BOOK V

1. MARIE LOUISE OF ORLEANS 411

2. MARIANA OF NEUBURG 485

EPILOGUE 529

INDEX 543

ILLUSTRATIONS

MARY TUDOR, QUEEN OF ENGLAND AND SPAIN. After a Painting

by ANTONIO MORE _Frontispiece_

ISABEL THE CATHOLIC AT THE SURRENDER OF GRANADA. After a _to face page_

Painting by PRADILLA 64

JOAN THE MAD AND THE BODY OF HER HUSBAND. After a

Painting by PRADILLA „ „ 176

ISABEL OF VALOIS. After a Painting by PANTOJA DE LA CRUZ „ „ 288

ISABEL OF BOURBON. After a Painting by VELAZQUEZ „ „ 336

MARIANA OF AUSTRIA. After a Painting by VELAZQUEZ „ „ 368

ISABEL FARNESE. After a Painting by VAN LOO „ „ 536

_The above Illustrations are reproduced from Photographs by J. Lacoste,

Madrid._

BOOK I

ISABEL THE CATHOLIC

CHAPTER I

Proudly reared upon a lofty cliff above the trickling Manzanares, there

stood the granite palace that had gradually grown around the ancient

Moorish fortress of Madrid. Like an eagle from its aerie, its tiny

windows blinked across the tawny plain at the far-off glittering snow

peaks of Guadarrama, standing forth clear and sharp against a cobalt

sky. The Alcazar had been the scene of many strange happenings in the

past; and for a hundred years chivalric splendour had run riot in its

broad patios, with their arcades of slender columns, and in its

tapestried halls, whose carved ceilings blazed with gold and colour.

Frivolous, pleasure-loving, Juan II. of Castile, grandson of John of

Gaunt, had through a long reign outdone in vain ostentation the epic

poems and romances of chivalry that filled his brain, and he himself,

with his attendant Nubian lion slouching by his side, had stalked

through the Alcazar upon the cliff, a figure more picturesque than that

of Amadis or Arthur. His lavish, easy-going son, Henry IV., had followed

in his footsteps, and had made his palace of Madrid a home of dissolute

magnificence and humiliating debauchery, unexampled even in that age of

general decadence.

But rarely had scenes at once so pregnant of evil, and yet so ostensibly

joyous, been enacted in the palace of Madrid as on the 17th March 1462.

Greed, hate and jealousy, raged beneath silken gowns and ermine mantles;

nay, beneath the gorgeous vestments of the great churchmen who stood

grouped before the altar in the palace chapel, though smiling faces and

words of pleasure were seen and heard on every side. For to the King,

after eight years of fruitless marriage, an heiress had been born, and

the court and people of Castile and Leon were bidden to make merry and

welcome their future Queen. Bull fights, tournaments, and cane contests,

the songs of minstrels and plenteous banquets, had for days beguiled a

populace palled with gaudy shows; and now the sacred ceremonies of the

Church were to sanctify the babe whose advent had moved so many hearts

to shocked surprise. The King, a shaggy, red-haired giant with slack,

lazy limbs and feeble face, towered in his golden crown and velvet

mantle over his nine-year-old half-brother Alfonso by his side. The

child, under a canopy, was borne in state up to the font by Count Alba

de Liste, and the stalwart, black-browed primate of Spain, Alfonso

Carrillo, Archbishop of Toledo, who, with three attendant bishops,

performed the ceremony, blessed the baby girl unctuously beneath the

King’s lymphatic gaze, though he had already resolved to ruin her. By

the side of the font stood the sponsors: a girl of eleven and a sturdy

noble in splendid attire, with his wife. All around, the courtiers,

their mouths wreathed in doubtful smiles which their lifted brows

belied, glanced alternately at the little group of sponsors, and at the

noblest figure of all the courtly throng: a young man glittering with

gems who stood behind the King. Tall, almost, as Henry himself, with

flashing dark eyes and jet black hair, a fair skin and gallant mien,

this youth formed with the King, and the group at the font, the elements

of a great drama, which ended in the renascence of Spain. For the young

man was Beltran de la Cueva, the new Count of Ledesma, who, all the

court was whispering, was really the father of the new-born Princess,

and the sponsors, besides the Frenchman Armignac, were the gorged and

spoiled favourite of the King, the all-powerful Juan Pacheco, Marquis of

Villena, and his wife, and the King’s half-sister, Princess Isabel of

Castile. The girl had seen nothing of court life, for up to this time,

from her orphaned babyhood, she had lived with her widowed mother and

younger brother in neglected retirement at the lone castle of Arevalo,

immersed in books and the gentle arts that modest maids were taught; but

she went through her part of the ceremony composedly, and with simple

dignity. She was already tall for her age, with a fair, round face,

large, light blue eyes, and the reddish hair of her Plantagenet

ancestors; and if she, in her innocence, guessed at some of the

tumultuous passions that were silently raging around her, she made no

sign, and bore herself calmly, as befitted the daughter of a long line

of kings.[1]

Seven weeks afterwards, on the 9th May, in the great hall of the palace,

the nobles, prelates, and deputies of the chartered towns met to swear

allegiance to the new heiress of Castile. One by one, as they advanced

to kneel and kiss the tiny hand of the unconscious infant, they frowned

and whispered beneath their breath words of scorn and indignation which

they dared not utter openly, for all around, and thronging the corridors

and courtyards, there stood with ready lances the Morisco bodyguard of

the King, eager to punish disobedience. And so, though the insulting

nickname of the new Infanta Juana, _the Beltraneja_, after the name of

her assumed father, passed from mouth to mouth quietly, public protest

there was none.[2]

Already before the birth of the hapless _Beltraneja_, the scandal of

Henry’s life, his contemptible weakness and the acknowledged sexual

impotence which had caused his divorce from his first wife, had made his

court a battle ground for rival ambitions. Like the previous Kings of

his house, which was raised to the throne by a fratricidal revolution,

and himself a rebel during his father’s lifetime, Henry IV. had lavished

crown gifts upon noble partisans to such an extent as to have reduced

his patrimony to nought. Justice was openly bought and sold, permanent

grants upon public revenues were bartered for small ready payments, law

and order were non-existent outside the strong walls of the fortified

cities, and the whole country was a prey to plundering nobles, who,

either separately or in “leagues,” tyrannised and robbed as they

listed.[3] Feudalism had never been strong in the realms of Castile,

because the frontier nobles, who for centuries pushed back gradually the

Moorish power, always had to depend upon conciliating the towns they

occupied, in order that the new regime might be more welcome than the

one displaced. The germ of institutions in Spain had ever been the

municipality, not the village grouped around the castle or the abbey as

in England, and the soldier noble in Spain, unlike the English or German

baron, had to win the support of townsmen, not to dispose of

agricultural serfs. But when the Moors in Spain had been reduced to

impotence, and a series of weak kings had been raised to the throne as

the puppets of nobles; then when feudalism was dying elsewhere, it

attempted to raise its head in Spain, capturing the government of towns

on the one hand and beggaring and dominating the King on the other. By

the time of which we are now speaking, the process was well nigh

complete; and the only safeguard against the absolute tyranny of the

nobles, was their mutual greed and jealousy.

For years Juan Pacheco, Marquis of Villena, had ruled the King with a

rod of iron. The grants and gifts he had extorted for himself and his

friends made him more powerful than any other force in the land. But

there were those who sulked apart from him, nobles, some of them, of

higher lineage and greater hereditary territories than his; and when the

handsome foot page, Beltran de la Cueva, captured the good graces of the

King and his gay young Portuguese wife, Queen Juana, the enemies of

Villena saw in the rising star an instrument by which he might be

humbled. After the Beltraneja’s birth and christening, honours almost

royal were piled upon Beltran de la Cueva; and Villena and his uncle,

Alfonso Carrillo, Archbishop of Toledo, grew ever more indignant and

discontented. Only a fortnight after the Cortes had sworn allegiance to

the new Princess, Villena drew up a secret protest against the act,

alleging the illegitimacy of the child,[4] and soon open opposition to

King and favourite was declared.

There is no space here to relate in detail the complicated series of

intrigues and humiliations that followed. The King on one occasion was

forced to hide in his own palace from the assaulting soldiery of

Villena. To buy the goodwill of the jealous favourite towards his little

daughter he went so far as to agree to a marriage between the Beltraneja

and Villena’s son;[5] and more humiliating still, in December 1464, he

consented to the inquiry of a commission of churchmen nominated by

Villena and his friends, to inquire into the legitimacy of his reputed

daughter. The inquiry elicited much piquant but entirely contradictory

evidence as to the virility of the King, who, it was admitted on all

hands, delighted in the society of ladies, and aroused the violent

jealousy of the Queen; but, although with our present lights there seems

to have been no valid reason for disinheriting the princess, the

commission was sufficiently in doubt to recommend the King to make the

best terms he could with the rebels. The King’s sister, Princess Isabel,

who at the time lived at Court, was also used as an instrument by Henry

to pacify the league against him. She had been betrothed when quite a

child at Arevalo to Prince Charles of Viana, eldest son of the King of

Aragon, and in right of his mother himself King of Navarre; a splendid

match which, failing issue from Henry and from her younger brother

Alfonso, might have led to the union of all Spain in one realm. But

Charles of Viana had already in 1461 fallen a victim to the hate and

jealousy of his stepmother, Juana Enriquez, daughter of a great

Castilian noble, Don Fadrique, the Admiral of the realm, and Isabel

became to her brother a valuable diplomatic asset. Before the storm of

war burst Henry attempted to wed his sister to Alfonso V. of Portugal,

his wife’s brother, and so to prevent her claims to the Castilian crown

being urged to the detriment of the Beltraneja; but the match had no

attraction for the clever cautious girl of thirteen; for the suitor was

middle-aged and ugly, and already her own genius or crafty councillors

had suggested to her the husband who would best serve her own interests.

So she gravely reminded her brother that she, a Castilian princess,

could not legally be bestowed in marriage without the formal

ratification of the Cortes.

In September 1564 Beltran de la Cueva received the great rank of Master

of Santiago, which endowed him not only with vast revenues, but the

disposal of an armed force second to none in the kingdom, and this new

folly of the King was the signal for revolt. A party of nobles

immediately seized Valladolid against the King, and though the

townspeople promptly expelled them and proclaimed the loyalty of the

city, the issue between the factions was now joined. On the following

day, 16th September, an attempt that nearly succeeded was made to

capture and kidnap the King himself near Segovia. He was a poor,

feeble-minded creature, hating strife and danger, and, though some of

his stronger councillors protested against such weakness, he consented

to meet the revolted nobles, and redress their grievances. In October

Villena, the Archbishop of Toledo, Count Benavente, the Admiral Don

Fadrique, and the rest of the rebels, met Henry between Cabezon and

Cigales, and in three interviews, during their stay of five weeks,

dictated to the wretched King their demands.[6] The King was to dismiss

his Moorish guard and become a better Christian: he was to ask for no

more money without the consent of the nobles, to deprive Cueva of the

Mastership of Santiago, recognise his own impotence and the bastardy of

his daughter, and acknowledge as his heir his half-brother Alfonso, whom

he was to deliver to the guardianship of Villena. On the 30th November

the nobles and the King took the oath to hold the boy Alfonso as the

heir of Spain; and then Henry, a mere cypher thenceforward, sadly wended

his way to Segovia, where the commission to inquire into the shameful

question of his virility was still sitting,[7] and Villena and his

uncle, the warlike Archbishop, were thus practically the rulers of

Spain. But though Henry consented to everything he characteristically

tried to avoid the spirit of the agreement. Beltran de la Cueva was

deprived of the Mastership of Santiago, but he was made Duke of

Alburquerque in exchange for the loss, and the poor little disinherited

Beltraneja was treated with greater consideration than before.

When civil war was seen to be inevitable in the spring of 1465, Henry

carried his wife and child with his sister Isabel to Salamanca, whilst

the Archbishop of Toledo, in the name of the revolted nobles, seized the

walled city of Avila, where within a few days he was joined by Villena

and his friends, bringing with them the Infante Alfonso, who, in

pursuance of the agreement made with the King at Cigales, had received

the oath of allegiance as heir to the crown. From the King it was clear

that the nobles could hope for no more, for he had summoned the nation

to arms to oppose them; but from a child King of their own making, rich

grants could still be wrung, and for the first time since the dying days

of the Gothic monarchy, the sacredness of the anointed Sovereign of

Castile was mocked and derided. In April 1565, at Plascencia, the nobles

swore secretly to hold Alfonso as King; and on the 5th June 1364, on a

mound within sight of the walls of Avila, the public scene was enacted

that shocked Spain like a sacrilege. Upon a staging there was seated a

lay figure in mourning robes, with a royal crown upon its head; a sword

of state before it, and in the hand a sceptre. A great multitude of

people with bated breath awaited the living actors in the scene; and

soon there issued from the city gate a brilliant cavalcade of nobles and

bishops, headed by Villena escorting the little prince Alfonso. Arriving

before the scaffolding, and in mockery saluting the figure, most of the

nobles mounted the platform, whilst Villena, the Master of Alcantara,

and Count Medillin, with a bodyguard, conveyed the Infante to a coign of

vantage some distance away. Then in a loud voice was read upon the

platform the impeachment of the King, which was summed up under four

heads. For the first, it ran, Henry of Castile is unworthy to enjoy the

regal dignity; and as the tremendous words were read the Archbishop of

Toledo stepped forth and tore the royal crown from the brows of the

lifeless doll: for the second, he is unfit to administer justice in the

realm, and the Count of Plascencia removed the sword of state from its

place: for the third, no rule or government should be entrusted to him,

and Count of Benavente took from the figure’s powerless grasp the

sceptre which it held: for the fourth, he should be deprived of the

throne and the honour due to kings, whereupon Don Diego Lopez de Zuñiga

cast the dummy down and trampled it under foot, amidst the jeers and

curses of the crowd. When this was done, and the platform cleared, young

Alfonso was raised aloft in the arms of men that all might see, and a

great shout went up of “_Castilla, Castilla, for the King Don Alfonso_,”

and then, seated on the throne, the boy gave his hand to kiss to those

who came to pay their new sovereign fealty. Like wildfire across the

steppes and mountains of Castile sped the awful news, and Henry in

Salamanca was soon surrounded by hosts of subjects whose reverence for a

sacrosanct King had been wounded by what they regarded as impious

blasphemy.

