Rivers of Gold

by Hugh Thomas

  Margaret soon became engaged in high diplomacy, and a famous alliance, the League of Cambrai against Venice, was her triumph. Her inclination was anti-French, pro-English, and somewhat aggressive, unlike that of the prudent Chièvres, who would succeed her as the prime mover of policy making. She had to withdraw from power after her imprudent arrest in 1513 of Juan Manuel, the leader of the Spanish courtiers in Flanders, who was a Knight of the Golden Fleece, and she had to defend herself at a angry meeting of the council of that order. But the accession to the throne of François I of France changed matters back in Margaret’s favor. Her motto was “Fortune, infortune fort une”: Misfortune as well as good fortune makes one strong.

  The dominant influence, however, over Charles by 1516 was Chièvres, who was by then grand chancellor of Burgundy. He was a cultivated aristocrat who had been ambassador to France. He was governor of Flanders in 1505 in Philip’s absence in Spain. From 1509 onward, he was grand chamberlain to the future Charles V: “The truth is that, as long as he lived, Monsieur de Chièvres governed me,” Charles himself once commented. Chièvres slept in the same room as Charles and thus could have his eyes on him all night as well as all day. Later, Charles told the accomplished Venetian ambassador Gasparo Contarini, future cardinal and essayist, that he had early learned the value of Chièvres and for a long time subordinated his will to his. Chièvres’s fine, intelligent, and observant eyes and good manners made him an effective counterweight to Margaret, though he always seemed “haughty, ambitious, and immoral.”25 When asked by the French ambassador Genlis in 1515 why he made the prince work so hard, he said: “Cousin, I am the keeper and guardian of his youth. When I die, I want him to be free to act, but also to understand his own affairs and to have been trained to know what work is.”26

  Chièvres was the head of the government in Flanders between 1515 and 1520. He was staunchly pro-French, where Margaret had been hostile; his moment of glory would be the Treaty of Noyon, of August 13, 1516, between Charles and François I. That treaty, which ended the era of enmity with France, was intended to create eternal friendship between the two kings, resolving the problems of both Naples and Navarre. Charles, aged sixteen, promised to marry Louise, daughter of François I (she was then a year old), who would bring with her as her dowry all the claims that France had on Naples. Charles also undertook to hear the complaints of the old royal family of Navarre, the Albrets.27 (Maximilian adhered to this treaty by the Treaty of Brussels of December 3, 1516.)28

  The fourth adviser to Charles, Adrian of Utrecht, was dean of St. Peter’s, Louvain, and afterwards bishop of Utrecht. He had been born Florencio Adriano Boeyens in Utrecht in 1459, the son of a ship’s carpenter. He was a member of the monastic order known as the Brothers of the Common Life. He went to Louvain University, where he became a doctor of theology in 1491 and its chancellor in 1497. Named by Maximilian to be preceptor of Charles in 1507, he was sent by the Archduchess Margaret to be the ambassador of Flanders in Spain, when in 1515 the King seemed to be toying with naming his other grandson, the Infante Fernando, Charles’s brother, as his heir. Adrian had a tranquilizing effect on Fernando; “a prudent pilot of a great ship given to rolling on the ocean,” Peter Martyr called him.29 He was now associated, though, as “ambassador,” by Cisneros with his government of Spain, a role that he (and Charles, after hearing the will of his grandfather) accepted, but he was a timid councillor, for he was as ignorant of Spain as he was of Spanish. He could communicate in Latin, however, with those clerics and learned men who knew that language, such as, for example, Bartolomé de las Casas, whose command of it was good.

  Cisneros, who was now eighty years old, received a friendly letter from Charles at the end of February 1517 (the first since Fernando’s death),30 and on March 9, Cisneros sent his first decree to the Indies, in respect of taxes, signed by himself (F. Cardinalis) and by Bishop Adrian (Adrianus ambasciator), in the name of Juana, there being no mention of Charles. All seemed calm. Cisneros was taking over command effectively. On March 4, the Council of the Realm had written sensibly to Charles saying that “there is no necessity during the life of the Queen, our lady, your mother, to entitle yourself King, since to do that would be to diminish the honor and the reverence that is due by both divine and human law [to her] … and because, in consequence of the death of the Catholic King, your grandfather, you have not acquired any more rights than you had before, since this realm was not his.”31

