Chapter VII: Part 7

The Spaniards, with their Indian allies, were quartered in the ample precincts of a royal palace. But Cortez was uneasy, notwithstanding these fair appearances. He had advanced with a handful of men into a populous city, where he might at any time be surrounded and attacked by multitudes. He was warned by the Tlascalans of Montezuma’s faithlessness; and the hostile spirit of the Mexicans was made plain, by intelligence that several Spaniards had been slain in repelling an attack on the garrison of Vera Cruz. Cortez felt that Montezuma’s forbearance proceeded only from timidity, and that his own best security lay in working upon that passion. He conceived the daring resolution to make the king a prisoner in his own capital; judging that, while Montezuma lived, the Mexicans would not throw off their allegiance, nor disobey his mandates, though issued under foreign control. He went, therefore, as usual, to the palace, attended only by a few picked men; and being admitted without suspicion to the emperor’s presence, he complained angrily of the attack on the garrison of Vera Cruz, and required Montezuma, as a pledge of his good faith, to take up his residence in the Spanish quarters. Betrayed by his own easiness into the power of a few strangers, Montezuma complied, under the imminent fear of personal violence. Cortez next required that the officer who commanded in the attack complained of should be given up. This was done; and he, his son, and five others, were publicly burnt on a pile of Mexican weapons, taken from the public armoury. While this atrocious act of cruelty and revenge was proceeding, the emperor, apparently to render it the more impressive, was placed in fetters.

Haughty and tyrannical, but unstable and timid, the spirit of Montezuma was entirely broken by his misfortunes. He remained passively during six months in his captivity; and formally acknowledged himself a vassal to the crown of Castile. Religion was the only point on which he was firm. Cortez urged him with the blind zeal of a crusader to renounce his false gods, and embrace Christianity; and not content with these importunate solicitations, he attempted forcibly to remove the idols from the grand temple. The resolute interference of priests and people compelled him to desist from the rash project; but not until it had aroused a spirit of implacable hostility.

Meanwhile Velasquez’s anger at Cortez’s faithlessness was increased by the brilliant accounts of his success; and having obtained from the court of Castile a patent constituting himself governor of New Spain, he prepared to remove or punish his disobedient officer by force of arms. He sent 900 men, commanded by Narvaez, a brave and experienced officer, who immediately opened a correspondence with Montezuma. This raised the hopes of the Mexicans, by showing that their invaders were not exempt from internal discord. Cortez perceived and met the dangers of his position with his usual ability and courage. Having tried in vain to arrange matters with Narvaez by negotiation, he left a garrison of 150 men in Mexico, and marched with only 250 against an enemy who nearly quadrupled him in number. His skill, the patience of his soldiers, inured to the inclemency of a tropical climate, and the too great security of his adversary, won for him an almost bloodless victory; and the troops sent out for his destruction enlisted almost to a man under his standard. Placed against all expectation at the head of near a thousand men, he hastened back to Mexico, where by that time his presence was urgently required.

He found the Spanish garrison hemmed in, and reduced to extremities, by a people who, stimulated by superstition and maddened by a fresh and atrocious outrage, seemed suddenly to have exchanged timidity for desperation. The return of Cortez with his formidable reinforcement did not abate their ferocity. Even the person of Montezuma, who was exposed on the Spanish rampart, ceased to command respect, and he received three wounds from stones and arrows, from the effects of which, aggravated by rage and a deep sense of his degradation, he expired. The Mexicans now sought to blockade their enemies and reduce them by hunger; and, as Cortez had not the command of the lake, he found it necessary immediately to evacuate the city. But he was taken at disadvantage in traversing by night (July 1, 1520) one of the long causeways which connect the city with the shores of the lake in which it stands; and on mustering those who reached the mainland, he found his small battalion of Europeans reduced by one-half, with the loss of all the horses, baggage, artillery, and most of the treasure which had been amassed by individual soldiers. The anniversary of this calamity was long, and may be still, distinguished in New Spain by the appellation of Noche Triste, the sad night.

By a circuitous route, and not without cutting their way through an immense army assembled to intercept them, the Spaniards returned to the friendly Indians of Tlascala, among whom Cortez meant to recruit his exhausted companions, and to wait until fresh supplies of men and stores could be obtained from the West India islands. Some vessels which put into the harbour of Vera Cruz afforded an unexpected reinforcement of 180 men; and on the 28th of December Cortez began to retrace his march towards Mexico. At Tezeuco, the second city of the empire, situated on the banks of the lake, about twenty miles from the capital, he established his head-quarters for four months, during which the timbers of twelve small vessels, cut out in the mountains of Tlascala, were put together. This force ensured the command of the lake, for the Mexicans had nothing larger than canoes; and just before their completion, a reinforcement of 200 men, with arms and stores, arrived from Hispaniola. At the beginning of May, 1521, with about 800 Europeans, Cortez commenced the siege of Mexico itself.

