The Golden Empire: Spain, Charles V, and the Creation of America

by Hugh Thomas

  On November 12, 1553, Philip wrote again to the emperor Charles that every year more corsairs sailed out of France intending to sack Spanish imperial ports. In the previous July, they had destroyed La Palma, in the Canaries.26 Yet, had it not been for the sums that now regularly reached Castile from the Indies, Spain would probably have had to abandon northern Europe.

  In Spain, Hernando Pizarro, the eloquent victor of Cuzco, seemed a reproach to all. He had been condemned for the illegal execution of Almagro. He was first ordered to be sent to a prison colony in North Africa. That sentence was commuted and Hernando found himself confined in a fortress in Madrid. Finally, he was sent in June 1543 to the Castillo de la Mota, just outside Medina del Campo, city of imagination (Bernal Díaz del Castillo) and of fantasy (Amadís de Gaula). Hernando reached there in June 1543, and he remained there till May 1561. He lived comfortably, but confined all the same.27 At first, he lived with Isabel Mercado of Medina del Campo. Then in 1552, he married his niece, the daughter of his brother Francisco Pizarro, Francisca, who was then aged seventeen. The idea of such a marriage to Francisca had occurred at one time to Gonzalo Pizarro.

  Hernando, once married to such a very rich girl as his niece, devoted his time to centralizing the management of his family’s estates in Peru, part of which had been managed by royal officials after the final defeat of Gonzalo. When eventually Hernando and Francisca left La Mota, free, in 1561, they went to live at La Zarza. That village outside Trujillo had always belonged to the Pizarro family, of which Hernando was now the head. They embarked there on “a strategy of reconstruction of their finances” and built a new palace in the main square of Trujillo (which still survives). They lived in the shadow of the coat of arms granted to Francisco Pizarro. They had also inherited Francisco’s marquessate, which, from 1576, was named as “of the Conquest.” Hernando died two years later, a survivor of extraordinary deeds into what seemed a calmer age. Francisca lived until 1598, having married again to Pedro Arias Portocarrero, son of the count of Puñonrostro.28

  Hernando’s fortune was large. In about 1550, it was almost as big as that of the family of Cortés—32,000 pesos a year, in comparison with the family of Cortés’s 36,800. Nor does this figure for Hernando’s income include the product of his mercantile adventures and mines.29 In the end, Hernando gained control of most of the estate (including the Porco mines) that the Pizarro brothers had acquired during the conquest.

  47

  The Emperor at Bay

  I shall enter no port other than that of death.

  EMPEROR CHARLES V, NOVEMBER 12, 1556

  Gold or no, northern Europe notwithstanding, the shadows were darkening for the emperor Charles. Nearly forty years of continuous struggle since 1516 had left him exhausted, and he was forever racked by pain from gout and other maladies. His failure at Metz at the hands of the duke of Guise had been a serious setback. On January 12, 1553, he abandoned the siege, blaming the cold and disease affecting his soldiers. He then retired to Brussels, where he succumbed to melancholy, examining his clocks. In September 1553, a statement about his health was made by Nicolas Nicolai: “In the opinion of his doctors, His Majesty cannot be expected to live long because of the great number of illnesses which affect him, especially in winter … the gout attacks him and frequently racks all his limbs and nerves … and the common cold affects him so much that he sometimes appears to be in his last straits … his piles put him in such agony that he cannot move without great pain … All these things, together with his very great mental sufferings, have completely altered the good humour and affability which he used to have and have turned him into a melancholic … His Majesty will not allow anyone, lord or prelate, into his presence nor does he want to deal with papers … He spends day and night in adjusting and setting his countless clocks and does little else.”1

  The possibility of abdication brought on by ill health became a continual preoccupation. The fact that no monarch of substance had abdicated since Diocletian, also probably in consequence of ill health, in A.D 305, was on his mind.2 Charles was only fifty-three but seemed to have reigned for centuries. The realistic, but for Charles tragic, peace of Augsburg of September 1555 sealed his reign: The principle was “cuius regio, eius religio.” Every state of the empire had the right thereafter to decide its own religion.

