When the first comedy was finished Philip and Isabel were led to the

adjoining garden of the Duke of Maqueda,[220] where there had been

erected two bowers or summer-houses of leaves and blossoms, with a great

number of coloured lights. These two arbors, one for the King and the

other for the Queen, communicated by an arched passage of foliage, and

were surrounded by similar erections for the suite, each bower being

supplied with a table of light refreshments. In the King’s bower there

was a hamper containing a long cloak of brown cloth, ornamented at the

edge by scrolls of black and silver, solid silver hanging buttons, and

loops serving for fastening. This was accompanied by a white

wide-brimmed hat trimmed with brown feathers and a white aigrette, and a

Walloon falling collar,[221] which was still occasionally worn in place

of the almost universal _golilla_. The King’s brothers were similarly

supplied with disguises; whilst in the Queen’s bower the hamper

contained a mirror, a brown woollen cloak embroidered at the bottom with

sprigs of black silk and silver, the fastenings in this case also being

solid silver hanging buttons and silver loops. The cloak was lined with

silk of the same colour, hemmed and stitched with black and silver, and

with it was a beautiful lace mantilla, a pleated lace ruff, and a white

hat adorned with brown and white plumes and spangles. The whole Court

was thus supplied with wraps and headgear against the night air. A light

supper of surpassing daintiness was then served in the arbors, and the

whole party, politely supposed to be disguised, proceeded to witness the

second comedy; the Queen in her capricious garb, ‘adding to her natural

and marvellous graciousness and beauty the extraordinary attraction of

the strangeness of attire, without losing an atom of the dignity which

distinguishes her Majesty, no less than the other admirable virtues and

perfections which shine in her.’ We are assured that the unusual hats

and garments worn by the King and his brothers were equally powerless to

spoil their dignified appearance, ‘as they unite those qualities which

vulgar censure and envy always strive to keep apart, namely, great

beauty and a noble air:’ and the writer of the account from which I

quote, nervous, apparently, at what the outside public would say to such

a derogation of royalty as to don disguises, assures us that only a very

select company was allowed to be present.[222]

The comedy of Lope de Vega, ‘_La Noche de San Juan_,’ was then

represented on the open air stage, and a short concert followed, after

which the King and Queen were conducted to a flower-decked gallery

erected in the other adjoining garden.[223] Here, after midnight,

another delicate refection was partaken of, the Count and Countess of

Olivares serving the King and Queen, the whole banquet being so well

organised that everything went off with the utmost decorum and

quietness, except for the sweet music which enlivened the feast. When

the day was just breaking the King and Queen entered their coach and,

after a few turns in the Prado, rode home to the palace to bed. Olivares

was praised to the skies for the organisation of this lavish feast, and

the wonder is expressed that the licentious crowd of people who

frequented the Prado at night should have been so awed by the presence

of the King in the garden adjoining, that no disturbance or disorder

took place.

This feast, fine as it was, was completely thrown in the shade by

another which took place a few yards away, two years later (1633), when,

at tremendous expense, and much unjust appropriation of other people’s

property, Olivares run up and sumptuously furnished, in an amazing short

time, the pleasure palace of the Buen Retiro, which afterwards became

Philip’s favourite place of residence, where his comedies, academies,

concerts, recitations and masquerades could be indulged in with more

propriety than in the gloomy, old half-Moorish palace on the cliff at

the other end of the town. The house warming of the Buen Retiro lasted

for a week in one continual round of tedious entertainment, in which

invention and lavishness exhausted itself; but this was only the first

of a series of such revels in the same place, for which any pretext was

seized.

In January 1637, for instance, when Philip learnt that his

brother-in-law, Ferdinand, had been elected King of the Romans, and

future Emperor, an entertainment was ordered on a prodigious scale at

the Buen Retiro. Three thousand men were set to work to level a hill

that Pinelo (Anales) says ‘had stood since the world was made,’ for the

purpose of building a wooden enclosure 608 feet long and 480 wide. Four

hundred and eight large balconies or boxes surrounded this vast space,

which was painted to look like masonry outside, whilst the inside was

hung with silk and tapestries, and a silver railing ran round the front

of the boxes. Nine hundred huge candelabra, ‘with four lights in each,’

illuminated the plaza; and the royal box, with its gilded roofs and

pillars, and its green and gold appointments, glittered with mirrors

which cast back the twinkling lights that fell upon them. Blazonry,

imperial and royal crowns, scutcheons of arms and ‘conceited devices,’

were displayed on every side; and when, on the 15th February (Sunday),

Philip came to the feast in state from the house, in the Carrera de San

Geronimo, where he had robed, through a broad lane of people, with

torch-bearers standing shoulder to shoulder throughout his route, people

said that never had such a gorgeous show been seen in Spain.

With martial music, before them rode in his train, sixteen bands of

nobles, twelve in each band, all dressed alike in black velvet and

silver, and every man carrying in his right hand a lighted wax taper,

whilst he restrained his prancing steed with the left. Last of all the

bands came those of Olivares and the King, dressed like the others, but

with some richer ornaments; and then great triumphal cars of strange and

showy designs, made by Cosme Lotti, the clever Florentine. Each of them

was 30 feet long and 46 feet high, lit with 100 torches, and contained

innumerable figures and devices; and bands of music, the weight being so

great that twenty-four bullocks were needed to draw each one, the

bullocks themselves being hung with crimson, and accompanied by men in

the garb of Orientals bearing silver torches. After them followed forty

savages, whose clubs were torches; and as the great procession entered

the enclosed space, and each party passed before Queen Isabel in the

royal box, a fanfare sounded and the men saluted the sovereign; the

whole procession, after having completed the circle, forming up in front

of the royal box, whilst the mummers on the cars represented before the

Queen ‘a colloquy of peace and war.’

Philip’s band of nobles in their musical ride and intricate evolutions,

of course excelled all others; and the King, acclaimed as the champion

cavalier of his realm, ascended to his wife’s box to lay at her feet the

guerdon of his prowess, and witness the rest of the feast at her side.

For ten days thereafter the feasting and vain show went on, comedies,

concerts, banquets, balls, water fetes on the lake, illumination of the

woods, bull fights by torchlight, a poetical contest and greasy poles; a

cotillon in which the party pelted each other with eggshells full of

perfume, and a hundred other devices to waste time and money,[224] and

to beguile Philip from the looming affairs of State, now wholly managed

by the strong, dark-faced man with the big head and bowed shoulders,

whom most people hated for his imperiousness and his greed, the King’s

bogey as some called him, the second King of Spain, the Count Duke of

Olivares.

The brilliant hopes of peace and retrenchment which had greeted Philip’s

accession had all been falsified. The Catholic union with France

represented by the marriages of Philip with Isabel and of Louis XIII.

with the Infanta Anna, had failed before the marriages themselves were

complete; for the ambitious projects of Philip II. were again being

revived by Olivares, who dreamed once more that Spain, cast down in the

dust as she was, might yet hold the hegemony over the powers of Europe,

and dictate to Christendom the articles of its faith. It was a vain,

foolish, vision in the circumstances, for not of material strength alone

had Spain been stripped, but of the real secret of its short

predominance, the firm conviction of divine selection and of the

invincibility of its sacred cause. The country was as politically

heterogeneous as ever, whilst it had lost the homogeneity it had

borrowed from religious exaltation; and yet, with its rival, France,

growing daily in national solidarity and contributive capability under

Richelieu, Spain was hurried by Olivares into a perfect fever for

conquest, and to the arrogant reassertion of its old exploded claims.

The employment of Spanish troops to overrun the Palatinate and reduce

Bohemia, and the recrudescence of the interminable war against the

Dutch, had knit the two branches of the house of Austria closer together

than ever, and strengthened the Emperor immensely. It was clear, that

unless Richelieu struck promptly and boldly, France would once again, if

Olivares had his way, be shut in by a circle of enemies. France and

Savoy, alarmed at the revived pretensions of Spain, made common cause

with the protestant powers, and soon all Europe was at war. Spain was

ruined, but at least the court nobles and the church were rich, and the

national pride was excited to the utmost. The war was primarily against

France, but Isabel of Bourbon was as fiercely Spanish as if her father

had not been Henry the Great, and she herself set the example of

sacrifice. The jewels she loved so well were sold to provide

men-at-arms; the ladies, who took their tone from the Queen, sent their

valuables the same way; the nobles, aroused by appeals to their pride,

contributed voluntarily a million ducats to the war fund; and the church

opened its hoards to the extent of raising and maintaining twenty

thousand troops. All French property in Spain was confiscated, and the

war for a time was carried on with an energy that reminded men of the

great times of the Emperor. At first the Spaniards and Austrians carried

all before them. Tilly in Germany, Spinola in Flanders, and Fadrique de

Toledo on the sea, revived the glory of the house of Austria; and

Spanish pride rose once more to crazy arrogance. Philip the Great, the

Planet King, were the titles already given to the idle young man, whom

Olivares flattered and controlled. But when the first gust of enthusiasm

was past, it was clear that Spain could not provide funds to carry on

war by land and sea the world over; and peace was made with England;

Savoy was won over, and thenceforward it was a duel to the death between

the house of Austria and the house of France, between Olivares and

Richelieu.

For years the struggle went on with varying military phases, but with

the inevitable result of reducing poverty-stricken, idle Spain to

absolute penury. Every device to raise more money was tried, and all in

vain. Crushing taxes upon production, debasement of the coinage,

confiscation, repudiation and robbery, were but weak resources to

maintain a great foreign war by a bankrupt State; and unless Olivares

confessed failure more money must be had. The Cortes of Castile was

powerless to check the national waste, but the Cortes of Aragon,

Catalonia and Valencia, were still vigorous, and resisted all attempts

to extort money except by their votes, grudgingly given only after much

haggling. Olivares had understood as clearly as Ferdinand and Isabel had

done, that for the King of Spain to be powerful enough to cope with

France he must control the whole resources of Spain. The bond of

religious exaltation had dissolved, and could not be restored; but the

unification on political lines might be effected by weakening the

separate autonomous institutions of the outlying States.

This was the plan of Olivares; doubtless a wise one if pursued patiently

and cautiously in times of peace and in an era of interior reforms. But

Olivares, like Ferdinand the Catholic before him, needed national unity

in a hurry, in order to obtain resources to fight France, not for the

purpose of making Spain a homogeneous peaceful nation,[225] and his

reckless attempts to obtain money for his war with France by over-riding

the autonomous privileges of Catalonia and Portugal, and extorting

taxation without parliamentary sanction, precipitated the ruin that had

long threatened. In June 1640 Barcelona flamed out in revolt against

Castile, and soon all Catalonia, and part of Aragon and Valencia, had

repudiated the dominion of Philip, and had made common cause with

France. Six months later, in December 1640, Portugal for similar reasons

proclaimed the Duke of Braganza king, and cast off for ever the yoke of

Spain.

Philip, plunged in his pleasures, as we have seen, was kept in the dark.

The Catalan insurgents were for him merely a band of rioters, as

Olivares assured him, who would soon be suppressed; and when Portugal

proclaimed its freedom the minister had the effrontery to rush into

Philip’s chamber with an appearance of joy, and congratulated him upon

gaining a new dukedom and a vast estate. ‘How?’ asked the King. ‘Sire,’

replied Olivares, ‘the Duke of Braganza has gone mad and revolted

against your Majesty. All his belongings are now forfeit and are yours.’

But Philip knew better, and for once lost his marble serenity. Blow

after blow fell upon him. Starving subjects, a crippled trade, an empty

treasury, and his richest realms in revolt: these were the results of

his twenty years rule, and all he had to show was the hollow glory of

battles gained far away in quarrels not his own.

He was good-hearted and really loved his subjects, but he had never

learnt to rule, for he had never ruled his own passions or curbed his

inclinations; and he was in despair when the truth came to him, bit by

bit. Frantic prayers; tears and vows of amendment were his way of

dealing with all the blows of fortune: but there were others at his side

who were more practical and determined than he. For years the yoke of

Olivares and his wife had galled the neck of Isabel. Fond of pleasure as

she was, she had a statesman’s mind, and her love for her promising son

Baltasar, now aged thirteen, and the pride of his parents’ heart, had

sharpened her wits as she saw his great inheritance slipping away from

him under the rule of a minister whom she personally disliked for his

rudeness even to her.[226] Again and again she had urged Philip to play

the man and head his own armies in the field. Philip was willing, even

eager, to do so; but Olivares would not hear of it, and the breach

widened between the Queen and the minister. Olivares was detested by

most of the principal nobles and churchmen. His policy of war could only

be paid for out of the plunder derived from them, since all other

classes were reduced to poverty, and the elements of discontent

gradually grouped around Isabel.

At last Isabel’s prayers, for once, overrode Olivares’ counsel, and

Philip stood firm in his determination to lead his own armies to rescue

Catalonia from the French. Olivares left no stone unturned to defeat the

Queen. Obedient physicians certified that the voyage would injure the

King’s health, submissive Councils voted against the risk of the

sovereign’s life in war, and constitutional lawyers laid down that it

was not proper for the King to go. Philip, tired out at last, snatched a

report of the Council from the hands of the Protonotary who was about to

present it, and, tearing it into pieces, cried, ‘Bring me no more

reports about my going to Catalonia, but prepare for the journey, for go

I will.’ The royal confessor—of course a creature of Olivares—added his

remonstrance against the King’s journey, but was at once stopped by

Philip, and was told that if Olivares did not want to go he could stay

away; and if he was not at Aranjuez when the King passed through he

would not wait for him.

It was a victory for Isabel that presaged the great minister’s fall; for

Olivares dared not leave his master’s side, and the Queen remained in

the capital as Regent. Every device was adopted to delay the King’s

progress. Money was wanted, and when that had been extorted, in many

cases by imprisonment,[227] the lavish and pompous preparations for the

journey were endless. Nine state coaches and six litters, a hundred and

three saddle horses, with crowds of courtiers, were considered necessary

for a campaign; and every grandee and titled nobleman in Spain was

warned that he must join the royal train. When, at last, after visits to

numberless altars, Philip took leave of his wife at Vacia Madrid in

April 1642, it was only to be delayed on the way for many weeks in

ostentatious feasts, hunting parties and frivolities, before he at

length arrived at Saragossa. By that time Aragon itself was half overrun

by the French, and Philip, fully awake now to the terrible condition of

affairs, grew ever more gloomy with his minister, who even now found

means to keep the King isolated at Saragossa, miles away from the

hostilities, in discounted inaction.

