Almost simultaneously with the death of Marie Louise an event happened which to a large extent altered the political balance of Europe, and placed at further disadvantage the French partisans in Madrid. The Prince of Orange had surprised the world by becoming King of England, practically without opposition. It was no longer a shifty Stuart with French sympathies and an itching palm for the bribes of Louis who directed the policy of Great Britain, but a prince whose very existence was bound up in the exclusion of France from Flanders; a prince, moreover, under whom England and Holland were for the first time really united. The coalition against Louis was infinitely strengthened thereby, and Spain, with Mariana at the helm, was now less likely than ever to shirk the fulfilment of her obligations under the Treaty of Augsburg. Madrid thereafter became for a time a prime centre of international intrigues, aimed at the exclusion of French interest from the Peninsula. Charles had no personal desire to marry again. He was afraid of fresh people about him; he was overborne with the responsibilities of his great position, and, although he was only twenty-eight, his feeble powers of mind and body were already on the wane. Left to himself, he would have desired nothing but to throw up matrimony as a failure, so far as he was concerned, and live in peace, after his own fashion, until on his deathbed he left his realm to an heir of his own choosing.

But the antagonistic factions that divided his Court between them decided that such a course was quite impossible. It could hardly have been with the hope, as they professed, that issue would be more likely from a second marriage than it had been from the first, for Charles had been really enamoured with Marie Louise, who had been his consort during the best period of such vigour as he ever possessed. It is more likely that the haste to get him married was prompted by the desire of the intriguers to have by his side, when he was called upon to settle the succession, a wife favourable to the views of the dominant party. Badgered and pestered on all sides, the poor creature, always anxious to do what he was told was his duty, consented to take another wife.

The opponents of the German interest at first suggested a princess of Portugal, but Mariana and her friends took care that the negotiations should fall through; and, at the Queen-Mother’s instance, Charles consented to leave the choice of a fit bride for him to his uncle and brother-in-law, the Emperor Leopold. The latter, who had only one daughter by his first wife the Infanta Margarita, Mariana’s daughter, had married as his second wife, by whom he had sons, Eleanor of Neuburg-Bavaria, daughter of the Elector Palatine, Duke of Neuburg. This lady had a sister of twenty-two, Marie Anne of Neuburg; and upon her the choice of the Emperor fell to be the wife of Charles II., King of Spain.

Three months after Marie Louise died the marriage treaty was signed; and on the 18th August 1689, late at night in the quaint Bavarian town of Neuburg on the Danube, the tall, angular girl with hard eyes and mouth, was led by the Spanish ambassador through the bedizened throng of princes and princesses of Austria, Bavaria and Hesse, who crowded the church of the Jesuits, to be wedded to her nephew, the young King of Hungary, the Emperor’s heir, as proxy for the King of Spain, the officiating priest being her brother, Prince Alexander. The marriage was regarded by all Europe as a pledge that thenceforward Spain would be firmly united with the Germanic interests against Louis XIV., and the challenge was promptly accepted by the French King. Thenceforward, for seven years, all Europe was at war; and Spain, which only needed rest, was forced not only to waste blood and treasure upon foreign fields, but to fight for the integrity of its own soil in Catalonia, North Africa and America.

England, under the Dutch King, had taken an active part in promoting an alliance which drew Spain closer to the Teutonic league; and only an English fleet was available to convey the new Queen of Spain in safety to her husband’s realm. Through Cologne and Rotterdam, Marie Anne and her train of Germans slowly travelled to Flushing in the late autumn of 1689, costly jewels meeting her as gifts, now from her husband, now from her gratified mother-in-law, who regarded her coming as a triumph for herself.^[327] At Flushing a powerful English fleet, under Admiral Russell, awaited the bride; and after much delay, and not a few mishaps, the squadron sailed for Spain late in January 1690. The intention had been to land the Queen at the port of Santander; and her Spanish household was on the road thither to receive her, when news reached them that Corunna had been chosen as a better harbour, and to the extreme north-west corner of Spain they wended their way. Bad weather, as is not unusual in the Bay of Biscay in mid-winter, made the voyage of the Queen a dangerous and difficult one; and on approaching Corunna it was found that the storm was too violent for the ships to enter. Colonel Stanhope, the English ambassador, who accompanied the Queen to Spain, says:^[328] ‘We were forced into a small port called Ferrol, three leagues short of the Groyne (i.e., Corunna), and by the ignorance of a Spanish pilot our ships fell foul one with another, and the admiral’s ship was aground for some hours, but got off clear without any damage.’

To Ferrol came hurrying the Spanish household from Corunna, with the inevitable Mansfeldt, all not a little ruffled at this game of hide-and-seek with the German Queen in the most inclement season of the year; and at length, on the 6th April, after nearly a fortnight’s stay on board of Russell’s ship in the harbour of Ferrol, Marie Anne and a great train of German, English and Spanish attendants landed in the barges of the English squadron, whose decorations and the smartness of the oarsmen aroused the surprised admiration of the Spaniards.^[329] Though the officials did their best to give Marie Anne a stately welcome at Corunna, and the Count de Lemos entertained her and her Court at a splendid festival at his house at Puente de Ume, all was not harmonious. The general feeling in Spain was against the German connection, and especially against the ruinous war with France that it entailed, and Count Mansfeldt, the imperial ambassador, was especially detested. The people at large firmly believed that he had connived at the poisoning of Marie Louise, and his overbearing manners had offended the courtiers.

‘I find,’ writes Stanhope, ‘that the Queen’s reception has been much meaner than it would have been out of a pique the Spanish grandees have against Count Mansfeldt, who was preferred before them all to the honour of bringing her over, by the favour of the Queen-Mother and contrary to the advice of the Council of Castile.’^[330] Nor did the demeanour of Marie Anne mend matters, for, even thus early, her stiff imperious manner and her hasty temper struck a chill in the hearts of the Spaniards, who place so high a value upon an amiable exterior. Dressed in the traditional Spanish garb, which suited her unbending mien, the Queen sat unmoved at the bullfights, tourneys, masquerades and other festivities offered in her honour by the storied cities through which she passed on her way to Valladolid. Nobles who knelt to greet her received but a cold recognition of their compliments, and the cheers of the populace awoke no smile of gratification upon the lips of Marie Anne of Neuburg.

Charles was not an eager wooer this time, and awaited calmly the coming of his new wife to Valladolid. On Ascension Day, 4th May 1690, he first met his bride. There was little or no pretence of affection on either side; but from the first Marie Anne took the lead and imposed her will upon her husband. The marriage feasts at Valladolid and the stereotyped gaieties that throughout Spain celebrated the marriage, pleased the thoughtless, but the more reflecting knew that the war for which Spain was being again squeezed dry by every empirical resource that ingenuity and ignorance of finance could devise, was a direct result of the series of alliances that the German marriage cemented, and many were the whispered curses uttered against the boorish Germans and Englishmen, who were not only disrespectful, but heretics to boot. With exactly the same ceremonial as had marked the entry of the beautiful Marie Louise into the capital ten years before, Marie Anne rode from the Buen Retiro to the old Alcazar through the crowded streets, on the 22nd May 1690. Again, behind the half-closed jalousies, in the house of Count OÑate in the Calle Mayor, over against the church of St. Philip, Charles II. and his mother, growing visibly old now, witnessed the passing of the new Queen.

