The reduction of Granada had required eleven years, and had drained
the kingdom of all its resources. It is not strange that Isabella
should have had no time to listen seriously to a threadbare enthusiast
asking for money and ships for a strange adventure! To have grown old
and haggard in pressing an unsuccessful project is not a passport
to the confidence of Princes. But the gracious Queen had promised
to listen to him when the war with the Moors was concluded. So now
Columbus sought her out at Granada; and it is a strange scene which
the imagination pictures--a shabby old man pleading with a Queen in
the halls of the Alhambra for permission to lift the veil from an
unsuspected Hemisphere; artfully dwelling upon the glory of planting
the Cross in the dominions of the Great Khan! The cool, unimaginative
Ferdinand listened contemptuously; but Isabella, for once opposing the
will of her "dear lord," arose and said, "The enterprise is mine. I
undertake it for Castile." And on the 3d of August, 1492, the little
fleet of caravels sailed from the mouth of the same river whence had
once sailed the "ships of Tarshish," laden with treasure for King
Solomon and "Hiram, King of Tyre." A union with Portugal--the land
of the Lusitanians and of Sertorius--was all that was now required to
make of the Spanish Peninsula one kingdom. This Isabella planned to
accomplish by the marriage of her oldest daughter, Isabella, with the
King of Portugal. Her son John, heir to the Spanish throne, had died
suddenly just after his marriage with the daughter of Maximilian,
Emperor of Germany.
This terrible blow was swiftly followed by another, the death of her
daughter Isabella, and also that of the infant which was expected to
unite the kingdoms of Portugal and Spain. The succession of Castile
and Aragon now passed to Joanna, her second daughter, who had married
Philip, Archduke of Austria and son of Maximilian, an unfortunate
child who seemed on the verge of madness.
Isabella's youngest daughter, Catherine, became the wife of Henry
VIII. of England. Happily the mother did not live to witness this
child's unhappiness; but her heart-breaking losses and domestic griefs
were greater than she could bear. The unbalanced condition of Joanna,
upon whom rested all her hopes, was undermining her health. The
results of the expedition of Columbus had exceeded the wildest dreams
of romance. Gold was pouring in from the West enough to pay for the
war with the Moors many times over, and for all wars to come. Spain,
from being the poorest, had suddenly become the richest country in
Europe; richest in wealth, in territory, and in the imperishable glory
of its discovery. But Isabella,--who had been the instrument in this
transformation,--who had built up a firm united kingdom and swept it
clean of heretics, Jews, and Moors,--was still a sad and disappointed
woman, thwarted in her dearest hopes; and on the 26th of November,
1504, she died leaving the fruits of her triumphs to a grandson six
years old.
This infant Charles was proclaimed King of Castile under the regency
of his ambitious father, the Archduke of Austria, and his insane
mother. The death of the Archduke and the incapacity of Joanna in a
few years gave to Ferdinand the control of the two kingdoms for which
he had contended and schemed, until his own death in 1516, when
the crowns of Castile and Aragon passed to his grandson, who was
proclaimed Charles I., King of Spain.
A plain, sedate youth of sixteen was called from his home in Flanders
to assume the crowns of Castile and Aragon. Silent, reserved, and
speaking the Spanish language very imperfectly, the impression
produced by the young King was very unpromising. No one suspected the
designs which were maturing under that mask; nor that this boy was
planning to grasp all the threads of diplomacy in Europe, and to be
the master of kings.
In 1517 Maximilian died, leaving a vacant throne in Germany to be
contended for by the ambitious Francis I. of France and Maximilian's
grandson, Charles.
It was a question of supremacy in Europe. So the successful aspirant
must win to himself Leo X., Henry VIII. and his great minister Wolsey,
and after that the Electors of Germany. It required consummate skill.
Francis I. was an able player. The astute Wolsey made the moves for
his master Henry VIII., keeping a watchful eye on Charles, "that young
man who looks so modest, and soars so high"; while Leo X., unconscious
of the coming Reformation, was craftily aiding this side or that as
benefit to the Church seemed to be promised.