In the meanwhile Isabel in Madrid, free from the terrifying presence of

the favourite, organised the party of his opponents. She had always been

a favourite with the crowd for her popular manners, but now she won

their hearts completely; for they knew she was against the man upon

whose back they laid all their woes. She visited the guards and

barracks, mustered the regiments in the capital and addressed to them

harangues, exciting their loyalty to the King and Spain. Once more she

sacrificed her ornaments, devoted herself to the comfort of the

soldiers, raised a new regiment at her own expense in her son’s name,

presided over the Councils, and infused more activity and enthusiasm in

the administration than had been seen for years.

Isabel of Bourbon had seized her opportunity. Up to that time she had

been simply an appanage of the splendours of the idle King; now, with

the power of a Regent and the favour of the people, she became the

strongest personality in Spain. Her letters to the King were vigorous

and brave; and he thenceforward treated her with greater consideration,

as if up to that time he had never realised that his wife was a woman of

talent and spirit. Philip was kept idle at Saragossa, away from his army

and his nobles for months. Once he acted on his own initiative and

appointed a new commander-in-chief, the Marquis of Leganés, a kinsman of

Olivares; but the appointment was unfortunate. At the first engagement

afterwards Philip’s army was utterly routed before Lerida; and as winter

approached, with a badly fed, unpaid dwindling force, quarrelling

generals, and his best provinces held by France, Philip returned to

Madrid with an aching heart at the end of the year 1642.

He found the tone in his palace very different from when he had left it.

There were four women, all of whom had Philip’s ear, and who hated

Olivares. The Queen, Anna of Austria, Queen of France, Philip’s sister,

the Duchess of Mantua (Margaret of Savoy), his cousin, who had been his

viceroy in Portugal, and who rightly blamed the minister for the loss of

the country; she, moreover, being kept in semi-imprisonment at Ocaña by

the minister’s orders, and Doña Anna de Guevara, the King’s old nurse,

who was also forbidden at Court by the same influence. These ladies were

all in communication with each other and with the nobles who were

Olivares’ enemies, led by the Counts of Paredes and Castrillo. ‘My good

intentions and my son’s innocence,’ Isabel told Paredes, ‘must for once

serve the King for eyes: for if he sees through those of the Count Duke

much longer, my son will be reduced to a poor King of Castile.’

A week or two after the King’s return, Isabel struck her blow at the

tottering favourite. The first sign of the event was the escape of the

King’s Savoy cousin, the Duchess of Mantua, from Ocaña, and her arrival

at Madrid late at night, after a ride of forty miles through a storm of

sleet. Olivares was furious, and kept her waiting for four hours before

he assigned her two wretched rooms in one of the royal convents. But

Isabel received her in the palace with open arms the next morning. Then

the banished nurse, Anna de Guevara, appeared in the palace in defiance

of Olivares. That afternoon Philip visited his wife’s room, and she,

kneeling before him, with little Baltasar in her arms, implored him for

the sake of their son to dismiss his evil minister before it was too

late to rescue the realms his ineptitude had lost. In a torrent of words

Isabel poured forth the pent-up complaints of years; the wars that had

ruined the country, the starving people, the lost provinces, the waste

and frivolity that had been the rule of their lives, the insults and

slights which she, personally, had suffered at the hands of Olivares and

his wife, and the shame that a king, into whose hands God had confided

so sacred a task, should delegate it to others.

Philip was deeply moved, though he said nothing; but as he left his

wife’s chamber, he was confronted in the corridor by the kneeling figure

of his beloved foster-mother, Anna de Guevara. She, too, formed her

impeachment of Olivares in impassioned words, and Philip could only

reply, ‘You have spoken the truth.’ Then for two hours the Queen and the

Duchess of Mantua were closeted with the King, and the victory was

won.[228] That night, 17th January 1643, Olivares was dismissed. He

struggled for days to regain his influence over the King, but tried in

vain; for Philip, like most weak men, was obstinate when once his mind

was made up, and so, ruined and degraded, the Count Duke turned his back

upon the Court he had ruled, and went to madness and death, leaving

Isabel of Bourbon, the mistress of the situation, the ‘King’s only

minister,’ as he said soon after, when he asked the nuns of shoeless

Carmelites to pray for his ‘minister.’

Madrid went wild with joy at Olivares’ fall. ‘Isabels have always saved

Spain,’ the people cried, as the King and Queen with the Duchess of

Mantua went to the convent church of the barefoots to give thanks;

‘Philip is King of Spain, at last, and will save his country.’ But it

needed much more than shouting to save Spain. Philip, spurred by his

wife, plucked up more energy than ever before. He would be his own

minister in future, and would take the field as soon as spring came, and

wrest Catalonia from the French. Before that could be done, Philip’s

army met in Flanders with the greatest defeat it had ever sustained, a

blow from which the reputation of the famous Spanish infantry never

recovered. His young brother, Cardinal Ferdinand, had died two years

before, and his place in Flanders had been taken by the Portuguese noble

Mello. He was a good soldier; but Condé, young as he was, out-generalled

him: and the defeat of Rocroy made it certain that France, and not

Spain, would in future lead Europe. But yet the soil of Spain itself

must be redeemed from the French invaders: and again, through the summer

of 1643, Philip struggled manfully to regain his lost dominion; whilst

Isabel, as Regent in Madrid, organised, directed, and encouraged, with a

spirit and energy that won for her the fervent love of her husband’s

loyal subjects. Some success attended him, for he captured Lerida from

the French: but the war was a terrible drain, and in the campaign of the

following year, 1644, failure followed failure.

The poor, weary, King’s heart was almost breaking under his many

troubles, when he was brought into contact with the saintly woman, who

until the end was his one refuge and solace, the Venerable nun, Maria de

Agreda, whose exhortations and prayers sustained him in his hardest

trials, which were yet to come. Philip was in Saragossa at the beginning

of October when news came to him that his wife was ill. Sending his new

favourite—for his good resolves in that respect had soon failed—Luis de

Haro, to the front, to acquaint the army of the King’s reason for

leaving, he started at once for Madrid.

On the 28th September 1644, Isabel had suffered from some sort of

choleraic attack with much fever. She was copiously bled in the arms,

and seemed to improve, but was soon seen to be suffering from violent

erysipelas in the face; the disease soon spreading to the throat, which

was almost closed, as if by diphtheria. The patient was bled eight times

more, but still the inflammation grew; and, as usual with Spanish

doctors, when bleeding failed, the charms of the church were resorted

to. On the 4th October the last sacrament was administered, and the dead

body of Saint Isidore was brought to the sick chamber. This having

failed to effect a cure, the more sacred relic still, the miraculous

image of the Virgin of Atocha was brought in procession from its shrine

into the convent of St. Thomas, at Madrid, with the intention of placing

it for adoration by the Queen’s bed. When Isabel’s permission was asked,

she said that she was unworthy of the honour of such a visit, and Prince

Baltasar visited the image instead, to implore upon his knees that his

mother’s life might be spared. ‘There was no church nor convent in

Madrid that did not bring out in procession its crucifixes and most

sacred images in prayer for the Queen’s health, and the whole people

wailed fervently their prayers and rogations that her life might be

granted.’[229]

On the 5th of October, the dying woman tried to make her new will; but

she was too weak, and only left verbal authority before witnesses to the

King to carry out her intentions. At noon on that day she sent for a

_fleur de lys_, which formed one of the ornaments in the crown, and in

which was encased a fragment of the true cross. This she worshipped

fervently. Her two children were brought to her, Baltasar and the girl

Maria Theresa, but she would not let them approach her for fear of

contagion, though she blessed them fervently from afar. ‘There are

plenty of Queens for Spain,’ she sighed, but princes and princesses are

scarce. The next day, as the great clock of the palace marked a quarter

past four in the afternoon, Isabel of Bourbon breathed her last, aged

forty-one. Garbed as a Franciscan nun, the body was carried that night

to the royal convent of barefoots; and thence the day after in a leaden

coffin, encased in another of brocade, it was borne back to the palace

to lie in state amidst blazing tapers, nodding plumes, and all the pomp

and circumstance of royal mourning.

In the meanwhile, Philip was hurrying from Aragon, a prey to the keenest

anxiety. At Maranchon, about fifty miles from the capital, where the

King had alighted at a wretched inn, the news came that the Queen was

dead. The ministers and courtiers around the King forbore to tell him

for a time, out of mere pity; for the journey and anxiety had told upon

him ‘and he had only just dined.’ But a few miles further on, at

Almadrones, the news was broken to him in his carriage by those who

accompanied him. A terrible burst of grief, and an order that he might

be left alone in his sorrow, proved that Philip, for all his

faithlessness, was fond of his wife; and then, rather than enter the

city where the Queen’s body lay, he turned aside and sought solitude at

the Pardo,[230] where he was soon joined by his son Baltasar, whilst,

with the usual heavy pomp at dead of night, the body of Isabel was

carried across the bleak Castilian tableland to the new jasper vault in

the Escorial, which, from very dread, she had never dared to enter in

her lifetime.

Three days after Isabel’s death, the sainted mystic of Agreda saw, as

she asserted, the phantom of the Queen before her, asking for the

prayers of the godly to liberate her from the pains she was suffering in

purgatory, for the vain splendour of her attire during her life.[231] To

the nun Philip’s cry of pain went up, whilst to all the rest of the

world he turned a leaden face. On the 15th November he wrote—‘Since the

Lord was pleased to take from me to himself the Queen, who is now in

heaven, I have wanted to write to you, but the great distress I am in,

and the business with which I am overwhelmed, have hitherto prevented me

from doing so. I find myself more oppressed with sorrow than seems

bearable, for I have lost in one person alone all that I can lose in

this world: and if it were not that I know, according to the faith I

hold, that God sends to us that which is best and wisest, I know not

what would become of me. But this thought, and this alone, makes me

suffer my grief with utter resignation to the will of God; and I must

confess to you that I have needed much help from on high to bring me to

bear this cross patiently. I wanted to ask you to pray to God very

earnestly for me in this dire trouble, and to aid me in asking Him to

grant me grace to offer up this sorrow to Him, and take advantage of it

for my own salvation.’[232]

A yet more terrible trial for him came two years later; and a yet more

heartbroken appeal to the nun for prayers, and to God to save him from

rebellion against his hard fate, burst from the King’s breaking heart

when his only son died in his budding manhood, and left Philip, aged by

suffering, to face matrimony again for the sake of leaving an heir to

the crown of sorrow that was weighing him down.

Isabel of Bourbon died bravely, as she had lived. She was a Frenchwoman,

married to bring about a friendship between France and Spain, and the

two countries were at war continually from the time that her marriage

was completed to the day of her death. In her time the sun of Spain sank

as surely as the day of France brightened, and yet she never gloried in

the triumph of the land of her birth, and kept faithful to the end to

the Spain which she loved so well. It would be unfair to credit her with

so clear and high a soul as either of the previous Isabels; but hers was

a brave, sturdy, heart that accepted things as they were if she was

unable to mend them; and, like her father before her, she enjoyed

herself as much as she could whilst doing her duty valiantly and well.

BOOK IV

II

MARIANA OF AUSTRIA

So long as Prince Baltasar lived Philip resisted all pressure that he

should take another wife. The spring and summer were spent in Aragon, in

the now almost despairing attempt to win back his dominions from the

French. Approaches for his own marriage were made by various interests,

but always gently put aside with a reference to his hopes being now

centred in his son, whom he kept at his side and instructed him in the

business of government. With a wretched lack of material resources his

attempts to recover Catalonia were fruitless. One defeat followed

another with wearisome reiteration, and as disaster deepened Philip

became more moody and devout; his one adviser and confidant being the

nun of Agreda, and his one resource agonised prayer. When his boy fell

ill in May 1646, at Pamplona in Navarre, on his way to the seat of war,

Philip’s invocations to heaven for his safety were almost terrible in

their intensity.[233] The lad recovered; and when he arrived with his

father at Saragossa in July, the imperial ambassadors were awaiting them

to offer in marriage to the heir of Spain his first cousin, the

Archduchess Mariana of Austria, the daughter of the Emperor.

Philip could look nowhere else for an alliance. France was his deadly

enemy, though it was governed by his sister Anna as regent, and a

further marriage experiment in that direction was out of the question at

present, even if there had been an available French princess.[234] The

Emperor and Spain, on the other hand, had been—to Spain’s ruin—fighting

shoulder to shoulder throughout the whole of the thirty years’ war, now

dragging to its conclusion, and the treaty was promptly signed for the

marriage of Baltasar, aged seventeen, with Mariana of Austria, three

years younger. With regard to their betrothal, Philip wrote to the nun

thus: ‘My sister, the Empress, having died, I consider it advisable to

draw closer the ties between the Emperor and ourselves in this way, my

principal aim being the exaltation of the faith; for it is certain that

the more intimate the two branches of our house are, so much the firmer

will religion stand throughout Christendom.’

Only two months later, early in October, the blow fell, and the prince

died of smallpox. Whilst he lay ill the distracted father wrote

frantically to his correspondent, crying for God’s mercy to save him

from this last trial. But when the boy had died the King’s letters

assumed a tone of dull despair. God had not heard his prayers, and he

supposed it was for the best. He had done everything to dedicate this

grief to God; but his heart was pierced, and he knew not whether he

lived or dreamed. He was resigned, he said, but feared his constancy,

and so on; each phrase revealing a heart that almost doubted the

efficacy of prayer, and the goodness of the Almighty.[235]

Thenceforward, for a time, his conduct changed. He had done his best and

had not spared himself. He had prayed night and day, and had fashioned

his life according to monastic counsels. But defeat, trouble, poverty

and bereavement had fallen upon him in spite of all, and Philip, in the

intervals of his poignant contrition, plunged into dissolute excesses

that shocked and scandalised the devotees about him. Philip was

forty-two, about the age when some of his forbears had developed that

strain of mystic devotion that so nearly borders madness. He had no male

heir, and only one tiny daughter of eight, and his troubles and excesses

had prematurely aged him. All Spain demanded of him a man child to

succeed to his greatness; and the remonstrances of the churchmen and the

nuns at the scandal of his life were reinforced by the Emperor’s

ambassadors, who urged that he should marry the girl-niece who had been

betrothed to his dead son.

