by Hugh Thomas
On that day, Charles met the pope, the cardinals, the ambassadors, and other Roman officials, and harangued them for an hour in Spanish without notes. He launched a real challenge to the King of France.13 He promised again that, if the King of France wanted him to fight personally, he could do so, armed or unarmed, “in shirt sleeves or in armour, with a sword or with fists, on land or on sea, on a bridge or on an island or in a closed place, in front of our armies or wherever he liked.”14 The prize would be Burgundy if he, Charles, won; Milan, if Francis won. Cobos and Granvelle were not consulted before their master made this chivalrous gesture.15 They were dismayed. If such challenges could be made in Europe, what if a Peruvian made the same in the Americas? The French bishop of Macon said he could not understand what was said: Charles made a defiant reply about the virtues of the Spanish language.16
The speech by Charles was seen everywhere as aggressive because of its Spanish vocabulary. The twentieth-century scholar Ramón Menéndez Pidal argued that it proclaimed Spanish the common tongue of diplomacy,17 but there was no such purpose in Charles’s declaration.
Though this occasion seems to have settled the issue of war against France, there was agreement on the need for a general council of the Church, which on June 4, 1536, was summoned to meet at Mantua in May 1537. But when the Protestant Germans refused to come to a meeting in Italy, the scheme was canceled. Alas, if the Protestant community had only brought themselves to make the journey to the enchanting Palazzo del Te at Mantua, the unity of Christendom might have been preserved!
Instead, war with France was decided. The Emperor moved up to Sarzana, the first Genoese town to the east on the Gulf of Liguria, the city of Pope Nicolas V, who had given Portugal its great place in Africa and India. There, Charles was greeted by Doria, who had decided to fight for him. The plan was for a joint land and naval attack such as had been so successful at Tunis the year before. Anselmo de Grimaldo came out to meet Cobos and Granvelle, and a few weeks later, Cobos and another Genoese banker, Tomasso Forne, arranged a loan with Grimaldo for 100,000 scudi.
Even in these fraught circumstances, the news from the Indies remained insistent. Thus on May 30, 1536, Granvelle—in effect now chancellor of the empire without the name—wrote: “Tout se porte bien en Espagne et y attend l’on merveilleuez nombre d’or des Indes.”18 In July 1536, Charles crossed into France, but it was a disastrous campaign thanks to Constable Montmorency’s scorched-earth policy. Aix-en-Provence was besieged, but the attempt to take it failed.19
In September, Charles decided to withdraw. Montmorency, always in favor of an alliance with the Emperor against the heretics, wrote to Granvelle that Francis was prepared to seek a lasting peace. Though Charles returned to Genoa, no peace was signed. On November 14, 1536, Charles also admitted how much he was relying on the gold from the Indies: “Et sommes attendant et en espoir qu’il viendra du côté de Perou, qui pourra servir au propos [and we are awaiting what comes from Peru which will be well deserved].”20 Considering the significance of Genoa in opening the New World, it was appropriate for the Emperor to be there. Two days later, the court sailed for Palamós, in Catalonia, where they arrived on December 5. There, the remorseless succession of decrees affecting the New World continued.
