Again, in August 1656, a girl child was born to Mariana only to die the same day, and then depression, utter and profound, fell upon Philip and his wife, for no ray of light came from any direction. There was no money for the most ordinary needs. The Indian treasures were regularly captured by the English, who closely invested Cadiz itself, whilst the French on the Flanders frontier and in Catalonia worked their will almost without impeachment, and the Portuguese defied their old sovereign. Philip was ready to make peace almost at any sacrifice, at least with the French; but the demands of Mazarin were as yet too humiliating for a power which had claimed for so long the predominance in Europe. At length, in the midst of the distress, hope dawned once more, and again the wiseacres predicted that this time the Queen would give birth to a son. Mariana’s every fancy was gratified.[[251]] Water parties on the lake at the Retiro, endless farces, as usual, capricious bull feasts, and diversions of all sorts, kept up her spirits; and Don Juan sent another sumptuous bed and furniture more splendid than the previous gift. Whilst this waste was going on in one direction, taxes were being piled up in a way that made them unproductive, and such was the penury in the King’s palace that Philip himself, on the vigil of the Presentation of the Virgin (20th November 1657), had nothing to eat but eggs without fish, as his stewards had not a real of ready money to pay for anything (Barrionuevo). Exactly a week after the King was reduced to such straits, the child of his prayers arrived. An heir was born at last to the weary man of fifty-two, whose crown was crushing him.
Madrid as usual went crazy with turbulent rejoicing, whilst Mariana in the gravest danger battled for her life. Every bench and table in the palace, we are told, was broken, and no eating house or tavern in the town escaped sacking by the crowd of idle rogues who marched with music and singing, whilst they stripped decent people even of their garments to pay for their orgy.[[252]] Later, there were the usual bull fights, masquerades, and the eternal comedies with new stage effects; and not a noble in Castile failed to go and congratulate the King. Astrologists were to the fore, as usual, foretelling by the stars that the newly born babe would grow up to be wise, prudent and brave, and would outlive all his brothers and sisters in a prosperous fortunate career. The proud father was full of gratitude to the Most High for the signal favour conferred upon him. ‘Help me, Sor Maria,’ he wrote to the nun, ‘to give thanks to Him; for I myself am unable to do so adequately: and pray Him to make me duly grateful, and give me strength henceforward to do His holy will. The new-born child is well, and I implore you take him under your protection, and pray to our Lord and His holy mother to keep him for their service, the exaltation of the faith and the good of these realms. And if this is not to be, then pray let him be taken from me before he comes to man’s estate.’[[253]]
Philip, like his courtiers, went into rhapsodies of admiration of the beauty and perfection of the infant that had been born to him. So fair an angel surely never had been seen than this poor epileptic morsel of humanity from whom so pathetically much was expected. On the 6th December Philip rode in State on a great Neapolitan horse through the streets of Madrid, to give thanks to the Virgin of Atocha for the boon vouchsafed to him, and the capital began its round of official rejoicings. Fountains ran wine, music and dancing went on night and day, mummers in strange disguise promenaded the streets in procession, bullfights and the usual tiresome buffoonery testified that Madrid shared with the King his delight that an heir had been born to him.[[254]] Philip himself was in high good humour, bandying jests with his favourite, Don Luis de Haro; and, at the brilliant ceremony of the christening of Prince Philip Prosper, a week later, which he witnessed hidden behind the closed jalousies of his pew, he was proudly pleased at the vigorous squalls of the infant. ‘Ah!’ he whispered to Haro, ‘that’s what I like to hear, there is something manly in that.’[[255]] It was fortunate for Philip that he could not foresee that this babe for whom he had prayed so fervently would be snatched from him four years later, stricken by the calamity of its descent; and that the later child that would succeed him, the offspring of incest too, would end the line of the great Emperor in decrepit imbecility, matching sadly with the decadence of his country.
Whilst the continued and costly celebrations of the Queen’s tardy recovery after the birth of her sickly child were scandalising the thoughtful, national affairs were going from bad to worse.[[256]] Don Luis de Haro, Philip’s prime minister, had started in January 1658 to relieve Badajoz, closely invested by the masculine Queen of Portugal, herself a Spaniard, and had been disgracefully routed by the despised Portuguese. This was a humiliation that proved to the world the complete impotence of Spain: but in June of the same year a more damaging blow still was dealt at the power that had held its head so high in the past. The battle of the Dunes, or Dunkirk, in which Don Juan, Condé and the Duke of York on the Spanish side were pitted against Turenne, aided by the troops of Cromwell, was a crushing defeat for Philip’s forces, and placed all Flanders at the mercy of the French. It was clear that Philip could fight no longer, for Spain had well nigh bled to death; and so great was the depopulation of Castile that a project was adopted—though not carried out for lack of money—to re-people the country with Irish and Dalmatian Catholics.
