forth no effort to save them, the Moors surrendered. This
was the last of the " three thousand seven hundred battles "
which they had waged with the Christians. Gonsalvo of
Cordova drew up the articles of capitulation. These
stipulated that the Mussulmans should be always governed
according to their own laws, that they should keep their
property and customs, and enjoy the free exercise of their
faith, without being subjected to other taxes than those
they paid their kings. When he reached Mount Padul,
whence Granada is seen, Boabdil (Abdoul Abdallah), its
last prince, cast a long look upon the city while tears bathed
his face. " My son," said to him his mother, Aischa, " you
do well to weep like a woman for the throne which you
were unable to defend like a man." The domination of
the Arabs in Spain had lasted 782 years. It left behind it
architectural monuments of refined elegance, agriculture
and manufactures carried to perfection, picturesque details
in the customs, dress, and household furniture, more than
one sonorous word in the language, and even in national
thought a touch of delicate and flowery courtesy of which
the rude Northern conquerors were utterly ignorant.

Spain was freed, but she cherished against the infidels a
horror and a hatred ripened, so to speak, by eight centuries
of war. The population of the peninsula presented a
strange mixture of Moors, Jews, and Christians. To make
the whole homogeneous by imposing a single faith, to fortify
the unity of the state by the unity of religion, Ferdinand
created a new Inquisition.* This celebrated tribunal, which

* The Inquisition, although early existing in the Western Church, was
made to assume its peculiar sanguinary character at the beginning of the



CHAP. IV.] SPAIN FROM 1453 TO 1521. 45

has left a terrible and an execrated name, at this its second
appearance had a political rather than ecclesiastical design.
Organized in Castile in 1480, the Holy Office was established
four years later in Aragon, and there maintained itself
despite an earnest opposition. It was then the only tri-
bunal recognized in both countries. The king named its
chief the Grand Inquisitor, and retained for his treasury
the goods of the condemned. These were first Judaizing
Christians and converted Moors who remained secretly
faithful to Mohammed ; later, innovators in politics as well
as in religion. From January to November, 1481, the
inquisitors sent 298 newly professed Christians to the stake
in Seville, and 2000 in the provinces of Seville and Cadiz.
Placed under the control of the kings, and at times sus-
pected by the court of Rome, it was first a means of gov-
ernment and an instrument of despotism to defend the
" two majesties " (ambas majestades), inasmuch as Ferdi-
nand, who at the capture of Granada had acquired for him-
self and his successors the surname of Catholic, so judi-
ciously confounded religion and monarchy that the same
name served to designate God and the king, and thus rebel-
lion became sacrilege. " What still more alienated men's
minds," said the Jesuit Mariana, " was seeing that this
tribunal inflicted upon children the punishment of their
parents ; that the accuser was not known and was not con-
fronted with the accused ; that the witnesses were not
known. Moreover, nothing seemed harder than those secret
investigations, which disturbed commerce and society."
The Dominican Thomas de Torquemada was the first
Grand Inquisitor. In the eighteen years during which he
directed this blood tribunal 8000 persons were burned,
6500 were burned in effigy or after death, 9000 underwent

thirteenth century, when directed by St. Dominic and Pope Innocent III.
against the Albigenses. Entirely reorganized in Spain in 1480, it was
called the Holy Office, and was shortly after introduced into Italy.
Its introduction into the Netherlands by Philip II. largely contributed
to their insurrection. Napoleon suppressed it in Spain in 1808, and at
Rome in 1809. After his fall it revived, but only for a brief time. The
execution of heretics by burning at the stake was sacreligiously called
attto-da-fd (act of faith), the last in America taking place in Mexico in
1815, and in Spain in 1826. The Catholic historian Llorente states that
in Spain alone before 1809 it burned alive at the stake 31,912 persons,
1 7>659 persons in effigy, and condemned to imprisonment or various tor-
tures 291, 450 more. ED.



46 REVOLUTION IN THE POLITICAL ORDER. [BOOK I.

the punishment of branding, of confiscation of goods, or of
perpetual imprisonment.

