FOREIGN WAR RENDERED INEVITABLE BY OLIVARES' POLICY--ITS EFFECT IN
SPAIN--CONDITION OF THE COURT--WASTE, IDLENESS, AND OSTENTATION OF ALL
CLASSES--EXTRAVAGANCE IN DRESS--PHILIP'S EFFORTS TO REFORM
MANNERS--RETRENCHMENT IN HIS HOUSEHOLD--THE SUMPTUARY ENACTMENTS--THE
_GOLILLA_--THE INDUSTRY OF OLIVARES--HIS CHARACTER AND APPEARANCE--HIS
MAIN OBJECT TO SECURE POLITICAL AND FISCAL UNITY IN SPAIN--THE
DIFFICULTIES IN THE WAY OF THIS--THE COMEDIES--THEATRES IN
MADRID--PHILIP'S LOVE FOR THE STAGE--AN AUTO-DE-FE--LORD WIMBLEDON'S
ATTACK ON CADIZ--RICHELIEU'S LEAGUE AGAINST SPAIN--SPANISH
SUCCESSES--"PHILIP THE GREAT"--VISIT OF THE KING TO ARAGON AND
CATALONIA IN 1626--DISCONTENT AND DISSENSION--PHILIP'S LIFE TRAGEDY
The policy of Olivares, which had estranged England and revived the
haughty old claims of Spain to dictate to Europe, had already begun to
produce widespread effects. France, no longer under the papal Italian
rule of the Queen-mother, but in the firm hands of Richelieu, could not
be expected to submit to such claims now; and during 1624 Europe once
more divided itself into two camps, one to assert and the other to
dispute the {128} supremacy of the house of Austria under the hegemony
of Spain. Richelieu did not believe in beginning the game until he
held all the cards in his hands, and delayed an open declaration of war
until he could join with him in a league against Spain, the United
Provinces, and Savoy, and had bought at least the neutrality if not the
active aid of England.
[Sidenote: A corrupt capital]
In the meanwhile we will glance at the effects which had been produced
in Spain, and particularly in the Court, by the joint action of the
young King and his mentor, the Count-Duke. The ruin and disappearance
of the greedy crew that had followed Lerma and his family, and the
accession of a promising youth like Philip IV. to the throne, had
filled the lieges with the belief that, as if by a fairy wand, all
Spain's troubles would cease and national power and general prosperity
would flood the long-suffering land with joy. The happy dream was of
short duration, for the ills were too deep seated to be quickly cured,
if even wise measures had been adopted. But the reforms of Olivares
had been merely of a palliative character, leaving the system and
incidence of taxation radically bad. Whilst rigid investigation of
past peculations was effected, whilst the squandering of the royal
resources in grants was limited, and economy severely enjoined in the
expenditure of private citizens, the most lavish waste was perpetrated
in other directions; and this, with the cost incurred by a forward
foreign policy, had, in the three years that succeeded the accession of
Philip, again brought affairs to a crisis, in which the national penury
was the conspicuous fact.
{129}
As soon as the echoes had died away of the festivals that had been
organised to dazzle the English Prince, the discontent of the people
began to find voice amongst those whose mordant speech and fluent pen
were so eager always to seize upon a pretext for the exercise of their
powers. Quevedo, the greatest wit of his time, who had once more been
recalled from the exile into which his biting satire so often cast
him,[1] and was the idol both of the quidnuncs of Liars' Walk and of
the dilettante nobles of the Court, launched his darts against the
grumblers, and told Spaniards boldly that the continued misery was the
fault of the degenerate race of his countrymen, "the well perfumed but
ill conducted hosts" who impatiently resisted or evaded the decrees of
those who endeavoured to mend matters.
The decrees, it is true, were from their intricacy and their
thoroughness not easy to follow, for they sought to revolutionise the
customs and ways of life rendered familiar by almost immemorial usage.
The evils to be cured had been patent to all, but the remedies were too
sudden and too drastic to be effectual. When Philip had first come to
the throne, and the new broom was to be wielded, the reforming member
of the Cortes, Lison y Biedma, had told the King[2]--
"Your subjects spend and waste great sums in the abuse of costly garb,
with so many varieties of trimmings that the making costs more than the
{130} stuff; and as soon as the clothes are made there is a change of
fashion and the money has to be spent over again. When they marry the
wealth they squander on dress alone ruins them, and they remain in debt
for the rest of their lives; ... such is the excess that the wife of an
artisan nowadays needs as much finery as a lady, even though she have
to get money for it by dishonest means and to the offence of God....
As for collars and ruffs, the disorder in their use is very scandalous.
A single ruff of linen with its making and ravelling will cost over 200
reals, and six reals every time it is dressed, which at the end of the
year doubles its cost, and much money is thus wasted. Besides, many
strong, able young men are employed in dressing and goffering these
extravagant things, who might be better employed in work necessary for
the commonwealth or in tilling the ground. The servants, too, have to
be paid higher wages in consequence of the money they spend in wearing
these collars, which indeed consumes most of what they earn; and a
great quantity of wheat is wasted in starch which is sorely wanted for
food. The fine linens to make these collars have, moreover, to be
brought from abroad, and money has to be sent out of the country to pay
for them. With respect to coaches, great evil is caused and offence
given to God, seeing the disquiet they bring to women who own them; for
they never stay at home, but leave their children and servants to run
riot, with the evil example of the mistress being always gadding
abroad. The art of horsemanship is dying out, and those who ought to
be mounted crowd, six or eight of them together, {131} in a coach,
talking to wenches rather than learning how to ride. Very different
gentlemen, indeed, will they grow up who have all their youth been
lolling about in coaches instead of riding."
And so on, almost every item of the daily life of Madrid is shown by
the writers of the day to be vicious, wasteful, and corrupt. Idlers
crowd in the monasteries, and hosts of other idlers, sham students,
poetasters, bullies, and beggars, depend for their daily sustenance
upon the garlic soup and crusts which are doled out at the gates from
the superfluity of the friars; and servants, with or without wages, but
living slothfully upon their patron's food in tawdry finery and squalid
plenty, pester the noble houses from stable court to roof.[3] Philip
and Olivares in the early days did not lack courage, and they came out
with a decree so drastic to restrict the wearing of rich clothes, the
abuse of ornament, and the possession of rich furniture, the use of
trimmings, bullion, silks, velvets, embroideries, and fringes, and to
limit the employment of silver and gold plate for household use,[4] as
to be quite inoperative; besides which, almost as soon as the decree
was promulgated the visit of Charles Stuart caused its suspension.
The number of servants to be kept was rigidly restricted, the use of
coaches was only to be allowed to people of a certain rank, women were
forbidden to drive up and down unattended by father or {132} husband,
and, what caused more gibes than anything else, the houses of ill fame,
of which, in the alleys leading out of the Calle Mayor, there was an
enormous number, were ordered to be closed. Above all, the most severe
orders were given against the wearing of ruffs and the using of starch
for any purpose. Pillory, confiscation, and exile were to be the fate
of any person who wore any pleated or goffered linen in any shape, and
the broad, flat Walloon collar, which fell upon the shoulders, alone
was to be allowed. Alguacils were provided with shears, and at a given
signal raided the fashionable promenades, cutting the fine lace ruffs
which the fops still insisted upon wearing, seizing and burning the
stocks of them in the shops, lopping hat-brims to the requisite
narrowness, confiscating jewels, and even snipping off the lovelocks
before the ears which were the mark of the exquisite.
The ladies, too, were no better treated, and many a brazen-faced madam
was hauled out of her trundling coach and put to shame, or had portions
of her forbidden finery profaned by the coarse hands of catchpoles.
The Calle Mayor and the Prado were up in arms at such sacrilege, and
bewailed the time when, the stern pragmatics notwithstanding, each
hidalgo and his dame who could get money or credit dressed as
splendidly as they liked. The worst of it was, that except the time
when all the Court was ablaze with the welcome to its English visitor,
the King, for the first time, followed his own pragmatics. Philip,
like his grandfather, disliked gorgeous attire for himself; though,
when the dignity of his position demanded it, he could be refulgent.
