by Hugh Thomas
Charles put three questions to Cortés: What demands did he make for grants? What kind of policy did he support for dealing with the indigenous populations? How could the royal income be increased from New Spain?6
In reply, Cortés wanted his concession of twenty-five thousand Indians to be confirmed by the cession to him of twenty places in New Spain, which he listed;7 he said that Spain should aim at the “conservation and perpetuation of the natives through good treatment by pastors of the Church.” To increase the royal income, the land conquered should be divided among the Spaniards as if it had been Castile. Cortés suggested that taxes should be paid when land was bought or sold, and that the main cities of New Spain should be reserved for the Crown. The royal reaction to these responses was that Cortés seemed to be demanding large grants, and the few people in Castile who knew something of the geography of New Spain were naturally astonished—especially when they realized that some of the places concerned (Texcoco, Tehuantepec, and all seaports) had been assumed to be royal holdings. The matter of what power Cortés would have over his vassals was also at issue: Would it be only be a matter of civil justice, or of criminal jurisdiction, too?
The conqueror of the Mexica remained on and off at court between May 1528 and March 1530. His first public appearance was at Mass in Toledo—presumably in the cathedral, where he arrived late, and sat himself down next to Henry of Nassau, in the Emperor’s stall. That was considered an act of arrogance, when it was in fact the scarcely less pardonable one of ignorance.8
Thereafter, Cortés traveled with the court, along with his following, to Monzón, to Saragossa, back to Toledo. After several months, in July 1529, in Barcelona, the Emperor named him Marquess of the Valley of Oaxaca and confirmed him as Captain-General of New Spain as well as of the Southern Sea.9 These titles were curious since Oaxaca was among the most doubtful of Cortés’s conquests, and oceans usually were guided by an admiral, not a captain-general. All the same, though Cortés soon lost political control of Oaxaca, he was henceforth always referred to as Marquess of the Valley. It was lost on no one that he was not again named governor of New Spain, a title he had received in 1522. Charles spoke of this in a letter to him in April 1529, saying that, of course, he knew that Cortés could perform that gubernatorial role, but “it was not convenient” (pero no conviene).10 Cortés did receive some other and unexpected benefits: for example, the supreme court of New Spain was ordered to respect his property. They would pay the costs of an expedition to the Moluccas, while various other debts would be forgotten.
During this prolonged stay in Spain, Cortés also sent an associate, Juan de Rada (sometimes, Herrada), to the Vatican with rich presents of stones and golden jewels as well as two foot-jugglers. Pope Clement was delighted and made Rada a count palatine; and he issued a bull legitimizing three of Cortés’s bastard children.11 Another bull conceded to Cortés the trusteeship of the Hospital of Nazareno Jesús.
Cortés’s stay in Spain was concluded by his long-prepared marriage to Juana Ramírez de Arellano at the Duke of Béjar’s castle in April 1529. Cortés gave his new wife a present of five emeralds that, it was said, were worth 100,000 ducats. One emerald was made into a rose; another a hunting horn; one a fish with eyes of gold; one a bell, with a pearl as the clapper; and the last a cup with a golden stem and the legend “Inter natos mulierum non durrexit.”12 A group of Genoese who saw these emeralds in La Rábida offered 40,000 ducats for just one of them. It is said that the Empress heard of the present and implied that she would like it herself. Cortés told her that he had already given it to Juana, who held on to it. The only one of Cortés’s fellow conquistadors from Mexico present at the wedding in Béjar seems to have been Diego de Ordaz, who wrote of it in a letter to his nephew Francisco Verdugo in New Spain.13
______
It is characteristic of the sixteenth century that though monarchs were often painted, and sometimes, as with Charles V, by great painters, lesser men were usually ignored by them. But Cortés was depicted at least twice by a German painter from Strasbourg, Christoph Weiditz. Weiditz came to Spain in the train of the accomplished Polish ambassador Dantiscus. His career was a happy recollection of a time when rich Poles could afford poor German artists in their entourage. His first portrait of Cortés was a sketch in pencil and watercolor standing next to his coat of arms. Weiditz must have painted this about 1528. It is a light work and surely does not capture the real Cortés. It gives him a blond beard, which clashes with accounts by chroniclers (for example, Bernal Díaz) who reported that his beard was black (prieto). Weiditz became a friend of Cortés and also did a medallion of him, of which there are several copies. It is a somber depiction, more mature and serious than the painting. There seems to have been a third work by Weiditz, for Dantiscus writes of it in a letter to his friend the Polish chancellor Szydlowiecki, in Cracow.14 Afterwards, a portrait was painted by the Hispanized Fleming Pedro Campaña (Pieter de Kempeneer) for the Italian art lover Paolo Giovio. This was painted about 1546 but has vanished. Various copies were, however, made.15
From all these portraits, we see Cortés as a shrewd, thoughtful, serene, calculating individual of power and authority: a suitable representation of a Renaissance general who was also a proconsul.16
In the weeks before he left Toledo for Italy on May 8, 1529, Charles also saw Francisco Pizarro, who had reached Spain in January 1529 from Nombre de Dios. Between there and Spain, he had stopped in Santo Domingo. Then he arrived at Sanlúcar de Barrameda and thence went up to Seville, where he was rudely received by the geographer Martín Fernández de Enciso, who claimed that he owed him money from the time long ago that they were together in La Antigua.17 Pizarro and his comrades were soon behind bars. But the Council of the Indies released them on payment of a fine from the money they had brought with them.
