Las Casas and King Charles, First Impressions

Undeterred by the failures of the Hieronymites, Las Casas determined that the next reform of the Indies would be in his hands. The Amerindians of the Greater Antilles (Española, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica) were already almost extinguished by the double onslaught of the conquistadors and European diseases. For the next four years, 1518–1522, Las Casas turned to Tierra Firme, principally the Atlantic coastline of modern Venezuela. The many Indian peoples along this coast were reeling from the effects of slave raids, armed expeditions, and diseases. But it was an immense continent and could still be saved.

Before he could save the Indies, however, Las Casas needed permission to do so. Not one to wait on the hand of God, Las Casas jumped into the middle of the new King’s Flemish entourage and gained ascendancy over his Spanish rivals at court. Las Casas’s next three years at court were a masterpiece of lobbying, maneuvering, and persuasion. He used, primarily, the natural suspicion of Charles’s Flemish advisers for old King Ferdinand’s Castilian nobles who were, in the main, Las Casas’s rivals. Especially key was Charles’s grand chancellor, Jean Sauvage, whom the king trusted completely. Important for Las Casas, Sauvage checked the power of one of Las Casas’s old foes, Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca, who had recaptured control over the Indies following the death of Cardinal Cisneros. That Cardinal Adrian, Charles’s first major Flemish emissary to Castile, remembered Las Casas well was another trump card in Las Casas’s deck.