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.
When Don Antonio fled from Portugal in 1581, Elizabeth and Catharine de
Medici vied with each other in the welcome they extended to him. The
English queen gave him a pension, and he was splendidly lodged at Eton
College, Somerset House, and elsewhere at her expense. Hopes were held
out to him that a fleet should be raised in England for him to hold
those isles of the Azores which continued favourable to him and capture
the rest. He was encouraged to pledge his priceless jewels, the finest
in the world, and whilst his money lasted, privateers and ships were
busily fitted out in his name. But though most of the gems were
ultimately juggled into the hands of Elizabeth and Leicester, the queen
had always stopped short of allowing a hostile fleet openly to leave her
shores to attack Philip in the pretender’s interest.
Antonio at last got tired of this, and with some difficulty fled to
France. There he found Catharine more ready. He promised her the great
empire of Brazil in exchange for aid, and in 1582 a fleet was got
together under her auspices, commanded by her cousin, Philip Strozzi. In
August the small Spanish garrison at St. Michaels was surrounded by 1500
Frenchmen on shore, and Strozzi’s fleet of about 40 ships lay off to
blockade the island. Suddenly Santa Cruz’s squadron appeared, somewhat
stronger than Strozzi’s. Antonio seems to have lost heart and fled in
the night with some of the ships; the English privateers which were
expected to join Strozzi did not put in an appearance; Santa Cruz fell
upon the French fleet and utterly destroyed it, Strozzi being killed;
and every prisoner who fell into the hands of the Spaniards instantly
slaughtered. They had no commission from the King of France, and were
treated as pirates. But Catharine was bent upon troubling her late
son-in-law to the utmost, and Antonio still had jewels to pledge, so in
the following year another fleet was got together in France, under Aymar
de Chaste, to hold Terceira. The French were received with open arms by
the islanders who were firm for Antonio, but Santa Cruz swooped upon
this fleet, as he had done on the previous one, with a similar result,
and Catharine became convinced that the Azores, the key as they were to
Philip’s western empire, were his least vulnerable point whilst his
fleets held the sea. But this attitude of the French queen and her son,
and the open patronage and aid she gave to her younger son, Alençon, in
his attempts with Huguenot help to seize the sovereignty of the
Netherlands, convinced Philip that, unless something was done to
withstand the advance of the Protestant power in France, he would in
time find himself surrounded by opponents on all sides. He did his best
to dispose of some of his personal enemies. He approved of Babington’s
plot to kill Elizabeth, he subsidised many unsuccessful attempts to
murder Don Antonio, and certainly two to assassinate the Prince of
Orange, one nearly successful, before the final foul blow was struck by
Gérard in 1584. It is evident, however, from the manner in which he
usually received such proposals, that he did not deceive himself as to
the inefficacy of murder as a political method. He treated it merely as
a palliative, to be used in conjunction with broader action. From the
time when it became evident that Catharine and her son mainly leant to
the side of the Huguenots and the politicians, and that Henry of
Navarre, the head of the reformers in France and the hereditary enemy of
the House of Aragon, would probably succeed to the crown of France, some
bolder action than assassination was necessary for Philip.
It has been seen how close had grown the connection between him and the
Guises, and how cleverly he had worked upon their hopes and fears to
bring them entirely under his thumb. Alternate flattery, bribes, and
veiled threats at length made Guise the humble servant of Spain. It
suited Philip to feed his ambitious dream of grasping all, or part, of
the French realm, to promise and pay him great subsidies, as he did, to
carry on war in his own country, because, in the first place, it
weakened Catharine and the Huguenots; and, secondly, it left Philip a
free hand in England and Scotland. By the aid of Spanish money and his
own dashing popularity, Guise began by completely gaining to his side
the mob of Paris, and then through all France the Catholic party was
gradually drawn into a great organisation, which enabled Guise to treat
with Philip on something like reciprocal terms. By the spring of 1585
the bases of the Holy League had been established. The idea was an
ambitious one, but doubtless many of its principal adherents had no
inkling of how completely the ultimate object of the whole organisation
was designed for the furthering of Philip’s political ends, under cover
of a purely religious movement. The dismemberment of France under his
auspices would have been a master-stroke of policy, and such a
consummation seemed at one time to be almost a certainty. To begin with,
an attempt was made to seduce Henry of Navarre into the League; but he
was wary and would not be caught, and consequently, in Philip’s view,
must be crushed. If he had consented to be satisfied with Béarn and the
south-west, Guise might well have had the east, the Duke of Savoy
Provence, and Philip’s daughter, Isabel, in right of her mother, would
have inherited Brittany, whilst Philip would have had a slice of Picardy
and French Flanders. When it was found that Henry of Navarre would not
be cajoled into abandoning any portion of his rightful claim to the
whole realm, the League and Philip induced Sixtus V. to fulminate his
famous bull (September 1585) excommunicating him, his cousin Condé, “and
the whole of this bastard and detestable race of Bourbon.” They and
theirs were to be deprived of all their principalities for ever, and the
excommunication extended to all their adherents. Henry’s reply was as
violent as the provocation. “The man who calls himself Pope Sixtus is
himself a liar and a heretic.” It only needed this bull again to set
flame to the smouldering ashes of the religious war. Henry III. had
already been forced into signing the infamous treaty of Nemours,
depriving the Huguenots of all toleration, and he became for a time,
with bitter hatred in his heart, the bond-slave of Guise. The poor
wretch tried in his weak, silly way to get free by forming fresh
connections with Elizabeth, with the German Lutherans, with Henry of
Navarre, but no party took much notice of him now, and the war went on,
the king being a fugitive from his own capital, and Philip afar off
smiling at the success of his schemes for setting his neighbours by the
ears and paralysing the arms of France that might help Elizabeth against
the Armada. For one moment it looked possible, after Philip’s weakness
had been demonstrated at sea, that all Frenchmen might band together,
forget their dissensions, and turn upon the common enemy; but Guise was
tied hard and fast to Philip by this time, and his ambitions were high.
The Paris mob was at his bidding, and the clergy throughout France. The
wretched king, Henry III., saw no other way out of his dilemma than to
have Guise and his brother killed (December 23, 1588). They had been
warned by Philip’s agents and others many times that this was intended,
but Guise scorned to show any fear, and he fell. With the murder of
Guise it seemed for a time as if the Spanish king’s intrigues in France
had turned out as fruitless as his efforts against England.
Nor was he much happier at home. It has already been related how, on
March 31, 1578, Escobedo, the secretary of Don Juan, had been murdered
by men in Antonio Perez’s pay, by virtue of an order given by Philip six
months before. However desirable it may have been to put this firebrand
out of the way in the autumn of 1577, when Don Juan was ostensibly
friendly with the States, the murder served no useful purpose whatever
when it was committed, for by that time Don Juan and Farnese were at war
openly with the States. Philip doubtless ascribed the assassination at
first to over-zeal on the part of Perez, and was inclined to condone it.
But it was part of his system to promote rivalry amongst the people who
served him, and another of his secretaries, Mateo Vasquez, whose duty it
was to convey to the king the gossip of the capital, continued, with
perhaps unnecessary insistence, to inform the king that all Madrid was
connecting the name of Perez and the widowed Princess of Eboli with the
murder. The princess was the greatest lady in Spain, a haughty,
passionate termagant, who had borne to Ruy Gomez a very numerous family,
and who since her husband’s death had given a great deal of trouble to
the king, by her erratic and impracticable conduct in the care of her
children and the management of her great household and estates. The
supposed amours between her and Philip have been disproved, but there is
no doubt that the vain, immoral Perez had become her lover, and that
Escobedo, who had formerly been a page of her husband’s, had discovered
this and resented it. There is but little doubt that the princess had in
consequence urged Perez to have the man killed under cover of the king’s
authorisation of many months before. The princess, when she heard that
Vasquez had mentioned her name to the king in connection with the
murder, flew into a violent rage and demanded his punishment. Thereupon
began a great feud between Perez and the princess on the one hand, and
Vasquez on the other, which doubtless caused Philip much inconvenience
and annoyance. He tried his hardest to reconcile the parties, keeping
Perez still in high favour. The princess and Perez were, however, so
persistent that the king at last lost patience, and in July 1579 had
them both arrested. The princess never entirely regained her liberty,
but Perez’s confinement was merely nominal, and he was assured by the
king that he would not be seriously inconvenienced. He was more
extravagant and arrogant than ever under his semi-arrest, and the
princess and he continued to press that he might be tried for the
murder. They knew that he could plead the king’s order, as indeed he
ultimately did, and that Philip hated an open scandal.
But a great change came when Philip wanted to conquer Portugal, and
restored Alba and his party to favour. For years Perez had been the
bitter enemy of Alba. He had scoffed and mocked at his appearance and
methods; he had been the prime cause of his downfall. Now was the time
for Alba’s revenge. Gradually he surrounded the king with those who took
his view, and the shadows grew deeper and deeper over Perez. For years
the trail was steadily followed, his relations with the princess
unravelled, his own incautious words taken down, until at the end of
1584 all his papers were seized, and Philip learnt how, for his
political ends, Perez had poisoned his ears against Don Juan. It was
seen that the accusations of intended treason in Spain were Perez’s own
interpretation of perfectly innocent passages in Don Juan’s and
Escobedo’s excited letters. Philip learnt also that Perez must have
divulged to the princess the authority given by the king to Perez for
the murder--a state secret. For these offences, and not for murder,
Perez was condemned to ten years’ imprisonment, escaped to sanctuary,
was taken thence, and kept in a dungeon for three years whilst the case
was being completed against him. In 1588 he was put on his trial for
murder, and was ordered to confess all. He feared a trap, and refused.
