GONZA'LO, HERNANDEZ DE CO'RDOVA, surnamed the Great Captain, was born of noble and wealthy parents at Montilla, near that city, in 1453. Having early lost his father, he was brought up by a knight called Diego Ciircamo, who inspired him with that grandeur of soul and love of glory by which Gonzalo amply compensated the disadvantages to which the law of primogeniture had subjected him as a second son. When the city of Cordova espoused the cause of the Infante Don Alonso against his brother Henry IV., Gonzalo, though yet an inexperienced youth, was sent by his brother Alonso de Aguilar to Avila, where the unfortunate Henry was solemnly despoiled of crown and sceptre. On the sudden death of the new king, his sister Isabella, the right heiress to the Castilian crown, also requested the service of Gonzalo against the partisans of Juana, called La Bertraneja, the dubious daughter of the dethroned Henry, who was married to the King of Portugal.
Gonzalo, by his military and fashionable accomplishments, height ened by his character for generosity, was hailed as the prince of the Spanish youth, and became the greatest ornament of Isabella's court.
His intrepidity at the head of 120 horse belonging to his brother, which aided in the defeat of the Portuguese at Albuera, excited general admiration. In the protracted contest of ten years, which resulted in the final conquest of Granada, he took part in all the important engagements, and also carried on a sort of constant guerilla warfare, which struck the Moors with terror and amazement.
When Charles VIII. of France, instigated by Ludovico Sforza of Milan, conqnered Naples in 1495, Gonzalo was sent by Ferdinand the Catholic to expel the invaders, and restore the crown to the native king. Europe was soon astonished by the brilliancy and rapidity of his success. His only difficulty was to garrison the numerous places which he reduced in quick succession. Both friends and foes pro claimed him the Great Captain, a title which has always been attached to his person and memory.
After the expulsion of the French from Naples, Pope Alexander VI, called in the aid of Gonzalo against one Menoldo Guerri of Biscay, to whom Charles VIII., on his retreat, delivered Ostia in trust, and who, by his exactions from the trading-vessels of the Tiber, distressed and starved Rome. Gonzalo surrounded that fortress with his veterans, stormed it on the eighth day, and the capital of Christendom beheld the hero of the age bringing in chains the monster who had kept her so long in alarm—a modern triumph, the glory of which the conqueror enhanced by requesting and obtaining the pardon of the vanquished, and an exemption from all taxes, during ten years, for the inhabitants of Ostia and its environs. He took leave of the pontiff by pointing out the necessity of a reform in his household and court. Thus did the Great Captain crown his first expedition to Italy in 1498. Two years after he suppressed a revolt of the converted Moors in the Alpujarras, and requested their pardon also as the reward of his victory.
Louis XII., inheriting the throne and the ambition of his cousin Charles VIII., made preparations to expel Sforza from Milan, and to stretch his erns as far as Naples. Ferdinand, who now agreed to partake of the spoils, sent Gonzalo to Italy again, but only as an ally of the Venetians. The first result of this campaign was the taking of
Cephalonia from the Turks, after a siege of fifty days. at the end of 1500. On the first news of the deposition of the king of Naples being sanctioned by the pope, Gonzalo gave up the estates with which that king had rewarded his previous services. Subsequently however he stained his character by an act of which he repented in his old age ; he sent the hereditary prince, the Duke of Calabria. as a prisoner to Spain, notwithstanding be had solemnly bound himself to respect his liberty, under the plea of Ferdinand's disapproval of that pledge, which wanted his previous royal consent. The partition of Naples between the Spanish and French soon brought them into collision, and afforded Gonzalo a second wadi more brilliant oppor tunity of defeating and finally driving away the French, and of reconciling the natives to the Spauish sway. Ferdivand at last grew jealous of a subject whose brilliant success threw the kingly dignity into tho shade. Even is the decline of his authority and power, after Isabella's death, and when Gonzalo, in a letter dated Naples, 2nd of July 1506, reassured bins of his unconditional and most firm adherence, and when the pope and the Venetians strove to place the Great Captain at the head of their respective forces, the distrustful king did not cease to make common cause with the envious courtiers, and succeeded iu removing his most faithful subject from Italy.
Returning to his conntry in 1507, and passing through Savona, where Ferdinand and Louis XII. bad an interview, he received the highest attentions from the French king and his suite. More flattering still and bordering almost on adoration was his reception in every part of Spain, except at court, where he met only with contumely. He was even refused the mastership of Santiago, which had been so often and so solemnly promised him; nor could he obtain leave to join Cardinal Cinnero in his expedition to Africa. Nevertheless, in the hour of need, when the new viceroy of Naples, Don Ramou de Cardona, was defeated at Itavenna by Gaston de Foix, on Eastk. day, April 11th, 1512, Ferdinand requested Gonzalo to organise a fresh expedition to Italy. But when ha was ready to depart with his veterans and the volunteers who bad flocked to his standard, Ferdinand's fears subsided, and distrust reassuming its wonted sway over his mind, he ordered the disbanding of the forces. As the army was composed of numerous volunteers who had parted with all their property, in order to furnish themselves for the expedition, their intended losder, grieved at the sacrifices which they had made, and keenly feeling their disappointment, convened them at Antequera, and rewarded them in a princely style. Such was the beat way of enjoying his wealth, he said, when remonstrated with for the ex travagance of his munificence. At the same time he wrote to the king a letter replete with bitterness and complaint. At length an accumulation of mental sufferieg impaired his health, and terminated his existence on the 2nd of December 1515. Two hundred tattered banners and two royal pennons, once unfurled by the enemy, waved over the tomb of the hero who raised the Spanish soldiery to that superiority which they maintained in Europe for more thau a century.