Mary had lost all hope. She knew now, at last, that she would never be a

mother: the persecutions for religion, and above all the war for the

sake of Philip, had made her personally unpopular, as she never had been

before; she had not a single, honest capable statesman near her, Pole

being now moribund, but a set of greedy scamps who looked to their own

interests alone; and the doomed Queen saw that not for her was to be the

glory of making England permanently Catholic, and ensuring uniformity of

faith in Christendom. As the autumn went on the Queen’s condition became

more grave, and constant fever weakened her sadly. In the last week of

October D’assonleville wrote to Philip that the Queen’s life was

despaired of, and Feria was instructed to make rapidly ready to cross,

and stay in England during the period of transition that would supervene

on her death. On the 7th November D’assonleville wrote again, urging

that, as Parliament had been summoned to consider the question of the

succession, it would be well that Philip himself should if possible be

present. This was true; but Philip had his hands full, and, even for so

important an errand as this, he could not absent himself from Flanders;

for the peace commissioners from England, France, and Spain were in full

negotiation, and peace to him now was a matter of vital importance.

Feria arrived in London on the 9th November, and found Mary lying in her

palace of Saint James’s only intermittently conscious. She smiled sadly

as the ambassador handed her Philip’s letter, and greeted her in his

name; but she was too weak to read the lines he had written, though she

indicated that a favourite ring of hers should be sent to him as a

pledge of her love. Her faithful Clarentius and beloved Jane Dormer,

already betrothed to Feria, whom she afterwards married, tended her day

and night: but most of the others who had surrounded her in the day of

her glory were wending their way to Hatfield, to court the fair-faced

young woman with the thin lips and cold eyes who was waiting composedly

for her coming crown. Feria himself took care to announce loudly his

master’s approval of Elizabeth’s accession when her sister should die;

and did his best to second the Queen’s efforts to obtain some assurance

from the Princess that the Catholic faith and worship should be

maintained in England. Elizabeth was cool and diplomatic. She knew well

that she must succeed in any case, and was already fully agreed with her

friends as to the course she should take, careful not to pledge herself

too far for the future; and when Feria, leaving the Queen’s deathbed,

travelled to Hatfield to see the Princess, she was courteous enough, but

firmly rejected every suggestion that she should owe anything to the

patronage of the King of Spain.

Mary in her intervals of consciousness was devout and resigned,

comforting the few friends who were left to sorrow around her bed, and

exhorting them to faith and fortitude. It was the 17th November, and the

light was struggling through the murky morning across the mist upon the

marshes between Saint James’s and the Thames, when the daily mass in

Mary’s dying chamber was being celebrated. The Queen was sick to death

now, but the sacrament she ordered for the last time riveted her

wandering brain, and the clouds that had obscured her intelligence

passed away, giving place to almost preternatural clearness. She

repeated the responses distinctly and firmly; and when the celebrant

chanted ‘_Agnus Dei qui tollis peccatur mundi_,’ she exclaimed with

almost startling plainness, ‘_Miserere nobis! Miserere nobis! Dona nobis

pacem_‘; then, as the Host was elevated, she bowed in worship, with

closed eyes that opened no more upon the world that for her had been so

troubled.

And so, with a prayer for mercy and peace upon her lips, and her last

gaze on earth resting upon the holy mystery of her faith, Mary Tudor

went to her account.[165] Her life was but a passing episode in the

English Reformation; for she was handicapped from the first by her

unpopular marriage, and the unstatesmanlike religious policy of her

ecclesiastical advisers. Like her mother, and her grandmother Isabel,

she would deign to no compromise with what she considered evil. ‘Rather

would I lose ten crowns if I had them,’ she exclaimed once, ‘than palter

with my conscience’; and, though to a less exalted degree, this was

Philip’s attitude of mind also. Fate cast them both in an age when

rigidity of belief was breaking down before the revival of ancient

learning, and the widened outlook of life growing from the renaissance.

They were pitted against rivals whose convictions were as wax, but who

were determined not only to win but to appear right in this world, at

any sacrifice of principle; and the fight was an unequal one. Mary could

not change—only once under dire compulsion did she even pretend to give

way in the matter of religion—Elizabeth changed as often and as

completely as suited her purpose: Philip had only one invariable set of

convictions and methods, his rivals had none, but invented them and

abandoned them as occasion served.

And so Mary Tudor failed; pitiably, because she was naturally a good

woman, who did her best according to her conscience. But the defects of

her descent were too strong for her: she was a Tudor, and consequently

domineering and obstinate; she was a grand-daughter of Isabel the

Catholic, and as a natural result mystically devout and exalted, caring

nothing for human suffering in the pursuit of her saintly aims; she was

an English Queen, proud of her island realm; a Spanish princess, almost

equally proud of the land of the Catholic kings; and, to crown all, she

was the consort of Philip II., pledged to the cause for which he lived,

the unification of the Christian faith and the destruction of the power

of France. Within a year of her death England was a Protestant country,

and Philip was married to a French princess.

BOOK III

II

ISABEL OF THE PEACE

(ELIZABETH DE VALOIS)

When Mary Tudor lay dying at Saint James’s, and all England was in the

throes of coming change, Feria archly hinted to Elizabeth that she might

secure her succession and consolidate her throne by marrying her Spanish

brother-in-law when her sister should die. Elizabeth loved such hints

and smiled, though she did not commit herself; and for the next few

weeks the main endeavour of Philip and his agents was to perpetuate his

hold over England by means of the marriage of the new Queen. They all

failed at first to gauge her character. Feria was certain that if she

decided to marry a foreigner, ‘her eyes would at once turn to your

Majesty’; and, at length, after his usual tedious deliberation and

endless prayers, Philip once more donned the garb of matrimonial

martyrdom and bade Feria offer his hand to the daughter of Anne Boleyn.

The conditions he laid down were ridiculous, for even he quite

misunderstood the strength of Elizabeth and the new national spirit of

her people. She must amongst many other things become a Catholic, and

obtain secret absolution from the Pope. ‘In this way it will be evident

that I am serving the Lord in marrying her, and that she has been

converted by my act.’ Elizabeth keenly enjoyed the compliment conveyed

by the offer; but she neither wished nor dared to accept it, and she

played with the subject with delightful skill until the latest possible

moment. While the question was pending, Philip kept open the peace

negotiations with France, in order that, if he had his way in England,

pressure might be exerted to obtain the restitution of Calais; but as

soon as it became clear that he was being used by this cunning young

woman as a cat’s paw, he gave her clearly to understand that he intended

to make peace himself, Calais or no Calais; and the treaty of Cateau

Cambresis was signed on the 2nd April 1559, leaving the erstwhile

English fortress in the hands of France.

Throughout the negotiations that followed Elizabeth’s accession,

Philip’s advisers urged upon him incessantly the vital need for him to

retain his hold over England by conquest and force if other means

failed. The new Queen, they said, was not yet firmly established; the

country was unsettled, and now was the time to act if ever. Philip was

well aware that the friendship of England was of greater importance to

him than ever, but he hated war, and the growth of protestantism in

Europe, especially now that Elizabeth was Queen of England, had

suggested to him a combination that exactly suited his diplomatic

methods. When the peace negotiations had first been broached in the

summer of 1558, Henry II. of France had suggested that a close league of

the great Catholic powers might be formed to withstand the growth of

heresy throughout Europe. Such combinations had been attempted several

times before, but had never been sincerely carried out; national

traditions had always been too strong. It had been further proposed at

the ephemeral truce of Vaucelles in 1556, that the friendship of France

and Spain might be cemented by the marriage of Philip’s only son Carlos

to Henry’s eldest daughter Elizabeth of France.

The idea slumbered and the truce was broken; but at the beginning of the

peace negotiations of Cateau Cambresis the marriage was again brought

forward, and in principle accepted by Philip. When it became evident

after Mary Tudor’s death that England under the new Queen might stand

aside, or even permanently oppose Spain on religious grounds, Philip

decided that an entire change of policy that should isolate Elizabeth

would suit him better than war. So a close union with France was

adopted; Philip’s name was substituted for that of his son in the

treaty, and the widower of thirty-two became the betrothed husband of

the most beautiful and gifted princess in Europe, the dainty eldest

daughter of Henry II. and Catharine de Medici. It was a clever stroke of

policy; for it not only bound France to Philip against heresy

everywhere, as it was intended to do, but it enabled him to counteract

from the inside any attempt on the part of his allies to depose

Elizabeth of England in favour of Mary Queen of Scots, the next Catholic

heir and the betrothed wife of the Dauphin of France. So far as France

was concerned, the substitution of Philip for his son as a husband of

the princess was an advantage. Don Carlos, though of the same age as the

bride (14), was a deformed, stunted epileptic, who probably for years to

come, if ever, would not possess any political power; whereas Philip, in

the prime of manhood, was by far the most powerful sovereign in the

world at the time, and could, if he chose, at once render any aid that

France might need in suppressing the reformers.

Elizabeth of Valois, or Isabel of the Peace, as the Spaniards called

her, was the flower of an evil flock. Tall, graceful, and well formed,

even in her precocious youth, she had been destined from her birth for

splendid marriage. ‘My daughter, Elizabeth, is such that she must not be

married to a duchy. She must have a kingdom, and a great one,’ said her

proud father once, when his younger daughter Claude was married to the

Duke of Lorraine; and the Spanish ambassador, describing her magnificent

christening feast at Fontainebleau, in July 1546, says that: ‘Isabel was

chosen for her name, because of the hope they have at a future time of a

marriage between her and the Infant (_i.e._ Don Carlos), and Isabel is a

name beloved in Spain.’[166] We may doubt the correctness of this; for

the Princess’s sponsor was Henry VIII. of England, and probably he chose

the name after his own mother, Elizabeth of York.

Isabel grew up by the side of her sister-in-law, the young Queen of

Scots; and although the latter was four years the senior of her

companion, they were close rivals in the learning then becoming

fashionable for young ladies of rank. The curious Latin and French

didactic letters written by Mary Stuart, aged ten or eleven, to her

little sister-in-law, although prim and priggish according to our

present ideas, throw a flood of light upon the severe and systematic

training for their future position that the young princesses underwent.

After making all allowances for inevitable flattery on the part of such

a courtier as Brantome, it is evident that Isabel was a beauty of the

very first rank. ‘Her visage was lovely and her eyes and hair black,

which contrasted with her complexion, and made her so attractive, that I

have heard say in Spain that the gentlemen did not dare to look at her,

for fear of falling in love with her, and to their own peril making the

King jealous. The churchmen also avoided looking at her for fear of

temptation; as they did not possess sufficient strength to dominate the

flesh on regarding her.’ In 1552 she was betrothed to Edward VI. of

England, and this danger to Spain, averted by Edward’s death, made

Philip and his father all the more eager to keep a firm hold upon

England as soon as Mary’s accession made an alliance possible.

It was this young beauty of fourteen whose portrait by Janet was sent to

Philip in the early days of 1559. He was always an admirer of women, and

had been twice an affectionate husband; but his first wife he had

married when he was but a boy, and she died within a year; and his

second wife, Mary Tudor, was, as we have seen, married to him for

political reasons alone. Doña Isabel de Osorio, who had been his

acknowledged mistress for years, and had borne him children, had retired

into a convent, and was, of course, now out of the question. The sight

of this radiant young French beauty seems to have stirred Philip’s heart

to as much eagerness as he was capable of feeling.[167] But though the

bride was an attractive one, and her own family exhausted eulogy in her

praise, as well they might, for no princess of her time excelled her,

the marriage was regarded on both sides as a political event of the

first importance, though, as we shall see, it became really more

important even than was anticipated. It was vital for Philip that he

should have some control over French policy now that friendship with

England was denied him; whilst to have his own clever daughter by the

side of Philip was to the King of France a guarantee that no step

inimical to him would be taken in Spain without his knowledge, and that

he could depend upon the help, or at least the neutrality, of Spain if

he had to deal with the French and Scotch reformers, who seemed to

threaten the basis of authority. Thenceforward the Catholic sheep were

to stand apart from the Protestant goats throughout the world.

So, when the saturnine Duke of Alba, with his train of gallant

gentlemen, rode into Paris on the 19th June 1559 to wed Isabel, as proxy

for Philip, the court and capital, all swept and garnished in its gayest

garb, were impressed with the knowledge that these brilliant nuptials

were intended to mark a new departure in the politics of Christendom.

Led by the princes of the blood royal of France, the Spaniards and

Flemings who represented Philip rode through the crowded and jubilant

city to the Louvre, heralded by triumphal music, and were received at

the door by Henry II. and his court. Alba dismounted and knelt at the

King’s feet, but was raised and embraced by Henry, and, arm in arm,

Philip’s proxy and his erstwhile enemy entered the great hall where the

Queen Catharine and her daughter sat in gorgeous state, surrounded by

their ladies. As Alba knelt and kissed the hem of the girl’s robe, it

was noticed that the colour fled from her cheek, and she rose from her

chair and remained standing whilst the Duke read to her Philip’s

message, and handed to her the splendid casket of jewels he had sent

her. One of the gifts was a portrait of the bridegroom in a superb

diamond locket, which Isabel pressed to her lips.

On the next day, 20th June, the same great hall of the Louvre was

crowded with the princes and nobles of France, whilst the solemn

betrothal ceremony was performed that gave to Isabel the title of Queen

of Spain: and on Thursday, 21st June, the capital was alive from early

dawn for the marriage itself. Frenchmen and Spaniards alike could speak

of nothing but the dignity and beauty of the bride. Even Alba, dour as

he was, broke into exclamations at the perfections of the new Queen, and

grew almost romantic in her praises in his letters to Philip. Isabel,

indeed, had been well schooled by her mother, whom she feared and

admired more than any other person in the world. Catharine de Medici was

still, to some extent, in the shade, for the Duchess of Valentinois was

the real Queen; but she was profoundly wise, and had moulded her

favourite daughter well for the character she was destined to play.

Isabel herself was fully conscious of the great position she was called

to fill, and was proud of the triumph that was hers.

