by Henry Kamen
But the resources were not readily available. By 1585 Spain had not only run down its Mediterranean fleet, it had also dismantled much of the military apparatus used for the conquest of Portugal and the Azores.129 Materials could not be found inside the country. For some time now, Spain had depended on other European countries (Italy for sails and oars, Flanders for masts and tar, Brittany for canvas, Genoa for seamen) for up to 90 per cent of the equipment for a typical galley.130 Cannon had to be regularly imported, and there was no cannon-shot available in Spain. At every level, whether touching personnel or material, major changes would have to be effected to enable the operation to be carried out. From the summer of 1586 a number of administrative reforms were rushed through. The council of War was expanded, a second secretary for war appointed and steps were taken to improve recruitment and cannon production.
It was impossible to complete the ambitious programme in the time available. A paper prepared by Santa Cruz in March 1586 called for a naval strength of over 500 ships, 46 galleys and 94,000 men, more than the entire force at Lepanto and twice that used against Portugal. Lepanto, however, had been a joint venture by several nations. The entire burden now would have to fall on Spain. In the event Philip never committed himself to the March paper. What he did intend was to launch the fleet – the Great Armada – within a year. There were serious deficiencies in all supplies, but the most crucial of all, namely money, was quickly resolved. From 1586 the crown's Italian bankers were happy to lend substantial sums, which gave them continuing access to the silver coming in from America.
Both the preparation and objective of the Armada were meant to be secret. In practice, it was impossible to disguise the scale of activities. Although the government gave out false rumours, these were not sufficient to mask the fact that something serious was going on.
The royal party arrived back from Valencia in Madrid on 21 March 1586. Philip had been away from his capital for fourteen months. Exactly a week later, on the twenty-eighth, a shattering report reached the court. The principal Spanish city in America, Santo Domingo, had been seized and sacked by Drake early in January. The English, with over thirty ships, had then gone on to attack Cartagena and the Florida coast. Everybody, from the king downwards, was stunned. ‘Struck with terror’, was the phrase used by an observer.131 Some of Philip's ministers were heard to say that this, coming on top of recent reverses, meant a turn of fortune against Spain. The Indies, on which the government relied for its silver, promptly jumped to the top of the agenda.132 Some advised the despatch of a fleet to America, but Philip knew that this was impossible. The news only confirmed his commitment to the preparation of the Armada. At this juncture he received the marquis of Santa Cruz's estimate of the forces required for a military action. In April the bishops of Castile were instructed to offer prayers for the success of affairs of state.
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Shortly before Philip's visit to Barcelona a preacher there had commented in a sermon on ‘the king don Philip, an old and sick man’.133 The words obviously reflected a perception that many Spaniards had of their king. He had been at the helm for forty years. Was he losing control? The truth is that many of his aides now disappeared. Granvelle was unwell during 1585 and 1586. His health did not recover. ‘He has lost all his influence in important matters,’ the Venetian envoy reported.134 He also became more and more gloomy about affairs. He wrote to Idiáquez, apocalyptically, that ‘we are heading towards the abyss’, and referred to ‘the final ruin that we are blindly pursuing’.135 He died in September 1586, aged sixty-nine. Commenting on their long relationship of nearly forty years, the king said that ‘this loss affects me deeply, not only because of the gap it leaves in political affairs but also because I loved the cardinal’.136
Margaret of Parma had also died in 1586. She was followed soon after by her husband Ottavio. Alessandro Farnese, formerly prince, now became duke of Parma. The loss which the king felt most keenly was that of Juan de Zúñiga. Both in Rome and in Naples, Zúñiga had served Philip so faultlessly that he was called specially to Madrid in 1583 and entrusted (from January 1585) with the governorship of the Infante Philip. Dissatisfied with most of his ministers, the king had great hopes of him. When he died suddenly in November 1586 at the age of forty-nine, Philip was appalled. ‘This is wretched news for me,’ he commented, ‘and puts me in serious difficulties.’137 He refused to appoint any other governor, and took charge of the prince himself.
