Renewed contest between Philip and the papacy--Condition of Don
Carlos--His arrest and imprisonment--Philip’s explanations--His
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.
Whilst Philip was engaged in his hopeless efforts to extirpate national
feeling and the Protestant faith in his Flemish dominions, he was, on
the other hand, carrying on a bitter contest with the Holy See. His
arrogant claims had tired out even the erstwhile obedient Pius IV., but
on his death in December 1565 a man of Philip’s own stamp mounted the
chair of St. Peter. Michael Ghislieri, Pius V., was consumed with the
one idea that the Church must be absolutely omnipotent through
Christendom in all ecclesiastical affairs; and this was in direct
opposition to the keynote of Philip’s policy, namely, that all power
within his dominions must be concentrated in the sovereign. It did not
take long, therefore, for matters to reach a crisis, the main bone of
contention being the king’s direct control of the clergy, and his claim
to withhold the papal bulls from promulgation in Spain. The new pope
issued a number of fresh orders for Church administration and
discipline, which were promptly set aside by Philip’s council, and the
contest then opened.
First, the pope turned his hand to the Spanish possessions in Italy,
sending peremptory orders to the Neapolitan bishops for them to
promulgate and obey the papal bulls without waiting for the royal
confirmation. This was met by the viceroy, the Duke of Alcalá, by
threatening any bishop who did so with summary imprisonment. Pius tried
by every device imaginable for three years to circumvent the Spanish
position in Naples, but at last in February 1569 had to confess himself
beaten. The patronage was in the hands of Philip, which necessarily made
the bishops his creatures. The pope was equally unsuccessful in Sicily
and in Milan, notwithstanding the efforts of the great cardinal, Charles
Borromeo, and the excommunication of Philip’s governor, the Duke of
Albuquerque. The pope’s action in Spain itself was more effectual. The
various pontiffs had from time to time regranted to the Spanish monarchs
the revenues arising from the sale of the so-called Crusade bulls
granting certain indulgences. Pius V. now refused to do this, on the
ground that the government traffic in these indulgences had become a
scandal. He also continued to worry Philip about Carranza and the
appropriation of the great revenues of his vacant see of Toledo to the
cost of the building of the Escorial. Bitter words and reproaches were
used on both sides. Philip gave way on secondary points, such as the
sending of Carranza to Rome, but he kept fast to his main idea of
retaining control over the clergy and benefices; and the constant
menaces of the Turks in the Mediterranean made it impossible for the
pope to carry to the last extreme the quarrel with the only prince to
whom he could look for protection. Philip, indeed, was assailed by
trouble at all points. His married life, in a domestic sense, was a
happy one, though his constant labour left him but small leisure to
enjoy it. All else was bitterness and disappointment, mostly, it is
true, the result of his rigid unadaptability to circumstances.
His greatest trouble was undoubtedly the state of his son. His frantic
excesses had become more and more scandalous as he grew older. The
marriage with Mary Stuart had fallen through, in consequence of the
superior quickness of Elizabeth of England, and perhaps in consequence
of Carlos’s own condition. The emperor was working incessantly to gain
the prince’s hand for his daughter Anne; and this was the match which
seemed most probable, and indeed was in principle accepted by Philip.
But the delicate state of health of the prince was Philip’s constant
excuse for not carrying the project into effect. The matter was a
delicate one, and the king was naturally desirous of making it as little
public as possible, but as early as 1562 the king had clearly hinted to
the imperial ambassador that the prince’s judgment and understanding
were defective. Dietrichstein, the emperor’s envoy, saw the prince in
1564, and confirmed the impression already given of him. The Venetian
ambassador in 1563 bluntly reported that the prince was a chronic
lunatic. The oft-told story of his forcing a bootmaker to eat a pair of
boots he had made too tight for him, and also of his murderous attack
on Cardinal Espinosa, need not be repeated here, but they are well
authenticated; and although too much weight need not be given to
Brantome’s repulsive account of the prince’s behaviour in the streets of
Madrid, it is quite consistent with what we know positively of his
character. Philip’s hopes and ambitions for his heir had been great, and
he strove long before he abandoned them. In the hope that serious work
might fix the prince’s mind, his father appointed him in 1567 to the
presidency of the Council of State, but in this position his excesses
and aberrations became the more conspicuous. He openly mocked at and
derided his father, whom he cordially hated, and delighted to thwart. He
had extorted a promise from the king that he should accompany him to
Flanders, but when he learnt at length that Alba was going instead, his
fury passed all bounds. When the duke went to take leave of the prince,
the latter cast himself upon him with his dagger, and only with
difficulty could the old warrior escape from his maniacal violence; and
on another occasion in January 1567, when the Cortes of Castile
presented a petition to the king that the prince should remain in Spain
if his father went to Flanders, he made an open scandal, threatening
with death those deputies who voted in favour of such a petition. This
public exhibition of his lunacy opened the eyes of the world as to his
condition, which could no longer be concealed, and in September of 1567
Ruy Gomez told the French ambassador that after the impending delivery
of the queen of what, no doubt, would be a son, the future fate of
Carlos would be decided.
