Free Basque History of the World by Mark Kurlansky Page B

description was offered by Machiavelli. In The Prince he referred to Ferdinand as “the first king in Christendom.” Ferdinand was a man who understood all of the tools for nation building. He could be a brilliant negotiator who wisely offered concessions, but he also knew when and how to use force. He took the bands of adventurers who had been crusading against the Moors and turned them into the best disciplined and most effective army in Europe.
    Isabella was the real Catholic. Fanatically devoted to the Church, she personally completed the Reconquista. In 1492, dressed in white armor with the red cross of Castile, she led an army on Granada and drove the last of the Moors off the Iberian peninsula. Then she unleashed the Inquisition to purge Spain of heresy and impurity. Convert, die, or leave were the only choices she offered. She was Columbus’s patron, and as new worlds were discovered, she charged the men of the Reconquista with spreading Catholicism.
    In 1504, at the age of fifty-three, Isabella lay on her deathbed. She extracted two promises from Ferdinand: to bury her without ceremony in a homespun Franciscan robe and never to remarry. Ferdinand kept the first promise.
    Germaine de Foix, Ferdinand’s new bride, arrived from France with thirty shiploads of personal effects, including unimaginable quantities of cosmetics, perfume, and jewelry. A relative of the ruling family of Navarra, Germana, as the Spanish called her, was plump, alcoholic, approaching middle age, with, perhaps literally, a ton of makeup—the perfect embodiment of the Spanish stereotype of the frivolous and vain French.
    Ferdinand, only a year younger than his late wife, was not in search of an autumn romance. Mortality was on his mind, and he wanted a son. His union with Isabella had given him, in addition to most of Spain, only a daughter, who was known as Juana La Loca—Juana the Mad. Now, sensing his time near its end, he had forged a magnificent birthright to pass on, and he wanted an heir who would know how to hold it together.
    But Germana produced no heir, and Ferdinand was increasingly resigned to turning over his new European superpower to Juana’s son, his grandson, Charles, whom the Spanish would call Carlos I. Charles was a teenager, born and raised in Flanders. He didn’t even want to visit Spain to see his inheritance because to him, and many northern Europeans, Spain was a primitive and uncomfortable frontier.
    Iñigo de Loyola’s sponsor and protector, Juan Velázquez de Cuéllar, was married to the beautiful Doña María, lady-in-waiting to Germana. Iñigo, completely dazzled by María, entered the flighty world of Germana’s court. María would entertain Iñigo by displaying her pearls and jewels, caressing certain glittery pieces and saying, “This one belonged to Queen Isabella.”
    Germana ran a court of shallow hedonistic amusements. Young Iñigo was taken by the jewels and the women. He had frequent infatuations and was especially smitten by the infanta Catalina. Catalina was the daughter of Philip the Fair and Juana the Mad. Unfortunately, the Mad triumphed over the Fair, and she spent much of her youth in the custody of her mother, who kept her in rags, locked up in the dark castle of Tordesillas. When she was eleven years old, her older brother, the future king of Spain, rescued her and brought her to court. During her brief stay, Iñigo was overcome with a teenage love for Catalina. But Juana refused to eat until her daughter was returned, and soon Catalina was taken away. She and Iñigo would remain lifelong friends.
    Not all his romances were as pretty. Away from queens and princesses, his appetite for women seemed insatiable, and he was often violent and abusive to them, frequently brawling with other men over them. In his later life when he was given to confessions, he also admitted to criminal acts. He once allowed an innocent man to be convicted of a robbery he committed. He and his only religious brother