From the very beginning of the reconquest of Spain from the Arab-Moors
in 718, when the brave band of refugees who had not bowed to the Saracen
yoke issued from the mountains of Asturias in the extreme northwest
corner of Spain, under Pelayo, with vows resting upon them "to rid the
land of its infidel invaders and to advance the standard of the cross
until it was everywhere victorious over the crescent," the "Expulsion of
the Moors" had been the hereditary appanage of the crown of Castile and
Leon, the first fruits of the reconquest.
The crown was heavy and the burden was great that descended to Isabella
in 1474, for although she came to the throne through Gothic ancestry and
in conformity with Gothic law, her father's heir and the chosen of the
people, yet the nation had already poured out its blood in defence of
her "succession" and the war of her "accession" was pending. No wonder
that Isabella never forgot that it was through the people and for the
people, and in defence of the cross, that she wore the crown and sat
upon the throne of Leon and Castile.
During the preceding reigns the laws of the country had been so
constantly defied that they had become of no effect. The one law of
barbarism seemed the only law that governed,
"He can take who has the power,
And he may keep who can."
The country was infested with lawless banditti, and even the cities were
powerless to protect individuals or property. The prisons were
overcrowded with suspected criminals who had never been brought to
trial; the immorality of the court had spread like a deadly poison
through the lower grades of social life; even the priests had become
tainted with the general demoralization. The coin of Castile had been
debased until the most necessary articles of life were enhanced from
three to six times their value; the late civil wars had exhausted the
treasury, and the country seemed on the verge of bankruptcy. The Moors
had even ceased to pay tribute and were making frequent forays into the
surrounding country, taking men, women, and children into Mussulman
captivity with the hope of exacting a ransom. Public confidence was
dead. No wonder that Isabella felt her crown heavy and the burden of her
kingdom great.
But the brave, resolute woman, making choice of wise and able
counsellors, entered at once upon a vigorous crusade of reform. The
first measure proposed to the cortes, in 1476, was the re-establishment
of the celebrated Hermandad, or Holy Brotherhood, which was carried into
effect the same year. The new institution differed from the ancient,
inasmuch as its power proceeded from the crown and was disbanded by it
in 1498. The Hermandad in our day would be called a mounted police, but
in the days of Isabella every organization came under the sanction of
the Church. The duties of the Holy Brotherhood were to arrest offenders
throughout the kingdom and to enforce the law. Every one hundred
householders throughout the kingdom maintained one Hermandad. Upon the
flight of a criminal tocsins were sounded, and the officers of the
Brotherhood stationed within hearing took up a pursuit that left little
hope for escape. Thus a body of cavalry, two thousand in number, fully
equipped and supported, was at the disposal of the crown to enforce the
law and to suppress insurrections. In a few years the country was
cleared of banditti and the blessing of personal security under the
government was restored.
Isabella revived also another ancient custom of her forefathers, that of
presiding in person over courts of justice. From city to city she
travelled on horseback, making the circuit of her kingdom, regardless of
personal fatigue. Side by side with Ferdinand, when he had leisure from
foreign complications to accompany her, she sat (not unmindful of the
dignity belonging to the crown) with her courtiers around her, to listen
with interest, that she might redress wrongs, punish the wrongdoers, and
administer justice even to the lowliest of her subjects. Her personal
address, and the unbounded respect which her integrity inspired; her
proclamation throughout the kingdom that the interests of her people
were her interests, re-established such public confidence that, says a
writer of that age, "Those who had long despaired of public justice
blessed God for their deliverance, as it were, from deplorable
captivity." Nor did the sovereigns relax their personal efforts for the
restoration of law and order until the cortes had passed measures for
the permanent administration of justice. Thus in a few years, from a
state of anarchy and misrule, Castile entered upon her "Golden Age of
Justice."
The golden age of literature, developed in the next century, has been
justly ascribed to the impetus given by Isabella to liberal education,
classical and scientific. Under her patronage schools were established
in every city, presided over by learned men. The printing press, lately
invented, was introduced; foreign books were imported free of duty,
while such precedence was given to native literature as led on to the
brilliant achievements of the sixteenth century. In social reform
precept was enforced by example. In all that was pure, in all that was
true, in all that was noble and magnanimous, Isabella, in private life,
was a witness unto her people. No calumny of any kind, even in a
depraved age, was ever cast upon Isabella of Castile or upon any one of
her royal children. But the strongest characteristic of Isabella, that
which colored her whole life and gave force to every public action, was
her fervent piety and her unfaltering [perhaps blind] faith in the
divine authority of the Roman Catholic Church. For all the evils that
grew out of the latter she is still branded, even among the
liberal-minded of to-day, regardless of her illiberal age, with that
worst of all brands, "a religious bigot." This side of her character we
will not discuss, but refer our readers to the history of Christianity
during the fifteenth century, when the great flood-tide of religious
intolerance reached its height.