She bore herself throughout the trying ceremonies with a composure and

grace which she knew were fitting for the Queen of Spain; and as she

glided, holding her handsome father’s hand, along the gorgeous raised

and covered gangway leading from the bishop’s palace to the great door

of Notre Dame, she presented a vision of beauty adorned with such

stately magnificence as can rarely have been surpassed, even at the

marriage of her friend and sister-in-law, Mary Stuart, in the same place

shortly before. The texture of Isabel’s robe was literally interwoven

with pearls. Round her neck was suspended Philip’s portrait, and the

great pear-shaped pearl which was the greatest treasure in the crown

jewels of Spain. Her mantle was of blue velvet, enriched with a border

of bullion embroidery a foot wide. The train of this gorgeous robe was

borne by her sister Claude, Duchess of Lorraine, and Mary Stuart, Queen

of Scots, and, as she foolishly called herself, Queen of England. Isabel

wore an imperial crown which, we are told, cast a halo of light around

her as she walked, so refulgent were the jewels of which it was

composed.[168] Alba, in cloth of gold and with the royal insignia,

personated his absent master, and in his name was married to the

Princess by Cardinal de Bourbon. Splendour truly seems to have excelled

itself in that sumptuous court on this occasion; the long-standing

enemies, France and Spain, each trying to outdazzle the other in its

lavish magnificence.

But scowling faces there were not a few, for this was the triumph of the

house of Lorraine, and the debonair Duke of Guise and his brothers took

no pains to hide their elation, whilst the princes of the blood of the

house of Bourbon, the Montmorencis and the reformers were full of

foreboding, for they knew now that their enemies could look across the

Pyrenees, almost certain of aid from the most powerful potentate on

earth. Queen Catharine, too, clerical though she was, smiled with a

bitter heart, for she had no love for the house of Guise. For days the

festivities went on: masque and banquet, ball and tournament following

each other with wearisome brilliancy, for another daughter of France,

Margaret, was wedded at the same time to the Duke of Savoy, and the

double nuptials called for double display.

At length the last and greatest of the gallant shows was held under the

shadow of the Bastille, hard by the gate of St. Antoine, on the 30th

June. In gorgeous tribunes under broidered silken canopies sat the Queen

of France and Spain, Catharine and her dearest daughter; and the

Duchesses of Lorraine and Savoy, with the fairest court in Christendom,

gathered around the great parallelogram of the lists to witness the

tournament. The glittering courtiers, gay as they looked, who stood

behind the ladies in the seats, knew that the wedding feast really

celebrated a political event of the first consequence. It foreboded the

suppression of Protestantism in Scotland by France, a war with England,

and the crushing of reform in France itself and in Flanders; for there

was to be no more paralysing rivalry between Philip and his new

father-in-law, and it made the Catholic Guises the masters of France.

But none could tell that the stroke that was to set all these events

into immediate motion was to fall so soon. Henry II., shallow and vain

of his unquestioned preeminence in the gallant sport, rode into the

lists upon a big bay war horse, decked, like its rider, with the black

and white devices and interlaced crescents of Diane de Poitiers, Duchess

of Valentinois. The King of France was determined in the presence of the

Spanish grandees to show that he, at least, was no carpet knight, like

their King Philip, and he rode course after course victoriously with

princes and nobles, until the light began to wane. Catharine, desirous

of ending the dangerous sport, sent a message from her tribune to pray

her husband to tilt no more for that day. Henry laughed to scorn such

timid counsel. He would run once more against the Franco-Scot

Montgomerie, Sieur de L’Orge, who tried his best to avoid the encounter

without success. At the first shock Montgomerie’s lance carried away the

King’s visor, but the shaft broke with the force of the impact and a

great jagged splinter pierced the eye and brain of Henry of Valois, who,

within three days, was dead.

The whole political position was changed in a day. The new King Francis

and his wife, Mary Stuart, were little more than children; and the young

Queen’s uncles the Guises would rule France unless Catharine the Queen

Dowager could beat them on their own ground. For her, indeed, the hour

had now come, or was coming. For years she had been patient whilst the

King’s mistress held sway; but if she could combine the enemies of the

Guises now she might be mistress of France. The alliance with Spain was

no longer to be used if she could help it as a means for crushing

Protestantism; for to Protestantism she must partly look to crush the

Guises; but if by diplomacy and the efforts of her daughter Isabel she

could win Spanish support to her side on personal grounds, then she

might triumph over her foes. It needed, as we shall see, consummate

skill and chicanery, and, in the end, it did not succeed; for Philip

would naturally in the long run tend towards the Guises, the enemies of

reform, and he was easily led by a woman.

And thus the mission of Isabel of Valois in marrying Philip was changed

in a moment by Montgomerie’s unlucky lance thrust from a national and

religious to a personal and political object. But Philip was a difficult

man to be used for the ends of others; what he had needed was French

neutrality whilst he tackled heresy, and he had no desire to forward the

interests of an ambitious Italian woman whom he hated; though at first

there was just one element that made him inclined to smile upon

Catharine, doubtfully orthodox though she was. The Queen of Scots and

France was Catholic heiress of England; and the Guises were already

preparing to employ French national forces to oust Elizabeth in favour

of their niece. This Philip could never have permitted: better for him a

Protestant England than a French England: so again national interests

overrode religious affinities, and before the ink of the treaty of

Cateau Cambresis was well dry the spirit that inspired the agreement was

as dead as the king who had conceived it.

Philip was still at Ghent when the news of Henry’s death reached him,

yearning to get back again to his beloved Spain, and full of anxiety

that even there the detested heresy was raising its head in his absence.

His Netherlands dominions would clearly have to be taught submission;

Elizabeth of England was positively insolent in her disregard of him,

and if Spain failed in orthodoxy then indeed would he and his cause be

lost. His most pressing need therefore, for the moment, was to keep the

alliance with France intact for the purpose he had in view, whilst

restraining the activity of the Guises in England on behalf of their

niece, Mary Stuart. All went well in this respect at first. The

Montmorencis and the princes of Bourbon were divested of political

power, the ultra-Catholic party was paramount, and even the

Queen-Mother, Catharine, was working in apparent harmony with the

Guises. But to keep his hand firmly upon the machine of government in

France, it was desirable for Philip to have at his side at the earliest

possible day his young French wife. Whilst Isabel was yet in mourning

seclusion with her mother, Philip continued to press for her early

coming, and in July the French ambassador, the Guisan Bishop of Limoges,

told the impatient bridegroom that the Princess now only awaited the

instructions of her future husband to commence the journey towards the

Spanish frontier.

As usual, the smallest detail was discussed and settled by Philip with

his Council at Ghent; the choice of the Queen’s confessor, the exact

etiquette to be followed on her reception in Spanish territory and

afterwards, the number of her French household, the amount of baggage

she and her suite might bring, and even the exact manner in which she

was to greet the Spaniards who went to receive her. On the 3rd August

Philip wrote from Ghent to the Cardinal Archbishop of Burgos to make

ready with his brother, the Duke of Infantado, to proceed to the

frontier for the new Queen’s reception soon after the King himself

should arrive in Spain. But Isabel’s departure from her own land could

not be arranged hurriedly. There was a prodigious trousseau to be

prepared, so enormous, indeed, as to strike with dismay the Spanish

officers who had to arrange for its conveyance over the Pyrenees and the

rough bridle paths of Spain; Catharine, too, was loath to let her

daughter go before she had indoctrinated her with her new task in Spain,

and she insisted upon her attending the coronation of her brother,

Francis II., at Rheims in mid September.

Philip, always impatient for the coming of his bride, arrived in Spain

by sea on the 8th September 1559; and signalised his arrival by the

great _auto de fe_ at Valladolid, that was to indicate to Europe that

heresy was to be burnt out of the dominions of the Catholic king. Full

of far-reaching religious plans, for which it was necessary that he

should be sure of France, the presence of his French wife by his side

was more than ever necessary, and in October he sent a special envoy,

Count Buendia, to France to demand that the bride should start at once:

‘first, because of the great desire of his Majesty to see and keep the

Catholic Queen in his realm as soon as possible, he begs most earnestly

his good brother the Christian King and Queen Catharine, to arrange so

that, in any case, the Queen should start at once, and arrive at Bayonne

by the end of November.’[169] Another letter from the King to the same

effect was written to Isabel herself, and she in reply promised through

the French ambassador in Spain to delay her departure no longer.

But week followed week, and yet the bride came not. Splendid presents

and loving messages from Philip went to her frequently, and kind replies

were returned from Isabel and her mother. But intrigue was already rife

in the French court, and Catharine was trying to gain promises from

Philip to support her against those who, she said, were bent upon

disturbing her son’s realm. So every excuse was seized upon to keep

Isabel in France, until Philip had promised what was required. The

French found him anything but compliant, and at length, in the depth of

winter (17th December), Isabel, with her mother and brother, and a great

train of courtiers, left Blois on her long journey south. The household

of the new Queen appointed by her mother was extremely numerous,

notwithstanding the remonstrances of Philip’s agents, who broadly hinted

that they would not be allowed to remain in Spain. Three of the Bourbon

princes of the blood, Anthony, Duke of Vendome, husband of Jeanne

d’Albret, titular Queen of Navarre, his brother, Cardinal de Bourbon,

and the Prince of Roche sur Yon, were to accompany her to the frontier,

a good excuse for sending them away from Paris, and two Bourbon

princesses, the Countess d’Harcourt (Madame de Rieux), and her niece,

Anne of Bourbon, were to go with her into Spain.

All these great personages and scores of others needed long lists of

servitors and trains of baggage, and the journey over the snowy winter

paths was long and tedious. The greatest difficulty was foreseen,

however, in the transport over the Pyrenees of the vast mass of

impedimenta taken by Isabel and her ladies. Much of it was sent by sea,

and was only received in Spain after long delay and continued annoyance

to the ladies, who had to appear in the ceremonies without their fine

clothes. The girl lost heart as the time grew near to bid farewell to

her mother. She loved France dearly, with an ardour she never lost to

the last day of her life, and the French people returned her devotion.

Along the roads to Chatellerault crowds stood in tears, invoking

blessings upon the angel who was to be sacrificed on the altar of peace.

France and Spain had been at war for generations: Philip’s cold, haughty

demeanour, which had earned him the dislike of Flemings, was equally

distasteful to Frenchmen, and stories current of the gloomy rigidity of

his monastic court struck the heart of the bright young beauty with fear

and dread.

For some days Catharine and her daughter stayed at Chatellerault, loath

to say goodbye; but at last, on the 29th November, the parting could be

delayed no longer, and, heartbroken, mother and daughter took a tearful

farewell. Isabel had been reared in the poetical court in which Ronsard

sang, and every courtier wooed in verse. Mary Stuart throughout her life

showed the effects of such training, and so did Isabel. She and her

mother had exchanged poetical letters during the months of their

mourning, and continued to do so afterwards; and on her lonely way from

Chatellerault Isabel solaced herself by inditing a letter in verse to

the beloved mother whom she had just left. As poetry it leaves much to

be desired. The poem is too long to quote, but in it the writer compares

her desire to see her husband with the much stronger natural love for

her mother, who, she says, is to her father, mother, and husband in one.

The epistle ends thus:—

‘Tantost je sens mon œil plorer puis ryre,

Mais la fin est toujours d’estre martyre,

Qui durera sans prendre fin ne cesse,

Jusques á tant que je reprenne adresse

Pour retourner vers vous en diligence:

Lors oblyant la trop facheuse absence

Je recevrai la joye et le plaisir,

Et joyrez de mon parfait desir

D’ensemble veoir père mère et mari.’[170]

The next morning brought Isabel a similar poem of regretful adieu from

her mother, and some really poetical lines from Mary Stuart, in which

the following occur:—

‘Les pleurs font mal au cœur joyeux et sain,

Mais au dolent, ils servent quasi de pain:

Car si le mal par les pleurs n’est allegé

A tout moins il en est soulagé.’

Through snow-clad France the long cavalcade slowly made its way. Endless

questions of etiquette, prompted by pride and jealousy on both sides,

occupied French and Spanish officials the while. Philip, as usual, saw

to the smallest point himself. The proud Mendoza Cardinal objected to

give precedence to the King of Navarre, as he was not a real king, and

the Doge of Venice had always given place to Cardinal Mendoza. ‘The

Prince of Roche sur Yon may be called “lordship,” because he is of royal

blood, but he must have only the privileges of an ambassador whilst in

Spain.’ The Countess of Ureña, who was to be Isabel’s mistress of the

robes, a proud dame in Philip’s entire confidence, was to keep close to

the Queen, and decide all points of feminine etiquette; whilst Lopez de

Guzman, Isabel’s Spanish chief steward, was to arrange everything

according to Spanish etiquette in her table service. Cardinal Mendoza

was instructed to alight and salute the Queen humbly when he first

approached her, and his brother the Duke was to kiss her hand,

notwithstanding any reluctance she might show. Each morning the Cardinal

was to visit her, whereupon she was to receive him standing, and order

an arm-chair to be brought for him, and he was to be seated whilst he

stayed with her. The Duke of Infantado, chief of the Mendozas, was only

to be received by the Queen standing the first time he visited her, and

for him was to be brought a red velvet stool upon which to sit; but the

Duke was warned that this privilege was only to last during the journey,

and was to cease when Isabel joined her husband.[171] And so on, down to

the smaller courtiers in gradation, the honours to be given and received

are all set down in minute detail, that of itself was sufficient to

strike awe in a young girl of fifteen, who had passed her life in the

gay poetical court of her father.

