The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Volume III Part 7

[22]

The prayers of the devout queen and her court found favor with Heaven.

[23] King Ferdinand reached Perpignan on the 19th of October, and on that same night the French marshal, finding himself unequal to the rencontre with the combined forces of Spain, broke up his camp, and, setting fire to his tents, began his retreat towards the frontier, having consumed nearly six weeks since first opening trenches. Ferdinand pressed close on his flying enemy, whose rear sustained some annoyance from the Spanish _ginetes_, in its pa.s.sage through the defiles of the sierras. The retreat, however, was conducted in too good order to allow any material loss to be inflicted on the French, who succeeded at length in sheltering themselves under the cannon of Narbonne, up to which place they were pursued by their victorious foe. Several places on the frontier, as Leocate, Palme, Sigean, Roquefort, and others, were abandoned to the Spaniards, who pillaged them of whatever was worth carrying off; without any violence, however, to the persons of the inhabitants, whom, as a Christian population, if we are to believe Martyr, Ferdinand refused even to make prisoners. [24]

The Spanish monarch made no attempt to retain these acquisitions; but, having dismantled some of the towns, which offered most resistance, returned loaded with the spoils of victory to his own dominions. "Had he been as good a general as he was a statesman," says a Spanish historian, "he might have penetrated to the centre of France." [25] Ferdinand, however, was too prudent to attempt conquests which could only be maintained, if maintained at all, at an infinite expense of blood and treasure. He had sufficiently vindicated his honor by meeting his foe so promptly, and driving him triumphantly over the border; and he preferred, like a cautious prince, not to risk all he had gained by attempting more, but to employ his present successes as a vantage-ground for entering on negotiation, in which at all times he placed more reliance than on the sword.

In this, his good star still further favored him. The armada, equipped at so much cost by the French king at Ma.r.s.eilles, had no sooner put to sea, than it was a.s.sailed by furious tempests, and so far crippled, that it was obliged to return to port without even effecting a descent on the Spanish coast.

These acc.u.mulated disasters so disheartened Louis the Twelfth, that he consented to enter into negotiations for a suspension of hostilities; and an armistice was finally arranged, through the mediation of his pensioner Frederic, ex-king of Naples, between the hostile monarchs. It extended only to their hereditary dominions; Italy and the circ.u.mjacent seas being still left open as a common arena, on which the rival parties might meet, and settle their respective t.i.tles by the sword. This truce, first concluded for five months, was subsequently prolonged to three years. It gave Ferdinand, what he most needed, leisure, and means to provide for the security of his Italian possessions, on which the dark storm of war was soon to burst with ten-fold fury. [26]

The unfortunate Frederic, who had been drawn from his obscurity to take part in these negotiations, died in the following year. It is singular that the last act of his political life should have been to mediate a peace between the dominions of two monarchs, who had united to strip him of his own.

The results of this campaign were as honorable to Spain, as they were disastrous and humiliating to Louis the Twelfth, who had seen his arms baffled on every point, and all his mighty apparatus of fleets and armies dissolve, as if by enchantment, in less time than it had been preparing.

The immediate success of Spain may no doubt be ascribed in a considerable degree to the improved organization and thorough discipline introduced by the sovereigns into the national militia at the close of the Moorish war, without which it would have been scarcely possible to concentrate so promptly on a distant point such large ma.s.ses of men, all well equipped and trained for active service. So soon was the nation called to feel the effect of these wise provisions.

But the results of the campaign are, after all, less worthy of notice as indicating the resources of the country, than as evidence of a pervading patriotic feeling, which could alone make these resources available.

Instead of the narrow local jealousies, which had so long estranged the people of the separate provinces, and more especially those of the rival states of Aragon and Castile, from one another, there had been gradually raised up a common national sentiment like that knitting together the const.i.tuent parts of one great commonwealth. At the first alarm of invasion on the frontier of Aragon, the whole extent of the sister kingdom, from the green, valleys of the Guadalquivir up to the rocky fastnesses of the Asturias, responded to the call, as to that of a common country, sending forth, as we have seen, its swarms of warriors, to repel the foe, and roll back the tide of war upon his own land. What a contrast did all this present to the cold and parsimonious hand with which the nation, thirty years before, dealt out its supplies to King John the Second, Ferdinand's father, when he was left to cope single-handed with the whole power of France, in this very quarter of Roussillon. Such was the consequence of the glorious _union_, which brought together the petty and hitherto discordant tribes of the Peninsula under the same rule; and, by creating common interests and an harmonious principle of action, was silently preparing them for const.i.tuting one great nation,--one and indivisible, as intended by nature.

