The Golden Empire: Spain, Charles V, and the Creation of America
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Despite the death of Sancho de Hoz, there remained friends of his in the cabildo in Santiago and also some in La Gasca’s circle in Peru. They accused Valdivia of murder, immorality (living with Inés), and sometimes of tampering with the royal box with three keys. La Gasca talked to some of these conspiratorial spirits.20
Most admitted that there was discontent in Chile. Some thought that Sancho de Hoz had had a good claim to much land. Others thought that Valdivia had been excessively generous to Sancho de Hoz, and yet others that his eventual execution had brought peace. Some said that Valdivia had given them a charge on his land in return for his seizure of their gold. Six out of eleven witnesses considered that Valdivia’s return would benefit Chile. Bernardino Mella, who had ridden back with Monroy to Chile in 1543, said that La Gasca ought to send Inés Suárez back to Spain because she was mad. Other accusations were levied against Valdivia. He defended himself well, saying that Inés was his maid and that Pizarro himself—Francisco, not Gonzalo—had given him permission to take her.
La Gasca’s judgment was solomonic: Valdivia was confirmed as governor and captain-general, but within six months he had to break his relation with Inés. He had to either send her away or marry her to someone else. He had within a year to pay off all loans forced by him; he had to permit all who wanted to leave to do so; and he had to ensure that all encomiendas had enough Indians to support them and that anything borrowed from the King’s box was replaced. Except for the clause about Inés, the punishments were logical. Some of Valdivia’s friends tried to persuade him to act against La Gasca. Valdivia refused and went overland to Arequipa. There he became ill but recovered, thanks to two later-notorious nurses. He went thence to Aruca and took a ship to Valparaíso, where he arrived in April. There he remained till June.21
He discovered immediately that La Serena, his port of entry 250 miles north of Santiago, had been destroyed. All Juan Bohon’s men and settlers had been massacred. The Indians had entered the town at night and placed an assassin in front of every door. When the alarm was given, the Spaniards were killed on their doorsteps. Only two survived, who explained how not only the settlers but also their animals were killed.
Villagrán was sent back to La Serena to recover the place with sixty men and thirty horse under himself by land, and thirty arquebusiers by sea under Diego Maldonado. The sea party arrived first but were forced back onto their ships. Villagrán arrived next day, and the two groups were able to hold back the Indians. The rebuilding of the town began. The loss had inspired consternation in Santiago. There was a general fear of an Indian attack, especially in the mines of Malga. The miners wanted six armed horsemen; Valdivia sent four, and the mines were closed.
Valdivia’s return to Santiago had many bizarre characteristics. His friends were now established in the town council, since Alderete had become treasurer again, Esteban de Sosa was accountant, Vicente del Monte was overseer, and Pedro de Miranda was spokesman. Valdivia himself, through his agent Juan de Cárdenas, had already sworn to respect the laws and rights of all settlers, and he now made a triumphal entry with Indians carrying myrtle and cinnamon before him. He found that Inés Suárez, evidently hearing of her condemnation by La Gasca, had left Valdivia for Rodrigo de Quiroga, whom she subsequently married.22
Just as soon as Valdivia had returned to Santiago, another hundred men under well-established leaders appeared in the capital, led by Francisco de Villagrán. Valdivia was then tempted by a new idea for an attack in the South. But first he sent Francisco de Aguirre to assist in rebuilding La Serena. Then he set off himself for the south in a hand chair carried by Indians, because he had broken his hip when his horse fell. With Alderete as his second-in-command, he as usual sent small units ahead to find the lay of the land. Then he moved down to attack the Indians on the rivers Laja and Biobío, both of which flow into the Pacific, and at what would become Concepción, where a fort was now established (March 3, 1550). There was a ferocious reply by the Indians. Alderete responded successfully, and many prisoners were captured, whose noses Valdivia, in a break from his usual policy of reconciliation, cut off.23
Valdivia was supported by his Genoese ally Pastene, who arrived with food at his fortress. Pastene went in search of further supplies and information, and reached as far as the island of Santa María, off Talca and close to Concepción. Valdivia’s land party then continued, founding a new settlement at what became La Imperial and then at Valdivia itself, a new town also, and like almost all those founded by the governor, on the coast. The towns mentioned survive till the present day in much their old sites. Valdivia also founded Villarrica, between Concepción and Valdivia, in April 1552. In March 1550, Valdivia wrote that he had defeated the Araucanian Indians—“the finest and most splendid Indians that have ever been seen in these parts.” Some 1,500 or two thousand had been killed, and he had cut off the noses and hands of another two hundred for “their contumacy in rejecting his offers of peace.”24 He continued his advocacy of Chile as the best place in Charles’s American empire: “The land has a fine climate and every kind of Spanish plant will grow in it better than [in New Spain].”25 He thought that southern Chile was “all a town, a garden and a gold mine.” He argued, too, that there were “more Indians in southern Chile than in Mexico.”26
Obviously Valdivia was hoping to establish Spanish imperial control over the whole of the southern part of the continent. He was, he wrote, sending the faithful Francisco de Villagrán from Villarrica across the Andes to “the northern sea,” the Atlantic. He had also sent Francisco de Aguirre to the north to add El Barco to the empire. He himself had been recently into the mountains and discovered there a high lake, presumably Lake Ranco. He was also thinking of sending Alderete to explore the Strait of Magellan from the South.
