CHAPTER VIII

FESTIVITIES IN MADRID--EXTRAVAGANCE AND PENURY--NEW WAYS OF RAISING

MONEY--HOPTON AND WINDEBANK--BATTLE OF THE DOWNS--VIOLENCE IN THE

STREETS OF MADRID--REVOLT OF PORTUGAL--FRENCH INVASION OF SPAIN--REVOLT

OF CATALONIA--PHILIP'S AMOUR WITH THE NUN OF ST. PLACIDO--THE WANE OF

OLIVARES--PHILIP'S VOYAGE TO ARAGON--INTRIGUES AGAINST OLIVARES--FALL

OF OLIVARES

[Sidenote: Princess Carignano]

Nothing even in Spain could exceed the magnificence with which Philip

greeted the Bourbon Princess of Carignano. She was really a person of

little importance, but her significance in Spain for the moment was

that she was a sister of the Count of Soissons, who in France was in

arms against Richelieu; and a foe of the Cardinal was a friend of

Spain. The proud dame was equal to the occasion, and, after endless

discussions as to the exact behaviour of both at a proposed interview

with the English ambassador, Sir Walter Aston decided that he could

not, with due regard for his dignity, meet the Princess at all. The

points of difference seem trivial enough: when Aston was to take off

his hat, how many steps upon the dais the lady was to advance to meet

him, and so on; but the Princess was indignant that the Englishman

{317} should thus haggle over the courtesy due to her, and all Madrid

took malicious part in the squabble.[1] The usual round of festivities

for the Princess, with the addition of a great pig-sticking day with

twenty wild boars at the Pardo, were followed in a fortnight by another

series more sumptuous still, to celebrate, the election of Philip's

brother-in-law to the kingship of the Romans and to the succession of

the imperial throne. Many detailed accounts of these extraordinary

feasts, the greatest ever given in the Buen Retiro, exist;[2] but so

many similar celebrations have been described in this book from Spanish

sources, that it will suffice in this case to quote only Sir Walter

Aston's short description of what he saw. "On the 7th February 1637

the King came from the Pardo to the Buen Retiro, and he has been busy

ever since arranging the festivities for the election of the King of

the Romans. The feasts began on the 15th, the King being present. A

large place had been specially cleared and levelled before the Buen

Retiro, and built about with uniform scaffolds two storeys high, the

posts and divisions {318} all beautified with paintings and gilding.

The King and the Conde (Olivares) dressed themselves in the house of

Carlo Strada, the _asentista_ (loan-monger), by whom they were richly

presented, not only with jewels but with the whole furniture of the

apartments,[3] which he had provided for each. [Sidenote: A sumptuous

show] His house is in the Carrera de San Geronimo, where the King and

Conde took horse, and, attended by 200 of the nobility and persons of

quality, and two triumphal chariots drawn by 20 oxen apiece, entered

the Plaza, where they performed a curious masquerade after their manner

full of changes, the one half of the horsemen being led by the King and

the other half by the Count-Duke; the King and Conde and all the rest

being richly clad after the same kind. The Plaza was round about set

full of torches in several heights, and postures which had so much

delight and magnificence in the appearance, that those who have looked

curiously into the entertainments of former times say that amongst the

Romans they have not read of any greater ostentation.[4] The charge

hath {319} certainly been very great, but hath cost the King nothing;

for it hath long used this town to defray all extraordinaries either

for his honour or his pleasure. Since then there has been a bull-feast

and some fresh entertainment every day. On Sunday last there was a

masked carnival fit for the Shrove-tide season; so full of variety of

different figures, antique shapes, and several dances, that I have not

seen in a ridiculous way any of more pleasure. Late advices have given

them little contentment; but however their business may go abroad, they

are resolved to make themselves merry at home."[5]

However "merry" the Court might be, the need for money was more

pressing than ever. In the same letter that describes these

entertainments, we are told that the Marquis of Castel Rodrigo had been

sent to Seville to demand 800,000 ducats for present needs in Madrid.

"Though he is to demand it as a denature, this King's requests are

{320} understood to be commands, and admit of no reply.[6] The

denature has already begun in this Court, and is to go through the

whole kingdom, everybody being told by way of request what he has to

pay." The Pope, too, who had been for months striving to bring about

peace or a truce, was persuaded to consent that the Spanish clergy

should be mulcted in 500,000 ducats; and when the Indies fleet arrived,

Olivares ordered a similar amount of private treasure in it to be

seized in exchange for assignments, which, says Aston, is commonly a

very slow and lame payment. But the greatest novelty in the way to

raise funds was invented at this juncture by a Jesuit priest in Madrid

named Salazar, and was at once seized upon by Olivares to become until

our own days a principal source of revenue in all civilised States;

namely, the device of using government-stamped paper for all official

and formal documents. This new impost was published in Madrid early in

1637, there being four denominations of stamped paper; respectively of

1, 2, 3, and 4 reals per sheet, to forge which was an offence

punishable by death. The lawyers and people were up in arms against

it, though financiers said it would bring in two million ducats a year,

and the Nuncio and priests flatly refused to conform to {321} it for

the ecclesiastical courts, etc., without the special order of the

Pope.[7]

[Sidenote: Prices in Madrid]

The prices of commodities in Madrid had risen enormously in the

previous few years, thanks to the tampering with the coinage and the

oppressive operation of the alcabala tax on all sales; and the figures

given by Hopton at the time to Coke are very significant of the

increased cost of living. Aston, sore and humiliated at the final

failure of the treaty, begged to be recalled; and Hopton, who had not

long returned to England disappointed, and, as he said, shelved, was

again nominated for the embassy at Madrid. But Coke informed him that

his allowance for diet would be in future reduced from £6 to £4 per

day, "as it was in the time of Queen Elizabeth." Sir Arthur Hopton (he

had only just been knighted) wrote feelingly on this matter, pointing

out how unjust the reduction was.

"All the diet of table and stables is three times as dear as in Sir

Charles Cornwallis's time, when the £2 a day was first added. A loaf

of bread {322} was then worth 12 maravedis, and is now worth 34.[8] An

azumbre[9] of wine was then worth 12 maravedis, and now sells for 30; a

pound of mutton, which was then worth 17 maravedis, is now worth 40; a

fanega[10] of barley then cost 6 reals,[11] and 16 now. I myself have

paid as much as 26. If this new rule be enforced, the English

ambassador cannot maintain his position, for some of the small Italian

ambassadors have as much as £6."

But Hopton need not have exerted himself to obtain the full pay; for

before he could make ready to return to his post a change came over the

scene. Aston had long been puzzled as to what was being arranged in

London. Rumours had reached him that some agreement was on foot

between England and France, but Hopton from London had emphatically

assured him, on the 23rd May 1637, that nothing of the sort was

intended. By the next courier Aston received an enigmatical letter

written by Charles's own hand, which only made the mystery deeper, and

drew from the ambassador an impatient exclamation that he could not

give any useful warning to the English merchants on such a riddle as

that. Why was he not told, he asked, if war was really intended, and

he then could make some use of his knowledge. The King's letter is a

characteristic one, and as it has not to my knowledge ever been

printed, I give it in full.

{323}

"Watt. The darkeness of ther inventions could not suffer my

resolutions to be cleare: so that it was impossible to send you a right

light to walke by. What that is (though uncertaine yet) Secretary

Windebanke will send you worde. They may be assured of my friendship,

but then ther actions not their words must doe it. So referring you to

my Secretaries despatch, I rest your friend Charles R. Theobalds, the

15th June 1637."[12]

[Sidenote: English neutrality]

Aston had not to wait many days for partial enlightenment. Hopton

wrote reminding him of Olivares's dictum that there was no gratitude

amongst princes; but said the Count-Duke might have been more grateful

on this occasion with advantage to himself. Now it was too late; for a

great change had been effected in English policy, and a treaty had been

arranged with France. A few days later, Windebank wrote a long

official despatch, setting forth all the causes for complaint against

the house of Austria, and announcing an alliance with Louis XIII.[13]

But still Aston did not know whether {324} it meant war with Spain, or

simply a neutrality with benevolent tendency towards the French and

Dutch. He learnt before long that all that Richelieu had needed was to

divert Charles from an agreement with Spain, for the Stuart ship was

already steering straight for the breakers, and thenceforward no active

attack from England had to be feared by either of the parties to the

great struggle on the Continent.

Relations between England and Spain almost came to open hostility when,

in October 1639, the powerful fleet of seventy vessels which Philip had

by a supreme effort fitted out was almost destroyed by the Dutch in the

Downs, and in English waters, where they had taken refuge from Tromp's

pursuing fleet. When the Spanish agent in England sought from Charles

the protection due to a belligerent in neutral waters, the King at once

attempted to bargain for conditions about the Palatinate. But Tromp

was in no mood for scrupulousness, and, taking the matter in his own

hands, whilst Charles was huckstering, boldly attacked and routed the

Spaniards as they lay on the coast of Kent. Olivares was furious, and

demanded redress from the King of England, who, he said, had aided the

Dutch in their attack. Admiral Pennington, to keep up appearances, was

imprisoned for not defending the neutrality of English waters; but that

was all. The Battle of the Downs was a deathblow to Spain's spirited

attempt under Olivares to become again a great naval power, and the

loss of prestige and material then suffered was never fully recovered.

By the neutrality of England settled in 1637, {325} and the cessation

of the war in the Valtelline and in Italy, the area of the duel to the

death between France and Spain, between Richelieu and Olivares, was

gradually narrowing; but this concentration of the struggle brought

nearer the danger to Spanish territory itself. Great as had been the

pressure brought to bear upon all classes to obtain funds for the war,

the threat of invasion made the cry for money more peremptory than

ever. Not only every noble, but now every knight of an order, was

summoned to provide a horse and arms for himself and servant, and to

hold himself in readiness to join a company; and coach and cart horses

were seized for government use everywhere.[14] A new "donativo" was

decreed for Madrid, and rich men were unmercifully drained.[15] Even

the beggars who lived in squalid plenty were passed in review, in order

to find how many impostors there were who in purse or person could

serve the King. It was found by this inquiry that of 3300 people who

lived by public mendicancy in the capital, only 1300 were really poor

and deserving.[16] On the other hand, as we have seen, at this very

time, with the danger hourly growing, ostentatious expenditure on

pleasure exhausted in a day sums large enough, in relation to the

national revenue, to have provided to a great extent for the more

pressing needs.

[Sidenote: Poverty and extravagance]

Peculation and personal lavishness were as remarkable as the public

waste. A Portuguese Count of Linhares, who was Philip's Admiral of the

Galleys of Sicily, arrived in Madrid in February {326} 1637, and in his

first audience he gave to the King a string of diamonds, which was said

to be the handsomest ever seen in Europe, its value being estimated at

considerably over 60,000 ducats. The Count then went to salute the

Queen, to whom he offered a casket with a pair of marvellous earrings.