He was put to the torture, and promised to tell everything. No one could
understand this at the time, but we can see now that, if he had
confessed why the king ordered the murder, and when, he must have
condemned himself, as it would have shown that the “execution,” as it
was euphemistically called, was unnecessary when it was committed and
had been done for private revenge. Before his confession could be taken,
he therefore escaped from prison and fled to Aragon. This, he well knew,
was the course which would distress the king most.
When he had taken his younger daughter, Catharine, to Zaragoza in 1585
to be married to Charles Emmanuel, Duke of Savoy (whom Catharine de
Medici had been trying to attract to her side), Philip had taken the
opportunity of making a stay of some duration in his kingdom of Aragon
and Catalonia, and had summoned the Aragonese Cortes at Monzon to swear
allegiance to his young son Philip as heir to the crown. As we have seen
in previous chapters, the Aragonese were extremely jealous of their
representative institutions, and resented all interference from Castile.
Philip had no love for these rough-spoken vassals of his, and their
constant assertion of their liberties, and had only recently been
obliged to bend to a decision of the Aragonese tribunals with regard to
a large semi-independent fief belonging to an illegitimate member of the
royal house, the Duke of Villahermosa, which fief Philip wished to
re-incorporate with the rest of his Aragonese kingdom. Amongst their
other liberties the Aragonese exacted from their sovereign an oath to
maintain what was called the “Manifestacion,” which was not unlike the
English “Habeas Corpus.” Any person accused of crime who set foot in
Aragon could claim to be lodged in the Aragonese prison, in which case
he was certain of enjoying the full rights of defence, protection from
violence or torture, and the benefit of a most enlightened judicial
procedure. The Aragonese had their own judges and laws, the principal
judge--the grand justiciary--being appointed by the king; but the latter
had no power to remove him, and the office was practically hereditary.
When, therefore, Perez reached Aragon he knew he was safe from arbitrary
action, and took refuge first in a Dominican monastery at Calatayud.
Orders arrived a few hours afterwards that he was to be captured, dead
or alive, at any risk or cost, and taken back to Castile. Perez was the
depositary of Philip’s secrets for years. He had taken a quantity of
important papers with him (some of which are now in the British Museum),
and the king was willing to brave the obstinate Aragonese and their
liberties, rather than allow so dangerous a man to slip through his
fingers. Perez claimed the protection of the “Manifestacion,” and on the
news coming to Calatayud of the king’s orders, a rebellious crowd at
once arose and swore that their privileges should not be infringed; and
even the priests in the monastery where Perez had taken refuge flew to
arms to repel any attack by the king’s messengers. Perez was rescued by
the Aragonese police and people, and safely lodged in the gaol of the
“Manifestacion.” All the king could do then was to prosecute him by
law--firstly, for having pretended to possess the royal authority for
killing Escobedo; secondly, for having tampered with despatches and
betrayed state secrets; and thirdly, for having fled whilst proceedings
against him were pending. But Perez did not want to be tried, for upon
these charges he could hardly be acquitted by any tribunal. He
accordingly begged Philip to let him alone, and threatened, if not, to
publish his secret papers; but Philip was resolved to fight it out to
the death now. To be thwarted and threatened by such a man was too much,
even for his patience. Perez must die. For once, however, the king had
to deal with a man even more crafty than himself, who knew every trick
in his armoury and was fighting for his life. Perez drew up a most
masterly exposition of his case, painting the king in his blackest
colours, and presented it to his judges. The tribunal called upon the
king for a refutation. “If,” replied Philip, “it were possible for me to
give an answer in the same public way that Perez has done, his guilt
would be made manifest. My only object in the prosecution has been the
public good. I cannot answer him further without betraying secrets which
must not be revealed, involving persons whose reputation is of more
importance than the punishment of this man, who is a traitor worse than
ever before has sinned against his sovereign.” And with this Philip
allowed his prosecution before the Aragonese tribunal to lapse. It was a
bitter pill for him to swallow. To answer Perez he must have confessed
that the lying scoundrel had made him believe that his own brother, Don
Juan, was a traitor, and that, under this belief, he had allowed him to
die broken-hearted and forsaken in Flanders.
