On the 18th November, the day after her interview with Villars, the

bride arrived at Quintanapalla, within a few miles of Burgos, where she

was to pass the night; the ostensible intention of the Spaniards being

that the marriage should take place at Burgos the next day. Everything

was done to lead the official Frenchmen to believe this; but Villars and

Harcourt were suspicious; and early on the morning of the 19th, they

arrived from Burgos at the miserable poverty-stricken village where

Marie Louise had passed the night. Assembled there they found members of

the King’s household, and taxed the Duchess of Terranova with the

intention of carrying through the royal marriage there. She replied

haughtily that the King had so commanded, and had given orders that no

one was to attend the wedding, but the few Spanish officers and

witnesses strictly necessary. The two noble Frenchmen indignantly

announced their intention of attending the ceremony, in obedience to the

orders of their own King Louis, whether the Spaniards liked it or not.

The imperious old lady thereupon flew into a towering rage; ‘_et dit

beaucoup de choses hors de propos_,’ and the ambassadors, declining to

quarrel with an angry woman, sent a courier galloping to Burgos to

demand leave for the official representatives of France to witness the

marriage of a French princess.[293]

At eleven o’clock in the morning, the King himself arrived at the poor

hamlet of ten houses, and at the door of the apartment where she had

lodged his beautiful bride met him. She looked radiant, ‘in a beautiful

French costume covered with a surprising quantity of gems,’[294] though

Charles told her the next day that he infinitely preferred her with the

Spanish garb and coiffure, which she usually assumed thenceforward. On

the threshold of the squalid labourer’s cottage, Marie Louise made as if

to kneel and kiss the King’s hand; but he stepped forward and raised

her. Unfortunately, thanks to his mumbling speech and her agitation, and

small familiarity with spoken Spanish, they soon found that conversation

was impossible without an interpreter, and Villars stepped into the

breach and said the mutual words of greeting between the husband and

wife.[295]

But whilst he was doing this courtly service, his keen eyes saw that the

humble living chamber of the cottage, where the ceremony of marriage was

to take place, was being filled by Spanish grandees, who had ranged

themselves in the place of honour on the right hand. Louis had broken

down the old Spanish claim to precedence before other nations, and

Villars at once demanded for Harcourt and himself the pre-eminent place.

Under protest, and with evil grace, the grandees were obliged to make

way for the Frenchmen; and there, in the squalid room, at midday, with

grey skies looming overhead, and the drizzling rain dimming the tiny

windows, Charles King of Spain was married to Marie Louise of

Orleans.[296]

An impromptu dinner was served immediately afterwards to the King and

Queen; and at two o’clock in the afternoon they entered the big coach

that awaited them, and the whole caravan floundered through the mud to

the city of Burgos. The next morning early the bride left the city

privately to dine at the neighbouring convent of Las Huelgas, and thence

to make her state entry on horseback, and dressed in Spanish fashion.

Then, for three days, the usual round of masquerades, bullfights, and

comedies, kept the Court amused, and the dreaded hour of parting from

her French train came to Marie Louise. Loaded with fine presents and

rewards from the King, the great ladies and gallant gentlemen who had

kept up the spirits of the Queen, now perforce turned their faces

towards the north again, and, as Marie Louise saw the French carriages

depart, her composure gave way, and she broke into a paroxysm of tears.

Spaniards generally, and especially the King, saw the French courtiers

depart with delight. For years the two countries had been constantly at

war. The splendour of France had grown proportionately as poverty and

impotence had fallen upon Spain. Old ambitions and vengeful hate were

not dead, and many Spaniards still dreamed of dictating to the world if

only France could be checked. At every step Marie Louise, who loved

France with all her heart, and had been forced to leave it, as she was

told, to serve its interests, was reminded that she must forget the dear

land of her youth and think only of her husband’s realm. It was too much

to expect that she would do it, and it is fair to say that she did not

try. She was a blithe, gay-hearted girl, in the full flower of youth and

strength, not yet eighteen: the pleasures of Versailles and St Cloud had

hitherto filled her life, and here in stern Spain, surrounded by

sinister intrigues she did not understand, and married to this

degenerate anæmic creature by her side, she did her best to play her

part properly; but she was French to her inmost soul, and she would not

forget her own folk and her old home. The harsh Duchess of Terranova

might insist upon the bright brown curls being brushed wet till they

hung flat and lank, and might cram the beautiful round bosom into the

hideous flat corset demanded by Spanish fashion; but even she could not

quite silence the frank, careless laugh, or suppress the triumphant

coquetry of a Parisian beauty overflowing with the sensuousness of

maturing passion.

During the stay at Burgos, and afterwards, the Duchess of Terranova kept

urging upon the narrow, suspicious King that his new wife was a young

woman of free and easy manners, entirely opposed to Spanish ideas of

decorum, and that he must keep a tight rein upon her. She laid it down,

moreover, that the girl must receive no visits of any sort until after

her State entry into Madrid, which would mean some six weeks of complete

isolation.[297] At Torrejon de Ardoz, a few miles from Madrid, Charles

and his wife were met by Mariana. The Queen-Mother was wiser and deeper

than the Mistress of the Robes; and instead of frightening her

daughter-in-law she was outwardly all kindness and sweetness to her. As

we shall see in the course of this history, the Terranova way, harsh as

it was, was less disastrous to Marie Louise than the policy of letting

her go her own way, and then holding her up to reprobation.

Mme. Villars records the coming of the newly-married pair to the Buen

Retiro palace, where the Queen was to remain whilst the preparations

were made for her state entry some weeks later. ‘Le roi et la reine

viennent seuls dans un grand carosse sans glace, à la mode du pays. Il

sera fort heureux pour eux qu’ils soient comme leur carosse.[298] On dit

que la reine fait tres bien: pour le roi, comme il etait fort amoureux

avant que de l’avoir vue, sa presence ne peut qu’avoir augmenté sa

passion.’

Marie Louise had now no Frenchwomen with her but two old nurses and two

maids of inferior rank; and some days after she had arrived at the Buen

Retiro she begged that Madame Villars, the ambassador’s wife, might be

allowed to come and raise her spirits by a chat in French. The Duchess

of Terranova was shocked, and refused. Neither man nor woman, she said,

should see the Queen until the state entry. Marie Louise then tried her

husband. Might not the ambassadress come in strict incognito? He seems

to have consented, and the Queen joyously sent word to Mme. Villars; but

Villars was aware of the jealousy in the palace, and before allowing his

wife to go, communicated with the Duchess of Terranova. She knew

nothing, she said, of such a permission, nor would she inquire, and the

Queen should see no one whilst she remained at the Retiro.

Secret means were found for letting Marie Louise know why her

countrywoman did not respond to the invitation; but a few days

afterwards Mme. Villars went to the Retiro, doubtless by appointment, to

pay her respects to the Queen-Mother Mariana. She found her everything

that was kind and amiable. ‘Have you seen my daughter-in-law yet?’ the

Queen-Mother asked. ‘She is so anxious to see you, and will receive you

when you like: to-morrow if you wish.’ This was a great victory over the

Duchess of Terranova, for Marie Louise had seen not a soul but the

inhabitants of the Retiro since she entered it. Only two days before the

Marchioness of Balbeses, the late ambassadress in France, who, though an

Italian, was married to a Spanish grandee, had gone to the apartment of

the Mistress of the Robes to beg an audience of the Queen. The latter,

hearing her friend’s voice, had run into the room from her own adjoining

chamber; but the moment the scandalised Duchess of Terranova caught

sight of her she seized her roughly by the arm and pushed her into her

own apartment again. ‘These manners,’ says Mme. Villars in recounting

the incident, ‘are not so extraordinary here as they would be anywhere

else.’[299]

The French ambassadress lost no time in availing herself of the

Queen-Mother’s hint; and on the following day went to the Retiro. The

account of her visit to the Queen may best be told in her own racy

words: ‘I entered by the apartment of the Mistress of the Robes, who

received me with all sorts of civility. She took me through some little

passages to a gallery, where I expected to see only the Queen, but, to

my great surprise, I found myself before the whole royal family. The

King was seated in a great arm-chair, and the two Queens on cushions.

The Mistress of the Robes kept hold of my hand, telling me as we

advanced how many courtesies I had to make, and that I must begin with

the King. She brought me up so close to his Majesty’s chair that I did

not know what she wished me to do. For my part, I thought nothing more

was required of me than a low courtesy; and, without vanity, I may

remark that he did not return it, though he seemed not sorry to see me.

When I told M. de Villars about it afterwards, he said no doubt the

Mistress of the Robes expected me to kiss the King’s hand. I thought so

myself, but I felt no inclination to do so.... There I was then, in the

midst of these three Majesties. The Queen-Mother, as on the previous

day, said many agreeable things, and the young Queen seemed very much

pleased to see me, though I did my best that she should show it in a

discreet way. The King has a little Flemish dwarf who understands and

speaks French very well, and he helped the conversation considerably.

They brought one of the young ladies in a farthingale, that I might

examine the machine.[300] The King had me asked what I thought of it,

and I replied, through the dwarf, that I did not believe it was ever

invented for a human form. He seemed very much of my opinion. They

brought me a cushion, upon which I sat only for a moment in obedience to

the sign made to me, but I took an opportunity immediately afterwards to

rise, as I saw so many “ladies of honour” standing, and I did not wish

to offend them; though the Queens repeatedly told me to be seated. The

young Queen had a collation served by her ladies on their knees—ladies

of the most splendid names, such as Aragon, Castile and Portugal. The

Queen-Mother took chocolate and the King nothing. The young Queen, as

you may imagine, was dressed in Spanish fashion, the dress being made of

some of the lovely stuffs she brought with her from France. She was

beautifully _coiffée_, her hair being brought diagonally across the

brow, and the rest falling loose over her shoulders. She has an

admirable complexion, very fine eyes, and a bewitching mouth when she

laughs. And what a thing it is to laugh in Spain! The gallery is rather

long, the walls being covered with crimson damask or velvet, studded all

over very close with gold trimmings. From one end to the other the floor

is laid with the most lovely carpet I ever saw in my life, and on it

there are tables, cabinets and brasiers, candlesticks being upon the

tables. Every now and then very grandly dressed maids come in, each with

two silver candlesticks, to replace others taken out for snuffing. These

maids make very great, long courtesies, with much grace. A good way from

the Queens there were some maids of honour sitting on the floor, and

many ladies of advanced age, in the usual widow’s garb, were leaning

standing against the wall.

‘The King and Queen left in three quarters of an hour, the King walking

first. The young Queen took her mother-in-law by the hand leading her to

the door of the gallery, and then she turned back quickly, and came to

rejoin me. The Mistress of the Robes did not return, and it was evident

that they had given the Queen full liberty to entertain me. There was

only one old lady in the gallery, a long way off, and the Queen said

that if she was not there she would give me a good hug. It was four

o’clock when I arrived, and half-past seven before I left, and then it

was I who made the first move. I can assure you I wish the King, the

Queen-Mother and the Mistress of the Robes could have heard all I said

to the Queen. I wish you could have heard it too, and have seen us

walking up and down that gallery, which the lights made very agreeable.

This young Queen, in the novelty and beauty of her garments, and with an

infinitude of diamonds, was simply ravishing. Once for all do not forget

that black and white are not more dissimilar than France and Spain. I

think our young Princess is doing very well. She wished to see me every

day, but I implored her to excuse me, unless I saw clearly that the King

and the Queen-Mother wished it as much as she did.... The Mistress of

the Robes came to meet me as I left the gallery, and I found there the

Queen’s French attendants, to whom I said that they must learn Spanish,

and avoid, if possible, saying a word of French to the Queen. I know

that they are scolded for speaking it too much to her.’[301]

In the deadly _ennui_ of such a life as that described above Marie

Louise, though she did her best to be patient, begged earnestly that her

countrywoman should be allowed to see her often. But Mme. Villars

pointed out to her how much depended upon her prudence, and avoided the

palace whenever possible, in the hope that the young Queen would fall

into Spanish ways. The King also, in his half-witted way, tried to

please his lovely wife: ‘more beautiful and agreeable,’ says Mme.

Villars, ‘than any lady of her Court,’ giving her many exquisite

presents of jewellery, and running in and out of her apartments to tell

her bits of news, and so on. But the life was deadly dull; and the gloom

within the palace could, as Mme. Villars says, be seen, tasted and

touched. Charles had no amusements other than the most childish games

and trivial pastimes: his intellect was not capable of sustaining a

reasonable conversation, and after a day of stiff monotony, he and his

wife went to bed every night at half-past eight, the moment they had

finished supper: ‘with the last morsel still in their mouths,’ as Mme.

Villars writes.

There was some eager talk of the Queen’s pregnancy before the grand

State entry into Madrid; but when that hope disappeared, and Marie

Louise began to languish alarmingly in the dull incarceration of the

Retiro, she and her husband sufficiently relaxed their surroundings to

go to the hunting palace of the Pardo, six miles away, where the young

Queen could ride her French horses, and Charles could enjoy himself with

a little pigsticking. At length the great day for the public entry into

the capital came on the 13th January 1680. Madrid, as usual, had

squandered money sorely needed for bread in gaudy shows. At every street

corner arose monuments and arches of imitation marble; and all the

heathen mythology was ransacked for far-fetched compliments to the

people’s new idol. The King and his mother leaving the Retiro in the

morning took up a position in the central balcony of the Oñate palace,

still standing, in the Calle Mayor; and at noon Marie Louise on a

beautiful chestnut palfrey issued from the gates of the Buen Retiro,

where the aldermen of the town stood awaiting her with the canopy of

state, under which she was to ride to the palace.

