Philip II. of Spain 17

Philip II. of Spain 17

In the meanwhile the prince’s health visibly declined. At best he had

been a continual invalid, burned up with fever and ague, but in

captivity and under examination he became worse. He refused to receive

the consolations of the Church, a freak upon which much superstructure

has been raised. As his madness increased, like many lunatics he took to

swallowing inedible things, jewelry, and other objects of the same sort,

and finally refused to eat anything at all for eleven days. Then in

reply to the king’s remonstrances, he gorged himself, and this brought

him a return of his fever in the worst form. Every sort of mad

proceeding was adopted in turn by the unhappy youth. He would half roast

himself by a fire, and then put ice in his bed. First he would

scornfully refuse the sacraments, and then fulfil scrupulously all the

forms of his Church. At length, probably from weakness, he became

calmer, and there was a momentary hope of his recovery. Llorente (whose

authority is not, however, to be accepted unquestioned) says that the

result of his trial was that he was “found guilty of implication in a

plot to kill the king and to usurp the sovereignty of the Netherlands,

and that the only punishment for this was death.” There are no

trustworthy official documents known which prove this to have been the

case, but nature and the prince’s mad excesses had apparently condemned

him to death, independently of his faults and failings. When he was told

that he was dying he conformed fervently to the rites of his Church, and

sent Suarez to beg his father’s forgiveness. On July 21 the French

ambassador wrote to his master that Don Carlos had eaten nothing but a

few plums and sweetmeats for eight days, and was dying of weakness. “The

king, his father, is much grieved, because, if he die, the world will

talk. I understand that if he live, the castle of Arevalo is to be put

in order, so that he may be lodged in safety and comfort.”

 

On July 26 the same ambassador writes to Catharine de Medici saying that

the prince had died the previous day. He attributes the death entirely

to his curious eccentricities of diet and hygiene. Llorente, enemy of

Philip though he was, says that Carlos died a natural death. In face of

this testimony it appears that Philip should be given the benefit of the

doubt. In any case, the Abbé de St. Real’s romantic fictions, which have

been drawn upon by so many historians, may be confidently dismissed as

unworthy of any credit whatever, and Perez’s source is too tainted to be

accepted. When the French ambassador notified the death of Don Carlos,

he told Catharine de Medici that her daughter, the queen, was ill. The

death, however, of her stepson was distinctly in her favour, as it made

the elder of her two little daughters, Isabel Clara Eugenia, heiress to

the crown of Spain. The queen saw this, and begged her mother to express

emphatically her sorrow for the death of the prince. But the queen

herself languished, crushed with the trouble that surrounded her, for

Alba was drowning Flanders in blood, and her own beloved France was

riven by religious disorder. In August it was announced that she was

pregnant, and all Spain prayed that an heir might be born. But she was

sacrificed to the unskilfulness of the Spanish doctors, and died on

October 3, 1568, to the great grief of all Spain and France. The French

ambassador relates the death-bed farewell of Philip and his wife,

“Enough to break the heart of so good a husband as the king was to her.”

And when all was over the king retired in the deepest grief to the

monastery of San Geronimo in Madrid, but not before he had signed

letters to the Duke of Alba and others giving the news of his

bereavement. Nothing short of his own death could prevent Philip from

attending to his beloved papers.

 

Once only during Elizabeth’s short married life had the object for which

she was sacrificed seemed on the point of realisation. The open sympathy

manifested in England for the Flemish Protestants, the ever-increasing

boldness of the English corsairs at sea, and the ferment of the

Huguenots in France had caused Philip in 1565 to approve of a plan for

binding Catharine de Medici to him in a league to utterly destroy and

root out the reformed doctrines in their respective territories. The

ostensible occasion was an interview between the Queen of Spain and her

mother at Bayonne, the Duke of Alba being the negotiator of the treaty.

Elizabeth of England was in a panic at the bare idea, and made one of

her rapid movements in favour of Catholicism, and another to draw

Catharine into a negotiation for the marriage of her young son, Charles

IX., with the Queen of England. It was a mere feint, of course, but it

helped towards its purpose. When Catharine reached Bayonne she found

that Alba’s instructions were to pledge her to destroy and break every

Huguenot noble or functionary in France, and to bind her hand and foot

to the extreme Catholic party. The queen-mother affected to agree, but

when she reached home she found all manner of impossible new conditions

necessary. Her second son must marry an Austrian princess and receive a

dominion. The league must also be joined by the emperor, the pope, and

others. So the league at that time came to nothing, for Catharine could

not afford to throw over the Huguenot nobles, who were her constant

balance against the Catholics and the Guises.

 

With the death of his French wife it became evident to Philip that he

could depend upon no enduring alliance between the French nation and

himself, and that he must face advancing Protestantism alone. It gave

him no trouble in Spain, thanks mainly to the Inquisition, but in

France, Germany, his own Netherlands, and, above all, in England, it

grew more and more threatening to the basis of his power. Mary of

Scotland, whom he had aided with counsel and money during her short

married life with Darnley, was a prisoner, and the reformers were

predominant in Scotland. Elizabeth of England was firmly established on

the throne, more than holding her own, the English and Dutch corsairs

were scouring the seas after Spanish shipping, and England was burning

with indignation at Alba’s _régime_ of blood in the Netherlands. But

withal Philip had to speak softly and temporise, for he dared not go to

war with Elizabeth whilst Holland was in arms, and the Huguenots strong.

