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Philip of Spain

Page 38

by Henry Kamen


  With the acquisition of Portugal, Spain reached the zenith of its status. Contemporaries in Spain, like Philip himself, saw the union of the crowns as a natural aspiration. To give some meaning to the unity of the peninsula, in 1582 the customs barriers between Castile and Portugal were abolished.23 The annexation did little to change the practical power or theoretical pretensions of the monarchy. As king of Portugal, Philip could now adopt a broader imperial strategy, but he did not increase his political power, as some Castilian nobles feared he might. Nor did the financial resources of the crown increase significantly.

  Possession of Portugal gave new confidence to his policies. After Alcazar-el-Kebir his advisers had stressed that his claim to the crown must succeed, for Portugal was the key to success elsewhere. It would facilitate defence against Islam. Above all it was, as Philip's cosmographer Gian Battista Gesio put it, the ‘brake on Flanders’.24 Possession of Portugal, Gesio felt, was ‘an absolutely sure way of recovering the states of Flanders’. Others advised Philip that from Portugal he could effectively undermine Dutch trade, and deprive the rebels of access to both spices and salt.

  *

  From Tomar Philip sent his daughters, then at San Lorenzo, comments on the Cortes proceedings, and on how ‘they want to dress me in brocade, much against my wishes, for they say it is the custom in these parts’. (He apparently gave in to the demand, for his royal portrait shows him splendid in brocade.) He had bestowed the Golden Fleece on the duke of Braganza and the two had gone to mass together, ‘but he went better-dressed than I’. He missed ‘the nightingales, though a few can be heard sometimes from one of my windows’. Already, unfortunately, prince Diego was suffering recurrent illness and fever. This worry, together with concern for the health of the three little children he had left behind in San Lorenzo, form the main theme of the letters he began writing in these months to his daughters.

  Written in simple language, uncluttered by literary style, formality or learning, the letters are the most charming private correspondence to have survived from the pen of a ruling monarch of those times. In 1581 at least, Philip tried to write every week, usually dictating to a secretary rather than writing in his own hand. If he found that official business got in the way, he gave priority to the letters.25 He delighted in describing the exotic aspects of his new life. ‘We crossed the river to come here to Almada, where I have a very pretty but small house, and from all the windows you can see the river and Lisbon and the ships and galleys. And from an upper room, where I am writing, you can see through the window the whole length of Lisbon … I very much wish to go to Lisbon, to get on with what I need to do there.’26

  In Lisbon he passed what, with hindsight, appears to have been the most restful period of his reign. He had serious attacks of gout in the summers of 1581 and 1582 but recovered quickly. His doctors, secretary Gassol reported, attended to him assiduously.27 Isabel and Catalina wrote to him regularly with news of their activities and health. His replies mention the periodic gout, but also his moments of contentment. Writing that first August: ‘Congratulations to you, the eldest, for reaching fifteen years, to reach this age is already to be very old though in spite of all this I think that you are not yet quite a woman. A week ago I wanted to send you my congratulations but when I wrote it slipped my mind. And you, the younger, will soon also be fourteen.’28 He referred regularly to the things they were enjoying and which he missed. ‘You made me very jealous in what you said of El Pardo, which looks better in winter than in summer.’ But these were the little pleasantries of a fond father. He was at ease in Lisbon.

  The thirty or so letters surviving from this period reveal something more than tenderness and devotion. They also show us aspects of Philip's character. Unlike separated fathers who never refrain from giving sound advice to their children, on their studies or their health or their general development, Philip never once imposed his views or his counsels. He normally gave directives to the chamberlains and tutors, and may have felt that the letters were no place for exhortation. Apart from a recommendation to the girls to learn Portuguese, and an approving comment that ‘you do well to exercise whenever you can’,29 he kept the letters free of appeals. Surprisingly, too, in a man frequently accused of being obsessed by religion, the letters are totally free of religiosity. Philip mentioned Church functions as a matter of course, but the tone was wholly secular, with no effusions of pious sentiment. Free both of didacticism and of piety, the letters breathe a freshness and spontaneity unique in the letters of kings.

