Chapter VI: Ferdinand and Isabella (3)

Their hopes of an heir, however, rested in their second daughter, the wife of Philip archduke of Austria, Juana, who, in 1500, was delivered of a prince, afterwards the celebrated Charles V.

Thus, the crown of Spain was to devolve on a foreign brow--the first example of the kind which had occurred from the foundation of the monarchy by Pelayo. Their disappointments, too, were embittered by the unhappiness of their children. The princess Isabella, who had always shown more affection for the cloister than for the throne, had been forced into the marriage, and died a premature and painful death. Juana, though extravagantly fond of her husband, was treated by him with the most marked neglect; and the fate of Catherine is but too well known. The misfortunes of her children sank deeply into the heart of the queen, and brought on a melancholy which ended in her death.[j]

ILLNESS AND DEATH OF ISABELLA

[Sidenote: [1503-1504 A.D.]]

In the beginning of 1503 she had declined so visibly that the cortes of Castile, much alarmed, petitioned her to provide for the government of the kingdom after her decease, in case of the absence or incapacity of Juana. She seems to have rallied in some measure after this; but it was only to relapse into a state of greater debility, as her spirits sank under the conviction, which now forced itself on her, of her daughter’s settled insanity.

Early in the spring of the following year (1504) that unfortunate lady embarked for Flanders, where, soon after her arrival, the inconstancy of her husband and her own ungovernable sensibilities occasioned the most scandalous scenes. Philip became openly enamoured of one of the ladies of her suite; and his injured wife, in a paroxysm of jealousy, personally assaulted her fair rival in the palace, and caused the beautiful locks which had excited the admiration of her fickle husband to be shorn from her head. This outrage so affected Philip that he vented his indignation against Juana in the coarsest and most unmanly terms, and finally refused to have any further intercourse with her. The account of this disgraceful scene reached Castile in the month of June. It occasioned the deepest chagrin and mortification to the unhappy parents. Ferdinand soon after fell ill of a fever, and the queen was seized with the same disorder, accompanied by more alarming symptoms. Her illness was exasperated by anxiety[60] for her husband, and she refused to credit the favourable reports of the physicians while he was detained from her presence. His vigorous constitution, however, threw off the malady, while hers gradually failed under it. Her tender heart was more keenly sensible than his to the unhappy condition of their child, and to the gloomy prospects which awaited her beloved Castile.

Her faithful follower, Martyr,[p] was with the court at this time in Medina del Campo. In a letter to the count of Tendilla, dated October 7th, he states that the most serious apprehensions were entertained by the physicians for the queen’s fate. “Her whole system,” he says, “is pervaded by a consuming fever. She loathes food of every kind, and is tormented with incessant thirst, while the disorder has all the appearance of terminating in a dropsy.”

On the 12th of October she executed that celebrated testament which reflects so clearly the peculiar qualities of her mind and character. She begins with prescribing the arrangements for her burial. She orders her remains to be transported to Granada, to the Franciscan monastery of Santa Isabella in the Alhambra, and there deposited in a low and humble sepulchre, without other memorial than a plain inscription on it. “But,” she continues, “should the king my lord prefer a sepulchre in some other place, then my will is that my body be there transported, and laid by his side; that the union we have enjoyed in this world, and, through the mercy of God, may hope again for our souls in heaven, may be represented by our bodies in the earth.” Then, desirous of correcting by her example, in this last act of her life, the wasteful pomp of funeral obsequies to which the Castilians were addicted, she commands that her own should be performed in the plainest and most unostentatious manner, and that the sum saved by this economy should be distributed in alms among the poor.

(From an old print)]

She next provides for several charities, assigning, among others, marriage portions for poor maidens, and a considerable sum for the redemption of Christian captives in Barbary. She enjoins the punctual discharge of all her personal debts within a year; she retrenches superfluous offices in the royal household, and revokes all such grants, whether in the forms of lands or annuities, as she conceives to have been made without sufficient warrant. She inculcates on her successors the importance of maintaining the integrity of the royal domains, and, above all, of never divesting themselves of their title to the important fortress of Gibraltar.

