Foreign Statesmen
PHILIP II. OF SPAIN
[Illustration: colophon]
PHILIP II. OF SPAIN
BY
MARTIN A. S. HUME
EDITOR OF
THE ‘CALENDAR OF SPANISH STATE PAPERS OF ELIZABETH’
(PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE)
_Philippus ipse Hispaniæ desiderio magnopere aestuabat, nec aliud
quam Hispaniam loquebatur._
SEPULVEDA.
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON
1911
COPYRIGHT
_First Edition 1897_
_Reprinted 1899, 1906, 1911_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
Philip’s failure, and the reasons for it--His birth and infancy--His
appearance and character--His education by Siliceo and Zuñiga--The
emperor meets his son--The consolidation of authority in
Spain--Suggestions for marriage with Jeanne d’Albret--Philip made
Regent of Spain--The emperor’s instructions to his son--His system
of government--Character of his councillors--Philip’s marriage with
Maria of Portugal--Birth of Don Carlos and death of the princess--Doña
Isabel de Osorio--Philip in his domestic relations--Project for
securing to Philip the imperial crown--The suzerainty of Spain over
Italy--Philip’s voyage through Germany.....Page 1
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.....20
CHAPTER III
Proposal to marry Philip to Queen Mary of England--The need for
alliance with England--The negotiations of Renard--Opposition
of France--Unpopularity of the match in England--Philip’s voyage
to England--His affability--His first interview with Mary--The
marriage--Philip made King of Naples--Failure of the objects of the
marriage--Philip’s policy in England--Pole’s mission--Philip and the
persecution of Catholics in England--Philip’s disappointment and
departure.....30
CHAPTER IV
Philip in favour of a moderate policy in England--His attitude towards
religion generally--He requests armed aid from England against the
French--The emperor’s embarrassments in Italy--Alba made Philip’s
viceroy in Italy--Factions in Philip’s court--Ruy Gomez and Alba--The
emperor’s abdication--Philip’s changed position--His attitude towards
the papacy--The Spanish Church--Pope Paul IV. and the Spaniards in
Italy--Excommunication of Philip--Invasion of Rome by Alba--Philip’s
second visit to England.....43
CHAPTER V
French intrigue against Mary--England at war with France--Battle
of St. Quintin--Philip’s tardiness--The English contingent--The
loss of Calais--Feria goes to England--His negotiations--Condition
of England--The English fleet used by Philip--Philip and
Elizabeth--Negotiations for peace--Death of Mary--Plans for
Elizabeth’s marriage--Peace of Cateau Cambresis--Philip’s policy in
England.....53
CHAPTER VI
Philip’s plan for a French alliance--His marriage with Elizabeth
de Valois--Philip’s embarrassments in the Netherlands--De
Granvelle--Philip’s departure from Flanders--Condition of
affairs in Spain--The Spanish Church--Death of Paul IV.--The
Inquisition--Bartolomé de Carranza--Philip’s arrival and routine in
Spain--The auto de fé at Valladolid.....64
CHAPTER VII
Arrival of Elizabeth de Valois in Spain--Her influence over
Philip--Position of affairs in France--War with England--Philip’s
attitude towards France--Death of Francis II.--Spanish disaster at Los
Gelves--Position of Spain in the Mediterranean Page 79
CHAPTER VIII
Don Carlos--His relations with Elizabeth de Valois--French intrigues
for his marriage--His illness--The Cortes of Aragon--Jeanne d’Albret
and Henry of Navarre--The Council of Trent and the Inquisition--Philip
and the pope--Renewed struggles with the Turks--Siege of Malta.....88
CHAPTER IX
Troubles in the Netherlands--Granvelle’s unpopularity--William
of Orange and Egmont--Their resignation and protest--Margaret of
Parma--Assembly of the Chapter of the Golden Fleece--Riots at
Valenciennes--Discontent of the Flemish nobles--They retire from
government--Granvelle’s dismissal--The maladministration of the
States--Egmont’s mission to Spain--Philip’s policy in the States--The
Beggars--Orange’s action--Philip determines to exterminate heresy in
the States--Philip’s projected voyage thither.....99
CHAPTER X
Renewed contest between Philip and the papacy--Condition of Don
Carlos--His arrest and imprisonment--Philip’s explanations--Carlos’
last illness and death--Death of Elizabeth de Valois--The interviews
