Читать книгу Queens of old Spain - Martin A. S. Hume - Страница 6

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Proudly reared upon a lofty cliff above the trickling Manzanares, there stood the granite palace that had gradually grown around the ancient Moorish fortress of Madrid. Like an eagle from its aerie, its tiny windows blinked across the tawny plain at the far-off glittering snow peaks of Guadarrama, standing forth clear and sharp against a cobalt sky. The Alcazar had been the scene of many strange happenings in the past; and for a hundred years chivalric splendour had run riot in its broad patios, with their arcades of slender columns, and in its tapestried halls, whose carved ceilings blazed with gold and colour. Frivolous, pleasure-loving, Juan II. of Castile, grandson of John of Gaunt, had through a long reign outdone in vain ostentation the epic poems and romances of chivalry that filled his brain, and he himself, with his attendant Nubian lion slouching by his side, had stalked through the Alcazar upon the cliff, a figure more picturesque than that of Amadis or Arthur. His lavish, easy-going son, Henry IV., had followed in his footsteps, and had made his palace of Madrid a home of dissolute magnificence and humiliating debauchery, unexampled even in that age of general decadence.

But rarely had scenes at once so pregnant of evil, and yet so ostensibly joyous, been enacted in the palace of Madrid as on the 17th March 1462. Greed, hate and jealousy, raged beneath silken gowns and ermine mantles; nay, beneath the gorgeous vestments of the great churchmen who stood grouped before the altar in the palace chapel, though smiling faces and words of pleasure were seen and heard on every side. For to the King, after eight years of fruitless marriage, an heiress had been born, and the court and people of Castile and Leon were bidden to make merry and welcome their future Queen. Bull fights, tournaments, and cane contests, the songs of minstrels and plenteous banquets, had for days beguiled a populace palled with gaudy shows; and now the sacred ceremonies of the Church were to sanctify the babe whose advent had moved so many hearts to shocked surprise. The King, a shaggy, red-haired giant with slack, lazy limbs and feeble face, towered in his golden crown and velvet mantle over his nine-year-old half-brother Alfonso by his side. The child, under a canopy, was borne in state up to the font by Count Alba de Liste, and the stalwart, black-browed primate of Spain, Alfonso Carrillo, Archbishop of Toledo, who, with three attendant bishops, performed the ceremony, blessed the baby girl unctuously beneath the King’s lymphatic gaze, though he had already resolved to ruin her. By the side of the font stood the sponsors: a girl of eleven and a sturdy noble in splendid attire, with his wife. All around, the courtiers, their mouths wreathed in doubtful smiles which their lifted brows belied, glanced alternately at the little group of sponsors, and at the noblest figure of all the courtly throng: a young man glittering with gems who stood behind the King. Tall, almost, as Henry himself, with flashing dark eyes and jet black hair, a fair skin and gallant mien, this youth formed with the King, and the group at the font, the elements of a great drama, which ended in the renascence of Spain. For the young man was Beltran de la Cueva, the new Count of Ledesma, who, all the court was whispering, was really the father of the new-born Princess, and the sponsors, besides the Frenchman Armignac, were the gorged and spoiled favourite of the King, the all-powerful Juan Pacheco, Marquis of Villena, and his wife, and the King’s half-sister, Princess Isabel of Castile. The girl had seen nothing of court life, for up to this time, from her orphaned babyhood, she had lived with her widowed mother and younger brother in neglected retirement at the lone castle of Arevalo, immersed in books and the gentle arts that modest maids were taught; but she went through her part of the ceremony composedly, and with simple dignity. She was already tall for her age, with a fair, round face, large, light blue eyes, and the reddish hair of her Plantagenet ancestors; and if she, in her innocence, guessed at some of the tumultuous passions that were silently raging around her, she made no sign, and bore herself calmly, as befitted the daughter of a long line of kings.^[1]

Seven weeks afterwards, on the 9th May, in the great hall of the palace, the nobles, prelates, and deputies of the chartered towns met to swear allegiance to the new heiress of Castile. One by one, as they advanced to kneel and kiss the tiny hand of the unconscious infant, they frowned and whispered beneath their breath words of scorn and indignation which they dared not utter openly, for all around, and thronging the corridors and courtyards, there stood with ready lances the Morisco bodyguard of the King, eager to punish disobedience. And so, though the insulting nickname of the new Infanta Juana, the Beltraneja, after the name of her assumed father, passed from mouth to mouth quietly, public protest there was none.^[2]

