Soon after the death of Ximenes, Charles [who as the emperor is known as Charles V but as King Charles I of Spain] made his public entry, with great pomp, into Valladolid, whither he had summoned the cortes of Castile. Though he assumed on all occasions the name of king, that title had never been acknowledged in the cortes. The Spaniards, considering Juana as possessed of the sole right to the crown, and no example of a son’s having enjoyed the title of king during the life of his parents occurring in their history, the cortes discovered all that scrupulous respect for ancient forms and that aversion to innovation which are conspicuous in popular assemblies.

The presence, however, of their prince, the address, the artifices, and the threats of his ministers, prevailed on them at last to proclaim him king, in conjunction with his mother, whose name they appointed to be placed before that of her son in all public acts. But when they made this concession, they declared that if, at any future period, Juana should recover the exercise of reason, the whole authority should return into her hands. At the same time, they voted a free gift of 600,000 ducats[77] to be paid in three years, a sum more considerable than had ever been granted to any former monarch.

Notwithstanding this obsequiousness of the cortes to the will of the king, the most violent symptoms of dissatisfaction with his government began to break out in the kingdom. Chièvres had acquired over the mind of the young monarch the ascendant not only of a tutor, but of a parent. Charles seemed to have no sentiments but those which his minister inspired, and scarcely uttered a word but what he put into his mouth. He was constantly surrounded by Flemings; no person got access to him without their permission; nor was any admitted to audience but in their presence. As he spoke the Spanish language very imperfectly, his answers were always extremely short, and often delivered with hesitation. Unfortunately for Charles, his favourites were unworthy of his confidence. To amass wealth seems to have been their only aim; and as they had reason to fear that either their master’s good sense or the indignation of the Spaniards might soon abridge their power, they hastened to improve the present opportunity, and their avarice was the more rapacious because they expected their authority to be of no longer duration. All honours, offices, and benefices were either engrossed by the Flemings or publicly sold by them. Chièvres, his wife, and Sauvage, whom Charles, on the death of Ximenes, had imprudently raised to be chancellor of Castile, vied with each other in all the refinements of extortion and venality. Not only the Spanish historians, who, from resentment, may be suspected of exaggeration, but Peter Martyr Angleriab [or de Anghierra], an Italian, who resided at that time in the court of Spain, and was under no temptation to deceive the persons to whom his letters are addressed, gives a description which is almost incredible, of the insatiable and shameless covetousness of the Flemings.

According to Angleria’s calculation, which he asserts to be extremely moderate, they remitted into the Low Countries, in the space of ten months, no less a sum than 1,100,000 ducats. The nomination of William de Croy, Chièvres’ nephew, a young man not of canonical age, to the archbishopric of Toledo, exasperated the Spaniards more than all these exactions.

Charles, leaving Castile thus disgusted with his administration, set out for Saragossa, the capital of Aragon, that he might be present in the cortes of that kingdom. On his way thither, he took leave of his brother Ferdinand, whom he sent into Germany on the pretence of visiting their grandfather, Maximilian, in his old age. To this prudent precaution Charles owed the preservation of his Spanish dominions. During the violent commotions which arose there soon after this period, the Spaniards would infallibly have offered the crown to a prince who was the darling of the whole nation; nor did Ferdinand want ambition nor councillors that might have prompted him to accept of the offer.

The Aragonese had not hitherto acknowledged Charles as king, nor would they allow the cortes to be assembled in his name, but in that of the justicia, to whom, during an interregnum, this privilege belonged. After long delays, however, and with much difficulty, he persuaded the members to confer on him the title of king, in conjunction with his mother. At the same time, he bound himself by that solemn oath, which the Aragonese exacted of their kings, never to violate any of their rights or liberties. When a donative was demanded, the members were still more intractable; many months elapsed before they would agree to grant Charles 200,000 ducats, and that sum they appropriated so strictly for paying debts of the crown, which had long been forgotten, that a very small part of it came into the king’s hands. What had happened in Castile taught them caution, and determined them rather to satisfy the claims of their fellow-citizens, how obsolete soever, than to furnish strangers the means of enriching themselves with the spoils of their country.

