Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings Part 5

Though everything now seemed ready for the departure of the Jeronymites and Las Casas, the members of the Council still advanced objections to the instructions which Palacios Rubios had drawn up for the licentiate Zuazo, who had been deputed to take the residencia of the colonial judges; it was feared that some severe decisions might be given on acts which these latter had performed in the interests of the members of the India Council, whose tools they were. Las Casas employed his usual direct tactics to overcome these delays and brought the matter to the Cardinal's notice.

His Eminence summoned the licentiate Zapata and Dr. Carbajal into his presence and ordered them to sign Zuazo's papers; they obeyed, but contrived to affix a mark in cipher to their signatures which would enable them later to complain to the King that the regent had forced them to sign.

In taking leave of the Cardinal, Las Casas frankly declared that he feared the Jeronymites had been so tampered with and influenced before starting on their mission, that more evil than good was to be apprehended from their action. The Cardinal, nonplussed for an instant by these forebodings, exclaimed, "Whom then can we trust?" quickly adding, "Go on and do you look out for everything."

This unpromising joint-commission sailed from San Lucar on November 11, 1516, but in separate vessels, the Jeronymites keeping aloof from Las Casas, who they contrived should not embark on the same s.h.i.+p with themselves. Their vessel reached Hispaniola thirteen days earlier than the other, which had been obliged to stop at Puerto Rico to discharge freight.

By detaching themselves from Las Casas at the very outset, the three Jeronymites doubtless intended to affirm the impartial and independent att.i.tude essential to the judicial character of their mission. They were not carried to the Indies on any such wave of righteous zeal and indignation as bore the impetuous reformer on its crest. They were cloister-bred men, cautious and prudent in their decisions and deliberate in their acts, and they doubtless felt that for them to arrive in company with Las Casas would be to prejudice the impartiality of their proceedings in the eyes of all the colonists. They were sent to the colonies to carry out instructions of a most delicate and difficult nature and it was their obvious preference to fulfil their mission, as far as possible, without friction. In this exercise of caution, Las Casas beheld weakness and even treachery. His pa.s.sionate nature chafed and raged at the deliberateness with which these impa.s.sive monks moved, and he was not slow to denounce them as having been won over by the blandishments of the colonial officials to betray the mission with which they were entrusted. His pa.s.sion for justice, a.s.sociated as it was with unrealisable ideals, refused to take account of the multifarious difficulties in the way of the reforms on which his heart was set, and he despised the obstacles to their consummation, through which he would have crashed, regardless of the consequences. Despite the sincerity of these one-sided views of the great Protector, it must be conceded that the problems confronting the Jeronymites were complex and difficult of solution. The prompt and reckless execution of their instructions would have overturned the entire economic system of the colonies which, however unjust in its principles, was the established condition of things, and would have certainly brought financial ruin as the first consequence. The situation was one which called for all their circ.u.mspection if the Jeronymites were to make their authority effective and their decisions operative. They were the first of all the men sent by the Spanish government to effect reforms in the colonies, whose intention to discharge their duty was conscientious, though Las Casas does not even admit this in their favour, for he declares that they had relatives in the islands whom they desired to benefit, and that in writing to the Governor of Cuba they even signed themselves as his "chaplains," which seemed to him conclusive proof of their too subservient att.i.tude towards the higher colonial authorities.

The Jeronymites, however, had been furnished with two sets of instructions and it was within their discretion to guide their policy according to either, as their judgment formed on the spot might dictate. The first set of instructions was in conformity with the plan drawn up by Las Casas and Palacios Rubios; the second was provided in case the result of their investigations showed the full application of the first to be inexpedient, for Cardinal Ximenez, though sympathising with the ideas of Las Casas, was not led by him, but viewed the situation, as he did every other that concerned the welfare of the Spanish realm, from the standpoint of a statesman trustee for the absent sovereign.

