Queens of old Spain

by Martin A. S. Hume

He had found his father in the last stage of mental and bodily depression. All had gone ill with him; and the burden of his task, as far from fulfilment as ever, was greater than he could any longer bear. ‘Fortune,’ he said, ‘is a strumpet, and reserves her favours for the young;’ and so to the young Philip he had determined to transmit his mighty mission of Christian unification as a means of Spanish predominance. In October 1555, in perhaps the most dramatic scene in history, the Emperor solemnly handed to Philip the sovereignty of Flanders; and on the 16th January 1556, the assembly of Spanish grandees, in the great hall of the palace of Brussels, witnessed the surrender of the historic crowns of Castile and Aragon by Charles V. to his beloved only son. Heart-broken Mary Tudor from that day was Queen of Spain, as well as Queen of England. The title was a hollow one for her, though, for her mother’s sake and her own, she loved the country which alone had succoured them in their trouble; for Philip’s accession made the return of her husband to her side more than ever remote. Philip had promised faithfully to come back, and in his letters to her he repeated his promise again and again. On one occasion when he was indisposed, Mary sent a special envoy with anxious inquiries after his health. There was nothing more the matter than the result of some little extra gaiety on Philip’s part; and he reassured his wife and announced his immediate visit to England. The English messenger, overjoyed at the good news, said to some of Philip’s gentlemen, that, though he was delighted to be able to bear the glad tidings to the Queen, he would take care not to tell her that his Majesty had exposed himself twice to the dreadful weather then prevailing, and of his dancing at weddings, as the Queen was so easily upset and was so anxious about him that she might be too much afflicted.[^[158]]

But still Philip came not; and soon afterwards Mary was thrown into despair by the order from Brussels, that the King’s household in England was to proceed to Spain. The English people followed the Spanish courtiers with reviling when they embarked, for the fear of being drawn into the war was stronger than ever; but to the Queen their departure was a heavy blow, for it meant that her husband would live in England no more. For a few months in the early part of 1556, the alliance of the Pope and the King of France against the Emperor and Philip was broken up by the settlement of a truce between the latter and the French King; and for a time matters looked more hopeful for Mary; but in the summer of 1556, the war with France broke out again, and Philip found himself face to face with a powerful coalition of the Papacy, France and the Turk. It meant a war over half of Europe, and now if ever England might aid its Spanish King Consort. Philip wrote constantly urging the English Council to join him in the war against France; but met only with evasions. Mary was breaking her heart in sorrow and disappointment, but was willing to do anything to please Philip. She had, moreover, her own grudge against France; for Noailles and his master had left no stone unturned to ruin her from the first day of her accession. But her Council, and above all, her subjects, had always dreaded this as a result of her Spanish marriage, and were almost unanimously opposed to the entrance of England into a strife which mainly concerned the supremacy of Spain over Italy. Mary, moreover, was in the deepest poverty, owing to her own firm resolve against all advice to restore to the church the forfeited tenths and first fruits; and the forced loans collected from the gentry, it was untruly said at the instance of the Spaniards for the purposes of their war, had caused the deepest discontent in the country.

It was clear that nothing more could be got from England for Spanish objects unless some special effort were made, and Philip was forced to undertake the journey himself to try the effect of personal pressure. Mary’s joy at the news of his coming was pathetic in its intensity, though Pole warned her that, as had happened on other occasions, Philip might not be able to come after all. The hope of seeing her husband again seemed to give her new life, and she hurried to London, visiting Pole at Lambeth on the way, and exerting herself to the utmost to win him to her side. Thenceforward for weeks, whilst the King’s voyage was pending, the English Council sat nearly night and day, and couriers incessantly hurried backwards and forwards to and from London, Brussels, and Paris.[^[159]] The French reinforced their troops around Calais and Guisnes, and all the signs pointed to the approach of a war between England and France at the bidding of Philip.

The King landed at Dover on the 18th March 1557, and again all his haughty frigidity gave way to genial smiles for all that was English.[^[160]] To the Queen’s delight he spent two quiet days with her alone at Greenwich, and then rode through London to Whitehall by her side as she sat in her litter. Their reception by the citizens was polite, but cold; for though Philip personally was not unpopular, the idea of going to war with France for another nation’s quarrel was distasteful in the extreme to Englishmen of all classes. What complicated the situation infinitely was that Philip was at war with the Pope—that violent, headstrong enemy of his house and nation, Cardinal Caraffa, Paul IV.—and Pole, as legate, could not even greet the King, much less acquiesce as a political minister in a war against the Papacy on the part of England. Mary, too, was torn between her devotion to the Church on the one hand and her love for her husband on the other. Her idea, and that of her Council, was to provide a subsidy and an English contingent to Philip, without entering into a national war; and this much, under the existing treaty between Charles v. and Henry VIII. in 1543, Philip had a right to claim if he was attacked by France.

But the King wanted more from his wife’s country than that which he could have claimed even if he had not married the Queen, and he ceaselessly urged upon Mary, and upon her Council, heavily bribed to a man, the granting of much greater aid than that offered. He was at last successful in this, though it was still arranged that there was to be no declaration of war by Mary against France, the English forces being used only for the defence of Flanders and the territory of Calais. There were to be 8000 infantry and 1000 horse, and an English fleet with 6000 fighting men was to be raised and maintained, half at the cost of England and half by Philip.

