Juan II., the son of the young Catherine and the boy prince of the Asturias, died in 1454, and his son Enrique (or Henry) IV. was King of Castile. When, after some years, Henry was without children, and with health very infirm, his young sister Isabella unexpectedly found herself the acknowledged heir to the throne of Castile. She suddenly became a very important young person. The old King of Portugal was a suitor for her hand, and a brother of the King of England, and also a brother of the King of France, were striving for the same honor. But Isabella had very decided views of her own. Her hero was the young Ferdinand of Aragon, and heir to that throne. She resisted all her brother's efforts to coerce her, and finally took the matter into her own hands by sending an envoy to her handsome young lover to come to her at Valladolid, with a letter telling him they had better be married at once.

Accompanied by a few knights disguised as merchants, Ferdinand, pretending to be their servant, during the entire journey waited on them at table and took care of their mules. He entered Valladolid, where he was received by the Archbishop of Toledo, who was in the conspiracy, and was by him conveyed to Isabella's apartments. We are told that when he entered someone exclaimed: Ese-es, Ese-es (that is he); and the escutcheon of the descendants of that knight has ever since borne a double S.S., which sounds like this exclamation.

The marriage was arranged to take place in four days. An embarrassment then occurred of which no one had before thought. Neither of them had any money. But someone was found who would lend them enough for the wedding expenses, and so on the 19th of October, 1469, the most important marriage ever yet consummated in Spain took place—a marriage which would forever set at rest the rivalries between Castile and Aragon, and bring honors undreamed of to a united Spain.

Isabella was fair, intelligent, accomplished, and lovely. She was eighteen and her boy husband was a year younger. Of course her royal brother stormed and raged. But, of course, it did no good. In five years from that time (1474) he died, and Isabella, royally attired, and seated on a white palfrey, proceeded to the throne prepared for her, and was there proclaimed "Queen of Castile." At the end of another five years, Ferdinand came into his inheritance. His old father, Juan II., King of Aragon and Navarre, died in 1479, and Castile, Aragon, and Navarre—all of Spain except Portugal and Granada—had come under the double crown of Ferdinand and Isabella.

The war with Portugal still existed, and their reign began in the midst of confusion and trouble, but it was brilliant from the outset. Ferdinand had great abilities and an ambition which matched his abilities. Isabella, no less ambitious than he, was more far-reaching in her plans, and always saw more clearly than Ferdinand what was for the true glory of Spain. With infinite tact she softened his asperities, and disarmed his jealousy, and ruled her "dear lord," by making him believe he ruled her.

A joint sovereignty, with a man so grasping of power and so jealous of his own rights, required self-control and tact in no ordinary measure. It was agreed at last that in all public acts Ferdinand's name should precede hers; and although her sanction was necessary, his indignation at this was abated by her promise of submission to his will. The court of the new sovereigns was established at Seville, and they took up their abode in that palace so filled with associations both Moorish and Castilian—the Alcazar. From the very first Isabella's powerful mind grappled every public question, and she gave herself heart and soul to what she believed was her divine mission—the building up of a great Catholic state. Isabella's devout soul was sorely troubled by the prevalence of Judaism in her kingdom. She took counsel with her confessor, and also with the Pope, and by their advice a religious tribunal was established at Seville in 1483, the object of which was to inquire of heretics whether they were willing to renounce their faith and accept Christianity. The head of this tribunal, which was soon followed by others in all the large cites, was a Dominican friar called Torquemada. He was known as the "Inquisitor General." Inaccessible to pity, mild in manners, humble in demeanor, yet swayed only by a sense of duty, this strange being was so cruel that he seems like an incarnation of the evil principle. At the tribunal in Seville alone it is said that in thirty-six years four thousand victims were consigned to the flames, besides the thousands more who endured living deaths by torture, mutilation, and nameless sufferings.

Humanity shudders at the recital! And yet this monstrous tribunal was the creation of one of the wisest and gentlest of women, who believed no rigors could be too great to save people from eternal death! And, in her misguided zeal, she emptied her kingdom of a people who had helped to create its prosperity, and drove the most valuable part of her population into France, Italy, and England, there to disseminate the seeds of a higher culture and intelligence which they had imbibed from contact with the Moors, who had treated them with such uniform tolerance and gentleness.

The kingdom of Granada was now at the height of its splendor. Its capital city was larger and richer than any city in Spain. Its army was the best equipped of any in Europe. The Moorish king, a man of fiery temper, thought the time had come when he might defy his enemy by refusing to pay an annual tribute to which his father had ten years before consented. When Ferdinand's messenger, in 1476, came to demand the accustomed tribute, he said, "Go tell your master the kings who pay tribute in Granada are all dead. Our mints coin nothing but sword-blades now."

The cool and crafty Ferdinand prepared his own answer to this challenge. The infatuated King Abdul-Hassan followed up his insult by capturing the Christian fortress of Zahara. His temper was not at the best at this time on account of a war raging in his own household. His wife Ayesha was fiercely jealous of a Christian captive whom he had also made his wife. She had become his favorite Sultana, and was conspiring to have her own son supplant Boabdil, the son of Ayesha, the heir to the throne. In his championship of Zoraya and her son, Abdul-Hassan imprisoned Ayesha and Boabdil, whom he threatened to disinherit. We are shown to-day the window in the Alhambra from which Ayesha lowered Boabdil in a basket, telling him to come back with an army and assert his rights. Suddenly, while absorbed by this smaller war, news came that Alhama, their most impregnable fortress, only six leagues from the city of Granada, had been captured by Ferdinand's army. It was the key to Granada. Despair was in every soul. The air was filled with wailing and lamentation. "Woe, woe is me, Alhama!" "Ay de mi, Alhama!" Indignant with their old king, who had brought destruction upon them, when Boabdil came with his army of followers, they flocked about him—"El Rey Chico!" (the boy king) as they called him. Abdul Hassan was forced to fly, and Boabdil reigned over the expiring kingdom. It was a brief and troubled reign.

In the famous "Court of the Lions" in the Alhambra, visitors are shown to-day the blood-stains left by the celebrated massacre of the "Abencerrages." The Abencerrages had supported the claim of Ayesha's rival, Zoraya; and it is said that Boabdil invited the Princes of this clan, some thirty in number, to a friendly conference in the Alhambra, and there had them treacherously beheaded at the fountain.

But whether this blood-stain upon his memory is as doubtful as those upon the stones at the fountain, seems an open question.

From the painting by V. Brozik.

Columbus at the Court of Ferdinand and Isabella.