The revolt of the Moriscos occupies a remarkable place in the native annals of the sixteenth century. These christianised Moors still remained Mohammedans at heart; and though they attended at mass, they made amends in secret for this compulsory apostasy, by celebrating the rites of their own religion. Early in 1567 a decree was published, that the children of the Moriscos should frequent the Christian church; that the Arabic should cease to be used in writing; that both men and women should wear the Spanish costume; that they should discontinue their ablutions; that they should no longer receive Mohammedan names; and that they should neither marry, nor remove from one place to another, without permission from the proper authorities.
The tenacity with which men adhere to ancient forms, even where there is not the slightest compromise of principle, appears from the opposition raised to the edict. The Moriscos contended, with great reason, that no particular mode of dress involved religious considerations, since, in every country, even where the same religion prevailed, it was found to vary; that if their women continued to use the veil, modesty only was the cause; that their musical instruments were equally harmless; that the use of the Arabic language could not surely be a sin, since it was the mother-tongue of many oriental Christians; and that their baths were used, not from religion, but from cleanliness. The marquis of Mondejar, captain-general of Granada, who had strongly disapproved the royal ordinance, was persuaded to lay these representations before the king. They had no effect—a result which so irritated this people that a general revolt was planned. Its chief authors were Ferag ben Ferag, descended from the royal house of Granada, and Diego Lopez ben Abu. The evening of Christmas Day was fixed for the general rising. With the romantic view of restoring their ancient kingdom, they secretly elected in Granada a sovereign, Ferdinand de Valor, whom they named Muhammed ben Humeya, and whose family was of royal extraction.
This bold step was followed by other measures equally secret and vigilant. Officers were nominated; the mountaineers and inhabitants of the plain armed, and ordered to rise on the night appointed—when alarm guns should be fired by the Christians from the fortress of the Alhambra. When the day arrived, eight thousand men lay in the mountains which overlook the towers of Granada, and two thousand more in a different direction, waiting for the signal. They had agreed to assail three of the gates, while another party should scale the walls: the Mohammedans who had been committed to the prisons of the Inquisition, or to those of the state, were immediately to be released, and every Christian in the place to be massacred. Fortunately for the city, several accidents conspired to avert the catastrophe. The night was dark; a heavy snow fell in the mountains; it was followed by a still heavier rain, which rendered them impassable, and compelled the eight thousand in ambush to retire. Ignorant of this disaster, in accordance with a preconcerted plan, Ibn Ferag, accompanied by 180 resolute Moriscos, advanced to the walls of the Albaycin, which they soon scaled, and with loud voices called on their brethren of that quarter to join them. The call, which, as it was issued by trumpets, amidst the silence of night, was heard by all, was applied to deaf ears; none obeyed it.
But if no impression was made on the capital, the case was far different with respect to the towns and villages in the province, the Moorish inhabitants of which rose simultaneously with this attempt. From Granada Ibn Ferag led his followers into the Alpujarras, where being joined by the monfis, or banditti of these mountains, he passed from place to place to sustain the insurrection.
At the same time orders were given by Ibn Humeya to massacre all Christians above the age of ten years. The vengeance of these ferocious apostates fell chiefly upon the priests who had forced them to mass, on the altars and images which they had been compelled to venerate, on collectors of the taxes, and on the officers of justice.
At Ragol, in the district of Marchena, the priest was dragged from the altar where he was celebrating mass, and was hung from a pillar: when dead, he was flayed, and his skin nailed to the wall. At Pitres, after the church and private houses had been plundered, the prisoners were brought out to suffer; but for the priest, who, with his aged mother, exhorted them not to flinch in the trial before them, a more lingering death was reserved. He was first drawn up by a pulley to the top of the steeple, and suffered to fall; but though his legs and arms were broken, he was not dead: he was then heavily cudgelled; still he breathed: a cord was thrown over his neck, and the end first given to some Morisco women, who dragged him through the mire, plunging needles, scissors, and knives into his body, until he perished. These demons of women next destroyed the venerable matron in the same manner. In some places the executions were conducted with whimsical caprice. In one, the rebels first shaved both the head and beard of the curate, but not so dexterously as to avoid inflicting some severe wounds; they next put him to death. In another, the priest and several of his flock having taken refuge in the church, and knelt, to prepare for their inevitable fate, before the high altar, they were seized by the Moorish alguazil; who, in delivering them into the hands of the bloodhounds outside, observed, “Kill these dogs! Let the priest have the first blow, in reward for the anxiety he showed about our souls; let the sacristan have the second, in return for the chastisement he inflicted on us when we either failed to attend mass or arrived too late!”
A DELEGATION FROM HOLLAND TO PHILIP II
They seized an image of the Virgin, which, after buffeting and kicking and dragging through the mud, they rolled down a steep eminence, calling on the idol, with ludicrous jeers, to save itself if it had any virtue in it. In another, as a Moorish wag was dragging a large crucifix through a sewer, he perceived a Christian physician, to whom he cried out, “Dog, here is thy Creator! canst thou not cure him?” The horrified Christian immediately knelt, kissed the log, which he declared was indeed his Creator, and was immediately transfixed by the contemptuous bystanders. A magistrate of Santa Cruz was stripped before his three daughters and one of his grandsons; his nose was cut off and nailed to his forehead; and in this state all were led out. On the way to the place of execution, with hands tied behind them, he forgot his own sufferings to strengthen their constancy by his exhortations: and his discourse so incensed the Moriscos that one cut off his ears, and crammed them into his mouth; another, improving on the barbarity, cut open his belly, and thrust into the cavity, ears, nose, tongue, hands, and feet; and in this state the poor sufferer was thrown into the flames. The daughters were spared—probably to satiate the brutal lust of the misbelievers. The priest of Andarax was roasted over a brazier; and while sustaining the agony with devout constancy, his mouth was gagged, that he might not invoke the divine mercy; the women, tired of waiting for his death, at length despatched him with their knives and needles. At one place, with the view of ridiculing the sacrifice of the mass, the rebels killed a pig on the high altar. At another, where, under the assurance of safety, about one hundred prisoners who had sought refuge in the fortress surrendered and were immediately butchered, two priests rendered themselves peculiarly obnoxious by their zealous exhortations to the martyrs. One of them was suspended with the head downwards, and with a noose round his neck; at the other end of the cord a second noose was made, and thrown over the neck of the other priest, who was similarly suspended: in their agony they strangled each other, amidst the shouts of the spectators. At Oanez, twenty-five Christian maidens of surpassing beauty were reserved as a present to the African princes whose aid had been solicited. As usual, endeavours were made to convert them, but without effect. Policy yielding to religious fury, they were stripped naked, conducted into the fields, tied to trees, pricked from head to foot with briers and thorns, and a rope being passed round them as they stood in a circle, was drawn so tight as to produce excruciating agony: in the end they were shot. Such are a few of the horrors perpetrated by the Moriscos on this occasion. The number of victims cannot be estimated; it probably amounted to thousands.
A Spanish Captain, Time of Philip II
When intelligence of these events reached the marquis of Mondejar, after providing for the defence of Granada, he took the field. Ibn Humeya, confiding in the defiles of the Alpujarras, prepared to receive him; while another band of the rebels placed themselves in opposition to the marquis de los Velez, on the southern frontier of this mountainous district. In some isolated actions, the Moriscos had the advantage; but this was only when the Christians went in scattered detachments, and were consequently subject to surprise. The former were too weak, even with the succours they derived from Africa, to risk a general engagement. Fortress after fortress fell into the power of the royal generals, who vigorously pursued the enemy.
The marquis de Mondejar continued the desultory warfare with more or less success. That success would have been much more decisive, but for the opposition between him and the marquis de los Velez: the former was for tempering mercy with justice; the latter for extermination. Horrors now were as much the work of the Christians as of the Moriscos. An event, which happened in the fortress of Jubiles made a deep impression on the rebels, and contributed more than any other cause to feed the flame of civil strife. That fortress being invested by the marquis, three aged Moriscos issued from it with the banner of peace, and agreed to its surrender, on the condition that the lives of the garrison, consisting of three hundred men and fifteen hundred women, should be respected. It was accordingly entered by the royal troops, to whom the plunder was abandoned. The men were lodged with the inhabitants of the town; the women were ordered to be accommodated in the church. As that edifice, however, would contain no more than five hundred, the remaining thousand were compelled to pass the night in the square before it. Guards were posted to protect them.
About the middle of the night, one of the soldiers, being enamoured with a young Morisca, wished to detach her from her companions. She resisted; he pulled her away by force; when one of the persons by her side—her husband or brother, in the disguise of a woman—took her part, engaged, and disarmed the soldier. The confusion produced by this struggle led to a tumult; the soldiers rushed from their camp; it was proclaimed that many armed Moriscos were disguised among the prisoners; and, in the fury of the moment, the whole number were pitilessly massacred. In vain did the marquis endeavour to stay the carnage: the authority of the officers was disregarded. At break of day their fury cooled, and gave way to remorse on perceiving the bloody corpses of one thousand helpless, unarmed women. This bloody crime will never be blotted from the minds of men.[88]
The tyranny of Ibn Humeya somewhat counterbalanced the effect which this terrific tragedy was so well calculated to produce. He assassinated his father-in-law, repudiated his wife, put to death several of her relatives, and threatened the same fate for her brother, Diego de Rojas, one of his ablest adherents. By this hasty vengeance he naturally estranged many of his followers. As the Christian army advanced into the mountains, he was compelled to flee from one position to another; but not without loss to his pursuers.
Mondejar considered that the war was at an end, and that the fugitive would infallibly be captured. He did not know that, notwithstanding the heavy losses sustained by the enemy, they were still six thousand in number; many of them determined to resist to the last extremity. In a few days, however, on the heights of the Sierra Nevada, one thousand were exterminated by the marquis de los Velez.
But such were the excesses of the Christian soldiers, the want of faith which characterised some of their leaders, and the rapacity of all, that no reverses could make the rebels lay down their arms; and on several occasions they were enabled to inflict a suitable revenge. The Moriscos had learned, to their cost, that even when conditions of capitulation had been proposed and accepted, in violation of their terms the prisoners were plundered or massacred. It was asserted that no faith could be placed in a Christian’s word or bond; and the report naturally strengthened the bands of Ibn Humeya. Philip saw that the two marquises would never cordially co-operate so long as each led an independent power; and he subjected both to the authority of his bastard brother, Don John of Austria.
Several districts which had submitted rebelled anew, and Ibn Humeya was at the head of a far more numerous force than had ever yet taken the field.
At Valor, whither the marquis de los Velez penetrated, Ibn Humeya made a vigorous stand; but notwithstanding his valour, which was never perhaps surpassed, and his abilities, which were of a high order, he was signally defeated and compelled to flee almost alone. This disaster was partially repaired by a reinforcement from Africa, and by the spirit of desertion which prevailed in the camp of the marquis. His own conduct, however, continually increased the number of his enemies. One night he was strangled, and Ibn Abu was proclaimed under the name of Mulei Abdallah.
The war now raged with various success; to each party the loss of one day was counterbalanced by the gain of the next, until Don John of Austria, who had assembled troops on every side, again took the field in person. He proceeded to reduce the mountain fortresses. One after another fell into his hands. To prevent another insurrection after submission, the inhabitants of the newly subdued towns were transplanted to other parts, generally to the towns of Andalusia; a few into New Castile. This measure contributed more than any other to weaken the rebels, and to hasten the conclusion of the war. In almost every partial action—the enemy could no longer dream of a general one—the advantage lay with the Christians; nor was the success less rapid than decided.
As the whole range of mountains was now almost depopulated, the Moriscos being uniformly transferred to other parts, and as but a handful of desperate adventurers, most of whom had been professed banditti, remained, the chiefs who still adhered to Mulei now advised him to submit. He refused and was killed. With Mulei was extinguished the last spark of the rebellion.
The next important feature in the domestic administration of Philip is the fate of his first-born son, Don Carlos. This prince, who was born in 1545, was by nature of fiery temperament and of irregular manners. In his seventeenth year he sustained an accident, which was, doubtless, the chief cause of all his misfortunes. One day, while at the university of Alcalá, he fell headlong down the staircase, and was for some time stunned by the blow. As no external injury was visible, his medical attendants hoped that he would soon be restored; but in a few days he was seized with an alarming fever, and they were painfully convinced that a serious internal one had been sustained. The fever increased, delirium approached, the king was sent for, and all hope of cure abandoned (1562).
In this extremity, when human aid was evidently unavailing, recourse was had to the merits of San Diego of Alcalá, who had always been the peculiar object of the prince’s veneration. The holy corpse was exhumed and brought into the bedchamber of Carlos, whose hands were devoutly placed on it, and whose lips implored the intercession of the saint; at the same time a part of the shroud was laid on his burning face. While a procession of monks removed the corpse to the tomb, the prince, we are gravely informed, fell into a sweet sleep, in which San Diego appeared to him, and assured him of a speedy recovery. The prediction, we need scarcely add, was immediately verified! Unfortunately, however, the saint could only restore the body; from this moment must be dated the periodical insanity of the patient, and that invariable eccentricity of manner which is inconsistent with soundness of intellect.[89] As he grew in years he exhibited his wayward humour; sometimes the most extravagant freaks. Nothing can more clearly show his unfortunate state of mind than his behaviour to the duke of Alva, when that nobleman, on being appointed to the government of the Netherlands, called to take leave of him. He told the duke that to him alone belonged the dignity, and that he would take the life of anyone who usurped it from him. Alva, with great mildness, endeavoured to pacify him, but in vain: in his fury he drew forth a dagger, and would assuredly have buried it in the governor’s heart, had not the latter seized his hands and held him until some gentlemen of the household hastened to the scene. One of his favourite diversions was to walk the streets by night, sometimes indecently exposing his person. On one occasion a pair of new boots were brought, which the prince, finding too tight, immediately cut into pieces, and made the poor workman swallow several. One day his chamberlain, Don Alfonso de Cordova, brother of the marquis de las Navas, being summoned by the bell, was unable to arrive in time for his impatience: he took the chamberlain in his arms, swore he would throw him out at the window, and advanced to one for the purpose, when the cries of Don Alfonso brought the domestics to his aid. Being one day in a forest with his governor, Don Garcia de Toledo, whom he hated for attempting to restrain his desperate excesses, he proceeded to stab that nobleman; but the intended victim escaped and reported him to the king. In short, his conduct to all his servants was intolerable, alike for its cruelty and caprice: several he beat, a few he maimed; nor could the exhortations of his father or his confessor make any impression on him. To the former he bore a bitter hatred: the cause was that Philip, who knew his fatal infirmity, would not allow him to interfere with public affairs.
At length, being discovered in an attempt to flee into the Netherlands, to place himself at the head of the insurgents, the king felt that he should be compelled to place a guard over his frenzied son. On the night of January 19th, 1568, accompanied by four of his nobles and some armed guards, he proceeded to the prince’s apartment, took away his papers, his sword, knives, and everything that could be hurtful to him; assuring him at the same time that he had no end in view beyond his good.
He confided the care of the prince to six gentlemen of the noblest families of Spain, two of whom were always to be with him night and day; and he placed over all the duke of Feria and the prince of Eboli. This measure, however well intended, did no good: Carlos grew sullen and obstinate; his freaks more frequent and capricious. To walk in a state of nudity through his apartments; to refrain from food two days together, and then to eat voraciously; to drink immoderate quantities of the coldest water; to steal ice and convey it into his bed;[90] to devour the sourest fruits, were his constant occupation. The infallible consequences soon appeared: his stomach refused to retain the most wholesome food, much more the medicines that were administered to him; a malignant fever assailed him; and he was told to prepare for death. At this period his better feelings returned; he asked for his father, whose pardon he humbly demanded, and whose blessing he received; he received the last sacraments, commended his soul to God, and died at midnight, July 24th, 1568.
The fate of this maniac prince has called forth much affected commiseration, inasmuch as it has enabled malignity to assail the memory of the father. It has been stated that Philip was the rival of his son in the affections of a French princess [Elizabeth (Isabella), daughter of King Henry II]; that after she became queen of Spain, she loved the latter, and detested the former; that jealousy forced the king to the most tyrannical treatment of the youth; that Carlos was persecuted by the Inquisition, and at length poisoned, by order of the father.[91] The truth is that Philip behaved with much moderation to a son who was fit only for a receptacle for lunatics.
But if impartial justice acquit Philip of guilt, or even of undue severity in regard to his son, the same favourable verdict cannot be given in regard to two other affairs, which have been studiously wrapped in great darkness: they were the assassination of Juan de Escovedo, secretary to Don John of Austria, and the subsequent persecution of Antonio Perez, Philip’s secretary of state. The former, who had been sent to Spain on business of his master, was murdered at Madrid, in March, 1578. The assassins were not unknown; but they were suffered to escape into Italy, and were afterwards employed in the service of the Neapolitan viceroy. That they were hired by Antonio Perez is undoubted, from his own confession; but what interest had he, what revenge to gratify, in such a crime? The same confession—published many years after the tragedy—throws the entire blame on the king; nor is there any reason to doubt its truth.[92]
The most probable hypothesis is that Escovedo was the prime intriguer in the ambitious schemes which Don John is known to have formed: that he had persuaded his master to aspire to the hand of Elizabeth, queen of England, was seriously affirmed by letters from the Low Countries; and that he had passed two months in England in trying to open negotiations for that end was said to rest on the authority of the Spanish ambassador at Rome.i
The sons of the murdered Escovedo had, soon after their father’s death, instituted a prosecution against the secretary, Antonio Perez, as the author of the foul deed. Through the king’s intervention, and under his sanction, a compromise was effected between the parties. Perez paid a large sum of money to Escovedo’s family, whereupon he was set at liberty, and, though forbidden to appear at court, continued to conduct the business of his office. But either the alleged intimacy with the princess of Eboli still rankled in Philip’s mind, or he dreaded the disgraced secretary’s revealing his own share in Escovedo’s assassination. In 1591 Perez was accused of boasting of the murder, of betraying state secrets to the princess of Eboli, of falsifying the letters he deciphered, and of taking bribes. Upon these charges he was thrown into prison, where, whilst he was offered his liberty as the price of giving up the king’s letters touching Escovedo’s death, he was treated with extraordinary severity. Perez accepted the terms, and was released: but he managed to keep back one note, which Philip, it seems, had forgotten.
