The Slow Decay of Spanish Power
When the long and unfortunate reign of Philip the Catholic came to an
end on the eve of the seventeenth century, Spain, sadly buffeted by the
rough waves of an adverse fortune, was in a most pitiful condition. With
the downfall of the great Armada which was so confidently destined to
humble the pride of England, national confidence had begun to slip away,
the wars at home and in the Netherlands had sadly depleted the treasury,
the credit of the country was far from good, and gradually, as a natural
reaction after the religious exaltation which had marked the whole of
the sixteenth century, a spirit of irreligion and licentiousness became
prevalent in all classes of society. As Philip had grown older and more
ascetic in his tastes, he had gradually withdrawn from society and had
left his court to its own devices. With his death, in 1598, the last
restraint was gone, and there was no limit to the excesses of the
insensate nation. Having failed in their great and zealous effort to
fasten Spanish Catholicism upon the whole of Europe, they had finally
accepted a milder philosophy, and had decided to enjoy the present
rather than continue to labor for a somewhat doubtful reward in the life
which was to come. The young king, Philip III., who began to reign under
these circumstances, was wedded in 1599 to the Archduchess Margaret of
Austria, and the feasts and celebrations which were organized in honor
of this event outrivalled in their magnificence anything of the kind
that had taken place in Spain for many years, and there was a free and
libertine spirit about all of this merrymaking which did not augur well
for the future. The Duke of Lerma, the king's favorite and prime
minister, was in full charge of the affair, and he spared no pains in
his desire to make a brave show, in spite of the critical financial
condition of the country. The young Austrian princess, upon her arrival
at Madrid, was fairly dazzled by the reception she was given; and well
she may have been, for the money expended for this purpose reaches
proportions which almost surpass belief. The Cortes appropriated one
million ducats for the occasion, and the nobles spent three million
more, three hundred thousand of this sum having been contributed by
Lerma from his own private revenues.
The Spanish court now changed its character completely, and the sombre
simplicity of the elder Philip's day gave place to a gayety and
brilliant ceremonial which were more in accord with the new spirit of
the times. Lerma filled the palace at Madrid with brilliant ladies in
waiting, for he believed, with the gallant Francis I. of France, that a
royal court without women is like a year without spring, a spring
without flowers; and a marvellous round of pleasures began, all governed
by a stately etiquette. But this gay life was rotten at the core; the
immodest and shameless conduct of the women in particular shocked and
surprised all visiting foreigners; and as time went on, the social evil
increased and became more widespread. Virtue in women was a subject for
jest, the cities were perfect sinks of iniquity, to quote Hume, and, in
Madrid in particular, immorality was so common among the women that the
fact passed into a proverbial saying. Homer has said: "Than woman there
is no fouler and viler fiend when her mind is bent on ill;" and even
were the superlatives to be lopped from this expression, it might still
help to express the fact that the moral degeneracy of Spain in her new
career of wantonness was at least shared by the women. At the court, the
king, who was in many ways what might be termed a mystic voluptuary,
spent his time in alternate fits of dissipation and devotion, wasted his
time in gallantry, and neglected his royal duties; and the all-powerful
Lerma was the centre of a world of graft, where the highest offices in
the land were bartered for gold, and every noble had an itching palm. In
this scene of disorder women played no little part, and through intrigue
and cajolery they often won the day for their favored lovers. Religion
gave place to recklessness, valor disappeared in vanity, and a splendid
idleness replaced a splendid industry. One Cortes after another
protested, measures were adopted which sought to bring the nation to its
senses, new sumptuary laws were enacted, but all to no avail; for the
nobility continued to set an example of glittering prodigality, and the
common people were not slow to follow.