Preceded by trumpeters and the knights of the royal orders, by her

household and by the grandees of Spain, all in garments of dazzling

magnificence, rode the most beautiful woman in Spain, gorgeously dressed

in garments so richly embroidered with gold that their colour was

hidden, and covered with precious stones, but withal, as a Spanish

eyewitness observes, ‘more beautifully adorned by her loveliness and

grace than by the rich habit that she wore.’ Her horse was led by the

Marquis of Villamayna, her chief equerry; and after her came a great

train of ladies led by the Duchess of Terranova, all mounted on draped

led mules. As the new Queen passed the Oñate palace she smiled and bowed

low to the King and his mother, who could be dimly seen behind the

nearly closed jalousies; and went triumphantly forward, conquering all

hearts by the power of her radiant beauty.[302] But though she, poor

soul, knew it not, more was needed than careless beauty to win the

battle in which she was engaged, a battle not of hearts but of subtle

crafty brains.

Bullfights, with grandees as toreros, masquerades, cane tourneys, and

the inevitable religious pageantry, at all of which Marie Louise,

glittering with gems, took her place, ran their usual course; and at the

end of a week after the entry the Queen began her regular married life

in the old Alcazar on the cliff, more gloomy and monotonous, even, than

the Retiro, in its gardens on the other side of the capital.

The political intrigues, though they had never ceased, had been

naturally somewhat abated during the Queen’s voyage and subsequent

seclusion: but as soon as the marriage feasts were over the struggle

began in earnest. Charles, absorbed in his courtship and marriage, had

appointed no minister to succeed Don Juan, the necessary administrative

duties being performed by a favourite of his, Don Jeronimo de Eguia, a

man of no position or ability; and the first bone of contention was the

appointment of the man who was really to rule Spain. The old party of

the Queen-Mother inclined to a Board of Government, headed by the

Constable of Castile; but Mariana, in appearance, at least, held herself

aloof, and the minister ultimately chosen by the King was the first

noble in Spain, the Duke of Medina Celi, an easy going, idle, amiable

magnate, who had sided with Don Juan; but whose gentle manners had

convinced the King that he would not tyrannise over him as Don Juan had

done. The Duchess of Terranova and most of the household whispered

constantly to the young Queen distrust and suspicion of Mariana; and

after her state entry they encouraged her as much as possible to see the

French ambassadress constantly. The Queen-Mother, they said, had been

continually with the German ambassador and his wife talking German, why

should not Marie Louise do the same with the French ambassador. But both

Villars and his wife were wary, and saw that they were to be used to

form a French party at Court to oppose the Queen-Mother and the

Austrians, and this they were not at present inclined to do.

Villars himself constantly reiterates that the Queen-Mother was quite

sincere in her professions of affection for her daughter-in-law, and he

and his wife lost no opportunity of urging Marie Louise to respond

cordially to her mother-in-law’s loving advances. The diplomatist

attributes to Mariana, indeed, at this time, sentiments which her whole

history seems to falsify, and it appears far more probable that Marie

Louise was right than the ambassador when she looked askance at the

tenderness of her husband’s mother. The old Queen, says Villars, was

discontented with the way her Austrian kinsmen had treated her, and

leaned now to the side of France, which had been friendly with her in

her exile; she sincerely loved her daughter-in-law and hoped that her

son would have children to succeed him by his beautiful wife. Villars,

indeed, casts the whole of the blame upon Marie Louise, who, he

says—probably quite truly—was lacking in judgment, decision and

generosity, and hesitated too late between the Duchess of Terranova, who

constantly warned her against the Queen-Mother, and the French

ambassador and others who strove to persuade her to make common cause

with her mother-in-law, and rule all things jointly with her.[303]

The nearest approach to common action of the two Queens was when they

both persuaded Charles to appoint the weak, idle, Medina Celi as

minister; but, in this, and in all the other manifestations of Mariana’s

conciliatory amiability at the time and after, it is unquestionable that

the measures and men she smiled upon were such as would, and did,

inevitably lead to a state of things in which her firm hand would become

indispensable. The effects of the utter ineptitude of such a government

as that of Charles and Medina Celi were soon seen. The coin had been

tampered with to such an extent as to have no fixed value, provisions

were at famine price, and the attempt to fix low values of commodities

by decree aroused a sanguinary revolt in Madrid in the early spring of

1680, that nearly overthrew the wretched government such as it was.

Bandits infested the high roads, half the work of the country was done

by foreigners, whilst Spaniards starved in idleness, or lived by preying

upon the comparatively few who still had means.

In this abject state of affairs, the King gave but a quarter of an hour

daily to his public duties, which were limited to stamping his signature

on decrees placed before him, for he had neither the industry to read

them nor the intellect to understand them; and the rest of his time was

spent on the most puerile frivolity and in endless visits with Marie

Louise to convents and churches. ‘Such visits,’ says Mme. Villars, ‘are

anything but a feast for her. She insisted upon my going with her the

last two days. As I knew nobody, I was very much bored, and I believe

she only asked me to go in order to keep her in countenance. The King

and Queen are seated in two arm chairs, the nuns sitting at their feet,

and many ladies come to kiss their hands. The collation is brought, the

Queen’s repast always being a roast capon, which she eats whilst the

King gazes at her, and thinks that she eats too much. There are two

dwarfs who do all the talking.’

A very few weeks of this idle life and good living worked its effect

upon Marie Louise. In February 1680, Mme. Villars writes: ‘She has grown

so fat, that if it goes much further, her face will be round. Her bosom,

strictly speaking, is already too full; although it is one of the most

beautiful I have ever seen. She usually sleeps ten or twelve hours, and

eats meat four times a day. It is true that her breakfast and her

luncheon (collation) are her best meals. She always has served for lunch

a capon boiled and broth, and a roast capon. She laughs very much when I

have the honour to be with her. I am quite sure that it is not I who am

sufficiently agreeable to put her into such a good humour, and that she

must be pretty comfortable generally. No one could behave better than

she does, or be sweeter and more complaisant with the King. She saw his

portrait before she married him, but they did not paint his strange

humour, nor his love of solitude. The customs of the country have not

all been turned upside down to make them more agreeable for her, but the

Queen-Mother does everything she can to soften them. All sensible people

think that the young Queen could not do better than contribute on her

side to the tenderness and affection that the Queen-Mother shows for

her.... When I tell you that she is fat, that she sleeps well and laughs

heartily, I tell you no more than the truth; but it is no less true that

the life she leads does not please her.... But, after all, she is doing

wonderfully, and I am quite astonished at it.’[304]

Already we see by this, that before Marie Louise had been in Madrid

three months, she was going her own way, and was being humoured to the

top of her bent by Mariana. She had been sold into a slavery of utter

boredom, married to a degenerate imbecile; and she had neither brains,

heart, nor ambition to take a leading part in politics, or to play the

rôle that she was intended to fill in Spain by her uncle King Louis. All

that was left for her, then, was to eat, drink, sleep, and be as merry

as her grim surroundings would allow; and let the world wag as it would.

The society of the capital and Court had reached the lowest degree of

decadence; and a strong, high-minded Queen would have found ample work

in reducing at least her own household to decency. Every lady in the

palace and elsewhere had a gallant, and was proud of it; and it was a

universal practice in theatres and public places, or even at windows

looking upon the street, for lovers to converse openly in the language

of signs. Immorality and vice had reached such a terrible pitch that

mere children who could afford it lived in concubinage, and few people,

high or low, were free from preventible disease.[305]

Marie Louise, utterly frivolous, made no attempt to reform all this, but

swam with the stream, taking part in the Kings puerile pleasures of

throwing eggshells full of scent at people, or playing with him for

hours at his favourite game of spilikins for pence. Mariana looked on at

it all quite complacently, Villars and his wife thought out of mere

amiability. That may have been so, but it is clear to see now that all

that was necessary was to let Marie Louise go her own way unchecked, and

Mariana had nothing to fear from her politically or personally. As an

instance of the attitude of the Queen-Mother towards the young Queen’s

thoughtlessness, a little circumstance related by Mme. Villars may be

quoted: ‘I was walking in the gallery of the Buen Retiro on Sunday,

before seeing the comedy, thinking nothing of kings or queens, when I

heard our young Princess call out my name very loudly. I entered the

room whence the voice proceeded quite unceremoniously; and, to my

confusion, I found the Queen seated between the King and the

Queen-Mother. She had thought of nothing when she called me but her own

wish to see me, quite regardless of Spanish gravity; and she burst out

laughing heartily when she saw me. The Queen-Mother reassured me. She is

always pleased when her daughter-in-law enjoys herself. Indeed, she made

an opportunity for me to come and talk with her in a window recess, but

I retired as soon as I could.’ To encourage Marie Louise to forget for a

moment that she was a Spanish Queen, was to ensure her downfall.

Here is another picture of the young Queen a few days afterwards. Mme.

de Sévigné had written a letter talking of Marie Louise’s beautiful

little feet, with which she danced so nimbly at Versailles. The young

Queen was gratified at the flattery, but ruefully said that all her

pretty feet were used for now was to walk round her chamber a few times,

and carry her off to bed at half-past eight every night. On this

occasion Mme. Villars thus describes her: ‘She was as beautiful as an

angel, weighed down but uncomplaining, by a _parure_ of emeralds and

diamonds on her head, that is to say, a thousand sparks; a _furious_

pair of earrings, and in front, and around her, in the form of a scarf,

rings, bracelets, etc. You think, no doubt, that emeralds on her brown

hair would not look well, but you are mistaken. Her complexion is one of

the loveliest brunettes ever seen, her throat white, and exquisitely

beautiful.’

Soon the young Queen’s careless jollity received a blow, which

embittered her. Charles hated and distrusted all French people; and the

insistence of Marie Louise in making companions of her French maids

annoyed him exceedingly; and the lives of the two maids whom she liked

best were made intolerable to them to such an extent that they had to

leave. The Queen was in despair, but protested and wept in vain: the two

Frenchwomen were made to understand that they had to go; and when their

mistress summoned them one morning she was told that they had departed

from the palace for good, leaving her with only two French servants, a

nurse and a maid. As usual in her trouble, she summoned Mme. Villars,

who found her lying down. ‘She rose at once. It is truly surprising how

beautiful she has grown. She wore her hair tied up in great curls on her

forehead, with rose-coloured ribbons on her cap and on the top of her

head; and she was not plastered over with rouge, as she is generally

obliged to be. Her throat and bosom admirable. She slipped on a French

dressing-gown, which she wore for the rest of the day. She stood thus

for a short time regarding herself in a great mirror, and the view

seemed to revive her. Her eyes looked as if she had been weeping much.

As soon as she began to speak to me the King entered the room, and it is

the rule in such cases for the ladies all to leave, except the Mistress

of the Robes and some servants. I heard cards asked for, and I concluded

that the Queen was going to be bored to death with the little game that

the King is so fond of, at which, if you have very bad luck, you may

lose a dollar. The Queen always plays it as if she was enraptured with

the occupation.’

The loss of two of her French attendants drew Marie Louise ever closer

to Mme. Villars, who was a person of mature age, but, to her later

regret, she gradually lost some of the reserve that at first she had

considered prudent in her communications with the Queen. Mariana smiled

upon the constant companionship of her daughter-in-law with the French

ambassadress, but she must have known, for she was experienced and

clever, that it would end in disaster to Marie Louise, whose future

depended upon pleasing her husband and becoming purely Spanish. The

Queen did her best to keep the affection of Charles, who, in his own

way, was desperately in love with her, and on occasions when he had to

leave her for a day or two she affected desperate sorrow at his absence

so cleverly as to arouse the admiration of Mme. Villars for her good

acting.

But, though she kept the King in alternate fits of maudlin devotion and

despairing rage at her capricious flouting of all the rules and

traditions of his Court, he himself was politically a cypher, and the

policy always favoured by Mariana slowly but surely gained ground,

whilst the French interest grew weaker; and Marie Louise, in spite of

her uncle’s indignant reminders, raised no finger to help the cause she

had been sent to Spain to champion. If Mariana ever had quarrelled with

the Emperor, as Villars thought, the breach was patched up now, and the

Austrian ambassador, Count de Grana, an old friend of Mariana’s, came to

draw closer than before the family alliance. And yet Mariana

ostentatiously abstained from any governmental action, whilst all went

in the way she wished.

The first open sign of a return to the old policy of religious unity and

the Austrian connection was the holding of the greatest _auto de fe_

that had taken place in Madrid for half a century, in June 1680. The

Plaza Mayor was transformed at a vast expense into a great theatre; all

its hundreds of windows were filled with the aristocracy of Spain, and

the high roofs of the houses crowded with people to see the dreadful

show. All the inquisitors in Spain had been summoned, and the pulpit,

the great tribune for the judges, the platform for the bishops, and the

fronts of the barriers and balconies were covered with costly tapestries

and rich hangings for the occasion. Eighty-five grandees and noblemen

were proud to act as familiars of the Holy Office, and a picked corps of

250 gentlemen served as soldiers of the faith, to guard its ministers,

and each to carry a faggot for the devilish bonfire at the gate of

Fuencarral after the _auto_ was finished.

All day long, from early morning till four in the afternoon, the King,

with Marie Louise and Mariana, sat in the principal balcony of the

Panadería, the centre house in the great square, whilst 120 poor

wretches in sambenitos, with ropes round their necks, gags in their

mouths, and other insignia of shame, were condemned after innumerable

ceremonies, sermons and rogations, to the tender mercies of the law

condemning heresy. Charles swore again on the gospels to defend and

promote the Catholic faith as held in Spain; and when the dread

sentences were pronounced, the captain of the Inquisition Guard entered

the royal balcony, bearing upon his shield a faggot, which was presented

to Charles and the Queen, the former of whom returned it to the holder,

saying: ‘Take it in my name, and let it be the first cast upon the fire

to burn heretics.’ The French ambassador and his wife were obliged to be

present, for those who did not attend were looked upon with suspicion;

but they, and all the world, knew that this atrocious scene meant the

growing power of the traditional ideas connected with Austrian

friendship and the certainty at no distant period of a renewal of the

war with France.

