Part 32 (1/2)
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CHAPTER IX
THE IBERIAN PENINSULA AND THE EXPANSION OF EUROPE
SECTION 1. SPAIN
[Sidenote: Reformation, Renaissance and Exploration]
If, through the prism of history, we a.n.a.lyse the white light of sixteenth-century civilization into its component parts, three colors particularly emerge: the azure ”light of the Gospel” as the Reformers fondly called it in Germany, the golden beam of the Renaissance in Italy, and the blood-red flame of exploration and conquest irradiating the Iberian peninsula. Which of the three contributed most to modern culture it is hard to decide. Each of the movements started separately, gradually spreading until it came into contact, and thus into compet.i.tion and final blending with the other movements. It was the middle lands, France, England and the Netherlands that, feeling the impulses from all sides, evolved the sanest and strongest synthesis.
While Germany almost committed suicide with the sword of the spirit, while Italy sank into a voluptuous torpor of decadent art, while Spain reeled under the load of unearned Western wealth, France, England and Holland, taking a little from each of their neighbors, and not too much from any, became strong, well-balanced, brilliant states.
But if eventually Germany, Italy and Spain all suffered from over-specialization, for the moment the stimulus of new ideas and new possibilities gave to each a sort of leaders.h.i.+p in its own sphere.
While Germany and Italy were busy winning the realms of the spirit and of the mind, Spain very nearly conquered the empire of the land and of the sea.
{426} [Sidenote: Ferdinand, 1479-1516 and Isabella, 1474-1504]
The foundation of her national greatness, like that of the greatness of so many other powers, was laid in the union of the various states into which she was at one time divided. The marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile was followed by a series of measures that put Spain into the leading position in Europe, expelled the alien racial and religious elements of her population, and secured to her a vast colonial empire. The conquest of Granada from the Moors, the acquisition of Cerdagne and Roussillon from the French, and the annexation of Naples, doubled the dominions of the Lions and Castles, and started the proud land on the road to empire. It is true that eventually Spain exhausted herself by trying to do more than even her young powers could accomplish, but for a while she retained the hegemony of Christendom. The same year that saw the discovery of America [Sidenote: 1492] and the occupation of the Alhambra, was also marked by the expulsion or forced conversion of the Jews, of whom 165,000 left the kingdom, 50,000 were baptized, and 20,000 perished in race riots. The statesmans.h.i.+p of Ferdinand showed itself in a more favorable light in the measures taken to reduce the n.o.bles, feudal anarchs as they were, to fear of the law. To take their place in the government of the country he developed a new bureaucracy, which also, to some extent, usurped the powers of the Cortes of Aragon and of the Cortes of Castile. [Sidenote: Francis Ximenez de Cisneros, 1436-1517]
In the meantime a notable reform of the church, in morals and in learning if not in doctrine, was carried through by the great Cardinal Ximenez.
[Sidenote: Charles V, 1516-1556]
When Charles, the grandson of the Catholic Kings, succeeded Ferdinand he was already, through his father, the Archduke Philip, the lord of Burgundy and of the Netherlands, and the heir of Austria. His election as emperor made him, at the age of nineteen, the {427} greatest prince of Christendom. To his gigantic task he brought all the redeeming qualities of dullness, for his mediocrity and moderation served his peoples and his dynasty better than brilliant gifts and boundless ambition would have done. ”Never,” he is reported to have said in 1556, ”did I aspire to universal monarchy, although it seemed well within my power to attain it.” Though the long war with France turned ever, until the very last, in his favor, he never pressed his advantage to the point of crus.h.i.+ng his enemy to earth. But in Germany and Italy, no less than in Spain and the Netherlands, he finally attained something more than hegemony and something less than absolute power.
