Christopher Columbus and How He Received and Imparted the Spirit of Discovery Part 58

[Sidenote: His enforced oath at Cuba.]

A second instance of Columbus's luckless impotence, at a time when an honorable man would have relied upon his character, was the attempt to make it appear that he had reached the coast of Asia by imposing an oath on his men to that effect, in penalty of having their tongues wrenched out if they recanted. One can hardly conceive a more debasing exercise of power.

[Sidenote: His ambition of territorial power.]

His insistence upon territorial power was the serious mistake of his life. He thought, in making an agreement with his sovereigns to become a viceroy, that he was securing an honor; he was in truth pledging his happiness and beggaring his life. He sought to attain that which the fates had unfitted him for, and the Spanish monarchs, in an evil day, which was in due time their regret, submitted to his hallucinated dictation. No man ever evinced less capacity for ruling a colony.

[Sidenote: His professed inspiration.]

The most sorrowful of all the phases of Columbus's character is that hapless collapse, when he abandoned all faith in the natural world, and his premonitions of it, and threw himself headlong into the vortex of what he called inspiration.

Everything in his scientific argument had been logical. It produced the reliance which comes of wisdom. It was a manly show of an incisive reason. If he had rested here his claims for honor, he would have ranked with the great seers of the universe, with Copernicus and the rest. His successful suit with the Spanish sovereigns turned his head, and his degradation began when he debased a n.o.ble purpose to the level of mercenary claims. He relied, during his first voyage, more on chicanery in controlling his crew than upon the dignity of his aim and the natural command inherent in a lofty spirit. This deceit was the beginning of his decadence, which ended in a sad self-aggrandizement, when he felt himself no longer an instrument of intuition to probe the secrets of the earth, but a possessor of miraculous inspiration. The man who had been self-contained became a thrall to a fevered hallucination.

The earnest mental study which had sustained his inquisitive spirit through long years of dealings with the great physical problems of the earth was forgotten. He hopelessly began to accredit to Divinity the measure of his own fallibility. "G.o.d made me," he says, "the messenger of the new heaven and the new earth, of which He spoke in the Apocalypse by St. John, after having spoken of it by the mouth of Isaiah, and He showed me the spot where to find it." He no longer thought it the views of Aristotle which guided him. The Greek might be pardoned for his ignorance of the intervening America. It was mere sacrilege to impute such ignorance to the Divine wisdom.

[Sidenote: Lost his friends.]

There is no excuse but the plea of insanity. He naturally lost his friends with losing his manly devotion to a cause. I do not find the beginning of this surrender of his manhood earlier than in the will which he signed February 22, 1498, when he credits the Holy Trinity with having inspired him with the idea that one could go to the Indies by pa.s.sing westward.

In his letter to the nurse of Don Juan, he says that the prophecy of Isaiah in the Apocalypse had found its interpreter in him, the messenger to disclose a new part of the world. "Human reason," he wrote in the _Proficias_, "mathematics, and maps have served me in no wise. What I have accomplished is simply the fulfillment of the prophecy of David."

[Sidenote: His pitiable death.]

We have seen a pitiable man meet a pitiable death. Hardly a name in profane history is more august than his. Hardly another character in the world's record has made so little of its opportunities. His discovery was a blunder; his blunder was a new world; the New World is his monument! Its discoverer might have been its father; he proved to be its despoiler. He might have given its young days such a benignity as the world likes to a.s.sociate with a maker; he left it a legacy of devastation and crime. He might have been an unselfish promoter of geographical science; he proved a rabid seeker for gold and a viceroyalty. He might have won converts to the fold of Christ by the kindness of his spirit; he gained the execrations of the good angels. He might, like Las Casas, have rebuked the fiendishness of his contemporaries; he set them an example of perverted belief. The triumph of Barcelona led down to the ignominy of Valladolid, with every step in the degradation palpable and resultant.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE DESCENT OF COLUMBUS'S HONORS.

[Sidenote: His kinsfolk.]

Columbus had left behind him, as the natural guardians of his name and honors, the following relatives: his brother Bartholomew, who in December, 1508, had issue of an illegitimate daughter, his only child so far as known; his brother Diego, who, as a priest, was precluded from having lawful issue; his son Diego, now become the first inheritor of his honors; his natural son, Ferdinand, the most considerable in intellectual habit of all Columbus's immediate kin.

[Sidenote: His son Diego.]

