Although the suspicions against him were probably groundless, the Great Captain felt the weight of Ferdinand’s jealousy. They had returned from Italy together, and Ferdinand had shown him all deference and had promised him the Grand Mastership of Santiago. But the promise was never fulfilled; he was treated with marked coolness, and withdrew to his estates near Loja, where he ended his days in haughty and magnificent retirement. Once only-after the battle of Ravenna (1512), when it was believed that he alone could save Spain’s possessions in Italy, he received a commission to enlist troops. Thousands had already joined his banner, when the danger passed away, and Ferdinand, alarmed and jealous, withdrew his commission.
The Barbary pirates not only rendered the sea unsafe, but acting in concert with the Moriscos, made frequent descents upon the Spanish coast, spreading terror and devastation far inland. In 1505, at the instigation of Ximenes, Mers-el-Kebir, one of their strongholds, had been captured. The disturbed condition of Spain made it impossible immediately to follow up this success, but Ximenes had not lost sight of his policy of African conquest. A war against the Infidel always stirred the crusading spirit of the Spaniards, and Ferdinand saw in it a way of turning public attention from late events. In 1508 a small expedition under Pedro Navarro captured Penon de la Gomera. In the following year a larger one was prepared. Ximenes lent money out of the vast revenues of his see, and himself accompanied the army of 14,000 men to Oran (May, 1509). The city was captured, and many Christian captives were set free; but the glory of the victory was stained by a brutal massacre of unarmed inhabitants. Within a month Ximenes was back in Spain. He had quarrelled with Pedro Navarro, the general in command of the expedition, and was moreover alarmed by reports that Ferdinand was plotting to deprive him of his archbishopric in favour of his illegitimate son, the Archbishop of Saragossa. Pedro Navarro remained behind, and in a few months effected a series of brilliant conquests. Bugia fell after a siege; Algiers and Tlemcen surrendered; Tripolis was stormed. Grown overbold, Navarro fell into an ambuscade among the sandhills of the waterless island of Gelves; the greater part of his army perished; and the tide of Spanish conquest in Africa was stayed for a time (August, 1510).
The recovery of Roussillon and Cerdagne gave Ferdinand command of the eastern passes of the Pyrenees; but Spanish unity was still incomplete, while the kingdom of Navarre lying astride-of the western end of the range held the keys of Spain. Torn by the continual wars of her two great factions, the Beaumonts and Grammonts, and crushed by the neighbourhood of more powerful States, Navarre could not hope to preserve her independence. She was, moreover, ruled by a feeble dynasty that had not taken root in the soil. Navarre had belonged to Ferdinand’s father in right of his first wife, but had passed by right of marriage to her great-grandson Fra^ois Phebus Count of Foix, and, later, to his sister Catherine. Ferdinand sought to secure the prize by marrying his son to Catherine. The scheme was frustrated by her mother Madeleine, sister of Louis XII; and Catherine married Jean d’Albret, a Gascon nobleman whose large estates lay on the border of Lower Navarre. Nevertheless Ferdinand found means of frequently interfering in the affairs of his neighbours. He protected the Beaumont faction and the dynasty against King Louis, who supported the claims of a younger branch of the House of Foix, represented first by the Viscount of Narbonne, and later by Gaston Phebus, brother of Ferdinand’s second wife.
In 1511 Pope Julius II, the Emperor, the Venetians, Ferdinand, and Henry VIII of England formed the Holy League for the purpose of crushing France. Bent on his scheme of recovering Guyenne Henry sent an army to Guipuzcoa to cooperate with the Spaniards (1512). Ferdinand’s opportunity had now come. He demanded a free passage for his troops through Navarre, and the surrender of fortresses as a guarantee of neutrality. Jean d’Albr’et tried to evade compliance by allying himself with the French. Ferdinand retaliated by a manifesto declaiming against his faithlessness and ingratitude, and by ordering the Duke of Alva to invade Navarre (July, 1512). Five days later the Spaniards, aided by the Beaumontais, encamped before Pamplona, and Jean d’Albret fled to seek help from the French army encamped near Bayonne. Pamplona surrendered on receiving guarantees of its liberties, which it held dearer than its foreign dynasty.
Failing to get help from the French, Jean d’Albret, though his capital was already in the enemy’s hands, attempted negotiation, professing his readiness to accept any terms that might be dictated. Ferdinand, however, insisted on his claim to hold Navarre until he should complete his holy enterprise against France. Most of the Navarrese towns and fortresses now surrendered; Tudela was besieged by the Aragonese under the Archbishop of Saragossa. Early in August Ferdinand renewed his promise to give up the kingdom at the end of the war. His messenger was seized and imprisoned, and on the 21st of the month he published at Burgos the bull Pater ille coelestis, excommunicating all who resisted the Holy League, and declaring their lands and honours forfeited to those who should seize them. Although Jean d’Albret and Catherine were not named, the bull specially mentioned the Basques and Cantabrians, and dread of its threats brought about the surrender of the few places that still held out in Upper Navarre. Ferdinand now threw off the mask and took the title of King of Navarre. Meanwhile Alva had crossed the mountains, and summoned the Marquis of Dorset from his camp near San Sebastian to aid in the conquest of Lower Navarre. The English, however, declared that they had come to conquer not Navarre but Guyenne; and since it was now too late in the year for that purpose they sailed home after plundering a small part of the frontier. A French army advanced against Alva, who recrossed the mountains without fighting and shut himself up in Pamplona. But, after two fierce assaults, the French in turn withdrew on the approach of Spanish reinforcements. The whole of Upper Navarre and the district of Ultrapuertos north of the mountains remained in Ferdinand’s hands. In 1513 the Navarrese Cortes swore allegiance to him, and the French King abandoned his allies by concluding a truce. Navarre was incorporated with Castile (1515); Ultrapuertos was however afterwards abandoned on account of the expense of keeping up an outpost beyond the mountains (1530).
The last three years of Ferdinand’s life were uneventful, so far as Spain is concerned. Although he was involved in the tangled skein of alliances and plots by which the fate of Italy was decided, his interest in politics was no longer active. His chief anxiety was to leave a son to succeed to his patrimony. One had been born of his second marriage, but had died shortly after birth. Although he was eager to become a father once more, he was not destined to undo his life’s work,—Spanish unity. He fell ill (1513), and with the restlessness of a dying man, wandered through the mountain villages of Castile pursuing his favourite occupation of hunting. A strong Spanish party, led by Don Juan Manuel and supported by France, still opposed him, scheming in favour of Maximilian’s claim to govern Spain as regent for his grandson. King Ferdinand held them in check, and