But when there was a talk of the Duchess of Albuquerque, then Mariana took an interest in the matter at once, and agreed with Medina Celi that she would be an ideal person for Mistress of the Robes. But, of all the ladies at Court, the Duchess of Albuquerque was the one that Marie Louise disliked most. She might struggle as she liked, however, she soon found that without Mariana’s goodwill no one could gain a footing in the palace, and she was almost tempted to beg the Duchess of Terranova to stay by her side, especially as the King himself was opposed to the Duchess of Albuquerque. It ended, of course, in Mariana having her way. She bullied her son into making the appointment, and into dismissing the people who, she said, had ruled him for a year, the Duchess of Terranova and his friend Eguia. Unbending to the last, the old Duchess, when she took leave of the Queen, noticed that the latter was crying now that the parting had come, and she told her that it was not proper for a Queen of Spain to weep for so small a matter. Marie Louise, half regretting the change now that it was too late, asked the Duchess of Terranova to come and see her sometimes. ‘I will never set foot in the palace again, as long as I live,’ replied the proud lady, violently banging the table and tearing her fan to bits; and she went forth in high dudgeon, refusing all the honours and rewards offered to her.
With her departure the outlook for Marie Louise changed like a charm. The new Mistress of the Robes had always been considered as austere as her predecessor, for which reason the young Queen had feared her. But she came to her new office all sweetness. The Queen was allowed to sit up until half-past ten at night, an unheard of thing before; she might mount her saddle horses and ride whenever she pleased, as no previous Queen Consort had ever done, and the King, on the persuasion of his mother and the new Duchess of the Robes, positively urged his wife to divert herself in pastimes that had previously been rigorously forbidden.[[310]] The change in the King was extraordinary, and proves the complete domination of his mother over his weak spirit when she pleased to exert her power. Mme. Villars happened to visit the Queen two days after the Duchess of Albuquerque assumed office; and as she entered the Queen’s apartment Marie Louise ran smiling up to her in joy, crying: ‘You will say yes to what I am going to ask you, will you not?’ The demand turned out to be that, by the King’s special wish, Mme. Villars’s daughter should enter the Queen’s household as a maid of honour; and Marie Louise, at the idea of having a French girl of her own age always near her, was transported with delight. The appointment was sanctioned and gazetted, but never took effect, for Villars could not afford to endow his daughter sufficiently well, and relations soon grew bitter again; but that Charles, who hated the French, and especially Mme. Villars, should ever have consented to it proves how complete the sudden change of scene was.
Encouraged by her new liberty, Marie Louise began to take a keener interest in public affairs, always playing, as can now be clearly seen, the game of those who were bent upon her ruin. Medina Celi had been cleverly diverted by Mariana, who had been ostensibly friendly with him, whilst the councils and secretariats had been gradually packed with her friends; and Marie Louise, prompted by her, took the opportunity of the opposition offered by the minister to the stay of the Court at Aranjuez, to set her husband against Medina Celi, after which, both she and her mother-in-law, into whose hands she played, both worked incessantly to undermine the minister who was already unpopular, owing to the terrible distress in the country and his own ineptitude. The minister and his henchman Eguia, and the King’s confessor, retaliated effectively by sowing jealous distrust between Mariana and her daughter-in-law, and between the King and his wife and mother; and thenceforward complete disunion existed between them all. Mariana, in disgust at her son’s weakness, and knowing that events were tending her way, stood aloof for a time; Marie Louise went her own gait, making no friends and possessing no party; and the inept Charles, alternately petulant and sulky, distrusted everybody.
Villars writes of Marie Louise at this juncture: ‘She, with her youth and beauty, full of life and vivacity, was not of an age or character disposed to enter into the views and application necessary for her proper conduct. Her bent for liberty and pleasure, the memories of France and all she had left behind her there, had made Spain intolerable to her. The captivity of the palace, the ennui of idleness without amusement, the coarse low manners of the King, the unpleasantness of his person, his sulky humour, which she increased frequently by her lack of amiability towards him, all nourished her aversion and unhappiness. She took interest in nothing, and would take no measure, either for the present or the future; and so, putting aside all that Spain could give her, she only consoled herself with the idea of returning to France. She entertained this idea, encouraged by predictions and chimeras which formed her only amusement, for everything else bored her.’[[311]]
In her despairing knowledge that she could never hope for happiness in Spain, Marie Louise thus grew reckless. She had no ambition to rule except in the heart of the man she loved; she was not clever enough to succeed in the subtle political intrigues that went on around her; she knew now that motherhood was hardly to be hoped for with such a husband as hers, and her one thought was of the joy of living in France. As the political relations between France and Spain grew constantly more strained and Charles’s detestation of Frenchmen increased, the visits of Mme. Villars to Marie Louise perforce grew rarer, for the suspicious King had got into his head that the French ambassadress was serving as an intermediary in the palace intrigues which were setting everybody by the ears. Marie Louise made matters worse by turning to her widowed nurse Mme. Quantin, and her inferior French maid. Quantin was a greedy, meddlesome woman, of low rank, who put up her influence over the Queen for sale, and soon embroiled matters beyond repair.
