THE ITALIAN WARS
1494–1504
A cloud of grief hung over Spain, but abroad her sun was rising. The
union of Castile and Aragon, the Conquest of the Moors, the campaign
against heresy, the discovery of unknown islands in the West—all these
had brought her prominently before the eyes of Europe; while yet another
harvest of glory still remained for Ferdinand’s diplomacy to reap on
foreign shores.
In the early years of his rivalry with France the Pyrenees had formed
his battleground, but for all his efforts, political or military, he had
never succeeded in regaining Roussillon or Cerdagne nor in undermining
French influence in Navarre. Diplomacy is a game where the practised
hand will always be at an immense advantage; and Louis XI. proved more
than a match for the young Aragonese opponent who was to succeed him
eventually as the craftiest statesman in Europe.
_Qui nescit dissimulare nescit regnare_ is said to be the only paternal
sermon to which the Dauphin Charles was ever subjected; but since Louis
XI.’s craven fear of his son denied the boy all but the most rudimentary
education, there was little likelihood that he would be able to make use
of so subtle a maxim. Ill-developed in brain as in body, his weak but
obstinate nature nourished its vanity on schemes requiring the strength
of a Hannibal or an Alexander for their realization. His father had with
tireless energy extended the boundaries of France north, east, and
south; employing the weapons of force, bribery, and lies, as the moment
demanded. His success, save on moral grounds, might have prompted the
continuation of his policy; but Charles chafed not at its immorality
only its apparent pettiness of scope. To make peace with his neighbours,
if necessary, by the surrender of lately-won possessions; and then,
freed from Christian molestation, to lead an army in person that should
add the kingdom of Jerusalem to French dominions—this was the fantasy
that floated ever before his eyes.
A crusade! Mediæval Europe had heard that project discussed for many
centuries. It had seen warriors take the Cross for reasons true and
false, had watched their victories and their failures, and, by the end
of the fifteenth century, was sufficiently disillusioned to smile in
private when the idea was mentioned. The recovery of the Holy Sepulchre
was a good excuse for governments to impose extra taxes, or for Venice
to induce the weak-minded to wage her trade-wars in the Levant. If the
Turk, as he threatened, grew stronger it might indeed become a matter of
serious politics; but in the meantime, save in Spain or Bohemia,
religious fervour stood at a discount.
Yet European statesmen were ready enough to twist the young French
monarch’s desire for high-sounding glory to their own advantage.
Ludovico, “Il Moro,” virtual ruler of Milan for his nephew Duke Gian
Galeazzo Sforza, saw in an alliance with Charles VIII. a way of
extricating himself from political troubles that were likely to
overthrow the balance of power in Italy, and with it his own dominion.
“This Ludovico was clever,” says Philip de Commines who knew him, “but
very nervous and cringing when he was afraid; a man without faith if he
thought it to his advantage to break his word.”
At the time when Charles VIII., grown to years of manhood if not
discretion, was centring his hopes on Jerusalem, Ludovico Sforza lived
in a perpetual state of fear. Of old in alliance with the Aragonese
House of Naples and the Medici at Florence, he had regarded with calm
eyes the hostility of Venice on the eastern border of his duchy and the
growing ambitions of the Papacy in Romagna. These five Powers,—Milan,
Naples, Rome, and the republics of Venice and Florence, had controlled
the peninsula, and in Machiavelli’s words made it their object “first
that no armed foreigner should be allowed to invade Italy, second, that
no one of their own number should be suffered to extend his territory.”
Slowly the balance thus established had been shaken, and mutual
suspicion began to darken the relations between Naples and Milan. King
Ferrante’s grand-daughter Isabella was wife of the rightful Duke, Gian
Galeazzo, and in her letters home made piteous complaints of his uncle’s
tyranny. Her husband was fully old enough to reign but was kept instead
a prisoner at Pavia, his natural delicacy of constitution aggravated by
this restraint. She herself was relegated to a merely secondary
position; and her relations, who had intended her to act as their
political agent, not unnaturally resented the forced seclusion in which
she lived.
The usurper on his side, noting the coldness of Ferrante and his son
Alfonso, Duke of Calabria, was haunted by a perpetual nightmare of his
own downfall through Neapolitan intervention. Such a revolution would
please Venice, who liked nothing better than to see her ambitious
neighbour involved in trouble, while little help could be expected from
the selfish Papacy, or from Florence which, torn by factions since the
death of the wise Lorenzo de Medici in 1492, was too weak to prove
either a formidable foe or ally.
In his need of support Ludovico looked beyond the Alps, and instantly
his quick brain suggested the rôle which Charles VIII. might play. It
was little more than half a century since the last representative of the
Angevin claims on Naples had been defeated and driven away from that
southern kingdom by his Aragonese rival, Alfonso V.[8] Since that date
the House of Anjou had been incorporated with the French Crown, and thus
Charles stood heir to its Italian ambitions; Naples but a stepping-stone
on the road to his conquest of Jerusalem.
Footnote 8:
See page 25.
If you will be ruled by me [declared Ludovico enthusiastically] I will
assist in making you greater than Charlemagne; for, when you have
conquered the Kingdom of Naples, we will easily drive the Turk out of
the Empire of Constantinople.
Such glib assurance awoke no answering belief amongst the older and more
experienced of the French King’s councillors; but Charles was in the
mood of Rehoboam and welcomed only the advice of the young and reckless,
which confirmed his own strong desire to undertake the invasion.
Commines, shaking his head over the many difficulties to be encountered,
concludes that Providence must certainly have guided and protected the
expedition, “for,” he adds, “the wisdom of the contrivers of this scheme
contributed but little.”
