So, as we have seen, Spain was prolific in men of force and gallantry, who poured out their blood freely for her sake, and who ventured their lives rashly in the expeditions she sent forth. The long wars with the Moors, lasting for centuries, had brought forth a race of soldiers unequalled perhaps in any other country at that time. They seem to have been bred and nurtured for these very deeds of risk and heroism which were born of their encounters with the natives of the New World; for self–denial, for intrepidity under almost insuperable difficulties. They were also fierce and cruel—how fierce and how cruel it is only necessary to read of the conquest of Mexico by Cortes; of the conquest of Peru by Pizarro; yes, of the treatment of the innocent natives by Columbus himself, who initiated the system of slavery, by which eventually they were extinguished in the West Indies. Humanity was foreign to their nature; long familiarity with the bloody work of the Inquisition in the home country, the persecution of Moors and Jews, the scenes of rapine and massacre they had witnessed and heard reported by their fathers, had accustomed these _conquistadores_ to cruelty and merciless oppression. Even the gentlest and most merciful of them were so only by comparison, for their progress everywhere could be traced by ruin and desolation, by ravaged homes and murdered men, women, and children. * * * * * Contemporaneously with her conquests in the New World, Spain herself acquired increasing territory in Europe, not alone by force of arms, but chiefly through matrimonial alliances and succession to power. To understand how this came about, we must retrace our course and bestow a parting glance upon the affairs of Isabella and Ferdinand. This royal pair, under whom Spain had at last become consolidated into a veritable kingdom, with a union of interests if not unity of purpose always, had five children born to them: Juan, the only son, born 1478, who married a daughter of Maximilian, Emperor of Germany, but died without heirs, in 1497; Isabella, born 1470, married twice, to two princes of Portugal, whose only child lived but two years; Juana, born 1479, married to the Archduke Philip, son of Maximilian, who had two sons, Charles and Ferdinand; Mary, born 1482, and Catherine, born 1485, who became the unfortunate wife of Henry VIII of England, and from whom she was divorced in 1533. By the death of Juan in 1497, of Isabella in 1498, and of the latter’s child two years later, the succession to the throne now devolved upon Juana, in accordance with the will of her mother, Isabella, executed in October, 1504. King Ferdinand, who had so successfully administered the affairs of the crown of Castile during thirty years, was appointed regent until Juana’s elder son, Charles, should attain to his majority.