The triumph of Mariana at the coming of a German bride for her son was short lived. The time that Marie Anne had spent at the Buen Retiro previous to the State entry had been sufficient to show the mother-in-law that she had met her match, and that here there was no gentle, submissive, young creature—no thoughtless beauty who would ruin herself if encouraged to go her own way, like poor Marie Louise—but a hard, passionate woman, who was determined, whatever happened to Spain, to make the best of her opportunities for her own advantage. Mariana, in accordance with her usual policy, endeavoured at first to co-operate harmoniously with her daughter-in-law, in order to gain predominance in the partnership afterwards. The sole minister, Oropesa, had done his best to relieve the suffering country, and his financial reforms had effected some improvement; but with the renewal of the war on land and sea, the economies were soon swallowed up, and the penury became as pressing as ever. The minister’s subordinates were rapacious and corrupt to an extent unexampled even in Spain, and offices, dignities, titles, and pensions were openly put up to the highest bidder. Oropesa, though fairly honest himself, had an ambitious, greedy wife, who increased his unpopularity; and when Marie Anne arrived in Madrid, the party inimical to the minister was already powerful.

Mariana had been Oropesa’s patron, but when the new Queen, for whose aims it was necessary to form a party in Spain, sided with the enemies of the minister, Mariana dared not take the unpopular and weaker side, and reluctantly agreed with her daughter-in-law that Oropesa and the corrupt crew that followed him should be deposed. Their principal abettors were the King’s confessor, Father Matilla, the Archbishops of Toledo (Cardinal Portocarrero) and Saragossa, the Constable of Castile, and the Secretary of State, Lira, formerly a creature of Oropesa. Marie Anne and the confessor gave the poor King no rest. Charles was deeply attached to Oropesa; he dreaded new people about him; and for a time he refused to dismiss his minister. Marie Anne suffered, when contradicted, from hysterical nervous crises, that were said to threaten her life, and every one, from her husband downward, went in mortal fear of provoking an attack by saying anything displeasing to her.^[331] The confessor Matilla finally threatened the King that he would not give him absolution, unless he did his duty to the country by dismissing Oropesa.

Charles, beset on all sides, at first told everything to Oropesa himself, but that made matters worse; and he then repeated to each party exactly what the other said, with the result that the palace itself became a hotbed of scandal, hatred, and all uncharitableness. At length Marie Anne had her way, and Charles sent for his minister with tears in his eyes and told him that his enemies had demanded his retirement. ‘They wish it,’ sobbed the unhappy man, ‘and I must agree to it:’ and then, in the deepest sorrow, he dismissed the best minister he had ever had, in obedience to a palace intrigue led by his German wife. Before Oropesa went into banishment at the end of June 1691, he sought an interview with the Queen, but was refused, and Mariana with difficulty was prevailed upon to receive her former instrument; her ungracious farewell of him being to tell him that he ought to have gone long before.^[332]

A sort of commission of government was then formed entirely composed of men in the interests of Marie Anne; and thenceforward all method and regularity in the administration disappeared. The King referred questions submitted to him to any person who happened to be near him, and the letters of Colonel Stanhope at the time testify to the impossibility of getting any official business done at all. The country was in the midst of war; the French were masters of the best part of Catalonia, and as the English ambassador reports, the Spaniards had not 4,000 men there in all, fit for service, and in four months’ vigorous recruiting only 1,000 men could be got. A handful of men, he says, dashing down from the French frontier, could easily capture Madrid itself, as not a soldier is between the Pyrenees and the capital: and, such was the confusion, that it was dangerous to drive out a mile from the walls of Madrid for fear of violence and robbery.

Marie Anne with her camarilla was mistress of the situation, and then Mariana, when it was difficult to regain her lost power, discovered what the aims of her German daughter-in-law were. It will be recollected that Mariana’s daughter, the Infanta Margaret, Empress, had died, leaving one daughter married to the Elector of Bavaria, and it was naturally her son, the boy Prince of Bavaria, to whom Mariana had looked to inherit the Spanish crown, in default of issue to Charles, and in accordance with the will of Philip IV. Marie Anne’s mission from the Emperor and his second wife was, however, quite a different one, and aroused in Mariana the hottest indignation when she fully understood it. The plan was to put aside both the female lines descended from the daughters of Philip iv., Maria Theresa, Queen of France, and the Empress Margaret, and to claim the succession of the Emperor’s second son by his second marriage with Marie Anne’s sister, by virtue of his male descent from the Emperor Ferdinand, brother of Charles V.

Marie Anne had around her a gang of blood-suckers almost as rapacious as herself, and, so long as they were Spaniards, the people suffered in silence.^[333] But the Queen’s most intimate councillors were Germans, who, undeterred by the fate of Nithard, vied with the Spaniards in grasping greed: and this aroused against Marie Anne the hatred of all who did not share in the booty. The strongest spirit in the Queen’s entourage was the Baroness Berlips, to whom the crowd had given the nickname of ‘the partridge,’ from a slight resemblance in her name to the name of the bird in Castilian. Another German member was one Henry Jovier, a lame man of infamous character, who had served in the Spanish army, and to these after the first few months was added the Queen’s Capuchin confessor Father Chiusa, also a German, who was brought purposely to replace the Jesuit confessor first appointed, the latter having been found not sufficiently pliant for the place.

This was the gang that principally advised the Queen in her measures, and, with a few Spanish grandees, especially the Duke of Montalto and the Admiral of Castile, practically formed the government. Mariana was treated with the greatest hauteur by her daughter-in-law, but had some of the ablest men in Spain on her side, of whom Cardinal Portocarrero was the most influential. The populace cordially hated Marie Anne, and dreaded the imperial domination of Spain which she represented; whilst she took no pains to disguise her contempt for them. Louis XIV., in describing the state of affairs shortly after this in his instructions to his ambassador, Harcourt, says: ‘The Queen has acquired such a dominion over the spirit of her husband that it may be said that she alone reigns as sovereign of Spain.... The authority of the Queen, however, is founded rather upon the fear of her anger than upon any love for her on the part of the nation. There is no people in the world so sensitive of praise as the Spaniards; and consequently none who are so much affected by contempt. The Queen professes contempt for the whole nation, and, as offensive discourse is the only revenge of those who are excluded from power, it is not surprising to hear all the evil things that the public detestation causes to be said about her. It is, however, very true that she gives plenty of reasons for the reproaches levelled against her with regard to her avidity in receiving and extorting presents; and there is no one more ingenious than she in finding excuses for appropriating everything that is most valuable in Madrid, and for amassing every day fresh treasure for herself.’^[334]

In the spring of 1683 the King’s weakness became so alarming that the physicians almost abandoned hope, and the intrigues around him grew in intensity. The last successful effort of Marie Louise before her death had been to extract from her husband a solemn promise that he would never cede to the persuasions of Mariana to appoint a successor to the crown until he had received the last sacrament on his deathbed; and the King had managed so far to withstand all pressure put upon him to do so. The pressure was redoubled now, especially by Marie Anne, who took the opportunity of his illness to urge him to summon the Archduke Charles to Madrid, and adopt him as his successor. When the unfortunate King was wavering some one, probably Cardinal Portocarrero, warned him of the certain consequences, and whilst the hesitation continued the King partially recovered.

