by Henry Kamen
And it is quite clear that there is more reason for choosing the alcabalas rather than the flour. Flour has to be paid for by both rich and poor, since the poor man has to eat just like the rich man. This doesn't happen with the alcabala, which is paid according to the quantity of goods that is bought or sold, which means that the rich man pays more and the poor man less.98
Persuading the deputies on the committee was only the first stage of the fight. ‘The matter has many obstacles to get through, and even if it gets through the committee there are still the Cortes deputies and then the cities, which is worse.’99
Eventually agreement was reached in February 1575. The government was allowed to take the step it had not yet dared take: raise the rate at which the alcabala was levied. It was now to be collected at its full legal rate of 10 per cent. But many cities objected, and refused to collect the tax. The government had to send in its own officials. There were protests and conflict. ‘All Spain was tense, angry and in turmoil,’ a friar of the Escorial noted.100
The Cortes of Castile met again in January 1576. The king personally prepared the opening speech. The sessions, among the most important of the reign, lasted until December 1577. A compromise was reached: in October 1577 a new alcabala was agreed, at a lower rate. The agreement was to last for four years, and renewal had to be negotiated. Philip never again attempted to touch the alcabala. Instead, the Cortes agreed to grant him special short-term subsidies as the need arose. By accepting subsidies (called servicios), the king in effect conceded control of the tax system in Castile to the cities. One way or another, the tax burden rose. In broad terms, government tax revenue in Castile in 1577 was about 50 per cent higher than in 1567.101 The increase was extremely unpopular. Discontent was aggravated by the drought conditions prevailing in Castile in 1577.102
Opposition to taxes gave rise to periodic incidents. Pasquinades against the king were posted on the doors of the main public buildings of Toledo in July 1577. The civil governor of the city failed to find those responsible.103 Street opinion in Madrid was influenced by the prophecies of the ex-soldier and seer Miguel de Piedrola Beamonte, whose words did not at first worry the king. In November 1578, however, Philip commented that ‘there is so much fuss here about prophecies, that I must look into it’, and he requested Quiroga and his confessor Diego Chaves to summon Piedrola and ‘question him and try to find out from where he gets these prophecies’.104 The seer's activities were judged to be innocuous, and he was allowed to continue his career.105
The criticisms and discontent of the late 1570s marked a decisive shift in the attitude of Castilians to their king. It was the custom of moralists to exaggerate complaints, but the exaggerations reflected a sombre reality. Philip at the time asked his grand almoner, Luis Manrique, to put down on paper his views on the current situation. Manrique suggested that the king ‘had deliberately and bit by bit made himself inaccessible and shut himself in a tower without doors and windows’. Dedicated only to his papers, he had isolated himself from the people. Throughout Spain ‘the people are despondent, expecting that everything is going to collapse’. If taxes are not lowered, ‘in a very short time Your Majesty will have neither treasury nor subjects, everything will collapse’. The king seemed to be unaware ‘that his subjects are discontented and that he is no longer in command of their affections’.106 Much the same words were used in a private letter which a prominent Jesuit, Pedro de Ribadeneira, addressed some time later to Quiroga. Many in the kingdom, he commented, were ‘embittered and discontented with His Majesty’, who was no longer ‘as loved as he used to be, nor so much in command of the hearts and good wishes of his subjects’.107
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The king's health was moderately good in these months, but the combination of heavy work and gout provoked problems. An occasional heavy cold did not help. In February 1576 he complained that ‘there are a great many files that I have been unable to look at, tomorrow if I can I'll see them because today I can't take any more. It's late and this thing in my chest won't go away, it's what most wears me out. Although the gout hurts now and then it doesn't affect my head, the cold affects it more.’108 Gout in his foot, and a heavy cold, continued to be problems in spring 1577, when he had to be bled.109 He still managed to put in an astonishing amount of hours on administrative work. Even his leisure was work. In San Lorenzo in July 1576 he spent his moments of rest supervising the hanging of his precious Titians. The pictures must be hung high up, he explained, so that when the floors are washed down the canvases do not get splashed.110 In May 1577 at Aranjuez, a month and place he normally chose for relaxation with the family, he could show signs of fatigue. ‘It's ten o'clock,’ he signed off a letter, ‘and I'm shattered and dying of hunger since today is a fast day. This will have to wait until tomorrow, it can't be done now.’111
