
hoped that their steady loyalty and a quiet and orderly discharge of
their social duties would in time secure them higher immunities. Many
had risen to a degree of opulence by means of the thrift and dexterity
peculiar to the race, which gave them a still deeper interest in the
land of their residence. Their families were reared in all the elegant
refinements of life; and their wealth and education often disposed
them to turn their attention to liberal pursuits, which ennobled the
character, indeed, but rendered them personally more sensible to physical
annoyance and less fitted to encounter the perils and privations of their
dreary pilgrimage. They were to go forth as exiles from the land of their
birth--the land where all whom they ever loved had lived or died; the
land not so much of their adoption as of their inheritance; which had
been the home of their ancestors for centuries, and with whose prosperity
and glory they were of course as intimately associated as was any ancient
Spaniard. They were to be cast out helpless and defenceless, with a brand
of infamy set on them, among nations who had always held them in derision
and hatred.
[Illustration: SPANISH CAVALIER OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY]
Those provisions of the edict which affected a show of kindness to
the Jews were contrived so artfully as to be nearly nugatory. As they
were excluded from the use of gold and silver, the only medium for
representing their property was bills of exchange. But commerce was too
limited and imperfect to allow of these being promptly obtained to any
very considerable, much less to the enormous amount required in the
present instance. It was impossible, moreover, to negotiate a sale of
their effects under existing circumstances, since the market was soon
glutted with commodities; and few would be found willing to give anything
like an equivalent for what, if not disposed of within the prescribed
term, the proprietors must relinquish at any rate. So deplorable, indeed,
was the sacrifice of property that a chronicler of the day mentions that
he had seen a house exchanged for an ass, and a vineyard for a suit of
clothes! Yet there were found but very few, when the day of departure
arrived, who were not prepared to abandon their country rather than their
religion. This extraordinary act of self-devotion by a whole people for
conscience’ sake may be thought to merit other epithets than those of
“perfidy, incredulity, and stiff-necked obstinacy,” with which the worthy
curate of Los Palacios,[h] in the charitable feeling of that day, has
seen fit to stigmatise it.
When the period of departure arrived, all the principal routes through
the country might be seen swarming with emigrants, old and young, the
sick and the helpless, men, women, and children, mingled promiscuously
together, some mounted on horses or mules, but far the greater part
undertaking their painful pilgrimage on foot. The sight of so much misery
touched even the Spaniards with pity, though none might succour them; for
the grand inquisitor, Torquemada, enforced the ordinance to that effect
by denouncing heavy ecclesiastical censures on all who should presume
to violate it. Much the largest division, amounting according to some
estimates to eighty thousand souls, passed into Portugal; whose monarch,
João [John] II, dispensed with his scruples of conscience so far as to
give them a free passage through his dominions on their way to Africa, in
consideration of a tax of a _cruzado_ a head. He is even said to have
silenced his scruples so far as to allow certain ingenious artisans to
establish themselves permanently in the kingdom.
A considerable number found their way to the ports of Santa Maria and
Cadiz, where, after lingering some time in the vain hope of seeing the
waters open for their egress, according to the promises of the rabbis,
they embarked on board a Spanish fleet for the Barbary coast. Having
crossed over to Ercilla, a Christian settlement in Africa, whence they
proceeded by land towards Fez, where a considerable body of their
countrymen resided, they were assaulted on their route by the roving
tribes of the desert, in quest of plunder. Notwithstanding the interdict,
the Jews had contrived to secrete small sums of money, sewed up in their
garments or the linings of their saddles. These did not escape the
avaricious eyes of their spoilers, who are even said to have ripped open
the bodies of their victims in search of gold which they were supposed
to have swallowed. The lawless barbarians, mingling lust with avarice,
abandoned themselves to still more frightful excesses, violating the
wives and daughters of the unresisting Jews, or massacring in cold blood
such as offered resistance.
But, without pursuing these loathsome details further, it need only be
added that the miserable exiles endured such extremity of famine that
they were glad to force a nourishment from the grass which grew scantily
among the sands of the desert; until at length great numbers of them,
wasted by disease and broken in spirit, retraced their steps to Ercilla,
and consented to be baptised, in the hope of being permitted to revisit
their native land. The number, indeed, was so considerable that the
priest who officiated was obliged to make use of the mop, or hyssop, with
which the Roman Catholic missionaries were wont to scatter the holy drops
whose mystic virtue could cleanse the soul in a moment from the foulest
stains of infidelity. “Thus,” says the Castilian historian, Ferreras,[k]
“the calamities of these poor blind creatures proved in the end an
excellent remedy, that God made use of to unseal their eyes, which they
now opened to the vain promises of the rabbis; so that, renouncing their
ancient heresies, they became faithful followers of the cross!”
Many of the emigrants took the direction of Italy. Those who landed at
Naples brought with them an infectious disorder, contracted by long
confinement in small, crowded, and ill-provided vessels. The disorder
was so malignant, and spread with such frightful celerity, as to sweep
off more than twenty thousand inhabitants of the city in the course of
the year, whence it extended its devastation over the whole Italian
peninsula. Many of the exiles passed into Turkey, and to different parts
of the Levant, where their descendants continued to speak the Castilian
language far into the following century. Others found their way to
France, and even England. Part of their religious services is recited to
this day in Spanish, in one or more of the London synagogues.
The whole number of Jews expelled from Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella
is variously computed at from 160,000 to 800,000 souls; a discrepancy
sufficiently indicating the paucity of authentic data. Most modern
writers, with the usual predilection for startling results, have assumed
the latter estimate; and Llorente[l] has made it the basis of some
important calculations in his _History of the Inquisition_. A view of
all the circumstances will lead us without much hesitation to adopt the
most moderate computation. This, moreover, is placed beyond reasonable
doubt by the direct testimony of Bernáldez.[h] He reports that a Jewish
rabbi, one of the exiles, subsequently returned to Spain, where he was
baptised by him. This person estimated the whole number of his unbaptised
countrymen, at the publication of the edict, at thirty-six thousand
families. Another Jewish authority, quoted by the curate, reckoned them
at thirty-five thousand. This, assuming an average of four and a half to
a family, gives the sum total of about 160,000 individuals.[55]
The detriment incurred by the state, however, is not founded so much
on any numerical estimate as on the subtraction of the mechanical
skill, intelligence, and general resources of an orderly, industrious
population. In this view, the mischief was incalculably greater than that
inferred by the mere number of the exiled; and although even this might
have been gradually repaired in a country allowed the free and healthful
development of its energies, yet in Spain this was so effectually
counteracted by the Inquisition, and other causes in the following
century, that the loss may be deemed irretrievable.