But he tried another course. The constitution of Aragon provided that
the king’s own servants, even Aragonese, might not claim against him the
protection of their laws, and under this clause Philip claimed to have
Perez delivered to him. The judges decided that Perez did not come under
this provision, and refused to deliver him. Perez was now acquitted, but
was still kept in the prison of the Manifestacion. There his monstrous
vanity had led him to boast of what he would do abroad to avenge
himself. He would bring back Henry of Navarre and the Protestants, and
make him King of Spain. He would make Aragon a republic, and much else
of the same sort. But, above all, he had used expressions which seemed
of doubtful religious orthodoxy. Notes were taken of all his loose
babble, and, as a consequence, the Holy Office in Madrid sent orders to
the Inquisitors at Zaragoza to take him out of the Manifestacion and
lodge him in their own dungeons. The judges of Aragon were now tired of
Perez, who was obviously a scoundrel. They had no wish to quarrel about
him with the king, and, above all, with the Inquisition. They had
vindicated their privileges, and that was enough for them. They were
willing to let the Holy Office have their prisoner. But Perez had no
wish for such a result. His friends aroused the city. The Aragonese
liberties were in peril from the tyrant, they said; and a dangerous
popular rising was the result. On May 21, 1591, the Aragonese
authorities determined to get rid of such a troublesome guest, and
quietly smuggled him into the hands of the Inquisition. With this the
people rose. From the watch towers boomed the alarm bells, furious men
swarmed into the streets, the king’s representative was dragged from his
palace, stripped, stoned, scourged, and nearly killed; the palace of the
Inquisition was besieged; faggots were piled up to burn it and the
Inquisitors inside, as they had burnt others, said the mob. Then the
Inquisitors gave way, and surrendered their prisoner to the populace,
who took him back to the Manifestacion. He tried to escape and failed.
He kept popular ebullition at fever-heat with artful proclamations and
appeals, and unfortunately the hereditary office of grand justiciary
fell at that time to a young man in Perez’s favour, who assumed office
without Philip’s confirmation. To avoid further conflict, after the
authorities had decided that Perez should be restored again to the
Inquisition, the prisoner was secretly hurried out of Zaragoza into the
mountains by his friends, and he escaped, after many wanderings, into
France. He was supremely self-conscious--a monster of misfortune, a
pilgrim of pain, as he called himself,--but he was clever and plausible,
and was received with open arms by Catharine de Bourbon, Henry’s sister,
in her castle of Pau. Henry himself made much of him, and so did
Elizabeth and Essex. Pensions and gifts were showered upon him for
years, for he knew all the weak places in Philip’s armour, and was ready
to sell his knowledge to the highest bidder. Facile, witty, and utterly
unscrupulous, he mingled the most sickening servility with the
haughtiest arrogance. He betrayed and defamed in turn every person who
trusted him, and, whenever he dared, bit the hand upon which he fawned.
For years he tried unsuccessfully to crawl back into the favour of
Philip III., the son of the man whom he had lived by libelling; and long
before his death in Paris, in the midst of poverty (1611), he was
contemptuously forgotten by his benefactors.
Philip was in no hurry for revenge. An army of 15,000 men was sent from
Castile to occupy Zaragoza under Alonso de Vargas, one of the butchers
of Antwerp. The townspeople were disinclined to hopeless resistance, and
only some of the nobles, the friars, and the country people made any
attempt at it. Anarchy was rife all over Aragon, and Philip’s troops
made a clean sweep of such marauding bands of rebels as stood in their
way. The Aragonese of the richer burgher class were indeed by this time
somewhat ashamed of having championed the cause of such a man as Perez,
and Vargas was soon master of Aragon, the young justiciary and the other
leaders of the rebellion having fled. For a time Philip made no attempt
to punish them, and they were gradually lured back home on promises of
forgiveness. Then suddenly fell Philip’s vengeance. At the end of
December 1591 Vargas was ordered without previous warning to seize and
behead the justiciary, in defiance of the Aragonese constitution, and at
the same time the net of the Inquisition was spread far and wide, and
swept into the dungeons all those who had offended. The few refugee
nobles and Perez thereupon prevailed upon Henry IV. to send a body of
Béarnais troops into Aragon, but the Aragonese joined with Philip’s
troops to expel them, and nothing serious came of the attempt. Some of
the higher nobles of Aragon died mysteriously in the dungeons, and
seventy-nine citizens were condemned to be burnt alive in the
market-place of Zaragoza. Philip, however, intervened, and urged
clemency upon the Holy Office, and only six were actually executed at
the great auto de fé, the rest of the seventy-nine suffering other
punishments, perhaps hardly less severe. The spectacle, and the stern
repression that preceded it, were dire lessons for the Aragonese, who
were thus made to understand that their free institutions must not be
exercised against the will of their sovereign. The constitution was not
formally revoked, in accordance with Philip’s promise, but all men now
understood that henceforward, at least whilst Philip lived, it must be a
dead letter, and no more vain dreams of autonomy were allowed to
interfere with the system of personal centralisation upon which his
government rested.