From Aragon, Charles proceeded to Catalonia, where he wasted much time, encountered more difficulties, and gained less money. The Flemings were now become so odious to every province in Spain by their exactions that the desire of mortifying them, and of disappointing their avarice, augmented the jealousy with which a free people usually conduct their deliberations. Segovia, Toledo, Seville, and several other cities of the first rank entered into a confederacy for the defence of their rights and privileges; and, notwithstanding the silence of the nobility, who, on this occasion, discovered neither the public spirit nor the resolution which became their order, the confederates laid before the king a full view of the state of the kingdom, and of the maladministration of his favourites. The preferment of strangers, the exportation of the current coin, the increase of taxes, were the grievances of which they chiefly complained; and of these they demanded redress with that boldness which is natural to a free people. These remonstrances, presented at first at Saragossa, and renewed afterwards at Barcelona, Charles treated with great neglect. The confederacy, however, of these cities, at this juncture, was the beginning of that famous union among the commons [comuneros] of Castile, which not long after threw the kingdom into such violent convulsions as shook the throne, and almost overturned the constitution.

KING CHARLES BECOMES EMPEROR

Soon after Charles’ arrival at Barcelona, he received the account of an event which interested him much more than the murmurs of the Castilians or the scruples of the cortes of Catalonia. This was the death of the emperor Maximilian—an occurrence of small importance in itself, for he was a prince conspicuous neither for his virtues, nor his power, nor his abilities; but rendered by its consequences more memorable than any that had happened during several ages. It broke that profound and universal peace which then reigned in the Christian world; it excited a rivalship between two princes, which threw all Europe into agitation, and kindled wars more general, and of longer duration, than had hitherto been known in modern times.

The revolution occasioned by the expedition of the French king Charles VIII, into Italy, had inspired the European princes with new ideas concerning the importance of the imperial dignity. The claims of the empire upon some of the Italian states were numerous; its jurisdiction over others was extensive; and though the former had been almost abandoned, and the latter seldom exercised, under princes of slender abilities and of little influence, it was obvious that, in the hands of an emperor possessed of power or of genius, they might be employed as engines for stretching his dominion over the greater part of that country. Even Maximilian, feeble and unsteady as his conduct always was, had availed himself of the infinite pretensions of the empire, and had reaped advantage from every war and every negotiation in Italy during his reign. These considerations, added to the dignity of the station, confessedly the first among Christian princes, and to the rights inherent in the office, which, if exerted with vigour, were far from being inconsiderable, rendered the imperial crown more than ever an object of ambition.

Not long before his death, Maximilian had discovered great solicitude to preserve this dignity in the Austrian family, and to procure the king of Spain to be chosen his successor. But he himself, having never been crowned by the pope, a ceremony deemed essential in that age, was considered only as emperor “elect.” Though historians have not attended to that distinction, neither the Italian nor the German chancery bestowed any other title upon him than that of king of the Romans; and no example occurring in history of any person’s being chosen a successor to a king of the Romans, the Germans, always tenacious of their forms, and unwilling to confer upon Charles an office for which their constitution knew no name, obstinately refused to gratify Maximilian in that point. By his death, this difficulty was at once removed, and Charles openly aspired to that dignity which his grandfather attempted, without success, to secure for him. At the same time Francis I, a powerful rival, entered the lists against him; and the attention of all Europe was fixed upon this competition, no less illustrious from the high rank of the candidates than from the importance of the prize for which they contended. Each of them urged his pretensions with sanguine expectations, and with no unpromising prospect of success. Charles considered the imperial crown as belonging to him of right, from its long continuance in the Austrian line; he knew that none of the German princes possessed power or influence enough to appear as his antagonist; he flattered himself that no consideration would induce the natives of Germany to exalt any foreign prince to a dignity which during so many ages had been deemed peculiar to their own nation; and, least of all, that they would confer this honour upon Francis I, the sovereign of a people whose genius, and laws, and manners differed so widely from those of the Germans that it was hardly possible to establish any cordial union between them. He did not, however, trust the success of his cause to this alone. Great sums of money were remitted from Spain; all the refinements and artifices of negotiation were employed; and a considerable body of troops, kept on foot at that time by the states of the circle of Swabia, was secretly taken into his pay. The venal were gained by presents; the objections of the more scrupulous were answered or eluded; some feeble princes were threatened or overawed.

On the 28th of June, five months and ten days after the death of Maximilian, this important contest, which had held all Europe in suspense, was decided. Six of the electors had already declared for the king of Spain; and the archbishop of Treves, the only firm adherent to the French interest, having at last joined his brethren, Charles was, by the unanimous voice of the electoral college, raised to the imperial throne. The important intelligence of his election was conveyed in nine days from Frankfort to Barcelona, where Charles was still detained by the obstinacy of the Catalan cortes, which had not hitherto brought to an issue any of the affairs which came before it. He received the account with the joy natural to a young and aspiring mind, on an accession of power and dignity which raised him so far above the other princes of Europe. Then it was that those vast prospects, which allured him during his whole administration, began to open; and from this era we may date the formation, and are able to trace the gradual progress, of a grand system of enterprising ambition, which renders the history of his reign so worthy of attention.

