The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Volume III Part 12

[6] Guicciardini, Istoria, lib. 6, pp. 330, 331.--Garnier, Hist. de France, tom. v. pp. 449-451.--Chronica del Gran Capitan, ubi supra.-- Varillas, Hist. de Louis XII., tom. i. pp. 416-418.--Ammirato, Istorie Florentine, tom. iii. lib. 28, p. 273.--Summonte, Hist. di Napoli, tom.

iii. p. 555.--Buonaccorsi, Diario, pp. 84, 85.--Giovio, Vitae Magni Gonsalvi, fol. 268.

[8] Bernaldez, Reyes Catolicos, MS., cap. 190.--Garnier, Hist. de France, tom. v. pp. 452, 453.--Ulloa, Vita di Carlo V., fol. 23.--Guicciardini, Istoria, lib. 6, p. 331.--Garibay, Compendio, tom. ii. lib. 19, cap. 16.-- Chronica del Gran Capitan, ubi supra.--Buonaccorsi, Diario, pp. 84, 85.-- Ammirato, Istorie Fiorentine, ubi supra.--Varillas, Hist. de Louis XII., tom. i. pp. 416-418.

[8] Soon after the rout of the Garigliano, Bembo produced the following sonnet, which most critics agree was intended, although no name appears in it, for Gonsalvo de Cordova.

"Ben devria farvi onor d' eterno esempio Napoli vostra, e 'n mezzo al s...o...b..l monte Scolpirvi in lieta e ooronata fronte, Gir trionfando, e dar i voti al tempio: Poi che l' avete all' orgoglioso ed empio Stuolo ritolta, e pareggiate l' onte; Or ch' avea piu la voglia e le man p.r.o.nte A far d' Italia tutta acerbo scempio.

Torcestel voi, Signor, dal corso ardito, E foste tal, ch' ancora esser vorebbe A por di qua dall' Alpe nostra il piede.

L' onda Tirrena del suo sangue crebbe, E di tronchi resto coperto il lito, E gli angelli ne fer secure prede."

Opere, tom. ii. p. 57.

[9] The Curate of Los Palacios sums up the loss of the French, from the time of Gonsalvo's occupation of Barleta to the surrender of Gaeta, in the following manner; 6000 prisoners, 14,000 killed in battle, a still greater number by exposure and fatigue, besides a considerable body cut off by the peasantry. To balance this b.l.o.o.d.y roll, he computes the Spanish loss at two hundred slain in the field! Reyes Catolicos, MS., cap. 191.

[10] Chronica del Gran Capitan, lib. 2, cap. 110.--Zurita, a.n.a.les, ubi supra.--Garibay, Compendio, lib. 19, cap. 16.--Quintana, Espanoles Celebres, tom. i. pp. 296, 97.

Guicciardini, who has been followed in this by the French writers, fixes the date of the rout at the 28th of December. If, however, it occurred on Friday, as he, and every authority, indeed, a.s.serts, it must have been on the 29th, as stated by the Spanish historians. Istoria, lib. 6, p. 330.

[11] Giovio, Vita Magni Gonsalvi, fol. 268.

[12] Giovio, Vita Magni Gonsalvi, fol. 268, 269.--Chronica del Gran Capitan, lib. 2, cap. 111.--Peter Martyr, Opus Epist., epist. 270.-- Guicciardini, Istoria, lib. 6, p. 331.--Zurita, a.n.a.les, tom. v. lib. 5, cap. 61.--Garnier, Hist. de France, tom. v. pp. 454, 455.--Sismondi, Hist.

des Francais, tom. xv. cap. 29.

[13] Zurita, Hist. del Rey Hernando, tom. i. lib. 5, cap. 61.--Garnier, Hist. de France, tom. v. pp. 454, 455.--Bernaldez, Reyes Catolicos, MS., cap. 190.--Giannone, Istoria di Napoli, lib. 29, cap. 4.

No particular mention was made of the Italian allies in the capitulation.

It so happened that several of the great Angevin lords, who had been taken in the preceding campaigns of Calabria, were found in arms in the place.

(Giovio, Vita Magni Gonsalvi, fol. 252, 253, 269.) Gonsalvo, in consequence of this manifest breach of faith, refusing to regard them as comprehended in the treaty, sent them all prisoners of state to the dungeons of Castel Nuovo in Naples. This action has brought on him much unmerited obloquy with the French writers. Indeed, before the treaty was signed, if we are to credit the Italian historians, Gonsalvo peremptorily refused to include the Neapolitan lords within it. Thus much is certain; that, after having been taken and released, they were now found under the French banners a second time. It seems not improbable, therefore, that the French, however naturally desirous they may have been of protection for their allies, finding themselves unable to enforce it, acquiesced in such an equivocal silence with respect to them as, without apparently compromising their own honor, left the whole affair to the discretion of the Great Captain.

