1621]

Death of Philip III

635

depth of despair he passed to ecstasies of trust in the efficacy of the Church to save him. All around his bed were relics of dead saints, and images to which he addressed his frantic appeals. Solemn religious offices went on unceasingly before his eyes, and for many days he anticipated his momentary death, notwithstanding the assurance of his physicians that it was not so near as he thought. He bade farewell to his children more than once, and distributed amongst them relics and sacred images, warning his heir to keep the rough crucifix which his father's dead hand would grasp, to serve a similar sad office when the new King's dread hour should come. In an agony of remorse he prayed continually for mercy and deplored the unhappy results of his two-andtwenty years' rule; but, when he died at last, on March 31, 1621, a cry of grief went up from all his people at the loss of the saintly sovereign, who, they said, had served his faith so well, had battled against heresy throughout the world, had founded convents without number, had expelled all the Spaniards in whose veins ran Mohammadan blood, and had caused the canonisation of more Spanish saints than any King before him. The people knew that the land was desolate, that the workshops were empty, the looms idle, and a whole nation sunk into pretentious sloth; but they did not know that the qualities which they most revered in their monarch had been the main cause of their ruin. That knowledge, like the King's repentance, came too late to work a remedy. Four-fifths of his will are occupied by pious exhortations to his successor and legacies for religious purposes; but, with all this saintly parade, he followed the example of his ancestress Isabel the Catholic, and ordered that his grants from the royal domains - mostly made in return for hard payment should be held void.

Lerma's warning to his undutiful son was fulfilled in a shorter time than even he could have expected it. Uceda's friend, Gaspar de Guzman, when once he had made his position secure in the young Prince's household, left no room for doubt as to his ambitious projects for himself. One after the other, the servile courtiers were given to understand that they must serve him if they hoped for future advancement, and the Prince, who at first found his new governor too masterly to please him, was initiated into licentious pleasures before his time in order that he might be made plastic in the hands of his initiator. When it was already too late, Uceda endeavoured to get rid of Guzman, now Count of Olivares, by offering him the great post of ambassador in Rome; but Olivares aimed at a higher mark and refused to leave young Philip's side. Uceda was with Philip III at the last, and had bethought him of summoning to his aid the Cardinal Duke of Lerma, to influence with his experience and authority the last dispositions of the King. But Philip III was dying, and Olivares held in his hand the will of the real King of Spain-the pale, tow-haired boy with the great hanging underlip, who was waiting with unconcealed impatience for his father's last breath;

636

Rise of Olivares

[1621

and Olivares, in the Prince's name, peremptorily forbade Lerma's approach.

It was the first of many blows which fell in rapid succession upon all those who had enjoyed power and office in the last reign. Even as Philip III had done when his father had died, so did Philip IV as soon as the corpse of his father, clad in the garb of a Franciscan monk, was borne out of the Alcazar on the cliff and over the dreary plains to the Escorial. Olivares had on several occasions during the last days of Philip III feigned a desire to abandon his office and retire to Andalusia; but he knew his young master well. The Prince implored him to stay, and promised to place himself entirely in his hands. goes it in the Prince's apartment?" asked Uceda of Olivares, as the King lay dying. "All is mine,” replied the Count. "All?" exclaimed Uceda. "Yes, everything without exception," retorted Olivares, "for the Prince overrates me in all things but my desire to serve him.” It was Uceda's notice to quit, and before the expiration of the new King's nine days' retirement to San Geronimo for mourning, a clean sweep was made of the men who, under Philip III, had brought Spain to the dire pass in which she found herself. Orders were given that every minister of Spain since 1603 was to give a strict account of all his property, and how he came by it. Lerma himself was not spared; though he fought stoutly but unsuccessfully for his vast possessions. Calderon in his prison, when he heard the passing-bell for the dead King, cried, "The King is dead, and so am I"; and soon his head fell under the axe in the great square of Madrid. The Duke of Osuna, the Viceroy who had ruled Naples with so high a hand, was lodged in prison and persecuted till his stout heart broke. Uceda met with a similar fate; and all the clan of Sandoval and Rojas were trampled under the heels of Guzmans and Zuñigas.

