The American Nation: A History Part 3

[Footnote: Bourne, "Prince Henry the Navigator," in Essays in Historical Criticism, 173-189.] Henry possessed, at the beginning of his explorations, little more than the traditional geographical conceptions of the later Middle Ages. Besides some twelve or fourteen extant fourteenth-century maps drawn by Italian draughtsmen, which were probably all known to Henry, his brother Pedro gave him one which has since disappeared, which had been constructed at Venice, and which "had all the parts of the world and earth described." [Footnote: Major, Prince Henry, 62.] He was probably also familiar with the cla.s.sical tales of the circ.u.mnavigation of Africa.

Besides this he had some important personal knowledge. During a Portuguese invasion of the Barbary states of Africa in 1415, in which Prince Henry served with his father and brothers, and later when he was himself in command, he found that there were caravan routes whose termini were at Ceuta and other Mediterranean towns. From the Sahara and the Soudan, across the desert, came caravans to the Mediterranean coast bringing gold, wine, and slaves, and news of trading routes far to the southward.

Moreover, these routes extended to rivers and seacoasts unknown to Europeans, which must, nevertheless, be connected with the open Atlantic Ocean, and might well be on the southern sh.o.r.e of that continent. "He got news of the pa.s.sage of merchants from the coast of Tunis to Timbuctoo and to Cantor on the Gambia, which inspired him to seek those lands by way of the sea." [Footnote: Diego Gomez, quoted in Beazley, Introduction to Azurara's Chronicle (Hakluyt Soc., Publications, 1899).] "The tawny Moors, his prisoners, told him of certain tall palms growing at the mouth of the Senegal or western Nile, by which he was able to guide the caravels which he sent out to find that river." [Footnote: Ibid.]

The first decade of Henry's efforts, from 1420 to 1430, resulted in little in the way of new discovery. The Madeira and Azores islands were rediscovered and their full exploration and permanent colonization begun. Every year saw one or more caravels sent from Lagos southward to follow the coast of the main-land; but they skirted no sh.o.r.es that were not desert, and turned back baffled by their own fears. Cape Boyador long remained a barrier whose imaginary dangers of reef and shoal served as an excuse for the still more unreal horrors of the "Sea of Darkness."

The next decade saw better results. In 1434 Gil Eannes, one of the boldest of the captains who were growing up in Prince Henry's service, when he reached Boyador, sailed far out to sea, doubled the cape, and, returning to the coast, landed and gathered "St. Mary's roses," and took them home to the prince as a memento of the "farthest South."

[Footnote: Azurara, Discovery of Guinea, chap. ix.] The greatest barrier had been pa.s.sed, that of superst.i.tious dread, and almost every voyage now brought its result of progress farther southward. Soon the boundaries of Islam were pa.s.sed, for natives were found on the coast who were not Mohammedans.

The third decade saw still further advance. In 1441 Nuno Tristam discovered Cape Blanco, the "White Cape," glistening with the white sand of the Sahara. In 1445 Dinis Diaz, of Lisbon, sailed at last beyond the desert and reached Cape Verd, the "Green Cape," [Footnote: Ibid., chap. x.x.xi.] fifteen hundred miles down the African coast, and as far from Gibraltar south as Constantinople was east. By this time the captains of Prince Henry had reached the fertile and populous sh.o.r.es where the western Soudan borders on the Atlantic Ocean, and a new obstacle to further exploration revealed itself in the attraction and the profit of the slave-trade.

The first "Moors" or negroes were some ten or twelve captured and brought home in the year 1441 by Antam Goncalvez, to satisfy the curiosity of the prince and to obtain information useful for the further prosecution of the voyages. Others were soon brought for other purposes. Of the two hundred and thirty-five Moors who made up the first full cargo of human freight, the prince gave away the fifty-six which fell to his share as one-fifth, although it is recorded with the somewhat grotesque piety of the fifteenth century that "he reflected with great pleasure on the salvation of their souls that before were lost." [Footnote: Azurara, Discovery of Guinea, chap. xxv.]

