The union of the Low Countries to Spain—The Italian suzerainty—The effects thereof—Etiquette of the House of Burgundy adopted in Spain—Ruy Gomez—Philip’s voyage—His unpopularity with Germans and Flemings—Fresh proposals for his marriage—The family compact for the imperial succession—Defection of Maurice of Saxony—War with France—Treaty of Passau—Defeat of the emperor at Metz.
ALBA left Germany for Spain at the end of January 1548, travelling by way of Genoa, and taking with him the exposition of the emperor’s new policy, which was to result in so much trouble and suffering to future generations. The lordships of Flanders and Holland had never up to this period been regarded by Charles as attached necessarily to the crown of Spain. Indeed at various times the cession of Flanders to France had been amicably discussed, and only shortly before Charles had considered the advisability of handing the Low Countries over to his daughter Maria as a dowry on her marriage with Maximilian. But the step of making them the inalienable possessions of the ruler of Spain would burden the latter country with an entirely fresh set of interests, and render necessary the adoption of a change in its foreign policy. Flanders once attached to the crown of Spain could never fall into the hands of France, and the latter Power would find itself almost surrounded by Spanish territory, with its expansion to the northward cut off. In the event of the Spanish suzerainty over Italy being established also, French influence in Italy would be at an end, and the papal power dwarfed. This therefore meant that France and the pope would make common cause in a secular struggle against Spain. The dishonesty of Ferdinand the Catholic about Naples had begun the feud, the rivalry of Francis I. for the imperial crown had continued it, and now if Flanders and Holland, instead of belonging to harmless Dukes of Burgundy, were to be held permanently by France’s great rival, the whole balance of power in Europe would be changed, and France must fight for life.
The Dukes of Burgundy and Counts of Holland, as possessors of the Flemish seaboard, had for generations found it necessary to maintain a close alliance with England, whose interests were equally bound up in preventing France from occupying the coast opposite its own eastern shores, the principal outlet for its commerce. By Charles’s new resolve this obligation to hold fast by England was transferred permanently to Spain, which country had not hitherto had any need for intimate political relations with England, except such as arose out of mutual commercial interests. Spain itself—and no longer the emperor as Duke of Burgundy—was thus drawn into the vortex of Central European politics, and herefrom came its ruin.
That the emperor’s plans were not entirely to the taste of his son is certain, but whether in consequence of a dread of the new responsibilities to be forced upon Spain, or from motives of ambition, is not quite clear. On the face of the correspondence between Alba and De Granvelle on the subject, it would appear that the latter was the case. The objection probably arose from the ambitious Alba, fresh from his German triumphs, who would point out to the young prince that the arrangement would permanently cut him off from the succession to the imperial crown, and that the interval of uncertainty which would elapse before his suggested suzerainty over Italy was established, would give time for intrigues to be carried on which might render it impracticable when the time came. At his instance, therefore, the question of his suzerainty over Italy was left open, and with it what was doubtless Alba’s objective point, the arrangement by which the succession to the empire was secured to Maximilian.
In pursuance of his plan of keeping the Spanish nobles busy in affairs other than the interior politics of their country, Charles in August 1548, before Philip’s departure on his travels, gave orders which had a considerable influence in the future history of Spain. The kings of the petty realms into which the Peninsula had been divided, constantly at war for centuries with the Moors, had been obliged to depend for their very existence upon their feudal semi-independent nobles. The kings at best were but first amongst their peers, and were constantly reminded of the fact. The “fueros” of each petty dominion were stubbornly upheld against the rulers, and in the north of Spain, at all events, it had been for some centuries past a continuous policy of the kings to curb the power for harm of the nobles and limit the autonomous privileges of the people. The policy of the emperor, as we have seen, was to centralise the government of Spain, and to give to its rulers an overwhelming influence in the councils of Europe. This could only be effected by making the king the supreme master over the lives and property of all his subjects, drawing from Spain the growing stream of riches from the Indies, and attaching the powerful Spanish nobles personally to their prince.
The court life of Spain, except for a short time when Charles’s father, Philip the Handsome, had visited it, had been bluff and simple. The new order of the emperor introduced for the first time the pompous and splendid etiquette of the House of Burgundy, which has since been adopted in most monarchies. By virtue of this the proud Spanish nobility became personally attached to the household of the prince in nominally inferior capacities, chamberlains, equerries, ushers, and the like; and the young hidalgoes of the greatest Houses, all bedizened and bedecked in finery, no longer hunted the wild boar in their mountain homes, but dangled in the presence of the monarch and added lustre to his daily life.
