In the north there was developing another and very different power. The descendants of the Visigoth Kings, making common cause with the rough mountaineers, had shared all their hardships and rigors in the mountains of the Asturias. Inured to privation and suffering, entirely unacquainted with luxury or even with the comforts of living, they had grown strong, and in a century after Alfonso I. had emerged from their mountain shelter and removed their court and capital from Oviedo to Leon, where Alfonso III. held sway over a group of barren kingdoms, poor, proud, but withHidalgosandDons, who were keeping alive the sacred fires of patriotism and of religion. This was the rough cradle of a Spanish nationality.
They had their own jealousies and fierce conflicts, but all united in a common hatred of the Moor. Though they did not yet dream of driving him out of their land, theirbrave leaders, Ramiro I. and Ordoño I. had been for years steadily defying and tormenting him with the kind of warfare to which they gave its name—guerrilla—meaning "little wars."
While the Great Khalif was consolidating his Moorish kingdom and driving the Christians back into their mountains, the power of that people was being weakened by internal strifes existing between the three adjacent kingdoms—Leon, Castile, and Navarre. The headship of Leon was for years disputed by her ambitious neighbor Castile (so called because of the numerous fortified castles with which it was studded), under the leadership of one Fernando, Count of Castile.
There had been the usual lapse into anarchy and weakness after the Great Khalif's death. Andalusia always needed a master, and this she found inAlmanzor, who was Prime Minister to one of the Khalif's feeble descendants. It was a sad day for the struggling kingdom in the north when this all-subduing man took the reins in his own hands, and left his young master to amuse himself in collecting rare manuscripts and making Cordova more beautiful.
This Almanzor, the mightiest of the soldiers of the Crescent since Tarik and Musa, proclaimed a war of faith against the Christians, who were obliged to forget their local dissensions and to try with their combined strength to save their kingdom from extermination. These were the darkest days to which they had yet been subjected. But for the death of Almanzor the ruin of the Christian state would have been complete. A monkish historian thus records this welcome event: "In 1002 died Almanzor, and was buried in hell."
The death of Almanzor was the turning point in the fortunes of the two kingdoms—that of the Moors and of the Christians.
The magnificence and the glory of the kingdom faded like the mist before the morning sun. Never again would Cordova be called the "Bride of Andalusia." Eight years after the death of Almanzor anarchy and ruin reigned in that city. The gentle, studious youth who was Khalif, was dragged with his only child to a dismal vault attached to the great mosque; and here, in darkness and cold and damp, sat the grandson of the first Great Khalif, his child clinging to his breast andbegging in vain for food, his wretched father pathetically pleading with his jailers for just a crust of bread, and a candle to relieve the awful darkness.
The brutal Berbers now had their turn. The priceless library, with its six hundred thousand volumes, was in ashes. They were in the "City of the Fairest." Palace after palace was ransacked, and in a few days all that remained of its exquisite treasures of art was a heap of blackened stones (1010). The Christians drew their broken state closer together, and gathered themselves for a more aggressive warfare than any yet undertaken. The time when the Moors were in the throes of civil war was favorable. The three kingdoms of Asturias, Leon, and Castile were in 1073 united into one "kingdom of Castile," under Alfonso VI., who had already made great inroads upon the Moslem territory and laid many cities under tribute. With this event, the nameCastiliancomes into Spanish history, and from thenceforth that name represents all that is proudest, bravest, and most characteristic of the part of the race which traces a direct lineage from the ancient Visigoth Kings.
Alfonso had not misjudged his opportunity. He had traversed Spain with his army, and bathed in the ocean in sight of the "Pillars of Hercules." His great general Rodrigo Diaz, known as "My Cid, the Challenger," had cut another path all the way to Valencia, where he reigned as a sort of uncrowned king; and he will forever reign as crowned king in the realm of romance and poetry; the perfect embodiment of the knightly idea—the "Challenger," who, in defense of the faith, would stand before great armies and defy them to single combat! Whether "My Cid" ever did such mighty deeds as are ascribed to him, no one knows. But he stands for the highest ideal of his time. He was the "King Arthur" of Spanish history; and so valiantly did he serve the Christian cause that the Moors were driven to a most disastrous step. With the Cid in Valencia, with Alfonso VI. marching a victorious army through the Moslem territory, and with Toledo, the city of the ancient Visigoth Kings, repossessed, it looked as if, after almost four hundred years, the Christians were about to recover their land.
The Moors, thoroughly frightened, realizinghow helpless they had grown, resolved upon a desperate measure.
There was, on the opposite African coast, a sect of Berber fanatics, fierce and devout, known as "saints," but which the Moors calledAlmoravides. Fighting for the faith was their occupation. What more fitting than to use them as a means of driving the infidel Christians out of Moslem territory!
