Imperial Spain 1469-1716

by John H. Elliott

  Since his dismissal from the government of the Netherlands in 1564, Granvelle had passed the years in Italy, a fading relic of an imperial past. On 30 March 1579 the King wrote asking him to come to Court at once, since he had the greatest need of his person. On 28 July Granvelle arrived at Madrid, in company with Don Juan de Idiáquez, whose father had been one of his most trusted colleagues in the Emperor's Government. The pair were greeted by Antonio Pérez. That same night, Pérez and the Princess of Eboli were taken into custody.

  The arrest of Pérez and the Princess virtually put an end to the Eboli faction, which seemed to have obtained a permanent ascendancy at Court since the disgrace of Alba. In summoning Granvelle, Philip was turning his back on the immediate past: on a decade of intrigues which had culminated in his treacherous deception by a secretary in whom he had placed a totally unjustified confidence. But if the two factions had now disappeared, the ideas which they had championed still survived. The remaining years of the reign would show that new questions had an uncanny way of turning into old questions in a fresh guise, and in particular into the highly intractable question of the future organization of the Spanish Monarchy. But at least the questions would be tackled by new advisers except that Granvelle was himself an older adviser than any he had come to replace.

  3. THE ANNEXATION OF PORTUGAL

  In many respects the years 1579 and 1580 represented not a break with the past but a return to it – to a more distant, and perhaps more glorious, past than the Eboli-Pérez era. At Court, an old councillor of Charles V, Cardinal Granvelle, was in the saddle. In the Netherlands, the Emperor's son Don John of Austria had died disillusioned and disappointed on 1 October 1578. Philip planned to replace him by appointing to the civil government of the Low Countries the Emperor's illegitimate daughter, Margaret of Parma, who had already acted as regent between 1559 and 1566 (although in the event Philip's plans were frustrated by the refusal of Margaret's son, Alexander Farnese, who had assumed the government on Don John's death, to share his power with his mother). This return at the end of the 1570s to figures from an imperial age was curiously appropriate, for these same years saw a radical change in the policies of Philip – a change to a policy of active imperialism, reminiscent in its scope of the imperialism of Charles V.

  The first two decades of the reign had been years of great difficulty for Philip II. A succession of events in the 1560s – the revolt of the Granada Moriscos, the stepping up of the Turkish naval attack, the revolt of the Netherlands, and the outbreak of the French wars of religion – had kept him consistently on the defensive. Although the danger in the Mediterranean receded after the victory at Lepanto, the 1570s were also sombre years, overshadowed by the failure to subdue the revolt in the Netherlands, and by the royal bankruptcy of 1575–6. The Crown's financial difficulties had in turn compelled the King to ask the Castilian Cortes of 1574–5 for a further tax increase – a request to which the Cortes responded by raising the encabezamiento again, until it stood at four times its level in the early years of Charles V. In practice, the new figure proved to be quite unrealistic. Many towns reverted to the practice of collecting the alcabala instead of compounding for it, with extremely unfortunate results. At Medina del Campo, for instance, the tax on sales, which had previously stood at only 1.2 per cent rose to 10 per cent with serious consequences for trade at the fairs. In the end, the difficulty of collecting the tax at the increased rate forced the Crown to retreat, and in 1577 Philip reduced the encabezamiento by a quarter, to some 2,700,000 ducats a year – a figure at which it remained for the rest of his reign.

  The inability of the Crown to extract more than some 2½ million ducats from the encabezamiento suggested that the traditional sources of revenue in Castile had been extended to their limits, and that, unless alternative sources of supply could be found, the King would be compelled to remain on the defensive. At this moment, however, the wealth of the Indies came to his rescue. The introduction of the amalgam of mercury into the refining of Peruvian silver was by now beginning to yield results, and during the second half of the 1570s there was a dramatic increase in the supplies of silver reaching the King from the New World. During the 1580s and 1590s Philip could expect to obtain some two to three million ducats a year from the treasure fleets. Trade between Seville and the New World reached new heights; the bankers, partially satisfied by the medio general or debt settlement of December 1577, began to recover confidence; and the fairs of Castile, having miraculously survived the bankruptcies of 1557 and 1575, enjoyed in the 1580s an Indian summer.

