Letters from Spain

by Joseph Blanco White

I shall not detain you with a description of our journey—the delays at the post-houses—our diminished haste at Valdepeñas for the sake of its delicious wine just as it is drawn from the immense earthen-jars, where it is kept buried in the ground; and, finally, the ugly but close and tight post-chaises drawn by three mules a-breast, which are used from Aranjuez to Madrid. I do not love description, probably because I cannot succeed in it. You will, therefore, have the goodness to apply for a picture of this town (for I wish you to remark that it is not reckoned among our cities) in Burgoing, Townsend, or some other professed traveller. My narrative shall, as hitherto, be limited to what these gentlemen were not likely to see or understand with the accuracy and distinctness of a native.

The influence of the court being unlimited in Spain, no object deserves a closer examination from such as wish to be acquainted with the moral state of this country. I must, therefore, begin with a sketch of the main sources of that influence, carefully excluding every report which has reached me through any but the most respectable channels, or an absolute notoriety. The fountain-head of power and honours among us has, till lately, been the Queen, a daughter of the late Duke of Parma, a very ugly woman, now fast approaching old age, yet affecting youth and beauty. She had been but a short time married to the present King, then Prince of Asturias, when she discovered a strong propensity to gallantry, which the austere and jealous temper of her father-in-law Charles III. was scarcely able to check. Her husband, one of those happy beings born to derive bliss from ignorance, has ever preserved a strong and exclusive attachment to her person. This attachment, combined with a most ludicrous simplicity, closes his mind against every approach of suspicion.

The first favourite of the Princess that awakened the King’s jealousy, was a gentleman of his son’s household, named Ortíz. Concerned for the honour of the Prince, no less than for the strictness of morals, which, from religious principles, he had anxiously preserved in his court; he issued an order, banishing Ortíz to one of the most distant provinces. The Princess, unable to bear this separation, and well acquainted with the character of her husband, engaged him to obtain the recall of Ortíz from the King. Scrupulously faithful to his promise, the young Prince watched the first opportunity to entreat his father’s favour, and falling upon his knees, asked the boon of Ortíz’s return, gravely and affectingly urging that “his wife Louisa was quite unhappy without him, as he used to amuse her amazingly.” The old King, surprised and provoked by this wonderful simplicity, turned his back upon the good-natured petitioner, exclaiming: Calla, tonto! Déxalo irse: Qué simple que eres! “Hold your tongue, booby! Let him go: What a simpleton thou art!”

Louisa deprived, however, of her entertaining Ortíz, soon found a substitute in a young officer named Luis de Godoy. He was the eldest of three brothers, of an ancient but decayed family, in the province of Estremadura, who served together in the Horse-Guards, a corps exclusively composed of gentlemen, the lowest ranks being filled by commissioned officers. Scarcely had this new attachment been formed, when the old King unmercifully nipped it in the bud, by a decree of banishment against Don Luis. The royal order was, as usual, so pressing, that the distressed lover could only charge his second brother Manuel with a parting message, and obtain a promise of his being the bearer of as many tokens of constancy and despair, as could be safely transmitted by the post.

It is a part of the cumbrous etiquette of the Spanish Court to give a separate guard to every member of the royal family, though all live within the King’s palace; and to place sentinels with drawn swords at the door of every suite of apartments. This service is performed without interruption day and night, by the military corps just mentioned. Manuel Godoy did not find it difficult to be on duty in the Prince’s guard, as often as he had any letter to deliver. A certain tune played on the flute, an instrument with which that young officer used to beguile the idle hours of the guard, was the signal which drew the Princess to a private room, to which the messenger had secret, but free access.

There is every reason to believe that Luis’s amorous dispatches had their due effect for some weeks, and that his royal mistress lived almost exclusively upon their contents. Yet time was working a sad revolution in the fortunes of the banished lover. Manuel grew every day more interesting, and the letters less so, till the faithless confidant became the most amusing of mortals to the Princess, and consequently a favourite with her good-natured husband.

