On August 4, 1578, Sebastian, the young King of Portugal, was killed at the battle of Alcazar-Kébir as he was conducting a crazy campaign against Abd-el-Melek, the Sultan of Morocco.Death of Sebastian, King of Portugal. Aug. 4, 1578. The death of the young King, who appears to have been half-mad, at once aroused the determination of Philip to secure the crown of Portugal, and thus finally unite the Iberian Peninsula under one hand. The successor of Sebastian was his great-uncle, Henry. He was a Cardinal, and over sixty-six years of age. Nevertheless, it was hoped that he might yet have children, and the Pope was asked to authorise his marriage.The Cardinal Henry succeeds; but dies. Jan. 31, 1580. Philip declared his indignation at this interference of the Papacy with what were ‘so clearly temporal affairs,’ but was relieved from further apprehension by the death of the Cardinal-King on January 31, 1580. The only claimant whom Philip had now to dread was Antonio, prior of Crato.[63] He was the illegitimate son, by a converted Jewess, of Lewis, Duke of Beja, the great-uncle of Sebastian, but he had been secretly legitimised by his father, had entered the order of St. John of Malta, and was prior of the rich commandery of Crato. If his legitimacy could be established, no doubt he was the next male heir. Philip, however, refused to allow his claim,Philip claims the crown, and sends an army under the Duke of Alva. and asserted his own right to the throne through his mother, the daughter of King Emanuel. To enforce this claim an army had been collected on the frontier under the Duke of Alva, which marched as soon as the intelligence of the Cardinal’s death arrived. Those who did not submit were treated as rebels, and when the town of Setubal offered some slight resistance it was given over to pillage, ‘because to deny the soldiers would have been a great injustice’ (July 16, 1580).
Meanwhile, Antonio had been proclaimed King by a motley assembly of peasants at Santarem, and proceeded to Lisbon.Antonio proclaimed King. In vain Pope Gregory XIII. attempted to mediate. To propitiate Philip, who had a passion for relics, he sent a most precious gift, part of the body of one of the Holy Innocents; Philip accepted the gift, but declined his mediation, and for once did not procrastinate. The Marquis of Santa Cruz was despatched with the fleet to Setuval. There he took the Duke of Alva and his troops on board, and sailed for Lisbon.Lisbon capitulates to Alva. Antonio in vain attempted to resist. The citizens of Lisbon would not fight; they asked for terms, but had to capitulate at discretion; and Antonio, escaping with difficulty, reached Calais after many wanderings. The city of Lisbon was partly saved from pillage by Alva, but the neighbouring villages were sacked with such relentless cruelty that it even surpassed all that Alva could have imagined; and such was the insubordination of the soldiery that the Duke declared rope would fail him wherewith to hang his mutinous soldiers. At Oporto, the same scenes were repeated by the troops under Sancho d’Avila, an officer who had already earned an evil reputation for mutiny in the Netherlands. On the 29th of June, 1581, Philip made his entry into Lisbon. Those few nobles who had dared to oppose him were treated with relentless cruelty; the majority attempted no resistance, and the people sullenly submitted.Philip enters Lisbon. June 29, 1581. Antonio, with a price set on his head, wandered from court to court begging for assistance to regain his crown. In June, 1582, he succeeded in obtaining the help of a French fleet, which sailed to the Azores. The fleet, however, was dispersed by the Marquis of Santa Cruz; and for the rest of his life the unfortunate pretender found an asylum for the most part in England. Philip had gained his end, and Portugal was for a time united with Spain. The Spaniards, however, had never been liked in Portugal; the atrocities which accompanied the accession of Philip turned the dislike to hatred; and it was not many years before Portugal again threw off the hated yoke, and once for all declared her independence.
§ 6. Internal Government of Philip II.
Although the government of Philip II. was practically a despotism, it would be a mistake to suppose that no constitutional checks existed, or that they were entirely futile.The Government despotic; yet constitutional forms survive in Spain and its dependencies. The Cortes of Castile and Aragon still survived, and even in the subject provinces the old assemblies were not done away with. In Castile, the Cortes nominally enjoyed deliberative powers; no edict could constitutionally be issued except on their petition, and no tax levied except by their consent. Yet if Philip often summoned them, if he did not interfere with their debates, if he listened to their petitions, these were constantly disregarded on the plea that it was not expedient that they should be granted; and, when occasion demanded it, royal ordinances were issued, and fresh taxes imposed, without waiting for their assent.
