1 IMPERIAL BEGINNINGS No conqueror created the Spanish empire , nor was its development the result of policy decisions taken by a king or his ministers . It evolved from the process that created Spain itself . Until late in the Middle Ages , Spain had been little more than a geographic ｅxpression . The Romans , after conquering its many tribes , divided the Iberian Peninsula into two provinces . In the fifth century the Visigoths established a kingdom centered at Toledo . They collected tribute and introduced elements of Germanic law , but did little to interfere with local or regional centers of power . Then , at the beginning of the eighth century , the armies of al - Islam swept over the Iberian Peninsula leaving a handful of Christian communities clinging to its mountainous northern fringe . Almost immediately the inhabitants of those tiny kingdoms began to re - encroach upon the lands that had been conquered by the Muslims . It was the beginning of what has been called the Reconquest , a struggle of nearly 800 years that ended only with the extinction of Muslim Granada in 1492 . The experience of those centuries forged Spain , itself an uneasy alliance of many cultures , but relentlessly devoted to expansion . The Reconquest was the first and most successful of the Crusades , but it was never the simple military action its name implies . The Christian advance remained sporadic until the middle of the thirteenth century . It halted whenever the Muslims achieved political unity , as they did under the Caliphate of Córdoba from 910 to 1031 , and advanced whenever Muslim Spain broke up into petty kingdoms , or taifas , too weak to defend themselves . Even then , the lack of Christian unity caused temporary reverses as kingdoms , towns , and military entrepreneurs formed alliances with little regard for confessional differences . The turning point came when the Almohads , an Islamic reform movement basedoriginally in North Africa , re - established Muslim unity between 1146 and 1172 . Setting aside their differences , the Christian kingdoms of León and Castile , Aragon , and Navarre defeated the Almohads at Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212 . The taifas re - emerged , only to be swallowed up one by one in the next 40 years . By 1252 , only Granada remained as an independent Muslim state on Spanish soil . By this time , four of the Iberian kingdoms had achieved something like permanence : Portugal , Navarre , Castile , and Aragon . Castile , the largest , was formed in 1230 from León , Galicia , the ancient kingdom of Asturias , and parts of the Basque country . Castile itself had originally been part of the kingdom of León . Portugal broke with León / Castile in 1143 and went on to create a maritime empire that lasted into the twentieth century . The inland kingdom of Aragon merged with the county of Catalonia in 1164 , thereby acquiring the wealthy city of Barcelona with its commercial interests in the western Mediterranean and political ties to France . Navarre , although smaller than its neighbors , maintained a precarious independence until the sixteenth century . Castile , Aragon , and Navarre eventually became Spain , but until relatively modern times they remained separate kingdoms that happened to be ruled by the same monarch . The contribution of each kingdom to the growth of a Spanish empire , like the course of its internal development , was therefore very different . THE IBERIAN KINGDOMS IN THE MIDDLE AGESCastile evolved from a group of Christian communities which , though different in some respects , shared a common social structure . Neither the Romans nor the Visigoths had been able to exert much influence in the remote valleys of the Cantabrian Mountains or the Pyrenees . Feudalism never penetrated there , and most of the population remained freeholders who lived by subsistence farming supplemented by hunting , fishing , and gathering . In this , northern Spain resembled other highland areas of Europe , and like them , it tended to produce a population surplus . Its inhabitants enjoyed a varied , protein - rich diet , while their scattered farmsteads and isolated settlements limited their exposure to infectious disease . But the productivity of their small fields , like the availability of fish and game , was limited by an unforgiving ecology . There was no way to accommodate population growth by putting new lands into production , and the resources of the forest were by definition inelastic as well . The Spanish north , like the Alps or the Italian Abruzzi , produced sturdy children , many of whom had to leave as soon as they reached maturity if the community as a whole wasto survive . The Christians who , in the ninth and tenth centuries , began pressing southward into the valley of the Duero River were therefore tough , independent , and highly motivated . Under the sometimes nominal leadership of their kings , they established their settlements in a way that became a pattern for later colonization in the New World . After killing , capturing , or driving off the Muslim inhabitants , they would plant a banner , sound the trumpet , and formally claim the surrounding land in the name of their king . They then established a fortified “ town , ” often little more than a small village , and conducted a repartimiento , which allocated land to each settler as free - hold property after setting aside a portion for the king . The final stage was to secure formal recognition of their municipality from the crown . This pattern of settlement produced the characteristic social structure of Old Castile : a world of small freeholders living together in fortified villages or towns for protection . Protection was needed because the new communities continued for many years to occupy a contested frontier . The Meseta of Old Castile is a high plateau with hot summers , cold winters , and rainfall that rarely exceeds 20 inches per annum . The economy of the towns established there was therefore based largely upon herding and ranching , although the fertile bottom land in the river valleys was always used to grow vines and row crops . Raiding and stock rustling provided important supplementary income . To protect themselves , and to launch raids of their own against Muslims and Christians alike , the towns established militias whose chief component was the caballeros villanos , or peasant cavalry . Poorer citizens fought as infantry , but every able - bodied male under the age of 70 was obliged by law to be armed and ready to fight on a few hours ’ notice . The weapons themselves might be provided by a king or lord , purchased , or acquired as booty in earlier raids . Horses , like a family ’ s weapons , were prized , and elaborate regulations governed their maintenance . Part of a militia always remained at home to defend the town walls and gates , but the remainder was free to raid or to accompany the king ’ s armies on campaign . The level of training and discipline in these town militias was remarkably high . They were an important part of Christian armies in all stages of the Reconquest , and the booty they acquired formed a useful supplement to the urban economy . A portion of that booty was , of course , allocated to the king , as was a share of all new lands conquered by his subjects . Until the fourteenth century , the crown of Castile therefore enjoyed substantial wealth . The kings used it to support their own retinue of knights that served as an elite corps at the heart of their armies . From the eleventh century , the kings also appointed fighting men from theseretinues as tenens or alcaldes to protect their new domains . These lords received landed benefices from the king , but in Castile and León such grants were not inheritable . The alcaldes used the proceeds of their benefice to maintain a troop of cavalry based upon a castle or fortified strongpoint . They acted as a mobile defense in case of attack and joined the royal host when the king embarked upon a campaign . Like the king , these lords maintained a retinue composed largely of professional knights , but in time , free peasants found it necessary to “ commend ” themselves to one of them in return for his protection . The peasant might then owe him fees or a percentage of their harvest , military service , and the exclusive use of the lord ’ s mill or other facilities . These early encomiendas , a term that would have a long and varied history , differed from feudal contracts in that the peasant who commended himself remained armed and legally free . He could , and all too often did , retain his right of private vengeance as well as the right to plead in court . He could choose his own lord or take a new one at any time , and retained full rights over his property as a freeholder . Though later modified to the peasants ’ disadvantage , this system prevailed in Old Castile until relatively modern times . It may help to account for that lack of servility in the Castilian character that foreigners sometimes chose to regard as arrogance . After the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa , the acquisition of vast tracts of land in New Castile and Andalusia forced Castile to adopt new measures . Although willing enough to fight for booty or reward , urban or peasant proprietors now showed little interest in abandoning their existing properties for new ones . Faced with a shortage of potential colonists , the crown began to rely more heavily on great lords and on the recently founded military Orders to settle newly conquered lands . The Orders of Alcántara , Calatrava , and Santiago formed late in the twelfth century . Basing their constitutions on those of the Templars and Hospitallers , military orders founded in the Holy Land but also active in Castile , they attracted landless knights who hoped to support themselves by pursuing a military career in Holy Orders . In return for their help in organizing the Reconquest , the military Orders — and the lords — received large grants of land . Muslims who did not flee to Granada or Morocco were sometimes placed in encomienda to these new lordships , but many of the lands , especially in Extremadura and in the vast spaces of La Mancha , had not been heavily populated to begin with . There , the new proprietors expanded the tradition of grazing and ranching that had developed in the trans - Duero region generations before . Their methods and equipment ( roundups , branding , the use of corrals , lariats , chaps , etc . ) would later take root in the New World . Towns , however , remained central to the colonizing effort . There were by this time scores of them . Where newly founded , usually by the crown or by one of the military Orders , the Castilians built them on a pattern inspired by that of the Roman camp . Like towns later constructed in America , streets radiated from a central plaza on which the church and municipal buildings , if any , could be found . When the Christians conquered a large Muslim city such as Seville or Córdoba , they converted the mosques to churches , and replaced the existing city government with one organized on the Castilian model of an elected city council and magistrates . By the reign of Alfonso XI ( 1312 – 1350 ) , these town governments had become so corrupt and faction - ridden that the king began to appoint royal officials known as corregidores to maintain order . Many Muslims , often the richest and most influential , emigrated to Morocco or Granada rather than accept Christian domination . Those who remained presented a problem for the Castilians , who together with their Aragonese and Portuguese neighbors , became the first Europeans to rule over a large non - Christian population . The Christian model for dealing with these new subjects differed little from that adopted years before by the Spanish Muslims . Tolerance , the convivencia lauded by some medievalists , was never an ideal . Canon Law , like the Koran , forbade conversion by force , but special taxes and other forms of legal and social discrimination encouraged many Muslims to convert . The Jews , who suffered similar disabilities , neither emigrated nor converted in significant numbers until forced to do so after a series of anti - Jewish pogroms that began in 1391 . The Reconquest was a crusade in law , in fact , and in popular understanding . Those who achieved it hoped to convert their new subjects . Their efforts were not always successful and the conversions achieved were often no more than skin deep , but like Europeans elsewhere , the Spanish and Portuguese had no use for infidels . They justified the Reconquest itself in purely religious terms while reveling in the booty it provided . Their kings , from earliest times , claimed power and privilege because they were God ’ s champions on earth . Duty for king and subject alike lay in the conquest and conversion of non - Christian populations . By 1300 , then , Castile had become not only “ a society organized for war , ” as James F . Powers has called it , but one permeated by a warrior mentality . Men saw conquest and raiding as a normal part of everyday life . Military skill and the ownership of weapons were common at virtually every level of society . The experience of occupying , distributing , and administering new lands , and of governing alien populations had been institutionalized to a degree unknown in the rest of Europe . When a medieval Castilian saw himself as a Christian warriorwho might some day acquire unimaginable wealth by fighting on behalf of his faith , he was not , in his own mind at least , engaging in Quixotic fantasies . But because medieval Castile was organized for conquest , it functioned poorly in time of peace . The end of the Reconquest meant the contraction of the frontier . Enterprising men of all social classes no longer had an outlet for their ambitions . Not only lords , but peasants , townsmen , and even priests found no one to fight but each other , and Castile sank into a state of near - anarchy that lasted more than a century . Much of the sad history of fifteenth - century Castile , like that of contemporary France and England , must be attributed , however , to the personal incompetence of its rulers rather than to any institutional weakness . During the years of Reconquest , the Castilian monarchy had evolved into a highly effective instrument for anyone with the political skill to manipulate it . In theory , the king enjoyed absolute power , delegated to him by God and sanctioned by the Church . That power , however , was not arbitrary . Since the Fuero Juzgo of Visigothic times , the monarch ’ s stated function had been to maintain order and justice by means of judicial procedures . The Siete Partidas of 1265 described the primary objectives of the law ( in order of importance ) as : to inspire confidence , to regulate , to command , to unify , to reward , to forbid , and to punish . Jurists and theologians alike understood that legislation — and the conduct of the king — had to be based ultimately on natural law , a concept found in Aristotle and the Scholastics , refined by Roman Law , and accepted by the Church as part of its own legal system . only the king could promulgate laws , but although new laws could modify and even supercede existing legislation , the old laws could not be discarded . Medieval Castile was therefore , above all , a nation of laws ; some would have said a nation of lawyers . The tensions and complexities inherent in its constitutional