Philip of Spain
Page 17
During the last stages of the council Philip was at Monzón, from where he handled a voluminous correspondence relating to its sessions, through his special envoy the count of Luna. Philip reiterated his view that the council was ‘the one true remedy that remains’.126 He sent proposals for reforms, in his own handwriting. He instructed Luna to block moves by English clergy to outlaw the queen of England, a move that ‘would be futile’.127 The council of Trent closed at the end of 1563 and its decrees were issued formally by the pope in June 1564. Two weeks later, on 12 July, Philip in Madrid accepted the decrees as the law of Spain. He was the first European ruler to do so.
Almost simultaneously, following conflicts over precedence between the French and Spanish ambassadors in Rome, he broke off relations with the papacy. ‘Touching the Council,’ he explained, ‘His Holiness sent me the text of its decrees printed in Rome, and I accepted them and ordered them observed in all my realms and lordships, as an obedient son of Holy Mother Church … Touching the question of precedence, I ordered the recall of my ambassador and his return to these realms, and have decided to have no ambassador or any other agent there.’128
The king's remarkable dual policy, of accepting Trent while questioning papal politics, won extensive support among Catholics in Europe. When Catherine de’ Medici, who was struggling to keep the allegiance of her own Catholics, heard that Philip had accepted the council, ‘she was taken aback, and said, “Surely not all of it?”’129 But the acceptance was indeed complete. The following January Philip convened his royal council in order to prepare plans for implementing Trent in Spain.
The provincial councils called by Philip in 1565 were a landmark in the history of the peninsular Church.130 Philip's religious policy was forward-looking, and by no means a mere imposition of traditional Catholicism. He gave full and enthusiastic support to the novelties introduced by Trent. Root and branch reform of all religious orders, the disciplining of all clergy, education of parish priests, reform of religious practice among both laity and clergy, abolition of the old mass and old rites, adoption of a new mass, a new prayer book, a new calendar, the training of missionaries and the establishment of schools: all of this was a formidable modernising programme which the king attempted to implement.131 His attempts to reshape the religious orders were no less ruthless than the measures undertaken by reformers in the England of Henry VIII. Monasteries and convents all over Spain were occupied by soldiers and closed, monks and nuns expelled, property confiscated. Never a religious conservative, Philip accepted changes with enthusiasm and contributed personally to textual changes in the Spanish mass.132 By contrast, many of his clergy refused to accept in any way the changes resulting from Trent.
At the same time, the progress of heresy in the Netherlands and France made the king aware how vulnerable Spain was. The apparently firm measures taken in 1558–9 appeared, in retrospect, inadequate. Spaniards continued to go abroad to study and to trade, books continued to enter the peninsula without hindrance. The 1558 measures had applied not to all Spain but only to Castile. This left the entire northern frontier of the Pyrenees, and the entire Mediterranean coast, unaffected. In 1565 there were Aragonese, Navarrese and Catalan students at the university of Toulouse. When Philip heard of it, he made a note to recall them.133 But it was three years before he eventually, in 1568, extended to the crown of Aragon the order not to study in France. In an age when no adequate border controls existed, and few were aware of or paid attention to the laws, little could be done to enforce the wishes of the government. Friars and nuns crossed the frontier and went to Geneva, the centre of international Calvinism. Books printed in Spanish and Basque were smuggled across the frontier.134 In Catalonia the inquisitors claimed they were unable to stop the quantity of books crossing into Spain.
As part of his policy, the king tried to keep a watch on Spaniards living outside the country. Around 1560 his ambassador in London, Quadra, reported that Spanish Protestants were flocking to that city. ‘Every day they arrive, with their wives and children, and many more are expected.’135 Philip's father had in the 1540s condoned the occasional seizure outside Spain of Castilians who became active Protestants. They were packed off home and made to face the music there. The intention was not, as a subsequent ambassador of Philip in England explained, to eliminate them but to keep an eye on them and hope that others would take the hint and mend their ways.136 The selective kidnapping was carried out most actively by Villavicencio and Alonso del Canto, who were sponsored by secretary Eraso. With the help of special funds, they set up a little network to spy on Spanish émigrés living in England, the Netherlands and Germany. Their most notable success was in persuading the famous humanist Furió Ceriol to return to Spain in 1563. In the process, they collected valuable information on Spanish Protestants abroad,137 and also became experts on the religious situation in the north. Philip came to value highly Villavicencio's information-packed but often venomous reports on personalities in the Netherlands.
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Throughout the spring of 1565, while Philip was busy with the immediate issues of Egmont, the provincial councils, and Catherine de’ Medici, a major preoccupation haunted his thoughts and his correspondence: the Turkish threat. From his foreign ambassadors he kept trying to obtain the latest information about the movements and intentions of the Ottoman naval forces. Meanwhile a major shipbuilding programme was put in hand.138 Subsidies which Philip was receiving from the pope could now be seen to be well spent. ‘The pope has his eyes on us,’ the king commented.139 In August 1564 the newly appointed commander of Spain's Mediterranean ships, García de Toledo, managed to put together an impressive fleet which captured the rocky fortress of Vélez de la Gomera on the north African coast.