The Queen, we are told, fell in love with them at once, and without

waiting for ladies or tire-women, snatched her own ornaments from her

ears and put in the new pair. Whilst she was admiring the effect of

them in a mirror the King came in, delighted, to show her his string of

diamonds, which he wore in his hat; and they exchanged many jokes at

each other's vanity. What the Count-Duke received as his present from

Linhares is not stated; but that he was so pleased with Linhares'

generosity that he said, "This is the sort of ministers and viceroys

for his Majesty"; and he thereupon appointed Linhares, much to the

latter's chagrin, Viceroy of Brazil, which post he would only accept on

all manner of new and favourable conditions.[17]

{327}

[Sidenote: Noble criminals]

It was in all respects high time that the noble courtiers who

surrounded Philip should be made to occupy themselves in real warfare

against the enemy of their country, for their quarrels and turbulence

had already reached a point that made them a public reproach. It had

been for more than a century a fixed policy of Spanish kings to keep

the territorial nobles as much as possible excluded from executive

activity in the Peninsula, and to attach them to the personal service

of the monarch at Court. The peerage had been enormously increased

under Philip III. and IV., and the numerous class of newly enriched and

ennobled courtiers and officers that thronged Philip's Court, utterly

idle and corrupt as they were, with no great feudal or military

traditions, had become insolent and pretentious beyond measure.

The broils of the nobles during the month of festivities in the early

part of 1637 were so scandalous, that it was seriously considered by

Philip and Olivares how they could punish the highly placed

law-breakers, and positively forbid duels altogether. First, the

quidnuncs on Liars' Walk were regaled at the end of January by the

sight of four gentlemen of birth being led past the Calle Mayor to be

hanged instead of beheaded. These criminals had plied their impudent

trade of cloak-snatchers in every street in Madrid, and had, amongst

many other outrages, killed a priest who had objected to part with his

raiment. The Duke of Hijar, a great friend of Olivares and a notable

boaster, had been relieved not only of his cape, but of his sword and

buckler as well; and a considerable band of these ruffians, led by a

{328} young noble of nineteen, one of those hanged, had so terrorised

the streets of the capital as to make them unsafe in broad daylight.

The next day, ten men and women, mostly people of good position, were

whipped through the Calle Mayor as thieves and receivers; and some

highly born gentlemen were condemned to death as housebreakers. "This

place," wrote an eye-witness, "simply swarms with folks of this sort,

and the efforts of the ministers of justice are powerless to stop

them."[18]

One morning soon afterwards, Madrid woke up to find the walls placarded

with a public challenge from Don Juan de Herrera to the Marquis del

Aguila to meet him and fight to the death in Switzerland. These were

the two nobles who had fought in the presence of the King (page 300),

and had fled from justice to foreign parts; and the subject of

discussion amongst the idlers and satirists in Madrid was whether or

not the Marquis was bound to accept the challenge. But in three days

this subject had to give way to another excitement. Don Juan Pacheco,

eldest son of the Marquis of Cerralbo, had asked the manager of one of

the theatrical companies of the capital, Tomas Fernandez, to represent

a new comedy, in honour of the recovery of his sweetheart, the daughter

of the Marquis of Cadreita, from fever. Fernandez had made other

arrangements for his company and declined to do so; and Pacheco at once

hired a bravo to stab the comedian as he was walking and chatting with

other actors in the open space near the Church of St Sebastian, called

the "Liars' Walk of the Comedians." When the {329} assassin delivered

the blow, this noble employer who was standing close by, shouted: "That

is the way to serve varlets."

Hardly had the exclamations on this event ceased, than another affray

between gentlemen in broad daylight interested the gossipers. On the

10th February there was dress rehearsal of the mounted masquerade in

the new arena at the Buen Retiro, which has been described on page 318.

The populace broke into the ring, and the royal guard had much trouble

to clear the space for the riders. During the process of clearing,

young Spinola, indignant that he, a Genoese noble, should be hustled,

called out offensively to Don Francisco Zapata, the lieutenant (whom we

have seen in trouble before): "Hi, Don Francisco! don't you know who I

am?" to which Zapata replied: "I don't care who you are"; and in spite

of his threats of vengeance Spinola was "moved on." As Zapata left the

gates of the palace afterwards, he met Spinola waiting for him in the

Prado. "I have a word to say to you," cried the Genoese. "I have no

sword," replied Zapata. "Then I will wait whilst you go and fetch

one," said Spinola; and with that Zapata leapt in a rage from his mule,

and, snatching a sword from a bystander, he fell upon his opponent,

though the pair were separated before blood was shed.

Another foolish fray over punctilious trifles took place on the

following day between the Count of Salazar and one of the gentlemen in

attendance on the Princess of Carignano, a Milanese Spanish subject who

bore an Italian title of Count de Pozo. The Spanish nobles always

sneered at Italian titles; {330} and Salazar shied at calling Pozo

"Lordship." The latter had retaliated by calling Salazar himself

"Worship" instead of "Lordship," and when he met him in the Calle Mayor

had neglected to bow to him. Worse still, when they met again in the

passage of the Buen Retiro palace leading to the Count-Duke's

apartment, Salazar doffed his hat, and Pozo neglected to return the

salute. In a moment Salazar turned back, and, snatching off Pozo's

wide-brimmed felt hat, gave the owner a tremendous buffet on the face

with it. In a moment swords flew from scabbards, and the two angry

nobles grappled; but they, too, were separated, Salazar taking refuge

in the German embassy, whilst Pozo fled into hiding. The "discourses"

in this case decided that Salazar was in the wrong; but he had many

friends, and held a perfect levee in the German embassy, closely

isolated from suspicious visitors, to prevent a hostile message

reaching him that would need his going out to fight. But by a trick

one of the pages of the Princess of Carignano obtained admission, and

handed him a challenge from Pozo. When the antagonists met next

morning at the place appointed, on the outskirts of the town, they were

both arrested; and even then the two alcaldes who arrested them had a

violent quarrel as to which of them should take Salazar.

These, and several other scandals of the sort, all happened within the

space of a fortnight; and it is little wonder that the Royal Council,

at the instance of Olivares, discussed the matter and reported to the

King that something must be done. The step decided upon was very

Spanish. All the {331} old fire-eaters and officers of experience were

fighting under the Cardinal Infante in Flanders, and to them the whole

subject was referred for consideration and report; "after which a very

strict pragmatic will be drawn up and published forbidding duels under

heavy penalties, and even making them cases for the Inquisition, or at

least that the principals and their descendants should be degraded.

Either of these two courses would touch Spaniards deeply." Needless to

say that, long before the report from Flanders came to Madrid, if it

ever came, these good resolves were forgotten, and the affrays of noble

ruffians disgraced Madrid uninterruptedly as before.

[Sidenote: Nearing the crisis]

Philip and his minister, indeed, had plenty of other things of greater

moment to occupy them than this. From the first we have seen that

Olivares recognised the absolute need for fiscal unity and equality of

sacrifice from all Spain if the old dream of supremacy was to be

enforced and France humiliated. Portugal, Aragon, Catalonia, and

Valencia, naturally jealous of ancient rights which each successive

ruler had sworn to respect, were determined to resist any attack by the

favourite upon their autonomy. I have on many occasions pointed out

that the main explanation of the past, and problem of the future, of

Spanish history is the intensely local and regional character of the

patriotism of the people. In our times the rapid means of

intercommunication between the parts, and the existence of a unified

administrative system for two centuries, have in some directions

rendered this feeling less conspicuous than it was; though in others,

and particularly in Catalonia and the {332} Basque Provinces, it is

still strong and clamant. But in the time of Olivares the sentiment

was absolutely unimpaired. Philip II., even after the rising against

him in Aragon, had done little really to injure the ancient _fueros_,

whilst in Portugal he had gone to the very extreme of prudence in

recognising the separate national rights of his new subjects. Any

attack, or even threat, therefore, on the part of a new and much hated

minister like Olivares upon this, the strongest racial and traditional

sentiment of the most active and enterprising communities in the

Peninsula, was certain to lead to conflict.

The need for money, nevertheless, was pressing, and however

statesmanlike the aim of the minister may have been if its execution

had been gentle and cautious extending over many years, it became the

height of rashness when forced to an immediate issue. Olivares was

very far from being foolish or naturally rash, and when his policy was

first explained to Philip, soon after his accession, he did not

disguise that his object was difficult to attain, and must be a work of

time.[19] But when once he had embraced the policy which forced upon

Spain {333} costly wars abroad, defeat and ruin for himself was the

only alternative to the dangerous plan of making the autonomous realms

pay their share of the cost of wars undertaken by the King, and of the

rampant waste amongst the decadent crowd in Madrid that had already

bled Castile to exhaustion.

[Sidenote: Portuguese autonomy]

For some years the Portuguese had been justly irritated by the giving

to Spaniards of administrative offices in Portugal, and by the

contemptuous way in which Olivares habitually received representations

or remonstrances as to the injuries suffered by Portuguese subjects in

consequence of the union with Castile. The principal instruments of

the Count-Duke in his attempts to rule Portugal on Castilian lines were

two creatures of his--Miguel Vasconcellos and Diego Suarez, both

Portuguese of obscure origin, who had practically superseded the

Duchess of Mantua, Philip's nominal figurehead, who was personally not

unpopular. In 1637, at an attempt to impose a tax on all property in

Portugal for Spanish purposes, risings took place in the Algarves and

Evora, and protests loud and deep came from other Portuguese cities.

Madrid at once announced that the King himself would go with a large

force and conquer his realm of Portugal; but though this was untrue,

the Duke of Medina Sidonia marched into the Algarves with a Spanish

force, whilst another threatened the north of Portugal, and the

Portuguese, unready as yet for the conflict, were cowed by the threat.

But the injury rankled deeply, and when, in the following year 1638,

Olivares summoned to Madrid the Portuguese archbishops, seven nobles

and three {334} Jesuit priests, to discuss the closer unity of the two

countries--an assembly which coincided with the imposition of a new

illegal tax upon the Portuguese as a punishment for the

risings--Portuguese nobles and people alike knew that unless they were

to be enslaved by Castile they must needs fight for their national

existence.

Thenceforward the great conspiracy that was to bring independence to

Portugal never ceased until victory crowned the attempt. The Duke of

Braganza, the Portuguese pretender with the best right to the throne,

was prodigiously rich and over cautious, but his virile Spanish Guzman

wife was eager and ambitious; whilst her wealthy brother, the Duke of

Medina Sidonia, head of the Guzmans, silently helped forward the scheme

which would make his sister a Queen, and afford him, the most powerful

vassal of the Castilian crown, a precedent for the creation of an

independent principality for himself in Andalucia, free from the weak

and corrupt bureaucracy led by his cousin Olivares in Madrid.