  This new largueza – abundance of money – gave Philip real freedom of manoeuvre for the first time in his reign. At last, after long years on the defensive, he could go over to the attack. It was because he had acquired this sudden accession of wealth that Philip was able to embark upon the bold projects and imperial ventures of the 1580s and 1590s: the plans for the recovery of the northern Netherlands, for a moment so close to achievement under the brilliant leadership of Alexander Farnese; the launching of the Armada against England in 1588: the intervention in the civil wars in France in the 1590s. These were the years of audacious enterprises, which give the lie to the legend of the ‘prudent’ king; years of a spectacular imperialism, which seemed for a moment as if it might make Philip the master of the world.

  While America provided the financial resources that subsidized the new imperialism, it acquired its geographical orientation from Philip's great success of 1580: the annexation of Portugal. The union of Portugal with the Spanish Crown gave Philip a new Atlantic seaboard, a fleet to help protect it, and a second empire which stretched from Africa to Brazil, and from Calicut to the Moluccas. It was the acquisition of these possessions, together with the new influx of precious metals, that made possible the imperialism of the second half of the reign. But the two events were by no means unrelated; for Portugal itself was won for Spain with American silver.

  The disastrous outcome of King Sebastian's African crusade of 1578 demoralized a nation already afflicted by a profound unease. Portugal under the House of Avis had achieved dazzling successes, but by the middle of the sixteenth century the gilt was flaking off the ornate edifice to reveal the flimsiness beneath. The Indian adventure had taken its toll of a nation with a population of only a million; Indian riches had helped to enervate the Portuguese governing class; and the country was ruled with increasing incompetence by a perenially bankrupt régime. But, beyond this, the economic basis of the Portuguese empire suffered from certain structural weaknesses which became more apparent as the century advanced. Essentially the Portuguese empire of the sixteenth century was an Asian empire, with Brazil as little more than a stepping-stone to a wealthy East. But in a world where Europe's trade balance with the Far East was permanently unfavourable, the Portuguese needed silver to purchase Asian spices. Unfortunately their empire, unlike that of their Spanish neighbours, contained no silver-mines. Increasingly, therefore, Portugal was forced to turn to Spain for the silver that the Spanish colonial empire alone could supply, and well before 1580 the prosperity of Lisbon had come to depend very closely on that of Seville.

  At a time when the country's economic future was already uncertain, its political future was hopelessly compromised by the disaster of Alcázarquivir. The King was dead and the dynasty threatened with imminent extinction; the nobility, which had followed Sebastian to the war, was either dead or held up to ransom for enormous sums which drained the country of its remaining stocks of silver; and the destruction of the army left the nation undefended. Cardinal Henry, aged and irresolute, was not the man to save his country in its hour of crisis. This was the moment for which Philip II had been waiting – a moment when he might at last hope to realize the old Trastámara ambition of unifying the entire peninsula beneath a single sceptre.

  Philip's plans were laid with the utmost care. The immediate task must be to win over Cardinal Henry and the Portuguese ruling class to recognition of his rights. He chose for this purpose Cristóbal de M
oura – a Portuguese who had come to the Court in the suite of John III of Portugal's widow, Philip's sister Juana, and had risen high in the favour of the king. With a liberal supply of Spanish silver at his disposal, Moura worked hard to undermine support for Philip's most dangerous rival, the Prior of Crato, and to dissipate aristocratic opposition to his master's succession.

  A few months before his death on 31 January 1580 the Cardinal was at last induced to favour openly the candidacy of Philip, and agreement was reached between him and Moura on the conditions under which Philip should receive the crown. But valuable as was Cardinal Henry's uneasy approval, it was not of itself sufficient to ensure Philip's smooth accession to his throne. This had become clear when the representatives of the towns made known their support for the Prior of Crato in the Cortes summoned on 9 January. The Portuguese populace was, by tradition, bitterly anti-Castilian, as also was the lower clergy. The result was that, although a majority favoured Philip's claims in the regency council which assumed the government on Cardinal Henry's death, the council dared not openly proclaim the Spanish succession.