Guatimozin, a nephew of Montezuma, who had succeeded to the throne, made a resolute defence; and Cortez, aware of the danger of entangling his troops in the streets, yet anxious to preserve the buildings as a trophy of his victory, urged the siege with unusual caution. Each day he pushed his way as far as possible into the city; but he returned to his quarters at night, during which the barricades of the causeways were repaired, and on the morrow a fresh battle was to be fought on the same ground. Thus matters went until the 3d of July, when Cortez, impatient of so protracted a resistance, made a desperate attempt to carry every thing before him in one great assault. Experience improved the Mexicans in the art of war. When the Spaniards, by the energy of their attack, had forced a way into the heart of the city, Guatimozin led them still onwards by a show of slackened resistance, while he detached troops, by land and water, to beset the breaches in the causeway by which it was necessary for the enemy to retire. At a given signal, the great drum of the god of war was struck, and the Mexicans returned to the attack, their hatred of the invaders stimulated by the ferocity of their superstition. The Spaniards were compelled to give way, and disorder was converted into absolute rout by the promiscuous onset of the natives, when they arrived at the breach. Above sixty Europeans perished, for those who were taken prisoners were offered as sacrifices on the Mexican altars. After this reverse Cortez took a surer way to success, and as fast as his troops made a lodgment, he caused the houses to be levelled with the ground. When three quarters of the city were thus destroyed, and those who defended the remainder were exhausted by famine and disease, Guatimozin yielded to the persuasion of those who urged him to preserve himself, to renew the war in the remote provinces of the empire. But he was intercepted and captured with his family, as he sought to escape across the lake; and on the loss of their sovereign, the Mexicans ceased to resist. The siege thus ended August 13, 1521.

The victors were greatly disappointed in the amount of the precious metals which fell into their hands. What remained of the royal treasures Guatimozin had ordered to be thrown into the lake. Much spoil was carried off by the Indian auxiliaries, and much probably was lost or destroyed in the ruins of the city. The whole treasure collected was inferior in amount to that which the Spaniards had formerly received as a present from Montezuma; and the adventurers clamorously expressed their dissatisfaction. Pressed by this spirit of discontent, Cortez gave way to a passion, as alien to that undefined feeling which we call the spirit of chivalry, as to the natural laws of charity and justice; and tried, in vain, to extract by torture from the royal prisoner and one of his favourite followers a discovery of the treasures which were supposed to be hidden. Overcome by pain, the latter cast a look on his master, which seemed to ask permission to reveal what he knew. Guatimozin indignantly replied to the implied entreaty—“Am I reposing on a bed of flowers?” and the faithful subject kept silence, and died. The emperor, with his two principal officers, was afterwards hanged, on a groundless charge of having excited insurrection.

The provinces were readily overrun after the fall of the capital, and made subject to Spain; though intolerable oppression often produced insurrections, which were put down with unrelenting severity. Having conquered an empire without commission from the monarch in whose name he made war, Cortez narrowly escaped having to answer as a criminal for the irregularity of his proceedings. But in 1522 he succeeded in procuring a royal commission, which constituted him captain-general and governor of New Spain. Still his actions were watched with an ungenerous though natural jealousy; and his situation became so critical, that he resolved, in 1528, to return to Castile, and answer, before no inferior tribunal, such charges as might be urged against him. He appeared with the splendour which became one who had unlocked the treasures of the New World; and his own ample fortune, contrasted with the smallness of the sum divided among his comrades, gave birth to a belief that he had not dealt fairly in the partition of the spoil. As his return to Spain put an end to all fears of his ambition, he was received with the favour which such brilliant services merited. He was invested with the order of St. Jago, the highest rank of Spanish knighthood; and the valley of Guaxaca, with an extensive domain, was erected into a marquisate in his behalf. But he could not obtain what he most desired, the supreme direction of affairs in Mexico. He returned thither in 1530 at the head of the military department, and with authority to prosecute new discoveries; but the direction of civil affairs was vested in a board, entitled the Audience of New Spain. Henceforward we may regard Cortez as a disappointed and unhappy man. Thwarted at home by the double authority established, he sought to reap new glory by exploring the Pacific Ocean; and in 1536 he discovered the peninsula of California, and surveyed part of the gulf which separates it from the American continent. But from that country neither profit nor honour, unless as a geographical discoverer, could be gained; and the result of the expedition neither satisfied the expectations of others, nor repaid the adventurers for the hardships which they underwent. In 1540, wearied and disgusted, Cortez returned to Spain, and found his services forgotten, or at least his person slighted. He served as a volunteer in 1541, in Charles V.’s expedition against Algiers, and had a horse killed under him. This was his last military action. After wearying his proud spirit in fruitless attempts to gain attention from Charles or his ministers to his real or supposed grievances, he retired into seclusion, and died at Seville, December 2, 1547, in the sixty-third year of his age.

We have passed rapidly over the shocking cruelties which marked the progress of the Spanish arms. Some portion of the horror, with which we naturally regard the actors in such events, may be neutralized by the consideration, that men’s notions in all things, and perhaps most especially in matters of international justice, are greatly dependent on the spirit of the time in which they live; and that it is hardly fair to judge actions, which won the admiration of contemporaries, according to the standard of a subsequent age. But even in that age there were not wanting many to raise an indignant voice against the cruelties practised on an unoffending people; and after every just allowance has been made, it is not to be doubted that the treatment of the American aborigines forms a foul stain on the history of Spain, and loads all who were concerned in it with an awful responsibility; and we willingly acknowledge it to have been a just retribution, that of the original settlers few reaped prosperity, repose, or wealth, as the harvest of their arms. With their leaders it was eminently otherwise. Scarce one of those who led the conquerors of Peru escaped a violent death in civil strife; while Cortez (with whom no one divides the fame of conquering Mexico) lived to experience the proverbial ingratitude of courts, and died in that forced obscurity which is most galling to an ambitious mind.

