Chapter IV (2)

Novoa says that Olivares delivered an empty, pompous harangue for two hours, but that the above was the substance of his speech, and, after making due allowance for the narrator's bias against Olivares, it is evident that the speech as given represents fairly the policy by which Olivares stood and fell. It is difficult to understand how a clever man could be so blind as he appears to have been to facts that now seem so patent, namely, that the extent and scattered position of Spain's {162} vast territories were a source of weakness, rather than of the strength of which Olivares boasted so vainly; that Philip in resources was not more powerful than all the enemies together; and that France or England alone could raise from their own resources, homogeneous and commercially prosperous as they were, larger and steadier contributions than could disunited Spain, and especially ruined Castile; whilst the brave talk of demanding heavy grants of men and money from the eastern realms of Spain for foreign wars was very soon proved to be hollow. Olivares thought to bounce and bully Aragon, Catalonia, Valencia, and later, Portugal, into stultifying their Parliaments and abandoning their constitutions as Castile had done, but he did not realise the fact that in adopting this policy _à outrance_ he was pitting himself against the most powerful sentiment in Spain, namely, local individuality; and it is not too much to say that all of Spain's internal troubles from the days of Olivares to the present have sprung from the attempts to override this sentiment.

[Sidenote: Philip and the Aragonese]

The Aragonese nobles were numerous and powerful, and the merchants and shipmen of Catalonia were immensely more wealthy than any others in Spain; and even before the King left Madrid it was evident that Olivares would have to face strenuous opposition. Power so absolute and so arrogant as his, so regardless of the feelings and the dignity of others, had already in the six years of his power raised up against him the bitter, if discreetly veiled, enmity of many of the older nobles, especially those of the outer realms, and the speech we have just quoted, shadowing {163} forth his policy in Aragon publicly--in addition to the document addressed to the King and quoted on page 142, gave the signal for the gradual drawing together of the elements against him.

The King and his brother Carlos left Madrid on the 7th September 1625, attended by Olivares, his son-in-law, the Marquis of Heliche, the Admiral of Castile (the Duke of Medina de Rio Seco), the Marquis of Castel Rodrigo, and other nobles, but with much less state than usual and a smaller attendance, the plan being to travel rapidly, and "rush" the three Cortes into voting what was needed. But the Aragonese and the others were already full of suspicion. The three Cortes had been convened,--that of Aragon at Barbastro, that of Catalonia at Lerida, and that of Valencia at Monzon, a town outside the realm of Valencia. The Valencians had flared up at once, and had sent a deputation to Madrid to remonstrate with the King for thus disregarding their privileges. After several interviews with Olivares, who had treated them very off-handedly, the deputation waited upon him for a final interview the day before the King left Madrid. "Why should you put this slight upon us?" asked the Valencians. "You do not act thus with the Aragonese and Catalans." "Oh!" replied the Count-Duke, "we think you Valencians are softer." "If you mean," said the offended deputation, "that we are softer in giving way to the wishes of our King and his ministers, regardless of our rights, that seems to be a reason why you should grant our request instead of rejecting it." "Well," continued Olivares drily, "all I can say is, that the King is {164} going to Monzon; if the Valencian Cortes are assembled there when he arrives, well and good. If not, we shall have to take the course we think best." "Shall I write that to my principals?" said the spokesman. "You may do as you like," retorted the Count-Duke, as he called his page to show the deputation out.[28]

Philip entered Zaragoza, the capital city of Aragon, on the 13th January 1626, and the official rejoicing of the citizens, though respectful, was marred by their discontent at the lack of the Court splendour they looked for; for the Aragonese, though dour, are loyal and love show. In the great cathedral on the banks of the Ebro, Philip swore upon the Gospels, held in the hand of the Chief Justice of the realm, never to impair the liberties of Aragon, and to the Cortes the King made a pitiable statement of the needs of his realm, and asked for 3330 armed soldiers for the war, and the right of freely enlisting 10,000 more to be drilled and kept ready in case of need. The Deputies said that such a vote was impossible, but offered instead to provide a million ducats, payable in ten annual instalments. Philip, with Olivares at his elbow, was angry and threatening; and at last in dudgeon he adjourned the Parliament to Calatayud, and hurried off to Barcelona.