of Bayonne and the Catholic League--Catharine de Medici--Philip face
to face with Protestantism--Philip and the Moriscos--Rising of the
Moriscos--Deza at Granada--Don Juan of Austria--Expulsion of the
Moriscos from Andalucia.....115
CHAPTER XI
Philip and England--Elizabeth seizes his treasure--Spanish plots
against her--Philip and the northern rebellion--The excommunication
of Elizabeth--Ridolfi’s plot--Philip’s hesitancy--Prohibition of
English trade with Spain--Its futility--Alba’s retirement from
Flanders--Philip’s responsibility for Alba’s proceedings--The tenth
penny--Philip’s disapproval--Orange’s approaches to the French.....136
CHAPTER XII
Philip’s fourth marriage--The killing of Montigny--Anne of
Austria--Philip’s domestic life--His industry--The Escorial--His
patronage of art--His character--Renewed war with the Turks--Don Juan
commands the Spanish force--The victory of Lepanto--Don Juan’s great
projects--Antonio Perez.....153
CHAPTER XIII
The Spanish troops in Flanders--Don Juan sent to Flanders--His
projects for invading England--Mutiny of the Spanish troops
in Flanders--The Spanish fury--Evacuation of Flanders by the
Spanish troops--Perez’s plot against Don Juan--The murder of
Escobedo--Don Juan seizes Namur--Renewal of the war--The battle
of Gemblours--Desperation of Don Juan--His death--Alexander
Farnese.....168
CHAPTER XIV
Philip’s ineffectual action against Elizabeth--The Desmond
rebellion--Philip’s conquest of Portugal--Recall of Alba and Granvelle
to Philip’s councils--Don Antonio, Prior of O Crato--Death of Anne
of Austria--Philip in Portugal--Flight of Antonio--His reception in
England and France--The Duke of Alençon--Philip and Mary Stuart--James
Stuart--Fresh proposals of the Scottish Catholics to Philip--Philip
and Granvelle’s views with regard to England--Lennox and the Jesuits
mismanage the plot--Philip’s claim to the English crown--Expulsion
of Mendoza from England--The English exiles urge Philip to invade
England--Sixtus V.--Intrigues in Rome--The Babington plot.....182
CHAPTER XV
The Infanta to be Queen of England--Approaches of the Scottish
Catholic lords to Philip--Execution of Mary Stuart--Intrigues for
the English succession--Drake’s expedition to Cadiz--The peace
negotiations with Farnese--Preparations for the Armada--Sailing of
the Armada from Lisbon--Its return to Vigo--Medina Sidonia advises
its abandonment--Its strength--Engagements with the English--Panic at
Calais--Final defeat--Causes of the disaster--Philip’s reception of
the news.....202
CHAPTER XVI
Don Antonio in England--Catharine’s support of him--Strozzi’s
defeat at St. Michaels--Philip’s patronage of assassination--Philip
and the League--Renewal of the war of religion in France--The
murder of Guise--Imprisonment of Antonio Perez and the Princess
of Eboli--Perez’s treachery--His escape to Aragon--The _fueros_
of Aragon--Philip proceeds against Perez--Perez arrested by the
Inquisition of Aragon--Rising in Zaragoza--Perez’s escape--Suppression
of the Aragonese.....223
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.....237
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.....249
GENEALOGICAL TABLE SHOWING PHILIP’S CLAIM TO THE ENGLISH CROWN.....263
APPENDIX.....265
CHAPTER I
Philip’s failure, and the reasons for it--His birth and
infancy--His appearance and character--His education by Siliceo and
Zuñiga--The emperor meets his son--The consolidation of authority
in Spain--Suggestions for marriage with Jeanne d’Albret--Philip
made Regent of Spain--The emperor’s instructions to his son--His
system of government--Character of his councillors--Philip’s
marriage with Maria of Portugal--Birth of Don Carlos and death of
the princess--Doña Isabel de Osorio--Philip in his domestic
relations--Project for securing to Philip the imperial crown--The
suzerainty of Spain over Italy--Philip’s voyage through Germany.
For three hundred years a bitter controversy has raged around the
actions of Philip II. of Spain. Until our own times no attempt even had
been made to write his life-history from an impartial point of view. He
had been alternately deified and execrated, until through the mists of
time and prejudice he loomed rather as the permanent embodiment of a
system than as an individual man swayed by changing circumstances and
controlled by human frailties.