The noble inscription, composed by Southey for the birth-place of Cortez’s early companion in arms and rival in fame, needs but the change of name to render it equally applicable to Cortez himself.

“Pizarro here was born—a greater name
The list of Glory boasts not. Toil and Pain,
Famine, and hostile Elements, and Hosts
Embattled, failed to check him in his course,
Not to be wearied, not to be deterred,
Not to be overcome. A mighty realm
He overran, and with relentless arm
Slew or enslaved its unoffending sons,
And wealth, and power, and fame were his rewards.
There is another world beyond the grave,
According to their deeds where men are judged.
O reader! if thy daily bread be earned
By daily labour,—yea, however low,
However wretched be thy lot assigned,
Thank thou, with deepest gratitude, the God
Who made thee, that thou art not such as he.”

LEIBNITZ.

The materials for this life of Leibnitz are chiefly taken from the _éloge_ of his contemporary Fontenelle.

Godfrey William Leibnitz was born at Leipzic, June 23, 1646. His father was Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of that place: he died when his son was only six years old. Leibnitz’s education therefore was left to his mother; and the great variety of his studies is traced to his free access to a large collection of books which his father left. He thus became a poet, an orator, an historian, a lawyer, a metaphysician, a mathematician, and a theologian. In some of these capacities he would not have escaped oblivion; but every accession to such a mass of titles becomes interesting, when it is remembered how conspicuous he became in more than one of them.

At the age of twenty he applied to the University of Leipzic for the degree of doctor of laws. This was refused, on the plea that he was too young; and he then went to Altdorf, where he maintained a public disputation, and was admitted to the degree which he desired, with unusual distinction. From Altdorf he repaired to Nuremberg, where he heard of a secret society of chemists, or, which was then the same thing, of searchers after the philosopher’s stone. Desiring to obtain some insight into their pursuits, he procured some books on chemistry, a subject which he had never studied, and picking out the phrases which seemed hardest, he wrote a letter altogether unintelligible to himself, which he addressed to them as his certificate of qualification. He was admitted with great honour, and was even offered the post of secretary, with a salary; and though he continued his intercourse with them for some time, he kept up his character as an adept to the last.

_Engraved by B. Holl._

LEIBNITZ.

_From a Picture in the Florence Gallery._

Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge

_London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street._
]

His first work, which appeared when he was twenty-two years old, was a treatise written under the name of George Vlicorius, recommending the choice of the Elector Palatine to be King of Poland. In 1670 he published his first philosophical work, an edition of ‘Marius Nizolius contra Pseudophilosophos;’ and in the following year two treatises on abstract and concrete motion, severally dedicated to the French Academy and the Royal Society.

During his abode at Nuremberg, the Baron de Boinebourg, minister of the Elector of Mayence, procured a legal appointment for him in that state. While he held this post he travelled into France and England. After the death of the Elector, he accepted a similar appointment in the dominions of the Duke of Brunswick-Lunenberg. At the peace of Nimeguen in 1678 he wrote upon some disputed ceremonials, under the title of Cesarinus Furstnerius, and displayed a great extent of reading, and a little of that speculative spirit which afterwards produced the _pre-established harmony_. He is said, though a Lutheran, to have argued on the supposition that Europe was to be considered as a large federation, of which the Emperor was the temporal, and the Pope the spiritual, head. In 1679 he was engaged by the reigning Duke to write the history of the House of Brunswick. On this service he went through Germany and Italy in search of authorities. It is related that, on one occasion, having left Venice in a small boat, a storm arose, and the boatmen began to discuss in Italian, which they supposed their passenger did not understand, the propriety of throwing the heretic overboard. Leibnitz, with great presence of mind, drew out a rosary, which he had about him _par précaution_, as Fontenelle supposes, who does not seem to guess that this anecdote, coupled with what has preceded, makes it at least an even chance that Leibnitz was really a Catholic. And this is negatively supported by the fact, that, Lutheran as he was considered, he very rarely attended the services of his church, in spite of the publicly-expressed disapprobation of the clergy. But on the other hand, he positively refused to profess Catholicism, when an advantageous settlement at Paris was offered on that condition. That he was both a religious man and a Christian is sufficiently attested by his writings.

He returned from his tour in 1690, and in 1693 published his ‘Codex Juris Gentium Diplomaticus.’ He had published almost at the same time with his first work a treatise on the study of jurisprudence. The first volume of the ‘History of Brunswick’ appeared in 1707, and two others in 1710 and 1711.