[Sidenote: Philip and the Valencians]

But in the meanwhile a much more serious conflict had taken place between the King and the offended Cortes of Valencia at Monzon. There for weeks the King was kept waiting. The clergy and popular estates were bribed and frightened {165} into promising to vote the amount demanded; but, deaf to the King's anger and the violent threats of Olivares, the landed gentlemen's estate obstinately stood out. The expulsion of the Moriscos, their best tenants, they said, had ruined them, and they could not pay. Philip, in a formal document, almost raved at their obstinacy, and on one occasion said that there could not have been loyal gentlemen amongst them, or they would have stabbed a particularly bold speaker who advocated resistance. It was necessary that the three estates should vote together, and that the decision should be unanimous; and at length, in the face of open threats, the vote was cast as the King demanded, with the exception that one member, Don Francisco Millan, obstinately held out. He ought to be garroted, said one of Philip's secretaries, and at the alarmed persuasion of his colleagues he gave way. But then other difficulties were raised. The estates could not agree amongst themselves as to their shares of the vote, but after much wrangling promised to contribute in material, but not in money, one half as much as the Aragonese paid. This did not suit Philip, and fresh trouble, more acute than ever, arose. The Cortes asked the King to stay in Monzon twelve days more, whilst the Cortes remained in legislative session; to which request the King replied by a haughty intimation that he should leave next day, and that the matter of the vote of supply must be settled within half an hour, which, taking out his watch, he told the deputation had already begun. This message fell like a thunderbolt upon the Cortes, which had not yet even discussed any legislation. Some were for {166} defiance, and an immediate dissolution of the assembly without voting or discussion on any subject. All night long they sat, considering this grave crisis in their national history, and at six in the morning a messenger from the King entered the chamber, and told the members that his Majesty had decided to punish them by abolishing their famous right of _nemine discrepante_, by which no vote of supply could be enforced unless it was unanimous. In future, he said, a bare majority would suffice, and he was leaving for Barcelona at once.

This was illegal and unconstitutional, and the Valencians never forgave it, but, rather than enter then upon the new path of open rebellion--up to that time an unheard-of thing in Spain since the loss of Castilian legislative power at Villalar a hundred years before--the Cortes of Valencia gave way, and at the stern order of the King voted the supply unconditionally and unanimously; after which the members were expelled the chamber, and sooner or later an armed struggle between the regal Castilian power and the Parliament of Valencia was rendered inevitable. This was the first result of Olivares' attempt to override sentiment and ancient constitutional rights.

[Sidenote: Philip and the Catalans]

Far more serious in the long run was the conflict in the stubborn Cortes of Catalonia. Even before the King made his splendid state entry into Barcelona, the dissensions amongst the nobles in immediate attendance upon him had come at last to an open quarrel. The proud nobles of ancient title looked down upon the new grandeeship of Olivares, and his insolence had deeply wounded {167} them. The matter came to a head upon a trivial point. The King's coach had been occupied by Philip and his brother Carlos, Olivares, as first minister and lord chamberlain, the Admiral of Castile as the senior official grandee by hereditary right, with the Marquis of Heliche, Olivares' young son-in-law, and the Marquis of Carpio, another relative of the Count-Duke and acting master of the horse. The party was to pass the night before entering Barcelona at the house of the Duke of Cardona, the proudest of Catalan nobles; and when they were setting out in the morning the King called for his host Cardona to accompany him in his coach. The Admiral of Castile, determined not to be ousted, pushing forward, took his place in the coach and refused to move or make way for Cardona; whereupon the King, in a rage, rebuked the admiral roughly. To make matters worse, the admiral and his friends at once threw the blame upon Olivares, and the latter, feigning an attack of gout, sulked and ostentatiously absented himself from the solemnities of Holy Week in Barcelona. The King thereupon appointed young Heliche to replace his father-in-law at court, and consequently to take precedence of the admiral. This was too much, and the proud noble gave the King a bit of his mind about his favourite, and ended by flinging his key, the insignia of office as chamberlain, upon the table, resigned his Court appointment, and went off to Madrid in a towering rage, there to be placed under arrest and to suffer all sorts of investigations and humiliations.[29]

