Read Over the Edge of the World: Magellen's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe for Free Online Page B

within the limits of our demarcation, islands, mainlands, rich spices,” it began, “we order that the following contract with you be recorded.”
    In the first clause, King Charles appeared to accede to Magellan’s insistence on a ten-year exclusive: “Since it would be unjust that others should cross your path, and since you take the labors of this undertaking upon yourselves, it is therefore my wish and will, and I promise that, during the next ten years, I will give no one permission to go on discoveries along the same regions as yourselves.” Nevertheless, he did not honor this promise. Just as Magellan feared, King Charles dispatched a follow-up expedition to the Spice Islands only six years after Magellan’s departure from Spain. The Spice Islands were too valuable to entrust to the luck and skill of a single explorer.
    King Charles enjoined Magellan and Faleiro to respect Portugal’s territorial rights under the terms of the Treaty of Tordesillas: “You must so conduct this voyage of discovery that you do not encroach upon the demarcation and boundaries of the Most Serene King of Portugal, my very dear Uncle and Brother, or otherwise prejudice his interests, except within the limits of our demarcation.” He reminded Magellan of the delicate diplomatic and family situation complicating the rivalry of Spain and Portugal for mastery of the seas and of world trade. Portugal’s sovereign, King Manuel, had married not just one but two of Charles’s aunts, first Isabel and then María. And now he was planning to marry Charles’s sister, Leonor, within a matter of weeks. The family ties, with their complex web of sentiment and formality, kept Spain and Portugal from all-out war with each other, but they did not extinguish the intense rivalry between the two nations; they drove it underground or into the diplomatic realm, where it was no less fierce.
    Charles I had every intention of overtaking the elderly king of Portugal. No matter what the language of the contract seemed to say, the impatient young king wished to bend the terms of the Treaty of Tordesillas to Spain’s advantage by insisting that the Spice Islands lay within the Spanish hemisphere. And if it was impossible to prove this point, then it was equally impossible to disprove it. To succeed, Magellan’s expedition need only give Spain a reasonable argument for claiming the Spice Islands.
    From Magellan’s standpoint, this was a remarkable contract because it gave him nearly everything he had wanted. The grant of lands, for instance, proved more generous than Magellan had any right to expect. “It is our wish and our will that of all the lands and islands that you shall discover, to grant to you . . . the twentieth part, and shall besides receive the title of Lieutenant and Governors of the said lands and islands for yourselves and your sons and heirs in freehold for all times, provided that the supreme [authority] shall remain with Us and with the Kings who come after Us.” Magellan would find his name all over the newly redrawn maps of the world, maps depicting lands that he not only discovered, but possessed: Magellan islands, Magellan lands, entire realms belonging to Ferdinand Magellan and his legitimate male heirs. The world, or at least a significant part of it, could be his.
    From Fonseca’s point of view, this was hardly an advantageous contract, for it gave Magellan too much power over the expedition. It would take Fonseca months, but eventually he would have his revenge on Magellan, and exert the control over the expedition that had been denied him in the royal contract.
     
    K ing Charles also promised Magellan five ships: “two each of 130 tons, two each of 90 tons, and one of sixty tons, equipped with crew, food, and artillery, to wit that the said ships are to go supplied for two years, and the other people necessary.” The fleet would be called the Armada de Molucca, after the Indonesian name for the Spice Islands.
    The ships were