The expulsion of so numerous a class of subjects by an independent
act of the sovereign might well be regarded as an enormous stretch
of prerogative, altogether incompatible with anything like a free
government. But, to judge the matter rightly, we must take into view the
actual position of the Jews at that time. Far from forming an integral
part of the commonwealth, they were regarded as alien to it, as a mere
excrescence, which, so far from contributing to the healthful action of
the body politic, was nourished by its vicious humours, and might be
lopped off at any time when the health of the system demanded it. Far
from being protected by the laws, the only aim of the laws in reference
to them was to define more precisely their civil incapacities, and to
draw the line of division more broadly between them and the Christians.
Even this humiliation by no means satisfied the national prejudices,
as is evinced by the great number of tumults and massacres of which
they were the victims. In these circumstances, it seemed to be no great
assumption of authority to pronounce sentence of exile against those whom
public opinion had so long proscribed as enemies to the state.
It has been common with modern historians to detect a principal motive in
the avarice of the government. It is, however, incredible that persons
possessing the political sagacity of Ferdinand and Isabella could
indulge a temporary cupidity at the sacrifice of the most important and
permanent interests, converting by a measure so manifestly unsound, their
wealthiest districts into a wilderness and dispeopling them of a class
of citizens who contributed beyond all others not only to the general
resources but to the direct revenues of the crown.
We need look no further for the principle of action, in this case, than
the spirit of religious bigotry which led to a similar expulsion of
the Jews from England, France, and other parts of Europe, as well as
from Portugal, under circumstances of peculiar atrocity, a few years
later.[56] Indeed, the spirit of persecution did not expire with the
fifteenth century, but extends even into our own more luminous days. How
far the banishment of the Jews was conformable to the opinions of the
most enlightened contemporaries, may be gathered from the encomiums
lavished on its authors from more than one quarter. Spanish writers,
without exception, celebrate it as a sublime sacrifice of all temporal
interests to religious principle.[g]
PERSECUTION AND REVOLT OF THE MOORS (1499-1502 A.D.)
[Sidenote: [1492-1499 A.D.]]
The establishment of the Inquisition led to the banishment of the Jews;
the latter, in its turn, to the persecution of the Mohammedans. These
soon found that their religious toleration, so solemnly guaranteed by
the articles of capitulation, would be little respected by a prince who
did not always hesitate to break his royal word--nor even his oath--when
his interests or his bigotry was concerned. It is certain that, from the
very year in which Granada submitted, the resolution was taken to convert
or expel the Moors; but their number, the assistance they might receive
from Africa, and the unsettled state of the new conquests, delayed its
execution.
In 1499, however, Ferdinand, being at Granada, seriously entered on
what he doubtless considered a path of stern but necessary duty. Having
assembled some of his counsellors and prelates to deliberate on the
proper means of attaining an object so momentous, it was agreed that
both end and means should be left to two eminent prelates--to Francisco
Ximenes [or Jimenes] de Cisneros, archbishop of Toledo, and to Ferdinand
de Talavera, metropolitan of Granada. In selecting two such opposite
instruments, it was doubtless intended that the gentleness of Don
Ferdinand should be fortified by the decision of his colleague: through
his influence it doubtless was that the first steps in the great work
were of a mild and rational nature. The alfaquis were assiduously
courted; were persuaded to dispute on the merits of their respective
faiths; and were severally dismissed with presents.
Whether through conviction or fear, through persuasion or interest,
these men forsook their old religion, and consented not only to be
baptised, but to become the instruments of converting their countrymen.
Their example had great effect: thousands applied for admission into the
church; and thousands more would have joined them at the same time, but
for the fiery zeal of Cardinal Ximenes,[57] which occasioned a serious
disturbance. Seeing that some of their body, who protested against the
prelate’s violence, were by his order conducted to prison, they arose,
murdered an obnoxious _alguazil_, and hastened to Ximenes’ hotel, which
they assailed. He fought with great spirit. The commotion continued
for several days: the whole Albaycin was in arms; and the insurrection
would have spread further, but for the metropolitan of Granada. Though
a messenger of peace had been stoned to death the preceding day by
the Moors of that quarter, he resolved to go among them, and finally
persuaded them to lay down their arms.
But the mischief was not yet ended. Those especially who abode in the
mountains of the Alpujarras were filled with fury at the forcible
attempts made to seduce their brethren from the faith of the prophet;
and they flew to arms. The king himself marched to reduce them; pursued
them into the heart of their hills; forced or persuaded them to submit,
and to surrender both their fortified places and their arms. His success
emboldened him to more decisive measures: missionaries were despatched,
wherever there was a Mohammedan village, to preach the necessity of
immediate conversion; and the efficacy of their labours was not a little
owing to the armed bodies of soldiers who accompanied them. Terrified by
the recent fate of the Jews, whole towns submitted to baptism--the more
willingly, perhaps, as no previous instruction was forced upon them;
there was no time for catechism or preaching: hundreds were sprinkled
with holy water at the same time; the same prayers were repeated over
them, and then they stood cleansed in the laver of regeneration! That
such conversions could not be very durable need not surprise us.
[Sidenote: [1499-1502 A.D.]]
The following year, the independent mountaineers again revolted, and
massacred all the Christians on whom they could lay hands. They were
again reduced: ten thousand submitted to the necessary rite; while a
greater number fled to their African brethren. A third time, in the
space of a very few months, were the embers of discontent fanned into a
flame--partly by the injudicious zeal of the Christian priests, partly
by the strong breath of indignation. This insurrection was the most
difficult to quell: one or two partial successes were obtained over the
royal troops; but, on the appearance of Ferdinand in person, with a
formidable power, the revolted fortresses submitted. Again did thousands
obtain his permission to settle on the opposite coast, and bade a final
adieu to the peninsula. By their departure, those who remained were
still less able to make head against the victor, who no longer hesitated
to issue his irrevocable decree of expulsion against every obstinate
follower of the Arabian prophet.[j]
[Illustration: A MAN OF GRANADA]
The sovereigns came to the extraordinary resolution of offering the
alternative of baptism or exile. They issued a _pragmática_ from Seville,
February 12th, 1502, that all the unbaptised Moors in the kingdoms of
Castile and Leon above fourteen years of age if males, and twelve if
females, must leave the country by the end of April following; that
they might sell their property in the meantime, and take the proceeds
in anything save gold and silver and merchandise regularly prohibited;
and, finally, that they might emigrate to any foreign country, except the
dominions of the Grand Turk, and such parts of Africa as Spain was then
at war with. Obedience to these severe provisions was enforced by the
penalties of death and confiscation of property.
This stern edict, so closely modelled on that against the Jews, must have
been even more grievous in its application. For the Jews may be said to
have been denizens almost equally of every country; while the Moors,
excluded from a retreat among their countrymen on the African shore,
were sent into the lands of enemies or strangers. The former, moreover,
were far better qualified by their natural shrewdness and commercial
habits for disposing of their property advantageously, than the simple,
inexperienced Moors, skilled in little else than husbandry or rude
mechanic arts. We have nowhere met with any estimate of the number who
migrated on this occasion.
Castile might now boast, for the first time in eight centuries, that
every outward stain, at least, of infidelity, was purified from her
bosom. But how had this been accomplished? By the most detestable
expedients which sophistry could devise and oppression execute; and that,
too, under an enlightened government, proposing to be guided solely by a
conscientious regard for duty.