The first step was for Charles to secure the goodwill of his neighbours;
and, having decked out the glory of a crusade against the Turks in its
brightest colours, he proceeded to buy the complaisance of England,
Flanders, and Spain towards his project by various concessions and
gifts. In the case of Spain the price demanded was the surrender of
Roussillon and Cerdagne; and it is said that superstition as well as his
anxiety for a settlement gained the French King’s final consent to this
bargain. Two friars, whether bribed by Ferdinand or no, declared that
Louis XI. had sinned grievously in ever taking possession of these
provinces, seeing that his rival, though he had failed to redeem the
mortgage on them, had spent his funds instead on a holy war against the
Moors. Charles, they urged, must make instant restoration or run the
risk, when he died, that his soul should dwell for ever in Purgatory.
By the Treaty of Barcelona (January, 1493) Roussillon and Cerdagne
passed back therefore into Spanish hands, and Ferdinand with many
compliments and protestations of friendship agreed to an alliance with
France against all enemies and to assist him in his crusade on the
understanding that such terms should not affect his relations with the
Holy See. His allegiance to the “Vicar of Christ” must stand before all
other claims.
Satisfied that he might now proceed on his road to fame without the
interference of the great Powers of Europe, Charles crossed the Alps
early in September, 1494. His forces, which comprised not only the
chivalry of France eager to prove its metal but also companies of Swiss
and German mercenaries armed with pike, halberd, and arquebus, were
further strengthened by a formidable array of artillery, mounted on
carriages drawn by horses. These could be moved almost as fast as the
infantry; and Italy, accustomed to the old-fashioned heavy guns dragged
across the country by teams of oxen, heard the report of the invader’s
superior ordnance with amazement, even with incredulity.
In Naples, the idea of a new Angevin expedition had at first aroused
laughter, and only the old King Ferrante had treated it as a serious
issue. In January, 1494, he died, and his son Alfonso II., realizing at
last that Ludovico’s threats were no mere cry of “wolf!” leagued himself
with the Pope and Florence to protect the frontiers of Romagna and
Tuscany.
The campaign that followed is perhaps the most amazing in the history of
European warfare. In September, Charles was at Asti, indulging as
Ludovico’s guest in festivities and excesses scarcely in keeping with
the ideal of a Christian crusader. Pleasure thus delayed him a month;
but from November, when he entered Florence, master of her principal
fortresses and acclaimed as a conquering hero by the populace, his
triumphant progress southwards was almost unimpeded. January, 1495,
found him in Rome, at peace with the Pope on the strength of a
hastily-constructed agreement, and by February, he had reached the
northern boundary of the kingdom of Naples.
The abdication of Alfonso in favour of his son Ferrante II.; the
latter’s retreat from San Germano, where he had intended to make a
determined stand against the enemy; and finally a revolution in the town
of Naples itself to overthrow its Aragonese defenders—these completed
the downfall of what might truly be called a “House of Cards.” Ferrante,
declaring that the sins of his fathers and not his own had been visited
on his head, fled to Sicily; and on February 22d, Charles, clad in
imperial purple and holding a golden sceptre in his hand, entered the
capital in triumph and was duly crowned as “King of Naples and Jerusalem
and Emperor of the East.”
Almost without the loss of a soldier and in less than six months he had
achieved his stepping-stone. Alexander VI., referring to the campaign,
remarked sarcastically that the French needed only a child’s wooden
spurs to urge on their horses, and chalk to mark their lodgings for the
night. For all their previous scoffing the armies of Italy had melted
away like mist before the despised “Barbarians,” or else had fled in
terror at the first encounter.
Contemporary historians are ready enough with their explanations. The
wars in the peninsula, says the Florentine Guicciardini, had been waged
hitherto chiefly in the study or on paper; and his fellow-citizen,
Machiavelli, elaborates this theory. The luxury, the civilization, and
the culture, that made the cities of Italy the admiration and the desire
of the rest of Europe, had produced an enervating atmosphere in which
the healthy virtues of patriotism and hardihood withered away. States
grew to rely for their defence not on their own subjects but on
mercenary armies enrolled by _Condottieri_ generals; and these, actuated
by no motive save to secure their pay for as many weeks as possible,
converted war from a grim struggle for existence into an intricate but
nearly bloodless pastime.
They spared no effort to relieve themselves and their men from fatigue
and danger, not killing one another in battle, but making prisoners
who were afterwards released without ransom. They would attack no town
by night, nor would those within make sorties against their besieging
foe. Their camps were without rampart or trench. They fought no winter
campaigns.
Little wonder if men used to a warfare of courtesies shrank appalled
from a ferocity that, once aroused, spared neither young nor old, women
nor invalids. In the early stages of the invasion the Duke of Orleans
had defeated Federigo, brother of King Alfonso of Naples, at Rapallo;
and the town, daring to resist the conquerors, had been put to the sack
with all the brutality attending a general massacre. Its fate had a
paralysing effect on future attempts to hinder the French advance,
especially in Naples, where devotion to the reigning House of Aragon was
never more than half-hearted.
Ferrante I. and his son, Alfonso II., had been typical Italian despots,
ruling by fear rather than by love, and to satisfy their own caprice
rather than to win their land prosperity or glory. Ferrante II. was
gentle and well-intentioned but too little known to be popular. Thus the
Neapolitans, cynically assured that the sovereign did not exist for whom
it was worth while to risk their lives, threw open their gates to the
French and joyfully acclaimed them as long-hoped for saviours.
