Chapter X (1)

MORAL AND SOCIAL DECADENCE IN MADRID--PHILIP'S HABITS--POVERTY IN THE PALACE--VELAZQUEZ--THE MENINAS--BIRTH OF AN HEIR--THE CHRISTENING--THE PEACE OF THE PYRENEES--PHILIP'S JOURNEY TO THE FRONTIER--MARRIAGE OF MARIA TERESA--CAMPAIGNS IN PORTUGAL--DON JUAN--DEATH OF HARO--PHILIP BEWITCHED--DEATH OF PHILIP PROSPER--BIRTH OF CHARLES--FANSHAWE's EMBASSY--LADY FANSHAWE AND SPAIN--ROUT OF CARACENA IN PORTUGAL--PHILIP'S ILLNESS--THE INQUISITION AND WITCHCRAFT--DEATH OF PHILIP

By great good fortune there have survived descriptions and accounts of life in Philip's Court at the time of which we now write (1654-1660), so minute and so photographic in their fidelity, as to provide absolutely trustworthy material for a true comparison of the condition of affairs after five-and-twenty years of a disastrous reign, with that which had existed on the King's accession. A writer of keen observation, insatiable curiosity, ample opportunity, and much literary skill, the noble churchman and poet Jeronimo de Barrionuevo, from 1654 for several years wrote almost every week a chatty letter from Madrid to his friend the Dean of Saragossa and others, setting {442} forth with perfect frankness everything worth recording that passed in Madrid. At the same time, an observant Hollander named Aersens van Sommerdyk visited Spain, and stayed in the capital long enough to write an account of the social and political condition of the Court as it appeared to an intelligent foreigner; whilst shortly afterwards the sparkling narrative of life in Madrid, written by the Frenchman Bonnecasse, came to confirm the impressions of the Spaniard and the Dutchman.[1] If we add to these Philip's own weekly letters to the nun, and the reports of the Venetian ambassadors, which are also in print, we have a mass of contemporary evidence which cannot be contradicted, especially in matters upon which all agree.

[Sidenote: Madrid in 1655-1660]

It is well that this should be so; for the picture to be presented of life in the capital of the Spains at the end of Philip's reign is so gloomy, that the historian who ventured to produce it without full contemporary warrant would be accused of bias {443} and exaggeration. At the beginning of the reign we saw a fairly numerous class of nobles, churchmen, and officials, still rich with royal grants and government plunder; whilst the mass of the people were sunk in poverty. At the time of which we are now writing the nobles themselves had been bled to a state of bankruptcy. They and the Church were supposed to be exempt from taxation; but the demands made upon them, and especially upon the nobles, for funds for the war had ended by reducing most of them to the same poverty-stricken condition as their inferiors in rank. The financial and mercantile classes had lost all confidence; for the arbitrary seizure of their property again and again by the Government, and the crushing taxation on exports, even to Spanish colonies, had driven them to universal evasion and contraband, to the further depletion of Philip's resources.[2] Haro, who had a revenue of 130,000 ducats a year, and a few of his kinsmen, were still very rich, and continued to plunder all they could, though there was, indeed, little left to plunder; and in addition to these, the only people who had much ready money to spend were the colonial officials who had returned home with the booty of their offices.

The idleness and pretension of all classes in the capital had increased now to such an extent, that practically the whole of the necessary work had to be done by foreigners; there being as many as 40,000 French subjects in Madrid dressing as Spaniards, and calling themselves Burgundians or Walloons, to escape the special tax on foreigners.[3] {444} By these people most crafts and callings were conducted, the Spanish working classes being occupied mainly in casual service, petty traffic, and mendicancy; whilst highway robbery and murder, even in Madrid, was so frequent as to cause no remark. The streets were more filthy and dilapidated than ever, and still the crowd of idlers on foot and in vast number of coaches, drawn by mules now, for the horses had been seized, thronged the promenades,--the Calle Mayor in the winter, the Prado and river bank in the summer; the humbler classes elbowing their social superiors with perfect effrontery, wearing swords and daggers, claiming equal respect, and, indeed, swaggering more than the nobles.

The two playhouses, which had been reopened on the King's second marriage, were crammed every day with artizans dressed in imitation or cast-off finery, and calling themselves _caballeros_, who had to pay from 10 to 15 sous in all for a seat;[4] and, whilst the fields were mostly tilled, if at all, and the urban labour was performed, by foreigners, the very cloth upon Spanish backs being made in Holland and England from Spanish wool, the native working classes still vociferously kept up the silly tradition of their own gentility, and of national potency and the overwhelming wealth of the King. The alternate appreciation and debasement of the coinage had enormously raised the price of commodities, and especially of house rent {445} in Madrid; the houses being still low, shabby, and incommodious, for the most part, owing to the claim of the King to the first floor of every house or its equivalent in money.

But what struck foreigners, and indeed observant Spaniards, at this period, was the appalling profligacy still prevalent in Madrid. Public women almost monopolised the promenades; their shameless impudence in broad daylight having the effect of lowering the standard of behaviour, even of decent women, who thought it no insult, but rather the contrary, to be addressed in amorous terms by strange men in the street.[5] The women, for the most part, still went about, notwithstanding the prohibition, with shawls covering their faces except one eye, and this facilitated intrigue in all classes to a shocking extent. The Government were in despair about the utter disregard by women of the dress regulations; for the wide farthingales, stiff, extravagant wigs, and fine stuffs were worn in spite of all pragmatics, since the Queen and her ladies set the fashion; and the only persons punished were the unfortunate shopkeepers who supplied the offending things.