The first measures of the Jeronymites were in the right direction, but they were far too timid and temporising to satisfy the expectations of Las Casas; the conditions he had foreseen were only too prompt in declaring themselves, for the Jeronymites showed themselves somewhat insensible to the crying abuses which he incessantly pressed upon their attention. They did not give full credit to all of his representations and even ignored many of the proofs he adduced. They had failed to find the picture he had drawn in Spain of the Indians an entirely accurate one, and they resisted his reiterated demand that they should scrupulously obey the injunction to at once deprive all royal judges and officials of their encomiendas. The exasperation of Las Casas at this time pushed him to excesses which aroused such a storm of ill-feeling and hostility against him that his good friends the Dominicans feared for his life and insisted that he should come to live with them in their monastery, where he would be safer from any violence his enemies might attempt. Whether it was feasible to proceed in the drastic manner demanded by Las Casas is open to doubt. It is evident that the colonists would have offered an obstinate resistance, to combat which the three Jeronymites had nothing but the moral force of their commission. Even with our present facilities for rapid communication, it is not always easy for the central authority to control its agents and ensure the faithful execution of its intentions. In the sixteenth century, time and distance influenced powerfully the action of the government representatives. Their instructions were made complex, voluminous, in the effort to cover every possible emergency, but no foresight sufficed for the purpose, while the legal system in use opened many loopholes for evading or postponing the application of unpopular measures. An appeal from a royal commissioner's decision, to the India Council or to the King, entailed a delay of many long months or even years, during which each party contested every point. The outcome of such proceedings was problematical but the resisting party was always certain of the one positive advantage of delay.

CHAPTER VII. - LAS CASAS AND CHARLES V. THE GRAND CHANCELLOR. NEGRO SLAVERY. EVENTS AT COURT.

As soon as Zuazo arrived, nearly three months after the Jeronymites, Las Casas immediately lodged against members of the audiencia, an accusation of having encouraged and shared in the man-hunts in the Lucayan islands and the enslavement of the captured natives. The Jeronymites, whose every act was now one of opposition to Las Casas, showed much annoyance at this impeachment of the royal functionaries. They solicited divers opinions, addressing themselves to the accused officials, who naturally exculpated themselves, to the Franciscan monks, who were not over-friendly to the Indians, and to the Dominicans, who were their warm advocates. Much discussion ensued, and meanwhile the perplexed Jeronymites did nothing, so that matters continued as they had been before their arrival, except that the sufferings of the Indians were augmented by their owners, who feared that the encomienda system was nearing its end and hence worked their Indians to death, sparing neither women nor children, so as to get all the profit they could out of them before they lost them. Charges and counter-charges were sent to Spain, the Jeronymites complaining of Las Casas and he in turn denouncing them to Cardinal Ximenez, though many of his letters were intercepted and never reached their destination. Things had come to such a pa.s.s that the only hope of remedy lay in Las Casas returning to Spain to file complaints against the very men he had himself caused to be sent to the Indies and in whose impartiality and humanity he had placed all his hopes. Both the Dominicans and Franciscans, for once in accord in this business, addressed letters to the King and the Cardinal in defence of Las Casas, armed with which he sailed in May, 1517, for Spain and within fifty days arrived at Aranda de Duero, where he found his friend and protector, the Cardinal-regent, stricken with a serious illness.

The arrival in Spain of the young King, Charles I.-better known in history under his imperial t.i.tle of Charles V.,-after repeated postponements was now confidently expected. During his regency, Cardinal Ximenez had been frequently embarra.s.sed by the influences surrounding the King in his distant Flemish court. He had written with characteristic frankness advising the King not to bring a Flemish household with him into Spain, and as soon as the date for the royal journey was fixed, the Cardinal set out to meet his arriving sovereign, travelling as fast as his age and infirmities would allow. He had arrived at Aranda de Duero, where he was seized with an illness of such a mysterious character that his friends hinted that he had been poisoned.