In a century that witnessed the perseverance and daring of the Moorish
struggle, the campaign of Charles VIII. stands out like a monstrous
caricature of triumph. Founded in vanity, its success had startled
Europe, but was to prove as evanescent as it was cheaply won. The fault
lay to a large extent with the conquerors.
At our first entrance into Italy [says Commines sadly] we were
regarded like saints, and everybody thought us people of the greatest
goodness and sincerity in the world; but that opinion lasted not long
for our own disorders and the false reports of our enemies quickly
convinced them of the contrary.
The Frenchman and the Swiss or German mercenary, conscious of their easy
victory, fell into the trap of regarding the Italians as cowards whom it
was scarcely worth while to conciliate; and Charles on his part, too
little of the statesman to secure what he had won, abandoned himself to
idle pleasure. Tyranny and licence worked hand in hand to teach the
Neapolitans that a change of dynasty may not be always for the better,
and as they groaned under the taxation and insolence of foreign
officials they began to remember Ferrante in his exile in Sicily.
Elsewhere in Italy there were also signs of reaction. Ludovico “Il Moro”
had swept his Aragonese rivals from his path; and death, not without his
assistance if there was any truth in rumour, had removed the young Duke
Gian Galeazzo; but it was now the all-conquering French who filled him
with dismay. Before the Sforza had established their rule in Milan, the
Visconti, had reigned there, and Louis, Duke of Orleans, cousin of
Charles VIII. and a near heir to the throne, was a descendant of the
Visconti in the female line.[9] Since the French had found how easy it
was to invade Italy, what should prevent them from claiming not only
Naples but Milan?
Footnote 9:
Louis, Duke of Orleans, afterwards Louis XII. of France, was grandson
of Valentina Visconti, sister of Duke Filippo Maria.
Ludovico, in terror for his duchy, was now as eager to drive out the
invaders as formerly to welcome them, and soon persuaded Venice and the
Papacy to join him in an alliance for this purpose. Outside Italy,
Maximilian, who had been elected Holy Roman Emperor on the death of his
father in 1493, was also alarmed at the signal triumph of the House of
Valois; but since his promises usually outran their fulfilment the real
organization of an effective opposition devolved on Spain.
Ferdinand, in spite of the outward amity signed and sealed at Barcelona,
had worked secretly from the first to prevent the success of Charles
VIII.’s ambitions. Roussillon and Cerdagne once secured, he had no
inducement to keep his bargain; and, when the French King on the eve of
the invasion sent to remind him of his promise to help in the crusade,
the elder statesman, though apparently enthusiastic, proceeded craftily
to withdraw his support. Charles had placed the idea of ultimate war
against the Turks well in the foreground of his public programme, with
merely a casual allusion to his designs on Italy; and this enabled
Ferdinand, while acclaiming war on the Infidel as the one ambition of
his life, to denounce the rest of the proposal with mingled surprise and
horror.
His ambassador, Don Alonso de Silva, begged the French King in moving
terms to desist from an expedition that could only prove the scandal of
Christianity; but still more forcible was his argument that, since
Naples was a fief of the Church, any attack made on that kingdom would
at once absolve his master from his alliance with France. The allegiance
of Ferdinand to the Holy See had been an item of too frequent recurrence
in the Treaty of Barcelona for Charles to miss the point; and, as he
turned from De Silva in fury, he realized that he had been badly duped.
One of the greatest strokes of good fortune for a man [says
Guicciardini] is to have an opportunity of showing that in the things
he does for his own interest he is moved by the thought of the public
good. This is what shed glory on the enterprises of the Catholic King.
What he did for his own security and aggrandizement often looked as if
it were done for the advancement of the Christian Faith or the defence
of the Church.
Ferdinand may appear a consummate scoundrel to modern minds, but in his
own day it can be seen that he was not without admirers.
From grief at an injury offered to a Papal fief, his opposition to
France on the Pope’s behalf grew so rapidly that Alexander VI. was
induced in 1494, not only to grant to him and his Queen, as we have
already noticed, the title of “Catholic Kings,” but to concede to them
as part of their revenue two-ninths of the Spanish tithes and rights of
sovereignty over most of the North African coast. Nor was this cordial
relationship affected by the peace with France, into which Alexander was
temporarily driven when Charles VIII. hammered at the gates of Rome; for
hardly had this second Charlemagne and his army vanished southwards than
the plots for his undoing were redoubled.
In March, 1495, the “League of Venice” made it patent to Europe that the
Empire, Spain, Rome, Milan, and Venice had pledged themselves to unite
for the mutual preservation of their dominions. Secret stipulations
explained that this end would be secured by Ferdinand dispatching an
army to Sicily to help Ferrante II. in recovering his kingdom, the
Venetian fleet meanwhile, attacking the Neapolitan coast-towns in French
hands. Spanish and Imperial forces would also assault France on her
southern and eastern boundaries; while Ludovico Sforza employed the
mercenary levies of Milan in holding the passes of the Alps against any
further inroad of “Barbarians.”
To Charles, idling at Naples, the menace of the League came like a
thunderclap. As timid now as formerly self-confident, he cast Jerusalem
from his thoughts, and in May, 1495, turned his face homewards at the
head of some ten thousand men. The rest of his army remained to guard
his newly acquired kingdom, with the Count of Montpensier as Viceroy and
Stuart d’Aubigny, a Scotch soldier of repute, as Governor-General of
Calabria.