The liberty thus purchased. Perez was not, however, long permitted to enjoy. The prosecution for the murder was revived; the accused was again thrown into prison, where he was tortured to extort a confession, which he had no desire to withhold. He is said to have revealed all, giving the reserved royal letter as evidence of his truth; and thus Philip, whose only object in this strange tissue of artifice appears to have been the clearing himself by a judicial sentence from any participation in the murder, was caught in his own toils. But the situation and prospects of the prisoner were not improved by the exposure of his royal accomplice; and he saw that in flight lay his only chance of life. His escape was happily managed by the address of his wife. Perez fled to his native Aragon; and there, though he was again seized by the king’s orders, his condition was far different. He appealed to the yet inviolate laws and privileges of Aragon. The justiciero mayor, Juan de Lanuza, evoked the cause before his own tribunal at Saragossa, where the proceedings were public; and he lodged the accused in the prison called the Manifestacion, under his own sole and especial jurisdiction.
Perez in Prison
This was not the tribunal before which it suited Philip that Perez should be tried. The Inquisition, therefore, accused the ex-secretary of heretical opinions; and as the justiciero mayor would not surrender his prisoner, the inquisitors, with the assistance of the marquis of Almenara, a minister of the king, broke open the prison, and removed him to their own dungeons. Such an infraction of the Aragonese constitution roused the spirit of the people, and a regular contest ensued between them and the king’s officers, in the course of which the marquis of Almenara was so ill-used as to occasion his death. Perez was recovered from the inquisitors and replaced in the justiciero’s custody; again seized by the inquisitors, and again torn from them by the populace, who, upon this second occasion, favoured his flight, when Perez, by the aid of his friends, escaped into France, where he was kindly received and protected by Henry IV.
Philip sent an army into Aragon, to quell and chastise these disorders. Prudence and submission upon negotiation might still, perhaps, have effected a compromise: but the justiciero had died during the tumults, and his son, who had succeeded to his office, rashly attempted to resist by force this second act of unconstitutional violence; for no foreign troops might enter Aragon without the consent of the cortes or the justiciero; and each of the several kingdoms united under the name of Spain still considered the natives of the others as foreigners. The attempt was unsuccessful, and again the fatal consequences of unsuccessful rebellion followed. The justiciero, together with the duke of Villa Hermosa, and some other leaders of the insurgents, were put to death; and the liberties of Aragon were very greatly diminished, though not so completely crushed as those of Castile had long been.n
Hated by the people while his influence with Philip II lasted, Antonio Perez became eminently popular as soon as his sufferings began. The secretary of state had commenced his brilliant career with a careful education, a vast knowledge, and an experience superior to his years. His handsome appearance won him the attention and favour of high-born women; his easy and agreeable manner gave him the highest place at the splendid court; his great ability, intelligence, and skill in business, his courtier-like cleverness had promptly won him his king’s affection.
The highest offices were heaped upon him, country-seats, palaces, carriages, horses, banquets, magnificent furniture, gold, and precious stones, all that his century could bestow, the delights of luxury, the pleasures of riches, the adulation of a high position—all was within his reach, and he abused all without limit or restraint. What could he not promise himself? What could he not hope for? Nevertheless the scene completely changed for the dazzled favourite; the hour of misfortune roused him from the soft sleep of his sybaritic delights, of his ambitious hopes, and imprisonment, tortures, the most violent and painful sufferings put his rich nature to the proof, exhausted the resources of his character, humbled his pride, and effacing the grievous errors of his prosperity, repeatedly poured into his ardent and pleasure-loving soul the balsam of resignation and the consolations of melancholy.
Having taken refuge in Paris by the side of Henry IV, he employed the rest of his life in defending the acts of his administration, and in vindicating his name from the grave accusations weighing on him. It was then he wrote his voluminous work entitled Memoirs and Letters of Antonio Perez, a book now well-nigh forgotten, but which in its time won the highest fame for its author. And this fame was just. All his writings in France, all his labours in England, had but the one exclusive aim—his defence; while he excited the interest of powerful foreigners won by the attraction of his cultured conversation, his graceful manners, and his flowery and witty letters. By this means his life and defence gained the highest popularity, his book made the greatest sensation in Paris, and numerous editions, translations, and extracts followed in quick succession to satisfy the public eagerness. The attentions of interest, the praise of admiration everywhere followed Perez, and while people believed his word and compassionated his dramatic misfortunes, they anathematised with horror the memory of his persecutor, the son of the victorious emperor, the eternal enemy of French influence.