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After the splendours and plausibilities of Barcelona,[30] the change to the hard-fisted Cortes at Lerida was a shock to the King and his minister. There was no hesitation in the demand of the Catalan Cortes that they must be heard before they would vote anything at all, and they were more inclined to ask the King to repay them what they had advanced to him than to grant him more money. The tone of Philip towards them at first was supplicatory, for they were rich, strong, and united. Mildness, however, was wasted upon the Catalans, and the private meetings of the members and other signs of resistance were considered to be dangerous. Olivares began to threaten, and gave them three days to pass the vote, but the Catalans were still unmoved. Then the Count-Duke, in a panic of fear, suddenly and without notice hurried Philip back to Madrid (May 1626). The Catalans, when he was gone, frightened in their turn, voted what was asked for, but all grace in the act was gone, and a deep chasm thenceforward existed between the eastern realms and the King's favourite in a hurry, who had tried to undermine their ancient liberties.

[Sidenote: The independent parliaments]

Philip from Madrid tried to appease the Aragonese by voluntarily reducing the contribution they had at length voted; but the result of his journey left not only resentment in the hearts of his non-Castilian subjects, but led to outrageous raids of angry Castilian soldiery into Aragon, and aroused in the King himself a bitter feeling towards the {169} peoples who had been the first to challenge the despotic supremacy which Olivares had taught him was his divine birthright. Philip, indeed, like his immediate predecessors on the throne, was saturated with the idea of his divinely delegated authority. To oppose his will was not disloyalty alone, but impiety, and it was naturally difficult for him to understand that this view, which was generally held by his Castilian subjects, whose kingly traditions were sacerdotal, could not be shared by peoples whose institutions were based upon a purely elective military monarchy, and feudalism modified by a representative democracy. How the anger rankled in his breast is seen in the long exculpatory document which I have several times quoted, which on his return to Madrid he addressed to the Council of Castile.[31] In the course of the document, whilst showing how he, personally, has striven to improve matters, he rates them, and indeed almost everybody, for so imperfectly seconding his efforts. But the hardness of his eastern subjects was evidently that which touched him most.

"Anything is better," he says, "than to burden more heavily these poor unhappy vassals of Castile, who, by their love, their efforts, and their sufferings have made us masters of the rest of what we possess, and still preserve it for us, as the head and part principal of our commonwealth. I would far rather take burdens from these poor people than impose further sacrifices upon them, and when I think of what they have to pay, and also the {170} trouble and annoyance they have to submit to in the collection of it, in good truth I would rather beg for charity from door to door, if I could, to provide for the funds necessary for the national defence, than deal so harshly with such vassals as these.... I grieve in my very soul to see such good subjects suffer so much from the faults of my ministers. If my own life-blood would remedy it I would cheerfully give it. And yet, though you (the Council of Castile) know how this cuts me to the heart, and though I reproach you, you propose no remedy.... I tried the Cortes of Aragon, running, as you well know, serious risk, and incurring great trouble and inconvenience, solely for the purpose of alleviating the pressure upon these Castilian subjects, and I am directing my efforts in the same way with my other realms, so that some day I hope we may be able to lighten the taxes in Castile. God knows, I yearn for the coming of that day more than to conquer Constantinople."

[Sidenote: Philip's life tragedy]

We shall see as time goes on that this attitude is the one natural to Philip through all the troubles which gathered blacker and blacker, as the evil seed sown by him and Olivares grew and ripened. He himself, acting conscientiously and under divine inspiration, was never wrong in the measures he adopted. If suffering and adversity came, they always came either from the wiles of the evil one, or for some wise inscrutable purpose of God. They were never at this time a consequence of any want of wisdom or prescience of his. His heart bled, as we see by his own passionate words quoted above, for the misery of his subjects, but it never seemed {171} through his life to occur to him that the way to remedy it was to abandon an untenable position in his foreign relations, and devote his energies to the concentration of national resources for the promotion of productive industry and interior economy.

