Philip II. of Spain 33

Philip II. of Spain 33

The fleets left Plymouth on June 3, 1596. They were divided into four

English squadrons of nearly equal strength, the aggregate consisting of

17 queen’s ships, 76 freighted ships, and some small craft, while the

Dutch squadron had 24 sail. The crews in all amounted to 16,000 men.

 

It was known that in Cadiz was concentrated the greater part of what was

left of Philip’s naval strength, and the city was the richest in Spain.

Ranged underneath the walls were 8 war galleys, and 17 galleons and

frigates were in the harbour, whilst 40 great ships were loading for

Mexico and elsewhere.

 

On June 20 (O.S.) the fleets appeared before Cadiz, and, thanks to

Ralegh’s intervention, a combined attack was first made upon the

shipping. Essex cast his plumed hat into the sea in his exultation when

he heard the news. At dawn next morning Ralegh led the van in the

_War-sprite_. The city was taken by surprise and was panic-stricken, but

the Spanish ships in harbour had assumed some attitude of defence. The

effect of Philip’s system had been, as we have seen, to paralyse

initiative in his officers, and when there was no time to communicate

with him they were lost. After a few shots had been fired, Sotomayor,

the admiral, withdrew the ships he could save to the end of the bay at

Puerto Real, out of reach of the English guns. At night, before the

decisive attack, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, the craven of the Armada,

but still Philip’s high admiral, arrived. As usual, he could only look

on helplessly, whilst the English squadrons sailed into the harbour,

sank two great galleons, then landed the soldiers, stormed the old

crumbling walls and seized the city, almost without resistance. The

terror inspired now by the English at sea perfectly dominated the

Spaniards. The fortress of Cadiz was ruinous, the guns were old and

dirty, ammunition was short, and after two days of starvation the

defenders made terms of surrender. Every ship in harbour was burnt or

sunk, either by the English or the Spaniards themselves, and the

terrified sailors had been drowned by hundreds, out of sheer fright at

the “devilish folk.” There were 5000 Spanish women who had taken refuge

in the fortress. They were allowed to leave without the slightest

molestation, and the English commanders even provided boats to convey

the nuns and sick from the hospitals to a place of safety. Then for

fifteen days the city was submitted to a systematic pillage. Nothing was

left, and the richest city in Spain was reduced to a smoking wreck.

 

“Neither ship, nor fleet, nor Cadiz remains,” wrote Medina Sidonia to

Philip. The fighting, such as it was, had only lasted three hours, and

there had been destroyed, mostly by the Spaniards, 13 Spanish

men-of-war, all the war galleys, and 40 of the best merchantmen in

Spain, with merchandise worth 11,000,000 ducats. The fortresses and

defences were razed to the ground, the first maritime city in the

country was destroyed, and the seal stamped deep on the final decadence

of Spain.

 

Philip’s system had brought him to this. He could not defend his own

harbours, much less avenge the injuries done to him. Henry IV. had

beaten him in France, the Nassaus had beaten him in Holland, the

English had beaten him on the sea. He was utterly bankrupt, his country

ruined, his dream of the universal predominance of Catholicism, and the

omnipotence of Spain proved to be a chimera. He was old and weary,

suffering incessant bodily agony, and yet with all this he never lost

his faith in his divine mission and the final success of his cause. “Thy

will, God, be done, not mine,” says an eye-witness of his last days,

were the words constantly on his lips.

 

During the spring of 1598 the king was almost unable to move from gout,

but still continued his work at his papers. At the end of June he was

carried to the Escorial in a litter, and soon afterwards malignant

tumours broke out in various parts of his limbs. The pain of his malady

was so intense that he could not even endure a cloth to touch the parts,

and he lay slowly rotting to death for fifty-three dreadful days,

without a change of garments or the proper cleansing of his sores.

 

Through all the repulsive and pitiful circumstances that accompanied his

last illness his patience and serenity never left him. His awful

sufferings were borne without a plaint, and his constant words were

those of resignation and assurance of divine forgiveness for his sins.

Night and day, ceaselessly around him, went on the propitiatory offices

of his Church; through the weary hours of pain the eyes of the dying

king were fixed in ecstasy on the holy emblems, and often in his anguish

of devotion he would bite and worry the coarse crucifix which never left

him, the same crucifix that had been grasped by the dying hands of the

emperor. On August 16 the nuncio brought him the papal blessing and

plenary absolution. Philip by this time was incapable of moving, a mere

mass of vermin and repulsive wounds, but his spirit conquered the

frailty of the flesh, and he fervently repeated his immovable faith in

the Church and the cause to which he had devoted his life. On September

1, in the presence of his son and daughter Isabel, the extreme unction

for the dying was administered, and although he had hitherto been so

weak as to be inaudible, he suddenly surprised the priests by himself

reading in a loud voice the last office of the Church. When the

administrant, fearing to tire him, said that it was unnecessary to

repeat the office when the sacrament was administered, the dying man

objected: “Oh yes, say it again and again, for it is very good.”