In 1700 he induced the Elector of Brandenburg to found the Academy of Berlin, of which he was appointed perpetual president. He contributed many valuable papers to its memoirs. His patron, the Duke of Brunswick-Lunenberg, died in 1678, and was succeeded by Ernest-Augustus, first Elector of Hanover, on whose issue by the Electress Sophia the crown of England was settled. Leibnitz continued in the Elector’s service till his death. This took place from gout, November 14, 1716, at Hanover. The real life of such a man is in his character and writings. With regard to the first, the account of Fontenelle is as follows. He had a strong constitution, ate a good deal, drank little, and never undiluted liquors. When alone, he always took his meals as his studies permitted. His chair was frequently his only bed, and in this way he is said to have sometimes passed whole months. He made notes of all he read, not to preserve them, but to fix the contents on his memory; for when once written, they were finally laid aside. He communicated freely with all classes of men, and could entirely divest himself of his character of a philosopher. His correspondence was immense; he answered every one who wrote, however small the pretext for addressing him. He was of a gay humour, easily excited to anger, and easily appeased. He lived at great expense, but had preserved and hid two years’ amount of his salary. The securing of this treasure gave him great uneasiness; and upon this slight ground he has been charged with avarice. He was never married: it is said that he contemplated such a connexion at the age of fifty, but that the lady desired time to consider. “This,” says his biographer, “gave M. Leibnitz the same opportunity, and he continued unmarried.”

The number and variety of characters in which Leibnitz is known will not permit us to say much upon each subject. His public life was that of a jurist. His ‘History of Brunswick’ was continued by M. Echard; who supplied Fontenelle with the necessary information for his _éloge_. In youth he was a poet; and he is said in one day to have made three hundred Latin verses without a single elision. But the Leibnitz of our day is either the mathematician or the metaphysician.

In the first of these two characters he is coupled in the mind of the reader with Newton, as the co-inventor of what was called by himself the Differential Calculus, and by Newton the Method of Fluxions. Much might be instanced which was done by him for the pure sciences in other respects; but this one service, from its magnitude as a discovery, and its notoriety as the cause of a great controversy, has swallowed up all the rest.

Leibnitz was in London in 1673, and from that time began to pay particular attention to mathematics. He was in correspondence with Newton, Oldenburg, and others, on questions connected with _infinite series_, and continued so more or less till 1684, when he published his first ideas on the Differential Calculus in the Leipzic Acts. But it is certain that Newton had been in possession of the same powers under a different name, from about 1665. The English philosopher drops various hints of his being in possession of a new method, but without explaining what it was, except in one letter of 1672, of which it was afterwards asserted that a copy had been forwarded to Leibnitz in 1676. Leibnitz published both on the Differential and Integral Calculus before the appearance of Newton’s Principia in 1687; and indeed before 1711, the era of the dispute, this new calculus had been so far extended by Leibnitz and the Bernoullis, that it began to assume a shape something like that in which it exists at the present day. In the first edition of the Principia, Newton expressly avows that he had, ten years before (namely, about 1677), informed Leibnitz that he had a method of drawing tangents, finding maxima and minima, &c.; and that Leibnitz had, in reply, actually communicated his own method, and that he (Newton) found it only differed from his own in symbols. This passage was, not very fairly, suppressed in the third edition of the Principia, which appeared in 1726, alter the dispute; and the space was filled up by an account of other matters. It was obvious that, on the supposition of plagiarism, it only gave Leibnitz a year to infer, from a hint or two, his method, notation, and results.

Some discussion about priority of invention led Dr. Keill to maintain Newton’s title to be considered the sole inventor of the fluxional calculus. Leibnitz had asserted that he had been in possession of the method eight years before he communicated it to Newton. He appealed to the Royal Society, of which Newton was President, and that body gave judgment on the question in 1712. Their decision is now worth nothing; firstly, because it only determined that Newton was the _first_ inventor, which was not the whole point, and left out the question whether Leibnitz had or had not stolen from Newton; secondly, because the charge of plagiarism is insinuated in the assertion that a copy of Newton’s letter, as above mentioned, had been sent to Leibnitz. Now they neither prove that he had received this letter in time sufficient to enable him to communicate with Newton as above described, or, if he had received it, that there was in it a sufficient hint of the method of fluxions. The decision of posterity is, that Leibnitz fairly invented his own method; and though English writers give no strong opinion as to the fairness with which the dispute was carried on, we imagine that there are few who would now defend the conduct of their predecessors. Whoever may have had priority of invention, it is clear that to Leibnitz and the Bernoullis belongs the principal part of the superstructure, by aid of which their immediate successors were enabled to extend the theory of Newton; and thus Leibnitz is placed in the highest rank of mathematical inventors.

The metaphysics of Leibnitz have now become a by-word. He is pre-eminent, among modern philosophers, for his extraordinary fancies. His monads, his pre-established harmony, and his best of all possible worlds, are hardly caricatured in the well-known philosophical novel of Voltaire. If any thinking monad should find that the pre-established harmony between his soul and body would make the former desire to see more of Leibnitz as a metaphysician, and the latter able to second him, we can inform him that it was necessary, for the best of all possible universes, that Michael Hansch should in 1728 publish the whole system at Frankfort and Leipzic, under the title, ‘Leibnitzii Principia philosophica more geometrico demonstrata;’ and also that M. Tenneman should give an account of this system, and M. Victor Cousin translate the same. It is not easy to give any short description of the contents, nor would it be useful. A school of metaphysicians of the sect of Leibnitz continued to exist for some time in Germany, but it has long been extinct.

