Charles IV of Spain

“ Charles V had, indeed, destroyed the liberties of Spain; but that had been done too recently for its full evil to be felt in Philip's time. A people cannot be debased in a single generation; and the Spaniards under Charles V and Philip II proved the truth of the remark that no nation is ever so formidable to its neighbors, for a time, as a nation which, after being trained up in self-government, passes suddenly under a despotic ruler. ”

“ In Spain, superstition is encouraged by the violent energies of nature. After the fall of the Roman Empire, Spain was first engaged in a long struggle on behalf of the Arianism of the Goths against the orthodoxy of the Franks. This was followed by centuries of struggle between the Christian Spaniard and the Mohammedan Moors. After the conquest of Granada, the King of Spain and Emperor, Charles V., posed primarily as the champion of religion and the enemy of heresy. His son Philip summarised his policy in the phrase that "it is better not to reign at all than to reign over heretics." ”

“ I can, consistently with the interests of my empire, do a great deal of good to Spain. What are the best means to be adopted?
“Shall I go to Madrid? Shall I take upon myself the office of Grand Protector in deciding between the father and the son? It seems to me a matter of difficulty to support Charles IV. on the throne. His government and his favourite are so very unpopular, that they could not maintain themselves for three months.
“Ferdinand is the enemy of France, and to that consideration he has been indebted for the crown. ”

“ Charles was then fifteen, just the age of the century, nine years younger than Henry, five years younger than Francis. Amid the tumult of the opening Reformation in 1519, the aged Maximilian also died, departed not unwillingly, one fancies, from an age whose intricacies had grown too many for his simple soul. The young King of Spain thus became lord of all the vast Hapsburg possessions of Austria, Bohemia, the Netherlands and so on. ”

“ Thus, in the morning of life, at little more than twenty-three years of age, perished Carlos, prince of Asturias. No one of his time came into the world under so brilliant auspices; for he was heir to the noblest empire in Christendom; and the Spaniards, as they discerned in his childhood some of the germs of future greatness in his character, looked confidently forward to the day when he should rival the glory of his grandfather, Charles the Fifth. But he was born under an evil star, which counteracted all the gifts of fortune, and turned them into a curse. ”

“ The sounds of war died away before they reached the foot of the Pyrenees. Spain, it is true, sent forth her sons, from time to time, to serve under the banners of Charles; and it was in that school that was perfected the admirable system of discipline and tactics which, begun by the Great Captain, made the Spanish infantry the most redoubtable in Europe. But the great body of the people felt little interest in the success of these distant enterprises, where success brought them no good. Not that the mind of Spain was inactive, or oppressed with the lethargy which stole over it in a later age. ”

“ So rapidly did Spain degenerate, that, upon the close of the Austrian dynasty, with all the natural advantages of the country, the best harbors and sea-coast in Europe, the (p. 096) richest soil, and the finest climate, and with the possession of the Indies also, the people were the poorest, the most ignorant, and the most helpless in Europe. The death of Charles II., a miserable, afflicted, superstitious, priest-ridden monarch, left Spain without a king, and the vacant throne became the prize of any monarch in Europe who could raise and send across the Pyrenees the largest army. ”

“ Spain might justly have abandoned the Family Compact after the Falkland incident, and for a time that treaty did suffer a partial eclipse. Charles III felt that in future he could count only on his own forces, but he continued to increase and equip them, for the danger from England was as great as ever. Self-interest inevitably brought Spain and France together, and with the appearance of the warlike Aranda in France, late in the year 1773, as Spanish ambassador to that court, plans with a view to meeting the common enemy were again discussed. ”

“ About the middle of the eighteenth century, all the enlightened men of Europe exclaimed against that company, and ardently desired its extermination; and, although many works were published against it, and the voices of many religious orders were raised in denouncing it to the pontifical throne and to the public, such was the power and dexterity with which it neutralised these hostile dispositions, that nobody dared to attack its front, until a king of Spain, the illustrious Charles III., undertook that great work, and carried it on to its consummation with as much resolution as ability. ”

“ Then came the magnificent reign of Charles V. with more gifts from fortune—the imperial crown, if not a substantial benefit to Spain, still bringing dignity and éclat. But under this glittering surface there had commenced even then a decline. Under Philip II. she was still magnificent, Europe was bowing down to her, but the decline was growing more manifest; and with the accession of his puny son, Philip III., there was little left but a brilliant past, which a proud and retrospective nation was going to feed upon for over three centuries. ”

“ The queen's ministers, with the chancellor, Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, at their head, felt a similar repugnance to the Spanish match. The name of the Spaniards had become terrible from the remorseless manner in which their wars had been conducted during the present reign, especially in the New World. The ambition and the widely-extended dominions of Charles the Fifth made him the most formidable sovereign in Europe. ”

“ At the Spanish court, meanwhile, affairs were in a scandalous condition, for the queen regent was ruled at first by a German Jesuit, and later foisted into favour an agreeable young man who had been merely a page, and whose highest conception of pleasure was to occupy the place of honour at a bullfight. If it may be said of the reign of Philip IV that it was the most disastrous to Spain since that of King Roderick the Goth, little more can be claimed for that of Charles II, his son, who came into the succession in 1675, at the age of fourteen. ”

“ As the time passed on, and the prospect of Charles II. of Spain dying without lineal heirs became more and more certain, so did the claims of the house of Bourbon to the Spanish crown after his death become matters of urgent interest to French ambition on the one hand, and to the other powers of Europe on the other. At length the unhappy King of Spain died. By his will he appointed Philip, Duke of Anjou, one of Louis XIV.'s grandsons, to succeed him on the throne of Spain, and strictly forbade any partition of his dominions. ”

