Imperial Spain 1469-1716

by John H. Elliott

  The obvious forum for discussion was the Council of State, which acquired under Philip a spurious glitter that helped to hide the fact that the King and not the Council was the real source of power. During the 1560s and 1570s the Council of State was turned into the battleground of two opposing factions, each struggling to obtain sole influence with a king who delighted in the art of playing off one against the other. The exact significance of these factions is extremely difficult to determine, but it is probable that much of their antagonism derived from family rivalries whose origins are lost in the shadowy regions of Spanish local history, but which had been exacerbated by the civil wars of the fifteenth century and by the succession struggles of the early sixteenth. For instance, the rival Toledo families of the Ayalas and the Riberas, which had come into conflict during the revolt of the Comuneros, and then again over the statutes of limpieza in the cathedral chapter, were each linked by ties of blood and clientage to the great families which clashed at Court. The Ribera faction at Toledo included the Silvas, and the Silvas in turn were close adherents of the enormously powerful house of Mendoza, which comprised twenty-two heads of families of the high aristocracy. Their rivals, the Ayalas and Ávalos, on the other hand were members of another aristocratic network, including the houses of Zapata and of Álvarez de Toledo, and headed by the great Duke of Alba himself.

  There are several indications that even in Philip II's reign the Castilian aristocracy still lived beneath the shadow of the hatreds generated during the revolt of the Comuneros. As late as 1578 Don Luis Enriquez de Cabrera y Mendoza, second Duke of Medina de Rioseco and Admiral of Castile, indignantly declared to the Imperial ambassador that the King's government was not a government of justice but of tyranny and revenge, since power now lay in the hands of those whose fathers had been Comuneros, and who sought to avenge themselves on their former opponents. The full significance of this remark is not yet clear, although a study of the family background of the councillors and officials at the Spanish Court would no doubt help to elucidate it. But there are enough signs of Comunero and anti-Comunero affiliations among the two Court factions of the 1560s and 1570s to suggest that the Admiral's assertion provides at least one important clue to the bitterness of their struggles.

  While it is true that the Duke of Alba's family played no significant part in the revolt of the Comuneros, its allies, the Zapatas, had been enthusiastic partisans of the rebels. On the other hand, the Duke of Infantado, head of the Mendozas, had (after some prevarication) come out in support of the Emperor. If post-Comunero Castile was divided between those who supported an ‘open’ Spain and those who stood for ‘closed’ Castilian nationalism as represented by the Comuneros, then the Mendozas, cultured and cosmopolitan, represented the first, and Alba the second. But it is impossible to say how far these positions were consciously held, and how far ‘ideological’ as distinct from family disagreements determined the respective alignments.

  In the early years of Philip II the Mendoza faction at Court was headed by the King's favourite and confidant Ruy Gómez de Silva, Prince of Eboli. The son of an aristocratic Portuguese family, he had come to Spain as a child with his maternal grandfather, mayordomo mayor to the Empress Isabella, and had grown up in the palace with Philip. Appointed a Councillor of State on Philip's accession, he married in 1559 Doña Ana de Mendoza, indiscreet, ambitious, capricious and volatile. Ruy Gómez's ascendancy with the King, whom he treated with exactly the right touch of smooth deference, made him an extremely influential character at Court, and the natural leader of all those who disliked the Duke of Alba. Among these was the secretary Antonio Pérez, who formed an easy allance with the Prince of Eboli, and was to succeed him as leader of the faction on Eboli's death in 1573. It was natural that Antonio Pérez should join this camp, for there had been a feud between his father and the Duke of Alba; and, in addition, his wife was a member of the Coello family, violent anti-Comuneros whose residence in Madrid had been destroyed during the revolt by the Comunero Zapatas.