In the one interview which Las Casas obtained, he perceived that the machinations of his enemies had not been entirely in vain, for he found the Cardinal's mind somewhat influenced by the representations which had reached him from the Jeronymites and the agents of the colonists.

Charles V. landed at Villaviciosa in Asturias on September 13, 1517.

Among his first acts was the dispatch of a letter to the Cardinal, in which the latter was dismissed to his diocese with a few perfunctory expressions of regard and recognition for his services. Cardinal Ximenez breathed his last a few hours after reading this heartless communication and Las Casas was left to begin anew his life as a courtier and to cultivate the good-will of the all-powerful Flemish favourites. He was fortunate, at this time, in securing the friends.h.i.+p of a brother of Fray Antonio de Montesinos, named Reginaldo, who was also a Dominican and proved a staunch and resourceful ally.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Charles V.]

Charles V.

From an engraving by Ferdinand Slema, made in 1778 after the portrait by t.i.tian

Influences and arguments which sound strange enough in twentieth-century ears were powerful, and likely to be employed with dangerous success in Spain at that time. One of the members of the Council having a.s.serted to Fray Reginaldo that the Indians were incapable of conversion, the friar submitted this proposition to the Prior of San Esteban in Salamanca, one of the most learned and influential men in the Dominican order, asking him to invite a body of theologians to determine whether or no such an affirmation was in accordance with Catholic doctrine, and to send him a copy of the decision. Thirteen doctors of theology and other ecclesiastical authorities replied with four or five signed conclusions, the last of which defined that all who held or propagated that error should be condemned to the stake as heretics. This was a weapon in Las Casas's hands which circ.u.mstances might make formidable; it was no trifling thing to be arraigned before the tribunal of the Inquisition on a charge of holding heretical doctrines, for neither rank nor calling availed to protect the offender, and it is somewhat astonis.h.i.+ng that no reference to use of this "opinion" being made by Las Casas in any given case is found in the records of his struggle for the liberty of the Indians.

King Charles, even in his boyhood, was of a grave and thoughtful temperament, reserved and observant in an unusual degree, but however richly endowed with gifts which promised him a glorious reign, he necessarily left the administration of his government very largely under the direction of his advisers, of whom the two most influential were William de Croy, commonly called Chievres, or by the Spaniards, Xevres, who had formerly been the King's governor, and Jean Salvage, a learned priest who was Dean of the University of Louvain. The latter's name was corrupted by the Spaniards into Juan Selvagio, and he held the office and t.i.tle of Grand Chancellor, both hitherto unknown in Spain. These Flemings were odious to the Spaniards, who resented their high rank and influence and looked upon them as rapacious foreigners, who were controlling national affairs to the exclusion of those who had better claims, while they enriched themselves out of the Spanish treasury: none of them so much as spoke the national language and even the King's first task was to master Spanish in order to converse with his own subjects.

As the Grand Chancellor had control of the department of justice, it was to him that Las Casas first got himself presented. He was well received and afforded opportunities to state his case, and, as he produced letters given him by some French Franciscans from Picardy, whom he had known in the Indies and who were friends of the Chancellor, he soon found himself upon terms of some friendliness with him. The Chancellor found great interest in listening to all that Las Casas had to tell him, and it is not to be doubted that the latter's habitual earnestness when on this subject was increased by the evident sympathy of his listener, upon whose support the fate of his projects depended.

This friends.h.i.+p with the detested Flemings cost Las Casas dear with his own people, and made him more unpopular than ever. His opponents were obliged, however, to cease abusing him in their letters and official papers, for not only did the Chancellor openly befriend him, but he handed over to him most of the correspondence pertaining to Indian affairs. Las Casas translated the contents into Latin, adding his own observations or objections to the different reports or proposals, and then returned them to the Chancellor, who was delighted to have such expert a.s.sistance in dispatching complicated affairs, in which he was himself unpractised.