But Carlos himself precipitated events. Philip had decided that his son
should remain in Spain. The prince was determined that he would not.
Philip had gone in December 1567 to pass Christmas in his devotions at
the Escorial as usual, and during his absence, on December 23, Carlos
informed his young uncle, Juan of Austria, of his intention to escape.
Don Juan lost no time. The next day he rode post-haste to the Escorial
and told the king. Philip’s thoughts must have been bitter indeed that
Heaven had afflicted him with such a son. He must have seen that the
great patriotic task to which he had devoted all his life would be
frustrated if handed to such a successor. But he was calm and rigid in
outward guise, and returned to Madrid as intended on January 17, 1568.
The next day he saw the French ambassador, and went with his son to
mass, but still made no sign. Don Juan had before this endeavoured to
dissuade the prince from his intention, and the madman had attempted to
kill even him. It was evident now to the king that he must strike,
however reluctantly. When he consulted his closest councillors on the
subject, for once his feelings broke through his reserve, and his
emotion was terrible. It was a duty he owed to his country and to the
cause for which he lived, to protect them against falling into the hands
of a congenital madman, and he took the course which duty dictated. Late
at night, when the prince was asleep, the king himself, with five
gentlemen and twelve guards, entered the chamber, in spite of the secret
bolts and bars with which it was provided. The prince woke from sleep,
started up, and tried to grasp a weapon; but the weapons were gone. The
unhappy young man then tried to lay violent hands upon himself, but was
restrained. The issues of the room barred, the secret receptacles
opened, the papers taken, himself restrained, the prince recognised his
helplessness, and casting himself on to his bed he sobbed out, “But I am
not mad! I am only desperate.” From that hour he was dead to the world,
which saw him no more.
Couriers flew with the news all over Europe. Explanations must not be
sought in Philip’s cold diplomatic letters giving foreign courts
information of the event, but in other quarters. The Queen of England
learnt the news on February 2, and on the 6th saw the Spanish
ambassador, when she expressed her surprise, said that the king had
acted with all dignity in the matter, but that she had not been informed
of the reason for the arrest. Letters had come from France even thus
early by which Cecil learnt that the prince had been implicated in a
plot against his father’s life. The ambassador was very indignant at
such an idea, which, he said, could only have emanated from heretics,
children of the devil.
But it is clear to see that the ambassador himself is as much in the
dark as every one else, for he prays his master to instruct him what
attitude he is to assume, “as the matter has made great noise here, and
no doubt elsewhere.” To this the king coldly replied that no more was to
be said about it. Ruy Gomez was less reticent. He told the French and
English ambassadors in Spain that the prince’s mind was as defective as
his body, and had been getting steadily worse. The king had dissembled
as long as he could, in the hope of improvement, but the prince’s
violence had now become intolerable, and it had been necessary to place
him under restraint. Dr. Man, the English ambassador, fully agreed that
the step had become inevitable, as did all the ambassadors then resident
in Madrid. “It was not a punishment,” wrote Philip to his aunt and
mother-in-law, the grandmother of Don Carlos, “if it were, there would
be some limit to it; but I never hope to see my son restored to his
right mind again. I have chosen in this matter to make a sacrifice to
God of my own flesh and blood, preferring His service and the universal
good to all other human considerations.”
