But with all her aptitude for military organization, Isabella had no love for war. Her first campaign was undertaken to make good her pretensions to the crown. The extermination of the Moslems was a matter of religious feeling and patriotic pride, rather than an object of military glory; but she refused to pursue her conquest across the Straits of Gibraltar. The expeditions to Italy were a part of Ferdinand’s diplomacy, though the honor of victory must be shared between Isabella and her Great Captain. But the queen’s ambition lay not in conquest abroad. On the contrary, as soon as the last province in Spain had been delivered from the foreign yoke of the Moor, she turned her attention to the peaceful development of the kingdom; and, unlettered warrior as she was, she bestowed her royal patronage upon students and studies, rather than upon the knights and nobles who had fought her battles before Granada. The old foundations of the Universities, the new art of printing, scholarship, music, architecture found in her a generous patron, not so much from predilection as from policy. Men of letters and men of learning were welcomed at her court, not only from every part of Spain, but from every part of Europe. For herself she had little appreciation of literature. She neither knew nor cared what influence her beloved Inquisition would have upon science. But as long as the queen lived, learning was honored in Spain. In this, as in all other things, her judgment of men was unerring. The queen who made Gonsalvo the commander-in-chief of her armies, and Ximenez the president of her council, who selected Torquemada as her grand inquisitor, and Talavera as her archbishop of Granada, made no mistake when she invited Peter Martyr to instruct her son in polite letters, and commissioned Lebrija to compose the first Castilian Grammar for the use of her court. Her beauty of face and form are familiar. Yet vanity was unknown to her nature. Simple and abstemious in her daily life, and despising pomp for its own sake, no one could make a braver show on fitting occasions; and the richness of her apparel, the glory of her jewels, and the noble dignity of her presence, have been celebrated by subjects and strangers.