by Henry Kamen
Philip followed a ‘wait and see’ policy over the situation in Saragossa. But he preferred to put on a tough public face. He explained to the viceroy of Aragon, the marquis of Almenara, that ‘if it should leak out that I incline to a soft line (which is what I desire whenever possible) there might follow complications of importance’.108 On 24 May 1591 the inquisitors of Saragossa tried to get Pérez transferred to their own prison in the Aljafería palace. The attempt provoked serious riots in the city; in the tumult Almenara received wounds from which he later died. The king was asleep in bed at Aceca when Chinchón brought him news of the death. ‘What?’, he is reported to have said, stroking his beard with his hand, ‘so they have killed the marquis?’109 He had himself dressed, and began to dictate letters.
After the May riots his ministers were unanimous that harsh measures, including the execution of implicated nobles, were essential. Philip, however, disagreed and refused to act. ‘In good time we can see what is the best course to take, in this as in everything else. I say this because it does not seem to me that we are yet in a situation to be able to resolve these matters.’110 To help him consider the issues, he set up a special junta on Aragon of thirteen persons, who were to meet under the presidency of cardinal Quiroga in Madrid. He happened to be seriously unwell at the time, and insisted on resting in bed at San Lorenzo rather than returning to Madrid.111 In the capital, the junta on Aragon were anxiously deliberating while also criticising the king for his inaction.
Philip's deliberate refusal to act was familiar to a key observer of this time, the count of Luna. ‘As was usual when he wanted a matter to be resolved in accordance with his wishes, when he sent it to a committee or for the opinion of others,’ Luna noted, ‘he took to his bed in order to force a reply. And this without ever declaring his will or ordering firmly “I want to do this”.’112 The tactic always worked. Four weeks later he had not changed his mind, preferring caution to the show of force advised by the junta on Aragon. ‘There is no doubt that if this can be settled by benign means it will be better than having to use force.’113 But this was no display of weakness. The king was already furious with the constitutional leaders of Aragon, the diputados, who instead of condemning the events of May had tried to explain them to him. ‘This was like throwing on the fiery disposition of His Majesty,’ it was observed, ‘not just oil but burning pitch.’114 In a long, ominous letter to the junta on Aragon, Philip bared his inner thoughts and also revealed a glimpse of cold steel:
I don't believe there is anybody in the world so blind or so misinformed as not to understand perfectly well the responsibility thrust on me in Aragon; and much less those here in the junta, unless they are blind or misinformed … I understand perfectly well this responsibility I now have, and the greatest responsibility of all is the service of Our Lord.
The next important responsibility was the authority that the Inquisition had lost in Saragossa. It was essential to restore this.
Besides this, there is the responsibility that I also have to the administration of justice in that kingdom, and the punishment of those who have put both Inquisition and justice in the condition in which they are … I am determined to resolve this as necessary, even if it means involving my own person and whatever else is required. If for the sake of religion we have been through and done what you have seen in Flanders, and then in France, the responsibility is even greater to our own people, on our doorstep. For I see very well that if you abandon them and do not help as you should, they will attempt to abolish the Inquisition…
For all these reasons, I cannot but be very firm and determined in what I have said. It also seems desirable that before any resort to force other appropriate means be explored, in order to achieve peacefully what I have been saying. But these means must be through the due and fitting use of authority, not through the pardon that I think some of you have proposed in some matters.
It seems to me that it is time now to begin to explore these means, so do not lose any more time.115
In the light of his own experience the king was determined not to repeat his mistake in Flanders, of resorting to strong measures when milder ones would suffice. He was also concerned to act within the law, not outside it.
