The expulsion of the French from Naples put an end, as might have been supposed, to The Most Holy League. For the high contracting parties, finding themselves secure from immediate danger, conceived themselves no longer bound by its provisions. Maximilian, ever penniless and generally faithless, had made no attempt to engage in any operations on the French frontier, nor had any one of the allies contributed to defray the heavy charges incurred by the Spanish sovereigns in fulfilling their part of the agreement. The Venetians were rather occupied in securing for themselves as much of the Neapolitan territory as they could acquire, by way of indemnification for their own expenses. The Duke of Milan had already made a separate treaty with Charles VIII. Each member of the league, in fact, after the first alarm had subsided, had shown himself ready to sacrifice the common cause to his own private advantage; and Ferdinand of Aragon, who had already suspended his operations on the frontiers of Spain in October, 1496, had no difficulty in agreeing to a further truce as regarded Naples and Italy, which was signed on the 5th of March, 1497.
The Spaniards had borne the entire burden of the latewar. They had been virtually abandoned by their allies, and their unassisted operations had led to the deliverance of Naples, to the safety of the Italian States, and the humiliation and the defeat of the French. Their immediate objects having been thus happily accomplished, Ferdinand and Isabella proposed to Charles VIII., without shame or hesitation, that the French and Spaniards should enter into an immediate treaty of alliance, with a view to drive out the reigning sovereign of Naples, and divide his kingdom between themselves! Meanwhile the Castilian envoy to the Holy See endeavored to induce Alexander VI. to withhold the investiture of his kingdom from Frederic, the new sovereign of Naples, on the ground that he was friendly to the Angevin party in Italy, the hereditary enemies of Spain. But Alexander paid no heed to Garcilaso de la Vega. Charles showed himself not only willing but eager to treat with Fernando de Estrada; but unwilling at once to abandon all his claims to Italian sovereignty, he offered to cede Navarre to Ferdinand, and keep all Naples to himself. Proposals and counter proposals thus passed between France and Spain; but before any definite programme had been agreed to, the negotiations were cut short by the sudden death of the French monarch, in the tennis court at Amboise, on the eve of Easter, 1498.
The success of the Spanish arms under Gonsalvo de Cordova in Italy was but the beginning of a long career of triumph. From the great victory at Seminara, in 1503, to the great defeat of Rocroy, in 1643, the Spanish infantry remained unconquered in Europe. The armies of Castile had been, indeed, as Prescott has it, “cooped upwithin the narrow limits of the Peninsula, uninstructed and taking little interest in the concerns of the rest of Europe.” But the soldiers and sailors of Aragon and Catalonia had fought with distinction, not only in Italy and in Sicily, but in the furthest east of Europe, for two hundred years before the Great Captain of the United Kingdom set foot on the shores of Calabria. Yet the victories of Gonsalvo were the beginning of a new era, and his life is interesting, not only as that of a brave soldier and an accomplished general, who flourished at a very important period of the history of Europe; but it is further and much more interesting as being the history of a man who united in himself many of the characteristics of ancient and modern civilization, and who himself appears as a sort of middle term between medieval and modern times.
In personal valor, in knightly courtesy, in gaudy display, he was of his own time. In astute generalship, and in still more astute diplomacy, an envoy not an adventurer, the servant and not the rival of kings, he belongs to a succeeding age, when the leader of a victorious army is prouder to be a loyal subject than a rash rebel. The Castilian lords of earlier days had ever been brave knights; their followers had ever been hardy and untiring combatants. But Gonsalvo was not only a tactician, but a strategist. The men whom he commanded were soldiers. Newly armed and admirably disciplined, the regiments were no longer the followers of some powerful nobleman; they formed a part of the national army of Spain. The short sword of their Celtiberian ancestors was once more found in their hands. The long lances of the Swiss mercenarieswere adopted with conspicuous success. The drill-sergeant took the place of the minstrel in the camp.
Nor was this revolution in the art of war confined to the conduct of the Spanish troops in the field. Before the close of the campaign a national militia, or rather a standing army, had taken the place of the brave but irregular levies of medieval Spain. A royal ordinance regulated the equipment of every individual, according to his property. A man’s arms were declared free from seizure for debt, even by the Crown, and smiths and other artificers were restricted, under severe penalties, from working up weapons of war into articles of more pacific use. In 1426 a census was taken of all persons capable of bearing arms; and by an ordinance issued at Valladolid, on February 22d of the same year, it was provided that one out of every twelve inhabitants, between twenty and forty-five years of age, should be enlisted for the service of the State, whether in the conduct of a foreign war or the suppression of domestic disorder.
THE DISCOVERY OF THE NEW WORLD—VASCO DA GAMA—THE ROYAL MARRIAGES—DREAMS OF EMPIRE—THE DEATH OF ISABELLA—FERDINAND’S END
Thereign of Ferdinand and Isabella was made immemorial through Columbus and his discovery. The man and the event will, in subsequent chapters, be considered at length. For the present it will suffice to note that on his return from the New World, after being loaded with honors, a question arose as to Isabella’s right to confer the dignities thus bestowed—Portugal claiming the territory by reason of an anterior grant from the Pope, who, in common with all other parties, believed it to be part of India.
The question was referred to a Junta of learned men of both nations, at the same time that application was made to the reigning Pope, Alexander VI., concerning it. The junta decided that the discoveries of Columbus were not included in the Portuguese grant; and his Holiness finally, as he conceived, terminated the dispute by drawing a line across the Atlantic, from pole to pole, and adjudging all lands discovered on the east of that line to Portugal, all on the west to Castile.
In connection with this it should be noted that, in 1497, Manuel of Portugal sent Vasco da Gama with three ships to double the Cape of Good Hope, with a view to tapping India. In the month of November, Gama successfully doubled the formidable Cape, and sailed up the eastern coast of Africa, as far as Mozambique. Here he found a Moor from Fez, who, acting as interpreter between him and the natives, facilitated the conclusion of a treaty, in virtue of which the King of Mozambique was to furnish the adventurous navigators with pilots well acquainted with the course to India. But, while they were taking in wood and water, a quarrel arose with the natives, to whom the fault is of course imputed. The pilots made their escape, and hostilities ensued. They did not last long; the terrors of the Portuguese firearms soon compelling the Africans to submit. Another, and, as the king assured Gama, a better pilot was supplied, and on the 1st of April, 1498, he sailed from Mozambique.
The new pilot proved quite as ill-disposed as his predecessors, endeavoring to betray the fleet into the power of his countrymen at Mombaza; and being alarmed with apprehensions of detection, by the bustle apparent in the crew of Gama’s ship, which had accidentally grounded, he also made his escape. It was not till they reached Melinda that they found really friendly natives. From that port Gama at last obtained a pilot who steered him right across the gulf to the coast of Malabar.
