Philip II. of Spain 30

Philip II. of Spain 30

When he had taken his younger daughter, Catharine, to Zaragoza in 1585

to be married to Charles Emmanuel, Duke of Savoy (whom Catharine de

Medici had been trying to attract to her side), Philip had taken the

opportunity of making a stay of some duration in his kingdom of Aragon

and Catalonia, and had summoned the Aragonese Cortes at Monzon to swear

allegiance to his young son Philip as heir to the crown. As we have seen

in previous chapters, the Aragonese were extremely jealous of their

representative institutions, and resented all interference from Castile.

Philip had no love for these rough-spoken vassals of his, and their

constant assertion of their liberties, and had only recently been

obliged to bend to a decision of the Aragonese tribunals with regard to

a large semi-independent fief belonging to an illegitimate member of the

royal house, the Duke of Villahermosa, which fief Philip wished to

re-incorporate with the rest of his Aragonese kingdom. Amongst their

other liberties the Aragonese exacted from their sovereign an oath to

maintain what was called the “Manifestacion,” which was not unlike the

English “Habeas Corpus.” Any person accused of crime who set foot in

Aragon could claim to be lodged in the Aragonese prison, in which case

he was certain of enjoying the full rights of defence, protection from

violence or torture, and the benefit of a most enlightened judicial

procedure. The Aragonese had their own judges and laws, the principal

judge--the grand justiciary--being appointed by the king; but the latter

had no power to remove him, and the office was practically hereditary.

When, therefore, Perez reached Aragon he knew he was safe from arbitrary

action, and took refuge first in a Dominican monastery at Calatayud.

Orders arrived a few hours afterwards that he was to be captured, dead

or alive, at any risk or cost, and taken back to Castile. Perez was the

depositary of Philip’s secrets for years. He had taken a quantity of

important papers with him (some of which are now in the British Museum),

and the king was willing to brave the obstinate Aragonese and their

liberties, rather than allow so dangerous a man to slip through his

fingers. Perez claimed the protection of the “Manifestacion,” and on the

news coming to Calatayud of the king’s orders, a rebellious crowd at

once arose and swore that their privileges should not be infringed; and

even the priests in the monastery where Perez had taken refuge flew to

arms to repel any attack by the king’s messengers. Perez was rescued by

the Aragonese police and people, and safely lodged in the gaol of the

“Manifestacion.” All the king could do then was to prosecute him by

law--firstly, for having pretended to possess the royal authority for

killing Escobedo; secondly, for having tampered with despatches and

betrayed state secrets; and thirdly, for having fled whilst proceedings

against him were pending. But Perez did not want to be tried, for upon

these charges he could hardly be acquitted by any tribunal. He

accordingly begged Philip to let him alone, and threatened, if not, to

publish his secret papers; but Philip was resolved to fight it out to

the death now. To be thwarted and threatened by such a man was too much,

even for his patience. Perez must die. For once, however, the king had

to deal with a man even more crafty than himself, who knew every trick

in his armoury and was fighting for his life. Perez drew up a most

masterly exposition of his case, painting the king in his blackest

colours, and presented it to his judges. The tribunal called upon the

king for a refutation. “If,” replied Philip, “it were possible for me to

give an answer in the same public way that Perez has done, his guilt

would be made manifest. My only object in the prosecution has been the

public good. I cannot answer him further without betraying secrets which

must not be revealed, involving persons whose reputation is of more

importance than the punishment of this man, who is a traitor worse than

ever before has sinned against his sovereign.” And with this Philip

allowed his prosecution before the Aragonese tribunal to lapse. It was a

bitter pill for him to swallow. To answer Perez he must have confessed

that the lying scoundrel had made him believe that his own brother, Don

Juan, was a traitor, and that, under this belief, he had allowed him to

die broken-hearted and forsaken in Flanders.

 

But he tried another course. The constitution of Aragon provided that

the king’s own servants, even Aragonese, might not claim against him the

protection of their laws, and under this clause Philip claimed to have

Perez delivered to him. The judges decided that Perez did not come under

this provision, and refused to deliver him. Perez was now acquitted, but

was still kept in the prison of the Manifestacion. There his monstrous

vanity had led him to boast of what he would do abroad to avenge

himself. He would bring back Henry of Navarre and the Protestants, and

make him King of Spain. He would make Aragon a republic, and much else

of the same sort. But, above all, he had used __EXPRESSION__s which seemed

of doubtful religious orthodoxy. Notes were taken of all his loose

babble, and, as a consequence, the Holy Office in Madrid sent orders to

the Inquisitors at Zaragoza to take him out of the Manifestacion and

lodge him in their own dungeons. The judges of Aragon were now tired of

Perez, who was obviously a scoundrel. They had no wish to quarrel about

him with the king, and, above all, with the Inquisition. They had

vindicated their privileges, and that was enough for them. They were

willing to let the Holy Office have their prisoner. But Perez had no

wish for such a result. His friends aroused the city. The Aragonese

liberties were in peril from the tyrant, they said; and a dangerous

popular rising was the result. On May 21, 1591, the Aragonese

authorities determined to get rid of such a troublesome guest, and

quietly smuggled him into the hands of the Inquisition. With this the

people rose. From the watch towers boomed the alarm bells, furious men

swarmed into the streets, the king’s representative was dragged from his

palace, stripped, stoned, scourged, and nearly killed; the palace of the

Inquisition was besieged; faggots were piled up to burn it and the

Inquisitors inside, as they had burnt others, said the mob. Then the

Inquisitors gave way, and surrendered their prisoner to the populace,

who took him back to the Manifestacion. He tried to escape and failed.