The change was certainly not in consonance with Philip’s natural inclinations. His personal tastes were of the simplest; he was always sober and moderate in eating and drinking, looking with positive disgust on the excess of Flemings and Germans in this respect. He hated pomp and blare, and his attire on ordinary occasions was as modest and simple as it was handsome. But he was a slave to duty, and when the exigencies of his high station demanded magnificence, he could be as splendid as any man on earth. So henceforward in public the quiet, modest man moved in a perfect constellation of glittering satellites. One great consolation the change gave him. In the emperor’s exhortation to him in 1543 he was told that in future his young friends must only approach him as his servants, and “that his principal companions must be elderly men and others of reasonable age possessed of virtue, wise discourse, and good example.” But Philip was yet (1548) only twenty-one, and was devotedly attached to some of the friends of his boyhood, such as Ruy Gomez de Silva and Gomez Suarez de Figueroa, Count de Feria, and to these and the like he gave offices which kept them constantly near him. Philip for the whole of his life was on his guard to prevent favourites from obtaining influence over him, and few monarchs have been less dominated by individual courtiers than he. But the man who gained most ascendency over him was Ruy Gomez, who, as will be shown later, led a party or school of thought whose policy was for many years followed by the king, and largely coloured subsequent events. On October 1, 1548, Philip left Valladolid on his voyage, leaving as regents his sister Maria and her bridegroom Maximilian. By slow stages, and followed by a great train of courtiers, he rode through Aragon and Catalonia, worshipping at the shrines of Saragossa and Monserrate on his way, and receiving the homage of Barcelona and Gerona. In the bay of Rosas, in the extreme north-east point of Spain, Andrea Doria awaited him with a splendid fleet of fifty-eight galleys and a great host of sailing ships.
Doria, the greatest sailor of his day, who had grown grey in the service of the emperor, knelt on the shore at the sight of the prince, overcome with emotion, and said in the words of Simeon: “Now, Lord, let Thy servant depart in peace, for his eyes have seen Thy salvation.” It is no exaggeration to say that this intense devotion to the Spanish prince reflected generally the feeling with which he was regarded in Spain, at least. The prince landed at Savona in the territory of Genoa, where princes and cardinals innumerable awaited him. In the city of Genoa he stayed at the Doria palace, and there Octavio Farnese came to him from his uncle, Pope Paul III., with a significant message. The Farneses had but small reason to greet Philip with enthusiasm just then, for the plans afoot for the aggrandisement of Spain were a grave menace to the interests of the papacy, and Octavio himself was being kept out of his principality by the emperor’s troops. But the pope’s champion against the emperor, Francis I, had recently died, and the pontiff was obliged to salute the rising sun of Spain, in the hope that he would prove a better friend to Rome than his father was. So Farnese was fain to bear to Philip from the pope a sanctified sword and a hat of state, “hoping that some day he might behold in him the true champion of the Holy Church.” Milan and Mantua vied with Genoa in the splendour of their rejoicings for Philip’s arrival, and so through the Tyrol, Germany, and Luxembourg he slowly made his way to meet his father at Brussels. On April 1, 1549, he made his state entry into the city, but so great was the ceremonial, that it was almost night before he arrived at the palace. Charles was still ailing, but gained, it seemed, new life when he saw the heir of his greatness. Thenceforward for a time the festivals, tourneys, and rejoicings went on unceasingly, to a greater extent, say eye-witnesses, than had ever been known before. Philip had no taste for such frivolities, but he did his best. He was a graceful, if not a bold, rider, and the custom of his time demanded that he should break lances with the rest. His courtly chroniclers relate how well he acquitted himself in these exercises, and the enthusiasm aroused by his gallant mien; but less partial judges do not scruple to say that at one of the tourneys during his stay in Germany on his way home “no one did so badly as the prince,” who was never able “to break a lance.” His inclinations were in a totally different direction. The drunken orgies and rough horseplay of the Germans and Flemings disgusted him, and he took but little pains to conceal his surprise at what appeared to him such undignified proceedings. He was unable, moreover, to speak German, and his voyage certainly did not help forward the project of securing to him the succession to the imperial crown.