In 1492 the Inquisition was sufficiently strong to obtain
the banishment of the Jews after having despoiled them of
their goods. They were forbidden to carry away either gold
or silver, but only articles of merchandise. Contemporary
writers estimate at 800,000 the number of those who left
Spain. The larger number of these perished or were made to
endure atrocious sufferings. Thus fanaticism immolated
an entire people, who had long been the principal, the only,
representatives of arts, manufactures, and science. A decree
deprived the Moors of the religious liberty which the treaty
of Granada had left them, and thus many went into exile.
Their definite expulsion was not pronounced till a century
later (1609). So Spain gained its religious unity, but she
lost her arts, manufactures, and commerce, of which the
Jews and the Moors were the most active agents.

Through the Inquisition the king controlled consciences ;
through the right conferred on him by the Pope of appoint-
ing to all the Church livings he gained a great ascendancy
over the clergy ; by having himself elected grand master
of the orders of Calatrava, Alcantara, and St. James he
acquired military power and considerable revenues. This
last order the most important of them all, it is true could
equip 1000 lancers. The reunion of these dignities to the
crown was at first only personal, but Ferdinand caused the
Pope to declare it perpetual. Through the reorganization
of the St. Hermandad, of which he declared himself the
protector, and which he subordinated to the council of Cas-
tile, the monarchy acquired the means of controlling the
national police, and under pretext of punishing or repressing
private wars among the barons, it razed their castles. In
1481 forty-six castles were demolished in the province of
Galicia alone and the highest heads fell. Commissioners
were sent into all the provinces to listen to the complaints
of the people against the grandees and to supervise the
judges, who in case of betrayal of trust were to restore
sevenfold. Finally, by the famous bulk de la cruzada the
king obtained a considerable share in the sale of indul-
gences.

United within, Spain abroad assumed an importance she
had never possessed. For the crown of Castile Columbus
discovered the new world. Ximenes gave it Oran on the



CHAP. IV.] SPAIN FROM 1453 TO 1521. 47

coast of Africa (1509), and Pedro de Vera the Canaries,
whose native population, the Guanches, was exterminated.
A stopping place, important for the navigation of the Atlan-
tic, was thus acquired for Spain. For the crown of Aragon
Ferdinand conquered the kingdom of Naples (1504), and
took away Navarre from Jean d'Albret (1512), thereby
closing to the advantage of Spain one of the two gates of
the Pyrenees. He already held the other through Rous-
sillen, which Charles VIII. had restored to him in 1493.

The death of Isabella came near separating the two
kingdoms. The queen left only a daughter, Jane the
Foolish, married to the archduke Philip the Fair, son of
Mary of Burgundy and of Maximilian of Austria, conse-
quently already sovereign of the Netherlands. Discontented
with her son-in-law, the queen by will bequeathed the
regency of Castile to her husband. The Castilians reluc-
tantly submitted to the last wishes of their great sovereign,
and Philip needed only to disembark in Spain to seize the
power. But he died soon afterward, and Ferdinand, thanks
to the support of the famous Cardinal Ximenes, Archbishop
of Toledo, was recognized by the cortes Regent of Castile
during the minority of his grandson Charles, son of Philip
the Fair.

However, the unity of Spain was not yet made sure.
Ferdinand through dislike of Philip the Fair had contracted
a second marriage with Germaine de Foix, niece of Louis
XII., in whose favor the French king renounced his claim
to Naples. This union was childless. A project of be-
queathing Aragon to his second grandson at the expense
of the first, whom he did not love, came to nothing. Ferdi-
nand, inspired on the bed of death (1516) with the grand
thought of the unity of Spain, bequeathed all his crowns to
Charles, who had already gathered the heritage of Isabella,
and who was still to gather that of his grandfather, the
emperor Maximilian. Philip II. was right in saying when
speaking of King Ferdinand, " To him we owe all."

Ximenes, Archbishop of Toledo and Grand Inquisitor, was
Regent of Castile until the arrival of the young king, then
in Flanders. An austere man, with a mind of rare vigor,
he had anticipated the Reformation by making it himself ;
at least he had brought back many monastic Spanish orders
to rigid discipline ; to reanimate the religious spirit in the
country, he had conducted at his own expense a crusade



48 REVOLUTION IN THE POLITICAL ORDER. [ BOOK I.

into Africa under the walls of Oran, of which he made
himself master. On the death of Isabella he adminstered
Castile, and kept it quiet after the death of Ferdinand.
Stern to others as to himself, he remained a monk under
the Roman purple and in the palace of kings ; but he no
more tolerated resistance to the faith than to the prince.
He burned the heretics and curbed the lords. One day
the grandees asked him what were his credentials. " There
they are," he replied, pointing to formidable artillery and to
a body of troops drawn up under the windows of the palace.

