Enriched by the estates of the dead and the elimination of ‘this heretical crime’, Isabella, confirmed in her belief that Castile was riddled with Judaizing heretics, was enthusiastic. The Seville Inquisition dealt with 16,000 cases, and 2,000 were executed in the first ten years. Isabella then turned to the Muslims.
In 1481, a posse of Islamic Granadan horsemen captured a Castilian town, an embarrassment that accelerated Isabella’s crusade to eliminate the rich but chaotic amirate of Granada. Ferdinand commanded in the field, while Isabella arranged the supplies, financed by her Jewish advisers Samuel Abulafia and Isaac Abravanel.
On horseback, power-dressed to maximum effect, Isabella delivered provisions to the military camps while overseeing the negotiations that encouraged civil war among the Granadans. In this she was aided by the capture of Amir Muhammad XII who, leaving his son El Infantico Ahmed as a hostage, became their vassal. The Muslims won some skirmishes – ‘I heard what happened with the Moors,’ she wrote. ‘I am greatly displeased’ – and in 1487, while the monarchs were besieging Málaga, a Muslim tried to assassinate them. After he had been killed by Isabella’s guards, the man’s body was catapulted into Málaga. When the city fell, Isabella enslaved everyone, distributing as many as 11,000 slaves. As the war dragged on, the queen in 1489 visited the siege of Baza, where her entourage was joined by a rumpled Genoese sailor who had just arrived in Castile.
Son of a Genoese weaver, taverner and cheesemonger, Cristóbal Colón – Columbus – had sailed with Genoese traders to England, Iceland and Guinea. A compiler of apocalyptic prophecies and travel books – particularly those of the Bible and Marco Polo respectively – he was visionary, loquacious, insecure, mendacious and shamelessly pushy, but also a tough and enterprising sailor, obsessed like so many, then and now, with the coming end of the world. Columbus was married to Felipa Perestrello, daughter of the late Madeiran potentate, who had shown him family papers suggesting the possibility of western access to the Indies – and given him an entrée to the Portuguese court.
Columbus presented the vigorous new king, João II, Isabella’s cousin, with his vision of a world-changing voyage.
THE
João was a good fit for Columbus: as great-nephew of the Navigator, he had accompanied his father Afonso the African on his conquests. Inheriting an overextended crown aged twenty-six, betrayed by overmighty grandees, he beheaded one cousin, the duke of Braganza, and invited another, the duke of Viseu, to his chamber for ‘an act of private justice’: there he personally gutted Viseu before killing all his associates. No wonder Isabella always called him El Hombre; for the Portuguese he was O Príncipe Perfeito.
In 1482, he built a castle on the Gold Coast, São Jorge da Mina (The Mine, still standing), as a base for the gold trade which now provided a quarter of royal revenue.* Around 8,000 ounces of gold a year were sent to Lisbon, rising to 25,000. The Portuguese inserted themselves into the local slave trade, buying around 500 slaves a year from Oba Ewuare’s Benin. Some were sold through Elmina or Cape Verde to Akan kings of Denkyira, who used them as porters and labourers; others were sold to Europeans to work on São Tomé, Madeira and Canaria.