The constitutional rights of Aragon and its dependencies, Valencia and Catalonia, were even more extensive. Any member of the Cortes could present a memorial of grievances; until these grievances were redressed the session could not be closed; and no law could be passed or tax imposed except by the unanimous vote of the assembly. The royal tribunals were subject to that of the Justiza, and any one who set foot in Aragon could escape from the jurisdiction of the royal courts by ‘manifesting’—that is, by appealing to his aid. No foreigners could hold office in Aragon; the Inquisition, though established, met with constant opposition. With these privileges Philip came into open conflict when, in April, 1590, Antonio Perez, his secretary, fled to Aragon and claimed the protection of the Justiza (cf. [pp. 307–9]). On the pretext that Perez had, in the justification which he had just published, been guilty of blasphemy, he was, at the demand of the Inquisitors of Aragon, transferred to their own prison. The citizens of Saragossa at once rose against this violation of their ‘fueros.’The revolt of Saragossa, 1591. The Justiza was mobbed for having surrendered the prisoner; the royal representative, the Marquis of Almanara, was killed; and the Inquisitors, in fear of their lives, restored Perez to the ‘Aljaferia,’ or Justiza’s prison. Four months later, another attempt on the part of the Inquisitors (September 1591) led to a renewed revolt, which was supported by the new Justiza, who had been just appointed. Philip forthwith ordered an army to march (October 24). The rebels had no army or organisation, and found little support, except from some of the more violent of the peasants, who betook themselves to brigandage. Accordingly, the royal army met with no resistance; and when it reached Saragossa on November 12, 1591, the city submitted without striking a blow. Although Philip published an amnesty, all the leading men who had taken any part were excepted; and the Justiza himself was executed, in violation of the law that he could not even be arrested unless by the order of the Cortes.Interference with the privileges of Aragon. A meeting of that body followed. In spite of the rule that it should be presided over by the King himself, or a prince of the blood, the chair was taken by Chinchon, the Archbishop of Saragossa, and the Cortes consented to the following invasion of their privileges. The King was to be allowed to nominate aliens as his viceroys; a definite time was to be fixed for presenting grievances; except for the voting of taxes, the right of any member to veto any measure was done away with, and matters were to be decided by the vote of the majority of each estate. This last concession practically made the King master of their decisions, since he had the power of adding to the number of deputies of each estate by summoning his nominees. Finally, for the appointment of the deputies of the Justiza, a complicated system was established which practically put the nomination in the King’s hands, and made them the creatures of the royal will. Here, therefore, ended the real independence of the Cortes of Aragon, and of its Justiza. True, the country was not so severely taxed as Castile; yet, as in Castile itself, the shadow of constitutional liberty alone remained, while the reality had departed.
An identical policy, although in a more exaggerated form, was pursued by Philip in Sicily, in Naples, and in Milan.Government of Naples, Sicily, and Milan. Satisfied with getting the control of the central courts of justice, and of the supreme executive, into the hands of his nominees, Philip allowed the old assemblies, the feudal and municipal privileges, to continue. For the rest the royal authority was maintained by the Viceroy. He made use of class and local jealousies; he played off noble against burgher and peasant, laity against clergy; he resorted to wholesale corruption, and kept an army, mainly composed of Spaniards, to fall back upon in the last resort; and, if at any time the Viceroy became too unpopular, he could always be made the scapegoat and removed. It was in Naples that the authority of the Viceroy was the least uncontrolled, that corruption was deepest, and the taxation heaviest; while Milan was protected by the privileges of the town and the pretensions of the archbishop, more especially under the well-known prelate, Carlo Borromeo; and in Sicily the feudal rights, and the municipal privileges of such towns as Messina and Palermo, were too powerful to be entirely overthrown.
Under such a system of government as this, it was inevitable that the real power should lie with the King and with those central councils which controlled the administrative and judicial system in the various parts of the empire.The Central Councils. Of these there were as many as eleven,[64] of which the three following were the most important: the Council of State, the Council of Castile, and that of the Inquisition. The Council of the Inquisition has already been described ([p. 279]). The Council of State confined itself for the most part to foreign affairs. But since Philip looked upon Castile as the centre of his empire, it was but natural that the Council of Castile should become the most important. Its functions were mainly judicial; it heard appeals from inferior courts, and under Philip II. was mainly composed of lawyers. It enjoyed, however, other powers; it kept the Church in control, it drafted laws, and was generally consulted on all matters of state interest. In fact, it became practically the Council of State for the interior. The nomination of the members of these Councils was exclusively in the hands of the King. With the exception of the Council of State they were composed of ecclesiastics as well as laymen, but the nobles rarely found a place there.