Already before the birth of the hapless Beltraneja, the scandal of Henry’s life, his contemptible weakness and the acknowledged sexual impotence which had caused his divorce from his first wife, had made his court a battle ground for rival ambitions. Like the previous Kings of his house, which was raised to the throne by a fratricidal revolution, and himself a rebel during his father’s lifetime, Henry IV. had lavished crown gifts upon noble partisans to such an extent as to have reduced his patrimony to nought. Justice was openly bought and sold, permanent grants upon public revenues were bartered for small ready payments, law and order were non-existent outside the strong walls of the fortified cities, and the whole country was a prey to plundering nobles, who, either separately or in “leagues,” tyrannised and robbed as they listed.^[3] Feudalism had never been strong in the realms of Castile, because the frontier nobles, who for centuries pushed back gradually the Moorish power, always had to depend upon conciliating the towns they occupied, in order that the new regime might be more welcome than the one displaced. The germ of institutions in Spain had ever been the municipality, not the village grouped around the castle or the abbey as in England, and the soldier noble in Spain, unlike the English or German baron, had to win the support of townsmen, not to dispose of agricultural serfs. But when the Moors in Spain had been reduced to impotence, and a series of weak kings had been raised to the throne as the puppets of nobles; then when feudalism was dying elsewhere, it attempted to raise its head in Spain, capturing the government of towns on the one hand and beggaring and dominating the King on the other. By the time of which we are now speaking, the process was well nigh complete; and the only safeguard against the absolute tyranny of the nobles, was their mutual greed and jealousy.

For years Juan Pacheco, Marquis of Villena, had ruled the King with a rod of iron. The grants and gifts he had extorted for himself and his friends made him more powerful than any other force in the land. But there were those who sulked apart from him, nobles, some of them, of higher lineage and greater hereditary territories than his; and when the handsome foot page, Beltran de la Cueva, captured the good graces of the King and his gay young Portuguese wife, Queen Juana, the enemies of Villena saw in the rising star an instrument by which he might be humbled. After the Beltraneja’s birth and christening, honours almost royal were piled upon Beltran de la Cueva; and Villena and his uncle, Alfonso Carrillo, Archbishop of Toledo, grew ever more indignant and discontented. Only a fortnight after the Cortes had sworn allegiance to the new Princess, Villena drew up a secret protest against the act, alleging the illegitimacy of the child,^[4] and soon open opposition to King and favourite was declared.

There is no space here to relate in detail the complicated series of intrigues and humiliations that followed. The King on one occasion was forced to hide in his own palace from the assaulting soldiery of Villena. To buy the goodwill of the jealous favourite towards his little daughter he went so far as to agree to a marriage between the Beltraneja and Villena’s son;^[5] and more humiliating still, in December 1464, he consented to the inquiry of a commission of churchmen nominated by Villena and his friends, to inquire into the legitimacy of his reputed daughter. The inquiry elicited much piquant but entirely contradictory evidence as to the virility of the King, who, it was admitted on all hands, delighted in the society of ladies, and aroused the violent jealousy of the Queen; but, although with our present lights there seems to have been no valid reason for disinheriting the princess, the commission was sufficiently in doubt to recommend the King to make the best terms he could with the rebels. The King’s sister, Princess Isabel, who at the time lived at Court, was also used as an instrument by Henry to pacify the league against him. She had been betrothed when quite a child at Arevalo to Prince Charles of Viana, eldest son of the King of Aragon, and in right of his mother himself King of Navarre; a splendid match which, failing issue from Henry and from her younger brother Alfonso, might have led to the union of all Spain in one realm. But Charles of Viana had already in 1461 fallen a victim to the hate and jealousy of his stepmother, Juana Enriquez, daughter of a great Castilian noble, Don Fadrique, the Admiral of the realm, and Isabel became to her brother a valuable diplomatic asset. Before the storm of war burst Henry attempted to wed his sister to Alfonso V. of Portugal, his wife’s brother, and so to prevent her claims to the Castilian crown being urged to the detriment of the Beltraneja; but the match had no attraction for the clever cautious girl of thirteen; for the suitor was middle-aged and ugly, and already her own genius or crafty councillors had suggested to her the husband who would best serve her own interests. So she gravely reminded her brother that she, a Castilian princess, could not legally be bestowed in marriage without the formal ratification of the Cortes.

