UNITED SPAIN
THE DISCOVERY OF THE NEW WORLD--VASCO DA GAMA--THE ROYAL
MARRIAGES--DREAMS OF EMPIRE--THE DEATH OF ISABELLA--FERDINAND’S END
The reign of Ferdinand and Isabella was made immemorial through Columbus
and his discovery. The man and the event will, in subsequent chapters,
be considered at length. For the present it will suffice to note that on
his return from the New World, after being loaded with honors, a
question arose as to Isabella’s right to confer the dignities thus
bestowed--Portugal claiming the territory by reason of an anterior grant
from the Pope, who, in common with all other parties, believed it to be
part of India.
The question was referred to a Junta of learned men of both nations, at
the same time that application was made to the reigning Pope, Alexander
VI., concerning it. The junta decided that the discoveries of Columbus
were not included in the Portuguese grant; and his Holiness finally, as
he conceived, terminated the dispute by drawing a line across the
Atlantic, from pole to pole, and adjudging all lands discovered on the
east of that line to Portugal, all on the west to Castile.
In connection with this it should be noted that, in 1497, Manuel of
Portugal sent Vasco da Gama with three ships to double the Cape of Good
Hope, with a view to tapping India. In the month of November, Gama
successfully doubled the formidable Cape, and sailed up the eastern
coast of Africa, as far as Mozambique. Here he found a Moor from Fez,
who, acting as interpreter between him and the natives, facilitated the
conclusion of a treaty, in virtue of which the King of Mozambique was to
furnish the adventurous navigators with pilots well acquainted with the
course to India. But, while they were taking in wood and water, a
quarrel arose with the natives, to whom the fault is of course imputed.
The pilots made their escape, and hostilities ensued. They did not last
long; the terrors of the Portuguese firearms soon compelling the
Africans to submit. Another, and, as the king assured Gama, a better
pilot was supplied, and on the 1st of April, 1498, he sailed from
Mozambique.
The new pilot proved quite as ill-disposed as his predecessors,
endeavoring to betray the fleet into the power of his countrymen at
Mombaza; and being alarmed with apprehensions of detection, by the
bustle apparent in the crew of Gama’s ship, which had accidentally
grounded, he also made his escape. It was not till they reached Melinda
that they found really friendly natives. From that port Gama at last
obtained a pilot who steered him right across the gulf to the coast of
Malabar.
The first place in India made by the Portuguese was Calecut. Here Gama
announced himself as an embassador sent by the King of Portugal to
negotiate a treaty of alliance with the sovereign, the zamorin of
Calecut, one of the most powerful princes of that part of Hindustan, to
establish commercial relations, and to convert the natives to
Christianity. How far this last object of his mission was agreeable to
the bigoted Hindus, or the equally bigoted Muhammadan conquerors, who
were then the masters of those wealthy regions, we are not distinctly
told by the Portuguese historians; but the zamorin appears in the first
instance to have received Gama well, and been upon the whole pleased
with his visit. This friendly intercourse was interrupted, as we are
assured, by the intrigues of the Moors or Arabs, who, being in
possession of the pepper trade, and indeed of the whole spice trade,
were jealous of interlopers. Quarrels arose, and some acts of violence
were committed. They ended, however, in Gama’s gaining the advantage,
and friendship was restored between him and the zamorin. He reached
Portugal in July, 1499, after a two years’ voyage, and was, like
Columbus in Spain, loaded with honors.
We may now return to Ferdinand and Isabella. This was the brightest
period of their lives. The repulse of Charles VIII., and the victories
of Gonsalvo, added fresh luster to their reign. Moreover, through
measures then undertaken, the unconverted Moors were subdued, and the
French provinces were regained; but, over and above all, a new world had
been discovered, and marriages, seemingly the most fortunate, were
concluded: Ferdinand and Isabella’s son and heir, Don John, having
married the daughter of the Emperor Maximilian; their second daughter
Joanna, Philip, the son and heir of that monarch, by Mary of Burgundy,
and already, in right of his deceased mother, sovereign of the rich and
fertile Netherlands; the third, Katharine, was affianced to Arthur,
Prince of Wales; and Manuel, duke of Beja, having succeeded to his
cousin John II. of Portugal, despite all intrigues in favor of the
illegitimate Don George, solicited and obtained the hand of the eldest
Infanta, the widow of the Prince of Portugal.