And so history repeated itself; and, as in the case of his grandfather,

Philip II., the King accepted for his wife the Austrian princess who had

been destined for his daughter-in-law. Of his many illegitimate children

he had only legitimised one, Don Juan José of Austria, the son of the

actress Maria Calderon. He was brilliant and handsome, and had won his

father’s regard; but he could never be King of Spain; and Philip, with

little enthusiasm, wedded an immature girl for the sake of giving an

heir to his country, and for the maintenance of the solidarity of the

house of Austria, which typified the old impossible claim of Spain to

dictate the religion of the world. It was a disastrous resolve, which

ensured the consummation of ruin to the country and the cause which it

was intended to benefit.

Philip was straining every nerve against the French in Catalonia and

Flanders; he was, to the extent of his ability, attacking the Portuguese

on the eastern frontier; and his kingdom of Naples was in full revolt.

The long war had exhausted him, as it had exhausted all Europe: he had,

to his own destruction, fought the battles of religion in central Europe

by the side of the Emperor for many years; and his new marriage was

intended to fasten the Emperor to him in the cause of Spain. The

powerlessness of marriage bonds to resist political forces was once more

proved before Philip saw his bride. The Treaty of Westphalia (October

1648) was finally signed, and Spain, which had suffered most in the war,

sacrificed most in the peace. The religious question in Germany was

settled for good, and the dream of Charles v. was finally dissipated:

the independence of Holland, the point which had dragged Spain down and

kept her at war for nearly a hundred years, was recognised at last, out

of sheer impotence for further struggle by Philip. Alsace went to

France, and Pomerania to Sweden: the central European powers were

satisfied: there was nothing more for the Emperor to fight for, and

Spain was left face to face alone with her enemy France, and without the

imperial co-operation for which Philip had paid so dear.

With ceremonies and pomp which would be tedious to relate the young

princess left Vienna on the 13th November 1648, travelling slowly by

coach with her brother, the King of Hungary, towards Trent, where the

representatives of Philip were to take charge of the new Queen. Endless

festivities were held at Trent and the Italian cities,[236] and

simultaneously in Madrid. Illuminated streets, bullfights, and

palace-revels, which Philip attended with dull hopeless face and heavy

heart, celebrated the announcement of the nuptials, coinciding in time

with the rejoicings for the recovery of Naples by the diplomacy of young

Don Juan of Austria, Philip’s son, in the winter of 1648. But it was

well into the autumn (4th September) of 1649 before the bride and her

Spanish household of one hundred and sixty nobles at length landed at

Denia in the kingdom of Valencia.

At Navalcarnero, a small village some fifteen miles from Madrid, the

great cavalcade arrived on the 6th October 1649; and there it was

arranged that Philip should first meet his bride.[237] For months he had

been writing by every post to the nun, deploring and repenting his

inability to resist the temptations of the flesh, and ascribing to his

sins the wars, pestilence and misery that were scourging his beloved

people. With such qualms of conscience as this it must have been welcome

to him—weary voluptuary though he was—to enter into a licit union,

which, at least, might rescue him from temptation. Disguised, he watched

his bride enter Navalcarnero, and then went to lodge in another village

before paying his formal visit to her a day afterwards. Mariana was just

fifteen, a strong, passionate, full-blooded girl with a hard heart. On

her way from Denia the mistress of the robes, the Countess of Medillin,

had gravely remonstrated with her for laughing at the buffoons, who

sought to amuse her, and had schooled her in the etiquette that forbade

a Queen of Spain to walk in public. But Mariana made light of such

prudery, and in the insolence of her gaiety and youth went her own way,

laughing her fill at the comedy played before her at Navalcarnero, to

while away the time until supper.

The King and Queen met for the first time in the little oratory where

their marriage was to be confirmed by the Archbishop of Toledo, and

then, after more comedies and bullfights, the royal pair proceeded to

the Escorial, lit up for the occasion by 11,000 lights, to pass the

first days of their honeymoon. From the Retiro on the 15th November

Mariana made her state entry into Madrid. The capital surpassed itself

in its signs of rejoicing, for Philip was extremely popular and his

subjects yearned for an heir to the throne. We are told that the whole

distance from the Retiro to the old palace, from one end of Madrid to

the other, the way was spanned by arches of flowers, whilst monumental

erections with devices of welcome were placed at each principal

point.[238] The Queen rode a snow-white palfrey; and as she smiled her

frank gratified smile to the lieges they welcomed her for her rosy,

painted cheeks and red pouting lips, knowing little the cold selfish

heart that beat beneath the buxom bosom.

Philip was too busy for weeks in the delights of his honeymoon to write

to his confidante the nun, presumably also because the sins he so deeply

deplored, and so constantly repeated, did not tempt him during the first

weeks of his married life. But when, on the 17th November, he found time

to write, he expresses the utmost satisfaction at his bride. ‘I confess

to you,’ he says, ‘that I know not how I can thank our Lord sufficiently

for the mercy he has shown to me in giving me such a companion; for all

the qualities I have hitherto recognised in my niece are great, and I

find myself exceedingly content, and full of a desire to prove myself

not ungrateful for so singular a mercy by changing my mode of life and

submitting myself in all things to His will.’[239] The nun in answer to

this urged the King to live well in his new condition, ‘trying earnestly

that the Queen shall have all your attention and regard, instead of your

Majesty casting your eyes on other objects strange and curious.’ All

Spain, the nun continues, is yearning for an heir, and her own prayers

are ceaseless to that end.

Philip was full of good resolves. He would never go astray again; but,

though he was as anxious for a son as his people were, he was in doubt

yet as to his new wife’s having arrived at sufficient maturity to have

children: ‘although others of her age, which is fifteen years, can do

so. But it is easy for our Lord to remedy this, and I hope in His mercy

that He will do it.’[240] In the meanwhile, the depositary of all these

hopes, Mariana, was diverting herself as best she could in girlish romps

with her stepdaughter of ten, who seems to have been her constant

companion. Philip, in writing of them, generally speaks of them as ‘the

girls,’ and frequently mentions Mariana’s joy at shows and gaiety. Once

more the Buen Retiro rang with light laughter. Comedies and masquerades

were again the constant diversion of the Court, though pestilence was

scourging the land, Catalonia and Portugal defied the arms of Spain, and

the French in Flanders still held the armies of Philip at bay. Pleasure,

the joy of living, absorbed the young Queen’s attention; and after the

first few months of marriage, Philip usually refers to her somewhat

wearily, and only with reference to her enjoyments or to his hopes of

progeny. After one disappointment a child was born in July 1651, a girl,

who was christened with the usual unrestrained splendour by the name of

Maria Margaret.[241] Again high hopes were entertained in due time, only

to be disappointed, and Mariana fell into melancholy; for Philip had

relapsed into his bad habits again, notwithstanding his vows and

resolves, and the delay in the coming of a son increased his coldness

towards his wife. A frenzied round of gaiety at the Buen Retiro did

something to arouse the Queen out of her depression,[242] but Philip had

now but little pleasure in his old love for glittering shows; for the

prayed for son came not, and war and pestilence still scourged Spain, as

he firmly believed for his own personal backsliding.

[Illustration:

MARIANA OF AUSTRIA.

_After a Painting by Velazquez._

]

The life of the palace had settled down to utter monotony. Philip,

immersed in business; ‘with his pen always in his hand,’ as he says, had

little time for frivolity. His demeanour in public was like that of a

statue, and when he received ministers or deputations it was noticed

that no muscle of his face moved but his lips. Every movement was

settled beforehand; and it was possible to foretell a year in advance

exactly where the Court would be on a given day, and what the King would

be doing at a certain hour. Mariana lived in her own way, with little

show of affection for her elderly husband, or for the people amongst

whom she lived. She had fallen by this time (1657) into the stiff

etiquette of the Spanish Court, and in the intervals of her hoydenish

merriment she displayed a haughtiness as great as that of Philip himself

without his underlying tenderness or his pathetic resignation. She was

German in all her sympathies, and soon lost the love of Spaniards that

had been gained by the freshness of her youth.[243] Dressed in the

tremendous triple-hooped farthingale; with her stiff, squarely arranged

wig, and her full painted cheeks, she presented a sufficiently dignified

appearance in public; but her flat, unamiable face, hard, weary eyes,

and bulging jaw, gave her a look which repelled rather than attracted.

The outward prudery of her Court barely veiled a state of atrocious

immorality amongst all classes. It was considered almost a reproach for

any of the ladies, all widows or unmarried, who were attached to the

palace service by hundreds, to have no extravagant gallant ready to ruin

himself for her caprices; and, as a natural consequence, assassination

was rife in the capital; and the news letters of the time are full of

scandalous stories, in which nobles, ladies and actresses are concerned

disgracefully. Corruption reigned more impudently than ever, and whilst

ships were rotting on the beach, and unpaid soldiers were starving in

the midst of war, vast sums were spent on foolish shows and revelry.

Philip now had little pleasure in it all, going through it like a leaden

automaton, only to torture himself with remorse afterwards, but withal,

habit or mere weakness led him to allow such scandals as the imposition

of a tax upon oil to pay for the new stage at the Buen Retiro, and the

robbing of the shrine of the venerated Virgin of Atocha of a great

silver chandelier for the illumination of the theatre.[244]

In September 1654 it was announced that Mariana was again pregnant. ‘God

grant that it may be so,’ wrote a courtier: ‘but if it is going to be a

girl it is of no use to us. We do not want any of them. There are plenty

of women already.’[245] The King’s hopes rose that a son would at last

be born to him, and Mariana insisted upon accompanying him everywhere;

for in the intervals of her merrymaking she was a prey to deep

melancholy, increased when a girl infant was born only to die a few days

afterwards. The prognostications of astrologers and quacks decided in

the summer of 1655 that the prayed for son was now really on the way;

and as time went on unheard of preparations were made for the event. The

Marquis of Heliche had twenty-two new comedies written ready for

representation in the coming festivities, and large sums of money were

spent in decorations beforehand. Mariana’s lightest caprice was law, and

Philip hardly left her side. The old palace depressed her, and the Buen

Retiro became her permanent abode; Don Juan of Austria sent from

Flanders the most wonderful tapestries, and bed and bed furniture ever

seen, with a vast bedstead of gilt bronze which cost a fortune; the

bedroom furniture being a mass of seed pearl and gold embroidery upon

satin. ‘There is no getting the Queen out of the Retiro, for she frets

in the palace. She passes the mornings amongst her flowers, the days in

feastings, and the nights in farces. All this goes on incessantly, and I

do not know how so much pleasure does not pall upon her.’[246] But again

the prophets were wrong, for in December another epileptic girl child

was born and died: ‘Saint Gaetano notwithstanding.’[247]

Mariana fell gravely ill after this, and a slight stroke of paralysis,

amongst other ailments, kept her for many weeks hovering between life

and death. Philip did his best to raise her spirits, and when the Cortes

petitioned him to have his elder daughter Maria Theresa acknowledged as

heiress, he refused, in order not to distress his wife, who, he said,

would be sure to have an heir directly. His letters to the nun show that

he, at this period, was himself in the depths of black despair,

overborne by his troubles; for Cromwell had seized Jamaica, and Spain

was at war by sea and land with England and France together. Whilst

Philip was gratifying his young wife by such entertainments as looking

on from concealed boxes in a theatre crowded with women, whilst a

hundred rats were surreptitiously let loose upon the floor;[248] he was

a prey to a morbid misery closely akin to madness, anticipating an early

death, weeping for the utter ruin that enveloped him and Spain, and the

absence of a male heir.

One of his strange whims at this time was to pass hours alone in the new

jasper mausoleum at the Escorial, to which the bodies of his ancestors

had just been transferred. He wrote after one of these visits in

1654:—‘I saw the corpse of the Emperor whose body, although he has been

dead ninety-six years, is still perfect, and by this is seen how the

Lord has repaid him for his efforts in favour of the faith whilst he

lived. It helped me much: particularly as I contemplated the place where

I am to lie, when God shall take me. I prayed Him not to let me forget

what I saw there;’[249] and shortly after this another contemporary

records that the King passed two solitary hours on his knees on the bare

stones of the mausoleum before his own last resting-place in prayer; and

that when he came out his eyes were red and swollen with weeping.[250]

Again, in August 1656, a girl child was born to Mariana only to die the

same day, and then depression, utter and profound, fell upon Philip and

his wife, for no ray of light came from any direction. There was no

money for the most ordinary needs. The Indian treasures were regularly

captured by the English, who closely invested Cadiz itself, whilst the

French on the Flanders frontier and in Catalonia worked their will

almost without impeachment, and the Portuguese defied their old

sovereign. Philip was ready to make peace almost at any sacrifice, at

least with the French; but the demands of Mazarin were as yet too

humiliating for a power which had claimed for so long the predominance

in Europe. At length, in the midst of the distress, hope dawned once

more, and again the wiseacres predicted that this time the Queen would

give birth to a son. Mariana’s every fancy was gratified.[251] Water

parties on the lake at the Retiro, endless farces, as usual, capricious

bull feasts, and diversions of all sorts, kept up her spirits; and Don

Juan sent another sumptuous bed and furniture more splendid than the

previous gift. Whilst this waste was going on in one direction, taxes

were being piled up in a way that made them unproductive, and such was

the penury in the King’s palace that Philip himself, on the vigil of the

Presentation of the Virgin (20th November 1657), had nothing to eat but

eggs without fish, as his stewards had not a real of ready money to pay

for anything (Barrionuevo). Exactly a week after the King was reduced to

such straits, the child of his prayers arrived. An heir was born at last

to the weary man of fifty-two, whose crown was crushing him.