In the meanwhile the war with France had taken a new aspect. The much

vaunted Spanish invasion of France through Bayonne under the Duke of

Nocera had turned out a ridiculous fiasco, and it was soon evident that

Richelieu meant to make an effort to revenge the attempt by an invasion

of Spain, as well as to retrieve the reverses he had sustained

elsewhere in the previous year. Anna of Austria, the Queen Mother of

France, did her best privately to persuade her brother and Olivares to

terms of peace acceptable to her son; and she sent to Madrid for the

purpose, in the summer of 1637, {335} a Minorite friar, who had many

interviews with Olivares on the subject. But the war had now entered

into a phase which involved the personal rivalry of two all-powerful

statesmen, as well as the prestige of two great nations, so that it had

to be fought to a finish. The blinded courtiers in Madrid, moreover,

openly scoffed at the idea of making peace with France until Spain had

asserted its incontestable superiority;[20] and all that the Minorite

friar took back with him to France was the little finger of Saint

Isidore the Husbandman, the patron of Madrid, which was secretly cut

from the body of the saint in his church in the Calle de Toledo at

midnight, to be sent as a venerated relic to Philip's sister Anna in

Paris.[21]

[Sidenote: Spain invaded]

In the summer of 1638, Richelieu was ready to strike his blow on

Spanish soil. Crossing the river Bidasoa at St. Jean de Luz, a French

army rapidly captured Irun and the fine harbour of Pasages, and laid

siege to Fuenterrabia both by sea and by land. The Prince of Condé

(Henri de Bourbon) and the Duke de la Valette were in command on land,

and the Bishop of Bordeaux at sea. An attempt was made by the French

to storm the hill upon which the fortress stands, but the Admiral of

Castile and the Marquis of los Velez, with 6000 men from Navarre and

Guipuzcoa, eager to fight for their own provinces, came opportunely

upon the scene. A dashing charge threw panic into the French camp, and

the besiegers fled headlong to their boats. Spaniards were always

ready enough to fight when well led, and they were fighting for their

own {336} provincial frontiers; and though La Valette was accused by

Richelieu of treachery, and condemned to death in his absence in

England, whither he had fled to join Marie de Medici, his men on this

occasion were fairly beaten by Spanish soldiers, who were irresistible

when they were defending their own provinces.

[Sidenote: The French repelled]

The same thing was seen in Catalonia in the following spring, where,

counting upon the notorious disaffection of the Catalans with Olivares'

policy, Condé in the spring of 1639 invaded Roussillon, which then

belonged to Catalonia, and captured Salcés. Peremptory demands for

help came to Madrid, but Olivares was in no hurry to help the Catalans,

and preferred that their own impotence to defend their country without

the aid of Castile should be first demonstrated. The provincial

authorities were stout and determined, and rapidly raised an army of

10,000 men. But the Catalans had no leader yet worthy of the name;

and, though they fought bravely, they fought for a time in vain. They

were badly and timidly led; and 8000 of them died of the plague before

Salcés, in which fortress the French were shut up. Condé, late in the

autumn, came back from Provence with a new French army of 20,000 foot

and 4000 horse to reinforce the French; and though the case seemed

hopeless, the Catalans, ever a dour race, determined to stand and fight

them. Full of confidence, the French army stormed the trenches of the

besieging Catalans on the 1st November. But the ditches and moats were

swollen by autumn rains, and regiment after regiment rushed to the

attack, only to be repelled with terrible loss by the {337} stout

Catalans, behind their earthworks and gabions. Discouragement at last

seized the French, and they fled, leaving the Catalans masters of the

field, and Salcés unrelieved. The fortress surrendered to famine at

the beginning of the year 1640, and the second attempt of Richelieu to

invade Spain failed. Nor were the attempts upon the Catalan coasts by

the French fleet under the Bishop of Bordeaux more successful; for,

after some depredations and the temporary occupation of Spanish ports,

the French fleet was scattered by a storm and returned disabled to

France. Once more it was proved that Spaniards were indomitable when

they were fighting for a deep-seated sentiment. The deepest of all was

local loyalty. Whilst the sentiment of religious selection had been

dominant it had given Spaniards a strength not their own; but that

burning faith was ashes now,[22] and the only thing worth fighting for,

beyond the inborn love of contest, was the independence of the province

that gave them birth, and for this, rather than for a Spain that for

most of them was but a geographical expression, Spaniards were still

ready to sacrifice their lives without stint.

It was a wretched story that King Philip had to tell the Cortes of

Castile that were assembled in {338} Madrid in the summer of 1638. His

treasury, he said, was more empty than ever; "for he had been obliged

by his duty to oppose all the heretics in Europe in defence of the

Catholic religion, as well as the enemies of his house in Italy,

Germany, Flanders, and Brazil, and a greater war was now on his hands

than had afflicted Spain since the time of Charles V. And although

peace had been discussed through various channels, as yet

unsuccessfully, the surest way to attain tranquillity was to arm more

powerfully than ever, and strike their enemies with dismay." Seventy

two millions and a half of ducats had been raised by loans at 8 per

cent. interest, and spent in the previous six years on war, in addition

to two millions and a quarter for the army in Spain itself. This was

an expenditure unheard of previously in Spain, and it meant that a sum

greater than ever was demanded now of Castile in the form of an

enormous addition to the food excise, and an increase of the alcabala.

The country was depopulated and starving, said the deputies;[23] but

withal the duty of his Majesty as a Christian prince was clear, and, no

matter at what sacrifice, the means for fighting the battle of the

Church and Spain must be found by his faithful vassals.

And so, through 1638 and 1639, as has already been told, the war went

on, not on the whole unfavourably for Spanish arms, for the French

invasion, at least, was repelled; but more disastrously than ever, for

the overtaxed and ruined people upon whom the crushing burden lay of

providing {339} funds. Talk of peace went on in Madrid all the while.

A secret agent of Richelieu named Pujol was in close though cautious

negotiation with Olivares for three years, both ministers professing

ardent desires for an agreement. But it was clear that neither was

disposed to give way an inch in his claims, and again and again the

Spanish agents declared that on no account would they recognise the

Dutch otherwise than as recalcitrant rebels against their King. In the

circumstances, therefore, peace was impossible; for Holland had not

held her own for seventy years to bow the head now, and in the summer

of 1640 the internal storm which had long been gathering burst upon

Spain, not, we may be sure, to Richelieu's surprise, and all hope for

peace fled.

[Sidenote: Rebellion in Spain]

The fatal burden of Philip's inherited task, and the traditions imposed

at his baptism, had led him to embark in impossible wars for an idea;

the need for money to support a policy of Quixotic adventure had

drained Castile; and the unhappy insistence of Olivares in exacting

from the autonomous realms a similar sacrifice, had at last sapped

their loyalty to the sacred personality of the sovereign. Philip, in

the prime of his manhood, after nineteen years of rule, found himself

face to face with rebellion of his own people, as well as with a great

war abroad; whilst the centre of his realm, whither all wealth flowed

and whence all power emanated, was sunk in pagan epicureanism, pride,

pretence, and sloth.

In earlier chapters we have seen that on both the occasions that Philip

had personally attended the Cortes of the eastern realms, he, and

especially {340} Olivares, had quarrelled bitterly with the deputies,

and had returned to Madrid in anger, leaving a rankling discontent

behind. Olivares since then had lost no opportunity of dealing hardly

with Catalans particularly,--their causes in Madrid being treated with

ostentatious neglect, and their interests passed over, in order, as

Olivares said, to teach them the lesson of obedience; whilst the

Catalans, whose qualities certainly do not include submissiveness,

repaid this treatment by passively resisting the orders that came to

them from the Court. When Roussillon was invaded by the French in the

autumn of 1639, Olivares had been slow to send succour from Castile.

As we have seen, the drain for the foreign war was tremendous, and both

money and men were scarce, even if Olivares had desired to send prompt

aid. But such was not the case; and the main efforts by which the

French were expelled and Salcés captured were those of the Catalans

themselves. The Viceroy was Queralt, Marquis of Santa Coloma, who,

although a Catalan, was devoted heart and soul to Olivares, and had

been chosen as a more pliant instrument for the minister than his

dignified predecessor, the Duke of Cardona.

To Santa Coloma, whilst the Catalans were straining every nerve to

defend their principality from the French, Olivares and the King

continued to send messages calculated to arouse the deepest resentment

of the people.

"Do not," wrote Olivares, "suffer a single man who can work to absent

himself from the field, nor a woman who can bear on her back food or

forage.... {341} If the enterprise can be effected without violating

the privileges of the province, well and good, but if in order to

respect these the service of the King is retarded by one single hour,

he who dares to uphold them at such a cost will be an enemy to God, his

King, his race, and his country.... Make the Catalans understand that

the general welfare of the people and of the troops must be preferred

to all rights and privileges.... You must take great care that the

troops are well lodged and have good beds; and if there are none to be

had, you must not hesitate to take them from the highest people in the

province; for it is better that they should lie on the ground than that

the troops should suffer."

[Sidenote: Revolt in Catalonia]

The reinforcements from Castile and elsewhere that eventually reached

Catalonia under Spinola, Marquis of Balbeses, arrived after most of the

fighting was over, and the French had retired; but orders were given

that these troops should remain quartered in the province. This was a

violation of one of the most cherished rights of the Catalans; and

Spinola made matters worse by his marked insolence to people of the

country, and his public instructions that in every case the troops

lodged in a place were to be stronger than the inhabitants, so that

they should always be the masters. Protests and indignant

remonstrances met with the same contemptuous treatment from Olivares,

Santa Coloma, and Spinola; and as the months wore on the mood of the

Catalans became ever more dangerous. It was announced in the spring of

1640 that the King would go and hold {342} a Cortes in Barcelona; but

to hold Cortes, it was remarked that he did not need the strong armed

force he summoned to attend him. The knights of the orders were again

placed under contribution, and protested in vain that it was an abuse

to press them thus for subordinate military service; the grandees of

Castile were each commanded to provide and pay for four months 100

soldiers each; and this, on the top of other swollen demands, aroused

higher than ever their hatred of Olivares. The Duke of Arcos said that

he had already paid 900,000 ducats; the Dukes of Priego and Bejar,

800,000 each, and others in like proportion, and that they were at the

end of their resources.[24] The Portuguese nobles saw in the summons

only a pretext for withdrawing them from their own country, and many

went into hiding to avoid compliance with it, whilst others with

feigned acquiescence procrastinated until they could safely throw aside

the mask.

Whilst Philip was still trifling in Madrid with the usual merrymakings

at the Retiro to celebrate the feast of Corpus Christi in June 1640,

there came flying news from Barcelona that the threatened tempest had

burst. The Catalans, driven to desperation by the exactions and

insolence of the polyglot rabble of troops quartered upon them, had

risen and massacred every Castilian soldier and officer they could

hound down. Santa Coloma himself in flight had sunk by the wayside,

and had been hacked to death by his maddened countrymen; and from

Barcelona through all Catalonia the fiery cross had been borne with

cries, it is true, {343} of "Long Live the King"; but still louder

shouts of "Vengeance," "Liberty," and "Down with the Government." In a

vain attempt to stem the flood the old Duke of Cardona was reappointed

Viceroy; and, after his death shortly afterwards, was succeeded by the

aged Archbishop of Barcelona. But it was too late, and anarchy soon

ruled unchecked. Cardinal Borja, himself a Valencian and an active

minister of Philip's thenceforward, openly declared in the Royal

Council at Madrid that "the revolt could only be drowned in rivers of

blood."