The first to be celebrated of all these royal marriages was that of the
Princess Isabella with Alfonso, the heir to the crown of Portugal, which
took place in the autumn of the year 1490, and which was apparently
calculated to lead to the happiest results. But the magnificent wedding
festivities at Lisbon were scarce concluded when the bridegroom died,
and the widowed princess returned disconsolate to her mother (January,
1491).
The marriage of John, prince of Asturias, was the next, and apparently
the most important alliance that engaged the attention of his parents;
and, moved by many considerations of policy and prestige, they turned
their thoughts to far-away Flanders. Maximilian of Hapsburg, the titular
sovereign of the Holy Roman Empire, had, by his first wife, Mary, a
daughter of Charles the Bold, and in her own right Duchess of Burgundy,
been made the father of two children, Philip, born in 1478, and
Margaret, in 1480. Their mother, the beautiful empress, died in 1482;
and Philip, on attaining his legal majority at the age of sixteen,
assumed, in her right, the government of the Low Countries in 1494. It
was with this youthful sovereign, the heir to yet more splendid
possessions, that the Catholic sovereigns desired to unite their younger
daughter in marriage, while the hand of his sister Margaret was sought
for the Prince of Asturias. The advantages to Spain of such a double
marriage were enormous.
If Prince John were to marry the Archduchess Margaret, the only daughter
of the emperor, he would inherit, in the event of the death of the
Archduke Philip without issue, the great possessions of the Hapsburgs,
Austria, Flanders, and Burgundy, with a claim to the empire that had
eluded his great ancestor, Alfonso X. That the Archduke Philip should in
his turn espouse, not Isabella, the eldest, but Joanna, the second
daughter of the Catholic king, would prevent Spain from passing under
the dominion of Austria, even in the unlikely event of the death of
Prince John without issue, inasmuch as Isabella of Portugal would, in
such a case, inherit the Spanish crown, to the prejudice of her younger
sister in Flanders. And finally, if all the young wives and husbands
should live to a reasonable age, and should leave children behind them
at their death, one grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella would wear the
imperial purple as lord of Central Europe, and another would sit upon
the throne of a great united Peninsular kingdom of Castile, Portugal,
and Aragon.
In the early autumn of 1496 (August 22), a splendid fleet set out from
Laredo, a little port between Bilbao and Santander, which carried Joanna
in safety to her expectant bridegroom. The archduke and the princess for
whom so sad a fate was reserved were married at Lille with the usual
rejoicings; and the Spanish admiral, charged a second time with a
precious freight of marriageable royalty, brought back the Lady Margaret
of Hapsburg with all honor to Spanish Santander, early in March, 1497.
The marriage of the heir apparent took place at Burgos, on the 3d of
April; and on the 4th of October of the same year, the gentle and
accomplished Prince of Asturias had passed away from Spain, and from the
world.
Yet, once again, and for a few months, there lived an heir to United
Spain, whose brief existence is scarce remembered in history. Isabella,
the widowed queen of John II. of Portugal, had been persuaded or
constrained by her parents to contract a second marriage with her
husband’s cousin and successor Emmanuel; but the price of her hand was
the price of blood. For it was stipulated that the Jews, who, by the
liberality of the late king, had been permitted to find a home in his
dominions, should be driven out of the country after the stern Castilian
fashion of 1492, ere the widowed Isabella should wed her cousin on the
throne of Portugal.
Whether the princess was an apt pupil, or merely the slave of her mother
and the Inquisitor that lurked behind the throne, we cannot say, but the
Portuguese lover consented to the odious bargain. The marriage was
solemnized at Valencia de Alcantara, in the early days of the month of
August, 1497, and the stipulated Tribute to Bigotry was duly paid. But
before ever the bridal party had left the town, an express had arrived
with the news of the mortal illness of the bride’s only brother; and in
little more than a year the young queen herself, on the 23d of August,
1498, expired in giving birth to a son. The boy received the name of
Miguel, and lived for nearly two years--the heir apparent of Portugal,
of Aragon, and of Castile--until he too was involved in the general
destruction.