At Fornovo, in Milanese territory, the retreating invaders were attacked
by Ludovico’s troops in combination with the Venetians, but succeeded in
repulsing them and making their way safely across the frontier. Much of
their baggage, however, fell into Italian hands, and the Allies loudly
proclaimed their victory. Fortune, hitherto so indulgent, was tired of
her incapable protégé, and at her frown his dominion quickly crumbled
away. As he quitted Neapolitan territory Ferrante II., supported by a
Spanish army under Gonsalvo de Cordova, left Sicily for the mainland,
and though at first held at bay by D’Aubigny, had regained the greater
part of his inheritance before a year had passed. In July, 1496, Naples
“the fickle” opened her gates to him; while later in the same month the
Viceroy, Montpensier, whose frantic appeals to his master for
reinforcements had been ignored, was driven to capitulate at Atella.
“Of the expedition of Charles VIII.,” says a French historian, “no more
trace remained than of the exploits of Amadis de Gaula.”
Judging by merely tangible results, or rather by the lack of them, it
may appear at first sight that in a biography of Isabel of Castile, this
campaign has received unmerited attention. The French meteor had come
and gone; and the balance of power in Italy, although badly shaken, was
restored to its equilibrium. Individual rulers had passed from the
board; but Milan, Venice, Florence, Rome, and Naples once more checked
and counter-checked each other’s moves. How could this temporary
disarrangement be said to have concerned Spain, save to afford a passing
triumph for Ferdinand’s diplomacy?
Yet in truth this same expedition was pregnant with results not only for
Spain but the whole of Western Christendom, results so far-reaching that
the history of modern Europe is often said to have begun at this date.
Mediæval Italy had rallied for a moment, but she had none the less
received her death-blow, the very incompetence and folly of her
conqueror revealing her mortal weakness. Never again, till centuries had
passed would her sunny fields and pleasant cities be free from foreign
menace; never again would her native rulers be left to plot and plan her
future undisturbed. Her beauty, her culture, her luxury had aroused the
lust of younger and hardier nations; and against their strength she
could offer no adequate defence.
Ludovico Sforza had boasted too soon, when he depicted a map of Italy,
with himself broom in hand sweeping the other Powers before him where he
would. In April, 1498, Charles VIII. of France died and was succeeded by
his cousin, Louis, Duke of Orleans, who at once styled himself King of
Naples and Duke of Milan. The assumption of these titles foretold his
invasion of Italy, whenever a favourable opportunity should occur, a
hint of which other Powers were not slow to take advantage. Venice, at
the price of a small stretch of Lombard territory for her mainland
empire, agreed to Ludovico’s ruin, with a shortsightedness that aroused
Peter Martyr’s shrewd comment to a Venetian friend: “The King of France,
after he has dined with the Duke of Milan, will sup with you.”
The Pope, anxious to found a kingdom in Romagna for his family, also put
away former anti-French prejudices, and granted a divorce, much desired
by Louis XII., in return for a bride and the title “Duke of Valentinois”
for his son, Cæsar Borgia.
The way for French ambition was thus paved; and Ludovico “Il Moro,” with
a retributive justice not often so clearly shown, fell a victim to the
storm he had originally evoked; and, captured by his rival in April,
1500, was sent to end his days in the dungeons of Loches. Less deserved
but equally irrevocable was the disappearance of the bastard line of
Aragon in Naples. Ferrante II. had died in September, 1496; and his
uncle and successor, Federigo, menaced by Louis XII., sought assistance
from his relations in Spain without avail. Ferdinand was playing a
deeper game than to preserve the throne of those whom he secretly
regarded as having cheated him out of a rightful inheritance. Only
political and financial embarrassments had caused his father, John II.,
to acquiesce in Alfonso V.’s will, leaving Naples to an illegitimate
son; and Ferdinand, with a united Spain behind him, and an army trained
for ten long years in the wars of Granada, saw no reason to continue
this policy. His support of Ferrante II. had been a temporary expedient
to rid Southern Italy of Charles VIII.; but now he boldly approached the
French King with a wholly selfish scheme of spoliation that finally took
shape in the Partition Treaty of Granada of November, 1500. Federigo had
foolishly given an opening to his enemies, when in despair at his
isolation he appealed to the Turks to come to his aid; and the Pope was
thus enabled to denounce him as a traitor to the Christian Faith and to
demand his instant abdication.
[Illustration:
A KING-AT-ARMS
FROM “SPANISH ARMS AND ARMOUR”
REPRODUCED BY COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR, MR. A. F. CALVERT
]
His kingdom, divided into two by a somewhat vague boundary line, was
partitioned by France and Spain, Louis receiving the northern portion
with the town of Naples, Ferdinand the provinces of Calabria and Apulia.
The unfortunate Federigo after a feeble effort to oppose this
settlement, yielded to superior force, and retired to honourable
captivity in France with the title “Duke of Anjou.”
Machiavelli’s contempt for Louis XII.’s share in the treaty was
unbounded. “The French do not understand statecraft,” was his answer to
Cardinal d’Amboise, who on one occasion had suggested sneeringly that
the Italians did not understand war; and there is little doubt that the
Florentine considered his own race the more blest. That a King who might
have controlled the peninsula should deliberately choose to share his
supremacy with a powerful rival was of all acts the most stupid; and
stupid indeed it was to prove; though it may be questioned if, in the
face of Ferdinand’s opposition, Louis could have conquered Naples at
all.
Where war in Southern Italy was concerned, Spain had in many ways the
advantage over France, above all in her extensive eastern seaboard and
her possession of the island of Sicily, which afforded a convenient base
of operations for landing reinforcements and provisions. Louis would
have needed to maintain an enormous army had he endeavoured to keep
Naples entirely free of Spanish aggression; but his alternative policy
of sharing the kingdom bordered quite as close on the impossible.