[Sidenote: Revolt of the Communes]
Though Spain benefited by his world power and became the capital state of his far flung empire, ”Charles of Ghent,” as he was called, did not at first find Spaniards docile subjects. Within a very few years of his accession a great revolt, or rather two great synchronous revolts, one in Castile and one in Aragon, flared up. The grievances in Castile were partly economic, the _servicio_ (a tax) and the removal of money from the realm, and partly national as against a strange king and his foreign officers. Not only the regent, Adrian of Utrecht, but many important officials were northerners, and when Charles left Spain to be crowned emperor, [Sidenote: 1520] the national pride could no longer bear the humiliation of playing a subordinate part. The revolt of the Castilian Communes began with the gentry and spread from them to the lower cla.s.ses. Even the grandees joined forces with the rebels, though more from fear than from sympathy. The various revolting communes formed a central council, the Santa Junta, and put forth a program re-a.s.serting the rights of the Cortes to redress grievances. Meeting for a time with no resistance, the rebellion disintegrated {428} through the operation of its own centrifugal forces, disunion and lack of leaders.h.i.+p. So at length when the government, supplied with a small force of German mercenaries, struck on the field of Villalar, the rebels suffered a severe defeat. [Sidenote: April, 1521] A few cities held out longer, Toledo last of all; but one by one they yielded, partly to force, partly to the wise policy of concession and redress followed by the government.
In our own time Barcelona and the east coast of Spain has been the hotbed of revolutionary democracy and radical socialism. Even so, the rising in Aragon known as the Hermandad (Brotherhood) [Sidenote: The Hermandad] contemporary with that in Castile, not only began earlier and lasted longer, but was of a far more radical stamp. Here were no n.o.bles airing their slights at the hands of a foreign king, but here the trade-gilds rose in the name of equality against monarch and n.o.bles alike. Two special causes fanned the fury of the populace to a white heat. The first was the decline of the Mediterranean trade due to the rise of the Atlantic commerce; the other was the racial element.
Valencia was largely inhabited by Moors, the most industrious, sober and thrifty, and consequently the most profitable of Spanish laborers.
The race hatred so deeply rooted in human nature added to the ferocity of the cla.s.s conflict. Both sides were ruined by the war which, beginning in 1519, dragged along for several years until the proletariat was completely crushed.
[The Cortes]
The armed triumph of the government hardly damaged popular liberties as embodied in the const.i.tution of the Cortes of Castile. When Charles became king this body was not, like other parliaments, ordinarily a representative a.s.sembly of the three estates, but consisted merely of deputies of eighteen Castilian cities. Only on special occasions, such as a coronation, were n.o.bles and clergy summoned to partic.i.p.ate. Its great {429} power was that of granting taxes, though somehow it never succeeded, as did the English House of Commons, in making the redress of grievances conditional upon a subsidy. But yet the power amounted to something and it was one that neither Charles nor Philip commonly ventured to violate. Under both of them meetings of the Cortes were frequent.
Though never directly attacked, the powers of the Cortes declined through the growth of vast interests outside their competence. The direction of foreign policy, so absorbing under Charles, and the charge of the enormous and growing commercial interests, was confided not to the representatives of the people, but to the Royal Council of Castile, an appointative body of nine lawyers, three n.o.bles, and one bishop.
Though not absolutely, yet relatively, the functions of the Cortes diminished until they amounted to no more than those of a provincial council.
What reconciled the people to the concentration of new powers in the hands of an irresponsible council was the apparently dazzling success of Spanish policy throughout the greater part of the sixteenth century.
No banner was served like that of the Lions and Castles; no troops in the world could stand against her famous regiments; no generals were equal to Cortez and Alva; no statesmen abler than Parma, no admirals, until the Armada, more daring than Magellan[1] and Don John, no champions of the church against heretic and infidel like Loyola and Xavier.
[Sidenote: The Spanish Empire]
That such an empire as the world had not seen since Rome should within a single life-time rise to its zenith and, within a much shorter time, decline to the verge of ruin, is one of the melodramas of history.
Perhaps, in reality, Spain was never quite so great as she looked, nor was her fall quite so complete as it seemed. But {430} the phenomena, such as they are, sufficiently call for explanation.
First of all one is struck by the fortuitous, one might almost say, unnatural, character of the Hapsburg empire. While the union of Castile and Aragon, bringing together neighboring peoples and filling a political need, was the source of real strength, the subsequent accretions of Italian and Burgundian territories rather detracted from than added to the effective power of the Spanish state. Philip would have been far stronger had his father separated from his crown not only Austria and the Holy Roman Empire of Germany, but the Netherlands as well. The revolt of the Dutch Republic was in itself almost enough to ruin Spain. Nor can it be said that the Italian states, won by the sword of Ferdinand or of Charles, were valuable accessions to Spanish power.