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Martin A. S. Hume. Queens of old Spain
Queens of old Spain
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
ILLUSTRATIONS
BOOK I. ISABEL THE CATHOLIC
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
BOOK II. JOAN THE MAD
BOOK III. I. MARY TUDOR. QUEEN OF ENGLAND AND SPAIN
BOOK III. II. ISABEL OF THE PEACE (ELIZABETH DE VALOIS)
BOOK IV. I. ISABEL OF BOURBON
BOOK IV. II. MARIANA OF AUSTRIA
BOOK V. I. MARIE LOUISE OF ORLEANS
BOOK V. II. MARIE ANNE OF NEUBURG
EPILOGUE
INDEX
Отрывок из книги
Martin A. S. Hume
Published by Good Press, 2021
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All Castile and Leon, with their daughter kingdoms, were looking and praying for a saviour who could bring peace and security; and at first sight it would seem as if a turbulent State that had never been ruled by a woman could hardly expect that either of the young princesses who claimed the crown could bring in its dire need the qualities desired for its salvation. Isabel’s popularity, especially in Valladolid, Avila and Segovia, was great; and at the moment of the King’s death her friends were the stronger and more prompt, for Villena had just died, the Beltraneja was but a child of twelve, and the Queen-Mother, discredited and scorned, was lingering out her last days in a convent in Madrid.[22] The towns, for the most part, awaited events in awe, fearing to take the wrong side, and a breathless pause followed the death of the King. Isabel was at Segovia, and under her influence and that of Cabrera, the city was the first to throw off the mask and raised the pennons for Isabel and Ferdinand, to whom, in her presence, it swore allegiance and proclaimed sovereigns of Castile. Valladolid followed on the 29th December; whilst Madrid, whose fortress was in the hands of Villena’s son, declared for the Beltraneja. The nobles shuffled again; moved by personal interest or rivalry, the Archbishop of Toledo, abandoning Isabel out of jealousy of Cardinal Mendoza; whilst Alburquerque, the supposed father of the Beltraneja, joined her opponent, and civil war, aided by foreign invasion from Portugal, was organised to dispute with Isabel and her husband their right to the crown.
By rare good fortune the young couple, who were thus forced to fight for their splendid inheritance, were the greatest governing geniuses of their age. It is time to say something of their gifts and characters. They were both, at the time of their accession, twenty-three years of age, and, as we have seen, their experience of life had already been great and disillusioning. Isabel’s was incomparably the higher mind of the two. The combined dignity and sweetness of her demeanour captivated all those who approached her, whilst her almost ostentatious religious humility and devotion won the powerful commendation of the churchmen who had suffered so heavily during the reign of Henry. There is no reason to doubt her sincerity or her real good intentions any more than those of her great-grandson, Philip II., a very similar, though far inferior, character. Like him, she never flinched from inflicting what we now call cruelty in the pursuance of her aims, though she had no love for cruelty for its own sake. She was determined that Spain should be united, and that rigid orthodoxy should be the cementing bond; that the sacred sovereign of Castile should be supreme over the bodies and souls of men, for her crown in her eyes was the symbol of divine selection and inspiration, and nothing done in the service of God by His vice-regent could be wrong, great as the suffering that it might entail. She was certainly what our lax generation calls a bigot; but bigotry in her time and country was a shining virtue, and is still her greatest claim to the regard of many of her countrymen. She was unmerciful in her severity in suppressing disorder and revolt; but we have seen the state at which affairs had arrived in Castile when she acceded to the crown, and it is quite evident that nothing but a rod of iron governed by a heart of ice was adequate to cope with the situation. Terrible as was Isabel’s justice, it entailed in the end much less suffering than a continuance of the murderous anarchy she suppressed.[23] Her strength and activity of body matched her prodigious force of mind, and she constantly struck awe in her potential opponents by her marvellous celerity of movement over desolate tracts of country almost without roads, riding often throughout the night distances that appear at the present day to be almost incredible.
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