Differences of opinion respecting the imaginary boundary (that had left
the ownership of some of the middle provinces undefined); quarrels as to
the right of collecting the tolls paid on the cattle and sheep passing
from their summer quarters in the Abruzzi to the sheltered valleys of
the Capitanata, their winter home; feuds between those Neapolitan
barons, who had originally supported the Angevin cause, and their
opponents, the former Allies of the Aragonese House—these were matters
so productive of strife that any efforts to establish a permanent peace
between France and Spain were obviously doomed to failure. Thus, by
1502, the royal thieves had fallen out; and war, occasionally suspended
by truces and negotiations, devastated Naples for the next two years.
Its course is hardly a highway in Castilian history, though its battles
were waged and its victories secured mainly by Castilian soldiers. The
ambitions by which it was dictated were purely Aragonese; and the final
success of Spanish arms in 1504, that drove the French from Naples, was
the crowning triumph of Ferdinand’s career. Yet, in as much as the issue
so vitally affected the future of Spain, drawing her definitely into a
struggle for the supremacy of Europe, and pitting her against France in
a national duel that was to outlast both Ferdinand and Louis, the
campaign demands some mention here.
Its actual conduct recalls, not only through its deeds of chivalry and
daring but in the character of its warfare, the struggle in Granada;
and, if Spain owed her success largely to her advantageous position, she
was also indebted to the thorough training her soldiers had received in
guerilla tactics. The mountainous districts of the kingdom of Naples
were peculiarly suited to the quick movements of light-armed horse; but
Gonsalvo de Cordova, Ferdinand’s Commander-in-chief, though recognizing
and using to the full this knowledge, did not disdain to learn what his
enemies could teach him in other branches of military art; and his
infantry, patiently drilled on the Swiss method, was soon to prove the
equal of any body of troops in Europe.
The real laurels of victory belong indeed to Gonsalvo de Cordova; for,
though the French army could boast heroes of chivalry, such as Bayard
the “knight without fear or stain,” and generals of skill and courage,
such as D’Aubigny, it had no soldier who could in any way approach the
genius of the “Great Captain.” Gonsalvo had been bred in a school of
war, which gave individual talent full scope, and like his elder
brother, Alonso de Aguilar, he had been early singled out by Isabel for
praise and advancement.
[Illustration:
SPANISH MAN-AT-ARMS, FIFTEENTH CENTURY
FROM “SPANISH ARMS AND ARMOUR”
REPRODUCED BY COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR, MR. A. F. CALVERT
]
To the light-hearted chivalry of the courtier, he united the prudence
and foresight of a practised statesman, and the patience and equable
temperament of the born ruler of men. In the fire before Granada which
destroyed the Queen’s tent, he had been prompt to put at her disposal
his wife’s wardrobe; an act of courtesy that caused Isabel to remark she
was afraid he and his family had suffered more loss than herself. This
and similar deeds of courtesy made him a pattern of manners in his own
day, but like the English Sir Walter Raleigh he was no mere
carpet-knight in search of royal favour. He was devoid of personal fear,
yet, when large issues depended on his orders, he never let his courage
degenerate into recklessness, after the manner of the average Castilian
commander, and perhaps his greatest military gift was his power of
judging whether the occasion required caution or a daring onslaught.
Never was a leader more intrepid in attack, more cool in the hour of
retreat, or less easily drawn from a good position by feint or scoff.
“A general,” he once remarked, “must obtain the victory at any price,
right or wrong. Afterwards he will be able to make tenfold compensation
to those whom he has injured.”
This specious reasoning is characteristic both of the man and the age in
which he lived; and Gonsalvo, like many of his contemporaries, was a
strange combination of sincerity and unscrupulous dealing. After the
campaign against Charles VIII., in which he had assisted Ferrante II. to
win back his kingdom, the Spanish General had been rewarded by a lavish
grant of Neapolitan territory. When, however, war broke out once more,
and Gonsalvo found he must lead his troops against his former Allies,
his code of honour prompted him to inform them of his regret at this
necessity and to offer the restoration of their gifts before embarking
on hostile measures. At the surrender of Taranto in 1502, on the other
hand, having promised on oath that the young Duke of Calabria,
Federigo’s eldest son, should be free to go where he liked, he
nevertheless arrested the boy and sent him a prisoner to Spain. It has
been argued that, in the latter case, he had received sudden orders from
Ferdinand not on any account to let the Duke escape; but the excuse, if
true is after all a sorry shelter for his bad faith.
More pleasing, in a country where generals were wont to sell their
services to the highest bidder and yield to bribery with little
hesitation, was Gonsalvo’s persistent loyalty to his sovereign.
Ferdinand was not an easy master to satisfy, for neither his thoughts
nor actions were ordinarily generous, and his cold distrustful nature
was slow to respond to either enthusiasm or anxiety. During the war of
Granada, the task of dispatching an adequate supply of soldiers and
ammunition to the seat of war had fallen, as we have seen, to Isabel;
but with increasing ill-health and worry such affairs had slipped from
her fingers, and preparations for the Neapolitan campaigns were left to
other hands.
In vain Gonsalvo begged for reinforcements and the necessary money to
pay those companies already under his command. Ferdinand had a shrewd
conviction that his general was capable, when in straits, of making two
men perform the work of four, and doled out his assistance with
niggardly craft. Nor did the brilliant achievements of his young
Commander-in-chief, in the teeth of difficulties he himself had often
aggravated arouse his gratitude or admiration.
