Rivers of Gold

by Hugh Thomas

  Cisneros had already been modifying his Indian policies. His new ideas were contained in a letter of July 28, 1517.41 This included encouragement to the bishops of the Antilles to reside in their dioceses; the establishment of judges for residencias in Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and Cuba (the priors to be free to name whomsoever they wanted, without Zuazo having a veto) and of the offices of factor and treasurer in Cuba; the naming of government inspectors to travel on all pearl ships to prevent abuses; the authorization to merchants to buy slaves on the Pearl Coast and sell them in the islands (provided that the Indians so obtained were well treated); the dispatch of workers from Andalusia as a result of appeals by a town crier; the admission of the legality of the trade in slaves from the Bahamas; a rebuke to the Dominicans for their condemnation of the encomiendas; the dispatch to Castile of Las Casas and an acceptance that, for the moment, there was no need to send Inquisitors to the Indies to seek out heretics or conversos. This policy was probably dictated by “the Abulense,” Fray Francisco Ruiz, on whom Cisneros relied for advice on the Indies in the absence of Las Casas. It marked a definite retreat from policies articulating the Cardinal’s original hopes.

  The import of black slaves, however, was another matter, and Cisneros wanted the priors to await the arrival of Charles in Spain. He would decide. Perhaps the wise Cardinal saw the likely consequences of a commitment to import black Africans.42

  So Cisneros allowed his enlightened imperial policy, inspired by Las Casas, to lapse—for example, there was no more consideration as to how laborers sent from Castile to La Española would be paid; nor of the complaints about the almojarifazgo, a sales tax that had become one of the benefits in the hands of the Aragonese clique; nor even how the grant that King Charles had made to Jorge de Portugal to carry four hundred black slaves to the islands was to be put into practice.

  Cisneros then left Madrid with his staff, accompanied by the Infante Fernando and Bishop Adrian. He was heading for the northern coast of Spain, where he expected to meet the new King. Cisneros and his party stopped at Torrelaguna and then, crossing the pass of Somosierra, went to Aranda de Duero, arriving on August 15. Before leaving Madrid, Cisneros was able to see the first copies of his seven-language Bible, which had been partly paid for by gold from the Indies. Conceived in the tradition of the multilingual edition of the Old Testament of the learned Origen of the third century, it was to be his lasting memorial. Its first four volumes contained the Old Testament in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, as well as the five books of Moses in Chaldean. Volume 5 was the New Testament in Greek and Latin, while the final volume had dictionaries and a Hebrew grammar.43

  Cisneros also changed the entourage of the Infante Fernando. This was on the orders of Charles, who, on September 7—the day of his embarkation for Spain—wrote sharply to his brother from Middleburg: “Very often and in many ways I have been told that some people of your household are doing things that are of disservice to the Catholic Queen, my mother, and also damage the harmony between myself and yourself.” He explained that he had sent instruction that Fernando’s three closest associates, the Comendador Mayor de Calatrava, the Marquis of Aguilar (Pedro Manrique), and the Bishop of Astorga, should leave the court. Instead, El Clavero (the archivist) of the Order of Calatrava, Diego de Guevara, and Charles Poupet de Laxao, one of Charles’s own Flemish advisers, should attend him. In the meantime, Alonso Téllez Girón, a reliable Andalusian and a brother of the Marquis of Villena, should remain with him until those gentlemen reached Spain.44

  Perhaps Cisneros’s inactivity in respect of the Indies had been influenced by the letter that he received from Judge Zuazo: “It was a pity,” he wrote from Santo Domingo, “to find that the entire island before these judges, such as Ayllón, had arrived had been well populated and full of people. But now one only sees shepherds’ shanties.” The biggest town outside Santo Domingo had about 30 or 40 people at most. Thus San Juan de la Maguana had about 25 inhabitants, Azúa 37, and Salvatierra de la Sabana only 15. Concepción de la Vega had 40 citizens. Lares de Guahaba had disappeared altogether.45