The whole moral situation in Spain was indeed a social problem which can only be explained by the lack of feminine influence in society at the time and previously. There had always remained a taint of Oriental tradition in the treatment of women in Spain. They had been kept in strict seclusion; {446} they were for the most part entirely ignorant, and had never taken an equal social position with men, usually dining apart from their husbands, visiting each other in closed chairs or coaches, and spent their time squatting on the ground in circles talking trivialities or devotion, whilst the men were rarely accompanied by their woman-kind in public. It was therefore no wonder that in such a state of society as this, ladies and modest women for the most part abandoned the streets and public places to utter profligacy; and that men, free from the salutary influence exercised by the presence of good women, sank deeper and deeper into vice. Philip, under the influence of the nun, had striven hard to make his capital more decent; but the whole tide of feeling was contrary and too strong for him; whilst his own example in this respect was a very bad one, which seriously weakened his efforts. Barrionuevo, in one of his letters at this time, mentions the King as being "a fine hand at bastards, but with very poor luck as regards legitimate children"; and shortly afterwards, during one of Philip's spasmodic attempts to cleanse his capital, the same writer says: "They are arresting all the women they find wandering unoccupied about the streets, and hailing them off by tens and twenties to prison with their hands tied. The gaol is crammed full, so that they have hardly room to stand, and the house will have to be largely extended if this rigour is to go on, or vast supplies of wood will have to be laid in to burn some of them otherwise."

In the matter of men's dress Philip's example had agreed with his precept; and here he had {447} succeeded in imposing the fashion of sombre modesty. No man was allowed to enter his presence, or even to tender a petition to him as he went to Mass through his lines of red and yellow halberdiers, unless apparelled entirely in black, and wearing a _golilla_. The style of dress had changed somewhat since the King's accession. The hats were much smaller, and often of silk instead of felt, and profusely trimmed with black lace. The doublet, trunks, and cape of the men were usually of black baize, as was the _ropilla_, a close-fitting unbuttoned tunic reaching to the thighs, with open sleeves hanging from the shoulder; though gentlemen often wore black silk doublets and trunks in the summer. The trunks or breeches were now cut quite narrow, with buttons at the knee, like modern knickerbockers; and the fashion was to wear thin black silk stockings over thick white ones, and the shoes were tied with very broad black ribbons.[6]

The King was now rarely seen in public, except that on two days in the week he sat almost motionless for an hour in public audience to receive petitions, which with a slight inclination of his head he referred to Don Luis de Haro. The various Councils, as before, discussed at great length every point touching their respective departments, and, unseen, the King might listen to their deliberations; but practically his intervention in their business was confined now to his {448} sitting upon his throne every Friday morning, whilst the respective secretaries recited what had been done during the previous week. The King's assent to their recommendations was usually given simply by the words "_Está bien_," It is well; but if the matter appeared to demand further attention he turned to Don Luis de Haro, who stood by his side, and told him to speak to him later about it. Don Luis de Haro was in all but name a Vice-King. Everyone, even the Secretary of State, knelt whilst he addressed him, and Philip appended his signature "Yo el Rey," with little or no inquiry, to everything that the favourite placed before him.

His finances were more hopelessly involved than ever, especially after Cromwell joined the French against him: and he told the Cortes of Castile in the previous year, 1654, that out of the 10 million ducats voted to him by them he only received 3 millions. From the Indies in all he received in good years from 1½ to 2 millions of ducats;[7] whilst about 2 millions came from Aragon, etc. Out of a total nominal revenue, therefore, of about 18 million ducats he only received about 8 or 9 millions, the rest being either anticipated or intercepted by peculation; and in the year 1654 he confessed to an uncovered debt of 120 million ducats. But, withal, though Philip himself made no secret of his poverty, the country at large, and particularly the people of Madrid, insisted upon boasting still Of the boundless wealth at his disposal. There are in Barrionuevo's letters scores of references to the squalid penury that existed {449} everywhere at this period,[8] even in the interior of Philip's palace; but the following short extract from one of them, belonging to the year 1657, will suffice.

[Sidenote: Poverty in the palace]

"For the last two months and a half the usual rations have not been distributed in the palace; for the King has not a _real_. On the day of St. Francis they served a capon to the Infanta (Maria Teresa), who ordered them to take it away, as it stank like a dead dog. They then brought her a chicken, of which she is fond, on sippets of toast, but it was so covered with flies that she nearly overturned the lot. This is how things go on in the palace.... It appears also that the Queen likes to finish her dinner with sweetmeats; but as none had been brought to her table for some days, she asked the lady whose business it is to attend to these things, why they were not served as usual. She replied that the confectioner refused to supply them because he could not get paid, and a large amount was owing to him. The lady then drew a ring from her finger, and said to a servant: 'Run out at once and get some sweetmeats, anywhere, with this jewel.' But the buffoon Manuelito de Gante was present, and cried: 'Put your finger in your ring again, mistress'; and with that he took a copper real from his pocket and said: 'Go and get some {450} sweetmeats quickly, so that this good lady may finish her dinner.'"