It was a cruel irony that sent Anthony de Bourbon, the shadowy King

Consort of Navarre, to deliver the French Consort of the real King of

Navarre to her husband on the frontier of the little mountain kingdom,

and he probably only accepted the mission in the hope that the

long-pending negotiations with Spain, for giving him some adequate

compensation, such as the title of King of Sardinia, might be

advantageously pushed on such an occasion. Philip fooled poor vain

Anthony as long as it suited him, but without the remotest intention of

giving any satisfaction to the house of Navarre. When, therefore, in

deep snowdrifts the Queen’s cavalcade reached the little frontier town

of St. Jean Pied de Port on the last day in the year 1559, and France

was all behind them, Anthony and the other Bourbon princes were on the

alert to resent any slight that might be offered to them by the

Spaniards. The exchange of the Queen to the custody of her husband’s

envoys was to be made at a point between St. Jean and the Spanish hamlet

of Roncesvalles, but the inclement weather and heavy snow made it

impossible to reach the elevated spot agreed upon; and for three days

Isabel and her French suite tarried weatherbound at St. Jean. For the

first time she donned there the Spanish dress, and received some of her

Spanish household; and on the 3rd January 1560 she started on horseback

towards the frontier, for she refused to enter her new realm in a

litter, and thus, with her veritable army of attendants and

baggage-train, she tramped through the savage pass and into the valley

of Valcarlos into Spain.

The cold was intense, and through the elevated mountain paths the

snowstorm drove furiously, yet she pushed bravely on until she could

gain the shelter of the monastery church of Our Lady of Roncesvalles in

Spanish territory. It was a great concession for the French to make, and

Anthony de Bourbon would not have crossed the frontier first but for the

insistence of Isabel, and the impossibility of carrying out the

ceremonious programme of handing over the Queen in a Pyrenean pass in a

mid-winter snowstorm. Further than Roncesvalles he was determined he

would not go, though only five miles further, at the village of Espinal,

the Cardinal and the Duke with the Spanish train were lodged. At the

gate of the Augustinian monastery, where the King of Navarre helped the

almost frozen Queen to alight, there stood beside the prior and

dignitaries a group of Spanish nobles who had ridden over from Espinal

unofficially to greet their new Queen; and after the religious ceremony

and prayers in the beautifully decorated church, these nobles and their

followers almost came to open fight with the Frenchmen. As Isabel left

the church to enter the apartments in the monastery assigned to her, the

Spaniards, jealous that in their own country Frenchmen alone should

attend the Queen, flocked in unbidden after her, and had to be forcibly

ejected by those in attendance upon her.[172]

Distrust and suspicion prevailed on all hands. It had been arranged,

after much courtly wrangling, that the transfer of the custody of the

Queen should take place at a point exactly midway between Roncesvalles

and Espinal, but King Anthony made the weather an excuse—probably a

perfectly good one—for urging the Spaniards to come the whole way to

Roncesvalles, rather than expose the Queen and themselves to a long

ceremony in an open field three feet deep in snow. But Infantado was

shocked at the idea that he and his brother the Cardinal should be asked

to go a step further than the Frenchmen, and refused. Anthony

remonstrated, but in vain; and in the lone monastery in the Pyrenean

valley Isabel passed two more days waiting for either the pride or the

snow to melt. At length she lost patience. She was as tenacious of

French honour as any one, but she well knew that the success of her

mission depended upon her winning the affections of the Spaniards, and

on the 5th January she sent for Navarre and told him that she intended

herself to ride to the spot agreed upon for the exchange. The French

nobles were indignant, and at first inclined to shirk the journey, but

Isabel, young as she was, could be imperious and insisted; and in

torrents of sleet the great cavalcade, with the ceremonial finery

already bedraggled, had prepared to start, when the welcome message came

from Espinal that the Duke and the Cardinal had relented, and were now

on their way to Roncesvalles to obey, as they said, the summons of their

Queen.

The utmost confusion then ensued, for the whole of the baggage, with

hangings, furniture and dresses had been packed, and much of it had

already started forward, especially the best frocks and furbelows of

Isabel’s crowd of ladies, who saw their beds and finery no more for many

a long day. The light was failing in the stormy winter day when Cardinal

Mendoza and his brother Infantado, preceded by sixty Spanish nobles in

brave attire, marched side by side up the great torch-lit hall, at the

end of which Cardinal de Bourbon stood upon a canopied dais, surrounded

by French ecclesiastics and nobles. Under the cloth of state, blazoned

with the lilies of France, the powers of the envoys were exchanged and

read; and then, with much stately salutation and stilted verbiage, the

Spanish nobles were led to the chamber where, upon a raised throne,

Isabel awaited them with King Anthony and the two Bourbon ladies. But

the place, a solitary mountain monastery, was unfit for courtly

ceremonies; and the Spaniards were so eager to do homage to their new

Queen that soon all seemliness was lost, and a jostling crowd filled the

presence chamber, each Spaniard trying to get the best place and

hustling rudely aside the French, and even the French ladies in

attendance, until the latter had to retire.

Isabel remained calm and dignified, determined to say nothing to offend

the Spaniards; but when the Mendozas advanced, and the actual exchange

was to be made, she turned pale as she stood to receive and greet them.

Through the interminable pompous speeches that accompanied her transfer

she remained outwardly unmoved, but when Navarre had actually handed to

the custody of Spaniards ‘this princess, whom I have taken from the

house of the greatest king in the world to be delivered to the most

illustrious sovereign upon earth,’ and the Bourbon princes came forward

and knelt to say farewell, the girl’s strength broke down, and she wept

bitterly. Cardinal Mendoza, apparently to improve the occasion, advanced

and chanted the verse, _Audi filia et vide inclina aurem tuam_, and the

response was intoned by another Spanish priest, _obliviscere populum

tuum, et domum patris tui_. She loved her people and the home of her

fathers dearly; she was going, almost a child, to live the rest of her

life amongst strangers who had been the enemies of her house for

generations, to wed a man she had never seen, but of whom she could have

heard little but evil; and, as the words of the versicle were croaked by

the ecclesiastic, they seemed to the overwrought girl a sentence of

doom, and in an agony of tears she threw herself into the arms of

Anthony of Navarre and his brother the Cardinal. She was led away gently

by Infantado, with some chiding words that she, the Queen of Spain,

should so condescend to the Duke of Vendome. In the midst of her grief

she answered with spirit that she did so by order of her brother, and,

‘as to princes of the blood, and after the fashion of the nation to

which, up to that moment, she had belonged.’[173] And, so still in

tears, the beautiful black-eyed girl was led to the Spanish litter

awaiting her, and through the heavily-falling snow was carried, to the

sound of many hautboys and trumpets, to the wretched village of Burgete,

where she was to pass the night; even there, comforted by the beds,

hangings, lights, food and delicacies, sent by her French countrymen to

furnish forth her poor quarters.’[174]

There is no space here to follow the Queen step by step through her new

country to join her husband. It was a progress full of jealousy and

bitterness between the French household of the Queen, that still

accompanied her, and the Spanish courtiers. At Pamplona, the capital of

Navarre, where the company passed three days, Isabel charmed all hearts

by her grace and beauty as she was carried through the thronged

thoroughfares from the cathedral to the royal palace where she was to

lodge. At the foot of the grand staircase stood a lady of fifty, stern

and haughty in appearance, but now all smiles as she kissed the hand of

the Queen and delivered to her a letter from King Philip. It was the

Countess of Ureña, daughter of the Alburquerques and the Toledos, and

one of the greatest ladies in Spain, who had been chosen by Philip as

the guide, philosopher and friend of his new consort. She looked sourly

upon the two Bourbon princesses whom she was obliged to salute; and on

the departure from Pamplona after three days of rejoicing Isabel,

desirous of propitiating the Countess of Ureña, whom Philip had praised

inordinately in his letters, offered her a seat in her own litter. This

she thought fit to refuse, as she was panting for the fray to establish

her precedence next to the Queen; and when the cavalcade was starting

her lackeys, violently hustling aside the equipage of the elder Bourbon

princess Madame de Rieux, intruded that of the countess into the place

in front of it. An affray resulted, and an appeal to the Queen, who

decided politely in favour of the blood royal of France until King

Philip himself should give his orders—which he subsequently did by

placing the countess between Madame de Rieux and her unmarried niece.

But the proud dame stored up in her mind the memory of the slight, and

many a troubled hour for Isabel grew out of this incident.

The young Queen’s life in Spain may now be said to have commenced, and

already she had shown the tact and diplomacy so extraordinary in a girl

of fifteen. Her hold upon the affection of the Spaniards was tenacious

from the first, owing partly, of course, to her great beauty and

sweetness, but also to her prompt adaptability and acceptance of Spanish

customs. From her childhood she had studied Spanish, and a very few

weeks after her entrance she spoke it fluently. But she never forgot her

own people and her own tongue. ‘To Frenchmen she always spoke in

French,’ wrote Brantome, ‘and would never consent to discontinue it,

reading always in French the most beautiful books that could be got in

France, which she was very curious to obtain. To Spaniards and other

foreigners she spoke Spanish very correctly. In short, this princess was

perfect in everything, besides being so splendid and liberal as never

was seen. She never wore a dress twice, but gave them all after once

wearing to her ladies; and God knows what rich and splendid dresses they

were; so rich and superb, indeed, that the least of them cost three or

four hundred crowns, for the King, her husband, kept her very lavishly

in such things. Every day she had a new one, as I was told by her own

tailor, who went thither a poor man and became richer than anybody, as I

have seen with my own eyes. She was always attired with extreme

magnificence, and her dresses suited her beautifully: amongst others,

those with slashed sleeves with laced points, and her head-dress always

matched, so that nothing was wanting. Those who saw her thus in a

painted portrait admired her, and I will leave you to guess the delight

it was to see her face to face with her sweetness and grace.... When she

went walking anywhere, either to church or to the monasteries or

gardens, there was such a great press and crowds of people to gaze upon

her that it was impossible to stir; and happy indeed was the person who

could say after the struggle, “I have seen the Queen.” Never was a queen

so beloved in Spain as she; not even the great Queen Isabel herself. The

people called her the Queen of peace and goodness, and our Frenchmen

called her the “olive branch.”‘[175]

Philip at Guadalajara, the town of the Mendozas, waited impatiently the

coming of his bride. With him from Toledo had come his sombre widowed

sister Joan, and when they learned, at the end of January 1560, that the

Queen’s cavalcade was approaching, it was made known that the King

wished special efforts to be made by the city to welcome his bride.

Through artificial flowering woods with tethered birds and animals,

through lines of gaily decked booths amply supplied with good cheer for

the free refreshment of her suite, by kneeling aldermen in crimson

velvet and white satin, and through an admiring populace, Isabel of the

Peace rode into the city between the Cardinal of Burgos and the Duke of

Infantado. At the door of the famous palace of the Mendozas, where

Philip lodged, stood Princess Joan, who half knelt and kissed the hem of

the girl’s garment; then led her by the hand into the large hall, at the

end of which a sumptuous altar was erected. Before it, in a gilded

chair, sat Isabel’s husband, grave of aspect beyond his thirty-three

years. He saluted his bride ceremoniously; and after mass at the altar

the marriage was performed by Cardinal Mendoza.

Philip’s impatience for his bride had been more political than personal,

for he needed above all things to be sure of France, and there was at

first little cordiality between the newly wedded pair. The first

afternoon, as the sovereigns sat in their tribune witnessing the bull

fight and cane tourneys held in the great square of Guadalajara to

celebrate the wedding, the frightened girl gazed so fixedly in the face

of her husband that Philip became annoyed, and turned to her curtly and

said: ‘What are you looking at? To see whether I have grey hair.’[176]

Through the tedious feasting that followed, the marriage still looked

unpromising. The girl was unformed and inexperienced, and was

overwhelmed with the importance of the task her mother had confided to

her. Around her there raged incessant jealousy, both between the

Countess of Ureña and her French ladies, and amongst the French ladies

themselves, and it needed all the authority of Catharine de Medici, and

the fear with which she inspired her daughter, to keep Isabel on the

right path amidst the contending factions.

The letters that passed between them show how absolute was the command

that at first Catharine exercised over her daughter, a command that

later was to a great extent replaced by that of Philip. Isabel in the

quarrels of her French ladies had sided with Madame Vimeux against her

principal attendant, Madame de Clermont, and, girl like, had made

friends with some of her younger French maids. Upon this her mother

wrote to her as follows: ‘It really looks very bad for you in the

position you occupy to show that you are such a child still as to make

much of your girls before people. When you are alone in your chamber in

private, you may pass your time and play with them as much as you like,

but before people be attentive to your cousin,[177] and Madame de

Clermont. Talk with them often and believe what they say; for they are

both wise, and aim at nothing but your honour and well being; whereas

those other wenches can only teach you folly and silliness. Therefore do

what I tell you, if you wish me to be satisfied with you and love you,

and to show me that you love me as you ought.’[178]

From Guadalajara Philip and his Consort passed on to Toledo for the

completion of the festivities, and to present his son Don Carlos to the

Cortes, to receive their oath of allegiance as heir to the crowns of

Castile. The capital received the Queen with unusual pomp, and after the

public reception was over Isabel retired to her chamber with her

favourite French maids, who for pastime danced before her. Soon the

Queen, flushed and excited, rose and danced several times herself. Her

high colour was noticed by some of the elder ladies, who had been

instructed by Catharine to watch the precious health of her daughter

closely; and in the morning Philip found that his girl wife was in a

burning fever, which was soon pronounced to be smallpox.

Up to this time Philip had not been particularly demonstrative towards

his French bride; and she had not quite got over her fear of him. But

her dangerous illness struck both him and her mother with dismay. Each

of them was determined to use her as a means to keep a hold upon the

other, and her death threatened to be disastrous for both; but, apart

from this, her mother was devotedly attached to her, and Philip was

beginning to love her as he loved no other person in the world, except,

years afterwards, his elder daughter by her. Couriers galloped backwards

and forwards between Paris and Toledo with daily news of the progress of

the malady. No fear for his health, no remonstrance from his courtiers,

could persuade Philip to keep away from his sick wife; and for long

periods during the most dangerous stages of her illness he would not

leave her side. Catharine was almost beside herself with anxiety. For

her everything depended upon her daughter’s success in gaining influence

over her husband, and for this Isabel’s beauty was as necessary as her

life. The attack proved to be light, and the patient was soon out of

danger; but Catharine showered upon the ladies in attendance questions

and counsels innumerable, as to the marks left by the fell disease. The

many remedies she sent appear, according to Brantome, to have given way

to the one which he mentions as having saved the Queen from

disfigurement; namely, the covering of the exposed skin with fresh white

of egg. Though Isabel was soon out of danger her convalescence was long

and tedious, and the intimate details of her bodily habit and condition

that passed between Catharine and Madame de Clermont, frank to the

extreme of coarseness, show how increasingly the Queen-Mother was

depending upon her Spanish son-in-law to sustain her amidst the warring

interests that were rapidly dividing France.