As the other pieces of his policy fell into place, the king became more conscious of the fragment he could not control: England. In August 1576 Quiroga informed him that ‘today the nuncio told me that the pope was determined to launch the enterprise of England’, and was looking for the money and the means. Philip replied: ‘The nuncio said the same to me, and I'm considering it.’112 But at the moment it was not a priority. For some years more he refused to entertain seriously the idea of invading England. His message to the nuncio was concise: ‘Nobody desires more than I that the matter be put in hand, but the when and how depend on the way things go in Flanders, and on many other considerations.’113
Of these considerations, the most pressing was evidently the financial crisis of 1575. Flanders was eating up both government revenue and American silver. In 1573 Philip's expenditure on Flanders was roughly four times what he spent in 1566. About one and a half million ducats a year was being sent to Brussels. The scale of expenditure and debt became insupportable and in September 1575 Philip declared the third ‘bankruptcy’ of his reign. The treasury suspended payments to its creditors but undertook to pay them in the long term with annuities. The readjustment of debts to his financiers was unavoidable, but precipitated the very problems he wished to avoid. In the Netherlands the unpaid troops mutinied and deserted. At this juncture the governor of the Netherlands, Requesens, died on 5 March 1576. ‘God willed,’ he commented when he first arrived in Brussels, ‘that I come here to pay for my sins.’114 He had tried, but failed. ‘The Netherlands,’ he wrote to Philip's confessor Fresneda shortly before his death, ‘were for me the Promised Land. God showed them to me, as he did to Moses, from the heights of the mountain.’115
Philip, repeatedly pressed by all his advisers to send a prince of the blood to succeed Requesens, had little hesitation in appointing the victor of Lepanto, Don Juan. In April the prince, who was then in Naples, was instructed to proceed directly to Brussels. But Don Juan had far-reaching plans of his own, which he insisted on presenting to the king. Disobeying instructions, he came personally to Madrid. One of his plans, he felt, was so important that it must be put to Philip. As commander in the Netherlands, he would invade England, marry himself to Mary queen of Scots, and thereby become in time ruler of England and the Netherlands. The result would be what Philip had always wanted: peace in western Europe.
At the Escorial, Philip listened politely but shrugged off the plan.116 Instead, he turned to the pressing business. He gave Don Juan clear instructions (drawn up by Hopperus) to concede all the points demanded by the Netherlanders. ‘Saving above all religion and my obedience’, everything else could be given away. There were to be no recriminations: ‘everything must be pardoned’.117 In a somewhat dramatic gesture thought up by the king,118 Don Juan made the northward journey overland through France in secret. He wore his beard and hair dyed, and was disguised as the servant of his only companion, the Italian noble Ottavio Gonzaga. On the evening of 3 November 1576 the weary pair crossed into the territory of the Netherlands.
One day later the Flanders mutineers, mostly unpaid Spanish troops, burst into the city of Antwerp, sacking, looting and killing at will. The p
rincipal buildings of the rich commercial metropolis were destroyed; over 6,000 people were massacred. The ‘Spanish Fury’ shocked Europe, and destroyed Spain's credibility in the north. The delicate negotiations between Philip and the Netherlanders were suspended. The States General moved rapidly to make its own peace with the rebels and Orange. Their agreement, known as the Pacification of Ghent, was signed in that city on 8 November.
Don Juan, faced with a situation he could not control, was obliged in the following February to agree to the terms of the Pacification, by a document inappropriately titled the Perpetual Edict. Its terms were accepted by Philip, who at this stage felt that all possible concessions should be made to Orange in order to secure peace.119 The most cogent clause of the Edict provided for the immediate removal of all Spanish troops, who began departing southwards for Italy in April 1577. Philip's new governor was left without authority and without troops. As evidence filtered through of a possible anti-Spanish coup, to protect his vulnerable position Don Juan in July seized the fortress of Namur, and appealed to Philip to send the troops back. In his letters he virtually called for a return to Alba's policy, with executions of leaders if necessary. After much hesitation the king agreed to a partial change of policy. In a confidential note he commented that ‘the plot against my brother cannot be blamed on the States as a whole but only on a few individuals. What is bad is what has happened afterwards. The situation must be taken very seriously and approached with determination. I have decided that the soldiers return to Flanders.’120 He continued to maintain the need for concessions to the States, but (for the moment) with an army to guarantee them.