With regard to the sweeping charge made by certain modern French historians against the Spanish general, of a similar severity to the other Italians indiscriminately, found in the place, there is not the slightest foundation for it in any contemporary authority. See Gaillard, Rivalite, tom. iv. p. 254.--Garnier, Hist. de France, tom. v. p. 456.--Varillas, Hist de Louis XII., tom. i. pp. 419, 420.

[14] Fleurange, Memoires, chap. 5, apud Pet.i.tot, Collection des Memoires, tom. xvi.--Bernaldez, Reyes Catolicos, MS., cap. 190.--Giovio, Vitae Ill.u.s.t. Virorum, fol. 269, 270.--Chronica del Gran Capitan, cap. 111.

[15] Brantome, who visited the banks of the Garigliano, some fifty years after this, beheld them in imagination thronged with the shades of the ill.u.s.trious dead, whose bones lay buried in its dreary and pestilent marshes. There is a sombre coloring in the vision of the old chronicler, not unpoetical. Vies des Hommes Ill.u.s.tres, disc. 6.

[16] Garnier, Hist. de France, tom. v. pp. 456-458.--Giovio, Vitae Ill.u.s.t.

Virorum, fol. 269, 270.--Guicciardini, Istoria, tom. i. lib. 6, pp. 332, 337.--St. Gelais, Hist. de Louys XII., p. 173.

[17] Buonaccorsi, Diario, p. 86.--Ulloa, Vita di Carlo V., fol. 23.-- Bernaldez, Reyes Catolicos, MS., cap. 190.--Giovio, Vitae Ill.u.s.t. Virorum, ubi supra.--Gaillard, Rivalite, tom. iv. pp. 254-256.

[18] Giovio, Vita Magni Gonsalvi, fol. 270, 271.--Quintana, Espanoles Celebres, tom. i. p. 298.--Chronica del Gran Capitan, lib. 3, cap. 1.-- Abarca, Reyes de Aragon, tom. ii. fol. 359.--Bernaldez, Reyes Catolicos, MS., cap. 190, 191.

[19] Giovio, Vitae Ill.u.s.t. Virorum, fol. 271.

[20] "Per servir sempre, vincitrice o vinia."

The Italians began at this early period to feel the pressure of those woes, which a century and a half later wrung out of Filicaja the beautiful lament, which has lost something of its touching graces, even under the hand of Lord Byron.

[21] Zurita, a.n.a.les, tom. v. lib. 5, cap. 64.--Guicciardini, Istoria, lib.

6, pp. 340, 341.--Abarca, Reyes de Aragon, ubi supra.--Carta del Gran Capitan, MS.

[22] Giovio, Vitae Ill.u.s.t. Virorum, fol. 270, 271.--Chronica del Gran Capitan, lib. 8, cap. 1.--Ulloa, Vita di Carlo V., fol. 24.

[23] Guicciardini, Istoria, lib. 6, p. 338.--Zurita, Hist. del Rey Hernando, tom. i. lib. 5, cap. 64.--Abarca, Reyes de Aragon, rey 30, cap.

14.--Buonaccorsi, Diario, pp. 85, 86.

[24] Zurita, a.n.a.les, tom. v. lib. 5, cap. 66.

The campaign against Louis XII. had cost the Spanish crown 331 _cuentos_ or millions of maravedies, equivalent to 9,268,000 dollars of the present time. A moderate charge enough for the conquest of a kingdom; and made still lighter to the Spaniards by one-fifth of the whole being drawn from Naples itself. See Abarca, Reyes de Aragon, tom. ii. fol. 359.

[25] The treaty is to be found in Dumont, Corps Diplomatique, tom. iv. no.

26, pp. 51-53.--Zurita, a.n.a.les, tom. v. lib. 5, cap. 64.--Machiavelli, Legazione Seconda a Francia, let. 9, Feb. 11.

[26] Brantome, Oeuvres, tom. ii. disc. 11.--Fleurange, Memoires, chap. 5, apud Pet.i.tot, Collection des Memoires, tom. xvi.--Buonaccorsi, Diario, p.

85.--Gaillard, Rivalite, tom. iv. pp. 255-260. See also Memoires de Bayard, chap. 25; the good knight, "sans peur et sans reproche," made one of this intrepid little band, having joined Louis d'Ars after the capitulation of Gaeta.

[27] Machiavelli, Arte della Guerra. lib. 2.--Machiavelli considers the victory over D'Aubigny at Seminara as imputable in a great degree to the peculiar arms of the Spaniards, who, with their short swords and s.h.i.+elds, gliding in among the deep ranks of the Swiss spearmen, brought them to close combat, where the former had the whole advantage. Another instance of the kind occurred at the memorable battle of Ravenna some years later.

