PART II. Augmentation of revenue. played new and more beautiful varieties, under the influence of Italian culture. 187 With this moral developement of the nation, the public revenues, the sure index, when unforced, of public prosperity, went on augmenting with astonishing rapidity. In 1474, the year of Isabella's accession, the ordinary rents of the Castilian crown amounted to 885,000 reals; 138 in 1477, to 2,390,078; in 1482, after the resumption of the royal grants, to 12,711,591; and finally in 1504, when the acquisition of Granada 139 and the domestic tranquillity of the kingdom had encouraged the free expansion of all its resources, to 26,283,334; or thirty times the amount received at her accession.140 All this, it 137 See the concluding note to this chapter. Erasmus, in a lively and elegant Vos istam felicitatem secundùm nunc Archiepiscopo Toletano, et si qui sunt horum similes, quorum autoritas tuetur, benignitas alit fovetque bonas artes." Epistolæ, p. 978. 138 The sums in the text express the real de vellon; to which they have been reduced by Señor Clemencin, from the original amount in maravedis, which varied very materially in value in different years. Mem. de la Acad. de Hist., tom. vi. Ilust. 5. 139 The kingdom of Granada appears to have contributed rather less than one eighth of the whole tax. 140 In addition to the last mentioned sum, the extraordinary service voted by cortes, for the dowry of the infantas, and other matters, in 1504, amounted to 16,113,014 reals de vellon; making a sum total, for that year, of 42,396,348 reals. The bulk of the crown revenues was derived from the alcavalas, and the tercias, or two ninths of the ecclesiastical tithes. These important statements were transcribed XXVI. will be remembered, was derived from the custom- CHAPTER ary established taxes, without the imposition of a single new one. Indeed, the improvements in the mode of collection tended materially to lighten the burdens on the people. The accounts of the population at this early pe- Increase of riod are, for the most part, vague and unsatisfactory. Spain, in particular, has been the subject of the most absurd, though, as it seems, not incredible estimates, sufficiently evincing the paucity of authentic data. 141 Fortunately, however, we labor under no such embarrassment as regards Castile in Isabella's reign. By an official report to the crown on the organization of the militia, in 1492, it appears that the population of the kingdom amounted to 1,500,000 vecinos or householders; or, allowing four and a half to a family (a moderate estimate), to 6,750,000 souls. 142 This census, it will be observed, was limited to the provinces immediately from the books of the escribanía mayor de rentas, in the archives of Simancas. Ibid., ubi supra. 141 The pretended amount of population has been generally in the ratio of the distance of the period taken, and, of course, of the difficulty of refutation. A few random remarks of ancient writers have proved the basis for the wildest hypotheses, raising the estimates to the total of what the soil, under the highest possible cultivation, would be capable of supporting. Even for so recent a period as Isabella's time, the estimate commonly received does not fall below eighteen or twenty millions. The official returns, cited in the text, of the most populous portion PART II. composing the crown of Castile, to the exclusion of Granada, Navarre, and the Aragonese dominions. 14 It was taken, moreover, before the nation had time to recruit from the long and exhausting struggle of the Moorish war, and twenty-five years before the close of the reign, when the population, under circumstances peculiarly favorable, must have swelled to a much larger amount. Thus circumscribed, however, it was probably considerably in advance of that of England at the same period. 144 How have the destinies of the two countries since been reversed! 143 I am acquainted with no sufficient and authentic data for computing the population, at this time, of the crown of Aragon, always greatly below that of the sister kingdom. I find as little to be relied on, notwithstanding the numerous estimates, in one form or another, vouchsafed by historians and travellers, of the population of Granada. Marineo enumerates fourteen cities and ninety-seven towns, (omitting, as he says, many places of less note,) at the time of the conquest; a statement obviously too vague for statistical purposes. (Cosas Memorables, fol. 179.) The capital, swelled by the influx from the country, contained, according to him, 200,000 souls at the same period. (Fol. 177.) In 1506, at