Charles, who in Spain was Charles I. and in the empire
Charles V., at first committed only errors. He disgraced
Ximenes and surrounded himself with Flemish favorites.
When in 1519 Spain learned that he had obtained the im-
perial crown and that he had accepted it, she feared, with
reason, that she was to see her blood and money sacrificed
to the ambition of the new emperor. Charles despised
these murmurs and embarked for Germany, but his de-
parture was the signal for an insurrection which spread
from Toledo all through Castile. The insurrected cities
united in a confederation which took the name of the Holy
League (Junta Santa), and refused to lay down arms until
the emperor had abolished the pecuniary privileges of the
nobility. The aristocracy then separated its cause from
that of the citizens and rallied around the sovereign. The
army of the league was beaten at Villalar, and its chief,
the noble Don Juan de Padilla, died upon the scaffold (1521).

Charles V. then completed the work of Ferdinand and
Isabella. He compelled the Moors of the province of
Valencia to be baptized, and all those of Granada to re-
nounce their costume and language. He cited before the
tribunal of the Holy Office the bishops who had declared
for the communeros. The clergy was obliged to bow the
head beneath the weapon which it itself had furnished.
Many others bowed it ; the privileges of the cities were
abolished, and Charles deprived the cortes of their impor-
tance by compelling them to vote the taxes before the con-
sideration of complaints, and by forbidding the deputies
any preliminary reunion. The nobles refusing to pay their
share of the state expenses, he ceased to summon them to
the cortes. They appeared no longer in the armies, now
composed of mercenaries, nor at the court, crowded with
Flemings.



CHAP. IV.] SPAIN FROM 1453 TO 1521. 49

So the king triumphed both over the citizens and over the
nobles an injurious victory, which was one of the principal
causes of the decline of Spain. Thenceforward the activity
of this great nation was repressed by a despotism which
knew not, like that on the other side of the Pyrenees, how
to give glory in exchange and to prepare the way for civil
equality.

At the southwest extremity of the peninsula the tiny

kingdom of Portugal was then casting a brilliant light.

_ . . The Capetian house of Burgundy, which had

Portugal. .... , J

founded this kingdom, was then perpetuated
only by an illegitimate branch, that of Avis, which reigned
since the glorious day of Aljubarota, when John I. the
Bastard had beaten his competitor, the King of Castile



The new dynasty, offspring of popular reaction and na-
tional sentiment, at first respected public liberty. John I.
had convoked the cortes twenty-five times. The minor-
ity of Alphonso V., surnamed the African (1438-81), was
favorable to the grandees ; a civil war broke out, then
followed useless but glorious expeditions into Africa, with
the capture of Arzila and Tangiers, and an unfortunate
intervention in Spain, where Alphonso sustained the rights
of Jane of Castile, daughter of Henry IV. Conquered at
Toro (1476), he was forced to solicit the assistance of
France. Louis XI. did not greatly love adventurous expe-
ditions ; he gave him nothing, but he hindered him from
shutting himself up in a monastery, preferring to see at
Lisbon a prince friendly to France, hostile to Castile and
Aragon, rather than to count one monk more, though a
king, in his abbeys.

John II. (1481-95), the successor of Alphonso V., was
the Louis XI. of Portugal, and a Louis XL still more
energetic than he of France. At the very commencement
of his reign he revoked in the cortes of Evora all the
concessions made to the nobility to the detriment of the
royal domain ; he took away from the lords the right of
life and death over their vassals, and subjected them them-
selves to the jurisdiction of the crown officers (1482).
This reform excited a revolt ; the Duke of Braganza put
himself at the head of the malcontents. John II. had him
seized and beheaded (1483).

The nobles then betook themselves to attempts at assas-



5 REVOLUTION IN THE POLITICAL ORDER. [BOOK. 1.

sination. The king with his own hand stabbed their
chief, his cousin, the Duke of Viseu. Appalled at such
examples, the nobility bowed its head. The independence
of the national assemblies was likewise broken ; the cortes
reappeared only three times in fourteen years. Then the
royal despotism found itself solidly established ; in return
it gave a powerful impulse to commerce and the spirit of
adventure, and the Renaissance was encouraged. Lisbon,
declared a free port, received the Jews driven from Spain ;
the islands of Cape Verd were discovered ; the Cape c
Good Hope was passed and the nation launched itself into
that adventurous career wherein, following the footsteps of
Vasco da Gama and Albuquerque, it was destined to attain
a grandeur ephemeral, but for a moment dazzling.