After this she comes to the succession of the crown, which she settles on the infanta Juana as “queen proprietor,” and the archduke Philip as her husband. She gives them much good counsel respecting their future administration; enjoining them, as they would secure the love and obedience of their subjects, to conform in all respects to the laws and usages of the realm. She recommends to them the same conjugal harmony which had ever subsisted between her and her husband; she beseeches them to show the latter all the deference and filial affection “due to him beyond every other parent, for his eminent virtues”; and finally inculcates on them the most tender regard for the liberties and welfare of their subjects.

She next comes to the great question proposed by the cortes of 1503, respecting the government of the realm in the absence or incapacity of Juana. She declares that, after mature deliberation, and with the advice of many of the prelates and nobles of the kingdom, she appoints King Ferdinand her husband to be the sole regent of Castile, in that exigency, until the majority of her grandson Charles; being led to this, she adds, “by the consideration of the magnanimity and illustrious qualities of the king my lord, as well as his large experience, and the great profit which will redound to the state from his wise and beneficent rule.”

She then makes a specific provision for her husband’s personal maintenance, which, “although less than she could wish, and far less than he deserves, considering the eminent services he has rendered the state,” she settles at one-half of all the net proceeds and profits accruing from the newly discovered countries in the West; together with ten millions of maravedis annually, assigned on the _alcabalas_ of the grand-masterships of the military orders. And lastly, concluding in the same beautiful strain of conjugal tenderness in which she began, she says, “I beseech the king my lord that he will accept all my jewels, or such as he shall select, so that, seeing them, he may be reminded of the singular love I always bore him while living, and that I am now waiting for him in a better world; by which remembrance he may be encouraged to live the more justly and holily in this.”

After performing this duty she daily grew weaker, the powers of her mind seeming to brighten as those of her body declined. The concerns of her government still occupied her thoughts; and several public measures, which she had postponed through urgency of other business or growing infirmities, pressed so heavily on her heart that she made them the subject of a codicil to her former will. It was executed November 23rd, 1504, only three days before her death. Three of the provisions contained in it are too remarkable to pass unnoticed. The first concerns the codification of the laws. For this purpose the queen appoints a commission to make a new digest of the statutes and _pragmáticas_, the contradictory tenor of which still occasioned much embarrassment in Castilian jurisprudence. This was a subject she always had much at heart; but no nearer approach had been made to it than the valuable though insufficient work of Montalvo[61] in the early part of her reign; and, notwithstanding her precautions, none more effectual was destined to take place till the reign of Philip II.

The second item had reference to the natives of the New World. Gross abuses had arisen there since the partial revival of the _repartimientos_, although, Las Casas[q] says, “intelligence of this was carefully kept from the ears of the queen.” Some vague apprehension of the truth, however, appears to have forced itself on her: and she enjoins her successors, in the most earnest manner, to quicken the good work of converting and civilising the poor Indians, to treat them with the greatest gentleness, and redress any wrongs they may have suffered in their persons or property. Lastly, she expresses her doubts as to the legality of the revenue drawn from the _alcabalas_,[62] constituting the principal income of the crown. She directs that the legislature be summoned to devise proper measures for supplying the wants of the crown--“measures depending for their validity on the good pleasure of the subjects of the realm.”

Such were the dying words of this admirable woman, displaying the same respect for the rights and liberties of the nation which she had shown through life, and striving to secure the blessings of her benign administration to the most distant and barbarous regions under her sway. These two documents were a precious legacy bequeathed to her people, to guide them when the light of her personal example should be withdrawn forever.

On receiving the extreme unction, she refused to have her feet exposed, as was usual on that occasion: a circumstance which, occurring at a time when there can be no suspicion of affectation, is often noticed by Spanish writers as a proof of that sensitive delicacy and decorum which distinguished her through life. At length, having received the sacraments, and performed all the offices of a sincere and devout Christian, she gently expired, a little before noon, on Wednesday, November 26th, 1504, in the fifty-fourth year of her age, and thirtieth of her reign.