Both factions flew to arms, and for months civil war raged, the walled

cities being alternately besieged and captured by both parties. Isabel

herself remained with the King, usually at Segovia or Madrid; though

with our knowledge of her character and tastes, she can have had little

sympathy with the tone of her brother’s court. At one time during the

lingering struggle in 1466, Henry endeavoured to win Villena and his

family from the side of rebellion by betrothing Isabel to Don Pedro

Giron, Master of Calatrava, Villena’s brother. The suitor was an uncouth

boor, and that an Infanta of Castile should be sacrificed in marriage

with an upstart such as he was too much for Isabel’s pride and great

ambition. Nothing in the world, she said, should bring her to such a

humiliation; though the King, careless of her protests, petitioned the

Pope to dispense Don Pedro from his pledge of celibacy as Master of a

monkish military order. Isabel’s faithful friend, Doña Beatriz

Bobadilla, wife of Andres Cabrera, High Steward of the King, and

Commander of the fortress of Segovia, was as determined as her mistress

that the marriage should not take place, and swore herself to murder Don

Pedro, if necessary, to prevent it. A better way was found than by Dona

Beatriz’s dagger, for when the papal dispensation arrived, and the

prospective bridegroom set out in triumph to claim his bride, poison cut

short his career as soon as he left his home. Whether Isabel herself was

an accomplice of the act will never be known. She probably would not

have hesitated to sanction it in the circumstances, according to the

ethics of the time; for she never flinched, as her brother did, at

inflicting suffering for what she considered necessary ends.

On the 20th August 1467, the main bodies of both factions met on the

historic battlefield of Olmedo, the warlike Archbishop of Toledo, clad

in armour covered by a surcoat embroidered with the holy symbols, led

into battle the boy pretender Alfonso; whilst the royal favourite,

Beltran de la Cueva, now Duke of Alburquerque, on the King’s side,

matched the valour of the Churchman.[8] Both sides suffered severely,

but the pusillanimity of the King caused the fight to be regarded as a

defeat for him, and the capture of his royal fortress of Segovia soon

afterwards proved his impotence in arms so clearly, that a sort of

_modus vivendi_ was arranged, by which for nearly a year each King

issued decrees and ostensibly ruled the territories held by his

partisans.[9]

At length, in July 1468, the promising young pretender Alfonso died

suddenly and mysteriously in his fifteenth year, at Cardeñosa, near

Avila; perhaps of plague, as was said at the time, but more probably of

poison;[10] and the whole position was at once revolutionised. Isabel

had been in the Alcazar of Segovia with her friends the commander and

his wife when the city was surrendered to the rebels, and from that

time, late in 1567, she had followed the fortunes of Alfonso, with whom

she was at his death. She at once retired broken-hearted to the convent

of Santa Clara in Avila, but not, we may be certain, unmindful of the

great change wrought in her prospects by her brother’s premature death.

She was nearly seventeen years of age, learned and precocious far beyond

her years; the events that had passed around her for the last six years

had matured her naturally strong judgment, and there is no doubt from

what followed that she had already decided upon her course of action.

She was without such affectionate guidance as girls of her age usually

enjoy; for her unhappy widowed mother, to whom she was always tender and

kind, had already fallen a victim to the hereditary curse of the house

of Portugal, to which she belonged, and lived thenceforward in lethargic

insanity in her castle of Arevalo. Isabel’s brother the King was her

enemy, and she had no other near relative: the churchmen and nobles who

had risen against Henry, and were now around her, were, it must have

been evident to her, greedy rogues bent really upon undermining the

royal power for their own benefit; and deeply devout as Isabel was, she

was quite unblinded by the illusion that the Archbishop and bishops who

led the revolt were moved to their action by any considerations of

morality or religion. On the other hand, the rebellious nobles and

ecclesiastics could not persist in their revolt without a royal figure

head. Young Alfonso, a mere child, had been an easy tool, and doubtless

the leaders thought that this silent, self-possessed damsel would be

quite as facile to manage.

They did not have to wait many days for proof to the contrary. The

Archbishop of Toledo was the mouthpiece of his associates. Within the

venerable walls of the royal convent at Avila he set before Isabel a

vivid picture of the evils of her elder brother’s rule, his shameful

laxity of life, his lavish squandering of the nation’s wealth upon

unworthy objects, and the admitted illegitimacy of the daughter he

wished to make his heiress; and the Archbishop ended by offering to

Isabel, in the name of the nobles, the crowns of Castile. The wearer of

these crowns, wrested painfully through centuries of struggle from

intruding infidels, had always been held sacred. The religious

exaltation born of the reconquest had invested the Christian sovereigns

in the eyes of their subjects with divine sanction and special saintly

patronage. To attack them was not disloyalty alone, but sacrilege; and

the deposition of Henry at Avila had, as we have seen, thrilled Spain

with horror. It was no part of Isabel’s plan to do anything that might

weaken the reverence that surrounded the throne to which she knew now

she might succeed. So her answer to the prelate was firm as well as

wise. With many sage reflections taken from the didactic books that had

always been her study, she declared that she would never accept a crown

that was not hers by right. She desired to end the miserable war, she

said, and to be reconciled to her brother and sovereign. If the nobles

desired to serve her they would not try to make her Queen before her

time, but persuade the King to acknowledge her as his heir, since they

assured her that the Princess Juana was the fruit of adultery.

At first the nobles were dismayed at an answer that some thought would

mean ruin to them. But the Archbishop, Carrillo, knew the weakness of

Henry, and whispered to Villena as they descended the convent stairs,

that the Infanta’s resolve to claim the heirship would mean safety and

victory for them. Little did he or the rest of the nobles know the great

spirit and iron will of the girl with whom they had to deal. No time was

lost in approaching the King. He was ready to agree to anything for a

quiet life, and Alburquerque, and even the great Cardinal Mendoza,

agreed with him that an accord was advisable; though it might be broken

afterwards when the nobles were disarmed. Before the end of August all

was settled, and the cities of Castile had sent their deputies to take

the oath of allegiance to Isabel as heiress to the crown. A formal

meeting was arranged to take place between Henry and his sister at a

place called the Venta de los Toros de Guisando, a hostelry famous for

some prehistoric stone figures of undetermined beasts in the

neighbourhood. All was amiable on the surface. Henry embraced his sister

and promised her his future affection, settling upon her the

principality of Asturias and Oviedo, and the cities of Avila, Huete,

Medina, and many others, with all revenues and jurisdictions as from the

beginning of the revolt (September 1464).[11] But by the agreement

Isabel was bound not to marry without the King’s consent, and it is

evident that to this condition Henry and his friends looked for

rendering their concessions voidable.

The intrigues of the two parties of Castile were therefore now centred

upon the marriage of the Princess. Suitors were not lacking. If we are

to believe Hall, Edward IV. of England, before his marriage with

Elizabeth Grey, was approached by the Spaniards, and it is certain that

his brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, was at one time a wooer. Either

of them would have suited Henry of Castile, because it would have

removed Isabel from Spain. A Portuguese would have also been acceptable

to the same party, because Portugal was naturally on the side of the

Beltraneja and her Portuguese mother. But Isabel had other views, and

the only suitors that were entertained seriously were the Duke of

Guienne, the brother of Louis XI., and the young Ferdinand of Aragon,

the son and heir of John II. and nephew of the doughty old Admiral of

Castile, who had stood by the side of the nobles in their revolt. There

was never any doubt as to which of the suitors Isabel favoured. The

Frenchman was reported to her as a poor, puny creature with weak legs

and watery eyes, whilst Ferdinand, a youth of her own age, was praised

to the skies for his manliness, his good looks, and his abilities, by

those whose judgment she trusted. It is impossible to say whether Isabel

as yet fully understood what such a marriage might mean to Spain; but it

is certain that the wicked old John II. of Aragon was quite aware of its

advantages for his own realm.

The house of Aragon, with its domains of Sicily and Naples, and its

secular ambition towards the east, had found itself everywhere opposed

by the growing power of France. The Mediterranean, the seat of empire

for centuries, had no finer havens than those under the sceptre of

Aragon, but the Catalans were harsh and independent with their kings,

and sparing of their money for royal purposes. A poor king of Aragon

could not hope, with his own unaided resources, to beat France on the

Gulf of Lyons, and bear the red and yellow banner of Barcelona to the

infidel Levant. But with the resources in men and money of greater

Castile at his bidding, all was possible; and John II., who had not

scrupled to murder his first-born son for the benefit of his second, and

oust his own children from their mother’s realm of Navarre, was ready to

go to any lengths to bring about the union which might realise the dream

of Aragon.

From Isabel’s point of view, too, the match was a good one, apart from

personal inclination. There is no doubt whatever that she was, even thus

early, determined when her time came to crush the tyrannous nobles who

had reduced Castile to anarchy and the sovereign to a contemptible lay

figure. With her great talent she understood that to do this she must

dispose of force apart from that afforded by any league of nobles in

Castile itself; and she looked towards Aragon to lend her such

additional strength. This fact, however, was not lost upon the greedy

nobles, especially Villena. The turbulent leader of conspiracy already

looked askance at the quiet determined girl who thus early imposed her

will upon her followers, and throwing his power again on the side of the

king he had once solemnly deposed, he seized the mastership of Santiago

as his reward. In a panic at the fear of the Aragonese match, the king

and Villena once more agreed to marry Isabel with the king of Portugal,

Villena and Cardinal Mendoza being heavily bribed by the Portuguese for

their aid.[12] Isabel was at her town of Ocaña at the time, and her

position was extremely difficult and perilous when the Portuguese envoys

came to her with Villena to offer her their king’s hand. As Isabel had

several weeks before secretly bound herself to marry Ferdinand of

Aragon, her reply was a diplomatic refusal to the Portuguese advances;

and Villena, enraged, was disposed to capture her on the spot and carry

her a prisoner to Court. Inconvenient princes and princesses were easily

removed in those days, and Isabel’s danger was great. But she had the

faculty of compelling love and admiration; she was as brave as a lion

and as cunning as a serpent, and the people of Ocaña made it quite

evident to Villena that they would allow no violence to be offered to

her. But clearly something must be done to prevent Isabel from becoming

too strong; and as a last resort after her refusal to entertain the

Portuguese match it was determined to capture her by force of arms. She

was then at Madrigal, and Villena’s nephew, the Bishop of Burgos, bribed

her servants to desert her in her hour of need: the King sent orders to

the townsmen that no resistance was to be offered to his officers; and

Cardinal Mendoza with a strong force marched towards Madrigal to arrest

Isabel. But another archbishop, more warlike than he, Carrillo of

Toledo, was before him. With the Admiral Don Fadrique and a band of

horsemen, he swooped down from Leon and bore Isabel to safety amongst

those who would have died for her, and entered into the great city of

Valladolid after sunset on the 31st August 1469. No time was to be lost.

Envoys were sent in disguise hurrying up to Saragossa, to hasten the

coming of the bridegroom. The service was a dangerous one; for if

Ferdinand had fallen into the hands of the Court party a short shrift

would have been his. But the stake was great, and Juan II. of Aragon and

his son, young as the latter was, did not stick at trifles. One

difficulty, indeed, was overcome characteristically. Isabel was known to

be rigidity itself in matters of propriety; and, as she and Ferdinand

were second cousins, a papal bull was necessary for the marriage. The

Pope, Paul II., was on the side of the Castilian Court, and no bull

could be got from him; but Juan II. of Aragon and the Archbishop of

Toledo carefully had one forged to satisfy Isabel’s scruples.[13]

Whilst one imposing cavalcade of Aragonese bearing rich presents took

the high road into Castile and occupied the attention of the King’s

officers, a modest party of five merchants threaded the mountain paths

by Soria, after leaving the Aragonese territory at Tarazona on the 7th

October. The first day after entering Castile they rode well-nigh sixty

miles; and late at night the little cavalcade approached the walled town

of Osma, where Pedro Manrique and an armed escort were to meet them. The

night was black, and their summons at the gates of the town was

misunderstood: a cry went up that this was a body of the king’s men to

surprise the place; and from the ramparts a shower of missiles flew upon

the strangers below. One murderous stone whizzed within a few inches of

the head of a fair-haired lad of handsome visage and manly bearing, who,

as a servant, accompanied those who wore the garb of merchants. It was

Ferdinand himself who thus narrowly escaped death, and a hurried

explanation, a shouted password, the flashing of torches followed, and

then the creaking drawbridge fell, the great gates clanged open, and the

danger was over.[14] The next day, with larger forces, Ferdinand reached

Dueñas, in Leon, near Valladolid; and four days later, now in raiment

that befitted a royal bridegroom, for his father had made him king of

Sicily, he rode when most men slept to Valladolid. It was nearly

midnight when he arrived, and the gates of the city were closed for the

night, but a postern in the walls gave access to the house in which

Isabel was lodged; and there the Archbishop of Toledo led him by hand

into the presence of his bride, to whom he was solemnly betrothed by the

Archbishop’s chaplain. It was all done so secretly that no inkling of it

reached the slumbering town; and within two hours the youth was in the

saddle again and reached Dueñas long before dawn.[15]

On the 18th October 1469, four days later, all was ready for the public

marriage, and Ferdinand entered the city this time in state, with

Castilian and Aragonese men-at-arms and knights around him. Isabel was

staying at the best house in Valladolid, that of her partisan, Juan

Vivero, and the great hall was richly decked for the occasion of this,

one of the fateful marriages of history, though none could have known

that it was such at the time. The celebrant was the warlike Archbishop

who had been so powerful a factor in bringing it about; and the next

day, after mass, the married pair dined in public amidst the rejoicing

of the faithful people of Valladolid. There was little pomp and

circumstance in the wedding, for the times were critical, the realm

disturbed, and money scarce; but imagination is stirred by the

recollection of the great consequences that ensued upon it, and those

who saw the event, even with their necessarily limited vision of its

effects, must have realised that any splendour lavished upon it could

not have enhanced its importance.