Whilst the Court was thus given over to discord the condition of the country grew worse and worse. The Marquis of Mancera told Stanhope that the King was only nominally sovereign of the realms of Aragon. Spain, but for the power of her allies, was absolutely defenceless, and the public distress had reached to such an extent that famine stalked unchecked through the land, and to protect the capital from depletion of food, a strict cordon was placed around it, to search every one entering or leaving the city. The Duke of Montalto had managed to ingratiate himself with the Queen sufficiently to obtain recognition as minister; and his impracticable remedy was to divide the country into four autonomous provinces, ruled by viceroys practically independent of a central government. Against this violation of the constitutions all Spain cried aloud. ‘These disasters coming so thick,’ writes Stanhope in July 1694, ‘has raised a very high ferment in the minds of people here, which expresses itself in great insolencies to the great men as they pass in the streets, and to one of the greatest even in the King’s palace: and the royal authority itself begins to lose its veneration, several scandalous pasquins being fixed in several public places, magnifying the great King of France and with very little respect to his Catholic Majesty, inasmuch as if Mr. Russell had not appeared with his squadron as he did, it is generally believed some public scandals would have followed.’

A few months later the same correspondent writes that the hatred of the public had greatly increased the strength of the faction opposed to Marie Anne, whose great influence over the King they intended to destroy; beginning if possible with the banishment of her bosom friend, Baroness Berlips. ‘This lady’s son, Baron Berlips, lately made his entry here, as envoy from the King of Poland, and as he went to his audience in the King’s coach, a company of ruffians came to the coach side giving him and his mother very ill names; one of them saying, ‘Let us kill the dog.’ Another replied, ‘Not now, for he is in the King’s coach.’ Nothing is so much talked about at present as ousting the Berlips, and then they think their monarchy safe.’

Cardinal Portocarrero, who was the Queen’s prime opponent, grew in boldness as he saw that public feeling was on his side, and both he and Mariana, when she could obtain access to her son, implored him to withstand the pressure of his termagant wife, and decline to divert the succession from that laid down by his father’s will, which made the Prince of Bavaria his heir. At the end of 1694 the Cardinal presented a formal State paper to the King, urging the expulsion of Marie Anne’s German camarilla and the royal confessor Matilla, who were ruining the country by placing and maintaining in power men utterly unworthy to administer the government. The wretched King, between the hectoring of his wife, the exhortations of his mother, the warnings of rival churchmen, and the clamours of his people, swayed first to one side, and then to the other, hating to discuss what was to take place when he was dead; yet hearing of very little else. His health, in the meanwhile, visibly declined; and all parties thought that there was no time to waste. The Queen feeling probably the need for some stronger personality near her than Berlips, and the few other inferior Germans who formed her council, soon caused herself to be reinforced by an imperial ambassador, Count Harrach, one of the ablest diplomatists in the Emperor’s service, and the party of old Mariana and her Bavarian grandson fell into the background.

Mariana, indeed, was now almost past struggling; afflicted by a mortal disease and abandoned by her physicians. She resorted, as usual, to charms and quackery of the most revolting description;^[335] but, in spite of incantations and empirical devices, Mariana in May 1696 ended her turbulent life, leaving the question of the succession still in the balance.^[336] With the death of the old Queen it was thought that the chance of the little Bavarian prince had disappeared; and Marie Anne pushed more energetically than ever the claims of her nephew, the Archduke Charles. Soon the King fell so seriously ill again that his life was despaired of, and the attempts of the Queen to obtain a will in the favour of the Archduke were redoubled. Like all semi-imbeciles, however, Charles, when once an idea had been drilled into his head, clung to it tenaciously; and though, for the sake of peace, he seemed to agree with his wife, he did not forget his father’s will and his mother’s injunction, that his own sister’s descendants had a better right to succeed him than a distant relative like the Archduke. Count Benavente, his lord of the bedchamber, although appointed by Marie Anne, was secretly against the Austrian; and, with his knowledge and that of Cardinal Portocarrero alone, Charles signed a secret will, appointing his great-nephew the child prince of Bavaria heir to his crown.

Once again he recovered sufficiently to rise from his bed; and Stanhope wrote on the 19th September 1696; ‘The King’s danger is over for a time, but his constitution is so very weak and broken, much beyond his age, that it is feared what may be the success of another attack. They cut his hair off in this sickness, which the decay of nature had almost done before, all his crown being bald. He has a ravenous stomach, and swallows all he eats whole; for his nether jaw stands out so much that his two rows of teeth cannot meet; to compensate which he has a prodigious wide throat, so that a gizzard or a liver of a hen passes down whole, and his weak stomach not being able to digest it he voids it in the same manner.’

No sooner was the immediate danger over than Marie Anne wormed out of the King that he had made his will in favour of the Bavarian. Her rage and indignation knew no bounds, and she upbraided the King with hysterical violence, to which he retorted by childish outbursts, leading to the smashing of crockery, furniture, and the like, and usually ending in tears. Oropesa, who had just returned to Court reconciled to Marie Anne, added his persuasions to those of the Queen and the threats of the confessor, but for a time without success. In November 1696 Stanhope reports that the King was still very ill, and obliged to keep his bed: ‘although they sometimes make him rise out of his bed, much against his will and beyond his strength, the better to conceal his illness abroad. He is not only extremely weak in body, but has a great weight of melancholy and discontent upon his spirits, attributed in a great measure to the Queen’s continual importunities to make him alter his will.’

At length, in September 1697, the sick man could withstand the pressure no longer; and during another grave attack,^[337] at the instance of his wife and Harrach, tore up the will appointing the Prince of Bavaria his heir. Portocarrero had gone so far as to threaten to call the Cortes together to confirm the will, and had exhorted the King to stand firm, but he had been powerless as against the strong will of Marie Anne. For a long time, however, Charles still held out against making another will in favour of the Austrian; and only, at last, by threats and cajolery was he induced to write a letter to the Emperor asking him to send the Archduke to Spain with ten or twelve thousand men, on the pretext that they were required for the defence of Catalonia.