The descent of his t.i.tles depended in the first instance on such a marriage as Diego might contract. Within a year or two Diego had had by different women two b.a.s.t.a.r.d children, Francisco and Cristoval, shut off from heirs.h.i.+p by the manner of their birth. Diego was at this time not far from four and twenty years of age.

Ten or twelve days after Diego succeeded to his inheritance, Philip the Handsome, now sharing the throne of Castile as husband of Juana, daughter of Isabella, ordered that what was due to Columbus should be paid to his successor. This order reached Espanola in June, 1506, but was not obeyed promptly; and when Ferdinand of Aragon returned from Italy in August, 1507, and succeeded to the Castilian throne, he repeated the order on August 24.

[Sidenote: Diego's income.]

[Sidenote: Diego presses for a rest.i.tution of Columbus's honors.]

It would seem that in due time Diego was in receipt of 450,000 ounces of gold annually from the four foundries in Espanola. This, with whatever else there may have been, was by no means satisfactory to the young aspirant, and he began to press Ferdinand for a rest.i.tution of his inherited honors and powers with all the pertinacity which had characterized his father's urgency.

[Sidenote: 1508. Suit against the Crown.]

Upon the return of Ferdinand from Naples, Diego determined to push the matter to an issue, but Ferdinand still evaded it. Diego now asked, according to Las Casas and Herrera, to be allowed to bring a suit against the Crown before the Council of the Indies, and the King yielded to the request, confident, very likely, in his ability to control the verdict in the public interests. The suit at once began (1508), and continued for several years before all was accomplished, and in December of that same year (1508), we find Diego empowering an attorney of the Duke of Alva to represent his case.

The defense of the Crown was that a transmission of the viceroyalty to the Admiral's son was against public policy, and at variance with a law of 1480, which forbade any judicial office under the Crown being held in perpetuity. It was further argued in the Crown's behalf that Columbus had not been the chief instrument of the first discovery and had not discovered the mainland, but that other voyagers had antic.i.p.ated him. In response to all allegations, Diego rested his case on the contracts of the Crown with his father, which a.s.sured him the powers he asked for.

Further than this, the Crown had already recognized, he claimed, a part of the contract in its orders of June 2, 1506, and August 24, 1507, whereby the revenues due under the contracts had been restored to him.

It was also charged by the defense that Columbus had been relieved of his powers because he had abused them, and the answer to this was that the sovereigns' letter of 1502 had acknowledged that Bobadilla acted without authority. A number of navigators in the western seas were put on the stand to rebut the allegation of existing knowledge of the coast before the voyages of Columbus, particularly in substantiating the priority of the voyage of Columbus to the coast of Paria, and the evidence was sufficient to show that all the alleged claims were simply perverted notions of the really later voyage of Ojeda in 1499. It is from the testimony at this time, as given in Navarrete, that the biographers of Columbus derive considerable information, not otherwise attainable, respecting the voyages of Columbus,--testimony, however, which the historian is obliged to weigh with caution in many respects.

[Sidenote: Diego wins.]

The case was promptly disposed of in Diego's favor, but not without suspicions of the Crown's influence to that end. The suit is, indeed, one of the puzzles in the history of Columbus and his fame. If it was a suit to secure a verdict against the Crown in order to protect the Crown's rights under the bull of demarcation, we can understand why much that would have helped the position of the fiscal was not brought forward. If it was what it purported to be, an effort to relieve the Crown of obligations fastened upon it under misconceptions or deceits, we may well marvel at such omission of evidence.

[Sidenote: Diego marries Maria de Toledo.]

[Sidenote: Diego waives his right to the t.i.tle of Viceroy.]

It was left for the King to act on the decision for rest.i.tution. This might have been by his studied procrastination indefinitely delayed but for a shrewd movement on the part of Diego, who opportunely aspired to the hand of Dona Maria de Toledo, the daughter of Fernando de Toledo.

This n.o.bleman was brother of the Duke of Alva, one of the proudest grandees of Spain, and he was also cousin of Ferdinand, the King. The alliance, soon effected, brought the young suitor a powerful friend in his uncle, and the bride's family were not averse to a connection with the heir to the viceroyalty of the Indies, now that it was confirmed by the Council of the Indies. Harrisse cannot find that the promised dower ever came with the wife; but, on the contrary, Diego seems to have become the financial agent of his wife's family. A demand for the royal acquiescence in the orders of the Council could now be more easily made, and Ferdinand readily conceded all but the t.i.tle of Viceroy. Diego waived that for the time, and he was accordingly accredited as governor of Espanola, in the place of Ovando.