tradition would , in the conquest of the New World , give birth to a legalism that has seemed strained if not bizarre to non - Spanish observers . Within the framework of the law , however , the king possessed great power . All officials and judges served entirely at his pleasure . In the course of the Reconquest he had also acquired real property rights over all lands conquered by his subjects . Because he could grant such lands to those who served his interests , this was an invaluable source of patronage . In theory , and for the most part in fact , the monarch was therefore not only the guarantor of a just and stable society , but the greatest patrón in a society still based to an extraordinary degree on loyalty and mutual obligation . His subjects expected that he would use these powers benevolently and in their best interests even if they did not fully understand every decision made at court . In the meantime , it was not only theirright , but their obligation , to inform the king of injustice and to petition him personally for redress . At no time in the history of the Spanish Empire was this right neglected . Over the centuries , tens of thousands of letters and petitions found their way to the kings . Most were answered , although the response might take years . The role of the king , then , was not to demand unquestioning obedience , but to mediate between his own political and dynastic interest and the demands of his subjects within a framework of civil and natural law . The failure of such kings as John II of Aragon ( 1458 – 1479 ) and Enrique IV of Castile ( 1454 – 1474 ) to manage this difficult task effectively was largely responsible for the disorder of their reigns . Aragon , too , became a society organized for conquest , but its historical and institutional development bore little resemblance to that of Castile . The king of Castile claimed absolute power limited only by divine will and natural law . He was , however , expected to hear “ in generous faith ” the advice of his subjects . In Aragon , the oaths of the king ’ s subjects remained conditional on his upholding their fueros , or liberties . Its rulers were therefore more limited in their freedom of action , at least in domestic affairs . Aragon proper was a sparsely populated region similar in culture and language to Castile . In 1164 it merged with the County of Catalonia , the coastal region centered on the city of Barcelona . Alone among the principalities of northern Spain , Catalonia had maintained close ties with the Frankish kingdom to the north and had adopted feudal institutions at approximately the same time . Barcelona had commercial interests throughout the Western Mediterranean . French knights had assisted in the first phases of the Reconquest , but otherwise , the pattern of royal , knightly , and civic initiative in fighting the Muslims resembled that of the other Iberian kingdoms until the reign of Jaume I , the Conqueror ( 1213 – 1276 ) . Sensitive to the needs of Barcelona , Jaume seized the Balearic Islands , long a haunt of Muslim pirates . Then in 1238 , he took Valencia , but by agreement with Castile , Valencia became the last Aragonese acquisition on the Iberian mainland . Thereafter , Aragon directed its energies to the Mediterranean . Between 1282 and 1343 , the Aragonese royal family acquired Sardinia and Sicily . After years of campaigning and diplomatic maneuver , Alfonso V the Magnanimous became King of Naples in 1442 , and made the city his capital . These achievements set the stage for Spain ’ s later dominance in Italy and created , in rough outline , a pattern for imperial governance . The components of the Aragonese / Catalan Empire remained separate kingdoms with their own institutions , united by a common sovereign . When the king was not in residence a viceroy ruled as hispersonal representative . Moreover , like other monarchs of the age , the kings of Aragon regarded their realms as private property that could be divided at will . When Alfonso V died , he left Sardinia , Sicily , and Aragon itself to his son JohnII . Naples went to John ’ s illegitimate half - brother Ferrante . A cadet branch of the royal family therefore ruled the kingdom until 1503 . During much of this period the two halves of the family remained united for diplomatic purposes . By the middle of the fifteenth century , both Aragon and Castile had developed experience , values , and institutions uniquely suited to the work of colonization . For good or ill , both had also been forced to confront a problem rare in Christian Europe : how to govern , and if possible to convert , large numbers of non - Christian subjects . Their experience would soon be put to use in unexpected ways . FERDINAND AND ISABELLAThe marriage of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon on October 18 , 1469 , began the unification of the Spanish kingdoms and created the nucleus of a much larger empire . Both countries had by this time suffered from decades of intermittent civil war . Isabella , supported by most of the Castilian nobility , succeeded her half - brother Enrique IV in 1474 . In an effort to prevent her accession , a faction associated with the late king allied themselves with Portugal , and launched a bloody but unsuccessful war that ended only in 1479 . In that year the death of Ferdinand ’ s father made him King of Aragon . Aragon and Castile were now linked by marriage , but the union of the two crowns was — and would remain — personal . By the terms of their marriage agreement , Ferdinand ruled Aragon but had only limited rights in Castile ; Isabella as ruler of Castile would have even fewer in Aragon and its dependencies . After each died , their common heir would become ruler of Spain , but he or she would inherit the two kingdoms separately ( plus Sicily ) , and each kingdom would retain its own government , institutions , and privileges . The arrangement could have been a recipe for disaster . The young rulers differed in interests and personality , and their marriage , in private at least , was not entirely tranquil . Ferdinand , a model for Machiavelli ’ s Prince , was cynical and devious but a capable soldier and a master of diplomacy . The deeply religious Isabella was more interested in domestic policy and had the surer grasp of what would today be called public relations . Both , however , were pragmatists at heart . While Isabella lived , the royal couple pursued a common policy . By necessity , that policy was expansionist . Ferdinand and Isabella arecorrectly regarded as the founders of modern Spain , but they knew nothing of the modern concept of nationhood and did not consciously set out to create either a nation or an empire . Instead , like other rulers of the day , they based their policies on dynastic interest modified at times by religious considerations . Their first priority was to strengthen royal authority in Castile , now badly eroded by decades of strife and misrule . The situation in Aragon was equally bad , but Ferdinand believed that the kingdom ’ s long - established fueros precluded serious reform . Castilian institutions seemed more amenable to change . Even there , however , Isabella lacked the resources or the inclination to impose her authority by force . She needed the cooperation of nobles and town governments , and knew that this required incentives . At the Cortes of Toledo in 1480 Isabella confirmed the nobles in their possession of lands taken illegally before 1466 on condition that they return those taken thereafter . Throughout her reign , she granted mayorazgos that allowed them to entail portions of their estates , thereby avoiding the trap of partible inheritance which diluted the wealth of their families . Mayorazgos were an important favor , as were mercedes , grants of land and money in return for services rendered , but they were not enough . In the long run , only war and the hope of acquiring new domains could satisfy the ambitions of nobles and towns alike . If domestic issues encouraged an expansionist policy , the international situation demanded it . Like the other rulers of fifteenth - century Europe , Ferdinand and Isabella believed that to survive they would have to increase their own power and reduce that of their enemies . Their two chief rivals remained Portugal , against which Ferdinand and Isabella had just fought a bitter five years ’ war , and France . France threatened Spanish interests through its occupation of Cerdanya and Rosselló ( Cerdagne and Roussillon ) , two Catalan territories claimed by Aragon , and by menacing the still - independent kingdom of Navarre . In 1498 it would invade the Italian kingdoms ruled by Ferdinand ’ s cousins . Ferdinand and Isabella tried to deal with these dynastic rivalries in several ways . As their children grew toward maturity , the monarchs pursued a complex marriage strategy aimed at neutralizing Portugal and isolating France . Like most such strategies in an age of low life expectancy , theirs was partially successful but produced unforeseen results . Alliances alone could not preserve or strengthen their dynasty . They knew that they had to counter the expansion of Portugal at sea by developing overseas interests of their own , and that they would one day face war with France . In either case , expansion of their domains was the price of survival . It would be wrong , however , to think that royal policy was based solely onrealpolitik . The religious culture of the later fifteenth century was steeped in prophecies and millennial fantasies . The writings of Christopher Columbus and the preaching of his Florentine contemporary , Savanarola , are two examples of this impulse at work . Like these visionaries , the Queen and the clerics with whom she associated believed that infidels and pagans must be converted to prepare for an imminent Second Coming of Christ , even if the conversions had to be forced . The growing intolerance for Jews and conversos ( Jewish converts to Christianity ) that led to the founding of the Spanish Inquisition was closely related to growing demands for a crusade against Muslims and heathen alike . Ferdinand ’ s apologists saw him as the “ last world emperor ” who would bring these visions to pass . The king may not have shared these fantasies with the same degree of enthusiasm , but he knew that they reflected the popular will and had no intellectual basis for rejecting them . Political theory in Spain and elsewhere held that the legitimacy of the monarchy depended on its relationship to God . Kings ruled as God ’ s representatives on earth . Their power might be in theory absolute , but in practice they were to seek the advice of their subjects and rule in accordance with Divine Will and natural law . Much of the chaos in the preceding reign had arisen from the perceived failure of Enrique IV to do either . Ferdinand sometimes tried to moderate the crusading impulses of Isabella and her court , but he never openly rejected their vision of both divine and popular will . THE CONQUEST OF GRANADAGranada , the last Muslim foothold on the Iberian Peninsula , therefore provided Ferdinand and Isabella with a unique opportunity . Its fall would complete the Reconquest and bring enormous prestige to the conquerors without threatening the other Christian dynasties of Europe . The Pope , in fact , was pressing them to launch a crusade and had granted them the right to levy a cruzada , or crusade tax for its support . Internally , war against the Muslims would divert the martial energies of the nobility and provide them with the hope of new wealth . The Castilian towns would be happy to use their militias in a cause that promised Muslim booty to supplement their otherwise stagnant economies , and a victory could , in time , add to the crown ’ s own revenues . The war for Granada would in fact prove extremely popular , not only in the Spanish kingdoms , but throughout Europe . Volunteers and mercenaries came from as far away as England and Germany to join the king ’ s men , the retinues of the great nobles , and the militias of the Spanish towns in driving the infidel from Europe . At first , the war for Granada resembled earlier episodes in the Reconquest . The Granadan border had long been chaotic . Raids and counter - raids caused extensive damage and loss of life , and forced the great lords of Castilian Andalusia to maintain private armies to protect their patrimonies . Royal authority in the region was almost non - existent . In 1482 the Marquis of Cádiz seized the Muslim town of Alhama in what appeared to be a normal raid . This time , however , the royal army moved to support him . In the same year , the growing weakness of Granada ’ s ruler , Muley Hassan , provoked a dynastic quarrel between two of his sons who are usually known by their nicknames , El Zigal and Boabdil . Both assumed that , in the tradition of Iberian warfare , each could use Ferdinand and his army against the other . Ferdinand was , of course , happy to encourage their civil war for his own purposes . Despite Muslim disunity , the war proved long , bloody , and expensive . Ferdinand ’ s basic strategy was to isolate the city of Granada by capturing the surrounding towns and , in particular , the port of Málaga through which the kingdom communicated with North Africa . The Granadan War , like the wars of the Reconquest , was therefore one of sieges interspersed with raids and guerrilla forays on both sides . When Málaga fell in 1487 , Boabdil agreed to surrender the city of Granada in return for Ferdinand ’ s help in seizing several towns held by El Zigal . By December , 1489 the Christians had secured the last of them , and El Zigal surrendered to the Christians rather than accept the rule of his half - brother . Boabdil then reneged on his agreement with Ferdinand and barricaded himself in the capital . In spring , 1490 , Ferdinand began the construction of a permanent siege camp outside Granada that became the city of Santa Fe . As the siege progressed , Boabdil began to realize that his cause was hopeless and asked for terms . on January 2 , 1492 , he surrendered both the city and his kingdom to Ferdinand , and like his half - brother , settled down to the life of a nobleman on one of his estates . At first , the Spanish settlement of Granada , like the conduct of the war itself , appeared to draw upon the older traditions of the Recon - quest . The Muslims retained their property , their religion , and even their legal and governmental institutions . Soon , however , the generous terms of this settlement broke down . For security reasons , the crown began to encourage the more prominent Muslims , including Boabdil , to emigrate to North Africa . Six thousand of them left for Morocco in 1493 , depriving the Muslim community of its natural leaders . In spite of a royal edict limiting the size of properties held by Christians , Spanish nobles took advantage of their departure , carving out great estates whose inhabitants were placed in encomienda to their new lords . In 1499 , the religious settlement , too , collapsed . The first Archbishop of Granada was the queen ’ s confessor , Hernando de Talavera . An admirer of Muslim culture , he hoped to convert his new charges through preaching and instruction . When the monarchs returned to the kingdom in 1499 , they brought with them the Archbishop of Toledo , Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros , who repudiated Talavera ’ s methods and instituted a regime of forced