CHAPTER IV.
HE RECEIVES HIS COMMISSION.
[Æt. 51; 1489]
The spring of 1487 arrived, and the Council of Salamanca had not yet made its report. The King and Queen, who seem to have required an annual Moorish war in order to tone up their systems, set out to besiege Malaga early in the spring, taking De Talavera with them, so that he might be on hand to confess the Queen in case she should find it desirable to commit a few sins and require subsequent absolution. The departure of De Talavera interrupted the sittings of the Council, and left Columbus without any regular occupation. During the siege of Malaga he was more than once summoned to the camp, ostensibly to confer with the court upon his famous project, but the proposed conferences never took place. He became so tired of the suspense in which he was kept, that he wrote to King John of Portugal, giving him one more chance to accede to his transatlantic plans. Not only did King John answer his letter and ask him to come to Lisbon, but King Henry VII. of England also wrote to him, inviting him to come to England and talk the matter over. At least, Columbus says that those two kings wrote to him; though the fact that he did not accept their invitations, but preferred to waste his time in Spain, casts a little doubt upon his veracity. It is certainly improbable that he would have waited for years in the hope of another interview with Ferdinand and Isabella, if at the same time two prominent kings were writing to him and urging him to bring his carpet-bag and make them a nice long visit.
In the spring of 1489 Columbus was summoned to Seville, and was positively assured that this time he should have a satisfactory conference with a new assortment of learned men. But no sooner had he reached Seville than the King and Queen suddenly remembered that they had not had their usual spring war, and thereupon promptly started to attack the Moors. Columbus went with them, and fought with great gallantry. Probably it was in some measure due to a dread of his awful conversational powers that the Moorish king surrendered, and it is to the honor of the Christian monarchs that they did not abuse their victory by permitting Columbus to talk to the royal prisoner.
Another year passed away, and still Columbus was waiting for a decision upon the feasibility of his plan. In the spring of 1491 he finally became so earnest in demanding a decision, that the King directed De Talavera and his learned friends to make their long-delayed report. They did so, assuring the King that it would be absurd for him to waste any money whatever in attempting to carry out the Italian’s utterly ridiculous plan. Still Ferdinand did not care to drive Columbus to despair, but politely informed him that after he should have finished the annual Moorish war upon which he was just about to enter, he would really try to think of the propriety of fitting out an expedition.
Columbus had now been nearly seven years in Spain, waiting for the King to come to a final decision; and this last postponement exhausted his patience. The court had from time to time supplied him with money; but he was not willing to spend his life as a pensioner on the royal bounty, while the western continent was vainly calling to him to come over and discover it. He therefore left Seville, with the resolution to have nothing further to do with Spain, but to proceed to France and try what he could do with the French king.
He seems to have journeyed on foot, for the very next time we hear of him is as a venerable and imposing tramp, accompanied by an unidentified small-boy, and asking for food—presumably buckwheat cakes, and eggs boiled precisely three minutes—at the gate of the convent of Santa Maria de Rabida.
[Æt. 55; 1491]
The Prior of the convent, Juan Perez de Marchena, happened to notice him, and entered into conversation with him. Columbus told him his name, and mentioned that he was on his way to a neighboring town to find his brother-in-law; from which we learn that four hundred years ago the myth of a brother-in-law in the next town was as familiar to the tramps of that period as it is to those of the present day. As the Prior listened to this story without making any remarks upon its improbability, Columbus was tempted to launch into general conversation, and in a few moments told him all about his desire to find a transatlantic continent, and his intention of offering to the King of France the privilege of assisting him.
Doubtless the good friar found his convent life rather monotonous, and perceiving vast possibilities of conversation in Columbus, he determined to ask him to spend the night with him. Columbus, of course, accepted the invitation, and, the Prior sending for the village doctor, the three spent a delightful evening.
The next day both the Prior and the doctor agreed that Columbus was really a remarkable man, and that it would be disgraceful if the French king were to be allowed to assist in discovering a new continent. The Prior sent for several ancient mariners residing in the neighboring port of Palos, and requested them to give their opinion of the matter. With one accord, they supported the scheme of Columbus with arguments the profundity of which Captain Bunsby himself might have envied; and one Martin Alonzo Pinzon, in particular, was so enthusiastic that he offered to pay the expenses of Columbus while making another application to the court, and to furnish and take command of a vessel in case the application should be successful.
[Æt. 55; 1491–92]
The religious interests of the convent must have suffered somewhat from the Prior’s geographical soirées. It must have required a great deal of punch to bring those ancient seafaring men into unanimity upon any subject, and the extent to which Columbus unquestionably availed himself of the opportunity for unrestrained conversation must have left the Prior no time whatever for prayers. He may have excused himself to his own conscience by pretending that to listen to Columbus was a means of mortifying the flesh; but, plausible as this excuse was, it could not justify the introduction of punch, seafaring men, and village doctors into a professedly religious house.
The upshot of the matter was, that the Prior resolved to write a letter to the Queen, and old Sebastian Rodriguez, a veteran sailor, staked the future integrity of his personal eyes upon his delivery of the letter into the hands of Isabella. The Prior had been formerly the Queen’s confessor, and of course he knew how to awaken her interest by little allusions to the sinful secrets that she had committed to his holy keeping.