The mathematical works of Leibnitz were collected and published at Geneva in 1768. His correspondence with John Bernoulli was also published in 1745, at Lausanne and Geneva. It is an interesting record, and exhibits him in an amiable light. He gives his friend a check for his manner of speaking of Newton, at the time when the partizans of the latter were attacking his own character, both as a man and a discoverer. He says (vol. ii. p. 234), “I thank you for the animadversions which you have sent me on Newton’s works; I wish you had time to examine the whole, which I know would not be unpleasant even to himself. But in so beautiful a structure, _non ego paucis offendar maculis_.” He also says that he has been informed by a friend in England, that hatred of the Hanoverian connexion had something to do with the bitterness with which he was assailed; “Non ab omni veri specie abest, eos qui parum Domui Hanoveranæ favent, etiam me lacerare voluisse; nam amicus Anglus ad me scribit, videri aliquibus non tam ut mathematicos et Societatis Regiæ Socios in socium, sed ut _Toryos in Whigium_ quosdam egisse.” (Vol. ii. p. 321.)

_Engraved by C. E. Wagstaff_

CARDINAL XIMENES.

_From a Picture in the Florence Gallery._

Under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.

_London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street._
]

XIMENES.

Gonzales Ximenes de Cisneros, Primate and Regent of Spain, was born at Tordelaguna, in Castile, in 1437. He was descended of an ancient family, long settled at Cisneros in the kingdom of Leon, and was baptized Gonzales after an ancestor who was one of the most renowned knights of his day: the name of Francis, by which he is commonly known, he assumed in after-life, in honour of the saint whose monastic rule he embraced. But though he was of honourable descent, neither rank nor wealth were stepping-stones to his preferment. His father supported a large family upon the income of his humble office of collector of tenths, payable to the king by the clergy: but his own studious disposition, and the facilities then afforded by the universities to poor scholars, raised him out of the obscurity in which his lot appeared to be cast. At the schools of Alcala, and at the University of Salamanca, he studied philosophy, theology, canon and civil law; and his proficiency soon enabled him to support himself, by teaching others. Having completed his education he undertook a journey to Rome, hoping there to find a readier field for the exercise of his talents than at home. Poor and friendless, he maintained himself by pleading in the Spanish causes which came before the Court of the Consistory; and he was already rising into eminence, when, hearing of his father’s death, and the distress of his family, he abandoned his flattering prospects and returned to Spain.

It appears that he had taken holy orders during his abode at Rome, for before his departure Sixtus IV. bestowed on him a reversionary grant of the first benefice which should fall vacant. This proved to be Uceda; and he immediately produced his letters and took possession. The Archbishop of Toledo, who had already promised the living, was highly offended at this exercise of what in truth was a most objectionable prerogative of the Holy See. He not only dispossessed, but imprisoned for six years, Ximenes, who remained firm in the assertion of his rights. At the end of that time the prelate yielded. Ximenes soon exchanged Uceda for a chaplaincy in the cathedral of Siguenza. Here he applied himself to the pursuit of theology, and laid the foundation of that Hebrew and Chaldaic learning which bore such noble fruit in after-life. He gained the warm friendship of his bishop, the Cardinal Mendoza, who, in 1483, appointed him grand vicar of the diocese. In that office he distinguished himself by integrity and talents for business, as he had before by piety and learning. And the fairest prospect of advancement was open to him, when all at once he resolved to quit the world, and to devote himself wholly to religious meditation.

He embraced the strictest rule of the Franciscan order, with a zeal to which the general example of his brethren gave no countenance. He retired to the secluded monasteries of Castagnar and Salceda, and in the forests which surrounded them, devoted himself wholly to prayer, the study of the Scriptures, and the mortification of the flesh. He thus gained the reputation of uncommon sanctity, and there seems to be no reason to think that his asceticism was defiled by any trace of hypocrisy. But his friend the Cardinal saw that he was fitted for still better things, and regretting his departure from active life, expressed a belief that he would ultimately be raised to much higher dignity, to the great advantage of the Church. And, in truth, the Cardinal, who had been raised from the see of Siguenza to the primacy of Spain, the Archbishopric of Toledo, did much to fulfil his own prediction. He introduced Ximenes to the Queen Isabella, who was then in want of a confessor, and she readily listened to his recommendation, and appointed Ximenes to the vacant office. He would fain have declined it, urging that he had been called to the cloister from active life to attend to his own salvation; that what was demanded would withdraw him from his proper vocation; and that a sovereign above all persons needed a religious guide, not only of good intentions, but of experience and wisdom. The Queen smiled as she assured him, that if he had formerly been directed to solitude, he was now summoned to court, and that if he would take charge of her conscience, she would be answerable for having chosen him to do so. And he consented, on condition that he should be required to attend her only when called by the duties of his office. This was in 1492. The austerity of his life and the wildness of his aspect caused him, when he appeared, to be compared by the gay frequenters of the court to an old Egyptian hermit come out from the desert.

Moved by the hope of advancing the temporal interests of their order, his monastic brethren now appointed him their provincial. They widely mistook his character. He accepted the proffered dignity, moved chiefly by the hope that it would furnish him with an excuse for more frequent absence from court; and he employed his power in striving to reform the corruptions which abundant wealth had introduced among them. His own life was in strict adherence to the self-denial which he recommended to others. In his visitations he travelled on foot from convent to convent, accompanied by one brother, Francis Ruyz, whom he had selected for his constant companion, as uniting the qualifications of a lively temper and sound health, with learning, modesty, and trustworthiness. For their sustenance they depended upon alms, and in the trade of begging Ximenes was very unsuccessful. Ruyz used to remonstrate on the misapplication of his talents. “Your Reverence will let us die of hunger; you were not meant for this profession. God gives each of us his talents: do you pray for me, and I will beg for you. Your Reverence may be made to give, but certainly not to ask.” Visiting Gibraltar in one of these tours, he was strongly possessed by the desire of going to preach the gospel in Africa. On this subject he consulted a female devotee, who had the reputation of enjoying divine revelations in visions, and was dissuaded by her from prosecuting the scheme.

