As to Juana, Bergenroth[s] is the strongest advocate of her sanity, though he has not convinced many. He declared that she was simply a heretic in religion. But even granting her insane, her parents treated her with “most odious duplicity,” according to Burke,[f] who can still see why Isabella should not want the hysterical daughter to take the throne of Castile, and reduce the great Ferdinand to the limits of Aragon. The proofs of Juana’s insanity we shall consider in the next chapter. BURKE’S ESTIMATE OF ISABELLA; HUME’S ESTIMATE Burke thinks that Isabella has suffered from too much praise of virtues she did not possess and too much neglect of her truer gifts. He places the blame for this largely on the fact that she and her husband were succeeded by foreign rulers, Habsburgs and Bourbons. He ridicules the tendency to blame Torquemada and others for the blots of cruelty on her reign, and blames them on the orthodoxy of the time. He makes of her a creature far different from the gentle Isabella of Prescott’s idea, and exclaims eloquently:[a] The real Isabella is one of the most remarkable characters in history. Not only was she the most masterful, and, from her own point of view, by far the most successful ruler that ever sat upon the throne of Spain, or of any of the kingdoms of the peninsula; she stands in the front rank of the great sovereigns of Europe, and challenges comparison with the greatest women who have ever held sway in the world. 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 her 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 vigour 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.