by Henry Kamen
Treasure from the New World was opportune help. While the king was preoccupied with the threat from Muslim expansionism in the Mediterranean, he found time to make a series of far-reaching decisions concerning America. In 1569 he appointed to the viceroyalty of Peru a member of Alba's family, Francisco de Toledo, who had already distinguished himself in the royal service. During his twelve momentous years in Peru, Toledo put into effect a series of reforms that pacified the territory and laid the basis for Spain's colonial rule. In 1572 he managed to seize and then execute the last emperor of the Incas, Tupac Amaru. It was the opening of a new phase of consolidation in America. In 1568 Philip had summoned a special committee in Madrid to revise the laws governing the New World territories. The new legislation, issued five years later, emphasised the government's commitment to the principle of peaceful imperialism. When Miguel López de Legazpi began his settlement of the Philippine Islands in 1569, he was specifically ordered by the king not to use force. Philip's instructions were based on the views of the Salamanca professor Francisco de Vitoria, and those of Las Casas, who aimed to avoid the bloodshed that had marked the conquest of Mexico and Peru a generation before. By the time of Legazpi's death in 1572 he had brought about a relatively bloodless occupation of the islands.150
In 1571 the king appointed Juan López de Velasco as ‘cosmographer- chronicler’ of the Indies, to draw up a survey of America and compose an official history of the conquest. This was the period when other great cultural enterprises, such as the General History of the Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagún, received royal backing. It appeared to be the beginning of an era of promise in the New World. But the promise was one-sided. Viceroy Toledo's measures severely disadvantaged the Indians. New harsh measures were taken against their religion. The Inquisition, which had operated in an informal way until now, was set up in Lima in 1570 and in Mexico City in 1571. The Indians were soon exempted from its control, but the very presence of the new tribunal was a sign of the times.
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The successful relief of Malta by Spanish forces did not lull western Christendom into a false sense of security. On the Hungarian frontier an enormous Turkish army, estimated at 300,000 men,151 was moving against the emperor Maximilian in the spring of 1566. Fortunately, the attack melted away. The reason was the death on 6 September of the great architect of Ottoman power, Suleiman the Magnificent. The Turks withdrew to settle their domestic conflicts. The war against the west was not, however, abandoned, and by sea it continued without a break. A new factor had entered the scenario. In January 1566 the cardinals at Rome elected as their new pope the elderly and zealous ascetic Pius V. Almost immediately he gave priority to the crusade against the crescent of Islam. Philip had the Netherlands to deal with and was not enthusiastic. Subsequently he had the war of Granada on his hands. Only much later, after the fall of the island of Cyprus to the Turks in 1570, did the continuing Turkish menace oblige Philip in May 1571 to participate in an anti-Ottoman ‘Holy League’ with Venice and the papacy. The alliance took concrete shape in a joint naval force which was to be sent to the eastern Mediterranean to relieve Cyprus and repulse the Turkish navy.
It was agreed that the supreme commander of the fleet would be Don Juan of Austria. Don Juan was in Barcelona from 16 June, waiting impatiently for the Spanish contingent to be put together. He was also waiting for the arrival of the archdukes Rudolf and Ernst, who were going home and whom he had to escort to Genoa. While in the city he received his instructions from Philip, but they left him deeply dissatisfied. Philip continued to address him with the standard title of ‘Excellency’ instead of the royal ‘Highness’ that he claimed. The king also, knowing Don Juan's temperament, placed several restrictions on his powers.
The massive Turkish fleet of over 300 galleys was ravaging the coastline of settlements in the eastern Mediterranean. In the west, Don Juan was determined, against the advice of more experienced sailors, to test to the full the resources put at his disposal. At the end of August he was in Messina, the appointed rendezvous for the ships of the Holy League. The assembled Christian fleet was supplied and paid for by the papacy, Venice and Spain. Although Philip II's treasury was the biggest single contributor to costs, the so-called ‘Spanish’ contribution was in fact largely Italian: four-fifths of the galleys supplied by Spain were built and paid for in the Italian states of the monarchy.
