The Hour Of Triumph - 5

The Hour Of Triumph - 5

  He wrote also from Barcelona to his two brothers, Bartholomew and Giacomo, or James,

since we may as well give him the English equivalent of his name. Bartholomew was in

France, whither he had gone some time after his return from his memorable voyage with

Bartholomew Diaz; he was employed as a map-maker at the court of Anne de Beaujeu,

who was reigning in the temporary absence of her brother Charles VIII. Columbus's letter

reached him, but much too late for him to be able to join in the second expedition; in fact

he did not reach Seville until five months after it had sailed. James, however, who was

now twenty-five years old, was still at Savona; he, like Columbus, had been apprenticed

to his father, but had apparently remained at home earning his living either as a woolweaver

or merchant. He was a quiet, discreet young fellow, who never pushed himself

forward very much, wore very plain clothes, and was apparently much overawed by the

grandeur and dignity of his elder brother. He was, however, given a responsible post in

the new expedition, and soon had his fill of adventure.

The business of preparing for the new expedition was now put in hand, and Columbus,

having taken leave of Ferdinand and Isabella, went to Seville to superintend the

preparations. All the ports in Andalusia were ordered to supply such vessels as might be

required at a reasonable cost, and the old order empowering the Admiral to press

mariners into the service was renewed. But this time it was unnecessary; the difficulty

now was rather to keep down the number of applicants for berths in the expedition, and to

select from among the crowd of adventurers who offered themselves those most suitable

for the purposes of the new colony. In this work Columbus was assisted by a

commissioner whom the Sovereigns had appointed to superintend the fitting out of the

expedition. This man was a cleric, Juan Rodriguez de Fonseca, Archdeacon of Seville, a

person of excellent family and doubtless of high piety, and of a surpassing shrewdness

for this work. He was of a type very commonly produced in Spain at this period; a very

able organiser, crafty and competent, but not altogether trustworthy on a point of honour.

Like so many ecclesiastics of this stamp, he lived for as much power and influence as he

could achieve; and though he was afterwards bishop of three sees successively, and

became Patriarch of the Indies, he never let go his hold on temporal affairs. He began by

being jealous of Columbus, and by objecting to the personal retinue demanded by the

Admiral; and in this, if I know anything of the Admiral, he was probably justified. The

matter was referred to the Sovereigns, who ordered Fonseca to carry out the Admiral's

wishes; and the two were immediately at loggerheads. When the Council for the Indies

was afterwards formed Fonseca became head, of it, and had much power to make things

pleasant or otherwise for Columbus.

It became necessary now to raise a considerable sum of money for the new expedition.

Two-thirds of the ecclesiastical tithes were appropriated, and a large proportion of the

confiscated property of the Jews who had been banished from Spain the year before; but

this was not enough; and five million maravedis were borrowed from the Duke of Medina

Sidonia in order to complete the financial supplies necessary for this very costly

expedition. There was a treasurer, Francisco Pinelo, and an accountant, Juan de Soria,

who had charge of all the financial arrangements; but the whole of the preparations were

conducted on a ruinously expensive scale, owing to the haste which the diplomatic

relations with Portugal made necessary. The provisioning was done by a Florentine

merchant named Juonato Beradi, who had an assistant named Amerigo Vespucci—who,

by a strange accident, was afterwards to give his name to the continent of the New World.

While these preparations were going on the game of diplomacy was being played

between the Courts of Spain and Portugal. King John of Portugal had the misfortune to be

badly advised; and he was persuaded that, although he had lost the right to the New

World through his rejection of Columbus's services when they were first offered to him,

he might still discover it for himself, relying for protection on the vague wording of the

papal Bulls. He immediately began to prepare a fleet, nominally to go to the coast of

Africa, but really to visit the newly discovered lands in the west. Hearing of these

preparations, King Ferdinand sent an Ambassador to the Portuguese Court; and King

John agreed also to appoint an Ambassador to discuss the whole matter of the line of

demarcation, and in the meantime not to allow any of his ships to sail to the west for a

period of sixty days after his Ambassador had reached Barcelona. There followed a good

deal of diplomatic sharp practice; the Portuguese bribing the Spanish officials to give

them information as to what was going on, and the Spaniards furnishing their envoys

with double sets of letters and documents so that they could be prepared to counter any

movement on the part of King John. The idea of the Portuguese was that the line of

demarcation should be a parallel rather than a meridian; and that everything north of the

Canaries should belong to Spain and everything south to Portugal; but this would never

do from the Spanish point of view. The fact that a proposal had come from Portugal,

however, gave Ferdinand an opportunity of delaying the diplomatic proceedings until his

own expedition was actually ready to set sail; and he wrote to Columbus repeatedly,

urging him to make all possible haste with his preparations. In the meantime he

despatched a solemn embassy to Portugal, the purport of which, much beclouded and

delayed by preliminary and impossible proposals, was to submit the whole question to the

Pope for arbitration. And all the time he was busy petitioning the Pope to restore to Spain

those concessions granted in the second Bull, but taken away again in the third.

This, being much egged on to it, the Pope ultimately did; waking up on September 26th,

the day after Columbus's departure, and issuing another Bull in which the Spanish

Sovereigns were given all lands and islands, discovered or not discovered, which might

be found by sailing west and south. Four Bulls; and after puzzling over them for a year,

the Kings of Spain and Portugal decided to make their own Bull, and abide by it, which,

having appointed commissioners, they did on June 7, 1494., when by the Treaty of

Tordecillas the line of demarcation was finally fixed to pass from north to south through

a point 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands.