Early in February 1669, Don Juan, with a fine bodyguard of two hundred horse, rode out of Barcelona, and through Catalonia and Aragon towards Madrid. Mariana had sent strict orders throughout the country that no honours were to be paid to him, but his journey in spite of her was a triumphal progress, and as he entered Saragossa in state the whole populace received him with shouts of: ‘Long live Don Juan of Austria, and Death to the Jesuit Nithard.’ A regiment of infantry was added by Aragon to the Prince’s force, and on the 24th February Mariana and her friend in the palace of Madrid were horrified to learn that Don Juan was at the gates of the capital with an armed body stronger than any at their prompt disposal. Whilst they made such hasty preparations as they could to resist, all Madrid was in open jubilation at the approach of their favourite prince. Don Juan’s force grew from hour to hour, and with it grew his haughtiness towards the ruling authority. Mariana, in alarm, tried every means. The Nuncio endeavoured to soften Don Juan’s heart; the higher nobles in the Queen’s household wrote to him deprecating violence; and, finally, the Queen herself wrote a letter of kindly welcome. But to all blandishments Don Juan stood firm: Father Nithard must go for good, and at once; whilst the Council of Castile also demanded the Jesuit’s expulsion.
On the morning of 25th February, whilst Mariana was still in bed, the courtyards of the palace filled with gentlemen and officials in groups, who openly declared for Don Juan and the expulsion of Nithard. The Dukes of Infantado and Pastrana sought an interview with the Queen, for the purpose of informing her of the general resolution, but were refused admittance into her bedchamber. They then charged her secretary, Loyola, to inform her, that unless she instantly signed a decree expelling Nithard they themselves would take measures against him, as Madrid was in a turmoil and order imperilled. Mariana with tears of rage swore that she would not be coerced; and Nithard himself refused to stir. A hasty meeting of the Council of Regency assembled in the forenoon, which Nithard abstained from attending only upon the entreaty of the Nuncio, where a decree of expulsion was drafted in the mildest form possible, and laid before the Queen for signature as soon as she had dined.
Mariana was at the end of her tether. The Court, the populace, and the soldiery were all against her favourite, and she was forced to sign the decree. But, though she did it, she never forgave Don Juan for the humiliation, and thenceforward it was war to the knife between them. Cardinal Nithard, with rich grants and gifts from the Queen, was with difficulty saved from the cursing multitude that surrounded his coach as he slunk out of the capital; and Don Juan, triumphant, begged for permission to come and salute the Queen in thanks for his expulsion. This, haughty Mariana coldly refused to allow, and Don Juan retorted by demanding a thorough reform in the administration of the government, a re-adjustment of taxation and many other innovations which he alleged that Nithard alone had prevented. The Spanish nobles, however, were no lovers of reform, and Don Juan’s drastic demands were regarded askance by many. A long acrimonious correspondence was carried on by the Queen at Madrid and Don Juan at Guadalajara, in the course of which some financial amendments were promised by the former: but in the meantime Mariana’s friends were raising an armed force as a bodyguard for her and her son, which afterwards became famous as the Chambergo regiment, because the uniform was copied from those worn by the troops of Marshal Schomberg. The formation of this standing force was bitterly resented by the citizens of Madrid, and aroused new sympathy for Don Juan. At length a semi-reconciliation was effected by the appointment of Don Juan as Viceroy of Aragon in June 1669; and for several years thereafter the Prince was piling up funds from his rich offices to strike a more effectual blow when the time should come.
The extreme debility of the boy King, who in 1670 was thought to be moribund, was already dividing the courtiers, and indeed all Spain and Europe, into two camps. If Charles II. died without issue, as seemed probable, his elder sister Maria Theresa, wife of Louis XIV., would be his natural successor, but for the act of renunciation signed at the time of her marriage; an act which from the first the French had minimised and disputed, and Philip himself had characterised as an ‘old wife’s tale.’ It was evident that Louis XIV., daily growing in power and ambition, had no intention of allowing the renunciation to stand in the way of his wife’s claims if her brother died childless; and all of Mariana’s enemies in Spain, and they were many, were ready to stand by the claims of the elder Infanta Maria Teresa, daughter of the beloved Isabel of Bourbon, if the succession fell into dispute.
On the other hand, Mariana, naturally championed the cause of her own daughter, the Infanta Margaret, married to the Emperor Leopold, and upheld the validity of Maria Theresa’s formal renunciation of the succession on her marriage. The Austrian connection had brought nothing but trouble to Spain, and the brilliant progress of France, even though it was to the detriment of their country, had gained many Spanish admirers of the modern spirit that pervaded the methods of Louis XIV. Mariana, therefore, to most Spaniards, represented, with her pronounced Austrian leanings, an attempt to tie the country to the bad old times, as well as to pass over the legitimate rights of the elder Infanta for the benefit of her own less popular daughter the Empress Margaret.
