Magellan combined elements of both methods. Mendoza was secured to the flagship’s deck, with ropes running from his wrists and ankles to the capstans, which consisted of a cable wound about a cylinder to hoist or move heavy objects. On cue, sailors pressed on levers to rotate the capstans’ drum, which contained sockets to check its backward movement. Bit by bit, the pressure applied to the capstans ripped Mendoza’s lifeless body to pieces.
Magellan directed that the quartered remains be spitted and displayed as a warning of exactly how traitors would be treated. The preserved body parts of Luis de Mendoza remained visible throughout the next several months in Port Saint Julian, an indelible lesson to the men concerning the consequences of mutiny. The practice, so barbarous by present standards, was in keeping with the customs of the time for those who would defy authority.
Magellan’s display of barbarism did not end there; he was only beginning to exact revenge for the mutineers’ insult to his authority and to the honor of King Charles. More than execution, torture was his ultimate weapon at sea. That he resorted to torture was not unusual; this was, after all, the era of the Spanish Inquisition, which had formally begun in 1478 and continued under the leadership of Tomás de Torquemada, the first Grand Inquisitor. To many Europeans, the mere mention of Spain summoned images of the Inquisition and of diabolical methods of torture, although Spain was hardly the only offender. Nor was torture confined to special cases of heresy; as Magellan’s behavior demonstrated, it was also applied to other criminal behavior such as usury, sodomy, polygamy, and especially treason, considered the most serious crime against the state.
An inquisition was not a trial in the modern sense. The accused were presumed guilty; their reluctance to confess their crimes only added to the sum of their crimes. Torture was designed to elicit withheld confessions, and the sooner the accused confessed, the sooner the agony ended. Indeed, confessions elicited by torture were considered the best evidence of all.
One eyewitness account of a typical Spanish inquisition evokes the fear and despondency Magellan’s victims likely experienced. “The place of torture in the Spanish Inquisition is generally an underground and very dark room, to which one enters through several doors. There is a tribunal erected in it, in which the Inquisitor, Inspector, and Secretary sit. When the candles are lighted, and the person to be tortured brought in, the Executioner . . . makes an astonishing and dreadful appearance. He is covered all over with a black linen garment down to his feet, and tied close to his body. His head and face are all hid with a long black cowl, only two little holes being left in it for him to see through. All this is intended to strike the miserable wretch with greater terror in mind and body when he sees himself going to be tortured by the hands of one who looks like the very devil.” In Magellan’s time, torture was a vivid, dreaded presence in daily life, and it belonged in every captain’s arsenal of techniques to keep sailors in line. With its legal and religious trappings, it was far more systematic, cruel, and psychologically damaging than the traditional remedy of the lash. Even when physical pain ended, psychological wounds continued to fester deep in the victims’ souls.
Magellan’s use of torture inflamed early Spanish historians, who professed to be shocked by his brutality, but what upset them was not that he resorted to torture, a fact of life in Torquemada’s Spain, but that he tortured Spaniards. Among those who denounced Magellan’s conduct regarding the mutiny was Maximilian of Transylvania, the scholar who interviewed the survivors of the expedition on their return to Seville; based on their recollections, he stated flatly that Magellan’s actions had been illegal. “No one, aside from Charles and his Council, can pronounce capital punishment against these dignitaries.” (Pigafetta, who was at the scene of the torture, simply ignored the inconvenient display of barbarism, as he did with everything else concerning the mutiny; it would not do to portray his beloved Captain General as inflicting grievous hardships on his beleaguered men.) Early historians stress that some of the victims of Magellan’s torture were Spanish officers in order to emphasize the insult to King Charles and Castile—evidence of Magellan’s disloyalty toward Spain—but many victims were actually Portuguese.
Torture, no less than the skill he displayed in recapturing the mutinous ships, played an important part in Magellan’s preventing further mutinies. Through his use of torture, his crew came to understand that the only thing worse than obeying Magellan’s dictates, and possibly losing their lives in the process, was suffering the consequences of defying him. One of the outstanding reasons that his crew had the courage and determination to circumnavigate the globe, even if it meant sailing over the edge of the world, was that he compelled them to do so. Fear was his most important means of motivating his men; they became more afraid of Magellan than the hazards of the sea.
To punish the other offenders, Magellan conducted a secular inquisition at Port Saint Julian. He appointed his cousin, Álvaro de Mesquita, as judge presiding over an exhaustive trial. First Magellan had promoted him to captain of San Antonio over the heads of more qualified pilots and master seamen, both Spanish and Portuguese. Now Mesquita functioned as Magellan’s agent of agony, deciding who was guilty of treason and who would suffer the consequences. No wonder the men hated him.
Mesquita spent two weeks assessing the “evidence” of guilt before passing judgment. At the end of the trial, Mesquita, no doubt under orders from Magellan, let one of the accused off with a slap on the wrist. The hapless accountant Antonio de Coca was merely deprived of his rank. But Mesquita found Andrés de San Martín, the esteemed astronomer-astrologer; Hernando Morales, a pilot; and a priest all guilty of treasonous behavior.
This judgment was unquestionably excessive. Their behavior was that of frightened men rather than of conspirators. For example, when searched, San Martín was found to possess an itinerary of the expedition, as would be expected of the fleet’s chief astronomer. In a panic, he threw the chart into the water. And what had the priest done to deserve the same treatment? According to the charges, he had been heard to say that the “ships did have enough provisions”—which was only the truth—“and for not having consented to communicate to the Captain General the secrets of what the crew had told him in confession.” Magellan probably expected that the priest had been privy to the plot, which sailors would have confessed, but it is unlikely they considered their deeds sinful; rather, they were justified by their desperate circumstances.
The tenuous connection of these deeds to the actual mutiny suggests that Mesquita and Magellan, for all their patient investigation, turned up little additional evidence of disloyalty and simply resorted to San Martín and the priest as scapegoats for their wrath. San Martín had been exercising his navigational skills with distinction at least since 1512, when King Ferdinand had appointed him as a royal pilot. He later tried twice to win a commission of pilot major, or chief of all pilots. Even though King Charles passed him over, San Martín replaced Ruy Faleiro as the astronomer-astrologer for the Armada de Molucca. San Martín’s skills, his royal charter, the lavish pay he received, his prominence, and his long record of loyalty all made him an unlikely candidate for the role of mutineer. Unlike Quesada, Cartagena, and the other co-conspirators, he did not hunger to become a captain and harbored no resentment against Magellan. His worst offense consisted only of a moment of panic. Nevertheless, this lapse condemned him to suffer what many considered a fate worse than death.