It was in the fulness of this tide that the great historic events of her
reign occurred, viz., the conquest of Granada, the expulsion of the
Jews, the Inquisition, and the discovery of America. After each of
these, for honor or dishonor, we interline the name of Isabella. Yet the
conquest of Granada, or the reconquest of every foot of land which the
Moors had taken from the Goths, was foreordained in Castilian councils
centuries before Isabella was born. The expulsion of the Jews, the
so-called "enemies of Christ," was but a part of the same effort "to rid
the land of unbelieving invaders." The Inquisition, with all its
horrors, was re-established by the Church during that age of
intolerance to which the reign of Isabella belongs. Yet these are still
named to the dishonor of Isabella.
But the discovery of America, with all its lasting benefits to mankind,
is the immortal crown which the world has woven out of her proffered
"Jewels;" and with this crown it has crowned Isabella of Castile.
In the marriage contract of the youthful prince and princess it was
agreed that Ferdinand should lead the armies of Castile against the
Moors as soon as the affairs of the kingdom would permit. The
opportunity and the provocation came after twelve years, when the
sovereigns sent to demand of the Moors the long unpaid tribute, and
received only the defiant answer, "Tell your masters that the Moors who
paid tribute to Castile are dead. Our mints no longer coin gold, but
steel!" And to prove the efficacy of their steel they sallied forth and
took Zahara, one of the strongholds which the father of Ferdinand had
taken from the Moors. The chivalry of Spain sprang quickly into
well-girt saddles, and the ten years' siege of Granada, "the last
stronghold of the Moors in Spain," began in 1481. The Iliad of the
reconquest of Spain from the Arab-Moors has yet to be written; the Homer
of its Iliad has yet to appear. But the closing year of the struggle
between Christian knight and turbaned Moor would furnish as stirring
incidents, and immortalize the names of its heroes as successfully, as
has the Greek Homer the Trojan war.
Those of us who have read the story of the Arab-Moors in Spain, the
quick-witted, light-footed, brave-hearted Moors, who coveted the land
"flowing with milk and honey" that lay across a narrow strait; who
conquered it, redeemed its barren wastes, and made them to blossom as
the rose; who, in their quick flight from the Arabian deserts through
civilized lands, gathered seeds of knowledge and planted them so freely
in the land of their adoption that their planting overspread the earth;
who, like the Goths, became enervated when they became stationary, and
were no longer able to resist the powerful foe who had from their
entrance into Spain sworn their expulsion or their extermination, will
be ready to weep when the final retribution comes. Yet come it did, when
Ferdinand and Isabella pitched their tents and planted their banners of
Castile and Aragon upon the verdant vega, or plain, around Granada.
And yet we as readily accept the inevitable. We have known that it was
impossible for Isabella to allow any portion of her dominions to be
possessed by a people alien in race, language, customs, and religion; to
see the Crescent triumphant over any site that had been hallowed by the
Cross. To the Spanish Christian the fall of Granada was only the final
victory of a righteous war. It was the triumph of his race, his nation,
and his creed. And, looking back over the long march from Asturias to
Granada, he claimed to have invaded no man's right; every victory but
won back what was his own: every step retraced by the Moors but left him
in possession of another portion of his inheritance from his
forefathers.
The Arab-Moors claimed also hereditary rights. For nearly eight hundred
years the Moors had held possession of that strip of land between the
"Snow Mountains" and the blue sea, in Southern Spain. One cannot but
feel respect for the brave Moorish king of Granada, who said, when
threatened with invasion, "Our mint no longer coins gold, but steel!" In
this last great chivalrous war, a war for race and creed and country,
all honor is due to the vanquished, who poured out their blood like
water for their homes and their religion. The details of this heroic
death-struggle belong to history rather than to biography. Yet Isabella
was the great animating spirit of the war. Her tent was side by side
with that of Ferdinand, and her counsel was ever wise and practical.
And near the royal tents were others which she erected, where the
wounded in the fray might have medical aid and tender nursing. Thus our
"Warrior Queen," with a woman's heart, provided the first Army Hospital
on record. The tents were burned down, but a substantial city arose, as
if by magic, to take their place. The knights would have called it
"Isabella," but she named it "Santa Fe," the city of Holy Faith. And
this city helped to bring the war to a close. The Moors knew by it that
Isabella had come to stay until she had added Granada to the crown of
Castile.