Then Valdivia returned to Santiago to speed the departure for Spain, precisely of Alderete: He was instructed by La Gasca to try to bring to Chile Valdivia’s wife, whose presence had been demanded.
Villagrán’s journey to the Atlantic was not a success. He crossed the Andes near Villarrica, but he found his way ahead was blocked by two rivers (perhaps the Almuinó and the Limay), so he returned to Villarrica. There he learned that the Indians had risen. He sought to save the garrison, though the commander Alonso de Moya was killed. From Villarrica, Villagrán went down to Concepción, where he found Valdivia, to whom he gave an account of his journey. Everyone else was engaged in a minor gold rush since that intoxicating metal had just been discovered nearby.
Back in Santiago, Valdivia wrote to the emperor Charles: “Most sacred Caesar, Your Majesty being so taken up with the service of God and the defence and the upholding of Christianity against the common enemy the Turks and the Lutherans, it would be more fitting to help by deeds rather than distract by words. Would to God that I could find myself in Your Majesty’s presence with much money and that you might use me in your service, even though I am not useless where I am.”27
This was the last letter that the “perfect captain” wrote to Europe. He soon returned to the south of Chile, where he considered his mission was to bring the entire land to submission. He founded Los Confines, between Concepción and La Imperial. Then he built forts at Purén and Tucapel, where his captain Alonso Coronas advised him that another general rising of Indians was about to begin. He also reported that a onetime stable boy, Lantaro, an Indian who had worked with the Spaniards, was teaching his compatriots how to fight on horseback. Captain Martín de Ariza was obliged to abandon the fort at Tucapel by Indians who hid their guns in bundles of grass brought in precisely for the horses. Tucapel was burned.
On Christmas Day 1553, there was one of the few battles on fixed lines between Indians and Spaniards, outside Tucapel. Lantaro had arranged to follow Valdivia’s route carefully, then to force the outnumbered Spaniards into the marshes. Valdivia drew up his men in three companies. He ordered his first unit to charge and rout the Indians. They held firm. Then he sent in his second company. Still the Indians did not flee. Leav
ing ten men to guard the baggage, Valdivia then led his own company against the enemy. Their ranks held. “Gentlemen,” asked Valdivia of his captains, “what shall we do?” “What does your lordship wish us to do except fight and die?” they replied.
Valdivia withdrew his horsemen from the baggage, hoping that the enemy would be distracted by the chance of loot. It was usually a successful tactic, but Lantaro had anticipated that move, and there was still no weakening on the Indians’ part. The Indians advanced, pressing the Spaniards into the nearby marsh. They were killed one by one. Valdivia had a strong horse and might have escaped, but he refused to abandon Fray Bartolomé del Pozo, who was on foot. Both were captured.28
According to Góngora de Marmolejo, Valdivia was disarmed and undressed and then tied up by the Indians. They built a fire in which they roasted slices of his arms cut off with mussel shells, and then they ate them. Other torture followed till they finally cut off his head.29
Thus died the “perfect captain,” among a group of very hard men, one of the most humane and tolerant of the conquistadors, and the father of Chile, a society which, being buffered behind the despoblado desert of Atacama, was more free of the diseases of Peru and the north than elsewhere on the continent. But the country was to be at the mercy of both famine and pestilence in the late 1550s.