In the process, substantial differences of approach emerged between himself and his ministers. They could not understand Philip's obsessive concern for the Inquisition. To them it appeared obvious that the whole business would never have got out of hand, had it not been for the Inquisition laying its hands on Pérez. They accordingly informed the king that for the Holy Office to preserve its authority, ‘it is very important not to involve this tribunal in matters that are outside its competence’. The view was strongly held by the ministers and other advisers.116 It provoked an angry and long-suffering outburst from the king. ‘Maybe,’ he responded, ‘you will come to realise one day, that these matters are not outside the competence of the Inquisition, but among those that most directly concern it.’117
The misunderstandings between king and ministers did not stop there. The junta on Aragon drafted a letter to Saragossa in Philip's name, saying that he was ‘determined to go there and hold a Cortes’. The king was indignant. ‘In the reply I sent you the other day, about going there, it was not a question of “going to a Cortes” but only of “going”; and that was my reply and it still is. I said nothing about going to hold a Cortes. There is no need right now to raise the matter of a Cortes until we see later on how things turn out.’118
Fortunately they all agreed on one thing: the probable need to send in an army. From 1 September secret preparations for this eventuality were put into effect, and the king with great precision drew up in his own hand details of recruitment, movements and strategy. Years of political experience, and direct familiarity with the terrain, enabled him to assume the role of strategist.
It was a grave moment. Never since the union of Castile and Aragon in the 1470s had the crown raised an army to act in Aragon. Not since the 1520s (in Castile) had it had to take armed action against its own nobility. The paramount concern now was France. Philip saw the need to ‘act quickly because of the business in France’.119 If there were commitments in France, he could not be tied down in Aragon. But even though the immediate motive was Saragossa, there were long-standing problems of law and order which Philip and his ministers were no doubt anxious to resolve. Preparations were to be kept secret even from the new viceroy, the bishop of Teruel, who was to be told (correctly) that troops were being prepared to secure the frontier with France.
On 24 September the Inquisition once again tried to remove Pérez to the Aljafería. This time there was an even more serious riot in the streets of Saragossa, and the prisoner was set free. Pérez, accompanied by his friends, fled the city and took the road northwards. He eventually made it to France and then to England. The events of September removed any doubts about the need for action. It was less a riot than a massacre: the casualties were twenty-three dead and many seriously wounded.120 When informed that the army would be ready by January the king commented: ‘It seems a very long time to have to wait until January for a solution.’121 He was now in a hurry to act.122 Two armies were assembled on the frontiers of Aragon. A small force waited in the north, on the frontier with Navarre. Further south, some 14,000 infantry and 1,500 cavalry were mustered under the command of Alonso de Vargas, an elderly and ailing veteran of the war in Flanders. Apart from some 800 infantry who had been with the ill-fated Armada, the soldiers were, in Vargas's opinion, the worst dregs he had ever seen. Recruited largely by the Castilian nobility from their estates,123 they were the only troops the government could raise at short notice. On 15 October the king sent a letter to each of the authorities in Aragon, telling them that he was sending in troops. Philip claimed that they were merely ‘passing through on their expedition to France’. There was, he insisted, no threat to liberties: ‘my will has been and is that the fueros be preserved’. Vargas told a friend that ‘the king told him that up till then he b
elieved that the affairs of Aragon would be settled without this severe measure of an army’. Still no action was taken. Days passed while the recruited troops straggled in to the rendezvous on the Castile–Aragon frontier.
The option of persuasion was not forgotten. Philip sent in, by way of the frontier town of Calatayud, the Valencian marquis of Llombay. His task was to reassure the Aragonese. Meanwhile, the king consulted with senior officials throughout the peninsula. The viceroy of Navarre, for example, was asked in October for his view of the situation.124
At the end of October the four judges in the court of the justiciar, Juan de Lanuza, declared that sending in the army was a contrafuero, a contravention of the laws of the realm. This was an open declaration against the king. On 11 November the royal armies entered Aragon. That same day Lanuza with his allies prepared to confront the invaders. Failing to muster sufficient forces in Saragossa, or the help of any other city in the realm, the dissidents fled the capital. Several nobles who had been forced into a compromising role by the events also left the city and went north to the town of Epila. They included the justiciar, Juan de Lanuza; the count of Aranda, Luis Jiménez de Urrea; and the duke of Villahermosa, Martín de Aragón. Vargas faced no resistance, and entered Saragossa peacefully on 14 November. The city was like a tomb, reports a witness: ‘it was horrible, because I saw over 1,500 houses with their doors and windows shut and a terrible fear in the spirits of everybody’.125
For a month nothing happened. The nobles and justiciar were persuaded to return to the capital. The constitutional bodies met again, and condemned the refugee dissidents. Vargas, a close friend to many Aragonese, advised moderation. He proposed a general pardon, the confirmation of the fueros, and the appointment of Aranda as viceroy. He also advised that ‘in order to preserve the authority of the Inquisition its officials should not interfere in matters that do not involve it directly’.126 This last piece of advice, as we have seen, coincided with that of ministers but went directly against the king's views.