The more recent histories of his reign--the works of English, American,
German, and French scholars--have treated their subject with fuller
knowledge and broader sympathies, but they have necessarily been to a
large extent histories of the great events which convulsed Europe for
fifty years at the most critical period of modern times. The space to be
occupied by the present work will not admit of this treatment of the
subject. The purpose is therefore to consider Philip mainly as a
statesman, in relation to the important problems with which he had to
deal, rather than to write a connected account of the occurrences of a
long reign. It will be necessary for us to try to penetrate the objects
he aimed at and the influences, personal and exterior, which ruled him,
and to seek the reasons for his failure. For he did fail utterly. In
spite of very considerable powers of mind, of a long lifetime of
incessant toil, of deep-laid plans, and vast ambitions, his record is
one continued series of defeats and disappointments; and in exchange for
the greatest heritage that Christendom had ever seen, with the
apparently assured prospect of universal domination which opened before
him at his birth, he closed his dying eyes upon dominions distracted and
ruined beyond all recovery, a bankrupt State, a dwindled prestige, and a
defeated cause. He had devoted his life to the task of establishing the
universal supremacy of Catholicism in the political interests of Spain,
and he was hopelessly beaten.
The reasons for his defeat will be seen in the course of the present
work to have been partly personal and partly circumstantial. The causes
of both these sets of reasons were laid at periods long anterior to
Philip’s birth.
The first of the great misfortunes of Spain was an event which at the
time looked full of bright promise, namely, the marriage of Juana,
daughter of Ferdinand and Isabel, to Philip of Austria, son of the
Emperor Maximilian. This marriage eventually burdened the King of Spain
with the German dominions of the House of Austria, the imperial crown,
with its suzerainty over Italy, the duchy of Milan, and, above all, the
rich inheritance of the House of Burgundy, the Franche Comté, Holland,
and the Netherlands. Even before this the crown of Aragon had been
weakened rather than strengthened by the possession of Sicily and
Naples, which latter brought it into inimical contact with France, and
also necessitated the assertion and defence of its rights as a
Mediterranean Power in constant rivalry with Turks and Algerians. This
had been bad, but the vast and scattered territories of Charles V.
cursed Spain with a foreign policy in every corner of Europe. In his
Austrian dominions the emperor was the outpost of Christianity against
the Turk, the bulwark which restrained the Moslem flood from swamping
eastern Europe. His galleys were those which were to keep the
Mediterranean a Christian sea. Flanders and the Franche Comté gave him a
long flat frontier conterminous with France, whose jealous eyes had been
fixed covetously for centuries on the fine harbours and flourishing
towns of the Low Countries.
Most of these interests were of very secondary importance to Spain
itself. The country had only quite recently been unified; the vast new
dominions which had fallen under its sway in America might well have
monopolised its activity for centuries to come. The geographical
position of the Iberian peninsula itself practically isolated it from
the other countries of Europe, and rendered it unnecessary for it to
take any part in the discords that prevailed over the rest of the
continent; whilst the recent religious struggles with the Moors in Spain
had consolidated Catholic Christianity in the country, and prevented the
reformed doctrines from obtaining any footing there. Spain indeed, alone
and aloof, with a fertile soil, fine harbours, and a well-disposed
population, seemed destined to enjoy a career of activity, prosperity,
and peace. But the possession of Flanders brought it into constant
rivalry with France, and necessitated a close alliance with England,
whilst the imperial connection dragged it into ceaseless wars with the
Turks, and, above all, with the rising power of Protestantism, which
ultimately proved its ruin. Philip, who succeeded to this thorny
inheritance, was, on the other hand, bounded and isolated by mental
limitations as irremovable as the Pyrenees which shut in his native
land. As King of Spain alone, having only local problems to deal with,
modest, cautious, painstaking, and just, he might have been a happy and
successful--even a great--monarch, but as leader of the conservative
forces of Christendom he was in a position for which his gifts unfitted
him.
