Great discovery or ingenious fraud: How Columbus managed to get the money of the Spanish crown

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

After three hundred years, the country will be named after him. In the distant lands there will be monuments in his honor. “Brave navigator”, “discoverer” - this is what they will write about him in the textbooks of the future. But there was a time when Christopher Columbus was in a Spanish prison for discovering America instead of going to India, having wasted public funds.

Columbus was born in Italy, the son of a clothier Domenico Colombo. His childhood was not marked by anything significant; he survived (for a child of the fifteenth century this was not taken for granted), grew up and went to study at one of the oldest universities in Italy - in the city of Pavia. At about twenty, he married a girl named Felipa. He was a handsome young man: tall, with a respectable elongated face, an aquiline nose, white skin, and blue eyes. He lived with her first in Genoa, then in Savona. Participated in several commercial sea expeditions.

Are the antipodes falling from Australia down?

Although the Middle Ages are often presented to the twenty-first century as a time of ignorance, many things were already known to people back then. So, the navigators of the past knew perfectly well that the Earth is spherical. And not only seafarers - Blessed Augustine in his writings expresses confidence in this fact. Astronomers and travelers took into account the curvature of the earth's surface. The hero of "The Divine Comedy" Dante passes through the globe, getting out "from the other side." In the Austrian Bible of 1250, God the Architect in one of the drawings measures the Earth drawn spherical with a compass. Doubts and reflections mainly concerned not the shape of the Earth, but whether people could live from that side of it - after all, they would fall from the bottom of the planet ?!

Some categorically denied the possibility of people being “on the other side”, others believed that the antipodes were holding themselves in some special way, and others that anyone who found themselves “on the other side” could somehow walk as freely as the locals (or how at home). Columbus clearly shared the third point of view. He was contemplating a financial expedition that had never been equal in his memory.

If the earth is a ball, then what difference does it make which side to swim to India? Skirting Africa - for a long time, on foot - there are many obstacles. What if sailing from the east to India is easier and faster than getting past the Ottomans?

Young Columbus consulted with Toscanelli, an astronomer and geographer. Toscanelli replied that - theoretically - this could very well be. Trying on this and that, Columbus decided that it was most convenient to sail past the Canary Islands west of Africa. Somewhere there, behind them, will be Japan; turn a little further south of it - and here it is, India, full of wonders and gold.

Since 1476, Columbus has been traveling throughout Europe. He settles in Portugal and from there visits England, Ireland, Iceland. Perhaps, in Iceland, he questioned the descendants of the Vikings about the lands that their ancestors could see in the west - the memories of the Vikings and their courage in travels were still fresh in the memory of Europeans. He also participates in an expedition to Guinea, a country in the very west of Africa.

To the Glory of the Holy Sepulcher: Columbus's First Expedition to America

In 1485, Columbus moved with his son Diego to Spain and since then has spent all his energy trying to achieve a meeting with the king and interest him in his project. The path to the king is not close. The abbot of the monastery, where Columbus and his son took refuge, sends a letter to the queen's confessor, but this does not lead to anything. The project manages to interest the Duke of Medinaceli, but his funds for the expedition will not be enough. The Duke introduces Columbus to the archbishop of Toledo, an influential and wealthy man, and he finally suits the Italian audience at Their Majesties.

The idea with which Columbus came before the royal eyes sounds as tempting as it is reckless. To study it, the king appoints a commission that includes not only cosmographers, but also theologians, as well as lawyers and courtiers. The commission has been torturing Columbus for four years, trying to get the details out of him for a final decision, but Columbus - perhaps not unreasonably - is afraid that, as soon as he put all the cards on the table, the idea will simply be stolen.

Meanwhile, the Portuguese have their own people among the Spaniards, and quite unexpectedly Columbus receives a letter from the Portuguese king. The king offers to return to Portugal, promises protection. Columbus's idea must be very tempting to him. But since the letter does not contain specific promises about the expedition, Columbus remains in Spain.

Finally, the navigator gives up trying to interest the king and turns to a topic of interest to the queen. Isabella is known for her ardent piety. Columbus describes how convenient it will be from the east to strike unexpectedly at the Muslims of the Ottoman Empire, how the glorious Spaniards will finally free the Holy Sepulcher in the lands of Palestine. At the same time, he admits that he is already ready to offer his project to France. The queen makes up her mind.

