THE ENTHUSIASTS CARRY THEIR PLANS TO THE KING.
Magellan, full of his project of finding a short way to the rich spicery
by sailing West, now sought the favor of the Spanish court. Gold has
ever been the royal want, and nobles have always had open ears to
schemes that promised to fill the public treasury.
Magellan's interesting friend Francisco Serrao, who had remained in the
Indian possessions of the Portuguese, after Magellan's return, had
discovered resources of the tropical seas of the Orient that were almost
boundless. He had written to Magellan:
"If you would become rich return to the Moluccas."
This letter would be a sufficient passport to the nobles who had the ear
of the King. He showed the letter to the King's ministers.
He thought that the point of South America turned _westward_, as the
Cape of Good Hope toward the East. He had an imaginary map in his mind
of an ocean world whose shape had no real existence, but that answered
well as a theory.
Magellan had brought a globe from Portugal on which he had drawn the
undiscovered world as he thought it existed. The strait which he had
hoped to find was omitted on this globe in his drawings that no
navigator might anticipate his discovery.
Some of the ministers listened to the project with indifference, a few
with ridicule; but as a rule Magellan appealed to willing ears. The
ministers as a body agreed to commend the enterprise to the King. The
Haros of Antwerp, the Rothschilds of the time, favored the expedition.
So Magellan and Faleiro made out a petition of formal proposals which
they desired to present to the King, and awaited the opportunity.
That opportunity soon came. Charles V, son of Joanna, who was passing
her days in solitude and grief on account of the loss of her husband,
was on his way to Aragon. He was Emperor of Germany and King of Spain.
He was a youth now; having been born in Ghent, February 24, 1500. He
came to the throne of Spain in 1516, as the disordered intellect of his
mother made her incapable of reigning. He was elected German Emperor in
1519.
[Illustration: Charles V. After a painting by Titian.]
In his youth he had been dissolute. Seeing the responsibilities that he
owed to the world and the age, he suddenly received new moral impulses
and conquered himself, and his moral life was followed by a religious
disposition. He received from the Pope the title of Roman Emperor. His
powerful intellect subdued a great part of continental Europe to his
will; but he became weary of the cares of state, retired from the
world, and ended his life as a religious recluse.
The young King entered Spain in triumph, but amid the glare of
receptions his ears were not dull to projects for acquiring gold.
Magellan and Faleiro, under the commendation of the ministry, were soon
able to lay their project before the young grandson of the great
Isabella. He received them in the spirit that Isabella had met Columbus.
He approved their plans, and charged them to make preparations for the
expedition.
Charles entered Zaragoza in May, 1518, a youth of eighteen, and Magellan
and Faleiro followed the royal train on its triumphal march in the
blooming days of the year. They were happy men, and their glowing
visions added to the joy of the court on its journey amid singing
nightingales and pealing bells.
The royal name signed to Magellan's commission was "Juana," who had been
the favorite daughter of Queen Isabella, who had signed the commission
of Columbus.[A] This royal daughter of Aragon and Castile was born at
Toledo, November 6, 1479. She was in the bloom of her girlhood when the
news of the return of Columbus thrilled Spain.
[A] Donna Juana and Don Carlos, her son, by the grace of God, Queen
and King of Castile, Leon, Aragon, the two Sicilies, and Jerusalem, of
Navarra, Granada, Toledo, Valencia, Galicia, the Mallorcas, Seville,
Sardinia, Cordova, Corsica, Murcia, Jaen, the Algarves, of Aljazira,
Gibraltar, of the Canary Isles, of the Indies, isles and mainland of
the Ocean-sea, Counts of Barcelona, Lords of Biscay and Molina, Dukes
of Athens and Neopatria, Counts of Roussillon and Cerdana, Marquises
of Euristan and Gociano, Archdukes of Austria, Dukes of Bergona and
Brabant, Counts of Flanders and Tirol, etc.
She was a girl of ardent affections; a lover of music; not beautiful,
but charming in manner; and at the age of eighteen was betrothed to
Philip of the Low Countries, called Philip the Handsome.