In September 1564 Beltran de la Cueva received the great rank of Master of Santiago, which endowed him not only with vast revenues, but the disposal of an armed force second to none in the kingdom, and this new folly of the King was the signal for revolt. A party of nobles immediately seized Valladolid against the King, and though the townspeople promptly expelled them and proclaimed the loyalty of the city, the issue between the factions was now joined. On the following day, 16th September, an attempt that nearly succeeded was made to capture and kidnap the King himself near Segovia. He was a poor, feeble-minded creature, hating strife and danger, and, though some of his stronger councillors protested against such weakness, he consented to meet the revolted nobles, and redress their grievances. In October Villena, the Archbishop of Toledo, Count Benavente, the Admiral Don Fadrique, and the rest of the rebels, met Henry between Cabezon and Cigales, and in three interviews, during their stay of five weeks, dictated to the wretched King their demands.^[6] The King was to dismiss his Moorish guard and become a better Christian: he was to ask for no more money without the consent of the nobles, to deprive Cueva of the Mastership of Santiago, recognise his own impotence and the bastardy of his daughter, and acknowledge as his heir his half-brother Alfonso, whom he was to deliver to the guardianship of Villena. On the 30th November the nobles and the King took the oath to hold the boy Alfonso as the heir of Spain; and then Henry, a mere cypher thenceforward, sadly wended his way to Segovia, where the commission to inquire into the shameful question of his virility was still sitting,^[7] and Villena and his uncle, the warlike Archbishop, were thus practically the rulers of Spain. But though Henry consented to everything he characteristically tried to avoid the spirit of the agreement. Beltran de la Cueva was deprived of the Mastership of Santiago, but he was made Duke of Alburquerque in exchange for the loss, and the poor little disinherited Beltraneja was treated with greater consideration than before.

When civil war was seen to be inevitable in the spring of 1465, Henry carried his wife and child with his sister Isabel to Salamanca, whilst the Archbishop of Toledo, in the name of the revolted nobles, seized the walled city of Avila, where within a few days he was joined by Villena and his friends, bringing with them the Infante Alfonso, who, in pursuance of the agreement made with the King at Cigales, had received the oath of allegiance as heir to the crown. From the King it was clear that the nobles could hope for no more, for he had summoned the nation to arms to oppose them; but from a child King of their own making, rich grants could still be wrung, and for the first time since the dying days of the Gothic monarchy, the sacredness of the anointed Sovereign of Castile was mocked and derided. In April 1565, at Plascencia, the nobles swore secretly to hold Alfonso as King; and on the 5th June 1364, on a mound within sight of the walls of Avila, the public scene was enacted that shocked Spain like a sacrilege. Upon a staging there was seated a lay figure in mourning robes, with a royal crown upon its head; a sword of state before it, and in the hand a sceptre. A great multitude of people with bated breath awaited the living actors in the scene; and soon there issued from the city gate a brilliant cavalcade of nobles and bishops, headed by Villena escorting the little prince Alfonso. Arriving before the scaffolding, and in mockery saluting the figure, most of the nobles mounted the platform, whilst Villena, the Master of Alcantara, and Count Medillin, with a bodyguard, conveyed the Infante to a coign of vantage some distance away. Then in a loud voice was read upon the platform the impeachment of the King, which was summed up under four heads. For the first, it ran, Henry of Castile is unworthy to enjoy the regal dignity; and as the tremendous words were read the Archbishop of Toledo stepped forth and tore the royal crown from the brows of the lifeless doll: for the second, he is unfit to administer justice in the realm, and the Count of Plascencia removed the sword of state from its place: for the third, no rule or government should be entrusted to him, and Count of Benavente took from the figure’s powerless grasp the sceptre which it held: for the fourth, he should be deprived of the throne and the honour due to kings, whereupon Don Diego Lopez de Zuñiga cast the dummy down and trampled it under foot, amidst the jeers and curses of the crowd. When this was done, and the platform cleared, young Alfonso was raised aloft in the arms of men that all might see, and a great shout went up of “Castilla, Castilla, for the King Don Alfonso,” and then, seated on the throne, the boy gave his hand to kiss to those who came to pay their new sovereign fealty. Like wildfire across the steppes and mountains of Castile sped the awful news, and Henry in Salamanca was soon surrounded by hosts of subjects whose reverence for a sacrosanct King had been wounded by what they regarded as impious blasphemy.

Both factions flew to arms, and for months civil war raged, the walled cities being alternately besieged and captured by both parties. Isabel herself remained with the King, usually at Segovia or Madrid; though with our knowledge of her character and tastes, she can have had little sympathy with the tone of her brother’s court. At one time during the lingering struggle in 1466, Henry endeavoured to win Villena and his family from the side of rebellion by betrothing Isabel to Don Pedro Giron, Master of Calatrava, Villena’s brother. The suitor was an uncouth boor, and that an Infanta of Castile should be sacrificed in marriage with an upstart such as he was too much for Isabel’s pride and great ambition. Nothing in the world, she said, should bring her to such a humiliation; though the King, careless of her protests, petitioned the Pope to dispense Don Pedro from his pledge of celibacy as Master of a monkish military order. Isabel’s faithful friend, Doña Beatriz Bobadilla, wife of Andres Cabrera, High Steward of the King, and Commander of the fortress of Segovia, was as determined as her mistress that the marriage should not take place, and swore herself to murder Don Pedro, if necessary, to prevent it. A better way was found than by Dona Beatriz’s dagger, for when the papal dispensation arrived, and the prospective bridegroom set out in triumph to claim his bride, poison cut short his career as soon as he left his home. Whether Isabel herself was an accomplice of the act will never be known. She probably would not have hesitated to sanction it in the circumstances, according to the ethics of the time; for she never flinched, as her brother did, at inflicting suffering for what she considered necessary ends.