But the gigantic armaments needed by Louis XIV. to face all Europe victoriously, as he had done, was exhausting the resources of France, and peace was in the air. The need also for French agents to have a good chance in Madrid to push the succession claim also made Louis pliant; and when the Peace of Ryswick was signed in October 1697, the world was surprised at the generous terms accorded by the victor to Spain. With every chance of success, then, Louis having restored the territory he had conquered, he could pose as the true friend of Spain, ready to champion the rights of his descendants by Maria Theresa, the eldest daughter of Philip, against the unpopular Germans, to succeed to the Spanish throne. There was much lost ground for the French to make up; for the German factions had been in sole possession ever since the death of Marie Louise in 1690; but the death of Mariana had left some of her friends in the market, and all classes of Spaniards were sick to death of Germans; so, as soon as the peace was signed, the Marquis d’Harcourt hurried to Madrid as French ambassador, primed with instructions, and supplied with means to re-constitute the French party in Spain, and defeat, if possible, the machinations of Queen Marie Anne.

The first effect of the peace was to stop the project of bringing an Austrian army to Spain under the Archduke, and also the plan of the Elector of Bavaria to put in an appearance to counteract the Archduke’s presence. The arrival of Harcourt at Madrid soon afterwards put a new complexion on affairs there. Stanhope writes, on the 14th March 1698, when the King had fallen again dangerously ill: ‘Our Court is in great disorder: the grandees all dog and cat, Turk and Moor. The King is in a languishing condition, not in so imminent a danger as last week, but so weak and spent as to his principle of life, that all I can hear is pretended, amounts only to hopes of preserving him some weeks, without any probability of his recovery. The general inclination as to the succession is altogether French; their (i.e. the Spaniards’) aversion to the Queen having set them against all her countrymen: and if the French King will content himself that one of his younger children be King of Spain, without pretending to incorporate the two monarchies, he will find no opposition, either from grandees or common people.... The King is so very weak he can scarcely lift his hand to his head to feed himself, and so extremely melancholy, that neither his buffoons, dwarfs, nor puppet-shows, all of which have shown their abilities before him, can in the least divert him from fancying everything that is said or done is a temptation of the devil, and never thinking himself safe but with his confessor and two friars by his side, whom he makes lie in his chamber every night.’^[338]

In such circumstances as these it was evident to the Queen’s opponents that a bold move must be made at once or she would win. Her most powerful abettor with the King was the confessor, Father Matilla; the ostensible ministers, the Admiral of Castile,^[339] Montalto and Oropesa, after many wrangles with her, agreeing to let her have a free hand with her husband, if they were allowed to take a fair share of the national plunder; the real government behind them being the Queen and her camarilla. The only man near the King who was inclined to favour the Bavarian heir was the lord chamberlain, Count Benavente, to whom one night, late in March 1698, Charles mumbled that he was very unhappy and uneasy in his conscience, and should like to see Cardinal Portocarrero.

The Cardinal Archbishop, who had been a close friend of Mariana’s, and was a man of ability, had been carefully excluded from the King’s chamber by Marie Anne. It was eleven o’clock at night, but swift secret messengers were soon at the Cardinal’s door; and before midnight, unknown to the Queen, the primate stood by the King’s bed. Charles opened all the troubles of his terror-stricken soul to the friend of his dead mother: how the violence of his wife and the harshness of the confessor, Matilla, frightened him into adopting a course which his conscience told him was wrong, and he prayed the primate to help him with advice in this dire strait. Portocarrero was nothing loath. Hurrying from the palace, he hastily convened a meeting of his friends. Count Monterey, the Marquis of LeganÉs, Don Sebastian de Cotes, Don Francisco Ronquillo, the idol of the populace, and Don Juan Antonio Urraca.

What was to be done, and who should do it, before the Queen could banish them all? Monterey, in his stumbling speech, pointed out the danger of acting through the King at all, seeing that the Queen could twist him round her finger and make him alter any resolution he adopted, as she had done before. The best course, he said, would be for the Cardinal to frequent the King’s chamber, ostensibly to give spiritual consolation, and then very gradually to prepare the King’s mind for a change. Others thought that this process was too slow, since the King might slip through their hands after all, and LeganÉs advised that the Cardinal should immediately urge the King to order the arrest and imprisonment of the detested Admiral of Castile, the Duke of Rio Seco. ‘His only escort,’ said LeganÉs, ‘were four knavish poets and a couple of buffoons,’ whilst he, LeganÉs, had plenty of arms at home and two hundred soldiers in his pay, and could seize the most objectionable ministers at once. Then turbulent Ronquillo had his say. They must strike higher than the Admiral. The Queen as well must be seized as soon as her henchman was laid by the heels, and the Huelgas at Burgos should be her future place of confinement. Let us be practical, said Monterey, sneering at Ronquillo for a fool: if we offer violence to the Queen the excitement will kill the King before we can get a will or decree executed. We must act more cautiously than that. Then the two angry nobles clapped their hands to their swords, and were for fighting it out on the spot, until the Cardinal separated them, and wise old Cotes, with his quiet voice, calmly gave his opinion. It would be easy for the Cardinal to obtain such a decree as that required, but the Queen would get it revoked the next morning more easily still, and then, what would happen to all of us? Let us, he said, strike at the trunk by all means, if possible, and get rid of the Queen: but how? Before that can be done we should put Matilla, the confessor, out of the way. The King hated and feared him already, and only yesterday refused to speak to him: let the Cardinal and Benavente advise the King to change his confessor, and the next step will be easy. This seemed good advice; but the jealous hidalgos then fell to quarrelling as to who the new confessor should be, with the result that the choice was ultimately left to the Cardinal.

The next morning Cotes suggested to his colleagues a certain modest professor of theology at AlcalÁ, one Father Froilan Diaz, for the post. He was near enough to the capital to be brought thither without delay, and would be humble enough to do as he was told: and so it was decided to secure the great appointment to Father Diaz. There was no lack of messengers to carry to him from the conspirators the news of his coming elevation, for each of them, especially Ronquillo, wished to gain the credit of proposing it; and the next day the astounded professor found himself already by anticipation a person to be courted by the greatest grandees in the land.

One day, early in the morning, in the first week in April, the sick King lay in bed listening dreamily to some music being played in the ante-chamber, the door between the rooms being open. Father Matilla and a crony of his, one Dr. Parra, were quietly chatting in one of the deep window recesses of the ante-chamber; when suddenly Count Benavente entered unannounced, accompanied by a stout, fresh-coloured ecclesiastic; and, without saluting Matilla, they walked straight through into the King’s bedroom, which Benavente alone was entitled to do, as lord chamberlain. Matilla was keen-witted, and saw at a glance what it meant. Turning to his friend, he said, ‘Goodbye: this business is ending just as it ought to have begun;’ and with that he hurried out of the palace and to the monastery of his order in Madrid.

Spies had already carried to Marie Anne and the Admiral reports of mysterious confabulations of their enemies, but they knew not where the blow was to fall. At eleven o’clock the King usually dined; and when Marie Anne, according to custom, entered the room that morning, to sit by his side whilst he ate, she learnt for the first time from the disjointed babble of the sick man, that he was free from Matilla, and had a new confessor.^[340] Marie Anne was aghast at the news, though she made no sign of disapproval to her husband; but the moment she could leave the King’s side, she summoned the Admiral and her other advisers, and considered the ill tidings. None knew who would be the next victim, and most of them thought that Matilla had betrayed them. Panic and bewilderment reigned amongst the chosen Camarilla. Some were for striving to reinstate Matilla, some for punishing him, others were for saving themselves by resignation and flight, but one great churchman, the head of the Franciscan order, Folch de Cardona, kept his head, and advised calmness. Matilla was exonerated and consulted; but when he learned that the Queen and the Admiral had known of Portocarrero’s meeting before the blow fell, he broke down. ‘Oh,’ he cried, ‘if I had only known one short half hour before, I could have saved us all:’ and then, though nominally pensioned and banished to Salamanca, he fell ill of grief, fever, or poison, and died within a week of his dismissal.