The wedding of this daughter of Isabella was to be celebrated in
Flanders by fetes of unusual splendor. A fleet of one hundred and thirty
vessels prepared to bear the bride to her handsome Prince. The ships
were under the command of the chivalrous admiral of Castile.
Juana took leave of her mother at the end of August, 1496, and embarked
at the port of Laredo. A more interesting bride under more joyous
circumstances had seldom gone forth to meet a bridegroom.
The sails covered the sea under the flags of the glory of Spain. They
drifted away amid music and shoutings, but the salvos of the guns had
hardly died away before terrible storms arose. The fleet was shattered,
and many of the vessels were lost.
The young bride herself arrived in Flanders safely, and her marriage
with the archduke followed at Lille.
When Queen Isabella heard of the birth of Charles, she recalled that it
fell on the day of Matthias, and exclaimed, "_Sors cecidit super
Mathiam_"--"the lot fell upon Matthias."
She predicted that the infant would become the King of Spain.
[Illustration: Ferdinand and Isabella. From a coin.]
Philip and Juana were summoned to Spain to meet the people over whom it
then seemed probable that they would soon be called to reign. They
entered France in 1501, attended by Flemish nobles, and wherever they
went was a holiday. There were weeks of splendid fetes in honor of the
progress.
When Ferdinand and Isabella heard of the arrival of Philip and Juana in
Spain they hastened to Toledo to meet them. Here Philip and his Queen
received the allegiance of the Cortes.
But Philip was a gay Prince, and he loved the dissipations of Flanders
more than his wife or the interests of his prospective Spanish
possessions. So he left his wife, and returned to Flanders.
The conduct of the handsome Prince drove Juana mad. She loved him so
fondly that she thought only of him, and sat in silence day after day
with her eyes fixed on the ground, as an historian says, "equally
regardless of herself, her future subjects, and her afflicted parents."
She subsequently joined Philip at Burgos. Here Philip died of fever
after overexertion at a game of ball. Juana never left his bedside, or
shed a tear. Her grief obliterated nearly all things in life, and she
was dumb. Her only happiness now, except in music, was to be with his
dead body.
She removed her husband's remains to Santa Clara.
The body was placed on a magnificent car, and was accompanied in the
long way to the tomb by a train of nobles and priests. Juana never left
it. She would not allow it to be moved by day. She said:
"A widow who has lost the sun of her soul should never expose herself to
the light of day!"
Wherever the procession halted, she ordered new funeral ceremonies. She
forbade nuns to approach the body. Finding the coffin had been carried
to a nunnery at a stage of the journey, she had it removed to the open
fields, where she watched by it, and caused the embalmed body to be
revealed to her by torches. She had a tomb made for the remains in sight
of her palace windows in Santa Clara, and she watched over it in silence
for forty-seven years, taking little interest in any other thing.
But as she survived Ferdinand and Isabella, her name for a time was
affixed to royal commissions, and so Magellan sailed in the service of
Charles under the signature of Juana, who was silently watching over her
husband's tomb, in the hope that the Prince would one day rise again.
We relate this narrative to give a view of the events of the period, and
for the same reason we must speak of another eminent person who acted in
the place of the Queen in her unhappy state of mind.
[Illustration: Cardinal Ximenes. After a painting by Velasquez.]
This was the great political genius of the time, the virtuous and
benevolent Cardinal Ximenes, statesman, archbishop, the heart of the
people and the conscience of the Church. He was born of a humble family
in Castile in 1487. He was educated in Rome. His character and learning
were such that Queen Isabella chose him for her confessor, and made him
Archbishop of Toledo, with the approval of the Pope.
On the death of Philip in 1505, he was made regent for Juana. Ferdinand
named Ximenes regent of Spain on his deathbed, until Charles V should
return from Flanders to Spain.
The regency of Ximenes was one of honor and glory. He himself lived
humbly and simply amid all his associations of pomp and power.
He maintained thirty poor persons daily at his own cost, and gave half
of his income to charity. He excited the jealousy of Charles V at last,
and lost his power in consequence. He lived to extreme age, and left a
character that Spain has ever loved to hold in honor.
Such was the political condition of Spain in the early days of
Magellan.