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The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3

W >> William H. Prescott >> The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3




These accumulated 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 circumjacent seas being
still left open as a common arena, on which the rival parties might meet,
and settle their respective titles 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 masses 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
constituent 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 constituting 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 mass 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 assisted 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 embarrassments 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 participation
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 furnishing 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
documents 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 shifting doubts, passions, 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 passages 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 assurance 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 principal 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 passions 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 class 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 sçavoit bien faire d'autres." Hist. de
Louys XII., p. 172.

[2] Idem, ubi supra.--Garnier, Hist. de France, tom. v. p. 410.--Gaillard,
Rivalité, tom. iv. pp. 238, 239.--Zurita, Anales, 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, Anales, 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 _méchanceté_ 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
España, tom. ii. pp. 690, 691.--et al.

[5] Seyssel, Hist. de Louys XII., p. 61.--St. Gelais, Hist. de Louys XII.,
p. 171.--Gaillard, Rivalité, 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 maître_
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
_châteaux 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 attitude assumed 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 unsurpassed by any who have
followed him.

[10] Philip is known in history by the title 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, Anales, MS., año 1503.--Gomez, De Rebus Gestis, fol. 45,
46.

He was born at Alcalá de Henares. Ximenes availed himself of this
circumstance 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 gratitude. 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 vassals. His eldest son was created
duke of Maqueda. Quincuagenas, MS., bat. 1, quinc. 2, dial. 1.--Col. de
Céd., 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 fortitude under her accumulated
sorrows. "Sentit, 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.--Mémoires de la Trémoille, chap. 19, apud Petitot, Collection
des Mémoires, tom. xiv.

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

The king of Navarre promised to oppose the passage 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, Anales,
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, Anales, ubi supra.--
Bernaldez, Reyes Católicos, MS., cap. 197, 198.--Carbajal, Anales, MS.,
año 1503.--Sandoval, Hist. del Emp. Carlos V., tom. i. p. 8.--Col. de
Cédulas, tom. i. no. 97.

The most authentic account of the siege of Salsas is to be found in the
correspondence of Gonzalo Ayora, dated in the Spanish camp. This
individual, equally eminent in letters and arms, filled the dissimilar
posts of captain of the royal guard and historiographer of the crown. He
served in the army at this time, and was present at all its operations.
Pref. ad Cartas, de Ayora; and Nic. Antonio, Biliotheca Nova, tom. i. p.
551.

[22] Peter Martyr, Opus Epist, epist. 263.

The loyal captain, Ayora, shows little of this Christian vein. He
concludes one of his letters with praying, no doubt most sincerely, "that
the Almighty would be pleased to infuse less benevolence into the hearts
of the sovereigns, and incite them to chastise and humble the proud
French, and strip them of their ill-gotten possessions, which, however
repugnant to their own godly inclinations, would tend greatly to replenish
their coffers, as well as those of their, faithful and loving subjects."
See this graceless petition in his Cartas, carta 9, p. 66.

[23] "Exaudivit igitur sancte reginee religiosorumque ac virginum preces
summus Altitonans." (Peter Martyr, Opus Epist., epist. 263.) The learned
Theban borrows an epithet more familiar to Greek and Roman than to
Christian ears.

[24] Zurita, Hist. del Rey Hernando, tom. i. lib. 5, cap. 54.--Abarca,
Reyes de Aragon, tom. ii. rey 30, cap. 13, sec. 11.-Peter Martyr, Opus
Epist., epist. 264.--Carbajal, Anales, MS., año 1503.--Bernaldez, Reyes
Católicos, MS., cap. 198.--Garnier, Hist. de France, tom. v. pp. 408,
409.--Gonzalo Ayora, Cartas, carta 11.--Oviedo, Quincuagenas, MS., dial.
de Deza.

Peter Martyr seems to have shared none of Isabella's scruples in regard to
bringing the enemy to battle. On the contrary, he indulges in a most
querulous strain of sarcasm against the Catholic king for his remissness
in this particular. "Quar elucescente die moniti nostri de Gallorum
discessu ad eos, at sero, concurrerunt. Rex Perpiniani agebat, ad millia
passuum sex non brevia, uti nosti. Propterea sero id actum, venit
concitato cursu, at sero. Ad hostes itur, at sero. Cernunt hostium acies,
at sero, at a longe. Distabant jam milliaria circiter duo. Ergo sero
Phryges sapuerunt. Cujus haec culpa, tu scrutator aliunde; mea est, si
nescis. Maximam dedit ea dies, quae est, si nescis, calendarum Novembrium
sexta, Hispanis ignominiam, et aliquando jacturam illis pariet
collachrymandam." Letter to the cardinal of Santa Cruz, epist. 262.

[25] Aleson, Annales de Navarra, tom. v. p. 113.

Oviedo, who was present in this campaign, seems to have been of the same
opinion. At least he says, "If the king had pursued vigorously, not a
Frenchman would have lived to carry back the tidings of defeat to his own
land." If we are to believe him, Ferdinand desisted from the pursuit at
the earnest entreaty of Bishop Deza, his confessor. Quincuagenas, MS.

