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explained as it could be by any modern politician. "He esteemed it necessary," says Polybius, both in order to retain his dominions in Sicily and to preserve the Roman friendship, that Carthage should be safe, lest by its fall, the remaining power should be able, without opposition, to execute every purpose and undertaking. And here," continues that author, "he acted with great wisdom and prudence; for that is never on any account to be overlooked; nor ought such a force ever to be thrown into one hand, as to incapacitate the neighboring states from defending their rights against it."-Polyb., lib. i., c. lxxxiii. The system of a balance of power is therefore not a policy of modern invention; although we must own that it had not a general influence on the politics of Europe till the above-mentioned period of the confederacy against Charles VIII. This prince died at the age of eight and twenty, and leaving no children, the duke of Orleans succeeded to the crown of France by the title of Lewis XII., and revived, as we shall afterwards see, his pretensions to the kingdom of Naples.

CHAPTER XIV.

SPAIN, FRANCE, ITALY, and BRITAIN at the end of the Fifteenth and beginning of the Sixteenth Century-Ferdinand and Isabella-Extinction of the Moors in Spain-Lewis XII. of France invades Italy-Pope Alexander VI.—Julius II.-England-Henry VI.-Civil Wars of York and Lancaster-Margaret of Anjou-Edward.IV.-Richard III.-Henry VII.-Union of York and Lancaster-Impostures of Simnel and Warbeck.

A VERY important revolution, which at this time took place in Spain, now demands our attention to that quarter. The assistance which Pedro the Cruel had received from the Black Prince was of transitory effect. On the departure of Edward, Pedro was again attacked by his enemies, and murdered by his bastard brother, Henry of Transtamarre, who thus secured for himself and his family the throne of Castile.

The voluptuousness of a court is no uncommon prelude to a revolution in the kingdom. Thus it happened under Henry IV. of Castile, a descendant of Henry of Transtamarre. The weakness and debauchery of this monarch incited a faction of his nobles, headed by the archbishop of Toledo, to take the govern ment into their own hands. They accused their own sovereign of impotency, and declared his daughter Joanna, who was the heiress of the kingdom of Castile, an illegitimate child; she was disinherit

ed, and sent out of the kingdom; while the Cortes, or the assembly of the States, obliged Henry to settle the inheritance on his sister Isabella.

The next concern of the associated nobles was to procure for Isabella a proper husband. Her alliance was courted by several princes. Lewis XI. demanded her for his brother, and the king of Arragon for his son Ferdinand. The king of Portugal sought her himself in marriage. The archbishop of Toledo, who headed the conspiracy against Henry, privately brought about the marriage of Isabella to Ferdinand of Arragon. This procedure exasperated the impotent Henry, who determined to rouse himself from his lethargy, and to exert his utmost eadeavors to restore his daughter Joanna to her right of inheritance. A civil war was the consequence, which embroiled the whole kingdom. At length, Henry thought it his best policy to affect, at least, to be reconciled to his sister and to her husband Ferdinand, who took care that no future rupture should occasion their title to be disputed. The sudden and painful death of Henry left little doubt that he had been taken off by poison. Alphonso, king of Portugal, took up arms in favor of his niece Joanna, whom he intended to marry; but, after a war of some years' continuance, this unfortunate princess thought it her wisest course to end those disturbances, which she saw were not to be attended with success, by retiring into a monastery.

A wise and vigorous, though a severe, administration characterized the beginning of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. Spain was at this time in great disorder-the whole country was a prey to robbers and outlaws. Even the nobility lived by depredation, and defended themselves in their castles against every legal attempt to restrain their violence. The new monarchs of Castile and Arragon determined to repress these enormities. The castles of the piratical nobles were razed to the ground. The office of the Santa Hermandad, or Holy Brotherhood, was instituted for the detection and punishment of murders, thefts, and all atrocious crimes. But amidst these laudable cares, the abominable tribunal of the Inquisition was furnished with such an extent of powers, that, under the pretence of extirpating heresy and impiety, the whole kingdom became a scene of blood and horror. The fortunes and the lives of individuals were entirely at the mercy of the grand inquisitor and his associates. It was never allowed to a criminal to be confronted with his accuser, nor even to be informed of his crime; the sole method of trial was by exposing the unhappy wretch to the most extreme tortures, which either ended his life in agony, or forced a confession of his guilt, which was expiated by committing him to the flames. It is computed, that after the appointment of Torquemada, the inquisitor-general of Spain, there were 6000 persons burnt in the short space of four years.