Charles gave his assent in January 1536 to the dispatch of a press and type to enable a son of Cromberger to set up a branch of his successful family business in Mexico, even if for a time only government printing and Christian textbooks were undertaken.21 The initiative to establish a branch of the printer Cromberger in Mexico was largely that of Bishop Zumárraga. As a Franciscan, he had had much to do with the Crombergers before he left Spain. In 1529, we find him owing Jacob Cromberger money, and in 1528, Jacob authorized him and Licenciado Marroquín to take over the fortune of a certain Diego de Mendieta in Mexico. Zumárraga soon decided that the establishment of a printing press would greatly assist the business of evangelization. Back in Spain in 1533, Zumárraga talked with the Council of the Indies of the plan, and in 1534, the Emperor gave permission to the bishop to spend a fifth of the income of the diocese for three years to establish a printer.22 The nucleus of this would be the already published books of Cromberger. As for the printer in Mexico-Tenochtitlan, the Crombergers sent an Italian from Brescia, Giovanni Paoli (Juan Pablos) to establish their branch.23 He set himself up in one of the houses owned or controlled by the bishop. There, Juan Pablos was formally registered as a citizen of Mexico; there, in 1540, he supervised the publication of Manual de adultos, the first volume that we know for sure was published in Mexico.24 The Cromberger family soon acquired other interests in Mexico, principally in the silver mines of first Taxco and then Zacatecas.25
But in Europe, the battles for peace continued. At the end of 1537, talks about ending war were held at the little town of Fitou, on the French frontier between Leucate and Salsas, with Granvelle and Cobos on the one hand, and Montmorency and Jean, cardinal of Lorraine, on the other. Charles was at Perpignan, Francis at Montpellier. The officials’ discussions centered on the restoration to the empire of Savoy, Milan, and Hesdin, in the Pas-de-Calais, which Charles had wanted given to him as a preliminary to further discussion. Later, there was also discussion of Navarre, Tournai, and even Asti. The discussions lasted till 1538. The Emperor again suggested a personal meeting between himself and the French King Francis. But Francis was reluctant. The commissioners met for the last time at Fitou on January 11, 1539. By January 20, the Spanish court were on their way back to Barcelona, the French to Lyons. Of the nobles accompanying Charles, the Duke of Nájera gave balls and jousts.26 But there was no meeting between Francis and the Emperor.
On December 21, 1537, Bishop Zumárraga wrote to Charles from Mexico urging that a large college (say, for five hundred boys) should be established in each diocese in New Spain and a second one for girls. The instruction for boys should be extended to include Latin grammar, while girls should be educated from six to twelve, when they should be married.27 Certainly the nineteenth-century historian Lord Macaulay would have approved. So did Charles after a time.
As far as officials in Seville are concerned, we are aware of a constant pressure on the Emperor to control and limit the scale of operations. Thus in 1538, we read of a decree on the petition of the officials of the Casa de la Contratación and the merchants of Seville that made the rules to exclude foreigners from navigation to the Indies more strict.28
The pursuit of an understanding between France and the empire continued: In May 1538, the Emperor arrived at Villefranche, near Nice, as usual in his friend Doria’s fleet. He sent a courtier, M. de Bossu, with thirteen galleys, to Savona, Columbus’s town, where the pope was waiting. The pope then went to the Franciscan house of Les Cordeliers, near Nice; the next day, Charles had an hour’s talk with him there. They met again in a pavilion built between Nice and Villefranche. On May 28, Francis arrived at Villeneuve, west of Nice, with his son Henry’s consort, Catherine de’ Médici; Queen Leonor, Charles’s sister; and a bodyguard of ten thousand Swiss. On May 29, Cobos, Alburquerque, and Granvelle called on King Francis and met Queen Leonor, and there was a similar courtesy visit by Montmorency and Cardinal de Lorraine to the Emperor. Then, on June 2, Francis had his first meeting with the pope, in a house that had been specially prepared for him, between Nice and Villeneuve. On June 4, the French and imperial commissioners met the pope for the first time, and later, the Queen visited Charles. The pier collapsed and many grand men and women fell into the water (including the archbishop of Santiago). Even the Emperor was temporarily thrown in, but he saved his sister Queen Leonor; and while Charles still did not meet on that occasion the French king, the pope did arrange a ten-year truce.
Leonor eventually persuaded Charles to meet Francis at the castle of Aigues-Mortes on a lagoon near Montpellier. They talked a long time, while a dance went on outside. Perhaps they could arrange a crusade together? Francis embraced the proposal with the same exaggerated enthusiasm that he had shown before for the idea and then
quickly forgot about it.