Among Pizarro’s companions, it will be recalled, was first, Licenciado Diego del Corral, a veteran of the early days of Darien. An enemy of Balboa, if much liked by Pizarro, he seemed a good person to argue Pizarro’s case for him. He was by 1528 rich and had an Indian mistress, by whom he had had many children. Pizarro’s second companion in Spain was Pedro de Candía, a giant Cretan who had been an artilleryman in the Spanish army since 1510. Greeks were often used in that capacity in those days. He had served in Asia Minor, in Italy, and in Spain itself. He had gone to the New World in 1526 in the train of the new governor of Panama, Pedro de los Ríos. By that time, he had a Spanish wife, who lived in Villalpando, Zamora, a town between Benavente and Valladolid. His accounts of his adventures in Peru were heard in Spain with astonishment by an amazed audience.
Pizarro spent about a year in Spain after January 1529. He presented himself and his companions at court in Toledo, where he arrived with several Indians, llamas, and many cases full of interesting objects from Peru, including the all-important gold.
The Council of the Indies had since 1523 been formally headed by the conventional Bishop García de Loaisa, but since he was also royal confessor, the Emperor took him with him to Rome, where he lingered some years without activity, as holy men can easily do in the Vatican, so that the president de facto was the Count of Osorno, García Fernández Manrique, a rather hard civil servant who would remain in place till 1542. He was distantly related to the royal family through an Enríquez grandmother.18 Osorno was a balanced man in public life but foolish in private.19 He was the first secular aristocrat to exert an influence on American matters. The Emperor eventually found him too bureaucratic. But for the moment, the substitution of a count for a cardinal seemed a relief.20 He was a close friend of Cardinal Pardo de Tavera, which then meant a great deal in Spanish administrative politics.
The other councillors of the Indies who talked to Pizarro were Gonzalo Maldonado, bishop of Ciudad Rodrigo; Luis Cabeza de Vaca, bishop of the Canary Islands; and Licenciado Juan Suárez de Carvajal, previously a justice of the supreme court of Valladolid, and once married to a niece of President García de Loaisa. More recently he had been bish
op of the distant diocese of Lugo in Galicia.
Also present was Pedro Manuel, the son of Juan Manuel, the longtime courtier and feline ambassador, supporter of both Philip and Charles in Flanders, who had been concerned with the Moluccas; and Gaspar Montoya, of Miranda de Ebro, author of a shrill defense of Catherine of Aragon against Henry VIII. He had worked with Pardo de Tavera. Another member of the council was now Rodrigo de Castro, who had been judge of the chancellery of Granada. He was another protégé of Pardo de Tavera, who, though formally President at the Council of Castile, would be seen to have been indirectly in control of the Council of the Indies, too, as if that were still dependant and not a separate institution.