The Primate Mendoza died at the end of 1494. In their last interview, he urged his sovereign not to entrust the vast revenues of his see to any one connected with the highest nobility, esteeming its power to be even dangerous to the crown, when knit by family ties to great feudal influence. Isabella listened to his advice, and after much hesitation pitched on Ximenes to be his successor. Aware of his feelings, she kept her intentions secret until letters confirmatory of the appointment arrived from the Pope. These without preface she put into his hands. Reading the address, “To our venerable brother Ximenes, Archbishop elect of Toledo,” “Madam,” he said, “these letters are not for me;” and he rose abruptly and quitted the royal presence. Six months elapsed before he was induced to accept the proffered dignity, in virtue of a direct injunction from the Pope. He was consecrated October 11, 1495.

Rank and wealth made no difference in the manners of the ascetic monk. He continued to live upon the coarsest fare, to wear the humble dress of his order, to sleep on the ground, or on a bed as hard, and to travel on an ass, or on foot. And Pope Alexander VI. thought it necessary to send a letter to him, with the very unusual exhortation to cultivate the pomps and vanities of the world a little more, for the sake of the church of which he was so exalted a member. Ximenes obeyed, and probably became convinced of the propriety of the counsel, as he became more engaged in civil government. He assumed even a more gorgeous state than his predecessors, but he still practised his usual self-denial in private; he slept and fared as hardly as before, and wore a haircloth under his episcopal robes. He was exemplary in the discharge of his public duties; liberal even to an extreme in relieving the daily necessities of the poor, and in contributing to charitable, useful, and religious undertakings; diligent in promoting the welfare of the people to the full extent of his almost regal power, by repressing extortion and peculation, whether in courts of law, or the collection of the revenue, by providing for the due administration of justice, ecclesiastical and civil, and by exercising a strict superintendence over the conduct of the parochial clergy. To the cry of the wretched his ears were always open; he hated oppression; and if an injured vassal complained against the highest noble in the land, he was ready to grant justice, if the matter lay within his jurisdiction, or, if not, to carry the complaint before the Queen. And his zeal and energy carried to a happy conclusion the arduous undertaking of reforming the Franciscan brotherhood, upon which he succeeded in enforcing a new system of regulations in 1499, after a most obstinate resistance.

We may here mention with unmixed praise one of the Archbishop’s charitable undertakings. It was an institution for the education of the daughters of indigent nobles, on such principles, according to the words of our authority, as should train them to the fit discharge of their duties towards their families and towards society. A fund, afterwards increased by the Spanish monarchs, was set apart to provide them with marriage portions. We may here trace the original of the celebrated establishment of St. Cyr.

His principal work was the establishment of a university at Alcala, where he himself received his early education. The foundation-stone was laid by himself in 1498; the buildings were completed, and the first course of lectures given, in 1508. For a model he took the university of Paris; he endowed it richly, and collected men distinguished for their learning from all parts of Europe, to fill the professorial chairs. Here he undertook the great work of publishing the first Polyglot Bible, the Complutensian, as it is called, from the Latin name of Alcala, where it was printed, which will exist for ages as a noble specimen of the Archbishop’s piety, munificence, and zeal for learning. The four first volumes contain the Old Testament in the Hebrew—the Septuagint version, with a Latin translation—the Vulgate, as corrected by St. Jerome—and the Chaldee Paraphrase, with a Latin translation. The fifth and sixth volumes contain the Greek Testament and the Vulgate. The printing of this great undertaking commenced in 1502, and was not completed till 1517, shortly before the death of Ximenes, who, when the last volume was brought to him, is reported by his earliest biographer, after an ejaculation of pious thanksgiving, to have addressed the bystanders in these words:—“Many high and difficult undertakings I have carried on in the service of the State, yet, my friends, there is nothing for which I more deserve congratulation than for this edition of the Scriptures, which lays open, in a time of much need, the fountain-head of our holy religion, whence may be drawn a far purer strain of theology than from the streams which have been turned off from it.” But owing to a hesitation at the Court of Rome, how far the criticism of the Scriptures should be encouraged, the Bible was not given to the world till 1522. Only about 600 copies were printed. The price fixed on it was six and a half ducats. The epistle dedicatory to Leo X. is by Ximenes himself: the preface, according to Dr. Dibdin, is by another hand. The most learned Hebrew and Greek scholars who could be procured were employed in the collation of manuscripts; and it may be noted that for seven Hebrew MSS. the sum of 4000 golden crowns was paid. These with other treasures of learning, which were deposited with the University of Alcala, about the middle of the last century were sold to a firework-maker as lumber. The whole cost of the work, which was defrayed by Ximenes, is said to have exceeded 50,000 gold crowns.