Those who have not themselves had occasion to pursue historical inquiries will scarcely imagine on what loose grounds the greater part of the narrative is to be built. With the exception of a few leading outlines, there is such a ma.s.s of inconsistency and contradiction in the details, even of contemporaries, that it seems almost as hopeless to seize the true aspect of any particular age as it would be to transfer to the canvas a faithful likeness of an individual from a description simply of his prominent features.

Much of the difficulty might seem to be removed, now that we are on the luminous and beaten track of Italian history; but, in fact, the vision is rather dazzled than a.s.sisted by the numerous cross lights thrown over the path, and the infinitely various points of view from which every object is contemplated. Besides the local and party prejudices which we had to encounter in the contemporary Spanish historians, we have now a host of national prejudices, not less unfavorable to truth; while the remoteness of the scene of action necessarily begets a thousand additional inaccuracies in the gossipping and credulous chroniclers of France and Spain.

The mode in which public negotiations were conducted at this period, interposes still further embarra.s.sments in our search after truth. They were regarded as the personal concerns of the sovereign, in which the nation at large had no right to interfere. They were settled, like the rest of his private affairs, under his own eye, without the partic.i.p.ation of any other branch of the government. They were shrouded, therefore, under an impenetrable secrecy, which permitted such results only to emerge into light as suited the monarch. Even these results cannot be relied on as furnis.h.i.+ng the true key to the intentions of the parties. The science of the cabinet, as then practised, authorized such a system of artifice and shameless duplicity, as greatly impaired the credit of those official doc.u.ments which we are accustomed to regard as the surest foundations of history.

The only records which we can receive with full confidence are the private correspondence of contemporaries, which, from its very nature, is exempt from most of the restraints and affectations incident more or less to every work destined for the public eye. Such communications, indeed, come like the voice of departed years; and when, as in Martyr's case, they proceed from one whose acuteness is combined with singular opportunities for observation, they are of inestimable value. Instead of exposing to us only the results, they lay open the interior workings of the machinery, and we enter into all the s.h.i.+fting doubts, pa.s.sions, and purposes which agitate the minds of the actors. Unfortunately, the chain of correspondence here, as in similar cases, when not originally designed for historical uses, necessarily suffers from occasional breaks and interruptions. The scattered gleams which are thrown over the most prominent points, however, shed so strong a light, as materially to aid us in groping our way through the darker and more perplexed pa.s.sages of the story.

The obscurity which hangs over the period has not been dispelled by those modern writers, who, like Varillas, in his well-known work, _Politique de Ferdinand le Catholique_, affect to treat the subject philosophically, paying less attention to facts than to their causes and consequences.

These ingenious persons, seldom willing to take things as they find them, seem to think that truth is only to be reached by delving deep below the surface. In this search after more profound causes of action, they reject whatever is natural and obvious. They are inexhaustible in conjectures and fine-spun conclusions, inferring quite as much from what is not said or done, as from what is. In short, they put the reader as completely in possession of their hero's thoughts on all occasions, as any professed romance-writer would venture to do. All this may be very agreeable, and, to persons of easy faith, very satisfactory; but it is not history and may well remind us of the astonishment somewhere expressed by Cardinal de Retz at the a.s.surance of those who, at a distance from the scene of action, pretended to lay open all the secret springs of policy, of which he himself, though a princ.i.p.al party, was ignorant.

No prince, on the whole, has suffered more from these unwarrantable liberties than Ferdinand the Catholic. His reputation for shrewd policy suggests a ready key to whatever is mysterious and otherwise inexplicable in his government; while it puts writers like Gaillard and Varillas constantly on the scent after the most secret and subtile sources of action, as if there were always something more to be detected than readily meets the eye. Instead of judging him by the general rules of human conduct, everything is referred to deep-laid stratagem; no allowance is made for the ordinary disturbing forces, the pa.s.sions and casualties of life; every action proceeds with the same wary calculation that regulates the moves upon a chessboard; and thus a character of consummate artifice is built up, not only unsupported by historical evidence, but in manifest contradiction to the principles of our nature. The part of our subject embraced in the present chapter has long been debatable ground between the French and Spanish historians; and the obscurity which hangs over it has furnished an ample range for speculation to the cla.s.s of writers above alluded to, which they have not failed to improve.