Paltry questions of diplomatic precedence and privilege, the haughty

encroaching spirit of Louis XIV., and the utter abandonment of even

current affairs by the Spanish government, under lazy Medina Celi,

widened daily the breach between France and Spain. Villars and his wife,

according to the evidence now before us, appear to have misunderstood

entirely who were their real friends and foes in the palace. Mariana was

all amiability to them, constantly urging that the ambassadress should

be much with Marie Louise, and openly disapproving of the harsh manners

of the Duchess of Terranova, who was always, says Villars, abusing the

French and turning the King’s dislike to his wife’s countrymen into

unreasoning hatred. The ambassador therefore believed that the Duchess

was really the enemy of the young Queen and the French interest; but it

is unquestionable that in the then state of feeling in Spain, the only

hope for Marie Louise was to keep as far away from her own countrymen

and women as her Mistress of the Robes desired. Marie Louise,

thoughtless as she was, naturally considered this tyrannical and hard.

On one occasion a French half-witted beggar came to her carriage door,

and the Queen, speaking French to him, threw him some alms; whereupon

the King was so enraged that he insisted upon the beggar being arrested,

examined and expelled the country. Another day the King and Queen in

their coach passed in the street some Dutch gentlemen dressed in French

style, whose carriage, according to etiquette, had drawn up whilst the

royal equipage passed. The strangers were on the left side of the

street, and consequently were nearer the Queen than the King, and in

their salutations addressed their respects to her. Again the King made a

violent jealous scene, and caused a grave reprimand to be addressed to

the Dutchmen, who were forbidden ever to salute the Queen again.

In the spring of 1680, on a disputed question of etiquette, the King

took away some of the diplomatic privileges of the French ambassador,

and the Duke of Orleans wrote to his daughter the Queen, asking her to

speak to her husband about it. When Marie Louise did so, Charles sulkily

told her to mind her own business, and not to speak to him on such

affairs. She pressed her point, however, and he replied: ‘They will

recall this ambassador, and send me another gabacho instead.’[306] Some

months later, whilst Mme. Villars was on one of her frequent visits to

the Queen, the King, who had taken a special dislike to her, and often

listened behind the arras to the conversation in the hope of detecting

an indiscretion, broke out from his hiding-place in insulting abuse of

the ambassadress. Villars lays all this trouble at the door of the

Duchess of Terranova and the Marquis of Astorga, the Queen’s master of

the household, both appointed by Don Juan, and praises Mariana to the

skies for her gentleness to Marie Louise, and her desire that she should

have her own way and see as many French people as she liked.[307]

After a time the Duchess of Terranova, finding that the harshness of her

methods, contrasting with the gentleness of her opponents, was

destroying her influence, softened her manners to some extent, and went

so far as to rebuke the King—even to scold him—when he said unkind

things to his wife about her countrywomen, but her desire to mould Marie

Louise into the traditional Spanish Queen never ceased, and if her

advice had been followed, unpalatable and cross-grained as it was, the

unhappy girl would have been saved much of her misery. Every small

device that the King could adopt, Villars says on the advice of the

Duchess, was brought into play to separate the Queen from French

influence. She was kept so short of money that most of her beloved

horses, which she was not allowed to ride, and their French grooms, had

to be sent back to France, all her French men servants, even her doctor,

were dismissed, though he, from his name (Dr. Talbot), would seem to

have been an Englishman.

In this wretched existence Marie Louise grew callous. She took no pains

even to be civil to the Spanish grand dames who visited her, or to

pretend to care a jot for the eternal comedies and visits to convents

that were the only amusements allowed her. She played for hours every

day at spilikins with the King; ‘the worst company in the world, and he

never had any one with him but his two dwarfs.’ She was careless and

buxom, and found some little pleasure in attending to her birds,[308]

but nothing else; for she had neither brains, nor ambition, nor ideas,

worthy of her rank. Secretly all she longed for was to return to France

as a widowed Queen, to enjoy herself as she liked without fear.[309] Her

one delight was the visit of Mme. Villars, who sang French airs with

her, or played whilst the Queen danced a minuet, or chatted about

Fontainebleau and St. Cloud. ‘I do not know,’ says Mme. Villars, ‘what

passes in her breast and in her head to keep her up so, but, as for her

heart, I believe that nothing passes there at all.’ In these words the

witty Frenchwoman aptly sums up the character of the Queen, doomed to

this life of gloomy dulness by the side of a semi-imbecile. She had left

her heart behind her in the land she loved, and her existence now was

carelessly epicurean.

The political intrigues went on around her unheeded, and she had not wit

enough to see the traps laid for her. The Duchess of Terranova was

always dour and disagreeable, but her desperate attempts to alienate the

Queen from all memory of France had now made her specially disliked by

her mistress, whilst Mariana and her friends ostentatiously sided with

the young Queen, and deprecated the severity of the Duchess. Incited by

them Marie Louise determined to get rid if she could of the rough old

lady who was really her only friend, and spoke first to her confidante

Mme. Villars about it. The ambassador and his wife were as deeply

resentful of the old Duchess, who hated French people, as was the Queen,

and were delighted to hear the project for getting rid of her, but Mme.

Villars counselled prudence; for she knew how flighty and unstable the

Queen was. The Duchess, she said, was very clever, and such a change as

that suggested was without precedent in Spain: besides, the Duchess had

been later somewhat more civil than before; nevertheless, if the Queen

really wished for a new mistress of the Robes she must begin by

mentioning the matter to the King, and the Prime Minister, so that the

affair might be settled before a word of it reached the ears of the

Duchess.

Marie Louise used all her witchery that same night when she broached the

subject to her husband. He answered her, as she said, more sensibly than

she had expected, and told her that, if really the Duchess made her so

unhappy, they would make a change; but it was a serious matter, and she

must recollect that no second change would be possible. Marie Louise

then approached Queen Mariana, and found her apparently cool and

indifferent about it, to an extent that somewhat discouraged the young

Queen, who little understood that there was nothing that her

mother-in-law desired more than the removal of the only salutary check

upon her conduct. But Medina Celi, the Prime Minister, whom the

imperious ways of the old Duchess had offended, lent eager ear to the

suggestion when, by the aid of the Villars, it was opened to him. Marie

Louise, by the advice of Madame Villars, asked that the Duchess of

Medina Celi might be her new Mistress of the Robes, but that lady

declined absolutely. Then the Marchioness of los Velez and other great

ladies were suggested; and when Marie Louise consulted Mariana upon each

one in turn, the old Queen remained cold and aloof, and even had

excuses, and good words to say about the Duchess of Terranova.

But when there was a talk of the Duchess of Albuquerque, then Mariana

took an interest in the matter at once, and agreed with Medina Celi that

she would be an ideal person for Mistress of the Robes. But, of all the

ladies at Court, the Duchess of Albuquerque was the one that Marie

Louise disliked most. She might struggle as she liked, however, she soon

found that without Mariana’s goodwill no one could gain a footing in the

palace, and she was almost tempted to beg the Duchess of Terranova to

stay by her side, especially as the King himself was opposed to the

Duchess of Albuquerque. It ended, of course, in Mariana having her way.

She bullied her son into making the appointment, and into dismissing the

people who, she said, had ruled him for a year, the Duchess of Terranova

and his friend Eguia. Unbending to the last, the old Duchess, when she

took leave of the Queen, noticed that the latter was crying now that the

parting had come, and she told her that it was not proper for a Queen of

Spain to weep for so small a matter. Marie Louise, half regretting the

change now that it was too late, asked the Duchess of Terranova to come

and see her sometimes. ‘I will never set foot in the palace again, as

long as I live,’ replied the proud lady, violently banging the table and

tearing her fan to bits; and she went forth in high dudgeon, refusing

all the honours and rewards offered to her.

With her departure the outlook for Marie Louise changed like a charm.

The new Mistress of the Robes had always been considered as austere as

her predecessor, for which reason the young Queen had feared her. But

she came to her new office all sweetness. The Queen was allowed to sit

up until half-past ten at night, an unheard of thing before; she might

mount her saddle horses and ride whenever she pleased, as no previous

Queen Consort had ever done, and the King, on the persuasion of his

mother and the new Duchess of the Robes, positively urged his wife to

divert herself in pastimes that had previously been rigorously

forbidden.[310] The change in the King was extraordinary, and proves the

complete domination of his mother over his weak spirit when she pleased

to exert her power. Mme. Villars happened to visit the Queen two days

after the Duchess of Albuquerque assumed office; and as she entered the

Queen’s apartment Marie Louise ran smiling up to her in joy, crying:

‘You _will_ say yes to what I am going to ask you, will you not?’ The

demand turned out to be that, by the King’s special wish, Mme. Villars’s

daughter should enter the Queen’s household as a maid of honour; and

Marie Louise, at the idea of having a French girl of her own age always

near her, was transported with delight. The appointment was sanctioned

and gazetted, but never took effect, for Villars could not afford to

endow his daughter sufficiently well, and relations soon grew bitter

again; but that Charles, who hated the French, and especially Mme.

Villars, should ever have consented to it proves how complete the sudden

change of scene was.

Encouraged by her new liberty, Marie Louise began to take a keener

interest in public affairs, always playing, as can now be clearly seen,

the game of those who were bent upon her ruin. Medina Celi had been

cleverly diverted by Mariana, who had been ostensibly friendly with him,

whilst the councils and secretariats had been gradually packed with her

friends; and Marie Louise, prompted by her, took the opportunity of the

opposition offered by the minister to the stay of the Court at Aranjuez,

to set her husband against Medina Celi, after which, both she and her

mother-in-law, into whose hands she played, both worked incessantly to

undermine the minister who was already unpopular, owing to the terrible

distress in the country and his own ineptitude. The minister and his

henchman Eguia, and the King’s confessor, retaliated effectively by

sowing jealous distrust between Mariana and her daughter-in-law, and

between the King and his wife and mother; and thenceforward complete

disunion existed between them all. Mariana, in disgust at her son’s

weakness, and knowing that events were tending her way, stood aloof for

a time; Marie Louise went her own gait, making no friends and possessing

no party; and the inept Charles, alternately petulant and sulky,

distrusted everybody.

Villars writes of Marie Louise at this juncture: ‘She, with her youth

and beauty, full of life and vivacity, was not of an age or character

disposed to enter into the views and application necessary for her

proper conduct. Her bent for liberty and pleasure, the memories of

France and all she had left behind her there, had made Spain intolerable

to her. The captivity of the palace, the ennui of idleness without

amusement, the coarse low manners of the King, the unpleasantness of his

person, his sulky humour, which she increased frequently by her lack of

amiability towards him, all nourished her aversion and unhappiness. She

took interest in nothing, and would take no measure, either for the

present or the future; and so, putting aside all that Spain could give

her, she only consoled herself with the idea of returning to France. She

entertained this idea, encouraged by predictions and chimeras which

formed her only amusement, for everything else bored her.’[311]

In her despairing knowledge that she could never hope for happiness in

Spain, Marie Louise thus grew reckless. She had no ambition to rule

except in the heart of the man she loved; she was not clever enough to

succeed in the subtle political intrigues that went on around her; she

knew now that motherhood was hardly to be hoped for with such a husband

as hers, and her one thought was of the joy of living in France. As the

political relations between France and Spain grew constantly more

strained and Charles’s detestation of Frenchmen increased, the visits of

Mme. Villars to Marie Louise perforce grew rarer, for the suspicious

King had got into his head that the French ambassadress was serving as

an intermediary in the palace intrigues which were setting everybody by

the ears. Marie Louise made matters worse by turning to her widowed

nurse Mme. Quantin, and her inferior French maid. Quantin was a greedy,

meddlesome woman, of low rank, who put up her influence over the Queen

for sale, and soon embroiled matters beyond repair.

The Queen, under the influence of this woman, lost what little

discretion and prudence she possessed. The many poor French people in

the town, to whom Quantin and the other French maids were known, would

congregate beneath their apartments in the palace to gossip of France,

tell the news, and perhaps to beg for favours; and Marie Louise would

sometimes be imprudent enough to approach the windows and exchange words

with her countrymen below. Spaniards who saw it—for jealous eyes watched

the Queen always—cried shame upon such a derogation from the dignity of

Spanish royalty, and the scandalmongers of the capital already began to

whisper that the ‘Frenchwoman,’ who would not play the part properly,

and gave no signs of motherhood, might be put aside in favour of another

Queen. In the Calle Mayor, a punning verse passed from hand to hand

reproaching her for her sterility, and demanding in ribald rhyme that

she should either give an heir to Spain, or return whence she came; and

thus, as war loomed ever nearer between her two countries, the lot of

the unhappy Queen grew darker.

Villars began to see that he had been misled in condemning the hard rule

of the Duchess of Terranova, and aiding the Queen to gain the freedom

advocated for her by the amiable Mariana. ‘It was a great misfortune for

the Queen,’ he wrote, ‘who now abandoned herself without restraint to a

dangerous line of conduct, and it is quite a question, judging by

results, whether the hard severity of the Duchess of Terranova was not

better for her than the weak complaisance of the Duchess of

Albuquerque.’[312] The poor misguided girl had not a single friend.

Mariana kept away; for things were going admirably from her point of

view; and a new alliance between Spain and the empire and other powers,

against the threatened encroachments of France, was already being

discussed in secret.

The Minister, Medina Celi, had succeeded, by means of Eguia and the

King’s confessor, in re-establishing his position by arousing the

jealousy of all the three members of the royal family against each

other; and he sought further to isolate and discredit Marie Louise by

whispering to the King that her friend Mme. Villars was engaged in

political intrigue with the Queen to the detriment of Spain. Mme.

Villars had been specially authorised to visit the Queen as much as

possible, and report fully all she heard for the information of the

French government; but it is certain that she had no political mission.