The first place in India made by the Portuguese was Calecut. Here Gama announced himself as an embassador sent by the King of Portugal to negotiate a treaty of alliance with the sovereign, the zamorin of Calecut, one of the most powerful princes of that part of Hindustan, to establish commercial relations, and to convert the natives to Christianity. How far this last object of his mission was agreeable to the bigoted Hindus, or the equally bigoted Muhammadan conquerors, who were then the masters of those wealthy regions, we are not distinctly told by the Portuguese historians; but the zamorin appears in the first instance to have received Gama well, and been upon the whole pleased with his visit. This friendly intercourse was interrupted, as we are assured, by the intrigues of the Moors or Arabs, who, being in possession of the pepper trade, and indeed of the whole spice trade, were jealous of interlopers. Quarrels arose, and some acts of violence were committed. They ended, however, in Gama’s gaining the advantage, and friendship was restored between him and the zamorin. He reached Portugal in July, 1499, after a two years’ voyage, and was, like Columbus in Spain, loaded with honors.
We may now return to Ferdinand and Isabella. This was the brightest period of their lives. The repulse of Charles VIII., and the victories of Gonsalvo, added fresh luster to their reign. Moreover, through measures then undertaken, the unconverted Moors were subdued, and the French provinces were regained; but, over and above all, a new world had been discovered, and marriages, seemingly the most fortunate, were concluded: Ferdinand and Isabella’s son and heir, Don John, having married the daughter of the Emperor Maximilian; their second daughter Joanna, Philip, the son and heir of that monarch, by Mary of Burgundy, and already, inright of his deceased mother, sovereign of the rich and fertile Netherlands; the third, Katharine, was affianced to Arthur, Prince of Wales; and Manuel, duke of Beja, having succeeded to his cousin John II. of Portugal, despite all intrigues in favor of the illegitimate Don George, solicited and obtained the hand of the eldest Infanta, the widow of the Prince of Portugal.
The first to be celebrated of all these royal marriages was that of the Princess Isabella with Alfonso, the heir to the crown of Portugal, which took place in the autumn of the year 1490, and which was apparently calculated to lead to the happiest results. But the magnificent wedding festivities at Lisbon were scarce concluded when the bridegroom died, and the widowed princess returned disconsolate to her mother (January, 1491).
The marriage of John, prince of Asturias, was the next, and apparently the most important alliance that engaged the attention of his parents; and, moved by many considerations of policy and prestige, they turned their thoughts to far-away Flanders. Maximilian of Hapsburg, the titular sovereign of the Holy Roman Empire, had, by his first wife, Mary, a daughter of Charles the Bold, and in her own right Duchess of Burgundy, been made the father of two children, Philip, born in 1478, and Margaret, in 1480. Their mother, the beautiful empress, died in 1482; and Philip, on attaining his legal majority at the age of sixteen, assumed, in her right, the government of the Low Countries in 1494. It was with this youthful sovereign, the heir to yet more splendid possessions, that the Catholic sovereigns desired to unite their younger daughter in marriage, while the hand of his sister Margaret was sought forthe Prince of Asturias. The advantages to Spain of such a double marriage were enormous.
If Prince John were to marry the Archduchess Margaret, the only daughter of the emperor, he would inherit, in the event of the death of the Archduke Philip without issue, the great possessions of the Hapsburgs, Austria, Flanders, and Burgundy, with a claim to the empire that had eluded his great ancestor, Alfonso X. That the Archduke Philip should in his turn espouse, not Isabella, the eldest, but Joanna, the second daughter of the Catholic king, would prevent Spain from passing under the dominion of Austria, even in the unlikely event of the death of Prince John without issue, inasmuch as Isabella of Portugal would, in such a case, inherit the Spanish crown, to the prejudice of her younger sister in Flanders. And finally, if all the young wives and husbands should live to a reasonable age, and should leave children behind them at their death, one grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella would wear the imperial purple as lord of Central Europe, and another would sit upon the throne of a great united Peninsular kingdom of Castile, Portugal, and Aragon.
In the early autumn of 1496 (August 22), a splendid fleet set out from Laredo, a little port between Bilbao and Santander, which carried Joanna in safety to her expectant bridegroom. The archduke and the princess for whom so sad a fate was reserved were married at Lille with the usual rejoicings; and the Spanish admiral, charged a second time with a precious freight of marriageable royalty, brought back the Lady Margaret of Hapsburg with all honor to Spanish Santander, early in March, 1497. Themarriage of the heir apparent took place at Burgos, on the 3d of April; and on the 4th of October of the same year, the gentle and accomplished Prince of Asturias had passed away from Spain, and from the world.
Yet, once again, and for a few months, there lived an heir to United Spain, whose brief existence is scarce remembered in history. Isabella, the widowed queen of John II. of Portugal, had been persuaded or constrained by her parents to contract a second marriage with her husband’s cousin and successor Emmanuel; but the price of her hand was the price of blood. For it was stipulated that the Jews, who, by the liberality of the late king, had been permitted to find a home in his dominions, should be driven out of the country after the stern Castilian fashion of 1492, ere the widowed Isabella should wed her cousin on the throne of Portugal.
Whether the princess was an apt pupil, or merely the slave of her mother and the Inquisitor that lurked behind the throne, we cannot say, but the Portuguese lover consented to the odious bargain. The marriage was solemnized at Valencia de Alcantara, in the early days of the month of August, 1497, and the stipulated Tribute to Bigotry was duly paid. But before ever the bridal party had left the town, an express had arrived with the news of the mortal illness of the bride’s only brother; and in little more than a year the young queen herself, on the 23d of August, 1498, expired in giving birth to a son. The boy received the name of Miguel, and lived for nearly two years—the heir apparent of Portugal, of Aragon, and of Castile—until he too was involved in the general destruction.
But some time before the death, or even before the birth of Miguel, another royal marriage had been concluded, whose results throughout all time were no less remarkable and scarce less important than that which handed over Spain to a Flemish emperor. For after infinite negotiations and more than one rupture, after some ten years’ huxtering about dowry, and a dozen changes of policy on the part of the various sovereigns interested in the alliance, Katharine, the youngest daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, more familiarly known as Katharine of Aragon, had been married to Arthur, Prince of Wales, and the first act had been concluded of that strange and fateful drama that led to the Reformation in England.
The dignified sadness of her story as Queen Katharine—insulted, divorced, and abandoned—the unwilling heroine of the great tragic drama that was played in the reign of Henry VIII. of England, is known to all men, who extend to her, with one consent, their pity and their respect. But those only who know something of the seven dreary and disgraceful years that she spent in the palace of her father-in-law, before she was permitted to know, even for a season, the happiness of a husband’s love, or to enjoy the great position of Queen of England, may alone understand the fullness of the measure of her wretchedness.
In June, 1504, Isabella, who had for some time been ailing, and who seems to have suffered from some nervous disease, was struck down suddenly by fever. She had lived a hard life. She had never spared herself, or others. The unhappy marriages of her children had casta dark shadow over her life. But hers was not the nature to repine. Diligent, abstemious, resolute, she had borne pain and suffering, and she was not afraid to face death. Unable at length to rise from her couch, as the autumn drew to a close, she continued to transact her accustomed business, gave audience to embassadors, chatted with privileged visitors, and, in the words of an astonished stranger, governed the world from her bed.
At last, on the 26th of November, 1504, as the church bells of Medina del Campo were ringing out the hour of noon, the spirit of Isabella of Castile flitted away from this world; and her mortal remains were conducted by a mournful company to their last resting place under the shadow of the red towers of Alhambra. Through storm and tempest, amid earthquake and inundation, across mountain and river, the affrighted travelers wended their way. For the sun was not seen by day nor the stars by night, during three long and weary weeks, as if the very forces of nature were disturbed at the death of a giant among the princes of the earth.