With poverty touching even the Queen's own table, with Philip and his ministers in despair of finding fresh means to extort more money from the empty pockets of subjects, and from the hidden hoards of the Church, lavish waste still jostled carking poverty. Barrionuevo gives an account of an entertainment provided by the Marquis of Heliche, the eldest son of Haro, a few months only before the scene just described (January 1657), to celebrate the visit paid to him by Philip and his wife at the Zarzuela outside Madrid, where, in addition to comedies and the like, a great banquet was prepared.

[Sidenote: A gargantuan feast]

"It cost 16,000 ducats.... There was a dinner served of 1000 dishes; and there was one monstrous stew in a huge jar sunk in the ground with a fire beneath it.... It contained a three-year-old calf, 4 sheep, 100 pairs of pigeons, 100 partridges, 100 rabbits, 1000 pigs' trotters, and 1000 tongues, 200 fowls, 30 hams, 500 sausages, and 100,000 other trifles. They say it cost 8000 reals, though mostly presents. Everything I am telling you is true, and I minimise rather than exaggerate. There were three or four thousand persons present, and there was plenty for everybody, and to spare. So much was left, indeed, that it was brought back to Madrid in baskets, and I got some relieves and scraps. And all this was in addition to tarts and puffs and pasties, sweet cakes, preserves, fruits, and enormous quantities of wine and sweet drinks. {451} The Venice ambassador presented 500 ducats' worth of glass, and Tutavilla gave a similar amount of crockery.... All the scenery and apparatus have been brought to the Retiro, to the new theatre which they have made in the St. Paul's Hermitage there, and the whole affair is to be repeated there this carnival."

It is hardly necessary to say that, in reward for this Gargantuan feast, Heliche was made a grandee a few days afterwards.

Philip took no pleasure personally now in these coarse frivolities; though Mariana hungered for them, to distract her from the fits of homesick depression into which she periodically sank in the dull monotony of her life and her frequently disappointed hopes of renewed motherhood. The King himself was well-nigh despondent: going through his life like a leaden automaton, signing papers placed before him by Haro, usually without discussion or remark.[9] His condition, indeed, now was closely akin to melancholy religious madness, such was the morbid misery that preyed upon him: in anticipation of an early death, weeping for his own sins, for the utter ruin that seemed impending, {452} and for the continued absence of a male heir to his broken realms. One of his strange whims at this time was to pass hours alone in the new jasper mausoleum at the Escorial, to which he had transferred the bodies of his ancestors shortly before. After one of these visits in 1654, he wrote to Sor Maria: "I saw the corpse of the Emperor, whose body, although he has been dead ninety-six years, is still perfect; and by this it may be seen how richly the Lord has repaid him for his efforts in favour of the faith whilst he lived. It helped me much, especially as I contemplated the place where I am to lie when God shall take me. I prayed Him not to let me forget what I saw there." Soon afterwards, Barrionuevo records that the King had passed two solitary hours upon his knees in prayer on the bare stones of the mausoleum before the niche which was to be his own final resting-place; and that when he came out his eyes were red and swollen with weeping.

[Sidenote: "The meninas"]

The years went on, and still Mariana's repeated hopes of progeny were disappointed. Her own health was not good, for she fretted much, whilst Philip's troubles had crushed and aged him sadly. The Indian silver, which had previously been so precious a contribution to his revenue, was now regularly captured by Cromwell's cruisers, which closely beleaguered Cadiz. The French on the Flemish frontier and in Catalonia were still holding his territory, though Don Juan was doing his best and not unsuccessfully in Flanders (1656-57). Peace, as Philip well knew, was now a vital necessity for him; but pride still kept him from surrendering to the foreigner the land of his fathers, and Mazarin's {453} terms were as yet too humiliating for acceptance by a Power which had for so long claimed predominance in Europe.

Girl children had been born to Mariana, but each one had died at, or soon after, birth, though the wildest caprice of the mother was complied with in order to produce favourable conditions; but after the simultaneous birth and death of the girl child which came in August 1656, all hope seemed gone, and a profound melancholy fell upon both husband and wife, unrelieved by one ray of light. Philip's principal pleasure now, with the exception of his prayers and the immoralities he deplored so much, were the visits he paid every few days to the studio of Velazquez in the old palace. There, beneath the magic brush of the painter, he saw grow in resemblance the portraits of those amongst whom his life was passed,--the dwarfs and buffoons, who tried now so fruitlessly to make him smile, the quaint characters about the palace, the generals and admirals, the councillors and secretaries, whose faces he knew so well; and, above all, his two little girls and his young wife, with her rouged cheeks, her stiff square wig and her hard eyes. The favourite child--for Mariana was jealous of the elder, Maria Teresa--was the little Infanta Margaret, born in 1651, a fragile, fair little flower of a girl, degenerate from her descent, but in childhood not showing excessively the unlovely features she inherited. The etiquette that surrounded the child and her sister was freezing in its formality. Those who served them knelt, and everything had to pass through several hands before reaching them. Their dress, {454} with the wide-hooped farthingales and stiff long bodices, were utterly unchildlike and cumbrous, but, withal, the charm of youth could not be utterly crushed out of Margaret; and Velazquez has left us portraits of her as a child which will always remain the ideal of infancy.

