Spies had already carried to Marie Anne and the Admiral reports of mysterious confabulations of their enemies, but they knew not where the blow was to fall. At eleven o’clock the King usually dined; and when Marie Anne, according to custom, entered the room that morning, to sit by his side whilst he ate, she learnt for the first time from the disjointed babble of the sick man, that he was free from Matilla, and had a new confessor.[[340]] Marie Anne was aghast at the news, though she made no sign of disapproval to her husband; but the moment she could leave the King’s side, she summoned the Admiral and her other advisers, and considered the ill tidings. None knew who would be the next victim, and most of them thought that Matilla had betrayed them. Panic and bewilderment reigned amongst the chosen Camarilla. Some were for striving to reinstate Matilla, some for punishing him, others were for saving themselves by resignation and flight, but one great churchman, the head of the Franciscan order, Folch de Cardona, kept his head, and advised calmness. Matilla was exonerated and consulted; but when he learned that the Queen and the Admiral had known of Portocarrero’s meeting before the blow fell, he broke down. ‘Oh,’ he cried, ‘if I had only known one short half hour before, I could have saved us all:’ and then, though nominally pensioned and banished to Salamanca, he fell ill of grief, fever, or poison, and died within a week of his dismissal.
Diaz did not seem very terrible at first; for his methods with the King were soothing, and he moved slowly. He took Matilla’s place on the Council of the Inquisition, and at once became a power in the land; but he was all politeness and gentle saintliness to Marie Anne, and even she, suspicious as she was, began to think that she might dominate still if she could confine Father Diaz to his spiritual functions. In the course of a few weeks after the change, the Court was moved to Toledo, but there the mob, who loved the Ronquillo brothers, and hated the Queen, knowing that she had suffered a defeat, made her feel that her power was on the wane. ‘The Queen,’ writes Stanhope, ‘is very uneasy at the impudent railleries of the Toledo women, who affront her every day publicly in the streets, and insult the Admiral to his face. There is besides a great want of money; for the King’s new confessor having persuaded him before he left Madrid to publish a decree forbidding the sale of all governments and offices, either in present or reversion, as a duty of conscience ... the superintendent of the revenues declares that he is not able to find money for his Majesty’s subsistence, all branches of the revenue being anticipated for many years, and he is now debarred from selling offices, which was the only resource he had left.’
In the meanwhile, the French ambassador, Harcourt, was busy buying friends at Court, though most of old Mariana’s late adherents still preferred, as the King undoubtedly did, the Bavarian Prince. The people at large were strongly in favour of a French prince, descended from Maria Theresa, ‘though they would rather have the devil,’ as Stanhope says, ‘than see France and Spain united.... It is scarce conceivable the abhorrence they have for Vienna; most of which is owing to the Queen’s very imprudent conduct; insomuch that, in effect, that party is included in her own person and family. They have much kinder thoughts of the Bavarian, but still rather desire a French Prince to secure them against war.’
The intrigues of the French ambassador were met by increased activity on the part of the Queen, who left Charles no rest in pushing the claims of her nephew the Archduke. The poor King was sick of the whole business, and only wished to be left alone, and for his Bavarian nephew to succeed him. The King will not bear to hear talk of business of any kind, and when sometimes the Queen cannot contain herself, he bids her let him alone, and says she designs to kill him.’[[341]] A few weeks later (25th June) the English ambassador sent this vivid picture of the invalid: ‘Our gazettes here tell us every week that his Catholic Majesty is in perfect health.... It is true that he is every day abroad, but hæret lateri lethalis arundo; his ankles and knees swell again, his eyes bag, the lids are as red as scarlet, and the rest of his face a greenish yellow. His tongue is “tied,” as it is called, that is, he has such a fumbling in his speech, that those near him hardly understand him; at which he sometimes grows angry, and asks if they all be deaf.’
But, with all his feebleness, Charles still resisted the pressure upon him either to make a will or to summon the Archduke. Marie Anne was persistent; and at the end of June her importunity produced a dangerous fit that nearly ended the King’s life there and then, after which Stanhope writes: ‘There is not the least hope of this King’s recovery; and we are every night in apprehensions of hearing he is dead in the morning, though the Queen lugs him out every day, to make the people believe he is well till her designs are rife, which I rather fear will prove abortive; for, by the best information I can get of the three pretenders, her candidate is like to have the fewest votes. Upon old Count Harrach’s pressing the King to have the Archduke Charles sent for to Spain ... he gave no answer, but turning to the Queen, who was present, said laughing, “Oyga mujer, el Conde aprieta mucho” (Hark, wife, how very pressing the Count is) repeating “very pressing” several times. The French Ambassador “presses” just as much, and the Nuncio, in the Pope’s name, also for the French.’