When another Philip, the fourth of this name, came to the throne in
1621, the situation was almost hopeless. The country was involved in the
Thirty Years' War, one failure after another befell the Spanish arms,
the taxes had become unbearable, and in many quarters revolt was
threatened. The king was not equal to his task, government was an
irksome duty for him, and he found his greatest pleasure in two things,
hunting and the theatre. Madrid at this time was theatre-mad, playhouses
were numerous, and the people thronged them every night. The ladies of
the nobility had their special boxes, which were their own private
property, furnished in a lavish way, and there every evening they held
their little court and dispensed favors to their many admirers. It was
the first time in the history of the theatre that women's rôles were
being played quite generally by women, and, as was most natural, certain
actresses soon sprang into popular favor and vied with each other for
the plaudits of the multitude. In theory the stage was frowned at by the
Church, the plays were very often coarse and licentious in character,
and the moral influence of this source of popular amusement was
decidedly bad; but the tinsel queens of that age, as in the present
time, were invested with a glamour which had an all-compelling charm,
and noble protectors were never wanting. Among the actresses of
notoriety in this Spanish carnival of life, the most celebrated were
Maria Riquelme, Francisca Beson, Josefa Vaca, and Maria Calderon,
familiarly known to the theatre-goers as _la bella Calderona_. Philip
IV., as much infatuated as the meanest of his subjects by the glitter of
the footlights, never lost an opportunity when at his capital to spend
his evenings in the royal box, where he showed his appreciation by most
generous applause; and he was soon on familiar terms with many of the
reigning favorites. Among them all, La Calderona seemed to please him
most, and she was soon the recipient of so many royal favors that no one
could doubt her conquest. Other lovers were discarded, she became
Philip's mistress, and she it was who bore to him a son, the celebrated
Don Juan, who became in later years a leader in revolt against his
father's widowed queen.
In the midst of this troubled life, divided between the pleasures of the
chase, the excitements of the theatre, and the many vexations of state,
Philip was reserved in his dealings with his fellow men, and few
fathomed the depth of his despair in the face of the approaching
national ruin. One person seemed to have read the sadness of his heart,
however, and that person, with whom he had a most extended
correspondence, was, strange to relate, a woman, and a nun of the most
devout type, Sister Maria de Agreda! The history of this woman is most
interesting, and she seems to have been the one serious and restraining
element in all that scene of gay riot. The Agreda family, belonging to
the lesser nobility, lived on the frontiers of Aragon, and there, in
their city of Agreda, they had founded in 1619 a convent, following a
pretended revelation which had directed them to this holy undertaking.
The year after the convent was completed, Maria de Agreda, who was then
eighteen, and her mother, took the veil at the same time and retired
from the vanity of the world. In seven years the young girl was made the
mother superior of the institution, and, beginning from that date, she
was subject to frequent visions of a most surprising character. God and
the Virgin appeared to her repeatedly, commanding her each time to write
the life of Mary; but in spite of these supernatural admonitions, she
resisted for ten long years, fearing that she might be possessed of
demons who came in celestial shape to urge her to a work which she felt
to be beyond her powers. Finally, impressed by the persistence of these
holy visitants, she referred the matter to a priest who had long been
her father confessor, and at his suggestion she decided to write as she
had been commanded. For some months she busied herself with this task,
and then one day, in an unlucky moment, she ventured to confide her
plans to another monk, in the absence of her regular spiritual adviser.
This time her plans of literary work were discouraged, and she was
advised to burn her manuscripts as worthless paper and to content herself
with the usual routine of conventual life. Following this advice, she
destroyed the fruits of her labor, and prepared to resume her
interrupted duties, when, to her consternation, God and the Virgin again
appeared in her cell at night and again commanded her to write as
before. Again she resisted, and again the vision came, and finally,
encouraged by her old confessor, who had returned upon the scene, she
began anew the once abandoned work. This time there was no interruption;
the book was finished, and printed first in Madrid, and then at Lisbon,
Perpignan, and Antwerp. Naturally, the claim was made that the book was
written under divine inspiration, and the curious and oftentimes
revolting details with which its pages were filled were soon the talk
and scandal of the religious world. Maria, in spite of her mysticism,
had proved to be a realist of the most pronounced type, and in many
quarters her book was openly denounced. In Paris, the great court
preacher Bossuet proclaimed it immoral; and the Sorbonne, which was then
a faculty of theologians, condemned the book to be burned. Although the
facts are not clearly known, it must have been during this time of
publicity that the nun was brought to the attention of the world-weary
king. He was attracted by her professed visions, he sought for
consolation of a spiritual character in the midst of his unhappy career,
and there resulted this correspondence between the two, which has since
been published. To quote Hume, it was "the nun Maria de Agreda who,
alone of all his fellow-creatures, could sound the misery of Philip's
soul as we can do who are privileged to read the secret correspondence
between them." Pleasures of all sorts were beginning to pall now upon
the jaded monarch. Court festivities became a hollow mockery, the
glitter of the stage had vanished, only to leave its queens all daubed
with paint and powder in the garish light of reality, and the
broken-hearted Philip, bereft of wife and heir, was induced to marry for
a second time, in the hope that another son might come to inherit his
throne.