Madrid as usual went crazy with turbulent rejoicing, whilst Mariana in

the gravest danger battled for her life. Every bench and table in the

palace, we are told, was broken, and no eating house or tavern in the

town escaped sacking by the crowd of idle rogues who marched with music

and singing, whilst they stripped decent people even of their garments

to pay for their orgy.[252] Later, there were the usual bull fights,

masquerades, and the eternal comedies with new stage effects; and not a

noble in Castile failed to go and congratulate the King. Astrologists

were to the fore, as usual, foretelling by the stars that the newly born

babe would grow up to be wise, prudent and brave, and would outlive all

his brothers and sisters in a prosperous fortunate career. The proud

father was full of gratitude to the Most High for the signal favour

conferred upon him. ‘Help me, Sor Maria,’ he wrote to the nun, ‘to give

thanks to Him; for I myself am unable to do so adequately: and pray Him

to make me duly grateful, and give me strength henceforward to do His

holy will. The new-born child is well, and I implore you take him under

your protection, and pray to our Lord and His holy mother to keep him

for their service, the exaltation of the faith and the good of these

realms. And if this is not to be, then pray let him be taken from me

before he comes to man’s estate.’[253]

Philip, like his courtiers, went into rhapsodies of admiration of the

beauty and perfection of the infant that had been born to him. So fair

an angel surely never had been seen than this poor epileptic morsel of

humanity from whom so pathetically much was expected. On the 6th

December Philip rode in State on a great Neapolitan horse through the

streets of Madrid, to give thanks to the Virgin of Atocha for the boon

vouchsafed to him, and the capital began its round of official

rejoicings. Fountains ran wine, music and dancing went on night and day,

mummers in strange disguise promenaded the streets in procession,

bullfights and the usual tiresome buffoonery testified that Madrid

shared with the King his delight that an heir had been born to him.[254]

Philip himself was in high good humour, bandying jests with his

favourite, Don Luis de Haro; and, at the brilliant ceremony of the

christening of Prince Philip Prosper, a week later, which he witnessed

hidden behind the closed jalousies of his pew, he was proudly pleased at

the vigorous squalls of the infant. ‘Ah!’ he whispered to Haro, ‘that’s

what I like to hear, there is something manly in that.’[255] It was

fortunate for Philip that he could not foresee that this babe for whom

he had prayed so fervently would be snatched from him four years later,

stricken by the calamity of its descent; and that the later child that

would succeed him, the offspring of incest too, would end the line of

the great Emperor in decrepit imbecility, matching sadly with the

decadence of his country.

Whilst the continued and costly celebrations of the Queen’s tardy

recovery after the birth of her sickly child were scandalising the

thoughtful, national affairs were going from bad to worse.[256] Don Luis

de Haro, Philip’s prime minister, had started in January 1658 to relieve

Badajoz, closely invested by the masculine Queen of Portugal, herself a

Spaniard, and had been disgracefully routed by the despised Portuguese.

This was a humiliation that proved to the world the complete impotence

of Spain: but in June of the same year a more damaging blow still was

dealt at the power that had held its head so high in the past. The

battle of the Dunes, or Dunkirk, in which Don Juan, Condé and the Duke

of York on the Spanish side were pitted against Turenne, aided by the

troops of Cromwell, was a crushing defeat for Philip’s forces, and

placed all Flanders at the mercy of the French. It was clear that Philip

could fight no longer, for Spain had well nigh bled to death; and so

great was the depopulation of Castile that a project was adopted—though

not carried out for lack of money—to re-people the country with Irish

and Dalmatian Catholics.

There were other circumstances that tended towards peace besides the

exhaustion of Spain. The long years of war had told heavily upon the

resources of France: the Catalans by this time had grown heartily tired

of their French king Stork, and were yearning for the return of their

Spanish king Log; and, above all, Mazarin had long cast covetous eyes on

the Spanish succession, in the very probable case of Philip’s issue by

his second wife failing. For years the Queen-regent, Anna of Austria,

had been striving for peace with her brother, but circumstances and

national pride had always defeated her. The efforts of the Emperor’s

agents in Madrid, aided very powerfully by Mariana, had also been

exerted to prevent a close agreement between France and Spain. In 1656

M. de Lionne had been sent secretly by Mazarin to Madrid, where he

passed many months in close conference with Luis de Haro, endeavouring,

but without success, to negotiate peace.

In one of their meetings Haro wore in his hat, as an ornament, a medal

impressed with the portrait of the Infanta Maria Theresa, Philip’s

daughter by his first wife. ‘If your King would give to my master for a

wife the original of the portrait you wear,’ said Lionne, duly

instructed by Mazarin, ‘peace would soon be made.’ Nothing more was said

at the time, for, in the absence of a son, Philip dared not marry the

heiress of Spain to his nephew Louis XIV., but when an heir was born to

Mariana, the idea of a marriage between Maria Theresa and Louis XIV. at

once became realisable. The Austrian interest still stood in the way;

and Mariana, who was as purely an ambassador for her brother as his

accredited diplomatic representative was, used all her efforts to

frustrate the plan; and a marriage was actively advocated by her between

the Infanta and Leopold, the heir of the empire. Philip for a long time

allowed himself to incline to the Austrian connection that had already

cost him so dear.

As soon as the French match looked promising, as a result of much secret

intrigue between Mazarin and Haro, the Emperor offered to Philip a great

army in Flanders to aid in expelling the French; and when Philip was

hesitating between the persuasions of his wife Mariana, and her kinsmen

on the one hand, and the pressure of poverty on the other, which made a

continuance of the war difficult for him, Mazarin played a trump card

which won the game. Louis was taken ostentatiously to Lyons to woo the

Princess of Savoy; and, in fear of a coalition against Spain, Philip

sent his minister Haro to negotiate peace with Mazarin personally on the

banks of the Bidasoa. During all the autumn of 1659, on the historic

Isle of Pheasants in the river, the keen diplomatists fought over

details; and often their labours seemed hopeless, for the Spaniards were

as proud as ever and the French as greedy. But the frail health of the

puling babe, who alone stood between the Infanta and the Spanish

succession, at length made Mazarin more yielding: the last great

obstacle, the restoration of Condé’s forfeited estates, was overcome,

and one of the most fateful treaties in history was settled.

It was still a bitter pill for Spain, for she lost much of her Flemish

territory and the county of Roussillon; but, at least, she regained

Catalonia, and, above all, secured peace with France. The Infanta was to

marry Louis XIV., and the Spaniards insisted that she should renounce

for ever her claim to the succession of her father’s crown, though

Mazarin made the clause ineffective by stipulating that the renunciation

should be conditional upon the entire payment of the dowry of 500,000

crowns, which, it was more than probable, Philip could never pay.[257]

In the meanwhile Mariana had borne another son, who died in his early

infancy; and at the pompous embassy of the Duke de Grammont to Madrid,

formally to ask for the hand of the Infanta, she took little pains to

appear amiable to an embassy which she looked upon as bringing a defeat

for her and her family.

A vivid picture of her and her husband at one of the great

representations at the theatre of the old palace is given by a follower

of Grammont, who wrote an account of the embassy.[258] ‘The great

saloon,’ he says, ‘was lit only by six great wax candles in gigantic

stands of silver. On both sides of the saloon, facing each other, there

are two boxes or tribunes with iron grilles. One of these was occupied

by the Infantas and some of the courtiers, whilst the other was destined

for the Marshal (Grammont). Two benches covered with Persian rugs ran

along the sides facing each other, and upon these some twelve of the

ladies of the court sat, whilst we Frenchmen stood behind them.... Then

the Queen and the little Infanta entered, preceded by a lady holding a

candle. When the King appeared he saluted the ladies, and took his seat

in the box on the right hand of the Queen, whilst the little Infanta sat

on her left. The King remained motionless during the whole of the play,

and only once said a word to the Queen, although he occasionally cast

his eyes round on every side. A dwarf was standing close by him. When

the play was finished all the ladies rose and gathered in the middle, as

canons do after service. They then joined hands, and made their

courtesies, a ceremony that lasted seven or eight minutes; for each lady

made her courtesy separately. In the meanwhile the King was standing,

and he then bowed to the Queen, who in her turn bowed to the Infanta,

after which they all joined hands and retired.’

In April 1660 Philip bade farewell to Mariana and set forth on this

famous journey to the French frontier, to ratify the peace of the

Pyrenees with his sister Anna of Austria, whom he had not seen since

their early youth more than forty years before, and to give his daughter

in marriage to the young King of France. Philip, for the sake of

economy, had ordered that as small a train as possible should accompany

him; but, withal, so enormous was his following and that of his

nobles,[259] with the huge stores of provisions and baggage, that his

cavalcade covered over twenty miles of road. Slowly winding its way at

the rate of only about six miles a day through the ruined land, greeted

by the poor hollow-eyed peasants that were left with tearful joy,

because it meant peace, the King’s procession at last arrived at the

seat of so many royal pageants, the banks of the Bidasoa, early in June.

Upon the tiny eyot in mid-river, the temporary palace that in the

previous year had been the meeting-place of Haro and Mazarin, still

remained intact; and here the sumptuous ceremony was performed that gave

to Louis XIV. the custody of his future wife, Maria Theresa.[260]

What all the courtiers wore, and how they looked, is described _ad

nauseam_ by French and Spanish spectators; but the greatest man in all

the host, upon the Spanish side at least, was the King’s quartermaster,

whose exquisite taste and knowledge directed the artistic details of the

pageant, Diego de Silva Velazquez, whose garments may be described as a

specimen of the rest. His dress was of dark material, entirely covered

by close Milanese silver embroidery, and he wore around his neck the

golilla that had replaced the ruff, at the instance of Philip many years

before, to save the waste of starching.[261] Upon his cloak was

embroidered the great red floreated swordlike cross of Santiago, and at

his side he wore a sword in a finely wrought silver scabbard; whilst

around his neck there hung a heavy gold chain from which depended a

small diamond scutcheon with the same cross enamelled in red upon

it.[262]

The restoration of the Stuarts in England soon after the ratification of

the Treaty of the Pyrenees, made a peace easy of negotiation between

their country and Spain, and by the beginning of 1661, Philip found

himself for the first time in a reign of forty years at peace with all

the powers outside the Peninsula.

But rebellious Portugal had still to be reconquered. Again disaster

befell the Spaniards. Don Juan, the King’s son, was utterly routed at

Amegial after some partial successes; for Mariana had been busily

intriguing against him, and had caused the reinforcement and resources

he asked for to be denied him.

Whilst Don Juan was struggling against the Portuguese and their English

abettors with inadequate forces and ineffectual heroism, Philip was

sinking deeper into the morbid devotional misery that afflicted in their

decline so many of his race. His only son, Philip Prosper, after a life

of four years of almost constant sickness, was snatched from him early

in November 1661, as a younger boy had been a year previously. The

bereaved father, who had watched over his son’s bed until the last,

nearly lost heart at this heavy blow; and was so much overcome, as he

confesses, as to be unable even to write for a time to his one refuge,

the nun of Agreda. When he did so, the usual self-accusing cry of agony

went up—‘I assure you,’ he wrote, ‘what troubles me most, much more even

than my loss, is to see clearly that I have offended God, and that He

sends all these sorrows as a punishment for my sins. I only wish I knew

how to amend myself and comply entirely with His holy will. I am doing,

and will do, all I can; for I would rather lose my life than fail to do

it. Help me, as a good friend, with your prayers, to placate the

righteous anger of God, and to implore our Lord, who has seen good to

take away my son, to bless the delivery of the Queen, which is expected

every day, and to keep her in perfect health and the child that is to be

born, if it be for his good service, for otherwise I desire it not. The

Queen has borne this last blow with much sorrow but christian

resignation. I am not surprised at this, for she is an angel, Oh! Sor

Maria: if I had only carried out your doctrines, perhaps I should not

find myself in this state.’[263]

A few days after this was written, Mariana once more bore a son, a weak,

puling infant, that seemed threatened with an early death; but whose

birth threw Spain into a whirlwind of rejoicing as extravagant as any

that had gone before. But Philip was sunk too deep now into despondency,

by witchcraft the people said, to be aroused much, even by the birth of

a son; and, as the shadows fell around him, the power of Mariana grew.

With her clever German Jesuit confessor and confidant, Father Everard

Nithard, she soon managed to drag the unhappy King again into the vortex

of imperial politics, that had already well-nigh wrecked Spain, by

persuading him to maintain an army to aid Austria and Hungary against

the incursions of the Turk. Mazarin had died soon after the peace of the

Pyrenees, and the new advisers of Louis XIV. were already inciting him

to retaliate for the Austrian _rapprochement_ with Spain by fresh

aggression upon Spanish Flanders. Don Juan, bitterly opposed to the new

German interest in Spain, retired to his town of Consuegra in disgust

and disgrace; the French and English governments assumed a tone of

dictatorial haughtiness towards Spain unheard before; and Philip, in

declining health and bitter disappointment, could look nowhere now for

help and solace: for his minister Haro was dead, and the saintly nun of

Agreda, his refuge for so many years, also went to her rest in the

spring of 1665. There was no one now at Philip’s side but Mariana,

already intriguing for uncontrolled power when her husband should die,

and her German confessor Nithard, whose one aim was to use what was left

of Spanish resources for the ends of Austria.

Others also were on the alert as to what would happen when Philip died,

and Sir Richard Fanshawe was sent to Madrid by Charles II., partly to

negotiate for the recognition of Portuguese independence; and also: ‘to

employ his utmost skill and industry in penetrating and discovering

under what model and form his Catholic Majesty designs to leave the

government there, when it shall please God that he die, which,

considering his great infirmity and weakness, may be presumed is already

projected.’[264] When Philip first received Fanshawe in June 1664, he

was so weak and weary that he could only ask him to put his speech on

paper,[265] and thenceforward all Europe regarded the King as a dying

man, whose work in the world was done.