His moderate attitude was brusquely rejected by the junta on Aragon in Madrid. The members were all agreed that exemplary punishment should be carried out. They disagreed only on its manner: some felt that the fueros should be respected, others held that the fueros were not operative in these circumstances. At the end of November they voted unanimously for the immediate execution without trial of the justiciar and of any other leaders caught.127 On 19 December Aranda and Villahermosa were arrested and despatched immediately under escort to Castile. The next day the justiciar was arrested.
The subsequent repression was controlled at every stage by the organs of government in Madrid. Every step was advised and recommended by officials of the council of Aragon, led by the count of Chinchón. Chinchón's personal animosity towards many of the leaders of Aragon was well known in that realm. The councillors advised Philip that neither formal trials nor evidence were required in cases like the present, ‘when there is open sedition and rebellion’; that the army should execute the guilty on the spot; and that the Inquisition must be used against other guilty persons.128 The junta in mid-December reaffirmed that ‘the guilty may be punished without any judicial order or formal accusation or trial or observation of the fueros’.129 The king followed this advice closely. Some in Madrid, in particular Chinchón, had their own reasons for supporting a harsh line. In that same week the order was sent for the execution without trial of the justiciar. The king issued a blanket commission written in his own hand.130
Juan de Lanuza had succeeded to the post on his father's death, just two days before the events of 24 September. He was twenty-two years old, without the experience or the authority to control his own judges or restrain the dissidents as his father had done. His compliance with the declaration of a contrafuero had provided the legal basis for opposition. On 20 December, just after his arrest, he had his supper tranquilly. Later he was taken to meet a group of officials including the governor of Aragon, Ramón Cerdán, a Flanders veteran. The king's sentence was read to him. He became distraught, but was told to compose himself since he had only twelve hours to live. When the governor in reading the sentence came to the accusation that he was a traitor, the justiciar could only murmur: ‘no, not that; ill-advised, yes’.131 At ten the next morning, he was beheaded in the market square of the city, under the windows of his residence.132 The streets were occupied by troops, and the windows shuttered: few managed to witness the execution. At midday, in pouring rain, he was buried with full honours.