It is a singular paradox, that Christianity, whose doctrines inculcate
unbounded charity, should have been made so often an engine of
persecution; while Mohammedanism, whose principles are those of avowed
intolerance, should have exhibited, at least till later times, a truly
philosophical spirit of toleration.[58] Even the first victorious
disciples of the prophet, glowing with all the fiery zeal of proselytism,
were content with the exaction of tribute from the vanquished.[g]
We may now take up in condensed form certain foreign relations that
had busied the Spanish monarchs simultaneously with their religious
activities.[a]
SPAIN IN ITALY; THE GREAT CAPTAIN
[Sidenote: [1479-1502 A.D.]]
Soon after his accession, Ferdinand was naturally anxious to procure the
restitution of Roussillon and Cerdagne. But to his pressing embassies
on this subject, Louis XI returned evasive answers. But when Ferdinand,
indignant at the evasions of his successor, Charles VIII, began to arm
for the recovery of this frontier, the latter, who meditated the conquest
of Naples, and who wished to have no enemies to harass France during his
absence, commanded Perpignan and the fortresses of the province to be
evacuated by the French troops; they were immediately occupied by those
of Aragon.
The severity of Ferdinand king of Naples had long been borne with
dissatisfaction by the people. Their discontent appeared to the French
king an excellent opportunity for vindicating the claims of his family on
that country, and for gratifying an ambition which was seldom restrained
by considerations of justice. He was the more confirmed in his purpose,
when several Neapolitan nobles, through disgust with their ruler, sought
his protection, and offered to aid him in gaining possession of so fair
a kingdom. The death of the Neapolitan king, and the accession of his
son Alfonso, in 1494, produced no change, either on the intentions of
Charles, or the disaffection of the people; Alfonso was as unpopular as
Ferdinand.
In alarm at the preparations of the Frenchmen, and the suspected
hostility of the pope, the new king implored the aid of his Spanish
brother and received the assurance he solicited. In the meantime Charles
invaded Italy by way of Grenoble, and passed through Pavia and Florence
direct on Rome. Having forced the pope into his interests, he continued
his march towards Naples. Alfonso, terrified at the approaching danger,
and convinced how much his subjects wished for his overthrow, abdicated
in favour of his son Ferdinand, who, he hoped, would be able to rally
them round the national standard; and retired to a monastery in Sicily.
The hope was vain; the Neapolitans fled--perhaps as much through
cowardice as disaffection--the moment they came in contact with the
French; and the capital, with the fortified places, submitted to the
invader.
But Ferdinand of Spain was not idle; by his ambassadors at Venice he
formed a league with the pope, the republic, the duke of Milan, and the
fugitive king of Naples for the expulsion of the French from Italy.
Fortunately for the common cause, the rapacity and insolence of the
invaders had turned the eyes of the Neapolitans towards their dethroned
king, whom they invited to resume his dignity, and at whose approach
they opened the gates not only of the capital, but of several important
fortresses.
[Sidenote: [1495-1501 A.D.]]
At this time, Don Gonsalvo de Cordova, the captain of Ferdinand, who had
acquired distinction in the wars of Granada, commenced his brilliant
career. The rapidity with which he reduced many of the fortified places,
and triumphed over the French generals on the field, drew the attention
of Europe towards this part of Italy. His exploits at the very first
campaign procured him the appellation of the Great Captain. The Calabrias
were soon entirely forced from the invaders, who were glad to take refuge
in the states of the church, until the arrival of the expected succours
from France. The restored king did not long survive his success; the
fatigues of the campaign consigned him, in 1496, to the grave. He was
succeeded by his uncle, Frederick, son of the first Aragonese king of
Naples.
To the new monarch Gonsalvo continued the same eminent services; and not
unfrequently the pope made use of his valour in humbling the temporal
enemies of the church. The king of France in vain attempted, by way of
diversion, to withdraw the attention of Ferdinand from the affairs of
Italy, by the powerful armaments which he frequently moved on Roussillon;
he found the Spanish king, as usual, prepared both to defend the
frontiers, and to secure the crown on the head of Frederick.
But in that relative’s behalf Ferdinand soon ceased to be interested.
For his progressive coolness towards that prince, various reasons have
been assigned; the chief one has been omitted--the king’s all-grasping
ambition, which sometimes took no counsel from justice. On hearing
that Louis XII, the successor of Charles, was preparing to arm for
the recovery of Naples, he besought that monarch to desist from the
undertaking; and when he found that solicitations were useless, he was
unprincipled enough to propose a division of the whole kingdom. Louis
eagerly seized the proposal, and the royal robbers immediately entered
into negotiations for adjusting their respective share of the spoils.
At first the city and kingdom of Naples were adjudged to Louis; the
two Calabrias and the Abruzzi to Ferdinand; the revenue arising from
the pasturage of Apulia was to be divided between them. But a dispute
arising, a new division was effected; the latter assigned the two
Calabrias and Apulia to the Spanish king; Naples and the Abruzzo to the
Frenchman. To preserve harmony in other quarters, Louis agreed at the
same time to relinquish his claims over Roussillon and Cerdagne, and
Ferdinand over Montpellier. Both sovereigns sent powerful armaments to
execute this iniquitous compact. No sooner did it reach the ears of the
unfortunate Frederick than he complained to the Spanish monarch of the
monstrous injustice. Ferdinand replied--no doubt with truth--that he had
done his utmost to prevent the French king from the enterprise; that when
entreaties failed, he had even offered a considerable sum to the same
effect; and that it was only when he found Louis bent on the undertaking,
and leagued with the Italian powers to insure its success, that he
had consented to the division; he added, that, as such a division was
inevitable, it was better that France should have a part than the whole.
In private life such reasoning would be characterised as it ought; but
kings have too often pleaded their sovereign exception from obligations
which they have been ready enough to enforce on the rest of mankind.
[Sidenote: [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]
ILLNESS AND DEATH OF ISABELLA
[Sidenote: [1503-1504 A.D.]]
In the beginning of 1503 she had declined so visibly that the cortes of
Castile, much alarmed, petitioned her to provide for the government of
the kingdom after her decease, in case of the absence or incapacity of
Juana. She seems to have rallied in some measure after this; but it was
only to relapse into a state of greater debility, as her spirits sank
under the conviction, which now forced itself on her, of her daughter’s
settled insanity.
Early in the spring of the following year (1504) that unfortunate lady
embarked for Flanders, where, soon after her arrival, the inconstancy of
her husband and her own ungovernable sensibilities occasioned the most
scandalous scenes. Philip became openly enamoured of one of the ladies of
her suite; and his injured wife, in a paroxysm of jealousy, personally
assaulted her fair rival in the palace, and caused the beautiful locks
which had excited the admiration of her fickle husband to be shorn from
her head. This outrage so affected Philip that he vented his indignation
against Juana in the coarsest and most unmanly terms, and finally refused
to have any further intercourse with her. The account of this disgraceful
scene reached Castile in the month of June. It occasioned the deepest
chagrin and mortification to the unhappy parents. Ferdinand soon after
fell ill of a fever, and the queen was seized with the same disorder,
accompanied by more alarming symptoms. Her illness was exasperated by
anxiety[60] for her husband, and she refused to credit the favourable
reports of the physicians while he was detained from her presence.