For the next two years the emperor kept his son by his side, indoctrinating him with his principles and policy. For two hours nearly every day the Spanish prince learnt the profound lessons of government from the lips of his great father, government founded on the principle of making all other men merely instruments for carrying out the ends of one.
Philip had now been a widower for four years, and doubtless during this period contracted his connection with DoÑa Isabel de Osorio, by whom he had several children; and he had one at least by a Flemish lady in Brussels. His only legitimate son was the lame, epileptic Don Carlos, and the emperor had no other sons; so during the intimate conferences which followed Philip’s arrival in Brussels, Charles pressed upon his heir the necessity of taking another wife, and once more brought forward Jeanne d’Albret, titular Queen of Navarre, who had claimed a divorce from the Duke of Cleves, whom she had been constrained to marry. But whether because cautious Philip saw that to extend his dominions into the south of France would be a source of weakness rather than strength to him, or whether he was influenced by the greed for dowry, and the persuasions of his widowed aunt Leonora, who was with his father in Brussels, he certainly leant to the side of her daughter, another Princess Maria of Portugal, aunt of his former wife, and negotiations were opened in this direction, although Ferdinand, King of the Romans, the brother of the emperor, tried his hardest to promote his own daughter to the place of Philip’s consort. Philip had contrived to persuade his probably not unwilling father to endeavour to promote his claims to the succession of the imperial crown in the place of Ferdinand, and the Austrian archives contain full details of the almost interminable family discussions with this end. At last, in March 1551, a compact was made with which Philip was forced to be satisfied. It was to the effect that Ferdinand should succeed Charles as emperor, but that on the death of Ferdinand the imperial crown should pass to Philip instead of to Maximilian, who was to govern the empire in his name, holding a similar position towards Philip to that occupied by Ferdinand towards Charles. The emperor’s suzerainty over Italy was to be exercised vicariously by Philip during the life of Ferdinand. This last provision was a bitter pill for Ferdinand to swallow, but it was, in Charles’s view, the most important of them all. Spain, with a supremacy over the Italian states, would be the mistress of the Mediterranean, with infinite possibilities of extension to the east and in Africa, whilst France would be checkmated on this side, as she had been on the north. Philip, who had accompanied his father to Augsburg for the Diet, only stayed until this arrangement was settled and he had received the fiefs of the empire, and then (in May 1551) started on his way home to Spain.
The battle of MÜhlberg, three years before, together with the ambition of Maurice of Saxony, had laid Lutheranism prostrate at the feet of Charles, but the plan to perpetuate Spanish domination over the empire once more aroused the spirit of the sovereigns to resistance, and the powerful Maurice of Saxony, the emperor’s own creature, joined his fellow-countrymen against him. Sent by Charles to besiege the Protestant stronghold of Magdeburg, he suddenly changed sides. The opportunity thus offered was too good to be neglected by France, where Henry II. was now firmly seated on the throne; and in October 1551 a compact was signed at Friedwald in Hesse, by which Maurice, the King of France, and the Protestant princes joined against the emperor. Henry II. had just made peace with England, and had recovered Boulogne, so that he was in a better position to face his enemy than ever before. Octavio Farnese, with the connivance of France, raised a tumult in Italy to recover his principalities of Parma and Piacenza; and thus Charles found himself suddenly confronted by war on all sides, just when the prospects of his House had looked brightest. There is no space in this work to follow the fortunes of the remarkable campaign in which Maurice swept through Germany, capturing the imperial cities, surprising the emperor himself in Innspruck, and forcing CÆsar to fly for his life through the darkness. Suffice it to say that Charles was humbled as he had never been before, and was obliged to sign the peace of Passau at the dictation of Maurice (July 31, 1552) on terms which practically gave to the Lutheran princes all they demanded. This put an end for once and for all to the dream of making Philip Emperor as well as King of Spain. Nor had Henry II. been idle. On his way to join the German Protestants he had captured the strong places of Alsace and Lorraine, and Charles’s army before Metz was utterly defeated by Guise (January 1553). In Italy, too, the emperor was unfortunate, for the French had obtained a footing in Siena, and had overrun Piedmont. And thus the idea of a permanent supremacy of Spain over the Italian states also fell to the ground.