From the Chancellor's favour to that of the King was but a step, and the charge of reforming Indian legislation, which Las Casas had held from Cardinal Ximenez, was renewed to him. This welcome news was given him one day by the Chancellor remarking in Latin, which was their habitual tongue, Rex dominus noster jubet quod vos et ego opponamus remedia Indiis; faciatis vestra memorabilia. Las Casas was quick to obey this congenial behest. (31)

It is indicative of the priority of importance which Las Casas habitually gave to spiritual over temporal aids, that he first had recourse to the priors of the religious orders, asking them to have their communities pray unceasingly and with special earnestness, that his mind might be illumined by divine grace to perceive what course he must follow. He next drew up his plan, but perhaps in no act of his long career is there less evidence of the action of divine guidance, for, in framing his project, he committed an error which he himself sincerely and frankly deplored with touching humility, and which has served all his detractors ever since as ground on which to bring a grave charge against him.

In obedience to the King's command conveyed to Las Casas through the Chancellor, he drew up a plan in which he proposed that labourers should be induced to emigrate to the Indies, by granting that each person, whether man or child, should have his expenses paid as far as Seville, the place of embarkation, at the rate of half a real per day. While waiting in Seville to start, the India House (Casa de Contractacion) was to lodge and feed them, their pa.s.sage to Hispaniola was to be given them and their food furnished for one year. Any of the emigrants who, at the expiration of the first year, found themselves incapacitated on account of the climate to support themselves, should be ent.i.tled to further a.s.sistance in the form of a royal loan. Lands were to be given them gratis and also the requisite farming implements for working them, in which their rights as owners should be permanent and hereditary. A more liberal scheme of a.s.sisted emigration could hardly be imagined. Other inducements were held out to attract emigrants under the new regulations and Las Casas acceded to the request of certain of the colonists in Santo Domingo to ask the King's consent to the importation of negro slaves to replace the Indians who should be freed.

This recommendation cost Las Casas dearly enough and later exposed his reputation to unjustifiable attacks, some of which even represented him as having _introduced_ negro slavery into America; others as having been betrayed by blind zeal in favour of the Indians into promoting the slave-trade at the expense of the Africans. No one more sincerely deplored his course in this matter than he himself when he realised the significance of what he had done, and the sincerity and humility of his compunction should have sufficed to disarm his detractors. The most formal accusation made by a reputable historian against Las Casas is found in Robertson's _History of America_, vol. iii., Year 1517, in which he charges the apostle of the Indians with having proposed to Cardinal Ximenez to purchase a sufficient number of negroes from the Portuguese settlements on the coast of Africa and to transport them to America in order that they might be employed as slaves in working in the mines and tilling the ground. Cardinal Ximenez however, when solicited to encourage the commerce, peremptorily rejected the proposition because he perceived the iniquity of reducing one race of men to slavery when he was consulting about the means of restoring liberty to another. But Las Casas, from the inconsistency natural to men who hurry with headlong impetuosity towards a favourite point, was incapable of making the distinction. While he contended earnestly for the liberty of the people born in one quarter of the globe, he laboured to enslave the inhabitants of another region and in the warmth of his zeal to save the Americans from the yoke, p.r.o.nounced it to be lawful and expedient to impose one still heavier on the African.

Language could hardly more completely travesty the facts, for Las Casas neither "laboured to enslave the inhabitants of another region" nor did he "p.r.o.nounce it lawful" to increase slavery amongst the Africans. The moral aspect of the question of slavery was not under consideration and the recommendation of Las Casas is seen upon examination to reduce itself to this: he advised that Spanish colonists in America should be allowed the privilege, common in Spain and Portugal, of employing negro slave labour on their properties. Since Spaniards might hold African slaves in Spain, it implied no approval of slavery as an inst.i.tution, to permit them to do the same in the colonies. Las Casas was engaged in defending a hitherto free people from the curse of a peculiarly cruel form of slavery, but had he regarded the inst.i.tution as justifiable in itself, he would have modified the ardour of his opposition to its extension.