But his own capacities, as he knew, were dwindling. The year 1586 was, in reality, the great turning point of his life. There were three crucial aspects to the change. His life-style altered, his health deteriorated, and he changed his manner of government.
His life-style became more subdued. Deprived now of Catalina, the king was left to pass the spring of 1586 in the company of Isabel and Philip. The Infanta, now aged nineteen, ‘has grown quite beautiful and graceful, to the great delight of the king’, it was reported. Late in March, when the heavy snows were over, Philip took the court for a week to Aranjuez to enjoy what an ambassador called ‘the softness of the air and the beautiful weather’.138 In April he expressed a wish to go for a while to Toledo, ‘where I haven't been for some time’, and possibly to see an auto de fe, ‘which they sometimes have there around this period, it's something worth seeing for those who haven't seen one’.139 They went to Toledo to celebrate Ascension, but there was no auto de je.
Despite the king's periodic attacks of gout the family enjoyed the first half of May 1586 at Aranjuez, hunting and strolling through the gardens, and the second at San Lorenzo. The French ambassador Longlée felt that it was a calm before the storm. Spain was clearly on the defensive against a belligerent England, and much rested on Philip's decision-making. But many Spaniards were beginning to doubt whether he could cope.
His health that year took a decisive turn for the worse. At the end of May 1586 he suffered an acute attack of gout, which lasted for over two months and made it impossible for him to conduct business normally. Late in June he was confined to bed for a while and periodically bled.140 ‘Now I can walk around,’ he reported in July, ‘although a bit lame and still with a stick. I had a bad attack in my hand and have not been able to write.’141 The gout and the bad news from America and Flanders effected a change for the worse in the king's general demeanour. Longlée observed that ‘these two reasons, as well as his age, have changed him somewhat and made him seem older, more pensive, and less resolute and expeditious in all sorts of affairs’.142
Castillans noted the disappearance of the king. Thanks to his illness, he became almost a recluse.143 After the summer stay at San Lorenzo his only major outing was the return visit there in the first week of August, when the completed church was finally blessed and inaugurated. In previous months he had been superintending the move to San Lorenzo of a large number of paintings, largely religious in character. The works of Netherlandish painters, notably Michel de Coxcie, formed an important part of this number.144 They were the artistic contribution to the centre-piece of the building: the church or basilica. Completion of the basilica after two decades of construction was the climax of the Escorial project. The whole enterprise had been a success, and Philip did not conceal his great joy.145 In a solemn and glittering ceremony, the sacrament was installed on the high altar. The blaze of candles was such that ‘it seemed one was entering into an unparalleled glory’.146 The highest security measures were taken, because the king ordered all the altars of the church to be covered with gold, silver, jewellery and the most select relics. The ceremonies reached their climax with a high mass on 10 August, feast of St Lawrence. In October the royal family moved off to the Pardo, where they went hunting. In the first days of November, a month after the king had returned to Madrid, the friars carried out the final transfer of all the royal bodies, from their temporary sites to the permanent resting-place directly under the high altar. It was a solemn occasion, but too emotionally painful for Philip. He made it plain that he did not wish to be prese
nt.147
During the late autumn of 1586 his poor health kept him indoors and he seldom left the Alcázar. He spent Christmas at San Lorenzo, but failed to make his usual public appearance at high mass on Christmas Day. The first three months of 1587 he did not stir from the Alcázar, leaving it only to go and spend Holy Week at San Lorenzo with his family. This behaviour, clearly at variance with his previous active life, contributed powerfully to the subsequent legend of a cloistered king.