He was, moreover, {133} sincerely desirous of remedying the terrible
penury that existed everywhere. He had been told by his advisers that
one of the ways to do this was to limit personal expenditure, in order
that there might be more money for the State to spend, and he
endeavoured in his own person to set the example of economy.
[Sidenote: Philip's reforms]
Philip has left a document in his own hand,[5] setting forth the
reforms he introduced in the service of his own palace (February 1624).
It is addressed to the master of the household, the Duke of Infantado,
and although far too long to reproduce entire here, some few passages
of it may be quoted, as showing that, severe as the cutting down might
be, the royal household was still much larger than would now be
considered necessary for a monarch.[6] The distressed condition of the
public revenues, says the King, the many calls upon it, the end of the
truce with the Dutch, and Spain's many foes on sea and land, make it
imperative to cut down every unnecessary expense. A beginning is to be
made in the salary of the master of the household himself, all _future_
holders of the office to receive a million maravedis less salary
(_i.e._ £330 less), but to retain all the perquisites of the office.
Only the four senior stewards are in future to be paid, the rest to
serve without payment, but to retain their rations, with some small
reductions, namely, the dish of chicken custard or rice is to be
suppressed, and the {134} allowance of twenty pounds of ice hitherto
given to each steward daily to be stopped. The number of "gentlemen of
the mouth" is in future to be restricted to fifty, the gentlemen of the
chambers to forty, who are not to have more than two lacqueys each.
The pages in future are to be only twenty-four. The numbers of
officials of the bakery, fruitery, cellar, spicery, chandlery, and
butchery are all reduced to what still seems an extravagant personnel
according to modern ideas, and the old scandal of the enormous
"rations" drawn (and in many cases sold) by all the palace officials is
once more attacked. For instance, the perquisite of sixty wax torches
taken by the chief gentlemen of the bed-chamber is abolished; and only
eight sets of rations are to be served to the gentlemen of the
bed-chamber, whilst the chief groom of the bed-chamber is in future to
go without his fifty reals a month in lieu of salads, and his jam on
fast days. The controller of the household will no longer be entitled
to fresh meat, pastry, bacon, chicken custard, salad and jams, and will
have to content himself in future whilst on a journey with two dishes
of roast meat and one dish of boiled, and two dishes for supper,--"and
he must not take anything out of the store."
[Sidenote: Philip's household economies]
Through every branch of the household this process of reduction was
decreed by Philip, and even the pay of the guards was rigidly cut down.
The members of the Spanish guard had recently had their pay doubled to
200 ducats a month, and now found themselves reduced to their former
pay of 100. The King, by these reforms, decreed that a saving of
67,300 ducats a year was to {135} be effected. In another manuscript
of the King's,[7] in which a year or two afterwards he recapitulates
his personal efforts to remedy the evils of his country, he refers
particularly to the sacrifices he made in his household for the
commonweal at this time.
"I have twice reformed my household," he says, "and although my
servants may be more numerous than before, I have had no other money to
pay them with than honours, and they have received no pecuniary pay.
As for my personal expenses, the moderation of my dress and my rare
feasts prove how modest it is, and I spend no money voluntarily on
myself, for I try to give my vassals an example to avoid vain
ostentation. So I have reconciled myself to ask for nothing for my own
person, but only the indispensable funds for the defence of my realm
and the Catholic faith. I want no more, not a maravedi, from my
vassals, and I charge you (the Council of Castile) on your conscience
to let me know if anything is being spent beyond this."
Philip spoke truly and from his heart when he expressed his desire to
avoid as much as possible the oppression of his subjects, but the
science of political economy had not yet been born, and neither he nor
his advisers could see that a system of taxation that largely consisted
of a crushing fine upon every sale of commodities and food stopped
production and trade, and tapped the stream of revenue before it had
time to fructify the land. The money from the Indies, or what was left
of it after the peculations of officers, all {136} drifted abroad
immediately, mostly before landing, to pay for the loans raised on
usurious interest, and in return for the articles of extravagance and
luxury which were forbidden to be made in Spain, or of which the
vicious taxation had killed the production. And so Philip, with the
best of intentions, still, be it remembered, a mere boy of nineteen,
was enclosed in the vicious circle which the impossible policy of
saddling Spain with the defence and assertion of the Catholic faith
throughout the world had imposed upon his doomed house.
He might, and did, as I have just shown, do his best to economise for
the supposed benefit of his people; but it was his people themselves
who needed reforming. Whilst they complained that matters got no
better, they shouted as loudly as ever that Spain must teach heretics
their error at the point of the pike, and they themselves resisted and
evaded by every means in their power the sumptuary and other measures
intended for the general relief. That these sumptuary measures were to
a great extent absurd, and the methods of enforcing them undignified
and often ridiculous, is, of course, clear to us now; but the
resistance to them was not founded on that ground, but because they
went against the prevailing sentiment of the people, at least the
people of the capital. The general pretentiousness, idleness, and love
of luxury unearned by labour were, indeed, symptomatic of the natural
decadence of society, produced by the unfounded inflation and unreal
exaltation of the nation for the greater part of a century previously.
The decay had gone too far now for any but a great governing genius to
remedy it; {137} and Philip, though good hearted, well meaning, and not
without ability, certainly was not that. The poison had to work itself
out of the national system by slow and painful process, until the
patient, exhausted but sound, could build up its strength again.
Philip, throughout his life a brilliant idler with good heart and a
tender conscience, was condemned to witness the progress of the disease
without being able to understand or remedy it; and to watch at the same
time with failing heart the parallel decline and threatened extinction
of his own historic house.
Whilst the male, and especially the female, swaggerers of the Calle
Mayor gave grudging and evasive obedience to the royal pragmatics
against extravagance in most respects, there was one enactment of
Philip's which, though at first resisted more sulkily than any of them,
gave rise at length to a new fashion, which was seized upon by the
whole of Spain with avidity, and became for the rest of the
century--seventy-five years--the most entirely characteristic article
of Spanish male dress. The ruffs under Philip III. had become
enormous, and the costly lace edging and elaborate devices for keeping
the frills stiff had made them, perhaps, the most extravagant articles
of dress ever generally and diurnally worn in any country. Many
attempts had been made to suppress them before Philip and Olivares
tried their hands, but all had failed. The alternative collar decreed
by Philip's pragmatics was either a plain linen band or the flat
Walloon collar falling on the shoulders. The former of these was
rejected utterly by people who aspired to be well dressed, as being
mean {138} and lacking in distinction after the spreading splendour of
the "lettuce frill" ruff. The Walloon collar, unstarched, soon got
wrinkled, creased, and soiled; and moreover, it had become to a great
extent identified with the "heretic" Hollanders and unpopular Flemings,
so that Madrid never looked upon it with favour, though the King wore
it after his first pragmatic. The problem was to find a new collar
which should be dignified and stiff without the forbidden starch, "or
other alchemy," as the pragmatics said; should present the light
contrast becoming to swarthy faces, without employing the fine foreign
lawn and lace which the royal decree made illegal, and should render
unnecessary the puritanical wrinkled Walloon.
[Sidenote: The _golilla_]
An ingenious tailor in the Calle Mayor, early in 1623, submitted to the
King and to his brother Carlos a new device, consisting of a high
spreading collar of cardboard, covered with white or grey silk on its
inner surface, and on the outside with dark cloth to match the doublet.
By means of heated iron rollers and shellac the cardboard shape was
permanently moulded into a graceful curve which bent outwards at the
height of the chin, presenting in juxtaposition with the face the
surface of light coloured silk.[8] Philip was pleased with the
novelty, which was distinctly more "dressy" than the Walloon, and had
none of the objections of the ruff, and ordered some to be made for his
brother Carlos and himself. The tailor, in {139} high glee, went home
to his shop to make them. But, alas! the pragmatics had forbidden "any
sort of alchemy" to make collars stiff, and, moreover, the Inquisition
was soon told by its spies that some secret incantations, needing the
use of mysterious smoking pots and heated machines turned by handles,
were being performed by the tailor in the Calle Mayor.
