Philip II. of Spain 32

Philip II. of Spain 32

Feria, the son of Philip’s old friend by his English wife, entered Paris

as the king’s representative to claim the crown for the Infanta, who

might be married to a French prince, to be chosen by Philip, or if the

Estates refused this, that the crown should be given to the Duke of

Guise, who might marry the Infanta. If Philip had proposed the latter

solution first, it might have been accepted; but whilst Feria was

bickering over the Infanta’s impossible claim, and losing precious weeks

in communicating with his distant master almost daily, Henry, outside

the city, was busy gaining over the Estates, showing himself gay,

confident, conciliating, and, above all, French. Gabrielle d’Estrées,

the _politicians_, the Leaguers, the clergy, and his own interests, all

urged him to conform to the Catholic faith. On July 25, 1593, he took

what he called “the mortal leap,” and attended mass at St. Denis. In

March 1594 the Béarnais entered Paris as king. The next day, through a

pitiless storm, the Spanish garrison, with Feria, marched out of the

gate of St. Denis. “Commend me to your master, gentlemen,” cried Henry,

“but come back hither no more.” The war lingered on until Philip was

nearly dying in 1598. Spanish troops still held parts of Picardy and

French Flanders, and once Amiens fell into their hands, but at the end

of the period even Mayenne commanded the French forces against them; and

pride, and belief in the divine support, alone prevented Philip from

making terms before. Henry at last listened to the promptings of the

pope, and made peace with his enemy alone. He broke faith with Elizabeth

and the Dutch, but he consolidated once more the French nation. Philip’s

ill-starred attempts to dominate France had thus failed, but he had

succeeded in preventing it from becoming a Protestant Power.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XVIII

 

Blighting influence of Philip’s system on his officers--Effects of

Philip’s routine on the administration--Social condition of Spain

and the colonies--Dr. Lopez and Antonio Perez--Philip II. and

Tyrone’s rebellion--The English sacking of Cadiz--Philip’s

resignation--His last illness and death--Results of his

life--Causes of the decadence of the Spanish power.

 

 

The death of Alexander Farnese had removed from Philip’s service the

last of the great men of his reign. He had been treated by his master in

the same way that all the rest of them had been--with cold

half-confidence and veiled suspicion. There is nothing more

surprising--more pitiable--in the phenomena of Philip’s reign than the

way in which he pressed men of the highest gifts into his service, only

to break their hearts and spirits by his tardiness of action and

inexpansiveness of mind. His system left no room for independent

judgment on the part of his instruments, and any attempt to exercise it

met with the passive, stony resistance, against which one ardent soul

after another dashed itself to death. As Philip grew older, and his

periodical attacks of illness became more frequent, the vast tide of

papers which flowed into the king’s cell became more and more

unmanageable. He had no sense of proportion whatever, and would

frequently waste hours of precious time over ridiculous trifles--the

choice of an unimportant word, the ordering of a religious procession,

or the strictly private affairs of his subjects,--whilst matters of the

highest import to the welfare of his great empire were allowed to drag

on for months without decision.

 

The centralising system had now been established to his satisfaction,

and from all four quarters of the earth viceroys, governors, ministers,

and spies sent their contribution of papers to Madrid. Everything came

under the eyes of the monarch, toiling early and late, even when his

malady stretched him on a sick-bed. The council that surrounded him in

his last years was composed of very different men from the Granvelles,

the Albas, the Ruy Gomezes, or even the Perezes, who had served him in

his prime. The principal secretary of state was Don Juan de Idiaquez,

one of the indefatigable writers whom Philip loved. No detail was too

small for Idiaquez. With his swift-current clerkly hand he wrote day and

night, deciphering, drafting, annotating. Every day after the king’s

frugal early dinner Idiaquez came with his bundle of papers, and was

closeted with him until nightfall. The communications had been opened,

considered, and reported upon by the council during the previous night,

and the results were now submitted to Philip. The second secretary, Don

Cristobal de Moura, had charge especially of Portuguese and Castilian

affairs. He had to report his budget of council minutes whilst the king

was dressing in the morning, and the Count de Chinchon had audience for

the affairs of Italy, Aragon, and the south of Spain at, and after, the

king’s dinner. Every draft despatch was read and noted by the king;

Mateo Vasquez, the sly enemy who had hunted Perez, being always at his

side to help him. Whilst the king of the greatest realm on earth, and

four men with the minds of superior clerks, were thus immersed in

endless papers, the social condition of Spain went from bad to worse.