The truth plainly appears in the chronicles of the times and establishes beyond cavil exactly what Las Casas did, and under what circ.u.mstances and for what purposes he made the recommendation which he never afterwards ceased to deplore. Retributive justice has followed these attempts of several lesser contemporaries of Robertson to asperse the character of one of the purest, n.o.blest, and most humane of men, and while discredit has overtaken the inventors and publishers of these falsehoods, the investigations of impartial historians, provoked by their enormity, have resulted in banis.h.i.+ng such fables from historical controversy.

The original basis of the charge that Las Casas favoured the introduction of negro slavery into America is a pa.s.sage in Herrera's _Historia de las Indias Occidentals_, written in 1598, thirty-two years after the death of Las Casas, and which reads as follows:

"As the licentiate Las Casas encountered much opposition to the plan he had formed for helping the Indians and seeing that the opinions he had published had produced no result, in spite of the extraordinary credit he enjoyed with the Flemish chancellor, Juan Selvagio, he had recourse to other means to attain the same ends. He asked in 1517 that the importation of Africans be permitted to the Spaniards settled in the Indies, in order to diminish the labour and sufferings of the Indians in the mines and on the plantations, and that a good number of labourers be enrolled in Spain who would emigrate to the Indies upon the conditions and with the advantages which he proposed. This new proposition was approved by the Cardinal of Tortosa, Adrian, by the Grand Chancellor, and the Flemish ministers. The Chamber of Commerce at Seville was consulted to learn what number of Africans, Cuba, Santo Domingo, San Juan [Puerto Rico], and Jamaica would require. It was replied that it would be sufficient to send four thousand. This answer being almost immediately made known by some intriguer to the Flemish governor of Bressa, this courtier obtained the monopoly of the trade from the sovereign and sold it to some Genoese for twenty-five thousand ducats on condition that during eight years no other license should be granted by the King. This arrangement was extremely harmful to the Population of the islands, especially to the Indians for whose benefit it had been granted; in fact had the trade been free, all the Spaniards might have engaged in it, but as the Genoese sold their right at a very high price few Spaniards were able to pay, and the importation of blacks was almost nil. The King was counselled to pay back the twenty-five thousand ducats from his treasury to the governor and recover his rights, which would pay him well and be of great advantage to his subjects. Unfortunately the King had little money then and, as he was left in ignorance of much concerning the affairs of the Indies, nothing of what was most important was done."

There is not a word in this pa.s.sage which even refers to the _introduction_ of negro slavery and Herrera in another pa.s.sage (tom. i., dec. i., lib. iv., cap. xii.) states that a royal ordinance given on September 3, 1500, to Don Nicholas de Ovando, the Governor of Hispaniola, permitted the importation of negro slaves. This was two years before Las Casas made his first voyage as a young man of twenty-eight to America, and in 1503, the same Ovando asked that no more negro slaves be sent to Hispaniola because they escaped and lived amongst the natives whom they corrupted. (32) The number of negroes continued, nevertheless, to increase and repeated mention of their presence in the colonies is found in different pa.s.sages throughout the history of Herrera and in other early writers.