Philip's second wife was his niece Mariana, another Austrian
archduchess, but this marriage was a vain hope so far as his earthly
happiness was concerned. The wished-for son was born, and duly
christened Charles, but he was ever a weakling; and when the father died
in 1665, preceding Maria de Agreda to the tomb by a few months only, the
government was left in charge of Mariana as regent, and all Spain was
soon in a turmoil as the result of the countless intrigues which were
now being begun by foreign powers who hoped to dominate the peninsula.
Mariana, who was a most ardent partisan, began to scheme for her
Austrian house as soon as she arrived in Spain, and did everything in
her power to counteract the French alliance which had been favored by
Philip. Upon her husband's death, she promptly installed her German
confessor, Nithard, as inquisitor-general, gave him a place in the
Council of State, and in all things made him her personal
representative. Her whole course of action was so hostile to the real
interests of Spain, that murmurs of discontent were soon heard among the
people; and Don Juan, the illegitimate son, won power and popularity for
himself by espousing the cause of the nation. The weakling boy-king
Charles was a degenerate of the worst type, the result of a long series
of intermarriages; and so long as Mariana could keep him within her own
control, it was difficult to question her authority to do as she
pleased. For greater protection to herself and to her own interests,
Mariana had installed about her in her palace a strong guard of
foreigners, who attended her when she went abroad and held her gates
against all unfriendly visitors when she was at home. But the opposition
grew, and finally, after some ill-timed measures of Nithard, there was
open revolt, and Don Juan appeared at the head of a body of troops to
demand in the name of outraged Spain the immediate dismissal of the
queen's favorite. Mariana's confusion at this juncture of affairs has
been quaintly pictured by Archdeacon Coxe, who wrote an interesting
history of the Bourbon kings of Spain in the early part of the last
century: "In the agony of indignation and despair, the queen threw
herself upon the ground and bewailed her situation. 'Alas, alas!' she
cried; 'what does it avail me to be a Queen and Regent, if I am deprived
of this good man who is my only consolation? The meanest individual is
permitted to chuse (_sic_) a confessor: yet I am the only persecuted
person in the kingdom!'" Tears were unavailing, however, and Nithard had
to leave in disgrace, although Mariana was successful in opposing Don
Juan's claim to a share in the government. But the queen could not rule
alone, and the new favorite, as was quite usual in such cases, owed his
position to feminine wiles. Valenzuela, a gentleman of Granada, had been
one of Nithard's trusted agents, and courted assiduously Doña Eugenia,
one of the ladies in waiting to the queen; and by marrying her he had
brought himself to Mariana's notice, and had so completely gained her
confidence, that she naturally looked to him for support. Either the
queen's virtue was a very fragile thing, or Valenzuela was considered a
gallant most irresistible; for in his first two interviews with Her
Majesty, his wife, Doña Eugenia, was present, "to avoid scandal." It is
probably safe to say that as Valenzuela rose in power this precaution
was thrown to the winds, and on more than one occasion "he made an
ostentatious display of his high favor, affected the airs of a
successful lover, as well as of a prime minister; and it did not escape
notice that his usual device in tournaments was an eagle gazing at the
sun, with the motto _Tengo solo licencia_, 'I alone have permission.'"
This pride had its fall, however, as in 1677 the boy-king Charles, at
the age of fifteen, which had been fixed as his majority, was made to
see that his mother was working against the best interests of his
subjects; and he escaped from the honorable captivity in which he had
been held at the palace, and gave himself up to his half-brother, Don
Juan, who was only too ready to seize this advantage against the hostile
queen. Manana was imprisoned in a convent in Toledo, Valenzuela was
exiled to the Philippines, and Don Juan, as prime minister, prepared to
restore public confidence. In line with his former policy, he made a
clean sweep of all the members of the Austrian party, and then began to
prepare the way for a French marriage, to strengthen the friendly
feeling of the powerful Louis XIV., who had been married to a Spanish
wife. Scarcely had the promise for this marriage between Louis's niece
Marie Louise and the half-witted Charles been made, when, suddenly, Don
Juan sickened and died, and the queen-mother Mariana was again in power.