It was a rapid, efficient and brutal act of surgery. The junta in February felt that ‘punishments are best done rapidly and not in cold blood nor half-heartedly, in this way they cause more terror’.133 Many Aragonese for their part felt that it was the most terrible moment in the history of their nation. ‘There are no words,’ the count of Luna lamented, ‘to express the calamity and sadness of that day.’134
Aranda was confined at Medina del Campo, and moved early in August 1592 to the castle at Coca, where within a few days he died, aged only fifty-three, of a sudden illness. Villahermosa was confined in Burgos, and later transferred to Miranda, where he also died of an illness, on 6 November. There were, inevitably, rumours about these sudden deaths. The king, however, had no motive whatever to remove the two men, and no evidence exists of foul play.135 Philip never in his reign sanctioned an execution, public or secret, without the explicit written support of his legal advisers. The mysterious deaths of the two nobles continue nevertheless to cast a shadow over the reputation of the king. In 1593, on his return from Tarazona, he instructed the council of Aragon to look into their cases. His confessor, Diego de Yepes, warned him about Chinchón's hostility to such a move.136 With the help of favourable testimony from Vargas and others, at Easter 1596 the council issued a sentence absolving Villahermosa.137 Aranda also was later declared innocent.138
Philip was concerned to reach a general pacification without delay. A general pardon was published in January 1592. It was accompanied by a list of over 150 persons who were excepted. Some of these, such as the rebel leader Juan de Luna, were already in custody. Luna and his accomplices were tried, tortured and executed on 19 October. The Inquisition was also encouraged to play its part. The king was advised that ‘this tribunal is the most efficient way of pursuing and punishing those whom Your Majesty feels should not reasonably remain unpunished’.139 In the spring of 1592 he was in touch with Inquisitor-General Quiroga over the action to be taken. The result was an enormous auto de fe held in Saragossa on 20 October that year, when eighty-eight victims participated in the ceremony. The name of Pérez featured among them, on a charge of homosexuality. Many of the others were accused of taking part in the riots against the Inquisition. It was a blatantly political use of a Church tribunal. A further ceremony, including more rioters, was held just over a year later.
Meanwhile, careful preparations had been made to summon the Aragonese Cortes. ‘This business of the Cortes,’ Philip had observed, ‘is not easy to resolve.’140 The cities and estates were called to meet in Tarazona: the session was opened on 15 June 1592 by the archbishop of Saragossa. Philip was seriously ill, but resolved, against the advice of Dr Vallés, to attend the later sessions. He also subsequently decided to include Navarre in the itinerary. He would take prince Philip with him, to swear to the laws of that realm. In May he went from San Lorenzo with the prince and Isabel, to spend a week at Valsaín and a further week in Segovia. In June they celebrated Corpus at San Lorenzo, and then set out on their journey towards Navarre and Aragon. In Valladolid, which put on celebrations, fireworks and a bull-run, the king was forced to stop several days because of his gout. On days when he felt better, he went visiting. He paid an official visit to the university, and also went to the English College, which he had founded years before as a haven for exiled English Catholic clergy. During the stay in Valladolid he suffered a serious blow: his long-serving and faithful doctor, Francisco Vallés, died. Another casualty was the Valencian humanist Furió Ceriol,141 wh
o was accompanying the court.
When the royal party eventually got to Burgos the king's condition was clearly serious. Philip insisted on pressing on towards Navarre, travelling part of the route in a litter. ‘In the year 1542 when I went to that city with the emperor my father,’ he reminisced to the viceroy of Navarre, ‘we went from Logroño, and I think this would be the best and most direct route.’142 Bad weather made the journey extremely difficult. It was ‘overcast, stormy, the roads muddy and very dangerous because of the swollen streams and deep torrents which flowed everywhere with great fury’.143 The royal group entered Pamplona on 20 November; two days later the Cortes of Navarre, assembled in the cathedral, swore to the prince as heir. There were the usual festivities and celebrations, and a special event was put on for Philip's pleasure: a grand tournament in the medieval manner.
The king reached Tarazona on the last day of November. Making a special effort, despite his condition, he entered the city riding a white horse.144 He was very ill, but also very angry. He entered the Cortes unsmiling, his face like thunder.145 As the king had promised, no significant changes were made to the liberties of Aragon. But the decisions agreed upon by the chastened deputies defined more rigidly the parameters of law and order in the realm. A repeat of the Pérez episode was made impossible. In future, delinquents in one realm could be repatriated from another, royal officials could enter other jurisdictions in search of those accused, and the office of justiciar was made revocable by the king. Most decisions of the estates could now be passed by simple majority, though the traditional need for a unanimous vote was still preserved in some essential matters.146 For the first time, the crown stepped in to license printing.147 Finally, the four estates of the Cortes held a solemn session on 2 December at which prince Philip swore to observe the fueros. Three days later the royal party left Tarazona. They were back in Madrid on the thirtieth. The whole trip had lasted eight months, and took its toll on the king's health. Philip looked haggard, old and ill.148