Charles, beset on all sides, at first told everything to Oropesa himself, but that made matters worse; and he then repeated to each party exactly what the other said, with the result that the palace itself became a hotbed of scandal, hatred, and all uncharitableness. At length Marie Anne had her way, and Charles sent for his minister with tears in his eyes and told him that his enemies had demanded his retirement. ‘They wish it,’ sobbed the unhappy man, ‘and I must agree to it:’ and then, in the deepest sorrow, he dismissed the best minister he had ever had, in obedience to a palace intrigue led by his German wife. Before Oropesa went into banishment at the end of June 1691, he sought an interview with the Queen, but was refused, and Mariana with difficulty was prevailed upon to receive her former instrument; her ungracious farewell of him being to tell him that he ought to have gone long before.[[332]]
A sort of commission of government was then formed entirely composed of men in the interests of Marie Anne; and thenceforward all method and regularity in the administration disappeared. The King referred questions submitted to him to any person who happened to be near him, and the letters of Colonel Stanhope at the time testify to the impossibility of getting any official business done at all. The country was in the midst of war; the French were masters of the best part of Catalonia, and as the English ambassador reports, the Spaniards had not 4,000 men there in all, fit for service, and in four months’ vigorous recruiting only 1,000 men could be got. A handful of men, he says, dashing down from the French frontier, could easily capture Madrid itself, as not a soldier is between the Pyrenees and the capital: and, such was the confusion, that it was dangerous to drive out a mile from the walls of Madrid for fear of violence and robbery.
Marie Anne with her camarilla was mistress of the situation, and then Mariana, when it was difficult to regain her lost power, discovered what the aims of her German daughter-in-law were. It will be recollected that Mariana’s daughter, the Infanta Margaret, Empress, had died, leaving one daughter married to the Elector of Bavaria, and it was naturally her son, the boy Prince of Bavaria, to whom Mariana had looked to inherit the Spanish crown, in default of issue to Charles, and in accordance with the will of Philip IV. Marie Anne’s mission from the Emperor and his second wife was, however, quite a different one, and aroused in Mariana the hottest indignation when she fully understood it. The plan was to put aside both the female lines descended from the daughters of Philip iv., Maria Theresa, Queen of France, and the Empress Margaret, and to claim the succession of the Emperor’s second son by his second marriage with Marie Anne’s sister, by virtue of his male descent from the Emperor Ferdinand, brother of Charles V.
Marie Anne had around her a gang of blood-suckers almost as rapacious as herself, and, so long as they were Spaniards, the people suffered in silence.[[333]] But the Queen’s most intimate councillors were Germans, who, undeterred by the fate of Nithard, vied with the Spaniards in grasping greed: and this aroused against Marie Anne the hatred of all who did not share in the booty. The strongest spirit in the Queen’s entourage was the Baroness Berlips, to whom the crowd had given the nickname of ‘the partridge,’ from a slight resemblance in her name to the name of the bird in Castilian. Another German member was one Henry Jovier, a lame man of infamous character, who had served in the Spanish army, and to these after the first few months was added the Queen’s Capuchin confessor Father Chiusa, also a German, who was brought purposely to replace the Jesuit confessor first appointed, the latter having been found not sufficiently pliant for the place.
This was the gang that principally advised the Queen in her measures, and, with a few Spanish grandees, especially the Duke of Montalto and the Admiral of Castile, practically formed the government. Mariana was treated with the greatest hauteur by her daughter-in-law, but had some of the ablest men in Spain on her side, of whom Cardinal Portocarrero was the most influential. The populace cordially hated Marie Anne, and dreaded the imperial domination of Spain which she represented; whilst she took no pains to disguise her contempt for them. Louis XIV., in describing the state of affairs shortly after this in his instructions to his ambassador, Harcourt, says: ‘The Queen has acquired such a dominion over the spirit of her husband that it may be said that she alone reigns as sovereign of Spain.... The authority of the Queen, however, is founded rather upon the fear of her anger than upon any love for her on the part of the nation. There is no people in the world so sensitive of praise as the Spaniards; and consequently none who are so much affected by contempt. The Queen professes contempt for the whole nation, and, as offensive discourse is the only revenge of those who are excluded from power, it is not surprising to hear all the evil things that the public detestation causes to be said about her. It is, however, very true that she gives plenty of reasons for the reproaches levelled against her with regard to her avidity in receiving and extorting presents; and there is no one more ingenious than she in finding excuses for appropriating everything that is most valuable in Madrid, and for amassing every day fresh treasure for herself.’[[334]]
In the spring of 1683 the King’s weakness became so alarming that the physicians almost abandoned hope, and the intrigues around him grew in intensity. The last successful effort of Marie Louise before her death had been to extract from her husband a solemn promise that he would never cede to the persuasions of Mariana to appoint a successor to the crown until he had received the last sacrament on his deathbed; and the King had managed so far to withstand all pressure put upon him to do so. The pressure was redoubled now, especially by Marie Anne, who took the opportunity of his illness to urge him to summon the Archduke Charles to Madrid, and adopt him as his successor. When the unfortunate King was wavering some one, probably Cardinal Portocarrero, warned him of the certain consequences, and whilst the hesitation continued the King partially recovered.