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Carolus Africanus
The best remedy would seem to be a good war. How can we arrange that? I have no means of sustaining my army.… The King of England does not look on me as a true friend and does not advise me adequately as to what he is going to do.
CHARLES V, AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTE, FEBRUARY–MARCH 1525
News of the thunder and the fury of all these conquests and battles, these slaughters and sufferings, these arguments and these denunciations in the New World eventually reached Europe and were absorbed by those who served the Crown in the matter of the Indies. But these officials had different priorities. The decision of the Emperor’s brother, Fernando, to become King of the Romans in 1531 was seen by many as the end of the idea of universal monarchy. But this had an impact on American policy. The frame of the extraordinary achievements in the Americas was provided by the Crown, after all. Charles V might be at Innsbruck or Augsburg, in Toledo or in Valladolid, Rome or Bologna; he might be on the Mediterranean or in a palace in Flanders; he might be considering the Turkish threat (was Erasmus right to argue that the true victory over the Turks would be to make them Christians?),1 or how he could outmaneuver that “monster” (that “bellaco” as Diego de Ordaz, the conqueror of the Orinoco, put it) Luther, or how he could defeat the German princes—but at any moment, the Emperor might be interrupted by his faithful secretary Cobos with a request for a contract for a new adventurer from Seville or Extremadura who wanted to go to the Indies to conquer and settle a new desert or jungle, to be called, say, New Extremadura or even New Badajoz. Charles might want to concentrate on the question of how to persuade the pope to call a general council of the Church, but more news from New Spain might interrupt his consideration of episcopal and religious reform.
Charles traveled continuously—surely no ruler has ever traveled so much. Gout already tortured him, but the Council of the Indies was always in communication, and other informal advisers were always writing to him. So were conquistadors themselves, such as Valdivia or indeed the great Cortés. Decisions affecting the Americas had to be made. Of course, Charles decided to give the island of Malta to the knights of Saint John, who had been expelled by the Turks from their old home at Rhodes. That was an easy decision. More difficult was deciding who should be sent to Peru to face and defeat Gonzalo Pizarro. A lawyer or a gentleman?
Charles is often held to have had no profound interest in his marvelous American empire. That was only half the case. True, his first attention was always paid to the cause of Germany, the Protestant revolt as well as the growing disorganization in the Low Countries. But all the same, from the moment that Charles saw the shivering Totonaca sent from Mexico to Andalusia by Cortés in 1520, he was concerned with the health of his new subjects. Charles had often listened to Las Casas’s pleas, and he was very interested indeed in the provision of gold and silver from the Indies, which helped to finance his wars in Italy. Charles was also “most fond” of maps, as Ambassador Dantiscus reported.2 So even though preoccupied by the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, the Empress signed the decree of August of that year that forbade any new enslavement in his realms: “No person shall dare to make a single slave whether in peace or in war … whether by barter, purchase, trade or on any pretext or cause whatsoever”;3 and Charles advised his son Prince Philip, in 1544 and 1548, always to concern himself with the quality of governors and Viceroys: “Do not cease to keep yourself well informed of the state of these distant lands, for the honour of God and for the sake of justice. Combat the abuses which have arisen there.”4 The twentieth-century Spanish historian Ramón Carande, however, pointed out that “without the Indian payments, his adventures [in Italy] would have been few.”5
In 1534, the Moorish admiral Barbarossa had captured Tunis. Charles, who had some knowledge of strategy, thought that that threatened the entire western Mediterranean, Spain as well as Italy. He thereupon began to gather a considerable army and navy, and called a meeting of the cortes in order to look for more money. He remained in Madrid all the winter of 1534–35, meeting the controllers of his military orders in hopes of financing this conflict.
While these preparations were being made, the news came in September 1534 of the death of Pope Clement VII, a great relief to Charles. He was succeeded by Cardinal Farnese, the oldest of the cardinals and the only one to date his cardinalate to the days of Alexander VI. Farnese was proclaimed Pope Paul III, and he immediately announced his support for Charles’s plea for a general council of the Church.