As Philip sank lower in despondency, the importance of Mariana rose.

Lady Fanshawe gives an account of her interview with the Queen on the

27th June 1664, at the Buen Retiro, which shows that Mariana was already

regarded almost as the reigning sovereign: ‘I was received at the Buen

Retiro by the guard, and afterwards, when I came up stairs, by the

Marquesa de Hinojosa, the Queen’s Camarera Mayor, then in waiting.

Through an infinite number of people I passed to the Queen’s presence,

where her Majesty was seated at the upper end under a cloth of state

upon three cushions, and on her left hand the Empress[266] upon three

more. The ladies were all standing. After making my last reverence to

the Queen, her Majesty and the Empress, rising up and making me a little

curtsey, sat down again; then I, by my interpreter, Sir Benjamin Wright,

said those compliments that were due from me to her Majesty; to which

her Majesty made me gracious and kind reply. Then I presented my

children, whom her Majesty received with great grace and favour. Then

her Majesty, speaking to me to sit, I sat down upon a cushion laid for

me, above all the ladies who sat, but below the Camarera Mayor; no woman

taking place (_i.e._ precedence) of her Excellency but princesses....

Thus, having passed half an hour in discourse, I took my leave of her

Majesty and the Empress; making reverences to all the ladies in

passing.’[267] Some months afterwards Queen Mariana sent to the English

lady many messages of regard and esteem, with a splendid diamond

ornament worth £2,000, which Lady Fanshawe received with somewhat

exaggerated professions of humility, and repeated her thanks to her in

an interview soon after (8th April 1655).

The total and final defeat of the Spaniards on the Portuguese frontier,

in June 1665, made the recovery of the lost kingdom hopeless, and broke

Philip’s heart. He had written in the spring to the dying nun, saying

that he desired no more health or life than was meet for God’s service,

and was ready to go when he was called. The call came in September 1665.

His chronic malady had been aggravated to such an extent by anxiety and

worry, that by the middle of the month his physicians confessed

themselves powerless. Then was enacted one of those ghastly farces

common at the time in Spain. It was whispered in the palace that the

King was bewitched, and the Inquisitor-General called a conference of

ecclesiastics to consider the means for exorcising the evil spirits that

held the sovereign in bondage. Philip himself gave permission for the

Inquisitor to act as might be judged best; and one day the royal

confessor, Friar Martinez, accompanied by the Inquisitor-General,

approached the sickbed and demanded of the King a certain little wallet

of relics and charms which he always wore suspended upon his breast.

After examining these carefully the wallet was returned to the King, and

from some clue therein contained, search elsewhere led to the discovery

of an ancient black-letter book of magic, and certain prints of the

King’s portrait transfixed by pins. All these things were solemnly burnt

after a service of exorcism by the Inquisitor-General at the chapel of

Atocha; and then, to assist the cure, the group of churchmen

administered to the King, who was suffering from several mortal

diseases, of which gall-stones caused the immediate danger, an elaborate

confection of pounded mallow-leaves with drugs and sugar.

This treatment aggravated the ill, and in two or three days the King

appeared to be in _articulo mortis_, after what was described as a fit

of apoplexy. The whole Court fell into momentary confusion, and the

death-chamber was already deserted when the King revived and altered

several of his testamentary dispositions, one clause of which now

appointed Mariana regent during the minority of her son. The will, by

Philip’s orders, was then locked into a leather purse with other

important state papers, and the key, by the dying man’s orders, was

delivered to his wife. That afternoon, after taking the sacrament,

Philip bade a tearful farewell to Mariana, and blessed his two children.

He then took an affectionate leave of the Duke of Medina de las Torres

and other nobles, beseeching them with irrepressible tears to work

harmoniously together, and help the widow and the poor child to whom his

heavy heritage was passing.

Philip struggled through the night in agony, and the next day the image

of the Virgin of Atocha was carried past the windows of the palace to be

deposited in the royal Convent of Barefoots hard by, whilst the dead

bodies of St. Diego and St. Isidro were brought to the royal chapel for

veneration;[268] and every church and convent in Madrid resounded with

rogations and processions for the health of the King. Around the bed of

the dying monarch evil passions already raged; for the Court was divided

thus early into two factions, one in favour of Mariana and the other

looking to Don Juan. The Duke of Medina de las Torres, the principal

minister, retired from the palace as soon as he had taken leave; and an

unseemly wrangle, almost a fight, took place over the deathbed between

rival friars, as to whether the viaticum might be administered or not,

until they had to be bundled out of the room by the Marquis of Aytona.

No sooner was this scene over than Count Castrillo entered the chamber

and announced that Don Juan had come and was waiting to see his father.

Philip knew, and bitter the knowledge was, that his wife and son would

be in open strife from the day the breath left his body; but that Don

Juan should return from exile unbidden, and dared to disobey his King,

whilst yet he lived, aroused one more spark of sovereign indignation in

the moribund man. ‘Tell him,’ he said, ‘to return whence he came until

he be bidden. I will see him not; for this is no time for me to do other

than to die.’ At early dawn on Friday, 17th September, poor Philip the

Great breathed his last. ‘And curious it is,’ said a contemporary

courtier, ‘that in the chamber of his Majesty when he died, there was no

one but the Marquis of Aytona and two servants to weep for the death of

their King and master. In all the rest of the court not one soul shed a

tear for him. A terrible lesson is this for all humankind; that a

monarch who had granted such great favours and raised so many to honour,

had no sigh breathed for him when he died.’[269]

The same night the dead body of the King was dressed in a handsome suit

of brown velvet, embroidered and trimmed with silver, with the great red

sword-cross of Santiago worked upon the breast, preparatory to the

pompous lying-in-state in the same gilded hall of the old palace at

Madrid, where the comedies the King had loved were so often played

before him. At the same time in an adjoining room the Councils of

Castile and State gathered to hear the will read by the secretary,

Blasco de Loyola, which made Mariana Queen-Regent of Spain, with the

assistance of a special council of regency, consisting of the great

dignitaries of the State, failing two of whom the Queen might appoint

two substitutes, an eventuality which partially occurred within a few

hours of Philip’s death by the decease of the Cardinal Archbishop of

Toledo, Moscoso. Don Juan, who was commended to the widow in the will,

waited to hear no more than the elevation of Mariana to the regency, and

then took horse with all speed and hurried back to the safe seclusion of

his fief of Ocaña. A few days afterwards, the sumptuous lying-in-state

being concluded, the body of ‘Philip the Great’ was carried in a vast

procession to the Escorial, to rest for ever in the jasper niche before

which he had so often prayed and wept.[270]

Mariana, at the age of thirty-one, was now ruler of Spain for her son

Charles II., aged four, and she lost no time in showing her tendencies

when left to herself. The root of most of the calamities that affected

Spain were the traditions that bound it to the imperial house. All that

the country needed, even now, was rest, peace and freedom from foreign

complications in which Spaniards had no real concern. But Mariana was

Austrian to her finger tips; and ever since Philip’s health began to

fail she had been working for the predominance of her kindred and

weakening the bonds of friendship with France, knit by the marriage of

Maria Theresa with Louis XIV.

There was already a large party of nobles who, seeing the national need

for peace, looked with distrust upon a policy which would still waste

Spanish resources in fighting the battles of the empire in mid-Europe:

and when to the vacancy in the Council of Regency and the

Inquisitor-Generalship, caused by the death of Cardinal Moscoso a few

hours after the King, Mariana appointed her Austrian confessor, Father

Nithard, Spanish pride flared out and protest became general. Nithard

was doubtless a worthy priest, though of no great ability, but if he had

been a genius the same detestation of him would have prevailed, for he

was a foreigner, and it was guessed at once that between him and the

Austrian Queen Spain would be sacrificed as it had been in the past to

objects that were not primarily Spanish. Observers abroad saw it too,

and although the French envoy who went to condole with Mariana on

Philip’s death assured her of the desire of Louis to be friendly with

her, the first acts of her regency gave to the French King a pretext for

asserting his wife’s right to the inheritance of Flanders, as her dowry

had not been paid, and her renunciation was asserted to be invalid.

In May 1667 Louis invaded Flanders with 50,000 men, faced only by a

small disaffected and unpaid force under the Spanish viceroy, the result

being that the French overran the country and captured many principal

cities. Don Juan was summoned in a hurry from his exile to the Council

of State in Madrid, and he and his sworn enemy Mariana divided between

them the sympathies of the capital and the country. Pasquins and satires

passed from hand to hand on the Liars’ Parade and in the Calle Mayor,

mostly attacking Nithard and the Queen, who were blamed for the war; and

the relations between Don Juan and Mariana grew more strained every day.

It was also evident now that Spain was powerless to coerce Portugal any

longer, and in February the humiliating treaty was signed—mainly by the

influence of Fanshawe[271] and Sandwich—in February 1668, recognising

the independence of the sister Iberian nation. Louis XIV. carried on his

attacks in Flanders with vigour, and rejected all overtures of peace

except on terms which aroused Spaniards to indignation. The Spanish

Franche Comté was occupied by the French in February 1668; and then, but

only by a supreme effort, a fresh army of nine thousand men was

collected in Spain to defend her territories. The Austrian friendship

was of little use to Spain, as usual, and Castile had once more to fight

her own battle. In these circumstances of national peril the influence

of Mariana and Nithard on the Council of Regency procured an order for

Don Juan to take command of the army and lead it to Flanders against the

French, and with an ill grace the royal bastard left Madrid on Palm

Sunday, 1668, for his rendezvous at Corunna, where the treasure ships

from Cadiz and his troops were to join him. Don Juan saw in this move an

intention of getting him away from the centre of government, and the

impression was strengthened by the almost simultaneous exile or arrest,

on various trivial pretexts, of some of those who were known to

sympathise with him, one of whom, Malladas, was strangled in prison by

Mariana’s orders.

All through the spring Don Juan lagged at Corunna, excusing himself from

embarking on various grounds, ill-health being the principal; until, at

length, thanks to the intervention of England and Holland, Louis was

brought to sign terms of peace with Spain at Aix la Chapelle, in May

1668, that left him in possession of the Flemish territories he had

conquered. But still Mariana and Nithard were determined that Don Juan

should go and take possession of his government in Flanders, and sent

him a peremptory order to embark. This he refused to do, and a decree of

the Queen in August directed him to retire to Consuegra, and not

approach within sixty miles of Madrid. He had many friends and

adherents, especially in Aragon, and his discontent extended to them.

Those in Madrid began to clamour that Mariana and Nithard were keeping

the little King in the background away from his people, and alienating

those who might serve the monarchy best.

Charles II. was now aged seven, and so degenerate and weak a child was

he, that he had been up to this period, and continued for some years

afterwards, entirely in the hands of women, and treated as an infant in

arms. He was dwarfish and puny, with one leg shorter than the other, his

gait during the whole of his life being uncertain and staggering. His

face was of extraordinary length and ghastly white, the lower jaw being

so prodigiously underhung that it was impossible for him to bite or

masticate food, or to speak distinctly. His hair was lank and yellow,

and his eyes a vague watery blue. This poor creature with his mother at

his side, in obedience to the clamour of Don Juan’s friends, was first

brought out in public for his subjects to see at a series of visits to

the convents and churches of Madrid in the summer of 1668.[272] Just as

the King and Mariana were about to start from the palace at Madrid on

one of these excursions, in October 1668, an officer came in great

agitation to the door of the Queen’s apartment and prayed for audience.

He was told that the coach awaited their Majesties, and the Queen could

not see him then, but would receive him when she returned. He begged in

the meanwhile to be allowed to stay in a place of safety in the palace.

This request made his visit seem important enough for Mariana to be

informed of it: and she ordered him to be introduced at once. When he

entered he threw himself upon his knees and besought that he might speak

with her alone; and for a half hour he was closeted with the Queen.

The story he had to tell was of a widespread conspiracy of Don Juan and

his friends against the Regency, and without delay the net was cast that

swept into prison one of Don Juan’s principal agents in Madrid, Patiño,

and all his household. In a day or two a force of soldiers was

despatched to Consuegra to arrest Don Juan himself, but found the bird

flown. Behind him he had left a document addressed to the Queen,

violently denouncing Nithard as a tyrant and a murderer, whilst

protesting his own loyalty to his father’s son. Madrid began again to

murmur at the persecution of a Spanish prince in Spain by a foreign

Jesuit, and though a brisk interchange of manifestoes and recriminatory

pamphlets was carried on, the great mass of the people were

unquestionably on the side of Don Juan against the German Queen and her

Jesuit favourite.

The Prince fled to Barcelona, where Nithard was especially hated and the

Madrid government always unpopular, and there nobles and people received

Don Juan with enthusiasm. Messages of support came to him from all parts

of Spain, and French money and sympathy powerfully aided his propaganda,

so that by the end of the year 1668 affairs looked dangerous for Mariana

and her confessor. The Queen and her Camarilla took fright and tried

conciliation, but Don Juan knew that he had the whip hand, and in a

letter written in November to Mariana peremptorily demanded the

dismissal of Nithard within fifteen days. Mariana’s friends on the

Council of Regency voted for the impeachment of Don Juan for high

treason; and for a time vigorous measures against him were like to be

taken. But the Council of Castile, the supreme judicial authority,

through its most influential member, warned the Queen that in a

controversy between the King’s brother and a foreign Jesuit Spaniards

must necessarily be on the side of the former, and the Queen must be

cautious or she would alienate the country from her. Mariana thereupon

wrote softly to Don Juan inviting him to approach Madrid that a

conference of conciliation might be held. But the prince would not trust

Nithard, who, he said, had planned his murder, and he declined to risk

coming to the capital except in his own time and way.