An extraordinary coincidence kept the memory of his misfortunes ripe in Spain. His last persecution is intimately connected with the abolition of Aragonese fueros, when, a fugitive from prison, Antonio Perez presented himself in Saragossa, imploring the aid of the country’s laws, and appealed to the magistrates of the town, and his personal friends watched that no harm should come to his person. Provocations on one side, excesses and disorders on the other, brought about a revolution; and when the king’s troops presented themselves before the gates of Saragossa, the people neither knew how to calm down nor to resist them, and Aragonese liberty came to perish on the scaffold of Lanuza. The remembrance of their lost privileges, the memory of their sufferings, lasted many years in Aragon, and the natives of the country loved and defended the person of the luckless being who was the occasion rather than the motive of their rising. The name of Antonio Perez has become therefore strangely involved with the fueros of his native land, and both causes have been handed down to posterity united in a common misfortune and a common love.
But it is unworthy of the learning of the age to judge the first of Spanish kings by the light of the deceptive rays reflecting from his political and religious enemies, from the point of view of the philosophical prejudices of the eighteenth century. By the blunders of his administration, the violence of his passions, the exaggeration of his character the son of Charles V has given sufficient food for censure, without heaping on his head false crimes and imaginary faults. When, trusting to appearances or to partisan reports, one judges Philip II in his dealings with Antonio Perez, one’s natural feeling is to absolve the favourite and condemn the king, but if one has the curiosity to examine contemporary documents, if one investigates the private or public interests which suddenly changed the condescending friendship of the king into hatred and persecution, one certainly deplores the misfortune of the fallen minister and the inexorable anger of his sovereign, but the extravagant admiration for the victim will slightly decrease, and the abhorrence for the man who abandoned him to the implacable hatred of his enemies will be less intense.
His life is a lasting example to proud courtiers that the favour of princes is inconstant as the calmness of the sea; speedily the tempest comes and lashes the waves. As the famous duke of Alva said to the prince of Eboli: “Kings are wont to prove men like children with personal favours, and bait them like fishes.”
The life of Antonio Perez is an example of the inconstancy of fortune and the vanity of worldly desires; and there is a warning in the fate of the magnate who, having drained all the pleasures of riches and seductions of vanity, dazzled by the height of his position fell into such affliction and misery that his contemporaries considered him worthy of the title—“fortune’s freak.”m
Philip now felt his latter end approaching; and, from a natural desire to leave his wide-spreading dominions in a tranquil state to his son, he gladly accepted Pope Clement VIII’s proposal to mediate a peace between France and Spain. The negotiation was procrastinated by the archduke’s surprise and capture of Amiens, which Henry thought it indispensable to recover, before he would even listen to terms. The Spanish garrison in that town capitulated in the autumn of 1597; and in the following summer, notwithstanding the opposition of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Maurice, the Peace of Vervins was concluded upon equitable conditions—all conquests being mutually restored, and all pretensions to any part of each other’s dominions mutually relinquished.
This peace and the investing of the infanta with the sovereignty of the Netherlands were the last acts of Philip. He did not live to see the celebration of her marriage, or of his son’s with Margaret, daughter of the archduke Charles of Austria, which he had concluded. He had for years been, like his father, a martyr to the gout, but had never permitted his sufferings to interfere with his regal duties. During the severest paroxysms, he regulated everything, and frequently, when urged to spare himself, said that the pains in his joints did not lame his brain. His last illness was dreadful, his limbs being covered with ulcers that generated swarms of the most loathsome vermin. In that condition he lay for fifty days, and is said to have exhibited during the whole time a wonderful example of Christian patience and resignation. He died on the 13th of September, 1598. Of his numerous children, two only survived him—his son Philip, and the infanta Isabella. A second daughter, Catherine, had married the duke of Savoy, but died before her father, leaving a large family.
In America the limits of the Spanish empire were extended during this reign, but not so as sensibly to affect the power or the greatness of the mother-country. One fact, however, deserves notice. Whilst all surrounding Indians bowed beneath the yoke, and were rapidly swept away by the unaccustomed toils their new masters required, one bold and warlike tribe in the province of Chile, named the Araucans, after submitting like the rest, rose against their oppressors, and for years defied all the troops the Chilian and the Peruvian Spaniards could send against them. The war was ended only by a treaty recognising their independence. In the East Indian seas the Philippines were named and colonised.
