Plottings of the Austrian and French parties for the succession.
The leader of the party favoring the Hapsburg, or Austrian, succession in Spain was the queen-mother, María Ana, herself of the House of Austria. After many vicissitudes she at length seemed to have achieved a victory, when she brought about the marriage of Charles II to an Austrian princess in 1689, the same year in which the king’s former wife, a French princess, had died. The situation was all the more favorable in that Louis XIV declared war against Spain in that year for the fourth time in the reign. The very necessities of the war, added to the now chronic bad administration and the general state of misery in Spain, operated, however, to arouse discontent and to provoke opposition to the party in power. Thus the French succession was more popular, even during the war, than that of the allied House of Austria. After the war was over, the French propaganda was established on a solid basis, for it was evident, now, that Charles II could not long survive. Louis XIV put forward his grandson, Philip of Anjou, as a candidate, and the Holy Roman Emperor urged the claims of his son, the Archduke Charles. Not only did Philip have the weaker hereditary claim, but he also had the renunciation of his grandmother, María Teresa, wife of Louis XIV, against him. The last-named objection was easily overcome, since Spain had never paid the promised dowry of María Teresa, wherefore Louis XIV held that the renunciation was of no effect.
Success of the French party.
The fight, after all, was a political one, and not a mere determination of legal right, and in this respect Louis XIV and his candidate, Philip, had the advantage, through skilful diplomacy. The French party in Madrid was headed by Cardinal Portocarrero, a man of great influence, assisted by Harcourt, the French ambassador. The imperial ambassador, Harrach, and Stanhope, the representative of England, worked together; the union of France and Spain under Bourbon rulers, who would probably be French-controlled, represented a serious upsetting of the balance of power, wherefore England desired the succession of the Archduke Charles, who at that time was not a probable candidate for the imperial crown. For several years Madrid was the scene of one of the most fascinating diplomatic battles in European history. The feeble-minded king did not know what to do, and asked advice on all sides, but could not make up his mind about the succession. The Austrian party had his ear, however, through his Austrian wife, and through the king’s confessor, who was one of their group, but by a clever strike of Portocarrero’s the king was persuaded that his wife was plotting to kill him, and was induced to change confessors, this time accepting a member of the French party. To divide his opponents Louis XIV proposed the dismemberment of Spain and her possessions among the leading claimants, assigning Spain, Flanders, and the colonies to a third candidate, the Prince of Bavaria. The French king did not intend that any such division should take place, and in any event the Bavarian prince soon died, but through measures of this type Louis XIV eventually contrived to supplant in office and in influence nearly all who opposed the Bourbon succession. Meanwhile, the unfortunate king was stirred up and worried, although possibly without evil design, so that his health was more and more broken and his mentality disordered to the point of idiocy, hastening his death. Strange medicines and exorcisms were used in order to cast out the Devil with which he was told he was possessed, exciting the king to the point of frenzy. In 1700 Louis XIV abandoned his course of dissimulation to such an extent that it became clear that he would endeavor to procure all the Spanish dominions for Philip. Henceforth it was a struggle between the two principal claimants for exclusive rule. The wretched Spanish monarch was at length obliged to go to bed by what was clearly his last illness. Even then he was not left in peace, and the plotting continued almost to the very end. On October 3, Philip was named by the dying king as sole heir to all his dominions. On November 1, Charles II died, and with him passed the rule of the House of Austria.
CHAPTER XXV
SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTS, 1516-1700
Principal events in the social history of the era.
AS compared with the two preceding eras there was little in this period strikingly new in social history. In the main, society tended to become more thoroughly modern, but along lines whose origins dated farther back. The most marked novelty in Spain was the conversion of the Mudéjares of Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia, followed less than a century later by the expulsion of the Moriscos from every part of Spain. The most remarkable phase of social history of the time, however, was the subjection, conversion, and to a certain extent the civilization of millions of Indians in the Americas. The work was thorough enough to mark those lands permanently with the impress of Spain.
Gradual approximation of the nobility to present-day society.
By a process of natural evolution from the practices current in the reign of the Catholic Kings the nobles came to exhibit characteristics very similar to those of present-day society. They now went to court if they could, or else to the nearest large city, where they became a bourgeois nobility. Those who remained on their estates were soon forgotten. Through social prestige the nobles were still able to procure not only the honorary palace posts but also the majority of the greater political and military commands. Now and then, an untitled letrado would attain to a viceroyalty or other high position, but these cases were the exception. In this way, the great body of the nobles were able to counteract the economic losses of their class occasioned by the new importance of mercantile and industrial wealth. Nevertheless, the wealthiest men of the times were nobles, with whom the richest of middle-class merchants could hardly compare in material possessions. The more extraordinary accumulations of wealth, based on vast lands and the institution of primogeniture, were confined to a few of the greatest nobles of the land, however. The vast horde of the segundones and others of the lesser nobility found service as before at court, or in the train of some great noble, in the army, and in the church. The nobles retained most of the privileges they had previously enjoyed, but except in Aragon proper lost much of the political jurisdiction they had formerly exercised over their own lands. The sentiment in favor of the royal authority was now so strong that any limitation on the power of the sovereign was viewed with disapproval. The jurisdiction which the lords retained was limited by many royal rights of intervention, such as the superior authority of the king’s law, or the royal institution of the pesquisa. Some remnants of the lords’ former political and social power over their vassals existed, but in general the relation was the purely civil one of landlord and tenant. In Aragon, despite attempts to effect reforms, the lords still possessed seigniorial authority, accompanied by the irksome incidents of serfdom; required personal services of their vassals; collected tributes of a medieval character; exercised a paternal authority (such as that of permitting or refusing their vassals a right to marry); and had the power of life and death.
Hierarchy of the nobility.