The Palace of Aranjuez became a patrimony of the Crown of Spain by virtue partly of the wise and able economic reforms instituted by Ferdinand the Catholic, and partly as a result of his characteristic greed. The husband of Isabel of Castile safeguarded his country by stripping the nobles of many of their privileges and powers, and readjusting their sources of income. He prohibited them from erecting new castles and coining money, and as the masterships of the vast estates of the military orders fell vacant, he retained the masterships and the estates in the royal family and paid the knights by fixed pensions. Aranjuez sprang into existence in the fourteenth century as the summer residence of Lorenzo Suarez de Figueroa, the master of the illustrious and wealthy Order of Santiago, who planted the land with trees and vines and olives, and erected a building that answered the double purpose of castle and convent. When Ferdinand incorporated the mastership of the Order of Santiago with the Crown, Aranjuez became the summer palace of the Catholic king and his consort. In 1536 Charles V. made it a shooting villa, and Philip II. introduced English elms into the grounds, and employed Herrera, of Escorial fame, to construct additional buildings to better accommodate his growing family. The palace was partially destroyed by fire in 1650, and five years later a second fire reduced it to a ruin. In this condition it remained until 1727, when Philip V., who had tasted the pleasures of palace-building at La Granja, rebuilt the present edifice, which was successively improved by Charles III. and Ferdinand VII.

Philip V. was better advised when he decided to erect a palace on the site of the master of the Order of Santiago’s summer residence than when he wrested a foothold for La Granja from the side of the mountains of Segovia. The royal home at Aranjuez is charmingly situated in the midst of avenues of stately elms and sycamores at the confluence of the Tagus and Jarama—a verdurous oasis in the midst of treeless, waterless Castile. He constructed the palace and the public chapel from stone taken from a quarry in the district of Colmenar, which he bought for the purpose. The timber he procured from the mountains of Cuenca, and the lead for the roofing from some mines that existed near Consuegra. Philip III. enriched the gardens with many of the fine bronzes and marbles that are to be seen there, and some of the splendid fountains were also added by his orders; but the Parterre department which Philip II. laid out was completed by the art-loving Philip IV., who furnished the busts of the Roman emperors, the statues, and the beautiful medallions. In 1748 the palace was again on fire, and the principal faÇade was restored by Ferdinand VI. in its present more elegant form.

That weak and fatuous monarch Charles IV., who added the Casas del Principe to the Escorial, and El Pardo, and the auxiliary Casa del Labrador to the palace of Aranjuez, had a particular affection for the ‘Spanish Fontainebleau.’ Here the king and queen and their favourite, Godoy, passed much of their time in the anxious days that preceded the fall of the monarchy; and here, in March 1808, the determination was arrived at by which the detested Prince of the Peace was torn from office and power, literally by the hands of the incensed mob. What a curious spectacle of a family group they present to our eyes! Charles IV. and Maria Luisa, Ferdinand and Godoy, with mutual hatred in their hearts and the sound of the tumult of Madrid ringing in their ears. King, prince, and minister each believed the advancing French to be his friends; each felt confident that Spain was being trampled under foot by foreign soldiers to advance their several conflicting interests. But suddenly from the rapidly approaching host came messengers with an ultimatum from Napoleon, containing impossible conditions that would have dismembered Spain and deprived her of her independence. It was evident now that Napoleon was coming not as a saviour but as a conqueror, and now it was too late to resist him by force of arms. In the palace of Aranjuez it was resolved that the Court should retire to Seville, and from there, if the worst happened, sail for America.

Although this secret resolution was carefully guarded, a rumour of the projected flight got about, and the mob vented their anger upon Godoy, whom they believed was prepared to sell the country to the Corsican. In vain Charles addressed proclamations to ‘my dear vassals,’ and assured them that his dear ally, the Emperor of the French, was only making use of Spanish soil to reach points threatened by the English enemy; in vain he denied the story of his intended flight. The greater part of the garrison in Madrid was ordered to Aranjuez, but with the soldiers went an army of country people who surrounded the king’s palace and the palace of the favourite, and closely guarded every avenue of escape. At midnight of the 17th March a bugle-call rang out, a shot responded to the summons, and in a moment the revolution was in full swing. Around the royal residence, in which Charles was lying ill with gout, the mob contented itself by howling threats and imprecations, but Godoy’s palace was carried by assault. The work of destruction was stayed for a few moments while the Princess of the Peace, a member of the royal family, and her daughter were respectfully conveyed to the royal palace. Then the ruffians got to work in terrible earnest. With murderous thoroughness they searched every room and corridor for the despised author of the national trouble, wrecking everything in their path. But Godoy had slipped from his bed, and found a refuge under a roll of matting in a neighbouring lumber-room. For thirty-six hours he remained in hiding until hunger and thirst drove him from his retreat, and he was led from his ruined house to the barrack guardroom through a populace that thirsted for his life. The wretched fugitive, ill with fear and fatigue, was placed between two mounted guards, and the journey was made at a sharp trot, but he could not out-distance the vengeance of the crowd, and his guards could not protect him. Fierce blows were rained upon him by the infuriated multitude, and the man who had been master of Spain, bleeding from a score of wounds and gasping for breath, was only rescued from instant death by a miracle.