On the 20th August 1467, the main bodies of both factions met on the historic battlefield of Olmedo, the warlike Archbishop of Toledo, clad in armour covered by a surcoat embroidered with the holy symbols, led into battle the boy pretender Alfonso; whilst the royal favourite, Beltran de la Cueva, now Duke of Alburquerque, on the King’s side, matched the valour of the Churchman.^[8] Both sides suffered severely, but the pusillanimity of the King caused the fight to be regarded as a defeat for him, and the capture of his royal fortress of Segovia soon afterwards proved his impotence in arms so clearly, that a sort of modus vivendi was arranged, by which for nearly a year each King issued decrees and ostensibly ruled the territories held by his partisans.^[9]

At length, in July 1468, the promising young pretender Alfonso died suddenly and mysteriously in his fifteenth year, at Cardeñosa, near Avila; perhaps of plague, as was said at the time, but more probably of poison;^[10] and the whole position was at once revolutionised. Isabel had been in the Alcazar of Segovia with her friends the commander and his wife when the city was surrendered to the rebels, and from that time, late in 1567, she had followed the fortunes of Alfonso, with whom she was at his death. She at once retired broken-hearted to the convent of Santa Clara in Avila, but not, we may be certain, unmindful of the great change wrought in her prospects by her brother’s premature death. She was nearly seventeen years of age, learned and precocious far beyond her years; the events that had passed around her for the last six years had matured her naturally strong judgment, and there is no doubt from what followed that she had already decided upon her course of action. She was without such affectionate guidance as girls of her age usually enjoy; for her unhappy widowed mother, to whom she was always tender and kind, had already fallen a victim to the hereditary curse of the house of Portugal, to which she belonged, and lived thenceforward in lethargic insanity in her castle of Arevalo. Isabel’s brother the King was her enemy, and she had no other near relative: the churchmen and nobles who had risen against Henry, and were now around her, were, it must have been evident to her, greedy rogues bent really upon undermining the royal power for their own benefit; and deeply devout as Isabel was, she was quite unblinded by the illusion that the Archbishop and bishops who led the revolt were moved to their action by any considerations of morality or religion. On the other hand, the rebellious nobles and ecclesiastics could not persist in their revolt without a royal figure head. Young Alfonso, a mere child, had been an easy tool, and doubtless the leaders thought that this silent, self-possessed damsel would be quite as facile to manage.

They did not have to wait many days for proof to the contrary. The Archbishop of Toledo was the mouthpiece of his associates. Within the venerable walls of the royal convent at Avila he set before Isabel a vivid picture of the evils of her elder brother’s rule, his shameful laxity of life, his lavish squandering of the nation’s wealth upon unworthy objects, and the admitted illegitimacy of the daughter he wished to make his heiress; and the Archbishop ended by offering to Isabel, in the name of the nobles, the crowns of Castile. The wearer of these crowns, wrested painfully through centuries of struggle from intruding infidels, had always been held sacred. The religious exaltation born of the reconquest had invested the Christian sovereigns in the eyes of their subjects with divine sanction and special saintly patronage. To attack them was not disloyalty alone, but sacrilege; and the deposition of Henry at Avila had, as we have seen, thrilled Spain with horror. It was no part of Isabel’s plan to do anything that might weaken the reverence that surrounded the throne to which she knew now she might succeed. So her answer to the prelate was firm as well as wise. With many sage reflections taken from the didactic books that had always been her study, she declared that she would never accept a crown that was not hers by right. She desired to end the miserable war, she said, and to be reconciled to her brother and sovereign. If the nobles desired to serve her they would not try to make her Queen before her time, but persuade the King to acknowledge her as his heir, since they assured her that the Princess Juana was the fruit of adultery.

