Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 3.djvu/180

 120 STATESMEN AND SAGES for the brave Moorish king of Granada, who said, when threatened with invasion, " Our mint no longer coins gold, but steel ! " In this last great chivalrous war, a war for race and creed and country, all honor is due to the vanquished, who poured out their blood like water for their homes and their religion. The details of this heroic death-struggle belong to history rather than to biography. Yet Isabella was the great animating spirit of the war. Her tent was side by side with that of Ferdinand, and her counsel was ever wise and practical. And near the royal tents were others which she erected, where the wounded in the fray might have medical aid and tender nursing. Thus our "Warrior Queen," with a woman's heart, provided the first Army Hospital on record. The tents were burned down, but a substantial city arose, as if by magic, to take their place. The knights would have called it " Isabella," but she named it " Santa Fe," the city of Holy Faith. And this city helped to bring the war to a close. The Moors knew by it that Isabella had come to stay until she had added Granada to the crown of Castile. Another form rises before us as we look back four hundred years across the vega of Granada to the city of Sante Fe. We forget for a time the Christians and the Moors, we see only the great queen and the great discoverer. The man of science, Christoforo Colombo, had been lately dismissed from the court at Sante Fe. The sovereigns had no time for adventurers seeking aid to discover unknown lands when the reconquest of their own was just within their grasp. Cast down, but not discouraged, Columbus, all alone, was retracing his steps across the vega, en route for a port from whence to sail for England, when the queen sent a royal summons for him to return, and he reached Sante Fe just in time to be present at the surrender of Granada. Let me add that while the Moors as a nation fell with Granada, they were not as individuals banished from Spain until the reign of Philip II., the great-grandson of Isabella. We all know the story of Columbus. At this time he was but a penniless mendicant travelling on foot from court to court, seeking patronage to enable him to prove the truth which his great mind had grasped, the rotundity of the earth. The subject had given him no rest for eighteen years. He had discussed it be- fore wise men in council assembled ; he had pleaded with royalty in vain ; at the court of Isabella, for the first time, he laid his plans and discussed his projects before a woman. The world to-day pays its tribute of four hundred years to Co- lumbus, the World-finder. All honor to the brave man who, firm of faith and fearless of fate, unfurled his sails 'upon an unknown sea, and planted the cross and the banner of Castile upon an unknown land. All honor, too, to Queen Isabella of Spain, who, with " faith in things unseen," had the courage to say, " I will undertake the enterprise for mine own crown of Castile," and from whose presence Columbus went forth to discover a land he never dreamed of, and to open a gate for the exodus of nations across the pathless sea. The same pen that signed the capitulation of the Moors and the contract with Columbus, signed also an edict for the expulsion of all unbaptized Jews from Spain between March and July of 1492. This edict condemned to perpetual exile from one to