SPAIN’S RELIGIOUS WARS.
The keynote of Philip’s character was bigotry. Trained in diplomacy by
his imperial father, brought up in the atmosphere of royal courts, born
to intrigue and bred to dissimulation, he early gave promise of a great
future which he never fulfilled.
When, at his abdication, in 1555, Charles admonished his son to “fear
God, live justly, respect the laws; above all, cherish the interests of
religion,” he really meant, as the codicil to his will expressed, in
1558: “Keep alive the fires of the Inquisition, and exterminate every
heretic in the kingdom.” And, so far as it lay in his power, the filial
son obeyed the precepts of his father to the letter!
Born in 1527, at twelve years of age he lost his mother by death, and
at twenty–seven, or in 1554, he was married to “Bloody Mary,” Queen
of England, and thus became titular King of the British Isles, though
never actually and actively engaged in the affairs of that kingdom
during the fourteen months of his residence there. Indirectly, the
result of this alliance was a fearful persecution of Mary’s Protestant
subjects, and the burning at the stake of martyrs like Latimer and
Cranmer, and more than three hundred others, before she died in 1558.
Fortunately for England, no children were born of this alliance, the
evil results of which were shown by the war with France, into which
Mary was drawn by Philip, and the loss of Calais to the English. “When
I am dead, Calais will be found written on my heart,” said the unhappy
queen; but the faithless husband, for whom she sacrificed so much, was
not inconsolable at her death, and soon again embarked in matrimony.
In truth, Philip was already a widower when he espoused Mary Tudor,
for he had been married to Maria, daughter of King John of Portugal,
in 1543, who died within two years, leaving a son, Don Carlos, who
became an object of suspicion to his unnatural father, by whom he was
imprisoned, and probably poisoned, in 1568.
Shortly after the death of Mary of England, Philip sued for the hand
of her sister, Elizabeth, who scornfully repelled him, and in June,
1559, he married Isabella, daughter of Henry II of France. His marital
record was completed when, in 1570, after the death of Isabella, he
espoused his niece, Anne of Austria, daughter of Emperor Maximilian
II. Thus within the space of twenty–seven years he had been four
times married, three times to the daughters of kings and once to the
daughter of an emperor. But his various attempts to ally himself with
royalty—with the reigning houses of Portugal, England, France, and
Austria—resulted in no direct benefit to him or to his kingdom. A
curious if not revolting circumstance attending two of these marriages
was, that while Mary of England was at one time the betrothed bride of
his father, Isabella of France was intended for his son Don Carlos! It
is supposed that it was on account of his jealousy of the relations
between his lovely bride and his son that Philip persecuted and
imprisoned the latter, and finally hounded him to his death.
In war and diplomacy Philip was at first more fortunate than in
matrimony, for in 1557 his generals gained the important victory of
San Quentin, and of Gravelines, 1558, over the French, between whom
and the Spanish and English a treaty of peace was signed in 1559. It
was at this time that the English lost Calais, and the French much
territory; the only benefits accruing to Philip of Spain, who acquired
two hundred towns in Italy and the Netherlands.
Although opponents in war, Henry II of France and Philip II of Spain
were of one religion, and united as against their heretical subjects;
so the alliance with Isabella was quite in the natural course of
events. In a tournament which followed the ceremony the King of France
was accidentally killed by the Scotch captain of his guards, the Count
of Montgomery; and thus Queen Isabella began in sorrow that sad, short
period of married life with Philip II which was terminated by her early
death.
After a visit to the Spanish Netherlands, in 1559, Philip returned to
Spain, and never again set foot on Flemish soil. But he always kept
those distant provinces within his ken; not with their best interests
at heart, but with a view to crushing out the Protestants with fire
and with sword. He left his half–sister, Margaret, Duchess of Parma,
to rule in his absence, assisted by Cardinal Grenville, and with
instructions to root out heresy from the land, at whatever cost. Spain
at that time had its prisons filled with victims of the Holy Office;
its _autos–da–fé_, or burnings of heretics at the stake, were of weekly
occurrence, no Sabbath being deemed complete without these dismal
spectacles.
