I felt obliged to
send a commissioner to the Indies to investigate and give me a true
report, and, if necessary, to put limits to the authority you were
accused of overstepping. If he found you guilty of the charges against
you, he was to relieve you of the government and send you to Spain to
give an account of your stewardship. This was the extent of his
commission. I find that I have made a bad choice in my agent, and I
shall take care to make an example of Bobadilla so as to warn others not
to exceed their power. But I cannot promise at once to reinstate you as
governor. As to your rank of Admiral, I never intended to deprive you of
it. But you must abide your time and trust in me."
Isabella's reply is a model of fairness and prudence so far as Columbus
is concerned, but it is hardly fair to Bobadilla. The comendador had
been brutal, it is true; but it was not true that he had gone beyond the
extent of his commission. His brutality consisted in pouncing upon the
offender without any preliminaries whatever. Yet it turned out that, in
acting thus, he did the best possible thing for Columbus's subsequent
treatment. There is no doubt that had he proceeded slowly, with a fair
and formal inquiry into all the complaints against the Admiral, it would
have been clearly shown that, from the very beginning, everything had
gone wrong in the colony.
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