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Philip of Spain

Page 19

by Henry Kamen


  In the four months of 1567 that it took Alba to reach Brussels, the king must have been beset with doubts about the correctness of his decision. His advisers in the council of State were evenly divided about the wisdom of intervention, and most outside the council were against it.44 Four- quevaux reported the feeling, ‘general in this court’, that what he called ‘this Turkish-type army’ would merely unite Catholics and heretics in Flanders against it.45 The news from Margaret in April that the situation was under control, served only to deepen the king's worry.

  But two separate events helped to confirm his resolve. The decisive factor, strangely enough, may have had nothing directly to do with the Netherlands. In the spring of 1567 Philip received information about a plot by a group of young nobles in Mexico to seize power there. They were allegedly led by the marquis del Valle, Martín Cortés, son of the famous conqueror and a personal friend of the king. Some of the ‘conspirators’ were summarily executed in Mexico in July 1566. A new viceroy arrived two months later, and ordered the transportation to Spain of the marquis, together with the relevant papers. Cortés and the documents reached Spain early in 1567.46 With memories of the Pizarro revolt in his mind, and evidence now of yet another possible insurrection, the king had no doubts. Revolt could not be tolerated, either in the Netherlands or in Mexico. He sent a team of judges to Mexico to deal with the case.47

  The second item to strengthen Philip's resolve came that summer. In the first week of August a letter arrived from his brother-in-law, the emperor Maximilian II, informing Philip of the military leagues between German Protestant princes, Orange (who had fled to Germany in April 1567) and other Flemings. The news brought tears to the king's eyes.48 He had been fully justified in sending the army.

  It was a more confident Philip (cheered, moreover, by the birth to Elizabeth in October of another daughter, Catalina) who now faced the Netherlands problem. On 9 September Alba began the great repression by arresting Egmont, Hornes and a number of other Flemish notables. Philip could almost see the end in sight. ‘I am thoroughly pleased and satisfied with everything you are doing,’ he wrote in reply to Alba's letter of 9 September. ‘I cannot but stress that you have greatly satisfied me’.49 ‘With the energy and vigour you are applying to affairs, I feel that their resolution is in sight … Here too the arrest was made at the opportune time of M. de Montigny, whom I ordered taken to the castle of Segovia … After the imprisonment of Montigny, I also ordered the arrest of Vandenesse and his transfer to the same castle.’50 At court Fourquevaux observed that ‘they say here that the need now is not for soft words with the Flemings but severity and the bloody sword. Never was the king more happy and content.’51 In November the king wrote to Alba: ‘you have a free hand’.52

  The duke's campaign was ruthless and struck terror into all. Both Calvinists and Catholics were swept into the net. The policy shocked since it appeared to be indiscriminate. The first executions and confiscations were limited to those who had participated in the troubles of 1566–7. Any government trying to impose order would have done the same. By the end of 1567 the Netherlands lay passive under the hard heel of Alba. All the Calvinist leaders and dissident Catholic nobles were either in confinement or had fled abroad. As though conscious of the outrage done to two of the leading knights of the Golden Fleece, Egmont and Hornes, Philip on 30 November did not celebrate the order's feast-day publicly in Madrid, as he usually did, but crept away to the convent of Esperanza, near Aranjuez, where he celebrated it alone.53

  Up to this point Philip seems to have approved wholly of Alba's policy. Rebels could expect no quarter. ‘The worst corner into which princes can be driven,’ he observed at this time, ‘is having to make agreements with rebel subjects.’54 He was less clear about what came next. ‘The king has no intention,’ Alba reassured a correspondent, ‘of shedding blood. If he can find another way of resolving this business, he will take it.’ The same day he told the king that ‘the peace of these states cannot be achieved by cutting off heads’.55 In November Philip forwarded to Alba for his consideration some papers from Villavicencio. Philip seems to have considered the friar's views reasonable; they were, indeed, both interesting and prophetic. Villavicencio claimed that Alba's task was now done. The situation, he insisted to the king, could not be resolved with an army. Nor must force be used against the Netherlanders, for that would unite them all against Spain. They would fight to defend what was theirs. Spaniards could not be allowed to govern in the country, ‘for they neither know the language nor understand the laws and customs’. The only solution was for the king to go there at once.56 It was one of the tragedies of this complex situation that Philip ignored the policy advice and simply sent the documents on to Alba. He did the same thing three months later when Hopperus sent him papers with similar advice and,57 and the duke was allowed to make the decisions.

