Ferdinand I of Castile

“ But Castile had been too long distracted by civil strife, and [71] men’s minds were too much demoralised for peace and tranquillity to return at once without further disturbance. Neither was Ferdinand IV exactly the man to rally the different parties round his throne. His cruelty and the violence of his disposition called forth enmity and hatred and increased the discontent and variance. Jealousy and dissension amongst the grandees were the chief cause why a campaign entered upon in conjunction with the Aragonese king against the emir Mulei Nazar of Granada had no success. ”

“ Ferdinand, King of Castile, seems to have been the principal aggressor. His great captain in his wars, both with Moslem and Christian states, was Rodrigo Laynez, who was called also by the Spaniards Ruy Diaz de Rivar, from the name of his birthplace, and by the Arabs El Sayd (Lord) , which has been altered into Cid. He was probably born about the year 1026, or rather later, at the Castle of Rivar, near Burgos, in Old Castile, of a noble but not wealthy family. He joined the army of Ferdinand, and rose by his talents, strength, and courage to the highest place in that king's service. ”

“ The long minorities, with which Castile was afflicted perhaps more than any country in Europe, frequently threw the government into the hands of the principal nobility, who perverted to their own emoluments the high powers intrusted to them. They usurped the possessions of the crown, and invaded some of its most valuable privileges; so that the sovereign's subsequent life was often consumed in fruitless attempts to repair the losses of his minority. He sometimes, indeed, in the impotence of other resources, resorted to such unhappy expedients as treachery and assassination. ”

“ With this affront, the king received also the alarming intelligence, that the emperor Maximilian and his son Philip were tampering with the fidelity of the Great Captain; endeavoring to secure Naples in any event to the archduke, who claimed it as the appurtenance of Castile, by whose armies its conquest, in fact, had been achieved. There were not wanting persons of high standing at Ferdinand's court, to infuse suspicions, however unwarrantable, into the royal mind, of the loyalty of his viceroy, a Castilian by birth, and who owed his elevation exclusively to the queen. ”

“ By the irony, or perhaps the eternal justice of fate, all the chicanery of Ferdinand, all the wisdom, the labours, and the fervour of Isabella brought disaster, ruin, and death to Spain. A thousand times happier would it have been for Castile to have remained isolated in its corner of Europe, untroubled with the complications of vast European connections, rather than to have been dragged by Aragon into a position of responsibility and world-wide ambition for which neither its native resources nor the extent nor character of its population befitted it. ”

“ As Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar he is first mentioned in a charter of Ferdinand I. of the year 1064. The legends which speak of the Cid as accompanying this monarch in his expeditions to France and Italy must be rejected as purely apocryphal. Ferdinand, a great and wise prince, under whom the tide of Moslem conquest was first effectually stemmed, on his deathbed, in 1065, divided his territories among his five children. Castile was left to his eldest son Sancho, Leon to Alphonso, Galicia to Garcia, Zamora and Toro to his two daughters Urraca and Elvira. ”

“ A shade of displeasure comes over Ferdinand’s glowing face as he flashes a look at her of pain and mortification. So young, yet so determined!
“Aye, but you must hear me!” she adds, rising to a sudden sense of her duty. “As future Queen of Castile, not as Isabel of Trastamare, I wed you. To me my country is more than life; its privileges, customs, laws, all must rest as they are; no foreign intrusion will be tolerated. As you will be in Aragon sole ruler, in which I shall in no way interfere, but with all my soul maintain you, so must I in Castile ”

“ In this way he made his entry into Burgos, amid the cheering acclamations of the people, and attended by a cortège of officers, who pompously displayed on their own persons, and the caparisons of their steeds, the rich spoils of Italian conquests. The old count of Ureña, his friend, who, with the whole court, came out by Ferdinand's orders to receive him, exclaimed with a prophetic sigh, as he saw the splendid pageant come sweeping by, "This gallant ship, I fear, will require deeper water to ride in than she will find in Castile!" ”