Another form rises before us as we look back four hundred years across
the vega of Granada to the city of Sante Fe. We forget for a time the
Christians and the Moors, we see only the great queen and the great
discoverer. The man of science, Christoforo Colombo, had been lately
dismissed from the court at Sante Fe. The sovereigns had no time for
adventurers seeking aid to discover unknown lands when the reconquest of
their own was just within their grasp. Cast down, but not discouraged,
Columbus, all alone, was retracing his steps across the vega, en route
for a port from whence to sail for England, when the queen sent a royal
summons for him to return, and he reached Sante Fe just in time to be
present at the surrender of Granada. Let me add that while the Moors as
a nation fell with Granada, they were not as individuals banished from
Spain until the reign of Philip II., the great-grandson of Isabella.
[Illustration: Ferdinand and Isabella. The surrender of Granada.]
We all know the story of Columbus. At this time he was but a penniless
mendicant travelling on foot from court to court, seeking patronage to
enable him to prove the truth which his great mind had grasped, the
rotundity of the earth. The subject had given him no rest for eighteen
years. He had discussed it before wise men in council assembled; he had
pleaded with royalty in vain; at the court of Isabella, for the first
time, he laid his plans and discussed his projects before a woman. The
world to-day pays its tribute of four hundred years to Columbus, the
World-finder. All honor to the brave man who, firm of faith and fearless
of fate, unfurled his sails upon an unknown sea, and planted the cross
and the banner of Castile upon an unknown land. All honor, too, to Queen
Isabella of Spain, who, with "faith in things unseen," had the courage
to say, "I will undertake the enterprise for mine own crown of Castile,"
and from whose presence Columbus went forth to discover a land he never
dreamed of, and to open a gate for the exodus of nations across the
pathless sea. The same pen that signed the capitulation of the Moors and
the contract with Columbus, signed also an edict for the expulsion of
all unbaptized Jews from Spain between March and July of 1492. This
edict condemned to perpetual exile from one to eight hundred thousand
of Spain's most wealthy subjects. The coast was lined with vessels of
every kind, and size, busy with the transportation of these unhappy
victims, when Columbus was seeking for vessels and men to cross the "Sea
of Darkness." And now we are beginning to understand the momentous
events that culminated in the reign of Isabella. We find that religious
enthusiasm, inspired during the long wars with the "Infidel Moors,"
developed into religious bigotry. In the Jews, Spain expelled the most
wealthy portion of her subjects; in the Moors, the most industrious; the
wealth and industry of the nation were sacrificed for race and creed.
And then within its own race and creed arose a new foe to combat; with
equal energy and blind zeal Spain crushed Protestantism within her
borders through the terrors of the Inquisition.
But let us not lay the whole blame of such intolerant Christianity upon
the unfortunate woman who fell heir to the crown of Castile during the
period when the Church of Rome had the power to bind the consciences of
men. Let us remember that as a woman Isabella was an honor to her sex;
as a Christian she lived devoutly; as a queen she ruled wisely for the
uplifting of her nation, and that the only censure the world casts upon
her is the fortitude with which she said "Infidelity must be banished
from the land."
"Bury me in Granada, the brightest jewel in my crown," she said, when
dying, in far-off Castile, November 26, 1504. The way was long and the
December winds were cold as the royal cortege, with knightly escort,
wended its way across the barren heights of Central Spain into the
beautiful valley of Andalusia, across the lovely vega, past Santa Fe, up
the rugged slope of the acropolis of Granada into the Chapel Isabella,
near the unrivalled Alhambra. Here in the very heart of the last Moorish
capital, while the whole nation mourned, they laid all that was mortal
of the great queen, whom Lord Bacon has named "the corner-stone of the
greatness of Spain."
Twelve years later, January 23, 1516, they laid King Ferdinand beside
her, "the wisest king that ever ruled in Spain." (Prescott.) Their
grandson, Charles V., now summoned the finest artists in the world to
prepare royal mausoleums for Ferdinand and Isabella and for his parents,
Joanna of Castile and Philip of Burgundy. The cathedral of Granada is
the Spanish temple of victory. It covers the site of an ancient Moorish
mosque. Within its royal chapel one may read, in bas-relief, the whole
story of the reconquest of Spain. On either side of its high altar kneel
the life-size statues of the final conquerors; while in solemn, stately
magnificence, the royal mausoleums of purest Carrara marble, with their
reclining portrait figures of Ferdinand and Isabella in soft,
time-tinted alabaster, tell us that here the nation, "redeemed from
bondage," laid their deliverers to rest. And here, at the close of
nearly four hundred years, a hand from across the sea lays this tribute,
with a garland of white roses and a wreath of olive leaves and
immortelles, upon the tomb of ISABELLA OF CASTILE.
[Signature of the author.]