What all the courtiers wore, and how they looked, is described ad nauseam by French and Spanish spectators; but the greatest man in all the host, upon the Spanish side at least, was the King’s quartermaster, whose exquisite taste and knowledge directed the artistic details of the pageant, Diego de Silva Velazquez, whose garments may be described as a specimen of the rest. His dress was of dark material, entirely covered by close Milanese silver embroidery, and he wore around his neck the golilla that had replaced the ruff, at the instance of Philip many years before, to save the waste of starching.[[261]] Upon his cloak was embroidered the great red floreated swordlike cross of Santiago, and at his side he wore a sword in a finely wrought silver scabbard; whilst around his neck there hung a heavy gold chain from which depended a small diamond scutcheon with the same cross enamelled in red upon it.[[262]]
The restoration of the Stuarts in England soon after the ratification of the Treaty of the Pyrenees, made a peace easy of negotiation between their country and Spain, and by the beginning of 1661, Philip found himself for the first time in a reign of forty years at peace with all the powers outside the Peninsula.
But rebellious Portugal had still to be reconquered. Again disaster befell the Spaniards. Don Juan, the King’s son, was utterly routed at Amegial after some partial successes; for Mariana had been busily intriguing against him, and had caused the reinforcement and resources he asked for to be denied him.
Whilst Don Juan was struggling against the Portuguese and their English abettors with inadequate forces and ineffectual heroism, Philip was sinking deeper into the morbid devotional misery that afflicted in their decline so many of his race. His only son, Philip Prosper, after a life of four years of almost constant sickness, was snatched from him early in November 1661, as a younger boy had been a year previously. The bereaved father, who had watched over his son’s bed until the last, nearly lost heart at this heavy blow; and was so much overcome, as he confesses, as to be unable even to write for a time to his one refuge, the nun of Agreda. When he did so, the usual self-accusing cry of agony went up—‘I assure you,’ he wrote, ‘what troubles me most, much more even than my loss, is to see clearly that I have offended God, and that He sends all these sorrows as a punishment for my sins. I only wish I knew how to amend myself and comply entirely with His holy will. I am doing, and will do, all I can; for I would rather lose my life than fail to do it. Help me, as a good friend, with your prayers, to placate the righteous anger of God, and to implore our Lord, who has seen good to take away my son, to bless the delivery of the Queen, which is expected every day, and to keep her in perfect health and the child that is to be born, if it be for his good service, for otherwise I desire it not. The Queen has borne this last blow with much sorrow but christian resignation. I am not surprised at this, for she is an angel, Oh! Sor Maria: if I had only carried out your doctrines, perhaps I should not find myself in this state.’[[263]]
A few days after this was written, Mariana once more bore a son, a weak, puling infant, that seemed threatened with an early death; but whose birth threw Spain into a whirlwind of rejoicing as extravagant as any that had gone before. But Philip was sunk too deep now into despondency, by witchcraft the people said, to be aroused much, even by the birth of a son; and, as the shadows fell around him, the power of Mariana grew. With her clever German Jesuit confessor and confidant, Father Everard Nithard, she soon managed to drag the unhappy King again into the vortex of imperial politics, that had already well-nigh wrecked Spain, by persuading him to maintain an army to aid Austria and Hungary against the incursions of the Turk. Mazarin had died soon after the peace of the Pyrenees, and the new advisers of Louis XIV. were already inciting him to retaliate for the Austrian rapprochement with Spain by fresh aggression upon Spanish Flanders. Don Juan, bitterly opposed to the new German interest in Spain, retired to his town of Consuegra in disgust and disgrace; the French and English governments assumed a tone of dictatorial haughtiness towards Spain unheard before; and Philip, in declining health and bitter disappointment, could look nowhere now for help and solace: for his minister Haro was dead, and the saintly nun of Agreda, his refuge for so many years, also went to her rest in the spring of 1665. There was no one now at Philip’s side but Mariana, already intriguing for uncontrolled power when her husband should die, and her German confessor Nithard, whose one aim was to use what was left of Spanish resources for the ends of Austria.
Others also were on the alert as to what would happen when Philip died, and Sir Richard Fanshawe was sent to Madrid by Charles II., partly to negotiate for the recognition of Portuguese independence; and also: ‘to employ his utmost skill and industry in penetrating and discovering under what model and form his Catholic Majesty designs to leave the government there, when it shall please God that he die, which, considering his great infirmity and weakness, may be presumed is already projected.’[[264]] When Philip first received Fanshawe in June 1664, he was so weak and weary that he could only ask him to put his speech on paper,[[265]] and thenceforward all Europe regarded the King as a dying man, whose work in the world was done.