baptisms . Talavera ’ s views had become anachronistic . Forced conversions reflected the triumphalist policies of Isabella , who had established the Spanish Inquisition between 1478 and 1483 and expelled the Jews from Castile only three months after the fall of Granada . In November , 1499 the Muslims of the Alpujarras , the region to the south of Granada on the slopes of the Sierra Nevada , rebelled . By March , Ferdinand had crushed their revolt , and in 1502 , the monarchs ordered the expulsion of all Moors who had not been converted . Most , of course , had nowhere to go . Their conversions were demonstrably false , but the new diocese of Granada had neither the means nor the will to instruct them and the crown had no desire to provoke further rebellions . For the next 50 years , the Muslims of Granada remained nominally Christian while preserving their Islamic faith and its practices . A policy of religious exclusivity inadequately supported by missionary efforts would remain characteristic of later Spanish conquests . The Moors of Granada remained sullen and discontented . The monarchs could not ignore the possibility that their new subjects might make common cause with their co - religionists in North Africa , or that the 6000 Granadans who emigrated might one day plot to return . To prevent this and also to establish a position in the lucrative African gold trade , the monarchs extended their policy of conquest to the seaports of North Africa . In 1497 the Duke of Medina Sidonia seized Melilla , which remains in Spanish hands to this day . The revolt of 1499 in the Alpujarras increased Spanish fears and inspired the Queen and Cisneros to call for a new crusade in Africa , but nothing was done until after Isabella ’ s death in 1504 . In the following year , an expedition took Mers - el - Kebeir . Peñón de la Gómera , Oran , Bugia , and Tripoli fell between 1508 and 1511 . These towns became presidios or fortified garrisons governed under contract by the great nobles of Andalusia until Philip II placed them under royal control in the mid - sixteenth century . The North African expeditions took place during a time of troubles in Castile . When Isabella died she was succeeded by her daughter Juana , who was to be assisted by her husband , Philip “ the Handsome ” of Habsburg , son of the Holy Roman Emperor . Philip , however , died in 1506 , and the new Queen suffered acomplete mental breakdown that made her unfit to rule . Throughout this period , Cisneros dominated Castilian affairs , but in 1510 Juana ’ s father , Ferdinand , was asked to return to Castile as administrator of the kingdom . It soon became evident that these strong - willed personalities disagreed on North Africa . Cisneros dreamed of a crusade that would conquer all of North Africa for Christ . Ferdinand , ever the realist , wanted only to maintain control of its major ports without imposing Spanish rule on the hinterlands . Ferdinand ’ s view prevailed . The presidios of North Africa would remain beleaguered garrisons on the fringes of a hostile Muslim world , neglected by the Spanish government and shunned by its more ambitious subjects because they offered little in the way of plunder or promotion . By the 1560 s , they had become a place of exile for those who had annoyed the king . SPAIN ’ S FIRST OVERSEAS COLONIES : THE CANARY ISLANDSIn Granada , the Spanish faced a traditional enemy whose social , political , and military organization was comparable to their own , and whose people consciously rejected Christianity in favor of Islam , another great world religion . Spain ’ s first encounter with isolated societies that had no concept of Christianity or of European technology came in the Canary Islands . The Canaries are a group of seven volcanic islands located in the Atlantic off the coast of North Africa . They had been inhabited since prehistoric times by tribes of people who were racially Caucasian , but who knew nothing of Christianity or Islam and who often lived in caves . Although their weapons were simple , centuries of tribal and inter - island warfare had made the Canarians accomplished fighters , and the invaders soon found that European military technology offered no great advantage against guerrillas operating in their own rugged terrain . In the 1340 s both the Portuguese and Aragon had sent expeditions to conquer the islands without success . In 1402 , Enrique III of Castile granted the lordship of the Canaries to some French adventurers who seized the islands of Lanzarote , Fuerteventura , and part of Hierro . In 1420 , Juan II made a similar gift to his Castilian subject , Alfonso de Las Casas , if he could conquer the rest of Hiero and the island of Gomera . Las Casas did so , and in the next 30 years acquired Lanzarote and Fuerteventura from their French grantees by marriage and purchase . When he died in 1452 , he left all four islands to his daughter , Inés de Las Casas , who then married Diego de Herrera . Their descendents retained ownership until early in the eighteenth century . The three larger islands , Gran Canaria , Tenerife , and La Palma remained unconquered when Isabella reclaimed jurisdiction over them in 1477 . For nearly a century , Portuguese mariners had been making their way down the coast of Africa , opening new markets in gold , ivory , and slaves and searching for a route to India that would give them a virtual monopoly of the spice trade . The Portuguese Crown , which fiercely opposed the accession of Isabella , had also annexed the Madeiras and the Azores in the Atlantic . While the Spanish monarchs were still at war with Portugal , and long before the attack on Granada , Isabella determined to contest the growing Portuguese dominance at sea . She also , of course , hoped to convert the Canarians to Christianity . In the treaty that ended the war over Isabella ’ s succession in 1479 , the Portuguese abandoned all claims to the Canaries . In return , Castile and Aragon agreed not to sail south of Cape Bojador , a point on the African coast some leagues south of the CanariesThe first expedition sanctioned directly by the Spanish crown departed for Gran Canaria in 1478 , a year before the treaty was signed . It was made up of mercenaries commanded by one Juan Rejón , and financed largely from ecclesiastical sources . It soon became obvious that Rejón and his men were uncontrollable and inept . After two years of growing chaos , Isabella sent a much larger force under the royal official Pedro de Vera to depose Rejón and complete the conquest of Gran Canaria . He accomplished this with great difficulty in 1483 , largely by exploiting tribal rivalries among the Canarians . The War of Granada delayed further efforts until 1492 , when the queen sent another expedition under Alonso Fernández de Lugo to take Palma and Tenerife . Like Columbus , who began his voyage to America in the same year , Lugo negotiated an agreement with the crown that guaranteed him the governorship in perpetuity of any lands he conquered , and , like Columbus , he was financed in part by the Genoese merchant community of Seville . Palma fell almost immediately , but Tenerife resisted until 1496 . By this time , most of the indigenous Canarians had been killed . In an effort to recoup their initial investment , the conquerors tried to sell the survivors as slaves . Isabella , who had justified the conquest as part of her efforts at conversion , promptly forbade this , but her orders were ignored . When the Queen died in 1504 , more than 90 percent of the native population had perished or been sold to buyers on the mainland . The developers then recruited Portuguese immigrants to work the land , but even this failed to compensate for the demographic catastrophe of the conquest . When it was discovered that conditions in the islands were perfect for growing sugar cane , an immensely valuable but labor - intensive crop first grown in the Middle East , the conquerorsintroduced African slavery . The Canary Islands eventually became a profitable colony and are today part of metropolitan Spain . Their acquisition did nothing to hinder Portuguese activities , but before the last island fell to the conquerors it became obvious that they would be a useful staging area for transatlantic expeditions . Their conquest , however , offered a lesson that came too late to influence the conquest of America . The medieval practice of granting virtually unlimited lordships over new lands made it difficult to establish royal authority thereafter , and the failure to establish royal authority could result in the speedy extermination of the crown ’ s new subjects . Because Ferdinand and Isabella did not see the results of their policies until about 1500 , the patterns established in the Canaries would be replicated with disastrous effect in the early settlement of America . COLUMBUS AND THE BEGINNINGS OF AN AMERICAN EMPIREIn 1492 , when Granada had fallen and the final stage of the campaign in the Canaries had begun , Ferdinand and Isabella authorized Christopher Columbus to sail westward in the hope of discovering new “ islands and mainlands ” in the Ocean Sea . His voyage marked the beginning of the Spanish Empire in the Americas , a world whose existence had hitherto been unsuspected by most Europeans . The well - known story of how Columbus claimed the New World for Spain demonstrates both the opportunistic character of Ferdinand and Isabella ’ s policy and the inadequate planning that accompanied it . Columbus was a Genoese merchant and sea captain who had lived for a number of years in Lisbon and acquired much experience in Atlantic navigation . In his travels he had sailed south to Mina , the Portuguese base in West Africa , and north to England , Ireland , and possibly Iceland . In 1478 or 1479 he married a Portuguese woman whose family , although relatively poor , were clients of the duke of Braganza , a leading figure at the Portuguese court . This connection , although weak and ultimately harmful to his cause , gave him limited access at court . In 1484 or 1485 Columbus appeared before Joaõ II of Portugal with a plan to reach Asia by sailing westward across the Atlantic . The king rejected it for reasons that remain unclear . His experts believed , correctly , that the circumference of the earth was almost one - third greater than Columbus ’ s estimate , and thought that he and his crew would run out of food and water long before they reached Japan . on the other hand , much of the Atlantic seafaringcommunity believed that there was land to the west . Portuguese and Basque fishermen had found carved objects floating in the water that could not have been made in Europe , and on at least one occasion , had discovered a dead man and woman with strange , non - European features in a derelict canoe . Joaõ thought these reports worth investigating , and , after he dismissed Columbus , sent out two Atlantic expeditions that learned more about Atlantic winds and currents but found no land . He probably refused to employ Columbus , not because the explorer was wrong , but because of his distant association with the duke of Braganza . The duke had tried to assassinate Joaõ in the preceding year , and the king may have seen no reason to give jobs to his enemies . Discouraged , Columbus decided to try his luck in Spain . Ferdinand and Isabella received him cordially in January , 1486 . Isabella in particular seemed to be interested , but the war for Granada was at its height and money remained short . She supported him with small subsidies , but made no decision for five years . Columbus used this time to build a formidable lobby on behalf of his project . It included prominent members of the Franciscan Order , the Genoese trading community in Seville , the Duke of Medinaceli , and several key figures in the court of the infante Don Juan . A royal commission appointed to study his proposals came to the same negative conclusion as their Portuguese counterparts , but the monarchs apparently ignored their report . When , in late 1491 , the Muslims at last agreed to surrender Granada , Isabella recalled Columbus to court and granted him 20 , 000 marevedís for expenses . A second commission again rejected his views , but at this point Ferdinand intervened : Columbus was to set forth as soon as possible . Ferdinand had apparently become convinced that the investment required in an Atlantic expedition would be small and therefore worth the risk . He knew of the Portuguese voyages , and although he almost certainly doubted that Columbus would reach Asia , wanted to ensure that if anything could be found by sailing west , it would go to Spain rather than to Joaõ II . Luis de Santángel , the escribano de ración , or keeper of household accounts for the Kingdom of Aragon , encouraged him in this view and found most of the money for the voyage . The budget for the entire enterprise was estimated at 2 million maravedís , a sum comparable to the annual income of a middling noble . An ad hoc arrangement typical of the age would finance the voyage . Santángel borrowed 1 . 4 million maravedís from the treasury of the Santa Hermandad , the body that supervised the militias of Castile , with a promise to repay it from other government revenues . Columbus provided another 500 , 000 , presumably advanced by his Genoese and Florentine friends in Seville . Inaddition , the crown ordered the seaport town of Palos to provide two of the three ships needed for the voyage in return for ignoring offenses committed by its citizens . This was a common practice of the age in every country that possessed maritime communities . Kings needed the cooperation of seafarers , always a marginal group that survived only by stretching if not ignoring the law . In this case , the men of Palos had been fishing for tuna south of Cape Bojador on the African coast in violation of the Castilian / Portuguese treaty of 1479 . The Pinzón family provided two caravels , their own Pinta and the Niña , which they leased from the Niño family from the neighboring village of Moguer . The crews , however , would be paid at standard seaman ’ s wages by the crown . Columbus himself leased the third ship , the Santa Maria , from a private owner who sailed as its master . Because Castile , not Aragon , provided the public funds for the enterprise , Castile would lay claim to any lands that Columbus found . As the legal basis for the expedition , Isabella drew up the capitulaciones of Santa Fe , so named because she issued them in the new city constructed for the siege of Granada . The capitulaciones were essentially a contract that legitimized potential conquests by affirming both the authority of the Queen and the religious purposes that justified the expedition . Similar documents had been drawn up in various phases of the Reconquest and for the expeditions to the Canaries . Others like them would accompany every subsequent expedition undertaken by Spain in the New World and beyond . They usually granted the commander of an expedition the governorship of whatever lands he conquered and a percentage of the wealth gained by his discoveries . The crown , however , retained authority over him as a governor , the sole right to organize repartimientos or distributions of land among the conquerors , and the all - important power to grant charters and privileges to any towns that might be founded . The provisions of this document , however , were unusually generous . Columbus was to be named admiral , viceroy , and governor general of all islands and mainlands that he discovered in the Atlantic , and granted noble status in Castile . All of these titles would be passed on to his heirs in perpetuity . He would , moreover , receive a salary of 140 , 000 maravedís for the voyage plus one - tenth of all gold , silver or merchandise found in any lands he discovered , tax free and presumably forever . The remaining 90 percent would go to the crown , but in future voyages , Columbus would be permitted to invest up to one - eighth of the cost and take one - eighth of the profits over and above the 10 percent he was already guaranteed . Finally , as Admiral he would hear all admiralty cases arising from the regions he had discovered and collect the court fees . There was nomention of Asia , although the monarchs included a letter to the Great Khan and ordered an interpreter who knew Arabic to accompany the fleet just in case . On October 12 , 1492 , Columbus landed on one of the out - islands of the Bahamas and claimed it for Castile . He believed , and would believe until the end of his life , that he had reached Asia . In the weeks to come , he found other small islands and explored eastern Cuba , which he thought was part of the Asian mainland . All of these places were inhabited by people who impressed the Europeans as primitive , but generous and good natured . Columbus mistakenly called them Indians . At this point , Martín Alonso Pinzón and the crew of the Pinta deserted the expedition to go exploring on their own . Columbus moved on to the large island he named Española ( Hispaniola ) , where his flagship ran aground on Christmas Eve and had to be abandoned . Knowing that his only remaining ship , the Niña was too small to hold the entire company , he decided to leave 39 men behind and return to Spain . He named the little colony La Navidad because it was founded on Christmas . The first voyage of Columbus became the basis of all subsequent Spanish claims in the Americas . When Ferdinand and Isabella heard that Columbus had returned , they applied to pope Alexander VI for a bull confirming Castile ’ s possession of the newly discovered lands . Alexander , a native of Valencia in the Kingdom of Aragon , granted them no fewer than four , effectively dividing the world between Castile and Portugal . Joaõ II found the papal grant too generous to Castile and opened independent negotiations with Ferdinand and Isabella . The result was the Treaty of Tordesillas ( 1494 ) that gave everything beyond a line 370 leagues ( c . 1400 miles ) west of the Azores to Spain . Everything to the east of the line and south of Cape Bojador would belong to Portugal . Six years later , the Portuguese navigator , Pedro Alvares Cabral , landed on the coast of what is now Brazil . Because the eastern bulge of South America lay east of the Tordesillas line , he claimed it for Portugal . The rest of North and South America would be claimed by Castile . The privileges granted to Columbus and the kind of colonial establishment they implied rested on the assumption that he would find either Asia or a group of islands like the Azores . Had Columbus actually found Asia , he intended to establish colonies like those planted by Portugal on the African coast and later in Asia : Small settlements of licensed merchants who traded with the natives while priests from Europe pursued the work of conversion . A garrison would have to protect these “ factories , ” but Spain would not try to rule directly over the population of the hinterland . The Portuguese experience demonstrated that the kind of governorship envisioned by the capitulaciones of Santa Fe worked wellin such circumstances . Had Columbus found uninhabited islands , it would have worked just as well , but it was not suited to the complex and unprecedented task of ruling large numbers of people whose culture was wholly unlike that of Europe . The islands he discovered were not , of course , part of Asia , although he denied this until his death . The people of the Bahamas , Hispaniola , and eastern Cuba fished and practiced subsistence agriculture . They possessed negligible amounts of gold , which they used as personal adornment , and had little or no access to the broader trading networks of the Americas . Ethnically and linguistically , they were of the Taino culture . Their political organization seems to have been limited to village chieftainships unaffiliated with any larger federation . The major difference between the Taino and the Canarians , at least from the Spanish point of view , was that the Taino were not skilled fighters . Columbus therefore found himself in a difficult , if not impossible , situation . Ferdinand and Isabella regarded the voyage as a royal initiative and had every intention of establishing sovereignty in the discovered lands . New subjects must be protected and , above all , converted to Christianity . The generous powers granted to Columbus placed the burden of this complex mission on a single man whose own motives were mixed and whose leadership skills proved adequate only to the management of a ship . Moreover , the crown ’ s acceptance of a partnership with private investors set the stage for endless conflict between conquerors and the crown . Columbus , though committed to the work of conversion , felt intense pressure to produce a return for his investors , public and private . His men , who had risked their lives on a dangerous and improbable scheme , wanted only to get rich . The tragedy then unfolding in the Canaries would be duplicated on a far grander scale in the Caribbean . When cultures with radically different values and levels of technology come into contact , the richer , more organized society will almost always exploit its poorer neighbor . Columbus and his men were immediately impressed by the hospitality and gentleness of the Taino , and astonished by the fact that they wore no clothes . Some of the Europeans took their nakedness as a sign of prelapsarian innocence ; others saw in it only barbarism and immorality . Columbus himself was of two minds on the question , but it seems to have occurred to him almost from his first contacts that the docile Indians would make excellent slaves . on the first voyage , he was deterred from enslaving them by his own concern for the conversion of the Indians and by the crown ’ s policy forbidding the enslavement of subjects unless they rebelled against royal authority . The second voyage changed his mind . Columbus returned to Hispaniola in November , 1493 with 17 ships and more than 1200 men . This time he took a more southern route and made his first landfall in the Leeward Islands . There he encountered the Caribs , a fierce and warlike people who were enemies of the Taino , and who greeted the Europeans with a shower of arrows . Clearly , the Caribs would reject both conversion and Castilian sovereignty . They were also cannibals . This charge , made by both Tainos and Spaniards , was at one time questioned by modern scholars , but it now appears to have been correct . From the first , Columbus regarded the Caribs as potential slaves . When he at last reached Hispaniola , he found that his little colony had vanished . The marooned sailors had extorted food and gold from the Indians and either raped the women or taken them as concubines . The natives , driven to desperation , had finally killed them . To Columbus , this meant that the Indians had rebelled , and were therefore at least technically subject to enslavement . He still hoped to convert them and make them loyal subjects of the crown , but as it became obvious that no Asian trade goods would immediately be forthcoming , Columbus began to look for gold , spices , and other commodities to send back to Spain . Finding only negligible amounts of gold and nothing else of value , he began to fear that the crown and his Genoese backers would withdraw their support before he could locate the Asian mainland . When he sent a portion of his fleet back to Spain for additional supplies , it carried the small amount of gold he had found and the first consignment of Indian slaves . By this time , the Europeans had grown restive . Most of the men on Columbus ’ s first voyage were impoverished sailors from Palos and Moguer . The second voyage brought more sailors , a smattering of Portuguese , Catalans , and Italians , and a cadre of tough peasants from the hardscrabble world of Extremadura and western Andalusia . There were no women . A contingent of soldiers from the Castilia Hermandades who had fought in the Granadan War and now lacked employment accompanied them . Before sailing , the soldiers traded the horses and weapons provided by the crown for substitutes of poorer quality and pocketed the difference . Isabella later blamed Columbus for not bothering to check on them in advance , but the whole episode says something about the early colonists . They were , almost by definition , desperate folk to whom stepping off the edge of the world was better than starving at home . Whatever the policies of the crown or the rationalizations of Columbus , such men would have no compunctions about taking what they could . Some went off to hunt for gold on their own . one such group under Alonso de Hojeda and another under Vicente Yañez Pinzón actually founded colonies that were laterconfirmed by the Queen . Still others followed the example of the murdered colonists at Navidad and settled down to oppress the Indians in the immediate neighborhood . Clearly , the great captain who led fleets across the trackless ocean could not control his men on land . Columbus responded to these troubles by leaving the colony in the hands of his brother , Bartolomé , and going off in search of the Asian mainland . While he was gone , a faction of colonists rebelled under the leadership of Francisco Roldán . They controlled part of the colony until Columbus returned on his third voyage in 1498 . Columbus finally ended Roldán ’ s rebellion by making two important concessions . First he allowed some of the men to form independent colonies of their own , thereby assuming the privilege of repartimiento reserved to the crown by the capitulaciones of Santa Fe . He then formally granted some of them the right to exploit Indian labor through what he called encomiendas . These encomiendas , like their Old World counterparts , did not involve grants of land or other property . Instead , the encomendero gained the right to demand labor services from Indian chiefs who assigned groups of tribes - men to him , often as virtual slaves . In some cases the labor service could be commuted for tribute in kind . Columbus , however , broke with tradition in one important respect . The New World encomendero assumed no responsibility for the welfare of his charges , religious or otherwise . Having granted these privileges to the rebels , Columbus had to extend them to his supporters as well . Isabella regarded the repartimientos as the usurpations they were , and disliked the Columbian interpretation of encomienda , not only because it oppressed her new subjects , but because she feared that , together with the repartimientos , it created the potential for a new quasi - feudal class whose privileges could one day threaten royal authority . Meanwhile , the Indians had begun to die in large numbers . Some were killed in conflicts with the settlers ; others perished from privation and overwork . European diseases , to which they had no immunity , exacted a terrible toll . The settlers , too , began to sicken and die from diseases that remain hard to identify from contemporary descriptions . Fleets sent back to Spain for supplies carried increasingly dire reports of conditions in the colony , and , in violation of the Queen ’ s direct orders , more Indian slaves . Exasperated , Isabella decided to send Francisco de Bobadilla with full powers to investigate the situation and deal with it as he saw fit . When he arrived on August 23 , 1500 , new rebellions had broken out . Columbus and his brother were off hunting rebels in the interior , and the bodies of seven Europeans now decorated a line of gallows erected at the water ’ s edge . Appalled , Bobadilla felt that he had no choice but to assume control of thecolony . In October , 1500 he sent the Columbus brothers home in chains . Isabella released them when they arrived and restored most of the Admiral ’ s privileges , but his career as a colonial administrator was over . The chaos uncovered by Bobadilla , and the realization that the discoveries of Columbus involved far more than a handful of islands , forced Ferdinand and Isabella to develop a more systematic approach to their Atlantic enterprise . Their first priority was to determine the limits of their new possessions . Between 1500 and 1502 they authorized 12 new voyages of discovery , including a fourth and final expedition by Columbus . The monarchs remained confident of his navigational skills , but would never again trust him as a governor . They also had to bring order to the colony on Hispaniola . In September , 1501 , they appointed Nicolás de Ovando governor of “ the islands and mainland ” in the Indies . By “ mainland ” they meant Cuba , whose outlines had not yet been discovered . Ovando arrived at Santo Domingo in February , 1502 , with 2500 men including farmers and artisans . Ferdinand and Isabella still hoped that large amounts of gold would be found in the islands , but realized that they needed to create a permanent infrastructure to support mining and prospecting . For this reason Ovando carried with him a royal auditor ( veedor ) , a factor , an assayer of precious metals ( fundador y mercado de oro ) , and an alcalde mayor , or Chief Justice of the Indies . By 1520 enough gold had been extracted by placer mining to cover the cost of the first expeditions , but by 1525 the deposits were exhausted . Ovando restored order to Hispaniola , not by abandoning the methods of Columbus , but by extending them . He executed large numbers of Indians and Europeans alike and expanded the encomienda and repartimiento systems . Ovando seems to have adhered more closely to the medieval ideal of the encomendero as a protector and Christianizer of the Indians than did Columbus , but his influence on the behavior of the colonists remained limited . By this time , Indian mortality had created a chronic labor shortage like that of the Canaries . The conquests of Puerto Rico ( 1508 ) , Jamaica ( 1509 ) , Cuba ( 1511 ) , and the establishment of a colony at Darién on the Isthmus of Panama ( 1509 ) were primarily attempts to find new supplies of labor , although the leader of the Darién colony , Vasco Nuñez de Balboa , found the time in 1513 to discover the Pacific Ocean and claim it for Spain . Meanwhile , little had been done to Christianize those Indians who had survived the first conquests . This distressed the pious Isabella until her death in 1504 , but the Church found it difficult to recruit suitable priests willing to brave conditions in the New World . Finally , in 1510 , four Dominicans came to SantoDomingo , and were outraged by what they found . one of them , Antonio de Montesinos , preached a memorable sermon against the greed and cruelty of the encomenderos . In 1512 , Ferdinand responded to his complaints with the Laws of Burgos , which established a wage rate for encomienda workers and placed the system as a whole under the supervision of royal officials . It was too late . The colonists largely ignored this