Again the screw had to be turned, and Olivares was almost in despair.

But he worked like a giant, cajoling and humouring Braganza and the

Portuguese nobles into what he hoped was a better frame of mind, whilst

he depleted the Portuguese frontier of the forces with which he had up

to that time terrorised the sister kingdom. The details of the

Secession War in Catalonia cannot be told here.[25] Suffice to say

that again Philip, supported by the enemies of Olivares, clamoured to

be allowed to lead his troops against the rebel subjects; but it suited

the minister to keep him amused with poetical academies, comedies,

amours, and devotions, rather than to bring him in touch with

realities, and enable him to learn the whole of the dire truth.

The Marquis of los Velez was sent to Catalonia with such an army as

could be got together, and in the summer he swept through the province,

almost without resistance, until he came to Tarragona and Barcelona,

which places had been occupied, by the invitation of the Catalans, by

{344} French troops. Epernon, who commanded them, again showed the

white feather, and retired; but the stout Catalans, though deserted by

their allies, formally renouncing the rule of the King of Castile and

acknowledging Louis XIII. as their prince, manfully stood behind their

trenches to defend the capital. The attempt to storm the outworks was

made on the 26th January 1641, the Earl of Tyrone leading the Irish

regiment, and falling dead at the first onset. The battle was a

desperate and sanguinary one, but just as victory seemed assured for

the Castilians, a panic seized them; a Catalan attack in their rear

completed the demoralisation, and Barcelona, untaken and victorious,

proclaimed itself a French city, whilst the routed Spanish army

retreated to Tarragona, a mere rabble. Thenceforward French government

troops poured into the principality; and Philip, amidst his alternate

wanton pleasures and agonised remorse in Madrid, realised that the

realms of his fathers were crumbling apart, and that the King of France

ruled with the consent of Spaniards over some of the richest provinces

of Spain. The knowledge struck like death to the heart of Philip, for

up to that hour, kept in the dark by Olivares, he had never understood

the tenacity of the autonomous States, or the danger of tampering with

a deeply rooted national tradition.

[Sidenote: Secession of Portugal]

But the news of the secession of Catalonia, terrible as it was, came

only a few weeks after another blow which had affected Philip even

more. The King, in the earlier days of December 1640, was presiding

over one of the ostentatious bullfights that he loved, given in honour

of the Danish {345} ambassador, when a courier from the Portuguese

frontier galloped post haste to the quarters of Olivares in the palace.

Soon Liars' Walk and Calle Mayor were full of grave faces and important

whispers that dreadful news had come from the sister kingdom. In the

palace, even in the Plaza where the bullfight was being held, everybody

knew or guessed the story that had come; yet none dared whisper a hint

to the King, for the sallow, frowning face of the Count-Duke was rigid,

and until he spoke the word none might break the silence. Hours

passed; the bull-fight came to its usual end, and, on returning to the

palace, the King sat at play with his friends. To him entered the

Count-Duke, gay and smiling. "I bring great news for your Majesty," he

said. "What is it?" asked the King, with little concern. "In one

moment, Sire, you have won a great dukedom and vast wealth," replied

the minister. "How so, Conde?" inquired Philip. "Sire, the Duke of

Braganza has gone mad, and has proclaimed himself King of Portugal; so

it will be necessary for you to confiscate all his possessions." The

King's long face fell longer still, and his brow clouded, for all his

minister's jauntiness. He was no fool, and he knew this was tidings of

evil moment. "Let a remedy be found for it," was all he said, turning

anew to his game; and the Count-Duke, as he left the room, looked sad,

as if he saw the beginning of his own eclipse.

In three hours the long prepared conspiracy had come to a head.

Braganza himself had done little, though he had artfully kept himself

out of the trap which Olivares had cleverly baited for him.

On the 1st December 1640 the cry had rung {346} through Lisbon, "Long

live King John IV." The hated Vasconcellos had been murdered first,

literally torn to pieces by the crowd; the Duchess of Mantua, Philip's

Vice-Reine, had been respectfully conducted to safety in a convent, and

the Castilians in the city had been interned in the fortress.

Resistance there was none, and no adequate Spanish force to make any;

and although for the rest of Philip's sad life the pretence was kept up

of treating the Portuguese as rebels, and intermittently war was pushed

on the frontier to regain Castilian hold over the country, the

separation was permanent, and Portugal never lost her independence

again.[26]

[Sidenote: Fresh troubles]

The volume of discontent against the minister grew apace, and all

Olivares could do was to keep Philip amused, whilst he isolated him

more and more from those who could open his eyes to the true state of

affairs. Several attempts had been made in the past years by rash

individuals to open the King's eyes. Once a young courtier named

Lujanes had thrown himself at the feet of Philip in the royal chapel,

and had shouted to him to beware of Olivares, who was bent upon his

ruin. He was hurried away, and the servile friends of the Count-Duke

shrugged their shoulders and said the poor fellow was a lunatic; but

the next day he died mysteriously in confinement, and the gossips made

no hesitation in saying that he had been poisoned. Other cries to the

same effect had from time to time greeted Philip in the streets and

public diversions; but now they became more frequent and {347}

outspoken. As he was going on a wolf-hunt, cries arose: "Hunt the

French, sire! They are our worst wolves." The disaster of a great

part of the Buen Retiro being burnt down with its sumptuous contents,

during a splendid carnival in February 1641, a few weeks only after the

reception of the ill news from Barcelona and Lisbon, gave fresh cause

for complaint against Olivares. Twice previously the King had been in

danger there by the bursting of reservoirs, and now he ran a worse risk

by the place catching fire.[27] The place was accursed, said the

grumblers; and when the irreparable loss of precious works of art by

the fire had to be made good by "voluntary" offerings of similar things

from private collections, and 60,000 ducats for rebuilding were

extorted from the deputies of the Cortes, with 20,000 from the

municipality of Madrid, 30,000 from the Council of Castile, and 10,000

from the Council of War, whilst the soldiers in the field were unpaid

and starving, all those who were not absolutely slaves to the

Count-Duke openly cried shame.[28]

Another trouble occurred at this time which embittered Philip's heart

and conscience for years to come; and this, again, whether true in all

its particulars or not, was added to the heavy account that the people

at large had against the Count-Duke. It will be recollected that a

horrible scandal had taken place in the convent of San Placido in

Madrid in 1632. The matter was hushed up and condoned in 1638, and the

nuns went into residence {348} again. Now, the patron of San Placido

was the King's confidant, and Olivares' henchman, the protonotary

Geronimo de Villanueva, whose mansion in the Calle de Madera adjoined

the convent. Villanueva had always been one of the useful ministers of

Philip's amours, and when his convent was rehabilitated in 1638 he

brought stories of a very beautiful young nun that he had seen there.

Philip and Olivares insisted upon seeing this paragon of loveliness,

and Villanueva, exerting his authority as patron, obtained entrance

into the locutory for the King in disguise; and for many nights in

succession the interviews took place.

[Sidenote: A convent scandal]

The affair, though very carefully concealed, began to be whispered,

before the King and his friends had penetrated beyond the grille which

separated them from the beautiful nun; and though Philip's conscience

after an offence was tender enough, it usually did not operate until

after the offence was committed. So determined was he to approach more

nearly to the object of his passion, that Olivares and Villanueva

together managed by bribes and prayers to persuade the nun to consent

to a violation of her vows, and to admit the King. A passage was made

from Villanueva's house to the cellars of the convent to facilitate the

entrance of the King; but before the secret work was finished, the nun,

either conscience-stricken or afraid of consequences, told the abbess

what was going on. The punishments meted out by the Inquisition a few

years before had probably been enough for this good lady; for she

besought Villanueva to desist from so terrible and dangerous a crime,

But Villanueva, anxious to please the King, {349} and being, like most

of the courtiers of his generation, a religious cynic, turned a deaf

ear to her entreaties. When later he led the enamoured King through

the secret passage into the sacred cloister, and to the room where it

was arranged that the meeting should take place, the pair were

horrified to see that the abbess had laid out the nun upon a bier, her

eyes closed, her hands crossed upon her breast clasping a crucifix,

whilst tapers were burning at the head and foot of the bier. This was

too much for Philip, and he fled; but subsequently affairs were

arranged more comfortably, and the amours, we are assured, continued

for some time.[29]

By and by the Inquisition heard something of what was going on from its

spies. What could be done? The King was too high even for the Holy

Office to touch; yet so awful a sacrilege as this could not be allowed

to go on. The Inquisitor-General was Friar Archbishop Sotomayor,

Philip's own confessor, a creature of Olivares, and a man of

indifferent character; but even he took the King to task severely and

repeatedly for his crime. Subsequently, when Philip probably was tired

of the intrigue, he desisted, and then, after interminable secret

inquiries by the Holy Office, it was decided that Villanueva was guilty

of sacrilege of the worst description, and must be arrested. The King,

remorseful or panic-stricken, was for letting the matter take its

course; but Olivares, trembling now for himself (in 1642), went to the

{350} Inquisitor-General, Sotomayor, with two decrees signed by the

King, one dismissing him and banishing him from Spain, the other giving

him a pension of 12,000 ducats a year for life, on condition that he

resigned the Inquisitor-Generalship and retired to Cordova. Sotomayor

naturally accepted the latter alternative. At the same time strong

measures were taken in Rome by Philip's agents to induce the Pope to

demand the reference of the case to him. The Inquisition obeyed the

Pope's command, and sent the whole of the papers in a casket to Rome by

one of its own confidential officers. Olivares managed to delay his

departure whilst one of the King's painters, perhaps Velazquez, made

several sketches of the messenger's face, which sketches were sent off

post haste to the King's officers in various parts of Italy, with

orders to capture the original secretly wherever he appeared, and send

him closely isolated to Naples, whilst his precious casket of papers

was to be forwarded intact to Olivares.

The unfortunate messenger, Paredes, landed at Genoa, where he was at

once kidnapped and spirited off to the strong castle of Ovo at Naples,

fated to be kept in close confinement for the rest of his life, fifteen

years. The casket was conveyed with great secrecy to Olivares, who,

with the King, reduced it and its unread contents to ashes in Philip's

private room. The new Inquisitor-General was a Benedictine friar in

the confidence of Queen Isabel, one Diego de Arce; and as no news came

from Rome of the case, letters were written by him and the Council of

the Inquisition to the Pope. The latter, primed by Philip's

ambassador, still {351} kept silence; and as the minutes of the trial

of course could not be found, and the wretched messenger had apparently

vanished from the face of the earth, there were no proofs forthcoming

against Villanueva, who remained under interdiction and in partial

seclusion.