Ubi supra.

[28] "Prima," says Livy pithily, speaking of the Gauls in the time of the Republic, "eorum proelia plus quam virorum, postrema minu quam foeminarum." Lib. 10, cap. 28.

[29] Two of the most distinguished of these were the Colonnas, Prospero and Fabrizio, of whom frequent mention has been made in our narrative. The best commentary on the military reputation of the latter, is the fact, that he is selected by Machiavelli as the princ.i.p.al interlocutor in his Dialogues on the Art of War.

[30] See Dubos, Ligue de Cambray, dissert. prelim., p. 60.--This French writer has shown himself superior to national distinctions, in the liberal testimony which he bears to the character of these brave troops. See a similar strain of panegyric from the chivalrous pen of old Brantome, Oeuvres, tom. i. disc. 27.

CHAPTER XVI.

ILLNESS AND DEATH OF ISABELLA.--HER CHARACTER.

1504.

Decline of the Queen's Health.--Alarm of the Nation.--Her Testament.--And Codicil.--Her Resignation and Death.--Her Remains Transported to Granada.

--Isabella's Person.--Her Manners.--Her Character.--Parallel with Queen Elizabeth.

The acquisition of an important kingdom in the heart of Europe, and of the New World beyond the waters, which promised to pour into her lap all the fabled treasures of the Indies, was rapidly raising Spain to the first rank of European powers. But, in this noontide of her success, she was to experience a fatal shock in the loss of that ill.u.s.trious personage, who had so long and so gloriously presided over her destinies. We have had occasion to notice more than once the declining state of the queen's health during the last few years. Her const.i.tution had been greatly impaired by incessant personal fatigue and exposure, and by the unremitting activity of her mind. It had suffered far more severely, however, from a series of heavy domestic calamities, which had fallen on her with little intermission since the death of her mother in 1496. The next year, she followed to the grave the remains of her only son, the heir and hope of the monarchy, just entering on his prime; and in the succeeding, was called on to render the same sad offices to the best beloved of her daughters, the amiable queen of Portugal.

The severe illness occasioned by this last blow terminated in a dejection of spirits, from which she never entirely recovered. Her surviving children were removed far from her into distant lands; with the occasional exception, indeed, of Joanna, who caused a still deeper pang to her mother's affectionate heart, by exhibiting infirmities which justified the most melancholy presages for the future.

Far from abandoning herself to weak and useless repining, however, Isabella sought consolation, where it was best to be found, in the exercises of piety, and in the earnest discharge of the duties attached to her exalted station. Accordingly, we find her attentive as ever to the minutest interests of her subjects; supporting her great minister Ximenes in his schemes of reform, quickening the zeal for discovery in the west, and, at the close of the year 1503, on the alarm of the French invasion, rousing her dying energies, to kindle a spirit of resistance in her people. These strong mental exertions, however, only accelerated the decay of her bodily strength, which was gradually sinking under that sickness of the heart, which admits of no cure, and scarcely of consolation.

In the beginning of that very year she had declined so visibly, that the cortes of Castile, much alarmed, pet.i.tioned her to provide for the government of the kingdom after her decease, in case of the absence or incapacity of Joanna. [1] She seems to have rallied in some measure after this, but it was only to relapse into a state of greater debility, as her spirits sunk under the conviction, which now forced itself on her, of her daughter's settled insanity.

Early in the spring of the following year, that unfortunate lady embarked for Flanders, where, soon after her arrival, the inconstancy of her husband, and her own ungovernable sensibilities, occasioned the most scandalous scenes. Philip became openly enamoured of one of the ladies of her suite, and his injured wife, in a paroxysm of jealousy, personally a.s.saulted her fair rival in the palace, and caused the beautiful locks, which had excited the admiration of her fickle husband, to be shorn from her head. This outrage so affected Philip, that he vented his indignation against Joanna in the coa.r.s.est and most unmanly terms, and finally refused to have any further intercourse with her. [2]

The account of this disgraceful scene reached Castile in the month of June. It occasioned the deepest chagrin and mortification to the unhappy parents. Ferdinand soon after fell ill of a fever, and the queen was seized with the same disorder, accompanied by more alarming symptoms. Her illness was exasperated by anxiety for her husband, and she refused to credit the favorable reports of his physicians while he was detained from her presence. His vigorous const.i.tution, however, threw off the malady, while hers gradually failed under it. Her tender heart was more keenly sensible than his to the unhappy condition of their child, and to the gloomy prospects which awaited her beloved Castile. [3]