The news of the dreaded marriage filled the King and his court with

dismay. Villena, in close league with Alburquerque and the Mendozas, now

espoused the cause of the Beltraneja,[16] who was declared the

legitimate heiress to the Crown, and betrothed to Isabel’s former

suitor, the Duke of Guienne, in the presence of the assembled nobles, at

the monastery of Loyola, near Segovia. It mattered not, apparently, that

the very men who now swore fealty to Juana, the hapless Beltraneja, had

previously denounced her as a bastard: they wanted a puppet, not a

mistress, as Isabel was likely to be, and they were quite ready to

perjure themselves in their own interests. Isabel was formally deprived

of all her grants and privileges, even of the lordship of her town of

Dueñas, near Valladolid;[17] where she and Ferdinand had kept their

little court, and where their first child had just been born (October

1470), a daughter, to whom they gave the name of Isabel.

Ferdinand could not remain long in idleness, and was soon summoned by

his father to aid him in a war with France, being absent from his wife

for over a year, winning fresh experience and credit both as soldier and

negotiator. In the meanwhile, things were going badly again for the

Beltraneja. Her French betrothed died in May 1472; and some of the

nobles, jealous of the greed of Villena, were once more wavering, and

making secret approaches to Isabel. She had bold and zealous friends in

the Chamberlain Cabrera, who held the strong castle of Segovia, and his

wife, Beatriz de Bobadilla.[18] In the last weeks of 1473, Doña Beatriz

and her husband urged Henry to forgive and receive his sister. She was,

they told him, being persecuted by the Marquis of Villena, and had meant

no harm in her marriage with the man she loved. Henry was doubtful, but

Cardinal Mendoza and Count Benavente had changed sides again, and now

quietly used their influence in Isabel’s favour. A grudging promise was

given by the King, but it was enough for Doña Beatriz; and, disguised as

a farmer’s wife, she set forth from Segovia on a market pad; and alone

over the snowy roads, hurried to carry the good news to the Princess in

the town of Aranda, which had just been surrendered to her by the

townsfolk. A few days afterwards, on further advice from Doña Beatriz,

Isabel, escorted by the Archbishop of Toledo and his men-at-arms,

travelled through the night, and before the first streak of dawn on the

28th December 1473, they were admitted into the Alcazar of Segovia,

where no force but treachery could harm her.

Villena’s son, who, fearing betrayal, had refused to enter the city when

he had come with the King weeks before, and had remained in the

neighbourhood at the famous Geronomite monastery of El Parral, founded

by his father, fled at the news. His father, with Alburquerque and the

Constable of Castile, Count of Haro, at once met at Cuellar, and sent an

insolent order to Henry to expel his sister from Segovia. It came too

late, however. The King, by this time, had met Isabel, who had received

him at the gate of the Alcazar, and professed her love and duty to him.

In a speech full of womanly wisdom,[19] she said she had come to pray

him to put aside anger towards her, for she meant no evil; and all she

asked was that he should fulfil his oath taken at Toros de Guisando, and

acknowledge her as heiress of Castile. ‘For by the laws of God and man,

the succession belonged to her.’ Weak Henry swayed from one side to the

other like a reed in the wind, as either party had his ear; and at last

Isabel took the bold course of sending secretly for Ferdinand, who had

just returned from Aragon. The risk was great, but Isabel knew, at

least, that she could depend upon the Commander of the Alcazar of

Segovia, and Ferdinand secretly entered the fortress on the 4th January

1474. It was a difficult matter for Doña Beatriz to persuade the King to

receive his young brother-in-law; but she succeeded at last, and when

Henry had consented, he did the thing handsomely, and they all rode

together through the city in state, with great show of affection and

rejoicing. On Twelfth Day, Doña Beatriz and her husband gave a great

banquet to the royal party[20] at the Bishop’s palace, between the

Alcazar and the Cathedral. Whilst the minstrels were playing in the hall

after dinner, the King suddenly fell ill. Violent vomiting and purging

seemed to point to poison, and the alarm was great. Prayers and

processions continued night and day, and the unfortunate man seemed to

recover; but, though he lived for nearly a year longer, he never was

well again, the irritation of the stomach continuing incessantly until

he sank from weakness.

In the interim both factions interminably worried him to settle the

succession. Sometimes he would lean to Isabel’s friends, sometimes to

Villena and Alburquerque, but Isabel herself, wise and cautious, knew

where safety alone for her could be found, and took care not to stir

outside the Alcazar of Segovia, in the firm keeping of Cabrera, who

himself was in the firm keeping of his wife, Doña Beatriz. Once in the

summer it was found that the King had treacherously agreed that

Villena’s forces should surreptitiously enter the town and occupy the

towers of the cathedral, whence they might throw explosives into the

Alcazar and capture Isabel on the ground that she was poisoning the

King; but the plan was frustrated, and Henry, either in fear or ashamed

of his part of the transaction, left Segovia to place himself in the

hands of Villena at Cuellar. Greedy to the last, Villena carried the

sick King to Estremadura to obtain the surrender of some towns there

that he coveted; but to Henry’s expressed grief, and the relief of the

country, the insatiable favourite died unexpectedly of a malignant

gathering in the throat on the way, and the King returned to Madrid,

himself a dying man. His worthless life flickered out before dawn on the

12th December 1474, and his last plans were for the rehabilitation of

the Beltraneja. He is said to have left a will bequeathing her the

succession; but Cardinal Mendoza, Count Benavente, and his other

executors, never produced such a document, which, moreover, would have

been repudiated now by the nation at large, passionately loyal, as it

already mainly was, to Isabel.[21]

There was hardly a private or public shortcoming of which Henry in his

lifetime had not been accused. From the Sovereign Pontiff to frank, but

humble subjects, remonstrances against his notoriously bad conduct had

been offered to the wretched King; and at his death the accumulated

evils, bred by a line of frivolous monarchs, had reached their climax.

There was no justice, order or security for life or property, and the

strong oppressed the weak without reproach or hindrance, the only

semblance of law being maintained by the larger walled cities in their

territories by means of their armed burgess brotherhood. But in the

disturbances that had succeeded the birth of the Beltraneja the cities

themselves were divided, and in many cases the factions within their own

walls made them scenes of bloodshed and insecurity. Faith and religion,

that had hitherto been the mainstay of the throne of Castile, had been

trampled under foot and oppressed by a monarch whose constant companions

and closest servitors had been of the hated brood of Mahomet. Nobles

who, for themselves and their adherents, had wrung from the Kings nearly

all they had to give, and threatened even to overwhelm the cities, were

free from taxation, except the almost obsolete feudal aid in spears

which the Sovereign had nominally a right to summon at need. Such men as

Villena, or Alvaro de Luna in the previous reign, with more armed

followers than the King and greater available wealth, were the real

sovereigns of Castile in turbulent alternation, and the final

disintegration of the realm into petty principalities appeared to be the

natural and imminent outcome of the state of affairs that existed when

Henry IV. breathed his last.

All Castile and Leon, with their daughter kingdoms, were looking and

praying for a saviour who could bring peace and security; and at first

sight it would seem as if a turbulent State that had never been ruled by

a woman could hardly expect that either of the young princesses who

claimed the crown could bring in its dire need the qualities desired for

its salvation. Isabel’s popularity, especially in Valladolid, Avila and

Segovia, was great; and at the moment of the King’s death her friends

were the stronger and more prompt, for Villena had just died, the

Beltraneja was but a child of twelve, and the Queen-Mother, discredited

and scorned, was lingering out her last days in a convent in Madrid.[22]

The towns, for the most part, awaited events in awe, fearing to take the

wrong side, and a breathless pause followed the death of the King.

Isabel was at Segovia, and under her influence and that of Cabrera, the

city was the first to throw off the mask and raised the pennons for

Isabel and Ferdinand, to whom, in her presence, it swore allegiance and

proclaimed sovereigns of Castile. Valladolid followed on the 29th

December; whilst Madrid, whose fortress was in the hands of Villena’s

son, declared for the Beltraneja. The nobles shuffled again; moved by

personal interest or rivalry, the Archbishop of Toledo, abandoning

Isabel out of jealousy of Cardinal Mendoza; whilst Alburquerque, the

supposed father of the Beltraneja, joined her opponent, and civil war,

aided by foreign invasion from Portugal, was organised to dispute with

Isabel and her husband their right to the crown.

By rare good fortune the young couple, who were thus forced to fight for

their splendid inheritance, were the greatest governing geniuses of

their age. It is time to say something of their gifts and characters.

They were both, at the time of their accession, twenty-three years of

age, and, as we have seen, their experience of life had already been

great and disillusioning. Isabel’s was incomparably the higher mind of

the two. The combined dignity and sweetness of her demeanour captivated

all those who approached her, whilst her almost ostentatious religious

humility and devotion won the powerful commendation of the churchmen who

had suffered so heavily during the reign of Henry. There is no reason to

doubt her sincerity or her real good intentions any more than those of

her great-grandson, Philip II., a very similar, though far inferior,

character. Like him, she never flinched from inflicting what we now call

cruelty in the pursuance of her aims, though she had no love for cruelty

for its own sake. She was determined that Spain should be united, and

that rigid orthodoxy should be the cementing bond; that the sacred

sovereign of Castile should be supreme over the bodies and souls of men,

for her crown in her eyes was the symbol of divine selection and

inspiration, and nothing done in the service of God by His vice-regent

could be wrong, great as the suffering that it might entail. She was

certainly what our lax generation calls a bigot; but bigotry in her time

and country was a shining virtue, and is still her greatest claim to the

regard of many of her countrymen. She was unmerciful in her severity in

suppressing disorder and revolt; but we have seen the state at which

affairs had arrived in Castile when she acceded to the crown, and it is

quite evident that nothing but a rod of iron governed by a heart of ice

was adequate to cope with the situation. Terrible as was Isabel’s

justice, it entailed in the end much less suffering than a continuance

of the murderous anarchy she suppressed.[23] Her strength and activity

of body matched her prodigious force of mind, and she constantly struck

awe in her potential opponents by her marvellous celerity of movement

over desolate tracts of country almost without roads, riding often

throughout the night distances that appear at the present day to be

almost incredible.

Ferdinand was as despotic and as ambitious as she, but his methods were

absolutely different. He wanted the strength of Castile to push

Aragonese interests in Italy and the Mediterranean; and, like Isabel, he

saw that religious unity was necessary if he was to be provided with a

solid national weapon for his hand. But for Isabel’s exalted mystic

views of religion he cared nothing. He was, indeed, severely practical

in all things; never keeping an oath longer than it suited him to do so,

loving the crooked way if his end could be gained by it, and he

positively gloried in the tergiversation by which throughout his life he

got the better of every one with whom he dealt, until death made sport

of all his plans and got the better of him. His school of politics was

purely Italian; and he cynically acted upon the knowledge, as Henry VII.

of England also did, that the suppression of feudalism doomed the

sovereign to impotence unless he could hoard large sums of ready money

wrung from subjects. In future he saw that kings would be feared, not

for the doubtful feudatories they might summon, but in proportion to the

men and arms they could promptly pay for in cash; and he went one better

than the two Henry Tudors in getting the treasure he saw was needed.

They squeezed rills of money from religious orthodoxy, and divided their

subjects for a century; he drew floods of gold by exterminating a

heterodox minority, and united Spain for the ends he had in view.

Ferdinand and Isabel might therefore challenge the admiration of

subjects for their greatness and high aims, and command loyalty by their

success as rulers; but they cannot be regarded as loveable human beings.

Between two such strong characters as these it was not to be expected

that all would be harmonious at first, and the married life of Isabel

began inauspiciously enough in one respect. There is no doubt that both

Ferdinand and his father intended that the former should be King regnant

of Castile, and not merely King consort. Ferdinand indeed, through his

grandfather of the same name, was the male heir to the Castilian crowns;

and as the Salic law prevailed in Aragon, they assumed that it might be

enforced in Castile. This, however, was very far from Isabel’s view;

reinforced as she was by the decision of the Castilian churchmen and

jurists, and she stood firm. For a time Ferdinand sulked and threatened

to leave her to fight out her battle by herself; but better counsels

prevailed, and an agreement was made by which they were to reign

jointly, but that Isabel alone should appoint all commanders, officers

and administrators, in Castile, and retain control of all fiscal matters

in her realms.

On the 2nd January 1475, Ferdinand joined his wife in Segovia, where a

Cortes had been summoned to take the oath of allegiance to them. Through

the thronged and cheering street he rode to the Alcazar; Beltran de la

Cueva, Duke of Alburquerque, by his side, and nobles, bishops and

burgesses, flocked to do homage to the new sovereigns. Two months later

the faithful city of Valladolid greeted the royal couple with effusive

joy; and a round of festivities drew the lieges and gave time for

adherents to come in. Both parties were mustering forces for the great

struggle; and it needed stout hearts on the part of Isabel and her

husband to face the future. The Archbishop of Toledo was now on the side

of the Beltraneja; and so was Madrid and some of the great nobles of

Andalucia; and, worst of all, Alfonso of Portugal had been betrothed to

his niece the Beltraneja; and was even now gathering his army to invade

Castile and seize the crown. On the 3rd April the new sovereigns held

high festival at Valladolid. Isabel, in crimson brocade and with a

golden crown upon her veiled abundant russet hair, mounted a white

hackney with saddle cloth, housings and mane covered with gold and

silver flowers. She was followed by fourteen noble dames dressed in

parti-coloured tabards, half green brocade and half claret velvet, and

head dresses to imitate crowns; and, as they rode to take the place of

honour in the tilt yard, men said that no woman was ever seen so

beautiful and majestic as the Queen of Spain.[24] Knights and nobles

flocked to the lists, and King Ferdinand rode into the yard mounted upon

his warhorse to break a lance, the acknowledged finest horseman in

Spain. But as he entered the populace stared to see the strange crest he

bore upon his helm, and the stranger motto emblazoned upon his shield.