  On September 7, Charles at last embarked for Spain and the next day sailed from Middleburg with forty ships, the sails showing the Cross emblazoned between the Pillars of Hercules and the device Plus Oultre.46 Charles had insisted on taking with him his sister, the Infanta Elena, who he had discovered was in love with one of his favorite jousting companions, the Count Palatine Frederick. Among others who accompanied the King was Wolf Haller of Nuremberg, representing the famous banking family of Fugger of Augsburg—the Fuggers’ first entry into Spanish affairs.47 He would later play a part in ensuring Charles’s election as Holy Roman Emperor. There also sailed Charles’s majordomo, Laurent de Gorrevod, the cultivated Governor of Bresse, in Savoy, and, since 1504, head of the court of the Archduchess Margaret. This courtier, who was also Admiral of Flanders and Marshal of Burgundy, to name merely a few of his remarkable collection of titles, would similarly have a brief but important role in Spanish American affairs.

  On September 18, 1517, after losing all his horses on one ship during a storm, King Charles and his court arrived off the coast of Asturias. A lookout said that he could see the mountains of Cantabria ahead, and they made for land. The next day they realized that they were nowhere near Cantabria. Should they turn back to Laredo or land in Asturias? Given the weather, they decided on the latter course. The royal barge was lowered into the sea, and at five in the evening, Charles and the lovelorn Infanta Elena, as well as secretaries such as the increasingly important Francisco de los Cobos, were rowed past Tazones and up the tidal river that led to the town of Villaviciosa. There they disembarked a mile from the town and walked the rest of the way. The Flemings, including Charles himself, were astonished by the rude manners of the Asturians, who, for their part, at first thought that the incoming fleet must be Turkish or French.

  The men of Villaviciosa who assembled were armed. “Moors on the coast” was already a frequently expressed fear on Spanish beaches. But when they saw the ladies of the court, and the courtiers scarcely armed, their fears vanished. The King and his train reached Villaviciosa in the dark. The Asturians presented what they could: skins of wine, baskets of bread, hams, sheep. The Infanta Elena is said to have made a jam omelette while most of the company had to be content with a bench or straw for a bed. The courtiers busied themselves, too, to find horses to replace those lost at sea. The Belgian Laurent Vital said that in return for their hospitality, the King made the Asturians henceforth free of all taxes “as if they had been gentlemen.” But though they might have been thus raised socially, the Asturians were not rich. Few wore shoes.48

  Charles spent four nights at Villaviciosa—one can still see the house where he lodged—and then proceeded ten rough miles to Colunga, a small town where he and his sister stayed in two houses opposite each other. The journey was undertaken partly on foot, partly in oxcarts. How curious Asturias must have seemed to the two hundred courtiers, many of them from Aragon, some of them conversos, many being Flemings! None of them could ever have been to that birthplace of the Castilian nation. The fleet, meanwhile, set off to meet the court at Santander. Vital reported that the countryside was “like a desert and quite uninhabitable, and both difficult and dangerous to traverse.”49 Then they reached a pleasing seaport, Ribadesella, where a parade of people played music on the flute and the German tambourine. There was an orange fight.

  On September 26, the party came to the cheerful port of Llanes, in eastern Asturias, where the King was joyously received. He stayed two nights, during which time he attended Mass in the fine church of La Magdalena and saw bulls running. En route he wrote several agreeable letters to Cisneros, drafted in French by Chièvres but translated by Cobos (who only recently had accused Cisneros of illegally holding on to the royal rents for the benefit of his own interests). One letter requested the Cardinal to remain at Aranda, for the King had not yet decided his final route. He was on the way to Santander, where he imagined that he would r
ejoin the rest of his followers.

  According to Alonso de Santa Cruz, the Flemings of lesser rank behaved in those days as if they were conquistadors, even killing people for fun in the streets.50 To avoid Charles knowing of such things, Chièvres “persuaded the King to keep himself to himself, talking to nobody, so much so that the people in the towns through which he passed began to call him a German, untalkable to [inconversable], and even an enemy of the Spanish nation.”51 Spaniards also began to think of the Flemings as people interested in stealing the wealth of Spain. The difficulty was that the Flemings and the Spaniards could not see eye to eye in any way. In matters of humor, for example, the bawdy conduct of the Flemings clashed with the solemnities of the Spanish court.

