Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. III.djvu/133

107 XIII. INVASION OF SPAIN. 107 forth, as we have seen, its swarms of warriors, to chapter repel the foe, and roll back the tide of war upon his own land. What a contrast did all this present to the cold and parsimonious hand with which the nation, thirty years before, dealt out its supplies to King John the Second, Ferdinand's father, when he was left to cope single-handed with the whole power of France, in this very quarter of Roussillon. Such was the consequence of the glorious union, which brought together the petty and hitherto dis- cordant tribes of the Peninsula under the same rule ; and, by creating common interests and an harmonious principle of action, was silently prepar- ing them for constituting one great nation, — one and indivisible, as intended by nature. and may well remind us of the as- the general rules of human con- tonishment somewhere expressed duct, every thing is referred to by Cardinal de Retz at the assur- deep laid stratagem ; no allowance ance of those, who, at a distance is made for the ordinary disturbing from the scene of action, pretended forces, the passions and casualties to lay open all the secret springs of life, every action proceeds with of policy, of which he himself, the same wary calculation that reg- though a principal party, was ig- ulates the moves upon a chess- norant. board ; and thus a character of con- No prince, on the whole, has summate artifice is built up, not suffered more from these unwar- only unsupported by historical evi- rantable liberties, than Ferdinand dence, but in manifest contradic- the Catholic. His reputation for tion to the principles of our nature, shrewd policy, suggests a ready The part of our subject embraced key to whatever is mysterious and in the present chapter, has long otherwise inexplicable in his gov- been debatable ground between the ernment ; while it puts writers like French and Spanish historians ; Gaillard and Varillas constantly on and the obscurity which hangs the scent after the most secret and over it has furnished an ample subtilesourcesof action, as if there range for speculation to the class were always something more to be of writers above alluded to, which detected, than readily meets the they have not failed to improve, eye. Instead of judging him by