Philip II had received Spain from his father in a state of brilliant prosperity. Her agriculture and manufactures were flourishing, and were competent to supply her large exports to her American colonies. That from this happy condition Spain began, during his long reign, to decline, is admitted by those Spanish writers who most warmly eulogise Philip; nor is the great pecuniary distress denied to which the lord of America and her mines was latterly reduced. The two facts form a curious comment upon the extraordinary prudence considered by them as his peculiar characteristic.
For this decline various causes have been assigned by philosophical historians, as, the numerous colonies that drained the population of the mother-country; the disgust which men, who saw immense fortunes easily and rapidly accumulated, in the plunder or the mines of the New World, conceived for the toils and the slow profits of trade and husbandry; the enormous waste of men and money occasioned by the various and simultaneous wars into which Philip was hurried, by either an extravagant ambition or an uncalculating bigotry. Experience and a maturer philosophy teach us that whatever ills may be thus occasioned, they are in their nature temporary, requiring only time to correct themselves; and direct us to seek the true cause of the gradual downfall of Spain in her loss of liberty.
The union of Spain into one monarchy, under Ferdinand and Isabella, had lessened the long-existing intimate connection between king and people, and the dependence of the former upon the latter: the natural consequence was a diminished respect on the part of the crown for popular rights. The splendour of Charles’ reign, his clemency, conciliating manners, and good government, perhaps, blinded the nation to his gradual invasion of their privileges, and neglect of the forms of a free constitution. Under the sterner sway of Philip, a complete despotism was established, and it seemed to give him a boundless power, alarming Europe, at the moment his authority began to decline. Since the cortes had fallen into contempt, the cities had lost their importance, and an arbitrary system of taxation had shaken the security of property.
Under such circumstances, commerce languished, and had no energy to resist the blow when the English and Dutch fleets intercepted the vessels bearing Spanish merchandise to America, or bringing back an ample return. Agriculture, like manufactures, must always suffer from the impoverishment of any portion of the community; but in Spain it now laboured under peculiar additional evils. When the nobles were lured from their rural homes to court, for the purpose of weakening their feudal power, the peasantry, divided from their natural protectors, robbed of the encouragement and support of almost princely establishments in every part of the country, sank into a degraded class; whilst the mighty lords themselves became mere intriguing courtiers, rapacious for money, in order to rival each other in splendour, and tyrants of those dependent peasants to whom their ancestors were as fathers. In this state, the vital spirit that should have reacted against every disaster was no more; and calamities, in their nature temporary, became permanent.
Philip II adorned Spain with many useful and some ornamental works. He erected the Escorial, which has ever since been a favourite royal residence. The Escorial is an immense pile of building, uniting a monastery, a cemetery, and a palace, dedicated to St. Lawrence in gratitude for the great victory of St. Quentin, gained upon the day on which his festival is celebrated; and to stamp it yet more manifestly his, is built in the form of a gridiron, the instrument of that saint’s martyrdom. The expense of the Escorial is reckoned as one cause of the exhaustion of Philip’s exchequer.
Philip was, or in emulation of his father and of his great-grandmother Isabella desired to be, esteemed a patron of literature, and of learning in general: in token of which he sent his eldest son Don Carlos, his brother Don John, and his nephew, the prince of Parma, to be educated at the University of Alcalá; and during his reign flourished most of the great Spanish authors. But the privilege of proscribing whatever books they should judge dangerous to Catholicism, which he committed to the Inquisition, more than counterbalanced his patronising exertions.n
“When he succeeded to his father,” says Hume,k “Spain was already well-nigh ruined by the drain of the emperor’s wars, imposed upon him by the inheritance of Flanders and the empire. It would be unfair to blame the monarch for the folly of his financial measures, as the science of political economy was yet unknown; but their persistent perversity seems almost systematic. When no further supplies could be wrung from the cortes, funds were raised by the seizure of the money which came to merchants from the Indies in payment for goods, by forced loans from nobles, prelates, or wealthy burgesses, by the sale of seigniorial rights over villages and towns, and of the royal patrimony, by repudiating debts, reducing interest, and hampering commerce and industry.