[Sidenote: Ovando recalled.]

Isabella had indeed, while on her death-bed, importuned the King to recall Ovando, because of the appalling stories of his cruelty to the Indians. Ferdinand had found that the governor's vigilance conduced to heavy remittances of gold, and had shown no eagerness to carry out the Queen's wishes. He had even ordered Ovando to begin that transference of the poor Lucayan Indians from their own islands to work in the Espanola mines which soon resulted in the depopulation of the Bahamas. Now that he was forced to withdraw Ovando he made it as agreeable for him as possible, and in the end there was no lack of commendation of his administration. Indeed, as Spaniards went in those days, Ovando was good enough to gain the love of Las Casas, "except for some errors of moral blindness."

[Sidenote: 1509. June 9. Diego sails for Espanola.]

It was on May 3, 1509, that Ferdinand gave Diego his instructions; and on June 9, the new governor with his n.o.ble wife sailed from San Lucar.

There went with Diego, beside a large number of n.o.ble Spaniards who introduced, as Oviedo says, an infusion of the best Spanish blood into the colony, his brother Ferdinand, who was specially charged, as Oviedo further tells us, to found monasteries and churches. His two uncles also accompanied him. Bartholomew had gone to Rome after Columbus's death, with the intention of inducing Pope Julius II. to urge upon the King a new voyage of discovery; and Harrisse thinks that this is proved by some memoranda attached to an account of the coasts of Veragua, which it is supposed that Bartholomew gave at this time to a canon of the Lateran, which is now preserved in the Megliavecchian library, and has been printed by Harrisse in his _Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima_. It was perhaps on this visit that the Adelantado took to Rome that map of Columbus's voyage to those coasts which it is usually said was carried there in 1505, when he may possibly have borne thither the letter of Columbus to the Pope.

[Sidenote: Bartholomew Columbus, and Diego Mendez.]

The position which Bartholomew now went with Diego to a.s.sume, that of the Chief Alguazil of Santo Domingo, caused much complaint from Diego Mendez, who claimed the credit of bringing about the rest.i.tution of Diego's power, and who had, as he says, been promised both by Columbus and by his son this office as recompense for his many services.

[Sidenote: 1509. July 10. Diego reaches his government.]

The fleet arrived at its destination July 10, 1509. The wife of the governor had taken a retinue, which for splendor had never before been equaled in the New World, and it enabled her to maintain a kind of viceregal state in the little capital. It all helped Diego to begin his rule with no inconsiderable consequence. There was needed something of such attraction to beguile the spirits of the settlers, for, as Benzoni learned years afterwards, when he visited the region, the coming of the son of Columbus had not failed to engender jealousies, which attached to the imposition of another foreigner upon the colony.

[Sidenote: Ojeda and Nicuessa.]

The King was determined that Diego's rule should be confined to Espanola, and, much to the governor's annoyance, he parceled out the coasts which Columbus had tracked near the Isthmus of Panama into two governments, and installed Ojeda in command of the eastern one, which was called New Andalusia, while the one beyond the Gulf of Uraba, which included Veragua, he gave to Diego de Nicuessa, and called it Castilla del Oro.

[Ill.u.s.tration: POPE JULIUS II.]

[Sidenote: Porto Rico.]

[Sidenote: Faction of Pa.s.samonte.]

[Sidenote: 1511. October 5. _Audiencia._]

This action of the King, as well as his effort to put Porto Rico under an independent governor, incited new expostulations from Diego, and served to make his rule in the island quite as uncomfortable as its management had been to his father. There also grew up the same discouragement from faction. The King's treasurer, Miguel Pa.s.samonte, became the head of the rebellious party, not without suspicion that he was prompted to much denunciations in his confidential communications with the King. Reports of Diego's misdeeds and ambitions, threatening the royal power even, were a.s.siduously conveyed to the King. The sovereign devised a sort of corrective, as he thought, of this, by inst.i.tuting later, October 5, 1511, a court of appeals, or _Audiencia_, to which the aggrieved colonists could go in their defense against oppression or extortion. Its natural effect was to undermine the governor's authority and to weaken his influence. He found himself thwarted in all efforts to relieve the Indians of their burdens, as nothing of that sort could be done without disturbing the revenues of leading colonists. There was no great inducement to undo measures by which no one profited in receipts more than himself, and the cruel devastation of the native population ran on as it had done. He certainly did not show himself averse to continuing the system of _repartimientos_ for the benefit of himself and his friends.