There is no reason to believe that Henry planned or wished the development of a trade in slaves; [Footnote: The statement to the contrary in the Cambridge Modern Hist., I., 10, is not deducible from any contemporary evidence.] but labor was scarce on the great estates of southern Portugal, slaves were in demand, and very different desires from those of the prince might be gratified by capturing and bringing to the slave-market of Lagos the unfortunate natives of the newly discovered coasts. Hence one expedition after another, sent out for purposes of discovery, returned, bringing tales of failure to reach farther points on the coast, but laden with human booty to be sold.

Private adventurers sought and obtained the prince's permission to send out caravels, and these also brought home cargoes of slaves. Only the most vigorous pressure, exercised on the choicest spirits among the Portuguese captains, served now to carry discoveries farther.

Nevertheless, a basis of interest in distant voyages had been found which had not existed before; and the further exploration of the African coast was certain, even in default of the personal enlightenment and enthusiasm of the Navigator. The expeditions sent by the prince and private voyages made familiar to the mariners of Portugal two thousand miles of coast instead of six hundred as of old.

Guinea was eventually reached.

In 1455 the Venetian Cadamosto entered into Henry's service; and, followed closely by Diego Gomez, discovered the Cape Verd Islands and pa.s.sed so far around the shoulder of northwestern Africa as not only to reach the ends of the caravan routes from Morocco, and to open up trade in gold, ivory, and the products of the Guinea coast, but to suggest that there was open sea now all the way eastward to India. The temporary disappointment of finding that this was not true was left to the successors of Prince Henry, for his death occurred in 1460. But the work was still carried on by his nephew, Alfonso V., and by the next king of Portugal, John II.

A series of bold pilots now pa.s.sed beyond the whole Guinea coast, crossed the equator, and made their way down almost two thousand miles more of the African coast. The belief became a.s.sured that "ships which sailed down the coast of Guinea might be sure to reach the end of the land by persisting to the south"; and stone pillars six feet high were ordered to be erected at landing-places to indicate possession and mark the stages of the route to the Indies.

Finally, in 1486, Bartholomew Diaz, the third member of his family to take part in the discoveries of Prince Henry, with two vessels sailed the remaining distance on the coast, and pa.s.sed so far to the eastward that his sailors mutinied and refused to go farther. Diaz then suddenly realized that, notwithstanding the necessity for his return, he had at last found the pa.s.sage-way to India dreamed of through so many ages and sought for at such heavy cost.

A period of still greater discoveries was already at hand. "It was in Portugal," says Ferdinand Columbus, "that the admiral began to surmise that if men could sail so far south, one might also sail west and find lands in that direction." The Portuguese were so wedded to the search for the southeast route, and it was so nearly achieved at this time, that their interest was but languid in the plans for a search to the westward. Another people therefore took it up, and soon the exploration of the New World was in full tide, and the period of pioneer effort pa.s.sed into the era of great accomplishment.

Meanwhile Portugal saw the fruition of Prince Henry's work in the circ.u.mnavigation of Africa. Ten years later than the exploit of Diaz, in 1496, a fleet sailed from Lisbon under Vasco da Gama which was destined to round the Cape, make its way up the east coast of Africa till familiar parts of the Indian Ocean were reached; then to sail across to India, cast anchor, and secure cargo in Calicut and many other ancient ports; and to return thence safely to its port of departure. [Footnote: The First Voyage of Vasco da Gama, in Hakluyt Soc., Publications, 1898.] The Portuguese search for a new route to the lands of Eastern products was thus successful; and once found, this path became familiar. The fleet of Cabral in 1500 immediately followed that of Da Gama, and, driven to the westward as it sailed to the south, discovered Brazil, as a casual incident of its successful voyage to India. Thus, if the voyage of Columbus had never been undertaken, America would have been found within less than a decade.