  There was another aspect to them. Philip never referred to his own childhood. He had had no real childhood, and no intimate relationship with his father. Possibly for that reason he did not understand that the missives from his daughters might be treasured by him one day. Shortly before returning from Lisbon he told the girls that he was burning all their old letters, ‘in order not to be weighed down with papers’.30

  *

  For a while after Granvelle's arrival in 1579, there was a certain stability of control at the helm of government in Madrid. The antagonisms of the Alba/Eboli days disappeared. On all major matters of policy there was little disagreement among ministers. The king became his own master. In this he was powerfully helped by the cardinal, known among ministers as ‘the bearded one’ because of his immensely long, white patriarchal beard. Philip put virtually all business into Granvelle's hands and the latter became for several months the real governor of the monarchy.31

  The situation began to change when Philip left Castile for Portugal. Granvelle was put in complete charge and diplomats and others were instructed to refer directly to him. The new system left many unhappy, and affected the efficiency of consultation and decision-making. Ministers regretted the removal of the king's firm controlling hand. If the king leaves, an observer felt, everything will collapse. ‘His Majesty has only to leave Madrid for El Pardo, and the ministers of all the councils drag their feet and don't turn up at appointed hours or meetings.’32 The pessimism was not misplaced.

  Without the king to keep the peace between factions, disputes broke out immediately. ‘War and more war is what we have here,’ commented the president of the council, Pazos, from Madrid. ‘We are all up to our heads in it, though it is true that what you have there is real and what we have here is staged.’33 The effects on administration were detrimental. ‘I admit,’ wrote Pazos, ‘the importance of His Majesty's presence there, but one must also consider how necessary it is for business here.’34

  Granvelle was ably seconded in Madrid by Juan de Idiáquez, who had come with him from Italy. Idiáquez, aged thirty-nine when sworn in as secretary to the king in 1579, was a Basque who had spent the last five years as ambassador in Genoa and Venice. He now began a long and distinguished career in the government of Spain. The cardinal, who had spent many years criticising Spain's administration from outside, found that working from within was no easy task. His efficiency clashed with the slower Spanish pace. ‘In Spain everything is slow,’ he complained. It was common to see him in his office dictating simultaneously in five different languages (which none of the ministers understood) to his team of secretaries. His non-Spanish temperament clashed with that of officials. He had constant battles with the treasury, which he considered both inefficient and corrupt. Above all, it was difficult to influence the decision-making of the king in Lisbon when he himself was in Madrid. Communicating by written word was unsatisfactory. ‘No secretary in the world uses more paper than His Majesty.’35 On policy issues, a gulf began to open up between the chief minister and the king.

  In Lisbon, Philip gave priority to Portugal. Granvelle, for his part, felt that the problems of the Netherlands and France were more important. Resolving the threat from France would, he felt, by itself resolve the problems in the Netherlands, Portugal and the Mediterranean. The obvious threat from England could be contained if England were set against France. If necessary, Spain must go to war with France.36

  *

  There is no indicat
ion of how long Philip would have stayed on in Lisbon. He missed his family, but the essentials of government functioned well enough and he was personally content. In April 1582 he was visited in Almeirim by his sister the empress María, mother of Anna and the archdukes, who had returned to Spain with her thirteen-year-old daughter Margarita in 1581 after the death of her husband the emperor Maximilian. She installed herself in Madrid and then later went to Portugal. Philip was, as he told his daughters, overjoyed to see her. ‘You can imagine how pleased she and I were to see each other, after not seeing each other for twenty-six years.’37 There was a rumour that the king considered making her governor of Portugal in his place, but before leaving Madrid the empress told ambassador Khevenhüller firmly that she had no intention of taking the job. In the event, a governor had to be found. The death of his heir prince Diego on 21 November 1582 altered matters and obliged Philip to return to Spain as soon as possible.38 He summoned the Portuguese estates to his palace on 30 January 1583, to swear allegiance to the Infante Philip as heir. He then told them that he was going to make a ‘brief absence’.