They came, like a cloud of locusts, and settled upon the land. Yusuf, their general, led his men against Alfonso's Castilians October 23, 1086. Near Badajos the attack was made simultaneously in front and rear, crushing them utterly; Alfonso barely escaping with five hundred men. This was only the first of many other crushing defeats; the most disheartening of which was the one in 1099, when the Cid, fighting in alliance with Pedro, King of Aragon, was defeated near Gardia, on the seacoast. Then the great warrior's heart broke, and he died; and we are told he was clothed cap-à-pie in shining armor and placed upright on his good steed Bavieca, his trusty sword in his hand—and so he passed to his burial; his banner borne and guarded by five hundred knights. And we are also told theMoors wonderingly watched his departure with his knights, not suspecting that he was dead.
The object of the Moors in inviting the odious Almoravides had been accomplished; the Christians had been driven out of Andalusia back into their own territory; but their African auxiliaries were too well pleased with their new abode to think of leaving it. One by one the Moorish Princes were subdued by the men whose aid they had invoked, until a dynasty of the Almoravides was fastened upon Spain. To the refined Spanish Arabs contact with these savages from the desert was a terrible scourge, and so far as they were able they withdrew into communities by themselves, leaving these African locusts to devour their substance and dim their glory.
But luxury was not favorable to the invaders. In another generation their martial spirit was gone and they had become only ignorant, sodden voluptuaries; and when the Christians once more renewed their attacks, they failed to repel them as Yusuf had done thirty years before.
There was another fanatical sect, beyond the Atlas range in Africa, which hadlong been looking for a coming Messiah, whom they called theMahdi. They were known as theAlhomades. A son of a lamp-lighter in the Mosque of Cordova one day presented himself before the Alhomades, and announced that he was the greatMahdi, who was divinely appointed to lead them, and to bring happiness to all the earth.
The path thisMahdidesired to lead them was first to Morocco, there to subdue the Almoravides in their own land, and thence to Spain. In a short time this entire plan was realized. The Mahdi's successor was Emperor of Morocco, and by the year 1150 included in his dominion was all of Mahommedan Spain! The Spanish Arabs, when they were fighting Alfonso VI. and the "Cid," did not anticipate this disgraceful downfall from people of their own faith. They abhorred these Mahommedan savages, and drew together still closer for a century more in and about their chosen refuge of Granada.
In the early part of the thirteenth century the Emperor of Morocco made such enormous preparations for the occupation of Spain that a larger design upon Europe became manifest. Once more Christendom wasalarmed; not since Charles Martel had the danger appeared so great. The Pope proclaimed a Crusade, this time not into Palestine, but Spain.
An army of volunteers from the kingdom of Portugal and from southern France re-enforced the great armies of the Kings of Castile, Aragon, and Navarre. The Crusaders, as they called themselves, assembled at Toledo July 12, 1212, under the command of Alfonso IX., King of Castile. The power of the Alhomades was broken, and they were driven out of Spain. The once great Mahommedan Empire in that country was reduced to the single province of Granada, where the Moors intrenched themselves in their last stronghold. For nearly three centuries the Crescent was yet to wave over the kingdom of Granada; but it was to shine in only the pale light of a waning crescent, until its final extinction in the full light of a Christian day.
A great change had been wrought in Europe. The Crusades had opened a channel through which flowed from the East reviving streams of ancient knowledge and culture over the arid waste of mediævalism. France and England had awakened from their long mental torpor, Paris was become the center of an intellectual revival. In England, Roger Bacon, in his "Opus Majus," was systematizing all existing knowledge and laying a foundation for a more advanced science and philosophy for the people, who had only recently extorted from their wicked King John the great charter of their liberties.
It was just at this period, when the door had suddenly opened ushering Europe into a new life, that the Christian cause in Spain triumphed; and, excepting in the little kingdom of Granada, the Cross waved from the Pyrenees to the sea. After more than four centuries of steadfast devotion to that object, thedescendants of the Visigoth Kings had come once more into their inheritance.
They found it enriched, and clothed with a beauty of which their ancestors could never have dreamed. These Spaniards had learned their lesson of valor in the north, and they had learned it well. Now in the land of the Moor, dwelling in the palaces they had built, and gazing upon masterpieces of Arabic art and architecture which they had left, they were to learn the subtle charm of form and color, and the fascination which music and poetry and beauty and knowledge may lend to life. As they drank from these Moorish fountains the rugged warriors found them very sweet; and they discovered that there were other pleasures in life beside fighting the Moors and nursing memories of the Cid and their vanished heroes.
The territory of Fernando III., King of Castile (1230-52), extended now from the Bay of Biscay to the Guadalquivir. The ancient city of Seville was chosen as his capital. It was a far cry from the "Cave of Covadonga" to the Moorish palace of the "Alcazar," where dwelt the pious descendant of Pelayo! The first act of Fernando III. was to convert theMosque at Seville into a cathedral, which still stands with its Moorish bell-tower, the beautiful "Giralda." There may also be seen to-day over one of its portals a stuffed crocodile, which was sent alive to King Ferdinand by the Sultan of Egypt. And within the cathedral, in a silver urn with glass sides, the traveler may also gaze to-day upon the remains of this "Saint Ferdinand" clothed in royal robes, and with a crown upon his head.