  As soon as he heard the news of Henry's death, Granvelle realized that it was essential to act with speed, since there was a danger that

  Table 5 THE PORTUGUESE SUCCESSION

  the Pope might offer to mediate and the Prior of Crato secure assistance from England or France. Certain military preparations had already been made, and on Granvelle's insistence the Duke of Alba was summoned from his estates at Uceda to take command of the army for the invasion of Portugal. On the expiry of Philip's ultimatum to the Portuguese, the army was ordered to concentrate on the frontier near Badajoz, and it crossed into Portugal at the end of June. The supporters of Don Antonio put up some resistance, but Lisbon surrendered at the end of August, Don Antonio fled, and the Iberian peninsula was at last united beneath a single king.

  While the union with Castile was accepted with a very bad grace by the Portuguese populace, the aristocracy and the upper clergy generally supported the claims of Philip II. So also did the Portuguese Jesuits – somewhat unexpectedly in view of the fact that Philip had always kept their Spanish brethren at arm's length. In addition, Philip appears to have enjoyed the support of the business and mercantile class in the Portuguese towns, anxious for the American silver that only union with Castile could bring. For economic reasons Portugal at this moment needed the political connexion with Spain, and it is significant that the connexion continued as long as – but no longer than – it brought tangible benefits to the Portuguese economy.

  Yet while the economic advantages of a closer association with Castile may have helped to reconcile many influential Portuguese to the union, these advantages would probably have counted for little if Philip had chosen to disregard Portugal's traditional laws and system of government. This indeed is what Granvelle hoped the King would do. In Granvelle's opinion, Portugal's government and finances required drastic reorganization, and this could never be effected as long as the administration remained in native hands.

  Once again, therefore, Philip was confronted with a problem which ultimately related to the whole constitutional ordering of the Spanish Monarchy – the problem of how to treat a state which had come by inheritance to the Spanish Crown. This time there was no Eboli faction to press upon the King the virtues of a ‘liberal’ solution; but in spite of this, Philip rejected Granvelle's ideas and settled the government of Portugal in a manner that would have earned him the wholehearted approval of the Prince of Eboli. Having duly assembled the Portuguese Cortes at Thomar in April 1581, he took the oath to observe all the laws and customs of the realm, and was recognized in turn as the lawful King of Portugal. The Cortes also asked him to ratify the twenty-five articles agreed between Moura and Cardinal Henry shortly before the Cardinal's death. These articles consisted of a wide range of concessions, which in effect preserved Portugal as a virtually autonomous state. The King was to spend as much time as possible in Portugal, and if forced to absent himself, he would confer the vice-royalty on a member of the royal family or on a native; a Council of Portugal conducting all its business in Portuguese was to be set up in attendance on the King's person; posts, both in Portugal itself and in its colonies, were to be given only to Portuguese nationals, and Portuguese were to be appointed to the royal households; while customs barriers between Castile and Portugal were to be abolished, Portugal was to keep its own coinage; and trade with its overseas territories was to remain exclusively in Portuguese hands.

  These articles were accepted by Philip II and were to serve as the basis of the Portuguese governmental system during the country's sixty years of union with Castile. The fact that Philip was prepared both to accept them and (apart from the restoration of the customs barriers in 1593) to abide by them, is highly significant, for it shows that, in spite of the disappearance of the Eboli party, the King had not given way to the ‘Castilian’ solution to the problems of the Monarchy. Possibly because he had been shaken by events in the Netherlands, but more probably because of his inherited conception and innate sense of the proper relationship between himself and his peoples, he accepted the union of the Portuguese Crown to his own on terms that were essentially ‘Aragonese’ in spirit. Portugal was united to Castile in 1580 in exactly the same way as the Crown of Aragon had been united to Castile a hundred years before, preserving its own laws, institutions, and monetary system, and united only in sharing a common sovereign.

  But this extension of the traditional method of union to yet another territory raised problems similar to those which had already been encountered in other parts of the Monarchy. If the King of each was also the King of all, how could his obligations to one individual kingdom be squared with his obligations to all the rest? The failure to solve this problem had played its part in the outbreak of the Netherlands revolt. There was no reason to believe that the Portuguese would find it any easier than the Dutch to reconcile themselves to the rule of an absentee and semi-alien King.