No time was lost in making preparations for transporting the queen’s body unembalmed to Granada, in strict conformity to her orders. It was escorted by a numerous _cortège_ of cavaliers and ecclesiastics, among whom was the faithful Martyr. The procession began its mournful march the day following her death, taking the route through Arevalo, Toledo, and Jaen. Scarcely had it left Medina del Campo when a tremendous tempest set in, which continued with little interruption during the whole journey. The roads were rendered nearly impassable; the bridges were swept away, the small streams swollen to the size of the Tagus, and the level country was buried under a deluge of water. Neither sun nor stars were seen during their whole progress. The horses and mules were borne down by the torrents, and the riders in several instances perished with them. At length, on the 18th of December, the melancholy and way-worn cavalcade reached the place of its destination; and, amidst the wild strife of the elements, the peaceful remains of Isabella were laid, with simple solemnities, in the Franciscan monastery of the Alhambra. Here, under the shadow of those venerable Moslem towers, and in the heart of the capital which her noble constancy had recovered for her country, they continued to repose till after the death of Ferdinand, when they were removed to be laid by his side in the stately mausoleum of the cathedral church of Granada.

PRESCOTT’S ESTIMATE OF ISABELLA

Her person was of the middle height, and well-proportioned. She had a clear, fresh complexion, with light-blue eyes and auburn hair--a style of beauty exceedingly rare in Spain. Her features were regular, and universally allowed to be uncommonly handsome. The portraits that remain of her combine a faultless symmetry of features with singular sweetness and intelligence of expression.

Her manners were most gracious and pleasing. They were marked by natural dignity and modest reserve, tempered by an affability which flowed from the kindliness of her disposition. She was the last person to be approached with undue familiarity; yet the respect which she imposed was mingled with the strongest feelings of devotion and love. She showed great tact in accommodating herself to the peculiar situation and character of those around her. She appeared in arms at the head of her troops, and shrank from none of the hardships of war. During the reforms introduced into the religious houses, she visited the nunneries in person, taking her needlework with her, and passing the day in the society of the inmates. When travelling in Galicia, she attired herself in the costume of the country, borrowing for that purpose the jewels and other ornaments of the ladies there, and returning them with liberal additions. By this condescending and captivating deportment, as well as by her higher qualities, she gained an ascendency over her turbulent subjects which no king of Spain could ever boast.

She spoke the Castilian with much elegance and correctness. She had an easy fluency of discourse, which, though generally of a serious complexion, was occasionally seasoned with agreeable sallies, some of which have passed into proverbs. She was temperate even to abstemiousness in her diet, seldom or never tasting wine; and so frugal in her table, that the daily expenses for herself and family did not exceed the moderate sum of 40 ducats. She was equally simple and economical in her apparel. On all public occasions, indeed, she displayed a royal magnificence; but she had no relish for it in private, and she freely gave away her clothes and jewels as presents to her friends.

Among her moral qualities, the most conspicuous, perhaps, was her magnanimity. She betrayed nothing little or selfish, in thought or action. Her schemes were vast, and executed in the same noble spirit in which they were conceived. She never employed doubtful agents or sinister measures, but the most direct and open policy. She scorned to avail herself of advantages offered by the perfidy of others. Where she had once given her confidence, she gave her hearty and steady support; and she was scrupulous to redeem any pledge she had made to those who ventured in her cause, however unpopular. She sustained Ximenes in all his obnoxious but salutary reforms. She seconded Columbus in the prosecution of his arduous enterprise, and shielded him from the calumny of his enemies. She did the same good service to her favourite, Gonsalvo de Cordova; and the day of her death was felt, and, as it proved, truly felt, by both, as the last of their good fortune. Artifice and duplicity were so abhorrent to her character, and so averse from her domestic policy, that when they appear in the foreign relations of Spain it is certainly not imputable to her. She was incapable of harbouring any petty distrust or latent malice; and, although stern in the execution and exaction of public justice, she made the most generous allowance, and even sometimes advances, to those who had personally injured her.