  The Eboli and the Alba factions were fighting primarily for power – for ascendancy with the King and the consequent control of patronage. But beyond this, they represented, either by tradition or by force of circumstance, or both, differing points of view which were crystallized in the discussions over the revolt of the Netherlands. Where Alba and his friends were advocates of a ruthless repression of the revolt, the Eboli faction entertained a discreet sympathy for the rebels and was anxious for a negotiated settlement. It is true that the choice of Alba to crush the revolt firmly committed his supporters at Court to a policy of repression, but there is every indication that this policy accorded with Alba's own inclinations and with his views about the proper organization of the Spanish Monarchy. Many years later, in a discussion in the Council of State about certain difficulties with Aragon, Alba said that, given three or four thousand men, he would wipe out Aragon's liberties; to which the Marquis of los Vélez, a member of the Eboli group, replied that this was not the advice to give the King if he wished to see him retain his territories, but that the way to preserve them was to respect their fueros and observe the conditions under which they had been inherited.5

  This clash at the council table suggests that the two factions stood for two opposing solutions to the problem of the Monarchy: the Alba faction for the Castilian nationalist solution, involving the destruction of provincial liberties, and the Eboli group for the ‘Aragonese’ federalist solution, as outlined by Furió Ceriol. In sending Alba to the Netherlands, the King had come down in favour of the ‘Castilian’ approach, but his willingness to stand by it would clearly depend on the extent of Alba's success. By 1573, after six years of terror, it was obvious that Alba had failed, and he was accordingly relieved of his post.

  The failure of Alba left the way free for the Eboli faction, but in the intervening period it had fallen into a state of some disarray. The president of the Council of Castile, Cardinal Espinosa, who had supported Eboli on the specific issue of the Netherlands, lost the King's favour and died immediately afterwards (allegedly of mortification) in September 1572. More serious, Eboli himself died in July 1573. The effective leadership of the truncated party now devolved upon Antonio Pérez. Pérez acquired a useful if politically inexperienced ally in Bishop Quiroga, Espinosa's successor as Inquisitor-General; but the faction needed an aristocratic figurehead, and one was not found until 1575, when Pérez did a deal with a former enemy of the Mendozas, the third Marquis of los Vélez (son of the commander in the Granada campaign who died in 1574) and secured his appointment to the Council of State. The faction did, however, have a coherent policy to set before Philip as an alternative to that pursued by Alba – a policy formulated by none other than Furió Ceriol. Furiós ‘remedies’ of 1573 for the troubles in the Netherlands6consisted of a number of measures aimed at pacification and conciliation. These included the dissolution of the Council of Troubles and the abandonment of the Tenth Penny, together with certain positive constitutional proposals which were fully consistent with the ‘Eboli’ approach to the government of the Monarchy: a guarantee by the King to preserve the traditional laws and liberties of the Netherlands, and the appointment of Netherlanders to offices in ‘the Indies, Italy, Sicily’ and the various other provinces.

  The man chosen by Philip to carry out this policy of pacification in the Netherlands was Don Luis de Requesens, at that time Governor of Milan, a member of one of the most distinguished families of Catalonia and father-in-law of Don Pedro Fajardo, who would shortly become third Marquis of los Vélez. Requesens, who left for the Netherlands in the autumn of 1573, prided himself on being independent of both the factions at Court. But an ‘Aragonese’ solution to the problem of the Netherlands, if such was intended, was to prove no more practicable than the ‘Castilian’ solution attempted by the Duke of Alba. A policy of pacification and re-concilation could only succeed if the army were kept under firm control, but the early 1570s – a period of recession in Seville's American trade – were a tim
e of acute financial difficulty for Philip, and regular payment of the troops in the Netherlands was becoming increasingly difficult. In March 1574 the King agreed to offer the rebels a general pardon (containing many exceptions), to be drafted on the model of the pardon issued by Charles V after the revolt of the Comuneros. But in April the troops mutinied and marched on Antwerp, and although the mutiny was quelled, the incident caused such alarm that the proclamation of the pardon by Requesens in June fell flat.