What could it mean? asked, not without fear, some of those who professed

to be his friends. The crest took the form of a blacksmith’s anvil, and

the motto ran;—

_Como yunque sufro y callo,

Por el tiempo en que me hallo._

I do bear, like anvil dumb,

Blows, until the time shall come.[25]

which we are told was meant as a warning to those at his side that he

knew they were beguiling him with such pageantry whilst they were

paltering with his enemies.

It was a gay though ominous feast; but Isabel could not afford much time

for such trifling, and on the second day she mounted her palfrey and

rode out to Tordesillas, forty miles away, to inspect the

fortifications, and then to make an attempt to win back to her cause the

Archbishop of Toledo. With prodigious activity the young Sovereigns

separately travelled from fortress to fortress, animating followers, and

providing for defence; and Isabel was in the imperial city of Toledo

late in May 1475, when the news came to her that the King of Portugal

had entered Spain with a large army, had formally married the Beltraneja

at Palencia, and proclaimed himself King of Castile.[26] Without wasting

a moment Isabel started on horseback for her faithful fief of Avila,

ninety miles away. She was less than two days on the road, and, though

she had a miscarriage on the way at Cabezon she dared not tarry until

safe within the walls of the city, which she entered on the 28th May.

For some months thereafter the fate of Spain hung in the balance.

Ferdinand strained every nerve, but the forces against him were stronger

than his, and the Archbishop of Toledo with his wealth and following had

reinforced the Portuguese. The invading army lay across the Douro at

Toro, a frontier fortress of Leon of fabulous strength, and Ferdinand

from Valladolid attempted to push them back and was beaten. All Leon,

and the plain of Castile as far as Avila, looked at the mercy of the

invaders. But the Portuguese was slow of action, and at this critical

juncture the splendid courage of Isabel saved the situation.[27]

Summoning Cortes at her city of Medina, the centre of the cloth industry

and the greatest mart for bills of exchange in Europe, she appealed to

their patriotism, their loyalty, and their love. Her eloquent plea was

irresistible. Money was voted without stint, merchants and bankers

unlocked their coffers, churches sold their plate, and monasteries

disinterred their hoards. Aragonese troops marched in, Castilian levies

came to the call of their Queen, and by the end of 1475 Ferdinand was at

the head of an army strong enough to face the invaders. Isabel took her

full share of the military operations. On the 8th January 1476, she rode

out of Valladolid through terrible weather, in the coldest part of

Spain, to join Ferdinand’s half-brother, Alfonso, before Burgos. For ten

days the Queen travelled through the deep snowdrifts before she reached

the camp, to find that the city had already surrendered; and on the

evening of her arrival, in the gathering dusk, she entered the city of

the Cid, to be received by kneeling, silk-clad aldermen with heads bowed

for past transgressions, to be graciously pardoned by the Queen. The

pardon was hearty and prompt; for these, and such as these, Isabel meant

to make her instruments for bringing Spain to heel.

In the meanwhile Ferdinand had marched to meet the invading army of 3000

horse and 10,000 foot which lay across the Douro at Toro. First he set

siege to Zamora, between the invading army and its base, and the King of

Portugal ineffectually attempted to blockade him. Failing in this, the

invaders on the 17th February raised their camp and marched towards Toro

again. They stole away silently, but Ferdinand followed them as rapidly

as possible, and caught up with them twelve miles from Toro, late in the

afternoon, on the banks of the Douro. The charge of the Aragonese upon

the disorganised army on the march was irresistible, and a complete rout

of the invaders ensued, no less than 300 of the fugitives being drowned

in the river in sheer panic. King Alfonso of Portugal fled, leaving his

royal standard behind him, and before nightfall all was over, and the

last hope of the Beltraneja had faded for ever.

A month afterwards Zamora, the almost impregnable fortress, surrendered

to Ferdinand; and then the King marched to subdue other towns, whilst

Isabel laid siege to Toro. The Queen scorned to avail herself of the

privilege of her sex, and suffered all the hardships and dangers of a

soldier’s life. Early and late she was on horseback superintending the

operations, and ordered and witnessed more than one unsuccessful assault

upon the town. At length, after a siege of many months, Toro itself

fell, the last great fortress to hold out, and Isabel rode into the

starving city in triumph. Then indeed was she Queen of Castile, with

none to question her right.

The waverers hastened to join the victorious side, the nobles who had

helped the Beltraneja, even the Archbishop of Toledo, came penitently,

one by one, to make such terms as their mistress would accord; whilst

the Beltraneja herself, unmarried again by an obedient Pope, retired to

a Portuguese convent, and the King of Portugal afterwards laid aside his

royal crown and assumed the tonsure and coarse gown of a Franciscan

friar. Never was victory more complete; and when three years later,

early in 1479, the old King of Aragon, Ferdinand’s father, went to his

account, Isabel and Ferdinand, for ever known as ‘the Catholic kings,’

by grace of the Pope, reigned over Spain jointly from the Pyrenees to

the Pillars of Hercules, one poor tributary Moorish realm, Granada,

alone remaining to sully with infidelity the reunited domains of the

Cross.

But the elements of aristocratic anarchy still existed, especially in

Galicia and Andalucia, where certain noble families assumed the position

of almost independent sovereigns, and at any time might again imperil

the very existence of the State. With the great ambitions of Ferdinand

and the exalted fervour of Isabel to spread Christianity, it must have

been clear to both sovereigns that they must make themselves absolutely

supreme in their own country before they could attempt to carry out

their views abroad. The realms of Aragon offered no great difficulty,

since good order prevailed, although the strict parliamentary

constitutions sorely limited the regal power, and gave to the estates

the command of the purse. In Castile, however, the nobles, eternally at

feud with each other, were quite out of hand, and Isabel’s first

measures were directed towards shearing them of their power for

mischief. All the previous kings of her line—that of Trastamara—had been

simply puppets in the hands of the nobility; she was determined, as a

preliminary of greater things, to be sole mistress in her realm. Her

task was a tremendous one, and needed supreme diplomacy in dividing

opponents, as well as firmness in suppressing them. Isabel was a host in

herself; and to her, much more than to her husband, must be given the

honour of converting utter anarchy into order and security in a

prodigiously short time.

The only semblance of settled life and respect for law in Castile was to

be found in the walled towns. The municipal government had always been

the unit of civilisation in Spain, and the nobility being untaxed, the

Castilian Cortes consisted entirely of the representatives of the

burgesses. With true statesmanship Isabel therefore turned to this

element to reinforce the crown as against lawless nobles. The proposal

to revive in a new form the old institution of the ‘Sacred Brotherhood’

of towns was made to her at the meeting of the Cortes at Madrigal in

April 1476, and was at once accepted. A meeting of deputies was called

at Dueñas in July, and within a few months the urban alliance was

complete. An armed force of 2000 horsemen and many foot-soldiers was

formed and paid by an urban house tax.[28] They were more than a mere

constabulary, although they ranged the country far and wide, and

compelled men to keep the peace, for the organisation provided a

judicial criminal system that effectually completed the task of

punishment. Magistrates were appointed in every village of thirty

families for summary jurisdiction, and constables of the Brotherhood

were in every hamlet, whilst a supreme council composed of deputies from

every province in Castile judged without appeal the causes referred to

it by local magistrates. The punishments for the slightest transgression

were terrible in their severity, and struck the turbulent classes with

dismay. In 1480 a league of nobles and prelates met at Cabeña, under the

Duke of Infantado, to protest against the Queen’s new force of

burgesses. In answer to their remonstrance she showed her strength by

haughtily telling them to look to themselves and obey the law, and at

once established the Brotherhood on a firmer footing than before, to be

a veritable terror to evildoers, gentle as well as simple.

Isabel was no mild saint, as she is so often represented. She was far

too great a woman and Queen to be that; and though for the first two or

three years of her reign diplomacy was her principal weapon, no sooner

had she divided her opponents and firmly established the Holy

Brotherhood, than the iron flail fell upon those who had offended. In

Galicia the nobles had practically appropriated to themselves the royal

revenues, and the Queen’s writ had no power. That might suit weak Henry,

but Isabel was made of sterner stuff than her brother had been, and in

1481 she sent two doughty officers to summon the representatives of the

Galician towns to Santiago, and to demand of them money and men to bring

the nobles to their senses. The burgesses despaired, and said that

nothing less than an act of God would cure the many evils from which

they suffered. The act of God they yearned for came, but Isabel was the

instrument. Forty-seven fortresses, which were so many brigand

strongholds, were levelled to the ground in the province; and some of

the highest heads were struck from noble shoulders. The stake and the

gibbet were kept busy, the dungeons and torture chambers full; and those

of evil life in sheer terror mended their ways, or fled to places were

justice was less strict.

But it is in the suppression of the anarchy at Seville that Isabel’s

personal action is most clearly seen. For years the city had been a prey

to the sanguinary rivalry between two great families who lorded it over

the greater part of Andalucia, the Guzmans and the Ponces de Leon; and

at the time of Isabel’s accession the feud had assumed the form of

predatory civil war, from which no citizen was safe. The cities of the

south were less settled in Christian organisation than those of the

north, and their municipal governments not so easy to combine; and

Isabel, in 1477, determined by her personal presence in Seville to

enforce the hard lessons she had taught the rest of her realms. The

armed escort that accompanied her was sufficient, added to the awe

already awakened by her name, to cow the turbulent spirits of Seville.

Reviving the ancient practice of the Castilian kings, Isabel, alone or

with her husband by her side, sat every Friday in the great hall of the

Moorish Alcazar at Seville, to deal out justice without appeal to all

comers. Woe betided the offender who was haled before her. The barbaric

splendour, which Isabel knew how to use with effect, surrounding her,

gave to this famous royal tribunal a prestige that captured the

imagination of the semi-oriental population of Seville, whilst the

terrible severity of its judgments and the lightning rapidity of its

executions reduced the population to trembling obedience whilst Isabel

stayed in the city. No less than four thousand malefactors fled—mostly

across the frontier—to escape from the Queen’s wrath, whilst all those

who in the past had transgressed, either by plundering or maltreating

others, and could be caught, were made to feel to the full what

suffering was. So great was Isabel’s severity that at last the Bishop of

Cadiz, accompanied by the clergy and notables of Andalucia, and backed

by hosts of weeping women, came and humbly prayed the Queen to have

mercy in her justice. Isabel had no objection. She did not scourge and

slay because she loved to do it, but to compel obedience. Once that was

obtained she was content to stay her hand; and before she left the city,

a general amnesty was given for past offences except for serious crimes.

But she left behind her an organised police and criminal tribunals,

active and vigilant enough to trample at once upon any attempt at

reviving the former state of things.

A more difficult task for Isabel was that of reforming the moral tone of

her court and society at large. The Alcazar of Henry IV. had been a sink

of iniquity, and the lawlessness throughout the country had made the

practice of virtue almost impossible; whilst the clergy, and especially

the regular ecclesiastics, were shamefully corrupt. Isabel herself was

not only severely discreet in her conduct, but determined that no

countenance should be given to those who were lax in any of the

proprieties of life; and it was soon understood by ecclesiastics and

courtiers that the only certain passport to advancement in Castile was

strict decorum. It is probable that much of the sudden reform thus

effected was merely hypocrisy; but it lasted long enough to become a

fixed tradition, and permanently raised the standard of public and

private life in Spain.

In all directions Isabel carried forward her work of reform. The great

nobles found to their dismay, when the Queen was strong enough to do it,

that she, fortified by the Cortes of Toledo, had cancelled all the

unmerited grants so lavishly squandered by previous kings upon them.

Some of those who had been most active in the late troubles, such as the

Dukes of Alburquerque and Alba and the Admiral of Castile, Ferdinand’s

maternal uncle, were stripped almost to the skin. Isabel’s revenue on

her accession had only amounted to 40,000 ducats, barely sufficient for

necessary sustenance; but in a very few years (1482) it had multiplied

by more than twelvefold, and thirty millions of maravedis a year had

been added to the royal income from resumed national grants. To all

remonstrances from those who suffered, Isabel was firm and dignified,

though conciliatory in manner. Her voice was sweet and her bearing

womanly; she always ascribed her measures, however oppressive they might

seem, to her love for the country and her determination to make it

great. Upon this ground she was unassailable; and enlisted upon her side

even those who felt the pinch by appealing to their national pride.

There was no one measure that added more to Isabel’s material power than

her policy towards the religious orders of knighthood. These three great

orders, Calatrava, Santiago, and Alcantara, had grown out of the long

crusade against the Moors; devout celibate soldiers receiving in

community vast grants of territory which they wrested from the infidel.

By the time of Isabel they had grown to be a scandal, for the

grandmasters disposed of revenues and forces as large as those of the

crown, and were practically independent of it. Isabel’s treatment of

them was diplomatic and wise as usual. As each mastership fell vacant

she granted it to her husband; and thus the three most dangerous rivals

to the royal authority were made thenceforward appanages of the crown,

to which the territories were afterwards appropriated.[29]

The Queen’s activity and strength of body and mind must have been

marvellous. We hear of her travelling vast distances, almost incessantly

in the saddle, visiting remote parts of her husband’s and her own

dominions for State business, to settle disputed points, to inspect

fortifications, to animate ecclesiastical or municipal bodies, and to

suppress threatened disorder. No difficulty seemed to dismay her, no

opposition to deflect her from the exalted purpose she had in view. For

it must not be supposed that this strenuous activity was sporadic and

without a central object which inspired it all. In this supreme object

the key to Isabel’s life must be sought. Isabel’s mother was mad: after

the death of her husband she had sunk into the gloomy devotional lunacy

which afflicted in after years so many of her descendants; and in the

impressionable years of Isabel’s youth, passed in the isolated castle of

Arevalo, the whole atmosphere of her life had been one of mystic

religious exaltation.