It was a humiliating position for Philip, who had been so dutiful a son
himself, and had such far-reaching ambitions to hand down to his heir.
It is not surprising that he avoided reference to it as much as
possible. Some sort of trial or examination of the prince took place in
secret before Ruy Gomez, Cardinal Espinosa, and Muñatones, but the
documents have never been found. The rumour that Carlos plotted against
his father’s life was repudiated vigorously by the king and his
ministers, but that he had been disobedient and rebellious is certain,
and probably this was the foundation of the charge of treason brought
against him. The Protestant party, in France and Flanders especially,
were willing enough to wound Philip and discredit the Inquisition by
saying that Carlos was punished for supposed Protestant leanings; and
even in Spain such things were cautiously whispered. There is, however,
not the slightest indication that such was really the case from the
papers of the prince himself and those who surrounded him, unless
perhaps the letter from his friend and almoner, Suarez, to him, in
which he reproaches him for not going to confession, and warns him that
if he persisted in his present course every one would think him mad;
“things so terrible, that in the case of other persons they have caused
the Inquisition to inquire whether they were Christians.” Certainly to
all appearance the prince was as devout a Catholic as his father, and
the idea of attributing to this epileptic imbecile elevated ideas of
political and religious reform is obviously absurd.
If we must hold Philip blameless with respect to his son’s imprisonment,
we must still keep in suspense our judgment with regard to his
responsibility for the prince’s death, because the evidence as to what
passed after his arrest comes mainly from persons in the king’s interest
and pay, and because the accusation that Carlos was murdered was
formulated by Philip’s bitterest enemy, Antonio Perez, a man, moreover,
utterly unworthy of credit, a murderer, a perjurer, and a traitor to his
country.
The long secret trial of the prince dragged on. Neither his aunt Juana
nor his beloved stepmother was allowed to see him, and Philip even
forbade his brother, Don Juan, to wear mourning for the trouble that had
befallen the royal house.
In the meanwhile the prince’s health visibly declined. At best he had
been a continual invalid, burned up with fever and ague, but in
captivity and under examination he became worse. He refused to receive
the consolations of the Church, a freak upon which much superstructure
has been raised. As his madness increased, like many lunatics he took to
swallowing inedible things, jewelry, and other objects of the same sort,
and finally refused to eat anything at all for eleven days. Then in
reply to the king’s remonstrances, he gorged himself, and this brought
him a return of his fever in the worst form. Every sort of mad
proceeding was adopted in turn by the unhappy youth. He would half roast
himself by a fire, and then put ice in his bed. First he would
scornfully refuse the sacraments, and then fulfil scrupulously all the
forms of his Church. At length, probably from weakness, he became
calmer, and there was a momentary hope of his recovery. Llorente (whose
authority is not, however, to be accepted unquestioned) says that the
result of his trial was that he was “found guilty of implication in a
plot to kill the king and to usurp the sovereignty of the Netherlands,
and that the only punishment for this was death.” There are no
trustworthy official documents known which prove this to have been the
case, but nature and the prince’s mad excesses had apparently condemned
him to death, independently of his faults and failings. When he was told
that he was dying he conformed fervently to the rites of his Church, and
sent Suarez to beg his father’s forgiveness. On July 21 the French
ambassador wrote to his master that Don Carlos had eaten nothing but a
few plums and sweetmeats for eight days, and was dying of weakness. “The
king, his father, is much grieved, because, if he die, the world will
talk. I understand that if he live, the castle of Arevalo is to be put
in order, so that he may be lodged in safety and comfort.”