The irregularities so frequently reported by Madame de Clermont in

Isabel’s health, at one time seem to have suggested to her distracted

mother that her disorder was the outcome of the dreadful disease which

it was stated she had inherited from her grandfather Francis I.; and

Catharine alternated scolding with prayers to her daughter to be

circumspect, until Isabel trembled with very fear when she opened one of

her mother’s letters.[179] ‘Recollect’ (wrote Catherine), ‘what I told

you before you left. You know very well how important it is that no one

should know what malady you have got; for if your husband were to know

of it he would never come near you.’[180] France had abandoned almost

every thing at the Peace of Cateau Cambresis in order to gain the

support of Spain against religious reform, and Catharine now looked to

her daughter to bring the same influence upon her side in any case.

Everything depended upon this girl’s being able to captivate her

experienced husband and to lead him as she liked. Philip, it is true,

was now in love with her; but his policy was founded upon a fixed

principle: it was never swayed by personal affection; and Isabel was

really as powerless to move him as all others who tried to do so.

Catharine had impressed particularly upon her daughter that she was to

use every effort to draw the ties between France and Spain closer, by

bringing about a marriage of her young sister Margaret[181] with Don

Carlos: or, in any case, to oppose to the utmost his marriage with an

Austrian cousin; even if it were necessary to marry him to his aunt

Joan. When Isabel entered Toledo she saw for the first time Philip’s

heir. He was within a few months of her own age, a lame, epileptic

semi-imbecile; already vicious and uncontrollable. When he approached

his stepmother for the first time he was yellow and wasted with

intermittent fever, and it was noticed that she caressed and petted him

more than he had been accustomed to; for he had never known a mother.

The passionate ill-conditioned boy had been told only a year ago to call

this young beauty his wife, and now to see her the wife of the father,

whom he feared and hated, turned his heart to gall. During her illness

and convalescence he was ceaseless in his inquiries about her; and when

her health again allowed her to resume her family life, she went out of

her way to entertain and please him. It was probably the only gentle

feminine influence he had ever experienced, for his widowed aunt Joan,

whom he alternately loathed and adored, was a gloomy religious mystic,

almost old enough to be his mother; and Isabel was not only just his own

age, beautiful and French, but for the purposes of her mother exerted

all her charms to gain his goodwill.

[Illustration:

ISABEL OF VALOIS.

_After a painting by Pantoja._

]

The romantic story that makes her fall in love with this poor

unwholesome boy may be put aside as baseless; but it is probably true

that her own charms, added to his jealousy and hate of his father, made

him fall in love with her. The letters Isabel wrote to her mother at the

time all speak of Philip as a most affectionate husband, and of Don

Carlos simply with pity for his ill-health; whilst Catharine’s replies

constantly urge her to incline her stepson to a marriage with her sister

Margaret; ‘or you will be the most unfortunate woman in the world if

your husband dies, and the Prince (Carlos) has for a wife any one but

your own sister.’ Unfortunately the youth was unable to hide his

extravagant affection for his young stepmother; and soon all the French

ladies were nodding and shrugging their shoulders at the romance that

was passing before their eyes, which probably Isabel herself hardly

understood.

The need for Catharine to draw personally nearer to Spain was greater,

and yet more difficult, than ever after the death, in November 1560, of

her young son Francis II. There was no fear now of France being drawn

into war again for the benefit of Mary Stuart, but, on the other hand,

Mary Stuart herself, being a widow, might marry Don Carlos, and become,

by Spanish aid and the efforts of the English Catholics, Queen of Great

Britain, in which case France would be isolated indeed.[182] Cardinal

Lorraine, and afterwards Mary herself, bade briskly for this match; but,

though Philip shrank from saying so, Carlos was, he knew, unfit for

marriage altogether. In answer to Catharine’s constant pressure upon her

daughter to persuade Carlos to marry Margaret, Isabel repeatedly assured

her that she would do her best, and she appears to have made a sort of

alliance with his aunt Joan to forward _her_ cause if the marriage with

Margaret was found impossible.

Philip’s sister, the wife of Maximilian, heir to the empire, wrote to

Isabel early in 1561, asking her to lend her help to the suit then being

pressed by the imperial ambassador for the marriage of Carlos with one

of his Austrian cousins, the Archduchess Anne,[183] and Isabel, in

giving an account of this to her mother, says that she showed the letter

to Princess Joan, who had received a similar letter, and angrily

expressed her opinion to Isabel that the plan was directed against her

(Joan); with which opinion Isabel agreed. ‘I spoke to the King about

it,’ wrote Isabel to her mother, ‘telling him that the Queen of Bohemia

had made one exception (before her daughter’s claim was put forward),

whereas I made two; namely, first my sister, and, secondly, the Princess

(Joan). He replied that his son was yet so young, and in such a

condition, that there was plenty of time for everything yet, though the

Prince has got over his quartan fever.’[184] To the imperial ambassador

Philip gently hinted also that his son’s infirmity of mind and body made

it impossible to arrange seriously for his marriage; but Catharine was

not to be put off easily, and Isabel did her best to obey her.

The Queen-Mother, sending her own portrait and that of her son, the new

boy King of France, Charles IX., to her daughter, included in the parcel

a likeness of her daughter Margaret; and one of Isabel’s maids writes of

the joy that the pictures of her dear ones gave to the Queen; who, she

says, after having recited her prayers at night in church, went to her

chamber, and said them again before her mother’s portrait. When the

precious portraits were unwrapped Princess Joan was there to admire

them, and soon Don Carlos came in. ‘Which is the prettiest of them?’ he

was asked. ‘The _chiquita_,’ he naturally replied; whereupon one of the

ladies drove home the lesson by saying, ‘Yes, you are quite right, for

she is the most fit for you’; whereupon he burst out laughing.[185]

Isabel herself wrote joyfully to her mother that Carlos was pleased with

Margaret’s portrait, and had repeated to her three or four times

laughing that the ‘little one was the prettiest; if she was like that;’

whereupon Isabel assured him that she was ‘_bien faite_,’ and officious

Madame de Clermont interjected that she would make a good wife for him,

to which the lad, though he giggled, made no reply. Philip also,

probably to please his wife, confessed that the portrait of her younger

sister was very beautiful: but it was noticed that, simultaneously with

these transparent matrimonial intrigues, he suddenly began to pay

ostentatious attention to his sister Joan, whose marriage with her

nephew Carlos was always a possibility to play off against other matches

proposed.

The kindliest relations were now established between Philip and his

young wife, and though he was usually absorbed in governmental detail

early and late, Isabel’s life was not a gloomy one. The two boys of

Maximilian, King of the Romans, the future emperor, and of Philip’s

sister Maria, were being brought up in the Spanish Court; and though

they were kept very close to their studies, they were allowed to come

and see Isabel and her ladies every afternoon to dance and romp as they

pleased. Carlos also took every opportunity of being in the company of

his stepmother, and the brilliant young Don Juan of Austria, Philip’s

half-brother, and Alexander Farnese, his nephew, were frequent visitors,

all being lively handsome youths except, indeed, poor fever-wasted

Carlos, fretting his weak wits to frenzy in unrequited love and impotent

spite.

In the summer of 1561 hopes were entertained that the Queen might fulfil

her husband’s dearest wish and make him the father of another son, and

the King’s delight at the prospect was unbounded. He caused to be made a

solid silver sedan chair in which to carry his wife to Madrid, and

overwhelmed her with attentions. But to Isabel’s grief the hope was

fallacious, and Philip was tenderly solicitous to solace his wife’s

disappointment. ‘Il avait toute la peine du monde de la consoler, et lui

tenir beaucoup plus privée et plus ordinaire compagnie que n’avait

jamais fait, de manière qu’il n’a été que bon que tous deux ayent eu

cette opinion. Il me fit l’honneur de me prier que je l’allasse

consoler, et lui dire qu’elle lui volust donner ce contentement et

plaisir de ne s’en fachier, et mesme quand on seroit à Madrid, que ma

femme le lui allast aussi dire, et user de tous ses bons offices qu’elle

scavoit bien faire en son endroit. Elle est aujourd’hui, Madame, en tel

estat pres du roy son mari que Votre Majesté, et tous ceux qui aiment

son bien et sommes affectionnés à son service, en devront remercier

Dieu.’[186]

In the midst of this happy and harmonious life in Spain, the girl Queen

tactfully did her best to obey her mother and serve the France she

always held dear, but it was inevitable that as time went on and the

influence of her husband over her grew, she should take a more purely

Spanish view of affairs. The death of young Francis II., and the fall of

the Guises, had made the friendship between Spain and France more

difficult than ever, for the profound religious divisions in the latter

country forbade any possibility of the national power being used, as had

been contemplated in the Peace of Cateau Cambresis in the suppression of

heresy everywhere; whilst Catharine’s now ostentatious friendship with

the Bourbons and the reforming party, by which she hoped to

counterbalance the Guises, deeply offended her son-in-law. Philip,

however, at this time was in the depth of penury: his own Netherlands

were simmering into revolt; he had suffered a terrible defeat at the

hands of the Turk on the coast of Tunis (February 1560), and the

Christian power in the Mediterranean was in the balance. Elizabeth of

England, too, was more obstinate than ever in her adherence to the

anti-Catholic policy, now that the strength of the Huguenot party in

France banished the fear of a Catholic coalition of France and Spain

against her. Much as Philip frowned at, and Isabel remonstrated against,

Catharine’s proceedings, the King of Spain was not in a position to make

war upon France, and for a time was obliged to dissemble with his

mother-in-law. So far, therefore, the Treaty of Cateau Cambresis had

been a failure, and Isabel had been sacrificed in vain. France and Spain

could not make common cause against Protestantism, and Isabel could not

win Don Carlos for her sister nor make her astute husband the tool of

her mother’s plans, deeply as he loved his charming young wife.

With regard to the marriage of Carlos, Isabel was indefatigable in her

efforts, but the prince grew more reckless than ever. In the spring of

1562 he was studying at the University of Alcalá, when, in descending a

dark stairway to keep a secret assignation, he fell and fractured his

skull. Philip and his wife were at Madrid when they received the news,

and the King at once set out, travelling through the night full of

anxiety for his son. He found him unconscious and partially paralysed:

the doctors, ignorant beyond conception, treated him in a way that seems

to us now nothing less than murderous. Purges, bleeding, unguents,

charms, and, finally, the laying upon the bed of the unconscious lad the

mouldering body of a monkish saint, Diego, were all tried in vain, until

at last an Italian surgeon was bold enough to perform the operation of

lifting the bone of the cranium that pressed upon the brain, and Don

Carlos recovered his consciousness. But if he had been a semi-imbecile

before, he became at intervals after this accident a raving homicidal

maniac. The prince himself, and those who surrounded him, attributed his

recovery to the mummy of the dead monk, and promised to give for

religious purposes in recognition of the miracle four times his own

weight in gold. When he was weighed for the purpose it was found that,

although he was seventeen years old, he only weighed seventy pounds.

But, no matter how weak or vicious Carlos might be, the struggle to

obtain his hand in marriage was waged as keenly as ever by Isabel and

her mother on the one hand, and by the Austrian interest on the other,

with the Princess Joan, the lad’s aunt, as a permanent candidate, to be

used by Philip when he needed a diversion. Hardly had the grave anxiety

about Carlos subsided when Isabel herself fell grievously ill, and was

like to die. At the time that the physicians had abandoned hope of

saving her (August 1562), Philip sent the Duke of Alba with a long

message to the French ambassador, of which the latter wrote a copy to

Catharine. He prefaces his letter by saying that the Queen was truly a

bond of peace since she ‘possède le roi son mari, et est aujourd’hui en

toute privauté et autorité avec lui.’ The message was to the effect that

it had always been the rule when Spanish queens were ill, even slightly,

to urge them to make their last dispositions in good time. On account,

however, of the great love and extreme affection which he (Philip) bore

to his wife, he had not allowed her in her present serious illness to be

spoken to on the subject, so as not to distress or alarm her. For, as he

said, he had in very truth good reason to love her dearly, and to take

great care of her; and if this loss should befall him, he would have

reason to say that it was the greatest and most important he had ever

suffered in his life, and that which most nearly touched his heart,

seeing the shining virtues and noble qualities with which his wife was

endowed. He makes a great point of honouring and pleasing her, and

preventing her from being troubled in any way; but since the physicians

said that she had reached such an extremity that her life could no

longer be expected to last,[187] he would regret that his love for her,

and his sorrow for her loss, should stand in the way of the duty she

owed to her position and reputation to make a will.’ He assured the

French ambassador that his friendship for his wife’s brother and mother

would not be diminished by her death, and he proposed that she should

leave two-thirds of her possessions to her mother, and the remainder be

employed in pious uses and in rewarding her very numerous servants.[188]

This letter is of great interest in showing how truly Philip loved and

respected his young wife, and every testimony shows that their affection

continued to increase as the time went on, though all around them, both

in public and private life, was full of bitterness and anxiety. Don

Carlos grew more and more outrageous in his disregard of all decency and

respect; and more than one miscarriage of Isabel seemed to threaten the

King with the misfortune of a childless marriage.

But what was a source of greater trouble perhaps than anything to Isabel

at this period, was the terrible infliction that was scourging her own

country. The first war of religion in France had ended with the death of

Guise and Anthony of Navarre, and the hollow edict of Amboise had been

issued by Catharine, giving toleration to the Huguenots in certain

towns. This was a heavy blow to Philip and his cause, and he tried to

parry it in his characteristic fashion by the aid of the Guisan party.

