Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. III.djvu/76

50 ITALIAN WARS. PART the parental care with which Isabella watched over '. — . the welfare of her soldiers in the long war of Gra- nada ! The queen appears to have taken no part in the management of these wars, which, notwith- standing the number of her own immediate sub- jects embarked in them, she probably regarded, from the first, as appertaining to Aragon, as ex- clusively as the conquests in the New World did to Castile. Indeed, whatever degree of interest she may have felt in their success, the declining state of her health at this period would not have allowed her to take any part in the conduct of them. Spirit of Gonsalvo was not wanting to himself in this Oonsalvo ~ trying emergency, and his noble spirit seemed to rise as all outward and visible resources failed. He cheered his troops with promises of speedy relief, talking confidently of the supplies of grain he ex- pected from Sicily, and the men and money he was to receive from Spain and Venice. He contrived, too, says Giovio, that a report should get abroad, that a ponderous coffer lying in his apartment was filled with gold, which he could draw upon in the last extremity. The old campaigners, indeed, ac- cording to the same authority, shook their heads at these and other agreeable fictions of their general, by famine for some time before this, pant, et nostros quotidie magis ac that Gonsalvo entertained serious magis premunt. Ita obsessi undi thoughts of embarking the whole que, de relinquenda. etiam Barletta of his little garrison on board the saepius iniere consilium. Ut mari fleet, and abandoning the place to terga dent hostibus, ne fame pcste- the enemy. " Barlettoe inclusos que pereant, saepe cadit in deliber- famepesteque urgerigraviter ainnt. ationem." Opus Epist., epist. 249 Vicina ipsorum omnia Galli occu-