by Des Ekin
‘There are even greater objects,’ Cavalli wrote perceptively, ‘for the Queen is 68 years old, and in the natural course of events she cannot continue much longer … and in the case of her death, this foothold in Ireland would allow the [Spanish] King either to acquire the country or to assist the Catholics, and by supporting his own nominee among the pretenders to the Crown, he can render England dependent on himself.’
In other words, the astute Venetians believed that Águila was being sent to hold the fort – literally – in expectation of the Queen’s imminent death, at which stage the Spanish King, Felipe III, would announce a successor to Elizabeth and already be in a position to act to support the claim with arms.
The Spanish Council of State had already recommended a suitable candidate: the Infanta Isabella, the devoutly Catholic daughter of the late King Felipe II, and the reigning King’s half-sister. Distantly descended from English royalty, she had a plausible claim to the throne. Spain was determined to block Isabella’s strongest rival, the Protestant King James VI of Scotland. Although rumoured to be sympathetic to the Catholic cause for which his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, had been executed, James was mistrusted by the Spanish and regarded as ‘false and shifty’.
The Venetians were in no doubt: the plan to invade Ireland was Mission Impossible. As their Ambassador to Spain, Francesco Soranzo, wrote home: ‘There is little certainty of success; every certainty of failure and the destruction of these poor fellows.’ They were not unique in their scepticism. A contemporary Spanish diarist named Luis Cabrera de Córdoba wrote that, while the aim of the armada was to help the Irish insurgents in their battle against the English, ‘there are those who say that the effect will be very different.’
Águila could have turned down the assignment, as Zuniga had, but that wasn’t his style. In his thirty-eight years as a soldier, he had never backed down from a challenge. There were other reasons why he should accept Mission Impossible. At fifty-six, he was nearing the end of his long and venerable military career. However, his reputation had been sullied by the accusations made against him. If he could pull off this mission, he could retire with honour. It was his all-or-nothing, his last throw of the dice.
Why had he been put into this position? If there was any justice, Águila would have been welcomed back from Brittany as a hero – not punished like a criminal. What he had achieved there in eight years had been remarkable. The Spanish had intervened in a convoluted French religious war, ostensibly to help the local Catholics but really to establish a string of forts along the Brittany coastline from which to attack southern England.
Águila had set up two superbly constructed fortresses, one near Lorient and the other near Brest. He had defended the first one right until the bitter end, leaving only when the political situation had shifted and he was ordered out. The other port had fallen, with horrific loss of life. However, Águila’s signal achievement while in Brittany was to mastermind a military invasion of southern England, sacking and burning several towns in Cornwall before pulling out. It was one of Spain’s most successful raids on England – in fact, it was to be the last Spanish invasion of England – and by right, that act alone should have earned Águila an equestrian statue in his home town of El Barraco.
El Barraco … Águila longed to retire in the little hilltop township where he had spent his childhood. He had a dream of leaving a bequest to future generations – giving hope to other children who played in those same rugged hills and valleys that he had roamed as a child.
Situated 100km from Madrid, and a thousand metres high in the Sierra de la Paramera, El Barraco lies amid a magnificent wildscape of moorland, pine woods and ancient reservoirs. On the horizon are the Sierra de Gredos mountains, where the rare Spanish Imperial eagle can still be seen hovering and diving over the peaks. Águila, his family name, is also the Spanish word for ‘eagle’ and that seemed to be reflected in Juan’s soaring, independent mindset and indomitable personality. An early portrait shows a young man whose intelligent and alert brown eyes lock the viewer’s in a good-humoured yet assertive challenge. His forehead is high, his hair neatly cropped, and his chin juts out challengingly under a short, pointed brown beard.
Juan del Águila had been born into a noble family with a strong military, political and religious tradition. Its menfolk either went to war or ruled cities. Its womenfolk patronised, founded or ran convents.