Jeanne d’Albret and her son (afterwards Henry IV.) had retired to mourn

the death of Anthony in their castle of Pau. Henry was heir to the crown

of France after Catharine’s sons, and his mother was a strict Calvinist,

so the Catholic party planned, with Philip’s aid, to kidnap Jeanne

d’Albret, Queen of Navarre, and her hopeful son, to prevent the danger

of a Huguenot ever being king of France. All was arranged for the _coup

de main_ when the principal conspirator, Captain Dimanche, fell ill in a

poor hostelry in Madrid. Isabel had always been accustomed to keep

herself well-informed of all cases of trouble amongst her own countrymen

in Spain, and hearing from her servants that a Frenchman was alone and

suffering, had him brought from his squalid lodging to the house of one

of her servants, to be well cared for by one of her own doctors.

Dimanche, in the course of his illness, divulged his conspiracy to his

host, who, though a Catholic, was shocked at the wickedness of the plan,

and told it to a higher officer, and afterwards to Isabel, who, he knew,

was deeply attached to Jeanne d’Albret. The Queen listened to the story

with horror, and cried, with tears in her eyes, ‘God forbid that such a

crime should be committed.’ As fast as a confidential courier could

gallop went the news from Isabel to her mother; how the Catholic party

and Spain were plotting to ruin the house of Navarre, and overthrow the

equilibrium in France; and Jeanne d’Albret and her son, also warned by

Isabel, escaped from Pau into central France.

Philip probably never knew that it was his wife who had upset so

promising a plan; but that her intervention was not from any love of

Protestantism is clearly seen by her subsequent action. Her Catholicism,

indeed, was more Spanish than French in its character; and that her

politic mother should call to her councils at all those whose orthodoxy

was doubtful, appeared to her nothing short of abominable, though for a

short time after the first Huguenot war, Catharine had managed to bring

about an appearance of harmony between the two great French factions.

But Condé, the chief of the Bourbons, after Anthony’s death, was rough

and imperious, and personally disliked by Catharine: Cardinal Lorraine

returned to France from the Council of Trent early in 1564, thirsting to

revenge the murder of his brother Guise, and soon Catholic intrigue was

busy in the French Court.

Isabel wrote to her mother an extraordinary letter at this time (the

summer of 1564), evidently inspired by Philip, and forming a part of the

Lorraine intrigues to win Catherine to the ultra-catholic party. ‘If,’

wrote Isabel, ‘you will cause Frenchmen to live as good catholics, there

is nothing you can ask of my husband that he will not give you. He begs

you will not compromise with the evil people, but punish them very

severely. If you are afraid because of their great number ... you may

call upon us, and we will give you everything we possess, and troops as

well, to support religion. If you do not punish these men yourself, you

must not be offended if the King, my husband, listens to the demands of

those who crave his help to defend the faith, and gives them what they

ask. He is, indeed, obliged to do so, for it touches him more than any

one. If France becomes Lutheran, Flanders and Spain will not be far

behind.’[189] And so, for page after page of her long letter, Isabel

urges her mother to crush the Huguenots for once and for all. Catharine

loved intrigue and crooked ways; and, although it was no part of her

plan to have only one party in France, she feared the Guises less now

that the Duke was dead, and it doubtless seemed to her a good

opportunity for drawing closer to Spain, in order to effect the marriage

of her daughter Margaret with Don Carlos, and gain some advantage by

marriage or otherwise for her darling son Henry (Duke of Orleans).

The effect of Cardinal Lorraine’s action was soon seen in the long

progress through the east and south of France undertaken by Charles IX.

and his mother. Catharine had been trying, ever since the death of

Francis II., to arrange an interview with Philip, and bring her personal

influence to bear upon him, though he had shown no eagerness to discuss

the matter; but now that the Court of France, with Lorraine pulling the

wires, was to visit the south, there seemed a chance of effecting at

last what the treaty of Cateau Cambresis had failed to do. The Court

left Paris in the spring of 1564, and at Nancy, the scheme of Lorraine

for a Catholic league to suppress heresy was first broached to Charles

IX. He was a mere lad, and was apparently alarmed at the idea; but in

the meanwhile, active negotiations were going on to induce Philip and

his wife to meet Catharine when she approached the frontier with her

son. The French ambassador in Spain was a strong Guisan partisan, and

worked hard to bring about the interview, as did Isabel herself, who was

sincerely attached to her kinsfolk, and yearned to embrace her mother

again. Philip was anxious to forward the formation of a Catholic League,

but he distrusted Catharine, and after much negotiation, he consented to

Isabel’s going as far as Bayonne to greet her mother; the political

negotiation, however, being entirely left to the Duke of Alba.

Philip was not enthusiastic, for he knew that Catharine was surrounded

by ‘politicians,’ and he was determined that if nothing came of the

interview, it should not be said that he had been deceived. He would

not, he said, go to any expense on the occasion, and no gold or silver

was to be worn on the dresses on either side: and the Queen was to be

kept to the most rigid etiquette in her communications with her mother

and brother. She left Madrid with a great train of courtiers in April

1565, bearing with her powers from her husband to ratify the

arrangements that Alba might make. What these arrangements were may be

seen by the memorandum given by Philip to Alba for his guidance.[190]

The object aimed at was a league, in which each party should be pledged

to employ all his force and means to sustain Catholic orthodoxy, to

allow no toleration whatever to any other religion, in public or

private, and to expel all persons but catholics from the realms, within

five months, on pain of death, and forfeiture for them and their

abettors, to publish and enforce the decisions of the Council of Trent,

to purge all the offices, commands, and services, of every suspicion of

heresy, and to deprive of their dignities, titles, and authority, every

person not firmly attached to the faith.

With this fateful mission Isabel travelled slowly towards the north,

through Burgos, in the spring of 1565. She had in her train more than

sixty Spanish nobles with their gaudily garbed followers; and, though

Philip’s orders with regard to bullion ornaments had been obeyed, there

was no lack of costly show. On the 14th May, in a heat so suffocating

that many of the soldiers died, Catharine and her son with the French

Court rode at early morning out of Saint Jean de Luz, to reach the

little river Bidasoa which divides France from Spain. For two hours the

royal party rested under a green arbour on the banks, whilst the Spanish

baggage was being ferried across; and just as the burning sun was

beginning to decline, a burst of trumpets heralded the approach of the

Queen of Spain. From the ancient castle of Irun the royal procession

could be seen winding down the hill to the shore, Isabel being borne in

a litter. Catharine at once entered her waiting boat, and swift oars

brought her to the Spanish side just as her daughter’s litter reached

the edge. Both Queens were beside themselves with joy. Isabel bent low

enough to kiss her mother’s knee, but was raised and tenderly embraced,

again and again, and then, overcome by their emotions, both Catharine

and Isabel burst into tears of joyful excitement, which continued

unabated until the boat had landed them on the French bank, where

Charles IX. awaited them amidst saluting volleys of musketry.[191]

The pompous rejoicings, the tourneys, comedies, balls, and banquets,

which followed at St. Jean de Luz and Bayonne; the splendour with which

each Court tried to dazzle the other, and the grave political

conferences between Alba and the French ministers and Catharine, cannot

be dwelt upon here; but the picture drawn of Isabel herself in the midst

of this memorable interview by Brantôme, who was present, is too

interesting to omit. ‘When she entered Bayonne she rode upon a pony very

superbly and richly harnessed with a cloth completely covered with

pearls embroidered, which had belonged to the Empress, and was used by

her when she entered towns in state; it was said to be worth one hundred

thousand crowns and more. She was quite bewitching on horseback, and was

worth gazing upon; for she was so lovely and sweet that every one was

enchanted. We were all ordered to go and meet her and accompany her on

her entrance ... and she was most gracious to us when we paid our

respects to her, and thanked us charmingly. To me, especially, she was

kind and cordial; for I had only taken leave of her in Spain four months

before, and I was greatly touched that she should thus favour me over my

fellows.... She was also familiar to the ladies and maids at the Court,

exactly the same as before her marriage, and took notice of those who

were absent or had got married; and about those who had come to Court

since she left she made many inquiries.’

In the discussions with the political ministers it was soon evident to

Catharine, as she had probably foreseen from the first, that to throw

herself entirely into the hands of the extreme Catholic party as Philip

desired, would be disastrous to her, and probably also to her son’s

throne. But it did not suit her to quarrel with her powerful son-in-law,

or to send her daughter back empty-handed to Madrid, after the much

heralded interview; so, although an arrangement was signed which

ostensibly bound France and Spain together for a religious end,

Catharine took care to leave a sufficient number of knotty points open

to give her a loophole to escape. When she returned to Paris she soon

began to raise difficulties about the ratification, and wrote to her

ambassador in Madrid (Fourquevault), ‘Je lui dis que en faisant ces

mariages, et donnant quelque état à mon fils d’Orleans, qu’il nous

falloit tous joindre ensemble: c’est à savoir le Pape, l’Empereur, et

ces deux rois, les Allemands et autres que l’on avisera: et que le roi

mon fils n’etait pas sans moyens pour aider de sa part, à ce qui serait

avisé quand les dits mariages seroient faits, et la dite ligue conclüe.’

It will be seen that she makes here so many conditions as to render the

league quite impossible. Not only is her daughter Margaret to marry

Carlos, and her son Henry a daughter of the Emperor with an independent

State, but all the other Catholic powers are to join the league before

France is to be bound to anything.

Indeed, it is clear that the power of the Huguenot and ‘politician’

nobles in France, and the old jealousy between France and Spain,

together with the persecution by the Inquisition of French residents and

visitors in Spain, and the massacre in the following year of the French

expedition to Florida by Philip’s orders, made a sincere co-operation

between the two countries in such a league impracticable;[192] and

though appearances were saved at Bayonne, Philip, when he joyfully met

his wife after her nineteen days’ absence from him, must have known that

again his dream of a Catholic league had failed. ‘Je ne fis qu’arriver

hier (writes the French ambassador to Catharine on Isabel’s return) de

baiser la main de la reine, la quelle j’ai trouvée si joieuse et

contente de la bonne venue du roy son mari, et de la démonstration de la

bonne affection et amitié qu’il lui fait.’ Though the personal affection

between the husband and wife was without a cloud, it was certain that

the political results of the marriage were insignificant. Isabel fought

hard for some satisfaction to the outrage to France in Florida, but

without result; Coligny, to her and Philip’s indignation, was growing

powerful in the French government; and the second war of religion was

seen to be inevitable, whilst the issue was already joined between

Philip and his Dutch subjects; pledged, as they were, to stand together

to resist him to the death.

In the midst of these public causes for anxiety Philip was overjoyed to

learn that his wife, whose age was nearly twenty-one, was likely to

become a mother.[193] The King, as usual, arranged every small detail

himself of, ‘le régime dont elle devoit user pour conduire son fruit à

bon port’; and his demonstrations of affection and pride for his wife,

and rejoicing at his hopes for a time, even in public, overcame his

natural frigid dignity. Nor was Catharine less delighted, for to her,

should the child prove a son, the event was of the highest importance,

in view of the growing incapacity of Don Carlos; and she also sent by M.

de Saint Etienne a parcel to her daughter: ‘Où il y a tout plein de

recettes, dont elle peut avoir de besoin’; and she wrote personally to

the physician in attendance, urging him to make use of these recipes,

which she assured him would do Isabel good.

Every day the smallest incident of the Queen’s condition were recounted

by courier to her mother; and Philip could hardly tear himself from her

side whilst he disposed of his usually beloved business. At length, on

the 1st August 1566, a daughter was born, at Balsain, near Segovia, to

Philip and Isabel. The child was christened Isabel, after the great

Queen and her mother, Clara because she was born on the day of the

Saint, and Eugénie, out of gratitude to the efficacious body of St.

Eugène—and the sumptuous ceremony of baptism was not allowed to pass

without a jealous wrangle between the Archbishop of Santiago and the

Bishop of Segovia, as to which should have the honour of performing the

rite, which was eventually celebrated by the Nuncio Castaneo, afterwards

Pope Urban VII. It would doubtless have been more satisfactory to Philip

had a son been born; but his joy and gratitude were nevertheless

intense, and the French ambassador, writing to Catharine a few days

afterwards, says that when he went to congratulate him, he had him (the

ambassador) led to the Queen’s room: ‘Voulant que je visse la fille

qu’il avoit plu Dieu lui donner, de laquelle il est tant aise qu’il ne

peut le dissimuler, et l’aime, à ce qu’il dit, pour le présent mieux

qu’un fils.’ This deep affection for his elder daughter lasted to the

King’s dying day; and the famous Infanta, designated by him to be in

succession Queen of England and France, became by his will sovereign of

the Netherlands, and inherited from her father not only the ancient

domains of his paternal house but his views, his methods, and his

obstinacy.

The Queen lay apparently at the point of death for some days after her

delivery, but as soon as her life was safe, the great project, so long

discussed, of a voyage of the royal family to insurgent Flanders, was

again taken in hand. Philip was for going alone, leaving, it was hoped

by Catharine, his wife Regent, though Isabel herself begged hard that

she might be allowed to accompany her husband: ‘Car vraiment, je serois

trop marrie de demeurer par deçà après lui; je ferai ce qui sera en moi

qu’il ne m’y laisse point.’ There was another who desired as ardently as

she to go to Flanders with the King. This was his only son Don Carlos.

The young man’s frantic excesses had grown more scandalous than ever as

he became older. The struggle to obtain his hand in marriage was still

going on between the Austrian and French interests; but Philip continued

to put the matter gently aside on the ground of his son’s ill-health.

The afflicted father had done his best to wean the Prince from his

violence and dissoluteness. He himself had been a dutiful son, ready to

sacrifice everything for the task confided to him, and his grief was

profound that this son of his youth should openly scandalise his court

by his disobedience and insolence to his father and sovereign. Like his

great-grandmother, Joan the Mad, the Prince lived in constant revolt

against authority, sacred and mundane. His conduct in the Council of

State, where his father had placed him to accustom him to business, had

shocked every one. Apparently out of sheer wrong-headedness he had

openly expressed his sympathy with the Netherlanders, who were defying

the will of his father, and he had extorted a semi-promise that he

should accompany the King to Flanders. Whether the Prince had entered

into any communication with the agents of the Flemings is doubtful; but

even if such were the case, and the ambition of Carlos to obtain an

early regency of Flanders was the end he had in view, it is a mere

travesty of history to represent that he seriously held reformed

opinions, any more than did Joan the Mad, when she reviled the mass and

the sacred symbols.

