Transition from the Mediaeval to the Modern Age.--The discovery of America by Columbus, in 1492, is often used to mark the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of modern times; and this was an event of such transcendent importance,-- the effect upon civilization of the opening up of fresh continents was so great,--that we may very properly accord to the achievement of the Genoese the honor proposed. Yet we must bear in mind that no single circumstance or event actually marks the end of the old order of things and the beginning of the new. The finding of the New World did not make the new age; the new age discovered the New World. The undertaking of Columbus was the natural outcome of that spirit of commercial enterprise and scientific curiosity which for centuries--ever since the Crusades--had been gradually expanding the scope of mercantile adventure and broadening the horizon of the European world. His fortunate expedition was only one of several brilliant nautical exploits which distinguished the close of the fifteenth and the opening of the sixteenth century.

This same period was also marked by significant intellectual, political, and religious movements, which indicated that civilization was about to enter--indeed, had already entered--upon a new phase of its development.

In the intellectual world, as we have seen, was going on the wonderful Revival of Learning, producing everywhere unwonted thought, stir, and enterprises This intellectual movement alone would suffice to mark the period of which we speak as the beginning of a new historical era; for the opening and the closing of the great epochs of history, such as the Age of Christianity, the Age of the Protestant Reformation, and the Age of the Political Revolution, are determined not by events or happenings in the outer world but by movements within the soul of humanity.

[The truest representative of the intellectual revival on its scientific side was Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543), who, while Columbus and others were exploring the earth's unknown seas and opening up a new hemisphere for civilization, was exploring the heavens and discovering the true system of the universe. He had quite fully matured his theory by the year 1;07, but fearing the charge of heresy he did not publish the great work embodying his views until thirty-six years later (in 1543). It should be carefully noted, however, that the Copernican theory had little influence on the thought of the sixteenth century. It was denounced as contrary to Scripture by both Catholics and Protestants, and was almost universally rejected for more than a hundred years after its first publication. Even after the revelations made by the telescope of Galileo (1564-1642) the acceptance of the truth was so hindered by theological opposition that the complete triumph of the doctrine was delayed until the eighteenth century. See Andrew D. White, The Warfare of Science with Theology, vol. 1, chap. iii.]

In the political world the tendency to centralization which had long been at work in different countries of Europe, gathering up the little feudal units into larger aggregates, was culminating in the formation of great independent nations with strong monarchical governments. The Age of the Nations was opening. This movement was one of vast significance in European history and might in itself very well be regarded as forming a division line between two great epochs.

In the religious world there were unrest, dissatisfaction, inquiry, complaint,--premonitory symptoms of the tremendous revolution that was destined to render the sixteenth century memorable in the religious records of mankind. This upheaval also constitutes a sort of continental divide in history.

Closely connected with these movements were three great inventions which, like the inventions of our own time, were also signs of a new age, and which powerfully helped on the mental and social revolutions. Thus the intellectual revival and the religious reform were greatly promoted by the new art of printing; the kings in their struggle with the nobles were materially aided by the use of gunpowder, which rendered useless costly armor and fortified castle and helped to replace the feudal levy by a regular standing army, the prop and bulwark of the royal power; while the great ocean voyages of the times were rendered possible only by the improvement of the mariner's compass, whose trusty guidance emboldened the navigator to quit the shore and push out upon hitherto untraversed seas. [It is a disputed question as to what people should be given the credit of the discovery of the properties of the magnetic needle. In a very primitive form the compass was certainly in use among the Chinese as early as the eighth century of our era. There is no reliable record of its use by European navigators before about the middle of the thirteenth century. It seems most probable that a knowledge of the instrument was gained in the East by the crusaders.]

Maritime Explorations; the Terrors of the Ocean.--To appreciate the greatness of the achievements of the navigators and explorers of the age of geographical discovery, we need to bear in mind with what terrors the mediaeval imagination had invested the unknown regions of the earth. In the popular conception these parts were haunted by demons and dragons and monsters of every kind. The lands were shrouded in eternal mists and darkness. The seas were filled with awful whirlpools and treacherous currents, and shallowed into vast marshes. Out in the Atlantic, so a popular superstition taught, was the mouth of hell; the red glow cast upon the sun at its setting was held to be positive evidence of this. Away to the south, under the equator, there was believed to be an impassable belt of fire. This was a very persistent idea, and was not dispelled until men had actually sailed beyond the equatorial regions.

Portuguese Explorations; Prince Henry the Navigator.-- Many incentives concurred to urge daring navigators in the later mediaeval time to undertake voyages of discovery, but a chief motive was a desire to find a water way that should serve as a new trade route between Europe and the Indies.