The family’s most famous patriarch, Nuno Gonzalez del Águila, was a colourful individual. As Lord of the castle of Villaviciosa, twenty miles from Avila, he had not only presided over a substantial estate but also held the religious role of canon and archdeacon of the cathedral. In addition, he had his hands full with his family and with a mistress, Doña Elvira Gonzales de Medina, who bore him four other children. Just before Nuno died, he sold a large chunk of his property to pass on to Elvira – a move that outraged his ‘formal’ family.
Even more frustratingly for them, Elvira decided to give the money to God. She established a small Carmelite convent, which developed into the Monastery of the Incarnation in Avila. Among its 140 nuns was a young sister named Teresa who, between 1535 and 1574, experienced the ecstatic visions that later elevated her to sainthood. Interestingly, the prioress who admitted her to the order was Doña Francesca del Águila, another member of the ubiquitous family.
Nuno – who was Juan del Águila’s great-grandfather – had built himself a romantic turreted castle in Villaviciosa. It remains standing today, bearing the family coat of arms showing a lion rampant over an eagle.
Young Juan joined the army at age eighteen. Even though he was a nobleman, he began as a basic infantryman and was willing to work his way up through the ranks. As we’ll see, that was part of the spirit of the elite Spanish regiments to which he would devote his life. During a career spanning nearly four decades, Águila saw action in almost every conceivable scenario – fighting Ottoman pirates in the Mediterranean, quashing a rebellion in Corsica, guarding the mighty galleons from the Americas, escaping across frozen polder dams in the Low Countries, and scrimmaging street by street through the embattled cities of northern Europe.
His abilities were soon noticed. ‘[In the Netherlands] Juan del Águila and [another commander] did signalise themselves,’ wrote one contemporary. At the Siege of Antwerp, Águila arrived with his troops at a critical moment, hurled himself into the fight, and carried the day. The commanding general instantly made him a Maestro de Campo – a regimental colonel – in gratitude. He was still in his late thirties.
Águila was a harsh disciplinarian. He had to be, to survive. This was a bleak era in which a commander had to maintain order among hungry, ill-equipped men who went for months without pay. Mutinies were commonplace. Victorious troops could decide to pay themselves by looting conquered cities – once, in Antwerp, seven thousand people died in a three-day orgy of violence known as ‘the Spanish fury’. Each commander walked a thin line between imposing tyranny and unleashing anarchy.
One story speaks volumes about the man’s personality. After a Spanish lieutenant surrendered a key post, the enemy – hoping for a ransom – asked Águila what they should do with the prisoner.
—Do what you like with him, Águila replied crustily. But if I had him here I’d know what to do with him: hang him.
However, he said he was willing to pay a ransom for another officer who was captured while fighting.
His own courage was never questioned. After suffering serious wounds in Flanders, he was presented to King Felipe II with the words: ‘Your Majesty, meet the man who was born without fear.’
Águila was lined up to lead one of the follow-up regiments for the Great Armada’s invasion of England in 1588. However, since the fleet never made landfall, he was never needed. In 1597, he was chosen as land commander for a subsequent armada, which was beaten back by bad weather.
By this stage, Águila had become a legendary figure. Spanish War Secretary Esteban de Ibarra was later to write: ‘When I remember w
ho Don Juan del Águila is, my heart is lightened and I begin to hope for great things.’ Felipe II’s successor, the young Felipe III, once said that the ‘high opinion’ he had of Águila relieved any anxieties he had about the mission to Ireland. A contemporary Spanish writer said he was one of the greatest luminaries that war had produced.
Internationally, his standing also remained high. The Venetians referred respectfully – and uncritically – to his long service in Flanders. A prominent Irish clan chieftain called him ‘a wise man and a skilful commander’. But the greatest tribute to Águila was the praise of his enemies. The English commander Charles Blount described him as ‘one of the greatest soldiers the King of Spain hath’. General George Carew said he was a man of quality and honour, and praised his coolness under pressure: ‘He is a cold commander. I wish he were more hare-brained.’
