Columbus: The Four Voyages, 1492-1504 (13 page)

 

T
he three experts consulted by the Portuguese king spent days questioning the navigator about his plan. Eager to impress, Columbus told all, and when they finished with him, João II proved to be as duplicitous as he was daring: he commissioned a clandestine expedition based on the information extracted from the Genoese mariner.

The deception continued. João II strung along Columbus while dispatching a supply caravel supposedly bound for Cape Verde and other islands, all the while delaying his official reply to Columbus. When the caravel limped home to Lisbon in appalling condition—with ripped sails and broken masts—the residents questioned the exhausted crew members. The survivors complained of the tempests they had endured at sea and declared it was impossible to reach land over a sea route. Once the voyage’s true purpose was exposed, King João’s subterfuge was apparent to all.

At this critical juncture, Columbus’s young wife, Felipa, died from unknown causes, or disappeared from view forever. A more skeptical tradition hinted that Columbus abandoned Felipa in Portugal, where her family connections had been useful, to try his luck in Spain, where they were not. Although the circumstances of her death, and even the year, remain unclear, his abrupt departure does not necessarily mean he deserted his wife; it is possible that he planned to send for her if he succeeded elsewhere. But it is even more likely that she did not survive, if only because she was never spoken of again.

He had devoted eight years to the great enterprise, with nothing to show for it but rejection and embarrassment. His youth had fled; he was turning forty—advanced middle age for a sea captain—with little to show for his years of wandering beyond unfulfilled ambition. He was a widower in a foreign land with deteriorating prospects and a young son in his care. His long, flowing hair turned white. There seemed to be little for which he could be grateful. But, given the dangers of the Portuguese court, and of the sea, he was fortunate to be alive.

Reluctantly he directed his ambition toward the other patrons of exploration, Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, even as part of him wished he could one day return to Portugal in triumph. For now, he would seek his fortune in Castile.

 

D
emoralized, he assigned responsibility for the expedition to his brother Bartholomew, and displaying a bit of guile himself, dispatched him to England, to plead with King Henry VII (the father of Henry VIII) for the backing denied by the enigmatic and recalcitrant Portuguese monarch.

To those who knew the Columbus brothers, the sudden transfer of power had a certain logic. Bartholomew’s reputation was that of a “very shrewd and courageous man, well versed in the ways of the world and most astute, more full of guile,” Las Casas judged, “than Christopher Columbus himself.” Bartholomew knew Latin, and “had much more experience in the ways of men.” He was reputed to be almost as skillful a navigator as Christopher, and more adept at fashioning charts and nautical instruments.

Overshadowed by his more celebrated son and successor, Henry VIII, Henry Tudor had won his throne by defeating Richard III on the field of battle, and founded the durable Tudor dynasty. He was, for a monarch of the epoch, prudent and responsible. Bartholomew Columbus flattered and cajoled his way into an audience with the king, and to win the sovereign’s favor he presented him with a
mappa mundi
, a Latin term indicating a sheet, or map, of the world, and on it were the lands that his brother Christopher planned to claim. The map contained a brief identification of its bearer in Latin: “He whose birthplace is Genoa and whose name is Bartolome Colon of Terrarubia, completed this work in London on the thirteenth day of the month of February in the year of our Lord one thousand four hundred and eighty-eight. Praise abounding be unto the Lord.”

 

C
olumbus, meanwhile, obtained a copy of a letter composed by the Florentine mapmaker and mathematician Toscanelli, dated June 24, 1474. Toscanelli spoke of a “shorter way of going by sea to the lands of spices, than that which you”—the Portuguese—“are making to Guinea.” A ship sailing due west from Lisbon, he claimed, would, after covering five thousand nautical miles, reach Quinsay, the opulent capital of China described by Marco Polo. There was more. Another sea route would take a ship to “the noble island of Çipango,” Marco Polo’s Japan, which, as readers of the Venetian’s enthusiastic account knew, was “most fertile in gold, pearls and precious stones, and they cover the temples and royal residences with solid gold.” If true, and that was an immense
if
, Portugal could forge an alliance with a country of unimaginable wealth. Even better, Toscanelli claimed, “By the unknown ways there are no great spaces of the sea to be passed.” This simple observation derived from a profound misunderstanding of the globe (and everyone knew it was a globe; there was little dispute about that point). Like Ptolemy before him, Toscanelli omitted the American continent and the Pacific Ocean—features that made such a voyage to Asia impossible.