This, however, could not continue for ever; and when, in 1644, Olivares

had disappeared from the scene, and nothing more was to be feared from

him, Villanueva was formally arrested by the Inquisition, and carried

off to Toledo, where he was taken before the judges in _penitenciæ_;

and, without any particulars being recited, was admonished that he had

sinned enormously by sacrilege and irreligion, whereby he had incurred

the heaviest penalties; but that the Holy Office in its clemency would

absolve him, only imposing upon him the obligation of fasting on

Fridays for the rest of his life, of never entering a convent again, or

speaking to a nun, and of giving 2000 ducats for charity to the Prior

of the Atocha. The King then restored Villanueva to his post, and

imposed perpetual silence with regard to the case against him.[30]

What penalty Philip himself paid for his terrible offence is not known;

though it is said that the clock of the convent, which played the dirge

for the dead each hour, and which existed well within the memory of the

present writer, and perhaps exists still, was one of the King's peace

offerings to the outraged cloister.

{352}

[Sidenote: Don Juan legitimated]

The clouds gathered ever blacker over Olivares. The demands he was

forced to make now for resources to face the French in Catalonia, and

to present some show of attempting the recovery of Portugal, drove the

Castilian nobles and people of means into almost open revolt. The

copper currency was again tampered with, being reduced to one-sixth of

its previous value;[31] and large demands were assessed in silver upon

persons who were assumed to be able to pay. In Madrid alone on this

occasion, 150 people were sent to the dungeons for their inability or

unwillingness to pay all that was asked of them. In addition to the

public causes for the hatred of the people against the minister, there

were also personal reasons of rapidly increasing strength for his

unpopularity with his own class. His arrogance had always offended the

nobles of high lineage, and he now added to it, as if in mere

wantonness, an offence for which even his own kin never forgave him.

His only daughter had died soon after her early marriage; and whatever

may have been Olivares' faults, he was an extremely fond father. He

had, as he grew older, practically adopted his nephew Don Luis de Haro,

son of the Marquis del Carpio, as his heir; but suddenly there appeared

at Court a young man of twenty-eight, up to that time known by another

name, and passing as the son {353} of a small government official in

Madrid. The name now given to this person was Enrique Felipe de

Guzman, and Olivares brought him to the palace and to the King's

apartments, introducing him as his son. The young man was a person of

no breeding or attraction, and his mode of life was far from exemplary,

but Olivares appears to have been perfectly infatuated with him.

Following his own bent, the son had married a lady of good house in

Seville; but Olivares had higher views for him, and, by dint of great

and costly efforts, caused the marriage to be declared invalid. No

people in the world were more tenacious of purity of blood than the

Spanish nobility, whose open immorality of life, indeed, added to their

strictness with regard to their legitimate succession; and, much as

Olivares favoured his new son, and lavishly as, at his instance, Philip

endowed him with rank, resources, and offices, it was difficult to get

him acknowledged as an equal by the proud Guzmans, and much less by the

nobles, who were already bitterly opposed to the minister. But

Olivares was powerful and determined. At his instance, the handsome,

gallant young son of the King, and of the actress the _Calderona_, who

was now twelve years old, was brought to Madrid, and by decree was

given the same semi-royal honours as had been bestowed on the other Don

Juan of Austria, the son of the great Emperor. Queen Isabel had but

two living children, young Baltasar Carlos, the heir, and a younger

girl, Maria Teresa. Baltasar Carlos, who was the same age as his

half-brother, was a promising, sturdy little Prince, immensely popular

with the people of Madrid as he pranced {354} about on his pony, or

raised in his name fresh regiments for the war. But naturally the

Queen his mother was jealous that another son of the King, even better

looking than Baltasar Carlos, should be brought into such close

competition with her own legitimate offspring.[32]

The significance of the legitimation of Don Juan was seen in a family

council summoned by the Count-Duke, in which Olivares' three sisters,

all great ladies, and their children, were required to greet Enrique

Felipe de Guzman as "Excellency," and a relative.[33] All the

Castilian nobility was up in arms at such an insult; but the disgust

was infinitely deepened when Olivares demanded of the Constable of

Castile, the Duke of Frias, the hand of his daughter for Enrique Felipe

de Guzman, and when the Constable, a weak man, consented to the

indignity--

Soy de la Casa de Velasco,

Y de nada hago asco.

Here great Velasco's chief you see;

Nothing is too vile for me,

{355} was written by one of the poets of the Calle Mayor, and another

scorpion was added to the lash preparing for the back of Olivares.

[Sidenote: The son of Olivares]

The minister was no weakling, and his hand fell heavily upon those who

dared to oppose him. Quevedo's trenchant pen had scarified the vices

and weaknesses of Madrid in a dozen satires: he had scourged the

slothful, vain, pretentious crew that filled the gutters of the slums

and the galleries of the Buen Retiro; but so long as he was friendly to

Olivares none dared to touch him. The moment he turned his glib verse

and bitter prose, addressed to the poet-king himself,[34] to an

exposure of the {356} evils arising from the policy of the favourite,

then isolation in a dark and filthy dungeon was Quevedo's reward.

There, until the favourite's fall, the poet, loaded with chains, was

kept, whilst the vices he had scourged grew greater with impunity.

The streets of Madrid became more scandalous even than before. Bravos

and assassins almost openly stood for hire; murder and robbery were so

common in broad daylight as to attract only passing notice, and in one

fortnight at this period (1641) there were 110 murders in Madrid alone,

many of them of persons of position.[35] Devout in form as were the

people, even sanctuary was now no protection, and the most hideous

sacrilege went hand in hand with grovelling sanctimoniousness. Fresh

pragmatics, with penalties ferocious in their severity, denounced evil

living, but little notice was taken of them after the first few days.

Women still clattered up and down the Prado and the Calle Mayor on high

jingling pattens, and with great swelling farthingales, their faces

covered and their breasts exposed; cape snatchers still plied their

trade at the street corners, and ruffling bullies picked quarrels for

gain with peaceful citizens.

{357}

[Sidenote: Disintegration]

In Catalonia the Spanish armies and fleet were being beleaguered and

beaten hopelessly (1641). The French King had received the oath of

allegiance from Barcelona, whilst powerful French armies under

Schomberg, De la Motte, and Meilleraie, with Richelieu behind them,

held the principality firmly, cordially seconded by the Catalans

themselves. All Spain, even Madrid, now almost at the end of its

resources, saw that the country was upon the rapid slope that led to

utter ruin. Portugal gone, with hardly as yet a pretence of winning it

back. Catalonia gone, apparently as hopelessly, Andalucia almost in

revolt,[36] and Naples simmering in discontent: a great empire of

formerly loyal people falling into impotent disintegration, and all

fingers pointed at the heavy, frowning, yellow-visaged man, who worked

night and day doing everybody's work, and desperately keeping the King

immersed in trifling pleasures, as the author of all this ruin and

disgrace.

It was inevitable that it should be so; but it {358} was, of course,

unjust. At the beginning of the reign, and for long afterwards, the

policy that caused the trouble, that of persisting in the inflated

claims of a century before, had been heartily endorsed by the whole

people. They wanted glory, pride, supremacy. They wanted still to act

the part of God's militia, to dragoon the world into one belief--their

own--to boast of the riches of their King and the greatness of their

country. But when at last they understood that a policy abroad of

bombastic meddling and of domestic waste at home was costly, they

turned to rend the man who had carried their vain aspirations into

acts. Olivares was no wiser than other Spanish statesmen of his time.

He could only see with the eyes of his own generation; and his share of

the blame for the ruin that had ensued upon his rule was only greater

because more conspicuous than that of the whole people, who were

blinded and besotted by the foolish hope of enjoying advantages,

national and personal, which were beyond their means.

In April 1642, Madrid was panic-stricken by the news that the last

reinforcements sent to the seat of war, and raised with such terrible

suffering from the exhausted people, had been overwhelmed by Marshal de

la Motte; and Castile was now powerless to send adequate forces to make

any head against the absolute domination of Catalonia by the French.

The satires and epigrams fell as thick as autumn leaves in Madrid,

urging Philip to wake up and act the man. Louis XIII. was to be

present with his army on Spanish soil at Perpignan, and was already

playing a worthy part in a great national crisis; whilst Philip, his

Spanish {359} brother-in-law, still dangled about the Buen Retiro, busy

in arranging comedies, even writing them, some said; planning

ostentatious shows and affected literary competitions, or, as a change,

speared driven boars at the Pardo. The Queen, a Frenchwoman though she

was, added her tears and entreaties that her husband himself should go

whither his duty called him, no matter at what sacrifice of his ease

and pleasures.

[Sidenote: Philip goes to the war]

To do Philip justice, he personally was eager to fulfil his duty; but

long custom had made him almost incapable now of shaking off the yoke

of Olivares and having his own way. For a time the minister and his

obedient Councils opposed every obstacle to the project of the King's

joining the army in the field. The personal danger was made most of;

the incommodity of the voyage, the inconvenience to the troops to be

weighted with the additional responsibility of the safety of the

monarch; the risk of assassination by rebel subjects; even the positive

lack of money for the journey, was urged, again and again, upon Philip

by Olivares. It was useless, moreover, he said, for the King to go

without large reinforcements. On the other hand, the Queen and the

higher nobles, even many of the Councillors, urged that the case was

desperate, and that without the King's personal example Catalonia was

lost for ever to Spain. They even began to whisper that cowardice was

the reason of Olivares' obstinate resistance to the journey; and at

length Philip, aroused for once in his life, put his foot down,

peremptorily silenced the remonstrances of the Council, and tore up its

Memorial opposing his going.

{360}

Again the drums were beaten. The cities of Andalucia were appealed to

in the name of loyalty; the nobles and their sons were once more

squeezed. The son of Olivares, with his father's money, raised a

chosen corps with which he made a brilliant show before the King, and

gave an excuse (says Novoa) to put pressure upon other young nobles to

do the like. At last, with infinite effort, a new force was got

together to accompany the King to Aragon; the Queen, working

strenuously, selling her jewels, putting pressure upon pious ladies and

ecclesiastics to subscribe, making much of the popularity of her son

Baltasar Carlos; and for the time putting aside the frivolous pleasures

that had delighted her, to play a part worthy of the daughter of the

gallant Béarnais, Henry of Navarre.

When news came to Madrid that Louis XIII. was on Spanish soil in

Roussillon, Philip finally determined to go to the front in spite of

Olivares. He would go by Aranjuez, he said, and if the Count-Duke did

not like to join him there he should go without him. This was open

rebellion, but Olivares was too old a hand to gainsay the King, who,

like all weak men, was obstinacy itself when once his mind had been

made up. On the 26th April, Philip, on a splendid charger, with

pistols at his saddle-bow and sword by his side, rode to the Atocha

church to pray to the famous image of the Virgin, and thence by Barajas

and Alcalá de Henares, on his way to the war. Like a lighted

powder-train the enthusiasm flew through the country as the King passed

onward. Not in the memory of living men had a monarch of Spain thus

rode forth to war to fight for his inheritance, and the foul {361}

miasma of sloth and ignoble enjoyment was swept from the hearts of

thousands of young Spaniards, whose spirits were aflame and whose

chivalry was touched anew with the spirit that in times past had made

their sires invincible.