Albuquerque followed around the southeast pa.s.sage in 1503; a permanent traffic between Portugal and India was established, and thereafter yearly fleets of merchant and war vessels rounded the Cape. Soon most of the points of vantage of the Indies were in Portuguese control-- Ormuz, Diu, Goa, Ceylon, Malacca--and the enterprising little western state had trade settlements in Burma, China, and j.a.pan. [Footnote: Hunter, Hist, of British India, I., 110-133.] The private path of the Portuguese ultimately became the public highway of the nations. Spain, Holland, England, and France sent fleets around the Cape of Good Hope, and made use of the route to the East which the Portuguese had discovered.

The actual progress of scientific knowledge and practical equipment for navigation made at Sagres, Lagos, Lisbon, and on the seas, during the voyages sent out by Prince Henry and his immediate successors, is unfortunately not accurately known; but some glimpses of it may be obtained. "In his wish to gain a prosperous result of his efforts,"

says an almost contemporary historian, "the Prince devoted great industry and thought to the matter, and at great expense procured the aid of one Master Jacome from Majorca, a man skilled in the art of navigation and in the making of maps and instruments, and who was sent for, with certain of the Arab and Jewish mathematicians, to instruct the Portuguese." [Footnote: De Barros, Decadas da Asia, quoted in Beazley, Henry the Navigator, 161.]

When trained Italian navigators applied to Henry, as was the case with the Venetian Cadamosto, they were readily taken into his service, and he sent word by them that he would heartily welcome any other such volunteers. When the prince's work fell into the hands of his nephew, King John, the latter appointed the German Behaim, of Nuremberg, who lived in Lisbon from 1480 to 1484, to be one of the four members of his "Junto de Mathematicos." It was Behaim who introduced to the Portuguese the improved ephemerides calculated by the German Regiomonta.n.u.s, and printed at Nuremberg in 1474. He also improved the astrolabe and the staff, drew charts and made globes, and accompanied one of the West- African expeditions in 1489. [Footnote: Major, Prince Henry the Navigator, 326-328.] Diego Gomez, one of Henry's captains, remarks, in describing his voyage of 1460, "I had a quadrant with me and wrote on the table of it the alt.i.tude of the arctic pole, and I found it better than the chart; for though you see your course of sailing on the chart well enough, yet if once you get wrong it is hard by map alone to work back into the right course." [Footnote: Quoted, in Beazley, Henry the Navigator, 297, 298.] Azurara also contrasts the incorrect charts with which Henry's sailors were provided before their explorations with those corrected by the later observations. [Footnote: Azurara, Discovery of Guinea, chap. Lxxvi.] His navigators, therefore, used the compa.s.s, the quadrant, and carefully constructed charts; but their advances in the use of this equipment are not recorded.

The first portolano to note the discoveries on the coast of Africa made by the Portuguese was that of Gabriele de Valsecca, of Majorca (1434- 1439). A map drawn by Andrea Bianco, of Venice, at London in 1448, seems to have been intended especially to indicate them, as it gives twenty-seven new names along the coast to the south of Cape Boyador.

But the map which was distinctively the outcome of the new discoveries was the so-called "Camaldolese map of Fra Mauro," drawn by Mauro, Bianco, and other draughtsmen during the year 1457, in the convent of Murano in Venice. King Alfonso of Portugal himself paid the expenses of its construction, and sent charts showing the recent discoveries. It included all the new knowledge obtained up to that time by Prince Henry's explorers. It is the first large map drawn with the exactness and the reliance on observed facts of the portolano, notwithstanding the fact that it included a larger part of the earth's surface in its field than any earlier map. Though disappointing in some respects, it stands in the forefront of improved modern maps, and not unworthily represents the advance made in the knowledge of the world's surface as a result of the Portuguese efforts up to that time. The scientific importance of the discoveries of the Portuguese and the intellectual alertness of the Italians are alike ill.u.s.trated by an incident that occurred at the court of Ferdinand and Isabella in 1491. Columbus having explained to the sovereigns his scheme for a western voyage to reach the Indies, most of the Spanish prelates who were present declared his ideas heretical, supporting themselves upon the authority of St. Augustine and Nicholas de Lyra. Alessandro Geraldini, an Italian, preceptor of the royal children, who was standing behind Cardinal Mendoza at the time, "represented to him that Nicholas de Lyra and St. Augustine had been, without doubt, excellent theologians but only mediocre geographers, since the Portuguese had reached a point of the other hemisphere where they had ceased to see the pole-star and discovered another star at the opposite pole, and that they had even found all the countries situated under the torrid zone fully peopled."