He was the offspring of the marriage of first cousins, both his parents
being grandchildren of cunning, avaricious Ferdinand, and of Isabel the
Catholic, whose undoubted genius was accompanied by high-strung
religious exaltation, which would now be considered neurotic. Her
daughter, Juana the Mad, Philip’s grandmother, passed a long lifetime in
melancholy torpor. In Charles V. the tainted blood was mingled with the
gross appetites and heavy frames of the burly Hapsburgs. The strength
and power of resistance inherited from them enabled him, until middle
age only, to second his vast mental power with his indomitable bodily
energy. But no sooner was the elasticity of early manhood gone than he
too sank into despairing lethargy and religious mysticism. Philip’s
mother, the Empress Isabel, came from the same stock, and was the
offspring of several generations of consanguineous marriages. The curse
which afflicted Philip’s progenitors, and was transmitted with augmented
horror to his descendants, could not be expected to pass over Philip
himself; and the explanation of his attitude towards the political
events of his time must often be sought in the hereditary gloom which
fell upon him, and in the unshakable belief that he was in some sort a
junior partner with Providence, specially destined to link his mundane
fortunes with the higher interests of religion. His slow laboriousness,
his indomitable patience, his marble serenity, all seem to have been
imitated, perhaps unconsciously, from the relentless, resistless action
of divine forces.
On the other hand, his inherited characteristics were accentuated by his
education and training. From the time of his birth his father was
continually at war with infidels and heretics, and the earliest ideas
that can have been instilled into his infant mind were that he and his
were fighting the Almighty’s battles and destroying His enemies. In his
first years he was surrounded by the closest and narrowest devotees, for
ever beseeching the divine blessing on the arms of the absent emperor;
and when the time came for Philip to receive political instruction from
his father, at an age when most boys are frank and confiding, he was
ceaselessly told that his great destiny imposed upon him, above all, the
supreme duty of self-control, and of listening to all counsellors whilst
trusting none. No wonder, then, that Philip, lacking his father’s bodily
vigour, grew up secret, crafty, and over-cautious. No wonder that his
fervid faith in the divinity of his destiny and the sacredness of his
duty kept him uncomplaining amidst calamities that would have crushed
men of greater gifts and broader views. No wonder that this sad, slow,
distrustful man, with his rigid methods and his mind for microscopic
detail, firm in his belief that the Almighty was working through him for
His great ends, should have been hopelessly beaten in the fight with
nimble adversaries burdened with no fixed convictions or conscientious
scruples, who shifted their policy as the circumstances of the moment
dictated. Philip thought that he was fittingly performing a divine task
by nature’s own methods. He forgot that nature can afford to await
results indefinitely, whilst men cannot.
Philip was born at the house of Don Bernardino de Pimentel, near the
church of St. Paul in Valladolid, on May 21, 1527. His mother was
profoundly impressed with the great destiny awaiting her offspring, and
thought that any manifestation of pain or weakness during her labour
might detract from the dignity of the occasion. One of her Portuguese
ladies, fearing that this effort of self-control on the part of the
empress would add to her sufferings, begged her to give natural vent to
her feelings. “Silence!” said the empress, “die I may, but wail I will
not,” and then she ordered that her face should be hidden from the
light, that no involuntary sign of pain should be seen.
In this spirit of self-control and overpowering majesty the weak, sickly
baby was reared by his devout mother. Two other boy infants who were
born to her died of epilepsy in early childhood, and Philip, her
first-born, remained her only son.
In the midst of the rejoicings that heralded his birth news came to
Valladolid that the emperor’s Spanish and German troops had assaulted
and sacked Rome, and that Pope Clement VII. was surrounded by infuriated
soldiery, a prisoner in his own castle of St. Angelo. In the long
rivalry which Charles had sustained with the French king, Francis I.,
who had competed with him for the imperial crown, one of the main
factors was the dread of the entire domination of Italy by Spain, by
virtue of the suzerainty of the empire over the country. The excitable
and unstable pontiff, Clement VII., thought that his own interests were
threatened, and made common cause with Francis. The emperor’s troops
were commanded by Charles de Montpensier, Duke of Bourbon, who had
quarrelled with his own sovereign, and was in arms against him, and he
unquestionably exceeded the emperor’s wishes in the capture and sacking
of the eternal city, the intention having been to have held the pontiff
in check by terror rather than to degrade him in the eyes of the world.
Charles made what amends he could for the blunder committed by Bourbon,
and at once suspended the rejoicings for the birth of his heir. But the
gossips in Valladolid gravely shook their heads, and prophesied that the
great emperor’s first-born was destined to be a bane to the papacy in
years to come. It will be seen in the course of the present book that
during the whole of his life Philip regarded the papacy and the persons
of the pontiffs without any superstitious awe, and mainly as instruments
in his hands to achieve the great work entrusted to him by Providence.