the time of the forced conversions, we find the numbers in the city dwindled to fifty, or at most, seventy thousand. (Comp. Bleda, Corónica, lib. 5, cap. 23, and Bernaldez, Reyes Católicos, MS., cap. 159.) Loose as these estimates necessarily are, we have no better to guide us in calculating the total amount of the population of the Moorish kingdom, or of the losses sustained by the copious emigrations during the first fifteen years after the conquest; although there has been no lack of confident assertion, as to both, in later writers. The desideratum, in regard to Granada, will now probably not be supplied; the public offices in the kingdom of Aragon, if searched with the same industry as those in Castile, would doubtless afford the means for correcting the crude estimates, so current respecting that country. 144 Hallam, in his "Constitutional History of England," estimates the population of the realm, in 1485, at 3,000,000, (vol. i. p. 10.) The discrepancies, however, of the best historians on this subject, prove the difficulty of arriving at even a probable result. Hume, on the authority of Sir Edward Coke, puts the population of England (including people of all sorts) a century later, in 1588, at only 900,000. The historian cites Lodovico Guicciardini, however, for another estimate, as high as 2,000,000, for the same reign of Queen Elizabeth. History of Eng land, vol. vi. Append. 3. XXVI. The territorial limits of the monarchy, in the CHAPTER mean time, went on expanding beyond example; Castile and Leon, brought under the same sceptre with Aragon and its foreign dependencies, Sicily and Sardinia, with the kingdoms of Granada, Navarre, and Naples, with the Canaries, Oran, and the other settlements in Africa, and with the islands and vast continents of America. To these broad domains, the comprehensive schemes of the sovereigns would have added Portugal; and their arrangements for this, although defeated for the present, opened the way to its eventual completion under Philip the Second. 145 principle. The petty states, which had before swarmed over Patriotic the Peninsula, neutralizing each other's operations, and preventing any effective movement abroad, were now amalgamated into one whole. Sectional jealousies and antipathies, indeed, were too sturdily rooted to be wholly extinguished; but they gradually subsided, under the influence of a common government, and community of interests. A more enlarged sentiment was infused into the people, who, in their foreign relations, at least, assumed the attitude of one great nation. The names of Castilian and Aragonese were merged in the comprehensive one of Spaniard; and Spain, with an empire which stretched over three quarters of the globe, and which almost realized the proud boast that the sun never set within her borders, now rose, not to the 145 Philip II. claimed the Portuguese crown in right of his mother, and his wife, both descended from Maria, third daughter of Ferdi nand and Isabella, who, as the read- PART II. Chivalrous spirit of the people. first class only, but to the first place, in the scale of European powers. 147 The extraordinary circumstances of the country tended naturally to nourish the lofty, romantic qualities, and the somewhat exaggerated tone of sentiment, which always pervaded the national character. The age of chivalry had not faded away in Spain, as in most other lands. 146 It was fostered, in time of peace, by the tourneys, jousts, and other warlike pageants, which graced the court of Isabella. It gleamed out, as we have seen, in the Italian campaigns under Gonsalvo de Cordova, and shone forth in all its splendors in the war of Granada. "This was a right gentle war," says Navagiero, in a passage too pertinent to be omitted, "in which, as firearms were comparatively little used, each knight had the opportunity of showing his personal prowess; and rare was it, that a day passed without some feat of arms and valorous exploit. The nobility and chivalry of the land all thronged there to gather renown. Queen Isabel, who attended 146 Old Caxton mourns over the little honor paid to the usages of chivalry in his time; and it is sufficient evidence of its decay in England, that Richard III. thought it necessary to issue an ordinance, requiring those possessed of the requisite £40 a year, to receive knighthood. (Turner, History of England, vol. iii. pp. 391, 392.) The use of artillery was fatal to chivalry; a consequence well understood, even at the early period of our History. At least, so we may infer from the verses of Ariosto, where Orlando throws Cimosco's gun into the sea. |