But some time before the death, or even before the birth of Miguel,
another royal marriage had been concluded, whose results throughout all
time were no less remarkable and scarce less important than that which
handed over Spain to a Flemish emperor. For after infinite negotiations
and more than one rupture, after some ten years’ huxtering about dowry,
and a dozen changes of policy on the part of the various sovereigns
interested in the alliance, Katharine, the youngest daughter of
Ferdinand and Isabella, more familiarly known as Katharine of Aragon,
had been married to Arthur, Prince of Wales, and the first act had been
concluded of that strange and fateful drama that led to the Reformation
in England.
The dignified sadness of her story as Queen Katharine--insulted,
divorced, and abandoned--the unwilling heroine of the great tragic drama
that was played in the reign of Henry VIII. of England, is known to all
men, who extend to her, with one consent, their pity and their respect.
But those only who know something of the seven dreary and disgraceful
years that she spent in the palace of her father-in-law, before she was
permitted to know, even for a season, the happiness of a husband’s love,
or to enjoy the great position of Queen of England, may alone understand
the fullness of the measure of her wretchedness.
In June, 1504, Isabella, who had for some time been ailing, and who
seems to have suffered from some nervous disease, was struck down
suddenly by fever. She had lived a hard life. She had never spared
herself, or others. The unhappy marriages of her children had cast a
dark shadow over her life. But hers was not the nature to repine.
Diligent, abstemious, resolute, she had borne pain and suffering, and
she was not afraid to face death. Unable at length to rise from her
couch, as the autumn drew to a close, she continued to transact her
accustomed business, gave audience to embassadors, chatted with
privileged visitors, and, in the words of an astonished stranger,
governed the world from her bed.
At last, on the 26th of November, 1504, as the church bells of Medina
del Campo were ringing out the hour of noon, the spirit of Isabella of
Castile flitted away from this world; and her mortal remains were
conducted by a mournful company to their last resting place under the
shadow of the red towers of Alhambra. Through storm and tempest, amid
earthquake and inundation, across mountain and river, the affrighted
travelers wended their way. For the sun was not seen by day nor the
stars by night, during three long and weary weeks, as if the very forces
of nature were disturbed at the death of a giant among the princes of
the earth.
The character of Isabella has suffered to an uncommon extent from an
ignorant glorification of virtues that she was far from possessing, and
the concealment of those transcendent powers that made her not only one
of the greatest rulers of Spain, but one of the greatest women in the
history of the world. Until the opening of the treasure-house at
Simancas displayed her correspondence to the world, she was only known
from the extravagant but somewhat colorless panegyrics of contemporary
chroniclers, who recognized at least that she was a royal lady,
compelling their gallant admiration, and that she was immensely
superior to her husband, whom it was necessary also to glorify, as the
last Spanish sovereign of Spain.
Isabella was one of the most remarkable characters in history. Not only
was she the most masterful, and, from her own point of view, by far the
most successful ruler that ever sat upon the throne of Spain, or of any
of the kingdoms of the Peninsula; she stands in the front rank of the
great sovereigns of Europe, and challenges comparison with the greatest
women who have ever held sway in the world. A reformer and a zealot, an
autocrat and a leader of men, with a handsome face and a gracious
manner, scarce concealing the iron will that lay beneath, Isabella was
patient in adversity, dignified in prosperity, at all times quiet,
determined, thorough.
In one particular she stands alone among the great ruling women, the
conquerors and empresses of history. She is the only royal lady, save,
perhaps, Maria Theresa of Hungary, who maintained through life the
incongruous relations of a masterful sovereign and a devoted wife, and
shared not only her bed but her throne with a husband whom she
respected--a fellow-sovereign whom she neither feared nor disregarded.
To command the obedience of a proud and warlike people is given to few
of the great men of history. To do the bidding of another with vigor and
with discretion is a task that has been but rarely accomplished by a
heaven-born minister. But to conceive and carry out great designs, with
one hand in the grasp of even the most loyal of companions, is a
triumphant combination of energy with discretion, of the finest tact
with the most indomitable resolution, that stamps Isabella of Spain as
a being more vigorous than the greatest men, more discreet than the
greatest women of history. Semiramis, Zenobia, Boadicea, Elizabeth of
England, Catherine of Russia, not one of them was embarrassed by a
partner on the throne. The partner of Isabella was not only a husband
but a king, jealous, restless, and untrustworthy. It is in this respect,
and in the immense scope of her political action, that the great Queen
of Castile is comparable with the bold Empress-King of Hungary rather
than with any other of the great queens and royal ladies of history.
