the reunion of Naples, the grip on the two gates of the Pyrenees, Navarre and Roussillon, the reversion, however unintentional, to the priceless Burgundian inheritance, the expulsion of Jews and Moors, and the two institutions, good or bad, of the Inquisition and the government by Council, which to the close of the 18th century mastered a proud and undisciplined nation? Such marvels are all the greater if full weight is given to the ubiquitous anarchy of Castile under Isabella's brother and father, and to the effervescing disorder in the Aragonese States, which Ferdinand's father, resourceful and relentless as he was, could never quite repress.

Questions there are, of course, still open for discussion, such as the respective parts played by husband and wife, the real worth of America to Spain, the policy of NorthAfrican settlement and of Neapolitan conquest, the intentions of Ferdinand as to his inheritance. On all these Mr Merriman pronounces with full knowledge of the evidence and with well-considered judgment; he is, perhaps, at his best throughout in the treatment of the wider problems. He can distinguish the essence of Spanish history from the confusion of incidental facts. On the first of these heads Castilian writers have usually given the foremost place to Isabella, while Italian historians scarcely mention her, but dwell on Ferdinand's European prestige. This is natural enough, for to Castilians the main objects of interest were Granada, America, the purity of the faith and an orderly government, which were pre-eminently the tasks of their country and their queen. Italians regarded Ferdinand as the creator of a Mediterranean Empire, which might at any moment extend from Apulia to the Eastern Adriatic and thence from Athens to the Chersonese. They were dazzled by Ferdinand's remarkable victories over the gigantic power of France, by the skill with which he brought Emperor, Pope, England, Venice, the Swiss and Brittany into one or other of his combinations, by his very power of deceit, which in Guicciardini's opinion surpassed that of all other men. Machiavelli more than once declares that prestige was in itself an aim for Ferdinand, and holds that, in the conquest of Granada, the African campaign, the attack on Naples, Vol. 231.-No. 459.

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even the expulsion of the Moors, his end was not this or that success but the gaining of reputation under the mask of religion, and the keeping the attention of his subjects on the strain by the multiplicity of unexpected enterprises. Ferdinand's Italian aims were certainly not limited to Naples; all Italy was subject to the infiltration of Spanish troops; they protected Pisa and sacked Prato; they were beaten at Bologna and Ravenna only to rout the Venetians near Vicenza; they held the passage of the Po at Piacenza when Francis I's victory of Marignano turned the scale against them. It is hard on Italy that Machiavellism should be fathered on her for all time, whereas Machiavelli was impressing on Italians the value of fierce energy and cant, the very qualities which they lacked, and thus made the Spaniard, Cæsar Borgia, the impersonation of the one and Ferdinand that of the other.

In a general sense, Isabella's interest was intensive government, that of Ferdinand territorial extension. His adventurous, expansive nature would have been cramped in the subordinate position in Castile to which his wife confined him; it found its vent in the manipulation of foreign policy. The suppression of a disorderly nobility, especially in Galicia and Andalusia, was the Queen's task; so was the conquest of Granada, though Ferdinand took an active and valiant part in the military operations. Annexation in Africa was for Isabella the enlargement of Granada; Ferdinand concurred in her plans, but with a view to Mediterranean expansion rather than to Spanish security. Aragon, it must be remembered, was still a State apart; the monarchical reforms in Castile had little reaction there; the only new institution common to the two kingdoms was the Inquisition. The Jews were, indeed, expelled from Aragon; but, when Isabella drove the unconvertible Moors from Granada, Ferdinand did not follow suit, and, after her death, tried to modify the severity of her measures. Isabella has usually been credited with the support of Columbus, tardy and grudging as it was; but Mr Merriman accepts the more modern view that Ferdinand was from the first an eager participant, even though Castile enjoyed the monopoly of trade and settlement. Of Isabella there is less to say, because her aims were obvious and straightforward-unity of faith and of race, promotion of true

religion and justice, the supremacy of Castile, and, within Castile, of herself. Her force lay in stability of will, that of Ferdinand in the astuteness of his restless intellect; Machiavelli, it is true, once called him astute and fortunate rather than wise and farsighted. It is to their credit that, in spite of such diversities, they remained a comparatively harmonious couple.

The discovery of America, the conquests in North Africa and Italy, and even the absorption of Navarre and Roussillon have this common tie, 'that all contributed to the embarrassing wealth of alternative adventures which ultimately bled Spain white. As if this were not enough, the international marriage policy of the Catholic Kings entailed yet further liabilities and complexities. The price paid for America was very high, for it drained Castile, a thinly populated State with a peculiarly low birth-rate and a proclivity towards indolence, of its most energetic manhood. Yet few would disagree with Mr Merriman's conclusion:

'Had Spain kept out of the New World she would doubtless have led a more comfortable existence in the Old. She would not have been so easily induced to attempt impossible tasks. She would not have drawn down on herself the jealousy and hatred of neighbouring States. She would probably have avoided the fatal trial of strength with England. She might well have been more powerful to-day. Yet, when all is said and done, it was the Indies that account for her greatness during the short period that it lasted. If they were a principal cause of her subsequent decay, they were also the primary source of her temporary pre-eminence. Without them she would never have been able to retain the hegemony of Europe as long as she did; without them the Spanish Empire would scarcely have been worthy of the name.'

