At Segovia, Isabel was proclaimed Queen of Castile, December 14, 1474, by her devoted subject the governor, Don Andreas de Cabrera, then husband of her friend, Beatrix de Bobadilla. A noble company of ricoshombres, priests, and alcades, in their robes of office, waited on her in the Alcazar in the Sala del Trono, and escorted her, under a purple _baldaquino_, through the city, mounted on a Spanish jennet, preceded by an hidalgo on horseback bearing a naked sword. “Castile, Castile, for the king and his consort, Doña Isabel!” cried the herald. But it was Isabel alone that received homage as [Illustration: PORTRAIT OF QUEEN ISABEL THE CATHOLIC.] queen and proceeded to the cathedral to return thanks. How far this omission pleased Don Ferdinand does not appear, but at least he had espoused the fairest woman in Spain--after her mother--and he possessed her entire love. Of Don Ferdinand, Shakespeare says, “The wisest monarch that ever ruled in Spain”; but the question is, how much of this “wisdom” was due to the far-seeing policy of his adoring wife and to the illustrious servants who so loyally carried out his will? CHAPTER XXIV Los Reyes Catolicos The union of Ferdinand and Isabel (_Los Reyes Catolicos_) knits mediæval with modern times. The whole round of royal actors in the dramatic epoch move before us as living characters on the stage of life. Their daughter Juana, _la Folle_, her handsome husband Philippe le Bel, Duke of Burgundy, the parents of Charles V., Katharine, her younger sister, married to King Henry VIII., Philip II., his son Don Carlos, and Elizabeth of Spain, bring us on to modern wars with Alva and Orange, the Armada, and our own Queen Elizabeth. * * * * * At once the royal spouses were involved in anarchy and war. Alfonso, King of Portugal, brother to the bad queen, actually espoused his niece, Juana la Beltraneja, then thirteen, to gain the throne. But he was defeated by Ferdinand, and the standard of Portugal--borne by the gallant De Almeyda first with his right hand, then with his left, when, losing both arms, he held it in his teeth--was torn to shreds. Alfonso retreated, and the Beltraneja, the innocent cause of so much strife and bloodshed, disgusted with a world in which she had found nothing but sorrow, took the black veil at the convent of Santa Chiara at Coimbra. * * * * * Ferdinand was, before everything, a soldier. He lived on the battle-field, and the queen, who followed him in all things with devoted love, rode with him in his campaigns, mounted on a war-horse, encased in mail, at the head of her Castilians.