“ Indeed, the common people of Castile very generally supported her in her preference of the Aragonese match. Boys paraded the streets, bearing banners emblazoned with the arms of Aragon, and singing verses prophetic of the glories of the auspicious union. They even assembled round the palace gates, and insulted the ears of Henry and his minister by the repetition of satirical stanzas, which contrasted Alfonso's years with the youthful graces of Ferdinand. ”

“ This connection was extremely distasteful to the Spanish sovereigns, and indeed to many of the Navarrese, who were desirous of the alliance with Castile. This was ultimately defeated by the queen-mother, an artful woman, who, being of the blood royal of France, was naturally disposed to a union with that kingdom. Ferdinand did not neglect to maintain such an understanding with the malcontents of Navarre, as should enable him to counteract any undue advantage which the French monarch might derive from the possession of this key, as it were, to the Castilian territory. ”

“ To carry one realm too far forward before going back to bring forward the other is destructive of a sense of synchronology, while the attempt to carry them simultaneously is as bewildering as it is difficult.
To carry Castile forward to that well-known time when Isabella wed Ferdinand of Aragon is to be compelled to retrace our steps for three centuries. It seems most convenient to do as follows: Leaving Castile at the moment of the death of that easily remembered monarch Pedro the Cruel, to take up Aragon and bring its history to the same point. ”

“ Ferdinand trusted none of the Castilian nobles, who feared that his amity with Henry and the latter's marriage with Katharine would deprive them of English help for their prince. After the ratification of the marriage between Mary and Charles, he took into his own hands as precaution all the castles of Galicia, [48] for many of the nobles, like Gonsalvo the great captain, had offered their services secretly to the Emperor for their prince, and Ferdinand feared that Maximilian's success in Northern Italy might preface the revolt of Naples and Sicily to the Prince of Castile. ”

“ By one, executed at Burgos, in 1512, he had committed the government of Castile and Aragon to the infante Ferdinand during his brother Charles's absence. This young prince had been educated in Spain under the eye of his grand-father, who entertained a strong affection for him. The counsellors remonstrated in the plainest terms against this disposition of the regency. Ferdinand, they said, was too young to take the helm into his own hands. His appointment would be sure to create new factions in Castile ”

“ The hermandad of Castile had never been countenanced by legislative sanction; it was chiefly resorted to as a measure of police, and was directed more frequently against the disorders of the nobility, than of the sovereign; it was organized with difficulty, and, compared with the union of Aragon, was cumbrous and languid in its operations. While these privileges continued in force, the nation was delivered over to the most frightful anarchy. The least offensive movement on the part of the monarch, the slightest encroachment on personal right or privilege, was the signal for a general revolt. ”

“ Though on the accession of Juan I of Castile Ferdinand readily renewed the peace between the two crowns, and consented to marry his daughter Beatrice to the heir of the Castilian, his characteristic fickleness was such that he soon resolved to resume hostilities. To engage the duke of Lancaster in his cause, he sent a trusty messenger to England, Dom João Ferdinand Andeiro, who concluded a league with the Plantagenet. To conceal this negotiation from the world, especially from the Castilian, he pretended great anger with Andeiro, whom he arrested, and confined to the fortress of Estremos. ”

“ He may not render the crown of Castile still more powerful, but he may so far enrich himself that, as a subject, he will have difficulty in finding the proper uses for his gold."
"There will always be a use for the gold of a Christian," answered the navigator, "while the Infidel remaineth the master of the Holy Sepulchre."
"How is this!" exclaimed Ferdinand, in his quick, sharp voice: "dost thou think, Señor, of a crusade, as well as of discovering new regions?" ”