The character of Isabella has suffered to an uncommon extent from an ignorant glorification of virtues that she was far from possessing, and the concealment of those transcendent powers that made her not only one of the greatest rulers of Spain, but one of the greatest women in the history of the world. Until the opening of the treasure-house at Simancas displayed her correspondence to the world, she was only known from the extravagant but somewhat colorless panegyrics of contemporary chroniclers, who recognized at least that she was a royal lady, compelling their gallant admiration, and that she wasimmensely superior to her husband, whom it was necessary also to glorify, as the last Spanish sovereign of Spain.
Isabella was 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. A reformer and a zealot, an autocrat and a leader of men, with a handsome face and a gracious manner, scarce concealing the iron will that lay beneath, Isabella was patient in adversity, dignified in prosperity, at all times quiet, determined, thorough.
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 a 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 vigor 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, thatstamps 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.
The husband of Zenobia indeed enjoyed the title of Augustus; but it was only after his assassination that the lady earned her fame as a ruler. Catherine caused her imperial consort to be executed as a preliminary to her vigorous reign in Russia; Boadicea was the successor and not the colleague of Prasutagus; and Semiramis, though herself somewhat a mythical personage, is said to have slain both her husband and his rival, in her assertion of her absolute power. Yet Isabella revolutionized 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!
Ferdinand of Aragon was no hero. But he was a strong man; a capable ruler; a clever if a treacherous diplomatist. And to this husband and consort was Isabella faithful through life, not merely in the grosser sense of the word, to which Ferdinand for himself paid so little heed; but in every way and walk of life. She supported him in his policy; she assisted him in his intrigues; she encouraged him in his ambitious designs; she lied for him, whenever prudence required it; she worked for him at all times, as she worked for Spain. For his policy, his intrigues, his designs were all her own. Whenever the views of the king and queen were for a moment discordant, Isabella prevailed, without apparent conflict of authority. In her assumption of supremacy in the marriage contract; in her nomination of Gonsalvo de Cordova to the command of the army; in her choice of Ximenez as the Primate of Spain, she carried her point, not by petulance or even by argument, but by sheer force of character; nor did she strain for one moment, even in these manifestations of her royal supremacy, the friendly and even affectionate relations that ever subsisted between herself and her husband.
The love and devotion of Isabella was a thing of which the greatest of men might have well been proud. And though Ferdinand the Catholic may not fairly be counted among the greatest, he was a man wise enough to appreciate the merits of his queen, and to accept and maintain the anomalous position in which he found himself as her consort.
In war at least it might have been supposed that the queen would occupy a subordinate position. Yet in no department of State did Isabella show to greater advantage than as the organizer of victorious armies; not as a batallador after the fashion of her distinguished ancestorsin Castile and in Aragon; but as the originator of an entirely new system of military administration.
Before her time, in Spain, war had been waged by the great nobles and their retainers in attendance upon the king. There was no such thing as uniformity of action or preparation, no central organization of any kind. Each man went into battle to fight and to forage as opportunity offered. Each commander vied with his fellow nobles in deeds of bravery, and accorded to them such support as he chose. The sovereign exercised a general authority, and assumed the active command of the united multitude of soldiers, on rare and important occasions. If victory followed, as at the Navas de Tolosa, the soldiers were rewarded with the plunder, and took possession of the property of the enemy. If the Christians were defeated, the army melted away; and the king betook himself to the nearest shelter.
But Isabella had no sooner assumed the title of Queen of Castile, than she was called upon to maintain her pretensions in the field. With no experience but that of a country palace, with no training but that of a country cloister, she set herself to work to organize an army. On the 1st of May, 1474, five hundred horsemen represented the entire forces of the fair usurper. By the 19th of July she had collected over forty thousand men, had armed and equipped them ready for the field, and had sent them forward under the command of Ferdinand to the frontier. Although she was at the time in delicate health, she was constantly in the saddle, riding long distances from fortress to fortress, hurrying up recruits all day, dictating letters all night, giving her zealous personalattention to every detail of armory and equipment, showing from the first that quiet energy and that natural aptitude for command that ever so constantly distinguished her. That her levies were not victorious in no way daunted her determination. A second army was raised by her, within a few weeks after the first had melted away under Ferdinand; nor would she listen to any offers of negotiation, until the enemy had been driven out of Castile.
In the conduct of the war of Granada, with time and money at her command, her preparations were upon a very different scale. The most skillful artificers were summoned from every part of Europe to assist in the work of supplying the army with the necessary material of war. Artillery, then almost unknown to the military art, was manufactured in Spain according to the best designs. Model cannon were imported, and the necessary ammunition collected from abroad. Sword-blades were forged at home. Not only a commissariat, but a field hospital—institutions till then unheard of in Spanish warfare—were organized and maintained under the personal supervision of the queen. The presence of a lady on the day of battle would, as a rule, as she rightly judged, have been rather a hinderance than a help; but she was very far from being a mere commissioner of supply. A first-rate horsewoman, she was constantly seen riding about the camp, encouraging, inspecting, directing; and in the last days of the siege of Granada, when the spirits of the troops had begun to flag, she appeared daily in complete armor, and showed herself upon more than one occasion in a post of danger on the field. The armies withwhich Gonsalvo de Cordova overran Calabria, and annihilated the French at Cerignola, were prepared and dispatched by Isabella; and if, in a subsequent campaign, the Great Captain was left without supplies or re-enforcements, it was that the queen was already sickening to her death, broken down and worn out by her constant and enormous exertions.
But with all her aptitude for military organization, Isabella had no love for war. Her first campaign was undertaken to make good her pretensions to the crown. The extermination of the Moslems was a matter of religious feeling and patriotic pride, rather than an object of military glory; but she refused to pursue her conquest across the Straits of Gibraltar. The expeditions to Italy were a part of Ferdinand’s diplomacy, though the honor of victory must be shared between Isabella and her Great Captain. But the queen’s ambition lay not in conquest abroad. On the contrary, as soon as the last province in Spain had been delivered from the foreign yoke of the Moor, she turned her attention to the peaceful development of the kingdom; and, unlettered warrior as she was, she bestowed her royal patronage upon students and studies, rather than upon the knights and nobles who had fought her battles before Granada.
The old foundations of the Universities, the new art of printing, scholarship, music, architecture found in her a generous patron, not so much from predilection as from policy. Men of letters and men of learning were welcomed at her court, not only from every part of Spain, but from every part of Europe. For herself she had little appreciation of literature. She neither knew nor caredwhat influence her beloved Inquisition would have upon science. But as long as the queen lived, learning was honored in Spain.
In this, as in all other things, her judgment of men was unerring. The queen who made Gonsalvo the commander-in-chief of her armies, and Ximenez the president of her council, who selected Torquemada as her grand inquisitor, and Talavera as her archbishop of Granada, made no mistake when she invited Peter Martyr to instruct her son in polite letters, and commissioned Lebrija to compose the first Castilian Grammar for the use of her court.