The fleet left Messina on 16 September and headed towards Corfu. There they were informed that the Turks were in the Gulf of Lepanto. The two massive formations came upon each other on the morning of 7 October in the Gulf. Calculations of the ships and men on each side vary widely. It is likely that the Turks had some 230 ships and well over 50,000 men. The Christians had some 200 vessels, not all of which took part in the battle, and about 40,000 men. By the end of the day Don Juan's ships had won a decisive victory. The Turkish vice-admiral, Uluj Ali, escaped with about thirty galleys; all the others were captured or destroyed. The Turks suffered 30,000 casualties and 3,000 prisoners. Christian losses were by comparison small: ten galleys, and some 8,000 men killed.
In the afternoon of 29 October 1571 a courier from Venice brought to the Venetian ambassador and to Philip, then in Madrid, reliable news of the victory at Lepanto. ‘The king's joy at receiving the news was extraordinary,’ the ambassador reported. ‘In that very moment he ordered a Te Deum sung.’152 Over the next few days all Madrid exploded in an orgy of celebration. A solemn procession was held, in which the king insisted on having the Venetian ambassador at his side. Don Juan's own special envoy, Lope de Figueroa, did not arrive until much later, on 22 November. The king at the time was at San Lorenzo. One of his gentlemen, fat, excited and breathless, burst in to say that a messenger had come from Don Juan. ‘Calm down,’ the king said; ‘let the messenger in, he will say it better.’153 Philip quizzed Figueroa eagerly. ‘For the first half-hour he did nothing but ask, “Is my brother well?” and all sorts of questions,’ the latter reported. The queen came in with her ladies and also questioned him. ‘Thus I passed an hour in the most agreeable manner possible,’ Figueroa wrote to Don Juan.154 Philip displayed ‘great delight and joy’,155 ordered the prior to have a Te Deum sung, and went to his rooms highly contented.
Don Juan was given his full share of public glory. Philip wrote to him, ‘I am pleased to a degree which it is impossible to exaggerate … To you, after God, ought to be given, as I now give, the honour and thanks.’156 Don Juan featured duly in the six large canvases which Philip commissioned some years later from the Genoese painter Luca Cambiaso, to hang in the summer lodge of El Monesterio. The military hero of Spain, victor first of the Alpujarras and now of Lepanto, Don Juan was fêted right across the peninsula. The king continued to distrust his character, but gave him all due honour for his successes.
Lepanto was a victory for Christendom, but it was never simply a Spanish victory. Without the resources of the Italians, Spain would have been powerless to act. Philip was perfectly aware of this. It explains his refusal to participate in the daydreaming to which less realistic men, such as Don Juan and pope Pius V, lent themselves. They imagined a possible liberation of the Holy Land, and even of Istanbul. The legend of Lepanto would continue to live on. One of the many who sweated through the battle, an unknown writer called Miguel de Cervantes, described it as ‘the greatest occasion that past or present ages have seen, or that future ones can hope to see’. Philip shared the enthusiasm. But he ‘opted for the possible, not for the grandiose’.157 Searching always for peace, Philip looked for a settlement in the Mediterranean. Spain must, first of all, have security in north Africa. Without this, it was difficult to devote resources to the north.
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Success in the Mediterranean was important compensation for the uncertain situation in northern Europe. In the Netherlands a group of Calvinist exiles who had been based in England, known as the Sea Beggars (Gueux de Mer), seized the port of Brill in April 1572. It gave them for the first time a base from which to attack the Spaniards
. Alba was confident he could contain their activities, but his attempts during 1571 to collect a new tax, the Tenth Penny, had aroused fierce opposition in the towns who now collaborated with the exiles. In May the town of Mons opened its gates to a force under Louis of Nassau, Orange's brother. Other small forces, aided by Huguenots, invaded.
Events in France gave even greater cause for concern. Exposure of the Ridolfi plot persuaded Elizabeth to agree on a formal alliance with the French in the same month of April (the treaty of Blois). The accord threatened to be extremely damaging to Spanish interests. The young king Charles IX was at this period strongly influenced by the Admiral of France, the Huguenot Gaspard de Coligny. He also had meetings with Louis of Nassau, who attempted to persuade him to form an alliance against Spain. A marriage had already been arranged between the king's sister Marguerite and the Protestant king of Navarre, Henry of Bourbon. French diplomats tried to extend the marriage arrangements to include one between the king's younger brother François, duke of Alençon (later, duke of Anjou), and Elizabeth. The latter, now thirty-eight years old, refused to think seriously about marrying someone twenty-two years younger than herself.158 Despite this, the scenario opening up for Philip and Alba was the frightening one of an international Protestant front, backed by France.