  No significant progress towards a general reconciliation was made during the following year, and the financial position was becoming acute. On 1 September 1575 came the second ‘bankruptcy’ of Philip's reign, when the King suspended payments to the bankers. The suspension destroyed the delicate mechanism of credit by which remittances were made from Castile to Flanders; the Castilian fairs were temporarily paralysed, two Sevillian banks failed at the beginning of 1576, and the Genoese refused to undertake any more asientos until a settlement was reached. With its pay in arrears, the Spanish army in the Netherlands (which in 1575 consisted of only some 3,000 Spanish infantry, as against 25,000 Germans and 8,000 Walloons) grew increasingly restless. Requesens, whose health had long been poor, died on 5 March 1576, and his death removed the one figure of any authority in the crumbling Spanish régime. The troops, discontented and mutinous, were now without a master. As the months passed and no pay arrived, the predictable happened. On 4 and 5 November they ran wild, and sacked the city of Antwerp.

  The ‘Spanish fury’ at Antwerp, which ended all chances of conciliation, occurred one day after the arrival in the Netherlands of a new conciliator, Don John of Austria. Don John's appointment in succession to Requesens is an indication of Philip II's continued support for the Eboli policy, for Furió Ceriol had suggested that Don John should be sent to the Netherlands if the King were unable to go himself, and the terms on which Don John accepted his appointment were very much in line with Eboli ideas. He asked for a free hand in the government of the Netherlands, and for permission to respect their laws and privileges. He insisted that all his correspondence should pass through the hands of Antonio Pérez, rather than those of the secretary of the northern department, Gabriel de Zayas, a protégé of the Duke of Alba. In addition, he requested authorization for an action consistently opposed by Alba, but supported both by the Papacy and by the Eboli faction – the invasion of England. Don John went to the Netherlands, therefore, enjoying the full confidence of Pérez and his friends, and with the intention of executing their policies.

  Apart from the fact that Don John's temperament scarcely fitted him for the role of a conciliator, circumstances anyhow made his task impossible. The time for conciliation was in fact past, although the King was now ready to make certain concessions – including the withdrawal of all Spanish troops – which were embodied in the Perpetual Edict signed by Don John on 12 February 1577. Don John, who was anxious for a settlement that would leave him free to prepare an invasion of England, felt deeply the humiliation implied in these concessions. Already, on the very day that the Edict was signed, Antonio Pérez had written the King a note on behalf of Quiroga, los Vélez and himself, expressing alarm at the despairing tone of Don John's dispatches. While the King was anxious for peace in the Netherlands, he was not ready for war with Elizabeth. He therefore left Don John in a state of suspended animation – unable to conclude peace on satisfactory terms, but lacking the money to resume the war – and disconsolately watching the gradual blighting of the cherished ambition to conquer England and marry Mary Queen of Scots.

  Increasingly frustrated by his enforced inactivity, Don John was now becoming convinced that a conciliatory policy was unworkable, and that the King must somehow be induced to authorize a full-scale resumption of the war. He was quite prepared, if necessary, to precipitate the renewal of a conflict which he anyhow considered unavoidable, and in late July 1577 he took the law into his own hands and seized the castle of Namur, from where he launched in August an impassioned appeal to the tercios to return to the Netherlands to wage war against the rebels. Meanwhile, he had sent his secretary Escobedo to Madrid to press the King for money. Escobedo, originally a protégé of Ruy Gómez and Antonio Pérez, had been appointed secretary to Don John at the instigation of Pérez in order to keep an eye on the activities of his mercurial master; but during his service in Flanders he had fallen under the spell of Don John and had become an enthusiastic supporter of his ambitious projects. By the time of Escobedo's return to Madrid, therefore, his devotion to Pérez had noticeably cooled – and all the more so since the ideas of Don John and the Pérez party no longer fully coincided.