Since the first half of the fifteenth century (about 1440) (33) the Portuguese had been engaged in bringing negroes from the west coast of Africa and selling them in Lisbon and Seville, so that during half a century before Las Casas appeared on the scene where he was destined to play so distinguished a part, Andalusia and the southern provinces of Spain were well provided with slaves and a flouris.h.i.+ng trade was carried on. The condition of such slaves was not a particularly hard one and the children born in Spain of slave parents were Christians. Since this system was recognised by the laws of the kingdom, and indeed by those of all Christendom at that time, no additional injury would be done to the negroes by permitting Spaniards who might own them in Spain, to take them also to the colonies. Las Casas was a man of such humane temperament that oppression and injustice everywhere of whatever kind revolted him, but it can hardly be required, even of him, to be several centuries in advance of his times in denouncing a commonly accepted usage which presented, as far as we know, few crying abuses. Toleration of an established order, even though an essentially evil one, is a very different thing from the extension of its worst features in regions where it is unknown and amongst people ill-fitted to support its burdens. A small group of men, chiefly Dominican monks, with Las Casas at their head, courageously championed the cause of freedom and humanity in a century and amongst a people hardened to oppression and cruelty; they braved popular fury, suffered calumny, detraction, and abuse; they faced kings, high ecclesiastics, and all the rich and great ones of their day, incessantly and courageously reprimanding their injustice and demanding reform. Since the memorable day when Fray Antonio de Montesinos proclaimed himself "vox clamantis in deserto" before the astonished and incensed colonists of Hispaniola, the chorus of rebuke had swelled until it made itself heard, sparing none amongst the offenders against equity and humanity. The development of the collective moral sense of a people is only slowly progressive, and the betterment of racial conditions is more safely accomplished by evolution than revolution, hence if the moral vision of Las Casas did not detect the injustice practised on the negroes, simultaneously with his keen perception of that which was being perpetrated on the Indians, his failure cannot be justly attributed either to indifference to the lot of one race of people or to wilful inconsistency in seeking to benefit another at its expense. That his action was not understood in any such sense at the time, is conclusively proven by the fact that inconsistency was never alleged against him, nor employed as a polemical weapon in the heated controversies in which he was engaged during all his life with the keenest and most determined opponents to his views. Far afield indeed did his enemies wander, seeking for weapons both of attack and defence, and nothing that could be twisted into an offence against the public conscience or national interests escaped the keen eyes of the searchers.

He was himself the first to perceive the error and contradiction into which he had inadvertently fallen, and forty years before Herrera's work was published, he had expressed his contrition for his failure to appreciate the conditions of African slavery, in the following pa.s.sage, which occurs in the fourth volume (page 380) of his _Historia General_:

"The cleric Las Casas first gave this opinion that license should be granted to bring negro slaves to these countries [the Indies] without realising with what injustice the Portuguese captured and enslaved them, and afterwards, not for everything in the world would he have offered it, for he always held that they were made slaves by injustice and tyranny, the same reasoning applying to them as to the Indians."

Fuller and more mature consideration of the entire question of slavery in all its aspects, of the right of one man or of nations to hold property in the flesh and blood of their fellow-men, conducted Las Casas directly to the necessary and generous conviction that the whole system must be everywhere condemned; for again in Chapter 128 he says of this advice which the cleric gave,

"that he very shortly after repented, judging himself guilty of inadvertence; and as he saw-which will be later perceived-that the captivity of the negroes was quite as unjust as that of the Indians, the remedy he had counselled, that negroes should be brought so that the Indians might be freed, was no better, even though he believed they had been rightfully procured; although he was not positive that his ignorance in this matter and his good intention would exculpate him before the divine justice."

As has been noted, the transfer of his monopoly by the Governor of Bressa to Genoese merchants, instead of increasing the exportation of negroes to America, resulted in almost stopping the nefarious trade, hence no considerable amount of mischief is traceable to the adoption of Las Casas's suggestion, which was only one of many enumerated in his scheme.

Had the project as he framed it been accepted in its entirety and loyally carried out, no increased injustice would have been done to the negroes, for it was the frightful mortality amongst the cruelly driven Indians that rapidly reduced the numbers of labourers and made gaps which could only be filled by the importation of others from elsewhere. Under a more humane system, the Indians might still have laboured, but not in excess of their powers; their lives would not have been sacrificed or rendered unendurable, while the colonists would have become rich less rapidly; there would have been no shortage of workmen and little need for the importation of Africans at a high price, even though one negro did the work of four Indians, according to the popular estimate. While many admirable suggestions of Las Casas were rejected, this blamable one concerning the permission to import negroes was accepted, and thus by a singular irony of fate, this good man, whose whole life was a self-sacrificing apostolate in favour of freedom, actually came to be aspersed as a promoter of slavery.