On July 26 the same ambassador writes to Catharine de Medici saying that
the prince had died the previous day. He attributes the death entirely
to his curious eccentricities of diet and hygiene. Llorente, enemy of
Philip though he was, says that Carlos died a natural death. In face of
this testimony it appears that Philip should be given the benefit of the
doubt. In any case, the Abbé de St. Real’s romantic fictions, which have
been drawn upon by so many historians, may be confidently dismissed as
unworthy of any credit whatever, and Perez’s source is too tainted to be
accepted. When the French ambassador notified the death of Don Carlos,
he told Catharine de Medici that her daughter, the queen, was ill. The
death, however, of her stepson was distinctly in her favour, as it made
the elder of her two little daughters, Isabel Clara Eugenia, heiress to
the crown of Spain. The queen saw this, and begged her mother to express
emphatically her sorrow for the death of the prince. But the queen
herself languished, crushed with the trouble that surrounded her, for
Alba was drowning Flanders in blood, and her own beloved France was
riven by religious disorder. In August it was announced that she was
pregnant, and all Spain prayed that an heir might be born. But she was
sacrificed to the unskilfulness of the Spanish doctors, and died on
October 3, 1568, to the great grief of all Spain and France. The French
ambassador relates the death-bed farewell of Philip and his wife,
“Enough to break the heart of so good a husband as the king was to her.”
And when all was over the king retired in the deepest grief to the
monastery of San Geronimo in Madrid, but not before he had signed
letters to the Duke of Alba and others giving the news of his
bereavement. Nothing short of his own death could prevent Philip from
attending to his beloved papers.
Once only during Elizabeth’s short married life had the object for which
she was sacrificed seemed on the point of realisation. The open sympathy
manifested in England for the Flemish Protestants, the ever-increasing
boldness of the English corsairs at sea, and the ferment of the
Huguenots in France had caused Philip in 1565 to approve of a plan for
binding Catharine de Medici to him in a league to utterly destroy and
root out the reformed doctrines in their respective territories. The
ostensible occasion was an interview between the Queen of Spain and her
mother at Bayonne, the Duke of Alba being the negotiator of the treaty.
Elizabeth of England was in a panic at the bare idea, and made one of
her rapid movements in favour of Catholicism, and another to draw
Catharine into a negotiation for the marriage of her young son, Charles
IX., with the Queen of England. It was a mere feint, of course, but it
helped towards its purpose. When Catharine reached Bayonne she found
that Alba’s instructions were to pledge her to destroy and break every
Huguenot noble or functionary in France, and to bind her hand and foot
to the extreme Catholic party. The queen-mother affected to agree, but
when she reached home she found all manner of impossible new conditions
necessary. Her second son must marry an Austrian princess and receive a
dominion. The league must also be joined by the emperor, the pope, and
others. So the league at that time came to nothing, for Catharine could
not afford to throw over the Huguenot nobles, who were her constant
balance against the Catholics and the Guises.
With the death of his French wife it became evident to Philip that he
could depend upon no enduring alliance between the French nation and
himself, and that he must face advancing Protestantism alone. It gave
him no trouble in Spain, thanks mainly to the Inquisition, but in
France, Germany, his own Netherlands, and, above all, in England, it
grew more and more threatening to the basis of his power. Mary of
Scotland, whom he had aided with counsel and money during her short
married life with Darnley, was a prisoner, and the reformers were
predominant in Scotland. Elizabeth of England was firmly established on
the throne, more than holding her own, the English and Dutch corsairs
were scouring the seas after Spanish shipping, and England was burning
with indignation at Alba’s _régime_ of blood in the Netherlands. But
withal Philip had to speak softly and temporise, for he dared not go to
war with Elizabeth whilst Holland was in arms, and the Huguenots strong.