There were dark hints of poison; it was insinuated that Mariana knew
more of the affair than she would be willing to reveal; but, whatever
the facts, there was no proof, and there was no opportunity for
accusations. Meanwhile, the preparations for the royal wedding were
continued, in spite of the fact that it was feared that Mariana might
try to break the agreement. But this wily woman, confident in her own
powers, felt sure that she would prove more than a match for this young
French queen who was coming as a sacrifice to enslave Spain to France.
Marie Louise had left her home under protest, strange tales of this
idiot prince who was to be her husband had come to her ears, and she
could only look forward to her marriage with feelings of loathing and
disgust. As all her appeals had been to no avail, she discarded prudence
from her category of virtues, and entered the Spanish capital a
thoughtless, reckless woman, fully determined to follow her own
inclinations, without regard to the consequences. Her beauty made an
immediate impression upon the feeble mind of her consort; but she
spurned his advances, made a jest of his pathetic passion for her, and
was soon deep in a life of dissipation. Mariana, as the older woman,
might have checked this impulsive nature; but she aided rather than
hindered the downfall of the little queen, looked with but feigned
disapproval upon the men who sought her facile favors, and, after a
swift decade, saw her die, without a murmur of regret. Again there were
whispers of poison, but Mariana was still in power, and she lost no time
in planning again for Austrian ascendency and an Austrian succession.
Once more the puppet king was accepted as a husband, and this time by
the Princess Anne of Neuburg, a daughter of the elector-palatine, and
sister of the empress, though, in justice to Anne, it should be said
that she was an unwilling bride and merely came as Marie Louise had
done--a sacrifice to political ambition. Victor Hugo, in his remarkable
drama _Ruy Blas_, gives a striking picture of this epoch in Spanish
history, and shows the terrible ennui felt by Anne in the midst of the
rigid etiquette of Madrid. In one of the scenes in this play, a letter
is brought to the queen from King Charles, who is now spending almost
all his time on his country estates, hunting; and after the epistle has
been duly opened and read aloud by the first lady in waiting, it is
found to contain the following inspiring words: "Madame, the wind is
high, and I have killed six wolves"!
The new queen, however, was soon interested by the indefatigable Mariana
in the absorbing game of politics which she had been playing for so long
a time and in which she was such an adept; and before many months had
passed, the two women were working well together for the interests of
their dear Austria, for their sympathies were identical and there was
nothing to prevent harmonious action between them. Anne brought in her
train an energetic woman, Madame Berlips, who was her favorite adviser,
and for a time these three feminine minds were the controlling forces in
the government. France was not sleeping, however; skilful diplomatic
agents were at work under the general supervision of the crafty Louis
Quatorze, and the matter of the succession was for a long time in doubt.
Without an heir, Charles was forced to nominate his successor; and the
wording of his will, the all-important document in the case, was never
certain until death came and the papers were given an official reading.
Then it was discovered, to the chagrin of the zealous Austrian trio,
that they had been outwitted, and that the grandson of Louis, young
Philip of Anjou, had won the much-sought prize. With the coming of the
new king, the women of the Austrian party and all their followers were
banished from the court, and a new era began for Spain. The French
policy which had worked such wonders in the seventeenth century was now
applied to this foreign country, numerous abuses were corrected, and
foremost in the new régime was a woman, the Princess Orsini, who was
soon the real Queen of Spain to all intents and purposes. Feminine tact
and diplomacy had long been held in high esteem in France; Louis had
been for many years under the influence of the grave Madame de
Maintenon; and this influence had been so salutary in every way, that
the aged monarch could think of no better adviser for his youthful
grandson, in his new and responsible position, than some other woman,
equally gifted, who might guide him safely through the political shoals
which were threatening him at every turn. Madame de Maintenon was called
upon for her advice in this crisis, and she it was who suggested the
Princess Orsini as the one woman in all Europe who could be trusted to
guide the young Philip V. It is interesting to note that there was never
question for a moment of placing a man in this post of confidence; its
dangers and responsibilities were acknowledged as too heavy for a man to
shoulder, and it was merely a question of finding the proper woman for
the emergency. One other woman was needed, however, in Spain at this
time, and that was a wife for the newly crowned king. She was to provide
for the future, while the Princess Orsini was to take care of the
present.