The first attempts to reach these lands by an all sea route were made by sailors feeling their way down the western coast of the African continent. The favorable situation of Portugal upon the Atlantic seaboard caused her to become foremost in these enterprises. Throughout the fifteenth century Portuguese sailors were year after year penetrating a little farther into the mysterious tropical seas and uncovering new reaches of the western coast of Africa. The soul and inspiration of all this maritime enterprise was Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460).

In the year 1442 the Portuguese mariners reached the Gulf of Guinea, and here discovered the home of the true negro. Some of the ebony-skinned natives were carried to Portugal as slaves. This was the beginning of the modern African slave trade, which was destined to shape such large sections of the history of the centuries with which we have to do. The traffic was at first approved by even the most philanthropic persons, on the ground that the certain conversion of the slaves under Christian masters would more than compensate them for their loss of freedom.

Finally, in 1486, Bartholomew Dias [Diaz] succeeded in reaching the most southern point of the continent, which, as the possibility of reaching India by sea now seemed assured, was later given the name of Cape of Good Hope. But at the same time it was a disappointment to the Portuguese to find that Africa extended so far to the south. Even should India be reached, the way, it was now known, would be long and dangerous. This knowledge stimulated efforts to reach the Indies and the " place of spices " by a different and shorter route.

Columbus in Search of a Westward Route to the Indies finds the New World (1492).--It was Christopher Columbus, a Genoese by birth, who now proposed the bold plan of reaching these eastern lands by sailing westward. The sphericity of the earth was a doctrine held by all the really learned men of this time. This notion was also familiar to many at least of the common people; but they, while vaguely accepting the view that the earth is round, thought that the habitable part was a comparatively flat, shield-like plain on the top of it. All the rest they thought to be covered by the waters of a great ocean.

While agreed as to the globular form of the earth and of the curvature of the land as well as of the water surface, scholars differed as to the proportion of land and water. The common opinion among them was that the greater part of the earth's surface was water. Some, however, believed that three fourths or more of its surface was land, and that only a narrow ocean separated the western shores of Europe from the eastern shores of Asia. Columbus held this latter view, and also shared with others a misconception as to the size of the earth, supposing it to be much smaller than it really is. Consequently he felt sure that a westward sail of three or four thousand miles would bring him to the Indies. Thus his very misconceptions fed his hopes and drew him on to his great discovery.

Everybody knows how Columbus in his endeavors to secure a patron for his enterprise met at first with repeated repulse and disappointment; how at last he gained the ear of Queen Isabella of Castille; how a fleet of three small vessels was fitted out for the explorer; and how the New World was discovered, --or rather rediscovered.

The return of Columbus to Spain with his vessels loaded with the strange animal and vegetable products of the new lands he had found, together with several specimens of the inhabitants,-- a race of men new to Europeans,--produced the profoundest sensation among all classes. Curiosity was unbounded. The spirit of hazardous enterprise awakened by the surprising discovery led to those subsequent undertakings by Castilian adventurers which make up the most thrilling pages of Spanish history.

Columbus made altogether four voyages to the new lands; still he died in ignorance of the fact that he had really discovered a new world. He supposed the land he had found to be some part of the Indies, whence the name " West Indies " which still clings to the islands between North and South America, and the term " Indians " applied to the aborigines. It was not until the middle of the sixteenth century that it became fully established that a great new double continent, separated from Asia by an ocean wider than the Atlantic, had been found.

Columbus never received during his lifetime a fitting recognition of the unparalleled service he had rendered Spain and the world. Jealousy pursued him, and from his third voyage he was sent home loaded with chains. Even the continent he had discovered, instead of being called after him as a perpetual memorial, was named from a Florentine navigator, Amerigo Vespucci, whose chief claim to this distinction was his having written the first widely published account of the new lands.

The Voyage of Vasco da Gama (1497-1498); the Portuguese create a Colonial Empire in the East.--We have seen that by the year 1486 the Portuguese navigators, in their search for an ocean route to the Indies, had reached the southern point of Africa. A little later, six years after the first voyage of Columbus, Vasco da Gama, a Portuguese admiral, doubled the Cape, crossed the Indian Ocean, and landed on the coast of Malabar.

The discovery of an unbroken water path to India effected most important changes in the trade routes and traffic of the world. It made the port of Lisbon the depot of the Eastern trade. The merchants of Venice were ruined. The great warehouses of Alexandria were left empty. The old route to the Indies by way of the Red Sea, which had been from time immemorial a main line of communication between the Far East and the Mediterranean lands, now fell into disuse, not to be reopened until the construction of the Suez Canal in our own day.

