Martin A. S. Hume

“ For months the cities of Portugal were the scene of prodigal pomp and devotion, that once more drove out of the muddled brain of the King all thought of the misery he had left behind him in Castile; and as he sat, on the 14th July 1619, under his gold and silken canopy in his palace at Lisbon, dressed in white taffeta and gold, and surrounded by the nobles of Portugal and Spain, it seemed as if the lying fable that made him personally the master of boundless wealth must be true, and that his stark and ruined realm was overflowing with happy abundance. ”

“ Uceda knew his day was past, and meekly bent his head: and thus, in the midst of greedy bickering, his nerveless hand grasping to the last the rough crucifix that had comforted the glazing eyes of his grandfather the Emperor, and his father Philip II., the third Philip passed the dread divide, revered and beloved by the people whom his ineptitude had ruined, because he had still upheld throughout Europe the claim of his house to impose Christian orthodoxy upon the world, and had purged the sacred soil of Spain of the taint of Moorish blood, to his country's permanent undoing. ”

“ Money, constant, never-ending money, was the first desideratum of King Philip, if such a war as that foreshadowed, in addition to the struggle in Germany, was to be undertaken. The outer realms, and especially Portugal, were in a condition of sulky apprehension; but Philip was forced to meet the legislatures before he could get money from them. It was a necessity that he and Olivares dreaded and hated, but it had to be faced. All the Cortes therefore were summoned. "All to get money for their great engagements: how great they are they know not themselves," wrote Hopton. ”

“ The famous Spanish ambassador in England owed much of his success to the assumed bluff jocosity with which he was wont to cover his cunning; but when he bounced into the Count-Duke's supper chamber on this occasion, he was so exuberant in his joy that grave Olivares looked up in surprise, and said: "Ah, Count! what brings you here at such an hour as this? You look as jolly as if you had the King of England himself in Madrid." "If we have not the King," chuckled Gondomar, "we have the next best thing to him,—the Prince of Wales." ”

“ But though the lieges might still enjoy their brilliant shows as of yore, Philip himself had become introspective and gloomy; and he attended the bull-fights and parades with sad, weary face. He wrote weekly to the nun deploring his frailty, and beseeching her intercession; but it is clear that he had thrown over most of his good resolutions, for Don Luis de Haro was as necessary to him as Olivares had been; and the fragile beauties of the capital found in him again as ardent an admirer as ever. ”

“ There alone could the Spanish love of ostentation be indulged; there alone could bravery of dress and demeanour find the attention and emulation it always seeks; there alone could advancement in any unlaborious career be found, for where all the patronage, wealth, and taste were, {193} there also must be those who sought patronage or provided things that taste and wealth alone could buy, and so the Court—"la Corte" as Madrid was always called—shone brightly, like the last phosphorescent spot in a decaying body, and attracted by its brilliancy when all the rest of Spain was dark. ”

“ Let your Majesty hold as the most important affair of your State to make yourself King of Spain. I mean, Sire, that you should not content yourself with being King of Portugal, of Aragon, of Valencia, Count of Barcelona, but that you should strive and consider with mature and secret counsel to reduce these realms of which Spain consists to the laws and form of Castile, without any distinction. If your Majesty succeeds in this, you will be the most powerful Prince in the world. ”

“ The palace of the Buen Retiro was intended by Olivares, and truly was, a fit setting for the elegant, chivalric, and poetic surroundings of the King, a light and pretty retreat in the midst of enchanting gardens, where upon stages under the trees or in high and gilded halls the witty dissolute comedies might be played to an audience of the elect. Nothing that the inspiration of genius, the efforts of flattery, or the exercise of unrestrained expenditure could compass was spared by Olivares in making the Buen Retiro perfect for its purpose of keeping the King diverted. ”

“ Olivares was far from sharing Gondomar's delight. To him the news meant infinite anxiety, danger, and expenditure; for not only must the Prince be entertained lavishly, but somehow he must be got rid of without marrying the Infanta, and if possible without a national war with England for the slight put upon the Prince. The Count-Duke hurried to the King's apartments with the great news, and Philip was as much taken aback as his minister, for young as he was he fully understood the gravity of the situation. ”