The Christian Spaniard of Castile had through seven centuries gradually

regained for Christ his lost kingdom by a constant crusade against the

infidel. The secular struggle had made him a convinced believer in his

divine mission to re-establish the reign of the cross on earth. To this

end saints had led him into battle in shining armour, blazing crosses in

the sky had heralded victory to God’s own militia, and holy relics,

miraculously revealed, had served as talismans which ensured success.

Mysticism and the yearning for martyrdom was in the air in Isabel’s

youth, and she, a saintly neurotic, who happened also to be a genius and

a queen, shared to the full the Castilian national obsession. The man

who fostered the growth of this feeling in the young princess at Arevalo

might have been useful in spurring a sluggish mind to devotion; but to

further inflame the zeal of a girl of Isabel’s innate tendency was

unnecessary, and of this alone was he capable. He was a fiery,

uncompromising, Dominican monk, called Tomas de Torquemada. The

Dominicans, centuries before, had been entrusted by the Pope with the

special duty to maintain the purity of the faith, and as its guardians,

spiritual pride and arrogance had always been the characteristic of the

order. Torquemada, as Isabel’s confessor and spiritual tutor, had

abundant opportunities of influencing her, and never ceased to keep

before her the sacred duty imposed upon rulers of extirpating heresy,

root and branch, at any cost. Her own brother Henry had been surrounded

by the hated infidel, the enemy of Christ and Spain. Failure as a king,

ruin as a man, and a miserable death, had been his portion. And so the

lesson was ceaselessly dinned into Isabel’s ear, that no ruler could be

happy or successful who did not smite heretics, infidels and doubters,

hip and thigh, for the glory of God. The Moor, she was told, still

defiled in Granada the sacred soil of Spain, suffered by an unworthy

Christian king to linger for the sake of the paltry tribute paid.

To establish the rule of Christ on earth, which she was taught was her

sacred duty, Isabel knew that a strong weapon was needed. Only a united

and centralised Spain could give her that, and Spain must be unified

first of all. Her marriage with Ferdinand was a great step in advance;

her suppression of the nobles and the masterships of the orders another,

the submission of the country to her will and law a third, the increase

of her revenues a fourth; but a greater than all was the reawakening in

the breasts of all Spaniards the mystic exaltation and spiritual pride

that gave strength to their arms against the Moor in the heroic days of

old. The character of the Spanish people, and the state of the public

mind at the time, made it easy to stir up the religious rancour of the

majority against a minority already despised and distrusted. Throughout

Spain there were numerous families of the conquered race nominally

Christians, but yet living apart in separate quarters, and unmixed in

blood with their neighbours. They were, as a rule, industrious and

well-to-do handicraftsmen and agriculturists, whose artistic traditions

and skill gave them the monopoly in many profitable and thriving

avocations. The Christian Spaniard had not, as a rule, developed similar

qualities, and were naturally jealous of the so-called new Christians

who lived with them, but were not of them.

There was, however, at first but little open enmity between these two

races of Spaniards, though distrust and dislike existed. It was

otherwise in the case of the Jews. They, during the centuries of Moorish

rule, had grown rich and numerous, and had in subsequent periods almost

monopolised banking and financial business throughout Spain, marrying in

many cases into the highest Christian families. As farmers of taxes and

royal treasurers they had become extremely unpopular, especially in

Aragon; and although, for the most part, professed Christians, they were

eyed with extreme jealousy by the people at large, and on many occasions

had been the victims of attack and massacre in various places.[30]

Nevertheless, so far as can be seen, the first steps towards religious

persecution by Isabel and her husband do not appear to have been

prompted, although they may have been strengthened, by this feeling.

There had for centuries existed in Aragon and Sicily an Inquisition for

the investigation of cases of heresy. It was a purely papal institution,

and its operations were very mild, though extremely unpopular. In

Castile, the papal Inquisition had never been favoured by rulers, who

were always jealous of the interference of Rome, and at the time of

Isabel’s accession it had practically ceased to exist.

When the sovereigns were holding Court at Seville in 1477, a Sicilian

Dominican came to beg for the confirmation of an old privilege, giving

to the Order in Sicily one-third of the property of all the heretics

condemned there by the Inquisition. This Ferdinand and Isabel consented

to, and the Dominican, whose name was Dei Barberi, suggested to

Ferdinand that as religious observance had grown so lax under the late

King Henry, it might be advisable to introduce a similar tribunal into

Castile. Ferdinand’s ambitions were great. He wanted to win for

Barcelona the mastership of the Mediterranean and the reversion of the

Christian Empire of the East, and, as a preliminary, to clear Spain

itself of the taint of dominant Islam at Granada. He understood that

times had changed, and that the nerve of war was no longer feudal aids,

but the concentration in the hands of the King of the ready money of his

subjects. The people who had most of the ready money in Spain were the

very people whose orthodoxy was open to attack, and he welcomed a

proposal that might make him rich beyond dreams.

Isabel was not greedy for money as her husband was: she was too much of

a religious mystic for that; but to spread the kingdom of Christ on

earth, to crush His enemies and raise His cross supreme in the eyes of

men, seemed to promise her the only glory for which she yearned. By her

side was her confessor Torquemada, the Dominican Ojeda, and the Papal

Nuncio, all pressing upon her that to strike at heresy in her realms was

her duty. So Isabel took the step they counselled, and begged the Pope

for a bull establishing the Inquisition in Castile. The bull was granted

in September 1478, but no active steps were taken for nearly two years.

In 1480, Isabel and her husband were again in Seville, and the

Dominicans were ceaseless in their exhortations to them to suppress the

growing scandal of obstinate Judaism. The complaints of the clergy

against the Jews were such as they knew would be supported by the

populace. Amongst other things, they said that the Jews bought up and

ate all the meat in the market for their Sabbath, and there was none

left for Christians on Sunday;[31] that they were hoarding coin to such

an extent that there was a lack of currency; that they donned rich

finery and ornaments only fit for their betters, and so on.[32]

The various modern apologists of Isabel have striven to minimise her

share in the establishment of the dread tribunal that sprang out of

these and similar complaints. There seems to me no reason for doing so:

she herself probably considered it a most praiseworthy act, and her only

hesitation in the matter was caused by her dislike of strengthening the

papal power over the church of Castile.[33] There could have been no

repugnance in her mind to punishing, however severely, those whom she

looked upon as God’s enemies, and consequently unworthy of the

privileges of humanity. Ferdinand added his persuasion to the clamours

of the churchmen; and from Medina del Campo, Isabel, in September 1480,

commissioned two Dominicans to act as Inquisitors, and to establish

their tribunal at Seville.

The Jews of Seville took alarm at once, and large numbers of them fled

from the city to the shelter of some of the neighbouring great nobles,

who looked with dislike at this new development of priestly power. A

decree of the sovereign’s at once forbade all loyal subjects to withhold

suspected heretics from their accusers, and those fugitive Jews who

could escape sought the safety of Moorish Granada. In the first days of

1481, the Inquisition got to work, striking at the highest first, and

before the end of the year 2000 poor wretches were burnt in Andalusia

alone.[34] All Spain protested against it. Deputations from the chief

towns came and demanded the abolition of a foreign tribunal over

Spaniards. The Aragonese, rough and independent as usual, resorted to

violence, and hunted the Inquisitors, whilst in Old Castile the tribunal

could only sit, in many places, surrounded by the Queen’s soldiers. But

Isabel’s heart was aflame with zeal, and Ferdinand, with gaping coffers,

was rejoicing at the showers of Jewish gold that flowed to him; and all

remonstrance was in vain. The Pope himself soon took fright at the

severity exercised, and threatened to withdraw the bull, but Ferdinand

silenced him with a hint that he would make the Inquisition an

independent tribunal altogether, as later it practically became, and

thenceforward the horrible business went on unchecked until Spain was

seared from end to end, and independent judgment was stifled for

centuries in blood and sacrificial smoke.

The heartless bigot Torquemada, Isabel’s confessor, was appointed

Inquisitor-General in 1483, and he, the most insolent, because the

humblest, man in Spain, became the greatest power in the land, master of

Isabel’s conscience and feeder of Ferdinand’s purse. Isabel’s Spanish

biographers continue to assert that she was tireless in her endeavours

to soften the rigour of her own tribunal, and to intercede for her ‘dear

Castilians.’ There is not a scrap of real evidence known to prove that

she did so, and certainly her contemporaries did not believe it.[35] Her

administration, however, had already been extremely successful. Peace

and order reigned, the pride of Spaniards, which she so sedulously

fostered, had been worked up to a high pitch, the Queen herself was

personally popular, in consequence of her dignity, her activity, and her

patriotism; and the urban populations, who had so greatly aided her, and

were now so powerful, dreaded to cause disturbance that might have

thrown the country again into the clutches of the nobles. Terrible,

therefore, as was the action of the Holy Office, acquiesced in by the

Queen, there were many reasons why no combined opposition to it in

Castile was offered, although for the first years of its existence it

was bitterly hated.

To the Queen during these first few years of ceaseless activity, no

other child had been born but the Infanta Isabel, the first fruit of her

marriage in 1470. The constant long journeys on horseback, the hardships

and risk entailed by her work, thus for eight years prevented the birth

of a male heir. But during Isabel’s stay at Seville, on the 30th June

1478, the prayed for Prince of Asturias, Juan, was born. Ferdinand was

away in the north at the time, but all the pomp and splendour, which

Isabel knew so well how to use, heralded the birth of the Prince. On the

15th July the Queen was sufficiently well to ride in state to the

cathedral from the Moorish Alcazar where she lived, and to present her

first-born son to the Church. Through the narrow, tortuous lanes of the

sunny city, packed with people, Isabel rode on a bay charger; her

crimson brocade robe, all stiff with gold embroidery, trailing almost to

the ground, over the petticoat covered with rich pearls. Her saddle, we

are told, was of gold, and the housings black velvet, with bullion lace

and fringe. Ferdinand’s base brother Alfonso, and his kinswoman the

Duchess of Vistahermosa, followed close behind, and the Queen’s bridle

was held by the Constable of Castile and Count Benavente. The merry

music of fife, tabor, and clarion preceded the royal party; and behind

there came on foot the nobles and grandees, and the authorities of the

city. The baby Prince was borne in the arms of his nurse, seated upon a

mule draped with velvet, and embroidered with the scutcheons of Castile,

Leon, and Aragon, and led by the Admiral of Castile. At the high altar

of the famous Mudejar Cathedral, Isabel solemnly devoted her child to

the service of God, and then, with splendid largess to all and sundry,

she returned to the palace.[36]

Isabel was unremitting always in the performance of her religious

duties, and wherever she stayed, endowments for purposes of the Church

commemorated her visit. Her humility and submission to priests and nuns

is cited with extravagant praise by her many ecclesiastical eulogists,

and they tell the story of how, when Father Talavera first succeeded

Torquemada as her confessor, he bade her kneel at his feet like an

ordinary penitent. When she reminded him that monarchs always sat by the

side of the confessor, as she had always done before, he rebuked her by

saying that his seat was the seat of God, before whom all kneeled

without distinction; and the Queen thenceforward kept upon her knees

before the priest, whom she honoured thenceforward for what in our days

we should consider unpardonable arrogance.

There was little of repose for Isabel, even after the birth of her

child. To Seville came the news a few months afterwards that the old

soldier Archbishop of Toledo and the Pachecos had once more persuaded

Alfonso of Portugal to strike a blow for his niece and wife the

Beltraneja. Raising what troops she could, Isabel rode through

Estremadura at the head of her force, determined to end for good claims

that she thought had already been disposed of. Ferdinand was in Aragon,

where, his father having just died, his presence could not be dispensed

with; but Isabel was undismayed. In vain her councillors begged her to

refrain from undertaking the campaign in person. The country was

devastated by famine and war, they said; pestilence prevailed in the

towns, and the raids of the Portuguese and rebels would expose her to

great danger. ‘I did not come hither,’ Isabel replied, ‘to shirk danger

and trouble, nor do I intend to give my enemies the satisfaction, nor my

subjects the chagrin, to see me do so, until we end the war we are

engaged upon or make the peace we seek.’[37] Isabel, in command of the

Castilians, finally crushed the Portuguese at the battle of Albuera; and

then, after reducing to submission the rebel noble fortresses, she

negotiated a peace with Portugal and France at Alcantara, by which both

powers were compelled to recognise her as Queen of Spain. Suppressing

revolt, deciding disputes, and punishing transgressions on her way,

Isabel then rode to Toledo, where Ferdinand joined her, and there her

third child, Joan, was born, in November 1479.

CHAPTER II

Castile and Aragon, now being indissolubly united, and internal peace

secured, it was time for the sovereigns to prepare for the execution of

the great designs that had respectively moved them to effect what they

had done. These designs were to some extent divergent from each other.

Ferdinand’s main object was to cripple his rival, France, in the

direction of Italy, and assume for Aragon the hegemony of the

Mediterranean and of the sister Peninsula, of which Sicily already

belonged to him and Naples to a member of his house. Castile, on the

other hand, had for centuries cultivated usually harmonious relations

with France, the frontiers not being conterminous except at one point,

the mouth of the Bidasoa; and the ambitions of Castile were

traditionally towards the absorption of Portugal, the domination of the

coast of North Africa, and the spread of the Christian power generally

to the detriment of Islam, its secular enemy. Its own Moorish

populations were as yet but imperfectly assimilated, and the existence

of the realm of Granada in the Peninsula kept hopes alive in the breasts

of the Castilian Moors. The presence of many thousands of potential

enemies in the midst of Christian Spain, and the wealth and number of

the Jews, who, in a struggle, would probably side with the Moors,

undoubtedly influenced greatly in causing the severity of the

Inquisition against them and their subsequent expulsion. The first step,

therefore, to be taken towards the objects either of Aragon and Castile,

was to reduce to impotence any Moorish power in Spain itself that might

cause anxiety to the Christian rulers whilst they were busy upon plans

abroad, though this step was mainly important to Castile rather than to

Aragon.