Portugal dotted the coasts of Africa and Asia, the Moluccas and other islands of the Pacific archipelago, with fortresses and factories, and built up in these parts a great commercial empire, and, through the extraordinary impulse thus given to the enterprise and ambition of her citizens, now entered upon the most splendid era of her history. [Among the makers of the Portuguese colonial empire Albuquerque (1452?-l515) stands preeminent. . .]

The Papal Line of Demarcation.--Remarkable and bold as were the voyages of Columbus and Vasco da Gama, these were now to be eclipsed by the still more adventurous enterprise of the circumnavigation of the globe by Ferdinand Magellan, a navigator of Portuguese birth. But to make intelligible the object of this expedition there is needed a word of explanation concerning what is known as the Papal Line of Demarcation.

Upon the return of Columbus from his successful expedition, Pope Alexander VI, with a view to adjusting the conflicting claims of Spain and Portugal, issued a bull wherein he drew from pole to pole a line of demarcation through the Atlantic one hundred leagues west of the Azores. As it was impossible for the surveyors and geometers to fix upon the right starting point, the indefiniteness of the language of the bull made no end of trouble. See Bourne's Essays in Historical Criticism, Essay vii.] The line was afterwards moved two hundred and seventy leagues westward [One result of this change was to throw the eastward projecting part of South America to the east of the demarcation line, and thus to make it a Portuguese instead of a Spanish possession] , and awarded to the Spanish sovereigns all pagan lands, not already in possession of Christian princes, that their subjects might find west of this line, and to the Portuguese kings all unclaimed pagan lands discovered by Portuguese navigators east of the designated meridian. [The claim of the popes to the right thus to dispose of pagan lands was believed to be supported by such Scripture texts as this: " Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession " (Psalms ii. S). Spain and Portugal recognized this claim, but the Catholic sovereigns in general only in so far as it coincided with their interests to do so. After the Lutheran revolt the rulers of the Protestant states gave no heed to it.] By treaty arrangements as well as by papal edicts,--which were based on the theory of that time that the ocean like the land might be appropriated by any power and absolute control over it asserted, [Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), the eminent Dutch jurist, in a treatise entitled Mare Liberum, refuted this theory, and in opposition to it maintained that the ocean should be free to all,--a far-reaching doctrine which finally became a part of the common lava of nations.] --the Portuguese were prohibited from sailing any of the seas thus placed under the dominion of Spain or from visiting as traders any of her lands, and the Spaniards from trespassing upon the waters or the lands granted to the Portuguese. [There was difficulty in determining just where among the islands lying southeast of Asia the papal line of demarcation, ashen carried around the globe, should run.]

Spain was thus shut out from the use of the Cape route to the Indies which had been opened up by Vasco da Gama, and consequently from participation in the coveted spice trade, unless perchance a way to the region of spices could be found through some opening in the new lands discovered by Columbus.

The Circumnavigation of the Globe by Magellan (1519-1522).--Such was the situation of things when Magellan laid before the young Emperor Charles V, grandson of the Isabella who had given Columbus his commission, his plan of reaching the Moluccas, or " Spice Islands," which he contended were in Spanish waters, by a westward voyage. The young king looked with favor upon the navigator's plans, and placed under his command a fleet of five small vessels.

Magellan directed his ships in a southwesterly course across the Atlantic, hoping to find towards the south a break in the newfound lands. Near the most southern point of South America he found the narrow strait that now bears his name. Through this channel the bold sailor pushed his vessels and found himself Upon a great sea with a blank horizon to the west. From the calm, unruffled face of the new ocean, so different from the stormy Atlantic, he gave to it the name Pacific. [The Pacific had several years before this been seen at the Isthmus of Darien.]

The voyage of these first intruders from the Old World upon the unknown sea, beneath the strange constellations of the southern skies, was one of almost incredible sufferings, endured with the bravest fortitude. Finally, on March 16, 1521, Magellan reached the group of islands now known as the Philippines, having been so named in honor of Philip II, Charles' son and his successor on the Spanish throne. On one of these islands Magellan was killed in a fight with the natives.

The year following the discovery of the Philippines a single battered ship of the fleet, the Victoria, with eighteen men out of the original crews of over two hundred sailors, entered the Spanish port of Seville. The globe had for the first time been circumnavigated. The most adventurous enterprise of which record has been preserved had been successfully accomplished. "In the whole history of human undertakings," says Draper, "there is nothing that exceeds, if, indeed, there is anything that equals, this voyage of Magellan's. That of Columbus dwindles away in comparison."