This was suspicious, and smelt of the Evil One; and soon the poor
tailor and his uncanny instruments were haled before the dread tribunal
on suspicion of witchcraft and sorcery. It could not make much of the
tools, but as, in any case, the collars were lined with silk, and that
was against the pragmatic, the poor tailor's stock and instruments were
ordered to be publicly burnt before his door. The tailor, in trouble,
went to Olivares, who was furious at the King's collars being burnt,
and he and the Duke of Infantado sent for the president of the
Inquisition Council, and rated him soundly. The president declared
that he knew not that the strange things were for his Majesty; but
pointed out how dangerously new they were in shape, how mysteriously
stiffened, and how they sinned against the pragmatic. But he was soon
silenced by the Count-Duke, who told him they were the best and most
economical neck-gear ever invented, as they needed no washing or
starching, and would last for a year without further expense.
Philip[9] and Carlos, with many of the courtiers, wore the new
_Golilla_ for the first time during the visit of {140} the Prince of
Wales, and the fashion caught the popular taste. Thenceforward all
Spain, Spanish Italy, and South America wore golillas, the curve, size,
and shape changing somewhat as other fashions changed, but the
principle remained the same, until Spain was born again and a French
King banned the golilla as barbarous, and imposed upon his new subjects
the falling lace cravat and jabot of the eighteenth century.
Though the satirists and poetasters might gibe anonymously at the small
remedial effect that followed the well-meant measures of the King and
his "bogey," as they called Olivares, and might whisper spitefully, as
they did, that the latter purposely kept Philip absorbed in frivolous
pursuits, the better to be able to rule unchecked himself, the
favourite went on his way sternly and forcefully, pushing aside roughly
those who stood in nis path, and behaving none too generously to those
who aided him. He gave up none of the duties of personal attendance
upon the King, although now the whole of the details of every
department of State passed through his hands. The jealous courtiers,
whose perquisites he had curtailed, sneered beneath their breath at him
for coming into the King's room hung all round with packets of paper,
with similar packets stuck in sheafs under the band of his hat, and
bulging from his pockets, the very way, they said, to disgust with
affairs a youth already disinclined for business and constitutionally
idle.
[Sidenote: The policy of Olivares]
It is quite evident, however, that someone had to do the business of
the State; and the numerous and very able State papers and memoranda of
{141} advice from Olivares to Philip, still in existence,[10] show that
every subject of importance was exhaustively explained to the King,
naturally from Olivares' point of view, and that, if Philip left the
executive power in the hands of the minister, it was not because he was
kept in ignorance of the issues involved. Even thus early the main
tendency of Olivares' policy was avowed to the King, a policy which was
in its essence wise and statesmanlike, but impossible of expeditious
consummation. The difficulty which faced Olivares had faced Ferdinand
and Isabel and all subsequent Spanish sovereigns, namely, the want of
political unity of the country. The "Catholic Kings" had attained a
factitious homogeneity by promoting a common spiritual pride, which had
given to Spain the temporary force, already well-nigh dead when
Olivares took the reins. How could Spain face half Europe in arms, and
force orthodoxy on unwilling princes and populations with the resources
of ruined Castile alone? Aragonese and Catalans were rich, but held
their purse-strings tight. Portugal, with its fine harbours and its
rich Oriental trade, held stiffly to the constitution, to respect which
Spanish kings had solemnly sworn, and not a ducat of taxes could be
imposed upon it by the King of Spain without Portuguese consent, or for
other than Portuguese purposes.
[Sidenote: Olivares advocates unification]
The expiry of the truce with the Hollanders, and the evident approach
of war after the departure of Charles Stuart from Spain, made necessary
the {142} raising of large funds somehow. It has been shown how
terribly exhausted the national resources of the Castilian realms were;
and the poverty of the country had wrung a cry from the Cortes of
Castile, which met late in 1623 to vote new supplies for three years.
They could not vote, nor could Castile pay, more than the usual amount,
which for the needs of a new war, in addition to the resumed struggle
with Holland, was quite insufficient. It would be necessary,
therefore, for Philip soon to go and face the independent Parliaments
of Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia; and, whilst renewing and taking the
usual oaths, beg for generosity from his eastern subjects. There is
extant a paper,[11] bearing date of 1625, in which Olivares unfolds to
Philip his ideas of the relations that ought to exist between the
various dominions of which Spain consisted: the object in view, as he
says, being to arrange that "in case any of the States was at war, the
rest should be obliged to come to its aid and defence." He cites many
examples, ancient and modern, of the need for national unity in the
matter of finance and reciprocal obligation, and points out for the
benefit of the outer realms of Spain that they can only expect to form
a great Power by making such sacrifices for their King as other
subjects are obliged to make. His idea, evidently, was to use the
obligation of mutual defence as the first step to a complete political
fusion of the crowns, and he tried to gild the pill by saying that each
of the outer realms may now be considered feudatories of Castile,
whereas if they were all united {143} each would be the head. There
was, and is, no sentiment or tradition so strong in these regions,
especially in Catalonia, as that of political independence of Castile,
and any such argument as that of Olivares was bound to meet with stout
resistance if he attempted to enforce it. The very rumour was
sufficient, and even before the journey of Philip to the eastern realms
was begun, in January 1626, ominous murmurs came that Castile might
fight her own battles. The crowns of Aragon would provide money and
men to defend themselves, and pay their stipulated tribute to their
King on the ancient conditions; but that if an attempt was made to
coerce any further payment trouble would ensue. How this threat was
carried out to the bitter end the later pages of this book will tell;
but before we accompany Philip and his mentor on their first regal
visit to the stubborn realms of the east, the further progress of
events in the capital must be told.
Philip's routine of life had already become fixed, and for many years
to come changed but little. Olivares, as before, was always the first
to enter his room in the morning, and assisted him to rise, afterwards
reciting to him the business of the day, to which, except in the short
but frequent fits of penitence and remorse that throughout his life
plagued him, it is to be feared the King paid but little attention. He
rose early, and ate and drank very soberly, dining at about eleven in
the morning after an early cup of chocolate, and performing his
religious duties. Like all his house, he was a devoted lover of the
chase, and the large preserves in the neighbourhood of all his palaces
provided {144} him with ample sport; besides which, as will be
described in a later chapter, he enjoyed frequent wild boar drives, in
which his fine horsemanship was displayed with advantage. His dress
was usually a close-fitting doublet of brown duffel with trunks to
match, or on occasions of greater ceremony black silk or velvet with
the thin chain and tiny badge of the Golden Fleece at the neck, but no
other ornament. The golilla was almost invariably worn, his doublet
being, for outdoor wear, surmounted by a serviceable long shoulder cape
of similar dark colour. The galligaskins were full, and tied at the
knee with ribbons, and confined at the waist by a leather belt,
square-toed shoes with buckles, and stockings of lighter colour than
the galligaskins, but not usually pure white, completed the leg
coverings, except for hunting wear, when gaiters or boots to the knee
were used. A broad-trimmed felt hat with a band, and sometimes a side
feather, was his head-dress; and in the spring or autumn, when the
cloak would have been too heavy, his outdoor garment over the
close-fitting doublet was a _ropilla_ or outer jacket with false
sleeves cut open and hanging from the shoulder.
[Sidenote: Diversions of the court]
Both Philip and his wife Isabel[12] were indefatigable in their pursuit
of pleasure, in which their tastes agreed. The two main amusements
were the theatre and the devotional celebrations in churches and
monasteries; and the immense number of these in Madrid and the
principal cities provided an endless choice of such festivities. The
splendour and glitter which the sumptuary {145} decrees prohibited so
sternly in secular life ran riot in the temples, and a generation
forbidden to be extravagant in their own persons flocked to the garish
festivities of the Church to find the sensuous enjoyment which the mere
sight of richness gave them. No opportunity, indeed, was lost of
getting up a religious show. Philip's second child[13] was born in
November 1623,--the condition of the Queen at the time of Charles
Stuart's departure having been the reason why Philip did not accompany
his guest farther on his road to the coast. The infant Princess,
Margarita Maria, only lived a month; but the ceremonial to celebrate
her baptism reads like the relation of a fairy-tale.[14]
[Illustration: PHILIP IV. AS A YOUNG MAN. _From a contemporary
portrait in the possession of His Grace the Duke of Wellington at
Strathfieldsaye._]
In July of the next year, 1624, a splendid {146} opportunity for
devotional display was provided by the action of a madman. The most
crowded church in Madrid was that of the Augustinian Monastery of St.
