Philip II. of Spain 4
Founded upon the statements of so bitter an enemy of Philip’s as Orange,
and upon the remarks of the Venetian ambassadors that he was incontinent
“_nelli piacere delle donne_”; that, above all things, he delighted,
“_nelle donne; delle quali mirabilmente si diletta_”; and that “_molto
ama le donne con le quali spesso si trattiene_”--it has been usual to
represent Philip as quite a libertine in this respect, and the lies and
innuendoes of Antonio Perez have strengthened this view. That Philip was
perfectly blameless in his domestic relations it would be folly to
assert, but he was an angel in comparison with most of the contemporary
monarchs, including his father; and probably few husbands of four
successive wives have been more beloved by them than he was, in spite of
his cold reserved demeanour. Behind the icy mask indeed there must have
been much that was gentle and loving, for those who were nearest to him
loved him best; his wives, children, old friends, and servants were
devotedly attached to him, even when they disagreed with his actions;
and in the rare intervals of his almost incessant toil at the desk no
society delighted him so much as that of his children. Charles had on
April 24, 1547, won the battle of Mühlberg, and had for the time utterly
crushed the leaders of the Reformation in Germany. The Diet of Augsburg
was summoned, and the Declaration of Faith, which it was hoped would
reconcile all difficulties, was drawn up. This perhaps was the highest
point reached in Charles’s power. Now, if ever, was the time for
carrying into effect his dream for assuring to his son the succession to
almost universal domination. It had been the intention of Ferdinand the
Catholic that Charles, his elder grandson, should succeed to the
paternal dominions, the empire and Flanders, whilst Ferdinand the
younger should inherit Spain and Naples. Charles, however, arranged
otherwise, and made his brother King of the Romans, with the implied
succession to the imperial crown on his elder brother’s death. But as
Philip’s aptitude for government became more and more apparent to his
father, the ambition of the latter to augment the heritage of his son
increased. Ferdinand and his son Maximilian clung naturally to the
arrangement by which the imperial crown should be secured to them and
their descendants, but the emperor determined that as little power and
territory as possible should go with it. Upon Philip accordingly the
vacant dukedom of Milan was conferred in 1546 by special agreement with
Ferdinand, who doubtless thought that it would not be bad for him to
have his powerful nephew as prince of a fief of the empire, and so, to a
certain extent, subordinate to him. But this was no part of Charles’s
plan. Sicily had long been attached to the crown of Aragon, Naples had
been added thereto by Ferdinand the Catholic, and now Milan was to be
held by the King of Spain. Parma and Piacenza also had just been
captured from the papal Farneses by the emperor’s troops (1547), and now
Charles conceived an arrangement by which the suzerainty of the empire
over Italy should be transferred to Spain, the states of Flanders and
Holland secured to the possessor of the Spanish crown, and the emperor
consequently left only with his Austrian dominions, poor and isolated,
with the great religious question rending them in twain. The transfer of
the Italian suzerainty was to be announced later, but Charles secured
the consent of his brother to the rest of his projects by promising to
guarantee the succession of the imperial crown after the death of
Ferdinand to his son, the Archduke Maximilian, who was to marry
Charles’s eldest daughter, Maria.
As soon as this had been agreed to, the emperor sent the Duke of Alba to
Spain with an able statement of the whole case for Philip’s information,
setting forth the new combination and its advantages, and urging the
prince to make a progress through the territories which were destined to
be his. The voyage was to be a long, and, to a man of Philip’s habits
and tastes, not an attractive one. Notwithstanding the emperor’s
exhortations years before, he spoke no German or Flemish, and indeed
very little of any language but Spanish. He was already of sedentary
habits, and feasts and the bustle of state receptions were distasteful
to him. But he was a dutiful son, and during all the summer of 1548 the
splendid preparations for his voyage kept Castile busy, whilst
Maximilian, the heir to the empire, was on his way to Spain to marry the
Infanta Maria and assume the regency during Philip’s absence.
CHAPTER II
The union of the Low Countries to Spain--The Italian
suzerainty--The effects thereof--Etiquette of the House of Burgundy
adopted in Spain--Ruy Gomez--Philip’s voyage--His unpopularity with
Germans and Flemings--Fresh proposals for his marriage--The family
compact for the imperial succession--Defection of Maurice of
Saxony--War with France--Treaty of Passau--Defeat of the emperor at
Metz.