Her beauty of face and form are familiar. Yet vanity was unknown to her nature. Simple and abstemious in her daily life, and despising pomp for its own sake, no one could make a braver show on fitting occasions; and the richness of her apparel, the glory of her jewels, and the noble dignity of her presence, have been celebrated by subjects and strangers.
At the death of Isabella, Ferdinand, in accordance with the provisions of her will, caused his daughter, Joanna, to be proclaimed queen and himself regent. Philip, archduke of Austria, the husband of Joanna, having disputed the rights of his father-in-law and threatened an appeal to arms, the latter in disgust, with the view of again separating the crowns of Aragon and Castile, entered into negotiations with Louis XII., married Germaine de Foix, the niece of Louis (1505), and shortly afterward resigned the regency of Castile. On the death of Philip, in 1506, he resumed the administration, though not without opposition, and retained it till his death. In 1508 he joined the League of Cambray for the partition of Venice, and thuswithout any trouble became master of five important Neapolitan cities.
In the following year (1509) the African expedition of Cardinal Ximenez was undertaken, which resulted in the conquest of Oran. In 1511 Ferdinand joined Venice and Pope Julius II. in a “holy league” for the expulsion of the French from Italy. This gave a pretext for invading Navarre, which had entered into alliance with France, and been laid under Papal interdict in consequence. Aided by his son-in-law Henry VIII. of England, who sent a squadron under the Marquis of Dorset to co-operate in the descent on Guienne, Ferdinand became master of Navarre in 1513; and on June 15, 1515, by a solemn act in Cortes held at Burgos, he incorporated it with the kingdom of Castile.
The League of Cambray, which was signed on the 10th of December, 1508, between Louis XII., the Emperor Maximilian, and Ferdinand of Aragon, at the instance of the warlike Pope Julius II., was nominally directed against the Turks, but was in reality a coalition for the destruction and partition among the confiscators of the rich State of Venice. If anything was wanted to make this league of public plunderers more corrupt and more odious than it would under any circumstances have been, it was that the kings of France and of Aragon, in order to secure the adhesion of the Medicis, sacrificed their faithful allies, the Pisans, after solemn assurances of protection and support, and actually sold that ancient city to the Florentines, their hereditary enemies, for a hundred thousand ducats.
But all their bad faith and covetousness was displayedin vain. The perfidious leaguers could not even trust one another; and the success of the French arms at Agnadel, in May, 1509, so seriously alarmed both Julius and Ferdinand that a second treaty was concluded in October, 1511, when the Pope and the King of Aragon invited the Venetian Republic, for whose destruction they had leagued themselves together with Louis XII. not three years before, to assist them in driving the French out of Italy.
Of the consummate skill with which Ferdinand, from the middle of 1509 to the end of 1511, played off his allies and rivals one against the other, until he had accomplished the central object of his diplomacy in the great Confederation against Louis XII., we may read in the history of France and of Italy, of England and of Germany, rather than in the Chronicles of Aragon. For King Ferdinand pulled the strings that moved the puppets, while he remained wellnigh hidden himself. But by the end of 1511 the showman was compelled to make his own appearance upon the stage of European warfare; and Ferdinand was ever less successful as an actor than as an impresario. His policy for the past two years had been the formation of a league against his dearly-beloved uncle-in-law, Louis XII., by the aid of his dearly-beloved son-in-law, Henry VIII. Queen Katharine, who had already played the part of embassador to her English father-in-law, was to make use of her influence over her English husband; and if the queen should refuse to advise King Henry to go to war with France, her confessor was to tell her that she was bound as a good Christian to do so.
To coerce the confessor, Ferdinand applied to the Pope;and to control the Pope, he betrayed to him, in secret, the whole scheme of King Louis XII. as regarded the plunder of the States of the Church. It is easy to understand what an effect the communication of the French king’s plans of spoliation produced upon the excitable and irascible Julius. When he had learned that he was not only to be robbed of his temporalities, but that he was to be deposed and imprisoned in case he should prove spiritually intractable, he hastened, in spite of his age and his infirmities, to traverse the snow-covered mountains, that he might meet his enemy in the field.
The King of Aragon was a diplomatist who left nothing to chance. He trusted no man. And if no man trusted him, he never deceived himself by supposing that any one was simple enough to do so. No detail, however trifling, was neglected by him in his negotiations. No contingency, however remote, was left out of sight in his intrigues. And however little we may respect his character, which was perhaps not much worse than that of some of his rivals, we cannot refuse to admire his transcendent skill, his infinite perseverance, his forethought, and his keen appreciation of every shade of political development. A little honesty would have made him a great man, a little generosity would have made him a great king. His policy, moreover, toward the close of his life, is at least worthy of an admiration which has rarely been extended to it. It was a policy which embraced all Europe in its scope; and although it had no direct relation to Spain or the Spanish people, it would be ill to conclude even a brief survey of the history of Spain without referring to the imperial dreams of the great Spaniard, first of modern diplomatists, and of hisearly endeavors to solve more than one of those questions that still embarrass the foreign policy of modern States: the establishment of a kingdom of Italy; the alliance between Italy and Germany, to withstand a dreaded power beyond the Danube and the Carpathians; the entanglement of England in a central European league; and the treatment of the Pope of Rome.
The Turks, the medieval bugbear in the East—for the Middle Ages had also their Eastern Question—were at this time rapidly encroaching upon Christian Europe; and it was obviously desirable to form a powerful empire, as a bulwark of Christendom, on the banks of the Danube. The opportunity of founding a great empire in central Europe actually existed. Ladislaus II., king of Bohemia and of Hungary, had only one son, Louis, who was of so delicate a constitution that no issue could be expected of his marriage. In case he should die without children, his sister, the Princess Anne, was the heiress of both his kingdoms; and if her father could be persuaded to marry her to the heir of the Austrian principalities, Bohemia, Austria, and Hungary, thus united with the heritage of the Hapsburgs, would form by no means a contemptible State, which might itself be but the nucleus of a greater and more ambitious empire.
Naples, which had so lately been added to the Spanish dominions, was still exposed to the attacks of the French, who claimed one-half, and were always ready to appropriate to themselves the whole of the kingdom. Naples was separated from France, indeed, by a considerable extent of territory in Italy; but the smaller Italian States were too weak to render any serious resistance, and toofickle to be counted upon as friends or as foes by any Spanish sovereign. The best way to render Naples secure was, in the eyes of Ferdinand, the foundation of a great kingdom in northern Italy, powerful enough to prevent the French from marching their armies to the south. The formation of such a kingdom moreover would have greatly facilitated a peaceful division of the great Austro-Spanish inheritance between Prince Charles and his brother, the Infante Ferdinand.
If Charles could be provided not only with the kingdom of Spain, but with the possessions of Maximilian and Ladislaus and the Princess Anne, and the empire of central Europe, his younger brother Ferdinand might content himself with a kingdom to be made up of all the States of Italy, protected against the encroachments of France by Spanish infantry and German landsknechts, and ready to drive the Turk out of the Mediterranean in support of the Christian empire on the Danube.