Whilst the Court was thus given over to discord the condition of the country grew worse and worse. The Marquis of Mancera told Stanhope that the King was only nominally sovereign of the realms of Aragon. Spain, but for the power of her allies, was absolutely defenceless, and the public distress had reached to such an extent that famine stalked unchecked through the land, and to protect the capital from depletion of food, a strict cordon was placed around it, to search every one entering or leaving the city. The Duke of Montalto had managed to ingratiate himself with the Queen sufficiently to obtain recognition as minister; and his impracticable remedy was to divide the country into four autonomous provinces, ruled by viceroys practically independent of a central government. Against this violation of the constitutions all Spain cried aloud. ‘These disasters coming so thick,’ writes Stanhope in July 1694, ‘has raised a very high ferment in the minds of people here, which expresses itself in great insolencies to the great men as they pass in the streets, and to one of the greatest even in the King’s palace: and the royal authority itself begins to lose its veneration, several scandalous pasquins being fixed in several public places, magnifying the great King of France and with very little respect to his Catholic Majesty, inasmuch as if Mr. Russell had not appeared with his squadron as he did, it is generally believed some public scandals would have followed.’
A few months later the same correspondent writes that the hatred of the public had greatly increased the strength of the faction opposed to Marie Anne, whose great influence over the King they intended to destroy; beginning if possible with the banishment of her bosom friend, Baroness Berlips. ‘This lady’s son, Baron Berlips, lately made his entry here, as envoy from the King of Poland, and as he went to his audience in the King’s coach, a company of ruffians came to the coach side giving him and his mother very ill names; one of them saying, ‘Let us kill the dog.’ Another replied, ‘Not now, for he is in the King’s coach.’ Nothing is so much talked about at present as ousting the Berlips, and then they think their monarchy safe.’
Cardinal Portocarrero, who was the Queen’s prime opponent, grew in boldness as he saw that public feeling was on his side, and both he and Mariana, when she could obtain access to her son, implored him to withstand the pressure of his termagant wife, and decline to divert the succession from that laid down by his father’s will, which made the Prince of Bavaria his heir. At the end of 1694 the Cardinal presented a formal State paper to the King, urging the expulsion of Marie Anne’s German camarilla and the royal confessor Matilla, who were ruining the country by placing and maintaining in power men utterly unworthy to administer the government. The wretched King, between the hectoring of his wife, the exhortations of his mother, the warnings of rival churchmen, and the clamours of his people, swayed first to one side, and then to the other, hating to discuss what was to take place when he was dead; yet hearing of very little else. His health, in the meanwhile, visibly declined; and all parties thought that there was no time to waste. The Queen feeling probably the need for some stronger personality near her than Berlips, and the few other inferior Germans who formed her council, soon caused herself to be reinforced by an imperial ambassador, Count Harrach, one of the ablest diplomatists in the Emperor’s service, and the party of old Mariana and her Bavarian grandson fell into the background.
Mariana, indeed, was now almost past struggling; afflicted by a mortal disease and abandoned by her physicians. She resorted, as usual, to charms and quackery of the most revolting description;[[335]] but, in spite of incantations and empirical devices, Mariana in May 1696 ended her turbulent life, leaving the question of the succession still in the balance.[[336]] With the death of the old Queen it was thought that the chance of the little Bavarian prince had disappeared; and Marie Anne pushed more energetically than ever the claims of her nephew, the Archduke Charles. Soon the King fell so seriously ill again that his life was despaired of, and the attempts of the Queen to obtain a will in the favour of the Archduke were redoubled. Like all semi-imbeciles, however, Charles, when once an idea had been drilled into his head, clung to it tenaciously; and though, for the sake of peace, he seemed to agree with his wife, he did not forget his father’s will and his mother’s injunction, that his own sister’s descendants had a better right to succeed him than a distant relative like the Archduke. Count Benavente, his lord of the bedchamber, although appointed by Marie Anne, was secretly against the Austrian; and, with his knowledge and that of Cardinal Portocarrero alone, Charles signed a secret will, appointing his great-nephew the child prince of Bavaria heir to his crown.