The Queen was left in Madrid as Regent, with the President of the

Council of Castile and the Marquis de Santa Cruz to aid her; and

Olivares, who knew well the danger of the course he was obliged to

acquiesce in, lagged behind in the capital as long as he dared,--afraid

of the war, sneered some; afraid of leaving the Queen alone, whispered

others; whilst, as time went on, the opinion became general that the

King's going was all a feint to get more money and men. There seemed

good reason for the suspicion; for when Olivares at length joined his

master, it was with plans formed to beguile Philip in the usual way.

Two days were passed in devotion at the shrine of St. James at Alcalá;

then a pompous visit with long festivities to Olivares' own house at

Loeches; and thence to Aranjuez, where and in the neighbourhood nearly

a month was passed in hunting parties, tourneys, and the like, with

frequent visits from the Queen. Again the war spirit in the country

flagged, and the people despaired at so much trifling, when, as the

saying went, there were three Kings on Spanish soil instead of one.[37]

At length Philip shook himself free again, thanks to the exhortation of

his wife; and on the 20th May rode forth from Aranjuez, now with a

numerous unwieldy train of servants, carriages, and baggage, and

followed by Olivares in terror {362} of assassination, surrounded by

guards whom he beseeched to allow no one to approach him.[38] Olivares

was in mortal fear, too, of an interview between Philip and his cousin

the Duchess of Mantua, the expelled Vicereine of Portugal; whom, much

to her indignation, the minister had forbidden to come to Madrid, and

had secluded under formal restraint at Ocaña, which lay in the road by

which the King must pass. The Duchess, if once she got ear of the King

alone, would tell him how, and why, Portugal had been lost; and in the

long drive during which the Duchess shared the King's coach on his way

to Ocaña, she laid such a story before him, of oppression, cruelty, and

unwise government, as to leave Philip shocked and angered that so much

had been hidden from him.

[Sidenote: Philip in Aragon]

Visiting noble houses and shrines on the road, and seizing every

opportunity for delay, Olivares managed to spin out the journey to

Saragossa until the 27th July, when Aragon itself was half overrun by

French raiders. Philip's entry into the city was more fitting for a

monarch's triumphal return from victory than for the opening of a

campaign by a soldier. Soon after his arrival he heard with dismay

that Monzon, the ancient legislative capital, had been occupied by the

French; whilst everywhere his troops were either retiring before the

enemy or being beaten hopelessly. The greater nobles, both Castilian

and Aragonese, systematically avoided contact with Olivares; but the

{363} presence of Philip in the Aragonese capital offered a good

opportunity for a visit of the grandees to him, in order to take

counsel as to what could be done in so calamitous a state of affairs.

Olivares received them almost rudely, and refused them collective

access to the King, whereupon the nobles in high dudgeon shook the dust

of Saragossa from their feet, and to a man swore to be avenged on the

insolent upstart who, they said, was keeping the King prisoner. In

fact, Philip was practically isolated in two rooms whilst at Saragossa,

on the plea of the risk to his life if he went out. Olivares rode

forth every day in a coach closely surrounded by guards, and no one was

allowed to approach him.

For all the months that Philip passed in the Aragonese city he never

saw his army or approached the enemy, his main amusement being to watch

tennis matches from his window.[39] Roussillon was lost in September,

never to be recovered, when Perpignan fell; and thenceforward every

week brought some story of disgrace and defeat for the Spanish arms;

whilst Philip, in inglorious despair, moped in his seclusion, bereft

even of his cherished amusements. Olivares was growing desperate.

Every courier brought from the stout-hearted Queen Regent in Madrid

messages of encouragement and good cheer. She was working bravely, and

with wonderful success; collecting funds from hoards hitherto

unsuspected, gathering troops and putting heart into them. With her

{364} son by her side she reviewed soldiers, and made herself the idol

of the populace, who for a time had plucked up some hope and pride in

the future of their country. But with the Queen's cheery news to her

husband there always went open or covert blame of Olivares. To the

minister she sent all the plate, jewels, and treasure she could

collect; but he saw from the comparative ease with which she could

raise it, whilst he could not, that she held the winning hand and had

the people behind her. In despair of beating the French in the field,

he stooped to conspire with Cinq Mars against the life of Richelieu

himself. The conspiracy was discovered, and made the feeling against

him personally more bitter than ever.

Philip could not be kept quite ignorant of the misery and ruin around

him, or of his own undignified position, and he grew moody and

irritable with the minister who had led him to such a pass. Without

even consulting him, he appointed the Marquis of Leganes, a cousin of

Olivares and an experienced soldier, to the chief command of what was

left of his army; and Olivares, foreseeing his disgrace, craved leave

to retire. But this Philip would not allow. He had no other minister

to replace him; he was in the midst of a disastrous war, and he had

neither the energy nor the knowledge necessary to take matters in his

own hand at this juncture.

[Illustration: PRINCE BALTASAR CARLOS. _From a painting by Velazquez

in the Prado Museum_]

The Queen in Madrid had no lack of friends and advisers, all of them

enemies of the Guzmans, especially the Counts of Castrillo and Paredes;

but the ostentatious legitimation of Olivares' son Enrique had also

alienated his own most influential {365} kinsman, the Haros,

represented by the Marquis of Carpio, whose son he had disinherited so

far as he was able; and these with other former adherents now joined

the Queen's friends. All Madrid knew that the Queen was against

Olivares; and, safe now from his presence, she made no concealment of

it. "My efforts and my boy's innocence must serve the King for eyes,"

she said; "for if he use those of the Count-Duke much longer my son

will be reduced to a poor King of Castile instead of King of Spain."

When la Motte defeated Philip's army under Leganes before Lerida late

in the autumn (1642), the last hope seemed gone. Torrecusa, the

Neapolitan general who had fought so well in the previous campaigns,

went to Saragossa, and, forcing his way to the King, told him that all

was lost unless a change was made in the direction of affairs.

Torrecusa was mollified with a grandeeship on the spot; but Philip,

overweighed and almost at his wits' end, was fain to return to his

capital, in the desperate hope of raising another army in the spring,

though the citizens of Saragossa prayed him to stay and defend them

against the all-victorious French and Catalans.[40] Alas! he had

neither troops nor money with which to defend them,--no spirit, no

counsel, no hope.

[Sidenote: Fall of Olivares]

On the 1st December 1642, Philip turned his face towards Madrid, after

signing decrees, drafted by Olivares, imposing upon Castile new and

crushing impositions with which to raise a fresh army. Another

"voluntary" levy of money was ordered, a new loan authorised, the

seizure of all the church {366} and domestic plate decreed, and a tax

of 7 per cent. upon all real property demanded. Well might the

subjects stand aghast at this. Where, they asked, was the actual money

to come from? The copper was so debased as to be worthless; the only

standard was silver at a high premium (38 per cent.), and of this there

was not enough available for currency, much less to represent the new

demand. When, therefore, Philip entered Madrid by the side of his

wife, all spirits were prepared and eager for the change they saw must

come. As the royal pair passed in their coach from the Retiro to the

palace, blessings loud and long greeted the Queen, such as Philip had

never heard before.

Olivares understood the signs of the times too. Summoning his

brother-in-law Carpio, he tried to reconcile him, but in vain, and

complained bitterly that all the gentlemen of the King's chamber had

turned his enemies. He talked, indeed, about retiring; but Philip

never moved a muscle of his face, and the minister knew that the course

which had served him so often was powerless to help him now. The

Countess was strong and resourceful, and undertook to bring Philip

round. When she met him in the palace that evening, she spoke much of

her husband's services and efforts, and of the excellent arrangements

he was making for carrying on a successful war in the following spring.

Philip bowed gravely, but made no reply. The day afterwards (14th

January 1643) a courier came from the Emperor, bringing more bad news

to Philip and bitterly attacking Olivares, and this also sank into the

King's mind.

Moodily the King walked to his wife's apartment {367} that afternoon.

There, to his surprise, he found with her the heir Baltasar Carlos, now

aged fourteen. Casting herself at the King's feet with her son by her

side, the Queen solemnly exhorted him, for the sake of what remained of

their child's inheritance, to cast aside the evil councillor who was

dragging them all to ruin. The King was troubled, for everything with

him was a case of conscience, and he felt that he could trust no one.

On his way from his wife's apartment he traversed a passage where he

was intercepted by an old woman, his foster-mother, Ana de Guevara, who

had been banished by Olivares and had returned without leave.

Kneeling, she in her turn implored Philip to listen to those who loved

him best; and then with a torrent of impassioned eloquence she

impeached the favourite and all his acts: spoke of the national ruin,

of the people's misery, of fields untilled, of looms idle, of the

foreigner reigning over Spanish land, and of people who once were the

soul of loyalty now in revolt against their King, all, all through

Olivares. Philip was overwhelmed, and could only raise her, saying,

"You have spoken truly."

But still one more blow was to be struck that night at the falling

favourite. The Duchess of Mantua, secretly summoned by the Queen, had

fled from Ocaña, and as fast as post-horses could draw her carriage

through the winter storm she had come to Madrid. Suddenly appearing in

the office of Olivares, she said she had come to see the King, and

required lodging and food. The minister treated her with great

rudeness, and made her wait for four hours before he provided a bad

lodging for her in the house of the Treasury. But she was the {368}

King's cousin; and the next day the Queen introduced her into Philip's

presence, where, this time with documentary proofs, she brought home to

him the responsibility of Olivares and his creatures for the loss of

Portugal.

That night Philip wrote to his minister, saying that the leave to

retire he had so often craved was now accorded him, and that he might

go where and when he pleased. Olivares, we are told by one who saw

him, stood as if turned to stone as he read the letter; but at length,

recovering his serenity, he turned to his wife and told her that he

needed rest and change, and would shortly leave for a stay at Loeches,

his seat some twelve miles from Madrid, if she would start at once and

prepare the place for his coming. Guessing the truth, she resisted as

much as possible, but was at last forced to obey. On the following

morning, according to his invariable custom for so many years, the

minister entered the King's room early, and knelt before him for a time

in silence. Then he launched forth an eloquent denunciation of those

who had slandered him in the eyes of his master, and in justification

of his efforts. He had failed, he acknowledged; circumstances and the

venom of his enemies had wrecked his best laid schemes for the

exaltation of Spain and the glory of his Sovereign; but at least he

prayed that his loyalty should be recognised, and that, in the

retirement to which he willingly went at the King's behest, he might

carry with him the regard of the master he had so strenuously tried to

serve.

No word of reply came from the King, whose long sallow face remained as

expressionless as if {369} moulded in putty, and Olivares left the

presence for the moment defeated; but still revolving in his mind other

expedients to regain Philip's favour, or at least to delay his own

fall. First he wrote to his energetic and spirited wife at Loeches,

telling her the whole truth; for where he had failed he thought she

might succeed. When her husband's letter reached the Countess, she was

just taking her seat at table for dinner, "and on reading it not only

did her natural colour fly from her face, but the rouge with which she

covered it, as is the fashion in the palace, paled and left her like a

corpse."[41] Leaving her dinner untouched, the afflicted woman hurried

back to Madrid; and after an interview with her husband tried her

blandishments upon the King as he was on his way through the corridors

to visit his children as usual. She found him unmoved and silent, and

then, rushing to the Queen's apartment, she threw herself at her feet.