Early in February 1669, Don Juan, with a fine bodyguard of two hundred

horse, rode out of Barcelona, and through Catalonia and Aragon towards

Madrid. Mariana had sent strict orders throughout the country that no

honours were to be paid to him, but his journey in spite of her was a

triumphal progress, and as he entered Saragossa in state the whole

populace received him with shouts of: ‘Long live Don Juan of Austria,

and Death to the Jesuit Nithard.’ A regiment of infantry was added by

Aragon to the Prince’s force, and on the 24th February Mariana and her

friend in the palace of Madrid were horrified to learn that Don Juan was

at the gates of the capital with an armed body stronger than any at

their prompt disposal. Whilst they made such hasty preparations as they

could to resist, all Madrid was in open jubilation at the approach of

their favourite prince. Don Juan’s force grew from hour to hour, and

with it grew his haughtiness towards the ruling authority. Mariana, in

alarm, tried every means. The Nuncio endeavoured to soften Don Juan’s

heart; the higher nobles in the Queen’s household wrote to him

deprecating violence; and, finally, the Queen herself wrote a letter of

kindly welcome. But to all blandishments Don Juan stood firm: Father

Nithard must go for good, and at once; whilst the Council of Castile

also demanded the Jesuit’s expulsion.

On the morning of 25th February, whilst Mariana was still in bed, the

courtyards of the palace filled with gentlemen and officials in groups,

who openly declared for Don Juan and the expulsion of Nithard. The Dukes

of Infantado and Pastrana sought an interview with the Queen, for the

purpose of informing her of the general resolution, but were refused

admittance into her bedchamber. They then charged her secretary, Loyola,

to inform her, that unless she instantly signed a decree expelling

Nithard they themselves would take measures against him, as Madrid was

in a turmoil and order imperilled. Mariana with tears of rage swore that

she would not be coerced; and Nithard himself refused to stir. A hasty

meeting of the Council of Regency assembled in the forenoon, which

Nithard abstained from attending only upon the entreaty of the Nuncio,

where a decree of expulsion was drafted in the mildest form possible,

and laid before the Queen for signature as soon as she had dined.

Mariana was at the end of her tether. The Court, the populace, and the

soldiery were all against her favourite, and she was forced to sign the

decree. But, though she did it, she never forgave Don Juan for the

humiliation, and thenceforward it was war to the knife between them.

Cardinal Nithard, with rich grants and gifts from the Queen, was with

difficulty saved from the cursing multitude that surrounded his coach as

he slunk out of the capital; and Don Juan, triumphant, begged for

permission to come and salute the Queen in thanks for his expulsion.

This, haughty Mariana coldly refused to allow, and Don Juan retorted by

demanding a thorough reform in the administration of the government, a

re-adjustment of taxation and many other innovations which he alleged

that Nithard alone had prevented. The Spanish nobles, however, were no

lovers of reform, and Don Juan’s drastic demands were regarded askance

by many. A long acrimonious correspondence was carried on by the Queen

at Madrid and Don Juan at Guadalajara, in the course of which some

financial amendments were promised by the former: but in the meantime

Mariana’s friends were raising an armed force as a bodyguard for her and

her son, which afterwards became famous as the _Chambergo_ regiment,

because the uniform was copied from those worn by the troops of Marshal

Schomberg. The formation of this standing force was bitterly resented by

the citizens of Madrid, and aroused new sympathy for Don Juan. At length

a semi-reconciliation was effected by the appointment of Don Juan as

Viceroy of Aragon in June 1669; and for several years thereafter the

Prince was piling up funds from his rich offices to strike a more

effectual blow when the time should come.

The extreme debility of the boy King, who in 1670 was thought to be

moribund, was already dividing the courtiers, and indeed all Spain and

Europe, into two camps. If Charles II. died without issue, as seemed

probable, his elder sister Maria Theresa, wife of Louis XIV., would be

his natural successor, but for the act of renunciation signed at the

time of her marriage; an act which from the first the French had

minimised and disputed, and Philip himself had characterised as an ‘old

wife’s tale.’ It was evident that Louis XIV., daily growing in power and

ambition, had no intention of allowing the renunciation to stand in the

way of his wife’s claims if her brother died childless; and all of

Mariana’s enemies in Spain, and they were many, were ready to stand by

the claims of the elder Infanta Maria Teresa, daughter of the beloved

Isabel of Bourbon, if the succession fell into dispute.

On the other hand, Mariana, naturally championed the cause of her own

daughter, the Infanta Margaret, married to the Emperor Leopold, and

upheld the validity of Maria Theresa’s formal renunciation of the

succession on her marriage. The Austrian connection had brought nothing

but trouble to Spain, and the brilliant progress of France, even though

it was to the detriment of their country, had gained many Spanish

admirers of the modern spirit that pervaded the methods of Louis XIV.

Mariana, therefore, to most Spaniards, represented, with her pronounced

Austrian leanings, an attempt to tie the country to the bad old times,

as well as to pass over the legitimate rights of the elder Infanta for

the benefit of her own less popular daughter the Empress Margaret.

The Queen-Mother, well aware of the strong party against her, and that

her prime enemy, Don Juan, was only awaiting his time to strike at her,

employed all the resources she could scrape together in providing for

her own defence against her domestic opponents, leaving the frontier

fortresses divested of troops and means for repelling attack from

France; whilst, on the other hand, she provoked Louis by sending a

Spanish contingent to co-operate with the Emperor’s troops in aiding the

Dutch in their war with France; and, later, in 1673, she formed a

regular alliance with the Emperor and Holland against Louis XIV. Nothing

could have been more imprudent than this in the circumstances, for Spain

was in a worse condition of exhaustion than ever, and the hope of

beating France by force had long ago proved fallacious. The ancient

appanage of Burgundy, the Franche Comté, promptly passed for ever from

the dominion of Spain to that of France; and whilst the fighting in

Flanders and the Catalan frontier was progressing in 1674, a new trouble

assailed Mariana’s government. The island of Sicily revolted, and

invited the French to assume the sovereignty, an invitation that was

promptly accepted. Thirty-seven years before, when he was a mere

stripling, Don Juan had recovered Naples for Spain in similar

circumstances; and Mariana, almost in despair, could only beseech her

enemy to leave his government at Saragossa, and take command of the

Spanish-Dutch forces to attack the French in Sicily. But Don Juan,

knowing her desire to get him out of the way, was determined not to

allow himself to be sent far from the centre of affairs, and refused to

accept the position.

His reasons were well founded, for events were passing in Mariana’s

palace that rendered her more unpopular than ever; and, by the will of

Philip IV., her regency would come to an end when her son attained his

fifteenth year late in the next year 1675. It had been hoped that with

the banishment of Nithard and the absence from the capital of Don Juan,

the factions that divided the Court would have held their peace during

the few years the regency lasted; and possibly this would have been the

case if the Queen had been prudent. Her unwise favour to Nithard had

already made her extremely unpopular, for foreign Queens in Spain were

always suspect; but she had learned nothing from her favourite’s

ignominious expulsion; and soon a confidant, less worthy far than

Nithard, had completely captured the good graces of the Queen. This was

a young gentleman of no fortune named Fernando de Valenzuela. He was one

of those facile, plausible, Andaluces, a native of Ronda, who had

figured so brilliantly in the Court of Philip IV. and Mariana, where the

accomplishment of deftly turning amorous verse, improvising a dramatic

interlude, or contriving a stinging epigram, opened a way to fortune. He

had been a member of the household of the Duke of Infantado, and upon

the death of the latter, had attached himself to Father Nithard, who

needed the aid of such men.

Valenzuela was not only keen and clever, but extremely handsome, in the

black-eyed Moorish style of beauty, for which the people of Ronda are

famous, and he soon managed to gain the full confidence of both Nithard

and the Queen, whom he served as a go-between and messenger, a function

which he continued after the Jesuit had been expelled. He had married

the Queen’s favourite half-German maid, and had been appointed a royal

equerry; both of which circumstances gave a pretext for his continual

presence in the palace; and at the time of the agitation against

Nithard, and afterwards, he had been extremely useful in conveying to

the Queen all the comments that could be picked up by sharp ears in the

Calle Mayor and Liars’ Parade (the peristyle of the Church of St.

Philip). It was noticed that those who spoke incautiously of the Queen

in public were promptly denounced and brought to trouble, and the

gossips soon pitched upon Valenzuela as the spy, calling him in

consequence by the nickname, by which he was generally known, of the

‘fairy of the palace.’ The man was bold, ambitious, and unscrupulous,

and soon more than occupied the place left vacant by Nithard.

Jealous nobles and courtiers looked with indignation at the rapid rise

of a mere provincial adventurer to the highest places in the State. Not

only was a marquisate and high commands and offices conferred upon him,

but at a time when Spain was in the midst of a great international war

that ended in the remodelling of the map of Europe at her expense, this

favourite, without special aptitude or experience, was appointed by

Mariana her universal minister for all affairs; and Valenzuela was the

most powerful man in Spain. He manfully did his best though

unsuccessfully, for he was cordially detested, to win popularity in an

impossible position, by multiplying in Madrid the feasts and diversions

its inhabitants loved, by writing comedies himself, full of wit and

malice, for gratis representation in the theatres, by re-building public

edifices, and generally beautifying the capital. He was surrounded,

moreover, by a great crowd of parasites, mostly nobodies, like himself,

who sang his praises for the plunder he could pour upon them.

But his rise was too rapid, and his origin too obscure to be easily

forgiven, and a perfect deluge of satires, verses, pamphlets and flying

sheets, full of gross libels upon him and the Queen, came from the

secret presses and circulated throughout Spain. The general opinion was

that he was the Queen’s lover as well as her minister; but Madrid was

always a hotbed of scandal, and, although this may well have been true,

it must be regarded as non-proven. As a specimen of the view taken of

the connection by contemporaries the following description of a

broad-sheet, found one morning posted on the walls of the palace, may be

given. A portrait of the Queen is represented with her hand pointing to

her heart, with the printed legend, ‘This is given;’ whilst Valenzuela

is portrayed standing close by her side, pointing to the insignias and

emblems of his many high offices, and saying, ‘These are sold.’ The

favourite himself seems to have been anxious to strengthen the rumour

that assigned to him the amorous affection of the widowed Queen, for at

two of the Court festivals, of which he promoted many, he bore as his

devices, ‘I alone have licence,’ and ‘To me alone is it allowed.’[273]

The unrestrained favour extended by the Queen to such an upstart as this

gave hosts of new adherents to Don Juan; and such of them as had access

to the young King, now rapidly approaching his legal majority, took care

to paint the wretched condition of the country in the blackest colours,

and to ascribe the trouble to the Queen’s bad minister. The boy, though

nearly fifteen, was still a child; backward and, at best, almost an

idiot. He could hardly read or write, for the weakness of his wits and

the degeneracy of his physique had caused his education to be entirely

neglected, and he was, even in his mature age, grossly ignorant of the

simplest facts. But, like his father, he was gentle, kind and

good-hearted, and his compassion was easily aroused by the sad stories

told him of the sufferings of his people, especially when they came from

the lips of his father confessor, Montenegro, and his trusted tutor

Ramos del Manzano.

They, and the great nobles who prompted them, understood that the moment

had come for action when, in the late autumn of 1675, Mariana and

Valenzuela ordered Don Juan to sail in Ruyter’s fleet to Sicily and

eject the French; and what to them was just as important, leave them

with no rivals near them when the King came of age. Charles was

persuaded by his confessor, and without the knowledge of his mother, to

sign a letter recalling his half-brother to Madrid; and with this in his

hand Don Juan could refuse, as he did, to sail for Sicily. On the

morning of 6th November 1675, the day that Charles reached his fifteenth

year and the regency ended, Madrid was astir early to see the shows that

were to celebrate the new reign, though the country, in its utter

exhaustion and misery, was in no spirit to rejoice now.

To the surprise of most was seen a royal travelling carriage rapidly

approach the Buen Retiro palace, and the escort that surrounded it

proclaimed that the occupant of the coach was no other than Don Juan.

All was prepared for the coup d’etat. The prince hurried, unknown to

Mariana, to the young King’s apartment, and kneeling, kissed the boy’s

hand; whilst a decree, already drafted, was presented to the King,

appointing his half-brother the universal minister of the crown. Mariana

had passed the night at the palace a mile away, but the coming of her

enemy to the Buen Retiro had been announced to her before he alighted.

Without losing a moment she flew to the Retiro and reached her son’s

room just as the decree that would have ruined her was about to be

signed. She was an imperious woman, and had been Queen-Regent of Spain

for over ten years: her control of her feeble son had been supreme

whilst she was with him, and her angry orders that the room should be

cleared might not be gainsaid. Left alone with her son, she led him to a

private room and, with tears and indignant reproaches, reduced the poor

lad to a condition of abject submission to her will.

The president of the Council of Castile had already told her, that as

Don Juan had come by the King’s warrant, the same authority alone could

send him back, and Charles was induced to sign a decree commanding the

prince to return forthwith to his government in Aragon and remain there

till further orders. Now was the time when boldness on the part of Don

Juan would have won the day; for the nobles, court and people, were

mostly on his side against Valenzuela and the Queen, whose means did not

allow them to bribe everybody. But Don Juan was as vain and empty as he

was ambitious and failed to rise to the occasion. The sacrosanct

character of the King of Castile, moreover, was still a strong

tradition, and Don Juan, who knew his fellow-countrymen well, dared not

aim at ruling instead of the King, but through the King. So that night

Don Juan and his supporters met in conclave, and weakly decided to obey

the King’s new command without protest, instead of making another

attempt to override Mariana’s influence upon her son; and the prince

returned to Aragon overwhelmed with confusion and disappointment.[274]

The triumph of Mariana was complete, and she took no pains to conceal

her joy when she attended that night in state the theatre of the Buen

Retiro, in celebration of the King’s coming of age. In a few days all

those who had had a hand in the futile conspiracy were on their way to

exile; and, to keep up appearances, Valenzuela himself was given the

rich post of Admiral of the Andalucian coast, with another rich

marquisate, as an excuse for his absence from the capital during the

first few weeks of the King’s majority. He was soon back again,

collecting new honours from the feeble King at the instance of Mariana,

and to the indignation of the other nobles. The great post of Master of

the Horse, usually held by one of the first magnates of Spain, was given

to Valenzuela; and when the jealous grandees remonstrated he was made a

grandee of Spain of the first class to match his new dignity. All this,

and the fact that Don Juan had been deprived of his viceroyalty, though

banished from Court, may testify to Mariana’s determination and

boldness, but says little for her prudence; for all Spain, high and low,

was against her, and Valenzuela was a weak reed to depend upon in the

face of so powerful an opposition.