  The Regent of Aragon, Archbishop Alonso, however, sent his half-nephew Charles a warmer message of support, repeating that he had often urged the late King to insist that he come to Spain; while on March 8, Alonso Manrique de Lara, Bishop of Badajoz and one of Charles’s supporters in Flanders, sent a long letter to Cisneros about the mood in Brussels: “Charles has a good disposition but he knows scarcely anything of Spain and is quite ignorant of its language, being completely under the influence of Flemish counselors, especially of Chièvres.” The Bishop emphasized to Cisneros the greed of the Flemings. He also said that there were some Spaniards in Brussels who spoke critically of the Inquisition, “in such a way that people are beginning to ask if they could arrange for the Inquisition to be brought to an end.” He denounced the excessive respect for France, which was the policy of Chièvres, who, he recalled, had arranged for Charles to sign his letters to François I as “your humble servant and vassal.…”32 Finally, he thought that Charles would soon be proclaimed king. That would have been news to Cisneros, to whom Manrique had once been chaplain.

  On the evening of March 13, 1516, while Manrique de Lara’s letter was still on its way to Spain, a procession lit by torches set off from the palace in Brussels to the cathedral, Sainte-Gudule, to mark the funeral of King Fernando, with Bishop Manrique presiding. The prince, in a cowl of mourning, rode on a mule. There was a requiem Mass, and Bishop Manrique, who not for nothing was a cousin of the poet Jorge de Manrique, preached a sermon on the vanity of human wishes. Perhaps he privately recalled that his grandfather Rodrigo had had as his slogan: “Our family does not descend from kings, but kings descend from us.” The walls of the church were hung with black brocade, and there were hundreds of tapers.

  Next day a quite different procession went to Sainte-Gudule. Thirteen Spanish knights bore the banners of Fernando’s kingdoms, and three other knights carried a shield, a helmet, and a sword, the symbols of knighthood. Charles entered the cathedral last and sat in the chancel. Again, the Mass was introduced and sung by Bishop Manrique. The herald of the Order of the Golden Fleece then turned to the congregation and from the altar steps called, “El rey don Fernando!” From the depths of the church the reply came: “He is dead.” Three times this happened. Then the thirteen Spanish knights in the cathedral threw their banners to the ground and shouted, “Long live the Catholic Kings, Queen Juana and King Charles.” The new King flung off his mourning cowl and received a sword from the hands of Bishop Manrique. He brandished it aloft, and the congregation shouted, “¡Viva el rey!”33 In a sense, this was something of a coup d’état,34 since, as the Council of the Realm in Castile had tried to insist, the will of Fernando had left Charles as “governor” of Spain, no more. The extraordinary act of assertion was partly because Charles’s Flemish advisers thought that he would stand a better chance of succeeding his other grandfather, Maximilian, as emperor if he were a king and not just governor of a realm. But for Spain the ceremony marked a decisive step toward the establishment of Charles and the Habsburgs on the throne of the Catholic Kings.

  The news of this proclamation reached Madrid a week later, on March 21, accompanied by orders from Charles to Cisneros that he, the Cardinal and Regent, the Council of the Realm, the great noblemen, and the cities should immediately proclaim him king. Charles added that it was his “determined will” that he should be proclaimed thus. The letter named Cisneros “prince,” not a title previously used in Castile, and gave him authority as regent until Charles himself arrived.

  This decision of Charles provoked altercation
among many leading people in Castile, who thought that he seemed to want to steal from the Queen the title that only she possessed. There was high talk at a meeting attended by both noblemen and the prelates in Madrid, a discussion that was cut short by Cisneros who insisted that “he had never had any intention of doing anything other than accept Charles as king”;35 and he summoned old friends of King Fernando, such as the Duke of Alba, the Admiral of Castile (Fadrique Enríquez), and the cultivated Marquis of Villena, and announced to them that he proposed to proclaim Charles as king. He repeated this at a meeting of the Council of the Realm in the Plaza de la Paja, opening the windows onto the balcony to show the noblemen his artillery in the square below, thus giving rise to a famous myth that he ordered his men to open fire before them, saying to the Duke of Infantado and the Count of Benavente: “With these powers that the King gave me, I am governing and shall govern Spain until the prince our lord comes to govern us.”36 He arranged that Charles should be proclaimed king in Toledo, where Pedro López de Ayala, the Count of Fuensalida, raised banners for him.