The kingdom of Italy, thus designed for his younger grandson by the far-seeing Ferdinand of Aragon, was to consist of Genoa, Pavia, Milan, and the Venetian territories on the mainland. The country of the Tyrol, being the most southern of the Austrian dominions, could, without sensibly weakening the projected empire, be separated from it and added to the new kingdom in Italy. Thus stretching from the Mediterranean to the Adriatic, and from the Gulf of Spezia to the Lake of Constance, this sixteenth century kingdom of Italy, with the whole power of the Holy Roman Empire to support it, would have been a splendid endowment for a younger son of the greatest family on earth. There was also a reasonable prospect that itmight afterward be still further enlarged by the addition of Naples, and the smaller Italian States would easily have fallen a prey to their powerful neighbor. But in addition to all this, Ferdinand thought that he would render a notable service to the Catholic religion and to the peace of Europe if the Church were thoroughly reformed. What Rome herself has lost by Ferdinand’s failure it is not given even to the Infallible to know. What the king’s reforms were to be, we can only shrewdly surmise; and although they would most assuredly not have been Protestant, they would with equal certainty have been by no means palatable to the Vatican. For it is reasonably probable that if either Louis XII. or Ferdinand the Catholic had been permitted to carry out their designs, the Pope of Rome would have found himself deprived of his temporal power, and Garibaldi, nay, perchance Luther, would have been forestalled. It was the reforms of Ximenez that to a large extent prevented Luther in Spain. The reforms of Ferdinand might possibly have prevented him in Italy.
It was in 1516 that Ferdinand died. Seven years previous Queen Germaine had been delivered of a son, who received from his parents the name of John. But the curse that lay upon the children of Ferdinand was not yet spent; and the rival of Charles V., the heir of Aragon, Sardinia, Naples, and Sicily, was permitted to gladden the envious heart of his father by but a few hours of life. As years passed on there seemed little chance of any further issue of the King and Queen of Aragon. The unity of Spain at length appeared to be secure. But the ambition of Ferdinand was even surpassed by his jealousy. Childless, vindictive, and obstinate, he chafed at the ill-success of hispersonal schemes; and rather than suffer the crown of united Spain to pass over to his daughter’s son and heir, he sought, at the hands of some medical impostor, the powers that were denied to his old age. The drug that was to have renewed his youth destroyed his constitution, and his death was the direct result of one of the least creditable of the many developments of his jealousy, his obstinacy, and his selfishness.
At length came the inevitable end; and at the wretched hamlet of Madrigalejo, near Guadalupe, in the mountains of Estremadura, on the 23d of January of the new year 1516, Ferdinand died; and Spain was at length a United Kingdom.
THE HOUSE OF HAPSBURG—PHILIP II.—DEFEAT OF THE INVINCIBLE ARMADA—A BOURBON AMONG THEM—THE PENINSULAR WAR—ALFONSO XIII.
Withthe death of Ferdinand begins the period of uninterrupted Hapsburg rule in Spain, which lasted for nearly two centuries. In the course of this period, the monarchy obtained absolute authority, and Spain, after rising for a time to be the foremost State in Europe, sank to the position of a second-rate power, from which it has never since emerged. Aragon and Castile were distinct kingdoms, and the former was again divided into the three provinces of Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia, each of which had its own Cortes, its own privileges, and the most warmly-cherished traditions of independence. The foreign possessions of the two crowns were a source of weakness rather than of strength. France stood ready at the earliest opportunity to contest the possession of Navarre with Castile, and that of Naples with Aragon.
The difficulties of domestic government were increased by the fact that the prospective ruler was a youthful foreigner, who had never visited Spain, and who was completely ignorant of the customs and even of the language of the country. Charles—the son of Philip, archduke ofAustria, and of Jane, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella—had been born and educated in the Netherlands, of which he had been nominal ruler ever since the death of his father in 1506. All his friends and advisers were Flemings, who cared nothing for Spanish interests, and had already acquired an evil reputation for selfish greed. The first symptom of discontent in Spain was excited by Charles’s demand to be recognized as king, in utter disregard of his mother. In Aragon the demand was unhesitatingly refused, but in Castile the vigorous measures of the famous Cardinal Ximenez secured Charles’s proclamation.
The regent, however, had great difficulties to face. The nobles, delighted to be rid of the strong government of Ferdinand, wished to utilize the opportunity to regain the privileges and independence they had lost. In this crisis the loyal devotion of Ximenez saved the monarchy. Throwing himself upon the support of the citizen class, he organized a militia which overawed the nobles and maintained order. A French invasion of Navarre was repulsed, and to avoid any danger from the discontent of the inhabitants, all the fortresses of the province, with the single exception of Pamplona, were dismantled. These distinguished services were rewarded with more than royal ingratitude by Charles, who came to Spain in 1517, and who allowed the aged cardinal to die on November 8th, without even granting him an interview.
Charles’s enormous inheritance was increased by the successes of Cortes in Mexico and of Pizarro in Peru, by his own annexation of the Milanese, and by his conquests in northern Africa.
The glory of Spain was then at its apogee. After his death, which occurred in 1558, the decline set in. From this time also the House of Hapsburg became divided into its contemporary branches.
Charles was succeeded by Philip II., his only legitimate son. The administration of the latter, while successful at home, was a failure abroad. During his reign a claim to the throne of Portugal was successfully asserted, and the unity of the Peninsula was completed. Moreover, colonial possessions were greatly extended. Yet his religious intolerance excited the revolt of the Netherlands, which resulted in a loss of the seven northern provinces. His effort to obtain a preponderant influence over France was dexterously foiled by the succession and triumph of Henry IV. But his great and historical defeat was that which he experienced with the Armada.
Besides the Spanish crown, Philip succeeded to the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, the Duchy of Milan, Franche-Comte, and the Netherlands. In Africa he possessed Tunis, Oran, the Cape Verd, and the Canary Islands; and in Asia, the Philippine and Sunda Islands, and a part of the Moluccas. Beyond the Atlantic he was lord of the most splendid portions of the New World. The empires of Peru and Mexico, New Spain, and Chili, with their abundant mines of the precious metals, Hispaniola and Cuba, and many other of the American islands, were provinces of the sovereign of Spain.
Philip had also the advantage of finding himself at the head of a large standing army in a perfect state of discipline and equipment, in an age when, except some few insignificant corps, standing armies were unknown to Christendom. The renown of the Spanish troops was justly high, and the infantry in particular was considered the best in the world. His fleet, also, was far more numerous, and better appointed, than that of any other European power; and both his soldiers and his sailors had the confidence in themselves and their commanders which a long career of successful warfare alone can create.
One nation only had been his active, his persevering, and his successful foe. England had encouraged his revolted subjects in Flanders against him, and given them the aid in men and money without which they must soon have been humbled in the dust. English ships had plundered his colonies; had defied his supremacy in the New World, as well as the Old; they had inflicted ignominious defeats on his squadrons; they had captured his cities, and burned his arsenals on the very coasts of Spain. The English had made Philip himself the object of personal insult. He was held up to ridicule in their stage plays and masks, and these scoffs at the man had (as is not unusual in such cases) excited the anger of the absolute king, even more vehemently than the injuries inflicted on his power. Personal as well as political revenge urged him to attack England. Were she once subdued, the Dutch must submit; France could not cope with him, the empire would not oppose him; and universal dominion seemed sure to be the result of the conquest of that malignant island.