A trivial circumstance first discovered the effects of this great elevation upon the mind of Charles. In all the public writs which he now issued as king of Spain, he assumed the title of “majesty,” and required it from his subjects as a mark of their respect. Before that time, all the monarchs of Europe were satisfied with the appellation of “highness,” or “grace”; but the vanity of other courts soon led them to imitate the example of the Spanish. The epithet of majesty is no longer a mark of pre-eminence. The most inconsiderable monarchs in Europe enjoy it, and the arrogance of the greater potentates has invented no higher denomination.

The Spaniards were far from viewing the promotion of their king to the imperial throne with the same satisfaction which he himself felt. To be deprived of the presence of their sovereign, and to be subjected to the government of a viceroy and his council, a species of administration often oppressive and always disagreeable, were the immediate and necessary consequences of this new dignity. To see the blood of their countrymen shed in quarrels wherein the nation had no concern; to behold its treasures wasted in supporting the splendour of a foreign title; to be plunged in the chaos of Italian and German politics were effects of this event almost as unavoidable. From all these considerations they concluded that nothing could have happened more pernicious to the Spanish nation; and the fortitude and public spirit of their ancestors, who, in the cortes of Castile, prohibited Alfonso the Wise [the Learned] from leaving the kingdom, in order to receive the imperial crown, were often mentioned with the highest praise, and pronounced to be extremely worthy of imitation at this juncture. But Charles, without regarding the sentiments or murmurs of his Spanish subjects, accepted of the imperial dignity which the count palatine, at the head of a solemn embassy, offered him in the name of the electors; and declared his intention of setting out soon for Germany, in order to take possession of it. This was the more necessary, because, according to the forms of the German constitution, he could not, before the ceremony of a public coronation, exercise any act of jurisdiction or authority.

Their certain knowledge of this resolution augmented so much the disgust of the Spaniards that a sullen and refractory spirit prevailed among persons of all ranks. The pope having granted the king the tenths of all ecclesiastical benefices in Castile, to assist him in carrying on war with greater vigour against the Turks, a convocation of the clergy unanimously refused to levy that sum, upon pretence that it ought never to be exacted but at those times when Christendom was actually invaded by the infidels; and though Leo, in order to support his authority, laid the kingdom under an interdict, so little regard was paid to a censure which was universally deemed unjust, that Charles himself applied to have it taken off. Thus the Spanish clergy, besides their merit in opposing the usurpations of the pope, and disregarding the influence of the crown, gained the exemption which they had claimed.

The commotions which arose in the kingdom of Valencia, annexed to the crown of Aragon, were more formidable, and produced more dangerous and lasting effects. A seditious monk, having by his sermons excited the citizens of Valencia, the capital city, to take arms, and to punish certain criminals in a tumultuary manner, the people, pleased with this exercise of power and with such a discovery of their own importance, not only refused to lay down their arms, but formed themselves into troops and companies, that they might be regularly trained to martial exercises. To obtain some security against the oppression of the grandees was the motive of this association, and proved a powerful bond of union; for as the aristocratical privileges and independence were more complete in Valencia than in any other of the Spanish kingdoms, the nobles, being scarcely accountable for their conduct to any superior, treated the people not only as vassals but as slaves. They were alarmed, however, at the progress of this unexpected insurrection, as it might encourage the people to attempt shaking off the yoke altogether; but as they could not repress them without taking arms, it became necessary to have recourse to the emperor, and to desire his permission to attack them (1520).

At the same time the people made choice of deputies to represent their grievances, and to implore the protection of their sovereign. Happily for the latter, they arrived at court when Charles was exasperated to a high degree against the nobility. As he was eager to visit Germany, where his presence became every day more necessary, and his Flemish courtiers were still more impatient to return into their native country, that they might carry thither the spoils which they had amassed in Castile, it was impossible for him to hold the cortes of Valencia in person. He had for that reason empowered the cardinal Adrian to represent him in that assembly, and in his name to receive their oath of allegiance, to confirm their privileges with the usual solemnities, and to demand of them a free gift.

