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
Silva and Gomez Suarez de Figueroa, Count de Feria, and to these and the
like he gave offices which kept them constantly near him. Philip for the
whole of his life was on his guard to prevent favourites from obtaining
influence over him, and few monarchs have been less dominated by
individual courtiers than he. But the man who gained most ascendency
over him was Ruy Gomez, who, as will be shown later, led a party or
school of thought whose policy was for many years followed by the king,
and largely coloured subsequent events. On October 1, 1548, Philip left
Valladolid on his voyage, leaving as regents his sister Maria and her
bridegroom Maximilian. By slow stages, and followed by a great train of
courtiers, he rode through Aragon and Catalonia, worshipping at the
shrines of Saragossa and Monserrate on his way, and receiving the homage
of Barcelona and Gerona. In the bay of Rosas, in the extreme north-east
point of Spain, Andrea Doria awaited him with a splendid fleet of
fifty-eight galleys and a great host of sailing ships.
Doria, the greatest sailor of his day, who had grown grey in the service
of the emperor, knelt on the shore at the sight of the prince, overcome
with emotion, and said in the words of Simeon: “Now, Lord, let Thy
servant depart in peace, for his eyes have seen Thy salvation.” It is no
exaggeration to say that this intense devotion to the Spanish prince
reflected generally the feeling with which he was regarded in Spain, at
least. The prince landed at Savona in the territory of Genoa, where
princes and cardinals innumerable awaited him. In the city of Genoa he
stayed at the Doria palace, and there Octavio Farnese came to him from
his uncle, Pope Paul III., with a significant message. The Farneses had
but small reason to greet Philip with enthusiasm just then, for the
plans afoot for the aggrandisement of Spain were a grave menace to the
interests of the papacy, and Octavio himself was being kept out of his
principality by the emperor’s troops. But the pope’s champion against
the emperor, Francis I, had recently died, and the pontiff was obliged
to salute the rising sun of Spain, in the hope that he would prove a
better friend to Rome than his father was. So Farnese was fain to bear
to Philip from the pope a sanctified sword and a hat of state, “hoping
that some day he might behold in him the true champion of the Holy
Church.” Milan and Mantua vied with Genoa in the splendour of their
rejoicings for Philip’s arrival, and so through the Tyrol, Germany, and
Luxembourg he slowly made his way to meet his father at Brussels. On
April 1, 1549, he made his state entry into the city, but so great was
the ceremonial, that it was almost night before he arrived at the
palace. Charles was still ailing, but gained, it seemed, new life when
he saw the heir of his greatness. Thenceforward for a time the
festivals, tourneys, and rejoicings went on unceasingly, to a greater
extent, say eye-witnesses, than had ever been known before. Philip had
no taste for such frivolities, but he did his best. He was a graceful,
if not a bold, rider, and the custom of his time demanded that he should
break lances with the rest. His courtly chroniclers relate how well he
acquitted himself in these exercises, and the enthusiasm aroused by his
gallant mien; but less partial judges do not scruple to say that at one
of the tourneys during his stay in Germany on his way home “no one did
so badly as the prince,” who was never able “to break a lance.” His
inclinations were in a totally different direction. The drunken orgies
and rough horseplay of the Germans and Flemings disgusted him, and he
took but little pains to conceal his surprise at what appeared to him
such undignified proceedings. He was unable, moreover, to speak German,
and his voyage certainly did not help forward the project of securing to
him the succession to the imperial crown.
For the next two years the emperor kept his son by his side,
indoctrinating him with his principles and policy. For two hours nearly
every day the Spanish prince learnt the profound lessons of government
from the lips of his great father, government founded on the principle
of making all other men merely instruments for carrying out the ends of
one.