As Philip sank lower in despondency, the importance of Mariana rose. Lady Fanshawe gives an account of her interview with the Queen on the 27th June 1664, at the Buen Retiro, which shows that Mariana was already regarded almost as the reigning sovereign: ‘I was received at the Buen Retiro by the guard, and afterwards, when I came up stairs, by the Marquesa de Hinojosa, the Queen’s Camarera Mayor, then in waiting. Through an infinite number of people I passed to the Queen’s presence, where her Majesty was seated at the upper end under a cloth of state upon three cushions, and on her left hand the Empress[[266]] upon three more. The ladies were all standing. After making my last reverence to the Queen, her Majesty and the Empress, rising up and making me a little curtsey, sat down again; then I, by my interpreter, Sir Benjamin Wright, said those compliments that were due from me to her Majesty; to which her Majesty made me gracious and kind reply. Then I presented my children, whom her Majesty received with great grace and favour. Then her Majesty, speaking to me to sit, I sat down upon a cushion laid for me, above all the ladies who sat, but below the Camarera Mayor; no woman taking place (i.e. precedence) of her Excellency but princesses.... Thus, having passed half an hour in discourse, I took my leave of her Majesty and the Empress; making reverences to all the ladies in passing.’[[267]] Some months afterwards Queen Mariana sent to the English lady many messages of regard and esteem, with a splendid diamond ornament worth £2,000, which Lady Fanshawe received with somewhat exaggerated professions of humility, and repeated her thanks to her in an interview soon after (8th April 1655).
The total and final defeat of the Spaniards on the Portuguese frontier, in June 1665, made the recovery of the lost kingdom hopeless, and broke Philip’s heart. He had written in the spring to the dying nun, saying that he desired no more health or life than was meet for God’s service, and was ready to go when he was called. The call came in September 1665. His chronic malady had been aggravated to such an extent by anxiety and worry, that by the middle of the month his physicians confessed themselves powerless. Then was enacted one of those ghastly farces common at the time in Spain. It was whispered in the palace that the King was bewitched, and the Inquisitor-General called a conference of ecclesiastics to consider the means for exorcising the evil spirits that held the sovereign in bondage. Philip himself gave permission for the Inquisitor to act as might be judged best; and one day the royal confessor, Friar Martinez, accompanied by the Inquisitor-General, approached the sickbed and demanded of the King a certain little wallet of relics and charms which he always wore suspended upon his breast. After examining these carefully the wallet was returned to the King, and from some clue therein contained, search elsewhere led to the discovery of an ancient black-letter book of magic, and certain prints of the King’s portrait transfixed by pins. All these things were solemnly burnt after a service of exorcism by the Inquisitor-General at the chapel of Atocha; and then, to assist the cure, the group of churchmen administered to the King, who was suffering from several mortal diseases, of which gall-stones caused the immediate danger, an elaborate confection of pounded mallow-leaves with drugs and sugar.
This treatment aggravated the ill, and in two or three days the King appeared to be in articulo mortis, after what was described as a fit of apoplexy. The whole Court fell into momentary confusion, and the death-chamber was already deserted when the King revived and altered several of his testamentary dispositions, one clause of which now appointed Mariana regent during the minority of her son. The will, by Philip’s orders, was then locked into a leather purse with other important state papers, and the key, by the dying man’s orders, was delivered to his wife. That afternoon, after taking the sacrament, Philip bade a tearful farewell to Mariana, and blessed his two children. He then took an affectionate leave of the Duke of Medina de las Torres and other nobles, beseeching them with irrepressible tears to work harmoniously together, and help the widow and the poor child to whom his heavy heritage was passing.
Philip struggled through the night in agony, and the next day the image of the Virgin of Atocha was carried past the windows of the palace to be deposited in the royal Convent of Barefoots hard by, whilst the dead bodies of St. Diego and St. Isidro were brought to the royal chapel for veneration;[[268]] and every church and convent in Madrid resounded with rogations and processions for the health of the King. Around the bed of the dying monarch evil passions already raged; for the Court was divided thus early into two factions, one in favour of Mariana and the other looking to Don Juan. The Duke of Medina de las Torres, the principal minister, retired from the palace as soon as he had taken leave; and an unseemly wrangle, almost a fight, took place over the deathbed between rival friars, as to whether the viaticum might be administered or not, until they had to be bundled out of the room by the Marquis of Aytona.