  On March 31, a meeting in Madrid of counselors, grandees, and courtiers recognized Charles as king, if jointly with Juana, who was named first in the order. A few days later a brother of the Count of Fuensalida, Canon Diego López de Ayala, left Madrid for Flanders as Cisneros’s representative to explain to Bishop Manrique and Charles what had been done. Cisneros and Adrian (now a cardinal) wrote from Madrid to all sources of authority (las autoridades) in the country, not just the municipalities but also the noblemen and leading clergy, saying that Charles would reign as king in conjunction with his mother.37 Soon after that, the Infante Fernando, who never demonstrated any sign of independent action (he was still only thirteen years old), was confined to his house. Cisneros’s decisive actions saved Spain for Charles. Had he not so acted, anything could have happened. A little later Cisneros sent a friend of his, Rodrigo Sánchez de Mercado, Bishop of Majorca, to Tordesillas to change the way that Queen Juana was looked after. There had already been local protests against the iniquity of her guardian, Luis Ferrer, and the Bishop ensured that he left forever. He also arranged that Juana, with her daughter Catalina, should have better access to gardens.38

  Naturally pleased, Charles in Brussels approved what Cisneros was doing. The courtiers all preferred the Cardinal to what they considered to be a Jewish clique—the conversos—in Flanders. They were pleased that Cisneros had established order in Spain, that Adrian had been associated with him in the government, and that the proclamation of the Infante Fernando had been avoided.

  Charles spent much of the next six months sending recommendations to Cisneros for promotions of people whom he liked or who had worked with his father. But he made no move to go himself to Spain. A fleet was assembled, but on October 10, Charles permitted those ships to disperse. He did seek to interfere, however, in Cisneros’s government. For example, outraged by the casual acts of violence willfully carried out by noblemen up and down Spain, Cisneros conceived an idea of asking “the Men of Order” (gente de ordenanza) to provide a militia to which each city would make a contribution proportionate to its population: Ávila and Segovia would thus send 2,000 men, Toledo 3,500, and so on. By this method there would have been established something like a national army or police force of about 30,000, able to intervene when and where the Cardinal thought right. The idea was inspired by the old Hermandad. It was perhaps appropriate that in Spain a cardinal should be the man to plan the first regular army. But the noblemen were against the scheme and ensured that Charles, in Brussels, vetoed it.39 This was partly because of the influence of the Burgos converso, Bishop Ruiz de la Mota, “el maestre Mota,” the almoner to Charles.

  Then there came a bombshell as far as the Indies were concerned: on April 24, Cisneros dismissed Bishop Fonseca. This was more because Cisneros believed him to be corrupt than because he was against his Indian policies. But Las Casas saw this as a vindication of his own and Montesinos’s ideas. A few days before, Cisneros had ordered Canon Sancho de Matienzo in person to bring him forthwith all the gold and jewelry deposited in the Casa de Contratación. Next, a friend of Las Casas’s, Bartolomeu Díaz, royal pilot (comitre del rey) in Seville, sent a report to Cisneros on corrupt practices in that body.

  Las Casas himself, meanwhile, thwarted by the death of the King and of his royal audience, had arrived at Cisneros’s court in Madrid. It had been his intention to travel on to Flanders to lobby the courtiers of King Charles about the sufferings of the Indians, but before he left Madrid, about March 15, he sent a letter to “Ambassador Adrian” in Latin in which he gave a dark picture of conditions in Cuba: he talked of excessive work in the mines, of badly fed servants who were made to sleep on the floor, of the forced abandonment of women and children, of the employment of Indians as beasts of service, of the absence of Sunday rest days, of hard work building roads, and of cruel punishments.40 Adrian was horrified. He went to Cisneros to expostulate.

  Cisneros already knew something of the tragedy in the Indies and received from Las Casas a Spanish translation of what he had sent to Adrian. Las Casas also wrote to King Charles about “possible reforms.”41 His letter made twelve suggestions for improving the welfare of the indigenous population.