But the principle which gave a peculiar colouring to every feature of Isabella’s mind was piety. Such was the decorum of her manners, that, though encompassed by false friends and open enemies, not the slightest reproach was breathed on her fair name in this corrupt and calumnious court. She gave a liberal portion of her time to private devotions, as well as to the public exercises of religion. She expended large sums in useful charities, especially in the erection of hospitals and churches, and the more doubtful endowments of monasteries. Her piety was strikingly exhibited in that unfeigned humility which is so rarely found; and most rarely in those whose great powers and exalted stations seem to raise them above the level of ordinary mortals. A remarkable illustration of this is afforded in the queen’s correspondence with Talavera, in which her meek and docile spirit is strikingly contrasted with the Puritanical intolerance of her confessor. Unfortunately, the royal conscience was at times committed to very different keeping; and that humility which made her defer so reverentially to her ghostly advisers led, under the fanatic Torquemada, the confessor of her early youth, to the establishment of the Inquisition and the exile of the Jews.

But though blemishes of the deepest dye on her administration, they are certainly not to be regarded as such on her moral character. It will be difficult to condemn her, indeed, without condemning the age; for these very acts are not only excused, but extolled by her contemporaries, as constituting her strongest claims to renown and to the gratitude of her country. They proceeded from the principle, openly avowed by the court of Rome, that zeal for the purity of the faith could atone for every crime. This immoral maxim, flowing from the head of the church, was echoed in a thousand different forms by the subordinate clergy, and greedily received by a superstitious people. It was not to be expected that a solitary woman, filled with natural diffidence of her own capacity on such subjects, should array herself against those venerated counsellors whom she had been taught from her cradle to look to as the guides and guardians of her conscience.

However mischievous the operations of the Inquisition may have been in Spain, its establishment, in point of principle, was not worse than many other measures which have passed with far less censure, though in a much more advanced and civilised age. Where, indeed, during the sixteenth and the greater part of the seventeenth century, was the principle of persecution abandoned by the dominant party, whether Catholic or Protestant? And where that of toleration asserted, except by the weaker? It is true, to borrow Isabella’s own expression in her letter to Talavera, the prevalence of a bad custom cannot constitute its apology. But it should serve much to mitigate our condemnation of the queen, that she fell into no greater error, in the imperfect light in which she lived, than was common to the greatest minds in a later and far riper period.[63]

Isabella’s actions, indeed, were habitually based on principle. Whatever errors of judgment be imputed to her, she most anxiously sought in all situations to discern and discharge her duty. Faithful in the dispensation of justice, no bribe was large enough to ward off the execution of the law. No motive, not even conjugal affection, could induce her to make an unsuitable appointment to public office. No reverence for the ministers of religion could lead her to wink at their misconduct; nor could the deference she entertained for the head of the church allow her to tolerate his encroachments on the rights of her crown. Isabella’s measures were characterised by that practical good sense without which the most brilliant parts may work more to the woe than to the weal of mankind. Though engaged all her life in reforms, she had none of the failings so common in reformers. Her plans, though vast, were never visionary. The best proof of this is that she lived to see most of them realised.

She was quick to discern objects of real utility. She saw the importance of the new discovery of printing, and liberally patronised it, from the first moment it appeared. She had none of the exclusive, local prejudices too common with her countrymen. She drew talent from the most remote quarters to her dominions by munificent rewards. She imported foreign artisans for her manufactures, foreign engineers and officers for the discipline of her army, and foreign scholars to imbue her martial subjects with more cultivated tastes. She consulted the useful in all her subordinate regulations; in her sumptuary laws, for instance, directed against the fashionable extravagances of dress, and the ruinous ostentation so much affected by the Castilians in their weddings and funerals. Lastly, she showed the same perspicacity in the selection of her agents, well knowing that the best measures become bad in incompetent hands.

But although the skilful selection of her agents was an obvious cause of Isabella’s success, yet another, even more important, is to be found in her own vigilance and untiring exertions. During the first busy and bustling years of her reign, these exertions were of incredible magnitude. She was almost always in the saddle, for she made all her journeys on horseback; and she travelled with a rapidity which made her always present on the spot where her presence was needed. She was never intimidated by the weather, or the state of her own health; and this reckless exposure undoubtedly contributed much to impair her excellent constitution.

She was equally indefatigable in her mental application. After assiduous attention to business through the day, she was often known to sit up all night dictating despatches to her secretaries. In the midst of these overwhelming cares she found time to supply the defects of early education by learning Latin, so as to understand it without difficulty, whether written or spoken, and indeed, in the opinion of a competent judge, to attain a critical accuracy in it. As she had little turn for light amusements, she sought relief from graver cares by some useful occupation appropriate to her sex; and she left ample evidence of her skill in this way, in the rich specimens of embroidery, wrought with her own fair hands, with which she decorated the churches.

