Almost simultaneously with the death of Marie Louise an event happened which to a large extent altered the political balance of Europe, and placed at further disadvantage the French partisans in Madrid. The Prince of Orange had surprised the world by becoming King of England, practically without opposition. It was no longer a shifty Stuart with French sympathies and an itching palm for the bribes of Louis who directed the policy of Great Britain, but a prince whose very existence was bound up in the exclusion of France from Flanders; a prince, moreover, under whom England and Holland were for the first time really united. The coalition against Louis was infinitely strengthened thereby, and Spain, with Mariana at the helm, was now less likely than ever to shirk the fulfilment of her obligations under the Treaty of Augsburg. Madrid thereafter became for a time a prime centre of international intrigues, aimed at the exclusion of French interest from the Peninsula. Charles had no personal desire to marry again. He was afraid of fresh people about him; he was overborne with the responsibilities of his great position, and, although he was only twenty-eight, his feeble powers of mind and body were already on the wane. Left to himself, he would have desired nothing but to throw up matrimony as a failure, so far as he was concerned, and live in peace, after his own fashion, until on his deathbed he left his realm to an heir of his own choosing.
But the antagonistic factions that divided his Court between them decided that such a course was quite impossible. It could hardly have been with the hope, as they professed, that issue would be more likely from a second marriage than it had been from the first, for Charles had been really enamoured with Marie Louise, who had been his consort during the best period of such vigour as he ever possessed. It is more likely that the haste to get him married was prompted by the desire of the intriguers to have by his side, when he was called upon to settle the succession, a wife favourable to the views of the dominant party. Badgered and pestered on all sides, the poor creature, always anxious to do what he was told was his duty, consented to take another wife.
The opponents of the German interest at first suggested a princess of Portugal, but Mariana and her friends took care that the negotiations should fall through; and, at the Queen-Mother’s instance, Charles consented to leave the choice of a fit bride for him to his uncle and brother-in-law, the Emperor Leopold. The latter, who had only one daughter by his first wife the Infanta Margarita, Mariana’s daughter, had married as his second wife, by whom he had sons, Eleanor of Neuburg-Bavaria, daughter of the Elector Palatine, Duke of Neuburg. This lady had a sister of twenty-two, Marie Anne of Neuburg; and upon her the choice of the Emperor fell to be the wife of Charles II., King of Spain.
Three months after Marie Louise died the marriage treaty was signed; and on the 18th August 1689, late at night in the quaint Bavarian town of Neuburg on the Danube, the tall, angular girl with hard eyes and mouth, was led by the Spanish ambassador through the bedizened throng of princes and princesses of Austria, Bavaria and Hesse, who crowded the church of the Jesuits, to be wedded to her nephew, the young King of Hungary, the Emperor’s heir, as proxy for the King of Spain, the officiating priest being her brother, Prince Alexander. The marriage was regarded by all Europe as a pledge that thenceforward Spain would be firmly united with the Germanic interests against Louis XIV., and the challenge was promptly accepted by the French King. Thenceforward, for seven years, all Europe was at war; and Spain, which only needed rest, was forced not only to waste blood and treasure upon foreign fields, but to fight for the integrity of its own soil in Catalonia, North Africa and America.
England, under the Dutch King, had taken an active part in promoting an alliance which drew Spain closer to the Teutonic league; and only an English fleet was available to convey the new Queen of Spain in safety to her husband’s realm. Through Cologne and Rotterdam, Marie Anne and her train of Germans slowly travelled to Flushing in the late autumn of 1689, costly jewels meeting her as gifts, now from her husband, now from her gratified mother-in-law, who regarded her coming as a triumph for herself.[[327]] At Flushing a powerful English fleet, under Admiral Russell, awaited the bride; and after much delay, and not a few mishaps, the squadron sailed for Spain late in January 1690. The intention had been to land the Queen at the port of Santander; and her Spanish household was on the road thither to receive her, when news reached them that Corunna had been chosen as a better harbour, and to the extreme north-west corner of Spain they wended their way. Bad weather, as is not unusual in the Bay of Biscay in mid-winter, made the voyage of the Queen a dangerous and difficult one; and on approaching Corunna it was found that the storm was too violent for the ships to enter. Colonel Stanhope, the English ambassador, who accompanied the Queen to Spain, says:[[328]] ‘We were forced into a small port called Ferrol, three leagues short of the Groyne (i.e., Corunna), and by the ignorance of a Spanish pilot our ships fell foul one with another, and the admiral’s ship was aground for some hours, but got off clear without any damage.’