[Footnote: Mariejol, L'Espagne sous Ferdinand et Isabelle, 96.] In ship-building Henry and his navigators made positive progress. The Venetian Cadamosto testifies that "his caravels did much excel all other sailing ships afloat." Many varieties of vessels are mentioned in the records of Prince Henry's time--the barca, barinel, caravel, nau, fusta; the galley, galiot, galea.s.s, and galleon; the brigantine and carrack. Of all these the caravel became the favored for the long, exploring voyages. It was usually from sixty to one hundred feet long and eighteen to twenty-five feet broad, and of about two hundred tons burden. It had three masts with lateen sails stretched on the oblique yards which were swung from the masthead, and was steered, at least partly, by the turning of these great, swinging sails. [Footnote: Revista Portuguesa, Colonial (May 20, 1898), 32-52, quoted by Beazley, Introduction to Azurara's Chronicle (Hakluyt Soc., Publications, 1899, p. cxii.).] John II. encouraged the immigration of English and Danish ship-builders and carried improvements still further. The greatest service to navigation done by Prince Henry and his successors was that of providing a school of sea-training. Not only were the whole group of early Portuguese explorers, Henry's own captains, "brought up from boyhood in the household of the Infant," [Footnote: Azurara, Discovery of Guinea, chap xiii.] but there was scarcely a name great in navigation in the succeeding period which had not in some way been connected with these voyages. Diaz, Da Gama, Albuquerque, Da Cunha, Cabral, and the other captains who made the Portuguese empire in the East, Magellan, who found still another way to India by the southwest; Estevam Gomez, who sailed to the arctic seas; Bartholomew and Christopher Columbus--were all taught or practised in that school.

Columbus lived in Lisbon from 1470 to 1484, married there the daughter of Bartholomew Perestrello, the discoverer and captain-general under Prince Henry of Porto Santo in the Madeiras; and, besides his voyages on the Mediterranean and to England and Iceland, went repeatedly to the coast of Guinea and lived for some years in the Madeiras. Between 1477 and 1484 he was regularly engaged in the maritime service of the Portuguese crown. Besides these great names, many navigators who had only local repute or have remained nameless were Portuguese in birth and training, and belonged to the same maritime school. In 1502, close upon the English grants of exploring and trading rights to the Cabots, came a similar concession to "Hugh Elliott and Thomas Ashehurst, merchants of Bristol, and to John Gunsalus and Francis Fernandez, Esq., subjects of the king of Portugal." [Footnote: Rymer, Foedera] The expedition of the French captain De Gonneville to Brazil, in 1503, was guided by two Portuguese pilots; [Footnote: Pigeonncau, Hist du Commerce, II, 50.] and twenty of the sailors on Magellan's Spanish fleet of 1519, besides the commander, were Portuguese. [Footnote: Navarrete, Coleccion, II, 12] Three vessels from Dieppe, under Portuguese pilotage, in 1527, rounded the Cape of Good Hope and visited Madagascar, Sumatra, and the coast of India. [Footnote: De Barros, Decadas da Asia (Madrid ed., 1615), 42 decade, book V., chap, vi., 296.]

Actual skill in navigating vessels was increased and developed to a high degree in the struggle with the adverse maritime conditions on the coast of Africa. The violent and disturbing currents, the terrible surf of the beaches, the cyclones of the Guinea coast, the trade-winds, which were always head-winds to the mariners returning from the south- west, the uncharted reefs and bars, all favored a school of seamanship which trained the Portuguese and Italian sailors to meet far worse difficulties than those likely to confront them in the later and more distant voyages to the westward.