But in the Low Countries the infamous inquisitors encountered
a resistance more formidable than from the passive wretches of
downtrodden Spain. Though their streets flowed with human blood,
though the flames rose from every square and market place, yet the
Netherlanders opposed the attempt to subvert them. They rose in
rebellion when the Inquisition was introduced, in 1565, and to suppress
them the great Duke of Alva, who had won victories for both Charles
and Philip, was despatched with an army considered sufficient for
the purpose. This general, of consummate abilities yet of monstrous
cruelty, afterward boasted that he had executed eighteen thousand men
by hanging and drowning, by the rack and fire, besides the many killed
in battle. He put to death Counts Egmont and Horn, drove the valiant
William of Orange into exile; and the flames of war and bitterness
which he kindled lasted for more than two generations, resulting in the
eventual loss of all the northern Netherlands to Spain. He was rewarded
by the Pope with the title of supreme Defender of the Faith, but left
the country pursued by the maledictions of the people. His infamous
“Council of Blood” rode rough–shod over all the rights of the people,
and sent to the gallows and the block the highest and the wealthiest of
the country, whose properties were confiscated for the benefit of the
king. At last, after the northern provinces had maintained a successful
war for several years, the Duke of Alva was recalled, and the king’s
half–brother, Don John of Austria, was sent in his stead. One of Alva’s
last offices was to conquer Portugal for Philip, in 1580.
During this gloomy period in the Netherlands there occurred several
things of importance in Spain and the farther East which had a
bearing on the fortunes of the Christian world. At home a Moorish
rebellion disturbed the land. Goaded to desperation by oppressive
laws, hunted like beasts by the familiars of the Holy Office, at
last the Moriscoes could endure no more. Many fled to the mountains
and organized a rebellion, which for several years kept the Spanish
soldiers actively engaged ferreting them out in their retreats and
dragging them to death. “Better not reign at all, rather than over
a nation of heretics,” was Philip’s declaration as the Moors begged
for the retention of their ancient religion and forms of dress. He
was determined to make them all conform to his own ideal of religious
faith; and the result was loss and irreparable disaster to the country
over which he reigned as king. By the year 1572 the rebellion was
crushed, its leaders all murdered, and the unfortunate Moriscoes
scattered in exile far from the homes of their ancestors, where
hitherto they had been peacefully tilling the soil and engaged in
manufactures that redounded to the benefit of Spain.
In the year 1571, in alliance with Rome and Venice, Spain arrested
the westward–flowing flood of Mohammedanism at Lepanto, one of the
“decisive battles of the world,” when one hundred and thirty Turkish
galleys were wrecked or captured, twenty–five thousand Turks were
killed, twelve thousand Christian galley slaves liberated from their
living death, and vast booty taken from the enemy.
Lepanto was the western limit of Islam’s latest advance in Europe;
after that fateful battle it receded toward the Orient. But for King
Philip’s insane jealousy of his half–brother, Don John of Austria,
who so bravely led the Christian hosts, the allied forces might have
laid siege to Constantinople; as it was, Don John sailed across the
Mediterranean with twenty thousand men and captured Tunis, on the
African coast. It was soon after retaken by the Turks, and many years
later the other Spanish dependencies went the same way.
On the other side of the Pyrenees, in France, an event occurred in
1572 peculiarly acceptable to Philip—the atrocious massacre of Saint
Bartholomew’s night, when four thousand Huguenots were murdered in cold
blood, through the treachery of the queen regent, Catherine de’ Medici,
and her son Charles IX. In the provinces of France at least thirty
thousand more fell victims of the hate and fury of their compatriots
who differed from them in their religious belief; and they could not
fly to Spain for succour, for there sat their inveterate enemy, who
was only too anxious to interfere in the affairs of France. He had his
hands full, with the encroaching Moslems on one side and the obstinate
Netherlanders on the other; yet he found time to attend to all these
things, and to manage the affairs of his vast empire in the New World
also.
