Over the Edge of the World: Magellen's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe Read Online Free PDF Page B

highest circles of the Casa, could barely conceal their gloating. “If the affair has a favorable outcome, we will seize from the Orientals and the King of Portugal the trade in spices and precious stones.”
    Still, the provisions of the Treaty of Tordesillas posed serious obstacles for the proposed expedition. Members of the Casa failed to see how Magellan could avoid trespassing on Portuguese interests by sailing west until he reached the East. Anticipating this objection, Magellan referred the distinguished members of the Casa to a clause in the Treaty of Tordesillas that allowed Spain or Portugal the freedom of the seas to reach lands belonging to one empire or the other. Such a clause was open to many interpretations, and Magellan might sail into conflict with Portugal if he attempted to take advantage of it. Then there was the question of Magellan’s nationality. The prospect of a Portuguese leading a Spanish expedition through Portuguese waters made nearly everyone at the Casa de Contratación uneasy; if the Portuguese became aware of the expedition, relations between the two countries might be strained to the breaking point. Yet the Casa’s newest member looked at matters quite differently. Juan de Aranda, an ambitious merchant, took the Portuguese navigator aside and offered to lobby on behalf of the expedition in exchange for 20 percent of the profits. Privately, Magellan resented Aranda’s intrusion into his scheme, but the merchant held out the best hope for keeping the expedition’s prospects alive. And so Magellan agreed to cooperate.
    Aranda wrote enthusiastically on behalf of Magellan, only to be reprimanded by the Casa de Contratación, which reminded him that he was not entitled to negotiate the terms of the expedition on his own. Worse, Magellan’s comrade Ruy Faleiro was outraged to hear that Aranda had insinuated himself into the expedition and flew into a tirade so severe that it caused Magellan to back down. There was more to Faleiro’s rage than simple indignation; it was a symptom of his growing mental instability. Aranda, for his part, attempted to apologize to Faleiro, and, despite the violent disagreement, contrived to obtain an audience for Magellan with King Charles in the city of Valladolid in north central Spain. It was here that Ferdinand and Isabella were married, and where Christopher Columbus died, and it now served as the capital city of Castile. And on January 20, 1518, Magellan, along with Ruy Faleiro and Ruy’s brother Francisco, set out from Seville for Valladolid.
     
    M agellan’s arrival in the capital city coincided with a period of instability within the innermost circles of the royal court. Castile’s regent, Cardinal Ximenes de Cisneiros, had just died on his way to assist the inexperienced King Charles, and poisoning was suspected. More than anyone else in Spain, the cardinal had ensured the safety of the newly arrived king, providing 32,000 soldiers to preserve order, but now he was gone, and young Charles sorely missed the prelate’s guiding hand. Instead, he relied on the advice of a group of Flemish ministers for every decision. Guillaume de Croy, Seigneur de Chièvres, perhaps the most able of the lot, had long served as Charles’s tutor, schooled him in the exercise of power, and jealously guarded his authority over the lad. The young king’s inner circle also included Ximenes’s successor, Chancellor Sauvage, and Cardinal Adrian of Utrecht. Despite his subsequent elevation to the papacy as Adrian VI, this cardinal seems to have earned no one’s admiration. Wrote one nineteenth-century historian of Adrian: “Of low extraction, and a person of weak character, his advancement must always be regarded with wonder.” Such were the men on whom an immature king from a foreign culture, speaking a foreign tongue, depended to make decisions concerning affairs of state.
    Aranda obtained a meeting for Magellan with the king’s Flemish ministers to consider a