legislation , and Indian mortality continued to mount . Modern estimates of Indian deaths in the islands have ranged from 50 , 000 to 8 million . The first figure is almost certainly too low , but given the limitations of Indian technology and the island environment , both of which would tend to limit the size of the original population , the true figure was probably closer to the former than the latter . Whatever it may have been , the conquest had resulted in genocide , although this had never been the colonist ’ s intent . The Spanish did not want the Indians to die ; they wanted to profit from their labor . They also found Indian women attractive . Decades would pass before significant numbers of Spanish women could be induced to emigrate . Many , perhaps most , of the colonists formed liaisons with Indian women and had many children by them . As a result , the DNA of Tainos and Caribs survives in the modern population of the islands , but within three decades the Indian cultures themselves had vanished . Despite their efforts and intentions , Ferdinand and Isabella had failed to protect or Christianize their new subjects in the islands . Their attempt to provide an economic and administrative framework for the new colonies was not much more successful . Their first priority , after restoring a measure of order on Española , was to regulate trade and communications with the Indies . In 1503 , the crown established the Casa de Contratación at Seville . Based on the Consolats de la Mar established in the kingdom of Aragon during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries , it was intended to preserve the Indies trade as a Spanish monopoly conducted through one authorized port . Its staff of royal appointees licensed ships , organized convoys , inspected cargoes , and collected duties , including a fifth of all bullion shipments for the crown . In time it developed advisory and judicial functions as well , and became an important element of imperial administration . A second and equally pressing issue involved the structure of colonial government . The arbitrary behavior of Columbus and Ovando in the islands and Fernández de Lugo in the Canaries proved that the crown could not depend entirely on the discretion of its governors . The powers granted to them had been too broad . The capitulations of Santa Fe had made the powers granted to Columbus hereditary . The crown honored that obligation by appointingColumbus ’ s son , Diego Colón , to replace Ovando as governor in 1509 , but modified the original agreement in significant ways . The finances of the colony were placed under the supervision of royal officials , and Diego was instructed to consult regularly with an informal junta within the Royal Council headed by Bishop Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca , the crown ’ s chief adviser on American affairs since 1493 . The government also rejected Diego ’ s claim to rule over islands and mainland alike by appointing new governors in Panama , Puerto Rico , and elsewhere . In 1511 Ferdinand , acting as regent of Castile , established the first American audiencia at Santo Domingo . Originally a three - man court that heard appeals from lower courts as well as cases involving the crown , it placed judicial authority firmly in the hands of royal officials other than the governor . The Laws of Burgos further restricted the governor ’ s powers to grant encomiendas and repartimientos . To protect his rights , Diego Colón filed suit against the crown . The issue was not resolved until 1536 , long after Diego himself had died . In a negotiated compromise , the Columbus family relinquished its governmental privileges in return for a tenth of the crown receipts from Española , the island of Jamaica , and a huge estate in Panama . No such powers would ever again be granted to a colonial governor , but when Ferdinand died in 1516 , the status of the colonial governors remained unclear , and no constitutional entity was as yet charged with the management of American affairs . The situation in the Indies remained fluid , if not chaotic , but the foundations of an American administration were becoming visible . 2 THE CREATION OF AN EMPIRE INEUROPE Important as the discovery of America proved to be , the founding of its first colonies was never a major preoccupation of Ferdinand and Isabella . Their highest priorities remained the ordering of Castile and the protection of their realms from European challengers . With the settlement of their disputes with Portugal , the greatest threat to Spanish interests remained France . The French held the Catalan counties of Cerdanya and Rosellón ( Cerdagne and Roussillon ) , while a French family , the Albret , ruled Navarre , the tiny kingdom that straddled the western passes of the Pyrenees . Both regions offered the French easy military access to the Iberian peninsula . The kings of France also claimed the Aragonese kingdom of Naples , based on their descent from the Angevin dynasty that had ruled there until it was supplanted by Alfonso the Magnanimous of Aragon in 1443 . A cadet branch of the Aragonese dynasty had ruled there ever since , and although Naples was not part of Ferdinand ’ s patrimony , he was obligated by kinship and treaty to protect it . From 1492 until his death Ferdinand therefore devoted most of his attention to Europe . Although he could not have foreseen it , his military , diplomatic , and dynastic policies became the foundations of a vast Spanish empire in Europe . From the beginning of their reign , Ferdinand and Isabella had worked to construct an anti - French alliance that included England , the Duchy of Brittany , and the Emperor Maximilian I . In the process they created a first - rate diplomatic corps based on resident ambassadors , an Italian innovation that had not yet been copied by the states of northern Europe . When , in 1492 , the new King Charles VIII of France decided to invade Italy in an effort to make good the Angevinclaim to Naples , the Spanish therefore had several assets in place : Good relations with much of Europe , excellent intelligence ( their resident ambassadors also served as spies ) , and a cadre of fighting men hardened in the campaigns for Granada . It was not quite enough . France had more than twice the population of the Spanish kingdoms and far greater wealth . Spanish artillery was no match for that of the French , and the Spanish infantry , tough as it was , had not yet found a way to defeat the Swiss pikemen who fought as mercenaries for France . Ferdinand , if he hoped to protect the Aragonese possessions in Italy , would have to rely on diplomacy as well as force . Informed of Charles ’ s intentions by the Spanish ambassador , Ferdinand raised the issue of Cerdanya and Rosellón . As Charles did not want a war in the foothills of the Pyrenees while he was engaged in Italy , he ceded both territories to Aragon in the Treaty of Barcelona ( 1493 ) . It was the first of several diplomatic triumphs and could not have been more gratifying to Ferdinand and his Catalan subjects . The French invasion of Italy , when it came in January , 1494 , began a series of wars that lasted ten years and ultimately brought Ferdinand the Kingdom of Naples . Already king of Sicily and Sardinia , he may have hoped from the beginning to displace the cadet branch of his family that had ruled there since 1443 . He succeeded in part because of good luck and the weakness of the Neapolitan dynasty , but his cunning diplomacy and military success won him the grudging admiration of Europe and greatly expanded the foundations of Spanish power in Italy . His great diplomatic achievement was to create and maintain the Holy League , an alliance of all the Italian states including the Aragonese Pope , Alexander VI . The army with which Ferdinand twice expelled the French from Italy was therefore predominantly Italian , although strengthened by Spanish veterans of Granada and by German Landsknechte whose skill and discipline as pikemen approached that of the Swiss . Gonzalo de Córdoba , a Castilian who had played a major role in the War of Granada , commanded this force in most of its engagements . Gonzalo was known as “ the Great Captain , ” in part because he eventually developed the combination of pikemen supported by arquebusiers that ended Swiss domination of the battlefield and paved the way for a century and a half of Spanish military predominance . The combination of Gonzalo ’ s army and Ferdinand ’ s diplomacy proved unbeatable . The armies of the League drove the French from Italy for the first time in 1497 . Meanwhile , Ferdinand and Isabella concluded treaties with England and with the Emperor Maximilian I . To seal the agreements , their daughter Catherine of Aragon married Arthur , Prince of Wales . Then , in a doublemarriage , their only son Juan married Maximilian ’ s daughter Margaret of Burgundy and their second daughter Juana married Margaret ’ s brother Philip “ the Handsome ” of Habsburg . Neither England nor the Habsburgs provided major assistance to Ferdinand in Italy , but the marriages would have important , if unforeseen , consequences . Charles VIII , the object of these schemes , died unexpectedly in 1498 . Ferdinand now feared that , in the absence of a French threat , the Holy League might turn against Spain in attempt to rid Italy of foreigners once and for all . In a piece of chicanery remarkable even for him , he concluded the secret Treaty of Granada ( 1500 ) with Charles ’ s successor , Louis XII . The agreement actually brought the French back into Italy by promising to divide Naples between Louis and Ferdinand . once again , the French invaded Naples , and in 1501 captured King Federico , the last surviving member of the Aragonese dynasty . Gonzalo de Córdoba and the armies of the League drove the French out again by 1503 after using the new tactics to defeat them at Cerignola . At this point , luck intervened on Ferdinand ’ s behalf . In 1504 , Federico died in France , and Ferdinand became King of Naples by hereditary right . Louis XII recognized him as king in 1505 , but the issue never really died . In the next half - century , the French would fight seven wars on Italian soil without dislodging Ferdinand or his successors . The Kingdom of Naples remained under Spanish rule until 1707 . Ferdinand ’ s last territorial acquisition came in 1512 . The tiny Kingdom of Navarre dominated the most important pass between France and Spain . Its population , most of whom were either Basques or Spaniards who spoke a dialect of Castilian had few affiliations with France , but since 1484 it had been ruled by a French family , the Albret . Ferdinand had always coveted Navarre for its strategic value and because it had once been ruled by his father , John II . In 1512 , his army launched a successful invasion on the pretext that France and Navarre were conspiring to invade Castile . His ally the pope quickly deposed John II of Albret and proclaimed Ferdinand King of Navarre . Like Naples , it was incorporated into the Kingdom of Aragon , but retained its royal title , its coinage , and its own political institutions . Three years later , for reasons that remain unclear , Ferdinand placed the kingdom under the Crown of Castile . Its privileges and governmental institutions , however , did not change . THE INHERITANCE OF CHARLES VImportant as they were , Ferdinand ’ s acquisitions in Europe pale before the consequences of his dynastic policies . To guarantee the peace with Portugal , Ferdinand and Isabella had married their eldest daughter , Isabella , to EmmanuelI . As part of their diplomatic efforts to isolate France in the 1490 s , they had , as we have seen , given their second daughter , Juana to the Habsburg Archduke , Philip “ the Handsome . ” At the time , Ferdinand and Isabella assumed that their only son , Juan , would inherit the Spanish kingdoms , but Juan died an unmarried teenager in 1497 . Isabella of Portugal died in 1498 , leaving a young son who then became the Spanish heir until he too died in 1500 , the year in which Juana gave birth to her first son , Charles of Habsburg . As Juana was now the oldest surviving heir , the infant Charles was now in line for the Spanish inheritance , but his parents were still very young . Had it not been for further domestic tragedies , he might have waited decades for his throne . The years after the death of Isabella of Castile in 1504 tested whatever unity Spain and its nascent empire possessed . In her will , the Queen followed the letter of her pre - nuptial agreement and left Castile and its possessions to her eldest surviving daughter , Juana . She excluded King Ferdinand from the succession , but made him “ governor of the kingdom ” until Juana could rule in person . If Juana could not rule — she had already begun to exhibit symptoms of a mental disorder — Ferdinand would govern until little Charles reached his twentieth birthday . In the meantime , Juana ’ s husband Philip could style himself Philip I of Castile , but was to be excluded from power . These arrangements foundered on Philip ’ s determination to rule in his own right . Soon after the royal couple arrived in Spain , he and a faction of nobles hostile to Ferdinand drove “ the Old Catalan , ” as they called him , out of Castile . Furious , Ferdinand tried to prevent Juana and Philip from inheriting Aragon as well by marrying Germaine de Foix , a niece of Louis XII of France . Had these two produced a child , Aragon and Castile would again have been separated , but their efforts proved unsuccessful . Then , in September , 1506 , Philip I died unexpectedly at the age of 28 . Juana ’ s mental condition now deteriorated to the point that she could not , and indeed would not , govern . The Royal Council appointed Cardinal Cisneros to administer Castile on her behalf , but by 1510 the cardinal ’ s irascible personality and autocratic methods had alienated powerful elements in the kingdom and Ferdinand was asked to return under his old title of “ governor . ” He ruled Castile as regent for his daughter until he died in 1516 . Ferdinand resented the Habsburgs to the end , but failure to produce a child in his old age forced him to recognize Charles , son of Juana and Philip I , as heir to Castile , Aragon , and its Italian possessions . By this time , Charles was 16 and had already inherited most of what is now Belgium and the Netherlands from his father . In the course of the fourteenth andfifteenth centuries the Dukes of Burgundy had built a vast estate that stretched from the foothills of the Alps to the shores of the North Sea . They held some of these lands from the King of France , but most were Imperial fiefs . When Charles the Bold , the last Valois Duke of Burgundy , died in 1477 , Lorraine , Burgundy , Picardy , and parts of Artois reverted to the French crown . His daughter Mary inherited the rest of his estate , and preserved most of it by marrying Emperor Maximilian I . When Mary died , their son Philip the Handsome inherited her fiefs and passed the Burgundian inheritance to his eldest son when he died . At six , Charles therefore became Duke of Brabant , Limburg , and Luxemburg . He was also Count of Holland , Zeeland , Hainaut , Namur , and the Franche - Comté . He held all of these states as vassal of his grandfather , the Emperor Maximilian , whose authority in the Netherlands had never been more than nominal . As Count of Flanders and Artois , Charles remained a vassal of the