To Ferrol came hurrying the Spanish household from Corunna, with the inevitable Mansfeldt, all not a little ruffled at this game of hide-and-seek with the German Queen in the most inclement season of the year; and at length, on the 6th April, after nearly a fortnight’s stay on board of Russell’s ship in the harbour of Ferrol, Marie Anne and a great train of German, English and Spanish attendants landed in the barges of the English squadron, whose decorations and the smartness of the oarsmen aroused the surprised admiration of the Spaniards.[[329]] Though the officials did their best to give Marie Anne a stately welcome at Corunna, and the Count de Lemos entertained her and her Court at a splendid festival at his house at Puente de Ume, all was not harmonious. The general feeling in Spain was against the German connection, and especially against the ruinous war with France that it entailed, and Count Mansfeldt, the imperial ambassador, was especially detested. The people at large firmly believed that he had connived at the poisoning of Marie Louise, and his overbearing manners had offended the courtiers.
‘I find,’ writes Stanhope, ‘that the Queen’s reception has been much meaner than it would have been out of a pique the Spanish grandees have against Count Mansfeldt, who was preferred before them all to the honour of bringing her over, by the favour of the Queen-Mother and contrary to the advice of the Council of Castile.’[[330]] Nor did the demeanour of Marie Anne mend matters, for, even thus early, her stiff imperious manner and her hasty temper struck a chill in the hearts of the Spaniards, who place so high a value upon an amiable exterior. Dressed in the traditional Spanish garb, which suited her unbending mien, the Queen sat unmoved at the bullfights, tourneys, masquerades and other festivities offered in her honour by the storied cities through which she passed on her way to Valladolid. Nobles who knelt to greet her received but a cold recognition of their compliments, and the cheers of the populace awoke no smile of gratification upon the lips of Marie Anne of Neuburg.
Charles was not an eager wooer this time, and awaited calmly the coming of his new wife to Valladolid. On Ascension Day, 4th May 1690, he first met his bride. There was little or no pretence of affection on either side; but from the first Marie Anne took the lead and imposed her will upon her husband. The marriage feasts at Valladolid and the stereotyped gaieties that throughout Spain celebrated the marriage, pleased the thoughtless, but the more reflecting knew that the war for which Spain was being again squeezed dry by every empirical resource that ingenuity and ignorance of finance could devise, was a direct result of the series of alliances that the German marriage cemented, and many were the whispered curses uttered against the boorish Germans and Englishmen, who were not only disrespectful, but heretics to boot. With exactly the same ceremonial as had marked the entry of the beautiful Marie Louise into the capital ten years before, Marie Anne rode from the Buen Retiro to the old Alcazar through the crowded streets, on the 22nd May 1690. Again, behind the half-closed jalousies, in the house of Count Oñate in the Calle Mayor, over against the church of St. Philip, Charles II. and his mother, growing visibly old now, witnessed the passing of the new Queen.
The triumph of Mariana at the coming of a German bride for her son was short lived. The time that Marie Anne had spent at the Buen Retiro previous to the State entry had been sufficient to show the mother-in-law that she had met her match, and that here there was no gentle, submissive, young creature—no thoughtless beauty who would ruin herself if encouraged to go her own way, like poor Marie Louise—but a hard, passionate woman, who was determined, whatever happened to Spain, to make the best of her opportunities for her own advantage. Mariana, in accordance with her usual policy, endeavoured at first to co-operate harmoniously with her daughter-in-law, in order to gain predominance in the partnership afterwards. The sole minister, Oropesa, had done his best to relieve the suffering country, and his financial reforms had effected some improvement; but with the renewal of the war on land and sea, the economies were soon swallowed up, and the penury became as pressing as ever. The minister’s subordinates were rapacious and corrupt to an extent unexampled even in Spain, and offices, dignities, titles, and pensions were openly put up to the highest bidder. Oropesa, though fairly honest himself, had an ambitious, greedy wife, who increased his unpopularity; and when Marie Anne arrived in Madrid, the party inimical to the minister was already powerful.
Mariana had been Oropesa’s patron, but when the new Queen, for whose aims it was necessary to form a party in Spain, sided with the enemies of the minister, Mariana dared not take the unpopular and weaker side, and reluctantly agreed with her daughter-in-law that Oropesa and the corrupt crew that followed him should be deposed. Their principal abettors were the King’s confessor, Father Matilla, the Archbishops of Toledo (Cardinal Portocarrero) and Saragossa, the Constable of Castile, and the Secretary of State, Lira, formerly a creature of Oropesa. Marie Anne and the confessor gave the poor King no rest. Charles was deeply attached to Oropesa; he dreaded new people about him; and for a time he refused to dismiss his minister. Marie Anne suffered, when contradicted, from hysterical nervous crises, that were said to threaten her life, and every one, from her husband downward, went in mortal fear of provoking an attack by saying anything displeasing to her.[[331]] The confessor Matilla finally threatened the King that he would not give him absolution, unless he did his duty to the country by dismissing Oropesa.