The mob still overran the streets of Aranjuez, and swarmed around the royal palace in which Charles IV. signed the decree handing the crown of Spain to Ferdinand. A few days later he withdrew his abdication privately at the instigation of General Monthion, Murat’s chief of the staff, and shortly afterwards left Aranjuez for the Escorial, from whence, on the 25th April following, he set out for Bayonne, to lay the crown at the feet of the Emperor of the French. The king died at Rome in 1819; Ferdinand, having spent six years at ValenÇay, where he was virtually a prisoner of the French, was restored to the throne of Spain. During the nineteen years of his reign Ferdinand VII. and the coarse, ignorant vulgarians who composed the camarilla by which he surrounded himself, spent much of their time at Aranjuez. Here the vast conspiracy was hatched against the Constitution, which led to the battle between the militia and the citizens in 1822; and here the worthless monarch intrigued until his death to re-establish absolutism, and restore the old rotten order of things which the nation had shed its best blood to wipe out.

The nearness of Aranjuez to Madrid and the beauty of its situation has always made it a favourite residence of the Spanish royal family. The town itself, which has a population of some ten thousand inhabitants, is composed of wide streets and large squares, and many noble families possess villas in the neighbourhood. The interior of the palace, which reveals an incongruous jumble of modern innovations adapted to the architecture and decoration of bygone generations, is filled with a large assortment of works of art, some possessing a very high order of merit, and others very little. The celebrated staircase which faces the principal entrance is magnificent. It leads to the Saleta, a room embellished with a granite chimney-piece and chandeliers of rock crystal and bronze, and containing several paintings by the famous Italian artist Luca Giordano, who is known in Spain by the name of Juan JordÁn. Other pictures by Giordano, painted on white silk damask, are to be seen in an adjoining apartment. In the Oratory is a superb altar, with an agate inlaid table, and Titian’s ‘Annunciation of the Virgin.’ Next to the Oratory is the Hall of Ambassadors, a modern apartment, with a ceiling painted in 1850 by Vicente and Maximino CamarÓn. The walls of the queen’s study in the same suite are covered with white damask, and the room is furnished with twelve chairs and a carved mahogany table of the time of Charles IV.

The ball-room and the dining-room, even the Moorish room, in which Rafael Contreras has revived the beauties of the Alhambra, are surpassed by the music-room, which is the finest saloon in the palace. Here all the decorations are Chinese in character, worked out and enamelled with great skill; and the chandelier, which is in one piece, is an exquisite specimen of workmanship. The walls of this room are entirely covered with large porcelain plaques, representing in high relief groups of beautifully modelled Oriental figures. The looking-glasses, made at La Granja, with their frames composed of fruits and flowers, enhance the effect. Joseph Gricci, who modelled and painted the music-saloon, was one of the artists brought over from Naples by Charles III. in 1759, when he established in Madrid the factory of Buen Retiro. In addition to this superb porcelain, the palace boasts a bedstead of splendidly carved lignum-vitae, and some pictures by Bosch (Jerome van Aeken), a painter of the sixteenth century, who is almost unknown outside Spain. These canvases represent fantastic subjects and allegories in the style of Breughel, and were highly praised by the critics of his time.

The Convent of San Pascual was founded by Charles III., and the theatre in the town owed its inception to the same monarch. The convent church contains only a few valuable pictures, but it is rich in marble and beautifully carved wood. The convent library possesses many ancient manuscripts, and the convent grounds are famous for their beauty, but the gardens of the royal palace are the crowning glory of Aranjuez.