The state of things with which the new sovereign had to deal was pitiable in the extreme; and there is no doubt that, so far as their lights extended, both the boy-King and his strong-willed minister sincerely wished to reform the abuses, the results of which were patent to everyone. Young Philip himself was good-hearted, as his father had been, but far more sensual in his tastes, and less devout in his habits. As years went on and he gained experience he deliberately assumed in public the stolid gravity and marble impassivity which he thought befitted the monarchy of Spain; but in his youth, and in the society of his favourites, he was gay and witty. His ability was far greater than that of his father had been, and his delight in books, music, poetry, the drama, and, above all, pictures, made him the greatest patron of the authors and artists of Spain's golden age. But idleness marred all his talents, and the mad lust of pleasure which he was powerless to resist, kept him, as his father had been kept, nearly all his life, in the leadingstrings of favourites. The man to whom on the first day of his reign he

1621]

Philip IV and his mentor

637

handed his conscience, Gaspar de Guzman, Count of Olivares, and first Duke of San Lucar, was twenty years his senior. An indefatigable worker, with an ambition as voracious as his industry, Olivares was the exact opposite to the idle, courtly, and conciliatory Lerma. His greed was not personal, as Lerma's had been, though his love of power led him to absorb as many great offices as his predecessor had appropriated. He was arrogant and impatient, violent in his rage if opposed, and careless of all considerations but those which served his ends. Able as he undoubtedly was, he appraised his ability too highly and contemned all opinions but his own; and his attitude towards foreign Powers would only have been warrantable at the time when the Spanish power was irresistible. From an economic point of view Olivares was not much wiser than his Spanish predecessors; but his conception of the political unity of Spain as the thing primarily needful, was sage and statesmanlike, though premature; and upon this rock he was wrecked. The portraits of him by Velasquez enable us to see the man as he lived. As he stands, dark, stern, and masterful, with his heavy shoulders bowed, seemingly by the weight of his ponderous head, with its fierce, black, sunken eyes, we know that this man would dominate or die. was the finest horseman in Spain; and he treated men as he treated his fiery, big-boned chargers, taming them to obedience by force of will and tireless persistence. Such was the man who led Spain during the crucial struggle which decided, not only whether France or Spain should prevail politically on the Continent, but whether Spanish or French influence should in future predominate in the artistic, literary, and social development of Europe. In that great contest Spain lost not so much because Olivares was inferior to Richelieu, as by reason of the inflexible traditions that hampered Spanish action at home and abroad, and pitted a decentralised country, where productive industry had been killed and the sources of revenue destroyed, against a homogeneous nation in which active work was being fostered, and whose resources were being placed at the command of the central authority.

He

Olivares was clever enough to place in the nominal post of chief adviser of the Crown his uncle Don Baltasar de Zuñiga, an experienced and able diplomatist, who until his death, a year after the accession, attended to political affairs, while Olivares was fastening his hold upon all those who surrounded the King. Before Philip was out of bed, his minister was always the first to enter his room; he drew the curtains, opened the window, and then, on his knees by the bedside, rehearsed the business of the coming day. Every garment that the King put on passed first through the hands of Olivares, who stood by whilst Philip dressed; after the monarch's midday meal, Olivares entertained him with chat; and late in the evening, before the King retired his minister attended to give him an account of the dispatches received, and to consult him as to the answers. Philip's natural idleness led him to