  This was the first of many such programs suggested by Las Casas in the next few years—ideas for reforms carefully worked out, meticulously written, wonderfully optimistic, read by the greatest men, and indeed generally well received. He proposed, first, the abolition of all encomiendas and other types of forced work; second, he wanted the maintenance of existing laws only if they protected the Indians. Third, all existing governors and officials should be replaced by others. Fourth, the Indians were to be collected into communities, each one of which was to have a hospital, shaped in the form of a cross, with fifty beds in each section and, in the middle, an altar so that all might see the Mass from their beds. If the Indians needed animals, the Spaniards were to lend them half of what they had.42 Fifth, though the Indians would be free, they would continue to work for the Spaniards. But they would have time to cultivate their own plots. There would also be an annual rotation of Indians to serve cities and villas. The Indians would have the best land, even if it was already in Spanish hands. Sixth, some Indians would, of course, work as servants. Seventh, Spaniards dispossessed of Indians would be indemnified by the purchase of their cattle and other agricultural products, paid for with the first or second melting down of gold. Finally, all settlers could have their own sugar mills and seek gold on their own account. The King would grant licenses to import both black and white slaves, and African or other slaves were to be placed in the mines instead of Indians.43 The fact that idealistic priests wanted to compensate for the shortage of Indian labor by introducing black slaves from Africa shows that the Renaissance was preparing to adopt classic behavior in more ways than one.

  Las Casas also recommended the creation of mixed Hispanic-Indian communities. The new cities of the Indies would be reinforced by forty workers coming from Spain with their families, to each one of which there would be allocated five Indians. Of the benefits subsequently obtained, one part would go to the King, and the rest would be shared between the farmer and his Indians. In time, Indians and Spaniards would intermarry and so would form a single “republic,” which would become the most peaceful and Christian in the world, “for the sons of one race would marry the daughters of the other.” This encouragement to mestizaje was remarkable, being, like so many other aspects of the program, utopian. Las Casas thought that there were many poor Spaniards who would be delighted to find a new life in the Indies: “Thus the land will be made fruitful and its people multiply, because they will plant all manner of trees and vegetables. Your Majesty’s revenues will be increased and the islands ennobled and become, therefore, the best and richest in the world.…”

  Meanwhile, ships going to the Bahamas would be controlled by the King, and each one would have on board both a Dominican and a Franciscan friar, who would
decide which island was or was not habitable on Castilian terms. If they turned out to be inhabitable, a “casa del rey” would be built in such islands as a center of evangelization.

  An ecclesiastic on each island would be available to protect the Indians and punish settlers who mistreated them. Indians were not to be punished for wrongdoings in the same way as Spaniards. All priests would be properly educated in matters relating to the Indians. Indians were not to be moved from one island to another. The Inquisition would be established, “insomuch as two heretics have already been discovered and burned there.” Then “the books on Indian matters by Dr. Palacios Rubios and Maestro Matías de Paz, formerly professor of Valladolid,” would be printed and sent to the islands “so that the Spaniards there may realize that Indians are men, are free, and must be treated as such.”

  Finally, a supervisor would oversee everything. Priests would instruct the Indians in religion. Graduates would teach them Spanish. Physicians, surgeons, and chemists would be drafted to serve them, lawyers would come to represent them in legal matters. Indians would be taught to sit on benches and to eat from tables. They were not to sleep on the ground. They would carry their hammocks wherever they went. Two or three beasts of burden would “always be kept on hand to be ready to bring in sick Indians [to the hospitals] wherever necessary.” The seventy-four officials to be appointed would meanwhile cost over 3 million maravedís every year, apart from the cost of their animals.44

  This remarkable letter can be compared to Macaulay’s famous “minute” on education in India. Macaulay wanted Indians made into upper-class Englishmen. Las Casas wanted his Indians made into respectable and socially responsible Castilian Catholics. His scheme was put to a committee of the usual advisers on affairs of the Indies: the cousin of the King, Hernando de Vega; the secretary Zapata; the able Galíndez de Carvajal; the Dominican provincial Pedro de Córdoba; the lawyer Palacios Rubios; and the Bishop of Ávila, Francisco Ruiz, “El Abulense,” Cisneros’s adviser on Indian matters (who, it will be remembered, had briefly been in La Española with Bobadilla). All sorts of views were further considered: from those of settlers who wished to treat the Indians purely as beasts of burden, with no qualifications, to the curious idea that Aristotle was right that there were laws that proclaimed that white people were superior to those who were black and brown. Finally, the radical humanist approach, reflected by Montesinos in 1511 and by Las Casas himself in 1516, was also discussed.