This was the state of affairs in the beginning of 1481. The Castilians

were subdued and prepared to do the bidding of their Queen, but the

Catalans and Aragonese, rough and independent, had to be conciliated

before they could be depended upon to give their aid to an object

apparently for the advantage of Castile. Isabel had summoned a Cortes of

her realms to the imperial city of Toledo late in 1480, to take the oath

of allegiance to her infant son Juan as heir to the throne: and thence,

with a splendid train, she rode to visit for the first time her

husband’s kingdoms, to receive their homage as joint sovereign.

Ferdinand met his wife at Calatayud in April 1481, and there, before the

assembled Cortes of Aragon, the oath of allegiance to the sovereigns and

their heir was taken. The Aragonese were rough-tongued and jealous, and

even more so the Catalans, dreading the centralising policy of Isabel

and their assimilation by Castile; and throughout Ferdinand’s dominions

Isabel was forced to hear demands and criticisms to which the more

amenable Cortes of Castile had not accustomed her. It was gall and

wormwood to her proud spirit that subjects should haggle with monarchs,

and in Barcelona she turned to her husband, when the Cortes had refused

one of his requests, and said: ‘This realm is not ours, we shall have to

come and conquer it.’ But Ferdinand knew his subjects better than she,

and gradually made them understand that in all he did he had their

interests in view. He was forced, indeed, by circumstances and his wife

to allow precedence to Castilian aims, the better to compass those of

Aragon.

The turbulent Valencians were being won to benevolence by the presence

of their King and the smiles of his wife in the last days of 1481, when

the news reached the sovereigns that the pretext they needed for their

next great step had been furnished by the Moors of Granada. From the

fairy palace of the Alhambra for the previous two hundred and fifty

years, the Kings of Granada had ruled a territory in the South of

Andalucia, running from fifteen miles north of Gibraltar along the

Mediterranean coast two hundred and twenty miles to the borders of

Murcia, and including the fine ports of Malaga, Velez, and Almeria. The

industry of the people and the commerce of their important seaboard,

facing the African land of their kinsmen, made the population prosperous

and their standard of living high; but a series of petty despots,

successively reaching the throne by usurpation and murder, had enabled

the Kings of Castile, by fomenting the consequent discord, to reduce

Granada to the position of a tributary. When Isabel succeeded, and the

treaties between Castile and Granada had to be renewed in 1476,

Ferdinand had demanded the prompt annual payment of the tribute in gold.

Muley Abul Hassan had paid no tribute to Isabel’s brother, and intended

to pay none to her. ‘Tell the Queen and King of Castile,’ he replied,

‘that steel and not gold is what we coin in Granada.’ From the day they

received the message Isabel and Ferdinand knew that they could not wield

a solid Spain to their ends until the Cross was reared over the Mosque

of Granada. When, therefore, all the rest of Spain was pacified, and the

sovereigns were at Valencia at Christmas 1481, the pretext for action

came, not unwelcome, at least for Isabel. The Moors of Granada had swept

down by night and captured the Christian frontier fortress of

Zahara.[38] Isabel and her husband had never ceased since their

accession to prepare for the inevitable war. The civil conflict they had

passed through had proved the superiority for their purpose of paid

troops of their own over feudal levies, and already the organisation of

a national army existed. The Royal Council appointed by Isabel had

brought from France, Italy, and Germany the best skilled engineers and

constructors of the recently introduced iron artillery; great quantities

of gunpowder had been imported from Sicily, and improved lances, swords,

and crossbows had been invented and manufactured in Italy and Spain.

The troops that had been expelled from Zahara, and those that at first

revenged the insult by the capture and sack of the important Moorish

fortress of Alhama, between Malaga and Granada, were the vassals of the

princely Andalucian nobles, the Duke of Medina Sidonia and the Marquis

of Cadiz; but the sovereigns, hurrying from Valencia to the Castilian

town of Medina del Campo, set about organising the coming war with

national forces. The efficiency and foresight shown were extraordinary,

and, up to that time, unexampled. Nothing seems to have been forgotten

or left to chance; flying hospitals, field ambulances, and army

chaplains, testify to Isabel’s personal influence. Whatever may have

been the case with Ferdinand, his wife approached the struggle as to a

sacred crusade. Torquemada, though not yet Inquisitor-General, was busy

with the Holy Office, and had just been replaced as Isabel’s confessor

by the saintly Father Talavera, whose influence over the Queen was

greater still; and whose zeal for the conquest of Granada for the cross

was a consuming passion, only comparable in its strength with his proud

humility.[39]

The kingdom of Granada was girt around with mountain fortresses of

immense strength upon the spurs and peaks of the Sierra Nevada; and in

the midst stood the lovely city, as it stands to-day, with its twin

fortresses upon their sister cliffs, the Alhambra and the Albaycin, each

capable of housing an army. The task of reducing the mountain realm was

a great one, for the outlying fortresses had to be subdued separately

before the almost impregnable capital could be attacked, whilst the long

line of coast had to be watched and blockaded to prevent, if possible,

succour being sent from Africa by kinsmen across the sea. In the first

days of March 1482, the news of the capture of Alhama by the Andalucian

nobles, and the awful slaughter of the women and children, as well as

the men, who so heroically defended it, reached Isabel at Medina; and

the splendid exploit and vast booty won uplifted all Castilian hearts.

It is said by many historians, but is not true, that Isabel herself set

out barefooted on a pilgrimage to Compostella, to thank Santiago for the

victory. But though she had no time for this, she bade the Church

throughout Castile sing praises for the boon vouchsafed to the Christian

cause. But then came tidings less bright. The Moorish King, with all his

force of 80,000 men, was besieging the Marquis of Cadiz in Alhama: the

water supply had been cut off, food was scarce, and the Christians

surrounded. Within a week of the news Ferdinand was on the march with

his army, and the Duke of Medina Sidonia, with his 40,000 armed

retainers, was rapidly approaching Alhama to succour his ancient foe the

Marquis of Cadiz. The slaughter of Moors in the constant unsuccessful

assaults upon Alhama had been immense; the King, Muley Abul Hassan, had

bitter domestic enemies, and daring not to face the approaching

Christians, he raised the siege and returned to Granada. The rich booty

taken in the town by the original captors aroused the cupidity of the

relieving force, and dissensions between the Christians arose over the

division of the spoil. Medina Sidonia and his army marched away, and

again Muley Abul Hassan beleaguered Alhama, with artillery this time,

and a powerful army. Once more deeds of unheard of gallantry and

hardihood were done by the Moorish chivalry; but, as before,

unavailingly. By the end of March Ferdinand’s great host, with 40,000

beasts of burden carrying supplies and munitions, approached, and again

Muley Abul Hassan retreated to his disaffected capital. It was a blow

from which the Moorish power in Spain never recovered, and thenceforward

Granada fought hopelessly with her back to the wall.

Into the fertile vega of Granada swept Ferdinand’s host in the midsummer

of 1482, carrying devastation and ruin in its van. From the heights of

Granada the Moors, with impotent hate and rage, saw their blazing

villages, their raided flocks and herds, their murdered countrymen, and

desolated fields; and yet within the fair city treason and civil discord

numbed all hearts, and paralysed the warrior’s arms. For Muley Abul

Hassan was fighting foes within his own harem more deadly than the

Christians who raided beneath his walls; and a palace revolution led by

his wife and his undutiful son, Abu Abdalla (Boabdil), was already

plotting his downfall. To secure his position in the vega of Granada, it

was necessary for Ferdinand to capture the frowning fortress that

crowned the height of Loja, and commanded the pass into Castile. It had

long been a thorn in the Christian flesh, and now Ferdinand, with all

the chivalry of Spain, were pledged to capture it at any cost. Though

brave and cool, Ferdinand was no great tactician, and was easily

outwitted by the wily Moors, who led his forces into ambush and utterly

routed the Christian host. Panic and flight ensued, with the loss of

baggage, standards, and arms; and Ferdinand himself escaped only by the

efforts of a small devoted band of Castilian knights. The ruin was

complete, and when Ferdinand joined his heroic wife at the ancient

Moorish Alcazar of Cordova, even her faith and steadfastness for a time

wavered.

But not for long. Talavera, Torquemada, and Mendoza, the Cardinal of

Spain, with fiery zeal for the extirpation of heresy, were at her side.

Not for territory alone, but to fix God’s realm on earth freely, must

sacrifice be made and final victory won: and, though Ferdinand with

longing eyes towards his own aims, yearned to use his arms against

France for the recapture of his own provinces of Rosellon and Cerdagne,

and tried to persuade his wife that though ‘her war might be a holy one,

his against the French would be a just one,’ Isabel had her way, and

with unflinching zeal set about organising to snatch conquest from

defeat.[40] Muley Abul Hassan, expelled from his city of Granada, but

holding his own in Malaga and the south, had been succeeded in his

capital by the weak, rebellious Boabdil. The old King and his brother,

El Zagal, were still fighting doughtily, and even successfully raiding

the Christian land near Gibraltar; and Boabdil, jealous of their

activity, determined to sally from Granada and strike a blow for his

cause, at the instigation of his masculine mother. At the head of 9000

Moors, all glittering and confident, the Prince sallied out of Granada

in April 1483, and, collecting the veteran guard of Loja on the way,

marched towards Cordova. The Moors were undisciplined, loaded with loot,

and led by a fool, when they approached the Christian Cordovese city of

Lucena, and their ostentatious march into Christian land had been

heralded. Their attack upon the city was repulsed with great valour, and

whilst they were meditating a renewed assault, a relieving force of

Christians approached. The Moors retired, but were overtaken and utterly

routed. Boabdil the King, garbed in crimson velvet mantle heavy with

gold, and armed in rich damascened steel, was singled out from amongst

the mob of fugitives, captured by a Castilian man-at-arms, and borne in

triumph by the Christian chief, the Count of Cabra, to the strong castle

of Porcuna, there to await the sovereign’s decision as to his fate.

Isabel and her husband were far away at the time; for, after the birth

of her fourth child, Maria, in the previous summer of 1482, she and

Ferdinand had travelled north to Madrid to meet the Castilian Cortes,

and ask for supplies for carrying on the war. Thence, on a more

questionable errand, they had moved further north. The little mountain

realm of Navarre on the Pyrenees, a buffer state between Castile and

France, belonged to the descendants of Ferdinand’s father by his first

wife. The desire of the Aragonese King to unite Navarre to Ferdinand’s

kingdoms, had removed by murder one Navarrese sovereign after another,

until now, in 1482, the beautiful young half French Francis Phœbus was

King. He was one more obstacle to be removed; for after him a sister

would come to the throne, and she might be easily dealt with: so poison

ended the budding life of Francis Phœbus—by Ferdinand’s orders, it was

credibly said at the time;[41] and Ferdinand and his wife hurried up to

Vitoria, bent, if possible, upon adding one more crown to the brows of

the Queen of Castile.[42] It was a cynically clever move of Ferdinand’s,

for it would bring Castile in touch with France, and thus play into the

hands of the Aragonese, but the threatening attitude of Louis XI.

convinced Ferdinand that he must wait for a more fitting opportunity,

which he did for thirty years, when Isabel had long been dead. When the

news came to Tarazona, where the Cortes of Aragon were in session, that

Boabdil was captured, Ferdinand hurried south to Cordova to reap the

fruits of victory, leaving Isabel in Castile.

In the great hall of the Alcazar of Cordova, Ferdinand sat in council in

August 1483, surrounded by the soldiers who in his absence had overrun

the vega, and two Moorish embassies claimed audience. One came from the

old King, Muley Abul Hassan, in Malaga, begging with heavy bribes the

surrender of his rebellious son Boabdil. This embassy Ferdinand refused

to receive; but the other from the Queen Zoraya, Boabdil’s mother, with

offers of ransom, submission, and obedience, was admitted. Ferdinand was

the craftiest man of his age, and saw that the imprisonment of Boabdil

gave unity to the Granadan Moors, whilst his presence amongst them would

again be the signal for fratricidal conflict. But the King of Aragon

drove a hard bargain, as he always did, and the foolish, vain Boabdil

only bought his liberty at a heavy price. He was to do homage to the

Christian kings, to pay a heavy ransom and yearly tribute, and give

passage to the Christian armies to conquer his father in Malaga. Boabdil

meekly subscribed to any terms, and then paying homage on bended knee to

his master, he wended his way to Moorish land, a mark for the scorn of

all men, ‘Boabdil the Little’ for the rest of time.

Anarchy thenceforward reigned through the kingdom of Granada, as

Ferdinand had foreseen. I shall pluck the pomegranate, seed by seed,

chuckled the Christian king. And so he did; for, although a two years’

truce had been settled with Boabdil, the civil war gave to the Christian

borderers constant opportunities of overrunning the land, on the pretext

of aiding or avenging one of the combatants and attacking the old King.

Ferdinand would fain have attacked the new King of France, Charles

VIII., but Isabel was firm; and though Ferdinand was thereafter obliged

to stay a time in his own dominions to placate the discontented

Catalans, Isabel was tireless in her insistence upon the Christian

crusade that she had undertaken, though, for appearance sake, she

consented to both wars being carried on at the same time, which she knew

was impracticable.[43] The spirit of the woman was indomitable.

Travelling south towards the seat of war in 1484 with the new Archbishop

of Toledo, Cardinal Mendoza, she herself took command of the campaign

against the Moor.

It was, verily, her own war. In counsel with veteran soldiers she

surprised them with her boldness and knowledge; and her harangues to the

soldiery, and care for their welfare, caused her to be idolised by men

who had never yet regarded a woman as being capable of such a stout

heart as hers. She managed even to spur Ferdinand into leaving Aragon,

and once more taking the field against the old King of Granada, and, one

by one, the Moorish fortresses fell, and the Christian host encamped

almost before the walls of Granada: the Queen herself, though

approaching childbirth (in 1485), travelling from place to place in the

conquered country, encouraging, supervising, and directing. The

following year, 1486, Isabel and her husband again travelled to Cordova

from Castile, and now with a greater force than ever before. For news of

this saintly warrior Queen, who was fighting for the cross, had spread

now through Christendom, and not Iberian knights alone, but the chivalry

of France and Italy, Portugal and England, were flocking to share the

glory of the struggle.