The ambition of Ferdinand and Isabella was not limited to the possession of Arragon and Castile; the kingdom of the Moos, of Granada, which was all that remained of the Mahometan dominions in Spain, was a very tempting object of enterprise. Granada was at this time rent by intestine divisions; the factions of the Zegris and the Abéncerrages had reduced that unhappy kingdom to the lowest state of weakness. The romantic exploits of these contending factions are remembered to this day in many beautiful Moorish ballads, and are pompously described in a very extraordinary work, entitled Historia de las Guerras Civiles de Granada, a book which contains a curious and authentic picture of a very singular state of society. In the Moorish kingdom of Granada were preserved the last remains of the genuine spirit of chivalry and romantic gallantry, a state of manners which in that work is very happily delineated.

Aboacen, king of Granada, was at this time at war with his nephew, Abo-Abdeli, who attempted to dethrone him. Ferdinand of Arragon supported Abo-Abdeli in order to weaken both parties; and no sooner was he in possession of the throne, by the death of Aboacen, than Ferdinand attacked his former ally with the united forces of Castile and Arragon. The war was tedious, and lasted several years. Isabella accompanied her husband in several of his military expeditions, and attended him when he laid siege to the city of Granada in 1491. After a blockade of eight months, the pusillanimous Abo-Abdeli, who has been called El Rey Chico, or the Little King, meanly capitulated, contrary to the sentiments and urgent remonstrances of above 20,000 of the inhabitants, who offered to defend their native city to the last extremity. The treaty between Abo-Abdeli and Ferdinand secured to the Moors of Granada a small mountainous part of the kingdom, with the enjoyment of their laws and religion. The Moorish prince, execrated by his people, betook himself to this despicable retreat. He is said to have wept when he cast back his eyes to the beautiful plain and city of Granada. "You have reason," said his mother, "to weep like a woman for the loss of that kingdom, which you could not defend like a man.” Thus ended the dominion of the Moors in Spain, about 800 years after its foundation.

Ferdinand, now master of Arragon, Castile, and Granada, from that time took the title of king of Spain. He wanted only Navarre, which, as we shall see, he soon afterwards invaded and took possession of. Immediately after the conquest of Granada, he expelled all the Jews from the kingdom-a most impolitic step, which deprived Spain of about 150,000 inhabitants. The greatest part of these took refuge in Portugal, and carried with them their arts, their industry, and their commerce; the rest sailed over into Africa, where they were still more inhumanly used than in Spain. The Moors of that country are said to have ripped

open their bellies, in order to search for the gold which they were supposed to have concealed in their bowels.

We have already seen that the arms of Ferdinand of Spain were successfully employed in driving the French out of Italy, after the fruitless conquest of Naples by Charles VIII. Lewis XII., his successor, was sensible of the necessity of having the pope in his interest when any claims were to be made good against the states of Italy. He courted Alexander VI. likewise, upon another account; he wished to procure a divorce from his wife, the daughter of Lewis XI., and to marry Anne of Brittany, the widow of Charles VIII. Cæsar Borgia, the natural son of pope Alexander, was, like his father, a monster of wickedness. The palace of the popes was stained with murder, adultery, and incest. Alexander was desirous of securing for his son Borgia an independent sovereignty, and he sent him for that purpose as his ambassador into France to make a treaty with Lewis, on the ground of their mutual pretensions. It was stipulated that the king of France should be divorced from his wife, and have the pope's assistance in the invasion of Italy, provided Cæsar Borgia should receive, in return, the dukedom of Valentinois, with the king of Navarre's sister in marriage, and a pension from Lewis of 100,000 livres. Lewis, having put his kingdom in a state of defence, crossed the Alps, and in ten days made himself master of Milan and Genoa. After some unsuccessful struggles made by Ludovico Sforza to regain the dukedom of Milan, that prince was betrayed by the Swiss troops, whom he had hired to protect his dominions, and given up into the hands of the French, among whom he passed his days as a prisoner, though treated both with humanity and respect. Lewis XII., afraid of Ferdinand of Spain, who had dispossessed his predecessor, Charles of the kingdom of Naples, thought it his most advisable measure to compromise matters with the Spanish monarch, and they agreed to divide the Neapolitan dominions between them. Ferdinand had Apulia and Calabria, and Lewis all the rest. Pope Alexander made no scruples of conscience to give his apostolical sanction to this partition, which dispossessed ar innocent monarch, his ancient vassal, of all his territories.