Diaz did not seem very terrible at first; for his methods with the King were soothing, and he moved slowly. He took Matilla’s place on the Council of the Inquisition, and at once became a power in the land; but he was all politeness and gentle saintliness to Marie Anne, and even she, suspicious as she was, began to think that she might dominate still if she could confine Father Diaz to his spiritual functions. In the course of a few weeks after the change, the Court was moved to Toledo, but there the mob, who loved the Ronquillo brothers, and hated the Queen, knowing that she had suffered a defeat, made her feel that her power was on the wane. ‘The Queen,’ writes Stanhope, ‘is very uneasy at the impudent railleries of the Toledo women, who affront her every day publicly in the streets, and insult the Admiral to his face. There is besides a great want of money; for the King’s new confessor having persuaded him before he left Madrid to publish a decree forbidding the sale of all governments and offices, either in present or reversion, as a duty of conscience... the superintendent of the revenues declares that he is not able to find money for his Majesty’s subsistence, all branches of the revenue being anticipated for many years, and he is now debarred from selling offices, which was the only resource he had left.’

In the meanwhile, the French ambassador, Harcourt, was busy buying friends at Court, though most of old Mariana’s late adherents still preferred, as the King undoubtedly did, the Bavarian Prince. The people at large were strongly in favour of a French prince, descended from Maria Theresa, ‘though they would rather have the devil,’ as Stanhope says, ‘than see France and Spain united.... It is scarce conceivable the abhorrence they have for Vienna; most of which is owing to the Queen’s very imprudent conduct; insomuch that, in effect, that party is included in her own person and family. They have much kinder thoughts of the Bavarian, but still rather desire a French Prince to secure them against war.’

The intrigues of the French ambassador were met by increased activity on the part of the Queen, who left Charles no rest in pushing the claims of her nephew the Archduke. The poor King was sick of the whole business, and only wished to be left alone, and for his Bavarian nephew to succeed him. The King will not bear to hear talk of business of any kind, and when sometimes the Queen cannot contain herself, he bids her let him alone, and says she designs to kill him.’^[341] A few weeks later (25th June) the English ambassador sent this vivid picture of the invalid: ‘Our gazettes here tell us every week that his Catholic Majesty is in perfect health.... It is true that he is every day abroad, but hÆret lateri lethalis arundo; his ankles and knees swell again, his eyes bag, the lids are as red as scarlet, and the rest of his face a greenish yellow. His tongue is “tied,” as it is called, that is, he has such a fumbling in his speech, that those near him hardly understand him; at which he sometimes grows angry, and asks if they all be deaf.’

But, with all his feebleness, Charles still resisted the pressure upon him either to make a will or to summon the Archduke. Marie Anne was persistent; and at the end of June her importunity produced a dangerous fit that nearly ended the King’s life there and then, after which Stanhope writes: ‘There is not the least hope of this King’s recovery; and we are every night in apprehensions of hearing he is dead in the morning, though the Queen lugs him out every day, to make the people believe he is well till her designs are rife, which I rather fear will prove abortive; for, by the best information I can get of the three pretenders, her candidate is like to have the fewest votes. Upon old Count Harrach’s pressing the King to have the Archduke Charles sent for to Spain... he gave no answer, but turning to the Queen, who was present, said laughing, “Oyga mujer, el Conde aprieta mucho” (Hark, wife, how very pressing the Count is) repeating “very pressing” several times. The French Ambassador “presses” just as much, and the Nuncio, in the Pope’s name, also for the French.’

These signs were not lost on Marie Anne, and she began to turn to the strongest side. Harcourt and his wife were charming and liberal, and had quite captivated the Madrid crowd, who cheered them wherever they went, whilst Harrach and his wife were unattractive and unpopular; but what was more important than anything else, now that Spanish resources were failing, French money was forthcoming to buy Baroness Berlips and the Queen’s German hangers-on. The Marquise of Harcourt paid assiduous court to Marie Anne, who, seeing the impossibility of her own candidate, listened, beguiled, to the clever suggestion of the French that if she would abandon the Emperor’s son, she might continue Queen of Spain by a marriage with the French prince who might succeed Charles.

For a time, in the late autumn of 1698, the French cause suffered a setback. Louis apparently considering that his chance of placing a French prince upon the throne of all the Spanish dominions in face of Europe would be impracticable, revived a scheme that he had agreed upon with the Emperor years before, when Charles was a child; namely, to partition Spain, by agreement with the maritime powers, between the three claimants: a French prince to take Naples, Sicily, and the Basque province, the Prince of Bavaria to reign in Spain itself, and Austria to be contented with Milan. This, when it was divulged, aroused the intensest indignation, not only in Spain, but in Austria and Bavaria. Harcourt and his wife lost their favour at once, and Marie Anne again leaned towards her German kinsmen. What was more important still, the King at last, under pressure which will be presently explained, made a testament declaring the Prince of Bavaria his heir. Marie Anne, the King himself, and the Council, all denied it; but it was soon known to be true, and the French ambassador immediately presented a demand that Cortes should be summoned to settle the succession by vote.

Suddenly, whilst this demand was being laboriously discussed, the news came that the little Bavarian prince, the only descendant of old Mariana except the King, had died, aged six—of poison it was said, in February 1699; and the problem of the succession was changed in a moment. Bribed and cajoled by hopes of remaining Queen of Spain by a second marriage, Marie Anne again seemed inclined to side with those who had been her enemies. Most of the partisans of the Bavarian claimant, including the King himself, and especially Portocarrero, went over to the French view; and the principal reason why Marie Anne held herself in doubt was because she saw those whom she hated all ranged on the side of France.

Whilst this sordid bickering was going on in the palace the distress in the country increased daily, until famine invaded even the capital. The new confessor and Cardinal Portocarrero had, as yet, made no great change in the government; and Marie Anne’s friends were still in office, headed by Oropesa and the Admiral. Ronquillo and his fellow-conspirators were growing impatient for their reward, and incited secretly by their agents, the populace of Madrid broke into revolt in April 1699. A howling mob surrounded the palace, crying for bread. ‘Long live the King, and death to Oropesa,’ was the cry. Inside the palace panic reigned supreme, and poor Charles was like to die with fright, when the rabble demanded fiercely that he should show himself upon the balcony. Marie Anne appeared at the open window undaunted, and told the crowd that the King was asleep. ‘He has slept too long,’ was the reply, ‘wake him’; and at last the King had to appear, looking, as Stanhope says, like a ghost, and moving as if by clock work. Ronquillo! Ronquillo! shouted the mob. We will have Ronquillo for mayor: and in a hurry Ronquillo was sent for and sworn in as mayor, which somewhat appeased the insurgents, who bore him off in triumph. Oropesa’s palace was ablaze, and a rush upon it by the mob had resulted in many of the latter being killed, and cast into a well within the precincts by Oropesa’s servants. Further enraged at this, the populace surged en masse to the King’s palace, clamouring for the heads of Oropesa and the Admiral; and they were with difficulty restrained from invading the royal apartments by the clergy, with raised crucifixes and holy symbols. Again they demanded the presence of the King, who told them that Ronquillo had orders to do everything to satisfy them, and promised, on his oath as a King, that the insurgents should be held harmless for the tumult.