But Isabel had suffered under her hard rule too long, and answered

coldly: "What God, the people, and evil happenings have done, Countess,

neither the King nor I can undo."

Then Olivares summoned to the Retiro his nephew, Don Luis de Haro,

Carpio's son, who he knew was in high favour with the King. He had, he

told him, been a bad uncle to him; but he had brought his father and

him from their remote grange at Carpio, and had made them rich and

powerful; and he begged him, notwithstanding later jealousy, to be a

good nephew to him and plead his cause. Haro saw the King, and gave

him account of several secret points of politics {370} on behalf of the

fallen minister, and asked in his name many and expensive favours for

his servant, all of which Philip granted,[42] but kept silent with

regard to Olivares himself.

Soon the news was whispered in Madrid; and Liars' Walk was like a

swarming hive. At first men were incredulous. It was all a sham, they

declared; just another trick to squeeze more money out of them on the

pretext that the hated Olivares had gone. But by and by the happy

truth gradually forced itself upon them. The nightmare that had sat

for all these years upon the heart of Spain had been shaken off at

last! And then there burst out such a frantic flood of rejoicing as

Madrid had rarely seen before. We have a King again! cried the crowds

that stood in the great square before the palace; and squibs and

pasquins were handed from hand to hand by the score.[43] But still day

followed day and yet Olivares tarried in the vain hope of averting his

fate. A hundred excuses were found by him for delay: the difficulty of

transport, the condition of his health, his desire to see all those who

had served him well provided for, and much else. Hints reached him in

plenty that his {371} absence was desirable, though he admitted no one

to see him. His keys were demanded, and he sent them; once he saw the

King in public audience, and talked to him of affairs for a quarter of

an hour, but those who stood by remarked that Philip's eyes never once

rested upon him; and again he retired discomfited, with tears coursing

down his cheeks. As the King and Queen, with the Duchess of Mantua in

their coach, went on St. Anthony's day (17th January 1643) to the

Convent of Discalced Carmelites, the people, who now knew everything,

impulsively surged around them with joyous cries: "Our King is King at

last!--God save the King!"

At length Philip grew impatient at the delay, for he would appoint no

new officers until he was clean quit of Olivares and his crew, and he

decided to hunt for two days at the Escorial in order that measures

might be taken in his absence. No sooner had he left than the Countess

of Olivares made another tearful appeal to the Queen, who dismissed her

promptly; and on the second day (20th January 1643), when Philip was

approaching Madrid on his way back, a great gathering of nobles came

out to meet him. Through Melchior Borja they said that they wished to

place themselves and their possessions at the disposal of their King

once more. Hitherto they had stood aloof, for reasons now known to

him; but so soon as that evil cause was removed they were willing to

stand by him to the death. Then they urged him to change all his

councils and administrative officers, and begin a new régime.

When Philip entered the palace, he turned to Don Luis de Haro and

asked, "Has he gone?" {372} "No, Sire," was the reply. "Is he waiting

for us to use force?" grumbled the King; and soon the hint was conveyed

to Olivares, and, convinced now of the hopelessness of his case, the

man who had ruled Spain over the King for two-and-twenty disastrous

years slunk out of the capital by unfrequented ways, accompanied by

only four attendants in a coach with closely drawn curtains, in mortal

fear of assassination; for, as his spiteful biographer says, the very

children in the streets would have stoned him to death if they had

known of his flitting.[44]

Not until the fallen favourite had left Madrid well behind him did

Philip feel himself safe. Summoning to his workroom in one of the

corner towers of the old palace, Cardinals Borja and Spinola, and a

number of the nobles who had opposed Olivares, he addressed a long

speech to them. He was, he said, ardently determined to take the

details of Government into his own hands in future. The Count-Duke had

served him long, well, and zealously; but his health had broken down

and he needed repose. Thenceforward he (the King) would have no

confidential minister, but would work himself as minister, with the aid

and counsel of his hearers, from whom he asked now reports and

suggestions for future remedial action. Oñate, an old man and vain,

hoped for some days that he was to replace Olivares as sole minister,

but the King promptly undeceived him, and declared publicly that in

future he would have no other minister but his wife, whose energy,

{373} wisdom, patriotism he now understood for the first time.

As for the once powerful minister who had gone into obscurity

broken-hearted, none was so poor as to do him reverence, few

magnanimous enough to give him a good word. Those who had beslavered

him with adulation were the first now to load him with ignominy; even

the Constable of Castile, who had so willingly married his daughter to

Olivares' base son, now stripped of all his honour, claimed that young

Guzman's earlier marriage had been valid after all. When it was

pointed out to the Constable that this would leave his daughter

dishonoured, he replied: "I would rather see my daughter a bawd and

free, than an honest woman and Guzman's wife."[45]

The many scathing attacks published upon Olivares and his

administration, provoked by his fall, found but one able, though

imprudently frank, answer, which was called _Nicandra_,[46] and is

ascribed to Ahumada, the Prince's tutor, and to that staunch friend of

Velazquez and of the Count-Duke, Francisco de Rioja; but now that the

dust of the convulsion has cleared away, we see that it was Olivares'

methods rather than his principles that were the cause of the disasters

of his rule. The foreign policy which he represented was not his

alone, but was the policy of the immense majority of his countrymen at

the time; and if it had not brought him into antagonism with the {374}

provincial and autonomous traditions of the outer realms of the

Peninsula, the principal factor of his fall would not have existed.

The vast wealth which it was said he had heaped upon himself,

amounting, so his enemies asserted, to the enormous total of 400,000

ducats a year, was not accumulated for personal gratification or greed,

as had been the case with Lerma, nor were the sums he obtained larger

than were appropriated by his great rival Richelieu. He lived very

quietly, almost humbly, giving the whole of his time to work, and spent

his revenues largely in the entertainment and convenience of the King.

From Loeches he soon, with the King's permission, retired to Toro, far

away from Court. Even there, divested of his dignities and power, the

envy and hate of his enemies pursued him. More than once in the two

years that followed his retreat the King seemed inclined to recall his

old minister. But watchful eyes and jealous heart always frustrated

such an idea, if it was entertained. Many a time, in fear of such a

calamity to them, the nobles, especially those of Aragon, urged the

King to punish with death a man who had thus betrayed his confidence;

but Philip was neither cruel nor unjust, and naturally drew back from

such a course as this. Once it seemed as if the enemies of Olivares

had almost succeeded; for in reply to an address from the ex-minister

upon public affairs, in which the latter offered his services again,

the King wrote from Saragossa: "In short, Count, I must reign, and my

son must be crowned King of Aragon. This is difficult unless I deliver

your head to my subjects, who {375} demand it unanimously, and I cannot

oppose them any further."

[Sidenote: The end of Olivares]

Alas! the head of Olivares was useless to them or to anyone else

thenceforward, for the letter sent him raving mad, and he died on the

22nd July 1645, only two years and a half after his disgrace.

Thenceforward Philip, for good or for evil, stands alone. What is done

he does, and no powerful minister is interposed as a shield between him

and the responsibility for his acts. "Philip the Great" meant well,

but he had yet to learn the lesson that broke his heart: that good

intentions alone are not sufficient to ensure success; and that the

despairing struggles of one conscience-haunted man are powerless to

save a nation that has lost its faith in itself, and its dependence

upon labour as a means to salvation.

[1] She ended by utterly wearing out her welcome, and disgusting

everybody in Madrid by her pride and rapacity and the turbulence of her

followers, and before she left she was supplanted by another great

French lady, the Duchess of Chevreuse, who came to Madrid from London

as an emissary of Marie de Medici, and was received with great

distinction, much to the Princess of Carignano's anger. Needless to

say that nothing came of either of the intrigues, and that Richelieu

kept his hand firmly on the helm until he died in 1642.

[2] These two series of festivities, which together lasted about a

month, certainly mark the high-water mark of the splendour of the Buen

Retiro. Full descriptions of parts of them have been published by

Mesonero Romanes in _El Antiguo Madrid_, by Morel Fatio in _L'Espagne

au XVI. et XVII. Siècle_, and by at least three contemporary

writers--Mendez Silva, Andrés Sanchez del Espejo, and the Newsletters

in Rodriguez Villa's _Corte y Monarquia de España_, etc.

[3] The contents of the King's apartment, given by Strada to Philip,

"with a very precious reliquary," was valued at 20,000 ducats. But

this splendid gift did not save Strada from a fine of 200 ducats a few

weeks afterwards, for having addressed Camporedondo, the senior member

of the Council of Finance as "Lordship" whereas by the pragmatic he was

only allowed to be addressed as "Worship." The house Strada lived in

was one he rented from Spinola his fellow-Genoese. As an instance of

the prevailing corruption it may be mentioned that Strada paid 300

ducats to the author of the official account of these festivities for

the favourable references to him in it.

[4] The Newsletters say that there were 7000 wax lights, which alone

cost over 8000 ducats, the cost of this one day's feast being 300,000

ducats--afterwards increased to 500,000 ducats. This enormous

expenditure shocked everybody who thought about the matter. "The

gossips," says the Newsletter, "assert that this great event, which had

no other end than pastime and pleasure, which indeed was pure

ostentation was to show our friend Cardinal Richelieu that there is

plenty more money left in the world to punish his King." But many

persons who dared in the subsequent carnival to blame this waste found

themselves in the dungeons a few days afterwards; and several priests

who preached before Olivares at St. Geronimo in the ensuing Lenten

retreat, and ventured to denounce such wicked extravagance, were

banished from Court. Rodriguez Villa's Newsletters have much to say

about this.

[5] Aston to Coke, 20th and 25th February 1637.--Record Office, S.P.

Spain MSS. 38. This part of the entertainments had been arranged and

paid for by Philip's state secretary and confidential friend, Geronimo

de Villanueva, Marquis of Villalba, of whom we shall hear later. On

the following Tuesday the regular public carnival took place, and the

licence appears to have been shocking in the extreme. In one of the

cars a donkey was represented as dying in bed, with pretended priests

and friars mocking the most sacred mysteries around him, whilst the

supposed doctors were going through indecent antics. One masker was

covered with habits of knighthood, crosses, and noble insignia, with

the significant motto, "For Sale." Rodriguez Villa.

[6] Amongst other devices at this period, Olivares in the King's name

appropriated one-third of all the household plate and manufactured

silver in private hands, and ordered each member of the Councils of the

Indies and Castile to provide each month 200 ducats in silver to be

exchanged (for depreciated copper) at the exchange of 25 per cent., the

current rate being 38. A young Irish student at the Escoria came and

said that he had discovered how to convert a mark of silver and a mark

of copper into two marks of pure silver. Olivares accepted the youth's

offer to demonstrate his discovery at the palace before experts, but

after two attempts he ignominiously failed and was imprisoned.