A political marriage was planned, as might have been expected, and after
some delay the fickle Duke of Savoy, who had long been a doubtful friend
to the French, was brought to terms, and his daughter Marie Louise was
promised as Philip's bride. The ceremony was performed at Turin, where
the king was represented by a proxy, the Marquis of Castel Rodrigo, and
the royal party left Genoa in a few days, in gayly adorned galleys,
bound for the Spanish coast. Philip hastened to meet his bride, and
first saw her at Figueras, to the north of Barcelona. There, on October
3, 1701, their union was ratified, in the presence of the "patriarch of
the Indies," who happened to be in Spain at that time. All was not clear
weather in these first days of the honeymoon, for, at the command of the
French king, all of the Piedmontese attendants of the little queen had
been dismissed, as it was feared that she might bring evil counsellors
who would make trouble for the new government. The Princess Orsini, who
had joined the party when they embarked at Genoa, took charge of Marie
Louise on the departure of her friends, and did all in her power to make
the separation easy for her, but Marie was so indignant at this
unexpected turn of affairs that she was in high dudgeon for several
days, and during this time, until she had become thoroughly reconciled
to her fate, the impatience of the boy-king was restrained and he was
forced to consent to a temporary separation. To quote from Coxe's
description: "Marie Louise had scarcely entered her fourteenth year, and
appeared still more youthful from the smallness of her stature; but her
spirit and understanding partook of the early maturity of her native
climate, and to exquisite beauty of person and countenance she united
the most captivating manners and graceful deportment." Even after her
attendants had been dismissed and the Princess Orsini had been
definitely installed as her _camerara-mayor_, or head lady in waiting,
with almost unlimited powers, Louis Quatorze still thought it advisable
to write to his young protégé and give him some advice relative to his
treatment of his wife. Among his sententious remarks, the following are
of special interest: "The queen is the first of your subjects, in which
quality, as well as in that of your wife, she is bound to obey you. You
are bound to love her, but you will never love her as you ought if her
tears have any power to extort from you indulgences derogatory to your
glory. Be firm, then, at first. I well know that the first refusals will
grieve you, and are repugnant to your natural mildness; but fear not to
give a slight uneasiness, to spare real chagrin in the future. By such
conduct alone you will prevent disputes which would become
insupportable. Shall your domestic dissensions be the subject of
conversation for your people and for all Europe? Render the queen happy,
if necessary, in spite of herself. Restrain her at first; she will be
obliged to you in the end; and this violence over yourself will furnish
the most solid proof of your affection for her.... Believe that my love
for you dictates this advice, which, were I in your place, I should
receive from a father as the most convincing proof of his regard."
The Princess Orsini, or Des Ursins, as she is generally known, was a
most remarkable woman. A member of the old French family of La
Tremouille, she had first married Adrian Blaise de Talleyrand, Prince
de Chalais; and on her husband's banishment as the result of an
unfortunate duel, she went with him in exile to Spain, where she spent
several years and had an opportunity to become familiar with the
language and customs of the country. Going later to Italy, where her
husband died, she was soon married a second time, to Flavio de' Orsini,
Duke of Bracciano and Grandee of Spain, and for several years was a most
conspicuous figure in the court circles of Rome and Versailles, becoming
the intimate friend of Madame de Maintenon. Thus it was that Madame de
Maintenon spoke of her in connection with the Spanish position as soon
as the matter presented itself. The Princess Orsini was nothing loath to
accept this position when it was spoken of, and she wrote to the
Duchesse de Noailles as follows in soliciting her influence with the
French court: "My intention is only to go to Madrid and remain there as
long as the king chooses, and afterward to return to Versailles and give
an account of my journey.... I am the widow of a grandee, and acquainted
with the Spanish language; I am beloved and esteemed in the country; I
have numerous friends, and particularly the Cardinal Pontocarrero; with
these advantages, judge whether I shall not cause both rain and sunshine
at Madrid, and whether I shall incur the imputation of vanity in
offering my services." Saint-Simon, who knew the princess well, has
written in his _Memoirs_ the following description of her appearance and
character, and it is so lucid in its statement and such an admirable
specimen of pen portraiture that it is given in its entirety:
"She was above the middle size, a brunette with expressive blue
eyes; and her face, though without pretension to beauty, was
uncommonly interesting. She had a fine figure, a majestic and
dignified air, rather attractive than intimidating, and united
with such numberless graces, even in trifles, that I have never
seen her equal either in person or mind. Flattering, engaging, and
discreet, anxious to please for the sake of pleasing, and
irresistible when she wished to persuade or conciliate, she had an
agreeable tone of voice and manner, and an inexhaustible fund of
conversation, which was rendered highly entertaining by accounts of
the different countries she had visited, and anecdotes of the
distinguished persons whom she had known and frequented. She had
been habituated to the best company, was extremely polite and
affable to all, yet peculiarly engaging with those whom she wished
to distinguish, and equally skilful in displaying her own graces
and qualifications. She was adapted by nature for the meridian of
courts, and versed in all the intrigues of cabinets from her long
residence in Rome, where she maintained a princely establishment.