With all her high qualifications, Isabella would have been still unequal to the achievement of her grand designs, without possessing a degree of fortitude rare in either sex; not the courage which implies contempt of personal danger--though of this she had a larger share than falls to most men; nor that which supports its possessor under the extremities of bodily pain--though of this she gave ample evidence, since she endured the greatest suffering her sex is called to bear without a groan; but that moral courage which sustains the spirit in the dark hour of adversity, and, gathering light from within to dispel the darkness, imparts its own cheering influence to all around. It was her voice that decided never to abandon Alhama. Her remonstrances compelled the king and nobles to return to the field, when they had quitted it after an ineffectual campaign. As dangers and difficulties multiplied, she multiplied resources to meet them; and when her soldiers lay drooping under the evils of some protracted siege, she appeared in the midst, mounted on her warhorse, with her delicate limbs cased in knightly mail, and, riding through their ranks, breathed new courage into their hearts by her own intrepid bearing. To her personal efforts, indeed, as well as counsels, the success of this glorious war may be mainly imputed.

Happily, these masculine qualities in Isabella did not extinguish the softer ones which constitute the charm of her sex. Her heart overflowed with affectionate sensibility to her family and friends. She watched over the declining days of her aged mother, and ministered to her sad infirmities with all the delicacy of filial tenderness. We have seen abundant proofs how fondly and faithfully she loved her husband to the last, though this love was not always as faithfully requited.[64] For her children she lived more than for herself; and for them too she died, for it was their loss and their afflictions which froze the current of her blood before age had time to chill it. Her exalted state did not remove her above the sympathies of friendship. With her friends she forgot the usual distinctions of rank, sharing in their joys, visiting and consoling them in sorrow and sickness, and condescending in more than one instance to assume the office of executrix on their decease. Her heart, indeed, was filled with benevolence to all mankind. In the most fiery heat of war she was engaged in devising means for mitigating its horrors. She is said to have been the first to introduce the benevolent institution of camp hospitals; and we have seen, more than once, her lively solicitude to spare the effusion of blood even of her enemies.

It is in these more amiable qualities of her sex that Isabella’s superiority becomes most apparent over her illustrious namesake, Elizabeth of England, whose history presents some features parallel to her own. Both were disciplined in early life by the teachings of that stern nurse of wisdom, Adversity. Both were made to experience the deepest humiliation at the hands of their nearest relative, who should have cherished and protected them. Both succeeded in establishing themselves on the throne after the most precarious vicissitudes. Each conducted her kingdom, through a long and triumphant reign, to a height of glory which it had never before reached. Both lived to see the vanity of all earthly grandeur, and to fall the victims of an inconsolable melancholy; and both left behind an illustrious name, unrivalled in the subsequent annals of their country.

But with these few circumstances of their history the resemblance ceases. Their characters afford scarcely a point of contact. Elizabeth, inheriting a large share of the bold and bluff King Harry’s temperament, was haughty, arrogant, coarse, and irascible; while with these fiercer qualities she mingled deep dissimulation and strange irresolution. Isabella, on the other hand, tempered the dignity of royal station with the most bland and courteous manners. Once resolved, she was constant in her purposes, and her conduct in public and private life was characterised by candour and integrity. Both may be said to have shown that magnanimity which is implied by the accomplishment of great objects in the face of great obstacles. But Elizabeth was desperately selfish; she was incapable of forgiving, not merely a real injury, but the slightest affront to her vanity; and she was merciless in exacting retribution. Isabella, on the other hand, lived only for others--was ready at all times to sacrifice self to considerations of public duty, and, far from personal resentments, showed the greatest condescension and kindness to those who had most sensibly injured her; while her benevolent heart sought every means to mitigate the authorised severities of the law, even towards the guilty.[65]