‘There have been no other speeches but war with Spain,’ the English envoy wrote home from Blois.159 Coligny was pressing Charles IX to intervene in favour of the rebels in the Netherlands. Spain was in no doubt about the reality of this threat. In July Alba's aide Albornoz told the royal secretary Zayas that ‘I have in my possession a letter of the king of France which would strike you with astonishment if you could see it’.160 The letter, from Charles to Louis of Nassau, reassured the count that he intended to use his armies to free the Netherlands from its oppressors. But the force sent by Coligny and the king to help Nassau was destroyed by Spanish troops just south of Mons. Queen Elizabeth, who was kept well informed what was going on, did not intend to get drawn into a war with Spain, nor did she relish the idea of France dominating the Netherlands. In June 1572 she promptly withdrew from the alliance made at Blois.
Charles IX was faced with the unappetising alternative of going it alone against Spain, or pulling back and betraying his Huguenot allies. There remained a third alternative: to break with the Huguenots. It was the solution pressed on him by his mother Catherine de’ Medici. Subsequent events are well known. All the great leaders of France, Protestant and Catholic, were gathered in Paris for the marriage on 18 August 1572 of Henry of Navarre to the princess Marguerite. On 22 August an unsuccessful attempt was made on the life of Admiral Coligny. Two days later, on St Bartholomew's Eve, he was brutally murdered. His death was made the signal for the massacre of some 3,000 Huguenots in Paris and a further 25,000 or more in various parts of the country.
The news shocked Europe. The emperor Maximilian protested to the papal legate that the sword was no answer to religious differences. The first firm news of the event reached Madrid on 6 September, when the king was residing in the monastery of St Jerónimo. He called secretary Gracián over the next day to ask him to translate an account in French of the killing of the Huguenot leaders.161 Philip had always entertained an unjustifiably narrow image of what had really been agreed at Bayonne, and saw the events as a fulfilment of that meeting. His ambassador Diego de Zúñiga, writing from Paris, made it clear that Catherine and the king were responsible, but that the killing of so many Protestants was not part of the plan.162 On the day after Coligny's murder, Catherine wrote in her own hand to Philip, who replied at once to congratulate her on ‘this glorious event’. He also wrote to Zúñiga with his reactions to ‘the good news’. ‘I had one of the greatest moments of satisfaction that I have had in all my life, and will have yet another if you continue writing to me of what is happening in the other parts of that realm. If things go as they did today it will set the seal on the whole business.’163 The French ambassador, St Gouard, was invited to visit him the day after he received the news. ‘He began to laugh, with signs of extreme pleasure and satisfaction … He said he had to admit that he owed his Low Countries of Flanders to Your Majesty.’164
Philip was thoroughly relieved and did not disguise it. The threat from the French Protestant leaders, which since the early 1560s had been the chief obstacle to Spain's policies, was now removed. The way lay open to peace in Flanders and perhaps to security in western Europe. The mass killings, a corollary of the elimination of the leaders, were never at the centre of his mind.165 They were irrelevant to his ‘contentment’. He was thinking of the Netherlands. His confidence in the new situation was so great that, a week after receiving the news of St Bartholomew's, he took the unprecedented step of proposing to transport bullion to Alba through France, given the insecurity of the Channel route. ‘The money being taken is to serve to mop up those rebels of mine who are your enemies as well,’ he informed Charles IX.166 The resolution of the threat from France would also enable him to disarm in Italy. He wrote immediately to the governor of Milan, Requesens, instructing him to pay off 4,000 German mercenaries who had been brought in to defend the duchy. ‘Seeing that affairs in France are now in a different state thanks to the recent events, it appears that one need not entertain the suspicions that until now we have had of the French.’167
Even the massacres might be turned to profit. Protestant England's indignation might be used to sour its relations with France. ‘It's not a bad idea to set the English against the French,’ he informed Diego de Zúñiga; ‘keep at it … But do not in any way try to ally me with the English. What I want is that all the Christian princes join together against England.’168 In spite of these sentiments, what transpired was an agreement with England. Elizabeth had already made favourable overtures to Spain. As from 1 May 1573 the two countries renewed mutual trade, to the immense satisfaction of merchants on both sides. Further agreement came in 1576. Following talks in Madrid between Alba and the English envoy, Lord Cobham, English traders were exempted from the attentions of the Inquisition provided they caused no scandal over religion.169 For at least ten years, an uneasy peace between the two nations was assured. England continued to sympathise with and aid William of Orange, but studiously avoided offending Spain.