  Charles, too, was no longer the humane statesman concerned with the well-being of his Indian subjects, with enlightened Erasmian confessors such as Jean Glapion and liberal clergymen such as Alonso Manrique de Lara at his side. Crushed by ill health, he had become intransigent, obsessed by the Protestant heresy, and concerned with the Indies only in respect of the gold and silver that could be drawn out of it, and, it is fair to add, by his own failure to crush heresy and maintain the Habsburg legacy undivided.

  The prince-regent Philip, on the other hand, was by then preoccupied with his second marriage. Despite suggestions that he might marry another Portuguese princess (and there were other ideas already mooted in August 1553), Simón Renard,3 in London, had mentioned the possibility of an English marriage for the Prince to Queen Mary: “She began to laugh not once but several times and looked at me to suggest that she found the idea very much to her liking.”4 She was, after all, the daughter of Henry VIII by Catherine of Aragon and had used to consider the emperor Charles as her guiding light. Once, in 1521, she had even been betrothed to him; “the pearl of the world” she had been proclaimed.5 Charles obtained Philip’s (reluctant) approval and made a formal request for Mary’s hand for his son. Mary asked Renard many questions and requested a portrait; a copy of Titian’s famous one of Philip in armor was sent to her. If Philip was disposed to be amorous, she told Renard, such was not her desire, for she was “of such an age that Your Excellency knows of and had never harboured thoughts of love. Also she would love and obey Philip but, if he wished to encroach on the government of her country, she would be unable to allow it.”6 It was therefore an astounding decision of Philip’s since, at that time, his only heir was Don Carlos, his son by María of Portugal, and he, and the empire, needed more reassurance and, above all, more Infantes. The new marriage was not a decision welcomed by Ferdinand, Charles’s brother, the king of the Romans, who had already sent a messenger, Martín de Guzmán, a courtier of the Emperor, to propose a marriage of Mary with his own son, the archduke Ferdinand of Tyrol, then in his early thirties. Ferdinand had sent a portrait of him, too, to London.7

  On October 29, 1553, Mary, however, swore to accept Philip as her husband. He was then twenty-six, eleven years younger than she. He was not enthusiastic, and since the death of his first consort, he had had several pretty mistresses (Isabel Osorio, Catalina Laínez, and, above all, Eufrasia Guzmán). In England, there was also opposition. The House of Commons requested Mary not to marry a foreigner. But she went ahead. On January 12, 1554, a marriage contract was drawn up between Mary of England and Philip. Philip would share all titles and responsibilities with Mary, but would relinquish everything if Mary died first. He would conform to English laws and customs, admit no foreigners to office in England, and not implicate England in his wars. It was an arrangement similar to that of Ferdinand with Isabel in 1479.

  On July 13, 1554, Philip left Spain to marry Mary, and this time his sister Juana of Portugal, recently widowed in Portugal, would be regent in Spain.

  The Prince sailed from Corunna with seventy vessels, in bad weather; Silva, the Prince of Eboli, said he himself nearly died of seasickness. They were met off the Isle of Wight by Lord Howard of Effingham, the lord high admiral and father of the future English commander against the armada invincible in 1588, and entered Southampton on July 20.8 Philip seems to have had four thousand troops with him. They were greeted by Henry, Earl of Arundel, a Catholic nobleman, who presented Philip with the Order of the Garter. Then they went to Winchester and on July 23 were met at the cathedral by the ambassadorial Stephen Gardiner, the bishop of Winchester, who introduced Philip to the Queen. Though Mary was daughter of Catherine of A
ragon, she could not speak Spanish well, but she did speak French adequately. Charles sent, via Juan de Figueroa, a special present to Philip—the throne of Naples—so that he could marry as a king.

  On July 25, the day of Santiago, the wedding was held at Winchester. Philip was very affable, talking to the English crowd in the rain, drinking beer, promising to abbreviate his retinue, taking some English nobles into his train, telling his people to try to adapt to English customs. “He has shown such affability and such sweetness of temper as not to be surpassed,” reported Soriano, the Venetian ambassador.9 Then they proceeded slowly to London by water, disembarking there on August 18, and went on to Hampton Court for “what remained of the summer.” According to Andrés Muñoz, the Spanish nobles knew that they were in the land of Amadís de Gaula (much of which is set in England). “There is more to be seen in England than is written of in those books,” he commented, “because of the dwellings that there are in the country, the rivers, the fields, the beautiful flowered meadows, the cool fountains … a pleasure to see … above all, in summer.”10