Spain had begun to lift up her head among the other nations of Europe. To defeat the Crescent was the highest ideal of that chivalric age. Spain, longer than any other nation, had fought the Mahommedan. It had been her sole occupation for four centuries, and now she had vanquished him, and driven him into the mountains of one of her smallest provinces, there to hide from the Spaniards as they had once hidden from the Moors in the North. This was a passport to the honor and respect of other Christian nations. She was Spain "the Catholic"—the loved and favorite child of the Church—and great monarchs in England, France, and Germany bestowed their sons and daughters upon her kings and princes. Poorthough she was in purse, and somewhat rude yet in manners, she held up her head high in proud consciousness of her aristocratic lineage, and her unmatched championship of Christianity.
We realize how close had become the tie binding her to other nations when we learn that King Fernando III. was the grandson of Queen Eleanor of England (daughter of Henry II.), and that Louis IX. of France, that other royal saint, was his own cousin; and also that his wife Beatrix, whom he brought with him to Seville, was daughter of Frederick II., Emperor of Germany.
The deep hold which Arabic life and thought had taken upon their conquerors was shown when Alfonso X., son of Ferdinand, came to the throne. So in love was he with learning and science that he let his kingdom fall into utter confusion while he busied himself with a set of astronomical tables upon which his heart was set and in holding up to ridicule the Ptolemaic theory. If he had given less thought to the stars, and more to the humble question as to who was to be his successor, it would have saved much strife and suffering to those who came after him.
While the Moslems were building up their kingdom and making of their capital city a second and even more beautiful Cordova, there was a partial truce with the Moors in Granada. Moors and Christians were enemies still; the hereditary hatreds were only lulled into temporary repose. But Christian knights who were handsome and gallant might love and woo Moorish maidens who were beautiful; and, as a writer has intimated, love became the business and war the pastime of the Spaniard in Andalusia. Spain was unconsciously inbibing the soft, sensuous charm of the civilization she was exterminating; and the peculiar rhythm of Spanish music, and the subtle picturesqueness which makes the Spanish people unique among the other Latin nations of Europe, came, not from her Gothic, nor her Roman, nor her Phenician ancestry, but from the plains of Arabia; and the guitar and the dance and the castanet, and the charm and the coquetry of her women, are echoes from that far-off land of poetry and romance. Not so the bull-fight! Would you trace to its source that pleasant pastime, you must not go to the East; the Oriental was cruel to man, but not to beast. He would have abhorredsuch a form of amusement, for the origin of which we must look to the barbarous Kelt; or perhaps, as is more probable, to the mysterious Iberians, since among the Latin peoples of Europe bull-fighting is found in Spain alone. Well was it for Spain that her rough, untutored ancestors were kept hiding in the mountains for centuries, while that brilliant Oriental race planted their Peninsula thick with the germs of high thinking and beautiful living.
As the spider, after his glistening habitation has been destroyed by some ruthless footstep, goes patiently to work to rebuild it, so the Moor in Granada, with his imperishable instinct for beauty, was making of his little kingdom the most beautiful spot in Europe. The city of Granada was lovelier than Cordova; its Alhambra more enchanting than had been the palaces in the "City of the Fairest." This citadel, which is fortress and palace in one, still stands like the Acropolis, looking out upon the plain from its lofty elevation. Volumes have been written about its labyrinthine halls and corridors and courts, and the amazing richness of decoration, which still survives—an inexhaustible mine for artistsand a shrine for lovers of the beautiful. But Granada cultivated other things besides the art of beauty. Nowhere in Europe was there in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries such advanced thinking, and a knowledge so akin to our own to-day, as within the borders of that Moorish kingdom.
There were other reasons beside the growing peacefulness of the Spaniards why Granada was left to develop in comparative security for two centuries. It was impossible that adjacent ambitious kingdoms, such as Navarre, Castile, Aragon, Leon, and Portugal, with indefinite and disputed boundaries, and, on account of intermarriages between the kingdoms, with indefinite and disputed successions, should ever be at peace. In the perpetual strife and warfare which prevailed on account of royal European alliances, the fate of foreign princes and princesses were often involved, and hence European states stood ready to take a hand.
Castile and Aragon had gradually absorbed the smaller states, excepting Portugal on the one side and Navarre on the other. The history of Spain at this time is a history of the struggles of these two states for supremacy. The most eventful as well as the most luridperiod of this prolonged civil war was while Pedro the Cruel was king of Castile, 1350-69. This Spanish Nero, when sixteen years old, commenced his reign by the murder of his mother. A catalogue of his crimes is impossible. Enough to say that assassination was his remedy, and means of escape, from every entanglement in which his treacheries involved him. It was the unhappy fate of Blanche de Bourbon, sister of Charles V., King of France, to marry this King of Castile, and when he refused to live with her and had her removed from his palace the Alcazar to a fortress, and finally poisoned her, the French King determined to avenge the insult to his royal house. He allied himself with the King of Aragon to destroy Pedro, with whom the King of Aragon was of course at war.