His vigorous constitution, however, threw off the malady, while hers
gradually failed under it. Her tender heart was more keenly sensible than
his to the unhappy condition of their child, and to the gloomy prospects
which awaited her beloved Castile.
Her faithful follower, Martyr,[p] was with the court at this time in
Medina del Campo. In a letter to the count of Tendilla, dated October
7th, he states that the most serious apprehensions were entertained
by the physicians for the queen’s fate. “Her whole system,” he says,
“is pervaded by a consuming fever. She loathes food of every kind, and
is tormented with incessant thirst, while the disorder has all the
appearance of terminating in a dropsy.”
On the 12th of October she executed that celebrated testament which
reflects so clearly the peculiar qualities of her mind and character.
She begins with prescribing the arrangements for her burial. She orders
her remains to be transported to Granada, to the Franciscan monastery of
Santa Isabella in the Alhambra, and there deposited in a low and humble
sepulchre, without other memorial than a plain inscription on it. “But,”
she continues, “should the king my lord prefer a sepulchre in some other
place, then my will is that my body be there transported, and laid by
his side; that the union we have enjoyed in this world, and, through the
mercy of God, may hope again for our souls in heaven, may be represented
by our bodies in the earth.” Then, desirous of correcting by her example,
in this last act of her life, the wasteful pomp of funeral obsequies to
which the Castilians were addicted, she commands that her own should be
performed in the plainest and most unostentatious manner, and that the
sum saved by this economy should be distributed in alms among the poor.
[Illustration: ISABELLA
(From an old print)]
She next provides for several charities, assigning, among others,
marriage portions for poor maidens, and a considerable sum for the
redemption of Christian captives in Barbary. She enjoins the punctual
discharge of all her personal debts within a year; she retrenches
superfluous offices in the royal household, and revokes all such grants,
whether in the forms of lands or annuities, as she conceives to have
been made without sufficient warrant. She inculcates on her successors
the importance of maintaining the integrity of the royal domains, and,
above all, of never divesting themselves of their title to the important
fortress of Gibraltar.
After this she comes to the succession of the crown, which she settles
on the infanta Juana as “queen proprietor,” and the archduke Philip as
her husband. She gives them much good counsel respecting their future
administration; enjoining them, as they would secure the love and
obedience of their subjects, to conform in all respects to the laws and
usages of the realm. She recommends to them the same conjugal harmony
which had ever subsisted between her and her husband; she beseeches
them to show the latter all the deference and filial affection “due to
him beyond every other parent, for his eminent virtues”; and finally
inculcates on them the most tender regard for the liberties and welfare
of their subjects.
She next comes to the great question proposed by the cortes of 1503,
respecting the government of the realm in the absence or incapacity of
Juana. She declares that, after mature deliberation, and with the advice
of many of the prelates and nobles of the kingdom, she appoints King
Ferdinand her husband to be the sole regent of Castile, in that exigency,
until the majority of her grandson Charles; being led to this, she adds,
“by the consideration of the magnanimity and illustrious qualities of the
king my lord, as well as his large experience, and the great profit which
will redound to the state from his wise and beneficent rule.”
She then makes a specific provision for her husband’s personal
maintenance, which, “although less than she could wish, and far less
than he deserves, considering the eminent services he has rendered the
state,” she settles at one-half of all the net proceeds and profits
accruing from the newly discovered countries in the West; together with
ten millions of maravedis annually, assigned on the _alcabalas_ of the
grand-masterships of the military orders. And lastly, concluding in the
same beautiful strain of conjugal tenderness in which she began, she
says, “I beseech the king my lord that he will accept all my jewels, or
such as he shall select, so that, seeing them, he may be reminded of the
singular love I always bore him while living, and that I am now waiting
for him in a better world; by which remembrance he may be encouraged to
live the more justly and holily in this.”
After performing this duty she daily grew weaker, the powers of her
mind seeming to brighten as those of her body declined. The concerns
of her government still occupied her thoughts; and several public
measures, which she had postponed through urgency of other business or
growing infirmities, pressed so heavily on her heart that she made them
the subject of a codicil to her former will. It was executed November
23rd, 1504, only three days before her death. Three of the provisions
contained in it are too remarkable to pass unnoticed. The first concerns
the codification of the laws. For this purpose the queen appoints a
commission to make a new digest of the statutes and _pragmáticas_, the
contradictory tenor of which still occasioned much embarrassment in
Castilian jurisprudence. This was a subject she always had much at heart;
but no nearer approach had been made to it than the valuable though
insufficient work of Montalvo[61] in the early part of her reign; and,
notwithstanding her precautions, none more effectual was destined to take
place till the reign of Philip II.
The second item had reference to the natives of the New World.
Gross abuses had arisen there since the partial revival of the
_repartimientos_, although, Las Casas[q] says, “intelligence of this
was carefully kept from the ears of the queen.” Some vague apprehension
of the truth, however, appears to have forced itself on her: and she
enjoins her successors, in the most earnest manner, to quicken the good
work of converting and civilising the poor Indians, to treat them with
the greatest gentleness, and redress any wrongs they may have suffered
in their persons or property. Lastly, she expresses her doubts as to the
legality of the revenue drawn from the _alcabalas_,[62] constituting
the principal income of the crown. She directs that the legislature
be summoned to devise proper measures for supplying the wants of the
crown--“measures depending for their validity on the good pleasure of the
subjects of the realm.”
Such were the dying words of this admirable woman, displaying the
same respect for the rights and liberties of the nation which she had
shown through life, and striving to secure the blessings of her benign
administration to the most distant and barbarous regions under her sway.
These two documents were a precious legacy bequeathed to her people, to
guide them when the light of her personal example should be withdrawn
forever.
On receiving the extreme unction, she refused to have her feet exposed,
as was usual on that occasion: a circumstance which, occurring at a
time when there can be no suspicion of affectation, is often noticed
by Spanish writers as a proof of that sensitive delicacy and decorum
which distinguished her through life. At length, having received the
sacraments, and performed all the offices of a sincere and devout
Christian, she gently expired, a little before noon, on Wednesday,
November 26th, 1504, in the fifty-fourth year of her age, and thirtieth
of her reign.
No time was lost in making preparations for transporting the queen’s
body unembalmed to Granada, in strict conformity to her orders. It was
escorted by a numerous _cortège_ of cavaliers and ecclesiastics, among
whom was the faithful Martyr. The procession began its mournful march the
day following her death, taking the route through Arevalo, Toledo, and
Jaen. Scarcely had it left Medina del Campo when a tremendous tempest set
in, which continued with little interruption during the whole journey.