When this had been arranged, France struck her counterblow, for it was clearly better for her to be at open war, in which she could adopt reprisals on the Scottish border, than to fight English contingents in Philip’s service. The English Protestant exiles in France were made much of and subsidised; and hare-brained Stafford and his crew of foolish young gallants sailed from Dieppe on Easter Sunday to seize the crown of England for himself. He captured Scarborough, but himself was captured directly afterwards, and incontinently lost his head. It was a silly, hopeless business; but the rebels had started from France, and had been helped by the French King, and the fact was argument enough. On the 6th June 1557, war was declared between England and France, and Philip, at last, saw some return for his marriage in England. He hated war, and his methods were in all things different from those of a soldier; but his best chance of securing a durable peace was to show his strength whilst his hold over English resources lasted, and it was clear from Mary’s declining health that this would not be long.

At the beginning of July, Philip rode for the last time from Gravesend through Canterbury to Dover, his ailing wife being carried in a litter by his side. On the 3rd July he bade her farewell as he stepped into the barge that carried him to the galleon awaiting him, and Mary, with death in her heart, turned her back to the sea, and went desolate to her home in London.

The combined army in Flanders was commanded by the brilliant young soldier, Emanuel Philibert of Savoy, who had 50,000 men, whilst the French army, under Constable Montmorenci, reached barely half that number. Savoy began the campaign by several rapid feints that deceived the French, and then suddenly invested St. Quintin, into which Coligny with 1,200 men just managed to enter before Savoy reached it. Finding himself in a trap, Coligny begged Montmorenci to come to his relief. The first attempt at this failed; and on the the 10th August the French main body made a desperate effort to enter the town by boats over the Somme. This was found impossible, and Montmorenci’s force was surprised and taken in the rear by Savoy’s superior strategy. The order to retire was given too late, and the French retreat soon became a panic-stricken rout. Six thousand Frenchmen were killed, and as many more captured, with all the artillery and Montmorenci himself; and there was no force existent between Savoy’s victorious army and the gates of Paris. Philip was at Cambrai during the battle; and if he had been a soldier, like his cousin Savoy, or even like his father, he might have captured the capital, and have brought France to her knees. But he turned a deaf ear to Savoy’s prayers, and lost his chance, as he did all his life, by over-deliberation. Te Deums were chanted, votive offerings promised, joy bells rung, but Philip’s host moved no further onward. St. Quintin itself held out for a fortnight longer; and murder, sack, and pillage, by the rascal mercenaries of Philip, held high saturnalia, in spite of his strict command, and to his horror when he witnessed the havoc wrought: and then, with the fatal over-deliberation that ruined him, he tamely quartered his men in the conquered territory instead of pressing his victory home.

The Germans, discontented with their loot, quarrelled and deserted by the thousand; the English, sulky and unpaid, grumbled incessantly; and the Spaniards asserted that they had shown no stomach for the fight before St. Quintin. Their hearts, indeed, were not in the war, for it concerned them not, and they demanded to be sent home. In London, the most was made of the victory of St. Quintin by the Queen’s Government. Bonfires blazed in the streets, free drink rejoiced the lieges, and Pole, in the Queen’s name, congratulated Philip upon so signal a mark of divine favour; but the people wanted to gain no victories for foreigners, and obstinately refused to be glad. Philip, as usual, was pressed for money, and rather than keep the unruly English contingent through the winter, he acceded to their request to be allowed to go home.

Whilst Philip’s forces were melting away in idleness the fine French army under Guise, who were fighting the Spaniards outside Rome, were suddenly recalled by Henry II. to the Flemish frontier. The Pope was then obliged to make terms with Alba, and withdrew from the war, leaving the greater antagonists face to face. The English fortress of Calais had been neglected, and at the declaration of war Noailles, on his way back to France, had reported that it might be captured without difficulty. Guise and his army from Italy suddenly appeared before the fortress, and stormed and captured the Rysbank-fort on the sandy island forming Calais harbour. The news, when it came the next day (4th January 1558), to Mary, found her again in high hopes of a child; and she received it bravely, setting about means to reinforce the town without the loss of a day. Lord Pembroke was ordered to raise a force of 5000 men and cross to Philip’s town of Dunkirk. But before they were ready matters were desperate, for treachery was at work within and without the fortress of Calais. Lord Grey de Wilton at Guisnes was also in evil case; ‘clean cut off,’ as he says, ‘from all aid and relief. I have looked for both out of England and Calais, and know not how to have help by any means, either of men or victuals. There resteth now none other way for the succour of Calais, and the rest of your Highness’s places on this side, but a power of men out of England, or from the King’s Majesty, or from both.’ A first attempt to storm the citadel of Calais failed, but a few days later a great force of artillery was brought to bear. Wentworth, the governor, and Grey, the governor of Guisnes, sent beseeching messages to Philip for relief, but the time was short, and no sufficient force to attack Guise could be raised. Philip from the first had been impressing upon the English Council the need for strengthening Calais; but, as we have seen, they were overburdened, without money, and without any able leader. Calais had been left to its fate, and on the 8th January 1558 the place cheerfully surrendered to the French. A few days afterwards Guisnes fell, and the last foothold of the English in France was gone for ever.