The controversy on this pa.s.sage in the life of Las Casas has been touched upon here because it furnished at one time material for much discussion, (34) but the light of historical research has long since dispersed the artificial clouds which misrepresentation caused to gather about the fame of the Protector of the Indians, and there now neither is, nor can be, any doubt concerning the sentiments and intentions of one whose n.o.ble figure is too clearly defined on the horizon of history ever again to be blurred or obscured.

Another part of the plan for colonisation on the moral basis of benefiting the Indians as well as the Spaniards, was the foundation of fortified places at intervals along the coast of the territory to be granted. In each of these settlements, some thirty men should be stationed with a provision of various articles, such as the Indians prized, for trading purposes; also several missionary priests, whose occupation would be teaching and converting the Indians. It was maintained that by kind treatment the Indians could be attracted to the Spaniards and thus, little by little, become civilised, profitable, and voluntary subjects of the King.

Unfortunately for the prosperous development of these benevolent projects, the mischievous Bishop of Burgos and his brother, who, since the latter part of Cardinal Ximenez's regency, had been excluded from active partic.i.p.ation in Indian affairs, began once more to exercise an influence, partly, perhaps because long experience had equipped them with a practical knowledge of details which the Grand Chancellor found useful, and partly, so Las Casas hints, because they had succeeded, by spending important sums of money, in recovering their former offices. At first the Bishop's opposition was mild enough, and he contented himself with pointing out that he had never been able to induce emigrants to go to the Indies and that Las Casas's scheme was unworkable. Las Casas, however, affirmed that he could easily find three thousand workmen as soon as he was authorised to a.s.sure them of the King's conditions, and that the Bishop had not succeeded in finding men because he had treated the islands as a penal colony, whereas now, on the contrary, the severest punishment, after the death penalty, with which a colonist in the Indies could be threatened, was that of being s.h.i.+pped back to Spain.

The King had left Valladolid(35) on his way to take formal possession of the kingdom of Aragon and these negotiations were being carried on at Aranda de Duero, where a halt had been made. Las Casas fell ill and the court moved on without him, but it is indicative of the favour he had already acquired with the King that frequently the monarch exclaimed: "Oh, I wonder how Micer Bartolome is getting on!" Micer was the t.i.tle the Flemings gave to ecclesiastics, and Charles V., who was the reverse of demonstrative, commonly used this familiar appellation in speaking of Las Casas. Before the court reached Zaragoza, the invalid was on his legs again and had rejoined the others, being received with great joy by the Grand Chancellor, (36) who was almost as enthusiastic as Las Casas himself in pus.h.i.+ng forward the Indian reforms. Delay, however, was again caused at Zaragoza, where the King and court were established, by the illness of the ever-contrary Bishop of Burgos; while waiting there to resume business, a letter was sent to Las Casas from Seville by his friend Fray Reginaldo, containing a full account of the ruthless cruelties of one of the captains of Pedro Arias, named Espinosa, which cost the lives of forty thousand Indians. This ghastly chronicle, which was supplied by a Franciscan, Fray Francisco Roman, who wrote as an eye-witness of the atrocities, was immediately laid before the Chancellor by Las Casas; the former was much impressed by the report and directed Las Casas to go to the Bishop on his behalf and read him the letter.

The Bishop took the news coolly enough and merely observed that he had long since advised the recall of Pedro Arias.(37)

With the recovery of the Bishop, everything seemed ready for the resumption of business, when fate dealt Las Casas one of the hardest blows he had had to sustain. The Grand Chancellor, who owned to feeling indisposed on a Friday, became worse on Sat.u.r.day, so that he had to keep his room; his illness persisted on Sunday with signs of fever and, as Las Casas tersely puts it, "they buried him on Wednesday."