“ Surrounded by a full gathering of grandees in gold chains, Philip stood under his canopy dressed in his military garb, almost English in fashion, as he stands in the Dulwich Gallery portrait, with a splendidly embroidered scarlet {225} ropilla doublet, a broad lace collar and "paned" hose, his breast covered with rich jewels and with a great feather in his hat. As Sir Francis Cottington approached him the King expressed his joy at the news. He was as glad, he said, as if the son had been his own; and he had prayed upon his knees for the happiness of the young prince. ”

“ And so on, almost every item of the daily life of Madrid is shown by the writers of the day to be vicious, wasteful, and corrupt. Idlers crowd in the monasteries, and hosts of other idlers, sham students, poetasters, bullies, and beggars, depend for their daily sustenance upon the garlic soup and crusts which are doled out at the gates from the superfluity of the friars; and servants, with or without wages, but living slothfully upon their patron's food in tawdry finery and squalid plenty, pester the noble houses from stable court to roof. ”

“ During the process of clearing, young Spinola, indignant that he, a Genoese noble, should be hustled, called out offensively to Don Francisco Zapata, the lieutenant (whom we have seen in trouble before) : "Hi, Don Francisco! don't you know who I am?" to which Zapata replied: "I don't care who you are"; and in spite of his threats of vengeance Spinola was "moved on." As Zapata left the gates of the palace afterwards, he met Spinola waiting for him in the Prado. "I have a word to say to you," cried the Genoese. "I have no sword," replied Zapata. ”

“ Neither the war nor the trouble was yet over, for the plague came almost to the doors of Madrid, and scourged whole provinces; whilst the war with the French still went on in Catalonia and Flanders, and Portugal continued to defy successfully the arms of Philip. But, withal, the drain upon Castile, bad as it still was, became somewhat less pressing; for Mazarin had his hands full in France with the revolt of the Fronde, which, of course, Spain helped to the extent of her possibilities; and the Catalans were far less enamoured with their French masters than they were at first. ”

“ As for my personal expenses, the moderation of my dress and my rare feasts prove how modest it is, and I spend no money voluntarily on myself, for I try to give my vassals an example to avoid vain ostentation. So I have reconciled myself to ask for nothing for my own person, but only the indispensable funds for the defence of my realm and the Catholic faith. I want no more, not a maravedi, from my vassals, and I charge you (the Council of Castile) on your conscience to let me know if anything is being spent beyond this. ”

“ Philip's own inclinations led him to idle and profitless pleasures, especially those which lent themselves to theatrical display or ostentatious decorations. The bull-fights, combats between wild beasts, equestrian parades, cane tourneys, masques, balls, comedies and banquets, alternated with religious processions and church ceremonies. In these rejoicings Philip and his wife took equal pleasure. It was the Augustan age of Spanish literature, and the drama of intrigue which Spaniards had invented to delight Europe in future was then in its full flood of malicious fertility. ”

“ The Theatres of Madrid
The deprivation, even for a week, of the pleasures of the theatre must have been to the citizens of the Court a greater penance for the offence of the madman than any other; for Spain had literally gone crazy for the stage, and Philip and his wife led or followed the fashion eagerly. Actors, or histrions, as they were called, were popular heroes, and upon the Liars' Walk they swaggered and exchanged quips with the fecund poets who supplied them with lines of facile verse by the fathom. ”

“ They wanted glory, pride, supremacy. They wanted still to act the part of God's militia, to dragoon the world into one belief—their own—to boast of the riches of their King and the greatness of their country. But when at last they understood that a policy abroad of bombastic meddling and of domestic waste at home was costly, they turned to rend the man who had carried their vain aspirations into acts. Olivares was no wiser than other Spanish statesmen of his time. He could only see with the eyes of his own generation ”

“ The Duke of Braganza, the Portuguese pretender with the best right to the throne, was prodigiously rich and over cautious, but his virile Spanish Guzman wife was eager and ambitious; whilst her wealthy brother, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, head of the Guzmans, silently helped forward the scheme which would make his sister a Queen, and afford him, the most powerful vassal of the Castilian crown, a precedent for the creation of an independent principality for himself in Andalucia, free from the weak and corrupt bureaucracy led by his cousin Olivares in Madrid. ”