All he could do was by intrigue to endeavour to stir up civil
dissensions both in France and England, and this he did ceaselessly, but
with indifferent success, as will be seen, for both Elizabeth and
Catharine, with their quick vigilance, were far more than a match for
Philip’s slow ponderous methods. Powerless, however, as Philip might be
to stay the progress of heterodoxy abroad, he was determined that it
should gain no foothold in his own country. Early in 1568 he expelled
the English ambassador, Dr. Man, ostensibly in consequence of his too
open profession of the reformed faith, but really to anticipate a demand
which he knew would be made for religious toleration for the ambassador
in return for the similar privilege enjoyed by the Spanish ambassador in
England. Although Protestantism was by the unsparing severity of the
Inquisition stamped out utterly in Spain, Philip’s principle of
absolute uniformity of faith amongst his subjects had to encounter a
serious resistance from another quarter. On the capture of Granada by
the Catholic sovereigns, the most complete religious toleration had been
promised to the Moors. The promise had been broken through the zeal of
Ximenez, and, nominally at least, the whole of the Spaniards of Moorish
descent had during the reign of the emperor been drawn into the Catholic
Church. All the south of Spain was inhabited by a people in course of
gradual amalgamation, and if time had only been given to them, they
would eventually have mingled into a homogeneous race, to the enormous
future advantage of the country. During the emperor’s time an edict had
been issued ordering all people of Moorish blood to discontinue the use
of their distinctive garb and language. It was naturally found
impossible to enforce this within a short period, and the edict was
allowed to fall nearly into abeyance, thanks, in a great measure, to the
liberal contributions of the Moriscos to the cost of the emperor’s wars
against his German Protestants. The Morisco population of the kingdom of
Granada, and Valencia especially, had accordingly, although outwardly
conforming Christians, really clung in secret to the faith and habits of
their fathers, living in industry and usefulness, adding greatly to the
national wealth both by their advanced agricultural science, and the
perfection to which they had brought the production of silk. The
prosperity they attained, and their distinct blood and customs, aroused
the jealousy and hatred of their Christian neighbours, especially during
the periodical struggle with the Turks, when the Moriscos were accused
of sympathy with the national enemy. Philip’s first action against these
useful citizens was prompted--as were most royal edicts in Spain--by a
representation made to him by the Cortes of Castile in 1560, to the
effect that the introduction of African slaves by the Spanish Moriscos
was a disadvantage to the country, and a royal pragmatica was issued
forbidding this. It was a heavy blow, as much of the hard labour of
mountain agriculture and irrigation was done by these slaves, but
measures of a very different character were adopted as soon as possible
after Cardinal Espinosa became inquisitor-general. In 1563 an edict had
been issued prohibiting the Moriscos from wearing or possessing arms,
which caused much discontent and resistance; but at the instance of the
clergy, and more especially of Guerrero, the Archbishop of Granada, and
of Espinosa, a far more serious step was taken early in 1567. The
Moriscos were forbidden to wear their distinctive garb, and were ordered
to dress as Christians, no silk garments being allowed, and the women
going abroad with their faces uncovered. They were to have no locks or
fastenings upon their doors, and within a term of three years were
utterly to discontinue the use of their own language and also adopt
Christian names. Above all, the use of warm baths was prohibited under
brutal penalties. Their customs and traditions, indeed, were to be
trampled upon with apparent wantonness. The Moriscos had always been
quiet, docile people, and the local clergy and authorities had assured
Philip that no difficulty would be experienced in enforcing the edict.
At first the Moriscos adopted the same means of evasion as they had
successfully employed on other occasions, namely, bribery and cajolery.
Espinosa belonged to the war party, and consequently had the Ruy Gomez
party against him, and even the Governor-General of Granada, the Marquis
de Mondejar, and much pressure was exerted upon Philip to induce him to
relax the orders, but, influenced by Espinosa and the churchmen, he
refused. For the first two years the Moriscos sulkily bowed beneath the
yoke, evading and passively resisting as much as possible; but during
this period the Mussulman fervour had been rising, and at length at
Christmas 1568 the storm which had long been brewing burst. A youth,
Aben Humeya, in the Alpujarras had distinguished himself in resisting
the enforcement of the edicts. He was a descendant of the prophet
himself, and was proclaimed by the Moriscos King of Granada. The Moorish
force was organised in the almost inaccessible mountains, whilst envoys
sped from the new king to his co-religionists at Constantinople and on
the other side of the Straits of Gibraltar; but the Turk was busy
organising an expedition against the Venetians, and the Barbary Moors
were split up into independent tribes which could furnish no
considerable combined force, so the Spanish Moriscos were left nearly
unaided, although many isolated companies of Barbary Moors responded to
the call and crossed to Spain. On December 26, 1568, a small body of 180
Moriscos, under Aben Farax, a dyer of Granada, came down from the
mountains through the driving snow and forced their way into the city of
Granada. The Morisco townspeople, terrified at the risk they ran in
joining so small a force, turned a deaf ear to the exhortations of the
chief. Through the sleeping city the little body of Moors rushed on,
desecrating the Christian temples, cursing the Christian gods, and
killing such few Spaniards as resisted them. And then when a call to
arms from the citadel sounded, Aben Farax and his little force withdrew
once more to the mountains. The large Morisco population of Granada had
made no move, or the city would have been taken, and the Governor
Mendoza, Marquis de Mondejar, took counsel with their head men for
resisting further attack, and urged them to stand loyal to the king
against the mountain marauders.