At first the nobles were dismayed at an answer that some thought would mean ruin to them. But the Archbishop, Carrillo, knew the weakness of Henry, and whispered to Villena as they descended the convent stairs, that the Infanta’s resolve to claim the heirship would mean safety and victory for them. Little did he or the rest of the nobles know the great spirit and iron will of the girl with whom they had to deal. No time was lost in approaching the King. He was ready to agree to anything for a quiet life, and Alburquerque, and even the great Cardinal Mendoza, agreed with him that an accord was advisable; though it might be broken afterwards when the nobles were disarmed. Before the end of August all was settled, and the cities of Castile had sent their deputies to take the oath of allegiance to Isabel as heiress to the crown. A formal meeting was arranged to take place between Henry and his sister at a place called the Venta de los Toros de Guisando, a hostelry famous for some prehistoric stone figures of undetermined beasts in the neighbourhood. All was amiable on the surface. Henry embraced his sister and promised her his future affection, settling upon her the principality of Asturias and Oviedo, and the cities of Avila, Huete, Medina, and many others, with all revenues and jurisdictions as from the beginning of the revolt (September 1464).^[11] But by the agreement Isabel was bound not to marry without the King’s consent, and it is evident that to this condition Henry and his friends looked for rendering their concessions voidable.

The intrigues of the two parties of Castile were therefore now centred upon the marriage of the Princess. Suitors were not lacking. If we are to believe Hall, Edward IV. of England, before his marriage with Elizabeth Grey, was approached by the Spaniards, and it is certain that his brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, was at one time a wooer. Either of them would have suited Henry of Castile, because it would have removed Isabel from Spain. A Portuguese would have also been acceptable to the same party, because Portugal was naturally on the side of the Beltraneja and her Portuguese mother. But Isabel had other views, and the only suitors that were entertained seriously were the Duke of Guienne, the brother of Louis XI., and the young Ferdinand of Aragon, the son and heir of John II. and nephew of the doughty old Admiral of Castile, who had stood by the side of the nobles in their revolt. There was never any doubt as to which of the suitors Isabel favoured. The Frenchman was reported to her as a poor, puny creature with weak legs and watery eyes, whilst Ferdinand, a youth of her own age, was praised to the skies for his manliness, his good looks, and his abilities, by those whose judgment she trusted. It is impossible to say whether Isabel as yet fully understood what such a marriage might mean to Spain; but it is certain that the wicked old John II. of Aragon was quite aware of its advantages for his own realm.

The house of Aragon, with its domains of Sicily and Naples, and its secular ambition towards the east, had found itself everywhere opposed by the growing power of France. The Mediterranean, the seat of empire for centuries, had no finer havens than those under the sceptre of Aragon, but the Catalans were harsh and independent with their kings, and sparing of their money for royal purposes. A poor king of Aragon could not hope, with his own unaided resources, to beat France on the Gulf of Lyons, and bear the red and yellow banner of Barcelona to the infidel Levant. But with the resources in men and money of greater Castile at his bidding, all was possible; and John II., who had not scrupled to murder his first-born son for the benefit of his second, and oust his own children from their mother’s realm of Navarre, was ready to go to any lengths to bring about the union which might realise the dream of Aragon.

From Isabel’s point of view, too, the match was a good one, apart from personal inclination. There is no doubt whatever that she was, even thus early, determined when her time came to crush the tyrannous nobles who had reduced Castile to anarchy and the sovereign to a contemptible lay figure. With her great talent she understood that to do this she must dispose of force apart from that afforded by any league of nobles in Castile itself; and she looked towards Aragon to lend her such additional strength. This fact, however, was not lost upon the greedy nobles, especially Villena. The turbulent leader of conspiracy already looked askance at the quiet determined girl who thus early imposed her will upon her followers, and throwing his power again on the side of the king he had once solemnly deposed, he seized the mastership of Santiago as his reward. In a panic at the fear of the Aragonese match, the king and Villena once more agreed to marry Isabel with the king of Portugal, Villena and Cardinal Mendoza being heavily bribed by the Portuguese for their aid.^[12] Isabel was at her town of Ocaña at the time, and her position was extremely difficult and perilous when the Portuguese envoys came to her with Villena to offer her their king’s hand. As Isabel had several weeks before secretly bound herself to marry Ferdinand of Aragon, her reply was a diplomatic refusal to the Portuguese advances; and Villena, enraged, was disposed to capture her on the spot and carry her a prisoner to Court. Inconvenient princes and princesses were easily removed in those days, and Isabel’s danger was great. But she had the faculty of compelling love and admiration; she was as brave as a lion and as cunning as a serpent, and the people of Ocaña made it quite evident to Villena that they would allow no violence to be offered to her. But clearly something must be done to prevent Isabel from becoming too strong; and as a last resort after her refusal to entertain the Portuguese match it was determined to capture her by force of arms. She was then at Madrigal, and Villena’s nephew, the Bishop of Burgos, bribed her servants to desert her in her hour of need: the King sent orders to the townsmen that no resistance was to be offered to his officers; and Cardinal Mendoza with a strong force marched towards Madrigal to arrest Isabel. But another archbishop, more warlike than he, Carrillo of Toledo, was before him. With the Admiral Don Fadrique and a band of horsemen, he swooped down from Leon and bore Isabel to safety amongst those who would have died for her, and entered into the great city of Valladolid after sunset on the 31st August 1469. No time was to be lost. Envoys were sent in disguise hurrying up to Saragossa, to hasten the coming of the bridegroom. The service was a dangerous one; for if Ferdinand had fallen into the hands of the Court party a short shrift would have been his. But the stake was great, and Juan II. of Aragon and his son, young as the latter was, did not stick at trifles. One difficulty, indeed, was overcome characteristically. Isabel was known to be rigidity itself in matters of propriety; and, as she and Ferdinand were second cousins, a papal bull was necessary for the marriage. The Pope, Paul II., was on the side of the Castilian Court, and no bull could be got from him; but Juan II. of Aragon and the Archbishop of Toledo carefully had one forged to satisfy Isabel’s scruples.^[13]

