Columbus_ The Four Voyages - Laurence Bergreen [2]
Throughout the first voyage, Columbus kept a detailed record of his thoughts and actions, in which he sought to justify himself to his Sovereigns, to his Lord, and to himself. He believed that history would be listening. In his record, he began by explaining the premise of the voyage in terms of Reconquista, the reclaiming of the Iberian Peninsula from Muslims who had occupied it for centuries. For Columbus, the success of this military campaign made his voyage possible, and, given his mystical bent, inevitable.
Addressing the “most Christian and very Exalted, Excellent and mighty Princes, King and Queen of the Spains and of the Islands of the Sea, our Lord and Lady, in the present year 1492”—his Sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella, in other words—he reminisced about their war against the Moors (Muslims), especially their memorable retaking of the “the very great City of Granada”—the former Moorish stronghold. Columbus was there, or so he claimed. He “saw the Royal Standards of Your Highnesses” appear on the “towers of Alhambra,” the former seat of Moorish rule. He even saw “the Moorish King come forth to the gates of the city and kiss the Royal Hands of Your Highnesses.” Even then, Columbus reminded them, he was thinking of his grand design to establish trade with the fabled “Grand Khan” in the east, the “King of Kings.” And it so happened, according to his epic recitation of events, that the Sovereigns, avowed enemies of “all idolatries and heresies,” resolved to send him—Christopher Columbus—to India in order to convert those in distant lands to “our Holy Faith”—the only faith. Recasting events slightly to flatter Ferdinand and Isabella, he claimed that they “ordained that I should not go by land”—why, as a mariner, would he?—but “by the route of the Occident,” in other words, by water.
In reciting this very recent history, Columbus made sure to incorporate the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, accomplished by a royal decree dated March 31, 1492, which he welcomed as the final impetus for his voyage. “After all the Jews had been exiled from your realms and dominions in the same month of January Your Highnesses commanded me that with a sufficient fleet I should go to India, and for this granted me many graces.” And what graces they were. They “ennobled me so that henceforth I might call myself ‘Don’ and be ‘Grand Admiral of the Ocean Sea and Viceroy and Perpetual Governor’ of all the islands and mainland that I should discover and win.” Not only that, “My eldest son should succeed me, and thus from rank to rank for ever.” His preening revealed that hereditary titles and wealth had inspired him to go as much as anything else.
Thereafter, his tone became more practical and objective.
“I departed from the city of Granada on the 12th day of the month of May of the same year 1492, on a Saturday, and came to the town of Palos, which is a seaport, where I fitted for the sea three vessels”—Niña, Pinta, and his flagship, Santa María—“well suited for such an enterprise, and I departed well furnished with very many provisions and many seamen on the third day of the month of August on a Friday, at half an hour before sunrise, and took the route for the Canary Islands of Your Highnesses . . . that I might thence take my course and sail until I should reach the Indies, and give the letters of Your Highnesses to those princes, and thus comply with what you had commanded.”
That was the plan, in all its grandeur and simplicity.
His journal