Even more than Ptolemy, Toscanelli led Columbus to believe that the Caribbean was the doorstep to China. Sooner or later some country, and some monarch, was bound to succumb to the Columbus brothers’ siren song of empire.

 

As Bartholomew was appealing to King Henry, Christopher, revived by his studies, made his way to Spain to interest Ferdinand and Isabella in the same enterprise. But his initial reception in Spain proved so disappointing that late in 1487 he wrote to King João, who had spurned and humiliated him, to ask permission to return to Portugal.

Against all expectations, the Portuguese monarch replied on March 20, 1488, in conciliatory tones, thanking Columbus for his “good will and affection,” and, astonishingly, saying, “we will have great need of your ability and fine talent,” words certain to inflame Columbus’s ambition. The offer came with an assurance that “you will not be arrested, detained, accused, summoned, or prosecuted, for any reason whatsoever, under the civil and criminal code. Therefore, we beg you and urge you to come soon and not to be reluctant to do so for any reason whatsoever.”

Columbus arrived in Lisbon in 1488, at the same time Bartolomeu Dias, King João’s favored navigator of the moment, returned from his exploration of the coast of Africa. So Columbus endured the humiliation of watching his competitor surpass him in accomplishment and in the affections of King João. Had Columbus been set up? More likely the king summoned him as a substitute in case Dias never returned from his voyage, and Columbus, led by his ambition, his naiveté, and his vanity, had walked into the trap. He left Portugal again in 1488, bound for Spain, where he would make a determined effort to win backing for his enterprise. Humiliated and disappointed, he hoped never to see Portugal again.

Later, Columbus confessed to the sovereign who did back him, King Ferdinand of Spain, “I went to the king of Portugal, who was better versed in the matter of discoveries than any other sovereign, and the Lord blinded his eyes and deafened his ears so that for all of fourteen years he did not understand what I was saying.” But Ferdinand listened, and Isabella understood what Columbus was saying. To her ears, he was saying he could bring her the means to administer a transoceanic empire that would surpass that of any other European nation.

 

F
erdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile met for the first time only five days before they married, on October 19, 1469, at the Palacio de los Vivero in Valladolid. He was almost a year younger than she, and on their wedding day, they were just eighteen and seventeen years of age, and cousins. She was not beautiful, and he was not handsome. But they were pious Christians. They were both children of kings of the Trastámara dynasty, and well-known figures. At the age of twelve, Ferdinand had led his soldiers to victory against the Catalans, and when his ambitious mother, Juana Enríquez, a Castilian, died of cancer in 1468, he delivered her eulogy and positioned himself as the next dynastic leader. Months later, representatives from Isabella sought him out and escorted him to Castile to marry.

From the start, theirs was an unusual arrangement that gave Isabella powers equal to, or in some cases greater than, those of her young husband. On terms agreed to by their legions of advisers, she alone ruled the kingdom of Castile in north central Spain. On the basis of their intricate official relationship, their union flourished. Ferdinand had his mistresses and Isabella had her religion for consolation. Whatever their private differences, they demonstrated publicly that they loved and respected each other, as was necessary to maintain their joint rule.

The early years of their reign were a time of testing for them both. They relied on more experienced advisers and intermediaries to rebuff challenges to their power and to their finances. Teetering on the brink of insolvency, they implemented novel methods of taxation, often from the sale of agricultural products, to finance their ambitions. One of the most dangerous tests materialized in 1476 when Alfonso, king of Portugal, invaded Castile with the help of Castilian nobles. The Sovereigns would not let the challenge stand. On March 1 of that year, King Ferdinand won a decisive victory over Alfonso in the wine-producing town of Toro, north of Madrid, and began the arduous task of consolidating the fragmented empire. Ferdinand and Isabella became known as Los Reyes Católicos, the Catholic Sovereigns, a sobriquet that would stay with them throughout their long reign.

