Don Carlos—His relations with Elizabeth de Valois—French intrigues for his marriage—His illness—The Cortes of Aragon—Jeanne d’Albret and Henry of Navarre—The Council of Trent and the Inquisition—Philip and the pope—Renewed struggles with the Turks—Siege of Malta.
DON CARLOS, Philip’s only son and heir, had grown to be a boy of fourteen. Considering his descent, it is not surprising that he was deformed both in mind and body, lame and stunted, an epileptic semi-imbecile. He had been left in charge of his widowed aunt, the Regent Juana, a gloomy, religious mystic, to whom he was violently attached, and whose side he could only with difficulty be prevailed upon to leave. Philip had appointed as his tutor the learned Honorato Juan, who certainly did his best for the royal pupil. But he could do little for such a mind as his. As early as October 1558 the tutor wrote to the king, then in Flanders, that his pupil obstinately refused to study anything and was beyond control. The king himself, he said, was the only person who could bring him to order. Philip’s answer was characteristically cold and inexpressive. Honorato Juan must continue to look after the prince’s education and separate him from any companions who might divert him from his studies. But dry as was Philip’s letter to the tutor, it is clear that the news struck sorrow to his heart, for he loved his children dearly, and had great hopes for his heir. On a letter written on March 6, 1559, to Cardinal Pacheco respecting the need for settling ecclesiastical matters in the Netherlands, the king wrote the following words in his own hand: “Perhaps the prince my son will not be so careful of this as I am, and the people here may not try so hard as I should about it, seeing how desirable it is for the service of God, which is evidently the only end I aim at.” One of the first acts of Philip on his arrival in Spain was to take his son under his own care. When the new queen entered Toledo in state for the marriage ceremony (February 12, 1560) she was received by her stepson Carlos, yellow with recent fever, on his left being his young uncle, Don Juan of Austria, and on the right Alexander Farnese, the son and grandson, respectively, of the emperor.
When Elizabeth had left France, her mother, Catharine, had secretly instructed her to use every effort to win Don Carlos for her younger sister, Margaret de Valois, afterwards the famous first wife of Henry IV. Elizabeth’s fascination was great, and she very soon obtained absolute dominion over the sickly boy. The romantic stories of mutual love between them may be dismissed now as utterly exploded fables. Elizabeth had been born and bred in an atmosphere of political intrigue, she had gone to Spain purely for political reasons, and she was entrusted with the task of trying to win the greatest matrimonial prize in Europe for her sister, and to strengthen the union between France and Spain. She naturally carried out her mission to the best of her ability. Her efforts with regard to the marriage were utterly fruitless, for Philip was in no mood for a closer alliance with Catharine de Medici; but she attached her stepson to her to such an extent by her pity and kindness during his continual attacks of fever, that at length the French ambassador could write to Catharine, “The more the prince hates his father, the greater grows his affection for his stepmother, the queen, for she has all his regard, and her Majesty is so wise that she discreetly manages to please both her husband and her stepson.”
Catharine de Medici’s instructions to her daughter were that if she could not bring about a marriage between Carlos and her sister Margaret, she was to strive to forward his union with his aunt, the former Regent Juana, who was herself anxious for marriage with her nephew of half her age—anything rather than allow the heir of Spain to marry Mary Stuart. This latter would have been the best match for Philip, and he knew it. England would once more have been brought into his grasp, France checkmated effectually, and Flanders safe. Mary and her minister, Lethington, were eager for it. But time went on whilst Philip was procrastinating—probably in consequence of the condition of Carlos. Elizabeth, Catharine, and the emperor who wanted the heir for his granddaughter Anne, all intrigued actively against the match, Mary drifted into her marriage with Darnley, and Philip once more missed his chance.
On February 22, 1560, Carlos received the oath of allegiance from the Cortes of Castile in Toledo, and afterwards returned to the University of AlcalÁ, where he was supposed to be studying. His life there was violent and licentious, and in April 1562, in descending a dark stair to keep an assignation, he fell and suffered a severe fracture of the skull. The king, on receiving the news, at once set out from Madrid, his new capital, travelling through the night, full of anxiety for his son. He found him unconscious and partially paralysed; the doctors, ignorant beyond conception, treated him in a way that seems to us now to have made his death almost inevitable. Purges and bleedings, unguents and charms, ghastly quackery, such as putting a skeleton in bed with the invalid, were all tried in turn, until the Italian surgeon Vesale arrived and performed the operation of trepanning. The prince then recovered: but if he had been a semi-imbecile before, he now became at intervals a raving homicidal maniac. The prince and those around him attributed his recovery entirely to the skeleton of the monk that had been put to bed with him, and he promised to give four times his weight in gold for religious purposes. He was then seventeen years of age, and was found to weigh only 5 stone 6 lbs.