“The maladministration arising from the evil system of pledging and farming future resources was never reformed, the squalid lavishness of the court expenditure was never reduced, a conciliatory policy in order to avoid the cost of war was never adopted: the only steps which appear to have occurred to the financial advisers of Philip were those which undermined public confidence and security, which blighted the national industries, and which killed future resources for the sake of present advantage. The continued aggregation of land in the hands of the church and tied up in perpetual entail, and the expulsion of the Moriscos from Andalusia had well-nigh ruined agriculture. To prevent whole provinces from starving in the finest grain country in the world, immense quantities of wheat had to be introduced from abroad, and the alcabala suspended on bread-stuffs imported into Seville. Constant wars and emigration, the association of the Moriscos with industry, and the immense number of church holidays, moreover, made the ordinary Spaniard contemptuous of work, and scanty in his aggregate production. And so the vicious circle went on, and the curse of far-reaching dominions in the possession of an imperfectly unified and organised country had in seventy years reduced Spain to the last depth of misery and penury. To some extent this may, of course, be attributed to Philip’s qualities and limitations; but it was mainly owing to a system and to circumstances which were originated before his birth and which neither his training nor his character enabled him to vary.”
His character must be sufficiently clear from his actions: that it was gloomy, stern, and cruel; that he allowed neither civil freedom, nor religious toleration, but was on all occasions the consistent enemy of both; that he was suspicious, dark, and vindictive, are truths too evident to be denied. On his return to Spain, immediately after his father’s resignation, a characteristic scene occurred in Valladolid, at an auto-da-fé, which he attended with much devotion. When the condemned arrived at the place where the fire and fagot awaited them, one of them, an officer of distinction, asked the king how he could have the heart to behold the exquisite torments of his people. “Were my own son,” replied the bigoted tyrant, “such a wretch as thou, he should suffer the same fate!”
And when the archbishop of Toledo, Don Bartolomeo de Carranza, was arrested on suspicion of heresy by the office blasphemously called holy, the king wrote to the inquisitors commanding them to show no respect for persons, however exalted, but to proceed even against his own son, should the latter ever dare to doubt the infallibility of the church. All this is bad enough; yet, by the French writers as well as by our own historians, he has been treated with injustice. His ambition was certainly subservient to his zeal for religion; his talents were considerable; for prudence he was almost unrivalled; his attention to public affairs and to the best interests of his country has been surpassed by few monarchs; his habits were regular, his temperance proverbial; his fortitude of mind, a virtue which he had often occasion to exercise, was admirable; and, in general, he was swayed by the strictest sense of justice. Even his religious bigotry, odious as it was, was founded on conscientious principles, and his arbitrary acts on high notions of the regal authority. By many of his subjects he was esteemed, by many feared, by some hated, by none loved.i
Some historians have distinguished this prince by the title of Philip the Prudent, and have represented him as the wisest as well as the most religious prince that ever filled the Spanish throne. But it is questionable whether he be entitled to praise on account of his prudence, any more than on account of his religion. In the beginning of his reign he discovered great caution in his military enterprises; and, on some occasions, made even greater preparations than were necessary to insure success. But his ambition, his resentment, and his abhorrence of the Protestants were too violent to suffer him to act conformably to the dictates of sound policy and prudence.
He might have prevented the revolt of his Dutch and Flemish subjects if, after the reformation in the Netherlands was suppressed by the duchess of Parma, he had left the reins of government in the hands of that wise princess, and had not sent so odious a tyrant as the duke of Alva to enslave them. He might, after the defeat of the prince of Orange, have riveted the chains of slavery about their necks, and gradually accustomed them to the yoke, if, by engaging in too many expensive enterprises, he had not exhausted his exchequer, and made it in some measure necessary for Alva to impose the taxes of the tenth and twentieth pennies, for the maintenance of his troops. He might, through the great abilities of the duke of Parma, have again reduced the revolted provinces to obedience, if he had not conceived the wild ambition of subduing England and acquiring the sovereignty of France. His armies, in the latter part of his reign, were never sufficiently numerous to execute the various enterprises which he undertook; yet they were much more numerous than he was able to support. Few years passed in which they did not mutiny for want of pay. And Philip suffered greater prejudice from the disorders and devastation which his own troops committed, than he received from the arms of his enemies. Against his attempts on England and France, the wisest counsellors remonstrated in the strongest terms. And prudence certainly required that, previously to any attack upon the dominions of others, he should have secured possession of his own. Yet so great was his illusion that, rather than delay the execution of those schemes which his resentment and ambition had suggested, he chose to run the risk of losing the fruits of all the victories which the duke of Parma had obtained; and, having left defenceless the provinces which had submitted to his authority, he thereby afforded an opportunity to the revolted provinces of establishing their power on so firm a foundation that it could not be shaken by the whole strength of the Spanish monarchy exerted against it for more than fifty years.h