Equally does the exploit seem to have impressed the imagination of Magellan's own age. The old writer Richard Eden (b. about 1521) refers to it as "a thing doubtless so strange and marvelous that, as the like was never done before, so is it perhaps never like to be done again; so far have the navigations of the Spaniards excelled the voyage of Jason and the Argonauts to the region of Colchis, or all that ever were before "; and a Spanish contemporary declares, " Nothing more notable in navigation has ever been heard of since the voyage of the patriarch Noah."

The results of the achievement were greater in the intellectual realm than in the commercial or the political domain It revolutionized whole systems of mediaeval theory and belief; it pushed aside old narrow geographical ideas; it settled forever and for all men the question as to the shape and size of the earth. It brought to an end the scholastic controversy concerning the antipodes, --that is, whether there were men living on the "under" side of the earth. The state of most men's minds in regard to this matter had till then been just about the same as is ours to-day on the question whether or not the planets are inhabited.

These Voyages and Geographical Discoveries ushered in a New Epoch.-- By some geographers civilization is conceived as having passed through three stages,--the potamic or river stage, the thalassic or inland sea stage, and the oceanic stage. In the case of our own civilization, whose beginnings we seek in Egypt and Babylonia, these steps or stages seem fairly well defined and mark off historical times into three great periods, which may be named the River Epoch, the Sea Epoch, and the Ocean Epoch.

The River Epoch was that during which civilization was confined to river valleys, like those of the Nile, the Tigris, and the Euphrates. The chief cities of this period, as, for instance, Memphis and Thebes in Egypt, Nineveh and Babylon in Mesopotamia, arose on the banks of great streams. Rivers were the pathways of commerce. Boats were small and the art of sea navigation was practically unknown.

The Sea Epoch was that during which the Mediterranean was the theater of civilization. It was ushered in by the Phoenicians, the first skillful sea navigators, in the second millennium before our era. From the river banks the seats of trade and population were transferred to the shores of the Mediterranean, and Tyre and Sidon and Carthage and Ephesus and Miletus and Byzantium and Corinth and Athens and Rome arose and played their parts in the transactions of the thalassic age. So entirely did the events of this age center in and about the Mediterranean that this sea has been aptly called the Forum of the ancient world.

The Ocean Epoch was opened up by the voyages and geographical discoveries of which we have just been speaking. In this period the great oceans have ceased to be barriers between the nations, and have become instead the natural highways of the world's intercourse and commerce.

The Five Early Colonial Empires.--One of the most important phases of the earlier history of this Ocean Epoch was the expansion of the five states on the Atlantic seaboard of Europe --namely, Portugal, Spain, France, the Netherlands, and England--each into a great empire, embracing colonies and dependencies in two hemispheres. This expansion of Europe into Greater Europe holds somewhat such a place in modern history as the expansion of Hellas into Greater Hellas and of Rome into Greater Rome holds in ancient history.

In the mutual jealousies and the conflicting interests of these growing colonial empires is to be found the ground and cause of many of the great wars of modern times since the close of the religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. For this reason, although it is our special task to trace the lines of the historic development in Europe, we shall from time to time call the reader's attention to these European interests outside of the European continent. In the present connection a few words in regard to Spanish conquests and the beginnings of Spanish colonization in the New World will suffice.

The Conquest of Mexico ( 1519-1521) .--The accounts of Spanish explorations and conquests in the lands opened up by the fortunate voyage of Columbus read more like a romance than any other chapter in history. They tell of men growing old while hunting through strange lands for the Fountain of Youth; of expeditions lost for years to the knowledge of men, while searching beneath gloomy forests for El Dorado; of explorations upon seas and amidst mountains never before looked upon by men of the Old World; of voyages on ocean-like rivers which led no one knew where; and of ancient states conquered and their enormous accumulations of gold and silver seized by a few score of adventurous knights. [Juan Ponce de Leon started on his romantic expedition in search of the fabled spring in 1512; Vasco de Balboa discovered the Pacific in 1513; Hernando de Soto while searching for a rich Indian kingdom, found the Mississippi in X j41; and in the same year Francisco de Orellana descended the eastern slope of the Andes to the Napo, floated down that stream to the Amazon, and then drifted on down to the sea.]

Perhaps the most brilliant exploit in which the Spanish cavaliers engaged during this period of daring and romantic adventure was the conquest of Mexico. Reports of a rich and powerful a Empire " upon the mainland to the west were constantly spread among the Spanish colonists who very soon after the discovery of the New World settled the islands in the Gulf of Mexico. These stories inflamed the imagination of adventurous spirits among the settlers, and an expedition, consisting of five or six hundred foot soldiers and sixteen horsemen, was organized and placed under the command of Hernando Cortes for the conquest and "conversion " of the heathen nation. The expedition was successful, and soon the Spaniards were masters of the greater part of what now constitutes the republic of Mexico.