Other experiences of the Portuguese were later utilized by the Spaniards in their American colonies. The slave-trade was a sombre precedent, followed only too readily; the system of grants of newly discovered territory to captains or contractors who would continue its discovery or conquest, exploit its resources, and pay to the crown a large share of its products was followed, somewhat intermittently, in the West Indies and Central and South America. [Footnote: Bourne, Spain in America, chap. xiv.]

One of the permanent lessons of the Portuguese explorations was the need for and effectiveness of royal or quasi-royal patronage. Italian expeditions bore no fruit and could bear none, for this requirement of patronage was but ill-afforded by her merchant cities or even by her merchant princes. It was impossible for Venice or Genoa to take a part in the new discoveries and follow the new lines of trade, not only because of their unfavorable geographical position, not only because they were then engaged in a desperate military and economic struggle to retain their old Levantine trade conquests and connections, not only because their wealth and prosperity were deeply smitten by their mutual struggles and their common losses from the repeated blows of the Ottoman conquest, but because Italy had no royal family to take under its patronage distant discovery, conquest, trade, and colonization.

Italy furnished most of the knowledge, the skill, and the individual enterprise that made the great period of explorations; but Portugal, under the leadership of her great prince, was its true pioneer.

CHAPTER V

THE SPANISH MONARCHY IN THE AGE OF COLUMBUS

(1474-1525)

The limits of Portuguese discovery and dominion were soon reached; and as the fifteenth century advanced, Spain emerged not only as one of the great powers of Europe but as the first exploring, conquering, and colonizing nation of America. A century before any other European state obtained a permanent foothold in the New World, Spain began the creation of a great colonial empire there, which was soon occupied by her settlers, administered by a department of her government, converted by her missionaries, and made famous throughout Europe by the wealth which it brought to the mother-country. Such a work at such a time could only be accomplished by a vigorous and rising nation, and, in fact, Spanish advancement in Europe during this period corresponded closely with her achievements in America. There are few recorded instances of a development so rapid and a transformation so complete as that which took place in Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella, between 1474 and 1516.

For a career destined to be scarcely inferior to that any of the great empires of history, Spain had at the beginning of this period an inadequate and undeveloped political organization. Even that royal power which was the condition precedent to distant conquest and colonial organization was new. Spanish national unity, royal absolutism, and religious uniformity, which were famous throughout Europe in the sixteenth century, were all of recent growth; the centralized control over all parts of her widely scattered colonies which Spain, above all colonizing countries, exercised, was a power attained and a policy adopted only at the moment of the acquisition of those colonies.

When, in 1474, Isabella inherited the crown of Castille, and, in 1479, her husband, Ferdinand, became king of Aragon, they united, by close personal and political bonds, what had formerly been near a score of domains, variously joined or detached.

The king of Aragon had already incorporated into a personal union three separate countries--the kingdom of Aragon, the kingdom of Valencia, and the ancient princ.i.p.ality of Catalonia, each with its own body of representatives, its own law, its peculiar customs, and its separate administrative systems. Castile was in name a political unity, having one monarch and one body of estates. Nevertheless its provinces represented well-marked ancient divisions. Leon had once been a separate kingdom, and was still coupled with Castile itself in the full t.i.tle of that monarchy; while Galicia, Asturias, and the three Basque provinces were inhabited by peoples of different political history, of different stock, and living under different customs. Navarre, Granada, and Portugal, although within the Iberian peninsula, were, at the accession of Ferdinand and Isabella, still independent; though the first was destined to be united to Aragon, the second to Castile, and even the third was to be amalgamated for eighty critical years with the greater monarchy. Thus Spain was a congeries of states, joined by the marriage bond of the two rulers of its princ.i.p.al divisions, but by no means yet a single monarchy or a united nation. It was the work of the Catholic sovereigns to carry this unification far towards completion by following common aims, by achieving success in many fields of common national interest, and by imposing the common royal power upon all divergent and warring cla.s.ses and interests in the various Spanish states.