The efforts of Philip had been directed towards making his people as

rigid as monks. Pragmatics had been showered upon Spain, prohibiting for

the hundredth time luxury or splendour in dress, furniture, and

appointments, restricting the use of carriages, abolishing courtesy

titles. No person was allowed to be educated out of Spain, and all

attempts at introducing science in any form were sternly suppressed by

the Inquisition. The most slavish and extravagant conformity in

religious observance was enforced, but the loosest and most licentious

conversation was tolerated. The women of Spain had in previous times

been modest, almost austere and oriental in their retirement. They now

became perfectly scandalous in their freedom, and remained a bye-word

for the rest of civilised Europe for a century afterwards. Camillo

Borghese was sent by the pope to Madrid in 1593, and thus speaks of the

state of affairs at that time: “The main street of Madrid ... is

unutterably filthy, and almost impassable on foot. The better class of

ladies are always in carriages or litters, whilst the humbler folk ride

on donkey-back or pick their way through the mire. The ladies are

naturally shameless, presumptuous, and abrupt, and even in the streets

go up and address men unknown to them, looking upon it as a kind of

heresy to be properly introduced. They admit all sorts of men to their

conversation, and are not in the least scandalised at the most improper

proposals being made to them.” Philip’s pragmatics were useless.

Extravagance checked in one direction broke out in others, and in the

midst of the most appalling poverty, luxury and waste ran riot. The

immense loss of life in constant wars, and the vast emigration to

America, had depopulated wide tracts of country, and the laws which

favoured the aggregation of property in the hands of the Church had

turned whole towns into ecclesiastical settlements. The friars had grown

more insolent as their riches increased, and as the king’s slavishness

to their cloth became more abject, and now during his last years their

power was practically supreme in the king’s court.

 

Whilst Philip’s system had reduced his own country to this state, the

ships of Drake, Ralegh, Hawkins, Cumberland, and the rest of them were

harrying the Indies, the English were trading openly with Spanish

settlements in spite of royal prohibition, and in the insensate thirst

for gold, the Spanish colonists were wiping out whole nations of

inoffensive Indians who were unable or unwilling to satisfy their greed.

The missionary friars sometimes raised their voices against the

wholesale murder of their possible converts, but they cried in vain, for

Philip’s hide-bound system only referred the protests against the

slaughter to the men who perpetrated it. Philip’s American possessions

consequently were enriching his enemies rather than himself, and, as

Ralegh said, were furnishing the means for them to carry on war against

him. In the meanwhile his own coasts, both of Italy and Spain, were

practically undefended. The loss of the Armada had been a blow both to

his credit and to his naval power, from which he could never entirely

recover, and neither men, money, nor ships could easily be obtained.

 

Perez lived caressed and flattered in Essex House, and knew all that

passed in Spain. Everything which his wickedness and malice could devise

to injure his enemy he urged with ceaseless pertinacity. He persuaded

the queen that her physician, the Jew Dr. Lopez, had plotted with Philip

to murder her. There was just enough foundation to give a plausible

appearance to the assertion, and Lopez was executed (June 7, 1594). That

he was ready to undertake such commissions is doubtless true, but

evidence is now forthcoming which tends to show that in this case Perez

lied, and that Lopez was innocent.[4]

 

The accusation, however, was believed by Elizabeth and her ministers,

and when Perez proposed to his ambitious patron Essex a plan for

revenging his mistress he was eager to listen. But there was another

reason as well. The English Catholic refugees were still intriguing, and

urging Philip to take action to secure the crown of England for the

Infanta on Elizabeth’s death, whilst the Scots Catholics were

endeavouring to gain it for James, under their auspices if possible. Now

that a direct invasion of England by Philip was acknowledged to be

impossible, it was constantly pressed upon him by the English exiles

that he might disturb and paralyse Elizabeth by sending armed support to

the Irish Catholics. The complete collapse of the Desmond rebellion in

Munster, and the slaughter of the papal Spanish contingent (1580) had

made Philip cautious; so when Irish priests and emissaries came to him

from Tyrone and O’Donnell, he had been, as usual, vaguely sympathetic,

and took means to discover the real strength behind them before he

pledged himself. Spanish officers were sent to spy out the land and

report upon the capabilities of Tyrone. The latter was still keeping up

an appearance of great loyalty to the English, but his correspondence

with Philip was well known in London, as well as the hopes and promises

sent from Spain to the Irish Catholics. It would be a great stroke if

the fleet, which spies stated was fitting out for Ireland, could be

destroyed. As a matter of fact, Philip was so poor that he could do but

little to help Tyrone; and for years afterwards the agonised appeals of

the Irish Catholics were only answered by fair words and tardy,

inadequate, and ineffectual assistance. But for the moment Elizabeth was

led to believe that a powerful invasion of Ireland was imminent.

 

When it came to finding the money and incurring the responsibility of a

direct invasion of Spain, however, the queen more than once drew back,

and it required all hot-headed Essex’s personal influence to bring her

to the point. At last when the commission was granted, the precedent of

the ill-fated Portuguese expedition of 1589 was followed. The first

object was, as then, stated to be the destruction of the King of Spain’s

fleet, and, secondly, the attack upon the homeward-bound Indian

flotilla. Only as a doubtful resource was a rich town to be attacked. As

in 1589, the command was to be divided--on this occasion between

Lord-Admiral Howard and Essex, with Ralegh as lieutenant. It was

difficult to get men to serve. “As fast as we press men on one day,”

writes Ralegh, “they run away the next.”