Both possessed rare fortitude. Isabella, indeed, was placed in situations which demanded more frequent and higher displays of it than her rival; but no one will doubt a full measure of this quality in the daughter of Henry VIII. Elizabeth was better educated, and every way more highly accomplished, than Isabella. But the latter knew enough to maintain her station with dignity; and she encouraged learning by a munificent patronage. The masculine powers and passions of Elizabeth seemed to divorce her in a great measure from the peculiar attributes of her sex; at least from those which constitute its peculiar charm, for she had abundance of its foibles--a coquetry and love of admiration which age could not chill; a levity most careless, if not criminal; and a fondness for dress and tawdry magnificence of ornament which was ridiculous, or disgusting, according to the different periods of life in which it was indulged. Isabella, on the other hand, distinguished through life for decorum of manners and purity beyond the breath of calumny, was content with the legitimate affection which she could inspire within the range of her domestic circle. Far from a frivolous affectation of ornament of dress, she was most simple in her own attire, and seemed to set no value on her jewels but as they could serve the necessities of the state; when they could be no longer useful in this way, she gave them away to her friends.

(From an old print)]

Both were uncommonly sagacious in the selection of their ministers; though Elizabeth was drawn into some errors in this particular by her levity, as was Isabella by religious feeling. It was this, combined with her excessive humility, which led to the only grave errors in the administration of the latter. Her rival fell into no such errors; and she was a stranger to the amiable qualities which led to them. Her conduct was certainly not controlled by religious principle; and though the bulwark of the Protestant faith, it might be difficult to say whether she were at heart most a Protestant or a Catholic. She viewed religion in its connection with the state--in other words, with herself; and she took measures for enforcing conformity to her own views, not a whit less despotic, and scarcely less sanguinary, than those countenanced for conscience’s sake by her more bigoted rival.

This feature of bigotry, which has thrown a shade over Isabella’s otherwise beautiful character, might lead to a disparagement of her intellectual power compared with that of the English queen. To estimate this aright, we must contemplate the results of their respective reigns. Elizabeth found all the materials of prosperity at hand, and availed herself of them most ably to build up a solid fabric of national grandeur. Isabella created these materials. She saw the faculties of her people locked up in a death-like lethargy, and she breathed into them the breath of life for those great and heroic enterprises which terminated in such glorious consequences to the monarchy. It is when viewed from the depressed position of her early days that the achievements of her reign seem scarcely less than miraculous. The masculine genius of the English queen stands out relieved beyond its natural dimensions by its separation from the softer qualities of her sex; while her rival’s, like some vast but symmetrical edifice, loses in appearance somewhat of its actual grandeur from the perfect harmony of its proportions.

The circumstances of their deaths, which were somewhat similar, displayed the great dissimilarity of their characters. Both pined amidst their royal state, a prey to incurable despondency, rather than any marked bodily distemper. In Elizabeth it sprang from wounded vanity, a sullen conviction that she had outlived the admiration on which she had so long fed--and even the solace of friendship and the attachment of her subjects. Nor did she seek consolation where alone it was to be found, in that sad hour. Isabella, on the other hand, sank under a too acute sensibility to the sufferings of others. But, amidst the gloom which gathered around her, she looked with the eye of faith to the brighter prospects which unfolded of the future; and when she resigned her last breath, it was amidst the tears and universal lamentations of her people.

It is in this undying, unabated attachment of the nation, indeed, that we see the most unequivocal testimony to the virtues of Isabella. In the downward progress of things in Spain, some of the most ill-advised measures of her administration have found favour and been perpetuated, while the more salutary have been forgotten. This may lead to a misconception of her real merits. In order to estimate these, we must listen to the voice of her contemporaries, the eye-witnesses of the condition in which she found the state, and in which she left it.

We shall then see but one judgment formed of her, whether by foreigners or natives. The French and Italian writers equally join in celebrating the triumphant glories of her reign, and her magnanimity, wisdom, and purity of character. Her own subjects extol her as “the most brilliant exemplar of every virtue,” and mourn over the day of her death as “the last of the prosperity and happiness of their country”; while those who had nearer access to her person are unbounded in their admiration of those amiable qualities whose full power is revealed only in the unrestrained intimacies of domestic life. The judgment of posterity has ratified the sentence of her own age.[g]

This portrait of Isabella as drawn by Prescott is glowing with an enthusiasm that is not self-ashamed. It admits frankly many evils, but in the sweep of eulogy they practically lose their effect and make no impression on the mind. Yet Prescott’s opinion was based on a thorough search of the authorities and upon the impartiality of a foreigner enamoured of a character purely by the good deeds he had learned to credit to her. It must therefore be received with respect, though it has, like all such summings-up, provoked severe disagreements. Even a writer in possession of no new facts could use the same data for violent denunciation.