The personality of Ferdinand and Isabella was the first great factor in the strengthening of the monarchy; for they were both individuals of authority, energy, and ability. [Footnote: Burgenroth, Col. Letters and State Papers, Spain, I., 34, etc.] Their union was the next element; for the royal power of the united monarchies could be used to break down opposition in either. Great achievements in Spain and in Europe increased their authority and power by the prestige of success.

Finally, the discoveries, conquests, and colonization of America gave a unique position to the rulers of these distant possessions. Not only did the products of the American mines American commercial taxation furnish a material basis of strength and influence; not only did a great commercial marine and a great navy grow up around the needs of intercourse with the colonies; but the romantic interest of the discoveries, the wild adventures, and the wonderful success of the conquistadores, and the extent of the colonies, filled the imagination and gave an ideal greatness to the monarchs in whose name these conquests were made, and by whom the New World was ruled.

There was need for all the authority of the new sovereigns at the time of their accession in 1474. Under the weak rule of Isabella's brother, Castile had become a prey to disorder amounting almost to anarchy; in Galicia brigandage was so common as to be unresisted, except by townsmen staying within walls; in Andalusia private warfare among the great n.o.ble houses had let loose all the forces of disorder and violence; Isabella's claim to the crown was disputed and her rival upheld by foreign support. [Footnote: Maurenbrecher, Studien und Studien, 45, 46.] The united sovereigns met these difficulties with vigor, and the first two years of Isabella's rule in Castile gave repeated instances of victorious warfare, of successful a.s.sertion of authority, and of harsh justice. The turbulent districts were reduced to order and the foreign invader expelled.

The disorder in Andalusia seemed to demand personal action. In 1477, therefore, the two sovereigns made a formal entry into Seville, and the queen a.s.serted her royal power in a way that could not be misunderstood. In true patriarchal fashion she established her tribunal in the Alcazar, sitting in a chair on an elevated platform surrounded by her council and officers, in all solemnity and according to traditional forms, listening to the complaints of high and low, rich and poor, and granting summary justice to all who claimed it, irrespective of rank or means. Her decrees were carried out, ill-doers forced to make amends, and turbulent n.o.bles reduced to promising to keep the peace. The visit of Isabella to Seville may well be taken as the beginning of the work of the new monarchy in Spain. [Footnote: Perez, Los Reyes Catolicos in Sevilla, 1477-1478, p. 13.]

The next step towards an enforcement of royal authority taken by the new monarchs involved the acknowledgment of an inst.i.tution seemingly independent of the monarchy. Spanish cities and communes had at various times formed hermandads, leagues or brotherhoods, to enforce order, to support themselves against great n.o.bles, or to strengthen themselves for the carrying out of some object of common policy. Instances could be found in which their combined strength had been used against the king himself or his officials. On the other hand, their united power had been used efficaciously to form a sort of rural police, each city undertaking the protection of certain roads and stretches of country.

[Footnote: Antequera, Hist. de la Legislacion Espanola, 194-197.]

Two influential ministers, with the approval of Ferdinand and Isabella, in 1476, obtained the agreement of the Cortes of Castile and of a junta of the towns for the formation of a santa hermandad, or "holy brotherhood," for three years, for which rules were drawn up, submitted to the monarchs, and filially promulgated. The n.o.bles gave a reluctant a.s.sent to the requirements of these rules, so far as they affected their estates and va.s.sals. Altogether two thousand hors.e.m.e.n were to be equipped, each horseman supported by a body of one hundred households.

These were grouped into companies under eight captains and placed in detachments at certain distances along all the roads. Besides the armed soldiers of the brotherhood, a whole system of alcaldes was organized with exclusive jurisdiction over certain kinds of offences. A common treasury existed for the support of expenses.