The finest painting that ever left the master's easel is that which presents not only a portrait of the little Princess, but also an interior which tells more of Court life at the time (1656) than pages of written description could do. The tiny Infanta stands in her white satin hooped dress, her fair hair parted at the side, in the studio of Velazquez, who, with the coveted cross of Santiago upon his breast,[10] is painting a portrait of the King and Queen, whose faces are seen reflected in a mirror at the back of the room, but who do not appear in the picture itself. The child had probably been brought to relieve the tedium of her parents in sitting for their portraits, and she seems herself to have grown fretful and needed amusing. The young maid of honour, Doña Maria de Sarmiento, kneels before her, handing her, on a gold salver, a cup of water in the fine red scented clay which it was a vicious fashion of ladies of the day to eat. In the foreground lies a mastiff dozing, and close by it are two of the ugly dwarfs who were such important personages in the Spanish Court, Mari Barbola and Nicolasico Pertusato; whilst behind {455} them, slightly curtseying, is another maid of honour, Doña Isabel de Velasco; and still farther back in the gloom a lady and gentleman in attendance, the former in a conventual dress; whilst in the extreme rear of the picture stands the Queen's quarter-master, Don Jose Nieto, at the open door drawing back a curtain, perhaps that more light may be thrown upon the King and Queen, whom the painter is portraying. The interior of the room, with its special lighting and its unrivalled perspective, fixes for us, as if in a flashlight photograph, one unstudied moment of life in Philip's Court as it was actually passed, and for this reason the picture is invaluable. The existence it crystallises is a dull one, unrelieved from tedium for Philip except by the presence of his little child, and the trembling consolations of his religion.

[Sidenote: Birth of an heir]

Soon, however, hope for a time was to blossom again. After months of anxiety, in which his doubts and fears were laid before the nun again and again by the anxious father, he was assured that another child was yet to be born to him, and the astrologers and soothsayers predicted that this time it would be a son, and would live. Philip was in dire straits for money at the time (November 1657), and on the first day of the Vigil of the Presentation of the Virgin he had nothing to eat but eggs without fish; as his steward had not a _real_ of ready money to pay for anything else, and the tradesmen would give no more credit.[11] But yet the most whimsical fancy of his wife now had to be gratified at any sacrifice, and the Buen Retiro soon again rang with jovial music and water parties {456} on the lake, merry comedies, novel bull-fights, and diversions of all sorts, which were produced to make Mariana happy. Don Juan sent from Flanders a splendid silver bedstead, with brocade hangings; and all that care and solicitude could discover to ensure the happy arrival of the looked-for heir was forthcoming.

[Sidenote: Prince Philip Prosper]

At last, to the weary, worn-out King of fifty-two, a man-child was born at the end of November 1657. The mother was thought to be dying, but no one had thoughts for her, the birth of an heir to Philip being greeted by rejoicings so tumultuous in the capital as of themselves to prove the lawless condition into which the people had sunk.

"On the day of the birth," writes Barrionuevo (5th December 1657), "not a bench nor a table was left unbroken in the palace, nor a single pastry-cook's nor tavern that was not sacked. In the Admiral's house, too, one of his equerries, and riding-master to some of the greatest gentlemen in Madrid, named Chicho Cristalino, killed his groom in the stable, stabbing him for some trivial cause.... He has escaped. He was a Knight of Calatrava. The same night three or four other similar misfortunes happened, and in the rejoicings nobody's cape was safe.... To-morrow they say that his Majesty will go on horseback to the Atocha to give thanks to the Mother of God.... They say the Prince is a pretty little chap, and that the King wishes him to be baptized at once, before the extreme cold comes on.... There are to be masquerades, bullfights, and cane-tourneys as soon as the Queen gets up to see them, as well as plays with machinery {457} invented by an engineer, a servant of the Nuncio, to be represented at the theatre at the Retiro, and in the saloon of the palace.... The municipality, following the lead of the Councils, have gone to congratulate the King, ... and no gentleman, great or small, has failed to do the like. There have been some funny incidents. Here are two. The little Count de Haro, the Admiral's child, six years old, went, and the King was much pleased with the little man, as he was so serious, and especially when he said to his Majesty, 'But, Sir! those buttons of yours are against the pragmatic; they are gold!' They were really diamond buttons that the King had put on for the celebration. The favourite (_i.e._ Haro) accompanied him, and one of the courtiers present came up to him and said: 'God bless your Excellency for the boon you have bestowed upon Spain in sending us a Prince,' as if Haro had been the artificer of the work. There was much laughter at this."

Astrologers were busy predicting all manner of glory and good fortune for the new-born Prince, and Philip was full of gratitude and hope that all would now be well. "Help me, Sor Maria," he wrote, "to give thanks to God; for I by myself am unable to do so adequately. Pray to Him to make me fully thankful for the signal favour conferred upon me, and to give me strength henceforward to do His holy will. The new-born babe is well, and I implore you to take him under your protection, and pray to our Lord and His holy Mother to keep him for their service, for the exaltation of the faith and the good of these realms. If this is {458} not to be, then pray let him be taken from me before he reaches manhood."[12]

[Sidenote: Baptism of Philip Prosper]

For weeks the usual festivities in Madrid went on, though the general penury made them less brilliant than the occasion warranted. But Philip, for his part, seemed almost young again with joy. On the 6th December he rode through the decorated streets of his capital on a spirited Neapolitan charger. Dances, masques, and music greeted him on his way, and the public fountains ran wine instead of water, whilst the night was made as light as day by thousands of wax torches.[13] A week afterwards the baptism of the Prince was celebrated in the royal chapel by the Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo (Borja), whose magnificent preparations of liveries, vestments, and equipages were to cost 50,000 {459} ducats; though, says Barrionuevo, he had not a _real_.