king of France , but French rights in these counties had long been unenforceable as well . Although not a kingdom , the Burgundian lands were an independent principality , perhaps the richest in Europe . Charles ’ s aunt , Margaret of Austria , ruled them as regent during his minority until 1515 when Charles deposed her with the help of an aristocratic faction headed by the Grand Chancellor of Burgundy , Guillaume de Croye , lord of Chièvres . The young archduke governed thereafter in his own name , though for some years he remained under the influence of Chièvres . Long before he set foot in Spain , Charles was therefore among the greatest potentates in Europe . He was soon to become greater yet . The 17 - year - old youth who arrived at Laredo in 1517 to claim his Spanish inheritance was of medium height with a prominent chin , a reticent manner , and no knowledge of Spanish . His new subjects were unimpressed , and thoroughly disliked his “ Flemish ” courtiers . Led by Chièvres , the new king ’ s entourage used the first months of the reign to gorge themselves on the more lucrative offices in Castile . The Castilians grumbled , while Valencia and Catalonia refused to acknowledge Charles as king until he appeared there in person . Then , in January 1519 , Charles ’ s grandfather , Emperor Maximilian I died , leaving him the hereditary lands of the Habsburgs : Austria , Styria , Carinthia , and the Tyrol , together with the County of Alsace , and several counties in Swabia and the Breisgau . Charles now became the leading candidate to succeed Maximilian as Holy Roman Emperor . Emperors had to be chosen by the seven imperial electors : the archbishops of Mainz , Cologne , and Trier , and the four secular rulers of Brandenburg , the Palatinate , Electoral Saxony , and Bohemia . The election of Charles as Emperor Charles V on June 28 , 1519 required massive bribes and an army of mercenariesto protect the electors from the other leading candidate , Francis I of France , whose own armies threatened to intervene . The campaign cost the enormous sum of 835 , 000 florins . Using projected revenues from Castile and the Tyrol as collateral , Charles borrowed the money from Italian and German bankers , with 65 percent of the total coming from the Fugger bank of Augsburg . Similar arrangements would be made throughout the reign whenever Charles embarked on a new and expensive project . The election brought Castilian discontent to the boiling point . Already unhappy with a foreign king and his rapacious counselors , the Castilians now realized that Charles would almost certainly be an absentee ruler and that he would use their resources to support causes in which they had no interest . Several Castilian towns rebelled before Charles left for Germany in May , 1520 . Unrest spread , and within a few months developed into the generalized urban uprising known as the comunero revolt . Fortunately for Charles , the high nobility grew alarmed at the increasingly radical tone of the revolt and suppressed it before Charles returned to Spain in 1522 . By this time Chièvres had died . Charles then showed that , left to his own devices , he could be a masterful politician . His settlement of the revolt balanced conciliation with judicial force , and from that time forward Castile became the most loyal of his kingdoms . The concerns of the rebels , however , had been justified . The inheritance of Charles V , as he is now called out of deference to the imperial title , drew the Spanish kingdoms into a host of entanglements on the continent of Europe . THE EUROPEAN EMPIRE OF CHARLES VCharles now ruled the Netherlands , Spain , the Aragonese kingdoms in Italy , and the German Empire . The union of these polities was , and would remain , entirely personal until his death . Their individual constitutions , and Charles ’ s place within them , varied enormously , as did their ability to generate revenues for projects beyond their own immediate needs . The European empire of Charles V was not , in other words , a Spanish empire in the constitutional sense , but by the end of his reign Spain would become the dominant power within it . A brief description of the empire ’ s major components suggests the reasons for this development . The Holy Roman Empire , from which Charles derived his imperial title , was not a kingdom , but a federation of more than 200 princely states and free cities , most of whom pursued their own policies with little regard for the emperor . Thelarger principalities resembled the monarchies of Western Europe with their own chanceries and representative institutions . Some of the lesser princes survived by acting as military contractors , selling their service to the highest bidders . More than 80 imperial cities had achieved virtual self - government in the period of imperial disintegration after 1250 , and many possessed their own militias . In theory , the emperor was supposed to determine foreign policy and serve as the empire ’ s military leader . In practice he could act only with the consent of the Imperial Diet , a body so large and diverse that it rarely agreed on anything . Towns and princes alike formed their own alliances within the empire and sometimes conducted diplomatic relations with France and the elective monarchies of Eastern Europe . Imperial administration was rudimentary at best . Maximilian I had created an imperial court ( Reichskammergericht ) to adjudicate disputes between states , but its members were appointed by the Diet . The Common Penny , an imperial tax created in 1498 , was collected by the Diet , not the emperor , and completely ignored by many of the states . An emperor could secure military and financial support from the Diet , but only after pursuing delicate and complex negotiations with individual princes and the towns . Earlier emperors , including Maximilian , had survived largely on revenues from their hereditary lands . Charles would do the same , but the Habsburg properties in Austria and Germany could do little to assist him . Early in the reign , Charles ceded them and their revenues to his younger brother Ferdinand whose help he needed in dealing , not only with the German princes , but with Turkish pressure on the Empire ’ s eastern borders . The German Empire , in other words , added little to Charles ’ s resources but greatly increased his responsibilities . The wealthiest , most urbanized region in Europe , the Netherlands , was another patchwork of city and provincial governments divided by intense localism . Each town had its own government , militia , and charter of privileges , and each province had its provincial estate , a representative body that included members from the towns and from the land - holding nobility . Charles , however , was the hereditary ruler of each province . He appointed the stadholder , who governed it as his personal representative , and many of the lesser officials in the provincial administration . Moreover , the provincial estates acknowledged their obligation to support him with taxes in the form of grants known as aides , or , in Flemish , beden . These grants , however , were not perpetual . “ Ordinary ” grants to cover the basic cost of government were usually renewable for several years at a time , but the larger “ extraordinary ” grants needed for a war or other emergency were not . If he needed additional funds , Charles requested them from eachprovincial estate , whose members responded with a list of demands and grievances . If Charles and the representatives could reach an accord on these matters , the aide would be forthcoming , usually as a one - time payment for a specific purpose . Redress of grievances , in other words , preceded the supply of funds . The Dukes of Burgundy had also developed a rudimentary central government to deal with matters involving all of their provinces . Each province elected representatives to the States - General , a central parliament with authority over tolls , taxation , currency , and the declaration of war . Here , too , redress preceded supply , and individual provinces sometimes refused to honor grants voted by the Estates - General if the emergency in question did not threaten their immediate interests . Other central institutions included a Privy Council that advised the prince on policy , a Council of Finance , and the High Court of Mechelen . The latter was an appellate court that dealt with cases arising between provinces . Typically , several provinces including the Duchy of Brabant did not recognize its jurisdiction . Although fractious and decentralized , the government of the Netherlands functioned reasonably well under Charles V . His regents , Margaret of Austria ( restored in 1517 ) and his sister , Mary of Hungary , who governed from 1530 to 1555 , were capable politicians . The Burgundian nobility , unlike their counterparts in some countries , provided a unifying element in the life of the region . Bound to the prince through their common membership in the prestigious Order of the Golden Fleece , they served as provincial stadholders , voted in the estates , and commanded the armies of the Netherlands in the frequent wars that convulsed the region . Important , too , was the sophisticated system of bonded debt developed by the towns and provinces to fund their tax obligations . The Netherlands raised enormous sums of money in the course of the reign . They also proved capable of defending themselves militarily , but the terrible crises through which they passed left neither men nor money for Charles ’ s projects in other parts of Europe . His Spanish inheritance brought Charles Castile , Navarre , and the Aragonese Empire consolidated by his grandfather Ferdinand during the Italian wars . The kingdom of Aragon contained three rather disparate principalities . Aragon itself remained a dry , isolated land with a few great estates and a larger number of properties held by minor nobles . The city of Valencia with its rich , irrigated hinterland , had a large Morisco population and suffered from grave social tensions in the early years of the new reign . The suppression of the Germanías , a series of rebellions contemporaneous with the Comunero revolts in Castile , brought the region a certain measure of calm after 1519 . Historically , Catalonia , with its great city of Barcelona , had been the heart of the kingdom and the driving force behind its acquisition of a Mediterranean empire . From the fourteenth century onward , however , terrible visitations of the plague reduced its population by half while bank failures , political unrest , and growing economic competition from Genoa nearly destroyed its trade . By the mid - fifteenth century , the glories of medieval Barcelona had become little more than a memory . Each of the three component states had its own Cortes ( Corts in Catalan ) , but these bodies met together as a Cortes General to deal with matters involving the entire kingdom . Unlike the Cortes of neighboring Castile , the Aragonese assemblies possessed real legislative authority , and in financial matters redress of grievances preceded supply . Each body elected a subcommittee of its Cortes known as the Generalitat or Disputació that contained a deputy and an oidor or auditor from each of the three estates ( four in the case of Aragon , where the lesser nobility constituted a fourth estate ) . These men paid the crown subsidies , controlled their collections , and served as spokesmen for the Cortes in all dealings with the king . The strength of these constitutional arrangements protected the kingdom ’ s cherished fueros , or rights , until the last years of Philip II , and — together with the country ’ s undeniable relative poverty — ensured that Aragon ’ s contributions to the imperial treasury would be modest . To Charles , Naples and Sicily were the most valuable parts of his Aragonese inheritance . He and his successors regarded the two kingdoms as a first line of defense in the struggle against the Turks , and Naples provided him with a strategic base on the Italian peninsula . They were also wealthy enough to provide large revenues for the crown , but despite certain cultural similarities , the problems of governing the two states were different . Sicily had been part of the Aragonese Empire since 1282 , when the islanders had expelled the Angevins in a bloody revolt . There was no nostalgia for French rule and , whatever their internal differences , the Sicilians remained loyal to Spain . Sicily ’ s parlamento was stronger and more representative than that of Naples . Its three bracci or estates represented the church , the titled nobility , and a variety of corporations including the towns and the university . As in the Netherlands , redress of grievances preceded supply , but every three years the Sicilians voted an “ ordinary ” grant that ranged from 100 , 000 florins to 175 , 000 at the end of the reign . From 1532 to 1556 , they provided no fewer than ten “ extraordinary ” grants in varying amounts in addition to maintaining a fleet of galleys . Sicily ’ s cooperation in fiscal matters arose almost entirely from fear of the Turks , and most of the money was spent locally . Otherwise , Sicilian politics remained a hornet ’ s nest of factional rivalries and open vendettas that tried the patience of the Spanish viceroys . Most of these men were Castilian grandees , and few sought to remain in their posts for more than two or three years . In the long run , however , the endless vendettas guaranteed the permanence of Spanish rule , not only because they prevented the development of a real opposition , but because the Sicilians readily accepted the government as a referee in their disputes . Under Charles V , the Sicilians preferred to appeal the decisions of their own courts to those of Spain in the hope of receiving more objective justice . Philip II chose instead to reform the Great Court of Sicily , on which several Sicilian barons held seats by right of inheritance . By threatening to appoint Spaniards to Sicilian courts , he maneuvered the parlamento into accepting a compromise . The court would be packed with qualified Sicilian jurists appointed by the crown ; the barons could retain their seats , but their opinions would no longer carry judicial weight . The basic principles of Roman and Spanish law were thereby extended to Sicily , which , like Naples , had been founded as a feudal state on the Norman model . Naples , although larger and wealthier than Sicily , had weaker institutions and was at first less securely attached to the crown . Many Neapolitans carried resentments against the Aragonese regime that dated to the time of Alfonso the Magnanimous . They rebelled unsuccessfully on the death of Ferdinand of Aragon in 1516 , and , when the French launched an invasion of the kingdom in 1528 , an important faction of Neapolitan barons supported their efforts . Most of these people lost their estates after the invasion failed , and were replaced by Genoese and other north Italian investors who had supported Charles V . The nobility , however , remained factionalized and continued to rule the countryside in alliance with bandit gangs whose power continued to influence Neapolitan and Sicilian life throughout the Spanish period and beyond . Between 1532 and 1553 , an able viceroy , the Castilian Don Pedro de Toledo , maintained order by playing the nobles against each other and tried without much success to eliminate the banditi . His efforts to introduce