But the Valencian nobles, who considered this measure as an indignity to their country, which was no less entitled than his other kingdoms to the honour of their sovereign’s presence, declared that, by the fundamental laws of the constitution, they could neither acknowledge as king a person who was absent, nor grant him any subsidy; and to this declaration they adhered with a haughty and inflexible obstinacy. Charles, piqued by their behaviour, decided in favour of the people, and rashly authorised them to continue in arms. Their deputies returned in triumph, and were received by their fellow-citizens as the deliverers of their country. The insolence of the multitude increasing with their success, they expelled all the nobles out of the city, committed the government to magistrates of their own election, and entered into an association, distinguished by the name of germandada or “brotherhood,” which proved the source not only of the wildest disorders but of the most fatal calamities in that kingdom.c

CHARLES’ STRUGGLE WITH THE CORTES

At this period it was Charles’ misfortune to make enemies on every side. As the constitution of Valencia required that he should be present, to fulfil the compact with his people, he should, doubtless, have hastened thither, and, by yielding prompt obedience to the laws, have removed all pretext for rebellion. The same imprudence, the same disregard of established custom, made him summon the cortes of Castile and Leon to meet him at Santiago; a thing never before attempted by the most arbitrary of his predecessors. To the murmurs produced by this innovation, the ministers paid no attention: on the contrary, they did all they could to fan the flame of discontent, by interfering in the return of the deputies, and by bribing such as they could not nominate to submit in everything to the royal will.

Toledo displaced the deputies whom it had chosen, and nominated others more submissive to the popular voice. It next prevailed on some other towns to join in insisting on the following concessions: that the king should not leave Spain; that he should require no subsidy; that, instead of conferring dignities on foreigners, he should deprive the possessors of those which they actually held; that no money, under any pretext whatever, should leave the kingdom; that offices should cease to be venal; and that the cortes should be assembled, according to ancient custom, in some town of Leon or Castile, not in an angle of Galicia. Most of these demands were reasonable enough; but the first two were insulting, and all were sure to be highly unpalatable to the court. The deputies who bore them waited on Charles, now at Valladolid, on his way to Galicia, and with some difficulty obtained an audience. He told them, however, that he was in too much haste to take the subject into consideration; but that, if they would meet him near Tordesillas, he would commune with them. To Tordesillas they accordingly repaired; but a report being maliciously spread in Valladolid that he was not only about to leave the kingdom, but to take away his mother, the populace were excited to the highest pitch. A Portuguese lace-maker mischievously ascended the tower of a church, the bell of which was never sounded except on extraordinary occasions, and rang with such good-will that six thousand men were speedily under arms.

It was immediately resolved that all the Flemings should be put to death; but the intended victims had timely intimation of their danger, and with the king fled at midnight, the rain descending in torrents, to Tordesillas, where they arrived at daybreak. The authorities of Valladolid showed great activity in the apprehension of the ringleaders in the riot, and a few were punished; but the king, who was naturally clement, ordered the remainder to be liberated. He now hastened towards Galicia, the Toledan deputies closely following him, and at every town requesting an audience; but he refused to see them until they reached Santiago.

On the first day of April, 1520, the states were opened in the convent of San Francisco. The speech from the throne laid stress on the necessity of the king’s immediate voyage to Germany; on the expenses with which it would be attended, as well as on that which had been incurred in preparations for war with the infidels; and ended by demanding a gratuity. For a moment the deputies were silent; but those of Salamanca rose, and protested that they could not take the accustomed oath of allegiance unless the king would comply with the demands which had been presented to him. They were immediately supported by a deputy of Toledo, who asserted that, rather than consent to anything prejudicial, either to the city he represented or to the kingdom, he would sacrifice his life. Emboldened by the example, the delegates of Seville, Cordova, Zamora, Toro, and Avila joined with the three, and the business of the assembly was for some days interrupted. Nothing can better show the degraded state in which the cortes were held, and the power which the crown had been accustomed to exercise over the proceedings—debates were unknown among them—than the next step of the king: it was no less than to order the Toledan deputies, the most violent of the party, to leave the court. In vain did they petition: they were compelled to obey. When the news reached Toledo, the population was in an uproar; and their anger still further inflamed by the arrest of two of their magistrates, Juan de Padilla, and Ferdinand Davalos. Whether a royal order was sent for the arrest, or a citation for the appearance of both, is doubtful: the mob opposed its execution; and would have murdered the corregidor, the alcalde, and alguacil mayor, had not all three contrived to escape. The fortress and gates, with the government of the city, were now seized by the mob, and the royal officers expelled. The example was imitated by the whole kingdom of Murcia. When intelligence of these events reached Santiago, the king proposed to march on Toledo, and inflict a summary vengeance on that city; but his ministers—fearing that if he remained any longer in Spain he would risk the imperial crown, some members of the diet having already threatened to proceed to a second election—dissuaded him from his purpose. The states were now transferred to Corunna, where, with some reluctance,—so effectually had the royal influence been exercised in the interim,—a considerable subsidy was granted to the monarch. The great cities, however, refused to sanction it; and even the few deputies who voted it accompanied it by requests exceedingly obnoxious to the court. Anxious to take possession of the brilliant dignity which awaited him, and perhaps to escape from so troubled a kingdom, Charles closed the cortes, and prepared to embark. He left the regency of Castile to Cardinal Adrian; of Aragon, to Don Juan de Lanuza; of Valencia, to the count de Melito; and he intrusted the command of the troops to approved officers. The choice of Adrian, a foreigner, was peculiarly offensive to the nobles and deputies at court: they solicited another; but Charles, who generally adhered to his plans with uncommon tenacity, refused to change. In May he embarked, and proceeded to England, to concert with Henry VIII the means of humbling the power of the French king.

