Note (back) — INDEX.

The most persistent of Henry's advisers was none of his council. He was Ferdinand the Catholic, King of Aragon; and to his inspiration has been ascribed[94] the course of foreign policy during the first five years of his son-in-law's reign. He worked through his daughter; the only thing she valued in life, wrote Catherine a month after her marriage, was her father's confidence. When Membrilla was recalled because he failed to satisfy Catherine's somewhat exacting temper, she was herself formally commissioned to act in his place as Ferdinand's ambassador at Henry's Court; Henry was begged to give her implicit credence and communicate with Spain through her mediation! "These kingdoms of your highness," she wrote to her father, "are in great tranquillity."[95] Well might Ferdinand congratulate himself on the result of her marriage, and the addition of fresh, to his already extensive, domains. He needed them all to ensure the success of his far-reaching schemes. His eldest grandson, Charles, was heir not only to Castile and Aragon, Naples and the Indies, which were to come to him from his mother, Ferdinand's imbecile daughter, Juaña, but to Burgundy and Austria, the lands of his father, Philip, and of Philip's father, the Emperor Maximilian. This did not satisfy Ferdinand's grasping ambition; he sought to carve out for his second grandson, named after himself, a kingdom in Northern Italy.[96] On the Duchy of Milan, the republics of Venice, Genoa and Florence, his greedy eyes were fixed. Once conquered, they would bar the path of France to Naples; compensated by these possessions, the younger Ferdinand might resign his share in the Austrian inheritance to Charles; while Charles himself was to marry the only daughter of the King of Hungary, add that to his other dominions, and revive the empire of Charlemagne. Partly with these objects in view, partly to draw off the scent from his own track, Ferdinand had, in 1508, raised the hue and cry after Venice. Pope and Emperor, France and Spain, joined in the chase, but of all the parties to the league of Cambrai, Louis XII. was in a position to profit the most. His victory over Venice at Agnadello (14th May, 1509), secured him Milan and Venetian territory as far as the Mincio; it also dimmed the prospects of Ferdinand's Italian scheme and threatened his hold on Naples; but the Spanish King was restrained from open opposition to France by the fact that Louis was still mediating between him and Maximilian on their claims to the administration of Castile, the realm of their daughter and daughter-in-law, Juaña.