So, with such a distinguished career behind him, why was Águila jailed at all? One source says he was imprisoned ‘to answer some actions of his in Brittany’. Yet the arrests happened in 1600, several years after the events in Brittany. And towards the end of his stint there, Águila had been entrusted with the command of twelve thousand men in the 1597 Armada – hardly a job to allocate to a man with a bad military reputation. Another source, the diarist Luis Córdoba, says he was ‘put in the sheriff’s prison … with his wife and an army accountant, for having unfairly taken advantage of the King’s revenue’. In the moral maze of Spanish politics, where corruption was rife in the highest circles, this financial offence could have been as simple a matter as failing to give kickbacks to the right people. Whatever the reason, Águila now walked out of the jail to freedom.
At the time, Águila was regarded as the right choice to lead the new expedition. One early-seventeenth-century writer said that the Spanish sent troops to Ireland ‘under General Juan del Águila, a man that conceived great hopes’.
As an eminent English historian later summed it all up: ‘It was [Águila] who had established the Spanish footing in Brittany, which for years had been a thorn in the side both of England and France, nor was he ever dislodged by force of arms. So high was the reputation he had won that, though at the time he was in disgrace and under arrest, he had been called out of prison to take command of the new expedition. What he had done in Brittany he intended to do in [Ireland’s] Munster.’
Águila reported for duty in Lisbon in July 1601. His journey there was probably a horrific experience in itself. Famine had ravaged the area, and bubonic plague had wiped out one in ten of the population. Lisbon was ‘a wilderness’, according to one authority, ‘with most of the population having died or fled’.
On arrival, Águila was given his own personal priest to accompany him and to hear his confessions. But Father James Archer, a militant Jesuit from Kilkenny, was no ordinary pastor. Although he had been recommended to Águila as ‘a very fervent and apostolic man’, he was actually high on the English authorities’ most wanted list after allegations that he had conspired to kill Queen Elizabeth and participated in the kidnap of a prominent Irish nobleman. Archer had regularly slipped in and out of Ireland in disguise. While there, he would live ‘in the woods and hiding places’ as he encouraged the insurgent fighters. In Spain he was a legendary figure. ‘Of the priests, Archer was in the best reputation with the Spaniards,’ one expatriate Irishman later testified.
When Águila went to the nearby port of Santa Maria del Belém to inspect his troops, he was aghast. Both the numbers and quality were even lower than he had expected. He needed more food, more ammunition, more money and more soldiers, he wrote to King Felipe III in mid-August. And it was too late in the season to mount such an expedition.
But Felipe was determined that the force should leave before autumn.
The King’s motives were complex – he had promised his father on his deathbed that he would continue the wars of religion, and he was under constant pressure from his pious wife to intervene on behalf of the Irish Catholics. He was also ‘headstrong’ and determined to make a grand gesture to demonstrate his maturity as an international statesman. He was, after all, only twenty-three.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘FOR GOD, ALL DIFFICULTIES MUST BE OVERCOME’
Valladolid, Capital of Spain, 1601
FELIPE III, King of Spain, King of Portugal, and emperor of the greatest dominion the world had ever known, gazed with satisfaction on his royal bride as she ate and drank at table.
Queen Margaret never reached for a cup herself, which was how it should be. Instead, if she wanted to drink, she would sign discreetly to the most senior of the three ladies-in-waiting who stood by her table, each with a napkin draped precisely over their shoulder. The first lady made a signal to the second lady. The second signed to the third. The third lady signed to the mayordomo or steward, who signed to a page, who in turn signalled the wish to a lowly servant. Together the page and servant left the room to fetch a capped goblet on a golden tray. The page gave it to the mayordomo, who inspected it before allowing the page to present it to the first lady. Kneeling before the Queen, the first lady would pour a little of the liquid into the cover of the goblet and taste it via a napkin – she must never touch it with her lips – before offering the goblet and tray to her royal mistress. After the Queen had supped, the goblet was removed by the same elaborate route.