REVOLT OF THE GERMANEROS AND THE COMUNEROS[78]

The departure of the king was not likely to assuage the turbulence of the times. If the opposition, so long as it was constitutionally exercised, was just, and even laudable, it had now degenerated into rebellion, and patriotism been succeeded by schemes of personal ambition. In Toledo, Padilla, by pretending to follow the popular current, guided it at his will: his wife, Doña Maria Pacheco, who had greater talents and even greater ambition than himself, headed the popular processions, and by her presence authorised some revolting scenes. From Murcia the governor, the marquis de los Velez, had been expelled, and a royal officer, who had been sent to institute proceedings against the guilty, compelled to flee for his life, followed by eight thousand of the combined rebels.

The example of these great places was too attractive to remain inoperative. Segovia immediately rose, and hung two of the magistrates. The mob were, above all, anxious to murder their deputies, of whom both had agreed to the subsidy at Corunna; but one of them, wisely distrustful of their intention, had not returned: the other, who returned at midnight, was dragged along the streets to the place of execution. The monks of San Francisco issued from their cloisters, with the holy sacrament: the interference was unavailing; nor was it without difficulty that permission could be obtained for a confessor to attend him. A monk approached, and though the office was speedily performed, loud murmurs were raised, by the murderous herd, at the time so unnecessarily lost. They again seized the rope, dragged the deputy along, and, though he was dead before they reached the gallows, hung him on the same tree that had proved fatal to two preceding victims.

Though Valladolid was honoured with the abode of Adrian and the council of regency, the rabble rose to put the deputies to death; and when these, too, had the good fortune to escape, even the cardinal was arrested, but, as it appears, soon released, through the interposition of the nobles and clergy. Burgos was still more criminal. Unable to find the bishop or his brethren, individuals peculiarly obnoxious, the rioters, headed by a cutler, burned a house in which many valuable archives were consumed. They next proceeded in search of a royal favourite, whose house shared the same fate. He was overtaken, dragged from the church where he had sought sanctuary, brought to Burgos, and committed to prison, where he immediately died from the effect of the blows he had received. Not satisfied with taking his life, they dragged his corpse through the city, and suspended it, the head downwards, from the public gallows. The arrival at Madrid of a royal magistrate, said to be proceeding to Toledo to try the rebels, raised the rioters, who swore to take his life; and, as he was fortunate enough to escape, they deposed the magistrates, elected others, seized all the arms they could find, and summoned the governor of the Alcazar to remit that fortress into their hands; but he had fidelity enough to set them at defiance. The siege was prosecuted: a mine was sprung, the gallant handful of defenders was destroyed, and the place capitulated. Finally, at Avila, Guadalajara, and Siguenza, the legitimate authority was overthrown; brute force, murder, rape, and plunder reigned in its stead.

The rebellious communities agreed to act in concert for the common cause, and to send their representatives to Avila, to hold a sort of national cortes. Accordingly, Toledo, Madrid, Guadalajara, Soria, Murcia, Cuenca, Segovia, Avila, Salamanca, Toro, Zamora, Leon, Valladolid, Burgos, and Ciudad Rodrigo, successively and within short intervals, joined their respective deputies, while from several of these places troops daily arrived. For some time, however, nothing important was attempted: the royalist general, Fonseca, was too busily occupied in raising troops to assail Segovia; and Ronquillo was too weak to take the field. The weakness of the regent, who in fear of violence expressed his disapprobation of the hostilities commenced by Fonseca, redoubled their audacity. Anarchy was now at its height.