Two years after the recall of Alva from the Low Countries, or in
1575, Holland and Zealand were united under Philip’s bitterest enemy,
William of Orange, and the next year witnessed the famous “Pacification
of Ghent” between the Protestant and Catholic provinces, by which
the Inquisition was declared abolished, mutual toleration agreed
to in religious matters, and a united stand maintained against the
Spanish soldiery. In 1578 the free states brought about a treaty with
Queen Elizabeth of England, and the next year the Union of Utrecht—a
stepping–stone to their great and final declaration of independence
and repudiation of Spain, in 1581. As the Duke of Parma, who had
succeeded Don John of Austria, advised the removal of the head and
front of the opposition in the person of the noble patriot William the
Silent, Philip at once declared him a miscreant and outlaw, and offered
a reward of twenty–five thousand crowns to whoever would murder him.
This is the reason why Philip II of Spain has been called the murderer
of William the Silent, because, instigated by the proffered reward, a
miserable wretch was finally successful in assassinating William, in
July, 1584. Although he himself did not point the pistol which ended
the life of William the Silent, yet Philip was as actually his murderer
as if he had done so; likewise of his secretary, Escovedo, of his own
son, Don Carlos, of the Counts Egmont and Horn, of Don John of Austria,
and thousands of others who were put to the sword, beheaded, hanged,
and burned to death by his commands.
Were we writing the history of the Netherlands we might find
examples of Philip’s tortures, might produce evidence of his most
inhuman cruelty to his brother man too revolting, too horrible for
contemplation. He reminds us of nothing so much as of a vile and
venomous spider intrenched in his web at Madrid, whence radiate threads
of communication to the confines of his realm—to Naples and the
Netherlands, to Africa and the Americas—all connecting with the capital
where sits this arch–enemy of mankind, absorbing the life–blood of
his innumerable victims. This human spider rioted in scenes of blood,
yet rarely shed blood directly by his own hand; his foul parasites
executed his commands, and burned and strangled by his orders; he was
Briareus–like; no one could escape him; no life was safe if once he
wanted it. So it was that, while he gratified his hideous instincts,
his country became poorer and poorer; while he sucked the blood of
his prey, he also sapped the land of its vitality; his armies were
numerous, his wars were costly, and as he had encouraged no domestic
industries—had killed rather than fostered skilled artisans—all the
vast wealth brought to the shores of Spain by her flotillas of treasure
galleons was absorbed by unworthy favourites, was scattered abroad on
many a battlefield, or went to reward hired assassins and a mercenary
soldiery. For the credit of humanity, for the credit of the cause of
religion—which he pretended to champion and up–hold—we would his life
were otherwise than what it was; but it has been said of him, and of
his father, Charles I, that no other sovereigns with such glorious
privileges, with such great opportunities for doing so much good, ever
did so much harm!
The Netherlands may be considered as lost to Spain when their cause
was championed by the “Virgin Queen” Elizabeth, who sent, in 1586, the
Earl of Leicester to represent her with an army. It was at a skirmish
attending one of the battles of this year that there fell one who has
received almost immortal acclaim for his knightly courtesy: Sir Philip
Sidney, who, dying, refused a cup of water that a brother soldier might
be refreshed.
Though King Philip may have welcomed a war with England, as a hotbed of
Protestantism and the realm over which ruled Elizabeth, whose refusal
to marry him still rankled in his bosom, yet he was soon to regret it.
For, in 1587, that great sea–lion, Sir Francis Drake—not then “Sir,”
however, but plain Admiral—pounced upon the seaport of Cadiz, sank two
hundred and fifty galleys and transports, and created consternation
everywhere in Spain.
The next year, in spite of Drake’s ravages, sailed the great armada—one
hundred and forty ships and thirty thousand men, with friars,
inquisitors, etc.—for the conquest and conversion of England: argosies
in which were centred the hopes of Spain; only to be crushed and
defeated by one half its number of English ships, combined with the
adverse elements, so that only a pitiful remnant returned to Spanish
ports. A last expiring effort at naval supremacy was made in 1595; but
this fleet also was sunk, carrying with it Spain’s prestige on the
ocean wave.
And at last, in misery and torture from a loathsome disease, at the
age of seventy–one, in the year 1598, Philip II departed this life;
his chief legacy an impoverished kingdom, his greatest monument the
Escorial, that palace, monastery, mausoleum, library, upon which he had
spent thirty years of time and lavished millions of treasure.
[Illustration]