Pizarro told his interlocutors all that he had seen in South America. He wanted the council’s approval of his grand project for the conquest of Peru. The Council listened and were impressed by hearing of the tall Extremeño’s hardships. They consulted Charles and, in July, Pizarro was granted the governance and other formal support that he wanted in the new, if still unknown, land. Pizarro was awarded the name of adelantado mayor of Peru, which was to be named New Castile, as well as the captaincy-general and governorship of whatever land he should conquer. It was the Empress Regent Isabel who finally gave the license.
In this contract (capitulación) of July 26, 1529, Pizarro was to be allowed to “continue the said discovery and conquest and settlement of the province of Peru up to 200 leagues [600 miles] along that coast.”21 This limitation would later give rise to controversy and even civil war among Spaniards. Second, there was a passage about the captaincy-general and governorship of Peru with a lifetime salary of 725,000 maravedís a year—an income well above what Pedrarias had received (that had been 366,000 maravedís) for the same office, and there had been no inflation to speak of. That salary would be gained in the land to be conquered, and Pizarro would have to pay from it a chief magistrate (alcalde mayor), ten shield bearers, thirty foot soldiers, one doctor, and an apothecary. He would also have to pay for the journey of the friars whom he would take with him.
There were some other nominations: Pizarro, recalled the chronicler Cieza, “secured the most and best for himself without remembering how much his partner [Diego de Almagro] had suffered and deserved.”22 So Pizarro forgot about the adelantamiento that Almagro had expected. Almagro would become lieutenant-governor of the fortress of Tumbes, a town visited by him and Pizarro on their earlier journey; and Luque the priest, who had also contributed to the financing of the future expedition, was to be bishop of it and protector of the Indians in that province. Actually, at this time Tumbes was desolate. There had been fighting between it and nearby Puna, which the latter city had won.
All those who had been with Pizarro on Gallo Island, “the thirteen of fame,” were to be named hidalgos; if they were that already, they would be named knights of the Golden Spur. That brought Pizarro’s expedition fully into line with new chivalrous romances such as Amadís de Grecia, newly published in Cuenca in January 1530 by Cristóbal Francés.23
Pizarro’s contract was signed by the Empress Regent (yo la reina).24 Though Pizarro had had brought to Spain some Indians from the periphery of the Inca empire, as well as one or two animals, it was still surprising that the Crown interested itself in a modest way in the financing of the adventure.25
Other nominations for the journey to Peru included Bartolomé Ruiz de Estrada, the able pilot who would become piloto mayor del mar del sur and town councillor of Tumbes at a salary of 75,000 maravedís a year. A native of Moguer, next to Palos, he had already worked for Pizarro and Almagro for several years. Candía, Pizarro’s Cretan companion in Spain, was named chief of artillery of the expedition, at 60,000 maravedís a year. He, too, would become a councillor of the phantom city of Tumbes.
Gold from Peru would carry a tax of 10 percent for six years, 20 percent later. Other taxes (almojarifazgo, alcabala) were delayed. Pizarro would have six months in which to prepare his expedition, and he could take 150 men from Spain itself and another one hundred from the Americas. Pizarro was prohibited from taking with him new Christians (converted Jews or Muslims), Gypsies, foreigners, and lawyers.
Pizarro went “home” to Trujillo and recruited four of his brothers. There seem to be no records of that visit, though a priest, Fray Pedro Martinez Calero, recalls meeting him then.26 The outstanding recruit was Pizarro’s brother Hernando, whom, Oviedo wrote, was the only legitimate one, and legitimate in his pride.27 He was only twenty-five. Trujillo at that time had about two thousand citizens with full rights. Of these about seventy were hidalgos while 213 of the population belonged to the town nobility.
Others also recruited at this time included a Franciscan, Fray Vicente de Valverde; Pedro Barrantes, a distant cousin; and Francisco de Ávalos, of the great family of the Marquess of Pescara; and Juan Pizarro de Orellana, who was also a distant cousin.28 He surely visited bankers in Seville such as the Illescas brothers or Francisco García or Diego Martínez.29 Perhaps he saw one or two of the famous Genoese who were to be found in Seville—men such as Andrés Lomelín, Cristóbal Centurión, Juan Jacob Spinola, and Jerónimo and Gregorio Cataño, not to mention Florentines such as Jacob Boti.
