CHAPTER X

MORAL AND SOCIAL DECADENCE IN MADRID—PHILIP'S HABITS—POVERTY IN THE PALACE—VELAZQUEZ—THE MENINAS—BIRTH OF AN HEIR—THE CHRISTENING—THE PEACE OF THE PYRENEES—PHILIP'S JOURNEY TO THE FRONTIER—MARRIAGE OF MARIA TERESA—CAMPAIGNS IN PORTUGAL—DON JUAN—DEATH OF HARO—PHILIP BEWITCHED—DEATH OF PHILIP PROSPER—BIRTH OF CHARLES—FANSHAWE's EMBASSY—LADY FANSHAWE AND SPAIN—ROUT OF CARACENA IN PORTUGAL—PHILIP'S ILLNESS—THE INQUISITION AND WITCHCRAFT—DEATH OF PHILIP

By great good fortune there have survived descriptions and accounts of life in Philip's Court at the time of which we now write (1654-1660), so minute and so photographic in their fidelity, as to provide absolutely trustworthy material for a true comparison of the condition of affairs after five-and-twenty years of a disastrous reign, with that which had existed on the King's accession. A writer of keen observation, insatiable curiosity, ample opportunity, and much literary skill, the noble churchman and poet Jeronimo de Barrionuevo, from 1654 for several years wrote almost every week a chatty letter from Madrid to his friend the Dean of Saragossa and others, setting forth with perfect frankness everything worth recording that passed in Madrid. At the same time, an observant Hollander named Aersens van Sommerdyk visited Spain, and stayed in the capital long enough to write an account of the social and political condition of the Court as it appeared to an intelligent foreigner; whilst shortly afterwards the sparkling narrative of life in Madrid, written by the Frenchman Bonnecasse, came to confirm the impressions of the Spaniard and the Dutchman.[[1]] If we add to these Philip's own weekly letters to the nun, and the reports of the Venetian ambassadors, which are also in print, we have a mass of contemporary evidence which cannot be contradicted, especially in matters upon which all agree.

Madrid in 1655-1660

It is well that this should be so; for the picture to be presented of life in the capital of the Spains at the end of Philip's reign is so gloomy, that the historian who ventured to produce it without full contemporary warrant would be accused of bias and exaggeration. At the beginning of the reign we saw a fairly numerous class of nobles, churchmen, and officials, still rich with royal grants and government plunder; whilst the mass of the people were sunk in poverty. At the time of which we are now writing the nobles themselves had been bled to a state of bankruptcy. They and the Church were supposed to be exempt from taxation; but the demands made upon them, and especially upon the nobles, for funds for the war had ended by reducing most of them to the same poverty-stricken condition as their inferiors in rank. The financial and mercantile classes had lost all confidence; for the arbitrary seizure of their property again and again by the Government, and the crushing taxation on exports, even to Spanish colonies, had driven them to universal evasion and contraband, to the further depletion of Philip's resources.[[2]] Haro, who had a revenue of 130,000 ducats a year, and a few of his kinsmen, were still very rich, and continued to plunder all they could, though there was, indeed, little left to plunder; and in addition to these, the only people who had much ready money to spend were the colonial officials who had returned home with the booty of their offices.

The idleness and pretension of all classes in the capital had increased now to such an extent, that practically the whole of the necessary work had to be done by foreigners; there being as many as 40,000 French subjects in Madrid dressing as Spaniards, and calling themselves Burgundians or Walloons, to escape the special tax on foreigners.[[3]] By these people most crafts and callings were conducted, the Spanish working classes being occupied mainly in casual service, petty traffic, and mendicancy; whilst highway robbery and murder, even in Madrid, was so frequent as to cause no remark. The streets were more filthy and dilapidated than ever, and still the crowd of idlers on foot and in vast number of coaches, drawn by mules now, for the horses had been seized, thronged the promenades,—the Calle Mayor in the winter, the Prado and river bank in the summer; the humbler classes elbowing their social superiors with perfect effrontery, wearing swords and daggers, claiming equal respect, and, indeed, swaggering more than the nobles.

The two playhouses, which had been reopened on the King's second marriage, were crammed every day with artizans dressed in imitation or cast-off finery, and calling themselves caballeros, who had to pay from 10 to 15 sous in all for a seat;[[4]] and, whilst the fields were mostly tilled, if at all, and the urban labour was performed, by foreigners, the very cloth upon Spanish backs being made in Holland and England from Spanish wool, the native working classes still vociferously kept up the silly tradition of their own gentility, and of national potency and the overwhelming wealth of the King. The alternate appreciation and debasement of the coinage had enormously raised the price of commodities, and especially of house rent in Madrid; the houses being still low, shabby, and incommodious, for the most part, owing to the claim of the King to the first floor of every house or its equivalent in money.

But what struck foreigners, and indeed observant Spaniards, at this period, was the appalling profligacy still prevalent in Madrid. Public women almost monopolised the promenades; their shameless impudence in broad daylight having the effect of lowering the standard of behaviour, even of decent women, who thought it no insult, but rather the contrary, to be addressed in amorous terms by strange men in the street.[[5]] The women, for the most part, still went about, notwithstanding the prohibition, with shawls covering their faces except one eye, and this facilitated intrigue in all classes to a shocking extent. The Government were in despair about the utter disregard by women of the dress regulations; for the wide farthingales, stiff, extravagant wigs, and fine stuffs were worn in spite of all pragmatics, since the Queen and her ladies set the fashion; and the only persons punished were the unfortunate shopkeepers who supplied the offending things.

The whole moral situation in Spain was indeed a social problem which can only be explained by the lack of feminine influence in society at the time and previously. There had always remained a taint of Oriental tradition in the treatment of women in Spain. They had been kept in strict seclusion; they were for the most part entirely ignorant, and had never taken an equal social position with men, usually dining apart from their husbands, visiting each other in closed chairs or coaches, and spent their time squatting on the ground in circles talking trivialities or devotion, whilst the men were rarely accompanied by their woman-kind in public. It was therefore no wonder that in such a state of society as this, ladies and modest women for the most part abandoned the streets and public places to utter profligacy; and that men, free from the salutary influence exercised by the presence of good women, sank deeper and deeper into vice. Philip, under the influence of the nun, had striven hard to make his capital more decent; but the whole tide of feeling was contrary and too strong for him; whilst his own example in this respect was a very bad one, which seriously weakened his efforts. Barrionuevo, in one of his letters at this time, mentions the King as being "a fine hand at bastards, but with very poor luck as regards legitimate children"; and shortly afterwards, during one of Philip's spasmodic attempts to cleanse his capital, the same writer says: "They are arresting all the women they find wandering unoccupied about the streets, and hailing them off by tens and twenties to prison with their hands tied. The gaol is crammed full, so that they have hardly room to stand, and the house will have to be largely extended if this rigour is to go on, or vast supplies of wood will have to be laid in to burn some of them otherwise."