In any case, Philip abandoned his intention, if he ever really held it,

of going in person to the Low Countries; and decided to send the

ruthless Alba with a great army to scourge the stubborn ‘beggars’ into

humble submission to his will. When Carlos heard this, and that he, too,

was to remain in Spain, his fury passed all bounds. He attempted to stab

Alba himself when he went to take leave; and when the Cortes of Castile

petitioned the King that the heir to the throne should be kept in Spain,

Carlos made an open scandal, and threatened the deputies with death.

By this time, the autumn of 1567, Isabel was again pregnant, and

Philip’s hopes ran high that another son would be born to him. It is

clear that the great mission to which he and his father had devoted

strenuous lives could not safely be passed on to Carlos; and in

September, Ruy Gomez, Philip’s only friend, told the French ambassador

that if the Queen gave birth to a son, the future of Carlos as heir

would have to be reconsidered. The Prince was insatiable for money,

which he scattered broadcast on evil doings, he was openly insolent to

his father, and the latter suspected a design to escape clandestinely to

join the enemies of his State: and there is no doubt that if Isabel’s

second child had been a son, he would have been placed in the succession

before Don Carlos. Philip exceeded himself in tender solicitude for his

wife, but at last, on the 17th October 1567, the child that all Europe

was breathlessly expecting, was born—another daughter.

Thereafter the romance of Don Carlos unfolded rapidly. Philip had been

patient and longsuffering under the affliction of such a son, but he at

length despaired, and his attachment to his heir gave place to antipathy

and disgust: especially when his physicians had definitely assured him

that his line could never be continued by Carlos.[194] The Prince, on

the other hand, hated his father bitterly, and was morose with his aunt

Joan, whom he formerly loved, and with the young Austrian Princes,

though he had now been formally betrothed to their sister Anna. The only

person who influenced him was Isabel: ‘Il fait semblant de trouver bon

tout ce que la reyne votre fille fait et dit, et n’y a personne qui

dispose de lui comme elle, et c’est sans artifice ni feinte, car il ne

sçait feindre ni dissimuler.’[195]

Matters came to a head at the end of the year 1567. Philip and Isabel

had gone to pass Christmas at the newly commenced Palace of the

Escorial, when Carlos decided to make his long contemplated attempt to

escape from Spain. On the 23rd December, he whispered to his young

uncle, Don Juan of Austria, that he needed his help to get horses; and

Juan, recognising the seriousness of the situation, at once rode the

thirty odd miles to the Escorial to tell the King. As in all his great

calamities, Philip remained outwardly unmoved, and though he took such

measures secretly as would frustrate the flight, he did not return to

Madrid until the day previously fixed, the 17th January 1568. The next

day he went with Carlos to mass; but still made no sign. In the interim,

the Prince had even attempted to kill Don Juan; and it was time for his

father to strike, in order to prevent some greater tragedy, for Carlos

had admitted to his confessor that he had an ungovernable impulse to

kill a man. Whom? asked the confessor. The King, was the reply. For once

Philip broke down utterly when, with Ruy Gomez and other intimate

councillors, he deliberated what should be done. Late that night, when

the Prince slept, the afflicted father, with five armed gentlemen and

twelve guards, obtained entrance into the chamber, in spite of secret

bolts and locks; and when the Prince, disturbed, sprang up and sought

for his weapons, the weapons were gone. In rage and despair, he tried to

strangle himself, but was restrained; and, recognising that he was a

helpless prisoner, he flung himself upon his bed in an agony of grief,

and sobbed out, ‘I am not mad, not mad, only desperate.’

From that hour he was dead to the world, which saw him no more. The

position was a humiliating one for Philip, but he made the best of it,

by explaining to all the courts that the prince’s mental deficiency

necessitated his seclusion. To his own nearest relatives he did not hide

his bitterness. ‘It is not a punishment,’ he wrote, ‘would to God it

were, for it might come to an end: but I never can hope to see my son

restored to his right mind again. I have chosen in this matter to

sacrifice to God my own flesh and blood, preferring His service and the

universal good to all human considerations.’ Some sort of trial or

examination of the prince was held, but all professed accounts of the

proceedings must be accepted with caution. Certain it is that they

dragged on wearily, whilst the charges of treason, of conspiracy, of

disloyalty, and perhaps of heresy, were laboriously examined in strict

secrecy. Neither Isabel nor his aunt Joan was allowed to see Carlos, and

Don Juan was forbidden even to wear mourning for the calamity. By all

accounts the prince’s malady grew rapidly worse, as well it might in

such circumstances. Like Joan the Mad before him, he would starve for

days, and then swallow inedible things, he would alternately roast and

freeze himself, and he attempted suicide more than once. The end came on

the 25th July 1568, and the immense weight of testimony is in favour of

his having died in consequence of his own mad fancies in diet and

hygiene.

When Fourquevault conveyed the news of Carlos’s death to Catharine, he

wrote that the Queen Isabel was suffering from fainting fits and

headache; but it was her wish that great signs of mourning should be

made for the Prince in France, to show the King of Spain that they

(_i.e._, the French) were sorry for his loss; ‘as the Spanish people

attach so much importance to appearances.’ Isabel in weak health, for

she was again pregnant, was deeply touched by the trouble around her.

The French ambassador was gleefully reminding her mother that the death

of Don Carlos was a very good thing for her, and praising her beauty,

which the deep Spanish mourning set off to advantage, whilst he indulged

in brilliant hopes for the birth of a son to Isabel. But the young

Queen’s heart was heavy, not for Carlos alone, but for the scenes of

horror which were flooding Flanders with blood under the flail of Alba.

Egmont and Horn had been treacherously sacrificed in Brussels, Montigny

in Spain, and her own dear France was reft in twain by fratricidal war.

She was a catholic as sincere as Philip himself, but that the faith

should need wholesale murder for its assertion shocked and frightened

her; and she languished in the atmosphere of gloomy determination which

surrounded Philip.

Catharine wrote often in reply to the depressing news from her daughter,

arousing her hopes for a son who should, in his time, put all things

right; but Isabel at twenty-three had lost her gay elasticity, and the

advance of her pregnancy meant the advance of her exhausting malady.

Philip, as usual, was tenderly solicitous for her ease and happiness;

full of hope, too, that a son at last was to be born to him, for upon

this everything depended. The lying stories which long afterwards the

traitor Antonio Perez wove with hellish skill in the safe refuge of

Essex House, accusing Philip of jealousy of his wife with Don Carlos,

and subsequently with one Pozzo, are hardly worth more credit now than

the sentimental romance of the Abbé de St. Real about her love for

Carlos. Perez, whose only wish was to blacken Philip indelibly to please

his enemies, and his own paymasters in England and France, hints that

Philip himself connived at his beloved wife’s murder by poison: but even

if the confidential letters of her French friends now before us did not

disprove this, the fact that nothing could be so unfortunate for

Philip’s policy as Isabel’s death would give it the lie.

Isabel had been suffering for months from heart failure and bodily

irregularities; and on the 3rd October 1568, the violent remedies

administered to her by her doctors caused a miscarriage. The poor Queen

knew that she was doomed, for when before daybreak Philip, heartbroken,

came and sat by her bed, she calmly took a last farewell of him, praying

him to be good to their two little girls, to be friendly with Catharine

and King Charles IX., and kind to the attendant ladies who had served

her so well: ‘with other words worthy of admiration, and fit to break

the heart of a good husband, such as the King was. He answered her in

the same way; for he could not believe that she was so near her end, and

promised all she asked him; after which he retired to his room in great

anguish, as I am told.’[196] The dying woman had confessed and received

extreme unction during the night; and early in the morning the French

ambassadors were summoned to her chamber. ‘She knew us at once, and

said, Ah! ambassador, you see me well on the road out of this unhappy

world into a better one ... pray my mother and brother to bear my loss

patiently, and to be satisfied with what pleases me more than any

prosperity I have enjoyed in this world, to go to my Creator, where I

may serve him better than I can here. I shall pray Him that all my

brothers and sisters may live long and happily, as well as my mother and

brother Charles: and I beg you to beseech them to look to their realm,

and prevent heresy taking root. Let them all take my death patiently,

for I am very happy.’ ‘O!’ replied the principal ambassador, ‘your

Majesty will live a long time yet, to see France good and happy.’ ‘No,

no, ambassador,’ she whispered, shaking her head with a faint smile. ‘I

do hope it will be so, but I do not wish to see it. I would much rather

go and see what I hope very soon to see.’

After much more tender talk of her own land and people, the dying Queen

took farewell of her countrymen and prayed awhile with her ghostly

comforters: then fell into slumber for a short ten minutes. At midday,

‘she suddenly opened her eyes, bright and sparkling, and it seemed to me

as if she wished to tell me something more, for they looked straight at

me:[197] and then Isabel of the Peace passed quietly into the world her

gentle soul longed for. ‘We left the palace all in tears, for throughout

the people of this city there is not one, great or small, that doth not

weep; for they all mourn in her the best Queen they have ever had.’

Philip in grief hid himself from the world in the monastery of Saint

Jerome; but his task in the world was greater to him even than his

sorrow or his love. The hopes of the French alliance to extirpate heresy

had failed, failed utterly and completely. England, helping the

insurgent Flemings with all her might, had drifted further, and ever

further, away from him. In France the reformation was growing, and only

two lives—and bad ones—stood between the throne and a Huguenot King.

There was no male heir to inherit the thorny inheritance of championing

orthodox Christianity throughout the world. Whither could Philip turn

for sympathy and a mother for the heir he yearned for? Not to England;

not to France, for both had failed him. Where but to his own kin in

Austria; to his niece Anna, the betrothed of his dead son Carlos: and on

the second anniversary of Isabel’s death Anna of Austria landed in Spain

to marry her uncle Philip. Isabel of the Peace politically had lived in

vain.

BOOK IV

I

ISABEL OF BOURBON

The niece wife of Philip II. bore him many children, of whom one

weakling alone survived to inherit the oppressive crown of his father.

Anna was a homely, devout soul, submissive and obedient to her husband,

ever busy with her needle and her household cares; and, like the other

members of her house, overpowered with the vastness and majesty of the

mission confided by heaven to its chief.[198] On the voyage to Portugal

in 1580 Philip fell ill at Badajoz, and when his life was despaired of

Anna fervently prayed that he might be saved, even if she had to be

sacrificed instead. Her prayer was heard; and as the husband of

fifty-three recovered the wife of thirty sickened and died, leaving

Philip broken and lonely to live the rest of his weary life for his work

alone. The struggle to prevent the victory of reform in France, which

occupied Philip’s later years, and consummated the ruin of his country,

rendered impossible a renewal of the idea of a French and Spanish

coalition, except, indeed, by the conquest of France by Philip, which

many years of fruitless war proved to be impossible, whilst the gallant

cynic, Henry of Navarre, could hold up the national banner of France as

a rally point against the foreign invader.

Once Philip, in sheer despair, turned, when it was too late, to England

again in the hope of bringing it into his system by force, if intrigue

and subornation of conspiracy and murder failed: but with the defeat of

the Armada that hope fled too; and again there was no possible bride but

an Austrian cousin for Philip’s heir, Philip III., and no feasible

policy from Philip’s point of view but a continuance of the close family

alliance with the German Habsburg descendants of Joan the Mad. The

Emperor, it is true, was forced to tolerate his Lutheran princes; but he

and his house made common cause with the Philips when the French cast

greedy eyes towards Catholic Flanders or Italy. Margaret of Austria

brought to sickly, scrofulous Philip III. an anæmic body and a stunted

mind to rear his children. She implored her mother passionately to save

her from the terrifying honour of sharing the gloomy throne of her

cousin, for in her Styrian home she lived the life of a nun, devoted

only to the humble care of the poor and sick of her own land: but she

was sternly told that all must be sacrificed to the supreme duty that

was hers; and thenceforward she, too, lived in the awestricken

atmosphere of religious abnegation, which was the mark of her Spanish

kindred.[199] In besotted, conventual devotion, and frivolous trifling

in turns, her monkish husband and she passed their lives; their

children, of whom they had several, all bloodless decadents of low

vitality, with big mumbling jaws and lack-lustre eyes, brought up in the

same pathetic tradition that to them and Spain—poor, ruined, desolated

Spain now—was confided the sacred duty and honour of upholding religious

orthodoxy throughout the world at any cost or sacrifice.

So long as Henry IV. was King of France, even though he had ‘gone to

mass,’ the close union with Spain was impossible: but on the fateful day

in May 1610 when, in the narrow Paris lane, the dagger of Ravaillac

pierced the heart of the great ‘Béarnais,’ all was changed. The

Queen-Regent of France was one of the Papal Medici, imbued, as they all

were, with the tradition of Spain’s orthodoxy and overwhelming might.

Her marriage with Henry had been a victory for the extreme Catholic

party in Europe; but so long as Henry lived he had prevented violent

reaction. Now that he was gone, with his Huguenot traditions, France and

Spain, it was thought, might again be joined in a Catholic league, and

together impose their form of faith upon the world, either by armed

force or political pressure. It was a foolish, impracticable plan, for

Frenchmen were too far advanced now to be used to play the game of

impotent bankrupt Spain, powerful only in its pride and its traditions.

But James I. of England had been toadying and humiliating himself to

gain Philip’s aid in favour of his son-in-law, the Palatine in Germany,

and it doubtless seemed a good stroke of policy on the part of France

and Spain to leave him and the Lutherans isolated. In any case no time

was lost, and before Henry IV. had lain in his tomb at St. Denis a year

it was agreed that the Spanish Infanta, Anna, should marry Louis XIII.

of France, and that Isabel, or Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of Henry

IV. and Marie de Medici, should become the wife of Philip, Prince of

Asturias, the son and heir of the Spanish King. All the betrothed were

children of tender age, and it was agreed that the exchange of brides

should be deferred until the Infanta was twelve years old (1613).

