s looked still towards the east, and saw a Frenchman ever
in their way. The Christian outpost in the Mediterranean, Sicily, already
belonged to Aragon; so did the Balearic isles: but an Aragonese dynasty
held Naples only in alternation and constant rivalry with the French house
of Anjou; and as the strength of the French monarchy grew it stretched
forth its hands nearer, and ever nearer, to the weak and divided
principalities of Italy with covetous intent. Unless Aragon could check
the French expansion across the Alps its own power in the Mediterranean
would be dwarfed, its vast hopes must be abandoned, and it must settle
down to the inglorious life of a petty State, hemmed in on all sides by
more powerful neighbours. But although too weak to vanquish France alone,
a King of Aragon who could dispose of the resources of greater Castile
might hope, in spite of French opposition, to dominate a united Italy, and
thence look towards the illimitable east. This was the aspiration that
Ferdinand inherited, and to which the efforts of his long and strenuous
life were all directed. The conquest of Granada, the unification of Spain,
the greed, the cruelty, the lying, the treachery, the political marriages
of all his children, and the fires of the Inquisition, were all means to
the end for which he fought.

But fate was unkind to him. The discovery of America diverted Castilian
energy from Aragonese objects, and death stepped in and made grim sport of
all his marriage jugglery. Before he died, beaten and broken-hearted, he
knew that the little realm of his fathers, instead of using the strength
of others for its aims, would itself be used for objects which concerned
it not. But though he failed his plan was a masterly one. Treaties, he
knew, were rarely binding, for the age was faithless, and he himself never
kept an oath an hour longer than suited him; but mutual interests by
kinship might hold sovereigns together against a common opponent. So, one
after the other, from their earliest youth, the children of Ferdinand and
Isabel were made political counters in their father's great marriage
league. The eldest daughter, Isabel, was married to the heir of Portugal,
and every haven into which French galleys might shelter in their passage
from the Mediterranean to the Bay of Biscay was at Ferdinand's bidding.
The only son, John, was married to the daughter of Maximilian, King of the
Romans, and (from 1493) Emperor, whose interest also it