“He who is the cause of another’s greatness,” says Machiavelli, “is
himself undone”; and Ferdinand looked with suspicion on a subject so
successful and popular that his possible disloyalty might prove a source
of danger to the Crown. His own reputation as the champion cheat of
Europe was perhaps unassailable; but it carried with it this penalty: he
lived in mortal terror that he would one day be cheated.
In extenuation of his parsimony, the contrast between his wide ambitions
and small treasury must be remembered. Ferdinand, like Elizabeth of
England, was forced to imitate the careful housekeeper in making a
little go a long way; and habitual economy is a virtue that often
borders on vice. Not yet were the gold and silver of South America and
Mexico pouring in a rich flood into the royal coffers; while every day
fresh schemes of government, fresh wars and discoveries abroad, and the
weaving of fresh strands of alliance demanded monetary support, as well
as the King’s minute and unswerving attention.
Were Spain to pause for a moment in the race, letting Portugal outstrip
her in the Western seas, or France suborn her brilliant generals and
entice away her allies, she must inevitably fall behind into the second
rank of nations. Thus Ferdinand, straining ever after a prize, whose
very magnitude was to prove his country’s ultimate ruin, spun his web of
diplomacy in and out amongst the Powers of Europe, never neglecting any
opportunity that would draw him nearer his goal.
In the case of Portugal, fate seemed to have willed by the death, first
of Prince Alfonso and then of the young Queen Isabel, that no Aragonese
Infanta should draw closer the union of the two nations; but in 1500 the
spell of tragedy was broken by the marriage of Maria, the sovereign’s
third daughter, with the widower King Emmanuel.
One child alone remained with Ferdinand and Isabel, Catherine their
youngest; and in the following year she also fulfilled her destiny and
carried her father’s olive-branch to a northern home. Born in December,
1485, she had been betrothed almost from her infancy to Arthur, Prince
of Wales, Henry VII.’s eldest son; and Roger Machado, on his visit to
the Spanish Court, did not in his amazement at jewels and fine clothes
neglect to mention his future Queen, and how beautiful he had thought
her, held up in her mother’s arms to watch a tilting-match.
So firmly settled was the alliance, grounded on mutual hatred of England
and Aragon for France, that already at the early age of three the little
Infanta was styled “Princess of Wales”; but the intervening years before
the union could be realized did not on this account pass her over in
silence. The correspondence of the time is filled with frequent disputes
between the Catholic sovereigns and Henry VII. as to the exact financial
value of their respective offspring; and the discussion ranged from
Catherine’s marriage portion and the size of her household to the
comeliness of the ladies-in-waiting, who would accompany her;—the latter
a point on which the English King laid great stress.
At length, however, all was satisfactorily settled; and Henry, having
welcomed the bride, could write to her parents that
although they could not see the gentle face of their beloved daughter,
they might be sure that she had found a second father, who would ever
watch over her happiness, and never permit her to want anything he
could procure her.
A few short months and Arthur’s death had left the little Spanish
Princess, then not seventeen years old, a widow in a strange land; while
fatherly kindness wrangled furiously over the cost of her maintenance
and the disposition of her dowry. It was well for the immediate fortunes
of Catherine of Aragon that she soon found a husband in Arthur’s younger
brother Prince Henry, though perhaps, could she have read the future,
she would have preferred to decline the honour.
De Puebla, the Spanish Ambassador entrusted by Ferdinand with the
greater part of the marriage negotiations, had also tried his hand
during the years that he resided in England, at enticing the King of
Scotland into the anti-French web. The friendship between France and
Scotland was of ancient date; but De Puebla felt that the offer of a
royal bride from the Spanish Court would make a deep impression on King
James’s susceptible vanity, and since, at the date when this idea
occurred to him, all the Spanish Infantas were either married or
betrothed, he suggested instead Doña Juana, one of Ferdinand’s
illegitimate daughters, concealing as he believed with considerable
statesmanship the fact of the bar sinister. Ferdinand, when he heard of
it, was most contemptuous. Such a deception, he wrote, could not
possibly be maintained and therefore was not worth the lie. Let De
Puebla, on the other hand, hold out false hopes if he could of one of
the real Princesses, and by this bait induce the Scottish monarch to
quarrel with France. Even moderate success in this strategy would prove
of considerable value.
James IV. did not marry a Spanish Princess but Catherine of Aragon’s
sister-in-law Margaret Tudor; and what harm he might inflict on Spain
and her Allies in French interests was a mere pin-prick to the stab
administered by Ferdinand’s immediate family. On the death of Prince
Miguel in July, 1500, Joanna, Archduchess of Austria, became heiress to
the throne of Castile and Aragon; and, though there was cause for
rejoicing that a son had been born to her early in the same year and
thus the succession was assured, yet the situation arising from the new
importance of her position tended every day to grow more critical.
Joanna and her husband had been from the first an ill-matched pair, his
light careless nature acting like a spark to fire the mine of her sullen
temper and quick jealousy; and his faithlessness and her lack of
self-control combined to keep the Flemish Court in a perpetual flame of
scandal.
Had they been merely private individuals, the evil effects of their
passions might have spread no further than the street or town in which
they lived; but unfortunately Joanna had gone to Flanders not merely as
a bride but as an agent to influence her husband’s policy in her
father’s favour, and the odium and exasperation her behaviour aroused
reacted to the detriment of Spain. Philip had nothing in common with the
Castilian race. Their pride irritated him, their deep religious feeling
awoke his incredulity, their sense of reverence and gravity a flippant
scorn and boredom, that his selfishness found it difficult to disguise.