Pompous and lavish embassies went through the solemn farce of paying

honour to the girl-children respectively as Queen of France and Princess

of Asturias. The Duke of Mayenne, of the house of Guise, ruffled and

swaggered in Madrid with a marriage embassy so splendid in 1612, that

the cost of entertaining him beggared the capital for years; and so keen

was the emulation in sumptuousness of dress and adornments during the

interminable festivities in Madrid to celebrate the double betrothals,

that the Spanish nobles came to dagger-thrusts on the subject in the

palace itself.

In Paris Ruy Gomez’s son, the Duke of Pastrana, paid similar court to

the dark-haired girl of nine who was betrothed to young Philip, heir of

Spain, two years younger. Three years more had to pass, notwithstanding

the impatience of the French, before the backward little Infanta Anna,

in October 1615, was conveyed with a pomp and extravagance that ill

matched the penury of her father’s realm, to the frontier of France,

there to be exchanged for Isabel of Bourbon, her brother’s bride.[200]

On the 9th November 1615 all the chivalry of France and Spain were once

more assembled on either bank of the little stream of Bidasoa that

separated the two countries. Wasteful luxury and vain magnificence had

been squandered wantonly by the Spanish nobles, determined, as usual, to

put the French to shame. At Behovia, the point where the ceremony was to

take place, sumptuous banqueting-halls had been erected upon rafts

moored on each side of the stream, whilst in mid-current another raft

supported a splendid pavilion covered with velvet and cloth of gold, and

carpeted with priceless silken carpets from the East. Here the Duke of

Guise delivered Isabel of France to the Duke of Uceda, in exchange for

Anna of Austria, thenceforward Queen of France. The romantic and

turbulent career of the latter is related elsewhere: here we have to

follow the fortunes of the beautiful dark-haired girl of twelve who,

like Isabel of the Peace fifty-four years before, turned her back upon

her native land to cement the Catholic alliance between France and

Spain.[201]

The circumstances were widely different, for the battle of religious

liberty in Europe was practically won, though the blind faith and vanity

of Philip III. refused, even now, to recognise the fact, or his own

poverty-stricken impotence. The Medici Queen-Regent of France, moreover,

was a very different person from her kinswoman Catharine. She was not

playing her own game so much as that of the cunning Italians who

directed her, and it was soon evident, under Richelieu, that Frenchmen

were no longer to be made the playthings of foreign ambitions. Isabel,

child as she was, had a stout heart and a high spirit, as befitted her

father’s daughter. She was willing enough to be a queen upon the most

pretentious throne in Europe; but she was not made for martyrdom, and,

as we shall see, her marriage was even less influential in securing

lasting peace and co-operation between France and Spain than that of the

previous Isabel had been.

Through Fuenterrabia, San Sebastian and Vitoria, Isabel travelled

towards Burgos, where she was to meet her boy bridegroom. Dressed in

Spanish garb from Vitoria onward, she won all hearts by her gaiety and

brightness; and, as an eyewitness says of her, ‘even if she had French

blood in her veins she had a Spanish spirit.’ Philip III. and his son

met the bride a league from Burgos, and we are told that the prince of

eleven years old was so dazzled with her beauty that he could only gaze

speechless upon her. The next day Burgos was all alive with the

splendour of the welcome of the future Queen, who entered the city on a

white palfrey with a silver saddle and housings of velvet and pearls;

and so, from city to city, smiling and happy, the girl, in the midst of

the inflated Court, slowly made her way to Madrid. On the afternoon of

19th December 1615 Isabel rode from the monastery of St. Jerome[202]

through Madrid to the palace upon the cliff overlooking the valley of

the Manzanares. An eyewitness describes her appearance as she rode

through the mile of crowded narrow streets of old Madrid, under

triumphal arches, past thousands of peopled balconies, hung with

tapestries, with songs and music of welcome all the way. ‘Her Highness

was dressed in the French fashion, with an entire robe of crimson satin

embroidered with bugles, a little cap trimmed with diamonds, and a ruff

beautifully trimmed in French style, and with a rosette and girdle of

diamonds of great size. She went her way, bright and buxom, full of

rejoicing. Her aquiline face was wreathed in smiles, and her fine eyes

flashed from side to side, looking at everything, to the great delight

of the populace.’[203]

It was five years after this, on the 25th November 1620, at the palace

of Pardo, that young Philip and Isabel began their married life

together. Philip was yet barely sixteen when (in March 1621) the low

vitality of his father flickered out, and the monarch, who should have

been a monk, passed, in alternate paroxysms of fear and ecstacies of

hope, from the world in which he had meant so well and done so ill. The

corruption and waste under Lerma and his crew of parasites had bled

Spain to the white, and utter ruin was now the lot of whole populations.

The tradition of the King’s wealth which still lingered could hardly be

kept up now, though at the fall of Lerma some of the worst robbers had

been made to disgorge their booty. The King had been beloved and revered

for his saintliness, but all saw the desolation that his idle dependence

upon favourites had caused. Spain now looked only to the sallow,

long-faced boy, Philip IV., with the light blue eyes and lank flaxen

hair, to save the people from starvation. Not to him, but to the man at

his side, it soon learned to look. He was a big-boned powerful man of

thirty-three, with a great square head, heavy stooping shoulders, fierce

black eyes, burning like live coals in an olive face; and his upturned

twisted moustache added to the haughty imperiousness of his mien. This

was the man, Gaspar de Guzman, Count of Olivares, Duke of St. Lucar, who

made a clean sweep of all the corrupt gang that had fattened upon Spain,

the brood of Rojas and Sandoval, and replaced them with his own

creatures. Philip, like his father, meant well, and was naturally a much

more able man; but he was idle, pleasure-loving, and pathetically unable

to resist temptation, each constantly recurring transgression being

followed by an agony of remorse, only to be again committed when the

first poignancy of regret had passed.

Following the advice of Olivares, he attempted to mend matters by

cutting down expenses alone, instead of changing the system of taxation

and finance; and the ‘spirited foreign policy’ which he adopted soon

involved him in expenditure, which later completed the downfall of the

country. The foolish old dream that catholic unity might be won by

Spanish arms still kept him at war with the Dutch, whilst the Moors were

harrying the Spanish coasts and commerce, and France and Spain were

already at loggerheads again, now that Marie de Medici and her crew had

been thrust into the background. Instead of recognising facts and lying

low to recuperate, Olivares and Philip, with the blinded nation behind

them, were as boastful and haughty as their predecessors had been in the

days of Spain’s strength. The weak poltroon who reigned unworthily in

England, was ever ready to truckle to apparent strength. He had

sacrificed Raleigh at Spain’s bidding, he had been contemptuously used

and scorned by Lerma and Philip III. when he had tried to marry his heir

to a Spanish Infanta, and he had been cleverly kept from an alliance

with France by hopes and half promises. But the Palatinate was still

unrestored, and when Philip III. had died, James made another attempt

with the new King to win Spain’s friendship by a marriage.

The hare-brained trip of Prince Charles and Buckingham to Madrid, to win

the hand of the Infanta and the alliance of Spain, has often been

described, and can hardly be touched upon here. The Prince suddenly

appeared disguised at the English embassy at Madrid on the 7th March

1622, and the next day, to the dismay of Olivares, the awkward visit was

known to all the capital. He and young Philip made the best of a bad

business. To abandon Austria and the Palatinate for the sake of

protestant England did not suit them, but they could be polite. All the

edicts ordering economy of dress, eating, and adornments, were

suspended, and whilst Charles stayed in Madrid a tempest of prodigality

prevailed. Isabel and the Infanta played their parts in the farce with

apprehension and reluctance, for the former knew that the besought

alliance was directed against France, and the Infanta was horrified at

the idea of marrying a heretic. But they did their best to keep up

appearances, especially Isabel, who treated Charles most graciously. The

day after his arrival, Philip and his wife and sister, the latter with a

blue ribbon round her arm to distinguish her, rode in a coach to the

church in the Prado, and Charles, of course quite by accident, met them

both coming and going, to his great satisfaction. Soon after Isabel sent

to the English prince a fine present of white underwear, a nightgown

beautifully worked, and several scented coffers, with golden keys, full

of toilet requisites, probably guessing that in his rapid voyage he had

not brought such luxuries with him; and at the great bull fight at the

Plaza Mayor in honour of the Prince, she sat in brown satin, bordered

with gold, in the fine balcony of the city bread-store overlooking the

Plaza, as Charles, in black velvet and white feathers, rode his fine bay

horse into the arena by the side of Philip, to take his place in an

adjoining box.

Before the masked ball on Easter Sunday, given by the Admiral of Castile

in Charles’s honour, Isabel in white satin, covered with precious

stones, dined in public; and then, changing her dress to one of black

and gold, awaited the English Prince to lead her to the ballroom. There

during the entertainment, and on all other occasions, he sat at her

right hand under a royal canopy, with Philip on her left; whilst the

Earl of Bristol, on his knees before them, interpreted the small talk

suitable to the occasion. And so, with comedies and cane tourneys,

banquets and balls, Charles and Buckingham were beguiled by Olivares for

well nigh six months, until the farce grew stale, and Charles wended his

way home again, nominally betrothed to the Infanta, but really outwitted

and his country humiliated. The defeat was softened by much loving

profession and splendid presents from Philip and his courtiers to the

English Prince; and it is somewhat curious that, on the departure of

Charles, the present given to him by Isabel again took the form of white

linen garments, fifty amber-dressed skins, two hundred and fifty scented

kidskins for gloves, a large sum in silver crowns, and other

things.[204]

Philip and his wife had now settled down to their regular life in the

most brilliant court in Europe. It was the Augustan age of Spanish

literature and the drama, and a perfect craze for comedies and satirical

verse seized upon the Spanish people, under the influence of the King

and Queen, both of them passionately fond of the theatre and diversions

of all sorts. Isabel, like her husband, was conventionally devout, and

her religious benefactions were constant, as well as her attendances at

the ceremonies of the church;[205] but in her devotion she had none of

the gloomy monastic character which had afflicted her husband’s family,

and the social demeanour of the courtiers and of the townspeople

generally underwent a complete change in her time. Her manners, indeed,

were so free and debonair as to have given rise to some quite

unsupported scandal as to her faithfulness to her husband. Madrid was a

perfect hotbed of tittle-tattle; everybody considered it necessary to be

able to spin satirical verses, and as these were generally anonymous and

in manuscript, the reputation of no one, high or low, was safe from

attack.

The reaction from the rigid propriety of previous reigns led the Court

of Philip IV. to assume a licence that quite shocked foreigners. Much of

the day was passed in parading up and down the Calle Mayor (High Street)

in coaches, and much of the night in summer in promenading in the dry

bed of the river. Gallantry became the fashion, and ladies, very far

from resenting, welcomed broad compliments and doubtful jests addressed

to them by strangers in the streets.[206] The palace itself, especially

the new pleasure palace of the Buen Retiro, built in the Prado for

Philip by Olivares in 1632, was a notorious focus of intrigue;

encouraged by the example of Philip himself, by far the most dissolute

king of his line. From his early youth he had delighted in amateur

acting, and under a pseudonym (Un Ingenio de esta Corte), wrote comedies

himself, and delighted in the society of dramatic people.

Isabel was as keen a lover of the stage as her husband, and from the

first days after the mourning for Philip III. was over, she began her

favourite diversion of private theatricals in her own apartments. From

October 1622, every Sunday and Thursday during the winter, as well as on

holidays, comedies were performed by regular actors in her private

theatre. Some of these comedies may be mentioned to show the taste of

the Queen in such matters. ‘_The Scorned Sweetheart_,’ ‘_The Loss of

Spain_,’ and ‘_The Jealousy of a Horse_,’ were three plays by Pedro

Valdés, for which Isabel paid 300 reals (£6) each, the previous price

having been £4. ‘_Gaining Friends_,’ ‘_The Power of Opportunity_,’ and

‘_How our Eyes are Cheated_,’ ‘_The Fortunate Farmer_,’ ‘_The Woman’s

Avenger_,’ and ‘_The Husband of His Sister_,’ were others; and the total

number of such plays represented in the Queen’s apartments in the palace

during the winter of 1622–23, was forty-three, the fees for which

reached 13,500 reals (£270).[207]

Whilst the Prince of Wales was in Madrid the theatres in the palace, and

the two public courtyard theatres in the capital, had a busy season.

James Howell, writing from Madrid at the time,[208] says, ‘There are

many excellent poems made here since the Prince’s arrival, which are too

long to couch in a letter. Yet I will venture to send you this one

stanza of Lope de Vega:

“Carlos Estuardo soy,

Que, siendo amor mi guia,

Al cielo de España voy,

Por ver mi estrella Maria.”

“Charles Stuart here am I

Guided by love afar,

Into the Spanish sky

To see Maria my star.”

‘There are comedians once a week come to the palace, where, under a

great canopy, the Queen and the Infanta sit in the middle, our Princeps

and Don Carlos on the Queen’s right hand, the King and the little

Cardinal (_i.e._ the King’s boy-brother, Ferdinand) on the Infanta’s

left hand.’

Philip’s notorious and scandalous infidelity to his wife, to whom,

nevertheless, he was devotedly attached, did not prevent him from being

violently jealous of any appearance of special loving homage to her

beauty and charm. At one of the great cane tourneys to celebrate his

accession in the summer of 1621, it was noticed that when Juan de

Tassis, Count of Villamediana, rode with his troop of horsemen into the

arena, he was wearing a sash covered with the silver coins called

_reales_ (royals), and flaunting as his motto, ‘My loves are reals’ (or

royal). The Count was a spiteful poetaster, neither good looking nor

young, but boastful and presumptuous; and the quidnuncs of the capital

who flocked ‘Liar’s parade,’[209] began to whisper that this was a

challenge to the love of the Queen; and that the King, when his wife had

remarked that Villamediana aimed well, had replied, ‘Yes, but he aims

too high.’ It is now fairly certain that Villamediana’s homage was not

intended for the Queen, but for another lady, named Francisca de Tavara,

with whom the King was carrying on an intrigue at the time;[210] and

beyond her usual jovial heartiness there is no ground for supposing that

Isabel gave Villamediana any encouragement.