Then Pizarro went down to Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Seville’s port, and bought four ships on which he would leave for the New World, with 185 men in all.30 Six of these passengers were Dominican friars. On the way, Pizarro at Seville was awarded the much prized Order of Santiago as a knight. They then traveled via the Canaries as usual, stopping at La Gomera, and at Santa Marta on the north coast of South America. The governor there, García de Lerma, promoted the fancy that Peru was full of serpents, lizards, and wild dogs. This news dissuaded some weak hearts from continuing. The rest went on to Nombre de Dios, where the news of Pizarro’s success in Spain had preceded him and where Diego de Almagro and Bartolomé Ruiz, the pilot, as well as the priest Luque, awaited the returning Pizarro with fury at what seemed the neglect of their interests.
This was incidentally a promising moment in the history of the Spanish empire, for in January, the Council of the Indies had opened up commerce in the New World to eight new ports—Corunna, Bayona de Galicia, Avilés, Laredo, Bilbao, San Sebastián, Málaga, and Cartagena—a great step forward, even though to ensure taxes were paid, all ships had to return to Seville.31
In 1528, Isabel, the Empress Regent, was beginning to exert an influence. Serene and pale-cheeked, she had been brought up by her mother’s confessor, Fray García de Padilla, and by Fray Hernando Nieto. These were men who had introduced into Portugal the austere interpretation of religion known as the Observancia. Another influence in the same direction was Guiomar de Melo, later her chief attendant. Her chief secretary was the count of Miranda, another Zúñiga, the elder brother of Prince Philip’s tutor. Though she was Regent in Charles’s absences, “Her Majesty is pained by the Emperor’s departure, for fear that he will stay longer than he says, and she is right, for her life is very dreary when he is not here.”32 The Empress took the partings from her husband very hard but consoled herself “with the consideration that the absence of her husband whom she so dearly loved, was for the service of God, for the benefit of Christendom and for the faith.” She did in 1529 have a well-prepared council of regency in the shape of Miranda, Tavera, and the ultra-experienced Juan Manuel. Her household was much smaller than the large enterprise associated with the Burgundians.
When Charles arrived by sea in Genoa, via Monaco and Savona (which town the French had once planned to make an alternative outpost for their control of Liguria), the city had arranged for him to be greeted with cries from two hundred small boats of “Carlo, Carlo, Imperio, Imperio, Cesare, Cesare,” and he landed by a long specially built pier hung with tapestries and cloth of gold. A great ball appeared with an eagle on top, which showered scent, and a boy symbolizing justice handed the Emperor the keys of the city. This entry had been made possible for Charles by the opening in 1527 of this commercial city to him by Admiral Andrea Doria, who had ch
anged sides from France to the empire. Charles had even sailed across the northern Mediterranean in one of Doria’s boats. (He had left Barcelona in great style, too: as his armada left harbor, the crew on the flagship called out his motto “Plus ultra, plus ultra,” and the cry was echoed on the other galleys.33) Charles was then greeted by three cardinals sent by the pope, by the Duke of Ferrara, and by Alessandro de’ Medici, last of the main line of that great family (even if he was illegitimate).34
Charles’s success in Italy seemed even more striking since his dear aunt Margaret and Louise de Savoie, the mother of Francis I, signed in August the so-called “peace of ladies,” which was largely favorable to Charles. It was a confirmation of the Peace of Madrid of 1526, save that the recovery of Burgundy was omitted. Francis recognized Charles as sovereign in Flanders and Artois, and renounced all his old claims to Milan, Genoa, and Naples. The young French Princes who had been hostages in Madrid were released on the payment of a large ransom. The Emperor’s sister Leonor was confirmed as Queen of France.
The Emperor went on to Bologna, where in November he at last met Pope Clement. Here, too, Charles had a great welcome: There were inscriptions everywhere: “Ave Caesar, Imperator invite.” Every statue in Bologna was garlanded; there were triumphal arches and portraits of Caesar, Augustus, and Trajan. These imperial allusions did not, however, seem to embrace the territories that had been won in the New World. New Spain was not considered. For weeks, Charles and Clement were in discussion in public.35
Spain was implicated in Bologna for two reasons: First, it was the seat of the famous college of San Clemente founded in the fourteenth century for Spanish students by Cardinal Gil Álvarez de Albornoz, the College of the Spaniards; and secondly because Santo Domingo himself had died there and was buried there.