The Netherlands were in an impasse. The States General, at war with Don Juan, invited Orange back to Brussels and put on a hero's welcome for him in September 1577. But they were not yet prepared to appoint him as their ruler. Instead, the following month they announced that the archduke Matthias of Austria had accepted the post of governor-general. It was a move designed to win international support, and Philip's friendship with Matthias was counted on. Quite the reverse happened. A very angry Philip summoned ambassador Khevenhüller and complained that the emperor was interfering in the Netherlands.121 The members of the council in Madrid were furious, and demanded that the king remove Matthias.122 Don Juan was compelled to stand by while William of Orange consolidated his position. In January 1578, when Matthias was sworn in to govern the Netherlands in Philip's name, his appointed deputy was Orange. The stalemate with Don Juan did not last long. Ten days after the swearing-in, his troops once more under his control, Don Juan attacked and routed the rebel forces at Gembloux.
The attack appeared to promise positive results and there were other good signs in 1578. The problem of the succession in Spain seemed resolved. In the early hours of 14 April the queen gave birth to another son, Philip, in the Alcázar of Madrid. By good fortune he was to survive, and eventually succeeded to the throne. Philip was overjoyed but also extremely overworked. While Anna rested, he took a break. To clear his head, he told his secretary,
I am thinking of going tomorrow for a few days to Aranjuez, to have a look at it before going to Monzón since I shall not be able to afterwards. I haven't been there for some time, nearly a year I think. The idea is I shall go tomorrow to sleep at San Martín de la Vega and the next day in the afternoon see the celebrations they put on at Aranjuez.123
A month after the birth, Anna accompanied the king to San Lorenzo. Philip celebrated the occasion by putting on another of his grand chivalric tournaments. In the fields at the village of San Salvador de Muñico, some five miles distant from the monastery at Parraces, he and 800 chosen knights re-enacted the splendour of medieval warfare.124 It lasted for three days. We may imagine, as with the village innkeeper in Don Quixote, the peasants thronging in to see the spectacle and ‘the furious and terrible blows the knights deliver’.125 Philip, a father again, felt in superb condition. A courtier commented sardonically on ‘the king who despite his fifty years acts like a young gallant’.126 Philip returned to San Lorenzo on 21 June to pass the midsummer festival there with the court. In the first week of July he and Anna returned to Madrid. Two weeks before, his nephew, king Sebastian of Portugal, had set sail from Lisbon, in another splendid re-enactment of chivalry. His purpose: the crusade against the Moor.
In Madrid, Philip could take comfort from a number of promising signs on the political front. A one-year truce was formally signed in July 1578 between Spain and the Turks. Only six months before, lack of finance had forced the king to order a drastic reduction in the size of the Mediterranean fleet, ‘since it is not possible for my fleet to be numerous enough to be able to face the enemy’.127 It was the first of a series of truces, and came none too soon. Gembloux, meanwhile, gave the initiative to the Spanish forces in the north. The danger of French intervention was assuaged by agreements which Philip's ambassador in Paris, Juan de Vargas Mexía, made with the powerful Catholic grouping headed by the duke of Guise.128 There was still no end in sight to the conflict, but the Catholic provinces of the south were now inclined to make some sort of an agreement with Spain. Calvinist extremism alienated the sympathies of many Netherlanders.
Don Juan did not survive to see the fruit of his efforts. In poor health, he died on 1 October 1578 near Namur, aged only thirty-one. Six months later his body was disinterred and transported back to Spain, where he was reburied in the Escorial. Before his death he named as his successor the prince of Parma, Alessandro Farnese, who had been serving as an officer in the Netherlands since 1577. Philip approved the appointment, possibly the most fortunate one of his entire reign.
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On this clear and promising horizon, a small grey cloud appeared.