Philip, at the entrance to the Calle Mayor, upon whose steps and raised
sidewalk the idlers and gossips of the Court met to whisper scandal and
bandy satiric verse. Every morning from matins until the angelus bell
tolled the hour of noon, when the soup and bread at the gates were
doled to hungry authors, stranded poets, and idlers out of luck, Liars'
Walk was full. But rarely had such a sensation of horror pervaded it
as on the day just mentioned, when the congregation rushed in panic
from the church, with cries of horror that a heretic had knelt before
the high altar and had deliberately insulted the Holy Mystery there
displayed.[15] Horror upon horrors! and in the Court of the Catholic
King! For eight days the King and Queen, with all their Court in the
deepest mourning, peregrinated the capital, visiting shrines and making
propitiatory offerings. Every church in Madrid was draped in black,
and processions, rogations, and public flagellations of devotees went
on ceaselessly for a week, during the whole of which time "no stage
plays were allowed, and public women were forbidden {147} to ply their
trade." In the corridors of the palace itself separate altars were
raised for every royal personage, and all the jewels that the crown of
Spain could provide were piled upon them to appease the outraged
divinity.
[Sidenote: The Theatres of Madrid]
The deprivation, even for a week, of the pleasures of the theatre must
have been to the citizens of the Court a greater penance for the
offence of the madman than any other; for Spain had literally gone
crazy for the stage, and Philip and his wife led or followed the
fashion eagerly. Actors, or histrions, as they were called, were
popular heroes, and upon the Liars' Walk they swaggered and exchanged
quips with the fecund poets who supplied them with lines of facile
verse by the fathom.[16] There walked Quevedo, with his great
tortoiseshell goggles and his sober black garb; there, observed of all
observers, was the "phoenix of wits," the great Lope; there, Moreto and
Calderon; and there also the rival comedians of the two theatres, the
Corral de la Pacheca and the Teatro de la Cruz, twisted moustachios of
defiance at one another, and talked of the King's compliments at their
last appearance in the palace.
The two theatres of the capital consisted of large courtyards enclosed
by houses, which were usually held by the owners of the theatres.[17]
A raised stage at the farther end, with tiled eaves {148} and a
curtain, was faced by a number of benches protected from sun and rain
by an awning. In these seats men alone were allowed to sit, whilst in
the open uncovered space behind them other men, who had paid a smaller
sum, witnessed the show standing. On the left hand on the ground level
was a sort of enclosed gallery called the _cazuela_, the stew-pan,
where the women were accommodated; and, as upon the English stage at
the time, some of the more privileged of the gallants were allowed to
be seated on stools upon the stage itself. In the closely grated
windows of the houses surrounding the courtyard the aristocracy saw the
play and the audience without being seen; and as these windows
corresponded with rooms (_aposentos_) in different houses with separate
entrances, but yet in most cases of easy access to the stage, infinite
opportunities for intrigue were provided. So scandalous did this state
of affairs become at a somewhat later period, that murderous affrays
even between the highest nobles of Spain on the subject of the
actresses were of frequent occurrence.[18] Philip, by the Court
etiquette, was not supposed to go to public theatres, and had {149} a
regular stage erected in the Alcazar and other palaces, where comedies
were performed twice a week; but, in fact, he was a constant visitor to
both the public theatres, going, of course, incognito, and often
masked, as was the fashion of the time. There he would sit in one of
the private rooms, unseen behind a heavily grated window, but vigilant
for any new beauty who appeared on the stage or in the cazuela.[19]
Sometimes, too, the Queen would go with similar precautions, and it is
to be feared, from the stories of eye-witnesses, that her tastes were,
at all events in these joyful early years of her life, not too refined.
Not only was she an ardent lover of the bull-fight, but she would in
the palace or public theatres countenance amusements which would now be
considered coarse. Quarrels and fights between country wenches would
be incited for her to witness unsuspected; nocturnal tumults would be
provoked for her amusement in the gardens of Aranjuez or other palaces;
and it is related that, when she was in one of the grated _aposentos_
of a public theatre, snakes or noxious reptiles would be secretly let
loose upon the floor or in the _cazuela_, to the confusion and alarm of
the spectators, whilst the gay red-cheeked young {150} Queen would
almost laugh herself into fits to see the stampede.
[Sidenote: An _auto-de-fé_]
Nor were bull-fights, comedies, equestrian shows and church spectacles
the only amusements of a Court which actually lived for idle pleasures.
There was another in which poignancy of excitement and devotion of the
peculiar Spanish sort were equally blended; and, though not so frequent
as the other diversions, was still more popular. These were the
_autos-de-fe_. Heretics of the Protestant kind there were now
practically none to burn; but sorcery, impiety, and above all Judaism,
or the suspicion of it, provided enough victims to furnish forth an
occasional public holiday. The description of one such ceremonial at
this period will suffice.[20] It was not long after the mad French
pedlar had outraged the religious proprieties in the Church of St.
Philip, when the branch of the Inquisition at Madrid received advice
from one of its ubiquitous familiars that certain persons, believed to
be of Jewish origin, were in the habit of meeting at the house of a
certain Licentiate in the Calle de las Infantas, where, amongst other
impious rites, they flogged and maltreated a wooden crucifix. Before
many hours had passed, the whole of the accused and their friends were
in the dungeons of the Inquisition; and, as a warning to other
backsliders, it was determined to hold a solemn public ceremonial
judgment of the offenders in the Plaza Mayor of Madrid on Sunday, 4th
July 1624.
The municipality provided the stands and {151} decorations of the great
square, with a splendidly adorned balcony for the King and Queen, six
other balconies being reserved for the ladies in attendance, with nine
balconies for gentlemen of the palace party; a vast concourse of
citizens filling the public space, and the hundreds of balconies
looking down upon the square. An immense staging was erected facing
the royal balcony, upon which, in their state robes, were to be seated
the Town Council of Madrid, the Inquisition of Toledo, the Supreme
Tribunal, all the Royal Councils and other official bodies. The
ceremonies began on the evening before the great day. At five o'clock
on Saturday afternoon, a solemn procession left the Convent of Doña
Maria de Aragon,[21] near the palace, carrying the gigantic green cross
which upon these occasions held the place of honour. The standard was
borne by the first official noble in the land, the Constable of
Castile, whilst the Admiral of Castile carried the tassels of the
sacred banner. Then, amidst a crowd of priests with flaring waxen
tapers, came the white cross in the hands of the representative of
Toledo, followed by the green cross itself, in the hands of the prior
of St. Thomas. Torch-bearers and faggot-bearers came after, many
scores of them, and the procession closed by long lines of friars
bearing tapers from every monastery in Madrid.
At seven o'clock the next morning the King and Queen left the palace in
their coach, followed by the whole Court; and when the royal party had
seated themselves in their gay bedizened balconies, the long procession
of the Inquisition, {152} with swaying censers, flaming tapers, and
propitiatory dirges, wound into the plaza under the archway from the
Calle Mayor. First came the alguaciles of the municipality and the
town officials, then the alguaciles of the Court and the officers of
the Royal Council; seventy hooded familiars of the dread tribunal with
their big crosses upon their sombre garb, followed with the crowd of
consultants, notaries, and prosecutors of the Holy Office. After them
walked the municipality of Madrid, then the Chief Constable of the
Inquisition alone, followed by the fiscal of the Inquisition of Toledo
bearing the banner of the Holy Office, whose tassels were held by
fiscals of Castile. The Inquisition of Toledo came next, and then the
Supreme Council of the Inquisition itself, the last and most important
member being Cardinal Zapata, the Inquisitor-General.