  Some months before, the king had issued in Lisbon a decree, dated 29 September, accepting for all his realms the new Gregorian calendar. It created turmoil in the popular mind by abolishing ten days in early October. The king reflected that ‘I suppose there will be objections to this, but they will be sorted out’.39 He no doubt felt the Portuguese would also understand his ‘brief absence’. Since his sister María was unwilling to take up the post of governor, he entrusted the governorship to the archduke Albert. Then the court, accompanied by the empress, left Lisbon on 11 February. They passed through Setúbal and Evora, entering Castile via Badajoz. After a stop at the monastery of Guadalupe, they went through Talavera to the Escorial, arriving on 24 March. The king was anxious, after his long absence, to see what progress had been made on the building. The main purpose of his visit, however, was piety. The following day he presided over solemn funeral honours for his late queen. On the twenty-sixth a high mass was sung for her. Afterwards he went round Anna's rooms, awakening memories.40

  The next day he left for Madrid, by way of Galapagar and El Pardo. He entered his capital on 29 March.

  *

  lt was the beginning of the most solitary phase of his reign.41 His sister Juana, to whom he had been very close and who was a permanent companion of queen Anna, had died in 1573. After Anna's death, Philip no longer sought love affairs.42 His closest comfort was his daughters. The family circle now also consisted of the empress, who came straight from Lisbon to take up residence in the convent of the Descalzas Reales. Her ‘court’ in the convent became a complement to the real court in the Alcázar. All through 1583 the unfortunate Khevenhüller had to commute two or three times a day between the two courts, bearing messages from the empress to her brother.43 She made at least one major contribution to the cultural life of the city, by bringing with her from Vienna as director of her chapel's music the composer Tomás Luis de Victoria, long absent from his homeland.

  After the return from Portugal Philip began to spend more time in San Lorenzo. In 1583, for example, he spent all the great feasts there: Holy Week, Ascension, Pentecost, Corpus, San Juan, and All Saints. Between these visits, he was mostly in Madrid, with stays in Aranjuez or Valsaín. The keynote to his life after Lisbon was loneliness. It was never a matter of solitude, for he spent every possible moment with his children and family. But the quality of his life changed. He became more bound up with the monastery, and the friars commented on the long time he spent in prayer. He also became more obsessive about little details in the church, his church. If the doors were not opened at the correct hour, or if relics were placed in the incorrect order on the altar, he got annoyed and scolded the sacristans.44 Logically, he was able to spend more time on the building programme, but we may suspect also a wish to be in the place where Anna was resting. When their last child, the little María, died in Madrid on 4 August 1583, she was laid to rest solemnly in San Lorenzo two days later. The royal order for her burial referred to her as the child of ‘my very dear and much loved wife’. In October, as part of the work entrusted to the newly arrived Genoese painter Luca Cambiaso, Philip commissioned an altar painting of St Anne, as the late queen had apparently once wished for.45

  That autumn he exercised his sense of humour on the friars. Among the trophies he had brought from Portugal were an Indian elephant and a rhinoceros. In October he arranged for the elephant, driven by a black boy, to saunter round the cloister, up the steps and into the cells of the astonished Jeronimites. A week later it was the turn of the rhinoceros, which was not quite so cooperative. It grunted bad-humouredly and refused to eat the food it was offered.46

  Autumn 1583 was also the occasion when the marriage of the Infanta Catalina was decided. In mid-September the ambassador of Savoy delivered to Philip in San Lorenzo the formal proposal from his master Carlo Emanuele, duke of Savoy since 1580. Later, while speaking to his daughters, Philip casually handed to Catalina the letter brought by the ambassador. ‘Read this letter,’ was all he said. Half-knowing its content, Catalina opened the letter enough to see the signature. She immediately blushed a bright crimson, refused to read any more, and handed the letter back.47 Philip spent the rest of the afternoon in the company of the delighted princesses, and that night there were festivities to celebrate the event. It was probably in this period, as though to complement the celebrations, that Sofonisba began her inimitable portrait of the beautiful young Catalina.48 Four weeks later the court moved on to El Pardo, where they stayed for two weeks before returning to Madrid.

