Rivers of Gold

by Hugh Thomas

  Judge Zuazo, in Santo Domingo, meanwhile agreed that further Indian labor was needed in La Española and, in the spring, gave a license to Diego Caballero, the chief accountant of the colony, to travel with Antón Cansino to what were engagingly called “prohibited lands” to seek slaves, as his residencia put it. He gave the same approval for other undertakings to such well-known merchants as Bastidas and Fernández de las Varas.18

  The priors, still waiting for the arrival of Figueroa to free them from their responsibility, accepted this, though refusing to give any formal approval without the King’s agreement. Then a decree was signed (on January 24) by Fonseca that allowed two other Sevillano-Genovese, Adán de Vibaldo (Ribaldo) and Tomás de Fornari, a brother of Domingo, the right to name a factor in the Indies, with the sole power to sell the black slaves conceded to them because of the contract granted to Gorrevod.19

  The King, for his part, went to the monastery of Valdoncella, near Barcelona, and prepared for his official entry to that city. The secretaries Cobos and Padilla went ahead to begin discussions with officials there. After returning to Molins del Rey, they went back to Barcelona, with Dr. Galíndez de Carvajal.20 The following night Charles went in, disguised, to see the city for himself. Next day he entered Barcelona in style, but even then his mind was on potential German empire, and in the choir of the cathedral, he showed his priorities by holding a ceremony admitting ten Spanish noblemen into the Burgundian order of the Golden Fleece.21

  All the same, Gattinara and Laxao continued their discussions with Las Casas, and, indeed, they seemed to love hearing him talk. The King himself had also begun to warm to his ideas. Charles himself suggested that to decide on what Las Casas had proposed for the north coast of South America, there ought to be a committee of advisers whom the priest himself could choose. Las Casas chose Juan Manuel, the experienced and subtle diplomat who had led the party of King Philip, and Alonso Téllez (the brother of the Marquis of Villena) and Luís Manrique, both letrados of whom Las Casas approved. To these were added Francisco de Vargas, the treasurer of Castile. The preparation of this committee gave Las Casas time to refine his scheme. He made it even more fanciful, for he now wanted to send out fifty settlers, to be known as Knights of the Golden Spur—even more redolent of a chivalrous romance than his first proposal. They would be accompanied by twelve Franciscan or Dominican missionaries and ten Indian interpreters, and were to look for pearls, giving the King a fifth of the produce if the fishery was previously known but only a twentieth if it was new. Several imaginative financial arrangements would give both Crown and the colonizers an additional interest. A license would allow every partner to have three African slaves at the beginning and another seven later on.22

  Discussion in the Council of the Realm then began on the subject and was prolonged by a personal campaign sponsored by Fonseca and his friends against Las Casas.

  But these seemed small matters at the time. The most important event in the Spanish Empire was being played out in the Church of St. Bartholomew, Frankfurt, where King Charles I of Spain was, in his absence, elected emperor as Charles V. (At that time there were seven imperial electors—four secular, three archiepiscopal.)

  The victory had not been inevitable. François I, King of France, had, as we have seen, aspired to the imperial crown, and with his recent military successes, he was a compelling candidate. King Henry of England, still apparently sane and happy with his wife, Catherine of Aragon, King Charles’s aunt, could not be excluded. One or two of the electors themselves were possibilities—for example, Elector Frederick of Saxony or Elector Joachim of Brandenburg. Indeed, the Pope, seeing that the King of France might not win, had begun to back the first of these two as an alternative candidate. He did not favor Charles for the simple reason that he did not want an emperor who was already King of Naples.

  The King of France had earlier sought to leave the impression, through his able ambassadors, that his resources were endless; and François’s rich mother, Louise de Savoy, had, indeed, given him much money. His administration was far more centralized than that of Charles, so it was easier for him to lay his hands on it. But François could not raise money easily in Germany. Jacob Fugger, the most powerful banker of the century, refused to cash his notes; and money, in cash, was what was needed to secure the imperial election. Each elector had his price.