When all had taken their places, the Cardinal, as usual, ascended to
the royal balcony and administered to the King the oath to keep
inviolate the purity of the Church at any cost, an oath afterwards
repeated by the members of the tribunal itself and the Councils. Upon
a lower staging before the official platform were grouped the forty
wretched creatures in their flaming tabards of shame, whose offence
this pompous show was to punish. An interminable sermon was preached
by the King's confessor, Sotomayor, exhorting the accused to repent and
the faithful to increased zeal in the extermination of the enemies of
the holy faith; and then the dread sentences were read out by the
relator. Seven of the accused were condemned to be burned alive that
night {153} outside the gate of the city, and four more were to be
executed in effigy, whilst their bodies rotted for life in the secret
dungeons of the Holy Office; the rest being sent back to their prison,
probably never again to see the light of day, and to suffer unrecorded
tortures until death should release them. The house where the offence
was said to have been committed was doomed to be swept utterly from the
face of the earth, and a church and monastery dedicated to Christ
crucified erected in its place.[22] By the time the condemned were led
away it was three o'clock in the afternoon; and whilst the wretched
prisoners in their _sambenitos_, amidst the curses and insults of the
crowd, went to their doom, the smart company of courtiers, together
with King Philip and his wife, returned to their respective homes and
their much-needed repast, doubtless in an exceedingly self-approving
and pharisaical mood.[23]
Whilst the King and his people were thus absorbed in the pursuit of
demoralising pleasures, and loudly proclaiming to Europe that Spain had
abandoned none of its past pretensions, the European league against her
had been fully organised. It had been clear to Richelieu from the
beginning of Philip's reign, that unless France struck boldly and
promptly she would be in danger of finding herself once more shut in by
the House of Austria, more solid than ever now that Olivares was
determined to aid the Emperor to keep the {154} Palatinate, and the
blood and treasure of Castile were again to be squandered in fighting
heresy abroad. Spinola, victorious in Germany with Spanish troops, was
seriously threatening the United Provinces, and Spain, in defiance of
treaties, still held by force the Valtelline, which connected Lombardy
with Tyrol. The Duke of Savoy, ambitious and discontented with his
Spanish kinsman, tired of the rôle of catspaw to which he was
condemned, and greedy to seize Lombardy and Genoa, readily listened to
Richelieu's approaches; and England, still smarting under the
humiliation she had suffered from Olivares, did the same, whilst the
United Provinces, already at war with Spain, willingly joined the
enemies of her enemy. Europe found itself for a short time again thus
divided in its old way: France, Savoy, and the Protestant Powers being
on one side; whilst the House of Austria in Germany and Spain, with the
Italian principalities, were on the other. The first object of
Richelieu was to break the territorial circle by ousting the Spaniards
from the Valtelline, which he invaded with French and Swiss troops in
1625. Then followed the ignominious attack upon Cadiz by the English
fleet under Sir Edward Cecil (Lord Wimbledon) in October of the same
year,[24] and Spain thus found herself at war with half Europe.
[Sidenote: War with France]
Poor and exhausted as we have seen that the country was, the labours of
Olivares had not been quite without result, and with great effort funds
were raised to present a front to the enemies of {155} the faith worthy
of Spanish traditions. The Queen offered her personal jewels to fight
her own countrymen, the French; the nobles contributed a million ducats
in cash from their ill-gotten hoards; the pulpits and altars of Spain
and the Indies rang with priestly exhortations to sacrifice for the
faith; and the clergy itself undertook to maintain twenty thousand
troops during the war. The property of all French subjects in Spain
was confiscated, and for once the energy of Olivares was felt in all
branches of the Spanish service. It was as if the old times of Philip
II. had returned. Feria and Spinola, the one on land, the other at
sea, forced the French to abandon their conquests in the Valtelline and
Genoa. Spain, in a fever of pride and jubilation, hailed the young
King, who personally had done nothing and had never left Madrid, as
"Philip the Great," and Olivares caused the title to be officially
accorded to his young master. But after a time the diplomacy of the
Spanish Queen of France and Olivares did more to end the war than the
skill of the generals. Richelieu was a cardinal of the Church, and
could not entirely ignore the remonstrances of the Pope, prompted by
Olivares, against his making common cause with heretics to fight the
orthodox Catholic Power; and a treaty between France and Spain was
patched up in January 1626 with regard to the Valtelline, where the
Catholics were to enjoy full liberty of conscience on payment of a
tribute to the Protestant Grisons.
But in Germany the war, now mainly a religious one, went on, the arms
of the Emperor being to a great extent successful, thanks to {156} the
genius of Tilly and the ample aid in men and money poured into
mid-Europe by Spain. Spanish resources, too, were plentifully sent to
the Infanta Archduchess to carry on the eternal war with the Dutch, who
were, as of yore, upheld by their brother Protestants in England and
France. Once more the Dutch privateers harried Spanish commerce, and
again all traffic between Holland and Spain was prohibited, to Spain's
detriment. But the new-born spurt of energy favoured Spanish arms even
here; for Don Fadrique de Toledo destroyed the Dutch fleet off
Gibraltar, and Spinola at last, after a siege of ten months, captured
Breda. To complete the picture of Spain's unwonted success, the Dutch
were expelled from Guayaquil in South America and from Puerto Rico in
the West Indies, and the Moorish pirates who had harried the
Mediterranean, and even the Spanish coasts, for years, were crushed by
Philip's galleys.
[Sidenote: "Philip the Great"]
The pride and jubilation in Spain passed all bounds, and Philip
himself, in a recapitulation of the situation made to the Council of
Castile,[25] sets forth in words of proud satisfaction the rise in the
national prestige that had followed his accession. It is significant,
however, that the occasion that gave rise to this document,
congratulatory and exculpatory at the same time, was the absolute
destitution of the country as a consequence of the expense caused by
the renewal of the war of which they were all so proud.
"Our prestige," says the King, "has been {157} immensely improved. We
have had all Europe against us, but we have not been defeated, nor have
our allies lost, whilst our enemies (_i.e._ the French) have sued me
for peace. Last year, 1625, we had nearly 300,000 infantry and cavalry
in our pay, and over 500,000 men of the militia under arms, whilst the
fortresses of Spain are being put into a thorough state of defence.
The fleet, which consisted of only seven vessels on my accession, rose
at one time in 1625 to 108 ships of war at sea, without counting the
vessels at Flanders, and the crews are the most skilful mariners this
realm ever possessed. Thank God, our enemies have never captured one
of my ships, except a solitary hulk. So it may truly be said that we
have recovered our prestige at sea; and fortunately so, for, lacking
our sea power, we should lose not only all the realms we possess, but
religion even in Madrid itself would be ruined, and this is the
principal point to be considered. This very year of 1626 we have had
two royal armies in Flanders and one in the Palatinate, and yet all the
power of France, England, Sweden, Venice, Savoy, Denmark, Holland,
Brandenberg, Saxony, and Weimer could not save Breda from our
victorious arms."
In a similar gratulatory spirit the young King reviews the wars in
which Spain has held her own in the Grisons, Venetian territory,
France, and Genoa.
"We have," he continues, "held our own against England, both with
regard to the marriage and at Cadiz; and yet, with all this universal
conspiracy against us, I have not depleted my {158} patrimony by 50,000
ducats. It would be impossible to believe this if I did not see it
with my own eyes, and that my own realms are all quiet and religious.
I have written this paper to you to show you (_i.e._ the Council of
Castile, the supreme administrative, judicial, and financial authority
in Spain) that I have done my part, and have put my own shoulder to the
wheel without sparing sacrifice. I have spent nothing unnecessary upon
myself, and I have made Spain and myself respected by my enemies."
The political blindness that afflicted Philip in common with other
Spaniards of the day, is strikingly exhibited in this paper. The
liberty or supremacy of the Valtelline Catholics mattered not one jot
to Spain. The religious fate of Bohemia and the Palatinate was equally
foreign to purely Spanish interests, whilst it must have been patent to
all the world that a recognition of the inevitable independence of
Protestant Holland, which it was clear now Spain could never prevent,
would have resulted in a perfectly honourable peace in that direction,
and would have freed Spain from the drain which was exhausting her.
And yet there is in the document just quoted, and in scores of others
of the period emanating from Philip or his ministers, not one word to
indicate any idea that it was unwise or unstatesmanlike to lead
suffering Spain to utter ruin for the sake of championing the Catholic
faith, and all the causes masquerading under its name, in any part of
Europe.