All he could do was by intrigue to endeavour to stir up civil

dissensions both in France and England, and this he did ceaselessly, but

with indifferent success, as will be seen, for both Elizabeth and

Catharine, with their quick vigilance, were far more than a match for

Philip’s slow ponderous methods. Powerless, however, as Philip might be

to stay the progress of heterodoxy abroad, he was determined that it

should gain no foothold in his own country. Early in 1568 he expelled

the English ambassador, Dr. Man, ostensibly in consequence of his too

open profession of the reformed faith, but really to anticipate a demand

which he knew would be made for religious toleration for the ambassador

in return for the similar privilege enjoyed by the Spanish ambassador in

England. Although Protestantism was by the unsparing severity of the

Inquisition stamped out utterly in Spain, Philip’s principle of

absolute uniformity of faith amongst his subjects had to encounter a

serious resistance from another quarter. On the capture of Granada by

the Catholic sovereigns, the most complete religious toleration had been

promised to the Moors. The promise had been broken through the zeal of

Ximenez, and, nominally at least, the whole of the Spaniards of Moorish

descent had during the reign of the emperor been drawn into the Catholic

Church. All the south of Spain was inhabited by a people in course of

gradual amalgamation, and if time had only been given to them, they

would eventually have mingled into a homogeneous race, to the enormous

future advantage of the country. During the emperor’s time an edict had

been issued ordering all people of Moorish blood to discontinue the use

of their distinctive garb and language. It was naturally found

impossible to enforce this within a short period, and the edict was

allowed to fall nearly into abeyance, thanks, in a great measure, to the

liberal contributions of the Moriscos to the cost of the emperor’s wars

against his German Protestants. The Morisco population of the kingdom of

Granada, and Valencia especially, had accordingly, although outwardly

conforming Christians, really clung in secret to the faith and habits of

their fathers, living in industry and usefulness, adding greatly to the

national wealth both by their advanced agricultural science, and the

perfection to which they had brought the production of silk. The

prosperity they attained, and their distinct blood and customs, aroused

the jealousy and hatred of their Christian neighbours, especially during

the periodical struggle with the Turks, when the Moriscos were accused

of sympathy with the national enemy. Philip’s first action against these

useful citizens was prompted--as were most royal edicts in Spain--by a

representation made to him by the Cortes of Castile in 1560, to the

effect that the introduction of African slaves by the Spanish Moriscos

was a disadvantage to the country, and a royal pragmatica was issued

forbidding this. It was a heavy blow, as much of the hard labour of

mountain agriculture and irrigation was done by these slaves, but

measures of a very different character were adopted as soon as possible

after Cardinal Espinosa became inquisitor-general. In 1563 an edict had

been issued prohibiting the Moriscos from wearing or possessing arms,

which caused much discontent and resistance; but at the instance of the

clergy, and more especially of Guerrero, the Archbishop of Granada, and

of Espinosa, a far more serious step was taken early in 1567. The

Moriscos were forbidden to wear their distinctive garb, and were ordered

to dress as Christians, no silk garments being allowed, and the women

going abroad with their faces uncovered. They were to have no locks or

fastenings upon their doors, and within a term of three years were

utterly to discontinue the use of their own language and also adopt

Christian names. Above all, the use of warm baths was prohibited under

brutal penalties. Their customs and traditions, indeed, were to be

trampled upon with apparent wantonness. The Moriscos had always been

quiet, docile people, and the local clergy and authorities had assured

Philip that no difficulty would be experienced in enforcing the edict.

At first the Moriscos adopted the same means of evasion as they had

successfully employed on other occasions, namely, bribery and cajolery.

Espinosa belonged to the war party, and consequently had the Ruy Gomez

party against him, and even the Governor-General of Granada, the Marquis

de Mondejar, and much pressure was exerted upon Philip to induce him to

relax the orders, but, influenced by Espinosa and the churchmen, he

refused. For the first two years the Moriscos sulkily bowed beneath the

yoke, evading and passively resisting as much as possible; but during

this period the Mussulman fervour had been rising, and at length at

Christmas 1568 the storm which had long been brewing burst. A youth,

Aben Humeya, in the Alpujarras had distinguished himself in resisting

the enforcement of the edicts. He was a descendant of the prophet

himself, and was proclaimed by the Moriscos King of Granada. The Moorish

force was organised in the almost inaccessible mountains, whilst envoys

sped from the new king to his co-religionists at Constantinople and on

the other side of the Straits of Gibraltar; but the Turk was busy

organising an expedition against the Venetians, and the Barbary Moors

were split up into independent tribes which could furnish no

considerable combined force, so the Spanish Moriscos were left nearly

unaided, although many isolated companies of Barbary Moors responded to

the call and crossed to Spain. On December 26, 1568, a small body of 180

Moriscos, under Aben Farax, a dyer of Granada, came down from the

mountains through the driving snow and forced their way into the city of

Granada. The Morisco townspeople, terrified at the risk they ran in