Edward, the "Black Prince," was then brilliantly invading France and extending the kingdom of his father Edward III. He was the kinsman of Pedro, and when appealed to by his cousin for aid in protecting his kingdom from the King of Aragon and his French allies, Edward gallantly consented to help him; and in the spring of 1367, for the second time, a splendid army advanced through thePass at Roncesvalles, and a great battle, worthy of a better cause, was fought and won.
So this most atrocious king—perhaps excepting Richard III. of England, whom he resembled—had for his champion the victor of Cressy and Poictiers. He was restored to his throne, which had been usurped by his brother Enrique (or Henry), but in a personal encounter with Enrique soon after (which was artfully brought about by the famous Breton knight, Bertrand du Guesclin), he met a deserved fate (1369).
Constanza, the daughter of Pedro the Cruel, had been married to John of Gaunt (Duke of Lancester), brother of the Black Prince and son of Edward III. As Constanza was the great-grandmother of Isabella I. of Spain, so in the veins of that revered Queen there flowed the blood of the Plantagenets, as well as that of Pedro the Cruel!
Because of the number of doubtful pretenders always existing in Spain, disputes about the royal succession also always existed. Such a dispute now led to a long war with Portugal, where King Fernando had really the most valid hereditary claim to the thronemade vacant by Pedro's death. If his right had been acknowledged, Portugal and Spain would now be united; Isabella would have remained only a poor and devout princess, and would never have had the power to win a continent for the world. So impossible is it to remove one of the links forged by fate, that we dare not regret even so monstrous a reign as that of Pedro the Cruel!
Enrique's right to the vacant throne of his brother had two disputants. Besides the King of Portugal, John of Gaunt, who had married the lady Constanza,—by virtue of her rights as daughter of Pedro,—claimed the crown of Castile. This Plantagenet was actually proclaimed King of Castile and Leon (1386). For twenty-five years he vainly strove to come into his kingdom as sovereign; but finally compromised by giving his young daughter Catherine to the boy "Prince of Asturias," the heir to the throne. He was obliged to content himself by thus securing to his child the long-coveted prize. And it was this Catherine, who at fourteen was betrothed to a boy of nine, who was the grandmother of Isabella, Queen of Castile.
When such was the private history of thosehighest in the land we can only imagine what must have been that of the rest. Feudalism, which was a part of Spain's Gothic inheritance, had always made that country one of its strongholds, and chivalry had nowhere else found so congenial a soil. There was no great artisan class, as in France, creating a powerful "bourgeoisie"; no "guilds," or simple "burghers," as in Germany, stubbornly standing for their rights; no "boroughs" and "town meetings," where the people were sternly guarding their liberties, as in England.
The history of other nations is that of the struggles of the common people against the tyranny of kings and rulers. If there were any "common people" in Spain, they were so effaced that history makes no mention of them. We hear only of kings and great barons and glorious knights; and their wonderful deeds and their valor and prowess—excepting in the wars with the Moors—were always over boundary-lines and successions, or personal quarrels more or less disgraceful, with never a single high purpose or a principle involved. It was all a gay, ambitious pageant, adorned by a mantle of chivalry, and made sacred by the banner of the Cross. In thehistory of no other European country do we see a great state develop under despotism so unredeemed by wholesome ideals, and so unmitigated and unrestrained by gentle human impulses.
Juan II., the son of the young Catherine and the boy prince of the Asturias, died in 1454, and his son Enrique (or Henry) IV. was King of Castile. When, after some years, Henry was without children, and with health very infirm, his young sister Isabella unexpectedly found herself the acknowledged heir to the throne of Castile. She suddenly became a very important young person. The old King of Portugal was a suitor for her hand, and a brother of the King of England, and also a brother of the King of France, were striving for the same honor. But Isabella had very decided views of her own. Her hero was the young Ferdinand of Aragon, and heir to that throne. She resisted all her brother's efforts to coerce her, and finally took the matter into her own hands by sending an envoy to her handsome young lover to come to her at Valladolid, with a letter telling him they had better be married at once.
Accompanied by a few knights disguised as merchants, Ferdinand, pretending to be their servant, during the entire journey waited on them at table and took care of their mules. He entered Valladolid, where he was received by the Archbishop of Toledo, who was in the conspiracy, and was by him conveyed to Isabella's apartments. We are told that when he entered someone exclaimed:Ese-es, Ese-es(that is he); and the escutcheon of the descendants of that knight has ever since borne a doubleS.S., which sounds like this exclamation.
The marriage was arranged to take place in four days. An embarrassment then occurred of which no one had before thought. Neither of them had any money. But someone was found who would lend them enough for the wedding expenses, and so on the 19th of October, 1469, the most important marriage ever yet consummated in Spain took place—a marriage which would forever set at rest the rivalries between Castile and Aragon, and bring honors undreamed of to a united Spain.