"On Thursday the 13th, the corridors and courtyards of the palace were decorated with great splendour, and three canopies were erected, one in each corridor and one in the chapel." There was a very sumptuous bed adjoining the King's curtained closet, and a step away a staging, with two steps and a triangle of silver. Upon this was placed the font of St. Dominic's baptism, and six great silver braziers very full of fuel, which were replenished every now and then from the fireplaces, so that the air might be warmed, which it was until it was like an oven. There were also sconces which perfumed the air divinely. Shortly after two the ceremony commenced; the Inquisitor-General and the Bishop of Siguenza, apparelled in pontificals, assisting the Cardinal, who awaited the arrival of the Infante near the altar, whilst the whole chapel was hung with the most beautiful hangings the King possesses. Don Luis Ponce, without a cape, led the way with the Spanish Guard, followed by peers, nobles, and grandees; after whom came the Nuncio and ambassadors. Then came the minister (Don Luis de Haro), dressed in a gown of cloth of gold and a red sash.[14] Following him the Prince, richly adorned, was borne in the arms of the Countess of Salvatierra, seated in a crystal chair; and the Infanta (Maria Teresa) {460} walked behind, her train carried by the Mistress of the Robes, after whom marched the heralds and archers of the Guard, who entirely surrounded the space. The Marquis of Priego carried the sacred taper, Alba bore the custode and napkins, the Admiral carried the ewer, which was of a single emerald, very large, and set with diamonds. The marchpane[15] fell to the Count of Oñate, the towels to Medina de las Torres, the salt-cellar to the Prince of Astillano, his son. The ladies of the Court followed the Infanta, their trains borne by pages. The presidents of the Councils, with their two senior officers on each side, were ranged around the chapel, with the grandees before them; and when the ladies entered they stood in front of the grandees. The lady-in-waiting handed the Prince to the Infanta naked, except for a very short little jacket of plush much adorned, and with false sleeves. The Infanta cried out in a very clear voice: 'Why have you not put his clothes on? Why do you give him to me so undressed?' The lady replied: 'That is done on purpose, Madam, that it may be seen that he is a male.' The water they baptized him with was from the Jordan, ... brought lately by some friars who came from the Holy House. The Prince screamed lustily when he was baptized, and, attracted by the loud resonant voice, the King, who was looking through his jalousies, {461} exclaimed, "Ah! that does sound well; the house smells of a man now."[16]

[Sidenote: Pride of the Constable]

Then, after retailing the baby's names, Philip Prosper, "and the whole litany of saints to follow," and the magnificent presents given to the child's nurse, the narrator gives a curious instance of the overweening pride of the higher Spanish nobles of the time. A staircase had broken down with the crush of people, and the Duke of Bejar, whose duty it was to carry the marchpane, could not get through the crowd. The acting Lord Chamberlain, the Count of Puñonrostro, seeing that the ceremony was being delayed in consequence, asked the King what he should do. "Tell the Constable (_i.e._ the Grand Constable of Castile, the Duke of Frias) to carry the marchpane," said Philip. The proud noble replied that his arm was bad, and he could not do it. This answer only produced a repetition of the command from the King that the Constable was to carry the marchpane. "Tell his Majesty that the Constables of Castile are too big to serve as stopgaps for anybody," said the Constable. Two days later the Duke was being hurried off to Berlanga under arrest. If Dukes and Constables could be impracticably proud, so could scullions; for only a fortnight after this there was a regular pitched battle in the King's kitchen on some point of honour between the scullions and the guards, in which six of the combatants were killed outright, and twenty were wounded, many more being carried off to the prison of the Court to answer for their turbulence.

{462}

Admiration spent itself in praises of the beauty of the infant that had been born to Philip's decline. Never, sure, was such a babe vouchsafed to man as this. Verse and prose galore declaimed its present perfection and coming greatness. But alas! Philip Prosper, as might have been expected from the offspring of several generations of incest, was a poor epileptic monstrosity, who quietly made his exit from the world four years after he entered it with such a blare of trumpets. The good nun of Agreda, far away from the turmoil of rejoicing at the Prince's birth, had misgivings at the ungodliness and extravagance of the festivities, and remonstrated with Philip upon them. "It is good and politic for your Majesty to receive the congratulations of your subjects, ... but I do beseech you earnestly not to allow excessive sums to be spent on such festivities as these, when there is a lack of money needful even for the defence of your crown. Let there be no offence to God in what is done.... It is good to rejoice for the birth of the Prince; but pray let us do it with a clear conscience."[17]

Through all these years the wars in which Spain was engaged had gone on. Mazarin's many enemies in France had been encouraged and bribed largely by Spain, and the greatest of French commanders, Turenne and Condé, for a time entered Philip's service against their own country. This changed the aspect of affairs, especially on the Flemish frontier, whilst in the south of France the leaders of the Fronde with Spanish aid kept Mazarin's troops busy there. When Turenne {463} again returned to the French side the tables were turned somewhat (1655), and after a series of defeats the Archduke Leopold, Philip's Governor of Flanders, had retired, leaving Condé in command of the troops, whilst Don Juan, King Philip's son, succeeded the Archduke as Governor (1656). This brilliant pair of young men did much to restore Spanish prestige in Flanders; but when the alliance between Cromwell and Mazarin was signed Spain was outmatched, and all observers could see that France in the end must be victorious.