The roads were rendered nearly impassable; the bridges were swept away,
the small streams swollen to the size of the Tagus, and the level country
was buried under a deluge of water. Neither sun nor stars were seen
during their whole progress. The horses and mules were borne down by the
torrents, and the riders in several instances perished with them. At
length, on the 18th of December, the melancholy and way-worn cavalcade
reached the place of its destination; and, amidst the wild strife of
the elements, the peaceful remains of Isabella were laid, with simple
solemnities, in the Franciscan monastery of the Alhambra. Here, under the
shadow of those venerable Moslem towers, and in the heart of the capital
which her noble constancy had recovered for her country, they continued
to repose till after the death of Ferdinand, when they were removed to
be laid by his side in the stately mausoleum of the cathedral church of
Granada.
PRESCOTT’S ESTIMATE OF ISABELLA
Her person was of the middle height, and well-proportioned. She had a
clear, fresh complexion, with light-blue eyes and auburn hair--a style
of beauty exceedingly rare in Spain. Her features were regular, and
universally allowed to be uncommonly handsome. The portraits that remain
of her combine a faultless symmetry of features with singular sweetness
and intelligence of expression.
Her manners were most gracious and pleasing. They were marked by natural
dignity and modest reserve, tempered by an affability which flowed
from the kindliness of her disposition. She was the last person to be
approached with undue familiarity; yet the respect which she imposed
was mingled with the strongest feelings of devotion and love. She
showed great tact in accommodating herself to the peculiar situation
and character of those around her. She appeared in arms at the head of
her troops, and shrank from none of the hardships of war. During the
reforms introduced into the religious houses, she visited the nunneries
in person, taking her needlework with her, and passing the day in the
society of the inmates. When travelling in Galicia, she attired herself
in the costume of the country, borrowing for that purpose the jewels and
other ornaments of the ladies there, and returning them with liberal
additions. By this condescending and captivating deportment, as well as
by her higher qualities, she gained an ascendency over her turbulent
subjects which no king of Spain could ever boast.
She spoke the Castilian with much elegance and correctness. She had
an easy fluency of discourse, which, though generally of a serious
complexion, was occasionally seasoned with agreeable sallies, some of
which have passed into proverbs. She was temperate even to abstemiousness
in her diet, seldom or never tasting wine; and so frugal in her table,
that the daily expenses for herself and family did not exceed the
moderate sum of 40 ducats. She was equally simple and economical in
her apparel. On all public occasions, indeed, she displayed a royal
magnificence; but she had no relish for it in private, and she freely
gave away her clothes and jewels as presents to her friends.
Among her moral qualities, the most conspicuous, perhaps, was her
magnanimity. She betrayed nothing little or selfish, in thought or
action. Her schemes were vast, and executed in the same noble spirit
in which they were conceived. She never employed doubtful agents or
sinister measures, but the most direct and open policy. She scorned to
avail herself of advantages offered by the perfidy of others. Where she
had once given her confidence, she gave her hearty and steady support;
and she was scrupulous to redeem any pledge she had made to those who
ventured in her cause, however unpopular. She sustained Ximenes in
all his obnoxious but salutary reforms. She seconded Columbus in the
prosecution of his arduous enterprise, and shielded him from the calumny
of his enemies. She did the same good service to her favourite, Gonsalvo
de Cordova; and the day of her death was felt, and, as it proved, truly
felt, by both, as the last of their good fortune. Artifice and duplicity
were so abhorrent to her character, and so averse from her domestic
policy, that when they appear in the foreign relations of Spain it is
certainly not imputable to her. She was incapable of harbouring any petty
distrust or latent malice; and, although stern in the execution and
exaction of public justice, she made the most generous allowance, and
even sometimes advances, to those who had personally injured her.
[Illustration: ARMOUR OF ISABELLA]
But the principle which gave a peculiar colouring to every feature of
Isabella’s mind was piety. Such was the decorum of her manners, that,
though encompassed by false friends and open enemies, not the slightest
reproach was breathed on her fair name in this corrupt and calumnious
court. She gave a liberal portion of her time to private devotions, as
well as to the public exercises of religion. She expended large sums in
useful charities, especially in the erection of hospitals and churches,
and the more doubtful endowments of monasteries. Her piety was strikingly
exhibited in that unfeigned humility which is so rarely found; and most
rarely in those whose great powers and exalted stations seem to raise
them above the level of ordinary mortals. A remarkable illustration of
this is afforded in the queen’s correspondence with Talavera, in which
her meek and docile spirit is strikingly contrasted with the Puritanical
intolerance of her confessor. Unfortunately, the royal conscience was at
times committed to very different keeping; and that humility which made
her defer so reverentially to her ghostly advisers led, under the fanatic
Torquemada, the confessor of her early youth, to the establishment of the
Inquisition and the exile of the Jews.
But though blemishes of the deepest dye on her administration, they are
certainly not to be regarded as such on her moral character. It will be
difficult to condemn her, indeed, without condemning the age; for these
very acts are not only excused, but extolled by her contemporaries, as
constituting her strongest claims to renown and to the gratitude of her
country. They proceeded from the principle, openly avowed by the court of
Rome, that zeal for the purity of the faith could atone for every crime.
This immoral maxim, flowing from the head of the church, was echoed
in a thousand different forms by the subordinate clergy, and greedily
received by a superstitious people. It was not to be expected that a
solitary woman, filled with natural diffidence of her own capacity on
such subjects, should array herself against those venerated counsellors
whom she had been taught from her cradle to look to as the guides and
guardians of her conscience.
However mischievous the operations of the Inquisition may have been in
Spain, its establishment, in point of principle, was not worse than many
other measures which have passed with far less censure, though in a much
more advanced and civilised age. Where, indeed, during the sixteenth
and the greater part of the seventeenth century, was the principle
of persecution abandoned by the dominant party, whether Catholic or
Protestant? And where that of toleration asserted, except by the weaker?
It is true, to borrow Isabella’s own expression in her letter to
Talavera, the prevalence of a bad custom cannot constitute its apology.
But it should serve much to mitigate our condemnation of the queen, that
she fell into no greater error, in the imperfect light in which she
lived, than was common to the greatest minds in a later and far riper
period.[63]
Isabella’s actions, indeed, were habitually based on principle. Whatever
errors of judgment be imputed to her, she most anxiously sought in
all situations to discern and discharge her duty. Faithful in the
dispensation of justice, no bribe was large enough to ward off the
execution of the law. No motive, not even conjugal affection, could
induce her to make an unsuitable appointment to public office. No
reverence for the ministers of religion could lead her to wink at their
misconduct; nor could the deference she entertained for the head of the
church allow her to tolerate his encroachments on the rights of her
crown. Isabella’s measures were characterised by that practical good
sense without which the most brilliant parts may work more to the woe
than to the weal of mankind. Though engaged all her life in reforms, she
had none of the failings so common in reformers. Her plans, though vast,
were never visionary. The best proof of this is that she lived to see
most of them realised.