She was vain of her person and fond of admiration, foibles which
never left her, and hence her dress in every season of life was too
youthful for her age and sometimes even ridiculous. She possessed a
simple and natural eloquence, saying always what she chose, and as
she chose, and nothing more. Secret with regard to herself;
faithful to the confidence of others; gifted with an exterior, nay,
an interior, of gayety, good humor, and evenness of temper, which
rendered her perfectly mistress of herself at all times and in all
circumstances. Never did any woman possess more art without the
appearance of art; never was a more fertile head, or superior
knowledge of the human heart, and the means of ruling it. She was,
however, proud and haughty; hurrying forward directly to her ends,
without regard to the means; but still, if possible, clothing them
with a mild and plausible exterior. She was nothing by halves;
jealous and imperious in her attachments; a zealous friend,
unchangeable by time or absence, and a most implacable and
inveterate enemy. Finally, her love of existence was not greater
than her love of power; but her ambition was of that towering kind
which women seldom feel, and superior even to the ordinary spirit
of man."
Such was the woman who was to give tone to the new administration and to
aid the young king and queen in the difficult tasks which were before
them. Philip was not a decided success, except as a soldier; he yielded
much to his wilful wife, and the Princess Orsini was soon accepted by
them both as a trustworthy guide. The following extract from a letter
written by the French ambassador to his court soon after her
installation is significant in her praise: "I see the queen will
infallibly govern her husband, and therefore we must be careful that she
governs him well. For this object the intervention of the princess is
absolutely necessary; her progress is considerable; and we have no other
means to influence her royal mistress, who begins to show that she will
not be treated as a child." During the fourteen warlike years which
followed, and which resulted in the complete submission of all the
Spanish provinces to the will of Philip V., Marie Louise was devoted to
her husband's cause, and developed a strong character as she grew older;
but in 1714, just as quiet had come and the country under the new
administrative scheme had begun to win back some of its former thrift
and prosperity, death came to her suddenly, and Philip was left alone
with the resourceful Orsini, who rarely failed in her undertakings. So
complete was her influence over him, that Hume says she "ruled Spain
unchecked in his name." With this opportunity before her, and a victim
to her strong personal ambition, which exulted in this exercise of
power, she now grew jealous of her position and feared lest a new
marriage might depose her. Accordingly, she arranged matters to her
liking, and succeeded in having Philip marry Elizabeth Farnese, a
princess of Parma, who had been described to her as a meek and humble
little body with no mind or will of her own. With a queen of this stamp
safely stowed away in the palace, the Princess Orsini saw no limit to
her autocratic sway. This time, however, the clever woman of state had
been cruelly deceived; for the mild Elizabeth turned out to be a general
in her own right, who promptly dismissed her would-be patron from the
court and speedily acquired such domination over Philip that he became
the mere creature of her will.
This Elizabeth Farnese, in spite of her quiet life at Parma, soon showed
herself to possess a capacity for government which no one could have
suspected, for she had studied and was far better acquainted with
history and politics than the majority of women, spoke several
languages, and had an intelligent appreciation of the fine arts. Hume
calls her a virago, and, although this is a harsh word, her first
encounter with the Princess Orsini would seem to warrant its use. The
princess, by virtue of her office of _camerara-mayor_, had gone ahead of
the king, to meet the new queen, and the two women met at the little
village of Xadraca, four leagues beyond Guadalaxara. The princess knelt
and kissed the hand of her new mistress, and then conducted her to the
apartments which had been prepared for her. Coxe describes the scene as
follows: "The Princess Orsini began to express the usual compliments and
to hint at the impatience of the royal bridegroom. But she was
thunderstruck when the queen interrupted her with bitter reproaches and
affected to consider her dress and deportment as equally disrespectful.
