Queens of old Spain

by Martin A. S. Hume

At Bayonne, Marie Anne lived in retirement for nine years, when a strange revolution of fortune’s wheel brought her back to Spain again triumphant. In the stately Morisco Palace at Guadalajara, Marie Anne passed in affluent dignity the last twenty-six years of life in widowhood, and died in 1740. She lived to see Spain rise from its ashes, a new nation, purged by the fires of war; purified by heroism and sacrifice. The long duel between the Empire and France for the possession of the resources of Spain had ended before the death of Marie Anne in the successful reassertion of Spain to the possession of her own resources. Rulers, men and women, had blindly and ignorantly done their worst; pride, bigotry, and sloth had dominated for centuries the spirit of the nation, as a result of the action which alone had caused Spain to bulk so big in the eyes of the world, and then to sink so low. But at last the evil nightmare of the house of Austria was shaken off, and when the aged widow of Charles II. passed to her rest at Guadalajara, Spaniards were awakening to the stirring message, that Spain might be happier and more truly great in national concentration than when the men-at-arms of the Austrian Philips squandered blood and treasure beyond count, to uphold in foreign lands an impossible pretension, born of ambitions as dead as those who first conceived them.

EPILOGUE

Fire and sword swept Spain clean. The long drawn war of succession broke down much of the old exclusiveness and conceit which had been for two centuries the bane of the Spanish people, and a new patriotic spirit was aroused which proved that the nation was not effete but only drugged. The accession of Philip V. had been looked upon by his grandfather as practically annexing Spain to France. ‘Il n’y a plus de Pyrénées,’ he announced; and his first act proved his determination of treating his grandson’s realm as a vassal state of his own. Again it was to a large extent the influence of women which directed the course of Spanish politics, even to the confusion of the roi soleil. It has been shown in this history how often feminine influence had been invoked by statesmen to bring Spain to a sympathetic line of policy for their own ends, and how often circumstances had rendered their efforts ineffectual.

The confident anticipations of Louis XIV. that, by rightly choosing his feminine instruments he might use Spain entirely for the aggrandisement of France, were even more conspicuously defeated than any previous attempts had been in a similar direction; for the ladies upon whom he depended were one after the other caught up by the chivalrous patriotism of the Spanish people, newly aroused from the bad dream of a hundred years, and boldly braving Louis, they did their best for Spain and for their own ends, whether France benefited or not.

The bride that Louis chose for his grandson was one from whom no resistance could be expected. She was a mere child, under fifteen, Maria Louisa Gabriela of Savoy, daughter of Victor Amadeus and Anne Marie of Orleans, sister of that Marie Louise, Queen of Spain, whose life has been told in detail in these pages. In September 1701 young Philip went to meet his bride at Barcelona; and even thus early it was seen that he had to face a coalition of all Europe against him. Revolt had been stirred up in Naples; and Philip had hardly time to snatch a brief honeymoon before he was obliged to hurry away to Italy to fight for his crown; leaving the girl whom he had married to rule Spain in his absence and to marshal the elements of defence in a country utterly prostrate and disorganised. Maria Louisa was, of course, entirely inexperienced, but she came of a stout race and never flinched from the responsibilities cast upon her. The young married couple were already deeply in love with each other; and Philip, though only seventeen, had thus early begun to show the strange uxoriousness that in later life became an obsession which made him a mere appanage of the woman by his side; so that Maria Louisa began her strenuous life assured that she would meet with no captious opposition from her husband.

Louis XIV. and Mme. de Maintenon had placed by her side a far stronger personality than Philip; one of the greatest women of her century, whose mission it was to keep the young King and Queen of Spain in the narrow path of French interests. Anne Marie de la Tremouille, Duchess of Bracciano, whom the Spaniards called the Princess of Ursinos, took charge of the young Queen at once when the Piedmontese household was dismissed at the frontier; and through the most troublous period of the great struggle which finally gave the throne to Philip, she ruled the rulers gently, wisely and firmly for their own interests and those of Spain. No cantankerous straitlaced Mistress of the Robes was she, such as the Duchess of Terranova who had embittered the life of the other Marie Louise, but a great lady full of wit and knowledge, and as brave as a lioness in defence of the best interests of those in her charge.