She was quick to discern objects of real utility. She saw the importance
of the new discovery of printing, and liberally patronised it, from
the first moment it appeared. She had none of the exclusive, local
prejudices too common with her countrymen. She drew talent from the most
remote quarters to her dominions by munificent rewards. She imported
foreign artisans for her manufactures, foreign engineers and officers
for the discipline of her army, and foreign scholars to imbue her
martial subjects with more cultivated tastes. She consulted the useful
in all her subordinate regulations; in her sumptuary laws, for instance,
directed against the fashionable extravagances of dress, and the ruinous
ostentation so much affected by the Castilians in their weddings and
funerals. Lastly, she showed the same perspicacity in the selection of
her agents, well knowing that the best measures become bad in incompetent
hands.
But although the skilful selection of her agents was an obvious cause
of Isabella’s success, yet another, even more important, is to be found
in her own vigilance and untiring exertions. During the first busy
and bustling years of her reign, these exertions were of incredible
magnitude. She was almost always in the saddle, for she made all her
journeys on horseback; and she travelled with a rapidity which made her
always present on the spot where her presence was needed. She was never
intimidated by the weather, or the state of her own health; and this
reckless exposure undoubtedly contributed much to impair her excellent
constitution.
She was equally indefatigable in her mental application. After assiduous
attention to business through the day, she was often known to sit up
all night dictating despatches to her secretaries. In the midst of
these overwhelming cares she found time to supply the defects of early
education by learning Latin, so as to understand it without difficulty,
whether written or spoken, and indeed, in the opinion of a competent
judge, to attain a critical accuracy in it. As she had little turn for
light amusements, she sought relief from graver cares by some useful
occupation appropriate to her sex; and she left ample evidence of her
skill in this way, in the rich specimens of embroidery, wrought with her
own fair hands, with which she decorated the churches.
With all her high qualifications, Isabella would have been still unequal
to the achievement of her grand designs, without possessing a degree of
fortitude rare in either sex; not the courage which implies contempt of
personal danger--though of this she had a larger share than falls to
most men; nor that which supports its possessor under the extremities of
bodily pain--though of this she gave ample evidence, since she endured
the greatest suffering her sex is called to bear without a groan;
but that moral courage which sustains the spirit in the dark hour of
adversity, and, gathering light from within to dispel the darkness,
imparts its own cheering influence to all around. It was her voice
that decided never to abandon Alhama. Her remonstrances compelled the
king and nobles to return to the field, when they had quitted it after
an ineffectual campaign. As dangers and difficulties multiplied, she
multiplied resources to meet them; and when her soldiers lay drooping
under the evils of some protracted siege, she appeared in the midst,
mounted on her warhorse, with her delicate limbs cased in knightly mail,
and, riding through their ranks, breathed new courage into their hearts
by her own intrepid bearing. To her personal efforts, indeed, as well as
counsels, the success of this glorious war may be mainly imputed.
Happily, these masculine qualities in Isabella did not extinguish the
softer ones which constitute the charm of her sex. Her heart overflowed
with affectionate sensibility to her family and friends. She watched
over the declining days of her aged mother, and ministered to her sad
infirmities with all the delicacy of filial tenderness. We have seen
abundant proofs how fondly and faithfully she loved her husband to the
last, though this love was not always as faithfully requited.[64] For her
children she lived more than for herself; and for them too she died, for
it was their loss and their afflictions which froze the current of her
blood before age had time to chill it. Her exalted state did not remove
her above the sympathies of friendship. With her friends she forgot the
usual distinctions of rank, sharing in their joys, visiting and consoling
them in sorrow and sickness, and condescending in more than one instance
to assume the office of executrix on their decease. Her heart, indeed,
was filled with benevolence to all mankind. In the most fiery heat of war
she was engaged in devising means for mitigating its horrors. She is said
to have been the first to introduce the benevolent institution of camp
hospitals; and we have seen, more than once, her lively solicitude to
spare the effusion of blood even of her enemies.
It is in these more amiable qualities of her sex that Isabella’s
superiority becomes most apparent over her illustrious namesake,
Elizabeth of England, whose history presents some features parallel
to her own. Both were disciplined in early life by the teachings of
that stern nurse of wisdom, Adversity. Both were made to experience
the deepest humiliation at the hands of their nearest relative, who
should have cherished and protected them. Both succeeded in establishing
themselves on the throne after the most precarious vicissitudes. Each
conducted her kingdom, through a long and triumphant reign, to a height
of glory which it had never before reached. Both lived to see the vanity
of all earthly grandeur, and to fall the victims of an inconsolable
melancholy; and both left behind an illustrious name, unrivalled in the
subsequent annals of their country.
But with these few circumstances of their history the resemblance
ceases. Their characters afford scarcely a point of contact. Elizabeth,
inheriting a large share of the bold and bluff King Harry’s temperament,
was haughty, arrogant, coarse, and irascible; while with these fiercer
qualities she mingled deep dissimulation and strange irresolution.
Isabella, on the other hand, tempered the dignity of royal station
with the most bland and courteous manners. Once resolved, she was
constant in her purposes, and her conduct in public and private life
was characterised by candour and integrity. Both may be said to have
shown that magnanimity which is implied by the accomplishment of great
objects in the face of great obstacles. But Elizabeth was desperately
selfish; she was incapable of forgiving, not merely a real injury, but
the slightest affront to her vanity; and she was merciless in exacting
retribution. Isabella, on the other hand, lived only for others--was
ready at all times to sacrifice self to considerations of public duty,
and, far from personal resentments, showed the greatest condescension and
kindness to those who had most sensibly injured her; while her benevolent
heart sought every means to mitigate the authorised severities of the
law, even towards the guilty.[65]
Both possessed rare fortitude. Isabella, indeed, was placed in situations
which demanded more frequent and higher displays of it than her rival;
but no one will doubt a full measure of this quality in the daughter of
Henry VIII. Elizabeth was better educated, and every way more highly
accomplished, than Isabella. But the latter knew enough to maintain
her station with dignity; and she encouraged learning by a munificent
patronage. The masculine powers and passions of Elizabeth seemed to
divorce her in a great measure from the peculiar attributes of her sex;
at least from those which constitute its peculiar charm, for she had
abundance of its foibles--a coquetry and love of admiration which age
could not chill; a levity most careless, if not criminal; and a fondness
for dress and tawdry magnificence of ornament which was ridiculous, or
disgusting, according to the different periods of life in which it was
indulged. Isabella, on the other hand, distinguished through life for
decorum of manners and purity beyond the breath of calumny, was content
with the legitimate affection which she could inspire within the range
of her domestic circle. Far from a frivolous affectation of ornament of
dress, she was most simple in her own attire, and seemed to set no value
on her jewels but as they could serve the necessities of the state; when
they could be no longer useful in this way, she gave them away to her
friends.