  The arrival of Escobedo in Madrid at the end of July was extremely unwelcome to Pérez. The two men – Escobedo dour and intransigent, Pérez vain, deceitful and sly – were natural rivals for power and influence. Moreover, Escobedo knew too much, and soon discovered more. Pérez, always greedy for money, was in the habit of selling State secrets – a fact of which Escobedo can hardly have been unaware, especially as Pérez had kept Don John fully informed of all that passed at the Council table in Madrid. Escobedo also seems to have stumbled on some extremely incriminating evidence about the close alliance that had developed between Antonio Pérez and the widowed Princess of Eboli, who had returned to Court in 1576 after three turbulent years in a nunnery and had plunged into a world of political intrigue. The exact character of her intrigues with Pérez remains a mystery, but it seems possible that, among various other private ventures, the Princess and Pérez were conducting secret negotiations with the Dutch rebels. In any event, Escobedo soon discovered enough to be able to ruin Pérez, and Pérez in turn realized that Escobedo must be promptly disposed of, if he himself were to survive.

  Pérez's best hope lay with the King. Philip's natural distrust of his half-brother had been increased by Don John's recent behaviour in the Netherlands, and it was not difficult for Pérez to play upon the King's fears. Pérez apparently managed to persuade the King that Escobedo was Don John's evil genius; that the two men were plotting to secure for Don John the English – and perhaps even the Spanish – throne; and that Escobedo's removal would be fully justified on the grounds of reason of state. Once the King had been successfully convinced, it remained for Pérez to do the deed. Having failed in three attempts to kill Escobedo by poisoning, Pérez hired three assassins who duly murdered their victim in the street on the night of 31 March 1578.

  The murder which Pérez believed would save him from disaster proved, in fact, to be the beginning of his downfall. Escobedo's friends were not prepared to let the matter be forgotten, and they found an ally in Mateo Vázquez, originally secretary to Cardinal Espinosa, and, since 1573, secretary to the King. Vázquez soon came to suspect at least part of the truth, and began to press the King for action. During the months that followed, Philip passed through agonies of indecision. Uneasily aware of his own complicity in Escobedo's murder, it began to dawn on him that Pérez might have trapped him into ordering the death of an innocent man.

  It seems probable that these growing suspicions about the reliability of Antonio Pérez were reinforced by his behaviour during the summer and autumn of 1578. On 4 August the young King Sebastian of Portugal was killed in Africa at the battle of Alcázarquivir, leaving his aged uncle Cardinal Henry as heir to the Portuguese throne. Cardinal Henry's successor was likely to be one of three people: Don Antonio, the Prior of Crato, an illegitimate member of the Portuguese royal house; the Duchess of Braganza; and Philip himself. The contest for the succession left the field wide open for intrigue, and there was no more zealous intriguer at the Spanish Court than the Princess of Eboli. There are indications, although no clear proof, that the Princess was working for the candidature of the Duchess of Braganza, whose son she hoped to marry to her own daughter; and it was natural for the Princess to turn for help to her old ally, Antonio Pérez, who, as secretary for Portuguese affairs, was naturally involved in all the negotiations over the succession.

  Any hint of the
intrigues of Pérez and the Princess over the Portuguese succession must have nourished the King's growing doubts about his secretary's activities. By the end of 1578 these doubts had grown sufficiently for him to withdraw his favour from Pérez's aristocratic ally, the Marquis of los Vélez, who had shared with the King and Pérez the secret of Escobedo's murder. Yet, curiously enough even the disgrace of los Vélez failed to convince Pérez that his own position was now in danger. Confident that the King's own complicity in Escobedo's murder would make it too damaging for him ever to take action, Pérez overlooked Philip's dogged determination to get to the bottom of an affair which touched his own king-ship, at a most sensitive point. During all these long months the King was, in fact, carefully maturing his plans. His obvious need was to obtain new advisers. The Duke of Alba had been exiled to his estates; Pérez and his colleagues were utterly discredited. At this moment, when it was essential to prevent the Portuguese succession from slipping through his fingers, he turned to a statesman of great experience, well known for his capacity for quick thinking and decisive action – Cardinal Granvelle.