Whilst one imposing cavalcade of Aragonese bearing rich presents took the high road into Castile and occupied the attention of the King’s officers, a modest party of five merchants threaded the mountain paths by Soria, after leaving the Aragonese territory at Tarazona on the 7th October. The first day after entering Castile they rode well-nigh sixty miles; and late at night the little cavalcade approached the walled town of Osma, where Pedro Manrique and an armed escort were to meet them. The night was black, and their summons at the gates of the town was misunderstood: a cry went up that this was a body of the king’s men to surprise the place; and from the ramparts a shower of missiles flew upon the strangers below. One murderous stone whizzed within a few inches of the head of a fair-haired lad of handsome visage and manly bearing, who, as a servant, accompanied those who wore the garb of merchants. It was Ferdinand himself who thus narrowly escaped death, and a hurried explanation, a shouted password, the flashing of torches followed, and then the creaking drawbridge fell, the great gates clanged open, and the danger was over.^[14] The next day, with larger forces, Ferdinand reached Dueñas, in Leon, near Valladolid; and four days later, now in raiment that befitted a royal bridegroom, for his father had made him king of Sicily, he rode when most men slept to Valladolid. It was nearly midnight when he arrived, and the gates of the city were closed for the night, but a postern in the walls gave access to the house in which Isabel was lodged; and there the Archbishop of Toledo led him by hand into the presence of his bride, to whom he was solemnly betrothed by the Archbishop’s chaplain. It was all done so secretly that no inkling of it reached the slumbering town; and within two hours the youth was in the saddle again and reached Dueñas long before dawn.^[15]

On the 18th October 1469, four days later, all was ready for the public marriage, and Ferdinand entered the city this time in state, with Castilian and Aragonese men-at-arms and knights around him. Isabel was staying at the best house in Valladolid, that of her partisan, Juan Vivero, and the great hall was richly decked for the occasion of this, one of the fateful marriages of history, though none could have known that it was such at the time. The celebrant was the warlike Archbishop who had been so powerful a factor in bringing it about; and the next day, after mass, the married pair dined in public amidst the rejoicing of the faithful people of Valladolid. There was little pomp and circumstance in the wedding, for the times were critical, the realm disturbed, and money scarce; but imagination is stirred by the recollection of the great consequences that ensued upon it, and those who saw the event, even with their necessarily limited vision of its effects, must have realised that any splendour lavished upon it could not have enhanced its importance.

The news of the dreaded marriage filled the King and his court with dismay. Villena, in close league with Alburquerque and the Mendozas, now espoused the cause of the Beltraneja,^[16] who was declared the legitimate heiress to the Crown, and betrothed to Isabel’s former suitor, the Duke of Guienne, in the presence of the assembled nobles, at the monastery of Loyola, near Segovia. It mattered not, apparently, that the very men who now swore fealty to Juana, the hapless Beltraneja, had previously denounced her as a bastard: they wanted a puppet, not a mistress, as Isabel was likely to be, and they were quite ready to perjure themselves in their own interests. Isabel was formally deprived of all her grants and privileges, even of the lordship of her town of Dueñas, near Valladolid;^[17] where she and Ferdinand had kept their little court, and where their first child had just been born (October 1470), a daughter, to whom they gave the name of Isabel.