The death of the old King had now removed every obstacle to the Queen’s gallantries, and Manuel Godoy was rapidly advanced to the highest honours of the state, and the first ranks of the army. But the new sovereign did not yet feel quite easy upon the throne; and the dying King’s recommendation of his favourite Floridablanca, by prolonging that minister’s power, still set some bounds to the Queen’s caprices. Charles IV., though perfectly under his wife’s control, could not be prevailed upon to dismiss an old servant of his father without any assignable reason; and some respect for public opinion, a feeling which seldom fails to cast a transient gleam of hope on the first days of every reign, obliged the Queen herself to employ other means than a mere act of her will in the ruin of the premier. He might, however, have preserved his place for some time, and been allowed to retire with his honours, had not his jealousy of the rising Godoy induced him to oppose the tide of favour which was now about to raise that young man to a Grandeeship of the first class. To provide for the splendour of that elevated rank, the Queen had induced her husband to bestow upon Godoy a princely estate, belonging to the crown, from which he was to take the title of the Duke de la Alcúdia. Floridablanca, either from principle, or some less honourable motive, thought it necessary to oppose this grant as illegal; and having induced the King to consult the Council of Castille upon that point, endeavoured to secure an answer agreeable to his wishes, by means of a letter to his friend the Count Cifuentes. Most unluckily for the minister, before this letter arrived from San Ildefonso, where the court was at that time, the president was seized with a mortal complaint, and the dispatches falling into the hands of his substitute Cañada, were secretly transmitted to the Queen. It is needless to add, that the report of the council was favourable, that Godoy was made Duke de la Alcúdia, and that both he and the Queen were now wholly bent upon their opposer’s ruin.

During Floridablanca’s influence with the King, a manuscript satire had been circulated against that minister, in which he was charged with having defrauded one Salucci, an Italian banker connected with the Spanish Government. Too conscious, it should seem, of the truth of the accusation, Floridablanca suspected none but the injured party of being the contriver and circulator of the lampoon. The obnoxious composition was, however, written in better Spanish than Salucci could command, and the smarting minister could not be satisfied without punishing the author. His spies having informed him that the Marquis de Manca, a man of wit and talent, was intimate at Salucci’s, he had no need of farther proofs against him. The banker was immediately banished out of the kingdom, and the poet confined to the city of Burgos, under the inspection and control of the civil authorities.

But the time was now arrived when these men, who were too well acquainted with the state of Spain to look for redress at the hands of justice, were to obtain satisfaction from the spirit of revenge which urged the Queen to seek the ruin of her husband’s minister. Charles IV. being informed of Floridablanca’s conduct towards Salucci and Manca, the last was recalled to Court. His enemy’s papers, including a large collection of billets-doux, were seized and put into the Marquis’s hands, to be used as documents in a secret process instituted against the minister: who, according to his own rules of justice, was, in the mean time, sent a prisoner to the fortress of Pamplona. His confinement, however, was not prolonged beyond the necessary time to ruin him in the King’s opinion; and upon the marriage of two of the Royal Princesses, an indulto, or pardon, was issued, by which, though declared guilty of embezzling forty-two millions of reals, he was enlarged from his close confinement, and allowed to reside at Murcia, his native town.

I am not certain, however, whether Floridablanca’s dismissal did not shortly precede his accusation by Manca, as the immediate consequence of his efforts to make the King join the coalition against France after the death of Louis XVI. Charles IV. was, it seems, the only sovereign in Europe, who felt no alarm at the fate of the unfortunate Louis; and had more at heart the recollection of a personal slight from his cousin, than all the ties of common interest and blood. Charles had learned that, on his accession to the throne of Spain, the usual letter of congratulation being presented for signature to Louis, that monarch humourously observed, that he thought the letter hardly necessary, “for the poor man,” he said, “is a mere cypher, completely governed and henpecked by his wife.” This joke had made such a deep impression on the King, as to draw from him, when Louis was decapitated, the unfeeling and almost brutal remark that “a gentleman so ready to find fault with others, did not seem to have managed his own affairs very well.” The Count de Aranda, who, in the cabinet councils, had constantly voted for peace with France, was appointed, in February, 1792, to succeed Floridablanca. But the turn of affairs, and the pressing remonstrances of the allied sovereigns, altered the views of Charles; and having, at the end of seven months, dismissed Aranda with all the honours of his office, Godoy, then Duke of Alcúdia, was appointed his successor to begin hostilities against France. I need not enter into a narrative of that ill-conducted and disastrous war. An appearance of success cheered up the Spaniards, always ready to fight with their neighbours on the other side of the Pyrenees. But the French armies having received reinforcements, would have soon paid a visit to Charles at Madrid, if his favourite minister, with more address than he ever discovered in his subsequent management of political affairs, had not concluded and ratified the peace of Basle.