These signs were not lost on Marie Anne, and she began to turn to the strongest side. Harcourt and his wife were charming and liberal, and had quite captivated the Madrid crowd, who cheered them wherever they went, whilst Harrach and his wife were unattractive and unpopular; but what was more important than anything else, now that Spanish resources were failing, French money was forthcoming to buy Baroness Berlips and the Queen’s German hangers-on. The Marquise of Harcourt paid assiduous court to Marie Anne, who, seeing the impossibility of her own candidate, listened, beguiled, to the clever suggestion of the French that if she would abandon the Emperor’s son, she might continue Queen of Spain by a marriage with the French prince who might succeed Charles.
For a time, in the late autumn of 1698, the French cause suffered a setback. Louis apparently considering that his chance of placing a French prince upon the throne of all the Spanish dominions in face of Europe would be impracticable, revived a scheme that he had agreed upon with the Emperor years before, when Charles was a child; namely, to partition Spain, by agreement with the maritime powers, between the three claimants: a French prince to take Naples, Sicily, and the Basque province, the Prince of Bavaria to reign in Spain itself, and Austria to be contented with Milan. This, when it was divulged, aroused the intensest indignation, not only in Spain, but in Austria and Bavaria. Harcourt and his wife lost their favour at once, and Marie Anne again leaned towards her German kinsmen. What was more important still, the King at last, under pressure which will be presently explained, made a testament declaring the Prince of Bavaria his heir. Marie Anne, the King himself, and the Council, all denied it; but it was soon known to be true, and the French ambassador immediately presented a demand that Cortes should be summoned to settle the succession by vote.
Suddenly, whilst this demand was being laboriously discussed, the news came that the little Bavarian prince, the only descendant of old Mariana except the King, had died, aged six—of poison it was said, in February 1699; and the problem of the succession was changed in a moment. Bribed and cajoled by hopes of remaining Queen of Spain by a second marriage, Marie Anne again seemed inclined to side with those who had been her enemies. Most of the partisans of the Bavarian claimant, including the King himself, and especially Portocarrero, went over to the French view; and the principal reason why Marie Anne held herself in doubt was because she saw those whom she hated all ranged on the side of France.
Whilst this sordid bickering was going on in the palace the distress in the country increased daily, until famine invaded even the capital. The new confessor and Cardinal Portocarrero had, as yet, made no great change in the government; and Marie Anne’s friends were still in office, headed by Oropesa and the Admiral. Ronquillo and his fellow-conspirators were growing impatient for their reward, and incited secretly by their agents, the populace of Madrid broke into revolt in April 1699. A howling mob surrounded the palace, crying for bread. ‘Long live the King, and death to Oropesa,’ was the cry. Inside the palace panic reigned supreme, and poor Charles was like to die with fright, when the rabble demanded fiercely that he should show himself upon the balcony. Marie Anne appeared at the open window undaunted, and told the crowd that the King was asleep. ‘He has slept too long,’ was the reply, ‘wake him’; and at last the King had to appear, looking, as Stanhope says, like a ghost, and moving as if by clock work. Ronquillo! Ronquillo! shouted the mob. We will have Ronquillo for mayor: and in a hurry Ronquillo was sent for and sworn in as mayor, which somewhat appeased the insurgents, who bore him off in triumph. Oropesa’s palace was ablaze, and a rush upon it by the mob had resulted in many of the latter being killed, and cast into a well within the precincts by Oropesa’s servants. Further enraged at this, the populace surged en masse to the King’s palace, clamouring for the heads of Oropesa and the Admiral; and they were with difficulty restrained from invading the royal apartments by the clergy, with raised crucifixes and holy symbols. Again they demanded the presence of the King, who told them that Ronquillo had orders to do everything to satisfy them, and promised, on his oath as a King, that the insurgents should be held harmless for the tumult.
A clean sweep was made of Marie Anne’s friends. The Admiral fled to hiding; and Portocarrero declared that within a week or two he would have Berlips, the Capuchin confessor of the Queen, and the whole gang cleared out of Spain. The day after the tumult Stanhope wrote: ‘The King is very weak, and declines fast. The tumult yesterday, I fear, may have some ill-effect further on his health. It was such as the like never before happened in Madrid in the memory of the oldest men here, and proves, contrary to what they brag of, that there is a mob here as well as in other places.’ The whole aspect of the palace changed as if by magic, and Cardinal Portocarrero was supreme. Marie Anne, cowed by the violence and vituperation of the mob, was glad to lie low, and did not attempt to influence the King, whose health declined every day.