At the conquest of Loja in May 1486, Lord Rivers, Conde de Escalas, as

the Spaniards called him, aided greatly with his men in capturing the

place, and earned the praise of Isabel.[44] As each church was dedicated

to the true worship in the conquered towns, Isabel herself contributed

the sacred vessels and vestments necessary for Christian worship; relics

of the saints, and blessed banners sent by her, went always with the

Castilian hosts; and soon the spiritual pride, which had been the secret

of all Spain’s strength in the past, became again the overwhelming

obsession, which, whilst it strengthened the arms, hardened the hearts

of all those who owned the sway of Isabel.

In December 1485, Isabel’s last child, Katharine, was born at Alcalá de

Henares, and through most of the stirring campaigns of 1486 the Queen

accompanied the army in their sieges of Moorish towns, and thence rode

with her husband right across Spain to far Santiago, crushing rebellion

(that of Count Lemos), holding courts of justice, punishing offences and

rewarding services on the way. The next spring again saw her in the

field against the important maritime city of Velez-Malaga, which was

captured in April; and in the autumn the great port of Malaga fell after

an heroic defence. But heroism of infidels aroused no clemency in the

breast of the Christian Queen. By her husband’s side, with cross borne

before them, and a crowd of shaven ecclesiastics around them, they rode

in triumph through the deserted city to the mosque, now purified into a

Christian cathedral. Christian captives in chains were dragged from

pestilent dungeons that the manacles might be struck from their palsied

limbs in the victors’ presence, and when the Christians had given thanks

to the Lord of Hosts, the whole starving population of Malaga were

assembled in the great courtyard of the fortress, and every soul was

condemned to slavery for life: some to be sent to Africa in exchange for

Christian captives; some to be sold to provide funds for the war, some

for presents for the Pope and other potentates and great nobles, whilst

all the valuables in the wealthy city were grabbed by greedy Ferdinand,

by one of his usually clever and heartless devices.[45]

[Illustration:

ISABEL THE CATHOLIC AT THE SURRENDER OF GRANADA.

_After a Painting by Pradilla._

]

The want of magnanimity and common humanity to these poor people, who

had only defended their homes against the invader, is usually ascribed

entirely to Ferdinand; but there is nothing whatever to show that Isabel

thought otherwise than he, except that she objected to a suggestion that

they should all be put to the sword. She was a child of her age, an age

that did not recognise the right of others than orthodox Christians to

be regarded as human beings; and in Isabel all instinctive womanly

feeling was dominated by her conviction of the greatness of her duty as

she understood it, and the sacred mission of her sovereignty. The fall

of Malaga rendered inevitable that of the city of Granada, only held, as

it was, under the nominal rule of the miserable Boabdil, supported by

the Christian troops under Gonzalo de Cordova. Every week his little

realm grew smaller, and every hour the streets of Granada rang with

Moslem curses of his name. Outside the walls rapine and war, inside

treachery and murder, scourged Granada; and whilst the pomegranate was

rotting to its fall, in the intervals of fresh conquests Isabel and her

husband progressed through Aragon and Valencia, everywhere carrying

terror to evildoers and strengthening the arm of the Inquisition. The

next year, 1488, the same process was continued, and in 1489 the large

cities of Baza, Almeria and Guadix were conquered from Boabdil’s rebel

uncle. Baza was the strongest fortress in the kingdom, and offered a

resistance so obstinate that the Christians, despairing of taking it,

sent to Isabel at Jaen, asking her permission to raise the siege. She

commanded them to redouble their efforts. Fresh men, money and munitions

were sent to them. The Dukes of Alba and Najera, and the Admiral of

Castile, were bidden to lead their men to aid Ferdinand before Baza. New

field hospitals were supplied, and all the Mancha and Andalucia were

swept for food and transport, no less than 14,000 mules, for the relief

of the besiegers. Floods broke down the bridges and made the roads

impassable, but still Isabel did not lose heart. A body of 6000 men were

raised to repair the ways. The cost exhausted the Queen’s treasury, but

she laid hands on the church plate and the treasures of the convents,

pledged her own crown with the Jews to overcome the obstacle, and raised

a hundred million maravedis for her purpose. Her ladies followed her

example and poured their gold and jewels into her coffers, and yet Baza

still held out, and winter was close at hand. Ferdinand was for

abandoning the siege, but the stout-hearted Queen herself set out from

Jaen in November, and rode undaunted through the bitter weather, night

and day, to join her troops at Baza. Her presence struck the Moors with

dismay, and filled the Christian hearts with confidence, for both knew

that there she would stay, at any cost, until the place surrendered, as

it did, to her, on the 4th December 1489,[46] whereupon Almeria and

Guadix gave up the struggle, and the Queen and her husband returned to

winter at Seville, knowing now that Granada itself was theirs for the

plucking when the season should arrive.

All through the year 1490 the preparations for the crowning feat went on

throughout Castile. Patriotism, in the sense of a common pride of

territory, did not exist in Spain; but already in the nine years that

the Inquisition had been at work, and Isabel’s fiery zeal against the

Moors had continued, the spiritual arrogance, always latent, had knit

orthodox Spaniards together as they had never been bound before. To the

majority, the persecution of a despised and hated minority was

confirmation of their own mystic selection. Isabel was the

personification of the feeling, and to her, as to her people now, the

oppression of the unbeliever was an act that singled her out as the

chosen of God to vindicate His faith. So Torquemada and the Inquisition,

with the approval of the Queen, harried the wretched Jews, who professed

Christianity, more cruelly every day.[47] If a ‘New Christian’ broke

bread with a Jew it was the former who was punished. If he dared to wear

clean linen on Saturday, or used a Hebrew name, the Dominican spies, who

dogged his footsteps, accused him, and the flames consumed his carcass

whilst Ferdinand emptied his coffers. The revenue of the Jewish

confiscations had provided much of the treasure needed for the constant

war of the last eight years; but Ferdinand wanted more, and ever more,

money before Granada could be made into a Christian city. Isabel would

conquer Granada, and at any cost gain the undying glory of recovering

for Christ the last spot in Spain held by the infidel. Injustice,

cruelty, robbery, and the torture of innocent people were nothing, less

than nothing, to the end she aimed at; and when the flames were found

all too slow for feeding Ferdinand’s greed, Isabel easily consented to a

blow being struck at the unbaptised Jews, in a body, whenever it was

necessary to collect a specially large sum of money for _her_ war.

In April 1491, the siege of the lovely city, set in its vast garden

plain, was begun. The Moors inside were gallant and chivalrous,

determined to sell their city dearly, however their spiritless King

might deport himself; but their dashing cavalry sallies where almost

futile against an army so carefully organised and disciplined as that of

Isabel. The head quarters of the Christian Queen were about two leagues

from Granada, and when Isabel joined her army the siege opened in grim

earnest. The many contemporary chroniclers of the campaign have left us

astonishing descriptions of the dazzling splendour which surrounded the

Queen. She, who in the privacy of her palace was sober in her attire,

and devoted to housewifely duties, could, when she thought desirable, as

she did before Granada, present an appearance of sumptuous splendour

almost unexampled. Her encampment, with its silken tents magnificently

furnished, its floating banners and soaring crosses, were such as had

never been since the time of the Crusades. On a white Arab charger, with

floating mane and velvet trappings to the ground, the Queen, herself

dressed in damascened armour and regal crimson, was everywhere

animating, consoling, and directing. Cardinals and bishops, princes,

nobles and ladies, thronged around her; and every morning as the sun

tipped with gold the snow peaks of the Sierra, all in that mighty host,

from the Queen down to the poorest follower, bowed before the gorgeous

altar in the midst of the camp, whilst the Cardinal of Spain (Mendoza)

performed the sacred mystery of the mass.

One night in the summer (14th July) the Queen had retired to her tent

and was sleeping, when, two hours after midnight, a lamp by her bedside

caught the hangings, stirred by the breeze, and in a minute the great

pavilion was ablaze. Isabel in her night garb had barely time to escape,

and witnessed the conflagration spread from tent to tent till much of

the encampment was reduced to ruin. At the cries and bugle calls of the

distressed Christians, the Moors afar off on the walls beheld with joy

the discomfiture of their enemies; and if another leader than Boabdil

had been in command, it would have gone ill with Isabel and her men. But

there was no defeat for a woman with such a spirit as hers. The

suggestions that the siege should be raised until the next year, she

rejected in scorn. Once again her virile spirit had its way. More money

was raised, mostly squeezed out of the miserable Jews; the army was

quartered in neighbouring villages, and within eighty days a city of

masonry and brick replaced the canvas encampment, and here, in the city

of Santa Fe,[48] Isabel solemnly swore to stay, winter and summer, until

the city of Granada should surrender to her.

Granada was entirely cut off from the world. The coast towns were no

longer in Moorish hands, and no succour from Africa could come to the

unhappy Boabdil. The desperate warriors of the crescent were for

sallying _en masse_ and dying or conquering, once for all; but Boabdil

was weak and incapable; and less than a month after the completion of

Isabel’s new city of Santa Fe, he made secret advances to his enemy at

his gates for a capitulation. The Queen entrusted the greatest of her

captains, Gonzalo de Cordova, who understood Arabic, with the task of

negotiation; but soon the news was whispered inside the city, and twenty

thousand furious Moorish warriors rushed up the steep hill to the

Alhambra, to demand a denial from the King. Seated in the glittering

hall of the ambassadors, Boabdil received the spokesmen of his indignant

people, and pointed out to them with the eloquence of despair the

hopelessness of the situation; and the wisdom of making terms whilst

they might. Stupefied and grief-stricken the populace acknowledged the

truth, bitter as it was, and with bowed heads and coursing tears left

the beautiful palace that was so soon to pass from them.

The negotiations were protracted, for Granada was divided and might

still have held out, and the Moors begged hard for at least some vestige

of independence as a State. But at last, on the 28th November 1491, the

conditions were agreed to. The Granadan Moors were to enjoy full liberty

for their faith, language, laws and customs; their possessions and

property were to be untouched, and those who did not desire to owe

allegiance to Christian sovereigns were to be aided to emigrate to

Africa. The tribute to be paid was the same as that rendered to the

Moorish King, and the city was to be free from other taxation for three

years; whilst Boabdil was to have a tiny tributary kingdom (Purchena) of

his own in the savage fastnesses of the Alpujarra mountains, looking

down upon the splendid heritage that had been his. The terms were

generous to a beaten foe, and their gentleness is usually ascribed to

Isabel. Since, however, they were afterwards all violated with her full

consent, it matters little whether the Queen or her husband drafted

them. But mild as the conditions of surrender were, many of the

heartbroken Moors of the city were still for fighting to the death in

defence of the land of their fathers and their faith; and Boabdil, in

deadly fear for his life, begged the visitors to hasten the taking

possession of the city. On the last day but one of the year 1491, the

Christian men-at-arms entered the Alhambra; and on the 2nd January 1492,

a splendid cavalcade went forth from the besieging city of Santa Fe to

crown the work of Isabel the Catholic. Surrounded by all the nobles and

chivalry of Castile and Aragon, the Queen, upon a splendid white

charger, rode by her husband’s side, followed by the flower of the

victorious army. Upon a hill hard by the walls of the city, Isabel

paused and gazed upon the towers and minarets, and upon the two

fortresses that crowned the sister heights, for which her heart had

yearned. This must have seemed to her the most glorious moment of her

life: for the last stronghold of Islam was within her grasp; and well

she must have known that, capitulations notwithstanding, but a few short

years would pass before the worship of the false prophet would disappear

from the land where it had prevailed so long.

At a signal the gates of the city opened, and a mournful procession came

towards the royal group upon the rise. Mounted upon a black barb came

Boabdil the Little, dusky of skin, with sad, weeping eyes downcast. His

floating haik of snowy white half veiled a tunic of the sacred green,

covered with barbaric golden ornaments. As he approached the group upon

the mound, the conquered King made as if to dismount, and kneel to kiss

the feet of the Queen and her husband. But Ferdinand, with diplomatic

chivalry, forbade the last humiliation, and took the massive keys of the

fortress, whilst Boabdil, bending low in his saddle, kissed the sleeve

of the King as he passed the keys to the Queen, who handed them to her

son, and then to the Count of Tendilla, the new governor of the city.

Four days later, Granada was swept and garnished, purified with holy

water, ready for the entry of the Christian Sovereigns.[49] The steep,

narrow lane leading to the Alhambra from the Gate of Triumph was lined

by Christian troops, and only a few dark-skinned Moors scowled from

dusky jalousies high in the walls, as the gallant chivalry of Castile,

Leon, and Aragon, flashed and jingled after the King and Queen. As they

approached the Alhambra, upon the tower of Comares there broke the

banner of the Spanish Kings fluttering in the breeze, and at the same

moment, upon the summit of the tower above the flag, there rose a great

gilded cross, the symbol of the faith triumphant.

Then, at the gates, the heralds cried aloud, ‘Granada! Granada! for the

Kings Isabel and Ferdinand;’ and Isabel, dismounting from her charger,

as the cross above glittered in the sun, knelt upon the ground in all

her splendour, and thanked her God for the victory. The choristers

intoned Christian praise in the purified mosque, whilst the Moors, who

hoped to live in favour of the victors, led by the renegade Muza, added

the strange music of their race to the thousand instruments and voices

that acclaimed the new Queen of Granada. Amidst the rejoicing and

illuminations that kept the city awake that night, Boabdil the beaten

was forgotten. When he had delivered the keys of the Alhambra, he had

refused to be treated by his followers any longer with royal honours,

and had retired weeping to the citadel, soon to steal forth with a few

followers and his masculine mother to the temporary shelter of his

little principality.[50] When the sad cavalcade came to the hill called

Padul, ‘The last sigh of the Moor,’ thenceforward tears coursed down the

bronze cheeks of the King as he gazed upon the lost kingdom he was to

see no more. ‘Weep! weep!’ cried his mother, ‘weep! like a woman for the

city you knew not how to defend like a man.’