  Charles first approached the Welsers of Augsburg, and then Filippo Gualterotti of Florence, for their support and obtained promises of 133,000 and 55,000 Rhine florins, respectively, the loans being secured through the Fornaris in Genoa and Filippo Grimaldi of the same city. The contracts declared that the payments would only be made if Charles was elected emperor. Letters of promise were deposited in February 1519 with Jacob Fugger. They totaled over 300,000 maravedís, but that was not nearly enough.23 (The Fornaris were among those who had benefited eventually from Charles’s license to sell African slaves in the Americas, but there is nothing to suggest that there was a financial connection in 1518 between them and the King.)

  The Archduchess Margaret, Charles’s clever aunt and onetime foster mother, then directly approached Jacob Fugger, the nerve of the German banking system. After prolonged discussion, he made an offer of half a million florins. Four years later, Fugger would write a letter to Charles: “It is publicly notorious and clear as day that had it not been for me, you would not have been able to obtain the Roman Crown.”24 The same could have been claimed by the persuasive Archduchess, whose most remarkable achievement this was.25

  The details of how the money so obtained was spent are extraordinarily interesting. Of the electors, the Archbishop of Mainz, Albert of Brandenburg, received 113,200 florins of gold—100,000 for himself, the rest for his entourage. Perhaps this enabled him to pay Albrecht Dürer for the fine engraving he made of him that same year. The Archbishop of Cologne, Hermann von Wied, received 50,000, and 12,800 went to his entourage; and the Archbishop of Trèves, Richard, was given over 40,000 florins, of which nearly 20,000 went to his staff. The Elector Palatine of the Rhine, the old love of the Emperor’s sister Elena, received 184,000 florins.26

  The Elector Frederick of Saxony received 32,000 florins, he being the only elector who had refused to say for whom he was going to vote—but the Spanish ambassador increased that sum by another 80,000 for his entourage, as well as paying off half of a debt contracted with the House of Saxony by the late Emperor Maximilian some years before. He, too, was a client and subject of Dürer, who also made an engraving of him a few years later. The King of Bohemia received over 40,000 florins, his vote being exercised by his chancellor, Count Ladislas Sternberg, who received 15,000. The King himself received a little over 20,000 ducats, and 5,000 went to George Szathmary, Bishop of Fünfkirchen, an old friend of the Fuggers.

  The Elector of Brandenburg, Joachim I, supported the King of France almost to the end in what he called “this hay market.” François had said that if he won, he would make him regent when he was absent. In the final reckoning, he voted for Charles, though he swore that he only did so “out of great fear.” His cousin, the Margrave Casimir of Brandenburg, who had been at Charles’s court and worked for him, received 25,000 florins.27

  The Elector Palatine then found his share increased by another 30,000 florins.

  Thus the electors received nearly 500,000 florins in all.28

  The news of his triumph in Germany reached Charles in Barcelona on July 6.29 Gattinara was also a victor of the day. He had always expected that Charles would become emperor. He spoke of the dignity conferred on his master that he thought made him “the most important emperor and king who has existed since the division of the empire made by Charlemagne, your predecessor, and putting you well on the road to achieve universal monarchy, so as to reduce the world to the care of a single shepherd”—a favorite expression of his.30 He went on, in a guide to the monarchy (De Regime Principium), to tell Charles of the importance of having good officials.31

  The imperial ambassador, the Count Palati
ne, and the brother of the Duke of Bavaria soon arrived at Barcelona with the original document that named Charles emperor and required him to go to Germany to receive the crown.

  But in Castile, comment was critical: how could their monarch take up a foreign throne without consulting the Castilians? Their doubts were justified. If Charles had not been elected emperor, he would have had more time for Spain. Yet his interests in Burgundy and Flanders were vast, and whatever had happened in Germany, he would have played the part of a statesman of Europe rather than just one of the Spanish peninsula. If Juana had intervened, the situation would have changed completely. She did not do so. If the Medinacelis or the Enríquezes had claimed the throne of Spain in 1516, as heads of important branches of the old Spanish royal family, it would also have been a different matter. But they were not interested in such a suggestion.

  30

  “I was moved to act by a natural compassion”

  I was moved to act not because I was a better Christian than others but by a natural compassion.