The Queen-Mother, well aware of the strong party against her, and that her prime enemy, Don Juan, was only awaiting his time to strike at her, employed all the resources she could scrape together in providing for her own defence against her domestic opponents, leaving the frontier fortresses divested of troops and means for repelling attack from France; whilst, on the other hand, she provoked Louis by sending a Spanish contingent to co-operate with the Emperor’s troops in aiding the Dutch in their war with France; and, later, in 1673, she formed a regular alliance with the Emperor and Holland against Louis XIV. Nothing could have been more imprudent than this in the circumstances, for Spain was in a worse condition of exhaustion than ever, and the hope of beating France by force had long ago proved fallacious. The ancient appanage of Burgundy, the Franche Comté, promptly passed for ever from the dominion of Spain to that of France; and whilst the fighting in Flanders and the Catalan frontier was progressing in 1674, a new trouble assailed Mariana’s government. The island of Sicily revolted, and invited the French to assume the sovereignty, an invitation that was promptly accepted. Thirty-seven years before, when he was a mere stripling, Don Juan had recovered Naples for Spain in similar circumstances; and Mariana, almost in despair, could only beseech her enemy to leave his government at Saragossa, and take command of the Spanish-Dutch forces to attack the French in Sicily. But Don Juan, knowing her desire to get him out of the way, was determined not to allow himself to be sent far from the centre of affairs, and refused to accept the position.
His reasons were well founded, for events were passing in Mariana’s palace that rendered her more unpopular than ever; and, by the will of Philip IV., her regency would come to an end when her son attained his fifteenth year late in the next year 1675. It had been hoped that with the banishment of Nithard and the absence from the capital of Don Juan, the factions that divided the Court would have held their peace during the few years the regency lasted; and possibly this would have been the case if the Queen had been prudent. Her unwise favour to Nithard had already made her extremely unpopular, for foreign Queens in Spain were always suspect; but she had learned nothing from her favourite’s ignominious expulsion; and soon a confidant, less worthy far than Nithard, had completely captured the good graces of the Queen. This was a young gentleman of no fortune named Fernando de Valenzuela. He was one of those facile, plausible, Andaluces, a native of Ronda, who had figured so brilliantly in the Court of Philip IV. and Mariana, where the accomplishment of deftly turning amorous verse, improvising a dramatic interlude, or contriving a stinging epigram, opened a way to fortune. He had been a member of the household of the Duke of Infantado, and upon the death of the latter, had attached himself to Father Nithard, who needed the aid of such men.
Valenzuela was not only keen and clever, but extremely handsome, in the black-eyed Moorish style of beauty, for which the people of Ronda are famous, and he soon managed to gain the full confidence of both Nithard and the Queen, whom he served as a go-between and messenger, a function which he continued after the Jesuit had been expelled. He had married the Queen’s favourite half-German maid, and had been appointed a royal equerry; both of which circumstances gave a pretext for his continual presence in the palace; and at the time of the agitation against Nithard, and afterwards, he had been extremely useful in conveying to the Queen all the comments that could be picked up by sharp ears in the Calle Mayor and Liars’ Parade (the peristyle of the Church of St. Philip). It was noticed that those who spoke incautiously of the Queen in public were promptly denounced and brought to trouble, and the gossips soon pitched upon Valenzuela as the spy, calling him in consequence by the nickname, by which he was generally known, of the ‘fairy of the palace.’ The man was bold, ambitious, and unscrupulous, and soon more than occupied the place left vacant by Nithard.
Jealous nobles and courtiers looked with indignation at the rapid rise of a mere provincial adventurer to the highest places in the State. Not only was a marquisate and high commands and offices conferred upon him, but at a time when Spain was in the midst of a great international war that ended in the remodelling of the map of Europe at her expense, this favourite, without special aptitude or experience, was appointed by Mariana her universal minister for all affairs; and Valenzuela was the most powerful man in Spain. He manfully did his best though unsuccessfully, for he was cordially detested, to win popularity in an impossible position, by multiplying in Madrid the feasts and diversions its inhabitants loved, by writing comedies himself, full of wit and malice, for gratis representation in the theatres, by re-building public edifices, and generally beautifying the capital. He was surrounded, moreover, by a great crowd of parasites, mostly nobodies, like himself, who sang his praises for the plunder he could pour upon them.
But his rise was too rapid, and his origin too obscure to be easily forgiven, and a perfect deluge of satires, verses, pamphlets and flying sheets, full of gross libels upon him and the Queen, came from the secret presses and circulated throughout Spain. The general opinion was that he was the Queen’s lover as well as her minister; but Madrid was always a hotbed of scandal, and, although this may well have been true, it must be regarded as non-proven. As a specimen of the view taken of the connection by contemporaries the following description of a broad-sheet, found one morning posted on the walls of the palace, may be given. A portrait of the Queen is represented with her hand pointing to her heart, with the printed legend, ‘This is given;’ whilst Valenzuela is portrayed standing close by her side, pointing to the insignias and emblems of his many high offices, and saying, ‘These are sold.’ The favourite himself seems to have been anxious to strengthen the rumour that assigned to him the amorous affection of the widowed Queen, for at two of the Court festivals, of which he promoted many, he bore as his devices, ‘I alone have licence,’ and ‘To me alone is it allowed.’[[273]]