[Sidenote: Philip's appeal to Aragon]
But though Philip and his Castilian subjects were blinded to political
expediency by what they {159} proudly considered their religious
privilege and duty, the subjects of his eastern realms, hardheaded men
of other racial origins and political traditions, had no notion of
allowing themselves to be ruined for a sentimental idea, however
grandiose. When the King had asked the Aragonese Cortes for the usual
grant in 1624, he was told that he must first present himself before
the Aragonese Parliaments (Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia) to take the
usual oath to respect their constitutions, before they could make a
grant; and as they stiffly held to the principle, which the Castilian
Parliament had lost, of "redress before supply," they could vote
nothing until their legislative demands were satisfied. The anger of
Olivares at such a reply may be guessed by the tenour of the document
of his quoted on page 142, but there was no help for it, and Philip
with as good a grace as he might promised to visit his eastern
subjects, perfectly well aware that his progress was not likely to be a
mere voyage of pleasure, as his trip to Andalucia had been a year
previously.
The disappointed courtier Novoa[26] gives an amusing account of the
meeting of the Council of State which decided upon the King's voyage.
He says that Olivares, "careful as usual of the unessential point and
careless of what was most important," was determined to show off his
oratory, and begged the King and his brothers to sit behind the grating
in the council chamber, where unseen {160} they could watch the
proceedings, in order to hear his speech. The wisest and oldest
councillors in their speeches dwelt upon the gravity of the situation,
and expressed hope that the alliance of their enemies would soon fall
to pieces, and Lord Wimbledon's fleet be wrecked on its way home.
[Illustration: GASPAR DE GUZMAN, COUNT-DUKE OF OLIVARES. _From a
portrait by Velazquez in the possession of Edward Huth, Esq._]
[Sidenote: The policy of Olivares]
"Then came the Count's turn to speak. Settling himself firmly on his
legs, and thrusting his crutch stick between his bald patch and his
false hair, he made a longer pause than the occasion demanded, and said
that there was no reason for alarm, nor to make so much of the power of
many other potentates, for his Majesty was greater than all of them put
together. Even if France, England, Venice, Holland, Savoy, Piedmont,
Sweden and Denmark were to join together, none of them, and hardly the
whole of them united, were so great as the realms under the dominion of
King Philip. The realm of Castile, they all knew the greatness of, and
so they did of Portugal, Aragon, Valencia, Catalonia, Sicily, Navarre,
Naples, Milan, Flanders, the East Indies and the West and other
islands, and great territories elsewhere. Well, then! if his Majesty
alone had in various parts of the world greater possessions than many
of the others together, why should we be so frightened of the power of
many united?[27] Let his Majesty leave Castile, and as {161} Portugal
is only one realm, Naples and Sicily, so far away and across the sea,
let him go to Aragon, Valencia, and Catalonia. Let him call their
Cortes together, and ask them for supplies. Let him show them how many
years Castile has borne the burden alone, and demand that these three
realms shall do their part in providing men and money for his Majesty;
and those who cannot go to the war themselves, let them provide capable
and experienced men to replace them. By this means we shall be able to
outweigh with our own forces the powers against us, without having to
go and beg for help from foreign princes. Who doubts, he continued,
that by this means we shall raise great armies and fleets to defend the
country. We can then easily send the aid necessary to Italy, Flanders,
and elsewhere, and to our own coasts, so that our enemies will all be
in fear of us, and perhaps will desist from their evil intentions.
This is what appears to me, in the present case, as being necessary to
carry out the plans I have formed, which I cannot explain at this
juncture, but by which I hope to render signal service to his Majesty."
Novoa says that Olivares delivered an empty, pompous harangue for two
hours, but that the above was the substance of his speech, and, after
making due allowance for the narrator's bias against Olivares, it is
evident that the speech as given represents fairly the policy by which
Olivares stood and fell. It is difficult to understand how a clever
man could be so blind as he appears to have been to facts that now seem
so patent, namely, that the extent and scattered position of Spain's
{162} vast territories were a source of weakness, rather than of the
strength of which Olivares boasted so vainly; that Philip in resources
was not more powerful than all the enemies together; and that France or
England alone could raise from their own resources, homogeneous and
commercially prosperous as they were, larger and steadier contributions
than could disunited Spain, and especially ruined Castile; whilst the
brave talk of demanding heavy grants of men and money from the eastern
realms of Spain for foreign wars was very soon proved to be hollow.
Olivares thought to bounce and bully Aragon, Catalonia, Valencia, and
later, Portugal, into stultifying their Parliaments and abandoning
their constitutions as Castile had done, but he did not realise the
fact that in adopting this policy _à outrance_ he was pitting himself
against the most powerful sentiment in Spain, namely, local
individuality; and it is not too much to say that all of Spain's
internal troubles from the days of Olivares to the present have sprung
from the attempts to override this sentiment.
[Sidenote: Philip and the Aragonese]
The Aragonese nobles were numerous and powerful, and the merchants and
shipmen of Catalonia were immensely more wealthy than any others in
Spain; and even before the King left Madrid it was evident that
Olivares would have to face strenuous opposition. Power so absolute
and so arrogant as his, so regardless of the feelings and the dignity
of others, had already in the six years of his power raised up against
him the bitter, if discreetly veiled, enmity of many of the older
nobles, especially those of the outer realms, and the speech we have
just quoted, shadowing {163} forth his policy in Aragon publicly--in
addition to the document addressed to the King and quoted on page 142,
gave the signal for the gradual drawing together of the elements
against him.
The King and his brother Carlos left Madrid on the 7th September 1625,
attended by Olivares, his son-in-law, the Marquis of Heliche, the
Admiral of Castile (the Duke of Medina de Rio Seco), the Marquis of
Castel Rodrigo, and other nobles, but with much less state than usual
and a smaller attendance, the plan being to travel rapidly, and "rush"
the three Cortes into voting what was needed. But the Aragonese and
the others were already full of suspicion. The three Cortes had been
convened,--that of Aragon at Barbastro, that of Catalonia at Lerida,
and that of Valencia at Monzon, a town outside the realm of Valencia.
The Valencians had flared up at once, and had sent a deputation to
Madrid to remonstrate with the King for thus disregarding their
privileges. After several interviews with Olivares, who had treated
them very off-handedly, the deputation waited upon him for a final
interview the day before the King left Madrid. "Why should you put
this slight upon us?" asked the Valencians. "You do not act thus with
the Aragonese and Catalans." "Oh!" replied the Count-Duke, "we think
you Valencians are softer." "If you mean," said the offended
deputation, "that we are softer in giving way to the wishes of our King
and his ministers, regardless of our rights, that seems to be a reason
why you should grant our request instead of rejecting it." "Well,"
continued Olivares drily, "all I can say is, that the King is {164}
going to Monzon; if the Valencian Cortes are assembled there when he
arrives, well and good. If not, we shall have to take the course we
think best." "Shall I write that to my principals?" said the
spokesman. "You may do as you like," retorted the Count-Duke, as he
called his page to show the deputation out.[28]
Philip entered Zaragoza, the capital city of Aragon, on the 13th
January 1626, and the official rejoicing of the citizens, though
respectful, was marred by their discontent at the lack of the Court
splendour they looked for; for the Aragonese, though dour, are loyal
and love show. In the great cathedral on the banks of the Ebro, Philip
swore upon the Gospels, held in the hand of the Chief Justice of the
realm, never to impair the liberties of Aragon, and to the Cortes the
King made a pitiable statement of the needs of his realm, and asked for
3330 armed soldiers for the war, and the right of freely enlisting
10,000 more to be drilled and kept ready in case of need. The Deputies
said that such a vote was impossible, but offered instead to provide a
million ducats, payable in ten annual instalments. Philip, with
Olivares at his elbow, was angry and threatening; and at last in
dudgeon he adjourned the Parliament to Calatayud, and hurried off to
Barcelona.