Charles, however, was childishly jealous of her because his wife liked

her, and he instructed the Marquis de la Fuente, his ambassador in

France, to demand the recall of Villars in consequence of his wife’s

indiscretion. Louis XIV. knew his kinsman well, and the real reason for

his demand: but it was part of his policy just then to reassure the

Spanish King, and Villars was sacrificed. In the ambassador’s letter of

recall, Louis writes, after saying that Charles had complained of the

intrigues of Mme. Villars: ‘It is useless to inform you of all the

details ... it will suffice to say that, for many reasons affecting my

service, I have not thought fit to refuse the King of Spain this mark of

my complaisance, however satisfied I may be of the services you have

rendered in the post you occupy.’

Both Villars and his wife disdained to justify themselves by a single

word, and the ambassadress left Madrid in the summer of 1681, to the

despair of Marie Louise; whilst Villars himself was replaced by another

ambassador early in 1682. By this time the empire was at war with

France. Louis had captured Strasbourg, and Casale in Savoy on the same

day (30th September 1681), and Germany seemed almost at the mercy of the

now dominant power in Europe. The imperial ambassador at Madrid,

supported strongly by Mariana, was striving his utmost to draw Spain

into the great war that seemed inevitable, and Holland and England,

jealous of the aggression of France, were for a time apparently willing

to join Spain. But the clever diplomacy of Louis diverted the powers

from the alliance, except the empire and bankrupt Spain; and the sorely

reduced Flemish dominion of Spain was again invaded by French troops.

Luxembourg, which belonged to Spain, was besieged, the cities of

Dixmunde and Courtrai were captured (November 1683), and with every

fresh victory of the French, Louis became more exacting. Finally, when

the unfortunate country could resist no longer, the government of

Charles was forced to accept the humiliating terms of the Treaty of

Ratisbon in June 1684, by which Luxembourg, the well-nigh impregnable

fortress, was lost to Spain for ever, whilst Louis also kept Strasbourg,

Bovines, Chimay, and Beaumont. Other smaller potentates, like the

Elector of Brandenburg and the Regent of Portugal, following the example

of the great Louis, hectored Spain into degrading concessions, whilst

pestilence swept through the south, floods ruined Spanish Flanders,

hurricanes sank the silver fleets, upon which the government of Charles

largely depended, corruption lorded over all in stark desolate Spain;

and the cretin King, growing more feeble in mind and body, mumbled his

prayers, or played childish games with his wife or his dwarfs.

During the war, which further despoiled the land of her adoption, the

lot of Marie Louise was truly pitiable. Even before it broke out, and

during the period of acrimonious recriminatory claims which followed the

recall of Villars, her isolation and impotence and the growing power of

Mariana were plainly evident. In the instructions given by Louis XIV. to

his new ambassador, Vanguyon,[313] in 1682, the latter is instructed to

visit the Queen-Mother first, with all sorts of amiable messages, and

Marie Louise is only to be addressed ‘in general terms,’ and asked to do

her best to maintain good relations between the two countries. Mariana,

indeed, with the imperial ambassador, Mansfeldt, constantly at her side,

had by the mere force of circumstances and her own character gradually

again become the principal controlling power of the State, and, as

usual, she directed her influence not to the benefit of Spain but to the

aid of the empire in its secular struggle against the encroachments of

France. When the war, as already mentioned, broke out (1683) with

France, the underhand intrigues of Mariana and the Austrian faction to

discredit Marie Louise and destroy any political influence she might

have over her husband, were powerfully aided by the general feeling

against everything French; and the young Queen, without a single friend

near her, was more sorely beset than ever by her relentless enemies,

whilst she, perplexed with intrigues that she did not understand,

surrounded by people who would willingly have followed her if she had

had wit enough to lead them, threw away her chance by the frivolity and

imprudence of her behaviour.[314]

She managed, it is true, by her charm and beauty to keep her husband

deeply in love with her in his maudlin fashion, but, weak as he was, she

failed to influence him politically.[315] She had already offended

Medina Celi and played the game of the Queen-Mother against him—for he

had been a friend of Don Juan—by interfering with his appointments for

the benefit of her nurse, the widow Quantin; and now, at the very period

when Mariana had determined that the prime minister, who had failed to

pay her full pension, and who alone stood between her and supreme power,

should be dismissed, Marie Louise again foolishly threw her influence

with her husband against the oft-threatened minister. Medina Celi,

overwhelmed by his unpopularity and the insuperable difficulties of his

task, was brusquely dismissed by the King in June 1685; and

thenceforward Mariana was supreme. The new minister, the Count of

Oropesa, was clever and active, and at first made sweeping financial

reforms: but he was really the tool of the Austrian faction, which,

before many months had passed, negotiated the League of Augsburg, which

bound together Spain, the empire, Sweden, Bavaria and other powers,

against the encroachments of Louis XIV.; and again poor, ruined Spain

was pledged to enter, if called upon, into the central European war.

For the moment Louis was not prepared to meet all Europe in arms, and

his views with regard to Spain had become somewhat changed. It was by

this time evident that Marie Louise would bear no child to her

degenerate husband, and Mariana and Mansfeldt were already preparing to

put forward the claims to the succession of the children of the Empress

(the Infanta Margaret, daughter of Mariana), whilst Louis XIV., making

light, as he always did, of the renunciation signed by Maria Theresa on

her marriage (already referred to), was determined to show that his own

son, the Dauphin, had the best right to be King of Spain if Charles II.

died without issue. When, therefore, the new French ambassador,

Feuquière, went to Spain early in 1685, he was instructed to talk

seriously, and in secret, to Marie Louise on the subject.[316] He was to

tell her that she would be wise to desist from all political intrigue

directed to the change of personnel of the government, and so to gain

the goodwill of the ministers and obtain a firmer hold over the King.

This advice came too late, for she had foolishly connived at Medina

Celi’s fall before Feuquières could deliver his message. This, however,

was only the first step; and in the following year Father Verjus was

sent to Madrid with money and instructions to aid Feuquière in gaining

friends and forming a party under the ægis of Marie Louise to push the

claims of the Dauphin to the Spanish succession.

In the meantime the Austrian party, under Mariana, were having their own

way unchecked. Marie Louise was their sole stumbling-block, for the King

would never willingly lose sight of her, notwithstanding her follies, of

which her enemies made the most; and at the instance of Mariana and her

Austrian backers a dastardly series of plots was formed for ruining the

young Queen in the eyes of her husband. We get the first hint of them

from a letter dated 12th April 1685 in the curious informal

correspondence addressed by the Duke of Montalto in Madrid to the

Spanish ambassador in London, Pedro Ronquillo, both of them partisans of

Mariana: ‘A case of no little scandalousness has happened in the

palace,’ he wrote. ‘You know, of course, that Mme. Quantin is the

favourite of our Queen, and that M. Viremont, a Frenchman who takes care

of the Queen’s saddle horses, is also well liked by her Majesty. By

these means this man introduced himself so much into the palace with the

Quantin woman, that, although she wears the dress of a duenna, and is

neither young nor at all handsome, there was a talk of their getting

married. Everybody laughed at such a courtship; but the matter went so

far and the connection was so close, for both of them are cunning enough

to get out when they liked, and perhaps he may have found means to enter

her chamber in the palace, that the woman was recently taken out of the

palace to the house of Donna Ana de Aguirre, who is in high favour with

the Queen, and it is said that this Quantin woman gave birth to a boy

there the other day.[317] This scandal has caused no end of murmuring

and satires, so shameless some of them as to be incredible. What is

quite as incredible is the irresolution of the King. Up to the present

time nothing has been done, either to the man or the woman, and Viremont

continues in his employment as if nothing had happened. They are married

now; but if I had my way they should be burned. Yesterday the Quantin

woman went to pay her respects to the Queen with as much effrontery as

if she had not behaved thus. You can see by this the state the palace is

in.’[318]

We can supplement this narrative from other sources. The French widow

was the only person of her own tongue and country near Marie Louise,

and, though she had been a dangerous companion, the poor Queen clung

desperately to her. As soon as the rumour of her marriage spread the

outcry for her punishment and expulsion was raised by the enemies of

Marie Louise, and the Queen herself was attacked in dozens of spiteful

couplets as having connived at immorality in her own apartments. The

outraged Queen threw herself at her husband’s feet in an agony of tears,

and implored him not to expel the only French woman-servant upon whom

she could depend. Charles, moved by his wife’s tears, allowed Quantin to

remain in Madrid, though not to sleep in the palace, and refused to

believe the stories told him that Marie Louise had knowingly been a

party to the irregularity of her servant.

This was to some extent a defeat for the Queen-Mother and her friends;

but the scandal laid a foundation of distrust, upon which further attack

might be based. This is how the Duke of Montalto speaks of the King’s

concession to his wife. ‘I don’t know whether the Quantin affair is true

or not; but it is publicly stated, and is the most dreadful scandal that

ever happened in the palace. Medina, Oropesa and the Confessor, all

urged the King to take some step, but to no purpose, for he preferred to

give way to the tears and prayers of the Queen, rather than uphold the

decency of his own household. So she has triumphed to such an extent

that this woman, having married the rogue Viremont, has positively been

brought by the Queen into the palace again to serve her, and goes home

to her husband every night! Cases of this sort are surely enough to

drive one crazy, and to banish all hope of better times. Since I have

told you the story I must now tell you the sequel. As soon as they were

married the woman went ostentatiously to the palace to salute the King,

which he placidly allowed. The fine pair have now gone to Aranjuez with

the Court, like people of quality, in one of the royal coaches. Medina

Celi has thrown up everything and gone away in disgust. It is all the

King’s fault, and such goings on as these will expose to the world our

master’s tyranny and incapacity.’[319]

The further blow at the Queen was silently planned whilst the Court was

at the spring palace of Aranjuez, where it usually stayed until Corpus

Christi day. On the 12th May Charles fell suddenly ill, and much was

made of the matter. Although, after bleeding, he was quite well on the

third day, it was decided that he must immediately return to the

capital. ‘What must be well borne in mind in all this’ (wrote an enemy

of Marie Louise) ‘is that the Queen wanted to prefer her own pleasure to

the health of her husband; for it was almost impossible to persuade her

to come to Madrid. She said that the illness was nothing, and wished to

keep the King there till Corpus Christi, notwithstanding the heat and

danger. When she was not allowed to have her own way, she was cross and

ill-humoured; as was clear when the King was confined to his bed, for

she did not even go to see him. This is the more strange, as when the

Quantin woman was to be bled she must needs go and visit her without

ceremony. Neither I nor any one else can understand the strange things

that are going on in that house.’[320]

This was written at the end of May; and some three weeks afterwards the

plot ripened. A Frenchman named Vilaine, who is called by some

authorities a discharged groom of Marie Louise, and by the Duke of

Montalto the wax-chandler of the Queen-Mother, denounced Quantin and her

husband for having plotted, with the knowledge of the Queen, to poison

King Charles. The accused persons were at once arrested, and a carefully

prepared hue and cry was raised against all Frenchmen. Many foreigners

were attacked and some killed in the streets; the French embassy had to

be surrounded by troops, and the whole Court was in a panic. Charles was

a coward and miserably weak, but he stood by his wife as well as he knew

how at this period of trial. Marie Louise, indignant and outraged at

what she knew was a vile plot against her, demanded that the accusers

should also be arrested; but before this could be done, Quantin and her

husband, the French maids and others, were put to the torture; and the

poor woman, with both arms broken and her lower limbs crippled for life,

still maintained her innocence and would confess nothing.

The Queen’s few Spanish friends were put into close confinement. No

evidence whatever could be wrung from any of the accused to support the

charge against them: but the Council of Castile, packed now with the

Queen-Mother’s partisans, still continued to regard the matter as a

serious menace to the King’s life, and frightened poor Charles nearly

out of what small wits nature had given him. In a French news letter of

the time (19th August 1685) the political aim of the proceedings is

exposed. ‘The Council of Spain desires to involve the Queen in the

accusations, because they fear her influence over the King, and he has

not sufficient strength to resist the ministers who propose to appoint

commissaries for the Queen. She has written to her father, saying that

she has no French person now near her, nor any one else whom she could

trust. She is, she says, in daily fear of being poisoned, and she

refuses to eat what they provide for her, which has cast her into great

weakness. She will only eat with the King and from his dishes. Vilaine,

they say, is to be rewarded and sent to an employment in the Canaries.

The French ambassador is not allowed to speak with the Queen; and the

Venetian ambassador was nearly murdered, because they thought he was

French. When the King is with the Queen the ministers are all in the

wrong, but when they are with him he changes his mind.’[321]

Quantin and all the French people about the palace were expelled the

country, when no atom of proof could be found against them, and Charles,

apparently alarmed at the threats of Louis XIV., that if any harm came

to Marie Louise he would avenge her by war in Spain itself, was emphatic

in his repudiation of any suspicion on his part against his wife. He

assured Feuquières that he regarded his wife’s interests as his own, and

never believed for a moment in her guilt: and he assured the Duke of

Orleans that, not only did he not know that the accused French people

had been tortured, but that when he asked for a copy of the whole of the

proceedings in the case, his Council had assured him that the records

had all been burnt. In vain, however, did the French government insist

upon the punishment of the accusers. The King might promise and strive,

but there were others stronger than he; and Vilaine was spirited away

and rewarded.

Another news letter in the same French collection as that justed quoted

does not hesitate, a few months afterwards, when the whole matter was

known, to say: ‘Although the Quantin affair is now a thing of the past,

it is nevertheless worth recording that the Count of Mansfeldt, the

imperial ambassador and his wife, to please the Queen-Mother, originated

the accusation against the woman. She was made to suffer the cruel

tortures she did in order to injure the young Queen, who was so outraged

at it, and the King as well, that the imperial ambassador is forbidden

the palace, except on the business of his embassy.’