  Cisneros remained at the Franciscan monastery of La Aguilera, near Aranda, expecting to meet the King at Valladolid. He began to recover his health by mid-September, receiving further amiable letters from Charles; for example, that of September 27, which sympathized with his indisposition: Charles hoped that he would do nothing apart from regaining his strength.52 Then the King became ill himself at the pretty port of San Vicente de la Barquera, and he lingered there several days, receiving Francisco de Vargas, the royal treasurer, who brought money, and Archbishop Antonio de Rojas, president of the Council of the Realm, who had defied Cisneros’s order to remain at Aranda. The doctors curiously decided that it must be the proximity to the sea that was upsetting Charles’s health. Chièvres sent a message to the fleet at Santander to send the royal baggage to San Vicente de la Barquera, and when it arrived, after further trouble at sea, they set off south, inland, for Valladolid.

  The King remained ill, ate nothing, and the weather was bad. Then they reached Reinosa on the Santander-Valladolid road. There they were met by Jean Le Sauvage, a protégé of Chièvres’s, Grand Chancellor of the Duchy of Burgundy, who had come overland from Brussels. They moved on to Aguilar de Campóo, where they were met by Bishop Fonseca, his brother Antonio, the military member of the family, Councillor Zapata, Dr. Galíndez de Carvajal, and Hernando de Vega. Since the court was now in his diocese, Fonseca could ostentatiously receive the King in his capacity as bishop of Burgos. Cisneros, had he known, would have smiled derisively at these moves by courtiers to ingratiate themselves with the new administration. Charles, now recovered, met the grandees on October 22. Some archers and a hundred German noblemen came down from Santander. The secretaries asked if Chièvres would confirm their old positions; he said that could not be done until the court reached Valladolid. But there was anxiety lest Charles might be rejected by that city. So, taking advantage of an alleged rumor of a plague at Burgos itself, instead of going to Valladolid or Segovia, Charles decided to visit his mother, Juana, at Tordesillas. The Queen had recently been put under the control of Gil de Varacaldo, the father of Cisneros’s secretary, and of Hernán, Duke of Estrada.

  Cisneros, meanwhile, was traveling slowly north from Aranda to Roa, on his way to Valladolid, where, now ill with piles as well as with colitis, he lodged in the palace of the Count of Siruela. Years before, he had been a pupil of a priest who had taught him Latin in the same town. But by this time, all the couriers from Seville were directing themselves to the new court, not to Cisneros. Adrian of Utrecht seems to have fallen under the influence of Bishop Fonseca, whose star was rising again. On All Saints’ Day, at Becerril, Charles met the Constable of Castile, Íñigo Fernández de Velasco, accompanied by his kinsmen, arrayed in gold cloth. They reached Tordesillas on November 4, and there the King, with his sister Elena, saw his mother for the first time since she had left Flanders in 1505 when he was five. They saw not only Juana but the coffin of their father, as yet not buried, in the convent of Santa Clara, as well as their sister Catalina, who had lived all her life with her mother. Catalina, then eleven, was dressed as a peasant with a country skirt, a leather jacket, and a scarf on her head.

  Chièvres had a long conversation with Juana and told her how fortunate she was that Charles was now fully grown and capable of relieving her of the burdens of office. He had not known exactly what to expect. Suppose Juana had seemed sane enough to assert herself? But Charles left with the knowledge that he had nothing to fear from Juana, who showed herself quite uninterested in matters of state. According to the Belgian courtier Vital, Juana, when she first saw Charles and his sister Elena, asked, “But are these my children? And in such a short time they have grown so tall!”53 Sandoval, the Marquis of Denia, a cousin of Juana on King Fernando’s side of the family, would henceforth control the Queen as governor of Tordesillas. Charles wrote a letter to Cisneros, countersigned by Cobos, thanking the Cardinal for all his past services and asking to meet him at the little town of Mojados, where they could talk of current problems, and then, perhaps, Cisneros could take a well-earned rest.

  Almost certainly before he received that letter, certainly before he could heed its instructions, Cisneros died, on November 8, 1517. The rumor survives that he had received another dispatch from the King, which has been lost, and which contained something so discourteous that the noble Cardinal would have considered death a providential solution to the conflict that must have seemed to lie ahead. This, together with the ingratitude of the new monarch, the unrestrained avarice of the Flemings (who were increasingly seen as looking on Spain as a new Indies to be sacked), and the cowardly abandonment of the grandees who had promised the new King their friendship, had driven Cisneros to lose his appetite for life.54 But there is no evidence for such a letter.