In the meanwhile the conspiracy against Mariana grew in strength. Don

Juan amongst his faithful Aragonese could plot with impunity, whilst the

nobles in Madrid were working incessantly to the same ends, namely, the

banishment of Mariana and the impeachment and punishment of Valenzuela.

In February 1676 all the principal grandees signed a mutual pledge to

stand together until these objects were attained; and as, in virtue of

their position, they had unrestrained access to the King, who was now

nominally his own master, the result of their efforts was soon seen.

The object lesson to which they could point was a very plain one.

Spanish troops were still pouring out their blood upon the battlefields

of Europe without benefit to Spain: the distress in the capital itself

was appalling; even the King’s household sometimes being without food,

or means of obtaining it. On every side ruin had overwhelmed the people.

Industry had been crushed by taxation, whole districts were depopulated

and derelict, and neither life nor property was safe from the bandits

who defied the law in town and country.[275] Spain had almost, though

not quite, reached its nadir of decadence: and, though the distress was

really the result of long-standing causes described in the earlier pages

of this book, the boy monarch was made to believe that it all arose from

the mis-government of his mother and Valenzuela; and that Don Juan could

remedy all the ills and make Spain strong and happy again.

The noble conspirators took care, this time, to neglect no precautions

that might ensure success, and obtained (27th December 1676) from the

King an order to which Mariana was obliged to consent, for Don Juan to

return to Madrid; whilst on various pretexts they kept the Queen as much

as possible from influencing her son. Valenzuela was, of course,

informed of what was going on, and, recognising that the coalition was

strong enough to crush him, had suddenly fled into hiding a few days

previously. The night of the 14th January 1677, after the King had

retired to his bedchamber in the palace of Madrid, and Mariana doubtless

thought that all was safe until the next morning, Charles, accompanied

by a single gentleman-in-waiting, escaped by arrangement with the

conspirators, down backstairs and through servants doorways, from the

old palace to the Buen Retiro, where the nobles and courtiers were

assembled. Long before dawn a decree reached Mariana in her bedroom in

the palace, ordering her not to leave her apartments without the written

permission of the King. Her rage and indignation knew no bounds, and for

the rest of the night letters alternately denouncing the undutifulness,

and appealing to the affection of her son, showered thick and fast from

the Queen in the old Alcazar to the sixteen year old boy with the long

white face, who was trying to play the King in the pleasance of the Buen

Retiro. None of her letters softened him, if ever they reached him,

which is doubtful, and all the next day the antechambers at the Retiro

were crowded with courtiers, applauding the King’s stroke of State,

whilst in the Alcazar on the cliff the Queen-Mother found herself

neglected by flatterers, a prisoner in the palace where she had reigned

so long.

The next day news came that Don Juan, with a great armed escort and

household, had arrived at Hita, thirty-five miles from the capital; and

there the Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo and a crowd of grandees met him

with a message from the King, asking him to dismiss his armed men and

come to Court for the purpose of taking the direction of affairs. But

Don Juan had his conditions to make first, and he refused to enter the

capital until Mariana had left it, Valenzuela made a prisoner, and the

hated Chambergo regiment disbanded. He had his way in all things, and

the same night, with rage in her heart, Mariana rode out of the capital

for her banishment at Toledo; the Chambergos were hurried away for

shipment to Sicily; and then came the question where was Valenzuela.

Reluctantly, and bit by bit, it was drawn from the King that he himself

had contrived the flight of his mother’s favourite, and knew where he

was hidden amongst the friars of the palace-monastery of the Escorial.

From his windows overlooking the bleak Sierra of Guadarrama the fugitive

favourite gazed in the gathering dusk of the 17th January 1677 in

fancied security; when, to his dismay, a large body of cavalry trotted

into the courtyard and dominated the palace. Amongst them the alarmed

Valenzuela descried his enemy the Duke of Medina Sidonia, and a group of

other grandees. Flying for refuge within the consecrated precincts, he

besought the prior to save him; and when the doors of the monastery had

been closed the prior greeted the troops and nobles in the courtyard and

demanded their pleasure. ‘We want nothing,’ they replied, ‘but that you

will deliver to us the traitor Valenzuela.’ ‘Have you an order from his

Majesty?’ asked the prior. ‘Only a verbal one,’ replied Don Antonio de

Toledo, son of the Duke of Alba, who took the lead. ‘In that case,’

replied the monk, supported by a murmur of approval from his brethren

behind, ‘we will not surrender him, except to main force; for we shelter

him by written warrant of the King.’ Threats and insults failed to move

the monks, and an attempt at arrangement was at last made by means of an

interview in the church between Valenzuela himself and the Duke of

Medina Sidonia and Toledo. Owing mainly to the violence of the latter

the interview had no result; and, as the prior saw that the soldiery

were preparing to force the sanctuary, Valenzuela was hidden in a secret

room contrived for such eventualities where he might defy discovery. The

enraged nobles and soldiery, balked of their prey, ransacked the

enormous place, room by room, for three days, overturning altars,

insulting and violating the privacy of the monks, and committing

sacrilege undreamt of in Spain for centuries, for which they were

smartly punished afterwards by the ecclesiastical authority.[276]

At length, on the night of 21st January, Valenzuela took fright at some

voices near, and foolishly let himself down by his twisted sheets from

the window of his safe retreat; and, though one sentry let him go, and

the monks made desperate attempts to keep him hidden, he was captured on

the 22nd January and carried with every circumstance of ignominy to

close confinement in Don Juan’s fortress of Consuegra; then after

terrible sufferings and stripped of all his honours and possessions, he

was imprisoned in Manila, and afterwards taken to Mexico to die; whilst

his unfortunate wife, treated with atrocious brutality by Toledo, was

reduced to beg from door to door for charity, until her troubles drove

her mad.[277] No sooner was Valenzuela safe behind the bars at Consuegra

than Don Juan of Austria entered Madrid in state on the 23rd January,

acclaimed by the populace as the saviour of Spain, and welcomed by the

King as the heaven-sent minister who was to make his reign brilliant and

successful. Don Juan’s vengeance knew no limit, as his soul knew no

generosity. Whatever may have been Mariana’s faults as a Queen of Spain,

or her errors as a diplomatist, the ignominy to which she was now

subjected by order of her son, at the instance of Don Juan, shows the

lack of generosity of the latter and the miserable weakness of the

former. Mariana’s turn was to come again by and bye, but with her

banishment to Toledo her life as ruling Queen of Spain came to an end.

She lived nearly twenty years afterwards, but her vicissitudes during

that time may be told more fittingly in connection with the lives of her

two successors, the wives of her afflicted son.

BOOK V

I

MARIE LOUISE OF ORLEANS

With Mariana, closely watched in her convent at Toledo, and all her

friends exiled from Court, Don Juan of Austria reigned supreme. For

years he had been clamouring for reform, and holding up as a terrible

example of the results of mis-government the utter prostration that had

seized upon the nation. This was his chance, and he missed it; for he,

whom a whole people had acclaimed as the strong man that was to redeem

Spain from the sins and errors of the past, proved in power to be a

jealous vindictive trifler, incapable of great ideas or statesmanlike

action. Every supporter of the Queen-Mother, from the highest to the

lowest, was made to feel the persecution of Don Juan; letters from

Toledo were opened, spies listened at every corner, and violated the

sanctity of every home, in the anxiety of the Prince to discover plots

against him. His pride exceeded all bounds, and most of his time was

occupied in intrigues to secure for himself the treatment due to a royal

prince of legitimate birth.

Whilst Don Juan was engaged in these trifles and equally futile

government measures, such as endeavouring by decree to make the

courtiers dress in the French fashion instead of Spanish, the taxes were

as heavy as before, the prices of food higher than ever, the

administration remained unreformed, and the law was still contemned: the

Spanish troops were being beaten by the French in Catalonia for lack of

support, and King Louis still occupied Sicily. Don Juan’s own

supporters, too, soon got tired of him when they saw that he was

grudging of rewards, even to them; and pasquins and pamphlets rained

against him and in favour of the Queen-Mother. The latter and the

imperial ambassador had, before the coming of Don Juan, betrothed the

King to his niece the Archduchess Marie Antoinette, aged nine, the

daughter of the Emperor; as if the miserable Charles himself had not

been a sufficient warning against further consanguineous marriages in

the house of Austria: but Don Juan promptly put an end to that

arrangement, and proposed to marry Charles to a little Portuguese

Infanta of similar age. Peace was now an absolute necessity to all

Europe. The pourparlers between the powers at Nimeguen had already

lasted two years, and ended in an arrangement between Holland and

France, in which Spain was left out. Louis could then exact his own

terms; and, as usual, they were crushingly hard on Spain, which lost

some of the richest cities in Flanders and all the Franche Comté

(September 1678). But it was peace, and the rejoicing of the

overburdened Spanish people was pathetic to witness.

Charles was seventeen years of age, and already his country was

speculating eagerly upon his marriage; whilst his degeneracy and

weakness aroused hopes and fears of what might happen if he died without

issue. According to the will of Philip IV., the succession fell to the

Empress Margaret, daughter of Mariana; but the French King, who from the

first had made light of his wife’s renunciation of her Spanish

birthright, and Maria Theresa herself, were not inclined to let her

claims go by default. Soon the gossips in Madrid began to whisper that a

French Queen Consort, a descendant of the house which had given them

their beloved Isabel of Bourbon, would suit Spain best, and Don Juan

himself was not unwilling to listen to such a suggestion; for, in any

case, the King must marry, and a French match would be a blow against

Mariana and the Austrian connection. The Duke of Medina Celi, Don Juan’s

principal henchman, slept, as sumiller de corps, in the King’s room; and

it was he who first broached to Charles the idea of a French wife. He

was, the Duke reminded him, a grown man now, and the Austrian

Archduchess of ten was too young for him. The Princess of Portugal, he

said, would never be consented to by the French, and she was also too

youthful: but there was at St. Cloud the most lovely Princess ever seen,

only a year younger than himself, who was a bride for the greatest king

in the world.[278]

Her name was Marie Louise, and she was the daughter of the brother of

King Louis, the Duke of Orleans, by Henriette of England, that beautiful

daughter of Charles I. who had been so beloved in the country of her

adoption. Maria Theresa took care that miniatures of her lovely niece

should go to the Spanish Court, and when one of them was brought to the

notice of the young King, his adolescent passion was inflamed at once,

and the Marquis de los Balbeses, who had represented Spain at the

conference of Nimeguen, was instructed by Don Juan to proceed to Paris

and ask King Louis for the hand of his niece.

Marie Louise was a spoilt beauty of the most refined and gayest court in

Europe. She had when a child lost her English mother; but every body was

in love with her, from King Louis downward; and it had long been

understood that she might marry the Dauphin, with whom she was on the

tenderest terms of affection. But the treaties of Nimeguen had

transformed the face of Europe, and Louis had other views for his son,

whilst the need for securing a footing in Spain during the critical

period approaching was evident. So, when Balbeses came to Paris with

unusual state, and Saint Germain and Saint Cloud were a blaze of

magnificence to receive him, the girl’s heart sank; for with her

precocious intelligence she guessed the meaning of the whispers and

curious glances that greeted her every appearance in the ceremonies in

honour of the King of Spain’s ambassador.

She and the Dauphin were deeply in love with each other, and had been so

since childhood; and it was like a sentence of death for the beautiful

girl with the burnished copper-brown hair and flashing eyes, to learn

that she was to be the bride of the long-faced, pallid boy, with the

monstrous jaw and dull stare, in his gloomy palace far away from

brilliant Versailles, and from her own home at Saint Cloud. When her

father, the Duke of Orleans, and afterwards King Louis himself, gravely

told her the honour that was in store for her, she implored them in an

agony of passionate tears to save her from such a fate. To her

stepmother, Charlotte of Bavaria, to the Queen Maria Theresa, to the

King, she appealed on her knees, again and again, to let her stay in

France, where she was so happy; and not to send her far away amongst

people she did not love. She was told that her duty was to France; and

Colbert, by the order of King Louis, drew up a serious State paper for

the instruction of the frightened girl in the manner that French

interests might be served by her as Queen of Spain.

The fine pearl necklace, worth a hundred thousand crowns, given to her

by King Louis, the magnificent diamonds brought by the Duke of

Pastrana,[279] as a present to her from her future husband, the title of

Majesty, ostentatiously given to her as soon as preliminaries were

arranged, the fine dresses and jewels, and the new deference with which

she was surrounded, only deepened the girl’s grief. Her heart grew hard

and her spirit reckless when she understood that, regardless of her own

feelings, she was to be a sacrifice: and, as the pompous ceremony of her

marriage by proxy approached, she became outwardly calm, and more

proudly beautiful than ever. On the 30th August 1679, as the new Queen

was led by her father on one hand and the Dauphin she loved on the

other, into the principal saloon at Fontainebleau for the formal

betrothal to the Prince of Conti, representing the King of Spain, all

the Court was enraptured at her peerless loveliness. Her train, seven

yards long, of cloth of gold, was borne by princesses of the blood; and

the magnificence that the Roi Soleil loved so well found its centre in

the jewels that blazed over the young Princess who was being sacrificed

for France.

It would be tedious to recount the splendour of the betrothal, and

marriage the next day, 31st August,[280] but when, after the ceremony

with Conti that made Marie Louise the wife of Charles II., she left the

chapel in her royal crown, her purple velvet robe lined with ermine and

covered with golden fleurs de lis, and her flashing gems enveloping her

in light, King Louis and his Queen, between whom she walked in the

procession, praised and soothed her as the most perfect princess and

queen in the world. At the State concert and ball that night, and at the

ceremonies of the morrow, Marie Louise was radiant in her loveliness,

and shed no tears, for she was steeled now to the sacrifice, and

determined thenceforward to get as much sensuous joy out of life as she

could, in spite of the fate that had befallen her.