  Bartolomé de las Casas to the King, 1519

  In 1519, Spain had a king who was pleased to be an emperor, but he considered Europe his domain. He and Spain were on the verge of possessing an empire in the Indies but did not yet realize it. In September, however, Charles would declare, “By the donation of the Holy Apostolic See and other just and legitimate titles, we are lord [señor] of the West Indies, the islands and mainlands of the Ocean Sea already discovered and to be discovered.”1 Those words occur in a decree sent in reply to a request of the settlers and conquerors of La Española that affirmed Charles’s sovereignty over the new territories.2 This seems to have been the first time that the expression “the West Indies” was used—in contrast to the real Indies.

  The standing of these colonies had risen at court recently, for the import of gold from there had much increased since 1510: the official figures suggested that just over 9 million grams of gold had come in, and we can assume that this was an underestimate of the true total. Whereas before 1515 most of this treasure derived from La Española, after 1515 both Puerto Rico and Cuba made their contributions: output in Puerto Rico almost equaled that of La Española in some years, and Cuban production was about half as great.3

  To those islands now went Rodrigo de Figueroa, the judge from Zamora named to succeed the Jeronymite priors. He did not have with him Bartolomé de las Casas, since that great agitating priest still thought it possible to encourage free peasants to go to the New World from Spain; and he had a hundred other ideas that he was still trying to propagate at court. Yet on the boat out to the Indies, Figueroa talked with many experienced passengers—men such as Juan de Villoria, of whom he could ask the real nature of the relations between Judge Zuazo and Diego Colón. Such petites histoires must have consumed many hours of gossip on those high seas.

  After arriving in Santo Domingo, Figueroa found only about a thousand colonists on the island: many had gone to Cuba. The Indians were still melting away. He talked extensively with the priors. Not all their experiments had failed. For example, with the funds obtained from the sale of Indians who had previously belonged to absentee landowners, they had been able to lend money to entrepreneurs such as Hernando de Gorjón, who had left Spain with Ovando, made a fortune in commerce, and now sought to found a college that would eventually become the University of Santo Domingo. With the help of the priors, Gorjón had built a sugar mill on his encomienda at Azúa, the new town where Hernando Cortés had been notary in Ovando’s day. Figueroa also helped by asking Alonso Fernández de Lugo, the Governor in Tenerife, to send sugar technicians, and he exempted machinery needed to build mills from all taxes.4

  Figueroa found that the overwhelming opinion among Spaniards in his colony was against the idea of giving Indians liberty of any kind. He did free those Indians who had been working in mines, only to receive many complaints from settlers who said that that would cut the gold produced to one-third of the previous year’s output.5 They knew that argument would be successful at home.

  Back in Spain, Las Casas, meanwhile, had won the day in the Council of the Realm in the late summer of 1519 with a new, revised version of his romantic idea of converting the Indians of the north coast of South America—“the best and richest territory in the Indies”—into tributaries for ten years, with the foundation of ten model cities. Under this plan, the Crown would subsidize these places by up to 9 million maravedís, pay the cost of the journey of citizens and their equipment to those places, agree that for the time being there would be no taxes there, make easy the import of African slaves, and proscribe encomiendas. Diego Colón would have overall authority over them. These ideas were presented to the court in Barcelona, where the King then was.

  The scheme fascinated the chancellor, Gattinara. Diego Colón also gave it his patronage, partly since he thought that it would increase his own power. But Fonseca knew how to counterattack. He was now critical of anything proposed by Las Casas and made thirty charges against him, accusing him of being inexperienced in government, of having deceived his patron Cisneros, even of being a “frivolous priest”—an accusation that would have been hard to substantiate, whatever one might think of Las Casas’s ideas. Fonseca even accused his critic of robbery in Cuba and, worse, of plotting with Venetians and Genoese against Spain. Antonio de Fonseca, the military brother of the Bishop, was also a critic of Las Casas. He said: “Father, you really cannot say that these gentlemen of the Council of the Indies have killed Indians, because you have already taken from them the Indians they personally used to have working for them.”