  The king's decision to go in person to Flanders had been put off several times. Philip was not enthusiastic about going, but faced the commitment squarely. In December a special meeting of the Cortes was called. At the opening ceremony on the eleventh in the Alcázar of Madrid Francisco de Eraso read the king's speech in which he confirmed his intention of going north. The dismayed deputies protested against yet another absence, but in June 1567, when he finally dissolved the Cortes, Philip insisted on the need to go. By July the final details were arranged. Ships, provisions and soldiers, all put together at great expense, were standing by in the northern port of Laredo. The costs were frightening: Eboli estimated they came to 200,000 ducats. It was proposed that Juana act again as regent, since Don Carlos was to accompany the king and Elizabeth was advanced in pregnancy.

  Still the king delayed. He was waiting, he explained later, for news from Alba. At last, on the night of 21 August, he heard for the first time of Alba's safe arrival in Brussels. By then it was obviously too late to sail. The weather conditions would not allow it. In September 1567 orders were given for the supplies in Laredo to be removed from the ships, and for the soldiers to be dismissed. Foreign observers suspected that the king had never intended to go. The preparations, some felt, had been part of an elaborate deception. The French ambassador was more realistic: the formal assurances and costly preparations were, he considered, too real to be a mere smokescreen. Above all, Philip's explanation to the pope, who more than anyone had urged the visit, had the ring of truth about it. There were two preconditions for his trip, the king wrote.58 First, he had to hear of Alba's arrival; but the duke had been delayed. Second, Alba had to carry out ‘certain acts which must precede my departure’. These acts included, apparently, the arrest of Egmont and Hornes, which Philip learned of only on 19 September. The strategy, explained the king, was ‘first to use the severity of justice, then afterwards use clemency and kindness’. The former had to be done in his absence, the latter in his presence.

  There was also another reason for the cancellation, impossible to divulge. Philip in 1567 feared for the stability of his throne in Spain. There was no way he could leave the country now, risking his life in the hazards of the journey to Flanders. The problem was his son and heir, Don Carlos.

  *

  Don Carlos's health remained poor after his accident in 1561. He was unwell in the spring of 1564 and could not accompany Philip on the visit to the crown of Aragon. That June, when the new Imperial ambassador Adam von Dietrichstein arrived, he appeared to be much better. Dietrichstein sent the emperor a description of the prince: ‘brown curly hair, long in the jaw, pale of face … One of his shoulders is slightly higher than the other. He has a sunken chest, and a little lump on his back, at waist height. His left leg is much longer than his right … he has weak legs. His voice is harsh and sharp, he has problems in speaking and the words come with difficulty from his mouth’. Unlike the Venetian ambassador, who thought the prince downright ugly, Dietrichstein thought he had a normal aspect. He noted, however, Don Carlos's violent nature, his intemperate speech, and his gluttony.59

  Despite his obvious def
iciencies, the prince was intelligent and usually gentle. Philip had no doubts about letting him take part in meetings of the council of State from June 1564 onwards. A year later, in June 1565, he also let Don Juan of Austria participate. The idea of marriage for the prince was mooted. There was no lack of possibles for the hand of the heir to Spain. Mary queen of Scots seemed in 1563 a strong candidate. Then in 1564 it was virtually agreed that he would marry Anna, the daughter of the emperor Maximilian.

  Don Carlos's life pursued two parallel courses, one normal and one bizarre. The bizarre aspects became the subject of court gossip and of grave concern to the king. The prince developed an attachment to the queen which took the form of buying her expensive jewels. He periodically vented his temper on servants and was particularly cruel to animals. On one occasion he took a liking to a horse that the king specially prized. He persuaded Philip's master of the horse, Antonio de Toledo, to let him ride it. The horse was ridden cruelly, and died of its wounds.