During the governorship of Don Juan in Flanders, there had been considerable opposition in Madrid to his policies. The differences coincided with a bitter rivalry which had developed between Antonio Pérez and Don Juan's secretary Juan de Escobedo, one of the court noblemen associated with the Eboli group. Early in 1575 he was appointed by the king as secretary to Don Juan of Austria, then serving in Italy and soon became an enthusiastic proponent of Don Juan's ambitious schemes. Among these was one to solve the problems of the north by marrying himself, Don Juan, to Mary queen of Scots, heir to the English throne.
Since his entry into the administration in the 1560s, Pérez (born in 1540) had become one of the bright stars at court. Dark-haired, slim and always impeccably dressed, sporting a moustache and small goatee beard, Pérez combined intelligence and elegance. The king at first kept somewhat aloof from a young man he considered ‘dissolute’,129 but soon grew to admire his efficiency. As secretary to the king, Antonio's special care was the affairs of Italy. As friend and colleague of Eboli, he was also concerned with the issue of Flanders. When Eboli died, he became the most prominent representative of the Eboli view within the administration.
Pérez, who corresponded on his own account with Don Juan and Escobedo, was unhappy about the latter's schemes and denounced them vigorously to Philip. In January 1576 he urged the king to ‘consider and think of a remedy’ to Don Juan's ideas. Philip, never enthusiastic about Don Juan, seemed to agree, but urged patience. Three months later his reaction was sharper. ‘I am surprised by what you say about Escobedo,’ he informed Pérez in April.130
At this juncture Philip appointed Don Juan, then serving in Italy, to succeed Requesens in Flanders. The prince, wilful as ever, was glad of the appointment but wished to link it to his own plans for the Scottish marriage. In June 1576 he sent Escobedo to Madrid with a letter outlining his ideas. Philip insisted on seeing Escobedo at once. ‘If he arrives tonight,’ he wrote to Pérez on 30 June, ‘you can talk to him tomorrow, and come here on Tuesday to lunch and to stay a couple of days.’ Tuesday was not soon enough, and on Sunday, 1 July, Philip wrote to Pérez: ‘Both you and he can come here tomorrow to lunch, and I shall look over what he brings.’131
The king was unimpressed by his half-brother's pretensions, and took a dislik
e to Escobedo's bold way of presenting his master's case. In subsequent weeks, he refused to see Escobedo and found excuses for not answering his letters. In a confidential letter the king explained what the problem was: ‘Going by some of the things that Escobedo says, I can only fear that there will be some terrible demands [by Don Juan] which will be impossible to meet, such as a lot of money, and a lot of soldiers, and a lot of freedom in carrying out his instructions.’ On all three questions, he insisted, ‘I cannot and must not agree’.132 He sent a letter to Don Juan in which he ignored the prince's requests to come and see him and ordered him to proceed directly to Flanders. When Don Juan arrived in Spain (contravening the king's express orders), Philip went off to San Lorenzo so that he would not have to receive the prince formally in Madrid. Don Juan visited him there. At the Escorial, the king communicated his instructions but otherwise put him off with vague talk. He was urgently trying to reach a solution in Madrid along the lines suggested by Hopperus, and none of his advisers would have supported Don Juan's proposals.
After reaching Brussels, Don Juan was forced to play an unheroic and therefore uncongenial role as peacemaker. Pérez, the king and other ministers were aware that the prince entertained thoughts of a grand design to invade England from Flanders. Philip was not completely opposed to the idea. Pérez, however, tried to present to Philip an image of a bellicose prince, abetted by Escobedo, whose warlike designs would wreck the delicate financial state of the monarchy. He referred specifically to ‘deception’. Philip was perplexed. ‘Although I don't understand this very well, I think that I grasp the substance.’133 Pérez, taking his campaign against Escobedo further, worked on other members of the council. ‘This afternoon’, he informed Philip in mid-February 1577, ‘I was with Quiroga134 and read him all the recent despatches from Flanders, and he was very disturbed to see how little Don Juan and Escobedo trust us.’ He also spoke with others, and got the same reaction. Philip agreed with Pérez's insistence that ‘it is necessary to avoid using arms’. He commented that in Flanders ‘it would not be possible to supply all that is required, and if we supplied it that would be at the expense of what is needed against the Turkish fleet and everything else’.135