[Sidenote: Loss of Dunkirk]

One after the other the Flemish frontier places surrendered to the allies; but the great blow to Philip's arms fell in the summer of 1658. Dunkirk, a Spanish port in Flanders, promised to Cromwell by Mazarin, was closely blockaded by an English fleet, and besieged on the land side by Turenne, who was accompanied by young Louis XIV. himself; whilst a Spanish army under Don Juan and Condé, with whom was James Duke of York, now nominal Admiral of the Spanish fleet, was endeavouring to break through Turenne's lines and relieve the place. By a _coup de main_ Turenne outflanked the Spanish force, whilst Cromwell's fleet bombarded them from the sea. Panic overtook the Spaniards, who fled precipitately with great loss, and Dunkirk soon after capitulated. This Battle of the Dunes seemed the last drop in Philip's cup of sorrow, for by it all Flanders lay at the mercy of the French royalists, and city after city fell into their hands.

Shortly before this, and soon after the christening of Philip Prosper described above, an equally fatal catastrophe had fallen upon Philip on the Portuguese {464} frontier. There for years a state of hostility had continued, with frequent raids on both sides; but, growing bolder with Philip's increased exhaustion, the masculine Spanish Queen Mother of Portugal[18] had laid regular siege to the great Spanish frontier fortress of Badajoz. At any cost this daring insolence had to be met, and Philip, with no able commanders now available, Don Juan being in Flanders, entrusted the leadership of his forces of 8000 men, raised with infinite sacrifice and difficulty, to his favourite, Don Luis de Haro. On the news of his approach the Portuguese raised the siege of Badajoz and recrossed the frontier; but Haro, utterly inexperienced in warfare, was drawn into pursuing them, led into an ambush and put to ignominious flight, with the loss of guns, baggage, and most of his men.

[Sidenote: Peace with France]

This defeat, followed by the Battle of the Dunes a few months afterwards, proved to all the world that Spain had come to the end of her tether and could struggle no more. Material resources, faith in herself, belief in her mission, even confidence in her God, had all fled, and nothing was left to her but besotted pride and a sanctimonious ritual devotion which lightly covered a scoffing mockery of the noble ideals that had made her temporarily great. Peace had now, indeed, become for Philip absolutely necessary. There had been many efforts made through the influence of Anna of Austria, Queen of France, to come to an understanding with her brother, ever since the treaty of Münster; but the demands of Mazarin, that the {465} French should continue to hold all they had taken including Catalonia, had in every case frustrated the attempts. But the aspect of affairs was changing. Catalonia was heartily tired of the French, who left the province less liberty than it had enjoyed under the Castilian Kings, whilst the grave discontent and division in France against Mazarin's Government had rendered peace necessary even for him. But that which, above all, contributed to a peaceful agreement was the fact that Philip's health was evidently failing, and that only one life, that of the scrofulous epileptic infant, Philip Prosper, stood between the house of France and the Spanish throne. It is true that when Queen Anna had married Louis XIII. she had solemnly renounced for herself and her family the right of succession to Spain; but some of the dowry which was to have been paid to her had not been paid, and it might be contended that as one condition of the contract had not been fulfilled the others could not be enforced as against the house of France. Mariana, Philip's second wife, was at Madrid quite as much in the capacity of Austrian ambassador as of Philip's consort, and she had always tried to prevent any closer union between France and Spain; her object, aided by the German agents who prompted her, being to maintain the fatal alliance between the two branches of the house of Austria, which had dragged Spain to ruin.

In the summer of 1656 a sincere attempt had been made by France to come to an understanding with Philip. A skilled diplomatist, M. de Lionne, in the confidence of Mazarin, had arrived with great secrecy at Madrid, and was lodged at the Retiro, {466} where he and Haro held many conferences, with a result that an agreement on many points was arrived at, especially upon the retrocession of Catalonia (though not of Roussillon) to Spain. In one of their conferences Lionne noticed that Haro was wearing in his hat, doubtless for a purpose, a medal impressed with the portrait of the Infanta Maria Teresa. "If your King would give to my master for his wife the original of the portrait you wear," said Lionne, "peace might soon be made."[19] Haro passed over the matter lightly, for in the absence of a male heir to Philip it would have been impossible to marry Maria Teresa to the King of France; but the idea was not a new one, and the possibility of bringing about such a match as a pledge of peace between France and Spain had often been mooted by the quidnuncs of Madrid.[20]

[Sidenote: Peace negotiations]

Lionne's negotiations came to nothing at the time, mainly because the knotty point of the Prince of Condé's position could not be settled; but when the birth of Philip Prosper provided Philip with an heir, the marriage idea again came to the front, and made both sides in the subsequent peace negotiations much more conciliatory than they otherwise would have been, especially when there was a talk of marrying Louis XIV. elsewhere. He was, indeed, {467} on a courting expedition to the south of France to meet the Princess of Savoy, when Haro, in May 1659, sent Antonio Pimentel in a hurry to Mazarin reminding him of what Lionne had said three years before about a Spanish marriage. Anna of Austria and Mazarin were quite willing; and in a very few weeks the diplomatists on both sides had drawn up a protocol suspending hostilities, and providing for a meeting of plenipotentiaries of both Powers in the little Isle of Pheasants in the Bidosoa River that separates France and Spain. This was to take place in August, and in the meanwhile ministers were busy drawing up marriage settlements and agreeing upon the main points in dispute between the two Powers. Mariana struggled hard to prevent the agreement by proposing a marriage between the Infanta and the Archduke Leopold, the Emperor's heir. She even prevailed upon her brother to send the Archduke Sigismund to replace Don Juan in Flanders, and to bring a strong imperial army with him to defend Spanish territory there. Before they could meet the French, however, the truce between Philip and Louis was signed (June 1659), and the Austrian interest for the present had to accept defeat.