  The king was never a prisoner of the Escorial. The palace was, rather, a convenient base for both business and pleasure. He invariably came accompanied by prince Philip and the princesses, who afforded him company and relaxation. In 1584, once again, he celebrated the great feasts in San Lorenzo. The last week of April and the first of May were spent at Aranjuez, ‘going out most days hunting, with the king always taking their Highnesses in his coach, and in the afternoon boating on the river’.49 On 8 May the royal family took boats upriver to the palace at Aceca, which they reached four days later.

  A full-scale deer hunt was put on at Aceca on 12 May. The method of hunting practised by the court was one commonly used at that time in Europe. Beaters, blowing horns and aided by dogs, were sent out to enclose an agreed zone. The required animals in that zone were then driven, terrified, into a target area. The king and members of his family would be waiting in the royal carriage, from which they would pick off the animals they chose.50 On this occasion fifty carriages participated in the hunt. Twelve deer were eventually killed. The royal party then set off for San Lorenzo, which Philip made his base from 17 May to 2 October. He spent the whole week of his birthday confined to bed by gout, but after Corpus he was well enough to get about. Every afternoon in June, then, he was able to make outings with the children to Fresneda (his preferred site for fishing) and the other residences in the Castilian countryside.51 It was a special pleasure to teach his daughters how to shoot. In September Isabel went hunting with him and killed a deer. ‘Let's see now,’ said the king, ‘if the younger Infanta can kill a deer as the elder did, so that with this we can take our leave of the hunting here.’52 Isabel in time, as portraits of her show, became a great devotee of hunting.

  Much of October was spent in El Pardo, where on Saturday the twentieth a pastoral comedy was staged in the evening in honour of Catalina's betrothal. It lasted from seven to ten in the evening. ‘His Majesty enjoyed it very much and left very pleased.’53 He returned to Madrid on 4 November.

  *

  Among the king's first measures on returning to Castile from Portugal was the summoning of the Cortes, which began sessions in the summer of 1583 and continued for a further two years. In November 1584, in a solemn ceremony in the monastery of St Jerónimo, the Cortes deputies swore allegiance to the heir to the throne, the six-year-old Infante Philip. Among the guests present was the duke of S
avoy's brother Amedeo, in Madrid to finalise arrangements for the duke's marriage to the Infanta Catalina.

  Economic difficulties increased in the peninsula during the 1580s. There were occasional epidemics, particularly in Andalusia. The year 1584 was one of hardship in Madrid: a decree in June referred to ‘the great shortage of bread and the drought this year and the want suffered by the poor’. Special measures were taken to bring in grain from the provinces.54 The state debt, made worse by the expense of the Portuguese campaigns, was at a record level.

  The king got back into his work ritual. A daily schedule set out for him in 1583, and presumably reflecting what he really did, suggested that he should awake at 6 a.m. and deal with some public matters, then rise at 8 a.m. and hear mass. From 9.30 a.m. to 11 a.m. he should see ministers. Lunch, followed by a siesta, was meant to come between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. The rest of the afternoon was reserved for business and audiences. From 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. he had to despatch papers. From 9 p.m. to 10.30 p.m. he should have dinner, and go to bed at 11 p.m., which allowed him some seven hours of sleep.55 The timetable seems plausible. A courtier confirms, for example, that the king gave audiences ‘from nine to ten in the morning and from five to six in the afternoon’.56

  There were times when the correspondence simply mounted up. In the hot summer at Badajoz, waiting for the troops to go in, he continued to labour over his papers, which pursued him everywhere. ‘Seeing the many papers with which His Majesty has to deal’, a minister commented, ‘only makes me regret that he wishes to waste his health and shorten his life this way.’57 ‘I can't take any more,’ Philip exploded during his stay in Elvas in January 1581. ‘Would anyone like to see what I've been through today? Just two men have occupied me for more than two hours and left me with more papers than I can manage in as many hours. I'm completely shattered. God give me strength and patience!’58 There were days when all the time had to be dedicated to paperwork. ‘I've been all day replying to papers,’ he wrote from the Escorial in July 1584, ‘and can't look now at anything else. It's been a long haul.’59 It was during this period that he observed: ‘I've never seen so many papers mount up as now’.60

 

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