[Sidenote: Philip and the Valencians]
But in the meanwhile a much more serious conflict had taken place
between the King and the offended Cortes of Valencia at Monzon. There
for weeks the King was kept waiting. The clergy and popular estates
were bribed and frightened {165} into promising to vote the amount
demanded; but, deaf to the King's anger and the violent threats of
Olivares, the landed gentlemen's estate obstinately stood out. The
expulsion of the Moriscos, their best tenants, they said, had ruined
them, and they could not pay. Philip, in a formal document, almost
raved at their obstinacy, and on one occasion said that there could not
have been loyal gentlemen amongst them, or they would have stabbed a
particularly bold speaker who advocated resistance. It was necessary
that the three estates should vote together, and that the decision
should be unanimous; and at length, in the face of open threats, the
vote was cast as the King demanded, with the exception that one member,
Don Francisco Millan, obstinately held out. He ought to be garroted,
said one of Philip's secretaries, and at the alarmed persuasion of his
colleagues he gave way. But then other difficulties were raised. The
estates could not agree amongst themselves as to their shares of the
vote, but after much wrangling promised to contribute in material, but
not in money, one half as much as the Aragonese paid. This did not
suit Philip, and fresh trouble, more acute than ever, arose. The
Cortes asked the King to stay in Monzon twelve days more, whilst the
Cortes remained in legislative session; to which request the King
replied by a haughty intimation that he should leave next day, and that
the matter of the vote of supply must be settled within half an hour,
which, taking out his watch, he told the deputation had already begun.
This message fell like a thunderbolt upon the Cortes, which had not yet
even discussed any legislation. Some were for {166} defiance, and an
immediate dissolution of the assembly without voting or discussion on
any subject. All night long they sat, considering this grave crisis in
their national history, and at six in the morning a messenger from the
King entered the chamber, and told the members that his Majesty had
decided to punish them by abolishing their famous right of _nemine
discrepante_, by which no vote of supply could be enforced unless it
was unanimous. In future, he said, a bare majority would suffice, and
he was leaving for Barcelona at once.
This was illegal and unconstitutional, and the Valencians never forgave
it, but, rather than enter then upon the new path of open rebellion--up
to that time an unheard-of thing in Spain since the loss of Castilian
legislative power at Villalar a hundred years before--the Cortes of
Valencia gave way, and at the stern order of the King voted the supply
unconditionally and unanimously; after which the members were expelled
the chamber, and sooner or later an armed struggle between the regal
Castilian power and the Parliament of Valencia was rendered inevitable.
This was the first result of Olivares' attempt to override sentiment
and ancient constitutional rights.
[Sidenote: Philip and the Catalans]
Far more serious in the long run was the conflict in the stubborn
Cortes of Catalonia. Even before the King made his splendid state
entry into Barcelona, the dissensions amongst the nobles in immediate
attendance upon him had come at last to an open quarrel. The proud
nobles of ancient title looked down upon the new grandeeship of
Olivares, and his insolence had deeply wounded {167} them. The matter
came to a head upon a trivial point. The King's coach had been
occupied by Philip and his brother Carlos, Olivares, as first minister
and lord chamberlain, the Admiral of Castile as the senior official
grandee by hereditary right, with the Marquis of Heliche, Olivares'
young son-in-law, and the Marquis of Carpio, another relative of the
Count-Duke and acting master of the horse. The party was to pass the
night before entering Barcelona at the house of the Duke of Cardona,
the proudest of Catalan nobles; and when they were setting out in the
morning the King called for his host Cardona to accompany him in his
coach. The Admiral of Castile, determined not to be ousted, pushing
forward, took his place in the coach and refused to move or make way
for Cardona; whereupon the King, in a rage, rebuked the admiral
roughly. To make matters worse, the admiral and his friends at once
threw the blame upon Olivares, and the latter, feigning an attack of
gout, sulked and ostentatiously absented himself from the solemnities
of Holy Week in Barcelona. The King thereupon appointed young Heliche
to replace his father-in-law at court, and consequently to take
precedence of the admiral. This was too much, and the proud noble gave
the King a bit of his mind about his favourite, and ended by flinging
his key, the insignia of office as chamberlain, upon the table,
resigned his Court appointment, and went off to Madrid in a towering
rage, there to be placed under arrest and to suffer all sorts of
investigations and humiliations.[29]
{168}
After the splendours and plausibilities of Barcelona,[30] the change to
the hard-fisted Cortes at Lerida was a shock to the King and his
minister. There was no hesitation in the demand of the Catalan Cortes
that they must be heard before they would vote anything at all, and
they were more inclined to ask the King to repay them what they had
advanced to him than to grant him more money. The tone of Philip
towards them at first was supplicatory, for they were rich, strong, and
united. Mildness, however, was wasted upon the Catalans, and the
private meetings of the members and other signs of resistance were
considered to be dangerous. Olivares began to threaten, and gave them
three days to pass the vote, but the Catalans were still unmoved. Then
the Count-Duke, in a panic of fear, suddenly and without notice hurried
Philip back to Madrid (May 1626). The Catalans, when he was gone,
frightened in their turn, voted what was asked for, but all grace in
the act was gone, and a deep chasm thenceforward existed between the
eastern realms and the King's favourite in a hurry, who had tried to
undermine their ancient liberties.
[Sidenote: The independent parliaments]
Philip from Madrid tried to appease the Aragonese by voluntarily
reducing the contribution they had at length voted; but the result of
his journey left not only resentment in the hearts of his non-Castilian
subjects, but led to outrageous raids of angry Castilian soldiery into
Aragon, and aroused in the King himself a bitter feeling towards the
{169} peoples who had been the first to challenge the despotic
supremacy which Olivares had taught him was his divine birthright.
Philip, indeed, like his immediate predecessors on the throne, was
saturated with the idea of his divinely delegated authority. To oppose
his will was not disloyalty alone, but impiety, and it was naturally
difficult for him to understand that this view, which was generally
held by his Castilian subjects, whose kingly traditions were
sacerdotal, could not be shared by peoples whose institutions were
based upon a purely elective military monarchy, and feudalism modified
by a representative democracy. How the anger rankled in his breast is
seen in the long exculpatory document which I have several times
quoted, which on his return to Madrid he addressed to the Council of
Castile.[31] In the course of the document, whilst showing how he,
personally, has striven to improve matters, he rates them, and indeed
almost everybody, for so imperfectly seconding his efforts. But the
hardness of his eastern subjects was evidently that which touched him
most.
"Anything is better," he says, "than to burden more heavily these poor
unhappy vassals of Castile, who, by their love, their efforts, and
their sufferings have made us masters of the rest of what we possess,
and still preserve it for us, as the head and part principal of our
commonwealth. I would far rather take burdens from these poor people
than impose further sacrifices upon them, and when I think of what they
have to pay, and also the {170} trouble and annoyance they have to
submit to in the collection of it, in good truth I would rather beg for
charity from door to door, if I could, to provide for the funds
necessary for the national defence, than deal so harshly with such
vassals as these.... I grieve in my very soul to see such good
subjects suffer so much from the faults of my ministers. If my own
life-blood would remedy it I would cheerfully give it. And yet, though
you (the Council of Castile) know how this cuts me to the heart, and
though I reproach you, you propose no remedy.... I tried the Cortes of
Aragon, running, as you well know, serious risk, and incurring great
trouble and inconvenience, solely for the purpose of alleviating the
pressure upon these Castilian subjects, and I am directing my efforts
in the same way with my other realms, so that some day I hope we may be
able to lighten the taxes in Castile. God knows, I yearn for the
coming of that day more than to conquer Constantinople."
[Sidenote: Philip's life tragedy]
We shall see as time goes on that this attitude is the one natural to
Philip through all the troubles which gathered blacker and blacker, as
the evil seed sown by him and Olivares grew and ripened. He himself,
acting conscientiously and under divine inspiration, was never wrong in
the measures he adopted. If suffering and adversity came, they always
came either from the wiles of the evil one, or for some wise
inscrutable purpose of God. They were never at this time a consequence
of any want of wisdom or prescience of his. His heart bled, as we see
by his own passionate words quoted above, for the misery of his
subjects, but it never seemed {171} through his life to occur to him
that the way to remedy it was to abandon an untenable position in his
foreign relations, and devote his energies to the concentration of
national resources for the promotion of productive industry and
interior economy.