But the French were not destined to have any durable possessions in Italy. Ferdinand soon after agreed with pope Alexander to deprive Lewis of his part of the spoils. Gonsalvo de Cordova, who had the distinguished epithet of El Gran Capitano, was commissioned by his master to extirpate the troops of Lewis, as he had done those of Charles VIII. The French, it is true, made a better defence. The duke de Nemours, a descendant of the great Clovis, and the illustrious Bayard, the chevalier sans peur et sans reproche, maintained their right to Naples with great military skill, and vied with each other in romantic feats of personal prowess. But the contention was vain. The conduct of

the GREAT Captain was superior to the valor of the French, and Lewis irrecoverably lost his share of the kingdom of Naples. It is worthy of notice, that in this war between the French and Spaniards in Italy, the art of blowing up mines by gunpowder was first practised by one of the Spanish generals.

Alexander VI., in the meantime, and his favorite son Cæsar Borgia, continued to practise every effort of ambitious villany to increase their power and accumulate wealth. The personal

estate of the cardinals on their death devolved to the pope, and many an unhappy cardinal died suddenly during this pontificate. Borgia, by force of arms, made himself master of the territories of some of the richest of the Italian nobles. Four of them he invited to a friendly conference, under the most solemn protestations of amicable intentions, and he massacred two of them by ambuscade. Vitelli, one of these wretched victims, is said to have entreated Borgia, his murderer, to ask of the pope, his father, a plenary indulgence for him in the agonies of death. Such is the deplorable weakness of superstition, that can attribute to the most abandoned of men the power of pardoning all offenqes against the Deity.* Italy was at length delivered of this monster and his son. It is said they had prepared poisoned wine for the entertainment of some wealthy cardinals, and that the pope himself, and his son, drank by mistake of a bottle intended only for his guests. The pope suffered an agonizing death, but Borgia escaped by having himself sewed up in the belly of a mule. He survived, however, but a short time, and reaped no other fruits of his own and his father's accumulated crimes, but the universal abhorrence of mankind. Most of the towns he had seized threw off their allegiance, and pope Julius II. stripped him. entirely of his possessions. In fine, Gonsalvo of Cordova sent him prisoner into Spain, where he died in miserable obscurity. It is sufficient to expose the principles of Machiavel to observe, that he holds forth Cæsar Borgia as a perfect pattern to all princes who have the ambition of uncontrolled dominion, and wish to establish their power upon a solid foundation; as if that power was secure which is founded on terror, or that authority were an object of a wise man's ambition, which must be purchased at the expense of universal detestation.

Julius II., the successor of Alexander VI., was a pontiff of great political abilities, of a bold and ambitious character, and consummately skilled in the art of war. It was he who employed Michael Angelo to cast his statue in brass, and when the

*We understand from Burcard, that it was at this time an established custom for every new pope, immediately after his election, and as the first act of his apostolical function, to give a full absolution to all the cardinals of all the crimes they might thereafter commit of whatever nature and degree. Burcard was master of the ceremonies to the pope's chapel from Sixtus IV. to Julius II Accounts and Extracts of MSS. in the King of France's Library.