“ It was impossible that Ferdinand and Isabel could compete without financial assistance against the wealth and well-known military strength of Portugal.
Such arguments had a surface plausibility; though a statesman might have asked himself if they did not take Fortune’s smiles too much for granted. Was it safe to ignore the deep-rooted dislike that Castile bore Portugal, or to assume the friendliness of the larger towns, on whose possession the ultimate victory must depend? Alfonso V. was not the type of man to ask uncomfortable questions. ”

“ The celebrated line of demarcation between the right of discovery and conquest was not so clearly understood as to avoid disputes between Dom Emmanuel and his brother sovereign of Castile. His splendid empire in the East had long attracted the jealousy of Ferdinand, who had frequently attempted, but as frequently been deterred by his remonstrances, to share in the rich commercial advantages thus offered to the sister kingdom. ”

“ The grand constable of Castile was commissioned to raise levies through every part of the kingdom, and the principal nobility flocked in with their retainers from the farthest provinces, all eager to obey the call of their beloved mistress. Thus strengthened, Ferdinand, whose head-quarters were established at Girona, saw himself in less than a month in possession of a force, which, including the supplies of Aragon, amounted to ten or twelve thousand horse, and three or four times that number of foot. ”

“ His kinsman of Castile was in worse case, for his dominions were more open to the Moor. Saint Ferdinand conquered the splendid Moorish city of Seville in 1248, where he died four years later, leaving his son, Alonso the Wise, to succeed him as King of Castile. Oriental luxury surrounded the frugal Castilians on all hands. The wealth of plundered cities, the spoils of Moslem palaces were to be had for the grasping, so that it was natural that extravagance in attire and eating should soon threaten to soften the Christian conquerors dwelling in the midst of the gentler, vanquished Moor. ”

“ The worthy friar, struck by the noble bearing of a man so poor and wearied, became delighted with the conversation of his guest, who opened to him both his heart and his schemes. He forwarded his plans by a letter to a powerful ecclesiastic, who introduced him to the Spanish Court, then one of the most powerful, and certainly the proudest and most punctilious, in Europe. Ferdinand of Aragon was polite, yet wary and incredulous; but Isabella of Castile listened more kindly to the stranger, whom the greatness of his mission inspired with eloquence. ”

“ Although the ancient intimacy, which subsisted between the royal families of France and Castile, in some measure favored his pretensions, the disadvantages resulting from such a union were too obvious to escape attention. The two countries were too remote from each other, [43] and their inhabitants too dissimiliar in character and institutions, to permit the idea of their ever cordially coalescing as one people under a common sovereign. Should the duke of Guienne fail in the inheritance of the crown, it was argued, he would be every way an unequal match for the heiress of Castile ”

“ Enough has been said to give an idea of the state of mental improvement in Castile under John the Second. The Muses, who had found a shelter in his court from the anarchy which reigned abroad, soon fled from its polluted precincts under the reign of his successor Henry the Fourth, whose sordid appetites were incapable of being elevated above the objects of the senses. If we have dwelt somewhat long on a more pleasing picture, it is because our road is now to lead us across a dreary waste exhibiting scarcely a vestige of civilization. ”

“ He was then induced to visit Spain, in 1486, with the admiral Henriquez, and soon took his place among the professors of Salamanca, where he filled the chairs of poetry and grammar with great applause for twelve years. He was subsequently transferred to the court, which he helped to illumine, by his exposition of the ancient classics, particularly the Latin. [14] Under the auspices of these and other eminent scholars, both native and foreign, the young nobility of Castile shook off the indolence in which they had so long rusted, and applied with generous ardor to the cultivation of science ”

“ And as he possessed no independent force like Ferdinand, and governed a kingdom more turbulent and unruly, which he himself by his narrow politics had confirmed in factious prejudices, he apprehended that his situation would prove in the issue still more precarious.
Nothing at first could turn out more contrary to the king’s wishes than the transactions in Spain. Ferdinand, as well as Henry, had become very unpopular, and from a like cause, his former exactions and impositions; and the states of Castile discovered an evident resolution of preferring the title of Philip and Joan. ”