In April 1528, when Philip was eleven months old, he received the oath
of allegiance as heir to the crown from the Cortes of Castile, and from
that time until the return of his father to Spain in 1533 the royal
infant remained under the care of his mother and one of her Portuguese
ladies, Doña Leonor de Mascarenhas, to whom Philip in after-life was
devotedly attached. He was even then a preternaturally grave and silent
child, with a fair pink-and-white skin, fine yellow hair, and full blue
lymphatic eyes, rather too close together. It is no uncommon thing for
princes to be represented as prodigies, but Philip seems, in truth, to
have been really an extraordinary infant, and exhibited great aptitude
for certain studies, especially mathematics. Charles on his arrival in
Spain decided to give to his heir a separate household and masters who
should prepare him for the duties of his future position. A list was
made of the principal priestly professors of the Spanish universities,
which was gradually reduced by elimination to three names. These were
submitted to the empress for her choice, and she selected Dr. Juan
Martinez Pedernales (which name = flints, he ingeniously Latinised into
Siliceo), a professor of Salamanca, who was appointed tutor to the
prince, with a salary of 100,000 maravedis a year. The emperor probably
knew little of the character of his son’s tutor. He had intended in the
previous year to appoint to the post a really eminent scholar, the
famous Viglius, but did not do so. Whatever may have been Siliceo’s
virtues, and according to priestly historians they were many, the
emperor had subsequently a very poor opinion of the way in which he had
performed his duty.
In a private letter from Charles to his son ten years afterwards, to
which other reference will be made, the emperor says that “Siliceo has
certainly not been the most fitting teacher for you. He has been too
desirous of pleasing you. I hope to God that it was not for his own
ends”; and again, “He is your chief chaplain, and you confess to him. It
would be bad if he was as anxious to please you in matters of your
conscience as he has been in your studies.” But Philip evidently liked
his tutor, for later he made him Archbishop of Toledo and Primate of
Spain. The prince must have been an apt pupil in the studies which most
attracted him. He was never a linguist of any proficiency, but could
read and write Latin well at quite an early age, and certainly
understood French and Italian. But he was a Spaniard of Spaniards, and
nothing shows the strict limitations of his capacity more than the
clumsiness with which he expressed himself even in his own language,
although he frequently criticised and altered the words and expressions
employed by his secretaries.
The governor appointed to teach Philip the social duties and exercises
fitting to his rank was an honest Spanish gentleman who possessed the
full confidence of the emperor--Don Juan de Zuñiga, Comendador Mayor of
Castile. From him he learnt fencing, riding, and warlike exercises, and
especially dancing, of which during his youth he was very fond. Don Juan
was somewhat uncompromising of speech, and apparently made no attempt
to flatter or spoil his pupil, for the emperor in 1543, when Philip was
sixteen, warns him that he is to prize Don Juan the more for this
quality, and is to follow his advice in all personal and social matters.
At the age of twelve Philip lost his mother, and two years afterwards,
in 1541, his political instruction may be said to have commenced. The
emperor, although still in the prime of life, was already tired of the
world. His great expedition to Algiers, from which he had hoped so much,
had brought him nothing but disaster and disappointment, and he arrived
in Spain in deep depression. A letter supposed to have been written to
him at the time by Philip, full of religious and moral consolation for
his trouble, is quoted by Cabrera de Cordoba and subsequent historians;
but on the face of it there are few signs of its being the composition
of a boy of fourteen, and it is not sufficiently authenticated to be
reproduced here. The emperor in any case was delighted with his son. He
found him studious, grave, and prudent beyond his years, and during the
period that the father and son were together the great statesman devoted
a portion of every day to initiate his successor in the intricate task
before him. In 1542 Philip was to receive his first lesson in practical
warfare, and accompanied the Duke of Alba to defend Perpignan against
the French, but he saw no fighting, and on his way back to Castile he
received the oath of allegiance of the Aragonese Cortes at Monzon,
Philip himself swearing in October at Saragossa to maintain inviolate
the tenaciously-held privileges of self-government cherished by the
kingdom of Aragon. How he kept his oath will be seen in a subsequent
chapter. The tendency of Charles’s policy was in favour of
centralisation in the government of Spain, and he several times in
writing to his son shows his dislike of the autonomy possessed by the
stubborn Aragonese. He had completely crushed popular privileges in his
kingdom of Castile, and would have liked to do the same in Aragon. This
will probably explain Philip’s eagerness in subsequently seizing upon an
excuse to curtail the rights of the northern kingdom. Before this period
Charles had conceived another project in favour of the consolidation of
Spain. Ferdinand the Catholic, with the papal authority, had seized the
Spanish kingdom of Navarre, and added it to his own dominions.