 

Then all the attendants were sent from the room, and Philip was left

alone with his son. “I meant to save you this scene,” he said, “but I

wish you to see how the monarchies of the earth end. You see that God

has denuded me of all the glory and majesty of a monarch in order to

hand them to you. In a very few hours I shall be covered only with a

poor shroud and girded with a coarse rope. The king’s crown is already

falling from my brows, and death will place it on yours. Two things I

especially commend to you: one is that you keep always faithful to the

Holy Catholic Church, and the other is that you treat your subjects

justly. This crown will some day fall away from your head, as it now

falls from mine. You are young, as I was once. My days are numbered and

draw to a close; the tale of yours God alone knows, but they too must

end.”

 

This was Philip’s farewell to his royal state, for he concerned himself

no more with mundane affairs. Patient, kindly solicitous for those

around him, in gentle faith and serene resignation, he waited for his

release. On September 11, two days before he died, he took a last

farewell of his son, and of his beloved daughter, the Infanta Isabel,

who for years had been his chief solace and constant companion, even in

his hours of labour. He was leaving her the sovereignty of the

Netherlands, in union with the Archduke Albert, whom she was to marry,

and he urged her to uphold inviolate the Catholic faith in her

dominions. The farewell was an affecting one for the Infanta, but the

father was serene through it all. When it was ended he gave to his

confessor, Father Yepes, his political testament for his son, copied

from the exhortations of St. Louis. He would fain have taken the

sacrament again, but Moura was obliged to tell him that the physicians

feared he was too weak to swallow the host. Towards the next night Moura

warned him that his hour had nearly come, and he smiled gratefully when

he heard it. All through the dragging night in the small gloomy chamber

the prayers and dirges for the dying went on. When for a moment they

ceased, the dying king would urge their continuance. “Fathers,” he said,

“go on. The nearer I draw to the fountain, the greater grows my thirst.”

During the night the watchers thought the great change had come, and

hastily placed in the king’s hand a blessed candle he had kept for many

years to illumine his last moments upon earth. But he was still

collected. “No,” he said, “not yet. The time has not come.”

 

Between three and four in the morning, as the first pale streaks of

coming dawn glimmered beyond the stony peaks of the Guadarramas, Philip

turned to Fernando de Toledo, who was at his bedside, and whispered,

“Give it to me; it is time now”; and as he took the sacred taper, his

face was all irradiated with smiles. His truckle bed almost overlooked

the high altar of the cathedral, the building of which had been his

pride, and already the shrill voices of the choristers far below were

heard singing the early mass which he had endowed long ago for his own

spiritual welfare. With this sound in his ears and prayers upon his

lips, his last moments ebbed away. When those around him thought that

all was over and had fallen to weeping, he suddenly opened his eyes

again and fixed them immovably on the crucifix. He shut them no more,

and as they glazed into awful stoniness he gave three little gasps, and

Philip the Prudent had passed beyond. He died gripping the poor crucifix

which still rests upon his breast, and he was buried inclosed in the

coffin he had had made from the timbers of the _Cinco Chagas_, one of

the great galleons that had fought the heretics. In the awful jasper

charnel-house at the Escorial, which will ever be the most fitting

monument of his hard and joyless life, his body has rested through three

centuries of detraction and misunderstanding.

 

Through all the tribulations and calamities that have afflicted his

country, the affectionate regard in which Spaniards bear the memory of

Philip the Prudent has never waned. His father was an infinitely greater

man, but he has no such place in the hearts of his countrymen, for

Philip was a true Spaniard to the core, a faithful concentration of the

qualities, good and evil, of the nation he loved. If Spaniards were

narrow and rigid in their religious views, it was the natural result of

centuries of struggle, foot to foot with the infidel; if they were

regardless of human suffering in the furtherance of their objects, it

was because they lavishly and eagerly gave up their own lives for the

same ends, and oriental fatalism had been grafted upon Gothic

stubbornness in their national character. But they, like their king,

were patient, faithful, dutiful, and religious.

 

Philip was born to a hopeless battle. Spain, always a poor country of

itself, was saddled by the marriage of Philip’s grandparents with a

European foreign policy which cursed it with continuous wars for a

century. The tradition he had inherited, and his own knowledge, showed

him that his only chance of safety was to maintain a close political

alliance with England. We have seen how, by fair means and by foul, he

strove to this end through a long life, and how from the mere force of

circumstances it was unattainable. Spain’s power was imperilled from the

moment that Philip the Handsome brought the inheritance of Burgundy to

Jane the Mad, and the doom was sealed when Henry Tudor cast his eyes

upon Anne Boleyn; for the first event made a fixed alliance with England

vital, and the second made it impossible. It may be objected that if a

man of nimble mind and easy conscience had been in Philip’s place, and

had fought Elizabeth, Catharine, and Orange with their own weapons of

tergiversation and religious opportunism, the result might have been

different, as it also might have been if he had opened his mind to new

ideas and accepted the reformed faith. But apart from his mental

qualities, and his monastic training, which made such an attitude

impossible for him, his party had been chosen for him before his birth,