Mariana’s friends looked upon it in a very different light. Whilst still

the accusation was hanging over Marie Louise, Montalto wrote to

Ronquillo in London: ‘Quantin and her husband, and all the Frenchmen in

the Queen’s stable, with her bob-tailed horses, have all been packed off

to France. They were a lot of rascals, and the cost of her stable was a

calamity. They were all guilty, but as none of them would confess under

torture, they could not be further proceeded against. People are talking

very scandalously about such shameful laxity. Quantin’s young niece[322]

was sent out of the palace late at night, so that not a single French

person should remain. But the Queen’s tears and prayers soon fetched her

back. This is perfectly odious and disgraceful, and one can only have

contempt of so easy going a King, who will not let even justice take its

course if his wife says nay.’ A few weeks afterwards, the same courtier

says: ‘The Queen is still implacable at the loss of her Quantins, and

the King so excessively loving (not to call it by another name) of his

wife, that all his concessions to her, which ought to make her more

submissive to him, makes her humour worse, and the temper that God gave

her causes no end of trouble as it is; for it is the most extravagant

ever seen.’[323]

The French servants of the Queen, her only solace, all except the girl

Duperroy, had been sent away; but still Marie Louise personally had held

her place in the King’s affection. No sooner, however, had the Quantin

affair fallen a little into the background, than another stab more

wicked still was aimed at the Queen by the same hands out of the

darkness. There was a foolish, vain, French exon of the guard, the

Chevalier Saint Chamans, who had commanded Marie Louise’s escort when

she travelled to the Spanish frontier. As was not unusual in the French

Court at the time, Saint Chamans was pleased to profess a far-off

amorous worship of the lovely Princess; and it is quite probable that

during his attendance upon her, she may have smiled in raillery at his

silly languishing airs. In any case, the talk of his adoration reached

Madrid; and in the autumn of 1685, some miscreant in the capital of

Spain wrote two letters as from the Queen in a forged hand imitating

hers, to Saint Chamans, containing expressions to the highest degree

compromising of her honour. Saint Chamans, like the love-lorn fool that

he was, showed the letters to his chums, and Louis XIV. soon learnt of

their existence, and what is more extraordinary, believed them to be

genuine. In sorrow and severe reprobation, he wrote to Feuquières,

directing him to show the letters to the Queen, which he did in

September.

Marie Louise, outraged at the mere suspicion, and indignant at so cruel

a hoax, rose for once majestic and dignified in her wrath. She scribbled

a burning repudiation of the letters which she handed to Feuquières for

ciphered transmission to the King of France.[324] ‘It will not be

difficult for your Majesty to imagine the affliction in which I am, at

knowing that you suspect a person such as I of so unworthy a thing as

this. I cannot avoid expressing my justified sorrow at seeing that your

Majesty does not esteem at its true worth, as you should, conduct which

is most regular, and which certainly is not of the easiest.... but as I

am so unhappy as to have people near me here perfidious and abominable

enough to use every effort to ruin me by pernicious inventions, I am not

surprised that they should exert all their ingenuity to deprive me of

the esteem of your Majesty.... Believe me, nothing is more false than

that which you have thought of me, and my despair to see that your

Majesty doubts for a moment my good behaviour, makes me, in this, stand

apart from your counsel, and be myself alone; and I cannot think of the

injustice your Majesty has done me without being beside myself with

sorrow. Alas! I had made light of all my grief, believing that your

Majesty, at least, thought well of me: but I see now I am marked for

unhappiness, since your Majesty believes a thing of me which makes me

shudder even to think of.... I am so jealous of my honour, and I love it

so much, that I shall never do anything to stain it: and life itself is

not so insupportable to me, either, that I should seek thus to lose

it.... If I were in a more tranquil state, I should supplicate your

Majesty to have pity upon this poor realm for my sake; but I dare not,

though I think you will be good enough to recollect that I have the

honour to be your niece, and that all my happiness depends upon you....

Believe me, too, when I say that I am prouder of being born a princess

of your blood, than of the rank I hold in the world’: and so on, for

several pages, the wronged and outraged Queen eloquently protests her

innocence.

Thenceforward Marie Louise, though entirely without political

influence—for the Austrian faction and the Queen-Mother were in that

respect all-powerful—was unassailable in the affections of the poor man

she had married. Her disregard of the ordinary Spanish etiquette, the

free and easy _bonhomie_ of her demeanour, and the indulgence of her

caprices increased as she felt more secure in the love of her husband;

but she made no other use of her influence over him. No better series of

pictures of the life in her palace can be found than in the vitriolic

references to Marie Louise and her husband in letters already quoted of

the Duke of Montalto. On the 30th August 1685, he writes that for months

the Queen had not gone out in public, in which, he says, she was wise,

particularly when the anti-French riots were taking place, as the mob

might have attacked her. ‘They say again that she is pregnant, but there

is not much belief in it, as the same thing has happened several times

before. She had got up a very grand comedy for St. Louis’ day; but it

had to be deferred, because of this pregnancy rumour, and not even the

usual comedies in the palace were given for the same reason.’

On the 24th October of the same year, he records the removal of the

Court to the Retiro: ‘which place the Queen is very fond of, because

there she can enjoy her country sports, and especially ride about on

horseback every afternoon. In order to have her horses nearer to her,

she has had a place made for them near the large pond, where she goes

every morning to visit them.’ A little later he remarks that everything

in the palace is going to the dogs. ‘There is neither firmness nor

stability enough to correct these follies of the Queen.’ In April 1686,

the same writer says: ‘Things are in the greatest embarrassment for the

government, owing to the fancies and caprices of the Queen; for nothing

is done by any other rule than her whim.’ It appears that the presence

of the Queen’s Spanish friend Señora Aguirre, who had been exiled at the

time of the Quantin affair, was much desired by Marie Louise, and the

latter demanded her return of the prime minister, Oropesa. He temporised

for a time, but when she ordered him peremptorily to advise the King to

recall the lady, he refused. ‘Well,’ said the Queen, ‘do not oppose it

if the King suggests it.’ ‘Yes I will,’ replied the minister: whereupon

Marie Louise went with tears and blandishments to her husband, and

begged for the favour. For a time he held out; but at last gave way to

the extent of ordering a decree of recall to be drafted and discussed.

Oropesa protested, and Charles cancelled the decree. Another passionate

outburst from the Queen followed, and in the end she had her way. ‘The

coming of this woman (Aguirre) will be worse than all the devils

together; worse than Quantin. Judge what a state we are in with this

irresolution of our master. The advice of ministers and decisions of

tribunals, all are powerless before the will of this woman (the Queen).’

The caprices of Marie Louise soon reached the ears of her uncle Louis,

and he did, in May 1686, what he ought to have done years before,

namely, to send a French lady of great position and experience,

dependent upon him, to advise the Queen and keep her in the right way.

The lady was a descendant of the royal house, the Countess of Soissons,

and her mission was, if possible, to induce Marie Louise to turn her

influence to political account for the benefit of France. Her task was

almost hopeless from the first, and she failed, though she tried hard

for a time; and in the last few weeks of the Queen’s life, when too

late, was of some service to French interests.

‘The Queen’ (writes Montalto in May 1586) ‘is in the full force of her

madness, dominating the King completely by cries and threats. He has not

an atom of resolution, and no application at all. The day upon which the

great council was held, when he would not attend, he went on muleback to

the wild beast cages at the Retiro, and there he had the animals caught

and counted, thinking more of this frivolity than if it had been some

heroic action. This government of ours is nothing more than a boy’s

school with the master away. No one respects anything, and each person

does as he likes, whilst the Queen follows her whim or the last

suggestion.’ On another occasion, when the Marquis of Los Velez was

giving a representation of a sacred _auto_ on a holy day, Montalto

records that ‘the Queen witnessed the show from a balcony in the

passage, when she behaved herself so unrestrainedly as to shock people;

and the actions of this lady really give rise to the idea that she is

not in her right mind.’

The unfortunate woman kept apparently on friendly, but not cordial,

terms with Mariana, who smilingly let her go her own way without

remonstrance; and there was now no check whatever upon her strange

vagaries, for the King grew more feeble-minded than ever, and was as

clay in her hands. ‘The Queen’s levity approaches light-headedness,’

wrote Montalto in the summer of 1687. ‘She was lately ill with fever,

owing to the rubbish she is always eating. Nobody can control her, and

she looks consumptive. Those of us who are not much attached to her are

not sorry to see her afflicted.’ Utterly reckless in her mode of life

the unhappy woman, though still but twenty-five years of age, was

already losing her health and beauty. In July Montalto reports that ‘the

Queen still continues in her extravagant conduct, and no amendment can

now be expected. She is dreadfully thin and languid, and will take no

remedies but those prescribed by her own caprice and distrust. As for

the King, I say nothing, for I have already said so much, though not

half enough.’

And so, through the summer, matters went from bad to worse. There was no

guidance from the King, no stability or prudence from the Queen, and

Spain drifted helpless towards the whirlpool of civil war that was soon

to engulf her. The only care of old Mariana was to watch over the

interests of her own kin in their claims to the succession to the

Spanish crown, and paralyse the promotion of the French pretensions.

Writing from the palace on the 29th August 1687, Montalto says: ‘It is

impossible to exaggerate the terrible state of things here. This palace

is boiling over with disorder and scandalous stories to such an extent

as to be simply a mass of confusion. The Queen is so extravagant in her

conduct, and has so strange a character, that I dare not write, even in

cypher, what is going on. The King knows, but remedies nothing. It seems

as if God had endowed him neither with force nor application for

anything; and the same wretched laxity is seen in the government of the

realm. He gives no more than a quarter of an hour to business in the

day, and the whole of the rest of his time is spent in such trifles as

running backwards and forwards through these saloons, and from balcony

to balcony, like a child of six, and his conversation would match about

the same age. The Queen is dreadfully ill and thin, and has quarrelled

with the Queen-Mother.’

Months later, in May 1688, when the war between France and the empire

was recommencing, and Spain was once more arming for a conflict not

primarily her own, Montalto wrote, in more despondent spirit than ever,

of the condition of affairs in Madrid. ‘Yesterday it was my turn for

duty at the Retiro. I used to like it, but now I dread the day that

takes me there. Of course I know even when I am not there what is going

on with our master; but it is very shocking to see it close, and, so to

speak, face to face. The neglect everywhere is quite terrible. The

King’s great business whilst I was there was to see the matting taken up

in the rooms, and to count the pins and other trifles of that sort. The

Queen blurts out whatever comes uppermost, and indulges to the full in

her craze for riding on horseback, prancing about indecorously over the

neighbourhood. She has again had her ladies mounted, knowing that the

King hates to see it. She has her way and, dead against his will, she

insists upon acting the principal boy’s part in a comedy they are

rehearsing. As usual, she will do as she likes. There are constant

tourneys and balls because she insists upon them, and there is no

influence or reason that can keep her within bounds. The Queen-Mother

pays great attention to her, but is cruelly slighted by her.’

A week later, the same writer continues in a similar strain, saying that

the Queen had insisted upon the comedy being written specially for her

to take the boy’s part: but she had fallen ill and the performance had

been postponed. ‘The King is totally opposed to this prank; but of

course she has her way. She has had a magnificent theatre constructed at

the Retiro, with lavish ornaments, etc., for the ladies, in which she

has wasted thousands of ducats, and yet there is not a real for urgent

needs. The King is a cypher, and allows things to be done before him of

which he entirely disapproves. I positively dread my turn of duty, for I

see the King does nothing but run about like an imp, and if he goes into

the garden it is only to pick strawberries and count them.’

A week or so later Marie Louise had recovered her health, and the

long-prepared comedy was played with great brilliancy. The King went to

the full rehearsal two days before the public performance; and although

shocked and annoyed by his wife’s caprice in playing a male part, had

not strength of will enough to forbid it. When, however, the piece was

represented publicly, and all the principal ladies in Madrid, with the

gentlemen of the household, were present to praise and applaud, poor,

unstable Charles was so charmed with his wife, even on the stage, that

he testified his delight at her performance, and the entertainment was

repeated again and again during the summer.

Once more at this time there was a belief that the Queen was pregnant,

and the hopes of the French party ran high, though they were soon seen

to be fallacious as before. Montalto, reporting the matter to Ronquillo,

says that the Queen had explained, in answer to an inquiry of her

father, the Duke of Orleans, that the reason for her lack of issue was

not the impotence of the King but his excessive concupiscence, ‘which,’

says the writer, ‘I do not understand, though the effect is plain.’

In the autumn of 1688 Marie Louise fell ill of smallpox in the palace of

Madrid; and in her enfeebled state of health the disease was held to be

dangerous. She was a bad patient, self-willed in her rejection of the

remedies prescribed to her by the only physician she would receive, a

Florentine doctor she had known in Paris in attendance upon the

Balbeses. The King was to have started for the Escorial at the time his

wife was attacked by the malady, and was obliged to delay his departure,

though fear of contagion kept him away from the invalid. Montalto

reports, with characteristic ill-nature: ‘The King seems sorry; but he

is more sorry at having to postpone his journey to the Escorial. For

although his feeling towards his wife appears to be affection, I

maintain that it is more fear of her than anything else.’ Before she was

fit to be moved the Queen insisted upon being carried in a Sedan chair

to the Retiro to pass her period of convalescence there, first visiting

the church of the Atocha, whilst Charles departed to spend a month at

the Escorial.

Left alone in her solitary convalescence, Marie Louise appears to have

developed a more devout spirit than had previously characterised her,

and at the same time lost her desire to live. During the period of low

vitality which followed her illness one of her ladies begged her to

summon a famous saintly man, to pray for her prompt restoration to

strength. ‘No, no,’ she replied, ‘I will not do so. It would be folly

indeed to ask for life which matters so little.’ When, at this juncture,

the representatives of the town of Madrid offered to build a new church

as a votive offering for her restoration to health, she was no less

emphatic. If the money of the suffering subjects was to be spent upon

the building she would not allow it to be done.

She had, indeed, little left to live for. Wedded to the fribble we have

described, and with enemies of herself and her dear France everywhere

around her, she must have felt powerless to cope with the adverse

influences opposed to her. All the love she had to give was given long

ago, before she was called upon to make the great renunciation which had

been made in vain. So long as youth and sensuous vitality had remained

to her she had sought in reckless enjoyment to stifle the horror of the

loveless life to which she was condemned: but when the capacity for

bodily gratification was gone, Marie Louise lost her desire to live.