He kept popular ebullition at fever-heat with artful proclamations and

appeals, and unfortunately the hereditary office of grand justiciary

fell at that time to a young man in Perez’s favour, who assumed office

without Philip’s confirmation. To avoid further conflict, after the

authorities had decided that Perez should be restored again to the

Inquisition, the prisoner was secretly hurried out of Zaragoza into the

mountains by his friends, and he escaped, after many wanderings, into

France. He was supremely self-conscious--a monster of misfortune, a

pilgrim of pain, as he called himself,--but he was clever and plausible,

and was received with open arms by Catharine de Bourbon, Henry’s sister,

in her castle of Pau. Henry himself made much of him, and so did

Elizabeth and Essex. Pensions and gifts were showered upon him for

years, for he knew all the weak places in Philip’s armour, and was ready

to sell his knowledge to the highest bidder. Facile, witty, and utterly

unscrupulous, he mingled the most sickening servility with the

haughtiest arrogance. He betrayed and defamed in turn every person who

trusted him, and, whenever he dared, bit the hand upon which he fawned.

For years he tried unsuccessfully to crawl back into the favour of

Philip III., the son of the man whom he had lived by libelling; and long

before his death in Paris, in the midst of poverty (1611), he was

contemptuously forgotten by his benefactors.

 

Philip was in no hurry for revenge. An army of 15,000 men was sent from

Castile to occupy Zaragoza under Alonso de Vargas, one of the butchers

of Antwerp. The townspeople were disinclined to hopeless resistance, and

only some of the nobles, the friars, and the country people made any

attempt at it. Anarchy was rife all over Aragon, and Philip’s troops

made a clean sweep of such marauding bands of rebels as stood in their

way. The Aragonese of the richer burgher class were indeed by this time

somewhat ashamed of having championed the cause of such a man as Perez,

and Vargas was soon master of Aragon, the young justiciary and the other

leaders of the rebellion having fled. For a time Philip made no attempt

to punish them, and they were gradually lured back home on promises of

forgiveness. Then suddenly fell Philip’s vengeance. At the end of

December 1591 Vargas was ordered without previous warning to seize and

behead the justiciary, in defiance of the Aragonese constitution, and at

the same time the net of the Inquisition was spread far and wide, and

swept into the dungeons all those who had offended. The few refugee

nobles and Perez thereupon prevailed upon Henry IV. to send a body of

Béarnais troops into Aragon, but the Aragonese joined with Philip’s

troops to expel them, and nothing serious came of the attempt. Some of

the higher nobles of Aragon died mysteriously in the dungeons, and

seventy-nine citizens were condemned to be burnt alive in the

market-place of Zaragoza. Philip, however, intervened, and urged

clemency upon the Holy Office, and only six were actually executed at

the great auto de fé, the rest of the seventy-nine suffering other

punishments, perhaps hardly less severe. The spectacle, and the stern

repression that preceded it, were dire lessons for the Aragonese, who

were thus made to understand that their free institutions must not be

exercised against the will of their sovereign. The constitution was not

formally revoked, in accordance with Philip’s promise, but all men now

understood that henceforward, at least whilst Philip lived, it must be a

dead letter, and no more vain dreams of autonomy were allowed to

interfere with the system of personal centralisation upon which his

government rested.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XVII

 

Philip and Mayenne--The English attack upon Lisbon--Assassination

of Henry III.--Philip’s plans in France--The war of the League--The

battle of Ivry--Philip’s attitude towards Mayenne--Farnese enters

France--Relief of Paris--Retirement of Farnese--Philip changes his

plans in France--Farnese’s second campaign--Henry IV. goes to

mass--Enters Paris as king--Exit of the Spaniards.

 

 

Henry III. thought by one stroke to rid himself of his enemies by

killing Guise, and terrorising his party. “At last,” he said to his

mother, immediately after the execution, “at last I am King of France.”

“You have plunged your country into ruin,” replied Catharine. “You have

boldly cut out the cloth, but do not know how to sew the garment

together.” She spoke truly, for she knew her son. When the news reached

Paris a great gust of rage passed over the city. It was Christmas Day,

but all rejoicing turned to sorrow, and dirges took the place of Te

Deums. From the pulpits thundered denunciations of the royal murderer,

and by the middle of January (1589) the Sorbonne, under the promptings

of the Spanish party, had declared that the subjects of Henry III. were

released from their allegiance. A council of government was formed, with

Mayenne, Guise’s brother, as president and lieutenant-general of the

realm. All through France the example of Paris was followed, and the

League was soon the great governing power of the country, Henry finding

himself little more than King of Blois. He was therefore obliged to draw

closer to Henry of Navarre; and at first Philip feared that this

coalition would unite all Frenchmen against him, now that the popular