A clean sweep was made of Marie Anne’s friends. The Admiral fled to hiding; and Portocarrero declared that within a week or two he would have Berlips, the Capuchin confessor of the Queen, and the whole gang cleared out of Spain. The day after the tumult Stanhope wrote: ‘The King is very weak, and declines fast. The tumult yesterday, I fear, may have some ill-effect further on his health. It was such as the like never before happened in Madrid in the memory of the oldest men here, and proves, contrary to what they brag of, that there is a mob here as well as in other places.’ The whole aspect of the palace changed as if by magic, and Cardinal Portocarrero was supreme. Marie Anne, cowed by the violence and vituperation of the mob, was glad to lie low, and did not attempt to influence the King, whose health declined every day.

Since the death of the Bavarian claimant in February the matter of the succession had remained in abeyance; and it was evident now that unless the King was indeed very soon to declare his heir by testament he would die with the question still open. But poor Charles shrunk from the execution of an act, which he had always said he would only do in articulo mortis, and the persuasions of those about him were always met by a fresh plea for delay. In this deadlock of affairs a course was adopted by the dominant party which will always furnish one of the most repulsive episodes of history. During his first grave attack at the end of 1697, Charles, who was as superstitious as he was ignorant, sent for Rocaberti, the Inquisitor-General, a stern Dominican, and confessed that he believed his illness to be the result of a maleficent charm cast upon him. The Inquisitor replied that he would have the case examined; but he saw no probability of result unless the King would point out some person whom he suspected, or gave some evidence to proceed upon.

There the matter remained until Froilan Diaz was substituted, as has been related, for Matilla as the King’s confessor. Probably as part of a concerted plan to obtain complete control over him, Diaz appeared to agree with Charles in his expressed belief that he was bewitched; and, having heard that an old friend of his in a convent in Galicia, had by many efficacious exorcisms become quite familiar with the evil spirits that he cast out, he consulted the Inquisitor-General Rocaberti, as to whether it would be well to summon the priestly exorciser to the King. The Inquisitor did not like the business, but consented to a letter being written to the Bishop of Oviedo, the exorciser’s spiritual superior, asking him to submit to the latter the question as to the truth of the statement that the King was suffering from diabolical arts. The bishop, determined not to be made the channel of such nonsense, replied that the only witchcraft the King was suffering from was weakness of constitution and a too ready acquiescence in his wife’s will; and he refused to have anything to do with it. Diaz then sent direct to ArgÜelles the exorciser in July 1698, instructing him to lay upon his breast a paper with the names of the King and Queen written upon it, and summon the devil to ask if the persons whose names were written were bewitched.

Thenceforward for eight or nine months the ghastly mockery went on.^[342] The devil announced that the King was bewitched: ‘et hoc ad destruendam materiam generationis in Rege, et eum incapacem ponendum ad regnum administrandum’; the charm having been administered by moonlight when the King was fourteen years old. Repulsive remedies were prescribed which, if administered, would certainly have killed the patient, others were recommended just as hideous but less harmful; and the poor creature was submitted to them. At length, after the will in favour of the Bavarian had been wrung from the King by many months of this ghastly nonsense, it was seen that the exorciser was aiming at gaining influence for himself. He said that the charms had been administered by the King’s mother, and repeated much dangerous political advice that the devil had given, such as to recommend the complete isolation of the King from his wife, and other things less palatable to Portocarrero and the French party; and the exorciser, being able to get no further, was dropped in June 1699.

This was the time when the King was suffering from the shock of the recent tumults, and Stanhope writes: ‘His Catholic Majesty grows every day sensibly worse and worse. It is true that last Thursday they made him walk in the public solemn procession of Corpus, which was much shortened for his sake. However, he performed it so feebly that all who saw him said he could not make one straight step, but staggered all the way; nor could it be otherwise expected after he had had two falls a day or two before, walking in his own lodgings, when his legs doubled under him by mere weakness. In one of them he hurt his eye, which appeared much swelled, and black and blue; the other being quite sunk into his head, the nerves being contracted by his paralytic distemper. Yet it was thought fit to have him make this sad figure in public, only to have it put into the Gazette how strong and vigorous he is.’

At this juncture Marie Anne’s suspicions were first aroused of the witchcraft business by a hint dropped by the King, and she at once set spies upon those who had access to him, and especially upon Diaz the confessor. A very few days convinced her that the ghastly incantations that were being carried on were directed against her, politically and personally. ‘Roaring with very rage,’ she summoned her friends and demanded instant revenge and punishment of the King’s confessor.^[343] She was reminded by Folch de Cardona, that as the Inquisitor-General was concerned in the matter, it would be prudent to go cautiously until it was seen how far the Holy Office itself was a party: and, in any case, he said it would be wisest to allow the Inquisition to avenge her rather than for her to do it and thereby make herself more unpopular than she was. It was soon found that the Sacred Tribunal was not concerned; but as Rocaberti, the dreaded chief Inquisitor, had been active in the matter, no one dared to move against Diaz or him, for Inquisitors were dangerous people to touch. Almost immediately afterwards Rocaberti died suddenly, almost certainly poisoned; and then Marie Anne laid her plans to crush Father Diaz the confessor.

Stanhope writes (15th July): ‘The doctors, not knowing what more to do with the King, to save their credit have bethought themselves to say his ill must certainly be witchcraft, and there is a great Court party who greedily catch at and improve the report, which, how ridiculous soever it may sound in England, is generally believed here, and propagated by others to serve a turn. They, finding all their attempts in vain to banish Madame Berlips, think this cannot fail, and are using to find out any colourable pretences to make her the witch.’ It was higher game even than Berlips that they were aiming at. Berlips stood behind the Queen, and one could not be injured without the other.

In September a mad woman, in a state of frenzy, burst into the King’s presence, foaming at the mouth, and cursed him with demoniac shrieks until she was removed by force, leaving Charles in an agony of terror which nearly killed him. The mad woman was followed, and it was found that she lived with two other demoniacs who were under the impression that they were keeping the King subject in their room. This nonsense was conveyed to the King by Diaz, and confirmed the invalid in his conviction that he was under the influence of sorcery. In this belief he ordered that the three women should be exorcised by a famous German monk, who had been brought to Spain as an able exorciser for the King’s benefit. Diaz, who superintended the incantations, unfortunately for himself, dictated questions to the demoniacs which were evidently designed to involve the Queen. Who was it that caused the King’s malady? A beautiful woman, was the answer. Was it the Queen? and to this no distinct reply was given. But the question was enough; and when Marie Anne received a full report of the proceedings, as she did from her spies, she was, of course, furious that an open attempt should be made to cast upon her the blame of the witchcraft.