The most material attack on Prescott’s opinion is found in the very positive claim that Isabella’s daughter Juana was not mad, and that her mother’s treatment of her, founded on religious bigotry with which Juana did not sympathise, is therefore as cruel in kind as her mercilessness to the Jews. In the second place the genuineness of Isabella’s last will was questioned even by contemporaries, but it has never been disproved conclusively; admitting its authenticity, critics have said that in withdrawing from the nobility and others the various grants she had made them in payment of obligations, she committed an outrageous dishonesty or “posthumous royal plunder.”

Even her simplicity of attire has been denied, and it is said that she outdid all history in her display when she saw fit to affect splendour. But this much even Prescott admitted.

As to Juana, Bergenroth[s] is the strongest advocate of her sanity, though he has not convinced many. He declared that she was simply a heretic in religion. But even granting her insane, her parents treated her with “most odious duplicity,” according to Burke,[f] who can still see why Isabella should not want the hysterical daughter to take the throne of Castile, and reduce the great Ferdinand to the limits of Aragon. The proofs of Juana’s insanity we shall consider in the next chapter.

BURKE’S ESTIMATE OF ISABELLA; HUME’S ESTIMATE

Burke thinks that Isabella has suffered from too much praise of virtues she did not possess and too much neglect of her truer gifts. He places the blame for this largely on the fact that she and her husband were succeeded by foreign rulers, Habsburgs and Bourbons. He ridicules the tendency to blame Torquemada and others for the blots of cruelty on her reign, and blames them on the orthodoxy of the time. He makes of her a creature far different from the gentle Isabella of Prescott’s idea, and exclaims eloquently:[a]

The real Isabella is 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.

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 her 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 vigour 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.

Isabella revolutionised 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! It is open to any man to call her a saint and a heroine. It is open to any man to call her a bigot and a tyrant. But no man at least may deny that she was a great queen.[f]

The contradiction between such an opinion and the opinion of Prescott is not after all a contradiction in facts but in point of view. Both regard different phases or facets of one great busy soul striding through a great life on a line which, whether it led through tenderness or mercilessness, was as nearly straight as any line ever trod by a human monarch. It is the mockery of history, however, that while great souls bear great fruits, those fruits are not always of lasting quality, and time may turn them to poison.

The epitaph that Martin Hume would place above the beautiful memory of Isabella is sad enough, yet only too just:[a]

“That her objects were high and noble may be conceded, and that she succeeded in consolidating Spain as no other monarch had done, is true. But at what a cost! She had, in conjunction with Ferdinand, encouraged forces of bigotry and religious hate which flooded her realm with blood and tears, and threw it back in the race of nations for centuries. Her patronage of Columbus is more than blotted out by her patronage of Torquemada; her exalted piety is drowned in the recollection of her treatment of the Jews and the Moriscos. She was a fair embodiment of the prevailing feeling of her countrymen: that to them all things are permitted; they can do no wrong, because they are working for and with the cause of God. We shall see the bitter fruit this feeling bore later. By the irony, or perhaps the eternal justice of fate, all the chicanery of Ferdinand, all the wisdom, the labours, and the fervour of Isabella brought disaster, ruin, and death to Spain. A thousand times happier would it have been for Castile to have remained isolated in its corner of Europe, untroubled with the complications of vast European connections, rather than to have been dragged by Aragon into a position of responsibility and world-wide ambition for which neither its native resources nor the extent nor character of its population befitted it. Its transient grandeur, dearly paid for by long and painful decline, brought to the Spanish people, even while it lasted, neither peace, happiness, nor enduring prosperity; and the king and queen who made Spain great were the worst enemies she ever had.”[t]

FOOTNOTES

[50] Gonzalo de Oviedo[b] lavishes many encomiums on Cabrera, for his “generous qualities, his singular prudence in government, and his solicitude for his vassals, whom he inspired with the deepest attachment.” The best panegyric on his character is the unshaken confidence which his royal mistress reposed in him to the day of her death.