QUEEN JUANA RELEASED

The next proceeding of the rebels was distinguished for more boldness, and for something like originality. At the head of the troops furnished by Toledo, Medina del Campo, and other places, and accompanied by two other chiefs, Padilla proceeded to Tordesillas to gain possession of the imbecile Juana. He demanded and obtained an audience, expatiated on the evils which had befallen the kingdom since the death of the Catholic sovereigns, her parents, and said that her son had abandoned the kingdom to its fate; he ended by informing her that he placed the troops of Toledo, Madrid, and Segovia at her disposal. For a moment the queen seemed to have regained the use of her faculties; she replied that she had never before heard of her father’s death; that if she had, she would not have permitted the disorders which prevailed; that she desired the weal of the kingdom, and that on Padilla, in quality of captain-general, she devolved the duty of restoring the public tranquillity. Her rational manner of discourse made the deputies hope that she had been restored to sanity; they did homage to her as their sovereign queen; and in her name the representatives of the confederation were brought from Avila to Tordesillas. By issuing all decrees in her name and by her authority, they hoped to give legitimacy to their own.

But she almost instantly relapsed into her former lethargy, a circumstance, however, which they carefully concealed from the world. Emboldened by the success of their enterprise, and by the number of armed men who daily joined them, they now resolved to subvert the power of regent and council, and even to arrest the members. Padilla arrived with twelve hundred men. The cardinal now prepared to flee; the gates were shut on him; and he was detained as a sort of hostage for the safety of the rebel chiefs. In a few days, however, he assumed a disguise and silently escaped. His first step was to acquaint his master with the events which had happened. On their side, the confederates, with an impudence unparalleled in all history, attempted in the same manner to justify what they had done.

Charles V was in a difficult position: the hostility of the Lutherans, the rivalry of Francis I, the disturbances which threatened to afflict Italy, and the preparations of the Grand Turk, rendered it impossible for him to revisit Spain, even though his absence endangered the security of that crown. In this emergency he associated Velasco the constable and Henry the admiral of Castile in the regency with Adrian, and wrote to all the revolted communities calling on them to obey the laws and to restore tranquillity, promising to return the moment his pressing affairs would allow him. To dispose them in his favour he renounced the subsidy which had been voted him at Corunna, and promised that no benefices should be conferred on foreigners. His letters, however, had for some time little effect on the majority of the confederates, who declared that they were dictated by insincerity.

In this critical position of the royal cause, it was fortunate that Aragon, Catalonia, and most of Andalusia stood aloof from the confederation. Aragon, indeed, was subsequently troubled for a moment, through an organised opposition to the viceroyalty of Lanuza; but tranquillity was restored without much difficulty. Seville, Cordova, Xeres, and Granada either returned, without condescending to open, the proposals of that body, or reproached it for its excesses. The rebellious towns no less persevered in their career of violence. It was evident that nothing less than civil war could decide the problem, whether the king or the mob should exercise the government. The constable began to act with vigour, to collect his own vassals, and to summon all who held for the sovereign and the laws to join him; and he borrowed money from Dom Emmanuel, of Portugal, to support his levies. The cardinal too seemed to awake from his imbecile inactivity; and the admiral went from place to place to rouse the sparks of slumbering loyalty. The result showed what might have been accomplished earlier by an active combination of the royalist party; about eight thousand well-armed men soon repaired to Rio Seco. The extent of the preparations and the expostulations of the constables prevailed on Burgos to withdraw from the confederacy. On their side the assembly at Tordesillas vigorously prepared for the struggle, and placed Don Pedro Giron at the head of the rebel forces, among the ranks of which was the bishop of Zamora, with nine hundred men, of whom four hundred were ecclesiastics.

With eleven thousand men Don Pedro advanced towards Rio Seco, took and pillaged Tordehumos, without any molestation from the royalists, who were waiting for a reinforcement under the count de Haro. On the junction of that nobleman, who was raised to the command, the numbers were about equal; but for some time the royalists were unwilling to begin the attack. Don Pedro fell back to Villapando, and by this imprudent step exposed Tordesillas, which, with the queen, Juana, was invested and stormed by the count. He was already disgusted with the cause he advocated, and he soon abandoned it for that of the king: his place was supplied by Don Juan de Padilla.