With the death of the Fleming died all hope of any immediate action in behalf of the Indians; in the absence of any other as familiar with the business of the Indian department as himself, the Bishop of Burgos found himself once more omnipotent, or as Las Casas puts it, "he seemed to rise to the heavens while the cleric [himself] sank to the depths." The Chancellor's successor, named by the King pro tempore, was the Dean of Bisancio, a heavy, phlegmatic man who slept peacefully all through the sessions of the Council and only had sufficient perception to commend Las Casas for the zeal with which he pestered him day and night, remarking on one occasion with a dull smile: Commendamus in Domino, domine Bartholomeo, vestram diligentiam. Two such ill-a.s.sorted characters as this bovine dean and the fiery Las Casas only succeeded in tormenting one another to no purpose, though, as the latter observes, in this case "it did not kill the Dean for all that."

The India Council, over which the Bishop of Burgos presided, was composed at that time of Hernando de la Vega, Grand Commander of Castile, Don Garcia de Padilla, the licentiate Zapata, Pedro Martyr de Angleria, and Francisco de los Cobos who was then just rising into prominence. Las Casas was excluded, and though he was as busy as ever in laying pet.i.tions and memorials before the Council, he had no friends or protectors inside and consequently obtained nothing, save what they were obliged for very shame's sake to concede him. Discouragement was too alien to his sanguine temperament, else he might, with some show of reason, have abandoned all hope of struggling successfully against such odds. The first decisive measure of the Bishop was to recall the Jeronymite fathers from their mission in the Indies, of which he had from the outset been the determined opponent. It has often been justly observed that the vicissitudes of politics make strange bed-fellows, and it was certainly a singular regrouping of the persons in this historical situation, to find the Jeronymites now reduced to seeking out Las Casas to whom to pour out their woes against the mutual enemy, the Bishop of Burgos.

CHAPTER VIII. - MONSIEUR DE LAXAO. COLONISATION PROJECTS. RECRUITING EMIGRANTS.

While matters were at the low ebb described in the preceding chapter, the appearance of a new and unexpected character on the scene brought Las Casas some welcome a.s.sistance. Although his chief support had been his good friend, the deceased Chancellor, the other Flemings in the royal household were, on that account first of all, interested in him and the cause he so ardently pleaded. Amongst these unpopular foreigners was Monsieur de la Mure, who, being attracted to Las Casas by what he heard of him, expressed a desire to several of his friends to make the clerigo's acquaintance. This wish was soon gratified, and the young courtier's interest in all that concerned the Indians and the proposed measures for the reform of the colonies was quickly satisfied by Las Casas, who furnished him with a full history of the business he had in hand. The least impressionable of men could not listen to such an advocate unmoved, and M. de la Mure, profoundly affected by what he heard, offered to help his new friend by every means he could command. He was an ally worth having, for, being a nephew of Monsieur de Laxao, sommeiller du corps to the King, he was able to introduce Las Casas to his powerful uncle, who stood in closer relation to the monarch than any other officer of the court, for he slept in the royal bedchamber.

Monsieur de Laxao was as quickly won over to the good cause as his nephew had been, so Las Casas, finding himself once more with powerful supporters, renewed his efforts to press his business to a conclusion.

Some wholesome activity was displayed in dispatching various officials to take the residencia, of the several governors of the islands, Rodrigo de Figueroa being sent to Hispaniola, Doctor de la Gama to Puerto Rico and Cuba, and Lope de Sosa to Darien, where he was also to succeed the actual Governor, Pedro Arias de Avila. The Council, acting upon reports which described the natives of Trinidad as cannibals, ordered that war should be made upon them, but Las Casas denied this charge, and contrived that Figueroa should be authorised to first investigate and report on this matter before hostilities began; Figueroa's report was entirely favourable to the natives, amongst whom he found no cannibalism.