Peace or war, the stereotyped merrymaking never ceased for very long in the Court of Madrid. Like Olivares before them, Philip's ministers were constantly on the look-out for new musicians, buffoons, or beauties to distract him, and discovering fresh pretexts for shows.[21] To celebrate {468} the birth of the sickly Philip Prosper, the festivities continued for months; and in answer to the nun's remonstrances about it, the King invites her to tell him how he can fulfil his desire to withdraw his mind from worldly things, "since it is obligatory for me to live amongst men, and to be present at festivities and other public occasions, which I cannot avoid attending. In the midst of all this turmoil I should like to execute your directions, if my frailty does not prevent me from doing so. Help me, Sor Maria, and pray to God and His holy Mother to aid me in attaining such a boon."[22] In one of Philip Prosper's frequent illnesses a saintly friar from Jerusalem, one Father Antonio, went to see Philip, and brusquely told him, in reply to his request for prayers for the Prince's health, "that he, the King, ought to pray also, and leave off all these comedies and other rejoicings."[23] The Madrileños of Philip's time would no more abandon their idle pleasures than they would their daily bread. Fresh taxes of 2 per cent. more were put upon food, and upon every payment made of any sort; even fireplaces and windows were taxed more heavily, the idea being to make people redeem these taxes by paying a sum down, and so, as Barrionuevo says, to get money quickly. "All this makes men of business desperate, for it is said that even upon loans and payments of every sort the {469} tax is to be charged; so that we shall soon have nothing to pay with but water and sunshine."[24]

[Sidenote: Poverty and waste]

Only a few days after this was written, the municipality of Madrid gave a luncheon to the eleven Royal Councils, handsome presents being given to all the guests, the cost of the entertainment being over 550,000 ducats; and hardly a week passes without the record of two or three costly shows, bull-fights, masquerades, and tourneys, in which smart new clothes are always a notable feature, and the King and Queen are usually present, the young Marquis of Heliche being generally the busiest promoter. Madrid, although suffering from a winter more severe than had been known in the memory of man (February 1658), was full of foreigners and strangers, attracted by these continual shows, and doubtless much of the money squandered came ultimately from them; but the people themselves must have been in dire straits, for robbery seems to have been openly resorted to, even by priests; and so highly placed an ecclesiastic as Barrionuevo says of it: "I do not wonder, for the pinch of poverty is such that everybody is forced to do it."

Madrid, at the time, indeed, presented a strange picture of anarchy. The only rich people were the comparatively few who were concerned in the administration, either in Spain or the Colonies; and they spent their money with the utmost prodigality, whilst the great bulk of the population lived from hand to mouth on the proceeds of this expenditure, gained either by service, work, or robbery. There was practically no industry, {470} except that carried on in a small way by foreigners; and the vast majority of the inhabitants of Madrid lived, directly or indirectly, by government expenditure. Philip looked on helplessly, convinced apparently that his calamities were unavoidable, because sent for a special purpose by the Almighty as a scourge for his and his people's transgressions. Preachers unrebuked thundered out of pulpits to him that most of the evils might be avoided by energy. "Your Majesty is poor, and your ministers are rich," cried one to him. "You give grants, favours, pensions, and double pay to people such as these, who beguile you with vain shows. The noblest eagle may be left bare if plucked feather by feather; and your Majesty is obliged to appeal to these very ministers, whom you enable to settle vast estates, for money necessary for your very food and garments."

[Sidenote: Peace of the Pyrenees]

In good truth, it was too late to preach to Philip now; for he did little but register the decisions of others, and go through his dull round of duties with despairing, earthy face; his great consolation, as he says again and again, being the letters of the nun, which assured him of the divine mercy and of the efficacy of constant prayer. To his great delight another son was born to him in December 1658, though the babe lived only for a few months; but Philip Prosper lingered on still, through a sickly infancy. In the meanwhile Don Luis de Haro and Cardinal Mazarin were in close confabulation on the Isle of Pheasants, settling the terms of the much-needed peace; and the death of Cromwell, and the probable restoration of the Stuarts to the English throne, gave a further {471} hope that, after a long lifetime of constant war, Philip's days might end at peace with all the world.

In October 1659 the peace negotiations were sufficiently advanced for a formal demand to be made to Philip for his daughter's hand on behalf of her cousin Louis XIV. The ambassador was one of the greatest seigneurs of the Court of France, Marshal de Grammont; and though Madrid, with good reason this time, assumed its most pompous garb, and Spaniards held their heads high, yet de Grammont, as he entered with his brilliant suite into Philip's capital, consciously represented a new dispensation that was in process of supplanting that of Spain. For a century and a half Spain had claimed precedence over all earthly Powers: her language was that of culture and fashion; her literature, especially of the theatre and the novel, had given the tone to the writers of Europe; her dress had set the fashion; her soldiers had taught the art of war; and her explorers had borne to the four quarters of the earth her traditions, her tongue, and her religion. But the stately entrance of de Grammont with his new airs and graces into the palace of Madrid, after a devastating war extending over thirty years, marked the opening of a new epoch in the civilisation of the world. Spain was the waning force, France was the youthful giant with a long life before him; the Planet King Philip, spent and weary, was sinking to his yearned-for rest after a reign of tragic failure; the Roi Soleil was climbing in the sky. All the courtly conventions of diplomatists, all the gracious politeness of de Grammont, all the consideration shown by French statesmen to Spain in the treaty of {472} peace, could not hide these facts; nor could it be concealed that this new friendship meant the end of the fatal union of Austria and Spain, whose aim had been to force orthodoxy upon the world.