The state that the conquerors destroyed was not an empire, as termed by the contemporary Spanish chroniclers, but rather a sort of league or confederacy--something like the Iroquois confederacy in the North--formed of three Indian tribes. [Prescott's description of the Mexican state, especially as to its political organization, is misleading.] Of these the Aztecs were the leading tribe and gave name to the confederacy. At the head of the league stood a sachem, or war-chief, who bore the name of Montezuma.

The Aztecs, at the time of the discovery of America, had reached what is called the "middle stage of barbarism,"--a stage of culture which the Mediterranean races had reached and passed probably two thousand years before Christ. They employed a system of picture-writing. Their religion was a sort of sun worship. They were cannibals and offered human victims in their sacrifices. They had no knowledge of the horse or the ox, or of any other useful domesticated animal except the dog. [It has been conjectured that the backwardness in civilization of the native races of the Americas is to be attributed in part to their lack of useful tame animals. See Fiske, The Discovery of America, vol. i, p. 27. The native fauna of the New World as compared with that of the Old is singularly poor in tamable species. Aside from the llama, the alpaca, and the turkey, the New World has contributed nothing of essential value to the great store of domesticated stocks which constitute the basis of so large a part of modern industry.] They cultivated maize, but were without wheat, oats, or barley. They held their lands in common, and lived in communal or joint-tenement houses, which were large enough to accommodate from ten to one hundred families. It was these immense structures which the Spanish writers described as " palaces " and " public edifices." These buildings were, doubtless, the same in plan as those to be seen at the present day among the Pueblo Indians of the southwestern part of the United States.

The Conquest of Peru (1532-1536).--Shortly after the conquest of the Indians of Mexico the subjugation of the Indians of Peru was effected. The civilization of the Peruvians was superior to that of the Mexicans. It has been compared, as to several of its elements, to that of ancient Assyria. Not only were the great cities of the empire filled with splendid temples and palaces, but throughout the country were to be seen magnificent works of public utility, such as roads, bridges, and aqueducts. The government of the Incas, the royal or ruling race, was a mild, paternal autocracy.

Glowing reports of the enormous wealth of the Incas, the commonest articles in whose palaces, it was asserted, were of solid gold, reached the Spaniards by way of the Isthmus of Darien, and it was not long before an expedition, consisting of less than two hundred men, was organized for the conquest of the country. The leader of the band was Francisco Pizarro, an iron-hearted, cruel, and illiterate adventurer.

Through treachery Pizarro made a prisoner of the Inca, Atahualpa. The captive offered, as a ransom for his release, to fill the room in which he was confined " as high as he could reach " with vessels of gold. Pizarro accepted the offer, and the palaces and temples throughout the empire were stripped of their golden vessels, and the apartment was filled with the precious relics. The value of the treasure is estimated at over $15,000,000 [ca. 1900]. When this vast wealth was once under the control of the Spaniards, they seized it all, and then treacherously put the Inca to death (1533). With the death of Atahualpa the power of the Inca dynasty passed away forever.

Beginnings of Spanish Colonization in the New World.-- Not until more than one hundred years after the discovery of the Western Hemisphere by Columbus was there established a single permanent English settlement within the limits of what is now the United States; but into those parts of the new lands opened up by Spanish exploration and conquest there began to pour at once a tremendous stream of Spanish adventurers and colonists in search of fortune and fame. Upon the West India Islands, in Mexico, in Central America, all along the Pacific slope of the Andes, and everywhere upon the lofty and pleasant tablelands that had formed the heart of the empire of the Incas, there sprang up rapidly cities as centers of mining and agricultural industries, of commerce and of trade. Often, as in the case of Mexico, Quito, and Cuzco, these new cities were simply the renovated and rebuilt towns of the conquered natives.

Thus did a Greater Spain grow up in the New World. Before the close of the sixteenth century the dominions of the Spanish monarch in the new lands formed of themselves a magnificent empire, and were the source, chiefly through the wealth of their gold and silver mines, of a large revenue to the royal exchequer. It was, in part, the treasures derived from these new possessions that enabled the sovereigns of Spain to play the important part they did in the affairs of Europe during the century following the discovery of America.

Having thus indicated one source of Spanish greatness and reputation, it will be one of our aims in a following chapter to give some idea of the way in which this power and prestige were used by the Spanish sovereigns in maintaining the supremacy of the Catholic Church in the interests of Spain.