  The political aspects of Don Carlos's behaviour were the most serious. In his farewell speech to the States of the Netherlands in 1559, the king had promised to send Don Carlos to govern the provinces. But the prince's conduct made it plain he was not suited to the task. That he did not go to the Netherlands became Don Carlos's most profound grievance against his father. When Alba in April 1567 was taking his leave of the king at Aranjuez, Don Carlos protested that it was he, not Alba, who should be going to Brussels. He openly threatened (in one version, he actually attempted) to kill the duke. His only comfort was that his father was also planning to go, taking himself and Don Juan. When Philip later cancelled the sailing, Don Carlos was furious. He threatened to kill his father. The tension at court was profound. ‘If God does not send a remedy,’ the French ambassador reported, ‘some great mischance may happen.’60

  From threats Don Carlos proceeded to action.61 He wrote letters to the grandees, asking for their support. He plotted to escape from court and take ship for Italy. He asked Don Juan to help in his schemes. After trying in vain to reason with him, Don Juan galloped off to inform the king at San Lorenzo. It was Christmas Day, 1567. Philip consulted with his councillors. He returned to Madrid on 17 January, his mind made up. Just before midnight on 18 January, he called together the four active members of the council of State, and went with them and four aides to the bedroom of the prince. The king wore armour and a helmet. They entered silently, and seized all the weapons and papers in the room. The prince stirred, and asked sleepily, ‘Who is it?’ The answer came, ‘The council of State.’ Don Carlos rose, and saw his father, in armour. ‘Has Your Majesty come to kill me?’ he asked. Philip reassured him. The aides removed all heavy objects and nailed up the windows. In a brief exchange of words with the prince, Philip said he would now treat him not as a father ought to but as a king should. The councillors and king withdrew. The prince remained shut up in a tower of the Alcázar, watched over by a permanent guard of two, doing shifts of six hours at a time.

  It was the beginning of the most profoundly depressing period in the whole of the king's life. On the following day he began sending out brief letters of information, first to the Imperial ambassador and then to other governments, realms and authorities in Spain. The queen, who was informed that morning, burst into tears. Don Carlos had never been anything but kind to her. ‘She has not stopped crying for two days,’ the French ambassador reported.62

  The king was very likely in a state of shock. Outside his small circle, few understood the real situation. Weeks later, Philip sent an intimate explanation of the whole matter to the pope, written in his own hand. The prince, he said, was guilty neither of heresy nor of rebellion, as rumours had alleged. He was, quite simply, ‘completely lacking in the capacity needed for ruling over states’. The pope sympathised, hoping that this chastisement would set the prince to rights. It was the common impression in Vienna, Rome and London, that the king was simply meting out a punishment. The truth is that something more terrible than mere punishment was involved. The king had by his own decision deprived himself of a successor. ‘What has been done,’ he wrote in his own hand to the emperor in May, ‘is not temporary nor susceptible to any change in the future.’63 Don Carlos's confinement was to be permanent. The gravity of the decision clearly left Philip shaken. He did not stir from the Alcázar in months, not even to go to Aranjuez or San Lorenzo.64 When in subsequent weeks foreign ambassadors screwed up the courage to express their sympathy, the king scowled at them. ‘His Majesty always speaks to me and to the others with a smile,’ said the Genoese ambassador, ‘but on this point he was sharp, curt, and diffident.’65 The French ambassador said the king looked ‘gloomy and depressed’.66 Astonishingly, he still entertained hopes of going to Flanders. He wrote in mid-March to Francés de Álava in France: ‘the matter of the prince will not be an obstacle to my visit to Flanders, which I desire and must carry out now more than ever’.67

  The reaction outside the palace was one of total stupefaction. In France and the Netherlands the wildest stories circulated. Madrid itself was full of rumours. The most shrewd found it wisest not to talk about the matter; others expressed the opinion that the king had been too severe.68 Flemish officials writing home from the capital spoke of incredible rumours, and of murmuring among the nobility. The palace, said the French ambassador Fourquevaux, was in a state of fear.69 He conveyed to the French king the explanation he had received from Ruy Gómez on behalf of Philip. For at least three years Philip had been convinced that the prince ‘was even more unwell in mind than in body’. The king had waited in the hope that matters would improve, but in vain.70

  In confinement the conduct of Don Carlos grew worse. He tried to kill himself by not eating for weeks. Then he swallowed one of his rings in the belief that diamonds are poisonous. The king meanwhile tried to justify his severity by holding a public inquiry into the prince's conduct.71 He personally attended some of the sessions in an attempt to provide some background information. As summer approached, Don Carlos subjected himself to extreme changes of temperature by covering his bed with ice. All this had its effect. He fell ill, and died in the early hours of 24 July, aged twenty-three. His body was buried with honours in the church of St Domingo in Madrid. From there it was transferred in 1573 to San Lorenzo. The court went into mourning for a year.