Six people to enable one woman to sip a drink. Yes, this was how it should be. It was the way things worked in Felipe’s Spain, a country where the lavish opulence and overstaffing at the royal court stood in stark contrast to the grinding poverty of many of Felipe’s overtaxed subjects.
Felipe was just three years out of his teens. His Queen, the Austrian daughter of the Archduke Charles, was only sixteen. Yet together they ruled over a vast empire that stretched from Peru to the Philippines.
Almost three years before, while aged just twenty, Felipe had inherited the world’s first global superpower. He owned Spain, Portugal, parts of Italy, parts of North Africa, a piece of Asia, and by proxy a chunk of Europe’s Low Countries. A century beforehand, the world’s biggest empire had belonged to the Incas in South America. Spanning five thousand kilometres and ruling twelve million people, it was bigger than China’s or Turkey’s. Spain had swallowed it whole and added it to its territories.
However, decay had set in and was spreading rapidly. Felipe was well aware that he had inherited a basket-case economy. There was no industry to speak of. Nobody had seriously tried to bring farming methods out of the dark ages. Harvests had failed and famine was becoming a permanent way of life. Corruption and jobbery were rampant. One in ten people claimed noble status and refused to pay taxes. So did the hundreds of thousands of clerics who held 20 percent of the land. Just five years earlier, Spain had declared itself bankrupt for the third time, but that hadn’t stopped Felipe’s father, Felipe II, from splashing out millions of ducats on his splendid new palace at El Escorial.
For ordinary Spanish citizens, it was difficult to believe that Spain was taking in a fortune in gold and silver from its American colonies. Ships would arrive in Seville, their timbers groaning under the weight of New World bullion: 35 million ducats’ worth in one year alone; historians now estimate that in the course of three hundred years the Spanish treasure fleets brought home the equivalent of ten trillion US dollars today. But the money all went on lavish cathedrals and unwinnable wars. And the sheer size of the cargoes made them less valuable. Ridiculously, Spain had to degrade its own coins using cheap metal imported from elsewhere in Europe. As one writer lamented: ‘Spain is poor because she is rich.’
The image of the monarchy had hit an embarrassing new low when royal officials were despatched to beg door-to-door, asking householders to donate small saleable items. And yet Spain still continued its triumphal procession across the world stage, acknowledged as the richest, most powerful and most expansive empire in history. Spain was still Spain – the big dog of the global backyard. It dominated the world culturally, linguistically, financially and (it
liked to think) militarily. Broke it might have been, but, for the moment at least, the rich bankers of Genoa were still ready to back Spain with loans, even though they knew that most of the cash would go to gilded palaces and costly religious conflicts. They had invested too much already, and the empire was too big to fail.
The twenty-three-year-old to whom all this wealth and power had been bequeathed was an unimposing figure: contemporary portraits show him as a pale, rusty-haired youth whose arrogantly tilted head seems to compensate for an inner nervousness. His goatee beard hides a sharp chin, both nearly smothered by an enormous ruff. He is cultivating an extravagant military moustache.
Felipe came across as an eccentric figure: amiable enough, pious to the extreme, but incapable of making his own decisions. Old Felipe II had gone to such lengths to subdue and mould his son’s personality that the boy had been left with little identity he could call his own.
When it had been time to choose a wife for his son, the elder Felipe presented him with portraits of three equally acceptable sisters and instructed him to select the one he found most attractive. Young Felipe, terrified of the responsibility, said he would leave the choice up to his father. No doubt heaving an exasperated sigh, Felipe II pointed out that choosing a lifetime bedmate was a highly personal matter.
—I have no choice, his son stammered. Whoever seems most beautiful to Your Majesty will look the most beautiful to me.
On his deathbed the elder Felipe had fretted that his son would be too easily influenced by others. ‘Ah, I fear they will rule him,’ he predicted.