CHAPTER VI

A COURTIER OF THE EMPEROR

These years in which Charles had been specializing as king of Spain had also been a season of prosperity for the Imperial arms in Italy. On March 3rd of the year in which Garcilaso was married there reached Madrid the glad tidings that on the Emperor's birthday, February 24th,| the armies of France had been defeated at Pavia and the king, Francis I, made a prisoner. Almost immediately after the latter's arrival at Madrid in August under the guard of the Viceroy of Naples, the long discussion over the terms of peace between Charles and Francis began. On one point both of the monarchs were ready to agree, that Francis I should marry Charles' sister Eleanor of Austria. But the other conditions were not so easily settled as these family matters. Doña Eleanor left Toledo on October 6th for Talavera, where she remained "in bond

(en depósito)", as Martín de Salinas put it, awaiting the outcome of the negotiations. At last on January 14, 1526, the treaty between the kings was signed at Madrid. On the 20th of the month Queen Germana, widow of Ferdinand V, and now once more widow of the Marquis of Brandenburg, reached Toledo. The Emperor in person, attended by the principal nobles of the Court, among them the Duke of Alba and Diego de Toledo, rode out to Santa Lucía to escort her to the city. It was dark when they crossed the bridge of Alcántara, so that the pages of the company had to light their way with torches through the narrow streets till they reached the houses of Garcilaso de la Vega, which had been assigned to her for her lodging, as being among the best in Toledo.2

Her stay as a guest of Garcilaso was brief, for within a few days she started for Torrijos to meet Queen Eleanor. But on the 1st of February the two queens returned to Toledo and we may assume that she was again lodged at the house of Garcilaso. It is inter

esting to find this intimacy between Doña Germana and Doña Eleanor, for Garcilaso's wife, Doña Elena de Zúñiga was, as we have seen, a lady-in-waiting of the latter. Under these circumstances it is unquestionable that both Garcilaso and his wife were numbered in the suite of the Queens when they went to Illescas on the 16th of February to meet the king of France, who was then at Torrejón with the Emperor. Perhaps, too, they were among the gentlemen and ladies who danced before the sovereigns on the following days. As soon as Francis I left for France, Charles V returned to Illescas to take leave of his sister, before starting for Seville, where he was to be married to Isabella of Portugal. On the day that he set out on his journey, February 22nd, Doña Eleanor and Doña Germana returned to Toledo with their suites. Three days later they separated, |Doña Germana starting for Seville and Doña Eleanor for Vitoria in the wake of her royal fiancé.1

Among the company that left Toledo on the 24th and 25th when the Court departed

for Seville were the ambassadors of the foreign powers. Two of them at least must have been known to Garcilaso, Andrea Navagero, ambassador of the Serene Republic, and Baldassare Castiglione, Papal Nuncio, who had come to Spain in the preceding year. They were both men of letters and it is to them that we must attribute the first interest in Tuscan literature which Garcilaso and his friend Boscán did no much to further. It is possible that Garcilaso accompanied them on this journey to Seville, which they made by way of Guadelupe, while the Emperor followed the road through Trujillo and Mérida. They reached Seville on March 8th, two days before the Emperor, who had stopped for several days at Oropesa. They found Isabella of Portugal already arrived with her suite. At midnight of the day of Charles V's arrival, the royal couple was married by the Papal Legate, Cardinal Salviati.2

The celebration of the Emperor's wedding was marred by two untoward events: the death of his sister, the Queen of Denmark,

and the news of the murder of the Bishop of Zamora in the castle of Simancas, where he had been in confinement since the Comunidades. But during the stay in Seville there was at least one brilliant tournament, where the young Fernán Álvarez de Toledo and his uncle, Diego de Toledo, were especially distinguished for the gorgeousness of their trappings, covered with gold and silver and with tiny silver bells upon their steeds, and at which the Empress granted the prizes to those who had made the bravest show in the joust. On the very eve of the departure of the Court for Granada, Queen Germana once more became a bride, though she was more than fat and forty; this time the lucky man was Ferdinand of Aragon, Duke of Calabria. With her return to the regency of Valencia, Garcilaso lost another influential friend.

For the next six months the Court was established at Granada. To most of the members of the company this sojourn must have been, as it was to Navagero, a season of unmixed delight. To the cultured Venetian