Next year it was the turn of the Turks. When news arrived of a Turkish fleet in April 1565 the first impression was that it was headed for the fortress of La Goletta. In May 1565, however, the fleet attacked the island of Malta, which was defended principally by the knights of St John, under their commander Jean de La Valette. The island was overrun, and the knights were left defending a few forts. The position of the Christian forces became desperate. While they continued to resist, García de Toledo was able to put together a large relief fleet which effected troop landings and, in early September, forced the Turks to raise the siege. The news reached Spain in early October. The success made up for previous disasters and Philip's reputation was immeasurably enhanced.
After Malta, there could be no doubt of Spain as a serious Mediterranean power. But Philip did not set his sights on dominating the inland sea. He was neither an imperialist nor a crusader.140 Even less was he, like Don Juan later, an adventurer. He limited his horizons strictly to a defensive role, and was always watchful of the cost.
Tension continued within Spain, where the events of the year excited the Morisco population and gave rise all autumn to rumours of uprisings and of an invasion to be sponsored by Algiers.141 The relief of Malta was, for all that, a significant advance. It enabled Philip immediately to readjust his priorities in western Europe. Above all, it brought the Netherlands to the forefront of the agenda.
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In the course of 1565 a significant shift in policies and personnel began to take place in government. Ruy Gómez felt that the changes had begun in 1564, when the king appointed him as chamberlain to the household of Don Carlos. Philip explained at the time that he would not entrust his heir to anyone except Eboli. But Eboli felt, with reason, that his new duties would remove him to some extent from the politics of the court. His fears were justified. Replacing him for the talks at Bayonne was a clear pointer. Other changes in state personnel, notably the rise to influence of the obscure priest Diego de Espinosa, also affected Eboli's position. There were, however, clear policy reasons for Philip's change of tack. Ruy Gómez was a personal friend of Egmont, Homes and other leading Flemish nobles. He had worked with them at Philip's side in the Netherlands and in England, appreciated their views and interceded for them with Ph
ilip. The king now began to distance himself from Eboli's approach to these problems. At this juncture the disgrace of secretary Francisco de Eraso took place.
Since Philip's return Eraso had, through his links with Ruy Gómez, exercised a firm control over several aspects of administration. He was also actively in touch with the parties in the Netherlands. Egmont and Orange found him sympathetic. Granvelle, by contrast, quickly discovered that Eraso was his enemy. The turbulent politics of the Netherlands was in this way directly linked to personal ambitions at the Spanish court. Early in 1565 an investigation (visita), of the sort which the king sprang from time to time on his officials, was ordered into aspects of financial administration.142 Eraso and Francisco de Garnica were the chief officials affected. Eboli was obliged to distance himself from Eraso, and was in fact given the job of announcing the verdicts, early in April 1566. Eraso was fined a large sum and deprived of several of his offices. ‘He resented it and complained bitterly’ because his friends (by implication, Ruy Gomez) had failed to support him.143 He continued to play a role in the administration, until his death in 1570, but his changed functions signified a shift of the king's sympathies away from Eboli's group to the tougher line being pushed by Alba and Granvelle.
5
Towards Total War 1566–1572
The flames are spreading everywhere.1
Philip's incessant search for peace was fuelled by his knowledge that Spain did not have the means to wage war. He had always said so. Other nations, seeing the vast range of his territories, preferred to believe that he had expansionist aims. From 1566, the outbreak of seemingly minor conflicts in different parts of the globe forced Spain to upgrade its war capability, a move that had profound implications for the Castilian treasury.
Philip ruled over a collection of states that both then and later was dubbed an ‘empire’ but in reality was more like a confederation. The major partners in the confederation (or ‘monarchy’, as Spaniards of the time called it) were in principle independent of each other. They shared a common sovereign, the king of Spain, to whom they periodically contributed sums of money as a gesture of loyalty. Apart from this, the various states had no obligations to each other and few to Spain. Over the years, the presence of Castilian officials, and the demands of the emperor for money, had made inroads into this theoretical autonomy. Like his father before him, Philip found that the great advantage in ruling so many states was the ability to raise war revenues from them.