There was cause for concern only in the Netherlands, where Philip was already considering a change of tactics and had sent a new governor, the duke of Medinaceli. Even here there was some room for optimism. The failure of an invasion mounted by William of Orange, and the successful recovery of rebel towns by Alba, caused a Spanish observer in October to hope that ‘before long they will all be back in the obedience of His Majesty’.170
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Dropping the Pilot 1572–1580
I am trembling with fear at what the next post from Flanders will bring.1
Although a victory in military terms, Lepanto won little more than a breathing space. There still remained, at least for Spain, the question of the Muslim threat from north Africa. Philip was keen to use the advantage to obtain greater security on his flank, and he encouraged Don Juan to undertake the seizure of Tunis. This was captured successfully on 10 October 1573, almost exactly two years after Lepanto.
The picture is often given of a Philip who, after these years of conflict in the Mediterranean, accepted a truce and turned his attention to the north. The reality was more complex. Time would show that there were no more battles to be fought in the inland sea, but the Mediterranean could never be abandoned. The entire Levant coast of Spain was still largely defenceless. In 1574, when there was pressure once again on the king to resolve the problems of the Netherlands by going there in person, he was adamant that it could not be done. ‘There's nothing in this life I more wish,’ he commented, ‘than to see my subjects there, but it is not possible for now to absent myself from here, because of the war against the Turk.’2 The threat was all too real. In September 1574 a massive Turkish fleet of over 230 vessels recaptured the city of Tunis. The fortress of La Goletta, which o
verlooked the city and was manned by a Spanish garrison, had surrendered a fortnight before. The loss was bitterly criticised in both Spain and Italy. ‘I cannot but lament,’ observed ambassador Juan de Zúñiga in Rome, ‘that all that has been spent this year has been to no avail.’3 The pope blamed Spanish incompetence. He asked Don Juan, who passed through Rome in November, to express his concern to the king. Zúñiga bluntly blamed ‘the way they manage things in the council in Spain’.4 In 1575 the cardinal of Tarragona asked what might happen if the Turks overwhelmed them and ‘if Spain is lost, and we ourselves and all that we have?’5 His answer, surprisingly, was that the king could still go and rule over America: ‘he has powerful kingdoms in the Indies.’ The comment reflected the profound insecurity still felt on the coastline. At the end of 1576 Philip was trying to reduce his costs in the Mediterranean by cutting the fleet to one hundred galleys.6 But at the same time he took care to keep all the forces there on alert. In March 1577 the royal council had before it an alarming report that the Moriscos of Valencia and Aragon were preparing to rise on the arrival of a Turkish fleet.7 In January 1578 the king was warning the governor of Milan to be vigilant ‘in case the Turkish armada comes’.8 It was a long time before the government could think of relaxing its defences. The battle for north Africa was still on.
In any case, Philip had no intention of committing himself to northern Europe, from which he was patently trying to withdraw. After five years, Alba's policies had brought a solution no nearer. The duke himself was old, ill, worn out and fed up. ‘He is so desperate,’ his secretary Albornoz reported in 1569, ‘that he could leave it all and just march off.’9 The expense of the Spanish presence was formidable. The attempt early in 1572 to introduce the new tax of the Tenth Penny was a failure, and it aroused bitter protests, not only from Netherlanders but also from Spanish officials. In spring that year Philip, already half convinced that an alternative policy was possible in the Netherlands,10 sent as his new governor the duke of Medinaceli, Juan de la Cerda.