In the meanwhile Aben Farax swept through the Vega, carrying death and
torture with him to the Christians, burning villages, and submitting the
defenceless inhabitants to the most heartrending cruelty. Mad with blood
lust, the Moriscos of the band sought to avenge their race for endless
ignominy by outrage upon the country folk of the Vega. Three thousand
Christians were killed, before the king, Aben Humeya, put an end to the
slaughter, and many hundreds of others were sold into slavery across the
Straits in exchange for arms and men. Like wildfire ran the hope through
all Andalucia that at last the resuscitation of the Moorish power in
Spain had come, and the Moriscos from Valencia to the Sierra Nevada
sprang to arms. The hate and rancour of centuries were concentrated in
one mad week of slaughter. Mendoza, Marquis of Mondejar, with such
forces as he could raise, sallied and met the Moors in the pass of
Alfajarali, where he defeated them with great slaughter, and then
pressed on, killing and plundering, until blood and booty themselves
palled. When Mondejar re-entered the city of Granada he brought with him
800 rescued Christian women, who had been destined for sale to the Jews
of Barbary, and the churchmen made this an excuse for urging the
townspeople to fresh vengeance. In the early spring the Marquis de los
Velez set out with another force, gathered up from the idlers of the
cities of Andalucia, with the avowed object of massacre. They came
across 10,000 Morisco women and children fugitives, who had sought
safety on the edge of the great red cliffs overlooking the
Mediterranean. There was no mercy for them. Many cast themselves over
the edge to escape outrage and a lingering death; others, whilst praying
for mercy and avowing the Christian faith, were slaughtered. In two
hours 6000 poor creatures were killed, 2000 of them little children, and
the rest were distributed amongst the soldiers as slaves. But soon
slaves were so plentiful that the value fell, and soldiers deserted to
seek a better market for them, the Spanish forces became utterly
demoralised, and plunder and anarchy spread all over the fertile and
previously prosperous region. Deza, afterwards one of Philip’s cardinals
in Rome, was the representative in Granada of the civil power and the
Inquisition, and exceeded in violence and brutality even the lawless
men-at-arms. He complained constantly to Philip and Espinosa of the
slackness and want of authority of the Governor Mondejar, and at last
the king decided to send to Andalucia a considerable force under his
brother, Don Juan of Austria, to restore order. The young prince, who
had been born in 1547, was one of the handsomest and most gifted men of
his time. He had shared the studies of his unfortunate nephew, Don
Carlos, and of his cousin, Alexander Farnese, and from the time of the
emperor’s death had been treated as a prince of the blood. He had
already distinguished himself in the naval campaign against the Barbary
corsairs in 1567, and now his royal brother sent him once more against
the infidel. He entered Granada in April 1569. He was to do nothing
without first communicating with the king, and was strictly enjoined not
to expose himself to danger or to take any personal part in the mountain
warfare, which was to be left to the Marquis de los Velez. The reasons
probably why Don Juan had been chosen for the command were his youth,
which would, it might be thought, render him amenable to guidance from
Madrid, and the fact that he had from his childhood been indoctrinated
in the diplomatic principles of Ruy Gomez’s party, to which Secretary
Antonio Perez also belonged. But he was a youth of high courage and
great ability, who could ill brook strict control, and he chafed at
being kept in the city of Granada away from the fighting. Philip again
and again directed him to do as he was told and stay where he was. The
task confided to him was a pitiful one. Orders came from Madrid that
every Morisco in Granada was to be sent to Castile. On the day of St.
John 1569, writes the English spy Hogan, “Don Juan gathered together
13,000 Moriscos of Granada, and took 2000 for the king’s galleys, and
hanged some; a great number were sent to labour in the king’s works and
fortifications, and the rest, with their wives and children, kept as
slaves.” Despair fell upon the poor people, innocent mostly of all
participation in the mountain rising, at being dragged from their
beautiful homes and smiling native land to be sent in slavery to arid
Castile; but Deza and Espinosa were pitiless, and their advice alone was
heard in Madrid. The Marquis of Mondejar, the hereditary governor of
Granada, could not brook such ruinous folly to the city he loved, and
left in disgust.