Ferdinand could not remain long in idleness, and was soon summoned by his father to aid him in a war with France, being absent from his wife for over a year, winning fresh experience and credit both as soldier and negotiator. In the meanwhile, things were going badly again for the Beltraneja. Her French betrothed died in May 1472; and some of the nobles, jealous of the greed of Villena, were once more wavering, and making secret approaches to Isabel. She had bold and zealous friends in the Chamberlain Cabrera, who held the strong castle of Segovia, and his wife, Beatriz de Bobadilla.^[18] In the last weeks of 1473, Doña Beatriz and her husband urged Henry to forgive and receive his sister. She was, they told him, being persecuted by the Marquis of Villena, and had meant no harm in her marriage with the man she loved. Henry was doubtful, but Cardinal Mendoza and Count Benavente had changed sides again, and now quietly used their influence in Isabel’s favour. A grudging promise was given by the King, but it was enough for Doña Beatriz; and, disguised as a farmer’s wife, she set forth from Segovia on a market pad; and alone over the snowy roads, hurried to carry the good news to the Princess in the town of Aranda, which had just been surrendered to her by the townsfolk. A few days afterwards, on further advice from Doña Beatriz, Isabel, escorted by the Archbishop of Toledo and his men-at-arms, travelled through the night, and before the first streak of dawn on the 28th December 1473, they were admitted into the Alcazar of Segovia, where no force but treachery could harm her.

Villena’s son, who, fearing betrayal, had refused to enter the city when he had come with the King weeks before, and had remained in the neighbourhood at the famous Geronomite monastery of El Parral, founded by his father, fled at the news. His father, with Alburquerque and the Constable of Castile, Count of Haro, at once met at Cuellar, and sent an insolent order to Henry to expel his sister from Segovia. It came too late, however. The King, by this time, had met Isabel, who had received him at the gate of the Alcazar, and professed her love and duty to him. In a speech full of womanly wisdom,^[19] she said she had come to pray him to put aside anger towards her, for she meant no evil; and all she asked was that he should fulfil his oath taken at Toros de Guisando, and acknowledge her as heiress of Castile. ‘For by the laws of God and man, the succession belonged to her.’ Weak Henry swayed from one side to the other like a reed in the wind, as either party had his ear; and at last Isabel took the bold course of sending secretly for Ferdinand, who had just returned from Aragon. The risk was great, but Isabel knew, at least, that she could depend upon the Commander of the Alcazar of Segovia, and Ferdinand secretly entered the fortress on the 4th January 1474. It was a difficult matter for Doña Beatriz to persuade the King to receive his young brother-in-law; but she succeeded at last, and when Henry had consented, he did the thing handsomely, and they all rode together through the city in state, with great show of affection and rejoicing. On Twelfth Day, Doña Beatriz and her husband gave a great banquet to the royal party^[20] at the Bishop’s palace, between the Alcazar and the Cathedral. Whilst the minstrels were playing in the hall after dinner, the King suddenly fell ill. Violent vomiting and purging seemed to point to poison, and the alarm was great. Prayers and processions continued night and day, and the unfortunate man seemed to recover; but, though he lived for nearly a year longer, he never was well again, the irritation of the stomach continuing incessantly until he sank from weakness.

In the interim both factions interminably worried him to settle the succession. Sometimes he would lean to Isabel’s friends, sometimes to Villena and Alburquerque, but Isabel herself, wise and cautious, knew where safety alone for her could be found, and took care not to stir outside the Alcazar of Segovia, in the firm keeping of Cabrera, who himself was in the firm keeping of his wife, Doña Beatriz. Once in the summer it was found that the King had treacherously agreed that Villena’s forces should surreptitiously enter the town and occupy the towers of the cathedral, whence they might throw explosives into the Alcazar and capture Isabel on the ground that she was poisoning the King; but the plan was frustrated, and Henry, either in fear or ashamed of his part of the transaction, left Segovia to place himself in the hands of Villena at Cuellar. Greedy to the last, Villena carried the sick King to Estremadura to obtain the surrender of some towns there that he coveted; but to Henry’s expressed grief, and the relief of the country, the insatiable favourite died unexpectedly of a malignant gathering in the throat on the way, and the King returned to Madrid, himself a dying man. His worthless life flickered out before dawn on the 12th December 1474, and his last plans were for the rehabilitation of the Beltraneja. He is said to have left a will bequeathing her the succession; but Cardinal Mendoza, Count Benavente, and his other executors, never produced such a document, which, moreover, would have been repudiated now by the nation at large, passionately loyal, as it already mainly was, to Isabel.^[21]