[Illustration: ISABELLA’S CROWN
(From an old print)]
Both were uncommonly sagacious in the selection of their ministers;
though Elizabeth was drawn into some errors in this particular by her
levity, as was Isabella by religious feeling. It was this, combined
with her excessive humility, which led to the only grave errors in the
administration of the latter. Her rival fell into no such errors; and she
was a stranger to the amiable qualities which led to them. Her conduct
was certainly not controlled by religious principle; and though the
bulwark of the Protestant faith, it might be difficult to say whether
she were at heart most a Protestant or a Catholic. She viewed religion
in its connection with the state--in other words, with herself; and she
took measures for enforcing conformity to her own views, not a whit less
despotic, and scarcely less sanguinary, than those countenanced for
conscience’s sake by her more bigoted rival.
This feature of bigotry, which has thrown a shade over Isabella’s
otherwise beautiful character, might lead to a disparagement of her
intellectual power compared with that of the English queen. To estimate
this aright, we must contemplate the results of their respective reigns.
Elizabeth found all the materials of prosperity at hand, and availed
herself of them most ably to build up a solid fabric of national
grandeur. Isabella created these materials. She saw the faculties of her
people locked up in a death-like lethargy, and she breathed into them the
breath of life for those great and heroic enterprises which terminated in
such glorious consequences to the monarchy. It is when viewed from the
depressed position of her early days that the achievements of her reign
seem scarcely less than miraculous. The masculine genius of the English
queen stands out relieved beyond its natural dimensions by its separation
from the softer qualities of her sex; while her rival’s, like some vast
but symmetrical edifice, loses in appearance somewhat of its actual
grandeur from the perfect harmony of its proportions.
The circumstances of their deaths, which were somewhat similar, displayed
the great dissimilarity of their characters. Both pined amidst their
royal state, a prey to incurable despondency, rather than any marked
bodily distemper. In Elizabeth it sprang from wounded vanity, a sullen
conviction that she had outlived the admiration on which she had so
long fed--and even the solace of friendship and the attachment of her
subjects. Nor did she seek consolation where alone it was to be found,
in that sad hour. Isabella, on the other hand, sank under a too acute
sensibility to the sufferings of others. But, amidst the gloom which
gathered around her, she looked with the eye of faith to the brighter
prospects which unfolded of the future; and when she resigned her last
breath, it was amidst the tears and universal lamentations of her people.
It is in this undying, unabated attachment of the nation, indeed, that
we see the most unequivocal testimony to the virtues of Isabella. In
the downward progress of things in Spain, some of the most ill-advised
measures of her administration have found favour and been perpetuated,
while the more salutary have been forgotten. This may lead to a
misconception of her real merits. In order to estimate these, we must
listen to the voice of her contemporaries, the eye-witnesses of the
condition in which she found the state, and in which she left it.
We shall then see but one judgment formed of her, whether by foreigners
or natives. The French and Italian writers equally join in celebrating
the triumphant glories of her reign, and her magnanimity, wisdom, and
purity of character. Her own subjects extol her as “the most brilliant
exemplar of every virtue,” and mourn over the day of her death as “the
last of the prosperity and happiness of their country”; while those
who had nearer access to her person are unbounded in their admiration
of those amiable qualities whose full power is revealed only in the
unrestrained intimacies of domestic life. The judgment of posterity has
ratified the sentence of her own age.[g]
This portrait of Isabella as drawn by Prescott is glowing with an
enthusiasm that is not self-ashamed. It admits frankly many evils, but
in the sweep of eulogy they practically lose their effect and make no
impression on the mind. Yet Prescott’s opinion was based on a thorough
search of the authorities and upon the impartiality of a foreigner
enamoured of a character purely by the good deeds he had learned to
credit to her. It must therefore be received with respect, though it
has, like all such summings-up, provoked severe disagreements. Even a
writer in possession of no new facts could use the same data for violent
denunciation.
The most material attack on Prescott’s opinion is found in the very
positive claim that Isabella’s daughter Juana was not mad, and that her
mother’s treatment of her, founded on religious bigotry with which Juana
did not sympathise, is therefore as cruel in kind as her mercilessness
to the Jews. In the second place the genuineness of Isabella’s last will
was questioned even by contemporaries, but it has never been disproved
conclusively; admitting its authenticity, critics have said that in
withdrawing from the nobility and others the various grants she had made
them in payment of obligations, she committed an outrageous dishonesty or
“posthumous royal plunder.”
Even her simplicity of attire has been denied, and it is said that she
outdid all history in her display when she saw fit to affect splendour.
But this much even Prescott admitted.
As to Juana, Bergenroth[s] is the strongest advocate of her sanity,
though he has not convinced many. He declared that she was simply a
heretic in religion. But even granting her insane, her parents treated
her with “most odious duplicity,” according to Burke,[f] who can still
see why Isabella should not want the hysterical daughter to take the
throne of Castile, and reduce the great Ferdinand to the limits of
Aragon. The proofs of Juana’s insanity we shall consider in the next
chapter.
BURKE’S ESTIMATE OF ISABELLA; HUME’S ESTIMATE
Burke thinks that Isabella has suffered from too much praise of virtues
she did not possess and too much neglect of her truer gifts. He places
the blame for this largely on the fact that she and her husband were
succeeded by foreign rulers, Habsburgs and Bourbons. He ridicules the
tendency to blame Torquemada and others for the blots of cruelty on her
reign, and blames them on the orthodoxy of the time. He makes of her a
creature far different from the gentle Isabella of Prescott’s idea, and
exclaims eloquently:[a]
The real Isabella is one of the most remarkable characters in history.
Not only was she the most masterful, and, from her own point of view, by
far the most successful ruler that ever sat upon the throne of Spain, or
of any of the kingdoms of the peninsula; she stands in the front rank
of the great sovereigns of Europe, and challenges comparison with the
greatest women who have ever held sway in the world.
In one particular she stands alone among the great ruling women, the
conquerors and empresses of history. She is the only royal lady, save,
perhaps, Maria Theresa of Hungary, who maintained through life the
incongruous relations of a masterful sovereign and a devoted wife,
and shared not only her bed but her throne with her husband whom she
respected--a fellow-sovereign whom she neither feared nor disregarded.
To command the obedience of a proud and warlike people is given to few
of the great men of history. To do the bidding of another with vigour
and with discretion is a task that has been but rarely accomplished by
a heaven-born minister. But to conceive and carry out great designs,
with one hand in the grasp of even the most loyal of companions, is a
triumphant combination of energy with discretion, of the finest tact with
the most indomitable resolution that stamps Isabella of Spain as a being
more vigorous than the greatest men, more discreet than the greatest
women of history. Semiramis, Zenobia, Boadicea, Elizabeth of England,
Catherine of Russia--not one of them was embarrassed by a partner on
the throne. The partner of Isabella was not only a husband but a king,
jealous, restless, and untrustworthy. It is in this respect, and in the
immense scope of her political action, that the great queen of Castile is
comparable with the bold empress-king of Hungary, rather than with any
other of the great queens and royal ladies of history.
