A CORDIAL RECEPTION IN SPAIN--COLUMBUS FAVORABLY RECEIVED AT COURT--NEW
INTEREST IN GEOGRAPHICAL DISCOVERY--HIS PLANS FOR THE REDEMPTION OF THE
HOLY SEPULCHRE--PREPARATIONS FOR A FOURTH EXPEDITION.
Columbus was right in insisting on wearing his chains. They became
rather an ornament than a disgrace. So soon as it was announced in Spain
that the great discoverer had been so treated by Bobadilla, a wave of
popular indignation swept through the people and reached the court.
Ferdinand and Isabella, themselves, had never intended to give such
powers to their favorite, that he should disgrace a man so much his
superior.
They instantly sent orders to Cadiz that Columbus should be received
with all honor. So soon as he arrived he had been able to send, to Dona
Juana de la Torre, a lady high in favor at court, a private letter,
in which he made a proud defense of himself. This letter is still
preserved, and it is of the first interest, as showing his own
character, and as showing what were the real hardships which he had
undergone.
The Lady Juana read this letter to Isabella. Her own indignation, which
probably had been kindled by the general news that Columbus had been
chained, rose to the highest. She received him, therefore, when he
arrived at court, with all the more cordiality. Ferdinand was either
obliged to pretend to join with her in her indignation, or he had really
felt distressed by the behavior of his subordinate.
They did not wait for any documents from Bobadilla. As has been said,
they wrote cordially to Columbus; they also ordered that two thousand
ducats should be paid him for his expenses, and they bade him appear at
Grenada at court. He did appear there on the seventeenth of December,
attended by an honorable retinue, and in the proper costume of a
gentleman in favor with the king and queen.
When the queen met him she was moved to tears, and Columbus, finding
himself so kindly received, threw himself upon his knees. For some time
he could not express himself except by tears and sobs. His sovereigns
raised him from the ground and encouraged him by gracious words.
So soon as he recovered his self-possession he made such an address
as he had occasion to make more than once in his life, and showed the
eloquence which is possible to a man of affairs. He could well boast of
his loyalty to the Spanish crown; and he might well say that, whether
he were or were not experienced in government, he had been surrounded by
such difficulties in administration as hardly any other man had had to
go through. But really, it was hardly necessary that he should vindicate
himself.
The stupidity of his enemies, had injured their cause more than any
carelessness of Columbus could have done. The sovereigns expressed their
indignation at Bobadilla’s proceedings, and, indeed, declared at once
that he should be dismissed from command. They never took any public
notice of the charges which he had sent home; on the other hand, they
received Columbus with dignity and favor, and assured him that he should
be reinstated in all his privileges.
The time at which he arrived was, in a certain sense, favorable for
his future plans, so far as he had formed any. On the other hand, the
condition of affairs was wholly changed from what it was when he began
his great discoveries, and the changes were in some degree unfavorable.
Vasco da Gama had succeeded in the great enterprise by which he had
doubled the Cape of Good Hope, had arrived at the Indies by the route of
the Indian ocean, and his squadron had successfully returned.
This great adventure, with the commercial and other results which
would certainly follow it, had quickened the mind of all Europe, as the
discovery by Columbus had quickened it eight years before. So far, any
plan for the discoveries over which Columbus was always brooding, would
be favorably received. But, on the other hand, in eight years since the
first voyage, a large body of skillful adventurers had entered upon the
career which then no one chose to share with him. The Pinzon brothers
were among these; Ojeda, already known to the reader, was another; and
Vespucci, as the reader knows, an intelligent and wise student, had
engaged himself in such discoveries.
The rumors of the voyages of the Cabots, much farther north than those
made by Columbus, had gone through all Europe. In a word, Columbus was
now only one of several skilful pilots and voyagers, and his plans
were to be considered side by side with those which were coming forward
almost every day, for new discoveries, either by the eastern route,
of which Vasco da Gama had shown the practicability, or by the western
route, which Columbus himself had first essayed.
It is to be remembered, as well, that Columbus was now an old man, and,
whatever were his successes as a discoverer, he had not succeeded as a
commander. There might have been reasons for his failure; but failure
is failure, and men do not accord to an unsuccessful leader the
honors which they are ready to give to a successful discoverer. When,
therefore, he offered his new plans at court, he should have been well
aware that they could not be received, as if he were the only one who
could make suggestions. Probably he was aware of this. He was also
obliged, whether he would or would not, to give up the idea that he was
to be the commander of the regions which he discovered.