The first step towards her revenge was to get a new Inquisitor-General in her interest, and she pressed the King to appoint Folch de Cardona, General of the Franciscans. He refused, prompted no doubt by his confessor, and, in spite of Marie Anne’s passionate outbursts of protest, he appointed Cardinal Cordova; to whom the King and the confessor unburdened themselves completely, and told the whole story of the exorcism. From these conferences an extraordinary resolution resulted. The Queen herself was too high to strike at first; but her great friend and late all-powerful minister, the Admiral of Castile, was detested and despised by every one, and might be attacked with impunity to begin with. So it was decided that he, being allied with the devil to cause all the mischief, should be seized by the Inquisition of Granada and closely imprisoned, whilst his household should be incarcerated elsewhere, and his papers seized by the holy office. This could not be done, however, until the new Inquisitor-General’s appointment was ratified by the Pope. Once more Marie Anne and her friends trumped their opponents’ strong suit, for Cardinal Cordova died of poison on the very day that the bull arrived.

Again Marie Anne pressed her husband to appoint one of her tools Inquisitor-General; but Father Diaz was now fighting for his life, and prevented the appointment. Marie Anne then sought out a man who would be acceptable to her opponents, but whom she might buy, and Mendoza, Bishop of Segovia, became Inquisitor-General, bribed by the Queen with the promise of a cardinal’s hat to do her bidding in future. Marie Anne had the whip hand and promptly used it. Stanhope wrote on the 22nd August: ‘As to Court factions, her Majesty is now as high as ever, and the Cardinal of Toledo, who carried everything before him two months ago, now dares hardly to open his mouth. But he is sullen, comes seldom to Court, and talks of retiring to Toledo.’ First the German exorciser was captured, and under torture confessed the details of the exorcism of the three demoniacs when Diaz was present; then the compromising correspondence with the exorciser in Galicia was seized, with all the hints and suggestions made in it to incriminate the Queen. This was sufficient evidence against Diaz, and he was arrested. Everything he had done, he said, was by the King’s orders; and as royal confessor he claimed immunity, his mouth being closed. He was at once dismissed from all his offices, and the King was appealed to by the Inquisitor-General to allow the confessor’s privileges to be dispensed with. Charles could only mumble that they might do justice; but Diaz had a powerful party behind him who took care to spread abroad the story of the Queen’s vengeance, and Diaz, aided by many of his late colleagues on the Council of the Inquisition, fled to the coast, and so to Rome. There he was seized and brought back to Spain; and thenceforward, for many years, there raged around him a great and unparalleled contest between the Council of the Inquisition, which favoured Diaz, and the Inquisitor-General in the interests of the Queen’s vengeance.^[344]

Marie Anne had won, so far as the King’s confessor was concerned, but her unpopularity was so great that she gained no ground politically; nor did her German candidate for the succession improve in his chance of success, for Cardinal Portocarrero and his friends filled all the administrative offices, and Marie Anne was powerless. Stanhope wrote in September 1699: ‘One night last week a troop of about three hundred, with swords, bucklers and firearms, went into the outward court of the palace and, under the King’s window, sung most impudent lampoons and pasquins; and the Queen does not appear in the streets without hearing herself cursed to her face.... The pasquins plainly tell her they will pull her out of the palace and put her in a convent, adding that their party is no less than 14,000 strong. This new turn has damped the discourse, which was very hot lately, of the Admiral’s return to Court, and the Cardinal of Toledo is now like to be the great man again.’^[345]

Every day some fresh sign was given that Marie Anne’s foes were paramount. ‘Our great German lady, the Countess of Berlips, is going, nor does she go alone; but all the rest of the German tribe are to accompany her, namely, a fine young lady, her niece, a German woman, a dwarf, an eunuch, the Queen’s German doctor, the Capuchin, her confessor, and Father Carapacci... who, though no German, yet is one of the Queen’s chief agents, and as great an eyesore to the people as any of them. This seems a great reform, but I believe will prove no amendment, for I expect to see others as greedy, if not more so, to take their places.’^[346]

The French party was now absolutely paramount; for the money and diplomatic skill of Louis XIV. had been lavishly employed in gaining friends from those who had been in favour of the Bavarian prince; and Marie Anne herself, though she had now the Inquisitor-General on her side, could hardly get a word alone with her dying husband. Charles lingered on in morbid melancholy for many months longer. Like his father, in similar case, he found the royal charnelhouse at the Escorial a resort that suited his humour. On one occasion it is related that, with Marie Anne at his side, he caused the coffins of his relatives to be opened and the bodies exposed to view. He was deeply affected by the sight of the corpse that had once been the beautiful Marie Louise, the wife of his youth, whose dead face he caressed, with tears and promises to join her soon, whilst Marie Anne, as a reply to the King’s affection for his dead French wife, kissed the crumbling hand of old German Mariana, whose enemy she had been on earth.

Whilst the Spanish Court and so-called government were thus employed in degrading superstitions and petty squabbles, the fate of the nation, reduced now to utter impotence, was being discussed and settled by foreign powers. Louis XIV., still desirous, if possible of securing for France without war the portion of Spain’s inheritance which mainly interested him, made early in 1700, another treaty with England and Holland for the partition of Spain between the claimants and others interested, threatening that if the Emperor refused to accept the terms offered the invasion of Spain by France would follow, and the whole inheritance claimed for the Dauphin at the sword’s point. The Emperor indignantly rejected the advance, and also claimed to be sole heir: the Spaniards, and even their moribund King, blazing out in anger with some of their old pride at this unceremonious dismemberment of their ancient realm. Stanhope’s expulsion from Spain followed quickly upon this new attempt at partition, and for a short time the French cause looked black. Then the Austrians, to make their assurance doubly sure, endeavoured to secure Marie Anne firmly to their side by the same means as those that Harcourt had employed to win her for the French faction. They promised that if she aided them the Archduke, her nephew, when he became King of Spain should marry her. The Queen was delighted; and in order to deal one more blow at the French claim, went to her husband and divulged to him, not the Austrian but the former French offer of marriage. Charles was tired of life and utterly muddled with the atmosphere of intrigue in which he lived; but even he protested in impotent passion against his wife being wooed before he was dead, and this increased his dislike of the French claimant, though Louis XIV. recalled Harcourt and disclaimed the offer he had made.