  The Spaniards found the English less appealing than their countryside. For they looked white and pink, and were quarrelsome. “All their celebrations seemed to consist of eating and drinking, they think of nothing else … They have a lot of beer, and drink more of it than there is water in the river at Valladolid.” There were frequent robberies in the streets, the ladies of the court were “quite ugly,” and the Queen had no eyebrows, and “though she was saintly, she was short-sighted, and her voice was rough and loud.” Some Spaniards said that “they would prefer to be in the slums of Toledo than in the meadows of Amadís.” The King acted “as if he were Isaac allowing himself to be sacrificed to the will of his father.”11 Then in November, Mary and Philip presided over a joint session of the English Parliament in which a reconciliation with the Church of Rome was made law. Philip also dealt with imperial affairs. Thus in London he set up a committee of twelve, including the flawed Fray Bartolomé de Carranza and Fray Bernardo de Fresneda, to discuss the matter of encomiendas. He told his father that he thought that they should concede these grants in perpetuity.

  But there would be shadows in London, too. On February 1, 1555, the first victim of Protestant persecution in England was burned at the stake. Many Spaniards were appalled. The ambassador in London, Simón Renard, wrote to Philip: “I do not think it well that Your Majesty should allow further executions to take place.”12 But the Prince had no power in the English Church courts, even if he inspired his confessor, Fray Alonso de Castro, a Franciscan with a mission to preach to the Prince-Regent from 1553 to 1556, in a sermon on February 10 to criticize the bishops of England for burning Protestants. The initiative was that of the lord chancellor Stephen Gardiner, who reenacted the anti-heresy statute of 1401. Yet he, like Richard Sampson and Edward Foxe, had published acts in defense of King Henry’s divorce and royal supremacy in the 1530s.13

  The year 1555 marked the beginning of the end for Charles the Emperor. On October 22, in Brussels, Charles made Philip master of the Order of the Fleece. Three days later, Charles summoned the authorities of the Low Countries. He abdicated from Burgundy and the Netherlands (leaning on the arm of the Prince of Orange) in favor of his son. Philip came over from England. Charles spoke in elegiac mood of his travels, his troubles, and his triumphs. Through his mind as he spoke there must have passed recollections of Luther at Worms, of Pope Adrian VI in Flanders, and the happy gardens of his childhood with his clever aunt Margaret at Malines. He surely would have recalled meeting Cortés and Pizarro in 1529, Magellan in 1522, King Henry VIII in 1520 and 1522, and all the members of that brilliant Netherlandish court who accompanied him in his first visit to Spain in 1517, above all Chièvres.

  He recalled then for his audience his ten stays in Flanders, his nine journeys to Germany, his six stays in Spain, his seven voyages to Italy, four to France, two to England (to see Henry VIII, whom he had admired, to begin with), and two to Africa, not to speak of several voyages in the Mediterranean—his ceaseless journeys, which enabled him to know all the mysterious corners of his European empire as well as his ancestors had known their Spanish kingdoms.14 He was surrounded as he spoke by the knights of the Fleece, Philip, his royal sisters, Leonor and Mary, both ex-queens, by the young Ferdinand of Austria, by Christine of Lorraine, and by Emmanuel Philibert, the new duke of Savoy. The last named introduced the Emperor. Charles then spoke of his life and how everywhere he seemed to have failed. He warmly commended Philip. There were abundant tears.

  Mary of Hungary also abdicated from the Netherlands. She and the former queen of France, Leonor, would follow Charles to Spain, Mary taking with her a fine collection of pictures, books, and tapestries (many of the former would find their way eventually to the Prado). Charles sent to his brother, Ferdinand, a letter of September 12, 1556, that handed him the imperial throne. Early in 1556, Charles gave up Castile and Aragon.

  On September 12, 1556, Charles also wrote to explain his decision to all the authorities and municipalities of the Indies. He explained that his bad health made his personal direction of the government impossible.15 He also abandoned his mastership of the great knightly orders. The abdication was read by Fray Francisco de Vargas, chaplain of the royal family since 1549, in Latin.

  Also in January 1556, Philip wrote to the same recipients, accepting the Crown of Castile and León, with everything belonging to it, including the reinos de las Indias, his American legacy.16 The heir to the throne, Don Carlos, son of Philip’s first wife, María of Portugal, proclaimed his father in Spain: “¡Castilla, Castilla por el rey Don Felipe!”