FOOTNOTES

[1] St. Gelais seems willing to accept Philip's statement, and to consider the whole affair of the negotiation as "one of Ferdinand's old tricks,"

"l'ancienne cantele de celuy qui en scavoit bien faire d'autres." Hist. de Louys XII., p. 172.

[2] Idem, ubi supra.--Garnier, Hist. de France, tom. v. p. 410.--Gaillard, Rivalite, tom. iv. pp. 238, 239.--Zurita, a.n.a.les, tom. v. lib. 5, cap.

23.--Garibay, Compendio, tom. ii. lib. 19, cap. 15.--Ferreras, Hist.

d'Espagne, tom. viii. p. 233.

[3] Garnier, Hist. de France, tom. v. p. 388.--Abarca, Reyes de Aragon, tom. ii. rey 30, cap. 13, sec. 3.--Guicciardini, Istoria, tom. i. p. 300, ed. 1645.--Zurita, a.n.a.les, tom. v. lib. 5, cap. 9.

It is amusing to see with what industry certain French writers, as Gaillard and Varillas, are perpetually contrasting the _bonne foi_ of Louis XII. with the _mechancete_ of Ferdinand, whose secret intentions, even, are quoted in evidence of his hypocrisy, while the most objectionable acts of his rival seem to be abundantly compensated by some fine sentiment like that in the text.

[4] Zurita, Hist. del Rey Hernando, tom. i. lib. 5, cap. 10.--Abarca, Reyes de Aragon, tom. ii. rey 30, cap. 13, sec. 2.--Mariana, Hist. de Espana, tom. ii. pp. 690, 691.--et al.

[5] Seyssel, Hist. de Louys XII., p. 61.--St. Gelais, Hist. de Louys XII., p. 171.--Gaillard, Rivalite, tom. iv. p. 239.--Garnier, Hist. de France, tom. v. p. 387.--D'Auton, Hist. de Louys XII., part. 2, chap. 32.

[6] Varillas regards Philip's mission to France as a _coup de maitre_ on the part of Ferdinand, who thereby rid himself of a dangerous rival at home, likely to contest his succession to Castile on Isabella's death, while he employed that rival in outwitting Louis XII. by a treaty which he meant to disavow. (Politique de Ferdinand, liv. 1, pp. 146-150.) The first of these imputations is sufficiently disproved by the fact that Philip quitted Spain in opposition to the pressing remonstrances of the king, queen, and cortes, and to the general disgust of the whole nation, as is repeatedly stated by Gomez, Martyr, and other contemporaries. The second will be difficult to refute, and still harder to prove, as it rests on a man's secret intentions, known only to himself. Such are the flimsy cobwebs of which this political dreamer's theories are made. Truly _chateaux en Espagne_.

[7] Martyr, whose copious correspondence furnishes the most valuable commentary, unquestionably, on the proceedings of this reign, is provokingly reserved in regard to this interesting matter. He contents himself with remarking in one of his letters, that "the Spaniards derided Philip's negotiations as of no consequence, and indeed altogether preposterous, considering the att.i.tude a.s.sumed by the nation at that very time for maintaining its claims by the sword;" and he dismisses the subject with a reflection, that seems to rest the merits of the case more on might than right. "Exitus, qui judex est rerum aeternus, loquatur.

Nostri regno potiuntur majori ex parte." (Opus Epist., epist. 257.) This reserve of Martyr might be construed unfavorably for Ferdinand, were it not for the freedom with which he usually criticizes whatever appears really objectionable to him in the measures of the government.

[8] Grotius, De Jure Belli et Pacis, lib. 2, cap. 11, sec. 12; lib. 3, cap. 22, sec. 4.--Gentilis, De Jure Belli, lib. 3, cap. 14, apud Bynkershoek, Quaest. Juris Publici, lib. 2, cap. 7.

[9] Bynkershoek, Quaest. Juris Publici, lib. 2, cap. 7.--Mably, Droit Publique, chap. 1.--Vattel, Droit des Gens, liv. 2, chap. 12.--Martens, Law of Nations, trans., book 2, chap. 1.

Bynkershoek, the earliest of these writers, has discussed the question with an amplitude, perspicuity, and fairness unsurpa.s.sed by any who have followed him.

[10] Philip is known in history by the t.i.tle of "the Handsome," implying that he was, at least, quite as remarkable for his personal qualities, as his mental.

[11] Opus Epist., epist. 253.--Ferreras, Hist. d'Espagne, tom. viii. pp.

