sted. Summing up the remonstrances and
reproaches of his various friends, he declared that he held himself to
deserve rather their envy than their commiseration, since amidst
the many learned men in Italy he felt himself obscure and useless,
counting himself indeed as _passerunculus inter accipitres, pygmeolus
inter gigantes_.

Failing to turn his friend from his purpose, Cardinal Ascanio
Sforza exacted from him a promise to send him regular and frequent
information of all that happened at the Spanish Court. It is to this
pact between the two friends that posterity is indebted for the
Decades and the _Opus Epistolarum_, in which the events of those
singularly stirring years are chronicled in a style that portrays
with absolute fidelity the temper of an age prolific in men of
extraordinary genius and unsurpassed daring, incomparably rich in
achievements that changed the face of the world and gave a new
direction to the trend of human development.

On the twenty-ninth of August the Spanish ambassador, after taking
leave of Innocent VIII.,[9] set out from Rome on his return journey to
Spain, and with him went Peter Martyr d'Anghera.

[Note 9: _Dixi ante sacros pedes prostratus lacrymosum vale quarto
calendi Septembris 1487_. (Ep. i.)]

II

Spain in the year 1487 presented a striking contrast to Italy where,
from the days of Dante to those of Machiavelli, the land had echoed to
the vain cry: _Pax, pax et non erat pax_. Peter Martyr was impressed
by the unaccustomed spectacle of a united country within whose
boundaries peace reigned. This happy condition had followed upon the
relentless suppression of feudal chiefs whose acts of brigandage,
pillage, and general lawlessness had terrorised the people and
enfeebled the State during the preceding reign.

The same nobles who had fought under Isabella's standard against Henry
IV. did not scruple to turn their arms upon their young sovereign,
once she was seated upon the throne. Lucio Marineo Siculo has drawn a
sombre picture of life in Spain prior to the establishment of order
under Ferdinand and Isabella. To accomplish the needed reform, it was
necessary to break the power and humble the pretensions of the feudal
nobles. The Duke of Villahermosa, in command of an army maintained
by contributions from the towns, waged a merciless campaign, burning
castles and administering red-handed but salutary justice to rebels
against the royal authority, and to all disturbers of