In one particular she stands alone among the great ruling women, the conquerors and empresses of history. She is the only royal lady, save, perhaps, Maria Theresa of Hungary, who maintained through life the incongruous relations of a masterful sovereign and a devoted wife, and shared not only her bed but her throne with a husband whom she respected--a fellow-sovereign whom she neither feared nor disregarded. To command the obedience of a proud and warlike people is given to few of the great men of history. To do the bidding of another with vigor and with discretion is a task that has been but rarely accomplished by a heaven-born minister. But to conceive and carry out great designs, with one hand in the grasp of even the most loyal of companions, is a triumphant combination of energy with discretion, of the finest tact with the most indomitable resolution, that stamps Isabella of Spain as a being more vigorous than the greatest men, more discreet than the greatest women of history. Semiramis, Zenobia, Boadicea, Elizabeth of England, Catherine of Russia, not one of them was embarrassed by a partner on the throne. The partner of Isabella was not only a husband but a king, jealous, restless, and untrustworthy. It is in this respect, and in the immense scope of her political action, that the great Queen of Castile is comparable with the bold Empress-King of Hungary rather than with any other of the great queens and royal ladies of history. The husband of Zenobia indeed enjoyed the title of Augustus; but it was only after his assassination that the lady earned her fame as a ruler. Catherine caused her imperial consort to be executed as a preliminary to her vigorous reign in Russia; Boadicea was the successor and not the colleague of Prasutagus; and Semiramis, though herself somewhat a mythical personage, is said to have slain both her husband and his rival, in her assertion of her absolute power. Yet Isabella revolutionized the institutions of her country, religious, political, military, financial, she consolidated her dominions, humiliated her nobles, cajoled her Commons, defied the Pope, reformed the clergy; she burned some ten thousand of her subjects; she deported a million more; and of the remnant she made a great nation; she brooked no man’s opposition, in a reign of thirty years, and she died in the arms of the king, her husband!