638

The supremacy of Olivares

[1621-6 shirk as much of the work as possible; and jealous observers, who called the minister "the King's scarecrow," sneered that Olivares purposely appeared before the King with his hatband stuck full of State documents, and with great bundles of papers under his arm and hung from his waistband. After a short time the King merely glanced at the papers presented to him, and affixed the signature "Yo el Rey" with a handstamp, to save himself trouble. The imputation of Olivares' enemies, that the minister's activity was the cause of the monarch's indolence, appears unjust in view of the original papers still extant, in which Philip is implored by Olivares to attend to business and decide matters for himself. In 1626 a most emphatic appeal was made to this effect. Since the beginning of the reign, Olivares says he had never ceased to urge that patriotism, duty, the happiness of the country, and the future of Spain, all demand that the King should not evade the labours of his position. "But lately," he continues, "affairs are growing worse than ever, and his conscience will not allow him to remain silent. And, if the King will not put his shoulder to the wheel, the writer will bear the responsibility no longer, but will leave Madrid, whatever the consequences." Nothing can exceed the force, not to say the violence, of this appeal to the young King to do his duty to his subjects; and if Philip eventually disregarded it, he, and not Olivares, should be blamed. The King was well-meaning, however, and desired to do right, though his will was weak. His answer to the exhortation of his minister (here printed for the first time) may be transcribed in full. "Count. I have resolved to do as you ask me, for God's sake, my own, and yours. No action of yours towards me can be presumptuous; and knowing, as I do, your zeal and love, I will do it, Count, and I return to you the paper with this answer on it, that you may make it an heirloom, and that your descendants may know how their monarchs ought to be addressed, and what an ancestor they had. I should like to leave such a paper in my archives that my children, if God send me any, may learn, and other monarchs too, how to prevail in matters of right and justice. I the King."

It is evident, in any case, that Philip began his reign by casting upon Olivares the whole weight of government, and that, especially after Zuñiga's death, the policy adopted was the minister's alone. The position of the country was one that might have appalled the boldest, and the best summary of it is that addressed by the King himself five years later to his Council. This striking manuscript, to which reference will again be made, and which has not hitherto been printed, sets forth in the King's own words how Spain stood in 1621. "The finances were so utterly exhausted — in addition to the terrible debts incurred by Philip II - that every resource was anticipated for several years to come. My patrimony was so distressed that in my father's time alone grants and voluntary gifts had swallowed up 96,000,000 ducats,

1621-6]

The condition of Spain

639

without calculating what had been given in four or five of the principal Spanish kingdoms, from which returns have not yet been made. The currency had been raised to three times its face value: a thing never seen in any nation before, which threatened us with utter isolation and ruin, but for God's help. Ecclesiastical affairs were in such disorder that we were told from Rome that innumerable dispensations for simony had been obtained for bishoprics and archbishoprics, besides an enormous number for prebends. As for affairs of justice, they were in such a state that on the very first day of my reign I was obliged to make the demonstration you will recall. . . . The State itself was so degraded. that the King, my father, had been forced to negotiate with the Hollanders as if they had been an independent sovereign State, over which he had no claims; which confession was made, although not a single minister was in favour of it; although the King rejected it in his answers to the Consultas sent to him on the subject, and my uncle the Archduke also repudiated it, and likewise all authorities both here and in Flanders. I found myself with only seven ocean ships, and a maritime war on my hands; India lost to me, and America on the point of being lost. The truce in Flanders was within three months of its expiration, and in the twelve years' truce my subjects had lost their knowledge of war, and what is worse their prestige. I found German affairs in such a condition. that nothing less than a miracle seemed capable of avoiding utter ruin in that direction. The marriage of the Prince of Wales with my sister was so far advanced that it looked impossible to evade it without a great war. Portugal was discontented with the Viceroy, and the rest of the monarchy was ill-ruled or not ruled at all. Roman affairs were totally ruined: we were in a state of war with Venice; and the realm of Naples was bordering upon a popular revolt, with the coinage completely debased. This was the sad condition in which I found my country on my accession, from no fault of the King my father, or of his predecessors, as all the world knows, but because God Almighty decreed that it should be so; and I myself experience this every day: for no matter how adequate may be the remedies I adopt, our sins suffice to condemn all our affairs to the most miserable state imaginable."

The sad condition thus disclosed might have been ameliorated, as some unofficial observers urged, by setting the idle people to work upon the land again and by the encouragement of lost industries; but no measure would have permanently arrested the decadence short of an entire reform of the fiscal incidence and administration, and a rigid concentration of national resources on the purposes of Spain itself. As we have seen from the King's words, however, there was no inclination to abate the old claims or to limit the old arrogance; and the measures adopted by Olivares were mainly palliative rather than remedial. The expenditure of the palace was cut down to a minimum, the corrupt officials of the past reign were forced to disgorge their plunder, and