Spain

IN 1492, TWO EVENTS took place that shaped modern history in Spain. In January 1492, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella captured Grenada, the last Moorish (Muslim) city in Spain. In October 1492, Christopher Columbus, sailing for Ferdinand and Isabella, discovered the New World and claimed it for Spain. By freeing Spain from Islamic dominion, Ferdinand and Isabella liberated Western Europe from the last danger of Muslim conquest, a landmark that would not take place in Eastern Europe until the Austrian conquests of the 17th century. By supporting Columbus in his first voyage of discovery, they (mostly Isabella) opened the New World to Western trade and enterprise. Thus, the story of the right in Spain was the story of growing imperialism and colonialism.

Francisco Pizarro conquered the Inca Empire in South America and extended Spain's colonial empire.

[Page 878]Only 12 years after Columbus's first voyage of discovery, in 1504 Hernando Cortés arrived for the first time on the Spanish island of Hispaniola, now the Dominican Republic and Haiti. In 1519, Cortés would sail again for the New World, with an army to conquer the wealth of the Aztec Empire, which, he had been told by those on Hispaniola, existed in Mexico to the west. Landing at Vera Cruz, he began a historic voyage inland to meet the Emperor Montezuma II and wrest control of his realm. After Cortés captured Montezuma, the emperor was killed in a confrontation with his own people—or by order of Cortés. Aztec resistance was carried on by Cuauhtemoc, who finally surrendered to Cortés after a major Spanish attack, aided by Cortés's native allies. As Cortés himself wrote, the war ended on “Tuesday, the feast of Saint Hippolytus, the thirteenth of August, in the year 1521.”

In June 1534, Francisco Pizarro conquered the Inca Empire in South America by executing the emperor, Atahualpa. However, jealous other conquistadores, or conquerors, killed Pizarro in his palace at Lima in June 1541. In spite of such incidents, as C.H. Haring wrote in The Spanish Empire in America, “before the middle of the 16th century [Spain was able] to erect two vast political entities in the New World, the viceroyalty of New Spain, established in 1535, and that of Peru, organized in 1544.” In 1540, Francisco de Coronado would lead an expedition north from Mexico as far as Kansas, and in 1565 Pedro de Menendez would found the first permanent European city in the United States at Saint Augustine in Florida.

The great riches from its New World empire would enable Spain to dominate Europe. Charles V, who was king of Spain in the time of Cortés, was also the Holy Roman Emperor. Indeed, the next century would be referred to by the Spanish as el siglo de oro, “the golden century.” In 1556, the great empire would be divided between Spain and the Holy Roman Empire. Earlier, in 1571, the empire would defeat the last major Muslim attempt to conquer Western Europe by sea in the decisive Battle of Lepanto. However, Spanish imperial ambitions began to empty the vast Spanish treasury. In 1588, Philip II, the son of Charles V, suffered the first main Spanish reverse in his failure to capture England with the Spanish Armada, the so-called Enterprise of England. Still, the Spanish tercios, the great battalions of infantry, would dominate European warfare. However, almost exactly a century after the foundation of the viceroyalty of Peru (so named because a viceroy ruled in the name of the king), Spanish dominance ended in 1643. On May 19, 1643, Louis, the Grand Conde, would achieve a great French victory over the Spanish army of Don Francisco de Melo.

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