  Las Casas replied: “Sir, these properties and these grants have not killed the Indians, it is true, even though many have died, but Spaniards have killed many, and your lordships helped them.” The Council looked on, astonished, and Fonseca seemed shocked. The Bishop said ironically: “How fortunate the council of the King is if, while being the council, they have to have a lawsuit against Las Casas!” Las Casas responded: “Better off by far is this Las Casas who has traveled two thousand leagues, with great risks and perils, in order to advise the King and his council that they should not enter the inferno which, through their tyranny and destruction of peoples and regimes, they have achieved in the Indies.” Gattinara said nervously to Las Casas sotto voce: “The Bishop is obviously very angry; please God that this business ends well.”6

  By this time in Spain, a Council of the Indies (Consejo de las Indias)—an informal group of members of the Council of the Realm—had really taken shape. It consisted of Fonseca (presiding), Bishop Ruiz de la Mota, the two secretaries García de Padilla and Luis Zapata, as well as Gattinara coming and going as he liked, with Cobos as the secretary.7 Quite soon the organization of the royal secretariat came to consist of three councils: those of the State, of the Indies, and of Flanders. Gattinara was responsible for these changes.

  One night in late September 1519, still in Barcelona, Gattinara asked his Flemish colleague Poupet (Laxao) and Las Casas to dine. He showed Las Casas a document that lay on his table: it was an attack on him by Fonseca. “You must reply,” said Gattinara, “to these slanders and other things that are being said about you.” Las Casas said, “What, my lord, they have been working for three months on these attacks, and I have to reply now in a second? Give me five hours.”8 Las Casas was permitted to prepare his defense. He asked Gattinara to read aloud Fonseca’s criticisms one by one, and he would reply to each. They had begun on this when a messenger came to tell Gattinara that the King wanted to see him. Las Casas left but returned later and the two, the chancellor and the priest, spent the next four nights talking, with Las Casas defending himself. He acquitted himself successfully, and the King, who moved first to Badalona and then back to Molins de Rey, because of plague in Barcelona, was informed.

  Fonseca had already left Barcelona for Corunna to prepare the King’s fleet for Germany. Administration and preparation of fleets was, it will be recalled, his real specialty. In his fortunate absence, the K
ing approved all the schemes that Las Casas had proposed. Las Casas, seeing that he ought to make some concession to avoid the persistent opposition of Fonseca and his friends, decided to exclude from his scheme the pursuit of pearls in Cubagua, in what is now Venezuela, so reducing the potential riches, though not much the size, of the territory that he sought. He spoke of hiring fifty associates “from the islands [Cuba, La Española, and Puerto Rico]” to carry through the plan. These would be for the most part “hidalgos or knights and persons of merit.” How he would find these model gentlemen was not clear. The Franciscan and Dominican missions already in Cumaná would participate. In the territory under discussion, there was no gold that Las Casas knew of, except in the territory lived in by the Cenú, near Cartagena. Las Casas wanted to include that land in the west, with the River Essequibo (then known as the Río Dulce), in Guiana, as the eastern frontier. This was a colossal territory, including all present-day Venezuela and much of Colombia; it is not difficult to have some sympathy with Bishop Fonseca in his criticism. How could such a place be managed by an inexperienced priest and fifty friends, however worthy? More and more, Las Casas seemed to be demanding the conversion of the Indies into a romance.

  There was no royal consultation on the matter with officials actually in the Indies. Yet Figueroa, in Santo Domingo, seemed for the moment reasonably public-spirited. He named a whole series of new officials; for example, his assistant, Antonio Flores (who had come with him), was to be chief magistrate of La Vega in order to investigate the illegal sales of “Lucays” in the north of La Española.9 It transpired that there were many instances of slaves being sold instead of merely being exchanged. Another inquiry was into the nature of the Pearl Coast. Figueroa was determined to establish whence “the Caribs” came, since many slaves who had been carried to La Española under that designation were obviously not of that race. Were the people of Trinidad really “Caribs”? Many of the questions seemed, though, to be phrased to justify the seizure of slaves. For instance, one question ran: “Was it certain that Indians who have slaves sell them to the Caribs for eating or to be badly used by them?” Both cannibalism and sodomy continued too to be justifications for the kidnapping of any Indian by any Spaniard.10