Isabella revolutionised the institutions of her country, religious,
political, military, financial; she consolidated her dominions,
humiliated her nobles, cajoled her commons, defied the pope, reformed
the clergy; she burned some ten thousand of her subjects, she deported a
million more, and of the remnant she made a great nation; she brooked no
man’s opposition, in a reign of thirty years, and she died in the arms of
the king, her husband! It is open to any man to call her a saint and a
heroine. It is open to any man to call her a bigot and a tyrant. But no
man at least may deny that she was a great queen.[f]
The contradiction between such an opinion and the opinion of Prescott
is not after all a contradiction in facts but in point of view. Both
regard different phases or facets of one great busy soul striding through
a great life on a line which, whether it led through tenderness or
mercilessness, was as nearly straight as any line ever trod by a human
monarch. It is the mockery of history, however, that while great souls
bear great fruits, those fruits are not always of lasting quality, and
time may turn them to poison.
The epitaph that Martin Hume would place above the beautiful memory of
Isabella is sad enough, yet only too just:[a]
“That her objects were high and noble may be conceded, and that she
succeeded in consolidating Spain as no other monarch had done, is true.
But at what a cost! She had, in conjunction with Ferdinand, encouraged
forces of bigotry and religious hate which flooded her realm with blood
and tears, and threw it back in the race of nations for centuries.
Her patronage of Columbus is more than blotted out by her patronage
of Torquemada; her exalted piety is drowned in the recollection of
her treatment of the Jews and the Moriscos. She was a fair embodiment
of the prevailing feeling of her countrymen: that to them all things
are permitted; they can do no wrong, because they are working for and
with the cause of God. We shall see the bitter fruit this feeling bore
later. By the irony, or perhaps the eternal justice of fate, all the
chicanery of Ferdinand, all the wisdom, the labours, and the fervour of
Isabella brought disaster, ruin, and death to Spain. A thousand times
happier would it have been for Castile to have remained isolated in its
corner of Europe, untroubled with the complications of vast European
connections, rather than to have been dragged by Aragon into a position
of responsibility and world-wide ambition for which neither its native
resources nor the extent nor character of its population befitted it. Its
transient grandeur, dearly paid for by long and painful decline, brought
to the Spanish people, even while it lasted, neither peace, happiness,
nor enduring prosperity; and the king and queen who made Spain great were
the worst enemies she ever had.”[t]
FOOTNOTES
[50] Gonzalo de Oviedo[b] lavishes many encomiums on Cabrera, for
his “generous qualities, his singular prudence in government, and
his solicitude for his vassals, whom he inspired with the deepest
attachment.” The best panegyric on his character is the unshaken
confidence which his royal mistress reposed in him to the day of her
death.
[51] See the strong language, also, of Peter Martyr,[d] another
contemporary witness of the beneficial changes in the government.
[52] [It is difficult to reduce these sums to modern values, for the
maravedi has been coined in gold, silver, and the copper alloy or vellon,
and its value has fluctuated bewilderingly from a farthing or quarter of
a cent upwards. Assuming that at this time it was equal to about ½_d_ or
1 cent, Enriquez lost £480 or $2,400; Alva £1,150 or $5,750; Albuquerque
£2,800 or $14,000 annually. It is customary to multiply such sums by 7 to
get the modern purchasing equivalent.]
[53] As a counterpart to the above scene, twelve Christian renegades,
found in the city, were transfixed with canes, _acañavereados_, a
barbarous punishment derived from the Moors, which was inflicted by
horsemen at full gallop, who discharged pointed reeds at the criminal
until he expired under repeated wounds. A number of relapsed Jews were at
the same time condemned to the flames. “These,” says Father Abarca,[i]
“were the _fêtes_ and illuminations most grateful to the Catholic piety
of our sovereigns!”
[54] About two leagues west of Granada.
[55] [Mariana[m] placed the number at nearly 800,000; Graetz[n] at
300,000; Burke[f] at 200,000; Prescott[g] as above at 160,000. The
smallest of the estimates is sufficiently great to overwhelm the powers
of imagination.]
[56] The Portuguese government caused all children of fourteen years
of age, or under, to be taken from their parents and retained in the
country, as fit subjects for a Christian education. The distress
occasioned by this cruel provision may be well imagined. Many of the
unhappy parents murdered their children to defeat the ordinance; and many
laid violent hands on themselves.
[57] He consumed by fire all the Arabic controversial books he could
find, which amounted to five thousand volumes, according to the lowest
estimate; Condé[o] puts it at eighty thousand, which is commonly accepted.
[58] Prescott adds: “The spirit of toleration exhibited by the Moors,
indeed, was made a principal argument against them in the archbishop of
Valencia’s memorial to Philip III. The Mohammedans would seem the better
Christians of the two.”
[59] [There are, however, not wanting documents to show that at times
the great captain was goaded by Ferdinand’s jealous mistreatment into a
serious consideration of deserting to the enemy, or declaring himself
king in Italy.]
[60] [In 1492 Ferdinand had been almost killed by an insane assassin.
Isabella had nursed him with the utmost devotion.]
[61] [Dr. Alfonso Diaz de Montalvo. “He first gave to light the principal
Spanish codes, and introduced a spirit of criticism into the national
jurisprudence.”--PRESCOTT.[g]]
[62] [The _alcavala_ or _alcabala_ was a tax of one-tenth on all sales.
Thus bread was thrice taxed, as wheat, then as flour, and finally as
bread.]
[63] Even Milton, in his essay on _The Liberty of Unlicensed Printing_,
the most splendid argument, perhaps, the world had then witnessed in
behalf of intellectual liberty, would exclude popery from the benefits of
toleration, as a religion which the public good required at all events
to be extirpated. Such were the crude views of the rights of conscience
entertained, in the latter half of the seventeenth century, by one of
those gifted minds whose extraordinary elevation enabled it to catch and
reflect back the coming light of knowledge, long before it had fallen on
the rest of mankind.
[64] [Burke[f] says, “Ferdinand had at least four illegitimate children
by different ladies. Juana, who was offered with a double marriage
portion, in 1489, to the king of Scots. Juan, archbishop of Saragossa,
and two other daughters, both princesses. Raymond de Cardona (the
unworthy successor of Gonsalvo de Cordova in Italy) was also commonly
supposed to be a son of Ferdinand. But the king’s faults were certainly
not those of a voluptuary.” Prescott[g] quotes Marineo[r] on “the queen’s
discreet and most amiable conduct in these delicate matters.”]
[65] She gave evidence of this in the commutation of the sentence she
obtained for the wretch who stabbed her husband, and whom her ferocious
nobles would have put to death without the opportunity of confession and
absolution, that “his soul might perish with his body!” (See her letter
to Talavera.) She showed this merciful temper, so rare in that rough
age, by dispensing altogether with the preliminary barbarities sometimes
prescribed by the law in capital executions.
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