The chapter on this huge subject is necessarily a sketch, but it is valuable as summarising the results of numerous recent works, very few of which are available for the English reader. The sketch, too, is a sufficient reminder that before Ferdinand's death settlement on the mainland was very tentative, while by implication it corrects the inveterate belief that the mines of America were the cause of the remarkable rise of prices in Europe at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries. They were

then in fact quite inadequate for such a result, and not nearly so important as the silver mines of Tirol.

It might naturally be urged that Ferdinand should not have committed himself to the conquest of Naples. Yet it is fair to remember that it was his uncle Alfonso's choicest possession. The Catholic Kings, so long as the illegitimate line went in direct succession, had made no claim, but, when reversion was granted by Alexander VI to the third king's uncle, they had raised a reasonable protest. The alternative, moreover, was inevitable conquest by France; and where then would be the security for Sicily? The end was perhaps justifiable, though the less said about the means the better. It is rather in North Africa that Ferdinand's policy deserves criticism ; and this not for doing too much but too little. For Isabella, Granada was a bridge-head for North Africa; for Ferdinand North Africa was a jumping-off place for Italy. Ximenes in 1509, after much opposition and at his own expense, personally essayed to carry out Isabella's scheme. Oran was taken and colonised by six hundred Spanish families; and Ximenes would have followed this up by the conquest of the great kingdom of Tlemçen. Navarro, who succeeded, was against inland enterprise, and cared chiefly for the pillage of the coast towns. He took the old commercial port of Bugia, seized Peñon d'Argel, the islet which commanded Algiers, and captured Tripoli. All this was not worth doing unless occupation were extended far into the interior. Instead of this, Ferdinand used these troops, reinforced (it would appear) by Askari, as a reserve to be thrown upon Italy, where they were beaten at Ravenna.

Such was the mistaken policy which Spain continued to pursue. Her garrisons held a series of posts, which had to be provisioned, sometimes even watered, from Spain and Sicily. Losses by disease and desertion were unceasing. Fanatical tribes would gather as suddenly as sand-storms in the desert, and isolate the helpless garrisons of the coast. The peril of Melilla, Spain's first conquest, in 1909, was the most recent serious warning, but will not be the last. France, much later in the field, adopted the wiser policy. While Spain nibbled at the coast-line of North Africa, France swallowed the interior.

It is difficult to accept Mr Merriman's theory that

Ferdinand's second marriage with Germaine de Foix was due to a patriotic wish for a son who might exclude the foreigner, the Habsburg, from the Spanish thrones. Castile was the predominant partner; and to her the issue of Ferdinand and Germaine would be doubly foreign, whereas the two sons of Philip of Habsburg— Charles and Ferdinand-were her beloved heroine's grand-children. Ferdinand must have realised from the attitude of Castilian nobles during Philip's visit to Spain, and from his own unpleasant reception by Castilian towns on his retirement to Aragon, that such a dynastic revolution was impossible. On Ferdinand's death Spanish unity was in the scales of fate with the weights against it. Castile and Aragon still stood back to back, scornfully shrugging their shoulders at each other. Ferdinand's international policy had at the last moment gone awry. Francis I's victory at Marignano broke up the combination which Ferdinand had laboriously formed against him. Naples would be the next French objective; and Francis would undoubtedly champion the rights of the house of Albret to Navarre, and use his victorious armies for the recovery of Roussillon. In Castile Isabella's blows had only scotched, not killed, the snake of noble disaffection, while the cities represented in Cortes might raise new pretensions against the absolutism so recently established. The Queen Joanna was mad, her son Charles a stranger. On Ferdinand's death he would presumably be King of Aragon. This would preserve the formal union of the Spanish States; but did either Castile or Aragon wish for this? The difficult future depended on a personality with capacity to attack a problem for which the ablest of European kings had found no complete solution.

The Catholic Kings can scarcely be dismissed without mention of the Inquisition. Spain, when it was introduced, was in the heyday of the Renaissance; and they can scarcely have foreseen that the persecution of relapsing Jews and Moors would prove fatal to the intellectual future of the nation. The elimination of Jews did probably contribute to the decline of talent in the liberal professions, as the expulsion of the Moors did to that of agriculture. On the other hand, Spain escaped the religious wars of France, the Netherlands