For some time the destination of an enormous armament which he had long been preparing was not publicly announced. Only Philip himself, the Pope Sixtus, the Duke of Guise, and Philip’s favorite minister, Mendoza,at first knew its real object. Rumors were sedulously spread that it was designed to proceed to the Indies to realize vast projects of distant conquest. Sometimes hints were dropped by Philip’s embassadors in foreign courts that their master had resolved on a decisive effort to crush his rebels in the Low Countries. But Elizabeth and her statesmen could not view the gathering of such a storm without feeling the probability of its bursting on their own shores. As early as the spring of 1587, Elizabeth sent Sir Francis Drake to cruise off the Tagus. Drake sailed into the Bay of Cadiz and the Lisbon Roads, and burned much shipping and military stores, causing thereby an important delay in the progress of the Spanish preparations. Drake called this “Singeing the king of Spain’s beard.” Elizabeth also increased her succors of troops to the Netherlanders, to prevent the Prince of Parma from overwhelming them, and from thence being at full leisure to employ his army against her dominions.
Philip had an ally in France who was far more powerful than the French king. This was the Duke of Guise, the chief of the League, and the idol of the fanatic partisans of the Romish faith. Philip prevailed on Guise openly to take up arms against Henry III. (who was reviled by the Leaguers as a traitor to the true Church, and a secret friend to the Huguenots); and thus prevent the French king from interfering in favor of Queen Elizabeth. “With this object, the commander, Juan Iniguez Moreo, was dispatched by him in the early part of April to the Duke of Guise at Soissons. He met with complete success. He offered the Duke of Guise, as soon as he took the field against Henry III., three hundred thousand crowns, sixthousand infantry, and twelve hundred pikemen, on behalf of the king, his master, who would, in addition, withdraw his embassador from the court of France, and accredit an envoy to the Catholic party. A treaty was concluded on these conditions, and the Duke of Guise entered Paris, where he was expected by the Leaguers, and whence he expelled Henry III. on the 12th of May, by the insurrection of the barricades. A fortnight after this insurrection, which reduced Henry III. to impotence, and, to use the language of the Prince of Parma, did not even ‘permit him to assist the Queen of England with his tears, as he needed them all to weep over his own misfortunes,’ the Spanish fleet left the Tagus and sailed toward the British isles.”
Meanwhile in England, from the sovereign on the throne to the peasant in the cottage, all hearts and hands made ready to meet the imminent deadly peril. A camp was formed at Tilbury; and there Elizabeth rode through the ranks, encouraging her captains and her soldiers by her presence and her words.
The ships of the royal navy at this time amounted to no more than thirty-six; but the most serviceable merchant vessels were collected from all the ports of the country; and the citizens of London, Bristol, and the other great seats of commerce, showed as liberal a zeal in equipping and manning vessels as the nobility and gentry displayed in mustering forces by land. The seafaring population of the coast, of every rank and station, was animated by the same ready spirit; and the whole number of seamen who came forward to man the English fleet was 17,472. The number of the ships that were collected was 191; and thetotal amount of their tonnage 31,985. There was one ship in the fleet (the “Triumph”) of 1,100 tons, one of 1,000, one of 900, two of 800 each, three of 600, five of 500, five of 400, six of 300, six of 250, twenty of 200, and the residue of inferior burden. Application was made to the Dutch for assistance: and, as Stowe expresses it, “The Hollanders came roundly in, with threescore sail, brave ships of war, fierce and full of spleen, not so much for England’s aid, as in just occasion for their own defense; these men foreseeing the greatness of the danger that might ensue, if the Spaniards should chance to win the day and get the mastery over them; in due regard whereof their manly courage was inferior to none.”
The equipment of the Spanish forces consisted of 130 ships (besides caravels), 3,165 cannon, 8,050 sailors, 2,088 galley-slaves, 18,973 soldiers, 1,382 noblemen, gentlemen, and attendants, 150 monks, with Martin Alarco, vicar of the Inquisition—the whole under the command of the Duke of Medina Sidonia.
While this huge armada was making ready in the southern ports of the Spanish dominions, the Prince of Parma, with almost incredible toil and skill, collected a squadron of warships at Dunkirk, and his flotilla of other ships and of flat-bottomed boats for the transport to England of the picked troops, which were designed to be the main instruments in subduing England. Thousands of workmen were employed, night and day, in the construction of these vessels, in the ports of Flanders and Brabant.
One hundred of the kind called hendes, built at Antwerp, Bruges, and Ghent, and laden with provisionsand ammunition, together with sixty flat-bottomed boats, each capable of carrying thirty horses, were brought, by means of canals and fosses, dug expressly for the purpose, to Nieuport and Dunkirk. One hundred smaller vessels were equipped at the former place, and thirty-two at Dunkirk, provided with twenty thousand empty barrels, and with materials for making pontoons, for stopping up the harbors, and raising forts and intrenchments. The army which these vessels were designed to convey to England amounted to thirty thousand strong, besides a body of four thousand cavalry, stationed at Courtroi, composed chiefly of the ablest veterans of Europe; invigorated by rest (the siege of Sluys having been the only enterprise in which they were employed during the last campaign), and excited by the hopes of plunder and the expectation of certain conquest.
Philip had been advised by the deserter, Sir William Stanley, not to attack England in the first instance, but first to effect a landing and secure a strong position in Ireland; his admiral, Santa Cruz, had recommended him to make sure, in the first instance, of some large harbor on the coast of Holland or Zealand, where the Armada, having entered the Channel, might find shelter in case of storm, and whence it could sail without difficulty for England; but Philip rejected both these counsels, and directed that England itself should be made the immediate object of attack; and on the 20th of May the Armada left the Tagus, in the pomp and pride of supposed invincibility, and amid the shouts of thousands, who believed that England was already conquered. But steering to the northward, and before it was clear of the coast of Spain,the Armada was assailed by a violent storm, and driven back with considerable damage to the ports of Biscay and Galicia. It had, however, sustained its heaviest loss before it left the Tagus, in the death of the veteran admiral Santa Cruz, who had been destined to guide it against England.
This experienced sailor, notwithstanding his diligence and success, had been unable to keep pace with the impatient ardor of his master. Philip II. had reproached him with his dilatoriness, and had said with ungrateful harshness, “You make an ill return for all my kindness to you.” These words cut the veteran’s heart, and proved fatal to Santa Cruz. Overwhelmed with fatigue and grief, he sickened and died. Philip II. had replaced him by Alonzo Perez de Gusman, duke of Medina Sidonia, one of the most powerful of the Spanish grandees, but wholly unqualified to command such an expedition. He had, however, as his lieutenants, two seamen of proved skill and bravery, Juan de Martinez Recalde of Biscay, and Miguel Orquendo of Guipuzcoa.
On the 12th of July the Armada, having completely refitted, sailed again for the Channel, and reached it without obstruction or observation by the English.
The design of the Spaniards was, that the Armada should give them, at least for a time, the command of the sea, and that it should join the squadron which Parma had collected off Calais. Then, escorted by an overpowering naval force, Parma and his army were to embark in their flotilla, and cross the sea to England, where they were to be landed, together with the troops which the Armada brought from the ports of Spain. The schemewas not dissimilar to one formed against England a little more than two centuries afterward.