Thenceforward the titular sovereigns of Navarre were only tributary
princes of France, but they did not lightly put up with their
deprivation, and were a constant source of irritation and danger to
Spain on the Pyrenean frontier. The design of the emperor was nothing
less than to put an end to the feud, by marrying Philip to the heiress
of Navarre, Jeanne d’Albret. It is idle to speculate upon the
far-reaching results which might have ensued from such a match, but in
all probability it would have changed the whole course of modern
history. At the time this design was in view (1539) “to extinguish the
quarrel of Navarre and tranquillise both our conscience and that of our
son,” Philip and Jeanne were twelve years old, and the marriage would
doubtless have taken place but for the vigilance of Francis I. To have
brought the King of Spain over the Pyrenees as Prince of Béarn, and the
semi-independent sovereign of a large part of the south of France, would
have ruined the French monarchy, so poor little Jeanne was married by
force to a man she detested, and Philip had to look elsewhere for a
bride.
On the occasion of Charles’s own marriage, the dowry from the wealthy
royal family of Portugal had provided him at a critical juncture with
money to carry on the war with France; and now again, with his exchequer
chronically empty, and the demands upon it for warlike purposes more
pressing than ever, the emperor sought to tap the rich stream of the
Portuguese Indies by wedding his son to Princess Maria, daughter of John
III. and of Charles’s sister Catharine, another consanguineous marriage
of which we shall see the result later. Before the affair could be
concluded the emperor was obliged to leave Spain (May 1543). In July of
the previous year Francis I. had fulminated against his old enemy his
famous proclamation of war, and to Charles’s troubles with the
Protestants of Germany was now added the renewed struggle with France,
in which he was to have the assistance of the English king. The
emperor’s intercourse with his son during his stay in Spain had
convinced him of Philip’s precocity in statesmanship, and so he
determined to leave in his hands the regency of Spain in his absence.
This was one of the most important junctures of Philip’s life. He was
barely sixteen years old, and was thus early to be entrusted with
Charles’s secret system of government, an instruction which left deep
marks upon Philip’s own method for the rest of his life. The two letters
written by Charles to his son before his departure from Spain are of the
utmost importance as providing a key for Philip’s subsequent political
action. Although Philip was entrusted with the ultimate decision of all
subjects, he was to be guided by some of the most experienced and wisest
of Charles’s councillors. First there was the Cardinal-Archbishop of
Toledo, Tavara, and next the Secretary of State, Francisco de los Cobos,
who had been at the emperor’s right hand for so long. The young regent
is secretly told by his father that the reason why these two were
appointed as his principal councillors was because they were
respectively heads of factions, and their rivalry would prevent the
prince from falling under the influence of either political party. With
merciless scalpel the great emperor lays bare, for the benefit of the
lad of sixteen, the faults and failings of the statesmen who are to aid
him in the government. He is warned not to trust any of them separately.
Their hypocrisy, their greed, their frailties of character, and conduct
are pointed out by the worldly-wise ruler to the neophyte; and the moral
of it all is that he should listen to the opinions of every one, and
especially of rivals, and then decide for himself.
The greatest of the emperor’s Spanish subjects was the Duke of Alba, yet
this is how he is sketched for the benefit of Philip. “The Duke of Alba
would have liked to be associated with them (_i.e._ Cardinal Tavara and
Cobos), and I do not think that he would have followed either party, but
that which best suited his interests. But as it concerns the interior
government of the kingdom, in which it is not advisable that grandees
should be employed, I would not appoint him, whereat he is much
aggrieved. Since he has been near me I have noticed that he aims at
great things and is very ambitious, although at first he was so
sanctimonious, humble, and modest. Look, my son, how he will act with
you, who are younger than I. You must avoid placing him or other
grandees very intimately in the interior government, because he and
others will exert every means to gain your goodwill, which will
afterwards cost you dear. I believe that he will not hesitate to
endeavour to tempt you even by means of women, and I beg you most
especially to avoid this. In foreign affairs and war make use of him,
and respect him, as he is in this the best man we now have in the
kingdom.” And so, one by one, the bishops and ministers who were to be
Philip’s advisers are dissected for his benefit. The prince was ready
enough to learn lessons of distrust, and it afterwards became one of the
main principles of his system that only creatures of his own making
should be his instruments for the political government of Spain.