The husband of Zenobia indeed enjoyed the title of Augustus; but it was
only after his assassination that the lady earned her fame as a ruler.
Catherine caused her imperial consort to be executed as a preliminary to
her vigorous reign in Russia; Boadicea was the successor and not the
colleague of Prasutagus; and Semiramis, though herself somewhat a
mythical personage, is said to have slain both her husband and his
rival, in her assertion of her absolute power. Yet Isabella
revolutionized the institutions of her country, religious, political,
military, financial, she consolidated her dominions, humiliated her
nobles, cajoled her Commons, defied the Pope, reformed the clergy; she
burned some ten thousand of her subjects; she deported a million more;
and of the remnant she made a great nation; she brooked no man’s
opposition, in a reign of thirty years, and she died in the arms of the
king, her husband!
Ferdinand of Aragon was no hero. But he was a strong man; a capable
ruler; a clever if a treacherous diplomatist. And to this husband and
consort was Isabella faithful through life, not merely in the grosser
sense of the word, to which Ferdinand for himself paid so little heed;
but in every way and walk of life. She supported him in his policy; she
assisted him in his intrigues; she encouraged him in his ambitious
designs; she lied for him, whenever prudence required it; she worked for
him at all times, as she worked for Spain. For his policy, his
intrigues, his designs were all her own. Whenever the views of the king
and queen were for a moment discordant, Isabella prevailed, without
apparent conflict of authority. In her assumption of supremacy in the
marriage contract; in her nomination of Gonsalvo de Cordova to the
command of the army; in her choice of Ximenez as the Primate of Spain,
she carried her point, not by petulance or even by argument, but by
sheer force of character; nor did she strain for one moment, even in
these manifestations of her royal supremacy, the friendly and even
affectionate relations that ever subsisted between herself and her
husband.
The love and devotion of Isabella was a thing of which the greatest of
men might have well been proud. And though Ferdinand the Catholic may
not fairly be counted among the greatest, he was a man wise enough to
appreciate the merits of his queen, and to accept and maintain the
anomalous position in which he found himself as her consort.
In war at least it might have been supposed that the queen would occupy
a subordinate position. Yet in no department of State did Isabella show
to greater advantage than as the organizer of victorious armies; not as
a batallador after the fashion of her distinguished ancestors in
Castile and in Aragon; but as the originator of an entirely new system
of military administration.
Before her time, in Spain, war had been waged by the great nobles and
their retainers in attendance upon the king. There was no such thing as
uniformity of action or preparation, no central organization of any
kind. Each man went into battle to fight and to forage as opportunity
offered. Each commander vied with his fellow nobles in deeds of bravery,
and accorded to them such support as he chose. The sovereign exercised a
general authority, and assumed the active command of the united
multitude of soldiers, on rare and important occasions. If victory
followed, as at the Navas de Tolosa, the soldiers were rewarded with the
plunder, and took possession of the property of the enemy. If the
Christians were defeated, the army melted away; and the king betook
himself to the nearest shelter.
But Isabella had no sooner assumed the title of Queen of Castile, than
she was called upon to maintain her pretensions in the field. With no
experience but that of a country palace, with no training but that of a
country cloister, she set herself to work to organize an army. On the
1st of May, 1474, five hundred horsemen represented the entire forces of
the fair usurper. By the 19th of July she had collected over forty
thousand men, had armed and equipped them ready for the field, and had
sent them forward under the command of Ferdinand to the frontier.
Although she was at the time in delicate health, she was constantly in
the saddle, riding long distances from fortress to fortress, hurrying up
recruits all day, dictating letters all night, giving her zealous
personal attention to every detail of armory and equipment, showing
from the first that quiet energy and that natural aptitude for command
that ever so constantly distinguished her. That her levies were not
victorious in no way daunted her determination. A second army was raised
by her, within a few weeks after the first had melted away under
Ferdinand; nor would she listen to any offers of negotiation, until the
enemy had been driven out of Castile.
In the conduct of the war of Granada, with time and money at her
command, her preparations were upon a very different scale. The most
skillful artificers were summoned from every part of Europe to assist in
the work of supplying the army with the necessary material of war.