Spain was trembling upon the brink of a great war with France, and

during the winter succeeding the Queen’s illness Count Rebenac was in

Madrid with what amounted to an ultimatum to Spain to abandon the league

of Augsburg, formed to crush the ambition of Louis. Rebenac often saw

the Queen, and coached by him and by the Countess of Soissons, she

endeavoured, now that matters had gone too far, to employ her hold upon

her husband in a political direction, and to frustrate the policy of the

Queen-Mother in keeping Spain in offensive and defensive alliance with

the Emperor. Her influence upon Charles was great, and he began to

incline to the side of the French against his mother. Marie Louise

pointed out to him the awful condition of destitution in which his

country lay, and painted in moving words the horrors of a war in which

Spain had all to lose and could not hope to gain. Charles was gentle and

tender-hearted, hating to see or hear of suffering, and Rebenac reported

early in February 1689 that the efforts of the Queen had been effectual,

and that he had great hopes of the success of his mission.[325]

It was a great crisis, for a withdrawal of Spain at this point from the

alliance would have meant the predominance of France in Europe

thenceforward, and the defeat of the Austrian party in Spain. Mariana

and her friends were strong and determined; the King was weak and

unstable. Only the life of a languid woman, tired of the struggle, stood

between them and victory, and Marie Louise herself seems to have had a

prophetic knowledge that such an obstacle would not be allowed to

frustrate plans so deeply laid. As usual with Spanish sovereigns, the

Queen went every week to worship at the shrine of the Virgin of Atocha,

and on Tuesday the 9th February 1689, when she took leave of the prior

of the convent church, she told him that she should meet him no more on

earth. That night after her light repast of milk and honey the Queen was

seized with convulsions, violent pains and vomiting; a colic it was

called, which brought her to the lowest extremity of weakness. From the

first she knew that she was doomed and made no effort. In the intervals

of the burning agony she suffered, her confessor asked her if there was

anything that troubled her. ‘I am in peace, Father,’ she replied, ‘and

am very glad to die.’ She lingered in pain until the early hours of the

12th February; and then the most beautiful and ill-fated princess of the

house of Bourbon breathed her last, a martyr, if ever one lived, upon

the altar of her country; but a martyr sacrificed in vain, for she was

immolated, not by her own will, but by the will of others.

All that Marie Louise asked of life was love, and that was the one thing

denied to her. The Spanish people, who had sometimes been cruel to her

because she was a foreigner, were shocked by her untimely death: but

before the pompous procession which bore the body of Marie Louise to its

last resting-place in the inferior mausoleum in the Escorial reserved

for sterile Queens, whispers ran through Spain and France that it was no

colic that had cut short the life of Marie Louise, but poison

administered in the interests of Mariana and the Austrian faction. No

proof has ever been adduced that this was the case, for evidence in such

a matter would naturally not be easily obtainable;[326] but the death of

the Queen, at the very crisis when, by her aid, the King had been turned

to the side of France, seems in all the circumstances to have been too

providential to her enemies to have been entirely accidental. At any

rate it was effectual in changing the whole aspect of affairs

immediately; and before the mourning for Marie Louise had lost its

freshness, the French ambassador was on his way home unsuccessful, Spain

was again at war with France, and negotiations were being actively

carried on to find a German wife for the wretched crétin who wore the

crown of Spain.

BOOK V

II

MARIE ANNE OF NEUBURG

Almost simultaneously with the death of Marie Louise an event happened

which to a large extent altered the political balance of Europe, and

placed at further disadvantage the French partisans in Madrid. The

Prince of Orange had surprised the world by becoming King of England,

practically without opposition. It was no longer a shifty Stuart with

French sympathies and an itching palm for the bribes of Louis who

directed the policy of Great Britain, but a prince whose very existence

was bound up in the exclusion of France from Flanders; a prince,

moreover, under whom England and Holland were for the first time really

united. The coalition against Louis was infinitely strengthened thereby,

and Spain, with Mariana at the helm, was now less likely than ever to

shirk the fulfilment of her obligations under the Treaty of Augsburg.

Madrid thereafter became for a time a prime centre of international

intrigues, aimed at the exclusion of French interest from the Peninsula.

Charles had no personal desire to marry again. He was afraid of fresh

people about him; he was overborne with the responsibilities of his

great position, and, although he was only twenty-eight, his feeble

powers of mind and body were already on the wane. Left to himself, he

would have desired nothing but to throw up matrimony as a failure, so

far as he was concerned, and live in peace, after his own fashion, until

on his deathbed he left his realm to an heir of his own choosing.

But the antagonistic factions that divided his Court between them

decided that such a course was quite impossible. It could hardly have

been with the hope, as they professed, that issue would be more likely

from a second marriage than it had been from the first, for Charles had

been really enamoured with Marie Louise, who had been his consort during

the best period of such vigour as he ever possessed. It is more likely

that the haste to get him married was prompted by the desire of the

intriguers to have by his side, when he was called upon to settle the

succession, a wife favourable to the views of the dominant party.

Badgered and pestered on all sides, the poor creature, always anxious to

do what he was told was his duty, consented to take another wife.

The opponents of the German interest at first suggested a princess of

Portugal, but Mariana and her friends took care that the negotiations

should fall through; and, at the Queen-Mother’s instance, Charles

consented to leave the choice of a fit bride for him to his uncle and

brother-in-law, the Emperor Leopold. The latter, who had only one

daughter by his first wife the Infanta Margarita, Mariana’s daughter,

had married as his second wife, by whom he had sons, Eleanor of

Neuburg-Bavaria, daughter of the Elector Palatine, Duke of Neuburg. This

lady had a sister of twenty-two, Marie Anne of Neuburg; and upon her the

choice of the Emperor fell to be the wife of Charles II., King of Spain.

Three months after Marie Louise died the marriage treaty was signed; and

on the 18th August 1689, late at night in the quaint Bavarian town of

Neuburg on the Danube, the tall, angular girl with hard eyes and mouth,

was led by the Spanish ambassador through the bedizened throng of

princes and princesses of Austria, Bavaria and Hesse, who crowded the

church of the Jesuits, to be wedded to her nephew, the young King of

Hungary, the Emperor’s heir, as proxy for the King of Spain, the

officiating priest being her brother, Prince Alexander. The marriage was

regarded by all Europe as a pledge that thenceforward Spain would be

firmly united with the Germanic interests against Louis XIV., and the

challenge was promptly accepted by the French King. Thenceforward, for

seven years, all Europe was at war; and Spain, which only needed rest,

was forced not only to waste blood and treasure upon foreign fields, but

to fight for the integrity of its own soil in Catalonia, North Africa

and America.

England, under the Dutch King, had taken an active part in promoting an

alliance which drew Spain closer to the Teutonic league; and only an

English fleet was available to convey the new Queen of Spain in safety

to her husband’s realm. Through Cologne and Rotterdam, Marie Anne and

her train of Germans slowly travelled to Flushing in the late autumn of

1689, costly jewels meeting her as gifts, now from her husband, now from

her gratified mother-in-law, who regarded her coming as a triumph for

herself.[327] At Flushing a powerful English fleet, under Admiral

Russell, awaited the bride; and after much delay, and not a few mishaps,

the squadron sailed for Spain late in January 1690. The intention had

been to land the Queen at the port of Santander; and her Spanish

household was on the road thither to receive her, when news reached them

that Corunna had been chosen as a better harbour, and to the extreme

north-west corner of Spain they wended their way. Bad weather, as is not

unusual in the Bay of Biscay in mid-winter, made the voyage of the Queen

a dangerous and difficult one; and on approaching Corunna it was found

that the storm was too violent for the ships to enter. Colonel Stanhope,

the English ambassador, who accompanied the Queen to Spain, says:[328]

‘We were forced into a small port called Ferrol, three leagues short of

the Groyne (_i.e._, Corunna), and by the ignorance of a Spanish pilot

our ships fell foul one with another, and the admiral’s ship was aground

for some hours, but got off clear without any damage.’

To Ferrol came hurrying the Spanish household from Corunna, with the

inevitable Mansfeldt, all not a little ruffled at this game of

hide-and-seek with the German Queen in the most inclement season of the

year; and at length, on the 6th April, after nearly a fortnight’s stay

on board of Russell’s ship in the harbour of Ferrol, Marie Anne and a

great train of German, English and Spanish attendants landed in the

barges of the English squadron, whose decorations and the smartness of

the oarsmen aroused the surprised admiration of the Spaniards.[329]

Though the officials did their best to give Marie Anne a stately welcome

at Corunna, and the Count de Lemos entertained her and her Court at a

splendid festival at his house at Puente de Ume, all was not harmonious.

The general feeling in Spain was against the German connection, and

especially against the ruinous war with France that it entailed, and

Count Mansfeldt, the imperial ambassador, was especially detested. The

people at large firmly believed that he had connived at the poisoning of

Marie Louise, and his overbearing manners had offended the courtiers.

‘I find,’ writes Stanhope, ‘that the Queen’s reception has been much

meaner than it would have been out of a pique the Spanish grandees have

against Count Mansfeldt, who was preferred before them all to the honour

of bringing her over, by the favour of the Queen-Mother and contrary to

the advice of the Council of Castile.’[330] Nor did the demeanour of

Marie Anne mend matters, for, even thus early, her stiff imperious

manner and her hasty temper struck a chill in the hearts of the

Spaniards, who place so high a value upon an amiable exterior. Dressed

in the traditional Spanish garb, which suited her unbending mien, the

Queen sat unmoved at the bullfights, tourneys, masquerades and other

festivities offered in her honour by the storied cities through which

she passed on her way to Valladolid. Nobles who knelt to greet her

received but a cold recognition of their compliments, and the cheers of

the populace awoke no smile of gratification upon the lips of Marie Anne

of Neuburg.

Charles was not an eager wooer this time, and awaited calmly the coming

of his new wife to Valladolid. On Ascension Day, 4th May 1690, he first

met his bride. There was little or no pretence of affection on either

side; but from the first Marie Anne took the lead and imposed her will

upon her husband. The marriage feasts at Valladolid and the stereotyped

gaieties that throughout Spain celebrated the marriage, pleased the

thoughtless, but the more reflecting knew that the war for which Spain

was being again squeezed dry by every empirical resource that ingenuity

and ignorance of finance could devise, was a direct result of the series

of alliances that the German marriage cemented, and many were the

whispered curses uttered against the boorish Germans and Englishmen, who

were not only disrespectful, but heretics to boot. With exactly the same

ceremonial as had marked the entry of the beautiful Marie Louise into

the capital ten years before, Marie Anne rode from the Buen Retiro to

the old Alcazar through the crowded streets, on the 22nd May 1690.

Again, behind the half-closed jalousies, in the house of Count Oñate in

the Calle Mayor, over against the church of St. Philip, Charles II. and

his mother, growing visibly old now, witnessed the passing of the new

Queen.

The triumph of Mariana at the coming of a German bride for her son was

short lived. The time that Marie Anne had spent at the Buen Retiro

previous to the State entry had been sufficient to show the

mother-in-law that she had met her match, and that here there was no

gentle, submissive, young creature—no thoughtless beauty who would ruin

herself if encouraged to go her own way, like poor Marie Louise—but a

hard, passionate woman, who was determined, whatever happened to Spain,

to make the best of her opportunities for her own advantage. Mariana, in

accordance with her usual policy, endeavoured at first to co-operate

harmoniously with her daughter-in-law, in order to gain predominance in

the partnership afterwards. The sole minister, Oropesa, had done his

best to relieve the suffering country, and his financial reforms had

effected some improvement; but with the renewal of the war on land and

sea, the economies were soon swallowed up, and the penury became as

pressing as ever. The minister’s subordinates were rapacious and corrupt

to an extent unexampled even in Spain, and offices, dignities, titles,

and pensions were openly put up to the highest bidder. Oropesa, though

fairly honest himself, had an ambitious, greedy wife, who increased his

unpopularity; and when Marie Anne arrived in Madrid, the party inimical

to the minister was already powerful.

Mariana had been Oropesa’s patron, but when the new Queen, for whose

aims it was necessary to form a party in Spain, sided with the enemies

of the minister, Mariana dared not take the unpopular and weaker side,

and reluctantly agreed with her daughter-in-law that Oropesa and the

corrupt crew that followed him should be deposed. Their principal

abettors were the King’s confessor, Father Matilla, the Archbishops of

Toledo (Cardinal Portocarrero) and Saragossa, the Constable of Castile,

and the Secretary of State, Lira, formerly a creature of Oropesa. Marie

Anne and the confessor gave the poor King no rest. Charles was deeply

attached to Oropesa; he dreaded new people about him; and for a time he

refused to dismiss his minister. Marie Anne suffered, when contradicted,

from hysterical nervous crises, that were said to threaten her life, and

every one, from her husband downward, went in mortal fear of provoking

an attack by saying anything displeasing to her.[331] The confessor

Matilla finally threatened the King that he would not give him

absolution, unless he did his duty to the country by dismissing Oropesa.

Charles, beset on all sides, at first told everything to Oropesa

himself, but that made matters worse; and he then repeated to each party

exactly what the other said, with the result that the palace itself

became a hotbed of scandal, hatred, and all uncharitableness. At length

Marie Anne had her way, and Charles sent for his minister with tears in

his eyes and told him that his enemies had demanded his retirement.