The orders of King Philip to the Duke of Medina Sidonia were, that he should, on entering the Channel, keep near the French coast, and, if attacked by the English ships, avoid an action, and steer on to Calais Roads, where the Prince of Parma’s squadron was to join him. The hope of surprising and destroying the English fleet in Plymouth led the Spanish admiral to deviate from these orders, and to stand across to the English shore; but, on finding that Lord Howard was coming out to meet him, he resumed the original plan, and determined to bend his way steadily toward Calais and Dunkirk, and to keep merely on the defensive against such squadrons of the English as might come up with him.
It was on Saturday, the 20th of July, that Lord Effingham came in sight of his formidable adversaries. The Armada was drawn up in form of a crescent, which from horn to horn measured some seven miles. There was a southwest wind; and before it the vast vessels sailed slowly on. The English let them pass by; and then, following in the rear, commenced an attack on them. A running fight now took place, in which some of the best ships of the Spaniards were captured; many more received heavy damage; while the English vessels, which took care not to close with their huge antagonists, but availed themselves of their superior celerity in tacking and maneuvering, suffered little comparative loss.
The Spanish admiral showed great judgment and firmness in following the line of conduct that had been traced out for him; and on the 27th of July he brought his fleetunbroken, though sorely distressed, to anchor in Calais Roads. The Armada lay off Calais, with its largest ships ranged outside, “like strong castles fearing no assault; the lesser placed in the middle ward.” The English admiral could not attack them in their position without great disadvantage, but on the night of the 29th he sent eight fire-ships among them, with almost equal effect to that of the fire-ships which the Greeks so often employed against the Turkish fleets in their war of independence. The Spaniards cut their cables and put to sea in confusion. One of the largest galeasses ran foul of another vessel and was stranded. The rest of the fleet was scattered about on the Flemish coast, and when the morning broke, it was with difficulty and delay that they obeyed their admiral’s signal to range themselves round him near Gravelines. Now was the golden opportunity for the English to assail them, and prevent them from ever letting loose Parma’s flotilla against England; and nobly was that opportunity used. Drake and Fenner were the first English captains who attacked the unwieldy leviathans: then came Fenton, Southwell, Burton, Cross, Raynor, and then the lord-admiral, with Lord Thomas Howard and Lord Sheffield. The Spaniards only thought of forming and keeping close together, and were driven by the English past Dunkirk, and far away from the Prince of Parma, who, in watching their defeat from the coast, must, as Drake expressed it, have chafed like a bear robbed of her whelps. This was indeed the last and the decisive battle between the two fleets.
Many of the largest Spanish ships were sunk or captured in the action of this day. And at length the Spanish admiral, despairing of success, fled northward with a southerly wind, in the hope of rounding Scotland, and so returning to Spain without a further encounter with the English fleet. Lord Effingham left a squadron to continue the blockade of the Prince of Parma’s armament; but that wise general soon withdrew his troops to more promising fields of action. Meanwhile the lord-admiral himself and Drake chased the vincible Armada, as it was now termed, for some distance northward; and then, when it seemed to bend away from the Scotch coast toward Norway, it was thought best, in the words of Drake, “to leave them to those boisterous and uncouth northern seas.”
The sufferings and losses which the unhappy Spaniards sustained in their flight round Scotland and Ireland are well known. Of their whole Armada only fifty-three shattered vessels brought back their beaten and wasted crews to the Spanish coast which they had quitted in such pageantry and pride.
At the death of Philip, which occurred on September 13, 1598, he left to his son and successor, Philip III., an empire nominally undiminished, but unwieldy and internally exhausted. Resources had been squandered. The attention of the masses had been turned from industry to war. The soldiery once regarded as invincible had lost their prestige in the Netherland swamps. Enormous taxes, from which nobles and clergy were exempt, were multiplied on the people. That being insufficient, Philip III. proved his orthodoxy by completing the work. In 1609 the Moors, or Moriscoes, as they were called, were ordered to quit the Peninsula within three days, and thepenalty of death was decreed against all who failed to obey, and against any Christians who should shelter the recalcitrants.
The edict was obeyed, but it was the ruin of Spain. The Moriscoes were the backbone of the industrial population, not only in trade and manufactures, but also in agriculture. The haughty and indolent Spaniards had willingly left what they considered degrading employments to their inferiors. The Moors had introduced into Spain the cultivation of sugar, cotton, rice and silk. They had established a system of irrigation which had given fertility to the soil. The province of Valencia in their hands had become a model of agriculture to the rest of Europe. In manufactures and commerce they had shown equal superiority to the Christian inhabitants, and many of the products of Spain were eagerly sought for by other countries. All these advantages were sacrificed to an insane desire for religious unity.
The resources of Spain, already exhausted, never recovered from this terrible blow. Philip III. died in March, 1621. His reign had not been glorious or advantageous to Spain, but it contrasts favorably with those of his successors. Spanish literature and art, which had received a great impulse from the intercourse with foreign countries under previous rulers, reached their zenith during his lifetime. Three writers have obtained European fame—Cervantes, who produced the immortal “Don Quixote” between 1605 and 1613, and two of the most fertile of romantic dramatists, Lope de Vega and Calderon. In the domain of art, Spain produced two of the greatestmasters of the seventeenth century, Velasquez and Murillo.
Philip II. was succeeded by Philip III. After him came Philip IV. and then Charles II. Of these monarchs Mignet said: “Philip II. was merely a king. Philip III. and Philip IV. were not kings, and Charles II. was not even a man.” The death of the latter precipitated the War of the Succession, the military operations of which were rendered famous by the military exploits of Eugene and Marlborough. But this is not the place to recite them. The chief scenes of hostilities were the Netherlands, Germany and Italy, and their narration belongs more properly to the histories of these lands. Suffice it to say that by the Treaty of Utrecht war was concluded in 1711, and Philip V., a Bourbon, second grandson of Louis XIV., was, in accordance with the will of Charles II., acknowledged King of Spain. By the same treaty England gained Gibraltar, while the Spanish Netherlands, Milan, Naples and Sardinia were ceded to Austria.
With the accession of a Bourbon, Spain entered into a new period of history, during which it once more played a part in the politics of Europe, as also in its wars; those, for instance, of the Polish and Austrian successions—the country meanwhile being additionally embroiled with England.
Philip V. was succeeded by Ferdinand VI., and the latter by Charles III., whose death, together with the accession of Charles IV., were contemporary with the French Revolution. The execution of Louis XVI. made a profound impression on a country where loyalty was asuperstition. Charles IV. was roused to demand vengeance for the insult to his family. Godoy, the Prime Minister, could but follow the national impulse; and Spain became a member of the first coalition against France. But the two campaigns which ensued provoked the contempt of Europe. They form a catalogue of defeats. Under the circumstances it is no wonder that Spain followed the example of Prussia and concluded a treaty of peace.
The next event of importance was Napoleon’s famous coup de main—the seizure of the Spanish royal family at Bayonne—the jugglery which he performed with the crown, its transference by him from Ferdinand VII. (son of Charles IV.) to Joseph Bonaparte, and the revolt of the South American colonies which that act produced.