Isabella was fair, intelligent, accomplished, and lovely. She was eighteen and her boy husband was a year younger. Of course her royal brother stormed and raged. But, ofcourse, it did no good. In five years from that time (1474) he died, and Isabella, royally attired, and seated on a white palfrey, proceeded to the throne prepared for her, and was there proclaimed "Queen of Castile." At the end of another five years, Ferdinand came into his inheritance. His old father, Juan II., King of Aragon and Navarre, died in 1479, and Castile, Aragon, and Navarre—all of Spain except Portugal and Granada—had come under the double crown of Ferdinand and Isabella.
The war with Portugal still existed, and their reign began in the midst of confusion and trouble, but it was brilliant from the outset. Ferdinand had great abilities and an ambition which matched his abilities. Isabella, no less ambitious than he, was more far-reaching in her plans, and always saw more clearly than Ferdinand what was for the true glory of Spain. With infinite tact she softened his asperities, and disarmed his jealousy, and ruled her "dear lord," by making him believe he ruled her.
A joint sovereignty, with a man so grasping of power and so jealous of his own rights, required self-control and tact in no ordinarymeasure. It was agreed at last that in all public acts Ferdinand's name should precede hers; and although her sanction was necessary, his indignation at this was abated by her promise of submission to his will. The court of the new sovereigns was established at Seville, and they took up their abode in that palace so filled with associations both Moorish and Castilian—the Alcazar. From the very first Isabella's powerful mind grappled every public question, and she gave herself heart and soul to what she believed was her divine mission—the building up of a great Catholic state. Isabella's devout soul was sorely troubled by the prevalence of Judaism in her kingdom. She took counsel with her confessor, and also with the Pope, and by their advice a religious tribunal was established at Seville in 1483, the object of which was to inquire of heretics whether they were willing to renounce their faith and accept Christianity. The head of this tribunal, which was soon followed by others in all the large cites, was a Dominican friar calledTorquemada. He was known as the "Inquisitor General." Inaccessible to pity, mild in manners, humble in demeanor, yet swayed only by a sense ofduty, this strange being was so cruel that he seems like an incarnation of the evil principle. At the tribunal in Seville alone it is said that in thirty-six years four thousand victims were consigned to the flames, besides the thousands more who endured living deaths by torture, mutilation, and nameless sufferings.
Humanity shudders at the recital! And yet this monstrous tribunal was the creation of one of the wisest and gentlest of women, who believed no rigors could be too great to save people from eternal death! And, in her misguided zeal, she emptied her kingdom of a people who had helped to create its prosperity, and drove the most valuable part of her population into France, Italy, and England, there to disseminate the seeds of a higher culture and intelligence which they had imbibed from contact with the Moors, who had treated them with such uniform tolerance and gentleness.
The kingdom of Granada was now at the height of its splendor. Its capital city was larger and richer than any city in Spain. Its army was the best equipped of any in Europe. The Moorish king, a man of fiery temper, thought the time had come when he might defy his enemy by refusing topay an annual tribute to which his father had ten years before consented. When Ferdinand's messenger, in 1476, came to demand the accustomed tribute, he said, "Go tell your master the kings who pay tribute in Granada are all dead. Our mints coin nothing but sword-blades now."
The cool and crafty Ferdinand prepared his own answer to this challenge. The infatuated King Abdul-Hassan followed up his insult by capturing the Christian fortress of Zahara. His temper was not at the best at this time on account of a war raging in his own household. His wife Ayesha was fiercely jealous of a Christian captive whom he had also made his wife. She had become his favorite Sultana, and was conspiring to have her own son supplant Boabdil, the son of Ayesha, the heir to the throne. In his championship of Zoraya and her son, Abdul-Hassan imprisoned Ayesha and Boabdil, whom he threatened to disinherit. We are shown to-day the window in the Alhambra from which Ayesha lowered Boabdil in a basket, telling him to come back with an army and assert his rights. Suddenly, while absorbed by this smaller war,news came that Alhama, their most impregnable fortress, only six leagues from the city of Granada, had been captured by Ferdinand's army. It was the key to Granada. Despair was in every soul. The air was filled with wailing and lamentation. "Woe, woe is me, Alhama!" "Ay de mi, Alhama!" Indignant with their old king, who had brought destruction upon them, when Boabdil came with his army of followers, they flocked about him—"El Rey Chico!" (the boy king) as they called him. Abdul Hassan was forced to fly, and Boabdil reigned over the expiring kingdom. It was a brief and troubled reign.
In the famous "Court of the Lions" in the Alhambra, visitors are shown to-day the blood-stains left by the celebrated massacre of the "Abencerrages." The Abencerrages had supported the claim of Ayesha's rival, Zoraya; and it is said that Boabdil invited the Princes of this clan, some thirty in number, to a friendly conference in the Alhambra, and there had them treacherously beheaded at the fountain.
But whether this blood-stain upon his memory is as doubtful as those upon thestones at the fountain, seems an open question.