He was able to continue with some paperwork, but business was slowed down. A minister complained to the Venetian ambassador of inefficiency ‘in the conduct of our most vital affairs’.148 In spite of his health, Philip continued to deal with everything. Through the summer of 1586 there were crucial talks with a Danish diplomat who came to Madrid on behalf of the States General, but the negotiations foundered on the issue of liberty of conscience in the Netherlands. Writing in July to the Lutheran king of Denmark, Philip appealed to the principle maintained by the Protestants themselves in the states they ruled: ‘As to liberty of conscience, it is clear that no prince allows to his subjects any other religion than his own. And so I would rather lose all my kingdoms than consent to this.’149
Over these months of illness the conduct of government necessarily changed. In October 1585, when he fell ill at Monzón, the king handed over control of business to a small troika of ministers, which became known as the Junta Grande. Its members were Moura, the count of Chinchón and Juan de Idiáquez. Later their number was made up to four by the short-lived addition of Zúñiga. Working in association with Mateo Vázquez, they dealt with virtually all the correspondence of the councils.150 But the king continued to keep the reins tightly in his hands. ‘It is a miracle to see,’ commented an observer, ‘how he governs this great machine without any council of State and almost without ministers.’151 Rule by committee became the norm. For all practical purposes, government by council disappeared during the last twelve years of the reign. The situation contributed in no small measure to the dissatisfaction that many nobles, who dominated the councils, felt with the regime of Philip II. The French envoy Longlée was there to see it. ‘The men of judgment of this nation,’ he reported, ‘foresee a very great change in this state if the king should disappear. This has already begun to cause some disorder in government.’152
10
The Time of Thunder 1587–1593
…the great peril that we face if we do not impede what is very close to happening. And if it should happen, I expect that I shall not see it, because I shall have gone to carry out my duty1
The early months of 1587 were bitterly cold in Castile, with ‘ice and snow never before seen in this time of the year’.2 In the Casa de Campo all the ponds froze. Several Flemish courtiers put on for the court a display of ice-skating, a sport unknown in Spain. Philip, well wrapped up inside his coach, went out to see the skaters, and made the acquaintance of one of them, the newly arrived Jean Lhermite.3 At San Lorenzo some weeks later it snowed during Holy Week. The monks on Palm Sunday could barely carry the palms for the bitter cold. ‘We thought here this Easter that we would freeze,’ the king wrote; ‘it cannot be called an Easter of flowers because they all froze, and the fruit as well, so that food will I think be in short supply this summer.’4 His poor health was now continuous. In May he was ‘in bed, crippled by gout’. Confined to a chair, he could barely walk for the gout in his feet. ‘This gout is so persistent,’ he wrote in July, ‘that it won't let me go. It won't let me walk without help, and for five or six days now has not let me walk at all. It has been worst in this hand, not letting me write or do anything. Nor has my eyesight been very good.’5 Since the previous summer, he had not had full use of his right hand. ‘In order not to tire my hand,’ he wrote to Carlo Emanuele in May, ‘I am leaving some matters for another letter.’6
Deprived of Catalina, he relied more and more on Isabel. It was a common sight during their sojourns at San Lorenzo to see father and daughter walking slowly together, unaccompanied, through the grounds of the monastery.7 When he felt better, the king also went out for excursions into the countryside. His beard and hair now were white, his face thinner and wan. But he held himself firm and erect. His piercing eyes, as we see them in the portrait done by Hieronymus Wierix in 1586,8 mirrored his undimmed energy. Lhermite, who got to know the king well and very soon managed to have himself appointed assistant gentleman of the royal bedchamber, confirms this picture. Philip was ‘very subject to gout, his hair white and balding, but in good physical condition, his mind lively and his memory even better than ever’.9
Though adequately served by his ministers and generals, Philip in 1587 could feel that events were slipping out of his control. The instrument of vengeance, the Armada, was almost ready. But the English everywhere – in the Caribbean, in Portugal, in the Netherlands – were actively counter-attacking. Philip's last constitutional excuse to intervene in England itself disappeared when on 18 February Mary queen of Scots went to the block.
The execution was a direct consequence of the Babington plot. In spring 1586 Bernardino de Mendoza, scheming from his base in Paris, fostered a conspiracy among a group of English Catholics to kill Elizabeth. Philip, for the first time, insisted on being in touch with events. He gave his full approval to the conspiracy, but warned Mendoza that he should not put anything in writing. ‘As long as you take care on this point, everything else seems fine.’10 The plot was discovered in September. Philip regretted the stupidity of the plotters. ‘All I can say is that I feel very sorry for them; they themselves are in good measure to blame, for not keeping it secret.’11 The conspiracy had been a justifiable attempt to avoid further bloodshed, since ‘the cause is God's’. But he had deep regrets over the consequences for the queen of Scots. It was the end of nearly twenty years of support for ‘that poor lady’, as he had termed her in 1569. He wrote to Mendoza: ‘You cannot imagine the pity I feel for the queen of Scots. It was irresponsible to keep copies of those dangerous papers.’12 When he received news of her execution, in mid-April 1587, he wept openly.13 A solemn requiem was held in the Escorial.