235, 238.--Gomez, De Rebus Gestis, fol. 44.

[12] Carbajal, a.n.a.les, MS., ano 1503.--Gomez, De Rebus Gestis, fol. 45, 46.

He was born at Alcala de Henares. Ximenes availed himself of this circ.u.mstance to obtain from Isabella a permanent exemption from taxes for his favorite city, which his princely patronage was fast raising up to contest the palm of literary precedence with Salamanca, the ancient "Athens of Spain." The citizens of the place long preserved, and still preserve, for aught I know, the cradle of the royal infant, in token of their grat.i.tude. Robles, Vida de Ximenez, p. 127.

[13] Peter Martyr, Opus Epist., epist. 268.--Zurita, Hist. del Rey Hernando, tom. i. lib. 5, cap. 56.--Gomez, De Rebus Gestis, fol. 46.

[14] "Espejo de bondad," _mirror of virtue,_ as Oviedo styles this cavalier. He was always much regarded by the sovereigns, and the lucrative post of _contador mayor_, which he filled for many years, enabled him to acquire an immense estate, 50,000 ducats a year, without imputation on his honesty. Quincuagenas, MS., bat. 1, quinc. 2, dial. 2.

[15] The name of this cavalier, as well as that of his cousin, Alonso de Cardenas, grand master of St. James, have become familiar to us in the Granadine war. If Don Gutierre made a less brilliant figure than the latter, he acquired, by means of his intimacy with the sovereigns, and his personal qualities, as great weight in the royal councils as any subject in the kingdom. "Nothing of any importance," says Oviedo, "was done without his advice." He was raised to the important posts of comendador de Leon, and contador mayor, which last, in the words of the same author, "made its possessor a second king over the public treasury." He left large estates, and more than five thousand va.s.sals. His eldest son was created duke of Maqueda. Quincuagenas, MS., bat. 1, quinc. 2, dial. 1.--Col. de Ced., tom. v. no. 182.

[16] Peter Martyr, Opus Epist., epist. 255.--Gomez, de Rebus Gestis, fol.

45.--For some further account of these individuals see Part I, Chapter 14, note 10.

Martyr thus panegyrizes the queen's fort.i.tude under her acc.u.mulated sorrows. "Sent.i.t, licet constantissima sit, et supra foeminam prudens, has alapas fortunae saevientis regina, ita concussa fluctibus undique, veluti vasta rupes, maris in medio." Opus Epist., loc. cit.

[17] Garnier, Hist. de France, tom. v. pp. 405, 406.--Ferreras, Hist.

d'Espagne, tom. viii. pp. 235-238.--Guicciardini, Istoria, tom. i. pp.

300, 301.--Memoires de la Tremoille, chap. 19, apud Pet.i.tot, Collection des Memoires, tom. xiv.

[18] Aleson, Annales de Navarra, tom. v. pp. 110-112.

The king of Navarre promised to oppose the pa.s.sage of the French, if attempted, through his dominions; and, in order to obviate any distrust on the part of Ferdinand, sent his daughter Margaret to reside at the court of Castile, as a pledge for his fidelity. Ferreras, Hist. d'Espagne, tom.

viii. p. 235.

[19] Younger brother of Robert, third duke of Bouillon. (D'Auton, Hist. de Louys XII., part. 2, pp. 103, 186.) The reader will not confound him with his namesake, the famous "boar of Ardennes,"--more familiar to us now in the pages of romance than history,--who perished ignominiously some twenty years before this period, in 1484, not in fight, but by the hands of the common executioner at Utrecht. Duclos, Hist. de Louis XI., tom. ii. p.

379.

[20] Gonzalo Ayora, Capitan de la Guardia Real, Cartas al Rey, Don Fernando, (Madrid, 1794,) carta 9.--Aleson, Annales de Navarra, tom. v.

pp. 112, 113.--Garnier, Hist. de France, tom. v. p. 407.--Zurita, a.n.a.les, tom. v. lib. 5, cap. 51.--Abarca, Reyes de Aragon, tom, ii, rey 30, cap.

13, sec. 11.

[21] Gonzalo Ayora, Cartas, cap. 9.--Zurita, a.n.a.les, ubi supra.-- Bernaldez, Reyes Catolicos, MS., cap. 197, 198.--Carbajal, a.n.a.les, MS., ano 1503.--Sandoval, Hist. del Emp. Carlos V., tom. i. p. 8.--Col. de Cedulas, tom. i. no. 97.