Philip II. of Spain

by Martin A. S. Hume

On the other hand, his inherited characteristics were accentuated by his education and training. From the time of his birth his father was continually at war with infidels and heretics, and the earliest ideas that can have been instilled into his infant mind were that he and his were fighting the Almighty’s battles and destroying His enemies. In his first years he was surrounded by the closest and narrowest devotees, for ever beseeching the divine blessing on the arms of the absent emperor; and when the time came for Philip to receive political instruction from his father, at an age when most boys are frank and confiding, he was ceaselessly told that his great destiny imposed upon him, above all, the supreme duty of self-control, and of listening to all counsellors whilst trusting none. No wonder, then, that Philip, lacking his father’s bodily vigour, grew up secret, crafty, and over-cautious. No wonder that his fervid faith in the divinity of his destiny and the sacredness of his duty kept him uncomplaining amidst calamities that would have crushed men of greater gifts and broader views. No wonder that this sad, slow, distrustful man, with his rigid methods and his mind for microscopic detail, firm in his belief that the Almighty was working through him for His great ends, should have been hopelessly beaten in the fight with nimble adversaries burdened with no fixed convictions or conscientious scruples, who shifted their policy as the circumstances of the moment dictated. Philip thought that he was fittingly performing a divine task by nature’s own methods. He forgot that nature can afford to await results indefinitely, whilst men cannot.

Philip was born at the house of Don Bernardino de Pimentel, near the church of St. Paul in Valladolid, on May 21, 1527. His mother was profoundly impressed with the great destiny awaiting her offspring, and thought that any manifestation of pain or weakness during her labour might detract from the dignity of the occasion. One of her Portuguese ladies, fearing that this effort of self-control on the part of the empress would add to her sufferings, begged her to give natural vent to her feelings. “Silence!” said the empress, “die I may, but wail I will not,” and then she ordered that her face should be hidden from the light, that no involuntary sign of pain should be seen.

In this spirit of self-control and overpowering majesty the weak, sickly baby was reared by his devout mother. Two other boy infants who were born to her died of epilepsy in early childhood, and Philip, her first-born, remained her only son.

In the midst of the rejoicings that heralded his birth news came to Valladolid that the emperor’s Spanish and German troops had assaulted and sacked Rome, and that Pope Clement VII. was surrounded by infuriated soldiery, a prisoner in his own castle of St. Angelo. In the long rivalry which Charles had sustained with the French king, Francis I., who had competed with him for the imperial crown, one of the main factors was the dread of the entire domination of Italy by Spain, by virtue of the suzerainty of the empire over the country. The excitable and unstable pontiff, Clement VII., thought that his own interests were threatened, and made common cause with Francis. The emperor’s troops were commanded by Charles de Montpensier, Duke of Bourbon, who had quarrelled with his own sovereign, and was in arms against him, and he unquestionably exceeded the emperor’s wishes in the capture and sacking of the eternal city, the intention having been to have held the pontiff in check by terror rather than to degrade him in the eyes of the world. Charles made what amends he could for the blunder committed by Bourbon, and at once suspended the rejoicings for the birth of his heir. But the gossips in Valladolid gravely shook their heads, and prophesied that the great emperor’s first-born was destined to be a bane to the papacy in years to come. It will be seen in the course of the present book that during the whole of his life Philip regarded the papacy and the persons of the pontiffs without any superstitious awe, and mainly as instruments in his hands to achieve the great work entrusted to him by Providence.

In April 1528, when Philip was eleven months old, he received the oath of allegiance as heir to the crown from the Cortes of Castile, and from that time until the return of his father to Spain in 1533 the royal infant remained under the care of his mother and one of her Portuguese ladies, Doña Leonor de Mascarenhas, to whom Philip in after-life was devotedly attached. He was even then a preternaturally grave and silent child, with a fair pink-and-white skin, fine yellow hair, and full blue lymphatic eyes, rather too close together. It is no uncommon thing for princes to be represented as prodigies, but Philip seems, in truth, to have been really an extraordinary infant, and exhibited great aptitude for certain studies, especially mathematics. Charles on his arrival in Spain decided to give to his heir a separate household and masters who should prepare him for the duties of his future position. A list was made of the principal priestly professors of the Spanish universities, which was gradually reduced by elimination to three names. These were submitted to the empress for her choice, and she selected Dr. Juan Martinez Pedernales (which name = flints, he ingeniously Latinised into Siliceo), a professor of Salamanca, who was appointed tutor to the prince, with a salary of 100,000 maravedis a year. The emperor probably knew little of the character of his son’s tutor. He had intended in the previous year to appoint to the post a really eminent scholar, the famous Viglius, but did not do so. Whatever may have been Siliceo’s virtues, and according to priestly historians they were many, the emperor had subsequently a very poor opinion of the way in which he had performed his duty.

In a private letter from Charles to his son ten years afterwards, to which other reference will be made, the emperor says that “Siliceo has certainly not been the most fitting teacher for you. He has been too desirous of pleasing you. I hope to God that it was not for his own ends”; and again, “He is your chief chaplain, and you confess to him. It would be bad if he was as anxious to please you in matters of your conscience as he has been in your studies.” But Philip evidently liked his tutor, for later he made him Archbishop of Toledo and Primate of Spain. The prince must have been an apt pupil in the studies which most attracted him. He was never a linguist of any proficiency, but could read and write Latin well at quite an early age, and certainly understood French and Italian. But he was a Spaniard of Spaniards, and nothing shows the strict limitations of his capacity more than the clumsiness with which he expressed himself even in his own language, although he frequently criticised and altered the words and expressions employed by his secretaries.