It had been easy enough to grant him this command before there was so
much as an inch of land known, over which it would make him the master.
But now that it was known that large islands, and probably a part of the
continent of Asia, were to be submitted to his sway if he had it, there
was every reason why the sovereigns should be unwilling to maintain for
him the broad rights which they had been willing to give when a scratch
of the pen was all that was needful to give them.
Bobadilla was recalled; so far well. But neither Ferdinand nor Isabella
chose to place Columbus again in his command. They did choose Don Nicola
Ovando, a younger man, to take the place of Bobadilla, to send him home,
and to take the charge of the colony.
From the colony itself, the worst accounts were received. If Columbus
and his brother had failed, Bobadilla had failed more disgracefully.
Indeed, he had begun by the policy of King Log, as an improvement on the
policy of King Stork. He had favored all rebels, he had pardoned them,
he had even paid them for the time which they had spent in rebellion;
and the natural result was utter disorder and license.
It does not appear that he was a bad man; he was a man wholly unused to
command; he was an imprudent man, and was weak. He had compromised the
crown by the easy terms on which he had rented and sold estates; he had
been obliged, in order to maintain the revenue, to work the natives with
more severity than ever. He knew very well that the system, under which
he was working could not last long. One of his maxims was, “Do the best
with your time,” and he was constantly sacrificing future advantages for
such present results as he could achieve.
The Indians, who had been treated badly enough before, were worse
treated now. And during his short administration, if it may be called
an administration,--during the time when he was nominally at the head
of affairs--he was reducing the island to lower and lower depths. He
did succeed in obtaining a large product of gold, but the abuses of his
government were not atoned for by such remittances. Worst of all, the
wrongs of the natives touched the sensitiveness of Isabella, and she was
eager that his successor should be appointed, and should sail, to put an
end to these calamities.
The preparations which were made for Ovando’s expedition, for the
recall of Bobadilla, and for a reform, if it were possible, in the
administration of the colony, all set back any preparations for a new
expedition of discovery on the part of Columbus. He was not forgotten;
his accounts were to be examined and any deficiencies made up to him; he
was to receive the arrears of his revenue; he was permitted to have
an agent who should see that he received his share in future. To this
agency he appointed Alonzo Sanchez de Carvajal, and the sovereigns gave
orders that this agent should be treated with respect.
Other preparations were made, so that Ovando might arrive with a strong
reinforcement for the colony. He sailed with thirty ships, the size of
these vessels ranging from one hundred and fifty Spanish toneles to one
bark of twenty-five. It will be remembered that the Spanish tonele is
larger by about ten per cent than our English ton. Twenty-five hundred
persons embarked as colonists in the vessels, and, for the first time,
men took their families with them.
Everything was done to give dignity to the appointment of Ovando, and
it was hoped that by sending out families of respectable character,
who were to be distributed in four towns, there might be a better
basis given to the settlement. This measure had been insisted upon by
Columbus.
This fleet put to sea on the thirteenth of February, 1502. It met, at
the very outset, a terrible storm, and one hundred and twenty of the
passengers were lost by the foundering of a ship. The impression was at
first given in Spain that the whole fleet had been lost; but this proved
to be a mistake. The others assembled at the Canaries, and arrived in
San Domingo on the fifteenth of April.
Columbus himself never lost confidence in his own star. He was sure that
he was divinely sent, and that his mission was to open the way to the
Indies, for the religious advancement of mankind. If Vasco de Gama had
discovered a shorter way than men knew before, Christopher Columbus
should discover one shorter still, and this discovery should tend to the
glory of God. It seemed to him that the simplest way in which he could
make men understand this, was to show that the Holy Sepulchre might, now
and thus, be recovered from the infidel.
Far from urging geographical curiosity as an object, he proposed rather
the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre. That is, there was to be a new and
last crusade, and the money for this enterprise was to be furnished from
the gold of the farthest East. He was close at the door of this farthest
East; and as has been said, he believed that Cuba was the Ophir of
Solomon, and he supposed, that a very little farther voyaging would open
all the treasures which Marco Polo had described, and would bring the
territory, which had made the Great Khan so rich, into the possession of
the king of Spain.