It was necessary that the heir should receive the oath of allegiance of the Cortes of Aragon, CataluÑa, and Valencia. The Cortes of Castile, more submissive than the Aragonese, had, though not without some murmuring, voted the supplies needed by Philip, and were at once dismissed. The Aragonese Parliament, proud of its privileges, stubborn to rudeness whenever it was convoked, had not been called together since 1552, although the king was bound by oath to summon it every three years. The very existence of representative assemblies was opposed to Philip’s dream of personal centralisation of power, and he detested the Aragonese Cortes heartily. The French ambassador at the time wrote to Catharine that the king, when he took the oath, secretly meant “to cut their claws and dock the privileges that make them insolent and almost free.” The court was therefore transferred in the autumn of 1563 to the obscure Aragonese town of Monzon, the king on his way from Madrid laying the first stone of his vast granite palace of St. Laurence of the Escorial. He found the rough Aragonese inclined to be fractious, jealous as usual at any interference of Castilians in their affairs. But Philip was pressed for money, and was obliged to dissemble. A crisis nearly occurred when the Cortes touched the mainspring of his governmental system. The members adopted a protest against the extending power of the Inquisition, and its interference with other matters than those of theology. Philip was cold and evasive; he said he would consider the matter when he returned to Castile. But the Cortes understood the rule of “grievance first” as well as the English Commons, and replied that no money should be voted until a satisfactory reply was given to them. Philip fell ill with rage, but money he must have; and at last he promised that a regular inspection and inquiry should be instituted into the powers of the Aragonese Inquisition. With this the Cortes voted him 1,350,000 ducats. They then took the oath of allegiance to Carlos, and were promptly dismissed. Philip did not forget his grudge against them, and it went hard with Aragon and its liberties when they gave him a chance for revenge.
France had been engaged in the first war of religion, and the Catholic party had been hardly pressed. The Duke of Guise had recently been killed (February 24, 1563), the peace of Amboise had been patched up, and toleration had been established. Anthony de Bourbon, who had married Jeanne d’Albret, titular Queen of Navarre, had also been killed, and his widow and ten-year-old son, Henry, had retired to her castle at Pau to mourn their loss. For many years the rights of the royal house of Navarre to the kingdom which had been dishonestly filched from them by Ferdinand the Catholic had been a thorn in the side of Spanish sovereigns, for the Navarres were still powerful French tributary princes across the Pyrenees. After Philip’s own projected marriage with the heiress of the house in his boyhood had fallen through, she had married Anthony de Bourbon, Duc de VendÔme, a prince of the blood royal of France, and this had made the claim more dangerous for Philip. But worst of all, Jeanne was a strong Calvinist, and only three lives stood between her little son and the crown of France. The Guises and their Catholic followers saw that if he came to the throne their day was gone, and cast about for means to avert such a catastrophe. Pau was near the Spanish frontier. Why not seize the queen and two children and hand them over to the tender mercies of Philip? If they were out of the way, Navarre could cause no more anxiety, and the stronghold of Protestantism in France would be empty. So a certain Captain Dimanche was sent by the Guises secretly to Monzon to broach the matter to Philip. He was raising a large force at Barcelona to fight the Turks in the Mediterranean. What would be easier than to send 10,000 of them secretly to creep along the Pyrenees, make a dash to Pau, and capture Jeanne d’Albret and her children? What indeed? This was exactly the enterprise to suit Philip, and Captain Dimanche saw him more than once at dead of night, and the whole plot was settled. The Guisan Monlucs and their Catholic friends were to hold the Protestants in check, whilst Philip’s men kidnapped their quarry. But Dimanche fell ill. He was a Frenchman, and sought aid of a countryman who lodged in the same house, an underling in the household of Philip’s French wife. Dimanche let out his secret to his countryman, who conveyed it to the queen. She was loyal to her husband’s country, but she was a Frenchwoman, a dear friend of Jeanne d’Albret, and a daughter of Catharine de Medici, so the news of the treachery went flying across the Pyrenees, and Jeanne, and Henry of Navarre were saved. Philip probably to the end of his life never knew that his wife had frustrated this dangerous plot against France, but it is all clear to us now, who have her secret correspondence before us.
