Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/688

 632 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE the time. Queen Isabella is believed to have established the first field hospital when in 1484 she provided six large tents fully furnished and free medical and surgical attendance. Three years later it took four hundred " ambulancias " to carry the Queen's Hospital. Yet Isabella and Ferdinand drove thousands of Jews from their realm and through the Spanish Inquisition burned at the stake many heretics and Moorish or Jewish converts to Christianity who had re- lapsed to their original faith. Spain was not a land of great economic resources and this persecution of some of its most prosperous inhabitants and those most skillful in business and industries further operated to prevent the growth of a middle class. The discovery of America still more increased the power of the Crown, which ruled the Spanish colonies absolutely and derived a great income in gold and silver bullion from them. This did not in the long run stimulate the economic development of Spain itself, however, but rather had the contrary effect. Castile was more amenable to the great increase of royal power under Ferdinand and Isabella than Aragon, which clung tenaciously to its old cus- toms and local liberties. But inasmuch as Castile was three times as large as Aragon it was likely in the end to swing the smaller kingdom with it. Ferdinand was a very astute and, it must be added, un- scrupulous diplomat. He deceived or outwitted all the other Diplomacy European powers at least once each. When it was of Ferdi- reported to him that another monarch had com- plained that the King of Aragon had cheated him twice, Ferdinand exclaimed, "He lies! I cheated him three times!" A favorite method with Ferdinand was to enter alliances and then leave the others in the lurch as soon as he had secured his own object. He was generally hostile to France, with which he came into conflict in Italy and the Pyrenees. Hence he married his children to princes of other nations, giving his daughter Joanna to Philip, Archduke of Austria, the son of Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy, and his other two daughters to John II of Portugal and Henry VIII of England. Finally, however, after the death of Isa-