The disaster of Djerba and the urgent demands of the relief of Malta brought the problem of war to the fore. Philip's entire lifetime had been one of peace within the country. The Spain that he knew, though occasionally menaced by alarms, had not been at war with any other state. In 1568 the Sevillan writer Juan de Mal Lara celebrated the ‘calm enjoyed in general happiness by the entire kingdom’.2 War was a distant reality, fought in Italy or Flanders or on the Danube. Only the marauding of north African corsairs disturbed this tranquillity. ‘The peace that has reigned here for so many years’3 was blamed by a minister in the 1560s for the poor state of defence. Another commented that ‘our Spain … is badly in need of the practice of arms and warfare’; and claimed that ‘since our time has been one of universal peace, military discipline is much decayed’.4 A visiting ambassador shared the same opinion. ‘The lengthy peace, quiet and tranquillity’, in his view, contributed to the lack of military vitality among Spaniards.5
Surprisingly for a world power, Spain had no standing army or navy. If Spaniards became soldiers, they did so in order to serve abroad, as minority contingents in other armies. When the duke of Alba commanded the forces that unsuccessfully besieged Metz in 1552, about a sixth of his men were Spaniards. Most serving soldiers came inevitably from Castile, but there were never enough of them to meet needs. The government relied heavily on being able to recruit foreign troops, mainly Germans, Netherlanders and Italians.6 They were used even in the peninsula, where foreign troops defended Perpignan against the French in 1542. Spain also had no regular navy. Fleets were pieced together when occasion demanded, by contributions from different states. For normal security needs in the Mediterranean, the government used the contracted services of the fleet owned by the Genoese admiral, prince Andrea Doria. The Castilian treasury, which oversaw military expenditure, was still trying to work off the debts of Charles V, and was in no position to take on new commitments. The only priority adopted was defence against the Turk.
Spain had little money to spare for war. The different states of the monarchy, including the provinces of the crown of Aragon, raised money largely for internal needs. The cost of war abroad consequently fell mainly on Castile. Government income here was totally pledged, thanks largely to the expenditure of Charles V, and the accumulated debt was immense. This made it difficult to obtain loans from international bankers like the Fuggers. The king was helped to some extent by the silver that arrived from America, but he also had to fall back continually on the Castilian taxpayer.
From the 1560s the king tried to build up Spain into the military power it needed to be. His first concern was the Mediterranean. Within a decade he managed to secure a fleet of galleys possibly four times as large as that which had been available to his father,7 an achievement that would not have been possible without the contribution of the Italian states of the monarchy. Despite the build-up, Spain never became self-sufficient in defence matters. It continued to rely heavily on help from its partners in the monarchy. When the Morisco rebellion broke out in Granada in 1569, the government had to import virtually all the weapons it required for its campaigns. Field-guns, which Spain did not have, were imported in quantity from Milan and Flanders.8 Thanks to this military expenditure, from 1566 Philip's relations with the Castilian taxpayer, as represented in the Cortes, deteriorated rapidly. In December 1566 Cortes deputies were beginning to complain about the cost of fitting out an army for Flanders.9 The king, however, had no option but to press for more revenue, both from the Cortes and from the clergy.
Spain was the only European country with direct access to American silver. In some sense, the resources of the New World made Spanish foreign policy possible. The monopoly was therefore vigorously protected and, where possible, firm action was taken against intruders. At the beginning of 1566 the French ambassador in Madrid, Fourquevaux, received firm news about a massacre of his fellow-countrymen in Florida. A group of Huguenots, patronised by the Admiral of France, Gaspard de Coligny, had begun since 1562 to colonise the Florida coast. The Spanish authorities considered them heretics, pirates, and intruders in territory that was patently Spanish. Consequently the French settlers were surprised in September 1565 by a special expedition under the command of Pero Menéndez de Avilés. Over 250 Frenchmen were killed and their women and children taken prisoner. The news did not become public in Madrid until mid-February 1566 whereupon Fourquevaux immediately asked the king for an audience. Not until 1 April did Philip concede him one.
In an angry protest the ambassador denounced the carnage and brutality of the attack. ‘I have borne arms for forty years,’ he said, ‘and in that time the forces of the two crowns have often combated each other, but never once has such an execrable deed occurred.’10 With his accustomed courtesy, the king heard him through. At the end he spoke. ‘I told him [Philip reported] that I was distressed that the matter should have come, as it had, to the shedding of blood’.11 They were, however, invaders and heretics, who had obviously gone to Florida without the approval of the French government. The action (which the king described as ‘an exemplary punishment’) would serve to discourage others. He made use of a telling phrase in his explanation to Fourquevaux: ‘to preserve kingdoms and states it is sometimes necessary to depart from the norm in order to repel aggression (une violence)’.12
America was the back door through which unexpected threats might materialise. Since it was quite impossible to resort to normal methods of defence there, the king knew he had to strike hard if at all possible. Other states of the monarchy h
elped with their resources. In 1566, the Spanish government was shipping large quantities of armaments from the Netherlands to Florida.13 But problems continued to emerge in the New World. In Peru the long-standing rebellion of the Incas, secure in their mountain fortress of Vilcabamba, called for a strong Spanish response. Rebellions by white Spanish settlers also continued to pose difficulties.
Because America had the status of a mere colony, it did not possess constitutional privileges that the king had to respect. Rebels there could be punished out of hand. This tough line, pursued by Philip's officials in America, was not so easy to adopt in Europe. The Netherlands, now the king's number one problem in the Old World, was an autonomous state. His advisers, both in Brussels and in Spain, urged him to go there in person to settle affairs.