In 1498 the Archbishop was summoned to Granada by Ferdinand and Isabella, to deliberate on the means to be used for the conversion of the Moors. Inflamed by zeal, he had recourse to means which show the wisdom of the serpent more than the simplicity of the dove. He began with the priests and doctors of the law, and strove by kindness and attention, mixed with religious discussion, to dispose them to adopt the Christian faith. The priests led over the people in such flocks, that, in one day, the anniversary of which was observed as a festival, December 18, 1499, upwards of 3000 persons were baptized by aspersion in Granada. That the Archbishop should have believed in the sincerity of these wholesale conversions is not credible; he probably thought that a hypocritical worship of the true God was a less evil than sincere idolatry. The inquisition was charged with the superintendence of the souls of these nominal Christians, and the relapse from that faith which they never embraced was punished according to the mercy of that irresponsible tribunal. The dread and indignation produced by these measures led to a revolt, which was quelled, however, under the guidance of the Archbishop.

The same desire of making Christians any how appears in the measures adopted on this occasion. The inhabitants of the quarter in which the tumult broke out were declared guilty of high treason, and offered their choice of death or conversion. They embraced the latter; and the other Granadans, to the number of 150,000, followed their example. But these severities drove the most resolute spirits to that last insurrection, related with so much interest in Washington Irving’s ‘Chronicles of Granada;’ which terminated in the expatriation of the remnant who abided in their national creed. But however unapostolic the Archbishop’s mode of conversion may have been, his zeal and ability in instructing and rendering truly Christian those who submitted to the outward forms of the religion is said to have been admirable.

His conduct towards the unhappy natives of the West Indies was less exceptionable. He did his utmost not only for their conversion, but to protect them from the cruel exactions of the Spanish settlers.

The excellent Isabella of Castile died November 26, 1504. According to the tenor of his beloved mistress’s will, Ximenes steadily maintained the claim of Ferdinand, her husband, to the regency of the kingdom during the minority of Charles V. After the death of the Archduke Philip, September 25, 1506, he renewed his exertions to determine the Castilians in favour of Ferdinand’s claim to the regency, in preference to the Emperor Maximilian, Charles V.’s paternal grandfather; being satisfied that, notwithstanding the ancient jealousy between Castile and Arragon, the former would be better governed by a prince intimately acquainted with its circumstances and interests than by a stranger. Ferdinand, who was then engaged at Naples, owed his success in this matter to Ximenes; and showed his gratitude by procuring for him the rank of Cardinal, with the title of Cardinal of Spain, together with the office of Grand Inquisitor.

In his zeal for spreading the true faith, Ximenes had conceived a scheme for the conquest of the Holy Land, and indeed had nearly succeeded in effecting a league for that purpose between Ferdinand, Manuel of Portugal, and Henry VII. of England. But this hope being defeated, he was still anxious to employ the power of Spain against Mahometanism, and used his best endeavours to persuade Ferdinand to invade the coast of Barbary. The king’s parsimony was not to be overcome, until Ximenes offered a loan sufficient to equip the proposed armament, and defray its expenses for two months; and the capture of the town of Marsarquiver, in the autumn of 1505, was the immediate result. Here the Spanish arms remained stationary till 1509, when the Cardinal obtained permission to attempt the siege of Oran at his own expense, on the sole condition, that if he succeeded, either the patrimony of the church expended in this secular undertaking was to be repaid, or the domain conquered was to be annexed to the see of Toledo. He assumed himself the supreme direction of the expedition, entrusting the command of the army to Peter Navarre, an able, turbulent, and ambitious soldier. Everything was unfavourable to the Cardinal. The king was jealous of him; Navarre impatient of the subjection of the sword to the crozier; and other officers, corrupt or hostile, and encouraged by the example of their superiors, stirred the soldiers to mutiny. But the decision of Ximenes compelled obedience, and the wisdom of his measures ensured success; so that the surrender of Oran was the almost immediate result of his descent upon Africa. He would willingly have remained there to pursue his successes. But finding the disobedience of his lieutenant to be secretly encouraged by Ferdinand, he determined to return while he could do so with honour, leaving Navarre in the command of the troops. For himself or his see he reserved no part of the spoil. That which was not bestowed upon the soldiers, or consumed in the service, he set apart for the crown. Yet a fresh disagreement arose when the Cardinal, according to the compact, demanded payment of the advances made by the see; and when Ferdinand at last was compelled to acquiesce, it was in the most ungracious and unbecoming manner.

Ferdinand died January 23, 1516. On his death-bed he appointed Ximenes Regent of Castile during the minority of Charles V., with expressions indicative of no personal regard, but bearing strong testimony to his unbending justice, disinterestedness, and zeal for the public welfare. The Cardinal’s conduct in this exalted station was consistent with the tenor of his past life; he was a just ruler, but his authority was feared and respected rather than loved. If he had one passion unmortified, it was ambition: he ruled with a single eye to his young sovereign’s interests; but he evaded that sovereign’s attempts to circumscribe his powers with as much success as he bore down the opposition of those turbulent nobles, who hoped, in the weakness of a minority, to find a fit opportunity for prosecuting their own aggrandizement, and committing with impunity acts of illegal violence. For when Charles V. sent some of his confidential Flemish ministers to be associates in the commission of regency, the Cardinal received them with respect, and granted them the external distinctions of office; for the rest they were mere puppets in his hands. Of his internal policy, the chief scope was to elevate the regal power, and to depress that of the nobles, even by throwing a greater weight into the hands of the unprivileged classes: the same policy as had been pursued by the wisest princes of the age, Ferdinand and Isabella, Henry VII. of England, and Louis XI. of France. The crown had been reduced to great poverty by lavish grants, extorted, in disturbed times, by the necessity of conciliating powerful noblemen, rather than granted by free-will, or out of real gratitude for services; and it was one of Ximenes’ first objects to remedy this evil, even by means which showed none of that regard to vested interests, which belongs to times in which the course of law is regular and supreme, and consequently the rights of property are rigidly respected. Such pensions as had been granted in Ferdinand’s reign he cut off at once, on the plea that the grantor could only have bestowed them for his own life. The crown lands alienated during the same period were resumed: even the Cardinal’s boldness did not venture to carry the inquiry farther back, from the apprehension of driving the whole body of the nobility into revolt.