From the painting by V. Brozik.Columbus at the Court of Ferdinand and Isabella.
From the painting by V. Brozik.
So stubborn was the defense, it appeared sometimes as if the reduction of Granada would have to be abandoned. Isabella's courage and faith were sorely tried. But the brave Queen infused her own courage into the flagging spirits of her husband, and kept alive the enthusiasm of the people; and at last,—on the 2d of January, 1402,—the proud city capitulated. Boabdil surrendered the keys of the Alhambra to Ferdinand—the silver cross which had preceded the King throughout the war gleamed from a high tower; and from the loftiest pinnacle of the Alhambra waved the banners of Castile and Aragon.
The conflict which had lasted for 781 years was over. The death of Roderick and the fall of the Goths was avenged, and Christendom, still weeping for the loss of Constantinople, was consoled and took heart again.
The reduction of Granada had required eleven years, and had drained the kingdom of all its resources. It is not strange that Isabella should have had no time to listen seriously to a threadbare enthusiast asking for money and ships for a strange adventure! To have grown old and haggard in pressing an unsuccessful project is not a passport to the confidence of Princes. But the gracious Queen had promised to listen to him when the war with the Moors was concluded. So now Columbus sought her out at Granada; and it is a strange scene which the imagination pictures—a shabby old man pleading with a Queen in the halls of the Alhambra for permission to lift the veil from an unsuspected Hemisphere; artfully dwelling upon the glory of planting the Cross in the dominions of the Great Khan! The cool, unimaginative Ferdinand listened contemptuously; but Isabella, for once opposing the will of her "dear lord,"arose and said, "The enterprise is mine. I undertake it for Castile." And on the 3d of August, 1492, the little fleet of caravels sailed from the mouth of the same river whence had once sailed the "ships of Tarshish," laden with treasure for King Solomon and "Hiram, King of Tyre." A union with Portugal—the land of the Lusitanians and of Sertorius—was all that was now required to make of the Spanish Peninsula one kingdom. This Isabella planned to accomplish by the marriage of her oldest daughter, Isabella, with the King of Portugal. Her son John, heir to the Spanish throne, had died suddenly just after his marriage with the daughter of Maximilian, Emperor of Germany.
This terrible blow was swiftly followed by another, the death of her daughter Isabella, and also that of the infant which was expected to unite the kingdoms of Portugal and Spain. The succession of Castile and Aragon now passed to Joanna, her second daughter, who had married Philip, Archduke of Austria and son of Maximilian, an unfortunate child who seemed on the verge of madness.
Isabella's youngest daughter, Catherine, became the wife of Henry VIII. of England.Happily the mother did not live to witness this child's unhappiness; but her heart-breaking losses and domestic griefs were greater than she could bear. The unbalanced condition of Joanna, upon whom rested all her hopes, was undermining her health. The results of the expedition of Columbus had exceeded the wildest dreams of romance. Gold was pouring in from the West enough to pay for the war with the Moors many times over, and for all wars to come. Spain, from being the poorest, had suddenly become the richest country in Europe; richest in wealth, in territory, and in the imperishable glory of its discovery. But Isabella,—who had been the instrument in this transformation,—who had built up a firm united kingdom and swept it clean of heretics, Jews, and Moors,—was still a sad and disappointed woman, thwarted in her dearest hopes; and on the 26th of November, 1504, she died leaving the fruits of her triumphs to a grandson six years old.
This infant Charles was proclaimed King of Castile under the regency of his ambitious father, the Archduke of Austria, and his insane mother. The death of the Archduke and the incapacity of Joanna in a few yearsgave to Ferdinand the control of the two kingdoms for which he had contended and schemed, until his own death in 1516, when the crowns of Castile and Aragon passed to his grandson, who was proclaimed Charles I., King of Spain.
A plain, sedate youth of sixteen was called from his home in Flanders to assume the crowns of Castile and Aragon. Silent, reserved, and speaking the Spanish language very imperfectly, the impression produced by the young King was very unpromising. No one suspected the designs which were maturing under that mask; nor that this boy was planning to grasp all the threads of diplomacy in Europe, and to be the master of kings.
In 1517 Maximilian died, leaving a vacant throne in Germany to be contended for by the ambitious Francis I. of France and Maximilian's grandson, Charles.
It was a question of supremacy in Europe. So the successful aspirant must win to himself Leo X., Henry VIII. and his great minister Wolsey, and after that the Electors of Germany. It required consummate skill. Francis I. was an able player. The astute Wolsey made the moves for his master Henry VIII.,keeping a watchful eye on Charles, "that young man who looks so modest, and soars so high"; while Leo X., unconscious of the coming Reformation, was craftily aiding this side or that as benefit to the Church seemed to be promised.
But that "modest young man" played the strongest game. Charles was, by the unanimous vote of the Electors, raised to the imperial throne; and the grandson of Isabella, as Charles I. of Spain and Charles V. of Germany, possessed more power than had been exercised by any one man since the reign of Augustus. The territory over which he had dominion in the New World was practically without limit. Mexico surrendered to Cortez (1521) and Peru to Pizarro (1532); Ponce de Leon was in Florida and de Soto on the banks of the Mississippi; while wealth, fabulous in amount, was pouring into Spain, and from thence into Flanders.