All the same, there was a celebration in Mexico to mark the end of the war with France. This took place in the royal palace in Mexico, whose corridors “were transformed into bowers and gardens and, for each course, there were stewards and pages and a full and well-arranged service … together with much music of singers and trumpetry, and all sorts of instruments, such as harps, guitars, vihuelas, flutes, dulcimers, and oboes … huge pastries were full of live quail and rabbits, whose escape afforded much amusement. There were also jesters and versifiers, and fountains of white wine, sherry, and red wine. Over 300 men and over 200 women were present and the banquet lasted till two hours after midnight when the ladies cried out that they could no longer stay at the table and others that they were indisposed.” Everything was served on gold and silver, none of which was lost since the authorities placed an Indian guard next to every dish. But silver salt cellars, tablecloths, napkins, and knives did disappear. These fiestas were organized by Luis de León of Rome. The Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza and Cortés, the Marquess del Valle de Oaxaca, now on reasonable terms, celebrated together. Thus, less than twenty years after the great conquest of New Spain, did the New World give a full recognition of the old one.
34
The Indies Finance Europe
I wished your Highness to know all the things of this land which are so many and of such a kind that one might call oneself Emperor of the Kingdom with no less glory than of Germany which by the grace of God Your Sacred Highness already possesses.
CORTÉS TO CHARLES V, 1519
Charles the Emperor was in Spain in mid-1538, first in Burgos, then in Valladolid, and there he or the Empress issued numerous decrees—for example, one to encourage bachelors in the Indies to marry, giving preference indeed in encomiendas to those with families. Another royal decree ordered an ecclesiastical tribunal to examine a Tarascan catechism used in central Mexico and to take special heed that the terms used did not present difficulties for the teaching and practice of the Christian religion among the Indians.1 It almost began to seem as if the American empire was becoming a priority among the imperial authorities.
Charles had to preside over the death of his beloved wife, the Empress Isabel, who died in childbirth in 1539. Her death was the tragedy of Charles’s middle life. But the Emperor in Spain was also as busy with difficult noblemen as he had been in Germany. Thus, in October 1538, he summoned the cortes of Castile at Toledo. Charles had with him not just the procuradores of the towns but also the nobility and the clergy. He explained that the total revenue of the realm was just over a million ducats, but more than half was mortgaged in advance. The Crown had decided, therefore, to levy a new tax, the sisa, which would be paid by everyone. The very rich Duke of Béjar, son of Cortés’s great friend and benefactor, was the leading opponent, and in the end, Charles dropped the idea.
This meeting of the Castilian cortes was notable for bad tempers on all sides. Ninety-five grandees and nobles attended. The three estates assembled in different buildings in the city. The nobles refused to accept the secretary designated by the court, and whenever he appeared in the chapter house of the monastery of San Juan de los Reyes, he was expelled by angry noblemen crying: “Leave us, leave us, here we have no need of any secretary.”2
It was here, according to Sepúlveda, that Charles said, “It’s now that I understand the little power that I possess.”3 Sandoval reported that Charles said to Velasco, the constable of Castile, “I should like to throw you out of the window,” to which the constable replied: “Your Majesty should take care for, even if I am small, I weigh a lot.”
At this time, the idea of fighting the Turks so filled Charles’s mind that he hastily worked to solve all other problems.4 He was not deflected by a letter of good advice from his sister Mary, the regent in the Netherlands: “Your Majesty is the greatest Prince in Christendom but you cannot undertake a war in the name of all Christendom until you can be sure to carry it to victory. Such an enterprise could not be carried out save over many years and would cost inexhaustible money. Where could this come from? France, Venice, Naples, the Netherlands? Could you really go and leave us unprotected? The Turks cannot be conquered unless their whole empire falls. So great a Prince as you must only triumph. Defeat is the ultimate crime. Win the love of the German princes, make France a friend, not an enemy. March across France, settle your last accounts with the King there, then visit your Netherlands, then Germany and at last Italy. Gain the support of all! This is the advice which in all humility I offer you.”5
Yet Charles still had to decide such tedious matters as the rivalries between the Casa de la Contratación, the Council of the Indies, and the city council in Seville.
In civil cases relating to the Indies, the petitioner could choose between the Casa de la Contratación and the municipal court, always supposing that the accused was in Seville. Criminal cases had to be heard first by the Casa de la Contratación, except for criminal cases involving death, which would be heard by the Casa and passed to the Council of the Indies for sentencing.6
These considerations did not prevent Charles from planning once more to leave Spain for Flanders and Germany, leaving the reliable Cardinal Tavera as regent.
