Ierne L. Plunket

“ Thus fell Alonso de Aguilar, the mirror of Andalusian chivalry; one of the most powerful grandees of Spain, for person, blood, estate, and office. For forty years he had waged successful war upon the Moors; in childhood, by his household and retainers; in manhood, by the prowess of his arm and the wisdom and valour of his spirit; he had been general of armies, viceroy of Andalusia, and the author of glorious enterprises, in which kings were vanquished and mighty alcaydes and warriors laid low. ”

“ Thus the brief honeymoon, a triumphal progress from one large town of the kingdom to another, was a period of unmixed rejoicing in Spain. All promised well. Even the Princess Isabel had put aside her long mourning and consented at last to share the throne of Portugal with her patient suitor, demanding however with the fanaticism of her race, so strangely in contrast with her natural sweetness, that Emmanuel’s wedding-gift to her should be the expulsion of the Jews from the land to which she went. ”

“ Here, in the background, somewhat dimmed in the sight of posterity through the radiance of a greater genius, is Isabel of Castile, she whose tireless patriotism made it possible for Spain to enter on the newly 286discovered heritage of wealth and empire. Between pioneer and Queen there is the link not only of mere capacity but of that greatness of vision and unfaltering determination to reach a desired goal, that finds in obstacles an incentive to renewed efforts rather than a check. It is a fitting harmony, not often granted in history, that two such spirits should act in unison. ”

“ Were Spain to pause for a moment in the race, letting Portugal outstrip her in the Western seas, or France suborn her brilliant generals and entice away her allies, she must inevitably fall behind into the second rank of nations. Thus Ferdinand, straining ever after a prize, whose very magnitude was to prove his country’s ultimate ruin, spun his web of diplomacy in and out amongst the Powers of Europe, never neglecting any opportunity that would draw him nearer his goal. ”

“ The courage that inspired the Christians was not lacking in Malaga, where the fierce Hamet “El Zegri” and his garrison had pledged themselves to starve rather than yield. The fire of the heavy lombards, disembarked from the Castilian ships and pointed on the Moorish towers and ramparts, was answered by cannon equally deadly in their aim; the mines planted deep behind trenches were met by counter-mines; the Christian raids on the suburbs by midnight sallies of such unexpected ferocity that often massacre ensued, until reinforcements at length drove the invaders back to their walls. ”

“ Legislation usually has its dark side; and the sovereigns’ efforts to establish the commercial progress of their land on a sound basis were vitiated by the theory which they shared with their age that precious metals are not merely a convenient medium of exchange but an object of value in themselves. The lust of gold had been the curse that Columbus carried with him to the New World to corrupt his earthly paradise, blinding the settlers to the true wealth of its soil. ”

“ The name of her new confessor, Ximenes de Cisneros, is famous in Spanish history,—the name of one of the world’s chosen few, who solely by their natural gifts climb from poverty and obscurity to pluck her richest fruits. His success is the more arresting that, by the irony of fate, he cared nothing for the world or her rewards. Literary fame had stretched before him as chaplain of the cathedral church of Sigüenza, and he deliberately turned his back on it to exchange the free life of the chapter for the monk’s cell. Here he donned the Franciscan habit ”

“ Isabel’s bigotry is an inheritance she shared with the greater part of her race in her own day, the logical sequence of her belief in the exclusive value of the divine in man’s nature, as against any claims of his human body. If she pursued her object, the salvation of souls, with a relentless 5cruelty, from which we turn away to-day in sick disgust, we must remember that Spain for the most part looked on unmoved. Where opposition was shown, as in her husband’s kingdom of Aragon, it was rather the spirit of independence than of mercy that raised its head. ”

“ In vain Ferdinand, courting a speedy surrender, sent messengers to offer generous terms, such as he had granted at Ronda and Loja; in vain he threatened the alternative of slavery in case of prolonged resistance; in vain the more peace-loving citizens pleaded with their governor to accept a settlement that would save the prosperity of their port. Hamet “El Zegri” returned a scornful refusal. Soon, he declared the rainy season would begin, and the Christian camp would be turned into a swamp, fit breeding-ground for death in all its forms. Malaga had only to hold firm to triumph. ”

“ From Plasencia the Portuguese at length marched to Arévalo, where another delay, this time of two months, took place, Alfonso determining to await the troops that had been promised him by his Castilian allies. He had with him the chivalry of his own Court, young hot-bloods, who had pledged their estates in the prospect of speedy glory and pillage. In their self-confidence the easy theories of Villena found an echo; and they loudly boasted that Ferdinand and his wife would never dare to meet them, but were in all probability on the road to Aragon. ”

“ It has been said with truth that it was almost impossible to persuade the mediæval Castilian noble to act with his fellows. Pride, ambition, the courage that vaunts itself in duels, the revenge that lurks, dagger-drawn, in back streets or lonely roads: these were the source of constant feuds and internecine warfare, incapable of a final settlement save by the pressure of some outside force.
Nor could the noble, who distrusted the members of his own class, rely in times of danger on the co-operation of his humbler neighbours. ”