When any theft, a.s.sault, arson, or rape was discovered or complained of, immediately the bells Were rung, and the nearest detachment of soldiers of the brotherhood started on a pursuit which was carried to the boundaries of the next district, where its detachment took up the pursuit, and so on until the culprit was seized or the boundaries of the kingdom reached. No town, house, or castle could refuse the right of search. When arrested, a decision of the nearest alcalde was given within five days. If convicted, the culprit had hand or foot cut off or was put to death. The favorite mode of execution in earlier times had been to bind the offender to a stake, and shoot him with arrows "till he died naturally"; but Isabella required that he should be hanged first, and that only then might his body be used as a target and a warning for others. The rapidity of pursuit and the certainty of capture of offenders, the prompt.i.tude of justice, and the barbarism of the punishments made a strong impression; and the combination of popular vengeance with official sanction made the hermandad an effective form of national police. It was introduced into Aragon in 1488.

Although this system seemed to emanate from the people, the general control over it was preserved by Ferdinand and Isabella by placing in influential positions in its administration trusted ministers of their own, and by joining themselves in its organization. When its work of insuring order was measurably accomplished and the people began to complain of its expense, the sovereigns were able to transfer the military force into a contingent for the Moorish war, and the treasury into an addition to the commissariat for the same purpose. In 1498 it was reduced to the proportions of a petty and inexpensive local police.

It had proved itself, as utilized by these strong monarchs, a means of obtaining order and recruiting an army without cost to the royal treasury.

The vigor of the royal administration, however, expressed itself rather in the development of purely royal organs than in those which were so largely popular as the hermandad. A group of royal councils became, under Ferdinand and Isabella, the most powerful instruments of the royal will, the most effective means for obtaining additional power and beating down all opposition. Early in the reign, the old royal council, which traditionally consisted of twelve members, including representatives of each of the three orders of the state, was reconst.i.tuted so as to consist of one ecclesiastic, three n.o.bles, and eight or nine letrados, or lawyers. [Footnote: Cortes de los Antiguos Reinos, 112, etc.] The last cla.s.s, who made up its majority, were men learned in the Roman law, and therefore devoted to the idea of absolute monarchy; without connection with the church or the n.o.bility, and therefore interested in the strengthening of the kingship against both; shrewd, trained, capable, and hard working.

From this time forward the council, in constant attendance on the king, well organized, provided with a corps of clerks and officers, and holding daily sessions, became the serviceable and effective auxiliary of royal power. It had duties of consultation, advice, and in some cases decision, on matters of internal and external policy, of legislation and administration; and, in fact, of action in the whole sphere of the affairs of state. In time the council was gradually subdivided into three bodies: the Council of Justice, the Council of State, and the Council of the Finances, whose functions were indicated by their t.i.tles. The first of these was, in a certain sense, the direct representative of the old single royal council, and was frequently known as the Council of Castile. Its president was always considered the highest personage in the kingdom, next the king; its members were of that cla.s.s of letrados whom the king could most securely rely on, and to it fell the duty of enforcing the royal supremacy as against all ancient claims, privileges, and liberties.

In addition to these outgrowths from the primitive council of the king, new councils were created from time to time, a.n.a.logous in powers, but holding oversight over special spheres of national interest. Some of these were temporary, others permanent. Among them were the Council of the Hermandad, which lasted only for the twenty-two years of the existence of that inst.i.tution; the Council of the Suprema, or of the Inquisition; the Council of the Military Orders, the Council of the Indies, and the Council of Aragon. [Footnote: Antequera, Hist. de la Legislation Espanola, 347, 348.] These great administrative boards were a characteristic part of the Spanish system of government, a natural outgrowth of its wide-spread fields of action.