[51] See the strong language, also, of Peter Martyr,[d] another contemporary witness of the beneficial changes in the government.

[52] [It is difficult to reduce these sums to modern values, for the maravedi has been coined in gold, silver, and the copper alloy or vellon, and its value has fluctuated bewilderingly from a farthing or quarter of a cent upwards. Assuming that at this time it was equal to about ½_d_ or 1 cent, Enriquez lost £480 or $2,400; Alva £1,150 or $5,750; Albuquerque £2,800 or $14,000 annually. It is customary to multiply such sums by 7 to get the modern purchasing equivalent.]

[53] As a counterpart to the above scene, twelve Christian renegades, found in the city, were transfixed with canes, _acañavereados_, a barbarous punishment derived from the Moors, which was inflicted by horsemen at full gallop, who discharged pointed reeds at the criminal until he expired under repeated wounds. A number of relapsed Jews were at the same time condemned to the flames. “These,” says Father Abarca,[i] “were the _fêtes_ and illuminations most grateful to the Catholic piety of our sovereigns!”

[54] About two leagues west of Granada.

[55] [Mariana[m] placed the number at nearly 800,000; Graetz[n] at 300,000; Burke[f] at 200,000; Prescott[g] as above at 160,000. The smallest of the estimates is sufficiently great to overwhelm the powers of imagination.]

[56] The Portuguese government caused all children of fourteen years of age, or under, to be taken from their parents and retained in the country, as fit subjects for a Christian education. The distress occasioned by this cruel provision may be well imagined. Many of the unhappy parents murdered their children to defeat the ordinance; and many laid violent hands on themselves.

[57] He consumed by fire all the Arabic controversial books he could find, which amounted to five thousand volumes, according to the lowest estimate; Condé[o] puts it at eighty thousand, which is commonly accepted.

[58] Prescott adds: “The spirit of toleration exhibited by the Moors, indeed, was made a principal argument against them in the archbishop of Valencia’s memorial to Philip III. The Mohammedans would seem the better Christians of the two.”

[59] [There are, however, not wanting documents to show that at times the great captain was goaded by Ferdinand’s jealous mistreatment into a serious consideration of deserting to the enemy, or declaring himself king in Italy.]

[60] [In 1492 Ferdinand had been almost killed by an insane assassin. Isabella had nursed him with the utmost devotion.]

[61] [Dr. Alfonso Diaz de Montalvo. “He first gave to light the principal Spanish codes, and introduced a spirit of criticism into the national jurisprudence.”--PRESCOTT.[g]]

[62] [The _alcavala_ or _alcabala_ was a tax of one-tenth on all sales. Thus bread was thrice taxed, as wheat, then as flour, and finally as bread.]

[63] Even Milton, in his essay on _The Liberty of Unlicensed Printing_, the most splendid argument, perhaps, the world had then witnessed in behalf of intellectual liberty, would exclude popery from the benefits of toleration, as a religion which the public good required at all events to be extirpated. Such were the crude views of the rights of conscience entertained, in the latter half of the seventeenth century, by one of those gifted minds whose extraordinary elevation enabled it to catch and reflect back the coming light of knowledge, long before it had fallen on the rest of mankind.

[64] [Burke[f] says, “Ferdinand had at least four illegitimate children by different ladies. Juana, who was offered with a double marriage portion, in 1489, to the king of Scots. Juan, archbishop of Saragossa, and two other daughters, both princesses. Raymond de Cardona (the unworthy successor of Gonsalvo de Cordova in Italy) was also commonly supposed to be a son of Ferdinand. But the king’s faults were certainly not those of a voluptuary.” Prescott[g] quotes Marineo[r] on “the queen’s discreet and most amiable conduct in these delicate matters.”]

[65] She gave evidence of this in the commutation of the sentence she obtained for the wretch who stabbed her husband, and whom her ferocious nobles would have put to death without the opportunity of confession and absolution, that “his soul might perish with his body!” (See her letter to Talavera.) She showed this merciful temper, so rare in that rough age, by dispensing altogether with the preliminary barbarities sometimes prescribed by the law in capital executions.