“ He simply obeyed the impulse given him by the queen and Godoy. If he ever knew his wife’s real character he thought it more consistent with his dignity to shut his eyes. For he had a profound belief in his divine right and the sanctity of his person. If he understood that his kingdom was treated as a mere dependence by France, he also thought it due to his “face” to make believe that he was a powerful monarch. Royalty never wore a more silly aspect than in the person of Charles IV., and it is highly credible that he never knew what his wife was, or what was the position of his kingdom. ”

“ In Spain itself, the authority of the nobles was gone. First assailed under Ferdinand and Isabella, it was completely broken down under Charles the Fifth. The liberties of the commons were crushed at the fatal battle of Villalar, in the beginning of that monarch's reign. Without nobles, without commons, the ancient cortes had faded into a mere legislative pageant, with hardly any other right than that of presenting petitions, and of occasionally raising an ineffectual note of remonstrance against abuses. It had lost the power to redress them. Thus all authority vested in the sovereign. ”

“ We should have been much more justified in dreading a close understanding between the Spanish and French crowns than in hoping for the restoration of a Spanish-German anti-French constellation after the analogy of Charles V.; a king of Spain can only carry out Spanish policy, and the Prince by assuming the crown of the country would become a Spaniard. ”

“ If Charles himself was not unpopular in Spain, even though he kept his mother Joanna, the legitimate queen, under lock and key, that he might reign as Charles the First in Spain, his Germans and his Germanism were devoutly hated. The next Carlos who reigned in Spain, correctly styled the Second, was nearly a fool, but Charles III. was the best and most enlightened of the sovereigns of Spain until the days of Alfonso XII. Charles IV. abdicated under pressure of Napoleon in 1808, and then Don Carlos the Pretender naturally assumed the style and title of Charles the Fifth. ”

“ Such was the condition of Castile when the death of the miserable Henry IV, December 12, 1474, cast the responsibility of royalty on his sister Isabella and her husband, Ferdinand of Aragon. The power of the crown was eclipsed; the land was ravaged with interminable war between nobles who were practically independent; the sentiment of loyalty and patriotism seemed extinct: deceit and treachery, false oaths—whatever would serve cupidity and ambition—were universal; justice was bought and sold; private vengeance was exercised without restraint; there was no security for life and property. ”

“ This auspicious revolution was soon, alas! to be followed by another, of a most disastrous kind. Charles the Fifth, who succeeded his grandfather Ferdinand, was born a foreigner,—and a foreigner he remained through his whole life. He was a stranger to the feelings and habits of the Spaniards, had little respect for their institutions, and as little love for the nation. He continued to live mostly abroad; was occupied with foreign enterprises; and the only people whom he really loved were those of the Netherlands, his native land. ”

“ In answer to a long list of petitions, the King promised to learn to speak Spanish; to forbid illegal exportation of gold and silver; to grant no further offices or letters of naturalisation to foreigners; to keep his brother in Spain till the succession should be assured; not to alienate Crown property; and not to give up Navarre.
Charles then hurried on to hold Cortes at Saragossa. The Aragonese proved more stubborn. Freed from Ferdinand's strong hand, the nobles had shaken off all respect for the Crown, and moreover, Charles was thoroughly distrusted. ”

“ Carlos had been declared of age in 1675; he was utterly incapable and, though he can scarce be said to have had favorites, under such ministers as the Duke of Medinaceli and the Count of Oropesa, Spain sank deeper in misery and degradation until his death in 1700. The kingdom was reduced to the last extremity, without money, without industry, without means of defence to resist the aggressive wars of Louis XIV, or to defend the colonies from the ravages of buccaneers. The population is said to have shrunk to 5,000,000 ”

“ Charles IV and Godoy account for an extraordinary amount of the decrepitude of the monarchy and the demoralization of its army.
It is more just to admire the constancy with which a nation so handicapped persisted in the hopeless struggle, than to condemn it for the incapacity of its generals, the ignorance of its officers, the unsteadiness of its raw levies. If Spain had been a first-rate military power, there would have been comparatively little merit in the six years’ struggle which she waged against Bonaparte. ”

“ Charles fondly hoped that Philip, united to the Queen of England, and in the full vigour of youth, might yet establish a great Catholic monarchy with its centre in Spain, and resist the dangerous advance of heresy; nay, might some day bring the King of France to his knees, and establish Spanish supremacy in Europe. Milan and Italy had been already ceded to Philip on his marriage with Mary of England, but the division of authority had led to difficulties, and to some quarrels between father and son. ”

“ France, at the height of her power under Louis XIV, was unwilling to wait for the death of Charles II before profiting by Spanish weakness, and therefore engaged in several wars of aggression, directed primarily against Spain’s possessions in the Low Countries and against the Protestant Netherlands. In many of these wars other powers fought on the side of Spain and the Dutch, notably the Holy Roman Emperor, many princes of Germany, and Sweden, while England and the pope joined the allies against the French military lord in the last war of the period. ”

“ Through his mother and Ferdinand, Charles inherited Castile, Aragon, and Navarre, the Castilian dominions in Africa and America (where the era of great conquests was just about to begin) , the Roussillon and Cerdagne across the Pyrenees, and Sardinia, Sicily, and Naples in Italy; through his father he had already become possessed of the territories of the House of Burgundy, comprised of Flanders and Artois in northern France, Franche-Comté and Charolais in the east, Luxembourg, and the Low Countries. ”

“ His achievements in Spain belong to the field of institutional development rather than to that of political narrative, however. As for the Americas his reign was characterized by such a series of remarkable mainland conquests that it is often treated as a distinct epoch in American history, the era of the conquistadores, and Spanish America is, after all, the principal monument to the greatness of his reign. The Emperor Charles V was a failure; but King Charles I of Spain gave the Americas to European civilization. ”