  Charles would retire to Spain in September. The plan was that he would go to live at the Jeronymite monastery of Yuste in the Gredos Mountains. Thus he left Flushing, with 150 followers, on the Basque ship Espíritu Santo (known as the Bertendona), of 565 tons. Most of Charles’s courtiers were made ill by the voyage.

  Charles and his court reached Laredo, near Santander, on September 28. It had been a famous port throughout the century. There he was greeted by Pedro de Manrique, bishop of Salamanca, and by Durango, mayor of the court. They went to Burgos, where Charles stayed two days in the famous Casa del Cordón, the house of the constable of Castile, Pedro Fernández de Velasco. At Torquemada, the Emperor was greeted by La Gasca, now bishop of the rich diocese of Palencia; at Cabezón de la Sal, rather gracelessly by his grandson Don Carlos; at Valladolid, by the regent Juana; and at Medina del Campo, by the rich merchant Rodrigo de Dueñas, a financier who gave Charles a gold chafing dish filled with cinnamon from Ceylon— not Amazonian—the extravagance of which gift so infuriated the ex-Emperor that he refused to allow Dueñas to kiss his hand, or so it was said.17

  Charles then moved to a mansion belonging to the count of Oropesa at Jarandilla, in the Gredos, about ten miles from Yuste. The count was the hereditary protector of the convent of Yuste because of the actions in 1402 of an earlier count in defending the first Jeronymites there against marauding monks from other monasteries. Charles had not been to Yuste before.

  Charles remained at Jarandilla three months in 1556 before he moved, on February 3, 1557, to Yuste, which by then had been refurbished by Fray Juan de Ortega.18 It is in a beautiful spot, surrounded by chestnuts, on the turbulent river Tiétar. During much of the year, the nearby mountains are covered by snow, but the lower valley of La Vera is fertile and productive. The monastery was founded in the early fifteenth century on the site of two ancient hermitages.

  The Jeronymites were an offshoot of the Franciscan order. As predicted by Saint Bridget of Sweden, two Franciscan hermits who had been living in the mountains of Toledo presented themselves to Pope Gregory XI at Avignon and obtained the establishment of their new order. The brothers wore white woolen tunics and brown scapulars and mantles, as allegedly worn by Saint Jerome, the symbolic inspiration of the order. Yuste was one of the first of their houses. The Jeronymites were known for the rigor of their observances, the munificence of their
alms, and the hospitality of their tables. They emphasized humility. All these attributes attracted the Emperor, for he had always admired them.

  Charles had expected to remove himself from all business, but he conducted an active correspondence on many matters, especially those relating to heresy. He employed a staff of fifty, headed by Luis Méndez Quijada, his majordomo. He had with him religious books such as one by Saint Augustine and another by the fluent Fray Luis de Granada, scientific works such as the Astronomicum caesareum of Peter Apian, historical works such as the Commentaries on Charles’s own war in Germany by Luis Dávila y Zúñiga, and Olivier de la Marche’s Le chevalier délibéré, that “mirror of chivalry” that he had had translated into Spanish. There were also two big books on which had been painted “trees, grasses, men and other things from the Indies,” a sign that the Indies were still on the Emperor’s mind, though what books they were it is hard to know.19 He had some clocks, such as one of ebony and sand, another of crystal, and several portraits of his wife, the Empress Isabel, of himself, of Prince Philip, and even one of Queen Mary of England.20 From his bed in the monastery, he could see the altar of the church and, having positioned himself well, could see the host being raised during Mass.

  In August 1558, he became seriously ill with malaria. His gout, which had for so long tortured him, was every day worse. He died on September 21 of that year, at two A.M., his illness having occupied most of the month. He had time to rehearse his funeral. Fray Bartolomé de Carranza was present at the end, as was the count of Oropesa and his brother Francisco, as well as their uncle, Abbot Diego de Cabañas, Luis Dávila (to whom Charles had reserved the bringing up of Don Juan, his bastard son by Frau von Blomberg of Regensburg), and his secretary for correspondence, Martín de Gaztelu.21 His body was placed beneath the high altar of the monastery of the Jeronymites at Yuste but was removed from there to the Escorial in 1574.