An English response to the plots came rapidly in the shape of Drake's descent on Cadiz. On 29 April 1587, supported by a fleet of twenty-three vessels, Drake made a surprise incursion into Cadiz harbour. Over twenty Spanish vessels were destroyed or captured. The shore defences impeded any landing, and the English sailed away on 1 May, going on to occupy the coastal position of Sagres, at the southern tip of Portugal. The attack made it impossible to prepare the Armada for action that year and won a valuable few months for England.
The delay had serious consequences for Spain. The king was well aware of complaints at every level.14 In the ports there was dissatisfaction over the impunity with which English ships disrupted trade and attacked vessels. ‘The English are masters of the sea and hold it at their discretion,’ an ambassador at court commented.15 In Madrid there was murmuring against the government. The king himself, celebrating his sixtieth birthday that year, was preoccupied by the criticism within the council of War. It was at this period that he tried to allay criticisms of the delays in the Armada with his famous phrase, ‘the king and time will do everything’.16
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The decisions concerning the Armada, however, were made by an ailing king. The gout had affected him in hands and feet through the spring and summer of 1587. ‘The gout has caught me earlier this year than in others,’ he informed Carlo Emanuele.17 He was unable to sign any documents until July, and only a few in subsequent months. The indisposition did not affect preparations, but it did slow down the process of consultation within the government. Late in July the vessels made ready in Andalusia were sent to Lisbon, in the hope of preparing a general rendezvous there. But by September there was still no final decision. Philip sent off detailed instructions to Santa Cruz in Lisbon and to Parma in the Netherlands. He wrote letters to his commanders in November and December charging them, almost desperately, to put the whole exercise in motion
.18 Yet weather conditions were by now wholly unfavourable. The king was clearly not thinking properly. His commanders, quite rightly, delayed and did nothing.
Santa Cruz wrote from Lisbon in January 1588 that his fleet would shortly leave. The council of State in Madrid urged ‘that the enterprise be pursued, since this is the only way to protect trade with America, free these coasts from invasion, and preserve Flanders’.19 In fact, Santa Cruz was seriously ill. In February 1588 the most successful Spanish admiral of his time died at the age of sixty-three. In his place Philip appointed Alonso Pérez de Guzmán, duke of Medina Sidonia. Though the duke had no experience of naval command, he had a respectable military career, was an efficient administrator and had the status required of the leader of an expedition of this size.20 His orders were to take the Armada out as quickly as possible. It was costing a fortune while it waited (some 700,000 ducats a month, according to the president of the council of Finance), and its supplies were rapidly rotting. In the spring, therefore, hasty preparations were made to put to sea.
Fortunately, other pieces of the grand design now began to fall into place. In December 1587 the earl of Leicester and his troops abandoned the Netherlands and returned to England, after months of fruitless campaigning. Then in May 1588 the Catholic League of the Guises organised an uprising in Paris and effectively took over control of the government. Neither the Dutch nor the French were now in a position to give active help to Elizabeth.
Contemporaries agreed that the Armada had grave deficiencies. Medina Sidonia had himself said so in a letter to the government which Idiáquez did not dare show the king.21 In spring 1588, however, the obstacles seemed overcome: 130 vessels, carrying over 18,000 men, sailed out from the Tajo on 30 May. The ships made it out of Lisbon against an unfavourable wind but were forced by gales into Coruña. Pinned in, with men deserting, on 24 June Medina Sidonia wrote to the king advising him to abandon the expedition. But new supplies and men were found, and on 22 July the fleet sailed out of Coruña. A week later, favoured by the winds, the enormous concentration of ships and men lay off the English coast, south of Cornwall. It was an awe-inspiring sight for observers on the cliffs.