Queens of old SpainHume, Martin A. S. (Martin Andrew Sharp)
Philosophy
Queens of old Spain
Hume, Martin A. S. (Martin Andrew Sharp)
Queens -- Spain; Spain -- History; Women -- Political activity
Leaving Talavera as archbishop, and Count de Tendilla as governor of
conquered Granada, Isabel and her husband, with their children and a
splendid court, travelled in the early summer of 1492 to their other
dominions where their presence was needed. Ferdinand, indeed, was
yearning to get back to his own people, who were growing restive at his
long absence, and for the coming war with France, it was necessary for
him to win the love of his Catalan subjects, who, at first, still
remembering his murdered half-brother, the Prince of Viana, had borne
him little affection. He had treated them, however, with great
diplomacy, respecting their sturdy independence, and had asked little
from them, and by this time, in the autumn of 1492, when he and Isabel,
with their promising son, Juan, by their side, rode from Aragon through
the city of Barcelona to the palace of the Bishop of Urgel, where they
were to live, the Catalans were wild with enthusiasm for the sovereigns
with whose names all Christendom was ringing.
Ferdinand nearly fell a victim to the attack of a lunatic assassin in
December, as he was leaving his hall of justice at Barcelona, and during
his imminent danger Isabel’s affection and care for him gained for her
also the love of the jealous Catalans.[66] Throughout the winter in
Barcelona Ferdinand was busy weaving his web of intrigue around France
and Europe, to which reference will presently be made, and in March 1493
there came flying to the court the tremendous news that Colon had run
into the Tagus for shelter after discovering the lands for which he had
gone in search. No particulars of the voyage were given; but not many
days passed before Luis de Sant’angel, the Aragonese Treasurer Gabriel
Sanchez, and the monarchs themselves, received by the hands of a
messenger sent by the explorer from Palos, letters giving full details
of the voyage.[67] No doubt as to the importance of the discovery was
any longer entertained, and when the Admiral of the Indies himself
entered Barcelona in the middle of April, after a triumphal progress
across Spain, honours almost royal were paid to him. He was received at
the city gates by the nobles of the court and city, and led through the
crowded streets to the palace to confront the sovereigns, at whose feet
he was, though he and they knew it not, laying a new world. With him he
brought mild bronze-skinned natives decked with barbaric gold ornaments,
birds of rare plumage, and many strange beasts; gold in dust and nuggets
had he also, to show that the land he had found was worth the claiming.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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