Artillery, then almost unknown to the military art, was manufactured in
Spain according to the best designs. Model cannon were imported, and the
necessary ammunition collected from abroad. Sword-blades were forged at
home. Not only a commissariat, but a field hospital--institutions till
then unheard of in Spanish warfare--were organized and maintained under
the personal supervision of the queen. The presence of a lady on the day
of battle would, as a rule, as she rightly judged, have been rather a
hinderance than a help; but she was very far from being a mere
commissioner of supply. A first-rate horsewoman, she was constantly seen
riding about the camp, encouraging, inspecting, directing; and in the
last days of the siege of Granada, when the spirits of the troops had
begun to flag, she appeared daily in complete armor, and showed herself
upon more than one occasion in a post of danger on the field. The armies
with which Gonsalvo de Cordova overran Calabria, and annihilated the
French at Cerignola, were prepared and dispatched by Isabella; and if,
in a subsequent campaign, the Great Captain was left without supplies or
re-enforcements, it was that the queen was already sickening to her
death, broken down and worn out by her constant and enormous exertions.
But with all her aptitude for military organization, Isabella had no
love for war. Her first campaign was undertaken to make good her
pretensions to the crown. The extermination of the Moslems was a matter
of religious feeling and patriotic pride, rather than an object of
military glory; but she refused to pursue her conquest across the
Straits of Gibraltar. The expeditions to Italy were a part of
Ferdinand’s diplomacy, though the honor of victory must be shared
between Isabella and her Great Captain. But the queen’s ambition lay not
in conquest abroad. On the contrary, as soon as the last province in
Spain had been delivered from the foreign yoke of the Moor, she turned
her attention to the peaceful development of the kingdom; and,
unlettered warrior as she was, she bestowed her royal patronage upon
students and studies, rather than upon the knights and nobles who had
fought her battles before Granada.
The old foundations of the Universities, the new art of printing,
scholarship, music, architecture found in her a generous patron, not so
much from predilection as from policy. Men of letters and men of
learning were welcomed at her court, not only from every part of Spain,
but from every part of Europe. For herself she had little appreciation
of literature. She neither knew nor cared what influence her beloved
Inquisition would have upon science. But as long as the queen lived,
learning was honored in Spain.
In this, as in all other things, her judgment of men was unerring. The
queen who made Gonsalvo the commander-in-chief of her armies, and
Ximenez the president of her council, who selected Torquemada as her
grand inquisitor, and Talavera as her archbishop of Granada, made no
mistake when she invited Peter Martyr to instruct her son in polite
letters, and commissioned Lebrija to compose the first Castilian Grammar
for the use of her court.
Her beauty of face and form are familiar. Yet vanity was unknown to her
nature. Simple and abstemious in her daily life, and despising pomp for
its own sake, no one could make a braver show on fitting occasions; and
the richness of her apparel, the glory of her jewels, and the noble
dignity of her presence, have been celebrated by subjects and strangers.
At the death of Isabella, Ferdinand, in accordance with the provisions
of her will, caused his daughter, Joanna, to be proclaimed queen and
himself regent. Philip, archduke of Austria, the husband of Joanna,
having disputed the rights of his father-in-law and threatened an appeal
to arms, the latter in disgust, with the view of again separating the
crowns of Aragon and Castile, entered into negotiations with Louis XII.,
married Germaine de Foix, the niece of Louis (1505), and shortly
afterward resigned the regency of Castile. On the death of Philip, in
1506, he resumed the administration, though not without opposition, and
retained it till his death. In 1508 he joined the League of Cambray for
the partition of Venice, and thus without any trouble became master of
five important Neapolitan cities.
In the following year (1509) the African expedition of Cardinal Ximenez
was undertaken, which resulted in the conquest of Oran. In 1511
Ferdinand joined Venice and Pope Julius II. in a “holy league” for the
expulsion of the French from Italy. This gave a pretext for invading
Navarre, which had entered into alliance with France, and been laid
under Papal interdict in consequence. Aided by his son-in-law Henry
VIII. of England, who sent a squadron under the Marquis of Dorset to
co-operate in the descent on Guienne, Ferdinand became master of Navarre
in 1513; and on June 15, 1515, by a solemn act in Cortes held at Burgos,
he incorporated it with the kingdom of Castile.