These changes, and other important measures, were not carried into effect without great discontent and considerable open resistance. But the Cardinal was strong, in the resources of his own powerful mind, in the general reverence of the people for the sanctity of his character, in his exalted rank as head of the Spanish church, and in the immense revenues of his see, which gave him a command of money not enjoyed by the crown, and enabled him to keep in his own pay a considerable body of troops. With these he maintained order, and repressed feuds, which the barons, trusting to the common weakness of a regency, hastened to decide by the sword; and set at defiance the enmity of the nobility at a later period, when more decided encroachments on the privileges of the order had produced a general spirit of discontent. On one occasion a deputation of the chief grandees of Castile required to be informed, under what title he presumed to exercise such high authority. The Cardinal showed the will of Ferdinand, and its confirmation by Charles V., and finding them still unsatisfied, led them to a window, from which he pointed out a strong military force under arms. “These,” he said, “are the powers which I have received from the king. With these I govern Castile; and with these I will govern it, until the king, your master and mine, takes possession of his kingdom.”

One of his schemes for strengthening the crown was the erection of a species of militia, composed of burghers of cities; but that class was not sufficiently advanced in knowledge to appreciate the immense accession of importance which would accrue from this measure, which they regarded solely as a burden. It was therefore unpopular among them, as well as unpalatable to the barons; and was entirely dropped soon after the regent’s death.

His foreign policy was nearly confined to the conduct of two wars: the one to maintain Navarre, which had been usurped by Ferdinand, against the legitimate monarch John d’Albret; the other, an expedition against the pirate Barbarossa, King of Algiers, who inflicted a signal and entire discomfiture on the invading army.

In the administration of the kingdom Ximenes displayed the same inflexible love of justice, and the same economy, integrity, and order, as in the management of his own diocese of Toledo; and he brought the finances into so flourishing a state, that after discharging the crown debts, and placing the military establishment in a more than commonly efficient state, he was enabled to remit large sums of money to the young king in Flanders. And he had something of a title to Charles’s more immediate and personal gratitude, for having used with success his own overpowering influence to obtain the recognition of that prince as king of Castile during the lifetime of his insane mother, against the usage of the realm, although he had remonstrated with earnestness against pressing the indecorous and unfilial claim. All these services however were thrown into the shade by one thing. Ximenes hated the Flemish ministers whom Charles sent into Spain, and who disgraced their high station, and corrupted the country by open and abandoned venality. He never ceased to remonstrate against these abuses, and to importune Charles to visit his Spanish dominions; and the Flemish favourites saw that their own ruin was certain if the regent once gained an ascendance over the king’s mind. They retarded therefore the departure of the latter as much as possible, and succeeded in prejudicing him against his most sincere and judicious friend and servant. Convinced at last of the necessity for his presence, Charles set out for Spain, and landed in the province of Asturias, September 13, 1517. The Cardinal hastened towards the coast to meet him, but was stopped at Bos Equillos by a severe illness, which, as was very usual in past times, was imputed to poison. He wrote to the king, entreating him to dismiss the train of foreigners by whom he was attended, and earnestly soliciting a personal interview, which, from the pressure of illness, he was unable himself to seek. This favour was not granted, and he was vexed and harassed by a series of petty slights. At the point of death he received a letter of dismissal couched in civil but cold terms, permitting him to return to his diocese, and repose from his labours. Whether the Cardinal retained his faculties so as to be aware of this final mark of ingratitude is doubtful; but his end was assuredly hastened by mortification at the evil return made for his faithful service. He died a few hours after receiving the dismissal in question, November 8, 1517.

Though austere in temper, Ximenes was not cruel, and in civil matters had great reluctance to the shedding of blood. Yet in eleven years, as Grand Inquisitor, he burnt at the stake 2500 persons, for the glory of God and the good of the sufferer’s souls. Such miserable self-delusion in so great and good a man ought to teach humility, as well as to inspire abhorrence.

Our sketch has necessarily been personal rather than historical: a fuller account of the public life of Ximenes will be found in Robertson’s ‘Charles V.,’ as well as in the biographies of Flechier, Marsollier, and others. Barrett’s ‘Life of Ximenes’ appears to be a compressed translation from the Life by Flechier. We conclude with the short and comprehensive praise of Leibnitz, who said, that “If great men could be bought, Spain would have cheaply purchased such a minister by the sacrifice of one of her kingdoms.”

_Engraved by J. Thomson._

ADDISON.

_From a Picture copied by J. Thurston in the Possession of the
Publisher._

Under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge

_London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street._
]

ADDISON.