This was Philip's tragedy, the tragedy of a lifetime which this book will try to follow to its sad disillusioned end. The haunting, sorrow-stricken, compassionate face shows through its proud mask of impassivity and its leaden eyes deep traces of the terrible struggle within; of the throes of a man who dared not show his pain, and who in later years bared his soul but to one woman in the world. Weak of will, tender of conscience, sensitive of soul. A rake without conviction, a voluptuary who sought sensuous pleasures from vicious habit long after they had ceased to be pleasures to him, and yet expiated them with agonies of remorse which made his soul a raging hell.

This is the man. Philip the Great! "The Planet King," as the flattering poets called him; this pale, long-faced, sallow young man of twenty-one, who came back to his capital in the spring of 1626 already embittered and disillusioned, confronted by wars and threats of wars on all sides, overwhelmed with poverty yet inflated with pride: seeking escape from his troubles in the company of poets, painters, actors, and courtesans, and in the buffoonery of distorted dwarfs and half-idiotic monstrosities, whilst the dark heavy man with the big square head and arrogant mien led the nation down the slope that ended in inevitable disruption and ruin.

[1] He wrote a series of interesting descriptions of the ceremonies and feasts in honour of Charles's visit to Madrid. _Terpsichore_.

[2] _Apuntamientos_. Secretly printed in Madrid, 1623.

[3] When the Duke of Osuna was arrested early in Philip's reign he had 300 servants resident in his house.

[4] There are copies of many of these decrees in British Museum MSS. Add. 9933 and 9934.

[5] Contemporary transcript by Father Torquemada. MSS. Add. 10,236 British Museum. The original is in the Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid.

[6] It may be noted that Olivares, who of course cut down his own household, still had 122 servants after that process. _Revista de Archivos_, iv. p. 20.

[7] British Museum, Egerton MSS. 338, f. 136.

[8] The first idea of this collar, which was promptly dubbed _Golilla_ (little gorget), was merely as a support for the linen Walloon, which would thus be made to stand out like a ruff, but the silk-lined golilla alone was soon generally adopted.

[9] Philip during his life was rarely seen in any other collar, though in his fine portrait as a young man at Dulwich he wears a large lace Walloon.

[10] There is a most important collection of these originals and transcripts, in the Egerton MSS., British Museum.

[11] British Museum, Egerton MSS. 338.

[12] A biography of the Queen is given in the author's _Queens of Old Spain_.

[13] The first had been a girl, prematurely born in August 1621, who died in a few hours.

[14] There is a very long and detailed account of the ceremony in MS. (Biblioteca National, Madrid, p.v.c. 27), transcribed by the writer. The new-born babe was borne down the great staircase of the Alcazar in the arms of a lady of the house of Spinola, the Count-Duke of Olivares walking backwards with golden candlesticks escorting the new Princess to the rooms of her governess, the Countess Duchess of Olivares, in the ground floor apartment that had only a few months before housed the Prince of Wales. The King with all his Court attended the Royal Chapel for the _Te Deum_, pontifically celebrated by the Patriarch and Cardinal Zapata. For three nights in succession every balcony in Madrid was illuminated by a wax torch, and at night a great masked equestrian display of 120 nobles of the Court with new costumes and liveries was performed, the Count of Olivares and Don Pedro de Toledo being the most brilliant, and skilful riders. The great cavalcade paraded the principal streets of the capital, and ran two courses, one in the Calle Mayor and the other before the Convent of Discalced Carmelites. The next day the King rode in state with all the Court to give thanks to the Virgin of Atocha, returning in coaches and admiring the illuminations. The baptism took place in the little parish church of St. Gil, hung for the occasion with cloth of gold. There the Nuncio with cardinals and bishops galore made a Christian of the babe. The tremendous ceremony, with silver cradle, its rich offerings and its pompous names, must be taken for granted here, but the pride of the narrator in the grandeur of it all is significant of the time. There is extant a news-letter from Don Antonio de Mendoza to the Duke of Bejar of the date (quoted by Hartzenbusch in his _Calderon_) giving an account of the great festivity held by Marquis of Alcañices in his palace in Madrid to celebrate the birth of this Infanta. "Two comedies by different authors were represented with excellent dancers and a dance of maskers in which elegance and skill vied with each other; the great saloon in which it was held inciting envy in the heavenly spheres, such was the beauty and the brilliancy it contained."