The letter was written, and in two weeks’ time Rodriguez brought back an answer summoning the Prior to court. The good old man was overjoyed, and immediately went to Santa Fé, where the King and Queen were stopping, on their way to another Moorish war. When he was admitted to the Queen’s presence, he conducted himself with so much discretion, and made so favorable an impression, that Isabella gave him the magnificent sum of twenty thousand maravedies, and told him to hand it over to Columbus, and to send that persistent navigator immediately to her. It is somewhat of a disappointment to learn that the twenty thousand maravedies were in reality worth only seventy-two dollars; still they were enough to enable Columbus to buy a mule and a new spring overcoat, and thus to appear at court in an impressive manner.
The particular Moorish war upon which the King and Queen were then engaged was the very last one of the series, and it was confessedly of so much importance that Columbus did not try to obtain an audience until it was finished. In the mean time he lived with his old friend Alonzo de Quintanella, the treasurer.
[Æt. 55–56; 1491–92]
At last the day came when, the war being ended, Columbus was summoned to meet a committee of which De Talavera appears to have been the chairman. This time the feasibility of his scheme was admitted, and it only remained to settle the terms upon which he would agree to furnish Spain with new continents. Though Columbus expected to reach the eastern coast of Asia by crossing the Atlantic, that part of Asia was so wholly unknown to Europeans, that its discovery by means of a transatlantic voyage would have enabled the discoverer to take possession of it as a new continent; and it was hence quite proper for Columbus to speak of discovering a new world when he was really intending to discover the eastern half of what we now call the Old world.
It is all very well to have a good opinion of one’s self, but Columbus really did put what seems to unprejudiced people a tremendous price upon his services. Not only did he demand one tenth of whatever profits might be derived from his discoveries, but he insisted that he should be made an admiral, and viceroy over every country that he might discover. One of the committee justly remarked that the proposed arrangement was one by which Columbus had everything to gain and nothing to lose, and that if he made no discoveries whatever he would still be a Spanish admiral, and would outrank scores of deserving officers who had spent their lives in the service of their country. Columbus thereupon modified his terms by consenting to take only an eighth of the profits, and to furnish one eighth of the expenses.
It so happened that some member of the committee knew that one eighth was more, instead of less, than one tenth. We need not wonder, therefore, that the committee reported that the terms proposed were inadmissible. De Talavera told the Queen that he had met with a good deal of “cheek” in his time, but the cheek of Columbus was positively monumental, and that nature designed him not for an explorer but for a life-insurance agent.
The result was that the Queen decided to have no more to do with the affair, and Columbus, in a tremendous rage, climbed upon his mule and rode out of Santa Fé, remarking that he wouldn’t discover a continent for the Spanish monarchs if continents were as thick as blackberries. He furthermore declared that he would go straight to France and make a contract with the French king, and that the Spaniards would never cease to regret their short-sighted economy.
As the extremity of the Columbian mule vanished through the city gate, Luis de St. Angel, treasurer of the Church funds of the kingdom of Aragon, and the much-suffering Quintanella—who did not believe that Columbus would really go to France, and were convinced that the true way in which to be permanently rid of him was to send him on his proposed expedition—hastened to the palace, and told the monarchs that they were risking the loss of a new continent because they were afraid to risk two ships and a comparatively small sum of money, and because they hesitated to give the title of Admiral to an explorer who, if he did not succeed, would in all probability never return to Spain.
The Queen was much impressed by this straightforward statement of facts, and admitted that she would like to employ Columbus upon his own terms. The King, instead of saying, “Certainly, my dear; do so, by all means!” began to speak of the emptiness of the treasury and the necessity for economy. Of course this made Isabella indignant, and she rose up and exclaimed, “I will undertake the enterprise in behalf of Castile, and will raise the money if I have to pawn my jewels.”
[Æt. 55–56; 1492]
Quintanella and St. Angel applauded this resolution, and the latter offered to advance the necessary money without any security whatever. Inasmuch as the money in St. Angel’s hands belonged to Aragon, this was a remarkably neat way of saddling the whole expense upon King Ferdinand’s private dominions; and there are few ladies who will not concede that it served the King right.
A messenger was at once sent to recall Columbus, and that astute person, grimly smiling at the success of his threat to go to France, prevailed upon his mule to turn back and reënter Santa Fé. He was immediately given an audience with the Queen, and a contract was drawn up in which his utmost demands were recognized. He was to have a tenth of everything, and to rank with the High Admiral of Castile, while instead of his being required to contribute an eighth of the cost of the expedition, it was simply specified that he might make such a contribution if he should feel so inclined. The contract was signed on the 17th of April, 1492, and Columbus’s commission as Admiral and Viceroy was immediately made out and given to him.
[Æt. 56; 1492]
From 1474 to 1492, or precisely eighteen years, Columbus had been seeking for assistance to cross the Atlantic. During that entire period he was without money, without any visible means of support, and without powerful friends. Nevertheless, he finally obtained from Ferdinand and Isabella a full compliance with demands that to nearly every Spaniard seemed wildly preposterous. To what did he owe his success? It seems very plain that it must have been due to his unparalleled powers of conversation. We know that most of those persons with whom he was on familiar terms when he first conceived his scheme soon died, and the inference that they were talked to death is irresistible. Beyond any doubt, these were only a few of his victims. Columbus talked in Portugal until he was compelled to fly the kingdom, and he talked in Spain until the two monarchs and a few other clear-headed persons felt that if he could be got out of the country by providing him with ships, money, and titles, it must be done. We can readily understand why the news that he was actually about to leave Spain, and to undertake a voyage in the course of which it was universally believed he would be drowned, was received by the Spaniards with unanimous delight. Women wept tears of joy, and strong men went into secluded corners and stood on their heads in wild hilarity. The day of their deliverance was at hand, and the devastating career of the terrible talker was nearly at an end.