WHEN SPAIN WAS GREAT.
Although Queen Isabella assumed all responsibility for the first voyage
of Columbus, and is said to have declared, “I am ready to pawn my
jewels for the expenses,” yet the treasury of Aragon has the credit of
providing the necessary funds. Already fifty–six years of age when he
started on this voyage, Columbus had spent eighteen of the best years
of his life supplicating at courts and pleading for recognition; so he
was no longer blessed with health and vigour. Returning from the first
triumphant achievement early in 1493, the same year he sailed from
Cadiz with a larger fleet, and discovered islands farther to the south
than those which he first saw and landed on, as well as the island of
Jamaica. In 1498 yet another voyage revealed the island of Trinidad and
a portion of the north coast of South America; but, through the course
of events which we can not follow in this history, he was sent home to
Spain in chains by his enemy, Bobadilla. The queen, though she received
him with distinction, and did all she could to soothe his wounded
sensibilities, yet was unable to secure him another command until 1502,
when he sailed on his last and most disastrous voyage, which ended in
the wreck of his ships on the north coast of Jamaica, and his final
return to Spain, worn with disease and broken–hearted from abuse. Two
years after the death of Isabella he too departed this life, in the
year 1506, at the city of Valladolid, where the house in which he
died is still pointed out to the stranger. His remains were at first
deposited in Valladolid, then taken to Seville, and about the year 1540
transported to Santo Domingo, in accordance with his last request.
Following closely in the wake of Columbus were other voyagers and other
discoverers, notably Americus Vespucci, who, together with a valiant
Spaniard named Ojeda, sailed along the north coast of South America
from the Pearl Islands to the Gulf of Maracaibo, in the year 1499,
trading with the natives, and finally returning with a rich cargo of
pearls and other valuable products of their barter. They not only
obtained the beautiful pearls which unfortunate Columbus had somehow
overlooked the year before, but they first saw those curious people,
the Lake Dwellers, in the Gulf of Maracaibo, whose settlements over
the water suggested the name by which the region adjacent is known
to–day, of _Venezuela_, or Little Venice. Americus Vespucci was further
rewarded, on his return, by being appointed chart–maker to the king,
and eventually his name came to be applied to the continent discovered
by Columbus in 1498. That, at least, was long held to be the case, but
of late years it has been noticed that the word “America” may have been
derived from the native name of one of the provinces on that coast,
_Americapan_.
So we might go on tracing the extension of Spanish conquests, until
these pages, which we have dedicated to outlining the history of Spain,
would be filled with the doings of her valiant sons, and the numerous
adventurers attracted to her service by the reports of her growing
greatness. But still we can not ignore these brave _conquistadores_ who
sought fame and riches in the New World, the path to which had been
opened by Columbus. Two or three years after the death of Columbus the
gallant Ponce de Leon, then governor of a province of Santo Domingo,
went across the channel and conquered Puerto Rico, whence, in 1512, he
sailed to the discovery of Florida, after his romantic search for the
fabled “Fountain of Youth.” To note how, when once started, the stream
of exploration and conquest flowed on unimpeded, we have but to turn to
the island of Santo Domingo, discovered by Columbus in 1492, and where
the first schemes of colonization were carried out.
In the year 1509 the son of Columbus, Don Diego, was appointed governor
and viceroy of the island, in tardy recognition of the claim of his
father to the title of “High Admiral of the Ocean–Sea.” In 1511 one
Velasquez sailed over to Cuba and there established a colony, and
with him, among others who subsequently became famous, was an obscure
individual named Hernando Cortes, who, fired by the reports of a new
land discovered to the west, was placed in command of an expedition, by
Velasquez, who fitted it out; and the result was the ultimate conquest
of the vast territory of Mexico, which was first brought to notice
by Hernandez de Cordova in 1517. From this conquest, which was not
achieved until about 1521–’22, flowed millions and millions in treasure
to fill the coffers of Spain. Cortes himself, a man of humble origin,
was born in Spain in 1485, only seven years before Columbus sailed on
his first voyage; yet he added a kingdom to the realms of Spain before
he was forty years of age!
In the year 1513 the brave but unfortunate Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, from
a high point in the Isthmus of Darien, saw, first of all Europeans,
the vast Pacific; yet it was not until nearly twenty years afterward
that Francisco Pizarro, the ignorant soldier, who was born in the
same province as Cortes, in Spain, and who had served with Gonsalvo
de Cordova in Italy, subjugated the native people of Peru, and made
himself a virtual king. By the conquest of Peru and the murder of the
Inca by Pizarro more than fifteen million dollars in treasure was
secured, and ultimately the mines of that country enriched Spain for
many, many years.
So, as we have seen, Spain was prolific in men of force and gallantry,
who poured out their blood freely for her sake, and who ventured
their lives rashly in the expeditions she sent forth. The long wars
with the Moors, lasting for centuries, had brought forth a race of
soldiers unequalled perhaps in any other country at that time. They
seem to have been bred and nurtured for these very deeds of risk and
heroism which were born of their encounters with the natives of the
New World; for self–denial, for intrepidity under almost insuperable
difficulties. They were also fierce and cruel—how fierce and how cruel
it is only necessary to read of the conquest of Mexico by Cortes; of
the conquest of Peru by Pizarro; yes, of the treatment of the innocent
natives by Columbus himself, who initiated the system of slavery, by
which eventually they were extinguished in the West Indies. Humanity
was foreign to their nature; long familiarity with the bloody work of
the Inquisition in the home country, the persecution of Moors and Jews,
the scenes of rapine and massacre they had witnessed and heard reported
by their fathers, had accustomed these _conquistadores_ to cruelty and
merciless oppression. Even the gentlest and most merciful of them were
so only by comparison, for their progress everywhere could be traced
by ruin and desolation, by ravaged homes and murdered men, women, and
children.
* * * * *
Contemporaneously with her conquests in the New World, Spain herself
acquired increasing territory in Europe, not alone by force of arms,
but chiefly through matrimonial alliances and succession to power. To
understand how this came about, we must retrace our course and bestow
a parting glance upon the affairs of Isabella and Ferdinand. This royal
pair, under whom Spain had at last become consolidated into a veritable
kingdom, with a union of interests if not unity of purpose always,
had five children born to them: Juan, the only son, born 1478, who
married a daughter of Maximilian, Emperor of Germany, but died without
heirs, in 1497; Isabella, born 1470, married twice, to two princes
of Portugal, whose only child lived but two years; Juana, born 1479,
married to the Archduke Philip, son of Maximilian, who had two sons,
Charles and Ferdinand; Mary, born 1482, and Catherine, born 1485, who
became the unfortunate wife of Henry VIII of England, and from whom she
was divorced in 1533.
By the death of Juan in 1497, of Isabella in 1498, and of the latter’s
child two years later, the succession to the throne now devolved upon
Juana, in accordance with the will of her mother, Isabella, executed
in October, 1504. King Ferdinand, who had so successfully administered
the affairs of the crown of Castile during thirty years, was appointed
regent until Juana’s elder son, Charles, should attain to his majority.
Though at first there was a disagreement between Ferdinand and Philip,
Juana’s husband, as to the regency, all difficulties were settled in
1505 by mutual agreement, and the next year, by the sudden death of the
young archduke, the king became sole regent, and virtually ruler over
all Spain. Juana, the bereaved “lady proprietor,” was crazed by this
affliction, smiting upon a mind already diseased, and until her death,
forty–seven years after, took no part in the affairs of the kingdom. As
_Juana loca_, or “Crazy Jane,” she is known to history. She became most
insanely jealous respecting her dead husband’s remains, would not allow
them interred, and journeyed with them from place to place, always in
the night; for, she mournfully said, “A widow who has lost the sun of
her own soul should never expose herself to the light of day.” Thus she
lived in mental darkness, in her palace of Tordesillas, for nearly half
a century, an object of pity and commiseration.
Left at liberty to pursue his conquests where he would, Ferdinand first
turned to matrimony, and married Germaine, a frivolous niece of Louis
XII of France, in 1506. Three years later his great cardinal, Ximenes,
waged war on Oran, a port on the African coast, equipped an army at his
own expense—or rather from the revenues he derived from his position as
Primate of Spain—and took the Moorish stronghold after great slaughter
on both sides. The figure of this austere and virtuous cardinal, who so
faithfully served first Isabella, then Ferdinand, Juana, and finally
Charles, and who found time to attend to affairs of state and to purge
the kingdom of its heretics through inquisitorial fires, to carry on a
war at his own cost, to found a university, to cause to be translated
the famous Complutensian Bible, which employed men of learning fifteen
years at the task—his is one of the sturdiest and strongest of this
epoch. The University of Alcala, founded in 1500, and the renowned
Bible, the last portion of which was printed in 1517, are but two of
the many monuments he erected during his life.
In the year 1511 the Holy League was formed between Ferdinand and Pope
Julius II, Venice, and Henry VIII of England, against the French,
by which Spain was the gainer; and in 1512 Navarre was annexed to
Aragon, thus welding the northern kingdoms into one. In December, 1515,
Gonsalvo de Cordova, the “Great Captain,” who had won Ferdinand’s
victories in Italy, passed away; to be followed but a month later by
his sovereign, who expired on a morning in January, 1516, in a wretched
tenement where he had been overtaken by heart disease.
He was in his sixty–fourth year; his reign had endured forty–one years,
and at his death he left a reputation for ability, wisdom in diplomacy,
sincere interest in the affairs of his people, and economy in the
administration of the vast dominions embraced under his kingship over
Spain, Naples, and the two Americas.
For more than twenty years he had borne the title bestowed upon him
by Pope Alexander, in 1494, and as the great King of Spain, Ferdinand
“the Catholic,” he has passed down to history and the present time.
His remains were taken to Granada, where they were at first deposited
within the Alhambra; but to–day all that is earthly of Ferdinand and
his glorious consort repose in the magnificent marble tomb in the royal
chapel of Granada, which with its exquisite carvings and memorial
effigies, was executed by world–famous artists at the command of
Charles, the son of _Juana loca_ the demented queen.
[Illustration]