Alba left Germany for Spain at the end of January 1548, travelling by
way of Genoa, and taking with him the exposition of the emperor’s new
policy, which was to result in so much trouble and suffering to future
generations. The lordships of Flanders and Holland had never up to this
period been regarded by Charles as attached necessarily to the crown of
Spain. Indeed at various times the cession of Flanders to France had
been amicably discussed, and only shortly before Charles had considered
the advisability of handing the Low Countries over to his daughter Maria
as a dowry on her marriage with Maximilian. But the step of making them
the inalienable possessions of the ruler of Spain would burden the
latter country with an entirely fresh set of interests, and render
necessary the adoption of a change in its foreign policy. Flanders once
attached to the crown of Spain could never fall into the hands of
France, and the latter Power would find itself almost surrounded by
Spanish territory, with its expansion to the northward cut off. In the
event of the Spanish suzerainty over Italy being established also,
French influence in Italy would be at an end, and the papal power
dwarfed. This therefore meant that France and the pope would make common
cause in a secular struggle against Spain. The dishonesty of Ferdinand
the Catholic about Naples had begun the feud, the rivalry of Francis I.
for the imperial crown had continued it, and now if Flanders and
Holland, instead of belonging to harmless Dukes of Burgundy, were to be
held permanently by France’s great rival, the whole balance of power in
Europe would be changed, and France must fight for life.
The Dukes of Burgundy and Counts of Holland, as possessors of the
Flemish seaboard, had for generations found it necessary to maintain a
close alliance with England, whose interests were equally bound up in
preventing France from occupying the coast opposite its own eastern
shores, the principal outlet for its commerce. By Charles’s new resolve
this obligation to hold fast by England was transferred permanently to
Spain, which country had not hitherto had any need for intimate
political relations with England, except such as arose out of mutual
commercial interests. Spain itself--and no longer the emperor as Duke of
Burgundy--was thus drawn into the vortex of Central European politics,
and herefrom came its ruin.
That the emperor’s plans were not entirely to the taste of his son is
certain, but whether in consequence of a dread of the new
responsibilities to be forced upon Spain, or from motives of ambition,
is not quite clear. On the face of the correspondence between Alba and
De Granvelle on the subject, it would appear that the latter was the
case. The objection probably arose from the ambitious Alba, fresh from
his German triumphs, who would point out to the young prince that the
arrangement would permanently cut him off from the succession to the
imperial crown, and that the interval of uncertainty which would elapse
before his suggested suzerainty over Italy was established, would give
time for intrigues to be carried on which might render it impracticable
when the time came. At his instance, therefore, the question of his
suzerainty over Italy was left open, and with it what was doubtless
Alba’s objective point, the arrangement by which the succession to the
empire was secured to Maximilian.
In pursuance of his plan of keeping the Spanish nobles busy in affairs
other than the interior politics of their country, Charles in August
1548, before Philip’s departure on his travels, gave orders which had a
considerable influence in the future history of Spain. The kings of the
petty realms into which the Peninsula had been divided, constantly at
war for centuries with the Moors, had been obliged to depend for their
very existence upon their feudal semi-independent nobles. The kings at
best were but first amongst their peers, and were constantly reminded of
the fact. The “fueros” of each petty dominion were stubbornly upheld
against the rulers, and in the north of Spain, at all events, it had
been for some centuries past a continuous policy of the kings to curb
the power for harm of the nobles and limit the autonomous privileges of
the people. The policy of the emperor, as we have seen, was to
centralise the government of Spain, and to give to its rulers an
overwhelming influence in the councils of Europe. This could only be
effected by making the king the supreme master over the lives and
property of all his subjects, drawing from Spain the growing stream of
riches from the Indies, and attaching the powerful Spanish nobles
personally to their prince.
The court life of Spain, except for a short time when Charles’s father,
Philip the Handsome, had visited it, had been bluff and simple. The new
order of the emperor introduced for the first time the pompous and
splendid etiquette of the House of Burgundy, which has since been
adopted in most monarchies. By virtue of this the proud Spanish nobility
became personally attached to the household of the prince in nominally
inferior capacities, chamberlains, equerries, ushers, and the like; and
the young hidalgoes of the greatest Houses, all bedizened and bedecked
in finery, no longer hunted the wild boar in their mountain homes, but
dangled in the presence of the monarch and added lustre to his daily
life.
The change was certainly not in consonance with Philip’s natural
inclinations. His personal tastes were of the simplest; he was always
sober and moderate in eating and drinking, looking with positive disgust
on the excess of Flemings and Germans in this respect. He hated pomp and
blare, and his attire on ordinary occasions was as modest and simple as
it was handsome. But he was a slave to duty, and when the exigencies of
his high station demanded magnificence, he could be as splendid as any
man on earth. So henceforward in public the quiet, modest man moved in
a perfect constellation of glittering satellites. One great consolation
the change gave him. In the emperor’s exhortation to him in 1543 he was
told that in future his young friends must only approach him as his
servants, and “that his principal companions must be elderly men and
others of reasonable age possessed of virtue, wise discourse, and good
example.” But Philip was yet (1548) only twenty-one, and was devotedly
attached to some of the friends of his boyhood, such as Ruy Gomez de
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