  Antonio Pérez claimed later that the king ‘wept three days for his son’.72 If he wept, it was probably not from mere sorrow, for Philip had never felt close to his son. The whole story, rather, had been a tragedy. The loss was soon overtaken by another. Elizabeth never fully recovered from the birth of Catalina the preceding October. She became pregnant again, but also fell ill. In mid-September she began to have fevers and faints. The king was at her bedside when she died, aged only twenty-two, on 3 October 1568. Philip reported that she died ‘after a still-birth an hour and a half before of a girl of four or five months, who was baptised and went to heaven with her mother’. His grief was profound, ‘to suffer so great a loss after that of the prince my son. But I accept to the best of my ability the divine will which ordains as it pleases.’73

  The sequence of deaths in Philip's family could not fail to arouse rumour and speculation. The most extravagant stories circulated in Madrid. Foreign opinion, in large measure unsympathetic to the king, lapped up the gossip and further elaborated the narrative. Respectable historians of the time, such as the French annalist de Thou, published accounts which hinted at foul play. Philip's private grief was therefore only one aspect of the cross he had to bear. The other was the irredeemably sinister reputation that the tragedies in his family, joined to the tragedies being perpetrated in his name in Flanders, bestowed on him in the eyes of many contemporaries.

  *

  The repression in the Netherlands, instead of solving a crucial problem, elicited bitter criticism from every major European state. Alba was unrepentant about his tough policy convinced that the population must remain in a state of fear, ‘so that every individual has the feeling th
at one fine night or morning the house will fall in on him’.74

  Of the leading dissidents who escaped from Alba's hands, only William of Orange remained. Tall, dark-haired, with a small moustache and a short peaked beard, the prince of Orange-Nassau was aged thirty-five at the moment that fortune left him in the unenviable role of defender of his country.75 A comrade-in-arms of Philip during the latter's years abroad in mid-century, he never made a secret of his concern for the privileges of his class or of his dislike for religious dogmatism. Widowed in 1558, in 1561 he married Anne, the Lutheran daughter of the late Maurice of Saxony. The marriage, celebrated in Leipzig,76 gave him a useful link with the princes of the Holy Roman Empire. When news came of Alba's departure from Spain, Orange opportunely took refuge in Germany. It became clear that the only way to regain the Netherlands was by the use of an army. In the course of 1568 Orange sponsored invasions by several small forces, which entered from France and from Germany. All were defeated. Captured prisoners gave details of Orange's links with Protestants in several countries. The invasions could not fail to affect the fate of the distinguished prisoners in Alba's hands. On 5 June 1568, in the public square of Brussels, the counts of Egmont and Hornes were beheaded for high treason.

  The executions shocked opinion throughout Europe. The two nobles, as knights of the Golden Fleece, could be tried only by their peers. But Philip, grand master of the order, had cleared the way for the trial by a special patent which he had drawn up in April 1567 and sent to Alba in December.77 There is no doubt that Philip considered Egmont responsible for much of the trouble in Flanders, but the pressure for an exemplary punishment came rather from the members of his council, particularly (it seems)78 from cardinal Espinosa. Alba had always regretted the need to arrest the two counts, whom ‘I have always loved and esteemed as my own brothers’.79 According to some, he was reluctant to proceed to execution.80 Philip wrote formally to Alba: ‘I very deeply regret that the offences of the counts were so serious that they called for the punishment that has been carried out’.81 The remorse, which came too late, was probably sincere. The counts were victims of a political crisis. Their names, interestingly enough, continued to be held in honour at the Spanish court. A book on the events of Flanders published in Castile a few years later, when all books had to be licensed by the royal council, referred to them as ‘outstanding princes, well loved and of the highest and finest character’.82

 

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