Emanuel the Fortunate harvested what John II. had
sown. During the course of his reign, as tranquil at home
as it was glorious abroad, discoveries succeeded each other
with marvelous rapidity, and in the midst of the riches of
India Portugal forgot its ancient spirit of independence.
Emanuel let the cortes fall into disuse ; during the last
twenty years of his reign he did not convoke them once.

So the momentous fact which we have already recognized
in France, Aragon, and Castile was reproduced in Portugal :
the monarchy became preponderant. " John taught all
human kings the art of reigning," said Camoens. When,
learning of his end, the great Isabella cried, " The man is
dead," everybody understood that he who had just passed
away was the energetic King of Portugal.



CHAPTER V.
GERMANY AND ITALY FROM 1453 TO 1494.



Divisions of Germany and Italy. The Emperors Frederick III. and
Maximilian. Italy in the Second Part of the Fifteenth Century.



WE have just seen vast monarchies and powerful

royalties formed in France, England, and Spain. The

three great nations of the West, reunited

German^ nS and each under a national chief who introduced

perors ^rederl order and obedience in the interior, were

ick in. and therefore ready for action abroad, and in fact

were going to act beyond their frontiers.

At the center of the European continent two nations, on
the contrary, persisted in continuing to live the life of
anarchy as in the Middle Ages. Divided, consequently
feeble, Germany and Italy were to tempt the ambition of
every conqueror, and so one after the other to behold the
armies of Europe march upon their soil to decide their
quarrels. Italy became the first European battlefield ;
when victory had given it to one of the assailants, Ger-
many took her turn. By the woes of repeated invasions
these two countries had to pay for the ambition and pride
of their cities and princes.

In Germany the house of Austria had just re-seized the
imperial scepter, no more to lose it. But the indolent
Frederick III. was incapable of attaching real power to the
title of emperor. During a reign of fifty-three years
(1440-93) he forgot the empire and was busied only in
aggrandizing his Austrian domains, which he raised to an
archduchy in 1453. The electors vainly menaced him
with deposition ; he did not abandon his systematic in-
difference. He permitted the Duke of Burgundy, Philip
the Good, to break the feudal bond which attached the



52 REVOLUTION IN THE POLITICAL ORDER. [BOOK I.

Netherlands to the empire ; and if he disappointed the
ambition of the Bold by refusing him the title of king, he
made few efforts to save Neuss and the Swiss, who rescued
themselves all alone, the first by obstinate resistance, the
second by three victories. In 1460 a civil war broke out
in Germany itself. Frederick was satisfied with putting
its author, the Elector Palatine, under the ban of the empire ;
the elector replied to this impotent sentence by adding to
his castle at Heidelberg a tower which he called Trutz-
Kaiser (Plague on the Emperor), and which merited its name.
Another bad civil war continued from 1449 to 1456 between
many princes and seventy-two cities. More than two hun-
dred villages were burned on one side or the other. Freder-
ick remained simple spectator of the struggle, in which the
Swiss, however, had taken part.

In his own dominions Frederick when he drew the sword
was less indolent without being more successful. His
predecessor, Albert of Austria, had left to his son, Ladislaus
the Posthumous, the crowns of Bohemia and Hungary, to-
gether with the duchy of Austria. Frederick detained the
young king, and when the energetic demands of the
Bohemians and Hungarians obliged him to let him go free
he, however, kept the crown of St. Stephen, to which in the
eyes of the Hungarians seemed attached the independence
of their country. Mohammed II. entered Constantinople,
and in 1456 he conducted his victorious troops before Bel-
grade, the last bulwark of Christianity. There was then a
glorious role to play ; Frederick left it to John Huniadi,
"the White Knight of Walachia." A Franciscan, Giovanni
Capistrano, led to the Hungarian hero 46,000 Germans
whom his preaching had inspired. Huniadi penetrated
into the city, caused the siege to be raised, but died of his
wounds, bequeathing to his son, MathiasCorvinus, his glory
and his popularity.