The Queen, under the influence of this woman, lost what little discretion and prudence she possessed. The many poor French people in the town, to whom Quantin and the other French maids were known, would congregate beneath their apartments in the palace to gossip of France, tell the news, and perhaps to beg for favours; and Marie Louise would sometimes be imprudent enough to approach the windows and exchange words with her countrymen below. Spaniards who saw it—for jealous eyes watched the Queen always—cried shame upon such a derogation from the dignity of Spanish royalty, and the scandalmongers of the capital already began to whisper that the ‘Frenchwoman,’ who would not play the part properly, and gave no signs of motherhood, might be put aside in favour of another Queen. In the Calle Mayor, a punning verse passed from hand to hand reproaching her for her sterility, and demanding in ribald rhyme that she should either give an heir to Spain, or return whence she came; and thus, as war loomed ever nearer between her two countries, the lot of the unhappy Queen grew darker.
Villars began to see that he had been misled in condemning the hard rule of the Duchess of Terranova, and aiding the Queen to gain the freedom advocated for her by the amiable Mariana. ‘It was a great misfortune for the Queen,’ he wrote, ‘who now abandoned herself without restraint to a dangerous line of conduct, and it is quite a question, judging by results, whether the hard severity of the Duchess of Terranova was not better for her than the weak complaisance of the Duchess of Albuquerque.’[[312]] The poor misguided girl had not a single friend. Mariana kept away; for things were going admirably from her point of view; and a new alliance between Spain and the empire and other powers, against the threatened encroachments of France, was already being discussed in secret.
The Minister, Medina Celi, had succeeded, by means of Eguia and the King’s confessor, in re-establishing his position by arousing the jealousy of all the three members of the royal family against each other; and he sought further to isolate and discredit Marie Louise by whispering to the King that her friend Mme. Villars was engaged in political intrigue with the Queen to the detriment of Spain. Mme. Villars had been specially authorised to visit the Queen as much as possible, and report fully all she heard for the information of the French government; but it is certain that she had no political mission. Charles, however, was childishly jealous of her because his wife liked her, and he instructed the Marquis de la Fuente, his ambassador in France, to demand the recall of Villars in consequence of his wife’s indiscretion. Louis XIV. knew his kinsman well, and the real reason for his demand: but it was part of his policy just then to reassure the Spanish King, and Villars was sacrificed. In the ambassador’s letter of recall, Louis writes, after saying that Charles had complained of the intrigues of Mme. Villars: ‘It is useless to inform you of all the details ... it will suffice to say that, for many reasons affecting my service, I have not thought fit to refuse the King of Spain this mark of my complaisance, however satisfied I may be of the services you have rendered in the post you occupy.’
Both Villars and his wife disdained to justify themselves by a single word, and the ambassadress left Madrid in the summer of 1681, to the despair of Marie Louise; whilst Villars himself was replaced by another ambassador early in 1682. By this time the empire was at war with France. Louis had captured Strasbourg, and Casale in Savoy on the same day (30th September 1681), and Germany seemed almost at the mercy of the now dominant power in Europe. The imperial ambassador at Madrid, supported strongly by Mariana, was striving his utmost to draw Spain into the great war that seemed inevitable, and Holland and England, jealous of the aggression of France, were for a time apparently willing to join Spain. But the clever diplomacy of Louis diverted the powers from the alliance, except the empire and bankrupt Spain; and the sorely reduced Flemish dominion of Spain was again invaded by French troops. Luxembourg, which belonged to Spain, was besieged, the cities of Dixmunde and Courtrai were captured (November 1683), and with every fresh victory of the French, Louis became more exacting. Finally, when the unfortunate country could resist no longer, the government of Charles was forced to accept the humiliating terms of the Treaty of Ratisbon in June 1684, by which Luxembourg, the well-nigh impregnable fortress, was lost to Spain for ever, whilst Louis also kept Strasbourg, Bovines, Chimay, and Beaumont. Other smaller potentates, like the Elector of Brandenburg and the Regent of Portugal, following the example of the great Louis, hectored Spain into degrading concessions, whilst pestilence swept through the south, floods ruined Spanish Flanders, hurricanes sank the silver fleets, upon which the government of Charles largely depended, corruption lorded over all in stark desolate Spain; and the cretin King, growing more feeble in mind and body, mumbled his prayers, or played childish games with his wife or his dwarfs.
During the war, which further despoiled the land of her adoption, the lot of Marie Louise was truly pitiable. Even before it broke out, and during the period of acrimonious recriminatory claims which followed the recall of Villars, her isolation and impotence and the growing power of Mariana were plainly evident. In the instructions given by Louis XIV. to his new ambassador, Vanguyon,[[313]] in 1682, the latter is instructed to visit the Queen-Mother first, with all sorts of amiable messages, and Marie Louise is only to be addressed ‘in general terms,’ and asked to do her best to maintain good relations between the two countries. Mariana, indeed, with the imperial ambassador, Mansfeldt, constantly at her side, had by the mere force of circumstances and her own character gradually again become the principal controlling power of the State, and, as usual, she directed her influence not to the benefit of Spain but to the aid of the empire in its secular struggle against the encroachments of France. When the war, as already mentioned, broke out (1683) with France, the underhand intrigues of Mariana and the Austrian faction to discredit Marie Louise and destroy any political influence she might have over her husband, were powerfully aided by the general feeling against everything French; and the young Queen, without a single friend near her, was more sorely beset than ever by her relentless enemies, whilst she, perplexed with intrigues that she did not understand, surrounded by people who would willingly have followed her if she had had wit enough to lead them, threw away her chance by the frivolity and imprudence of her behaviour.[[314]]