Personal tastes inclined him rather to the volatile, easy-mannered
Frenchman; and, as domestic differences increased, so also did his
dislike for the Aragonese and sympathy with their enemies.
“The French rule everything,” wrote Fuensalida, the Spanish Ambassador
at the Archduke’s Court despairingly. “They alone surround him and
entice him from feast to feast, from mistress to mistress.”
[Illustration:
TILTING ARMOUR OF PHILIP THE FAIR
FROM “SPANISH ARMS AND ARMOUR”
REPRODUCED BY COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR, MR. A. F. CALVERT
]
Fuensalida suggested that Philip and his wife should be induced to visit
Castile as soon as possible, before the evil habits into which the
Archduke had fallen took permanent hold of him; and Ferdinand and Isabel
warmly seconded this idea. Their son-in-law’s behaviour had been
scandalous; but their daughter’s conduct caused them if anything more
uneasiness. At times full of loving memories of her old home, so that
she confessed “she could not think of her mother and how far she was
separated from her for ever without shedding tears,” Joanna, on other
occasions, was taciturn or even defiant when approached by special
emissaries from Spain. Their questions she met by silence, their
allusions to her parents or to the religious enthusiasm that had stirred
her youth, by indifference. It seemed that jealousy and wounded pride
could in a moment slip like a dark curtain across her mind and blot out
all save a brooding fury at her wrongs.
The mental balance, once a flaw has shaken its equilibrium, is of all
scales the most difficult to adjust; and Isabel’s hopes that a personal
supervision of her daughter would effect a cure were doomed to
disappointment. Philip and Joanna came to Spain in 1502; but their
presence was an unwilling acknowledgment that custom required their
recognition as Prince and Princess of Castile by the national Cortes.
That business concluded, the Archduke was fully determined to return to
his own land, if possible as he had come by way of France, for the
reception he had been accorded in Paris made him eager to renew its
delights.
It was his ambition that his son, Charles, heir not only of his Austrian
archduchy and county of Flanders but of all the wide dominions of Spain,
should marry Claude, the infant daughter of Louis XII., a scheme of
alliance by which he himself would be enabled to pose as the arbiter of
European politics, adjudicating between the two great rival nations with
whom he had formed connections. Ferdinand might be pardoned if he
regarded the Archduke somewhat dubiously in the proposed rôle; and
indeed quarrels over the terms of the Partition Treaty and the
subsequent war in Naples were soon to wreck the would-be arbitrator’s
hopes. Yet, even before this failure was assured, mutual suspicion had
thrown a restraint over the intercourse of father-in-law and son-in-law,
and had even poisoned the relations between Isabel and her daughter.
Joanna was well aware of her husband’s intention of leaving Spain at the
first possible moment; but she herself was expecting a child and knew
the long journey would be beyond her powers. The thought that Philip
would leave her behind, intensified by the fear that he would do so with
keener pleasure than regret, assumed in her disordered brain the
monstrous proportions of a plot to keep her a prisoner in Castile. In
vain she entreated him to stay until she should be well enough to
accompany him; the Archduke, his ambition once satisfied by the homage
of the Cortes of Toledo and of Saragossa, impatiently counted the days
until he could cross the French border, and all the Catholic sovereigns’
efforts to entertain him failed dismally.
In December, 1502, he left Madrid; and Joanna, at his going, sank into a
mood of sullen despondency from which even the birth of her son,
Ferdinand, in March of the following year, could not rouse her. At
length she received a letter from Philip suggesting her return to
Flanders; but war had broken out between France and Spain, making the
journey, if not impossible, at least fraught with danger.
Ferdinand was with his army in Roussillon, and Isabel who was ill in
Segovia sent imploring messages to her daughter at Medina del Campo,
begging her to do nothing rash. Joanna was however obsessed by the
notion that she was the victim of a plot, and in her passionate desire
to escape from Spain was deaf to warnings and petitions. One evening,
lightly clad and followed by her scared attendants, she started on foot
from the castle and was only prevented from leaving the city by the
Bishop of Burgos, who had been placed by the Queen in charge of her
household and who gave orders that the gates should be closed. The
Archduchess commanded that they should be opened, and even descended to
prayers and entreaties, when she found her authority was of no avail; to
all the Bishop’s persuasions that she should return home she replied by
an uncompromising refusal. Through the long night, in the darkness and
the cold, she maintained her vigil; and when messengers arrived from
Segovia the next day, begging her in her mother’s name to resist from
her project, she would only consent to move into a poor hovel hard by
the gates.
On the second evening, Isabel, who had dragged herself from her sick-bed
at the tale of her daughter’s mad folly, appeared in Medina del Campo;
but Joanna at first greeted her with reproaches and anger, “speaking”
wrote the Queen in her account of the interview to Fuensalida, “so
disrespectfully and so little as a child should address her mother, that
if I had not seen the state of mind she was in, I would not have
suffered it for a moment.”
[Illustration:
JOANNA “THE MAD,” DAUGHTER OF QUEEN ISABEL
FROM “HISTORIA DE LA VILLA Y CORTE DE MADRID” BY AMADOR DE LOS RIOS
]
In the end Joanna’s stubborn obstinacy was conquered, and she returned
to the castle; but after such a scene few could doubt that she was at
any rate temporarily insane; and the Queen, conscious that her own days
were drawing to a close, trembled at the thought of her country’s
future, delivered to the moods of such a ruler.