The Council of the Indies was const.i.tuted in 1511, under the presidency of Juan de Fonseca, archdeacon of Seville, and was exactly a.n.a.logous to the other councils. It accompanied the king, and had under him all ultimate control in policy, in jurisdiction, and in legislation over the Spanish possessions in America and in the East. Its members were habitually drawn from those men who had had experience as public servants in the West Indies or in the Philippines. The more direct oversight of individual voyages to the Indies, the regulation of details of colonial affairs, and a large sphere of general activity were possessed by the powerful Casa le Contractacion at Seville. A Bureau of Pilots also existed, whose office it was to collect nautical information, provide charts, and give a.s.sistance to Spanish navigators.

But both of these offices were under the control of the Council of the Indies. [Footnote: J. de Veitia Linage, The Spanish Rule of Trade to the West Indies, trans. by Captain J. Stevens, book I., chap. iii.]

All these councils were stronger in discussion than the execution; their archives came to include a vast ma.s.s of records and special reports on subjects falling within their respective fields, and their procedure favored penetrating investigation and full debate. But decision was hard to come at, and the consciousness that final decision after all rested with the king paralyzed effectiveness. The custom of submitting all questions of policy to investigation by the appropriate council became invariable in later Spanish history, and it resulted in c.u.mbrous ineffectiveness. Interminable inquiry and discussion ended frequently only in suspension of judgment or a divided report. Points of policy of imminent importance had to await a dilatory investigation and equivocal conclusions. This impotence of the central organs of government did not come in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella and their immediate successors, and the growing inefficiency of the councils was long overcome by the resolution of the monarchs. Nevertheless the system was part of the price paid for centralized government, acting independently of local initiative or independence.

The preponderance of power that was being obtained by the sovereigns in the affairs of central government by means of the royal councils was gained in the local affairs of provinces, towns, and communes, by the appointment of corregidores. Such officials were appointed from time to time by earlier sovereigns to represent them in various towns, but the system had never been extended widely. In 1480 the king and queen sent one or more corregidores into every self-governing town and city in Castile where such officials did not exist already. [Footnote: Pulgar, Cronita de los Reyes, II., chap. xcv.] They were to act alongside of the older local regidores and alcaldes as special representatives of the crown, defending its rights and claims, and fulfilling its duties of general oversight and protection. As a matter of fact, the great work they accomplished was the enforcement of royal supremacy over local privileges. Little by little they extended their powers and encroached upon the local self-government, bringing to bear all the weight of the central government upon local conditions. [Footnote: Mariejol, L'Espagne sous Ferdinand et Isabelle, 172-174.] The steady pressure of the corregidores was supplemented by the periodical visits of the pesquidores, veidores, or inspectors, whose duty it from time to time to visit the various localities, examining into the conduct of the corregidores and other officials, listening to complaints against them, reporting on the revenues, condition of the roads, and other local conditions and needs.

Councils, corregidores, inspectors, and various other instruments of royal power fast sapped the strength of older inst.i.tutions and gave authority and efficiency to the royal government; but they were expensive and the crown was poor. Moreover, these inst.i.tutions were only the permanent elements in a policy which had a thousand temporary occasions of expense. Not even Ferdinand and Isabella could carry out so vigorous a regime unless provided with larger revenues. They determined, therefore, to emanc.i.p.ate the crown from its poverty. A few years after their accession they felt themselves strong enough, supported by the representatives of the towns, in the Cortes of Toledo, to convoke the great n.o.bles and churchmen of the kingdom and demand from them an investigation into the conditions under which the ancient domains of the crown had been alienated. [Footnote: Pulgar, Cronica de los Reyes, II, chap. xcv.; Calmeiro, Introduction to Cortes de los Antiguos Reinos, II., 63, 64.] The Cardinal Pedro de Mendoza and the queen's confessor, Ferdinand de Talavera, were appointed to judge of the propriety of the gifts of former sovereigns. They did their work so adequately that pension after pension, estate after estate, endowment after endowment, were resumed by the crown. These resumptions were princ.i.p.ally to the loss of the great n.o.ble families which had enriched themselves at the expense of the crown. None, it is true, were impoverished thereby, but a more normal relation of comparative income between sovereign and subject was established in the process.