‘They wish it,’ sobbed the unhappy man, ‘and I must agree to it:’ and

then, in the deepest sorrow, he dismissed the best minister he had ever

had, in obedience to a palace intrigue led by his German wife. Before

Oropesa went into banishment at the end of June 1691, he sought an

interview with the Queen, but was refused, and Mariana with difficulty

was prevailed upon to receive her former instrument; her ungracious

farewell of him being to tell him that he ought to have gone long

before.[332]

A sort of commission of government was then formed entirely composed of

men in the interests of Marie Anne; and thenceforward all method and

regularity in the administration disappeared. The King referred

questions submitted to him to any person who happened to be near him,

and the letters of Colonel Stanhope at the time testify to the

impossibility of getting any official business done at all. The country

was in the midst of war; the French were masters of the best part of

Catalonia, and as the English ambassador reports, the Spaniards had not

4,000 men there in all, fit for service, and in four months’ vigorous

recruiting only 1,000 men could be got. A handful of men, he says,

dashing down from the French frontier, could easily capture Madrid

itself, as not a soldier is between the Pyrenees and the capital: and,

such was the confusion, that it was dangerous to drive out a mile from

the walls of Madrid for fear of violence and robbery.

Marie Anne with her camarilla was mistress of the situation, and then

Mariana, when it was difficult to regain her lost power, discovered what

the aims of her German daughter-in-law were. It will be recollected that

Mariana’s daughter, the Infanta Margaret, Empress, had died, leaving one

daughter married to the Elector of Bavaria, and it was naturally her

son, the boy Prince of Bavaria, to whom Mariana had looked to inherit

the Spanish crown, in default of issue to Charles, and in accordance

with the will of Philip IV. Marie Anne’s mission from the Emperor and

his second wife was, however, quite a different one, and aroused in

Mariana the hottest indignation when she fully understood it. The plan

was to put aside both the female lines descended from the daughters of

Philip iv., Maria Theresa, Queen of France, and the Empress Margaret,

and to claim the succession of the Emperor’s second son by his second

marriage with Marie Anne’s sister, by virtue of his male descent from

the Emperor Ferdinand, brother of Charles V.

Marie Anne had around her a gang of blood-suckers almost as rapacious as

herself, and, so long as they were Spaniards, the people suffered in

silence.[333] But the Queen’s most intimate councillors were Germans,

who, undeterred by the fate of Nithard, vied with the Spaniards in

grasping greed: and this aroused against Marie Anne the hatred of all

who did not share in the booty. The strongest spirit in the Queen’s

entourage was the Baroness Berlips, to whom the crowd had given the

nickname of ‘the partridge,’ from a slight resemblance in her name to

the name of the bird in Castilian. Another German member was one Henry

Jovier, a lame man of infamous character, who had served in the Spanish

army, and to these after the first few months was added the Queen’s

Capuchin confessor Father Chiusa, also a German, who was brought

purposely to replace the Jesuit confessor first appointed, the latter

having been found not sufficiently pliant for the place.

This was the gang that principally advised the Queen in her measures,

and, with a few Spanish grandees, especially the Duke of Montalto and

the Admiral of Castile, practically formed the government. Mariana was

treated with the greatest _hauteur_ by her daughter-in-law, but had some

of the ablest men in Spain on her side, of whom Cardinal Portocarrero

was the most influential. The populace cordially hated Marie Anne, and

dreaded the imperial domination of Spain which she represented; whilst

she took no pains to disguise her contempt for them. Louis XIV., in

describing the state of affairs shortly after this in his instructions

to his ambassador, Harcourt, says: ‘The Queen has acquired such a

dominion over the spirit of her husband that it may be said that she

alone reigns as sovereign of Spain.... The authority of the Queen,

however, is founded rather upon the fear of her anger than upon any love

for her on the part of the nation. There is no people in the world so

sensitive of praise as the Spaniards; and consequently none who are so

much affected by contempt. The Queen professes contempt for the whole

nation, and, as offensive discourse is the only revenge of those who are

excluded from power, it is not surprising to hear all the evil things

that the public detestation causes to be said about her. It is, however,

very true that she gives plenty of reasons for the reproaches levelled

against her with regard to her avidity in receiving and extorting

presents; and there is no one more ingenious than she in finding excuses

for appropriating everything that is most valuable in Madrid, and for

amassing every day fresh treasure for herself.’[334]

In the spring of 1683 the King’s weakness became so alarming that the

physicians almost abandoned hope, and the intrigues around him grew in

intensity. The last successful effort of Marie Louise before her death

had been to extract from her husband a solemn promise that he would

never cede to the persuasions of Mariana to appoint a successor to the

crown until he had received the last sacrament on his deathbed; and the

King had managed so far to withstand all pressure put upon him to do so.

The pressure was redoubled now, especially by Marie Anne, who took the

opportunity of his illness to urge him to summon the Archduke Charles to

Madrid, and adopt him as his successor. When the unfortunate King was

wavering some one, probably Cardinal Portocarrero, warned him of the

certain consequences, and whilst the hesitation continued the King

partially recovered.

Whilst the Court was thus given over to discord the condition of the

country grew worse and worse. The Marquis of Mancera told Stanhope that

the King was only nominally sovereign of the realms of Aragon. Spain,

but for the power of her allies, was absolutely defenceless, and the

public distress had reached to such an extent that famine stalked

unchecked through the land, and to protect the capital from depletion of

food, a strict cordon was placed around it, to search every one entering

or leaving the city. The Duke of Montalto had managed to ingratiate

himself with the Queen sufficiently to obtain recognition as minister;

and his impracticable remedy was to divide the country into four

autonomous provinces, ruled by viceroys practically independent of a

central government. Against this violation of the constitutions all

Spain cried aloud. ‘These disasters coming so thick,’ writes Stanhope in

July 1694, ‘has raised a very high ferment in the minds of people here,

which expresses itself in great insolencies to the great men as they

pass in the streets, and to one of the greatest even in the King’s

palace: and the royal authority itself begins to lose its veneration,

several scandalous pasquins being fixed in several public places,

magnifying the great King of France and with very little respect to his

Catholic Majesty, inasmuch as if Mr. Russell had not appeared with his

squadron as he did, it is generally believed some public scandals would

have followed.’

A few months later the same correspondent writes that the hatred of the

public had greatly increased the strength of the faction opposed to

Marie Anne, whose great influence over the King they intended to

destroy; beginning if possible with the banishment of her bosom friend,

Baroness Berlips. ‘This lady’s son, Baron Berlips, lately made his entry

here, as envoy from the King of Poland, and as he went to his audience

in the King’s coach, a company of ruffians came to the coach side giving

him and his mother very ill names; one of them saying, ‘Let us kill the

dog.’ Another replied, ‘Not now, for he is in the King’s coach.’ Nothing

is so much talked about at present as ousting the Berlips, and then they

think their monarchy safe.’

Cardinal Portocarrero, who was the Queen’s prime opponent, grew in

boldness as he saw that public feeling was on his side, and both he and

Mariana, when she could obtain access to her son, implored him to

withstand the pressure of his termagant wife, and decline to divert the

succession from that laid down by his father’s will, which made the

Prince of Bavaria his heir. At the end of 1694 the Cardinal presented a

formal State paper to the King, urging the expulsion of Marie Anne’s

German camarilla and the royal confessor Matilla, who were ruining the

country by placing and maintaining in power men utterly unworthy to

administer the government. The wretched King, between the hectoring of

his wife, the exhortations of his mother, the warnings of rival

churchmen, and the clamours of his people, swayed first to one side, and

then to the other, hating to discuss what was to take place when he was

dead; yet hearing of very little else. His health, in the meanwhile,

visibly declined; and all parties thought that there was no time to

waste. The Queen feeling probably the need for some stronger personality

near her than Berlips, and the few other inferior Germans who formed her

council, soon caused herself to be reinforced by an imperial ambassador,

Count Harrach, one of the ablest diplomatists in the Emperor’s service,

and the party of old Mariana and her Bavarian grandson fell into the

background.

Mariana, indeed, was now almost past struggling; afflicted by a mortal

disease and abandoned by her physicians. She resorted, as usual, to

charms and quackery of the most revolting description;[335] but, in

spite of incantations and empirical devices, Mariana in May 1696 ended

her turbulent life, leaving the question of the succession still in the

balance.[336] With the death of the old Queen it was thought that the

chance of the little Bavarian prince had disappeared; and Marie Anne

pushed more energetically than ever the claims of her nephew, the

Archduke Charles. Soon the King fell so seriously ill again that his

life was despaired of, and the attempts of the Queen to obtain a will in

the favour of the Archduke were redoubled. Like all semi-imbeciles,

however, Charles, when once an idea had been drilled into his head,

clung to it tenaciously; and though, for the sake of peace, he seemed to

agree with his wife, he did not forget his father’s will and his

mother’s injunction, that his own sister’s descendants had a better

right to succeed him than a distant relative like the Archduke. Count

Benavente, his lord of the bedchamber, although appointed by Marie Anne,

was secretly against the Austrian; and, with his knowledge and that of

Cardinal Portocarrero alone, Charles signed a secret will, appointing

his great-nephew the child prince of Bavaria heir to his crown.

Once again he recovered sufficiently to rise from his bed; and Stanhope

wrote on the 19th September 1696; ‘The King’s danger is over for a time,

but his constitution is so very weak and broken, much beyond his age,

that it is feared what may be the success of another attack. They cut

his hair off in this sickness, which the decay of nature had almost done

before, all his crown being bald. He has a ravenous stomach, and

swallows all he eats whole; for his nether jaw stands out so much that

his two rows of teeth cannot meet; to compensate which he has a

prodigious wide throat, so that a gizzard or a liver of a hen passes

down whole, and his weak stomach not being able to digest it he voids it

in the same manner.’

No sooner was the immediate danger over than Marie Anne wormed out of

the King that he had made his will in favour of the Bavarian. Her rage

and indignation knew no bounds, and she upbraided the King with

hysterical violence, to which he retorted by childish outbursts, leading

to the smashing of crockery, furniture, and the like, and usually ending

in tears. Oropesa, who had just returned to Court reconciled to Marie

Anne, added his persuasions to those of the Queen and the threats of the

confessor, but for a time without success. In November 1696 Stanhope

reports that the King was still very ill, and obliged to keep his bed:

‘although they sometimes make him rise out of his bed, much against his

will and beyond his strength, the better to conceal his illness abroad.

He is not only extremely weak in body, but has a great weight of

melancholy and discontent upon his spirits, attributed in a great

measure to the Queen’s continual importunities to make him alter his

will.’

At length, in September 1697, the sick man could withstand the pressure

no longer; and during another grave attack,[337] at the instance of his

wife and Harrach, tore up the will appointing the Prince of Bavaria his

heir. Portocarrero had gone so far as to threaten to call the Cortes

together to confirm the will, and had exhorted the King to stand firm,

but he had been powerless as against the strong will of Marie Anne. For

a long time, however, Charles still held out against making another will

in favour of the Austrian; and only, at last, by threats and cajolery

was he induced to write a letter to the Emperor asking him to send the

Archduke to Spain with ten or twelve thousand men, on the pretext that

they were required for the defence of Catalonia.

But the gigantic armaments needed by Louis XIV. to face all Europe

victoriously, as he had done, was exhausting the resources of France,

and peace was in the air. The need also for French agents to have a good

chance in Madrid to push the succession claim also made Louis pliant;

and when the Peace of Ryswick was signed in October 1697, the world was

surprised at the generous terms accorded by the victor to Spain. With

every chance of success, then, Louis having restored the territory he

had conquered, he could pose as the true friend of Spain, ready to

champion the rights of his descendants by Maria Theresa, the eldest

daughter of Philip, against the unpopular Germans, to succeed to the

Spanish throne. There was much lost ground for the French to make up;

for the German factions had been in sole possession ever since the death

of Marie Louise in 1690; but the death of Mariana had left some of her

friends in the market, and all classes of Spaniards were sick to death

of Germans; so, as soon as the peace was signed, the Marquis d’Harcourt

hurried to Madrid as French ambassador, primed with instructions, and

supplied with means to re-constitute the French party in Spain, and

defeat, if possible, the machinations of Queen Marie Anne.

The first effect of the peace was to stop the project of bringing an

Austrian army to Spain under the Archduke, and also the plan of the

Elector of Bavaria to put in an appearance to counteract the Archduke’s

presence. The arrival of Harcourt at Madrid soon afterwards put a new

complexion on affairs there. Stanhope writes, on the 14th March 1698,

when the King had fallen again dangerously ill: ‘Our Court is in great

disorder: the grandees all dog and cat, Turk and Moor. The King is in a

languishing condition, not in so imminent a danger as last week, but so

weak and spent as to his principle of life, that all I can hear is

pretended, amounts only to hopes of preserving him some weeks, without

any probability of his recovery. The general inclination as to the

succession is altogether French; their (_i.e._ the Spaniards’) aversion

to the Queen having set them against all her countrymen: and if the

French King will content himself that one of his younger children be

King of Spain, without pretending to incorporate the two monarchies, he

will find no opposition, either from grandees or common people.... The

King is so very weak he can scarcely lift his hand to his head to feed

himself, and so extremely melancholy, that neither his buffoons, dwarfs,

nor puppet-shows, all of which have shown their abilities before him,

can in the least divert him from fancying everything that is said or

done is a temptation of the devil, and never thinking himself safe but

with his confessor and two friars by his side, whom he makes lie in his

chamber every night.’[338]

In such circumstances as these it was evident to the Queen’s opponents

that a bold move must be made at once or she would win. Her most

powerful abettor with the King was the confessor, Father Matilla; the

ostensible ministers, the Admiral of Castile,[339] Montalto and Oropesa,

after many wrangles with her, agreeing to let her have a free hand with

her husband, if they were allowed to take a fair share of the national

plunder; the real government behind them being the Queen and her

camarilla. The only man near the King who was inclined to favour the

Bavarian heir was the lord chamberlain, Count Benavente, to whom one

night, late in March 1698, Charles mumbled that he was very unhappy and

uneasy in his conscience, and should like to see Cardinal Portocarrero.

The Cardinal Archbishop, who had been a close friend of Mariana’s, and

was a man of ability, had been carefully excluded from the King’s

chamber by Marie Anne. It was eleven o’clock at night, but swift secret

messengers were soon at the Cardinal’s door; and before midnight,

unknown to the Queen, the primate stood by the King’s bed. Charles

opened all the troubles of his terror-stricken soul to the friend of his

dead mother: how the violence of his wife and the harshness of the

confessor, Matilla, frightened him into adopting a course which his

conscience told him was wrong, and he prayed the primate to help him

with advice in this dire strait. Portocarrero was nothing loath.