While a desultory warfare followed, generally favourable to the royalists, Valencia [the headquarters of the Germania] was the undivided prey of anarchy; deeds were committed which threw into the shade the horrors of Castile and Leon. The thirteen syndics first endeavoured to oppose the entrance of the viceroy: and when this was found impossible, they artfully misrepresented his actions, organised a determined opposition to his authority, overawed the administration of justice, rescued the most notorious criminals from execution, openly attacked his house, and at length expelled him from the city. The consequences, not in the capital only, but in the towns, might have been easily anticipated. All who were hostile to the present order of things were pursued with vindictive rage: they were even sacrificed at the altar, their wives violated, their children put to death before their eyes, the priests themselves dragged from their sanctuary, and the holy sacraments trodden under foot. In short, there was no species of crime left uncommitted.

But, fortunately for humanity, evil has its climax as well as good, and the descent in the former case is even more rapid than in the latter. Some of the rebel leaders returned to their duty; and the count de Haro advanced against Padilla, who was intrenched in Torre Lobaton, but who fled on the approach of the royalists. The count pursued, overtook, and in a short time entirely defeated the rebels near Villalar, April, 1521; Padilla himself, with two other generals, being among the prisoners. All three were speedily condemned and executed. Terrified by this blow, Valladolid sued for and obtained its pardon. Medina del Campo, Segovia, Avila, Salamanca, Zamora, and other places of less note, followed the example. The prior of St. John, who had been sent to chastise the inhabitants of Toledo, defeated the bishop of Zamora, who had ventured to oppose him, and was precipitately driven into the city. For the bishop’s devotion to the popular cause, the people escorted him in triumph to the cathedral, and placed him under the archiepiscopal canopy; but intelligence arriving of Padilla’s defeat, he soon afterwards fled from the city.

Doña Maria Pacheco, the widow of Padilla, a woman of commanding talents, of desperate courage, and of little principle, succeeded to the unbounded authority of her husband. Her character will be best understood by an anecdote: Two Biscayan brothers, suspected of ill will towards her husband, were summoned to appear before her in the Alcazar; scarcely had they crossed the threshold of the fortress when they fell under the daggers of her creatures: the corpses were first thrown into the river, and then dragged through the streets by children. In the meantime the prior of St. John invested the city, from which sorties were frequently made, with various success. She confined the canons of Toledo, who refused to rob the church at her requisition, during two days and nights to the chapter-house, allowing them neither food nor bed; and there they must doubtless have remained until starvation had released them from her persecution, had they not submitted. But her despotic reign was approaching its end. The loss of thirteen hundred men in a desperate sortie so humbled the inhabitants that all submitted except a determined number, who retired with her into the Alcazar. Soon afterwards it was compelled to submit, but the heroic Doña Maria effected her escape into Portugal, where she passed her remaining days in great poverty.

The success of the royalists in Leon and Castile had little effect on the desperate rebels of Valencia. That city, like other towns of the kingdom, continued in the hands of a furious mob, who loudly proclaimed that no clergy should be maintained, no taxes hereafter paid, no civil government supported, since all were violations of natural liberty. Hearing that one of their leaders was defeated at Oropesa by the duke of Segorbe, and that the viceroy had convoked the ban and arrière-ban of the nobles, the fanatics left the capital to exterminate all their enemies. Four thousand of them furiously assailed several towns which continued faithful to the king; one-half of them were annihilated near Murviedro by the same duke; but, to counterbalance this check, another army of rebels defeated the viceroy in person near Jativa. The ferocity of the victors knew no bounds: they had bigotry enough to force the Moors whom they had conquered to receive baptism, but after the ceremony they massacred six hundred; saying that possibly the converts might relapse, and that it was better at once to send them to heaven, while in a regenerated state.

The viceroy now solicited aid from the regents of Castile; it was immediately sent; the royalists took the field in greater numbers, and with greater confidence of success. Fortress after fortress was reduced. The rapidity of these successes so frightened even the rebels of the capital that they sued for pardon; it was granted by the viceroy on the consideration that they would surrender their arms, and in future conform to the laws. In an incredibly short period all the fortified places submitted. The confederation was forever destroyed in Valencia; and, though it lingered for a while in the Balearic Isles, where it raged almost as furiously as on the continent, it was at length extirpated through the valour of the royalists.