But Cardinal Portocarrero was always by the King’s side, and exercised more influence over him than any one else. He, in his sacred character, warned Charles that it was his duty to his conscience to lay aside personal partialities, and to summon a conference of the most famous theologians and jurisconsults to discuss and decide the question of the succession. Portocarrero took care that such conferences should result in a vote in favour of Louis XIV.‘s young grandson, Philip Duke of Anjou, measures being taken to prevent any future joining of the two realms under one crown. Charles was hard to convince, for he clung to the Empire both by tradition and at the pleading of his wife; and Portocarrero then told him that it was his duty to submit his doubts to the Pope. Charles was devout, and did so. Innocent XI. had all along been an enemy of Austria and a friend of France; and, as Portocarrero of course anticipated, decided in favour of the Duke of Anjou as the legitimate heir.^[347]

But still Charles hesitated. Marie Anne was indefatigable in persuading him to favour the Austrian, and always managed to prevent the fateful will being made in Anjou’s favour; distracting her dying husband, even at this pass, with the vain shows, bull fights, tourneys, and the like, which had been for so long the traditional pleasures of his Court. She even endeavoured to make terms with her enemies again, in order to be safe in any eventuality; but Louis XIV. began to speak more haughtily now; threatening war if a single German soldier set foot in Spain or resistance was offered to the partition. There was nothing that Charles and his people dreaded more than the dismemberment of the country, and this frightened the King into looking upon the acceptance of the French claim as the only means of keeping Spain intact. Thus, from day to day, the irresolute monarch turned to one side or another, as his wife or Portocarrero, his fears or his affections, gained the upper hand.

On the 20th September he took to his bed to rise no more, and a few days afterwards received the last sacrament, asking for pardon of all whom he had unconsciously offended. The sick chamber assumed the appearance of a mingled charnel house and toyshop, as the pale figure of the King upon his great bed grew more ghastly and hopeless. All the sacred relics in the capital were crowded into the room; carved saints, blessed rosaries and mouldering human remains, until, to make space for fresh comers, the less renowned objects had to be removed. The Primate of Spain, Portocarrero, made the most of the priestly privilege; and, in the interests of the dying King’s religious consolation, he kept from his side Marie Anne and her allies, the Inquisitor-General and the King’s regular confessor. Alone with the King, the Cardinal admonished him that in order to avoid dying in a state of sin, it was necessary for him to avert war from the country by making a will, leaving his crown to the Duke of Anjou, putting aside all personal leanings and family ties.

Charles could resist no longer. He was in terror; the spectre of sin and devilish temptations always before him, and summoning the Secretary of State, Ubilla, he himself directed him to draft a will in favour of his young French great-nephew, the Duke of Anjou. On the 3rd October 1700, the document was placed before him. Around his bed stood Cardinals Portocarrero and Borgia, and the highest officers of the household; but Marie Anne of Neuburg was not there to see the final shattering of her hopes. With trembling hand Charles the Bewitched took the pen. ‘God alone gives kingdoms,’ he sighed, ‘for to Him all kingdoms belong.’ Then signing in his great uncultured writing; ‘I, the King,’ he dropped the pen, saying, ‘I am nothing now:’ and thus the die was cast, the house of Austria gave place to the house of Bourbon. Marie Anne did not even yet accept defeat meekly. In an interval of partial improvement in the King’s health, she returned to the attack, and with tears and protestations, induced the King to think well again of his Austrian kinsmen. A courier was sent hurrying to Vienna to tell the Emperor, that, after all, the last will would make his son the heir of Spain, and a codicil was signed conferring upon Marie Anne the governorship of any city in Spain or Spanish State in Italy or Flanders in which she might choose to reside after her husband’s death.

Soon afterwards (26th October) a decree was signed by Charles, who seemed then to be dying, appointing a provisional government, headed by Marie Anne, with Portocarrero and other great officers, to rule, pending the arrival of the new King; whilst Portocarrero was nominated to act as Regent if the King, though still alive, might be unable to exercise his functions. With all the terror-stricken devotion that had been traditional in his house, the last few days on earth of Charles the Bewitched were passed, and on the 1st November 1700, the last descendant in the male line of the great Emperor Charles V., died of senile old age before he was forty, the victim of four generations of incest; leaving as his legacy to the world a great war which changed the face of Europe, and decided the future course of civilisation.

The terms of the will had been kept a close secret; and as soon as the King’s death was known, the Palace of Madrid was packed with an eager crowd of nobles and magnates to learn the name of their future king. The will was read solemnly in the presence of Marie Anne and the principal great officers; and soon the news was spread that Spain was free from the house of Austria, which had been the cause of its greatness and its ruin. Marie Anne, at the head of the Council of Regency, had but a short term of power, and, as may be supposed, considering her imperious nature, a far from harmonious one. Louis XIV., however, lost no time; and the bright handsome lad, full of hope and spirit, thenceforward Philip V. of Spain, hurried south to take possession of his inheritance almost before the Emperor had time to protest.

On the 18th February 1701, Philip arrived in Madrid; and his first act was to confirm Portocarrero as his leading minister. Marie Anne had quarrelled with her colleagues before this, and they had complained of her to the young King before his arrival. She had been defeated indeed; for she saw now that the marriage bait that had been held out to her was illusory; and when the order came to her from the new King to leave Madrid before he entered it, she went, full of plans for revenge still, to her place of banishment at Toledo; yet with kindly professions upon her lips, for the large pension of 400,000 ducats settled upon her by Charles, was too valuable to be jeopardised by open opposition to the ruling powers. She was all smiles when young Philip visited her at Toledo soon after his arrival; and she hung around his neck a splendidly jewelled badge of the Golden Fleece as a token of her recognition of his sovereignty. But when the war broke out, and the Archduke, her nephew, with his allies came to fight for the prize he claimed, Marie Anne could hardly be expected to stand quite aloof. In 1706, the victorious Austrian and his allies were carried by the fortune of war into Toledo; and Marie Anne welcomed her nephew with effusive joy as King of Spain; but when the turn of the tide carried Philip V. into power again, a few months later, two hundred horsemen, under the Duke of Osuna, clattered into the courtyard of Marie Anne’s convent retreat at Toledo, and arrested the Queen, carrying her thence as rapidly as horses could travel over the frontier to France.

At Bayonne, Marie Anne lived in retirement for nine years, when a strange revolution of fortune’s wheel brought her back to Spain again triumphant. In the stately Morisco Palace at Guadalajara, Marie Anne passed in affluent dignity the last twenty-six years of life in widowhood, and died in 1740. She lived to see Spain rise from its ashes, a new nation, purged by the fires of war; purified by heroism and sacrifice. The long duel between the Empire and France for the possession of the resources of Spain had ended before the death of Marie Anne in the successful reassertion of Spain to the possession of her own resources. Rulers, men and women, had blindly and ignorantly done their worst; pride, bigotry, and sloth had dominated for centuries the spirit of the nation, as a result of the action which alone had caused Spain to bulk so big in the eyes of the world, and then to sink so low. But at last the evil nightmare of the house of Austria was shaken off, and when the aged widow of Charles II. passed to her rest at Guadalajara, Spaniards were awakening to the stirring message, that Spain might be happier and more truly great in national concentration than when the men-at-arms of the Austrian Philips squandered blood and treasure beyond count, to uphold in foreign lands an impossible pretension, born of ambitions as dead as those who first conceived them.