the Spanish Inquisition , however , met with total failure . Despite these problems , the weakness of Neapolitan institutions permitted the viceroys to extract great sums of money from the kingdom . The Neapolitan barons dominated a weak parlamento in which supply preceded redress . The city of Naples , one of the largest in Europe , had its own representative institutions , or seggi , with which the viceroy dealt separately . Lack of baronial unity and the fear of Muslim raids favored generous grants that went far beyond the needs of the kingdom and helped to finance the emperor ’ s European campaigns , but thefinancial demands of the crown grew so onerous that even Viceroy Toledo claimed that they were destroying the economy . By mid - century the economies of both Sicily and Naples were in decline , although climate change and the impact of Genoese control over Neapolitan trade may have done more harm than taxes . Under Philip II , Neapolitan grants as a component of imperial revenues declined as well . Sardinia , the third of the Italian kingdoms , remained largely peripheral to imperial affairs . A poor and sparsely populated island , its Cortes met but once every ten years to provide modest grants that rarely covered the cost of protecting it against Muslim raiders . When Philip II established the Council of Italy in 1555 to oversee Italian affairs , Sardinia remained under the authority of the Council of Aragon . With a population that probably numbered between 5 and 6 million people , Castile was the largest of Charles ’ s possessions . By most measures it remained a poor , largely agricultural society , but its system of finance and government had evolved in ways that made it uniquely useful to its ruler . The Cortes , Castile ’ s parliament , was generally cooperative . The nobles , whose partnership with the crown had been cemented by Charles ’ s careful handling of the comunero revolt , rarely attended because they did not pay taxes . only representatives of the 18 royal towns voted on revenue measures , but since the reign of Isabella , royal officials known as corregidores supervised municipal elections and could if necessary disqualify undesirable candidates . For all practical purposes , members of the Cortes were therefore selected with the approval of the crown . Moreover , in Castile , supply preceded redress . The Cortes presented the grievances of its constituents and negotiated money matters with considerable skill , but Charles usually obtained the subsidies he needed . Taxes that had long since been voted in perpetuity further strengthened his position . The alcabala , which dated in its earliest form from 1296 , was in theory a levy of 10 percent on all transactions . It had long since become a capitation tax , administered by the towns , and produced about 1 . 25 million ducats per annum during most of the reign . Other perpetual sources of revenue included customs duties , a transit tax on the movement of sheep , and the cruzada , originally levied on the clergy during the war of Granada and funded from the sale of indulgences . Together , these taxes covered more than the ordinary costs of government and provided Charles with a predictable source of revenue . More than any other ruler of the day , the king of Castile could borrow against future returns and budget for contingencies . He could also count upon what was probably the most effective administrationin Europe . In theory , the power of the crown was absolute . The Royal Council , reformed by Isabella in 1480 and staffed mostly by lawyers who served at the ruler ’ s pleasure , advised the crown on legislation and appointed its officials . The most important of these served on the contaduría mayor de la hacienda , which collected money , and the contaduría mayor de cuentas , which disbursed it . A powerful set of administrative controls limited corruption . All royal officials were subject at the end of their term to a residencia , a formal inquiry that examined their actions in detail . Should suspicions arise in the middle of an official ’ s term , the Royal Council could appoint a visita to investigate them . Moreover , Castile , unlike the Netherlands , possessed a uniform legal code in which all subjects were in theory equal under the crown . The audiencia of Valladolid served as an appellate court for the north ; the audiencia of Granada for the south . Their officials were subject to both residencias and visitas , and the Royal Council could if necessary serve as a final court of appeal . Church courts became subordinate to the royal courts after 1504 . The subordination of ecclesiastical courts reflected the position of the Spanish church in general . Ferdinand and Isabella had been able to wrest control of episcopal appointments from the papacy in both Castile and Aragon . This enabled them to initiate a wide - ranging reform of the church under the guidance of Cardinal Cisneros , who corrected at least some of the abuses that would produce the Protestant Reformation in northern Europe . The Inquisition , founded by Ferdinand and Isabella , dealt with matters of doctrine and morals . It , too , was controlled by the Crown . In Castile , Charles therefore possessed a realm whose financial , ecclesiastical , and legal systems were as firmly under his control as anything could be at a time when poor communications , inadequate information , and established privilege limited the effectiveness of all governments . It also had the best army in Europe . Officers and men trained in the Italian wars under the guidance of Gonzalo de Córdoba and his disciples made up the fighting core of Charles ’ s multinational armies . Like Castile ’ s administration , the army , improved and reorganized in the course of the reign , became a major bulwark of the Emperor ’ s power . In terms of usable finance , manpower , and organization , Castile was therefore the most valuable of Charles ’ s possessions . After 1519 , its acquisition of a vast new empire in America would further increase its importance . THE EMPEROR ’ S WARSThe sheer extent of Charles ’ s European domains , together with his ownideological and personal commitments , involved him in almost nonstop warfare . His adversaries accused him of seeking universal empire , but most of these struggles were , from his point of view , defensive . Some of his non - Spanish advisors , including the Chancellor of the Holy Roman Empire , Mercurino de Gattinara , sought to restore what they saw as the universal monarchy of antiquity , but Charles offered them little encouragement . He distrusted theories in general , especially those that unnecessarily frightened his neighbors , and based his policies on two basic principles : the preservation of his inheritance and the protection of the Catholic faith . The most important threat to his inheritance came from Francis I of France , the only European potentate whose wealth and power approximated his own . Rivalry between Charles and Francis was perhaps inevitable . Francis does not seem to have thought , as Richelieu later did , of France as a strategic island surrounded by Habsburg territories , but he resented his loss of the imperial election to Charles and wanted to revive French claims to Naples , Milan , Flanders , and Artois . He and his son , Henry II , fought campaigns against Charles and his successor in no fewer than 16 years . The conflict ended only with the Treaty of Câteau - Cambrèsis in 1559 . France possessed enormous wealth . Moreover , its position as a compact mass of territories surrounded by Habsburg lands was actually a strategic advantage because the French could force Charles to fight on as many as three fronts without overly extending their own lines of supply and communication . France could strike at any time in the Netherlands , Italy , and the Pyrenees from its own territory , while the emperor ’ s communications — and often his armies — had to move by long and often dangerous routes around the French periphery . In each war , the emperor raised multinational armies to fight in Italy and the Netherlands while relying on Spanish troops to guard against French attacks on Navarre and Catalonia . Despite these disadvantages and the enormous cost of the French wars , Charles ultimately prevailed . The Habsburg – Valois conflict , as it is often called , increased the Emperor ’ s holdings in the Netherlands and made him the virtual master of Italy . In the Netherlands , the French army normally confined itself to attacks on the southern provinces . In the north and east they used surrogates , the most dangerous of whom were the Duke of Gelre ( Gelderland ) and his successor , William “ the Rich , ” Duke of Cleves , who inherited Gelre in 1538 . Gelre was both wealthy and strategically important , for it controlled the passage of the Rhine between Germany and the Netherlands . Under its brutal and gifted marshal , Martin van Rossem , Gelre invaded Friesland , Groningen , andOverijssel in 1521 – 1522 , Utrecht in 1527 , and the heartland of Brabant in 1542 . The Netherlanders repelled each of these attacks at great cost in blood and money , and by 1544 Charles added Tournai , Utrecht , and all of the northeastern Netherlands ( Friesland , Groningen , Overijssel , Drente , and Gelre ) to his realms . The French failed in Italy as well . They continued to fight until 1544 even though the Emperor had established military superiority in the Peninsula by 1528 . In that year he induced the Genoese fleet under Andrea Doria to abandon the siege of Naples . The Spanish general Antonio de Leyva then crushed the French army at Landriano , giving the Duchy of Milan to Charles . Milan was the strategic key to the Po valley and historically a fief of the Empire . Charles restored it to Francesco Maria Sforza in 1530 , but when Sforza died five years later , the Emperor used his imperial authority to name himself Duke . With the French collapse in Italy , Milan became the hub of imperial and , later , Spanish power in Europe . The duchy ’ s arsenals and its usefulness as a center for military recruiting made it valuable ; its control of the lines of communication between Italy and the north made it vital . Under Charles and his successors , traditional Milanese institutions continued to function under the eye of an imperial lieutenant - general whose chief responsibility was to defend Lombardy . He was assisted by the Senate , an appellate court whose approval was needed for all ducal edicts and appointments . Its 12 members , nine of whom had to be Milanese , were appointed by the ruler for life , but there was no representative assembly . Taxes were very high , but nearly all of the revenues were spent on the defense of Lombardy . With Milan and Naples secure , the Emperor began to spin a web of patronage that made the other North Italian states his clients , and ultimately the clients of Spain . He secured Parma and Piacenza , when their pro - French ruler , Pier Luigi Farnese , was assassinated , perhaps with imperial connivance . Although Pier Luigi ’ s successor , Ottavio Farnese , was married to Charles ’ s illegitimate daughter , the Emperor seized Piacenza to secure his good behavior . The emperor ’ s only son and heir , Philip II of Spain ( born 1527 ) , would understand the dynamics of threat and reward as well as his father . When he ascended the Spanish throne in 1556 , he returned Piacenza to the Farnese , thereby securing their support for years to come . In the lower valley of the Po , Charles ensured the loyalty of Ferrara by reconciling its ruling family with the pope . At Mantua , he elevated Ferrante Gonzaga to Duke , confirmed him in his disputed succession to Montferrat , and granted him a number of important military commands . These cities and their networks of fortification neutralized the influence of the emperor ’ s greatest Italian rival , the Republic of Venice , by blocking its militaryaccess to the Italian mainland . In Tuscany , the loyalty of Florence was assured until 1589 when Charles acceded to the request of pope Clement VII and restored the Medici in 1530 . In 1554 , he supported Cosimo de ’ Medici ’ s attack on the neighboring republic of Siena , and brokered an arrangement by which his son Philip became Vicar of Siena only to subinfeudate it to Cosimo . Philip , however , retained the strategically important fortresses along the Tuscan coast — Porto Ercole , Orbetello , Porto San Stefano , l ’ Ansedonia , and Talamone — and placed them under the control of Naples . Of all these arrangements , the Emperor ’ s relationship with Genoa was perhaps the most important . Genoa ’ s fleet of war galleys dominated the Western Mediterranean and its bankers remained essential to the Emperor ’ s finances . Having bribed Andrea Doria to abandon the French cause in 1528 , Charles found it easy to preserve his loyalty and that of his fellow oligarchs by granting them estates and commercial concessions in the Kingdom of Naples . Long - term contracts ensured that the Genoese fleet would patrol the Western Mediterranean and support Spanish / Neapolitan ventures in the region , while the placement of ever - larger loans with Genoese bankers tied the Republic ’ s economy to Spain for the remainder of the century and beyond . By 1544 , Savoy , alone among the Italian states , remained under French control . With an eye to the future , Charles gave its young Duke , Emmanuele Filiberto , refuge at his court . In 1553 he appointed him commander - in - chief of his forces in the Netherlands . When Charles abdicated as ruler of the Netherlands , Savoy became regent for his heir Philip II , and in 1559 defeated the French at St . Quentin , the last battle of the Habsburg – Valois wars . A grateful Philip secured the restoration of his duchy by the Treaty of Câteau - Cambrèsis . For all practical purposes Italy was now , and would long remain , a component of the Spanish empire . From the emperor ’ s point of view , the French wars were a great success , but they distracted him from dealing with two other issues that were in some ways closer to his heart . The rise of the Ottoman Empire during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries brought a new focus to the age - old conflict between Islam and Christendom . Fully equal to the West in wealth and military sophistication , the Ottoman state was also relentlessly expansionist , and directly threatened not only the Emperor ’ s patrimony but his faith . The Turks conquered most of Hungary in 1526 . In 1529 and 1532 they forced the emperor to take the field against them when they besieged Vienna , capitol of the Habsburg hereditary lands . Logistical problems and the onset of winter forced the Turks to retreat onboth occasions , but the continued Turkish presence in Hungary posed a threat to the Austrian heartland until Charles ’ s brother Ferdinand negotiated a truce with the sultan in 1547 . Meanwhile , the Muslim pirates of North Africa , undeterred by the garrisons established under Ferdinand and Isabella , intensified their raids on the Spanish and Italian coasts . Their leader , Kheir - ed - din Barbarossa , had placed himself under the sultan ’ s protection , making Tunis and Algiers part of a semi - autonomous province of the Ottoman Empire with a permanent Turkish garrison . Protests over Barbarossa ’ s depredations forced Charles to mount costly expeditions against Tunis in 1535 and Algiers in 1541 . He captured Tunis with little difficulty , but the