Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. III.djvu/131

INVASION OF SPAIN. 105 to Louis the Twelfth, who had seen his arms baf- fled on every point, and all his mighty apparatus of fleets and armies dissolve, as if by enchantment, in less time than it had been preparing. The imme- diate success of Spain may no doubt be ascribed, in a considerable degree, to the improved organi- zation and thorough discipline introduced by the sovereigns into the national militia, at the close of the Moorish war, without which it would have been scarcely possible to concentrate so promptly on a distant point such large masses of men, all well equipped and trained for active service. So soon was the nation called to feel the effect of these wise provisions. transfer to the canvass a faithful likeness of an individual from a description simply of his prominent features. Much of the difficulty might seem to be removed, now that we are on the luminous and beaten track of Italian history ; but, in fact, the vis- ion is rather dazzled than assisted by the numerous cross lights thrown over the path, and the infinitely va- rious points of view from which every object is contemplated. Be- sides the local and party prejudices which we had to encounter in the contemporary Spanish historians, we have now a host of national prejudices, not less unfavorable to truth ; while the remoteness of the scene of action necessarily begets a thousand additional inaccuracies in the gossiping and credulous chroniclers of France and Spain. The mode in v.'hich public nego- tiations were conducted at this pe- riod, interposes still further embar- rassments in our search after truth. They were regarded as the person- al concerns of the sovereign, in which the nation at large had no right to interfere. They were set- tled, like the rest of his private affairs, under his own eye, with- out the participation of any other branch of the government. They were shrouded, therefore, under an impenetrable secrecy, which per- mitted such results only to emerge into light as suited the monarch. Even these results cannot be relied on as furnishing the true key to the intentions of the parties. The science of the cabinet, as then practised, authorized such a system of artifice and shameless duplicity, as greatly impaired the credit of those official documents which we are accustomed to regard as the surest foundations of history. The only records which we can receive with full confidence are the private correspondence of contem- poraries, which, from its very na- ture, is exempt from most of the restraints and affectations incident more or less to every work des- tined for the public eye. Such communications, indeed, come like VOL. III. 14