These troubled scenes were not the only evil experienced by the Spaniards at this season: they were afflicted by that of foreign invasion. Knowing that the forces of the kingdom were occupied in extinguishing the flames of rebellion, the French king thought this a favourable opportunity of vindicating the claim of Henry d’Albret to the throne of Navarre. A formidable army advanced under André de Foix, seized on St. Jean Pied de Pont, passed by Roncesvalles, invested and took Pamplona,[79] and the country, as it had no fortresses to defend it, became the easy prey of the enemy. Had the French been satisfied with this success, and erected fortresses to defend their conquest, the throne of Navarre might have been restored; but the general, in accordance, as is believed, with an understanding with the rebels of the confederation, invaded Castile and invested Logroño. The place made a gallant defence so as to allow the duke of Najera to advance with reinforcements. On his approach, the French were signally defeated—six thousand of their number remaining on the field, their artillery lost, and many officers captured, among whom was the general-in-chief, André de Foix; probably a still greater number perished in the pursuit. The kingdom was regained with greater facility than it had been lost. No sooner did Francis hear of this signal failure than, anxious to vindicate the honour of his arms, he despatched a second army, under the grand admiral Bonnivet. The invaders took Fuenterrabia; but on the approach of Don Bertram de la Cueva, they were driven back with serious loss. In 1524 Fuenterrabia was recovered by the emperor.

In July, 1522, the emperor, whose presence had been so often requested by the royalists, arrived in Spain. Early in the same year the cardinal Adrian had been invested with the pontifical crown. Having visited his mother at Tordesillas, Charles hastened to Valladolid, where his presence was naturally dreaded. It was expected by all that summary justice would be inflicted on those who had taken a prominent part in the recent disturbances; but clemency was the basis of his character, and on this occasion he exercised it to an extent, perhaps, unparalleled in history. He caused proclamation to be made that, with the exception of about eighty, all individuals concerned in the recent rebellion were freely pardoned, that all proceedings should cease, that all preceding condemnations should be revoked, and all who had suffered from the judgments of the tribunals should be restored to their possessions and honours. And of the eighty thus excepted, very few suffered.[80]

This conduct was truly imperial: it necessarily made a deep impression on the hearts of the people; and, as he had gained policy by experience, the deference which he now paid to native customs, the preference which he gave to native habits, the care with which he identified his interests and views with those of the Spaniards did the rest, and enabled him to exercise an ascendency over his subjects which few of his predecessors had ever possessed.d

THE MOORS UNDER CHARLES V

From the coming of Charles V to the imperial throne, the history of Spain became that of Europe. Events assumed such enormous proportions that the details of interior administration, police, and government lost much of their importance. The fate of the peninsula was no longer to be decided within the peninsula itself. Spain by its position could not be the centre of the vast empire of Charles V; it could only be an annex. Since the suicide of the Castilian communes at Villalar, all life had passed to the outside. Charles became a stranger to his hereditary states; he did not visit them for twenty years except to demand money from them.

Incessant war, which was stifled at one place only to break out in another, weighed heavily on all Spain, which paid the cost without reaping the fruits. Treasure from the New World traversed without stopping in her, and fabulous duties were imposed on all handiwork and provisions. American gold, peninsular revenues, the commerce of the Low Countries, all were swallowed up in this bottomless gulf. Half Europe ruined and exhausted itself to help Charles V to subdue the other half, and after twenty years’ struggle this dream of European dictatorship was no nearer being realised than at the beginning.

The Moors, expelled from Granada, or forced by a hypocritical conversion to buy the right of remaining, had ceased to give the government serious anxiety. Religious unity reigned, in appearance at least, in Andalusia, now impoverished by the exile of her most industrious inhabitants. But it was not the same in the kingdom of Valencia. We have seen the sad dénouement of that insurrection, sister to that of the comuneros of Castile. There, also, revolt had been quenched in blood; but deep bitterness rankled in men’s hearts. The people, oppressed by the nobles, leagued against them with the royal power, and impatiently awaited the hour of vengeance. Their hatred fell on the Moors, numerous in this country, who, finding no shelter save on the nobles’ land, had, in the struggle, espoused the cause of their suzerains. Popular irritation left them, to save their lives, no refuge but baptism. The new converts, lip- but not heart-Christians, bought from their overlords the right to renounce this semblance of Christianity, to return to the rites of Islam, which in reality they had never abjured. But the Inquisition watched them keenly. The relapsed were summoned to re-enter the pale of the church within thirty days under penalty of death and confiscation. The Moors, instead of obeying, had recourse to arms and took refuge in the Sierra de Bernia. There they maintained their position for some months, but hunger, threats, and, above all, promises, decided them to submit.

And yet heroic attachment to the faith of their fathers drove this unhappy people again to disobey, at the peril of their lives.

Then the last blow fell. An imperial decree ordered all Moors of both sexes, who had not embraced Christianity, to quit Valencia before the end of December, and Spain before the end of January. The only port designated to them was that of Corunna. This port, the most distant of all, offered a double advantage—that of keeping them far from Africa, and making them spend all their money on the journey.