[15] He was a French pedlar named Reynard de Peralta, and was of course garotted and burnt by the Inquisition for his crime, which amounted to a denial of the Immaculate Conception.

[16] The actors had also another Mentidero or Liars' Walk of their own, where they were wont to congregate on an open space at the corner of the Calle de Leon, opposite to what is now the great literary club of Madrid, the Ateneo.

[17] The original pretext for the establishment of the public theatres was to provide funds for the charitable fraternities who partly owned them, and always received a considerable share of the takings.

[18] Frequent attempts were made by the authorities to suppress the scandals and abuses in the theatres, which, although the performances always took place by daylight, were inevitable in such a state of society as that we are now describing. It was forbidden, for instance, for men in the courtyard or pit to converse with women in the cazuela or on the stage; the actresses were not allowed to dress in masculine garb, and an alguacil was always to be on duty in the auditorium during the performance. See Schack's _Historia del arte dramatica en España_; Pellicer's _Tratado Historico sobre el origen ... de la Comedia en España_ (1804); _El Corral de la Pacheca_, by Juan Comba; _Origen Epocas y Progresos del Teatro Español_, by Hugalde (1802), and the valuable MS. _Memorias Cronologicas sobre el origen ... de Comedias en España_, by Antonio de Armona, in the Royal Academy of History, Madrid.

[19] Philip's passion for the theatre was so well understood, that a comedy formed part of the entertainment at every place he visited. In the spring of 1624 he made a short but very splendid progress in Andalucia, and every great noble and city that received him gave him a new play. On the 18th March the Duke of Medina Sidonia, the great Andalucian magnate and kinsman of Olivares, entertained the King in his country house near St. Lucar, and presented a new comedy before him every day of his stay. On the 7th April we learn that, during his visit to Granada the King witnessed a comedy in the Alhambra! The King himself wrote some plays, now lost.

[20] Leon Pinelo's _Anales Manuscritos de Madrid_ and other contemporary writings describe many such.

[21] Now the Senate.

[22] The site is now converted into a pretty public garden, called the Plaza de Bilbao.

[23] The _auto_ is described by Leon Pinelo (_Anales Manuscritos_), by Montero de los Rios (_Historia de Madrid_), and others.

[24] A full account of this little known inglorious episode is given from the Elliot papers in the Camden Society, 1883.

[25] British Museum, Egerton MSS. 338, 136.

[26] _Memorias de Matias de Novoa; Ayuda de Camara de Felipe IV_. These invaluable memoirs, written by a bitter enemy of Olivares, were formerly supposed to have been written by another favourite courtier of Philip, called Vivanco. Though vivid, they are unfair to Olivares.

[27] It is rather a curious fact that the Count-Duke's father, the second Count of Olivares, had been the first councillor in 1603 to speak plainly in the Council of Philip in on the projects of Spain to dominate England. He pointed out very strongly that extension of territory did not mean increase of power, but the contrary, as it meant the distribution instead of the concentration of national strength. See the writer's _Calendar of Spanish State Papers of Elizabeth_, vol. iv.

[28] Dormer, _Anales de Aragon_, MS., Royal Academy of History, Madrid. The published portion of the book only covers the sixteenth century.

[29] Novoa and British Museum, Egerton MSS. 338.

[30] There is a most interesting and full unpublished account of Philip's entry and stay in Barcelona in British Museum, Add. MSS. 10,236, called _Entrada que el Rey Nuestro Señor hizo en la ciudad de Barcelona y fiestas que se hicieron_, 1626.

[31] Egerton MSS. 338.

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