Throughout Christendom rang the fame of the great Queen, whose

steadfastness had won so noble a victory; and even in far-off England

praise of her, and thanks to the Redeemer whose cause she had

championed, were sung throughout the land. For the conquest of Granada

marked an epoch, and sealed with permanence and finality the

Christianisation of Europe, the struggle for which had begun eight

centuries before, from the mountains of Asturias. The imagination of the

world was touched by the sight of a warrior-crusading Queen, more

splendid in her surroundings than any woman since Cleopatra, who yet was

so modest, meek, and saintly in the relations of daily life, so

exemplary a mother, so faithful a wife,[51] so wise a ruler; and the

cautious, unemotional Ferdinand, whose ability as a statesman was even

greater than that of his wife, was overshadowed by her radiant figure,

because she fought for an exalted abstract idea, whilst his eyes were

for ever turned towards the aggrandisement of himself and Aragon. She

could be cruel, and deaf to pleas for mercy, because in her eyes the

ends she aimed at transcended human suffering; he could be mean and

false, because his soul was baser and his objects all mundane.

In the Christian camp before Granada there had wandered a man who was

not a warrior, but a patient suitor, waiting upon the leisure of the

Sovereigns to hear his petition. He was a man of lofty stature, with

light blue eyes that gazed afar away, fair, florid face and ruddy hair,

already touched with snow by forty years of toil and hardship. He had

long been a standing joke with some of the shallow courtiers and

churchmen that surrounded the Queen, for he was a dreamer of great

dreams that few men could understand, and, worst offence of all, he was

a foreigner, a Genoese some said. He had followed the Court for eight

long years in pursuit of his object, the scoff of many and the friend of

few; but the war, and the strenuous lives that Isabel and Ferdinand

lived, had again and again caused them to postpone a final answer to the

prayer of the Italian sailor, who had, to suit Spanish lips, turned his

name from Cristoforo Colombo to Cristobal Colon.

At the end of 1484,[52] the man, full of his exalted visions, had sailed

from Lisbon, disgusted at the perfidy of the Portuguese, who had feigned

to entertain his proposals only to try to cheat him of the realisation

of them. His intention was first to sail to Huelva in Spain, where he

had relatives, and to leave with them his child Diego, who accompanied

him, whilst he himself would proceed to France, and lay his plans before

the new King, Charles VIII. Instead of reaching Huelva, his pinnace was

driven for some reason to anchor in the little port of Palos, on the

other side of the delta, and thence the mariner and his boy wended their

way to the neighbouring Franciscan Monastery of St. Maria de la Rabida,

to seek shelter and food, at least for the child. Colon, as we shall

call him here, was an exalted religious mystic, full of a great

devotional scheme, and himself, in after years, wore a habit of St.

Francis. It was natural, therefore, that he should be well received by

the brothers in that lonely retreat overlooking the delta of the Rio

Tinto; for he was, in addition to his devotion, a man of wide knowledge

of the world as well as of science and books, and in the monastery there

was an enlightened ecclesiastic who had known courts and cities, one

Friar Juan Perez, who had once been a confessor of Queen Isabel. With

him and the physician of the monastery, Garcia Hernandez, Colon

discussed cosmogony, and interested them in his theories, and the aims

that led him on his voyage. The mariner needed but little material aid,

two or three small ships, which could easily have been provided for him

by private enterprise. But his plans were far reaching, and well he knew

that to be able to carry them out, the lands he dreamed of discovering

could only produce for him the means to attain the result he hungered

for, if a powerful sovereign would hold and use them when he had found

them.[53]

There was a great magnate within a few days’ journey of the monastery,

who himself was almost a sovereign, and not only had ships in plenty of

his own, but could, if he pleased, obtain for any plan he accepted the

patronage of powerful sovereigns. This was the head of the Guzmans, the

Duke of Medina Sidonia, the Andalucian noble who controlled the port of

Seville and the coasts of the south. It must have seemed worth while to

Colon to address himself to this neighbouring noble before setting out

on his long voyage to France; for he journeyed from La Rabida towards

Seville, leaving his child, Diego, to be educated and cared for by the

friars of the monastery. He found the Duke of Medina Sidonia

irresponsive to his approaches, and was again thinking of taking ship to

France, when he was brought into contact, by what means is not known,

with another great noble almost as powerful as the head of the Guzmans,

the Duke of Medina Celi, who, from his palaces at Rota and Puerto de

Santa Maria, on the Bay of Cadiz, disposed of nearly as many sail as

Medina Sidonia.

The magnate listened, often and attentively, to the eloquent talk of the

sailor seer whom he lodged in his house: how, far away across the

western ocean, beyond the islands that the Portuguese had found, lay

Asia, the home of gems and spices rare, now only reached painfully

across the forbidden lands of the infidel and by the Levant Sea, or

perchance, though that was not sure, around the mighty African

continent; that wealth untold lay there in pagan hands, awaiting those

who, with cross and sword, should capture it, and win immortal souls for

Christ, and so eternal glory. He, Colon, was the man destined by God to

open up the new world foretold to Saint John in the tremendous dream of

the Apocalypse, for some vast object of which he yet refrained to speak.

Books, Seneca, Ptolemy, and the Arab geographers, the Fathers of the

Church, legends half forgotten, the conclusions of science, the course

of the stars, and the concentrated experience of generations of sailor

men, were all used by the Genoese to convince the Duke. The prospect was

an attractive one, and Medina Celi promised to fit out the expedition.

In the building yards of Port Santa Maria the keels of three caravels

were laid down to be built under Colon’s superintendence. They were to

cost three or four thousand ducats, and be fitted, provisioned and

manned, for a year at the Duke’s expense; and Colon must have thought

that now his dream was soon to come true, and that his doubt and toil

would end. But for the inner purpose he had in view beyond the discovery

of the easy way to Asia, he needed a patron even more powerful than

Medina Celi; and it may have been the discoverer who took means to let

the Queen of Castile know the preparations that were being made, or, as

Medina Celi himself wrote afterwards, the information may have been sent

to Court by the Duke, fearing to undertake so great an expedition

without his sovereign’s licence.[54] In either case, when Isabel was

informed of it in the winter of 1485, she and her husband were in the

north of Spain, and instructed the Duke to send Colon to court, that

they might hear from his own mouth what his plans were.

The mariner arrived at Cordova on the 20th January 1486, with letters of

introduction from the Duke to the Queen and his friends at court. The

sovereigns were detained by business in Madrid and Toledo for three

months after Colon came to Cordova; but his letters procured for him

some friends amongst the courtiers there, with whom he discussed the

theories he had formed, especially with the Aragonese Secretary of

Supplies, the Jewish Luis de Sant’angel, who, throughout, was his

enlightened and helpful friend. Most of the idle hangers-on of the court

at Cordova, clerical and lay, made merry sport of the rapt dreamer who

lingered in their midst awaiting the coming of the sovereigns. His

foreign garb and accent, his strange predictions, absurd on the face of

them—for how could one arrive at a given place by sailing directly away

from it?—all convinced the shallow pates that this carder of wool turned

sailor was mad.

When Isabel and Ferdinand at last arrived at Cordova, on the 28th April

1486, the season was already further advanced than usual to make

preparations for the summer campaign: and there was little leisure for

the sovereigns to listen to the vague theories of the sailor. But early

in May Colon was received kindly by Isabel and her husband, and told his

tale. Their minds were full of the approaching campaign, and of the

trouble between Aragon and the new King of France about the two counties

on the frontier unjustly withheld from Ferdinand; and after seeing Colon

for the first time Isabel instructed the secretary, Alfonso de

Quintanilla to write to the Duke of Medina Celi that she did not

consider the business very sure; but that if anything came of it the

Duke should have a share of the profits.

In the meanwhile Ferdinand and his wife were too busy to examine closely

themselves into the pros and cons of Colon’s scheme, and followed the

traditional course in such circumstances, that of referring the matter

to a commission of experts and learned men to sift and report. The

president of the commission was that mild-mannered but arrogant-minded

confessor of the Queen, Father Talavera; the man of one idea whom the

conquest of Granada for the cross blinded to all other objects in life.

With him for the most part were men like himself, saturated with the

tradition of the church, that looked upon all innovation as impiety, and

all they did not understand as an invention of the evil one. So, when

Colon sat with them and expounded his theories to what he knew were

unsympathetic ears, he kept back his most convincing proofs and

arguments; for his treatment in Portugal had taught him caution.[55]

There were two, at least, of the members of the commission who fought

hard for Colon’s view, Dr. Maldonado and the young friar Antonio de

Marchena, but they were outvoted; and when the report was presented it

said that Colon’s project was impossible, and that after so many

thousands of years he could not discover unknown lands, and so surpass

an almost infinite number of clever men who were experienced in

navigation.[56]

Hardly had Talavera and his colleagues assured the sovereigns that the

whole plan was impossible and vain, unfit for royal personages to

patronise,[57] than Ferdinand again took the field (20th May), and once

more Cristobal Colon was faced by failure. But he was a man not easily

beaten. During his stay at Cordova he had made many friends, and gained

many protectors at Court. First was his close acquaintance, Luis de

Sant’angel, by whose intervention he was so promptly received by the

sovereigns after their arrival at Cordova; but others there were of much

higher rank: the great Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo, Mendoza, the tutor

of the Prince Don Juan, Friar Diego Deza, Friar Juan Perez, who had

first received Colon at La Rabida, and was now at court, Alonso de

Quintanilla, the Queen’s secretary, Juan Cabero, the intimate Aragonese

friend and chamberlain of the King; and one who probably did more in his

favour quietly than any one else, that inseparable companion of Isabel,

Beatriz de Bobadilla, now Marchioness of Moya.

But it was weary waiting. As we have seen, the energies of the

sovereigns were absorbed in the war. Ferdinand, moreover, was

desperately anxious to finish it successfully, and get to Aragonese

problems that interested him more directly; the intended war with France

and that world-wide combination he was already planning, by which not

the strength of Spain alone but that of all Christendom should be at his

bidding, to humble his rival and exalt Aragon in Italy, the

Mediterranean and the East. It was too much to expect that Ferdinand

would welcome very warmly any project for frittering away in another

direction the strength of the nation he was hungering to use for his own

ends. Isabel, on the other hand, would naturally be inclined to listen

more sympathetically to such a project as that of Colon. Here was half a

world to be won to Christianity under her flag, here was wealth

illimitable to coerce the other half, and, above all, here was the

fair-faced mystic with his lymphatic blue eyes, like her own, showing

her how the riches that would fall to his share were all destined for a

crusade even greater than that of Granada, the winning of the Holy

Sepulchre from the infidel, and the fixing for ever of the sovereign

banner of Castile upon the country hallowed by the footsteps of our

Lord. To Isabel, therefore, more than to Ferdinand, must it be

attributed, that when the campaign of 1486 was ended the Italian mariner

was not dismissed, notwithstanding the unfavourable report of Talavera’s

commission.

The sovereigns were obliged to start out to far Galicia, as has been

related on page 64; but before they went they replied to Colon that,

‘though they were prevented at present from entering into new

enterprises, owing to their being engaged in so many wars and conquests,

especially that of Granada, they hoped in time that a better opportunity

would occur to examine his proposals and discuss his offers.’[58] This

answer, at all events, prevented Colon’s supporters in Spain from

despairing; and whilst the monarchs were in Galicia in the winter of

1486, the Dominican Deza, the Prince’s tutor, who was also a professor

at Salamanca, conceived the idea that an independent inquiry by the

pundits of the university might arrive at a different conclusion from

that of Talavera’s commission, and undo the harm the latter had

effected. Though there is no evidence of the fact, it is certain that

Deza, who was a Castilian and a member of the Queen’s household, would

not have taken such a step as he did without Isabel’s consent. In any

case, Colon travelled to Salamanca; and there, as the guest of Deza in

the Dominican monastery of Saint Stephen, he held constant conference

with the learned men for whom the famous University was a centre.

Isabel and her husband themselves arrived at Salamanca in the last days

of the year 1486, and heard from Deza and other friends that, in the

opinion of most of them, the plans of Colon were perfectly sound. The

effect was seen at once: the mariner accompanied the Court to Cordova in

high hopes, no longer an unattached projector of doubtful schemes, but a

member of the royal household. Before once more taking the field in the

spring of 1487, the Queen officially informed Colon that ‘when

circumstances permitted she and the King would carefully consider his

proposal’; and in the meantime a sum of 3000 maravedis was given to him

for his sustenance, a grant that was repeated, and sometimes exceeded,

every few months afterwards. In August 1487, Colon was summoned by the

sovereigns to the siege of Malaga, probably to give advice as to some

maritime operations; but thenceforward he usually resided in Cordova,

awaiting with impatience the convenience of the Queen and King.

During the heartbreaking delay he entered again into negotiation with

the Kings of Portugal, France, and England, but without result; and it

was only when the city of Granada was near its fall, and the end of the

long war in sight, that Colon, following the sovereigns in Santa Fe, saw

his hopes revive. Now, for the first time, he was invited to lay before

them the terms he asked for if success crowned his project. Isabel had

been already gained to Colon’s view by the transparent conviction of the

man and his saintly zeal. His friends at Court were now many and

powerful, and Ferdinand himself had not failed to see that the promised

accession of wealth to be derived from the discovery would strengthen

his hands. Perhaps he, like Isabel, had been dazzled with Colon’s life

dream of the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre; for that would, if it were

effected, tend to realise the highest ambitions of Aragon. But

Ferdinand, as a prudent man of business, never allowed sentiment,

however exalted, to override practical considerations. When, therefore,

the terms demanded by Colon were at length submitted to him and the

Queen, he unhesitatingly rejected them as absolutely out of the

question. Much obloquy has been heaped upon Ferdinand for his lack of

generosity in doing so; but a perusal of the conditions, with a

consideration of the circumstances and ideas of the times, will convince

any impartial person that Ferdinand’s first rejection of them was more

to his credit than his subsequent acceptance with the obvious intention

of violating them.