Excluded altogether from the Cortes of Castile, and with a very limited representation in that of Aragon,[65] the Spanish nobility took but little part in political affairs at home.Exclusion of nobles from political power. They had enormous revenues; they were exempted from taxation; they filled most of the offices in the royal household; they often commanded the royal armies and fleets abroad; they acted as ambassadors, and as Viceroys in the dependent states and in the colonies; but at home they had little influence. They were no longer allowed to bear arms or levy their retainers, except in the royal service; and, except on special occasions, such as the rebellion of the Moriscoes, rarely appeared in the field unless on foreign service. The time which was not spent at court, was passed on their wide domains, where they copied on a small scale the magnificence and the etiquette of the court. Living thus in proud isolation, with much wealth but little power, they refused to mix, or to intermarry with the lower classes, and rapidly became a degenerate and useless class like the nobles of France in the eighteenth century.
The Councils, then, depending as they did on the royal will, were filled for the most part with the obsequious servants of a suspicious master who could ruin them at his pleasure, unless, indeed, as was sometimes the case, they were able to spread a net of intrigue round the King which he was, for a time at least, unable to break. If Philip usually asked the advice of his Councillors, he kept to his father’s injunction, ‘to depend on no one but himself.’ He did not often appear at their sessions; sometimes he altered despatches before submitting them to his Councils; he generally received their opinions through a committee, or more often demanded a written report, which he took to his private cabinet and annotated with marginal comments. True to his boast, that ‘with a bit of paper he ruled over both hemispheres,’ he sat at his desk for hours together, sometimes assisted by a secretary, sometimes by his favourite daughter Isabella, often quite alone, and covered the state papers with notes in his crabbed hand with the assiduity of a clerk, and not uncommonly with trivialities, of which a schoolboy might be ashamed. Under these circumstances the actual authority exercised by any individual depended on his personal influence, and that of his clique, with the King. Although Philip would allow his ministers considerable latitude as long as he trusted them, his suspicions were easily aroused. He made use of one minister against another; he learnt from each severally the views and opinions of the others; he adopted the same system of espionage with regard to them as he did, through his secret emissaries, abroad, and his suspicion once aroused, the fall of the minister or viceroy was not far off.
Of the ministers who chiefly enjoyed his confidence the following may be mentioned. At the beginning of his reign three men were most influential:The chief ministers. the Duke of Alva, Ruy Gomez de Silva, Prince of Eboli, and Espinosa. The Duke of Alva had been a trusted adviser of Charles, and had served him in his wars.The Duke of Alva. Accordingly he recommended him to his son as the ablest statesman, and the best soldier in his dominions. Alva’s love of carefully weighing all sides before arriving at a decision, coupled with his determination in carrying out the royal will, made him a congenial spirit. He was Grand Steward of the household, and a member of the Council of State, and for the first few years had much influence. From the very first, however, he found a rival in Gomez.Ruy Gomez, Prince of Eboli. This nobleman, descended from the younger branch of a Portuguese family which had settled in Castile, had, as an imperial page, become the favourite of Philip when prince. The ascendency thus obtained he subsequently maintained by his knowledge of the humours of his master, his pliability, his obsequiousness, and his dexterity; while by his affability to others he succeeded in retaining popularity. After his marriage with Anna Mendoza, Princess of Eboli, a woman remarkable for her wit and for her beauty in spite of the loss of an eye, he was created Prince of Eboli, and made a member of the Council of State, and First Gentleman of the Bedchamber. Generally in favour of pacific measures, he was opposed to the policy of repression in the Netherlands, of which Alva approved. On this question Alva’s advice prevailed; but with his departure to carry out the policy he advocated, the influence of the Duke declined. The King perhaps had learnt to resent his haughty demeanour; at all events Alva ceased to play an important part in affairs of state.[66] The influence of the Prince of Eboli was now supreme; and by his adroitness, and, if we may believe some, by the complaisance of his wife to the attentions of the King, he continued to retain his power till his death, in July, 1573. The third man of note during Philip’s earlier years was Diego de Espinosa, who attracted the attention of the King by his extraordinary capacity for work, and by his ability. Cardinal Espinosa. He became President of the Council of Castile and of the Indies; he was also Inquisitor-General, a member of the Council of State, and Bishop of Siguença, and, finally, was created Cardinal. This rapid rise, however, made him so arrogant that he shortly incurred the dislike of his master, and on being given the lie by the King in open council, Espinosa took to his bed and died of chagrin, in September, 1572.