But Philip was threatened at this time (the autumn of 1562) with a greater danger nearer home than France. As the French ambassador wrote, “The king intends principally to establish obedience to him by means of the Inquisition.” We have seen how the remonstrances of the Cortes of Aragon were received; we will now consider how Philip met a more dangerous attack upon his favourite institution. The Council of Trent, which had always been a trouble to Philip and his father, met, after several years’ suspension, early in 1562. Various moderate resolutions were discussed, but when the French prelates arrived late in the year with Cardinal Lorraine at their head the blow fell. The French and German bishops, who had seen the effects of wars of religion, proposed a radical reform. The priests were to be allowed to marry and the sacrament to be administered in two kinds. This was bad enough, but, worst of all, some of the bishops—Philip’s own subjects—tried to shake off the heavy yoke of the Inquisition. The prosecution of Carranza had shown to the Spanish bishops that there was no safety for any of them. Prelates hitherto could only be tried for heresy by the pope, but now the weak Medici Pope, Pius IV., had been induced to delegate this power to the inquisitor-general. Most of the Spanish bishops had been in favour of strengthening the power of the monarch over the Church, but when it came to handing over their own liberties to the Inquisition it was another matter. Philip wrote in December 1562 deploring that the Spanish bishops were not showing fit zeal for the Holy Office, “which subject must not be touched upon either directly or indirectly.” The pope was also appealed to, to prevent the Council from interfering in any way with the Inquisition. When Pius IV., humble servant as he then was of Philip, mildly remonstrated with him for meddling with the Council, Vargas, the Spanish ambassador, scolded his Holiness roundly for his want of consideration for the interests of “God and his Majesty.” Gradually even Pius IV. began to lose patience. Philip’s grand promises to him and his needy nephews had been very sparely kept, and it was clear to the meanest intellect that his pious professions of attachment for the Church were only with the object of making use of it for his own interests. At last Philip threatened to withdraw his ambassador, and the now angry pope defied him, threatening above all to withdraw from him the right of selling the Crusade bulls of indulgence, which produced a large revenue. He also began clamouring about Carranza’s treatment by the Inquisition, and the revenues of the archbishopric. When Philip asked in 1564 for a renewal of the subsidy he received from Rome, nothing but evasive answers were given to him. The breach grew wider and wider. “In Spain,” said the pontiff, “you all want to be popes and bring the king into everything. If the king wished to be King of Spain, he” (the pope) “intended to be Pope of Rome. Never,” he said, “was a pope so ill-treated as he was by the King of Spain and his ministers.” The death of Guise and the religious settlement in France, however, caused the withdrawal of many of the French bishops from the Council of Trent, and Philip, by bribes and threats, once more gained the upper hand in the assembly. Heretics were excluded, the celibacy of the clergy decided upon, and the administration of the sacrament in two kinds prohibited; but a decision was also arrived at which seemed distantly to affect the omnipotence of the king over the Spanish clergy. It gave the power to the provincial synods, and as a last resource to the pope, to examine into the morality of recipients of benefices. A slight attempt was also made to deprecate the extreme severity of the Inquisition. These mild resolutions were called by Philip’s ambassador “works of the devil,” and for over a year the decisions of the Council of Trent were not published in Spain. When, indeed, they were promulgated, it was with the saving clause from the king that they should in no way abrogate or weaken his rights over the clergy, the benefices, or the tithes. The condition of armed truce between Philip and Rome continued until the death of Pius IV. in December 1565.
An attempt to introduce an inquisition of the Spanish type into Naples, with the avowed object of suppressing political disaffection, nearly lost Philip the realm. The city rose in revolt against it, and after a struggle Philip was obliged to give way, and consented to abolish the dreaded tribunal (1565). He was indeed at the time not in a condition to coerce Naples. The struggle with the Turks in the Mediterranean had dragged on almost without intermission. Don Garcia de Toledo had in the autumn of 1564 managed to capture PeÑon de los Velez, a nest of pirates in the kingdom of Fez, which had been Philip’s main object for a year previously; but this was no check to the power of the Constantinople Turks, who were fitting out a great expedition for the purpose of hurling the Knights of St. John from their last stronghold at Malta. Don Garcia de Toledo, now Viceroy of Sicily, joined with the Grand Master Parisot in clamouring for Philip’s aid, unless, he said, all the Mediterranean was to fall under the rule of the infidel. But clamour as they might, no hurry could be expected from the king. Toledo was a host in himself. Men were sent from Sicily, others recruited in Corsica; Naples was put into a condition of defence, and Toledo, “bigger in spirit than in body,” complained, and rated soundly, almost rudely, the slow methods of his master in so great a crisis. At last, on May 19, Piali Pacha and Dragut Reis, with a vast force of 100,000 men, appeared before Malta. There were about a tenth of that number of Christian fighting men on the island, but the isolated fort of St. Elmo, with a garrison of 600 men, had to bear the brunt of the Turkish attack. After a month’s hard fighting, when at length the Turks stormed the place only nine Christians were left alive. From this point of vantage the siege of the main fortress by the Turks was commenced, with the assistance of the fleet. The Grand Master had continued to reinforce St. Elmo with his best men until it fell, and now found himself short-handed. Fresh prayers went forth to distant Philip and persistent Don Garcia de Toledo. Strong swimmers carried the Master’s beseeching letters beyond the reach of the Turkish ships. He could only hold out, he said, twenty days at most. Sixteen thousand cannon-shots had been fired against his forts in the first month. All Christianity looked on aghast whilst Philip was spending his time in religious processions, fasts, and rogations for the delivery of Malta. Don Garcia’s activity made up for his master’s tardiness, and, thanks to him mainly, Malta was able to hold out month after month. When at last a relief squadron was got together somehow in Sicily, consisting of 28 galleys and 10,000 men, storm and tempest scattered it again and again, and it was not until the beginning of September 1565 that it approached Malta, landing its men and provisions. The defenders were at their last gasp, but this relief raised their hearts. Again Don Garcia returned with more men and stores, and after one last attempt to storm the stronghold, the Turks gave up the game and raised the siege. Malta was saved, but Philip complained that he did not get full credit for it, because the Grand Master was a Frenchman and the pope himself was jealous.