But where to get money for such an expedition? Spain has just ended a war with Muslims who have remained in the Iberian Peninsula since the defeat of the Visigoth King Roderich. “I will pawn my jewelry,” says the queen.

In fact, Columbus's money still had to be looked for additionally. Miracle, but they were found. On August 3, 1492, three ships flying the Spanish flag set sail from the port of Palos de la Frontera. On October 12, 1492, a Christian's foot sets foot on one of the Bahamas for the first time. It actually turned out to be faster than going around Africa.

There was only one small problem. The Bahamas weren't just far from Japan; they were separated from it by two huge continents.

However, so far no one knew this. Columbus returned to Europe triumphant. His appearance makes a noise. Portugal is especially excited. By decision of the Vatican, Portugal had the right to own the lands open to the south and east of Cape Bohador, "down to the Indians." But Spain was not at all going to give up its newly opened slice, as she thought, to an Asian neighbor. The dispute had to be resolved again in the Vatican. The Pope appoints a more precise division of the newly discovered lands - now proceeding from the fact that the Earth is spherical and it is necessary to somehow take into account who opens Asia and its riches from which end. Now all the lands passing west of the meridian, a hundred miles from Cape Verde, will belong to Spain.

Gold makes a man master

Columbus's second expedition darkens his glory somewhat. Indian palaces have not yet been discovered. The locals are not very happy with the claims of the Spaniards. The new lands of the Spanish crown bring more headaches than income. Their Majesties break the agreement with Columbus and conclude a new one with Amerigo Vespucci.

Columbus urgently returns to Spain to regain his position and his privileges. First, he convinces the queen that he is about to find the treasures of King Solomon, and not allegorically at all. Secondly, it presents a wonderful, cost-effective project: to use it to colonize criminals. This will unload the prisons, and if someone else dies on the way to the colony, it's not a pity at all. Profitable!

Yes, one should not harbor any special illusions about the special moral qualities of the discoverer of America. For example, what he writes to the king and queen about the Indians.

"They treated us so well it seemed like a miracle."

“These people have no beliefs and that they are not idolaters, but very meek people who do not know what evil is, murder and theft, unarmed and so fearful that any of our people can put a hundred Indians to flight, even if he makes fun above them."

And he also makes plans for how Spain can enslave and rob these people.

“Gold is an amazing thing. Whoever possesses it is the master of everything that he wants. Gold can even open the way to heaven for souls,”that was the motto of Mr. Columbus.

There is money for the third expedition. Columbus arrives at the colony and finds confusion and lawlessness there. He puts things in order by securing the Indians as slaves to the colonists. But at this very time, the Portuguese Vasco da Gama finally decides on a long journey around Africa, returns with a load of spices, and it becomes clear that Columbus is a deceiver. He did not find any way to Asia.

Francisco de Bobadilla lands on Hispaniola, a man empowered to speak and judge in the colonies on behalf of the king and queen. He arrests Columbus and the brothers ruling with him - for fraud and embezzlement of public money. In shackles, they are sent to Spain.

Columbus spends some time in prison. But the friends he managed to acquire persuade the royal couple to drop all charges. But in the two months in prison, as many people notice, he has grown very old.

There is no Asia in the west

Finding a way to Asia now seems to Columbus a matter of honor. He surveyed only a few islands. What if the mainland is there, beyond the islands? By some miracle, he, already deprived of the trust of many, collects the fourth expedition. On this expedition he is accompanied by his thirteen-year-old son Hernando.

No miracle happens. Columbus finds neither India, nor China, nor Japan. Only endless new lands inhabited by half-naked people. He returns to Spain as a loser. He was unable to regain the titles that the king and queen had once bestowed upon him and which they had taken back, and died in poverty. Although not as terrible as the Indians died at the hands of entertaining conquistadors in the lands they discovered. Nobody noticed his death.

He was declared great only later, when gold plundered from the South American empires flowed into Spain. But his grave was already lost, so there was nowhere to put the magnificent tombstone.

By the way, not a single lifetime portrait was left either. So no one will ever be able to see again the faces of the man who brought thousands of Indian lives to the altar of the Golden Calf.

True, not to say that all the indigenous people of the Americas were very different from their conquerors. The Aztecs, for example, practiced grisly rituals with cruel human sacrifices..