The League of Cambray, which was signed on the 10th of December, 1508,
between Louis XII., the Emperor Maximilian, and Ferdinand of Aragon, at
the instance of the warlike Pope Julius II., was nominally directed
against the Turks, but was in reality a coalition for the destruction
and partition among the confiscators of the rich State of Venice. If
anything was wanted to make this league of public plunderers more
corrupt and more odious than it would under any circumstances have been,
it was that the kings of France and of Aragon, in order to secure the
adhesion of the Medicis, sacrificed their faithful allies, the Pisans,
after solemn assurances of protection and support, and actually sold
that ancient city to the Florentines, their hereditary enemies, for a
hundred thousand ducats.
But all their bad faith and covetousness was displayed in vain. The
perfidious leaguers could not even trust one another; and the success of
the French arms at Agnadel, in May, 1509, so seriously alarmed both
Julius and Ferdinand that a second treaty was concluded in October,
1511, when the Pope and the King of Aragon invited the Venetian
Republic, for whose destruction they had leagued themselves together
with Louis XII. not three years before, to assist them in driving the
French out of Italy.
Of the consummate skill with which Ferdinand, from the middle of 1509 to
the end of 1511, played off his allies and rivals one against the other,
until he had accomplished the central object of his diplomacy in the
great Confederation against Louis XII., we may read in the history of
France and of Italy, of England and of Germany, rather than in the
Chronicles of Aragon. For King Ferdinand pulled the strings that moved
the puppets, while he remained wellnigh hidden himself. But by the end
of 1511 the showman was compelled to make his own appearance upon the
stage of European warfare; and Ferdinand was ever less successful as an
actor than as an impresario. His policy for the past two years had been
the formation of a league against his dearly-beloved uncle-in-law, Louis
XII., by the aid of his dearly-beloved son-in-law, Henry VIII. Queen
Katharine, who had already played the part of embassador to her English
father-in-law, was to make use of her influence over her English
husband; and if the queen should refuse to advise King Henry to go to
war with France, her confessor was to tell her that she was bound as a
good Christian to do so.
To coerce the confessor, Ferdinand applied to the Pope; and to control
the Pope, he betrayed to him, in secret, the whole scheme of King Louis
XII. as regarded the plunder of the States of the Church. It is easy to
understand what an effect the communication of the French king’s plans
of spoliation produced upon the excitable and irascible Julius. When he
had learned that he was not only to be robbed of his temporalities, but
that he was to be deposed and imprisoned in case he should prove
spiritually intractable, he hastened, in spite of his age and his
infirmities, to traverse the snow-covered mountains, that he might meet
his enemy in the field.
The King of Aragon was a diplomatist who left nothing to chance. He
trusted no man. And if no man trusted him, he never deceived himself by
supposing that any one was simple enough to do so. No detail, however
trifling, was neglected by him in his negotiations. No contingency,
however remote, was left out of sight in his intrigues. And however
little we may respect his character, which was perhaps not much worse
than that of some of his rivals, we cannot refuse to admire his
transcendent skill, his infinite perseverance, his forethought, and his
keen appreciation of every shade of political development. A little
honesty would have made him a great man, a little generosity would have
made him a great king. His policy, moreover, toward the close of his
life, is at least worthy of an admiration which has rarely been extended
to it. It was a policy which embraced all Europe in its scope; and
although it had no direct relation to Spain or the Spanish people, it
would be ill to conclude even a brief survey of the history of Spain
without referring to the imperial dreams of the great Spaniard, first of
modern diplomatists, and of his early endeavors to solve more than one
of those questions that still embarrass the foreign policy of modern
States: the establishment of a kingdom of Italy; the alliance between
Italy and Germany, to withstand a dreaded power beyond the Danube and
the Carpathians; the entanglement of England in a central European
league; and the treatment of the Pope of Rome.
The Turks, the medieval bugbear in the East--for the Middle Ages had
also their Eastern Question--were at this time rapidly encroaching upon
Christian Europe; and it was obviously desirable to form a powerful
empire, as a bulwark of Christendom, on the banks of the Danube. The
opportunity of founding a great empire in central Europe actually
existed. Ladislaus II., king of Bohemia and of Hungary, had only one
son, Louis, who was of so delicate a constitution that no issue could be
expected of his marriage. In case he should die without children, his
sister, the Princess Anne, was the heiress of both his kingdoms; and if
her father could be persuaded to marry her to the heir of the Austrian
principalities, Bohemia, Austria, and Hungary, thus united with the
heritage of the Hapsburgs, would form by no means a contemptible State,
which might itself be but the nucleus of a greater and more ambitious
empire.