The governor appointed to teach Philip the social duties and exercises fitting to his rank was an honest Spanish gentleman who possessed the full confidence of the emperor—Don Juan de Zuñiga, Comendador Mayor of Castile. From him he learnt fencing, riding, and warlike exercises, and especially dancing, of which during his youth he was very fond. Don Juan was somewhat uncompromising of speech, and apparently made no attempt to flatter or spoil his pupil, for the emperor in 1543, when Philip was sixteen, warns him that he is to prize Don Juan the more for this quality, and is to follow his advice in all personal and social matters.

At the age of twelve Philip lost his mother, and two years afterwards, in 1541, his political instruction may be said to have commenced. The emperor, although still in the prime of life, was already tired of the world. His great expedition to Algiers, from which he had hoped so much, had brought him nothing but disaster and disappointment, and he arrived in Spain in deep depression. A letter supposed to have been written to him at the time by Philip, full of religious and moral consolation for his trouble, is quoted by Cabrera de Cordoba and subsequent historians; but on the face of it there are few signs of its being the composition of a boy of fourteen, and it is not sufficiently authenticated to be reproduced here. The emperor in any case was delighted with his son. He found him studious, grave, and prudent beyond his years, and during the period that the father and son were together the great statesman devoted a portion of every day to initiate his successor in the intricate task before him. In 1542 Philip was to receive his first lesson in practical warfare, and accompanied the Duke of Alba to defend Perpignan against the French, but he saw no fighting, and on his way back to Castile he received the oath of allegiance of the Aragonese Cortes at Monzon, Philip himself swearing in October at Saragossa to maintain inviolate the tenaciously-held privileges of self-government cherished by the kingdom of Aragon. How he kept his oath will be seen in a subsequent chapter. The tendency of Charles’s policy was in favour of centralisation in the government of Spain, and he several times in writing to his son shows his dislike of the autonomy possessed by the stubborn Aragonese. He had completely crushed popular privileges in his kingdom of Castile, and would have liked to do the same in Aragon. This will probably explain Philip’s eagerness in subsequently seizing upon an excuse to curtail the rights of the northern kingdom. Before this period Charles had conceived another project in favour of the consolidation of Spain. Ferdinand the Catholic, with the papal authority, had seized the Spanish kingdom of Navarre, and added it to his own dominions. Thenceforward the titular sovereigns of Navarre were only tributary princes of France, but they did not lightly put up with their deprivation, and were a constant source of irritation and danger to Spain on the Pyrenean frontier. The design of the emperor was nothing less than to put an end to the feud, by marrying Philip to the heiress of Navarre, Jeanne d’Albret. It is idle to speculate upon the far-reaching results which might have ensued from such a match, but in all probability it would have changed the whole course of modern history. At the time this design was in view (1539) “to extinguish the quarrel of Navarre and tranquillise both our conscience and that of our son,” Philip and Jeanne were twelve years old, and the marriage would doubtless have taken place but for the vigilance of Francis I. To have brought the King of Spain over the Pyrenees as Prince of Béarn, and the semi-independent sovereign of a large part of the south of France, would have ruined the French monarchy, so poor little Jeanne was married by force to a man she detested, and Philip had to look elsewhere for a bride.

On the occasion of Charles’s own marriage, the dowry from the wealthy royal family of Portugal had provided him at a critical juncture with money to carry on the war with France; and now again, with his exchequer chronically empty, and the demands upon it for warlike purposes more pressing than ever, the emperor sought to tap the rich stream of the Portuguese Indies by wedding his son to Princess Maria, daughter of John III. and of Charles’s sister Catharine, another consanguineous marriage of which we shall see the result later. Before the affair could be concluded the emperor was obliged to leave Spain (May 1543). In July of the previous year Francis I. had fulminated against his old enemy his famous proclamation of war, and to Charles’s troubles with the Protestants of Germany was now added the renewed struggle with France, in which he was to have the assistance of the English king. The emperor’s intercourse with his son during his stay in Spain had convinced him of Philip’s precocity in statesmanship, and so he determined to leave in his hands the regency of Spain in his absence.

This was one of the most important junctures of Philip’s life. He was barely sixteen years old, and was thus early to be entrusted with Charles’s secret system of government, an instruction which left deep marks upon Philip’s own method for the rest of his life. The two letters written by Charles to his son before his departure from Spain are of the utmost importance as providing a key for Philip’s subsequent political action. Although Philip was entrusted with the ultimate decision of all subjects, he was to be guided by some of the most experienced and wisest of Charles’s councillors. First there was the Cardinal-Archbishop of Toledo, Tavara, and next the Secretary of State, Francisco de los Cobos, who had been at the emperor’s right hand for so long. The young regent is secretly told by his father that the reason why these two were appointed as his principal councillors was because they were respectively heads of factions, and their rivalry would prevent the prince from falling under the influence of either political party. With merciless scalpel the great emperor lays bare, for the benefit of the lad of sixteen, the faults and failings of the statesmen who are to aid him in the government. He is warned not to trust any of them separately. Their hypocrisy, their greed, their frailties of character, and conduct are pointed out by the worldly-wise ruler to the neophyte; and the moral of it all is that he should listen to the opinions of every one, and especially of rivals, and then decide for himself.