Mariana frowned and pouted as Grammont and his company of princes and nobles bowed before her; and the gloomy grandeur of the old palace of Madrid, with the richly sombre dresses of Philip and his courtiers, seemed to the triumphant and gaily dressed Frenchman, fresh from the sprightly youthful Court of Louis, to be in harmony with the old obscurantist régime which was passing. The visitors were liberal in recording their impressions of a society which they regarded as romantic and antique.[25] The description of a theatrical representation in the old palace of Madrid in honour of Grammont, written by one of his chaplains, will give a good idea of a characteristic feature of Philip's Court at the time.

"The great saloon was lit only by six enormous wax candles in gigantic silver stands. On each side of the saloon, facing each other, were two boxes or tribunes with iron grilles before them. One of these was occupied by the Infanta, whilst the other was destined for the Marshal (Grammont). Two benches covered with Persian rugs ran along the sides beneath the boxes, also facing each other, upon which sat about twelve ladies of the Court, whilst we Frenchmen stood behind them.... The {473} Queen and the little Infanta entered, preceded by a lady holding a candle. When the King appeared he saluted the ladies and took his seat in the box on the right hand of the Queen, whilst the little Infanta sat on her left. The King remained motionless during the whole of the play, and only once said a word to the Queen; although he occasionally cast his eyes round on every side. A dwarf was standing close by him. When the play was ended, all the ladies rose and gathered in the middle, as canons do after a service. Then joining hands in a row they made their courtesies, one by one, a ceremony that lasted some seven or eight minutes. In the meanwhile the King was standing, and he then bowed to the Queen, who bowed to the Infanta, after which they all joined hands and retired."[26]

It was far into the winter (1659) before the terms of the pregnant peace of the Pyrenees could be finally settled by the plenipotentiaries on the Isle of Pheasants. More than once the negotiations came to a deadlock, for, comparatively easy as the French conditions were, they were very bitter for the pride of Spain to swallow.[27] She had to surrender the province of Roussillon and most of Artois, as well as many of the principal cities of French Flanders, whilst the English kept her port of Dunkirk. But in return Catalonia willingly {474} became Spanish again under its old constitution, whilst the new King of England and his friends the Portuguese were excluded from the treaty. The rejoicings in Madrid, and the adulation of the favourite Haro, who was made Prince of the Peace, knew no bounds. At last, no matter, thought the lieges, at what cost, Spain was free from the war that had weighed her down for a whole generation; and now the rebel Portuguese might be punished for their contumacy, and Philip be King of the Peninsula again. Don Juan, the King's son, was to have the honour of reconquering Portugal for Castile; but for the present all minds were occupied by the ceremonious journey of King Philip and all his Court to the French frontier to conduct his daughter, the Infanta, to her waiting bridegroom.

[Sidenote: Marriage of Maria Teresa]

For many months, notwithstanding Philip's expressed desire that things should be done as economically as possible, the preparations for the voyage had been carried out on a scale of magnificence surpassing that of all previous bridal progresses between Spain and France. The Spanish nobles and courtiers, taking their tone from Haro himself, were determined, even at the cost of their last ducat, that the Frenchmen should see that the country was neither exhausted materially nor humiliated morally. So again the old prodigal pride asserted itself, and Madrid pushed its poverty in the background, as it spent its money on gew-gaws, or flocked to see the preliminary turnout of the royal equipages prepared for the King's journey to France.

{475}

"There were four litters, and fourteen coaches with six mules each;--a fine sight! The table services, newly made with the arms of Spain and France, which her Highness is to take with her, are a marvel of richness and beauty. The jewels for presents and for adornment exceed all price and praise. Each of the gentlemen who is to accompany the royal party is making preparations more in accordance with his spirit than with his means. They say that the Duke of Medina de las Torres will distinguish himself specially. He gives five suits of livery to each of his servants, one set alone of which made in Naples will cost 65,000 ducats; whilst, as to his Excellency's own dresses, wonderful stories are told of them, and also of the jewels he is taking with him, worthy as they are of the greatness of his heart. The preparations of Don Luis de Haro can only be conceived by those who recollect that he is the luminary of the world upon which reflects and radiates most fully the majesty and brilliancy of our Sun-Monarch. The value of the horses and hackneys, with their harness and housings, alone are said to be worth a vast treasure; but when we consider the rank of the persons with whom the horses of the Sun will enter Irun, these latter, richly caparisoned as they may be, will be unworthy of an occasion so supreme. It is likely enough that when our Infanta took leave of the altars of Madrid her eyes were wet with tears; but our muffled women, who spare nobody, said so in such a way as to hint that the tears were really hearty smiles. The Queen looks very sad at the King's going away."[28]

{476}

[Sidenote: Journey to the frontier]