When the news reached Lisbon, the Portuguese government protested against this invasion of territory, which it claimed lay east of the Tordesillas line. Portugal, however, did not follow up her protest or try to take possession for herself. At this very time a celebrated Portuguese navigator, Fernando Magellan, disgusted by the neglect of his own country, was urging the Spanish government to give him the means of carrying out his great project for the circumnavigation of the globe. He was confident he could reach the East Indies by rounding the southern point of South America or by finding a passage through the continent in higher latitudes than had yet been reached. The year 1519, when Magellan sailed from San Lucar on the first voyage around the world, was big with fate for Spain. Cortes was adding a new empire by the conquest of Mexico, thus giving Spain control of the world's supply of precious metals. The popular assemblies of Castile and Aragon, of Catalonia, Valencia, and Galicia, were preparing for a hopeless struggle against the might of a monarch who ruled two-thirds of Europe. At the very moment that Charles V. was crushing Peninsular freedom by brutal military force, the genius of Magellan and Cortes gave him the whole of America. Spain had heretofore been a federation of self-governing communes and provinces, but their independence was now destroyed. Military despotism proved strong enough to crush liberty, although it was unable to stamp out the feeling of local segregation. The very soldiers that conquered America took over an instinctive feeling that the central government was dangerous and inimical to the people--a sentiment which has always survived in some form among their descendants.