Philip had now been a widower for four years, and doubtless during this
period contracted his connection with Doña Isabel de Osorio, by whom he
had several children; and he had one at least by a Flemish lady in
Brussels. His only legitimate son was the lame, epileptic Don Carlos,
and the emperor had no other sons; so during the intimate conferences
which followed Philip’s arrival in Brussels, Charles pressed upon his
heir the necessity of taking another wife, and once more brought forward
Jeanne d’Albret, titular Queen of Navarre, who had claimed a divorce
from the Duke of Cleves, whom she had been constrained to marry. But
whether because cautious Philip saw that to extend his dominions into
the south of France would be a source of weakness rather than strength
to him, or whether he was influenced by the greed for dowry, and the
persuasions of his widowed aunt Leonora, who was with his father in
Brussels, he certainly leant to the side of her daughter, another
Princess Maria of Portugal, aunt of his former wife, and negotiations
were opened in this direction, although Ferdinand, King of the Romans,
the brother of the emperor, tried his hardest to promote his own
daughter to the place of Philip’s consort. Philip had contrived to
persuade his probably not unwilling father to endeavour to promote his
claims to the succession of the imperial crown in the place of
Ferdinand, and the Austrian archives contain full details of the almost
interminable family discussions with this end. At last, in March 1551, a
compact was made with which Philip was forced to be satisfied. It was to
the effect that Ferdinand should succeed Charles as emperor, but that on
the death of Ferdinand the imperial crown should pass to Philip instead
of to Maximilian, who was to govern the empire in his name, holding a
similar position towards Philip to that occupied by Ferdinand towards
Charles. The emperor’s suzerainty over Italy was to be exercised
vicariously by Philip during the life of Ferdinand. This last provision
was a bitter pill for Ferdinand to swallow, but it was, in Charles’s
view, the most important of them all. Spain, with a supremacy over the
Italian states, would be the mistress of the Mediterranean, with
infinite possibilities of extension to the east and in Africa, whilst
France would be checkmated on this side, as she had been on the north.
Philip, who had accompanied his father to Augsburg for the Diet, only
stayed until this arrangement was settled and he had received the fiefs
of the empire, and then (in May 1551) started on his way home to Spain.
The battle of Mühlberg, three years before, together with the ambition
of Maurice of Saxony, had laid Lutheranism prostrate at the feet of
Charles, but the plan to perpetuate Spanish domination over the empire
once more aroused the spirit of the sovereigns to resistance, and the
powerful Maurice of Saxony, the emperor’s own creature, joined his
fellow-countrymen against him. Sent by Charles to besiege the Protestant
stronghold of Magdeburg, he suddenly changed sides. The opportunity thus
offered was too good to be neglected by France, where Henry II. was now
firmly seated on the throne; and in October 1551 a compact was signed at
Friedwald in Hesse, by which Maurice, the King of France, and the
Protestant princes joined against the emperor. Henry II. had just made
peace with England, and had recovered Boulogne, so that he was in a
better position to face his enemy than ever before. Octavio Farnese,
with the connivance of France, raised a tumult in Italy to recover his
principalities of Parma and Piacenza; and thus Charles found himself
suddenly confronted by war on all sides, just when the prospects of his
House had looked brightest. There is no space in this work to follow the
fortunes of the remarkable campaign in which Maurice swept through
Germany, capturing the imperial cities, surprising the emperor himself
in Innspruck, and forcing Cæsar to fly for his life through the
darkness. Suffice it to say that Charles was humbled as he had never
been before, and was obliged to sign the peace of Passau at the
dictation of Maurice (July 31, 1552) on terms which practically gave to
the Lutheran princes all they demanded. This put an end for once and for
all to the dream of making Philip Emperor as well as King of Spain. Nor
had Henry II. been idle. On his way to join the German Protestants he
had captured the strong places of Alsace and Lorraine, and Charles’s
army before Metz was utterly defeated by Guise (January 1553). In Italy,
too, the emperor was unfortunate, for the French had obtained a footing
in Siena, and had overrun Piedmont. And thus the idea of a permanent
supremacy of Spain over the Italian states also fell to the ground.