Naples, which had so lately been added to the Spanish dominions, was
still exposed to the attacks of the French, who claimed one-half, and
were always ready to appropriate to themselves the whole of the kingdom.
Naples was separated from France, indeed, by a considerable extent of
territory in Italy; but the smaller Italian States were too weak to
render any serious resistance, and too fickle to be counted upon as
friends or as foes by any Spanish sovereign. The best way to render
Naples secure was, in the eyes of Ferdinand, the foundation of a great
kingdom in northern Italy, powerful enough to prevent the French from
marching their armies to the south. The formation of such a kingdom
moreover would have greatly facilitated a peaceful division of the great
Austro-Spanish inheritance between Prince Charles and his brother, the
Infante Ferdinand.
If Charles could be provided not only with the kingdom of Spain, but
with the possessions of Maximilian and Ladislaus and the Princess Anne,
and the empire of central Europe, his younger brother Ferdinand might
content himself with a kingdom to be made up of all the States of Italy,
protected against the encroachments of France by Spanish infantry and
German landsknechts, and ready to drive the Turk out of the
Mediterranean in support of the Christian empire on the Danube.
The kingdom of Italy, thus designed for his younger grandson by the
far-seeing Ferdinand of Aragon, was to consist of Genoa, Pavia, Milan,
and the Venetian territories on the mainland. The country of the Tyrol,
being the most southern of the Austrian dominions, could, without
sensibly weakening the projected empire, be separated from it and added
to the new kingdom in Italy. Thus stretching from the Mediterranean to
the Adriatic, and from the Gulf of Spezia to the Lake of Constance, this
sixteenth century kingdom of Italy, with the whole power of the Holy
Roman Empire to support it, would have been a splendid endowment for a
younger son of the greatest family on earth. There was also a reasonable
prospect that it might afterward be still further enlarged by the
addition of Naples, and the smaller Italian States would easily have
fallen a prey to their powerful neighbor. But in addition to all this,
Ferdinand thought that he would render a notable service to the Catholic
religion and to the peace of Europe if the Church were thoroughly
reformed. What Rome herself has lost by Ferdinand’s failure it is not
given even to the Infallible to know. What the king’s reforms were to
be, we can only shrewdly surmise; and although they would most assuredly
not have been Protestant, they would with equal certainty have been by
no means palatable to the Vatican. For it is reasonably probable that if
either Louis XII. or Ferdinand the Catholic had been permitted to carry
out their designs, the Pope of Rome would have found himself deprived of
his temporal power, and Garibaldi, nay, perchance Luther, would have
been forestalled. It was the reforms of Ximenez that to a large extent
prevented Luther in Spain. The reforms of Ferdinand might possibly have
prevented him in Italy.
It was in 1516 that Ferdinand died. Seven years previous Queen Germaine
had been delivered of a son, who received from his parents the name of
John. But the curse that lay upon the children of Ferdinand was not yet
spent; and the rival of Charles V., the heir of Aragon, Sardinia,
Naples, and Sicily, was permitted to gladden the envious heart of his
father by but a few hours of life. As years passed on there seemed
little chance of any further issue of the King and Queen of Aragon. The
unity of Spain at length appeared to be secure. But the ambition of
Ferdinand was even surpassed by his jealousy. Childless, vindictive, and
obstinate, he chafed at the ill-success of his personal schemes; and
rather than suffer the crown of united Spain to pass over to his
daughter’s son and heir, he sought, at the hands of some medical
impostor, the powers that were denied to his old age. The drug that was
to have renewed his youth destroyed his constitution, and his death was
the direct result of one of the least creditable of the many
developments of his jealousy, his obstinacy, and his selfishness.
At length came the inevitable end; and at the wretched hamlet of
Madrigalejo, near Guadalupe, in the mountains of Estremadura, on the 23d
of January of the new year 1516, Ferdinand died; and Spain was at length
a United Kingdom.