  Cisneros had been a hard, austere man, a decisive influence on Queen Isabel, possessed of a shining honesty and a determination to reach the right decisions. His intolerance toward Jews and Muslims was balanced by a belief that benign policies had to be pursued toward Indians. He was one of the greatest Castilians of his age. Pious but administratively competent, hardworking, and tireless, he did not shrink from audacity or from action at the head of an army. Even those who at the time hated Cisneros also admired him, at least in retrospect.

  Book Seven

  CHARLES, KING AND EMPEROR

  An early newsletter from Mexico (1520): a view of Tenochtitlan, the lake capital.

  (Illustration credit 7.1)

  28

  “The best place in the world for blacks”

  A license should be given for the import of blacks, ideal people for the work here in contrast to the natives, who are so feeble that they are only suitable for light work.… [La Española] is the best place in the world for blacks.

  Judge Zuazo, 1518

  The lordly Flemings around the young King Charles hoped that the death of the old Cardinal would remove the principal obstacle to their own authority. In reality, it took away the keystone in the arch of power in Castile. Neither Charles nor the Flemings regretted the death of Cisneros; but his regency of eighteen months had created the possibility of a peaceful transition to rule by the new, foreign, and youthful monarch. The coming of these northern Europeans seemed to many in Spain a disastrous consequence of the termination of the native royal family. Still, Charles and even his new advisers and the new friendships in Flanders and Burgundy helped bring Spain further into the general sweep of the European civilization of the Renaissance. Many of the Flemings were corrupt and covetous. But others were magnanimous, open-minded, big-hearted, and cultivated.

  On November 12, 1517, four days after the Cardinal died, Charles and his court left Juana, his mother, at Tordesillas to go to Mojados, a village eighteen miles south of Valladolid, where, incongruously, they met not Cisneros but the Infante Fernando, “the eternal younger brother” who always conducted himself impeccably, even if Charles feared that the contrary might be true. Chièvres met, too, the Council of the Realm for the first time—Archbishop Rojas, the calm president; Bishop Fonseca, the “Minister for the Indies”; the learned and responsible Extremeño Lorenzo Galíndez de Carvajal; “El Rey Chiquito,” Luís Zapata; and the gray treasurer, Francisco Vargas. Chièvres did what they wanted: he confirmed them in their posts.
The interpreter from French to Spanish was probably Cobos. The need for the approval of Chièvres may have seemed curious to some of these Spanish officials. But their loyalty was to the institution of monarchy. They could not envisage any other frame to an ordered life than a royal one. They must have approved the new court’s next move to the Jeronymite monastery of Abrojo, just south of Valladolid, while that city prepared for the King’s ceremonial entry. After all, the Catholic Kings, who had devised the form of monarchy that they admired, had liked being at El Abrojo nearly as much as they had at La Mejorada.

  Charles entered Valladolid, the informal capital of Castile, at the head of a triumphant procession on November 18, 1517. He stayed in the palace of Bernardino Pimentel, a cousin of the Count of Benavente, next to the church of San Pablo de Corredera. Most of the remaining members of the court stayed nearby in houses of the Count of Ribadavia, a nobleman of Galicia. Later, there were tournaments, banquets, dances, a javelin show, and a mock trial at the chancellery, where two teams of lawyers debated in front of the King. Charles learned that law could be an entertainment in Castile, not just a vocation. All was arranged as if it had been a theatrical ceremony.1

  With less fanfare but with determination, Fray Bartolomé de las Casas and the Dominican Fray Reginaldo de Montesinos also arrived at Valladolid. Fray Reginaldo had been proposed by Las Casas as an alternative to the Jeronymite priors for the governance of the empire. He and las Casas immediately approached the court once more, acting with the assistance of the secretary Zapata. The latter was one of the members of the Council of the Realm who was convinced, without having ever seen an Indian, that such people were incapable of receiving the faith. All the same, like so many, he was mesmerized by Las Casas’s eloquence and seemed to have forgiven Fray Reginaldo for insisting that his, Zapata’s, view of the Indians was technically a heresy.2