“Cursed fruit of the tree that bore her; ill-fated seed of the land that
gave her birth, was this daughter for her mother,” wrote Peter Martyr
bitterly; and Isabel’s star, which had risen in such splendour out of
the murk of Henry IV.’s misgovernment, was destined to sink amid the
shame of Joanna’s folly.
In the spring of 1504 the Archduchess sailed to Flanders; and Queen
Isabel, guessing the scandals that would follow her footsteps when her
own restraining influence was removed, said good-bye to her with a sick
heart. Feeble in body, so that every task seemed an effort, she herself
turned more and more from worldly matters to the prayers and meditations
that drew her ever closer in touch with the land of her desire towards
which she was hastening. Yet neither her kingdom nor people were far
from her thoughts.
In 1503, when Ferdinand had gone north to protect the border counties
from what was rumoured to be an enormous invading army, her old martial
spirit had revived; and she busied herself in Segovia, as in the old
days, in collecting troops and despatching them to the seat of war. With
the news of Spanish victories her conscience smote her. The flying
French! These also were a Christian race, fighting for their own land.
Recoiling from the thought of such a slaughter, she wrote to Ferdinand,
praying him to stay his hand; and, whether moved by her wish or his own
foresight, he contented himself with driving his foes across the border.
Soon afterwards Louis XII. agreed to an armistice that freed the
Pyrenean provinces from war.
Triumph in the north of Spain was followed by the news of Gonsalvo de
Cordova’s victories in Naples; but joy at these successes was
counterbalanced by the serious state of the Queen’s health. She and
Ferdinand had fallen ill of fever in Medina del Campo in the summer of
1504; and, while his constitution rallied from the attack, anxiety for
him and her own weakness aggravated her symptoms, and it was feared that
these would end in dropsy.
“We sit sorrowful in the palace all the day long,” wrote Peter Martyr
early in the autumn, “tremulously waiting the hour when religion and
virtue shall quit the earth with her.”
Isabel herself knew the end was not far off, and bade those about her
restrain their tears. When she heard of the processions and pilgrimages
made throughout the kingdom in the hope of restoring her to health she
asked that her subjects should pray “not for the safety of her life but
the salvation of her soul.”
On the 12th of October she signed her will, commanding in it that her
body should be taken to Granada, and there buried without ostentation in
a humble tomb. The money that would have provided an elaborate funeral
was to be spent on dowries for twelve poor girls and the ransom of
Christian captives in Africa.
The poverty of the Castilian treasury, in contrast to its heavy
expenses, evidently weighed on her mind; and she gave orders that the
number of officials in the royal household should be reduced, and gifts
of lands and revenues, that had been alienated by the Crown without
sufficient cause, revoked. Her jewels she left to Ferdinand, that
“seeing them,” she said, “he may be reminded of the singular love I
always bore him while living, and that now I am waiting for him in a
better world.”
The future government of the kingdom was her special care; and in her
will, and its codicil added in November, while acknowledging Joanna as
her successor, she begged both her and Philip “to be always obedient
subjects to the King, and never disobey his orders.” This injunction was
amplified by the command that if Joanna should be absent from Spain, “or
although present ... unable to reign and govern,” Ferdinand should act
as regent, until his grandson Charles was of an age to undertake this
task for himself.
Such were the most important clauses of the document, by which Isabel
strove to safeguard her loved Castile from the dangers threatening her.
In others, she insisted that Gibraltar, which she had acquired for the
Crown should never be alienated from it; that her daughter and
son-in-law should not appoint foreigners to any office or post of trust,
that the tax of the _alcabala_,[10] if found illegal on inquiry, should
be abolished; that a new and more accurate code of laws should be
compiled; and that steps should be taken to secure the kindly treatment
of natives in the New World. It will be seen that Isabel in her last
days was still the ruler, holding in her now feeble hands all the
threads of national government, but clear in mind to recognize and
command the issues.
Footnote 10:
See page 394.
[Illustration:
CODICIL TO ISABEL’S WILL, WITH HER SIGNATURE
FROM LAFUENTE’S “HISTORIA GENERAL DE ESPAÑA,” VOL. VII.
]
On November 26th[11] the end so long expected came; and, having received
the Sacraments and commended her soul to God, the Queen, clad in a
Franciscan robe, passed peacefully away.
Footnote 11:
Peter Martyr says November 22d.
My hand [says Peter Martyr] falls powerless by my side for very
sorrow. The world has lost its noblest ornament ... for she was the
mirror of every virtue, the shield of the innocent, and an avenging
sword to the wicked.
It has pleased Our Lord [wrote Ferdinand to the chief citizens of
Madrid] to take to Himself the Most Serene Queen Doña Isabel, my very
dear and well-beloved wife; and although her loss is for me the
greatest heaviness that this world held in store ... yet, seeing that
her death was as holy and catholic as her life, we may believe that
Our Lord has received her into His glory, that is a greater and more
lasting kingdom than any here on earth.
The day after her death, the coffin with its funeral cortège left Medina
del Campo for Granada, amid a hurricane of wind and rain such as the
land had rarely witnessed. Peter Martyr, who was one of the escort,
declared that the Heavens opened, pouring down torrents that drove the
horsemen to shelter in the ditches by the wayside, while the mules sank
exhausted and terrified in the road. Never for a moment was there a
gleam of either sun or star, until on December 25th, as the funeral
procession entered Granada, the clouds lifted for the first time.
There in the city of her triumph, in the Franciscan monastery of the
Alhambra, the very heart of the kingdom she had won for Christianity,
Isabel of Castile was laid to rest.