Two senior counselors, Tavera and Cobos, opposed Charles’s proposed campaign against Barbarossa, but their protests were ignored. Charles had, after all, a new source of finance—namely, Peruvian gold. For, as we have seen, Hernando Pizarro had returned in the winter of 1534 with his extraordinary news and presents from Peru. One hundred and eighty-five thousand ducats of the treasure of Pizarro were held in the castle of La Mota at Medina del Campo (a castle that Hernando, ironically, would come to know only too well). Cobos said that the King could also count on 800,000 ducats seized from private people who had brought that sum from the New World. Twenty-two cartloads of gold in bars arrived on April 29 in Barcelona, where the expedition to Tunis was being planned. Another twenty heavily laden mule trains arrived on May 22.
On May 13, 1535, all the forces that Charles was committing trooped past the Emperor outside the gate of Perpignan at Barcelona, while the royal treasurer, Pedro de Zuazaola, and Juan de Samano, the secretary of the Council of the Indies during most of the long reign, sat at a table writing down names and numbers. Never before had Charles seemed the leader of a real crusade. He himself unfurled a banner of Christ crucified and called to the assembled men, noblemen, soldiers, and camp followers: “Here is your captain-general, I am your standard bearer.” Seventy-four galleys, thirty minor ships, and three hundred transport then sailed under the command of Andrea Doria, the brilliant admiral of Genoa, assisted by his young Spanish disciple, Álvaro de Bazán. The Marquess de Vasto (son of the Marquess de Pescara, of Pavia renown) commanded the troops in Doria’s fleet, Charles agreeing to submit himself to that command.6
On June 10, the great fleet set out for Africa. Five days later, it lay at anchor before the ruins of Carthage. On July 14, the fort of La Goleta was stormed. That was Charles’s baptism of fire. Was he in a melée, was his horse killed under him? Such details are obscure. We know, though, that on July 21, Charles entered Tunis, triumphantly releasing twenty thousand Christian captives. He captured eighty-two vessels of Barbarossa’s fleet. Next month, he returned Tunis to his friend Muley Hasán, whom Barbarossa had dispossessed as king. The King-Emperor returned to Sicily on August 22, greeted as “Carolus Afr
icanus.” A banner spoke of him as “Champion of Europe and of Asia,” and another proclaimed, “Long live our victorious Emperor, conqueror of Africa, peacemaker of Italy.” Much booty was obtained. People began to talk of Charles as if he had become a combination of Saint Louis, Scipio, and Hannibal. Turkish fashions had a short vogue.
Charles was in Palermo for a month, leaving on October 13 to make a triumphal entry into Naples, where he stayed the winter. Splendid sculptures welcomed him at the Porta Capuana (Giovanni da Nola building on the work of the Florentine Giuliano da Maiano). The leaders of Europe flocked to congratulate him.7 There were dances, masked balls, even bullfights. Cobos in December gave a dinner in Naples for the collector Paolo Giovio, and it was presumably at that point that he gave Giovio a preconquest codex from New Spain, which may have been a present to him from Cortés. A treasure from the New World thus won pride of place in the city of Stupor Mundi.8
While Charles was still in Naples, the Council of the Indies recommended that the trade in African slaves in the New World should be thrown quite open, relieving the practitioners of all rules save payments of taxes.9 Charles considered that, but he was preoccupied: On April 2, 1536, he met the pope at Sermoneta, the most southerly town of the Monti Lepini. Two days later, the Emperor celebrated a triumphal entry into Rome “con gran demonstración de alegría,” Charles reported to the Empress in Spain.10 More than two hundred houses and even three or four churches were pulled down to make possible la grande entrée.11 The vicar of the pope came to meet the Emperor. Then, surrounded by noblemen such as the Dukes of Alba, Guasto, and Benavente, Charles rode down a new street (now the Via di San Gregorio) to the Arch of Constantine. He crossed the bridge over the Tiber to be greeted by the pope at St. Peter’s. The two talked. Though Charles failed to persuade the pope to side with him against France, a special congregation of cardinals at last agreed to summon a general council. Charles was so pleased that he arranged to thank the pope formally on April 17.12