But in the following spring of 1622, when the Court was at Aranjuez, a

far more serious matter happened which produced tragic results for

Villamediana. There was a great festival to celebrate Philip’s

seventeenth birthday, and one of the attractions was a temporary theatre

of canvas and wood erected in the ‘island garden,’ and beautifully

adorned, in which was to be represented at night a comedy in verse

written by the Count of Villamediana, and dedicated to the Queen. The

comedy was called ‘_La Gloria de Niquea_,’ and Isabel was to represent

the part of the goddess of beauty. All the Court was assembled, the King

being in his seat with his brothers and sister, and the Queen in the

retiring rooms behind the stage. The inside of the flimsy building was

of course lit brilliantly with wax candles and lamps, whilst in the

densely wooded gardens outside all was dark, when suddenly, at the

moment that the prologue had been finished, a cry went up from behind

the curtain: and then a long tongue of flame licked up the side, and

immediately the whole of the stage was aflame. Panic seized upon the

gaily bedizened crowd, and there was a rush to escape. In the confusion

the King with difficulty found his way out, only to rush to the back of

the edifice in search of his wife. Villamediana had been before him, and

Philip found his wife half fainting in the Count’s arms.

Whatever may be the truth of the matter, it was soon noised about by the

scandalmongers of Madrid that Villamediana had planned the whole affair,

and had purposely set fire to the place that he might have an excuse for

clasping the Queen in his arms. This was on the 8th April 1622; and

when, in August of the same year, Villamediana was assassinated in his

coach at nightfall in the Calle Mayor, within a few yards of his own

house,[211] all fingers pointed to Philip himself as the instigator of

the crime; and the current jingle ascribed to Lope de Vega, in which it

says that ‘_el impulso fué soberano_’ echoed public opinion on the

matter. No blame, however, in any case can be ascribed to Isabel, nor

did Philip ever cease to hold her in affection and esteem.

She was a true daughter of her father, sage in counsel, bold in action,

but with a gaiety of heart that often made her pleasures look frivolous

and unbecoming. More Spanish than the Spaniards, she loved the bullfight

and the theatre with an intensity that delighted her husband’s subjects,

who were crazy for both pastimes, but in her boisterous vitality she

would often countenance amusements contrived for her which we should now

think coarse. Quarrels and fights between country women would be

incited, or nocturnal tumults by torchlight in the gardens of Aranjuez

or the Retiro, arranged for her to witness; snakes or other noxious

reptiles would be secretly set loose on the floor of a crowded theatre

to the confusion of the spectators, whilst the Queen almost laughed

herself into a fit, at one of the windows overlooking the scene. The

Court indeed during the first years of her married life was a merry one,

notwithstanding its ostentatious devotion; and, although Olivares more

than once urged the King to take a more active interest in the

government and give less time to his amusements, the minister’s enemies,

and he had many, averred that there was nothing he really liked better

than to keep the young monarch immersed in pleasure, that he himself

might rule supreme.[212]

Much as Isabel herself loved pleasure, she began to be anxious, as

troubles at home and abroad accumulated, at the complete abandonment of

public affairs to the minister, and she urged Philip most earnestly to

give more time to his duties. She had good reason to be distrustful, for

she saw how weak to resist his impulses Philip was. His love affairs

were legion, and as in the case of most of his courtiers, gallantry

became a habit with him. There was, however, one affair of Philip’s that

gave his wife more disquietude than most of the others. Olivares, it was

said, in pursuance of his system, had agents all over Spain to send to

Madrid the most talented actors and attractive actresses that could be

found; and in 1627 there appeared as a member of a very clever troupe at

the ‘Corral de la Pacheca’[213] a girl of sixteen named Maria Calderon.

She was no great beauty, but of extraordinary grace and fascination,

with a voice so sweet, and speech so captivating, that she subdued all

hearts. Philip saw her on the stage, and fell in love with her at once.

She was summoned to the room overlooking the courtyard that served the

King for a private box, in order that he might listen more closely to

the cadence of her lovely voice, and the inflammable heart of Philip

grew warmer still. From the Corral to the palace was but a step when the

king willed it, and the ‘Calderona’ became Philip’s acknowledged

mistress. Gifts and caresses were piled upon her by the love-lorn King;

and the Calderona, proud of her position, turned a severe face to all

other lovers, needing, as she said, no favour but royal favour.

On the 17th April 1629 she had a son by the King, to the great delight

of Philip. The child Juan of Austria was the handsomest member of his

house, and Philip’s affection for him from the first was intense;

somewhat to Isabel’s chagrin when she herself bore him a son six months

afterwards.[214] But from the worthy ‘Calderona’ she had no more rivalry

to fear. As soon as the actress could go out she sought the King, and,

throwing herself at his feet, craved permission, humbly and tearfully,

to devote the rest of her life to religion in a convent, now that she

had been honoured by bearing a son to the King. Philip loved her still

and hesitated, but she firmly refused to cohabit with him again; and

with sorrow he gave way, and the Calderona became a nun.[215]

Isabel’s children were many, five who died at, or soon after, their

births having preceded the looked-for heir of Spain, Don Baltasar

Carlos, that chubby, sturdy little Prince (born in October 1629) who

prances his fat pony for ever upon the canvas of Velazquez. The fastuous

taste of the King and Court was satisfied to the full in the baptism of

Baltasar Carlos. The Countess of Olivares, who was as supreme in the

palace as her husband was in the country, held the babe at the font,

seated, as we are told by an eyewitness, upon ‘a seat of rock crystal,

the most costly piece of furniture ever seen in Europe’; and presents

were showered upon the midwife to the value of thirteen thousand ducats.

As soon as the Queen was able to appear, her birthday (21st November)

was celebrated on this occasion as it had never been before. Masquerades

on horseback, torchlight parades, cane contests and bullfights succeeded

each other, in all of which the King made a sumptuous appearance with

his brother, Don Carlos; and the Queen, who had given an heir to the

crown, was honoured to the full.

This splendid Court, strutting and posturing in rich garments upon the

brink of the slope which was leading to Spain’s overthrow, had the

advantage of being immortalised upon canvas by the greatest master of

portraiture that ever lived, and laid bare to the very soul by some of

the keenest satirists who ever wielded pen. The battue parties, in which

Philip and his wife delighted, for the killing of stags in an enclosure,

are brought before us as if we were present by the great picture in

which Velazquez has portrayed the scene.[216] In the park of Aranjuez,

with the afternoon sun glinting through the trees, dark against a

cloudless sky, the white canvas enclosure is erected. Into its gradually

narrowing limits the frightened deer have been driven by mounted

beaters, and at the only exit through the neck of the funnel are

stationed the gentlemen, beneath a sort of platform of leafy boughs

decked with red cloth, in which the ladies sit. The central figure of

the twelve ladies, seated upon a crimson cushion, the better to see the

sport, is the Queen, Isabel of Bourbon, dressed in a yellow robe, and

wearing a white bow upon her head. Beneath the platform there await,

mounted, the onrush of the deer, Philip and his two brothers, Carlos and

Ferdinand, and, of course, Olivares. With their hunting knives, they

slash at the deer as they fly past underneath the ladies’ bower, killing

some, ham-stringing others, and leaving the rest that escape to be dealt

with by the hounds awaiting them beyond. The ground beneath the bower is

drenched with the warm blood of the butchered beasts, and the ladies

smile approval at the sickly spectacle, whilst groups of courtiers,

servants, and beaters, crowd the foreground and discuss the King’s

prowess.

Another hunting scene, a little less repugnant to modern ideas, is the

famous ‘Boar Hunt’ in the National Gallery in London. Here the canvas

enclosure is in the hunting seat of the Pardo, and Philip, on his

prancing mount, is just thrusting his forked javelin into the flank of a

passing boar, whilst around him are his courtiers and companions in the

sport, with Olivares nearest; and in the arena there are some clumsy

blue carriages, with partially curtained windows innocent of glass

except in front, in one of which sits Queen Isabel. The mules of her

coach have, of course, been unharnessed and put out of harm’s way; but

as the boars are agile and fierce, and had been known to leap into the

coaches, the ladies themselves are armed with light javelins to repel

them. Every detail of the life of this pleasure-loving Court has been

fixed for us by the great painter: the ladies and gentlemen in the garb

in which they lived, the dwarfs and buffoons who amused them, the

palaces in which they intrigued; and, as a running accompaniment always,

the sated weary face of the King from youth to age.

Fair and lymphatic, with dull blue eyes, and colourless sallow face,

Philip had inherited the tradition that in all public appearances the

King of Spain must never smile: and, mad votary of pleasure as he was,

he never moved a muscle either in delight or annoyance whilst he was

behind the footlights. Isabel was more spontaneous, and Spanish

etiquette never crushed her. But as time went on and the clouds piled up

for the coming tempest, her face grew heavier and her eyes more sad. Her

portrait was painted many times by Velazquez, though only one specimen

remains in the Museo del Prado, the equestrian figure, painted at about

the time of Baltasar’s birth before misfortune had spoilt her life.

Another likeness of her, now at Hampton Court, was painted ten years

later (1638), shows the change wrought by trouble: but in all

Velazquez’s representations of the Queen, we see the same

characteristics: the large, expressive black eyes, the broad spacious

forehead, and the strong full jaw; and, though the general aspect was

more like her buxom mother than her clever father, Isabel’s countenance

is alive with intelligence. In the later portraits the face grows weary,

and the lower part is flaccid and heavy, but in all the painted

portraits of Isabel by Velazquez, we have the woman herself before us;

not a sensuous idealisation of her, like that painted by Rubens, and now

at the Louvre.

[Illustration:

ISABEL OF BOURBON.

]

If the painter has handed to us by his genius the exact reflection of

this Court in a way that makes it live for us more vividly, perhaps,

than any other, Quevedo and his followers, especially Velez de Guevara

in _El Diablo Cojuelo_, have left in biting prose records no less

faithful of its amusements, its follies, and crimes. By the light held

up by the satirists we see an utterly decadent society, sunk, from the

King downwards, into a slough of apathetic despondency of ever bettering

things, whilst each individual strives madly to get as much pleasure as

he can wring out of life, by fair means or foul, before the catastrophe

overwhelms them all. Faith has decayed, and trembling superstition mixed

with scoffing irreverence has taken its place: idleness is everywhere;

poverty and squalor seek to masquerade as nobility, in order to claim

the privilege to plunder which Court and Church alone possess, and

labour is scorned as beneath the subjects of a King so wealthy and

powerful as the sovereign of Spain is still assumed to be, in the face

of all evidence to the contrary. A pretentious, hollow society it was,

where all sought to share in the scramble, even at second or third hand,

for the possessions of the State, oblivious to the fact that the State

itself could possess nothing but what the individual citizens supplied.

Pretence was not limited to rank and material possessions. The noble

poet and satirist kept a sycophantic man of letters to supply him with

the lucubrations that moved the Court to admiration when they bore the

name of a marquis, the cities swarmed with sham students, who pattered

Latin tags, and cadged on the strength of a scholarship that was not

theirs: and when showy pageants palled upon the King, and even his

beloved comedies failed to spur his jaded wit, Philip could always find

solace in the pedantic and affected academies and poetical contests over

which he was so fond of presiding in his palace. There well-studied

impromptus were mouthed, far-fetched conceits declaimed with a pomposity

worthy of inspired prophecy, and preciosity run mad twisted and befouled

the noble Castilian speech into the bastard _Latiniparla_, at which

Quevedo gibed whilst himself revelling in it.

It was a Court of mean shams and squalid splendour, where all was

rottenness but the fair outside. How ostentatious that outside was may

be seen in the many records of court festivities that a bombastic age

has handed to us. They are for the most part insufferably tedious

catalogues of the dress and ornaments of pompously named nobles,

courtiers, and favourites;[217] but a few details of two great feasts in

which Isabel took a conspicuous part, may be set forth here as a

specimen of the diversions of her time. An entertainment, given to the

sovereigns by the Countess of Olivares early in June 1631, in the garden

of her brother, the Count of Monterey, inspired Olivares with the idea

of outdoing all previous efforts in the same direction. The time was

short, for the night of St. John (24th June) was the day fixed. Two

comedies had to be written specially for the occasion; and Lope de Vega,

the most marvellously prolific playwright that ever lived, managed to

compose one of them in three days: whilst Quevedo and Antonio Mendoza,

put on their mettle by Lope’s rapidity, wrote another jointly in a

single day, whilst Olivarez himself snatched rare moments of leisure

from State affairs, of which he was the universal minister, to

superintend the rehearsals.

As if by enchantment, in a few days there sprang up in the gardens[218]

a sumptuous pavilion from which the King and Queen, with their favoured

courtiers, might see the play. In front was erected the open air

theatre, crowded with crystal lights and rare flowers, whilst all around

were platforms for other guests, choristers, etc. At nine o’clock at

night, Philip and Isabel alighted from their coach, and were received by

Olivares to the sounds of soft music. When they had taken their seats,

Philip on a chair of state, and Isabel on a pile of cushions, trays of

presents were brought them, perfumes, embroidered scented handkerchiefs,

and essences in cut glass flasks,[219] Isabel being especially asked to

accept in addition a jewelled Italian fan. Quevedo’s comedy, _Quien mas

miente medra mas_ (He who lies most thrives most) was represented first,

after a musical prologue and a poetic welcome to Isabel recited by the

famous actress Maria de Riquelme. The first representation occupied two

hours and a half, we are told by an eyewitness: ‘during which many

excellent dances were introduced; and although the players, having had

little time to study, did not succeed in bringing out all the witty

invention of the verses, it is certain that in many ordinary comedies

together could not be found such an abundance of smart jests as in this

one alone; for one day’s work was sufficient for Don Francisco de

Quevedo’s wit to invent it all.’