Quite as extraordinary as the political instructions were the minute
rules of conduct given by the emperor to his son for the regulation of
his married life and the continuance of his studies. He is not to
consider that he is a man with nothing to learn because he married
early, and is left in so great a position, but is to study harder than
ever. “If this, my son, be necessary for others, consider how much more
necessary is it for you, seeing how many lands you will have to govern,
so distant and far apart.... If you wish to enjoy them you must
necessarily understand and be understood in them; and nothing is so
important for this as the study of languages.” The coming marital
relations of the young prince were in somewhat curious terms, left
entirely to the guidance of Don Juan de Zuñiga, and the lessons enforced
all through the proud and anxious father’s instructions, were piety,
patience, modesty, and distrust. These were Philip’s guiding principles
for the rest of his long life. The prince fully answered the
expectations of his father. During the next few years, full of stress
and storm for the wearying emperor, a close correspondence was kept up
between them, and the plans and principles of the father were gradually
assimilated by the son.
In November 1543 the Portuguese princess crossed the frontier to marry
Philip. She was of the same height and age as her bridegroom, a plump
bright little creature; but he was already grave and reserved, short and
dapper, but erect and well made, of graceful and pleasant mien. But for
all his gravity he was still a boy, and could not resist the temptation
of going out in disguise to meet her, and mixing in her train. His
coming was probably an open secret, for the princess on the day of his
arrival took care to look especially charming in her dress of crimson
velvet, and with white feathers in her jaunty satin hat. The meeting
took place in a beautiful country house of the Duke of Alba near
Salamanca, and on November 15 the wedding procession entered the city
itself. All that pomp and popular enthusiasm could do was done to make
the marriage feast a merry one. Bulls and cane tourneys, dancing and
buffooning, fine garments and fair faces, seemed to presage a happy
future for the wedded pair. The bride was Philip’s own choice, for his
father had at one time suggested to him Margaret, the daughter of his
old enemy Francis, but the prince begged to be allowed to marry one of
his own kin and tongue, rather than the daughter of a foe, and the
emperor let him have his way.
Little is known of the short married life of the young couple. It only
lasted seventeen months, and then, after the birth of the unfortunate
Don Carlos, the poor little princess herself died, it was said at the
time from imprudently eating a lemon soon after her delivery. The birth
of the heir had been hailed with rejoicing by the Spanish people, and
the news of the death of the mother caused redoubled sorrow. Philip was
already extremely popular with his people. His gravity was truly
Spanish; his preference for the Spanish tongue, and his reluctance to
marry the French princess, as well as his piety and moderation, had even
now gained for him the affection of Spaniards, which for the rest of his
life he never lost. His early bereavement was therefore looked upon as a
national affliction. For three weeks after the death of his wife the
young widower shut himself up in a monastery and gave way to his grief,
until his public duties forced him into the world again. The Prince of
Orange in his _Apology_, published in 1581, said that even before Philip
had married Maria he had conferred the title of wife upon Doña Isabel de
Osorio, the sister of the Marquis of Astorga. This has been frequently
repeated, and much ungenerous comment founded upon it, strengthened, it
is true, to some extent by the fact that subsequently for some years
marital relations certainly existed between them. It is, however, in the
highest degree improbable that Orange’s assertion was true. In the first
place no Spanish churchman would have dared to marry the prince-regent
before he was out of his boyhood without the knowledge of the emperor,
and the matter is now almost placed beyond doubt by the
already-mentioned document, which proves that Philip had pledged his
word of honour to his father that he had hitherto kept free of all such
entanglements, and would do so in future. Whatever may have been
Philip’s faults, he was a good and dutiful son, with a high sense of
honour, and it is incredible that he would thus early have been guilty
of deceit upon such a subject as this.
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.