He showed to Ferdinand and Isabella that, if they would once more let
him go forward, on the adventure which had been checked untimely by the
cruelty of Bobadilla, this time they would have wealth which would place
them at the head of the Christian sovereigns of the world.
While he was inactive at Seville, and the great squadron was being
prepared which Ovando was to command, he wrote what is known as the
“Book of Prophecies,” in which he attempted to convince the Catholic
kings of the necessity of carrying forward the enterprise which he
proposed. He urged haste, because he believed the world was only to last
a hundred and fifty-five years longer; and, with so much before them to
be done, it was necessary that they should begin.
He remembered an old vow that he had undertaken, that, within seven
years of the time of his discovery, he would furnish fifty thousand
foot soldiers and five thousand horsemen for the recovery of the Holy
Sepulchre. He now arranged in order prophecies from the Holy Scripture,
passages from the writings of the Fathers, and whatever else suggested
itself, mystical and hopeful, as to the success of an enterprise by
which the new world could be used for the conversion of the Gentiles and
for the improvement of the Christianity of the old world.
He had the assistance of a Carthusian monk, who seems to have been
skilled in literary work, and the two arranged these passages in order,
illustrated them with poetry, and collected them into a manuscript
volume which was sent to the sovereigns.
Columbus accompanied the Book of Prophecies with one of his own long
letters, written with the utmost fervor. In this letter he begins, as
Peter the Hermit might do, by urging the sovereigns to set on foot a
crusade. If they are tempted to consider his advice extravagant, he asks
them how his first scheme of discovery was treated. He shows that, as
heaven had chosen him to discover the new world, heaven has also chosen
him to discover the Holy Sepulchre. God himself had opened his eyes that
he might make the great discovery, which has reflected such honor upon
them and theirs.
“If his hopes had been answered,” says a Catholic writer, “the modern
question of holy places, which is the Gordian knot of the religious
politics of the future, would have been solved long ago by the gold of
the new world, or would have been cut by the sword of its discoverer.
We should not have seen nations which are separated from the Roman
communion, both Protestant and Pantheistic governments, coming
audaciously into contest for privileges, which, by the rights of old
possession, by the rights of martyrdom and chivalry, belong to the Holy
Catholic Church, the Apostolic Church, the Roman Church, and after her
to France, her oldest daughter.”
Columbus now supposed that the share of the western wealth which would
belong to him would be sufficient for him to equip and arm a hundred
thousand infantry and ten thousand horsemen.
At the moment when the Christian hero made this pious calculation he
had not enough of this revenue with which “to buy a cloak,” This is the
remark of the enthusiastic biographer from whom we have already quoted.
It is not literally true, but it is true that Columbus was living in the
most modest way at the time when he was pressing his ambitious schemes
upon the court. At the same time, he wrote a poem with which he
undertook to press the same great enterprise upon his readers. It was
called “The End of Man,” “Memorare novissima tua, et non peccabis in
eternum.”
In his letter to the king and queen he says, “Animated as by a heavenly
fire, I came to your Highnesses; all who heard of my enterprise mocked
it; all the sciences I had acquired profited me as nothing; seven years
did I pass in your royal court, disputing the case with persons of great
authority and learned in all the arts, and in the end they decided that
all was vain. In your Highnesses alone remained faith and constancy. Who
will doubt that this light was from the Holy Scriptures, illumining you,
as well as myself, with rays of marvellous brightness.”
It is probable that the king and queen were, to a certain extent,
influenced by his enthusiasm. It is certain that they knew that
something was due to their reputation and to his success. By whatever
motive led, they encouraged him with hopes that he might be sent forward
again, this time, not as commander of a colony, but as a discoverer.
Discovery was indeed the business which he understood, and to which
alone he should ever have been commissioned.
It is to be remembered that the language of crusaders was not then
a matter of antiquity, and was not used as if it alluded to bygone
affairs. It was but a few years since the Saracens had been driven out
of Spain, and all men regarded them as being the enemies of Christianity
and of Europe, who could not be neglected. More than this, Spain was
beginning to receive very large and important revenues from the islands.
It is said that the annual revenues from Hispaniola already amounted to
twelve millions of our dollars. It was not unnatural that the king and
queen, willing to throw off the disgrace which they had incurred from
Bobadilla’s cruelty, should not only send Ovando to replace him, but
should, though in an humble fashion, give to Columbus an opportunity to
show that his plans were not chimerical.