The history of Charles belongs, in fact, more to Europe than to Spain. No slightest tenderness seems to have existed in his cold heart for the land of Isabella, which he seemed to regard simply as a treasury from which to draw money for the objects to which he wasreally devoted. So, in fact, Spain was governed by an absolute despot who was Emperor of Germany, where he resided, and she visibly declined from the strength and prosperity which had been created by the wise and personal administration of Ferdinand and Isabella.
The Cortes, where the deputies had never been allowed the privilege of debate, had been at its best a very imperfect expression of popular sentiment; and now was reduced to a mere empty form. Abuses which had been corrected under the vigilant personal administration of two able and patriotic sovereigns returned in aggravated form. Misrule and disorder prevailed, while their King was absorbed in the larger field of European politics and diplomacy.
The light in which Spain shines in this, which is always accounted her most glorious period, was that of Discovery and Conquest and the enormous wealth coming therefrom; all of which was bestowed by that shabby adventurer and suppliant at the Alhambra, in whom Isabella alone believed, and who, after enriching Spain beyond its wildest expectations, was permitted to die in poverty and neglectat Valladolid in 1506! History has written its verdict: imperishable renown to Columbus, Balboa, Magellan, and the navigators who dared such perils and won so much; and eternal infamy to the men who planted a bloodstained Cross in those distant lands. The history of the West Indies, of Mexico, and Peru is unmatched for cruelty in the annals of the world; and Isabella's is the only voice that was ever raised in defense of the gentle, helpless race which was found in those lands.
The Reformation, which had commenced in Germany with the reign of Charles V., had assumed enormous proportions. Charles, who was a bigot with "heart as hard as hammered iron," was using with unsparing hand the Inquisition, that engine of cruelty created by his grandmother. And while his captains, the "conquistadors," were burning and torturing in the West, he was burning and torturing in the East. His entire reign was occupied in a struggle with his ambitious rival Francis I., and another and vain struggle with the followers of Luther.
He had married Isabel, the daughter of the King of Portugal. Philip, his son and heir,was born in 1527. The desire of his heart was to secure for this son the succession to the imperial throne of Germany. To this the electors would not consent. He was defeated in the two objects dearest to his heart: the power to bequeath this imperial possession to Philip, and the destruction of Protestantism. So this most powerful sovereign since the day of Charlemagne felt himself ill-used by Fate. Weary and sick at heart, in the year 1556 he abdicated in favor of Philip. The Netherlands was his own to bestow upon his son, as that was an inheritance from his father, the Archduke of Austria. So the fate of Philip does not seem to us so very heart-breaking, as, upon the abdication of his father, he was King of Spain, of Naples, and of Sicily; Duke of Milan; Lord of the Netherlands and of the Indies, and of a vast portion of the American continent stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific!
Such was the inheritance left to his son by the disappointed man who carried his sorrows to the monastery at St. Yuste, where the austerities and severities he practiced finally cost him his life (1558). But let no one suppose that these penances were on account ofcruelties practiced upon his Protestant subjects! From his cloister he wrote to the inquisitors adjuring them to show no mercy; to deliver all to the flames, even if they should recant; and the only regret of the dying penitent was that he had not executed Luther!
Philip established his capital at Madrid, and commenced the Palace of the Escurial, nineteen miles distant, which stands to-day as his monument. His coronation was celebrated by anauto-da-féat Valladolid, which it is said "he attended with much devotion." One of the victims, an officer of distinction, while awaiting his turn said to him: "Sire, how can you witness such tortures?" "Were my own son in your place I should witness it," was the reply; which was a key to the character of the man.
From the painting by Velasquez.The Surrender of Breda.
From the painting by Velasquez.
He asserted his claim through his mother, the Princess Isabel of Portugal, to the throne of that country, and after a stubborn contest with the Lusitanians, the long-desired union of Spain and Portugal was accomplished. This event was celebrated by Cervantes in a poem which extravagantly lauds his sovereign. Henry VIII. had been succeeded in England by Mary, daughter of his unhappyQueen, Catherine of Aragon, who, it will be remembered, was the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella. Mary had inherited the intense religious fervor and perhaps the cruel instincts of her mother's family, and she quickly set about restoring Protestant England to the Catholic faith. Philip saw in a union with Mary and a joint sovereignty over England, such as he hoped would follow, an immense opportunity for Spain. The marriage took place with great splendor, and in the desire to please her handsome husband, of whom she was very fond, she commenced the work which has given her the title, "Bloody Mary." In vain were human torches lighted to lure Philip from Spain, where he lingered. She did not win his love, nor did Philip reign conjointly with his royal consort in England. Mary died in 1558, and her Protestant sister Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn, was Queen of England.