attack on Algiers failed because an October storm destroyed the Spanish / Italian invasion fleet . Charles went to his grave regretting that he had not done more to defeat the great enemy of Christendom . The emperor ’ s failure to resolve the problems of Germany on his own terms proved equally distressing . The drift toward princely autonomy within the Empire became a powerful current with the advent of the Protestant Reformation . Two years before Charles ’ s election , the Saxon monk Martin Luther launched an attack on the sale of indulgences by the church . By the time Charles convened the first Diet of his reign at Worms in 1521 , Luther had become the center of a movement that threatened to destroy both the Empire and the unity of western Christendom . Politically , the heart of Luther ’ s message had become an assault on papal authority . It appealed to many Germans , whose anticlericalism was already well - developed , and to princes and city governments who saw in the Reformation an opportunity to gain control of church resources and patronage in their own states . At a deeper level , it threatened to sweep away centuries of religious thought and practice with its doctrine of salvation by faith alone . Charles was determined to resist the Reformation on several grounds . Personally , he remained a devout adherent of the Old Church for whom Luther ’ s teaching held no attractions . He believed , moreover , in the medieval theory that political authority , and the authority of the emperor in particular , derived from the God ’ s Grace as mediated by the Church . The office of Holy Roman Emperor was in fact sacred and quasi - priestly in its own right , a symbol of Christian unity derived ultimately from the age of Constantine . Practically , he saw that the towns and princes who favored the Reformation wanted to use the church ’ s resources to increase their autonomy at the expense of the Empire . Charles nevertheless tried to achieve a religious settlement through negotiation at Augsburg in 1530 , but efforts foundered on the intransigence of the Catholicprinces , including his brother Ferdinand . A group of Protestant princes and towns formed the Schmalkaldic League in the following year . When a second attempt at reconciliation failed at Regensburg in 1541 , Charles became convinced that only military action could save the empire . War , however , did not come to Germany until 1546 when Charles ’ s army outmaneuvered the Schmalkaldic League on the Danube and then routed the army of John George of Saxony at Mühlberg in March , 1547 . Five years later , the Protestants , reorganized and with new leadership , surprised the Emperor and drove him across the Alps into Italy . An army raised by the Castilian duke of Alba came to his rescue , but the reign ended with an uneasy religious compromise , the Peace of Augsburg ( 1555 ) . The French assisted the Protestants in these latter wars , and tried to cooperate from time to time with the Turks . The papacy , fearing Charles ’ s growing power in Italy , sometimes allied itself with France . Such combinations , although worrisome , tended to founder on differences of culture and purpose . A more serious problem was that the Emperor could not approach any one of these conflicts without worrying about the others . Their simultaneity prolonged his struggles and made them far more costly than they might otherwise have been . He therefore failed to achieve decisive results against either the Turks or the Protestants . The French wars , however , strengthened and expanded his authority in the Netherlands and gave him effective control over the Italian Peninsula . By 1561 , France itself had fallen into a civil war that effectively neutralized it until the 1590 s . IMPERIAL FINANCEThe cost of the emperor ’ s many wars was , of course , enormous . In most years it exceeded the revenues of all his states combined . Like the other princes of his day , he therefore lived largely on credit . From the 1540 s , wars in the Netherlands had been financed almost entirely with bonds issued by the various towns and provinces and pledged against specific sources of public revenue . These instruments , like the municipal bonds of today , provided guaranteed payments at fixed intervals , and could be bought and sold at market rates on European bourses . Because the credit of Netherlandish towns and provinces was better than the emperor ’ s , interest rates on this funded debt remained at a manageable 4 – 10 percent . The system was financially sound , but caused taxes to rise more rapidly than the rate of inflation . In 1520 the Netherlands contributed about 500 , 000 ducats to the emperor . By 1555 the annual receipts had reached 3 . 25 million . It was a heavy burden , but Netherlanders could console themselves with the thought that all of this money was consumed locally by the Regent ’ s government in the wars with France and Gelre . For expenses outside the Netherlands , Charles relied upon an older and far more costly system of finance . His officials borrowed money by asiento or agreement from private bankers . At the beginning of the reign , most of these loans were made by the Fuggers , the Welsers , and a handful of smaller German banks . Italian firms , the most important of which were the Genoese Dorias , eventually acquired about half of this business . The German share dropped to about a quarter , with Spanish and Netherlandish banks covering the remainder . Asientos differed from bonded debt in that payment of both interest and principal was to be made at a specified future date ( normally at one of the quarterly fairs of Antwerp or Genoa ) . As unforeseen emergencies arose and the size of armies increased , payment was often delayed , sometimes for decades . Bankers expected this , and charged interest rates of 12 – 20 percent on these loans , plus handling charges and service fees that continued to mount as long as the balance remained unpaid . Of this “ floating ” debt , 29 million ducats with a repayment obligation of no less than 38 million was secured against Castilian revenues alone . By 1557 , much had been paid off , but 12 million in principle remained , exclusive of fees and penalties . In that year , Charles ’ s son Philip , now Philip II of Spain , stopped payment on these loans and eventually restructured them by offering his creditors juros ( bonds ) at rates of between 6 and 7 percent . Wars , however , continued — as did borrowing at usurious rates . The Spanish state bankruptcy of 1557 was followed by similar restructurings in 1575 , 1596 , 1607 , 1627 , and 1647 , yet bankers continued to make loans whose terms they knew to be largely fictional . The reasons for this apparent folly were complex . In an agrarian economy with low or even negative rates of growth , few other investments returned 6 or 7 percent . Bankers reasoned that even loans converted to bonds would at least be paid over time , and with the build up of fees , penalties , and service charges on the original asientos , they could provide income over many years . In the meantime , if a banker could somehow secure payment before the next bankruptcy , his returns would be very much larger . The royal secretaries who arranged asientos encouraged such thinking by telling bankers that payment of existing loans would be delayed if no new loans were forthcoming . Other incentives to lenders included trading rights , monopolies in crown territories , and even the right to collect some of the taxes on which their loan was based . The Doria family , for example , enjoyed an immensely lucrative contract by which they provided galleys for the imperial fleet . They acquiredestates in Naples that had been confiscated from the rebels of 1528 , and were given monopolies that enabled them to gain control of much of that kingdom ’ s export trade . Concessions on a smaller scale were granted to other lenders . Over time , the government ’ s chronic insolvency created vast networks of mutual dependency that were often of more benefit to others than to itself . The system devised by Charles and his ministers provided emergency funding as needed , and tied Europe ’ s financiers to the fortunes of the empire . It could not , however , be sustained without far higher levels of economic growth than his states could provide . Germany , which had probably contributed no more than 3 . 23 million ducats between 1520 and 1555 , contributed nothing after the emperor ’ s abdication . Naples , which had contributed 8 million ducats in the same period , and the Netherlands , which contributed vastly more , had both reached the practical limits of taxation . Aragon , Sardinia , and Sicily contributed only enough to sustain themselves . Castile became the borrower of choice because , of all Charles ’ s kingdoms , it alone produced more tax revenues than it required for its own protection . Taxes in Castile rose throughout the reign , but the Emperor ’ s advisors believed that the overall burden of taxation had far to go before it seriously damaged the economy . Modern studies have generally agreed . Castile prospered under Charles V , while taxes rose at no more than the approximate level of inflation . Philip II , however , continued the fiscal policies of his father . The debt mounted and taxes continued to rise until by the 1590 s they began to create real economic distress at a time when agricultural yields declined , probably as a result of climate change . The financial system contributed by Charles V to his Spanish successors proved to be the most damaging part of his legacy . THE SPANISH ASCENDANCYThe importance of Castile as a source of revenues and credit was the most important reason for Spain ’ s emergence as the dominant power among the emperor ’ s European possessions , but there were others . Spain provided the cadre of professional soldiers at the core of his armies . They rarely numbered more than a fifth of his troops in the field , but their training , loyalty , and discipline made them indispensable . Spanish commanders such as Antonio de Leyva , the Marquis del Vasto , and the Duke of Alba became more prominent as the reign progressed . Castile ’ s government was also more amenable to the Emperor ’ s will than those of his other kingdoms . Traditional privilege , the bane of othermonarchies , was far weaker than in the Netherlands or the German Empire and the administration , controlled largely by secretaries like the great Francisco de Los Cobos , was extremely efficient by the standards of the day . On a personal level , Charles came to appreciate Spanish culture and its values . Spanish policy had long been anti - French . Even in Catalonia there was at this time no pro - French faction of the kind that had long existed in the Netherlands or in the Italian states . Moreover , hatred of the Turks and of Islam in general had deep roots in Spanish history and culture . The annual depredations of the North African pirates reinforced it , and the Cortes usually demanded that Charles expend more effort on the Muslim threat rather than less . Heresy , too , found little acceptance in Spain . The best efforts of the Inquisition uncovered no more than a few dozen Spanish heretics , only a handful of whom may actually have been Protestants . Spain remained firmly Catholic while the number of Protestants in Germany and the Netherlands grew throughout the reign . German Protestantism was a powerful movement that enjoyed substantial political and military support . Charles acknowledged that he could do little or nothing to defeat it by accepting the Peace of Augsburg at the end of his reign . In the Netherlands , Protestants remained a small minority , but many Catholics , including some provincial and municipal authorities , tolerated beliefs that most Spaniards found abhorrent . The emperor issued ferocious placards or edicts against heresy which , although not always enforced , served to limit its growth in his lifetime , but Germany and to a lesser extent England remained sources of reinfection . When he died , heresy was under a measure of control , and his lifelong alliance with the great nobles remained intact . The 17 provinces were loyal , but Charles no longer shared the values of many Netherlanders . The Spanish may not have wanted their money spent in faraway Germany , but they could not in conscience object to the Emperor ’ s religious policies . It is little wonder that , as the reign progressed , the Emperor grew more attached to his Spanish kingdoms . He had long since learned Castilian , and now used it as a matter of preference . Even his confessors were Spanish . When , sick and exhausted , he decided to abdicate his offices , he chose a monastery in the remote Castilian province of Extremadura as his place of retirement . As Charles approached the end of his reign , certain conclusions seemed inescapable . The first was that the French , the Turks , and the Protestants would remain a threat . He could not foresee that the accidental death of Henry II would plunge France into nearly 40 years of civil war or that the Turks and Protestants would abide by the treaties they made with his brother Ferdinand . He could see no end to war , and no new source of monies to support it other than Castile . Charles had always intended that his son Philip would inherit the Spanish and Italian kingdoms . Charles ’ s brother Ferdinand , elected King of the Romans in 1531 , would be the next Holy Roman Emperor . It was assumed that Ferdinand , following imperial tradition , would then arrange for the election of his own son Maximilian as King of the Romans , and that Maximilian would become emperor after Ferdinand ’ s death . The Netherlands were historically part of the Empire and would therefore have gone to Ferdinand and Maximilian , but in 1548 Charles declared them independent and named Philip as their future ruler . Three decades of warfare with France had convinced him that the provinces could not survive without the financial and military might of Spain . He may also have feared that membership in the Empire would expose the Netherlands to even greater inroads by the Protestants . Two years later , to his brother ’ s horror , he therefore reopened the issue of the imperial succession . Charles now believed that the German Empire could not survive without Spanish help and wanted Philip elected King of the Romans rather than Maximilian . This initiative failed because the electors feared Spanish power and would never have accepted it , but the Duchy of Milan was now added to Philip ’ s responsibilities as a kind of compromise . To further secure the safety of the Netherlands , Charles arranged a marriage between Philip and Queen Mary of England in 1554 . The union was unpopular with the English and ended with the death of the childless Queen in 1558 . Philip tried to maintain an alliance with her successor , the Protestant Elizabeth I , but it soon became obvious that the emperor ’ s vision of England as a political counterweight to France was doomed . When Charles died at the monastery of Yuste on September 21 , 1558 , Philip ( now Philip II of Spain ) ruled all of his father ’ s realms outside Germany and Austria . He also inherited his father ’ s problems and his debts , including full responsibility for the Netherlands . Meanwhile , the enormous and largely unanticipated growth of Castile ’ s empire in the New World was beginning to suggest the means by which these responsibilities might be fulfilled .