If Prince John were to marry the Archduchess Margaret, the only daughter of the emperor, he would inherit, in the event of the death of the Archduke Philip without issue, the great possessions of the Hapsburgs, Austria, Flanders, and Burgundy, with a claim to the empire that had eluded his great ancestor, Alfonso X. That the Archduke Philip should in his turn espouse, not Isabella, the eldest, but Joanna, the second daughter of the Catholic king, would prevent Spain from passing under the dominion of Austria, even in the unlikely event of the death of Prince John without issue, inasmuch as Isabella of Portugal would, in such a case, inherit the Spanish crown, to the prejudice of her younger sister in Flanders. And finally, if all the young wives and husbands should live to a reasonable age, and should leave children behind them at their death, one grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella would wear the imperial purple as lord of Central Europe, and another would sit upon the throne of a great united Peninsular kingdom of Castile, Portugal, and Aragon. In the early autumn of 1496 (August 22), a splendid fleet set out from Laredo, a little port between Bilbao and Santander, which carried Joanna in safety to her expectant bridegroom. The archduke and the princess for whom so sad a fate was reserved were married at Lille with the usual rejoicings; and the Spanish admiral, charged a second time with a precious freight of marriageable royalty, brought back the Lady Margaret of Hapsburg with all honor to Spanish Santander, early in March, 1497. The marriage of the heir apparent took place at Burgos, on the 3d of April; and on the 4th of October of the same year, the gentle and accomplished Prince of Asturias had passed away from Spain, and from the world. Yet, once again, and for a few months, there lived an heir to United Spain, whose brief existence is scarce remembered in history. Isabella, the widowed queen of John II. of Portugal, had been persuaded or constrained by her parents to contract a second marriage with her husband’s cousin and successor Emmanuel; but the price of her hand was the price of blood. For it was stipulated that the Jews, who, by the liberality of the late king, had been permitted to find a home in his dominions, should be driven out of the country after the stern Castilian fashion of 1492, ere the widowed Isabella should wed her cousin on the throne of Portugal.