Philip had made up his mind that Protestantism should be exterminated in his kingdom of the Netherlands. He could not go there himself, so he looked about for a suitable instrument for his purpose. The Duke of Alva was the man chosen. He wasappointed Viceroy, with full authority to carry out the pious design. Heresy must cease to exist in the Netherlands. The arrival of Alva, clothed with such despotic powers, and the atrocities committed by him, caused the greatest indignation in the Netherlands. The Prince of Orange, aided by the Counts Egmont and Horn, organized a party to resist him, and a revolution was commenced which lasted for forty years, affording one of the blackest chapters in the history of Europe. The name of Alva stands at the head of the list of men who have wrought desolation and suffering in the name of religion. The other European states protested, and Elizabeth, in hot indignation, gave aid to the persecuted states.
Philip had contracted a marriage, after Mary's death, with the daughter of that terrible woman Catherine de Medici, widow of Henry II. of France, and there is much reason to believe that it was this Duke of Alva who planned the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. There were sinister conferences between Catherine, Philip, and Alva, and little doubt exists that the hideous tragedy which occurred in Paris on the night of August 24,1572, was arranged in Madrid, and had its first inception in the cruel breast of Alva.
There had not been much love existing before between Philip and Elizabeth, who it is said had refused the hand of her Spanish brother-in-law. But after her interference in the Netherlands, and when her ships were intercepting and waylaying Spanish ships returning with treasure from the West, and when at last the one was the accepted champion of the Protestant, and the other of the Catholic cause, they became avowed enemies. Philip resolved to prepare a mighty armament for the invasion of England.
In 1587 Elizabeth sent Sir Francis Drake to reconnoiter and find out what Philip was doing. He appeared with twenty-five vessels before Cadiz. Having learned all he wanted, and burned a fleet of merchant vessels, he returned to his Queen.
In May, 1588, a fleet of one hundred and thirty ships, some "the largest that ever plowed the deep," sailed from Lisbon for the English coast. We may form some idea to-day of what must have been the feeling in England when this Armada, unparalleled in size, appeared in the English Channel! IfSir Francis Drake's ships were fewer and smaller, he could match the Spaniards in audacity. He sent eight fireships right in among the close-lying vessels. Then, in the confusion which followed, while they were obstructed and entangled with their own fleet, he swiftly attacked them with such vigor that ten ships were sunk or disabled, and the entire fleet was demoralized. Then a storm overtook the fleeing vessels, and the winds and the waves completed the victory. As in the Spanish report of the disaster thirty-five is the number of ships acknowledged to be lost, we may imagine how great was the destruction. So ended Philip's invasion of England, and the great Spanish "Armada."
Philip II. died, 1598, in the Palace of the Escurial which he had built, and with that event ends the story of Spain's greatness. The period of one hundred and twenty-five years, including the reigns of Ferdinand and Isabella, of Charles V., and of Philip II., is, in a way, one of unmatched splendor. Spain had not like England by slow degrees expanded into great proportions, but through strange and perfectly fortuitous circumstances, she had, from a proud obscurity,suddenly leaped into a position of commanding power and magnificence. Fortune threw into her lap the greatest prize she ever had to bestow, and at the same time gave her two sovereigns of exceptional qualities and abilities. The story of this double reign is the romance, the fairy tale of history. Then came the magnificent reign of Charles V. with more gifts from fortune—the imperial crown, if not a substantial benefit to Spain, still bringing dignity and éclat. But under this glittering surface there had commenced even then a decline. Under Philip II. she was still magnificent, Europe was bowing down to her, but the decline was growing more manifest; and with the accession of his puny son, Philip III., there was little left but a brilliant past, which a proud and retrospective nation was going to feed upon for over three centuries. But it takes some time for such dazzling effulgence to disappear. The glamour of the Spanish name was going to last a long time and picturesquely veil her decay. The memory of such an ascendancy in Europe nourished the intense national pride of her people. The name Castilian took on a new significance.
Nor can we wonder at their pride in thename "Castilian." Its glory was not the capricious gift of fortune, but won by a devotion, a constancy, and a fidelity of purpose which are unique in the history of the world. For seven hundred years the race for which that name stands had kept alive the national spirit, while their land was occupied by an alien civilization. These were centuries of privation and suffering and hardship; but never wavering in their purpose, and by brave deeds which have filled volumes, they reclaimed their land and drove out the Moors.
This is what gives to the name "Castilian," its proud significance. But when degenerate Hidalgos and Grandees, debauched by wealth and luxury, gloried in the name; when by rapacity and cruelty they destroyed the lands their valor had won; and when the Inquisition became their pastime and the rack and the wheel their toys—then the name Castilian began to take on a sinister meaning. Spain's most glorious period was not when she was converting the Indies and Mexico and Peru into a hell, not when Charles V. was playing his great game of diplomacy in Europe, but in that pre-Columbian era when a brave andrugged people were keeping alive their national life in the mountains of the Asturias. Well may Spain do honor to that time by calling the heir to her throne the "Prince of the Asturias!"