That most entertaining author and indefatigable dispenser of Testaments, George Borrow, travelled in Spain at a time when royalty was battling for its very existence. He found the country dangerous and desolated, and the country homes of its kings fallen into a state of neglect. When he was in La Granja, the palace of San Ildefonso was shut up, and the town which surrounds the patrimony of the Crown of Spain was practically deserted. He had no better luck in Aranjuez. He admits the beauty of the district, but he describes the place as in a state of desolation; he recalls the fact that Ferdinand VII. spent his latter days in its palace surrounded by lovely seÑoras and Andalusian bull-fighters, and quotes—perhaps with more sentiment than sympathy—the words of Schiller:

‘Intriguing courtiers no longer crowd its halls,’ he reflects; ‘its spacious circus, where Manchegan bulls once roared in rage and agony, is now closed, and the light tinkling of guitars is no longer heard amidst its groves and gardens.’ One feels as one reads these passages that Borrow was not at his best as a moralist. One prefers him when he is describing in his lively, absorbing manner his personal experiences, and is glad to learn that he disposed of eighty Testaments in desolate Aranjuez, and that he ‘might have sold many more of these Divine books’ if he had remained there a longer period.

But we are sorry that Borrow did not see the Palace Gardens in April or May, when the view from the Parterre is one of almost unsurpassed loveliness. The Reina, Isla, and Principe Gardens are furnished with a multitude of bridges, grottoes, fountains, and cascades, bordered and surrounded by an exuberance of plants and flowers from England, France, and the East, all bathed by the waters of the Tagus, and made musical with the notes of myriad birds. ‘The Nightingale that in the Branches sang’ returns in his thousands every spring, and we hear ‘The melodious noise of birds among the spreading branches, and the pleasing fall of water running violently.’ Here are Oriental trees, palms, and the cedars of Lebanon, and interspersed with them are the first elms introduced by Philip II. into Spain from England, which grow magnificently under the combined influence of heat and moisture. The impressionable and responsive Edmondo de Amicis writes of Aranjuez:

The Jardines de la Reina are of minor importance, but the Jardines de la Isla, comprising the four divisions which are known as Parterre, La Estatuas, Isla, and Emparrado, are filled with natural and created beauties. In the Isabel II. Garden is a bronze statue of the queen, erected to commemorate the political events of 1834. It is surrounded by a handsome iron railing, and completed by eight stone seats and as many marble vases mounted on pedestals. The Jardines de Principe, a much more modern preserve, are divided into four departments, and bisected by avenues that lead to the various small squares and to the Princesa, Apollo, Blanco, and Embajadores Avenues, the last of which terminates in the little Pabellones Garden of the time of Ferdinand VI. In addition to these princely gardens there are the English Garden, remarkable for its carved rock supporting a well-modelled swan; the Chinese Garden with its banana plantations; and the Garden of the Princess, acquired in 1535, and adorned in 1616 with a mechanical clock, decorated with twelve bronze figures that play on bronze trumpets. On the banks of the swiftly flowing river are the paddocks of the Crown, where camels and llamas roam, and a stud farm, where are bred English and Spanish blood horses and the beautiful cream-coloured animals of the Aranjuez stock.

The auxiliary palace called the Casa del Labrador, or Labourer’s Cottage, built by Charles IV., is a remarkable structure, being a series of boudoirs, À petit Trianon, worthy of a Pompadour. The ceilings are painted by Zacarias Velazquez, Lopez, Maella, and other artists, and the walls of the back staircase are decorated with scenes and figures of the time of Charles I. At the top of the staircase is figured a balcony, on which are leaning the handsome wife and children of the painter, Z. Velazquez. The gilded bronze balustrade of the main staircase contains gold to the value of £3000, and the marbles over the doors are very fine. On the ground-floor of the building, which is composed of three stories, are thirteen statues by Spanish sculptors. In the centre of the hall is a marble figure representing Envy, and around the apartment are twenty busts of Carrara marble. Among the treasures of the palace are many Japanese vases and bronzes of great artistic value, marble busts of Minerva and Mars, a group representing a sacrifice in honour of Venus, and an enormous, beautifully carved mahogany fountain. The decorations consist of platinum, artistically worked pavements of Buen Retiro porcelain, and the most gorgeous silk embroideries and tapestries bordered with gold; while the furniture includes priceless chandeliers, SÈvres vases, candelabra, and clocks. A chair and table in malachite, a present from Prince Demidoff to the ex-Queen Isabella of Spain, is valued at about £1500. The apartment known as Retrete is adorned with a composition resembling marble in the Moorish style and Etruscan low relief, and furnished with crimson coverings bordered with gold, while all the appointments of the hall, the capricious clocks and floral stands of bronze and glass, the table of rock crystal, and the wealth of marbles, all contribute to the magnificence of this so-called Casa del Labrador.