[26] Zurita, Anales, tom. v. lib. 5, cap. 55.--Abarca, Reyes de Aragon,
tom. ii. rey 30, cap. 13, sec. 11.--Peter Martyr, Opus Epist., epist.
264.--Lanuza, Historias, tom. i. cap. 17.--Garibay, Compendio, tom. ii.
lib. 19, cap. 16.--Machiavelli, Legazione Prima a Roma, let. 27.

Mons. Varillas notices as the weak side of Louis XII., "une démangeaison
de faire la paix à contre temps, dont il fut travaillé durant toute sa
vie." (Politique de Ferdinand, liv. 1, p. 148.) A statesman shrewder than
Varillas, De Retz, furnishes, perhaps, the best key to this policy, in the
remark, "Les gens foibles ne plient jamais quand ils le doivent."




CHAPTER XIV.

ITALIAN WARS.--CONDITION OF ITALY.--FRENCH AND SPANISH ARMIES ON THE
GARIGLIANO.

1503.

Melancholy State of Italy.--Great Preparations of Louis.--Gonsalvo
Repulsed before Gaeta.--Armies on the Garigliano.--Bloody Passage of the
Bridge.--Anxious Expectation of Italy.--Critical Situation of the
Spaniards.--Gonsalvo's Resolution.--Heroism of Paredes and Bayard.


We must now turn our eyes towards Italy, where the sounds of war, which
had lately died away, were again heard in wilder dissonance than ever. Our
attention, hitherto, has been too exclusively directed to mere military
manoeuvres to allow us to dwell much on the condition of this unhappy
land. The dreary progress of our story, over fields of blood and battle,
might naturally dispose the imagination to lay the scene of action in some
rude and savage age; an age, at best, of feudal heroism, when the energies
of the soul could be roused only by the fierce din of war.

Far otherwise, however; the tents of the hostile armies were now pitched
in the bosom of the most lovely and cultivated regions on the globe;
inhabited by a people who had carried the various arts of policy and
social life to a degree of excellence elsewhere unknown; whose natural
resources had been augmented by all the appliances of ingenuity and
industry; whose cities were crowded with magnificent and costly works of
public utility; into whose ports every wind that blew wafted the rich
freights of distant climes; whose thousand hills were covered to their
very tops with the golden labors of the husbandman; and whose intellectual
development showed itself, not only in a liberal scholarship far
outstripping that of their contemporaries, but in works of imagination,
and of elegant art more particularly, which rivalled the best days of
antiquity. The period before us, indeed, the commencement of the sixteenth
century, was that of their meridian splendor, when Italian genius,
breaking through the cloud which had temporarily obscured its early dawn,
shone out in full effulgence; for we are now touching on the age of
Machiavelli, Ariosto, and Michael Angelo,--the golden age of Leo the
Tenth.

It is impossible, even at this distance of time, to contemplate without
feelings of sadness the fate of such a country, thus suddenly converted
into an arena for the bloody exhibitions of the gladiators of Europe; to
behold her trodden under foot by the very nations on whom she had freely
poured the light of civilization; to see the fierce soldiery of Europe,
from the Danube to the Tagus, sweeping like an army of locusts over her
fields, defiling her pleasant places, and raising the shout of battle, or
of brutal triumph under the shadow of those monuments of genius, which
have been the delight and despair of succeeding ages. It was the old story
of the Goths and Vandals acted over again. Those more refined arts of the
cabinet, on which the Italians were accustomed to rely, much more than on
the sword, in their disputes with one another, were of no avail against
these rude invaders, whose strong arm easily broke through the subtile
webs of policy which entangled the movements of less formidable
adversaries. It was the triumph of brute force over civilization,--one of
the most humiliating lessons by which Providence has seen fit to rebuke
the pride of human intellect. [1]

The fate of Italy inculcates a most important lesson. With all this
outward show of prosperity, her political institutions had gradually lost
the vital principle, which could alone give them stability or real value.
The forms of freedom, indeed, in most instances, had sunk under the
usurpation of some aspiring chief. Everywhere patriotism was lost in the
most intense selfishness. Moral principle was at as low an ebb in private,
as in public life. The hands, which shed their liberal patronage over
genius and learning, were too often red with blood. The courtly precincts,
which seemed the favorite haunt of the Muses, were too often the Epicurean
sty of brutish sensuality; while the head of the church itself, whose
station, exalted over that of every worldly potentate, should have raised
him at least above their grosser vices, was sunk in the foulest
corruptions that debase poor human nature. Was it surprising, then, that
the tree, thus cankered at heart, with all the goodly show of blossoms on
its branches, should have fallen before the blast, which now descended in
such pitiless fury from the mountains?

Had there been an invigorating national feeling, any common principle of
coalition among the Italian states; had they, in short, been true to
themselves, they possessed abundant resources in their wealth, talent, and
superior science, to have shielded their soil from violation.
Unfortunately, while the other European states had been augmenting their
strength incalculably by the consolidation of their scattered fragments
into one whole, those of Italy, in the absence of some great central point
round which to rally, had grown more and more confirmed in their original
disunion. Thus, without concert in action, and destitute of the vivifying
impulse of patriotic sentiment, they were delivered up to be the spoil and
mockery of nations, whom in their proud language they still despised as
barbarians; an impressive example of the impotence of human genius, and of
the instability of human institutions, however excellent in themselves,
when unsustained by public and private virtue. [2]

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