We follow Charles in 1541 to the Diet of Regensburg, where the German princes had assembled. He was also in Ghent for the beheading of the leaders of that city’s dangerous revolt that year. There the Venetian Cardinal Contarini, dominating the Catholics, spoke with the authority of one experienced in the affairs of the Indies because of his old nunciatura in Spain. There was, too, the new prophet of intolerant Protestantism, Jean Calvin, from Geneva. There were some good signs. The German reformer and collaborator of Luther, Philipp Melanchthon, for example, was conciliatory. Charles, longing for a reconciliation, which he still believed possible, intervened often. But still, in the end, there was no peaceful solution. Charles withdrew and eventually saw the pope at Lucca in the bishop’s palace. He received papal blessing for a new expedition against the Ottomans, which had long been his dream.
For this an armada of sixty-five galleys and 450 other ships was made ready with twenty-four thousand troops, including, astonishingly, none other than the Marquess del Valle de Oaxaca, Cortés himself. He had talked his way into being accepted by Charles. But he had no command. How could a conquistador command European troops? The Duke of Alba assembled the fleet in Majorca under Doria, the troops under Ferrante Gonzaga. They left Majorca on October 13, 1541, and arrived off Algiers on October 20. On October 23, Charles began to disembark his troops on a treacherous spit of land to the east of that city. The infantry was landed, but bad weather prevented the cavalry and artillery from following them. A storm blew up on October 24–25, and there seemed no way of saving the ships without throwing overboard food and armaments. Even so, fourteen galleys were lost. Charles landed again, to the west of Algiers. But the disembarkation of provisions seemed impossible. Cortés told Charles that if he turned back, he personally could show the monarch how to conquer the city. If it had not been for the storm, Algiers could easily have been captured, but Cortés, for all his astounding talents, was not a master of the weather.
On November 2, Charles now ordered his half-starving troops to be re-embarked.7 He was held up for days at Bugia, west of the city. He returned to Cartagena on December 1, then to Valladolid via Ocaña, Toledo, and Madrid.
When Charles was back in Valladolid, he found the Council of the Indies again in bad morale. The trouble was that various Spanish cities, such as Córdoba, Madrid, and Guadalajara, had complained of the slow pace with which the council dispatched its business. In the cortes, someone had written, perhaps under the influence of Las Casas: “We beseech His Majesty that he remedies the cruelties which are done to the natives in the Indies and, in that way, God will be served and the Indies preserved.”8
Charles, contemplating these problems, held a new cortes in February 1542, this time at Valladolid. Most towns yielded to royal pressure and granted
a subsidy of 400,000 ducats a year for the purpose of financing a crusade against Islam, substantial bribery probably being used to achieve this.9 Charles told the cortes what he had been doing. He saw Las Casas, who came on the recommendation of Bishop Zumárraga. Of course, Charles had met him often in the days of his first visit to Spain in 1517–18.10 But their present encounter was equally important. Las Casas again made a profound impression, not only on the Emperor, but on all to whom he talked. After all, he had been to the places which they only discussed. The Emperor was shocked by Casas’s new memorials about the condition of Indians. Those documents led to the reorganization of the Council of the Indies and then to the New Laws, essentially a Las Casasian project.11
At that time, Spain alone of Charles’s dominions was at peace. Taxes remained high. Sometimes there were extra revenues, such as the dowry paid by the King of Portugal for Isabel; or the King of France’s ransom of his sons for a million ducats. In 1540, the 282,000 ducats that derived from “Indies treasure” was a major item in the Crown’s total income of 1,159,923 ducats.12
But there was never enough money at the start of a war. Bankers were called in; loans were raised at high interest. Crown lands and some sources of revenue were mortgaged. The future income of the Crown was crippled. Charles contracted debts haphazardly as the need occurred. That is why the Spanish Crown was coming to think of the Indies as a new treasure trove to finance their European designs. The Crown seems to have raised as much as two-thirds of its entire revenue from the Indies in 1543.13 This was exceptional, but it was an indication of what might be expected in the future.