A world lit only by fire_ the medieval m - William Manchester [143]
Long ago the Andalusians had given up the Armada de Molucca for lost. Now its survivors were hailed for achieving, in the words of one of their countrymen, “the most wonderful and greatest thing that has ever happened in the world since God created it.” Waterfront landsmen tried to fathom what the emaciated crewmen, calling down to them from Victoria’s decks, meant when they said that their cannons, now saluting the white bell tower of Seville’s La Giralda, had also been fired to celebrate the discoveries of Magellan’s Strait, the Pacific Ocean, and the Philippines. News of their return rapidly spread across the city, across Spain, across Europe. And now came the expedition’s final cruel irony. In Val-ladolid Charles V, having returned from the unpleasantness with Luther at Worms, was pleased to receive, and honor, the last commander of the voyage’s last ship—a man who, had he had his way in Puerto San Julián on April 2, 1520, would have overthrown Magellan even before the fleet had reached the strait.
The canonization of Juan Sebastián del Cano arose from no misunderstanding. Over a year earlier San Antonio, conned by the treacherous Estevão Gomes and his partners in crime, had returned to Seville, where the authorities had convened a royal commission of inquiry. The renegades, assuming that the armada’s remaining vessels had sunk with the loss of all hands, had their tale ready. The gist of it was that they had sailed away from Magellan after discovering that he was planning to betray his command to the Portuguese. Believing it their duty to resist, they testified, they had saved San Antonio by overpowering its captain—Magellan’s cousin Álvaro de Mesquita—and returning home. Magellan’s discovery of the strait had been unmentioned. There was a vague reference to the expedition’s entering a bay (“entraron en una bahía”), but they had then sworn that his search for a paso had been futile (“inútil sin provecho”).
Unconvinced, the commissioners had withheld final judgment pending further news of the flota—meanwhile imprisoning, of all people, Captain Mesquita. Now that the truth was available to them, they released Mesquita and awarded him reparations. The doom of the traitors seemed certain. Logically, the next step should have been an investigation of the earlier mutiny, in which Cano had been their accomplice. It was never taken. He shielded them, and his word was enough, for tarnishing his new image was unthinkable. Castile’s powerful dons had faced a choice between lionizing the capitán-general and honoring the man who had brought the armada’s last ship home. They reached their decision swiftly. The leader of the expedition was now merely a dead Portuguese. Cano, on the other hand, was not only a Spaniard, and very much alive; he was also a member of a noble Basque family. Therefore it was his name, not Magellan’s, which was heard everywhere, exalted and aggrandized.
The emperor, displaying the same ineptness which had distinguished his imperial performance at Worms, directed the farce. Summoning Cano to his court, he knighted him, granted him an annual pension of five hundred gold ducats, and presented him with a meretricious coat of arms on which the inscription Primus circumdedisti me (Thou first circumnavigated me) encircled a globe—thereby giving him full credit for all the capitán-general’s achievements. What made all this particularly shameless was that Francisco Albo, whose logs contained the truth, and without whom Victoria could not have found