A mild apology served only to rouse new fury; the queen haughtily
silenced her remonstrances, and exclaimed to the guard: 'Turn out that
mad woman who has dared to insult me.' She even assisted in pushing her
out of the apartment. Then she called the officer in waiting, and
commanded him to arrest the princess and convey her to the frontier. The
officer, hesitating and astonished, represented that the king alone had
the power to give such an order. 'Have you not,' she indignantly
exclaimed, 'his majesty's order to obey me without reserve?' On his
reply in the affirmative, she impatiently rejoined: 'Then obey me.' As
he still persisted in requiring a written authority, she called for a
pen and ink and wrote the order on her knee."
Whether this incident as related be true or not, it serves well to
illustrate the imperious nature which she undoubtedly possessed, and
which was seen so many times in the course of the next quarter of a
century. Her will had to be obeyed, and nothing could turn her aside
from her purpose when once it was fixed. But she was as artful as she
was stubborn, and ruled most of the time without seeming to rule,
carefully watching all of her husband's states of mind, and leading him
gradually, and all unconsciously, to her point of view when it differed
from her own. Her interests were largely centred in her attempts to win
some of the smaller Italian principalities for her sons, she was
continually involved in the European wars of her time, and she again
brought Spain into a critical financial condition by her costly and
fruitless warfare. Not until the accession of her stepson, Charles III.,
who came to the throne in 1759, was Spain free from the machinations of
this designing woman, and, in all that time of her authority, no one can
say that she ruled her country wisely or well. She was short-sighted in
her ambition, entirely out of sympathy with the Spanish people, and did
little or nothing to deserve their hearty praise. So when at last her
power was gone, and the new king came to his own, there was but one
feeling among all the people, and that was a feeling of great relief.
For the rest of this eighteenth century in Spain there is no
predominating woman's influence such as there had been for so many years
before, as Amelia, the wife of Charles III., died a few months after his
accession, and for the rest of his life he remained unmarried and with
no feminine influence near him. The morals of Spain did not improve in
this time, however, even if the king gave an example of continence which
no other monarch for many years had shown. Charles was very strict in
such matters, and it is on record that he banished the Dukes of Arcos
and Osuna because of their open and shameless amours with certain
actresses who were popular in Madrid at that time. The women in question
were also sternly punished, and the whole influence of Charles was thus
openly thrown in favor of the decencies of life, which had so long been
neglected. The sum total of his efforts was nevertheless powerless to
avail much against the inbred corruption of the people, for their none
too stable natures were being strongly influenced at that time by the
echo of French liberalism which was now sounding across the Pyrenees,
and restraint of any kind was becoming more and more irksome every day.
Charles IV., who ascended the throne in 1788, was weak and timid and
completely in the power of his wife, Marie Louise of Parma, a wilful
woman of little character, who was responsible for much of the
humiliation which came to Spain during the days of Napoleon's supremacy.
Charles IV., realizing his own lack of ability in affairs of state, had
decided to take a prime minister from the ranks of the people, that he
might be wholly dependent upon his sovereign's will; and his choice fell
upon a certain handsome Manuel Godoy, a member of the bodyguard of the
king, with whom the vapid Marie was madly in love, and whom she had
recommended for the position. The king, all unsuspecting, followed this
advice, and Godoy, who was wholly incompetent, went from one mistake to
another, to the utter detriment of Spanish interests. The queen's
relations with her husband's chief of state were well known to all save
Charles himself, and, on one occasion at least, Napoleon, by threatening
to reveal the whole shameful story to the king, bent Godoy to his will
and forced him to humiliating concessions. The queen supported him
blindly, however, in every measure, and put her evil pleasure above the
national welfare.
It must not be assumed that in this period of national wreckage that all
was bad, that all the women were corrupt and all the men were without
principle, for there was never perhaps such a condition of affairs in
any country; but the prevailing and long-continued licentiousness at the
court, which was in many respects a counterpart in miniature of the
wanton ways of eighteenth-century France, could not fail in the end to
react in a most disastrous way upon the moral nature of the people.
There were still pious mothers and daughters, but the moral standards of
the time were so deplorably low in a country where they had never been
of the highest, from a strictly puritan standpoint, that society in
general shows little of that high seriousness so essential to effective
morality.