Hurrying from the palace, he hastily convened a meeting of his friends.

Count Monterey, the Marquis of Leganés, Don Sebastian de Cotes, Don

Francisco Ronquillo, the idol of the populace, and Don Juan Antonio

Urraca.

What was to be done, and who should do it, before the Queen could banish

them all? Monterey, in his stumbling speech, pointed out the danger of

acting through the King at all, seeing that the Queen could twist him

round her finger and make him alter any resolution he adopted, as she

had done before. The best course, he said, would be for the Cardinal to

frequent the King’s chamber, ostensibly to give spiritual consolation,

and then very gradually to prepare the King’s mind for a change. Others

thought that this process was too slow, since the King might slip

through their hands after all, and Leganés advised that the Cardinal

should immediately urge the King to order the arrest and imprisonment of

the detested Admiral of Castile, the Duke of Rio Seco. ‘His only

escort,’ said Leganés, ‘were four knavish poets and a couple of

buffoons,’ whilst he, Leganés, had plenty of arms at home and two

hundred soldiers in his pay, and could seize the most objectionable

ministers at once. Then turbulent Ronquillo had his say. They must

strike higher than the Admiral. The Queen as well must be seized as soon

as her henchman was laid by the heels, and the Huelgas at Burgos should

be her future place of confinement. Let us be practical, said Monterey,

sneering at Ronquillo for a fool: if we offer violence to the Queen the

excitement will kill the King before we can get a will or decree

executed. We must act more cautiously than that. Then the two angry

nobles clapped their hands to their swords, and were for fighting it out

on the spot, until the Cardinal separated them, and wise old Cotes, with

his quiet voice, calmly gave his opinion. It would be easy for the

Cardinal to obtain such a decree as that required, but the Queen would

get it revoked the next morning more easily still, and then, what would

happen to all of us? Let us, he said, strike at the trunk by all means,

if possible, and get rid of the Queen: but how? Before that can be done

we should put Matilla, the confessor, out of the way. The King hated and

feared him already, and only yesterday refused to speak to him: let the

Cardinal and Benavente advise the King to change his confessor, and the

next step will be easy. This seemed good advice; but the jealous

hidalgos then fell to quarrelling as to who the new confessor should be,

with the result that the choice was ultimately left to the Cardinal.

The next morning Cotes suggested to his colleagues a certain modest

professor of theology at Alcalá, one Father Froilan Diaz, for the post.

He was near enough to the capital to be brought thither without delay,

and would be humble enough to do as he was told: and so it was decided

to secure the great appointment to Father Diaz. There was no lack of

messengers to carry to him from the conspirators the news of his coming

elevation, for each of them, especially Ronquillo, wished to gain the

credit of proposing it; and the next day the astounded professor found

himself already by anticipation a person to be courted by the greatest

grandees in the land.

One day, early in the morning, in the first week in April, the sick King

lay in bed listening dreamily to some music being played in the

ante-chamber, the door between the rooms being open. Father Matilla and

a crony of his, one Dr. Parra, were quietly chatting in one of the deep

window recesses of the ante-chamber; when suddenly Count Benavente

entered unannounced, accompanied by a stout, fresh-coloured

ecclesiastic; and, without saluting Matilla, they walked straight

through into the King’s bedroom, which Benavente alone was entitled to

do, as lord chamberlain. Matilla was keen-witted, and saw at a glance

what it meant. Turning to his friend, he said, ‘Goodbye: this business

is ending just as it ought to have begun;’ and with that he hurried out

of the palace and to the monastery of his order in Madrid.

Spies had already carried to Marie Anne and the Admiral reports of

mysterious confabulations of their enemies, but they knew not where the

blow was to fall. At eleven o’clock the King usually dined; and when

Marie Anne, according to custom, entered the room that morning, to sit

by his side whilst he ate, she learnt for the first time from the

disjointed babble of the sick man, that he was free from Matilla, and

had a new confessor.[340] Marie Anne was aghast at the news, though she

made no sign of disapproval to her husband; but the moment she could

leave the King’s side, she summoned the Admiral and her other advisers,

and considered the ill tidings. None knew who would be the next victim,

and most of them thought that Matilla had betrayed them. Panic and

bewilderment reigned amongst the chosen Camarilla. Some were for

striving to reinstate Matilla, some for punishing him, others were for

saving themselves by resignation and flight, but one great churchman,

the head of the Franciscan order, Folch de Cardona, kept his head, and

advised calmness. Matilla was exonerated and consulted; but when he

learned that the Queen and the Admiral had known of Portocarrero’s

meeting before the blow fell, he broke down. ‘Oh,’ he cried, ‘if I had

only known one short half hour before, I could have saved us all:’ and

then, though nominally pensioned and banished to Salamanca, he fell ill

of grief, fever, or poison, and died within a week of his dismissal.

Diaz did not seem very terrible at first; for his methods with the King

were soothing, and he moved slowly. He took Matilla’s place on the

Council of the Inquisition, and at once became a power in the land; but

he was all politeness and gentle saintliness to Marie Anne, and even

she, suspicious as she was, began to think that she might dominate still

if she could confine Father Diaz to his spiritual functions. In the

course of a few weeks after the change, the Court was moved to Toledo,

but there the mob, who loved the Ronquillo brothers, and hated the

Queen, knowing that she had suffered a defeat, made her feel that her

power was on the wane. ‘The Queen,’ writes Stanhope, ‘is very uneasy at

the impudent railleries of the Toledo women, who affront her every day

publicly in the streets, and insult the Admiral to his face. There is

besides a great want of money; for the King’s new confessor having

persuaded him before he left Madrid to publish a decree forbidding the

sale of all governments and offices, either in present or reversion, as

a duty of conscience ... the superintendent of the revenues declares

that he is not able to find money for his Majesty’s subsistence, all

branches of the revenue being anticipated for many years, and he is now

debarred from selling offices, which was the only resource he had left.’

In the meanwhile, the French ambassador, Harcourt, was busy buying

friends at Court, though most of old Mariana’s late adherents still

preferred, as the King undoubtedly did, the Bavarian Prince. The people

at large were strongly in favour of a French prince, descended from

Maria Theresa, ‘though they would rather have the devil,’ as Stanhope

says, ‘than see France and Spain united.... It is scarce conceivable the

abhorrence they have for Vienna; most of which is owing to the Queen’s

very imprudent conduct; insomuch that, in effect, that party is included

in her own person and family. They have much kinder thoughts of the

Bavarian, but still rather desire a French Prince to secure them against

war.’

The intrigues of the French ambassador were met by increased activity on

the part of the Queen, who left Charles no rest in pushing the claims of

her nephew the Archduke. The poor King was sick of the whole business,

and only wished to be left alone, and for his Bavarian nephew to succeed

him. The King will not bear to hear talk of business of any kind, and

when sometimes the Queen cannot contain herself, he bids her let him

alone, and says she designs to kill him.’[341] A few weeks later (25th

June) the English ambassador sent this vivid picture of the invalid:

‘Our gazettes here tell us every week that his Catholic Majesty is in

perfect health.... It is true that he is every day abroad, but _hæret

lateri lethalis arundo_; his ankles and knees swell again, his eyes bag,

the lids are as red as scarlet, and the rest of his face a greenish

yellow. His tongue is “tied,” as it is called, that is, he has such a

fumbling in his speech, that those near him hardly understand him; at

which he sometimes grows angry, and asks if they all be deaf.’

But, with all his feebleness, Charles still resisted the pressure upon

him either to make a will or to summon the Archduke. Marie Anne was

persistent; and at the end of June her importunity produced a dangerous

fit that nearly ended the King’s life there and then, after which

Stanhope writes: ‘There is not the least hope of this King’s recovery;

and we are every night in apprehensions of hearing he is dead in the

morning, though the Queen lugs him out every day, to make the people

believe he is well till her designs are rife, which I rather fear will

prove abortive; for, by the best information I can get of the three

pretenders, her candidate is like to have the fewest votes. Upon old

Count Harrach’s pressing the King to have the Archduke Charles sent for

to Spain ... he gave no answer, but turning to the Queen, who was

present, said laughing, “Oyga mujer, el Conde aprieta mucho” (Hark,

wife, how very pressing the Count is) repeating “very pressing” several

times. The French Ambassador “presses” just as much, and the Nuncio, in

the Pope’s name, also for the French.’

These signs were not lost on Marie Anne, and she began to turn to the

strongest side. Harcourt and his wife were charming and liberal, and had

quite captivated the Madrid crowd, who cheered them wherever they went,

whilst Harrach and his wife were unattractive and unpopular; but what

was more important than anything else, now that Spanish resources were

failing, French money was forthcoming to buy Baroness Berlips and the

Queen’s German hangers-on. The Marquise of Harcourt paid assiduous court

to Marie Anne, who, seeing the impossibility of her own candidate,

listened, beguiled, to the clever suggestion of the French that if she

would abandon the Emperor’s son, she might continue Queen of Spain by a

marriage with the French prince who might succeed Charles.

For a time, in the late autumn of 1698, the French cause suffered a

setback. Louis apparently considering that his chance of placing a

French prince upon the throne of all the Spanish dominions in face of

Europe would be impracticable, revived a scheme that he had agreed upon

with the Emperor years before, when Charles was a child; namely, to

partition Spain, by agreement with the maritime powers, between the

three claimants: a French prince to take Naples, Sicily, and the Basque

province, the Prince of Bavaria to reign in Spain itself, and Austria to

be contented with Milan. This, when it was divulged, aroused the

intensest indignation, not only in Spain, but in Austria and Bavaria.

Harcourt and his wife lost their favour at once, and Marie Anne again

leaned towards her German kinsmen. What was more important still, the

King at last, under pressure which will be presently explained, made a

testament declaring the Prince of Bavaria his heir. Marie Anne, the King

himself, and the Council, all denied it; but it was soon known to be

true, and the French ambassador immediately presented a demand that

Cortes should be summoned to settle the succession by vote.

Suddenly, whilst this demand was being laboriously discussed, the news

came that the little Bavarian prince, the only descendant of old Mariana

except the King, had died, aged six—of poison it was said, in February

1699; and the problem of the succession was changed in a moment. Bribed

and cajoled by hopes of remaining Queen of Spain by a second marriage,

Marie Anne again seemed inclined to side with those who had been her

enemies. Most of the partisans of the Bavarian claimant, including the

King himself, and especially Portocarrero, went over to the French view;

and the principal reason why Marie Anne held herself in doubt was

because she saw those whom she hated all ranged on the side of France.

Whilst this sordid bickering was going on in the palace the distress in

the country increased daily, until famine invaded even the capital. The

new confessor and Cardinal Portocarrero had, as yet, made no great

change in the government; and Marie Anne’s friends were still in office,

headed by Oropesa and the Admiral. Ronquillo and his fellow-conspirators

were growing impatient for their reward, and incited secretly by their

agents, the populace of Madrid broke into revolt in April 1699. A

howling mob surrounded the palace, crying for bread. ‘Long live the

King, and death to Oropesa,’ was the cry. Inside the palace panic

reigned supreme, and poor Charles was like to die with fright, when the

rabble demanded fiercely that he should show himself upon the balcony.

Marie Anne appeared at the open window undaunted, and told the crowd

that the King was asleep. ‘He has slept too long,’ was the reply, ‘wake

him’; and at last the King had to appear, looking, as Stanhope says,

like a ghost, and moving as if by clock work. Ronquillo! Ronquillo!

shouted the mob. We will have Ronquillo for mayor: and in a hurry

Ronquillo was sent for and sworn in as mayor, which somewhat appeased

the insurgents, who bore him off in triumph. Oropesa’s palace was

ablaze, and a rush upon it by the mob had resulted in many of the latter

being killed, and cast into a well within the precincts by Oropesa’s

servants. Further enraged at this, the populace surged _en masse_ to the

King’s palace, clamouring for the heads of Oropesa and the Admiral; and

they were with difficulty restrained from invading the royal apartments

by the clergy, with raised crucifixes and holy symbols. Again they

demanded the presence of the King, who told them that Ronquillo had

orders to do everything to satisfy them, and promised, on his oath as a

King, that the insurgents should be held harmless for the tumult.

A clean sweep was made of Marie Anne’s friends. The Admiral fled to

hiding; and Portocarrero declared that within a week or two he would

have Berlips, the Capuchin confessor of the Queen, and the whole gang

cleared out of Spain. The day after the tumult Stanhope wrote: ‘The King

is very weak, and declines fast. The tumult yesterday, I fear, may have

some ill-effect further on his health. It was such as the like never

before happened in Madrid in the memory of the oldest men here, and

proves, contrary to what they brag of, that there is a mob here as well

as in other places.’ The whole aspect of the palace changed as if by

magic, and Cardinal Portocarrero was supreme. Marie Anne, cowed by the

violence and vituperation of the mob, was glad to lie low, and did not

attempt to influence the King, whose health declined every day.

Since the death of the Bavarian claimant in February the matter of the

succession had remained in abeyance; and it was evident now that unless

the King was indeed very soon to declare his heir by testament he would

die with the question still open. But poor Charles shrunk from the

execution of an act, which he had always said he would only do in

_articulo mortis_, and the persuasions of those about him were always

met by a fresh plea for delay. In this deadlock of affairs a course was

adopted by the dominant party which will always furnish one of the most

repulsive episodes of history. During his first grave attack at the end

of 1697, Charles, who was as superstitious as he was ignorant, sent for

Rocaberti, the Inquisitor-General, a stern Dominican, and confessed that

he believed his illness to be the result of a maleficent charm cast upon

him. The Inquisitor replied that he would have the case examined; but he

saw no probability of result unless the King would point out some person

whom he suspected, or gave some evidence to proceed upon.