In 1479, Ferdinand succeeded his father as king of Aragon, and the territories and kingdoms of Ferdinand and Isabella became one. Not since the eighth century had there existed a unified political entity that could be designated España, or Spain. Los Reyes Católicos did not rest on their laurels. They set about reclaiming political power from both the bourgeoisie and the nobility, and they circumscribed the authority of the Cortes, or General Courts, reduced to mere functionaries in the Sovereigns’ quest for glory. They won popular support for their efforts, and consolidated their power. Jews and Muslims, essential components of Spain’s commerce, intellectual life, and trade, would be the next to fall. It was perhaps significant that Isabella’s royal emblem was a sheaf of arrows, their sharp heads a warning to the perceived enemies of the throne, and that Ferdinand’s emblem was a double yoke worn by a team of oxen, signifying his acquiescence to Isabella’s authority.

As heresy spread across the realm, the Sovereigns’ representatives established the Inquisition in 1480 to bring the accused to trial. Some escaped with no more than the loss of their worldly goods; others were condemned to death. Fear of Ferdinand and Isabella increased, and under their prodding Spain seemed to recover some of its previous swagger and piety. As a potent symbol, the holy city of Jerusalem remained the ultimate spoil of war. Soon there was talk of reclaiming it to complete the unfinished business of the Crusades.

In 1480, Christian forces drove Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula. More than fifty conquered Muslim cities entered the Christian fold within ten years. As mosques became churches, the conquests persisted, relying on artillery and battering rams to lay siege to one town after another. To fund this giant military operation, the Catholic Sovereigns turned to the pope, who permitted the crown to tithe in order to stay solvent. Taxes and obligatory loans also helped to replenish the royal coffers, but the most common method was the confiscation of the wealth of Jews and Muslims. Wealthy Seville was especially hard hit by the exigencies of the Inquisition.

Columbus appeared in the midst of this protracted struggle early in 1485, seeking the backing of Ferdinand and Isabella for an entirely new project, the discovery of a route over the ocean to the Indies. The thirty-four-year-old Genoese mariner’s prolonged dalliance with King João of Portugal had proved pointless, and his attempts to interest France and England in his imperial strategy also led nowhere. He had even returned to Genoa to try to generate interest in an expedition, but he met with little enthusiasm in his birthplace.

Discouraged, he had returned to Spain, where his grandiose plan struck a spark when he exhibited a map of the world showing India and other lands of the Grand Khan. According to his confidant Andrés Bernáldez, the demonstration “awakened in them a desire to know those lands.” Ferdinand obtained Ptolemy’s text,
Geography
, to see for himself just what Columbus was talking about.

Reconquista ground on slowly and relentlessly. Some provinces quietly submitted to Castilian rule and taxation; others stubbornly resisted. In 1487, one of the last remaining strongholds of resistance, Málaga, a port city on the southern coast of Spain, collapsed after a four-month siege, whereupon the Catholic Sovereigns enslaved and sold most of the residents, serving notice on others who would defy the will of Ferdinand and Isabella.

The greatest prize of all, Granada, gradually changed allegiance from Muslim to Christian. In November 1491, the sultan of Granada, his alternatives exhausted, arranged a surrender treaty in secret with Ferdinand and Isabella. On January 2, 1492, Spanish forces occupied the Alhambra, the fourteenth-century “Red Fortress” that had served as the residence for the last Muslim emirs, or sheikhs, of southern Spain; four days later, Ferdinand and Isabella made a dramatic entry into Granada. Columbus claimed he was there to see history in the making that day. “I saw the Royal Standards of Your Highnesses placed by force of arms on the towers of the Alhambra,” he later wrote, “and I saw the Moorish King come out to the gates of the city and kiss the Royal Hands of Your Highnesses and of the Prince my lord.” Perhaps he had merely heard about the surrender. Either way, he wanted his Sovereigns to know how profoundly he identified with their imperial aims.

Unlike the Jews, who were treated harshly, Muslims could own property, worship as they chose, and live according to their laws. The accommodation proved short-lived. Ten years later, a rebellion erupted, and the Sovereigns ordered the remaining Muslims to convert to Christianity or leave Spain. A century later, they, too, would be expelled.