Isabel of Bourbon died bravely, as she had lived. She was a Frenchwoman, married to bring about a friendship between France and Spain, and the two countries were at war continually from the time that her marriage was completed to the day of her death. In her time the sun of Spain sank as surely as the day of France brightened, and yet she never gloried in the triumph of the land of her birth, and kept faithful to the end to the Spain which she loved so well. It would be unfair to credit her with so clear and high a soul as either of the previous Isabels; but hers was a brave, sturdy, heart that accepted things as they were if she was unable to mend them; and, like her father before her, she enjoyed herself as much as she could whilst doing her duty valiantly and well.
BOOK IV
II
MARIANA OF AUSTRIA
So long as Prince Baltasar lived Philip resisted all pressure that he should take another wife. The spring and summer were spent in Aragon, in the now almost despairing attempt to win back his dominions from the French. Approaches for his own marriage were made by various interests, but always gently put aside with a reference to his hopes being now centred in his son, whom he kept at his side and instructed him in the business of government. With a wretched lack of material resources his attempts to recover Catalonia were fruitless. One defeat followed another with wearisome reiteration, and as disaster deepened Philip became more moody and devout; his one adviser and confidant being the nun of Agreda, and his one resource agonised prayer. When his boy fell ill in May 1646, at Pamplona in Navarre, on his way to the seat of war, Philip’s invocations to heaven for his safety were almost terrible in their intensity.[[233]] The lad recovered; and when he arrived with his father at Saragossa in July, the imperial ambassadors were awaiting them to offer in marriage to the heir of Spain his first cousin, the Archduchess Mariana of Austria, the daughter of the Emperor.
Philip could look nowhere else for an alliance. France was his deadly enemy, though it was governed by his sister Anna as regent, and a further marriage experiment in that direction was out of the question at present, even if there had been an available French princess.[[234]] The Emperor and Spain, on the other hand, had been—to Spain’s ruin—fighting shoulder to shoulder throughout the whole of the thirty years’ war, now dragging to its conclusion, and the treaty was promptly signed for the marriage of Baltasar, aged seventeen, with Mariana of Austria, three years younger. With regard to their betrothal, Philip wrote to the nun thus: ‘My sister, the Empress, having died, I consider it advisable to draw closer the ties between the Emperor and ourselves in this way, my principal aim being the exaltation of the faith; for it is certain that the more intimate the two branches of our house are, so much the firmer will religion stand throughout Christendom.’
Only two months later, early in October, the blow fell, and the prince died of smallpox. Whilst he lay ill the distracted father wrote frantically to his correspondent, crying for God’s mercy to save him from this last trial. But when the boy had died the King’s letters assumed a tone of dull despair. God had not heard his prayers, and he supposed it was for the best. He had done everything to dedicate this grief to God; but his heart was pierced, and he knew not whether he lived or dreamed. He was resigned, he said, but feared his constancy, and so on; each phrase revealing a heart that almost doubted the efficacy of prayer, and the goodness of the Almighty.[[235]]
Thenceforward, for a time, his conduct changed. He had done his best and had not spared himself. He had prayed night and day, and had fashioned his life according to monastic counsels. But defeat, trouble, poverty and bereavement had fallen upon him in spite of all, and Philip, in the intervals of his poignant contrition, plunged into dissolute excesses that shocked and scandalised the devotees about him. Philip was forty-two, about the age when some of his forbears had developed that strain of mystic devotion that so nearly borders madness. He had no male heir, and only one tiny daughter of eight, and his troubles and excesses had prematurely aged him. All Spain demanded of him a man child to succeed to his greatness; and the remonstrances of the churchmen and the nuns at the scandal of his life were reinforced by the Emperor’s ambassadors, who urged that he should marry the girl-niece who had been betrothed to his dead son.
And so history repeated itself; and, as in the case of his grandfather, Philip II., the King accepted for his wife the Austrian princess who had been destined for his daughter-in-law. Of his many illegitimate children he had only legitimised one, Don Juan José of Austria, the son of the actress Maria Calderon. He was brilliant and handsome, and had won his father’s regard; but he could never be King of Spain; and Philip, with little enthusiasm, wedded an immature girl for the sake of giving an heir to his country, and for the maintenance of the solidarity of the house of Austria, which typified the old impossible claim of Spain to dictate the religion of the world. It was a disastrous resolve, which ensured the consummation of ruin to the country and the cause which it was intended to benefit.
Philip was straining every nerve against the French in Catalonia and Flanders; he was, to the extent of his ability, attacking the Portuguese on the eastern frontier; and his kingdom of Naples was in full revolt. The long war had exhausted him, as it had exhausted all Europe: he had, to his own destruction, fought the battles of religion in central Europe by the side of the Emperor for many years; and his new marriage was intended to fasten the Emperor to him in the cause of Spain. The powerlessness of marriage bonds to resist political forces was once more proved before Philip saw his bride. The Treaty of Westphalia (October 1648) was finally signed, and Spain, which had suffered most in the war, sacrificed most in the peace. The religious question in Germany was settled for good, and the dream of Charles v. was finally dissipated: the independence of Holland, the point which had dragged Spain down and kept her at war for nearly a hundred years, was recognised at last, out of sheer impotence for further struggle by Philip. Alsace went to France, and Pomerania to Sweden: the central European powers were satisfied: there was nothing more for the Emperor to fight for, and Spain was left face to face alone with her enemy France, and without the imperial co-operation for which Philip had paid so dear.
With ceremonies and pomp which would be tedious to relate the young princess left Vienna on the 13th November 1648, travelling slowly by coach with her brother, the King of Hungary, towards Trent, where the representatives of Philip were to take charge of the new Queen. Endless festivities were held at Trent and the Italian cities,[[236]] and simultaneously in Madrid. Illuminated streets, bullfights, and palace-revels, which Philip attended with dull hopeless face and heavy heart, celebrated the announcement of the nuptials, coinciding in time with the rejoicings for the recovery of Naples by the diplomacy of young Don Juan of Austria, Philip’s son, in the winter of 1648. But it was well into the autumn (4th September) of 1649 before the bride and her Spanish household of one hundred and sixty nobles at length landed at Denia in the kingdom of Valencia.
At Navalcarnero, a small village some fifteen miles from Madrid, the great cavalcade arrived on the 6th October 1649; and there it was arranged that Philip should first meet his bride.[[237]] For months he had been writing by every post to the nun, deploring and repenting his inability to resist the temptations of the flesh, and ascribing to his sins the wars, pestilence and misery that were scourging his beloved people. With such qualms of conscience as this it must have been welcome to him—weary voluptuary though he was—to enter into a licit union, which, at least, might rescue him from temptation. Disguised, he watched his bride enter Navalcarnero, and then went to lodge in another village before paying his formal visit to her a day afterwards. Mariana was just fifteen, a strong, passionate, full-blooded girl with a hard heart. On her way from Denia the mistress of the robes, the Countess of Medillin, had gravely remonstrated with her for laughing at the buffoons, who sought to amuse her, and had schooled her in the etiquette that forbade a Queen of Spain to walk in public. But Mariana made light of such prudery, and in the insolence of her gaiety and youth went her own way, laughing her fill at the comedy played before her at Navalcarnero, to while away the time until supper.