Then came the restoration of Spanish independence through England’s aid; Wellington’s famous campaign; the battles of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajos; the entry into Madrid; the retreat of Joseph to Valencia; Napoleon’s crushing defeat at Leipzig, and Ferdinand’s return from captivity at Valençay.
The circumstances through which these last-mentioned events were induced or precipitated, and which are collectively known as the Peninsular War, originated at the moment when Napoleon was practically master of Europe. Its whole face was changed. Prussia was occupied by French troops. Holland was changed into a monarchy by a simple decree of the French emperor, and its crown bestowed on his brother Louis. Another brother, Jerome, became King of Westphalia, a new realm built up out of the electoratesof Hesse-Cassel and Hanover. A third brother, Joseph, was made King of Naples; while the rest of Italy, and even Rome itself, was annexed to the French empire. It was the hope of effectually crushing the world-power of Britain which drove him to his worst aggression, the aggression upon Spain.
Napoleon acted with his usual subtlety. In October, 1807, France and Spain agreed to divide Portugal between them; and on the advance of their forces the reigning House of Braganza fled helplessly from Lisbon to a refuge in Brazil. But the seizure of Portugal was only a prelude to the seizure of Spain. Charles IV., whom a riot in his capital drove at this moment to abdication, and his son, Ferdinand VII., were drawn to Bayonne in May, 1808, and forced to resign their claims to the Spanish crown; while a French army entered Madrid and proclaimed Napoleon’s brother Joseph king of Spain.
This high-handed act of aggression was hardly completed when Spain rose as one man against the stranger; and desperate as the effort of its people seemed, the news of the rising was welcomed throughout England with a burst of enthusiastic joy. “Hitherto,” cried Sheridan, a leader of the Whig opposition, “Bonaparte has contended with princes without dignity, numbers without ardor, or peoples without patriotism. He has yet to learn what it is to combat a people who are animated by one spirit against him.” Tory and Whig alike held that “never had so happy an opportunity existed in Britain to strike a bold stroke for the rescue of the world”; and Canning at once resolved to change the system of desultory descents on colonies and sugar islands for a vigorous warfare in the Peninsula.
The furious and bloody struggle which ensued found its climax at Vittoria, but it would be difficult to find in the whole history of war a more thrilling chapter than that which tells of the six great campaigns of which the war itself was composed.
The Peninsular War was perhaps the least selfish conflict ever waged. It was not a war of aggrandizement or of conquest. It was fought to deliver Europe from the despotism of Napoleon. At its close the fleets of Great Britain rode triumphant, and in the Peninsula between 1808-14 her land forces fought and won nineteen pitched battles, made or sustained ten fierce and bloody sieges, took four great fortresses, twice expelled the French from Portugal and once from Spain. Great Britain expended in these campaigns more than one hundred million pounds sterling on her own troops, besides subsidizing the forces of Spain and Portugal. This “nation of shopkeepers” proved that when kindled to action it could wage war on a scale and in a fashion that might have moved the wonder of Alexander or of Cæsar, and from motives too lofty for either Cæsar or Alexander so much as to comprehend. It is worth while to tell afresh the story of some of the more picturesque incidents in that great strife.
On April 6, 1812, Badajos was stormed by Wellington; and the story forms one of the most tragical and splendid incidents in the military history of the world. Of “the night of horrors at Badajos,” Napier says, “posterity can scarcely be expected to credit the tale.” No tale, however, is better authenticated, or, as an example of what disciplined human valor is capable of achieving, better deserves to be told. Wellington was preparing for his great forward movement into Spain, the campaign which led to Salamanca, the battle in which “forty thousand Frenchmen were beaten in forty minutes.” As a preliminary he had to capture, under the vigilant eyes of Soult and Marmont, the two great border fortresses, Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajos. He had, to use Napier’s phrase, “jumped with both feet” on the first-named fortress, and captured it in twelve days with a loss of twelve hundred men and ninety officers.
But Badajos was a still harder task. The city stands on a rocky ridge which forms the last spur of the Toledo range, and is of extraordinary strength. The river Rivillas falls almost at right angles into the Guadiana, and in the angle formed by their junction stands Badajos, oval in shape, girdled with elaborate defenses, with the Guadiana, five hundred yards wide, as its defense to the north, the Rivillas serving as a wet ditch to the west, and no less than five great fortified outposts—Saint Roque, Christoval, Picurina, Pardaleras, and a fortified bridge-head across the Guadiana—as the outer zone of its defenses. Twice the English had already assailed Badajos, but assailed it in vain. It was now held by a garrison five thousand strong, under a soldier, General Phillipson, with a real genius for defense, and the utmost art had been employed in adding to its defenses. On the other hand, Wellington had no means of transport and no battery train, and had to make all his preparations under the keen-eyed vigilance of the French. Perhaps the strangest collection of artillery ever employed in a great siege was that which Wellingtoncollected from every available quarter and used at Badajos. Of the fifty-two pieces, some dated from the days of Philip II. and the Spanish Armada, some were cast in the reign of Philip III., others in that of John IV. of Portugal, who reigned in 1640; there were 24-pounders of George II.’s day, and Russian naval guns; the bulk of the extraordinary medley being obsolete brass engines which required from seven to ten minutes to cool between each discharge.
Wellington, however, was strong in his own warlike genius and in the quality of the troops he commanded. He employed eighteen thousand men in the siege, and it may well be doubted whether—if we put the question of equipment aside—a more perfect fighting instrument than the force under his orders ever existed. The men were veterans, but the officers on the whole were young, so there was steadiness in the ranks and fire in the leading. Hill and Graham covered the siege, Picton and Barnard, Kempt and Colville led the assaults. The trenches were held by the third, fourth, and fifth divisions, and by the famous light division. Of the latter it has been said that the Macedonian phalanx of Alexander the Great, the Tenth Legion of Cæsar, the famous Spanish infantry of Alva, or the iron soldiers who followed Cortes to Mexico, did not exceed it in warlike quality. Wellington’s troops, too, had a personal grudge against Badajos, and had two defeats to avenge. Perhaps no siege in history, as a matter of fact, ever witnessed either more furious valor in the assault, or more of cool and skilled courage in the defense. The siege lasted exactly twenty days, and cost the besiegers five thousand men, or an average loss of two hundred and fifty perday. It was waged throughout in stormy weather, with the rivers steadily rising, and the tempests perpetually blowing; yet the thunder of the attack never paused for an instant.
Wellington’s engineers attacked the city at the eastern end of the oval, where the Rivillas served it as a gigantic wet ditch; and the Picurina, a fortified hill, ringed by a ditch fourteen feet deep, a rampart sixteen feet high, and a zone of mines, acted as an outwork. Wellington, curiously enough, believed in night attacks, a sure proof of his faith in the quality of the men he commanded; and on the eighth night of the siege, at nine o’clock, five hundred men of the third division were suddenly flung on the Picurina. The fort broke into a ring of flame, by the light of which the dark figures of the stormers were seen leaping with fierce hardihood into the ditch and struggling madly up the ramparts, or tearing furiously at the palisades. But the defenses were strong, and the assailants fell literally in scores.