The young Queen herself, when she had been installed in the capital as Regent, showed how changed were the circumstances of a Queen of Spain, now that the dull gloom of the house of Austria had been swept away, and a new Spain was gazing towards the dawn. Nothing could exceed the diligence and ability of this girl of fifteen in administering the government of Madrid in the absence of the new King. Instead of the dull round of devotion and frivolity which had filled the lives of other Queen Consorts, she, with the wise old Princess at her side, worked incessantly. She would sign nothing she did not understand: she insisted upon all complaints being investigated, and reports made direct to her. Supplies of men and money for the war in which Philip was already plunged in Italy, were collected and remitted with an activity and regularity which filled old-fashioned Spaniards with surprise, and encouraged those who possessed means to contribute from their hoards resources previously unsuspected. The manners of the Court were reformed; immorality and vice, so long rampant in Madrid, was frowned at and discouraged; and, instead of allowing the news of the wars in which the King was engaged to filter slowly and incorrectly from the palace to the gossips of the street, the Queen herself read aloud from a balcony to the people below the despatches she daily received from her husband.

All this was enough to make the old Queen Consorts of Spain turn with horror in their porphyry urns at the Escorial; but it came like a breeze of pure mountain air into the miasmatic apathy which had hitherto cloaked the capital; and all Spain plucked up heart and spirit from the energy of this girl of fifteen, with the wise old Frenchwoman behind her. But even they could only administer things as they found them, and the root of the governmental system itself was vicious. Time, and above all knowledge, was required to re-organise the country; and Spaniards grew restive at the foreign auspices under which the reforms were introduced. Maria Louisa and her husband well knew that without French support liberally given, they could never hold their own: for when the King returned to Madrid early in 1703, the Spaniards, who had belonged to the Austrian party in the last reign, had thrown off the mask and fled to join the enemy: and it was clear that no Spaniards would fight to make Spain a dependency of France.

Nothing less than this would satisfy Louis XIV.; and the Princess of Ursinos, who had tried to make the struggle a patriotic one for Spaniards, was warned from Paris that, unless she immediately retired from the country, King Louis would abandon Spain and his grandson to their fate. The Princess went into exile with a heavy heart, and the new French ambassador, Grammont, came when she had departed in 1704, instructed to make a clean sweep of all the national party in Madrid, and to obtain control for the French ministers. But Louis XIV. had underrated the power and ability of Maria Louisa, who resented the contemptuous dismissal of her wise mentor, and took no pains to conceal her opposition to the change. Louis sent scolding letters to her, berating her for her presumption in wishing, ‘at the age of eighteen to govern a vast disorganised monarchy,’ against the advice of those so much more experienced than herself. But at last he had to recognise that this girl, with the best part of Spain behind her, held the stronger position; and he took the wise course of conciliating her by re-enlisting and restoring to Spain the offended Princess of Ursinos. In vain his representatives in Madrid assured him that neither the Princess nor the Queen could be trusted to serve French interests blindly. The two women were too clever and too firm to be ignored, and the Princess returned to Madrid in triumph in August 1705, with carte blanche from Louis to do as she judged best to save Spain for the house of Bourbon, at all events.

Thenceforward the Mistress of the Robes governed the Queen, the Queen governed the King, and the King was supposed to govern the country; plunged in war at home and abroad, with the Spanish nobles either on the side of the Austrian or sullen at the foreign influence which pervaded the government measures, even when moderated and held in check by the Princess of Ursinos. At length, when the long war was wearing itself out, and peace was in the air, the stout-hearted little Savoyarde fell sick. She had borne many children to her husband, but only two sons, so far, had lived, Louis, born in 1707, and Ferdinand, born late in 1713. The birth of the latter heralded his mothers death. She had not spared herself in all the strenuous thirteen years of war and tumult, during which she had to a great extent governed Spain; for Philip, when not absent in the field, was an obedient husband; and now, at the dawn of a period of peace at the beginning of 1714, Maria Louisa died at the age of twenty-six.