Whilst this was happening in Fontainebleau, the plot was thickening in

Madrid. The star of Don Juan was visibly on the wane. The adherents of

Mariana grew bolder daily; some of them, like the Duke of Osuna, dared

to come to Court in spite of prohibition; and Don Juan lived in daily

fear that the King would slip through his hands and join his mother in

Toledo. In order to divert him from visiting Aranjuez, which is within

riding distance of Toledo, all sorts of pretexts were invented, and the

surveillance of the old Queen by Don Juan’s agents became more insulting

than ever. Mme. D’Aulnoy narrates a conversation with Don Juan at the

time, which may well be authentic.[281] ‘She asked him if it was true

that the Queen-Mother had written to the King requesting him to see her,

and that he had refused. The prince admitted that it was, and that this

was the sole reason that had prevented his Majesty from going to

Aranjuez, for fear that she might go there and see him, in spite of the

orders given to her not to leave Toledo. “What, sir,” I cried; “The King

refuses to see his mother!” “Say rather,” he replied, “that reasons of

State prevent monarchs from following their own inclinations when they

clash with the public interest. We have a maxim in the Council of State

always to be guided by the spirit of the great Emperor Charles V. in all

difficult questions.”‘... ‘It was quite evident to me,’ concludes Mme.

D’Aulnoy, ‘that Don Juan accommodated the genius of Charles V. to suit

his own.’[282]

Don Juan had grown colder towards the French match as time went on. He

had, indeed, endeavoured more than once to obstruct or frustrate it by

suggesting impossible conditions; but even Charles II. had plucked up

some semblance of manhood with his approaching marriage to the original

of the portrait that had so enraptured him, and gave his half-brother to

understand that he meant to have his own way, in this and in other

things.[283] Don Juan had very soon understood that the appearance of

Marie Louise in Spain, with the influence of Louis XIV. behind her,

would mean his own downfall; and the arrival of the Marquis of Villars,

the French ambassador, with instructions from his master not to accede

to the ambitious claims of Don Juan to receive the ambassador seated and

to give his hand as a royal prince, led to infinite negotiation. Louis

was determined that the bastard of Philip IV. should not be treated by

his ambassador as royal, unless his own illegitimate offspring enjoyed

the same privilege; and Villars was instructed not to negotiate with Don

Juan at all unless he gave way.[284] Louis also instructed Villars to

proceed to Toledo and salute Mariana; and Don Juan knew that with the

Queen-Mother’s interest, the French interest, and most of Spain against

him, his government was doomed to an early extinction.

The knowledge killed him; and before Marie Louise had reached the

Spanish frontier the news came to her that Don Juan was dead, 17th

September. He had suffered for many weeks from double tertian fevers,

and his anxiety had increased the malady. The King, he knew, was already

holding conferences of nobles, plotting to escape to his mother and

decree his half-brother’s dismissal. On all sides those upon whom he had

depended now opposed him, and some of his old enemies had already

claimed the right, in virtue of their rank and offices, to go and attend

the new Queen. In these circumstances it is not necessary to seek, as

many contemporaries did, to explain his death by accusations against

Mariana and her friends of poisoning him; but there is no denying that

his death was most opportune for them, and was welcome to the whole

nation, as ensuring some degree of harmony under the new regime that was

to commence with the King’s marriage. Don Juan’s dying ears were dinned

by the explosion of fireworks from his own windows, in celebration of

the wedding at Fontainebleau, so little regard was paid to him; and

hardly had the breath left his body when Charles ran to seek his mother

at Toledo, and, with tears and embraces on both sides, a reconciliation

was effected. It had all been the wicked bastard’s fault, and

henceforward all would go well.

Mariana managed her triumphant return with tact and skill. She had left

the Court after Valenzuela’s fall intensely unpopular; but much had

happened since then. Don Juan had proved a whitened sepulchre; the

detested Austrian match for the King was at an end, the cordiality shown

by Mariana towards the new marriage pleased the people, and a warm

welcome greeted her as she rode in state by her son’s side in the great

swaying coach with the curtains drawn back,[285] to the palace of the

Buen Retiro which was to be her residence until her own house was

prepared.

All the Court was eager to know what part Mariana would in future take

in the government. Would she be, as of yore, the sole dispenser of

bounty and the only fountain of power? Would she avenge herself upon Don

Juan’s friends as he had avenged himself upon hers, or would she leave

the dominating influence to her son’s young wife? Mariana had learnt

wisdom by experience, and walked warily. She was no lover of the French

match; but she knew that open opposition to it would alienate the King

and exasperate the country, and she smilingly played the part of the

fond mother who rejoiced at her son’s happiness. Everybody, moreover,

and especially the King, was so busy with the marriage that there was

neither time nor inclination for politics; and until the King’s

departure to meet his bride he was closeted every day in loving converse

with his mother, talking only of his coming happiness. Fortunately the

treasure-fleet from America arrived in the nick of time, and, for a

wonder, there was no lack of money, which not only added to the good

humour of the people, but enabled the preparations for the reception of

Marie Louise on the Spanish side to be made upon a scale approaching the

costly pageantry of former times.

The splendid entertainments at Fontainebleau ended at last; and on the

20th September 1679, the young Queen rode out of the beautiful park on

the first stage of the long voyage to her new country. She sat silently

in the coach with King Louis and his wife, and the one man upon whom her

heart was set, the young Dauphin, whose eyes were red with tears. At La

Chapelle, two leagues from Fontainebleau, the long cavalcade stopped,

for here Marie Louise was to take an eternal farewell of most of those

she loved. As she stepped from Queen Maria Theresa’s carriage and

entered one belonging to the King that was to bear her to the frontier,

every eye was wet with tears, and the common folk who witnessed the

leave-taking cried aloud with grief. Only Marie Louise, with fixed face

and stony eyes, was mute. But when the last farewell was said, and the

Queen’s carriage with the Dauphin turned to leave, one irrepressible

wail of sorrow was wrung from the heart of the poor girl, as she sank

back fainting upon the cushions of the carriage by her father’s

side.[286]

Through France, by short stages, and followed by a great household under

the Duke of Harcourt and the Maréchale Clerambant, as mistress of the

robes, the young Queen made her way, splendidly entertained by the

cities through which she passed; for to them the marriage meant peace

with Spain, and rich and poor blessed her for her beauty and her

sacrifice. The Marquis of Balbeses, the Spanish ambassador and his wife,

a Colonna, rode in her train, and at Poictiers the latter brought her

the news of Don Juan’s unregretted death. The Marchioness happened to be

wearing a black silk handkerchief at her neck; and, lightly touching it,

and smiling, she said: ‘This is all the mourning I am going to wear for

_him_.’[287] Thenceforward to the sad end Marie Louise had to deal with

those who, with smiling face and soft speeches, were secretly bent upon

her ruin; and she, a bright beauty full of strength and the joy of life,

hungry for the love that had been denied her, was no match, even if she

had cared to struggle with them, for the false hearts and subtle brains

that planned the shipwreck of her life.

The household of the new Queen, which had been chosen by Don Juan before

his death, started from the capital towards the frontier on the 26th

September, and already intrigue was rife amongst the courtiers to gain

ascendency over the young consort of the King. The master of the

household, the Marquis of Astorga, was mainly famous for his gallantry,

and had been a firm friend of Don Juan; whilst the mistress of the

robes, the Duchess of Terranova in her own right, was a stern grand dame

of sixty, whose experience, like that of Astorga, had been principally

Italian, and of whom some whispered that ‘she knew more about carbines

and daggers than about thimbles and needles.’[288] However that may be,

she was imperious and punctilious to the last degree, but kept Marie

Louise in the right way as she understood it; though, as we shall see,

the roughness of her methods disgusted the young Queen and hastened the

inevitable catastrophe.[289] Close upon the heels of the official

household went some of Mariana’s friends, especially the Duke of Osuna,

appointed Grand Equerry, and an Italian priest, who aspired to the post

of Queen’s confessor; and even before she entered Spain began to whisper

to Marie Louise political counsels intended to betray her.

Once again on the historic banks of the Bidasoa, and on the island of

Pheasants that had seen so many regal meetings, sumptuous pavilions of

silk brocade and tapestry were erected. Marie Louise at St. Jean de Luz,

a few miles away, was sick at heart, in spite of all the splendour that

surrounded her; and she could not suppress her tears as she stood upon

the last foot of French soil she was ever to touch, ready to enter the

gilded barge that was to cross the few feet of water that separated her

from the little gaily decked neutral island where the Marquis of Astorga

was to receive her on bended knee as his sovereign mistress.

The rule of the formidable old Duchess of Terranova began the moment

Marie Louise stepped into the barge that was to land her on the Spanish

bank. The Queen was dressed in the graceful garb that prevailed in the

Court of Louis XIV. The soft yielding skirts and square cut bodice with

abundance of fine lace at neck and wrists were coquettishly feminine.

The bright brown hair of the bride was curled and frizzed at the sides

and on the brow, in artful little ringlets, and all this grace and

prettiness looked to the Spanish ladies of the old school indecorous, if

not positively indecent. Their vast wide-hooped farthingales, of heavy

brocade, their long flat bodices, their stiff unbendable sleeves, and in

the case of younger ladies, their hair, lank and uncurled, falling upon

their shoulders, except where it was parted at the side and gathered

with a bow of ribbon over one temple, formed an entire contrast to the

French feminine fashions of the time; and until Marie Louise donned the

Spanish garb, and did her hair in Spanish style, the Duchess of

Terranova looked with grave disapproval at her mistress.

After the whole party had attended the Te Deum at Irun the journey south

began, though not before a desperate fight for precedence had taken

place between the Duke of Osuna and the Marquis of Astorga, a struggle

that was renewed on every opportunity until the Duke was recalled to the

King’s side. Long ere this the young King’s impatience to meet his bride

had over-ridden all the dictates of etiquette, and he had started on his

journey northward on the 23rd October, before even Marie Louise had

entered Spain. To one of those witty French ladies who, at the time,

wrote such excellent letters, we are indebted for invaluable information

on the events of the next two years, and the letters of Mme. de Villars,

wife of the French ambassador, will furnish us with many vivid pictures.

Writing from Madrid the day before Marie Louise entered Spain (2nd

November 1679) Mme. de Villars says: ‘M. Villars had started to join the

King, who is going in search of the Queen with such impetuosity that it

is impossible to follow him. If she has not arrived at Burgos when he

reaches there, he is determined to take the Archbishop of Burgos and go

as far as Vitoria, or to the frontier, if needs be, to marry the

Princess. He was deaf to all advice to the contrary, he is so completely

transported with love and impatience. So with these dispositions, no

doubt the young Queen will be happy. The Queen Dowager is very good and

very reasonable, and passionately desires that she (Marie Louise) should

be contented.’[290]

As the royal couple approached each other, almost daily messages of

affection and rich gifts passed between them. First went from Marie

Louise a beautiful French gold watch, with a flame-coloured ribbon,

which she assured the love-lorn Charles had already encircled her neck.

On the 9th November she reached Oñate, where she passed the night, and

sent from there a miniature of herself on ivory set with diamonds, and

with this went a curious letter,[291] now published for the first time,

touching upon a subject which afterwards became one of the principal

sources of Marie Louise’s troubles in Spain. The letter is in Spanish,

and in the Queen’s own writing, a large, bold hand, full of character.

The Queen told Balbeses in Paris that she had learnt Spanish in order to

talk it with Queen Maria Theresa, but did not speak it much. The present

letter was probably, therefore, drafted or corrected in draft before she

wrote it (perhaps by Mme. de Clarembant, who spoke Spanish), as there

are no serious errors of syntax in it.

‘If I were ruled by the impulses of my heart alone, I should be sending

off couriers to your Majesty every instant. I send to you now Sergeant

Cicinetti, whom I knew at the Court of France, and his great fidelity

also to your Majesty’s service. I pray you receive him with the same

kindness that I send him. My heart, sire, is so overflowing with

gratitude that your Majesty will see it in all the acts of my life. They

wished to make me believe that your Majesty disapproved of my riding on

horseback, but Remille (?), who has just come from your Majesty, assures

me that just the contrary is the case, especially as for these bad roads

horses are the best. As my greatest anxiety is to please your Majesty, I

will do as you wish; for my whole happiness is that your Majesty should

be assured that I shall only like that which you like. God grant you

many years of life, as I desire and need. Oñate, 9th November.—Your

Niece and Servant,

MARIE LOUISE.’

In fact, the Duchess of Terranova, from the first day, had been

remonstrating with the Queen against her insisting upon riding a great

horse over the wretched rain-soaked tracts that did duty for roads.

Spanish ladies, she was told, travelled in closely-curtained carriages

or litters, or, in case of urgent need, upon led mules, but never upon

horses thus: and Marie Louise, who was a splendid horsewoman, had

excusably defended the custom of the Court in which she had been reared.

This was the first cause of disagreement between Marie Louise and her

mistress of the robes, but others quickly followed.

Whilst Charles was impatiently awaiting his bride at Burgos, Marie

Louise travelled slowly with her great train of French and Spanish

courtiers over the miry roads and through the drenching winter of

northern Spain. Already her daily passages of arms with the Duchess of

Terranova had filled her with apprehension and anxiety. M. de Villars

met her at Briviesca, and found her ‘full of inquietude and mistrust,

and perceived that the change of country, and people and manners, enough

to embarrass a more experienced person than she, and the cabals and

intrigues that assailed her on every hand, had plunged her into a

condition of agitation which made her fear everything without knowing

upon whom she could depend.’[292] The ambassador did his best to

tranquillise her. All these people, he said, were intriguing in their

own interests. She need not trouble about them: only let her love the

King and live in harmony with the Queen-Mother, whom she would find full

of affection for her, and all would be well. It is clear that Don Juan’s

faction had not died with him, and even at this early stage the

household, mainly appointed by him, had done their best to make Marie

Louise fear and dread her mother-in-law.