Assignment task: Use the excerpt from William H. Prescott's The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella to answer the question.
Why did Ferdinand and Isabella MOST LIKELY pursue the goals reflected by the excerpt?
In order to guard against a similar disaster, as well as to provide comfortable winter quarters for the army, should the siege be so long protracted as to require it, it was resolved to build a town of substantial edifices on the place of the present encampment. . . . When it was completed, the whole army was desirous that the new city should bear the same of their illustrious queen; but Isabella modestly declined this tribute, and bestowed on the place the title of Santa Fe, in token of the unshaken trust, manifested by her people throughout this war, in Divine Providence. With this name it still stands as it was erected in 1491, a monument of the constancy and enduring patience of the Spaniards "the only city in Spain," in the words of a Castilian writer, "that has never been contaminated by the Moslem heresy."
The erection of Santa Fe by the Spaniards struck a greater damp into the people of Granada, than the most successful military achievement could have done. They beheld the enemy setting foot on their soil, with a resolution never more to resign it. They already began to suffer from the rigorous blockade, which effectually excluded supplies from their own territories, while all communication with Africa was jealously intercepted. Symptoms of insubordination had begun to show themselves among the overgrown population of the city, as it felt more and more the pressure of famine. In this crisis, the unfortunate Abdallah and his principal counsellors became convinced, that the place could not be maintained much longer; and at length, in the month of October, propositions were made through the vizier Abul Cazim Abdelmalic, to open a negotiation for the surrender of the place. The affair was to be conducted with the utmost caution; since the people of Granada, notwithstanding their precarious condition, and their disquietude, were buoyed up by indefinite expectations of relief from Africa, or some other quarter.
Responses
- to fund voyages of exploration to the Americas
- to make Spain the seat of the Church rather than Italy
- to gain access to Mediterranean and African trade routes
- to end the practice of slavery and the slave trade in Muslim lands