There was hardly a private or public shortcoming of which Henry in his lifetime had not been accused. From the Sovereign Pontiff to frank, but humble subjects, remonstrances against his notoriously bad conduct had been offered to the wretched King; and at his death the accumulated evils, bred by a line of frivolous monarchs, had reached their climax. There was no justice, order or security for life or property, and the strong oppressed the weak without reproach or hindrance, the only semblance of law being maintained by the larger walled cities in their territories by means of their armed burgess brotherhood. But in the disturbances that had succeeded the birth of the Beltraneja the cities themselves were divided, and in many cases the factions within their own walls made them scenes of bloodshed and insecurity. Faith and religion, that had hitherto been the mainstay of the throne of Castile, had been trampled under foot and oppressed by a monarch whose constant companions and closest servitors had been of the hated brood of Mahomet. Nobles who, for themselves and their adherents, had wrung from the Kings nearly all they had to give, and threatened even to overwhelm the cities, were free from taxation, except the almost obsolete feudal aid in spears which the Sovereign had nominally a right to summon at need. Such men as Villena, or Alvaro de Luna in the previous reign, with more armed followers than the King and greater available wealth, were the real sovereigns of Castile in turbulent alternation, and the final disintegration of the realm into petty principalities appeared to be the natural and imminent outcome of the state of affairs that existed when Henry IV. breathed his last.

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.

Ferdinand was as despotic and as ambitious as she, but his methods were absolutely different. He wanted the strength of Castile to push Aragonese interests in Italy and the Mediterranean; and, like Isabel, he saw that religious unity was necessary if he was to be provided with a solid national weapon for his hand. But for Isabel’s exalted mystic views of religion he cared nothing. He was, indeed, severely practical in all things; never keeping an oath longer than it suited him to do so, loving the crooked way if his end could be gained by it, and he positively gloried in the tergiversation by which throughout his life he got the better of every one with whom he dealt, until death made sport of all his plans and got the better of him. His school of politics was purely Italian; and he cynically acted upon the knowledge, as Henry VII. of England also did, that the suppression of feudalism doomed the sovereign to impotence unless he could hoard large sums of ready money wrung from subjects. In future he saw that kings would be feared, not for the doubtful feudatories they might summon, but in proportion to the men and arms they could promptly pay for in cash; and he went one better than the two Henry Tudors in getting the treasure he saw was needed. They squeezed rills of money from religious orthodoxy, and divided their subjects for a century; he drew floods of gold by exterminating a heterodox minority, and united Spain for the ends he had in view. Ferdinand and Isabel might therefore challenge the admiration of subjects for their greatness and high aims, and command loyalty by their success as rulers; but they cannot be regarded as loveable human beings.

Between two such strong characters as these it was not to be expected that all would be harmonious at first, and the married life of Isabel began inauspiciously enough in one respect. There is no doubt that both Ferdinand and his father intended that the former should be King regnant of Castile, and not merely King consort. Ferdinand indeed, through his grandfather of the same name, was the male heir to the Castilian crowns; and as the Salic law prevailed in Aragon, they assumed that it might be enforced in Castile. This, however, was very far from Isabel’s view; reinforced as she was by the decision of the Castilian churchmen and jurists, and she stood firm. For a time Ferdinand sulked and threatened to leave her to fight out her battle by herself; but better counsels prevailed, and an agreement was made by which they were to reign jointly, but that Isabel alone should appoint all commanders, officers and administrators, in Castile, and retain control of all fiscal matters in her realms.

On the 2nd January 1475, Ferdinand joined his wife in Segovia, where a Cortes had been summoned to take the oath of allegiance to them. Through the thronged and cheering street he rode to the Alcazar; Beltran de la Cueva, Duke of Alburquerque, by his side, and nobles, bishops and burgesses, flocked to do homage to the new sovereigns. Two months later the faithful city of Valladolid greeted the royal couple with effusive joy; and a round of festivities drew the lieges and gave time for adherents to come in. Both parties were mustering forces for the great struggle; and it needed stout hearts on the part of Isabel and her husband to face the future. The Archbishop of Toledo was now on the side of the Beltraneja; and so was Madrid and some of the great nobles of Andalucia; and, worst of all, Alfonso of Portugal had been betrothed to his niece the Beltraneja; and was even now gathering his army to invade Castile and seize the crown. On the 3rd April the new sovereigns held high festival at Valladolid. Isabel, in crimson brocade and with a golden crown upon her veiled abundant russet hair, mounted a white hackney with saddle cloth, housings and mane covered with gold and silver flowers. She was followed by fourteen noble dames dressed in parti-coloured tabards, half green brocade and half claret velvet, and head dresses to imitate crowns; and, as they rode to take the place of honour in the tilt yard, men said that no woman was ever seen so beautiful and majestic as the Queen of Spain.^[24] Knights and nobles flocked to the lists, and King Ferdinand rode into the yard mounted upon his warhorse to break a lance, the acknowledged finest horseman in Spain. But as he entered the populace stared to see the strange crest he bore upon his helm, and the stranger motto emblazoned upon his shield. What could it mean? asked, not without fear, some of those who professed to be his friends. The crest took the form of a blacksmith’s anvil, and the motto ran;—