This was Philip's tragedy, the tragedy of a lifetime which this book
will try to follow to its sad disillusioned end. The haunting,
sorrow-stricken, compassionate face shows through its proud mask of
impassivity and its leaden eyes deep traces of the terrible struggle
within; of the throes of a man who dared not show his pain, and who in
later years bared his soul but to one woman in the world. Weak of
will, tender of conscience, sensitive of soul. A rake without
conviction, a voluptuary who sought sensuous pleasures from vicious
habit long after they had ceased to be pleasures to him, and yet
expiated them with agonies of remorse which made his soul a raging hell.
This is the man. Philip the Great! "The Planet King," as the
flattering poets called him; this pale, long-faced, sallow young man of
twenty-one, who came back to his capital in the spring of 1626 already
embittered and disillusioned, confronted by wars and threats of wars on
all sides, overwhelmed with poverty yet inflated with pride: seeking
escape from his troubles in the company of poets, painters, actors, and
courtesans, and in the buffoonery of distorted dwarfs and half-idiotic
monstrosities, whilst the dark heavy man with the big square head and
arrogant mien led the nation down the slope that ended in inevitable
disruption and ruin.
[1] He wrote a series of interesting descriptions of the ceremonies and
feasts in honour of Charles's visit to Madrid. _Terpsichore_.
[2] _Apuntamientos_. Secretly printed in Madrid, 1623.
[3] When the Duke of Osuna was arrested early in Philip's reign he had
300 servants resident in his house.
[4] There are copies of many of these decrees in British Museum MSS.
Add. 9933 and 9934.
[5] Contemporary transcript by Father Torquemada. MSS. Add. 10,236
British Museum. The original is in the Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid.
[6] It may be noted that Olivares, who of course cut down his own
household, still had 122 servants after that process. _Revista de
Archivos_, iv. p. 20.
[7] British Museum, Egerton MSS. 338, f. 136.
[8] The first idea of this collar, which was promptly dubbed _Golilla_
(little gorget), was merely as a support for the linen Walloon, which
would thus be made to stand out like a ruff, but the silk-lined golilla
alone was soon generally adopted.
[9] Philip during his life was rarely seen in any other collar, though
in his fine portrait as a young man at Dulwich he wears a large lace
Walloon.
[10] There is a most important collection of these originals and
transcripts, in the Egerton MSS., British Museum.
[11] British Museum, Egerton MSS. 338.
[12] A biography of the Queen is given in the author's _Queens of Old
Spain_.
[13] The first had been a girl, prematurely born in August 1621, who
died in a few hours.
[14] There is a very long and detailed account of the ceremony in MS.
(Biblioteca National, Madrid, p.v.c. 27), transcribed by the writer.
The new-born babe was borne down the great staircase of the Alcazar in
the arms of a lady of the house of Spinola, the Count-Duke of Olivares
walking backwards with golden candlesticks escorting the new Princess
to the rooms of her governess, the Countess Duchess of Olivares, in the
ground floor apartment that had only a few months before housed the
Prince of Wales. The King with all his Court attended the Royal Chapel
for the _Te Deum_, pontifically celebrated by the Patriarch and
Cardinal Zapata. For three nights in succession every balcony in
Madrid was illuminated by a wax torch, and at night a great masked
equestrian display of 120 nobles of the Court with new costumes and
liveries was performed, the Count of Olivares and Don Pedro de Toledo
being the most brilliant, and skilful riders. The great cavalcade
paraded the principal streets of the capital, and ran two courses, one
in the Calle Mayor and the other before the Convent of Discalced
Carmelites. The next day the King rode in state with all the Court to
give thanks to the Virgin of Atocha, returning in coaches and admiring
the illuminations. The baptism took place in the little parish church
of St. Gil, hung for the occasion with cloth of gold. There the Nuncio
with cardinals and bishops galore made a Christian of the babe. The
tremendous ceremony, with silver cradle, its rich offerings and its
pompous names, must be taken for granted here, but the pride of the
narrator in the grandeur of it all is significant of the time. There
is extant a news-letter from Don Antonio de Mendoza to the Duke of
Bejar of the date (quoted by Hartzenbusch in his _Calderon_) giving an
account of the great festivity held by Marquis of Alcañices in his
palace in Madrid to celebrate the birth of this Infanta. "Two comedies
by different authors were represented with excellent dancers and a
dance of maskers in which elegance and skill vied with each other; the
great saloon in which it was held inciting envy in the heavenly
spheres, such was the beauty and the brilliancy it contained."
[15] He was a French pedlar named Reynard de Peralta, and was of course
garotted and burnt by the Inquisition for his crime, which amounted to
a denial of the Immaculate Conception.
[16] The actors had also another Mentidero or Liars' Walk of their own,
where they were wont to congregate on an open space at the corner of
the Calle de Leon, opposite to what is now the great literary club of
Madrid, the Ateneo.
[17] The original pretext for the establishment of the public theatres
was to provide funds for the charitable fraternities who partly owned
them, and always received a considerable share of the takings.
[18] Frequent attempts were made by the authorities to suppress the
scandals and abuses in the theatres, which, although the performances
always took place by daylight, were inevitable in such a state of
society as that we are now describing. It was forbidden, for instance,
for men in the courtyard or pit to converse with women in the cazuela
or on the stage; the actresses were not allowed to dress in masculine
garb, and an alguacil was always to be on duty in the auditorium during
the performance. See Schack's _Historia del arte dramatica en España_;
Pellicer's _Tratado Historico sobre el origen ... de la Comedia en
España_ (1804); _El Corral de la Pacheca_, by Juan Comba; _Origen
Epocas y Progresos del Teatro Español_, by Hugalde (1802), and the
valuable MS. _Memorias Cronologicas sobre el origen ... de Comedias en
España_, by Antonio de Armona, in the Royal Academy of History, Madrid.
[19] Philip's passion for the theatre was so well understood, that a
comedy formed part of the entertainment at every place he visited. In
the spring of 1624 he made a short but very splendid progress in
Andalucia, and every great noble and city that received him gave him a
new play. On the 18th March the Duke of Medina Sidonia, the great
Andalucian magnate and kinsman of Olivares, entertained the King in his
country house near St. Lucar, and presented a new comedy before him
every day of his stay. On the 7th April we learn that, during his
visit to Granada the King witnessed a comedy in the Alhambra! The King
himself wrote some plays, now lost.
[20] Leon Pinelo's _Anales Manuscritos de Madrid_ and other
contemporary writings describe many such.
[21] Now the Senate.
[22] The site is now converted into a pretty public garden, called the
Plaza de Bilbao.
[23] The _auto_ is described by Leon Pinelo (_Anales Manuscritos_), by
Montero de los Rios (_Historia de Madrid_), and others.
[24] A full account of this little known inglorious episode is given
from the Elliot papers in the Camden Society, 1883.
[25] British Museum, Egerton MSS. 338, 136.
[26] _Memorias de Matias de Novoa; Ayuda de Camara de Felipe IV_.
These invaluable memoirs, written by a bitter enemy of Olivares, were
formerly supposed to have been written by another favourite courtier of
Philip, called Vivanco. Though vivid, they are unfair to Olivares.
[27] It is rather a curious fact that the Count-Duke's father, the
second Count of Olivares, had been the first councillor in 1603 to
speak plainly in the Council of Philip in on the projects of Spain to
dominate England. He pointed out very strongly that extension of
territory did not mean increase of power, but the contrary, as it meant
the distribution instead of the concentration of national strength.
See the writer's _Calendar of Spanish State Papers of Elizabeth_, vol.
iv.
[28] Dormer, _Anales de Aragon_, MS., Royal Academy of History, Madrid.
The published portion of the book only covers the sixteenth century.
[29] Novoa and British Museum, Egerton MSS. 338.
[30] There is a most interesting and full unpublished account of
Philip's entry and stay in Barcelona in British Museum, Add. MSS.
10,236, called _Entrada que el Rey Nuestro Señor hizo en la ciudad de
Barcelona y fiestas que se hicieron_, 1626.
[31] Egerton MSS. 338.
{172}