  For a moment it seemed that this adjustment might not perhaps be required of them. During 1581 and 1582 Philip remained in Lisbon, leaving Granvelle to run the administration in Madrid. In many ways this was not a satisfactory division of power, for the separation of King and Minister merely widened the rift that was rapidly growing between them. Philip, as was natural, wanted to consolidate his position in Portugal. Granvelle, on the other hand, was anxious to press ahead with schemes for the recovery of the Low Countries. These, he believed, necessitated an immediate break with France and England, and a switch to a militantly imperial policy. The unpopularity of Granvelle's government among the Castilians, together with the policy disagreements between the King and his Minister, made it clear that Philip could not remain indefinitely in Portugal. Finally, in March 1583, to the chagrin of the Portuguese, he left Lisbon for Madrid, having appointed his nephew, the Archduke Albert, as Governor of the country.

  To his great distress, Granvelle found that the King's return to Madrid failed to remove the differences between them. It had confidently been expected that the death of Granvelle's enemy, the Duke of Alba, in December 1582 would heal the breach between the Cardinal and the King, but between March and August 1583 Philip summoned Granvelle only twice to a private audience. The unfortunate Minister was beginning to discover for himself the truth of an assertion once made by his rival, Alba, that ‘kings treat men like oranges. They go for the juice, and once they have sucked them dry, they throw them aside’.7 Philip was now turning less and less to the Cardinal for advice. In 1583 he created a special new Junta to assist him in the task of government, which came to be known as the Junta de Noche. The Junta included Cristóbal de Moura (now the King's closest favourite), the Counts of Chinchón and Barajas, Mateo Vázquez, and Granvelle's colleague Juan de Idiáquez. The name of Granvelle was conspicuous by its absence.

  ‘I do not know what is going to happen,’ wrote the disgruntled Cardinal to Idiáquez, ‘but I have no wish to take part in the final ruin, towards whic
h they are moving with their eyes closed. All business is left in the air; the administration is dominated by corrupt and dishonest officials who are not to be trusted, and the same is happening in judicial and financial affairs and in the running of the army and the fleet.’8 Deeply disillusioned, he died on 21 September 1586, frustrated to the last in his desire to serve a Monarchy which to him was still the Monarchy of his revered master, the Emperor Charles V.

  No doubt Granvelle had been a difficult and cantankerous character, too intransigent and authoritarian to preserve the favour of Philip II. No doubt, also, his mental outlook belonged to an imperial epoch remote from the very different epoch of the 1580s. Yet he possessed a breadth of vision and a capacity for general strategy which were badly needed at this juncture in the affairs of Philip II. Granvelle appreciated, for instance, that if the annexation of Portugal had created new difficulties for Spain, it also brought it unparalleled opportunities. It had given Spain a great accession of naval strength, making the combined Spanish and Portuguese merchant fleets the largest in the world: 250,000–300,000 tons, against the 232,000 tons of the Netherlands and the 42,000 of England. It had also given Spain a long Atlantic seaboard at a moment when the Atlantic was becoming the major battlefield between the Spanish Monarchy and the powers of northern Europe. Having providentially secured these wonderful advantages, it would be folly for Philip II to waste them.

  Yet wasted they were. In 1585 Granvelle urged Philip to transfer his Government to Lisbon. Here, in Granvell's view, was the perfect observation post for surveying the new Atlantic battlefield. From Lisbon, with its easy maritime communications to the nerve-centres of the world, Philip could have maintained effective control over the vast struggle now unfolding in western Europe and on the waters of the Atlantic. From here he could have directed the operations against England and the intervention in France. But the King elected instead to remain in the heart of Castile, far removed from the area of conflict; and by the middle of the 1590s it was already clear that Spain had lost the battle of the Atlantic. The ‘final ruin’ prophesied by Granvelle was approaching – a ruin precipitated by the victories of the Protestant powers of the north. The ruin might conceivably have been averted if the strategic opportunities that had come to Spain through the acquisition of Portugal had been more effectively exploited; but the opportunities were ignored, and it was not long before Portugal, with all that it had to offer, became little more than another burdensome addition to the increasingly unmanageable inheritance of the Spanish Habsburgs.