There were other circumstances that tended towards peace besides the exhaustion of Spain. The long years of war had told heavily upon the resources of France: the Catalans by this time had grown heartily tired of their French king Stork, and were yearning for the return of their Spanish king Log; and, above all, Mazarin had long cast covetous eyes on the Spanish succession, in the very probable case of Philip’s issue by his second wife failing. For years the Queen-regent, Anna of Austria, had been striving for peace with her brother, but circumstances and national pride had always defeated her. The efforts of the Emperor’s agents in Madrid, aided very powerfully by Mariana, had also been exerted to prevent a close agreement between France and Spain. In 1656 M. de Lionne had been sent secretly by Mazarin to Madrid, where he passed many months in close conference with Luis de Haro, endeavouring, but without success, to negotiate peace.
In one of their meetings Haro wore in his hat, as an ornament, a medal impressed with the portrait of the Infanta Maria Theresa, Philip’s daughter by his first wife. ‘If your King would give to my master for a wife the original of the portrait you wear,’ said Lionne, duly instructed by Mazarin, ‘peace would soon be made.’ Nothing more was said at the time, for, in the absence of a son, Philip dared not marry the heiress of Spain to his nephew Louis XIV., but when an heir was born to Mariana, the idea of a marriage between Maria Theresa and Louis XIV. at once became realisable. The Austrian interest still stood in the way; and Mariana, who was as purely an ambassador for her brother as his accredited diplomatic representative was, used all her efforts to frustrate the plan; and a marriage was actively advocated by her between the Infanta and Leopold, the heir of the empire. Philip for a long time allowed himself to incline to the Austrian connection that had already cost him so dear.
As soon as the French match looked promising, as a result of much secret intrigue between Mazarin and Haro, the Emperor offered to Philip a great army in Flanders to aid in expelling the French; and when Philip was hesitating between the persuasions of his wife Mariana, and her kinsmen on the one hand, and the pressure of poverty on the other, which made a continuance of the war difficult for him, Mazarin played a trump card which won the game. Louis was taken ostentatiously to Lyons to woo the Princess of Savoy; and, in fear of a coalition against Spain, Philip sent his minister Haro to negotiate peace with Mazarin personally on the banks of the Bidasoa. During all the autumn of 1659, on the historic Isle of Pheasants in the river, the keen diplomatists fought over details; and often their labours seemed hopeless, for the Spaniards were as proud as ever and the French as greedy. But the frail health of the puling babe, who alone stood between the Infanta and the Spanish succession, at length made Mazarin more yielding: the last great obstacle, the restoration of Condé’s forfeited estates, was overcome, and one of the most fateful treaties in history was settled.
It was still a bitter pill for Spain, for she lost much of her Flemish territory and the county of Roussillon; but, at least, she regained Catalonia, and, above all, secured peace with France. The Infanta was to marry Louis XIV., and the Spaniards insisted that she should renounce for ever her claim to the succession of her father’s crown, though Mazarin made the clause ineffective by stipulating that the renunciation should be conditional upon the entire payment of the dowry of 500,000 crowns, which, it was more than probable, Philip could never pay.[[257]] In the meanwhile Mariana had borne another son, who died in his early infancy; and at the pompous embassy of the Duke de Grammont to Madrid, formally to ask for the hand of the Infanta, she took little pains to appear amiable to an embassy which she looked upon as bringing a defeat for her and her family.
A vivid picture of her and her husband at one of the great representations at the theatre of the old palace is given by a follower of Grammont, who wrote an account of the embassy.[[258]] ‘The great saloon,’ he says, ‘was lit only by six great wax candles in gigantic stands of silver. On both sides of the saloon, facing each other, there are two boxes or tribunes with iron grilles. One of these was occupied by the Infantas and some of the courtiers, whilst the other was destined for the Marshal (Grammont). Two benches covered with Persian rugs ran along the sides facing each other, and upon these some twelve of the ladies of the court sat, whilst we Frenchmen stood behind them.... Then the Queen and the little Infanta entered, preceded by a lady holding a candle. When the King appeared he saluted the ladies, and took his seat in the box on the right hand of the Queen, whilst the little Infanta sat on her left. The King remained motionless during the whole of the play, and only once said a word to the Queen, although he occasionally cast his eyes round on every side. A dwarf was standing close by him. When the play was finished all the ladies rose and gathered in the middle, as canons do after service. They then joined hands, and made their courtesies, a ceremony that lasted seven or eight minutes; for each lady made her courtesy separately. In the meanwhile the King was standing, and he then bowed to the Queen, who in her turn bowed to the Infanta, after which they all joined hands and retired.’
In April 1660 Philip bade farewell to Mariana and set forth on this famous journey to the French frontier, to ratify the peace of the Pyrenees with his sister Anna of Austria, whom he had not seen since their early youth more than forty years before, and to give his daughter in marriage to the young King of France. Philip, for the sake of economy, had ordered that as small a train as possible should accompany him; but, withal, so enormous was his following and that of his nobles,[[259]] with the huge stores of provisions and baggage, that his cavalcade covered over twenty miles of road. Slowly winding its way at the rate of only about six miles a day through the ruined land, greeted by the poor hollow-eyed peasants that were left with tearful joy, because it meant peace, the King’s procession at last arrived at the seat of so many royal pageants, the banks of the Bidasoa, early in June. Upon the tiny eyot in mid-river, the temporary palace that in the previous year had been the meeting-place of Haro and Mazarin, still remained intact; and here the sumptuous ceremony was performed that gave to Louis XIV. the custody of his future wife, Maria Theresa.[[260]]