But that "modest young man" played the strongest game. Charles was, by
the unanimous vote of the Electors, raised to the imperial throne;
and the grandson of Isabella, as Charles I. of Spain and Charles V. of
Germany, possessed more power than had been exercised by any one man
since the reign of Augustus. The territory over which he had dominion
in the New World was practically without limit. Mexico surrendered to
Cortez (1521) and Peru to Pizarro (1532); Ponce de Leon was in Florida
and de Soto on the banks of the Mississippi; while wealth, fabulous in
amount, was pouring into Spain, and from thence into Flanders.
The history of Charles belongs, in fact, more to Europe than to Spain.
No slightest tenderness seems to have existed in his cold heart for
the land of Isabella, which he seemed to regard simply as a treasury
from which to draw money for the objects to which he was really
devoted. So, in fact, Spain was governed by an absolute despot who was
Emperor of Germany, where he resided, and she visibly declined from
the strength and prosperity which had been created by the wise and
personal administration of Ferdinand and Isabella.
The Cortes, where the deputies had never been allowed the privilege
of debate, had been at its best a very imperfect expression of popular
sentiment; and now was reduced to a mere empty form. Abuses which had
been corrected under the vigilant personal administration of two able
and patriotic sovereigns returned in aggravated form. Misrule and
disorder prevailed, while their King was absorbed in the larger field
of European politics and diplomacy.
The light in which Spain shines in this, which is always accounted
her most glorious period, was that of Discovery and Conquest and the
enormous wealth coming therefrom; all of which was bestowed by that
shabby adventurer and suppliant at the Alhambra, in whom Isabella
alone believed, and who, after enriching Spain beyond its wildest
expectations, was permitted to die in poverty and neglect at
Valladolid in 1506! History has written its verdict: imperishable
renown to Columbus, Balboa, Magellan, and the navigators who dared
such perils and won so much; and eternal infamy to the men who planted
a bloodstained Cross in those distant lands. The history of the West
Indies, of Mexico, and Peru is unmatched for cruelty in the annals of
the world; and Isabella's is the only voice that was ever raised in
defense of the gentle, helpless race which was found in those lands.
The Reformation, which had commenced in Germany with the reign of
Charles V., had assumed enormous proportions. Charles, who was a bigot
with "heart as hard as hammered iron," was using with unsparing hand
the Inquisition, that engine of cruelty created by his grandmother.
And while his captains, the "conquistadors," were burning and
torturing in the West, he was burning and torturing in the East.
His entire reign was occupied in a struggle with his ambitious rival
Francis I., and another and vain struggle with the followers of
Luther.
He had married Isabel, the daughter of the King of Portugal. Philip,
his son and heir, was born in 1527. The desire of his heart was to
secure for this son the succession to the imperial throne of Germany.
To this the electors would not consent. He was defeated in the two
objects dearest to his heart: the power to bequeath this imperial
possession to Philip, and the destruction of Protestantism. So this
most powerful sovereign since the day of Charlemagne felt himself
ill-used by Fate. Weary and sick at heart, in the year 1556 he
abdicated in favor of Philip. The Netherlands was his own to bestow
upon his son, as that was an inheritance from his father, the
Archduke of Austria. So the fate of Philip does not seem to us so very
heart-breaking, as, upon the abdication of his father, he was King
of Spain, of Naples, and of Sicily; Duke of Milan; Lord of the
Netherlands and of the Indies, and of a vast portion of the American
continent stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific!
Such was the inheritance left to his son by the disappointed man
who carried his sorrows to the monastery at St. Yuste, where the
austerities and severities he practiced finally cost him his life
(1558). But let no one suppose that these penances were on account of
cruelties practiced upon his Protestant subjects! From his cloister
he wrote to the inquisitors adjuring them to show no mercy; to deliver
all to the flames, even if they should recant; and the only regret of
the dying penitent was that he had not executed Luther!