Things in the meanwhile were going badly for the Spaniards in the
mountains. The king, Aben Humeya, gained a victory at Seron, and the
main body of Spaniards, under the Marquis de los Velez, got out of hand,
provisions and pay were short, and the men deserted in shoals, until at
last Los Velez was left only with the veteran regiment of Naples. Then
Philip and the churchmen saw that they must let Don Juan have his way
and give him active command, whilst the king himself, to be nearer, came
to Cordova.
But Aben Humeya’s power was slipping away. Dissensions had broken out in
his own family. He had exercised his royal authority with as much
harshness and arrogance as if it had been founded on a rock instead of
on the desert sand, and soon a revolution of his people broke out. The
young king, already sunk in lascivious indulgence, was strangled in his
bed, and his cousin, Ben Abó, was proclaimed King of Granada.
The juncture was a favourable one for Don Juan, and he lost no time.
With marvellous activity he collected the Spanish forces again around
the Naples regiment; he brought men from all parts of Spain, and by the
end of January 1570 he was besieging the fortress of Galera with 13,000
soldiers. For a month the siege lasted, and hardly a day passed without
some act of daring heroism on one side or the other. At last by February
16 the place was taken by assault, and the defenders to the number of
3000 killed. Massacre, pillage, and lust again threw the Spanish troops
into a state of demoralisation, and a few days later, in attempting to
recover Seron, an uncontrollable panic seized them, and the seasoned
warriors fled like hares before an insignificant gang of Moors, with a
loss of 600 men. All discipline and order were thrown to the winds;
desertion, anarchy, and murder were all that could be got from Don
Juan’s army, now a mere blood-thirsty rabble.
The Moorish king would fain make terms, and Don Juan was in favour of
entertaining his approaches. Philip was at his wits’ end with two wars
on his hands, both the result of his blind, rigid policy; his treasury,
as usual, was well-nigh exhausted. Elizabeth of England had recently
seized all the ready money he could borrow for the payment of Alba’s
army, and the Turk was busy in the Mediterranean, with the more or less
overt encouragement of Catharine de Medici. But though Don Juan begged
for clemency for the submissive Moors, the fanatics Deza and Espinosa
would have none of it, and Philip’s zeal was aroused again in the name
of religion to strike and spare not for the interests of “God and your
Majesty.”
Deza and one of his officials of the Inquisition managed to bribe a Moor
to betray and kill the king, Ben Abó. The body of the dead king was
brought into Granada, and Deza, churchman though he was, struck off the
head and had it nailed to the gate of what was once the Moorish quarter,
with a threat of death to the citizen who should dare to touch it.
There was to be no mercy to the vanquished, said the churchmen, and
Philip obeyed them, in spite of Don Juan’s protests against their
interference with the clemency of a magnanimous victor. Death or
slavery were the only alternatives, and no mercy was shown. From the
fair plains they and theirs had tilled for eight centuries, from the
frowning Alpujarras, which their tireless industry had forced to yield a
grudging harvest; from the white cities, which had kept alive the
culture of the east when the barbarians had trampled down the
civilisation of the west, all those who bore the taint of Moorish blood
were cast. Bound in gangs by heavy gyves, they were driven through the
winter snow into the inhospitable north. Don Juan, soldier though he
was, was pierced with pity at the sight. “They went,” he wrote to Ruy
Gomez, “with the greatest sorrow in the world, for at the time they
left, the rain, snow, and wind were so heavy that the daughter will be
forced to leave the mother, the husband the wife, and the widow her baby
by the wayside. It cannot be denied that it is the saddest sight
imaginable to see the depopulation of a whole kingdom. But, sir, that is
what has been done!”
By the end of November 1570 Andalucia was cleared of the Moriscos, and
at the same time cleared of its industry, its prosperity, and its
enlightenment. The fanatic churchmen had had their foolish way, and
Philip went back to his desk, certain in his narrow soul that he had
served the cause of God and the welfare of his country.