“ Each age has its theories of political economy and looks back with superior contempt on the failings of its predecessors. To twentieth-century eyes the economic outlook of the fifteenth is often exasperatingly foolish; yet in the days of Ferdinand and Isabel it appeared the height of wisdom, and efforts to put it into practice were eagerly demanded by the Cortes. Industry, it was felt, must be wrapped in the cotton-wool of a myriad restrictions ”

“ Like Juan Pacheco, he loved wealth, the more that he was in secret an alchemist and squandered the revenues of his see in a vain endeavour to make gold; but even the glitter of precious metals lost its charm beside his lust for power and influence. He must be first. This was the motive that had driven him to desert Henry IV., to break with his nephew in the revolt of the League, and now, finally, when the cause for which he had laboured was on the eve of success, to renounce his allegiance to Isabel, because of his jealousy of her new adviser the Cardinal of Spain. ”

“ Of old in alliance with the Aragonese House of Naples and the Medici at Florence, he had regarded with calm eyes the hostility of Venice on the eastern border of his duchy and the growing ambitions of the Papacy in Romagna. These five Powers,—Milan, Naples, Rome, and the republics of Venice and Florence, had controlled the peninsula, and in Machiavelli’s words made it their object “first that no armed foreigner should be allowed to invade Italy, second, that no one of their own number should be suffered to extend his territory.” ”

“ If criticism maintains that this benevolent government degenerated into despotism during the sixteenth century, while Spain became the tool and purse of imperial ambitions, it should be remembered that neither Castilian Queen nor Aragonese King could have fought the evils they found successfully with any other weapon than their own supremacy, nor is it fair to hold them responsible for the tyranny of their successors. Ferdinand indeed may be blamed for yielding to the lure of an Italian kingdom ”

“ In a century that witnessed the perseverance and daring of the Moorish struggle, the campaign of Charles VIII. stands out like a monstrous caricature of triumph. Founded in vanity, its success had startled Europe, but was to prove as evanescent as it was cheaply won. The fault lay to a large extent with the conquerors. ”

“ Many of Queen Isabel’s contemporaries remark her intolerance of crime and disorder, and a few of the younger generation who had grown to manhood in the atmosphere of peace she had established, condemn her justice as excessive. By modern standards it is undoubtedly barbarous; but long centuries of anarchy had bred a spirit of lust and brutality little above the barbarian level, and only drastic measures could hope to cure so deep-rooted an evil. ”

“ From their earliest days they must prepare to play their part in the future destiny of the nation, to tread the matrimonial measure not according to their fancy but at the parental wish; and then, their marriage achieved, to unite with the rôle of wife and mother the arduous task of political agent, maintaining friendly relations, often at the price of nerve-racking strain, between their old home and their new. ”

“ One solution of the problem has been to make the unfortunate Ferdinand the scapegoat of his Queen’s misdeeds. Whatever tends to the glory of Spain, in that, if not the originator, she is at least the partner and moving spirit. When acts of fanaticism hold the field, they are the result of Ferdinand’s material ambitions or the religious fervour of her confessors; Isabel’s ordinarily independent and clear-sighted mind being reduced for the sake of her reputation to a condition of credulous servility. ”

“ This western kingdom had always seemed in danger of absorption by its more powerful neighbour; once their common enemy, the Moor, had been driven southwards; but good fortune and a spirit of sturdy independence had preserved its freedom. By the great victory of Aljubarrota in 1385 Portugal had vindicated her claim to be a separate nationality; and Castile, leaving the flower of her chivalry dead on the battlefield, had retired to nurse her resentment in secret. ”

“ Ferdinand and Isabel had shown their wisdom in refusing to let the rift between them widen into an open quarrel. In a crisis the least straw may turn the balance; and the condition of affairs required their combined energies in the one scale. It is true that the majority of nobles and knights had either in person, or by deputy, expressed their allegiance; but there still remained a small though powerful group, headed by the young Marquis of Villena, who maintained that the Infanta Joanna was the rightful Queen. ”

“ When Ferdinand returned from Biscay, the sovereigns, after a short time together, were separated once more; he remaining in the north to watch over the affairs of Aragon and France, while she went south to Estremadura and Andalusia. The civil war was practically at an end. Here and there some strongly fortified place still floated the Portuguese standard; or the nobles, like wild horses bridled for the first time and unable to believe themselves mastered, chafed in secret conspiracies or flamed into spasmodic rebellion. ”

“ In 1476, Aben Ismail died; and his successor, Muley Abul Hacen, a chieftain already famous in his own land for various daring raids into Christian territory, ceased to send the required tribute to Castile. When the ambassadors of Ferdinand and Isabel came before him to remonstrate, he replied haughtily:
“Go, tell your sovereigns that the kings of Granada, who were wont to pay tribute, are dead. In my kingdom there is no coin minted save scimitars and iron-tipped lances.” ”