Two years after Ladislaus died. Frederick claimed to
be his heir. Every where he failed. The Bohemians elected
as king Podiebrad, the Hungarians MathiasCorvinus, and
Frederick was obliged to share the archduchy of Austria
with his cousin Sigismund and his brother Albert. He en-
deavored to take their part by force, was beaten, and would
have been captured at Vienna had it not been for the assist-
ance brought him by Podiebrad. The death of Albert gave
him naturally what he coveted, but after that of Podiebrad in



CHAP. V.] GERMANY AND ITALY FROM 1453 TO 1494. 53

1471 Bohemia escaped him still ; Vladislaus, the oldest son
of Casimir IV., King of Poland, was elected. Frederick
hoped that at least a long rivalry was going to exhaust
Bohemia and Hungary, where Mathias, aided by the Vene-
tians and Scanderbeg, sustained gloriously the contest
against the Ottomans. But the two kings agreed ; Mathias
found himself free to call the emperor to account for his
intrigues, for his underhand dealing in Hungary, and for
his cowardly abandonment of the cause of Christianity and
civilization. The Austrian troops were beaten ; Vienna
was captured in 1485, and remained in the hands of Mathias
until his death in 1490.

Yet this emperor " of very little heart," as says Comines,
this archduke always defeated, founded the greatness of
his dynasty. The marriage of his son Maximilian with
Mary of Burgundy gave the Netherlands, and later still
Spain, to Austria. We have already seen how this marriage
was brought about, and what were the relations of Fred-
erick III. with Charles the Bold.

Maximilian was educated, eloquent, and brave. He
loved letters, arts, and sciences, and cultivated them with
success ; but his character was light and fickle. He never
lingered long upon the same matter or in the same place,
always upon the highways of Europe and engaged in every
adventure, making, in a word, much noise and accomplishing
little. He occupied himself, however, somewhat more with
Germany than did his father. The anarchy had become
such that certain states had taken the initiative of the most
energetic measures. In 1488 the Swabian cities and princes
formed a league at Esslingen ; the extent of the disorder
can be judged by this fact, that in a few years the con-
federation had razed no less than 144 fortresses whose
masters were from time immemorial in the habit of plunder-
ing travelers and of pillaging the country. But a partial
and temporary effort was not enough ; a system of general
and permanent repression was necessary if public peace
was to be established.

This was the end sought by the diet of Worms when
promulgating the famous constitution of 1495, which for-
bade under penalty of fine and forfeiture all war between
the states. In order to punish violations of this funda-
mental law, or to prevent them, a permanent tribunal was
instituted whose members were chosen by the emperor from



54 REVOLUTION IN THE POLITICAL ORDER. [BOOK I.

a list of candidates presented by the states. This tribunal
took the name of the Imperial Chamber.

It remained now to put in execution the decrees of this
supreme court. For this they provided by the division of
Germany into ten districts a wise project, which the
emperor Albert II. had already tried, and which was realized
during the reign of Maximilian by the diets of Augsburg
(1500) and of Treves (1512). All the German territory,
all Bohemia and its dependencies, were divided into ten
departments, which had each its director. Each district
maintained at its expense a body of troops which were
placed under the command of the prince director and
charged with the maintenance of public peace. The posts,
instituted by Maximilian after the example of those which
Louis XI. had organized in France, were also a bond
between the different parts of the territory.

Unhappily for Germany these institutions of public
police only half succeeded. The diet, which alone exer-
cised legislative power, distrusted the Austrian emperors ;
they on the other hand hindered the putting in operation
of rules and laws established by the sovereign assembly.
Thus the Aulic Council, created in 1501 by Maximilian for
the administration of his hereditary estates and for the
decision of cases reserved for the emperor, diminished the
authority of the Imperial Chamber. Limited at first to the
Austrian estates, the jurisdiction of the new tribunal, while
dependent upon the court of Vienna, extended little by
little beyond its bounds and made a powerful competition
with the Imperial Chamber, whose members were badly
paid and their decisions badly obeyed. The encroach-
ments of the Aulic Council were to be one of the causes of
the Thirty Years War.

Upon the whole, at the end of this period the Holy Ger-
man Empire, by whatsoever title the pride of its chief was
flattered, was in reality an agglomeration, without stability,
of princes and cities who had hardly other bonds than
ancient recollections, similarity of customs, and identity of
language bonds that were to prove themselves exceed-
ingly fragile on the day when thundered the storm of
religious passion.

Even already the most powerful of the German princes
were uneasy at this activity of Maximilian. Upon their