[7] As may be imagined, Father Salazar's invention produced a perfect

torrent of satires, and the Jesuit himself was sternly reproved by his

ecclesiastical superiors for busying himself in financial affairs. So

bitter was the feeling against him, that he was forced to leave the

Society. Amongst other rumours about him was that he had devised a

government monopoly of drinking water. In the ensuing Lent the pulpits

of Madrid rang in denunciation of Father Salazar; and at the carnival a

masker dressed as a peasant bore a banner inscribed--

Sisas alcabalas y papel sellado,

Me tienen desollado.

With food excise and tax on all I sell.

And now with paper stamps, you've flayed me well.

The unfortunate masker had to fly to hiding to escape the wrath of

Olivares.

[8] Thirty-four maravedis at the normal value would be equal to 2½d.

[9] An azumbre is ancient liquid measure of about 2 quarts.

[10] A Castilian fanega of grain is 1½ bushel.

[11] This is the silver real, then worth 6d.

[12] Record Office, S.P. Spain MSS. 39.

[13] Although not immediately touching our subject, a very curious set

of letters included in the above in the Record Office may be mentioned.

They relate to Secretary Windebank's young son Christopher, or Kit

Windebank, as he was called. He had been sent under Aston's care to

Spain to see the world; and had been quite carried away by the _genius

loci_ of Madrid, and got out of hand altogether. The scapegrace makes

the best of his proceedings in his letters to his father and mother,

but Aston's reports tell a different tale, and Kit is very angry when

his money is stopped. The worst of it was that he fell in love with a

Spanish girl, and, running away from embassy, married her. At Aston's

instance Olivares threw into prison the priest who married them; but a

thousand legal difficulties existed, he said, to obtaining a divorce,

especially as Kit swore that he would not give up the girl, who was

_enceinte_. At the end, however, he submits sulkily, the girl is sent

to a convent, and young Kit returns home; doubtless to commit bigamy in

due time in England, and continue the knightly family of Windebank.

[14] It is curious to note that when the census of private coaches was

made in Madrid for this purpose, it was found that there were 900 in

use.

[15] March 1637, Rodriguez Villa's Newsletters.

[16] _Ibid._

[17] The Portuguese in question was splendidly repaid for his

generosity. and when he left Madrid at the end of the year he had

received the following grants,--"Marquis of Viseu, Count of Linhares

for his eldest son and successors, the post of Marshal of Portugal for

his second son, that of Governor of Ceuta for his third son, an

extension for three years longer of the revenues of the governorship of

Sofala (_i.e._ Mozambique), a grant of 24,000 for his own expenses,

5000 ducats per annum for ever, 2500 ducats perpetual pension for his

daughter-in-law, General on land and sea during his stay in Brazil with

the title of Viceroy, and the title of Lieutenant-Generalin Portugal so

long as the Duchess of Mantua rules there, grants for a second life of

all the pensioned knighthoods he holds, and four pensioned knighthoods

to be disposed of as he likes, and a renewal for three lives of the

pension he holds from the crown." It was said that these grants were

worth 700,000 ducats. This is a fair specimen of the lavishness to

quite a second-rate personage at a time when the nation was in the

deepest distress. Rodriguez Villa's Newsletters, 1637.

[18] Rodriguez Villa's Newsletter, 1637.

[19] The following words occur in the famous Memorial on the subject

referred to on page 142, etc.: "Let your Majesty hold as the most

important affair of your State to make yourself _King of Spain_. I

mean, Sire, that you should not content yourself with being King of

Portugal, of Aragon, of Valencia, Count of Barcelona, but that you

should strive and consider with mature and secret counsel to reduce

these realms of which Spain consists to the laws and form of Castile,

without any distinction. If your Majesty succeeds in this, you will be

the most powerful Prince in the world. Nevertheless this is not a

business which can be carried through in a limited time nor do I

suggest that it should be disclosed to anybody, however confidential he

may be; because the desirability of the object is indisputable, and

what is to be done in preparation and anticipation can be done by your

Majesty yourself."

[20] Rodriguez Villa's Newsletters.

[21] Aston's letters, MSS., Record Office S.P., Spain.

[22] How completely the old crusading spirit had decayed is seen in the

derision with which the courtiers in Madrid greeted the saying of

Antonio Mascarenhas, the dignified old-fashioned hidalgo governor of

Tangier. When he visited Madrid he went to present his respects to the

little Prince Baltasar Carlos. "Who are you?" asked the boy. "I am

the gentleman," replied the Portuguese, "who by and by will help your

Highness to conquer the Holy Sepulchre." It was the answer of a

knight-errant, sneered the courtiers, and so it was, but it was this

fervent knight-errantry which had given to Spain the strength it had

possessed, and which under the scoffers and mockers it never could

possess again.

[23] The speeches are given _in extenso_ in the documents printed in

Danvila's _Poder Civil en España_.

[24] Novoa, _Memorias_.

[25] The best contemporary is that by General de Melo, _Guerra de

Cataluña_.

[26] The details will be found in _Historia de la Conjuracion de

Portugal, Revolutions de Portugal_, Vertot; _Historia del levantamiento

de Portugal_, Seyner; and Canovas de Castello's _Estudios del Reinado

de Felipe IV._, vol. i.

[27] The King was actually dressing at the time, and with the royal

family escaped to one of the hermitages in the park, though at one time

in danger. Many ladies who were yet in bed fled in their night garb,

and were rescued with difficulty. Novoa.

[28] _Ibid._

[29] The only part of the story which appears open to question is the

continuance of the intrigue after Philip's remorseful flight. There

seems to be some doubt about this.

[30] The story is told with many embellishments, but the above version

is the most trustworthy. It comes from a contemporary MS., written

after the fall of Olivares, transcribed by Mesonero Romanes in _El

Antiguo_, Madrid.

[31] August 1642. Novoa, an eye-witness, referring to this time, says;

"Trade and commerce were confused, and the prices rose enormously, so

that people could not find money for boots and clothes; and even

provisions could not be had, as no one would sell. The copper money

was valueless, and people threw it about or forced it upon those to

whom they owed money, as the law gave it currency. The agony and

desperation of the people were intense, and utter despair consumed the

hearts and lives of the people." Novoa, _Memorias_.

[32] Don Juan was acknowledged in 1642, and the occasion was taken for

a great series of festivities to celebrate the event, though the state

of public affairs at the time was more deplorable than ever. The

Nuncio Panzuolo took a prominent part in the affair, and gave the

Pope's blessing to the young Prince; but it was noted that the Queen,

usually so hearty and debonnaire, was cold and haughty when Don Juan

was led up to kiss her hand and that of Prince Baltasar Carlos. It was

noticed that the latter, prompted apparently by his mother, addressed

his half-brother as _Vos_, You, which was the manner usually adopted

towards nobles, but not to royal personages. An interesting

unpublished paper in Italian in the British Museum gives many curious

particulars of Don Juan's youth, and the details of his legitimation.

Add MSS. 8703. "Ritratto della nascitá qualitá costumi ed accioni de

Don Juan d'Austria."

[33] A most amusing account of this family council is given by Novoa,

who hits off the respective characters of the three sisters--the

Marchiones of Carpio, Marchioness of Monterey, and Countess of

Alcañizes--very neatly.

[34] The terrible Memorial, written by Quevedo, exposing in burning

words the state of the country, and calling upon the King to arouse

himself, should be read by anyone who desires confirmation of the

pictures I have tried to trace in this book. The paper was slipped

under the King's napkin at dinner, and was accompanied by a parody

paternoster, beginning as follows--

Filipo, que el mundo aclama

Rey del infiel tan temido,

Despierta, que por dormido

Nadie te teme, ni te ama;

Despierta, rey, que la fama

Por todo el orbe pregona

Que es de leon tu corona

Y tu dormir de liròn,

Mira que la adulacion

Te llama con fin siniestro

"Padre Nuestro."

Hail, Philip, King whom all acclaim,

In fear the infidel to keep,

Awake! for in thy slumber deep

No one doth love or fear thy name.

Awake! oh King, the worlds proclaim

Thy crown on lion's brow to sit,

Thy slumber's but for dormouse fit.

Listen! 'tis flattery's artful wile

That sunk in sloth thy days beguile,

And calls thee, its base ends to foster,

"Pater Noster."

[35] At this time three of the principal grandees of Spain were

banished from Court by Philip, for scaling the walls of the Retiro at

night and clandestinely making love to the maids of honour. Two years

previously affairs had reached such a scandalous length with the

nobles, that Philip ordered a special commission to inquire into the

matter. As a result a large batch of nobles, two marquises and one of

Philip's chamberlains amongst them, were expelled as persons of known

evil life. But suspicion is aroused by the terms of the decree that

their dissoluteness was not the sole cause of this disgrace, as they

are said to have "frequented gambling houses and there murmured without

any reason at all against the present Government and the higher

officers of the State, although some of them are deeply obliged to the

same." Rodriguez Villa's Newsletter.

[36] An extremely dangerous conspiracy hatched at this time in

Andalucia was discovered, and contributed much to the increased

unpopularity of the Guzmans. The principal plotters were two of

Olivares' greatest kinsmen, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, brother of the

new Queen of Portugal, and the Marquis of Ayamonte, the object of the

conspiracy being to make Medina Sidonia King of Andalucia by the aid of

the new King of Portugal. Ayamonte had already betrayed to the

Portuguese a conspiracy hatched by Olivares in Lisbon; and then

suggested to Medina Sidonia that the discontent in Andalucia and the

disorganisation in Madrid offered a good opportunity for him to

proclaim himself an independent sovereign. The proud magnate

consented, but the plot was discovered. Olivares did his best to

minimise the matter, and the Duke was let off with a heavy fine, much

humiliation, and a challenge to fight John IV. in single combat; but

Ayamonte lost his head, although his life had been promised if he

divulged the whole plot, which he did. A curious account of how the

plot was discovered is in MSS. Egerton, 2081, British Museum.

[37] That is to say, Philip, the King of Portugal, and the King of

France.

[38] It must not be forgotten that Novoa, who says this, was an enemy

of Olivares; though there is no doubt that the minister did believe at

the time that his death was planned.

[39] These particulars are taken from an interesting Italian MS. in the

British Museum, Add. 8701, from the pen of the Venetian ambassador in

Madrid at the time, and also to some extent from Novoa.

[40] Novoa ascribes their desire for his presence to the money spent by

the Court.

[41] So one of her servants who was present told Novoa.

[42] "I got a pension of 400 ducats," says Novoa; and he relates the

whole of these grants and favours to those who had served Olivares.

[43] Amongst the skits was a placard that was stuck upon the palace

gates, saying--

El dia de San Antonio

Se hicieron milagros dos;

Pues empezó á reinar Dios,

Y del rey se echó el demonio.

Saint Antonio's day did bring

Of miracles this twain,

'Twas then the Lord began to reign,

And devil cast from the King.

[44] Novoa and, also for other details, Newsletters in Valladares'

_Semanario Erudito_, vol. xxxiii.

[45] Many of these particulars are taken from the Venetian narrative,

British Museum MSS., Add. 8701.

[46] The work was confiscated by the Inquisition, and the supposed

authors and the printer prosecuted; as were the attacks that gave rise

to it.

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