ISABEL DE BOURBON, FIRST WIFE OF PHILIP IV.
From a portrait by Velazquez in the possession of Edward Huth, Esq.
At a royal bull-fight—one of the earliest shows to celebrate the King's accession in the summer of 1621—the Count of Villa Mediana, Don Juan de Tassis, rode into the arena at the head of his troop of cavaliers, bearing as his device a mass of silver coins called "reals" (or royals), and above them the audacious motto of "My loves are ——," which was taken to mean, in conjunction with his daring glances and marked salutes, that his love was set upon the Queen. The Count was over forty years of age, and no beauty; and his malicious satirical verses had been aimed at everybody in Court, from the King downward. He was therefore well provided with enemies, who were ready to place the worst construction on his acts. It is now proved—as far as any such thing can be proved[[9]]—that the real object of the Count's regards was a lady named Doña Francisca de Tavara, with whom the King was carrying on an intrigue at the time. But in either case the young King's jealousy was aroused, and his annoyance was increased by an innocent remark of his wife that "Villa Mediana aimed well." "Ah!" replied Philip crossly, "but he aims too high"; and soon the ill-natured story with due embellishments was being whispered all over Madrid.[[10]]
Count de Villa Mediana
But in the following spring of 1622 there was a great series of festivals at Aranjuez, where the Court was then in residence, to celebrate Philip's seventeenth birthday. Already the glamour of the stage had seized upon Philip and his wife, and one of the attractions of the rejoicings was the representation in a temporary theatre of canvas erected amidst the trees on the "island garden," and beautifully adorned, of a comedy in verse by Count de Villa Mediana dedicated to the Queen. The comedy was called La Gloria de Niquea, and Isabel herself was to personate the goddess of beauty. It was night, and the flimsy structure of silk and canvas was brilliantly lit with wax lights when all the Court had assembled to see the show; the young King and his two brothers and sister being seated in front of the stage, and the Queen in the retiring-room behind the scenes. The prologue had been finished successfully, and the audience were awaiting the withdrawing of the curtain that screened the stage, when a piercing shriek went up from the back, and a moment afterwards a long tongue of flame licked up half the drapery before the stage, and immediately the whole place was ablaze. Panic seized upon the splendid mob, and there was a rush to escape. The King succeeded in fighting his way out with difficulty, and made his way to the back of the stage in search of his wife. In the densely wooded gardens that surrounded the blazing structure he sought for a time in vain, but at last found that Villa Mediana had been before him, and that the half-fainting figure of the Queen was lying in the Count's arms. Whatever may have been the truth of the matter, this, at all events, made a delightful bonne bouche for the scandal-mongers, who hated Villa Mediana for his atrabilious gibes, and it soon became noised abroad that the Count had planned the whole affair, and had purposely set fire to the theatre that he might gain the credit of having saved the Queen, and enjoy the satisfaction of having clasped her in his arms, if but for a moment.
Murder of Villa Mediana
Four months afterwards, in August 1622, Villa Mediana was returning home in his coach soon after dark, when, from an archway in the Calle Mayor, opposite the alley leading to the Church of St. Gines, there darted the cloaked figure of a man, who discharged at him a bolt from a crossbow which pierced his chest. The Count had just time to leap from the coach and draw his sword, shouting "It is done," when he fell dead upon the road. Villa Mediana had been noted in a splendid Court as the most splendid and extravagant courtier. Amongst men to whom gallantry was an obsession, he was looked upon as the most gallant; in a society of literary and artistic dilettanti, he was held to be the most critical and refined; and his murder, almost at his own door in the midst of the capital, caused a profound sensation. Murders in the open streets, it is true, had become scandalously frequent, mostly, it was said, prompted by private vengeance, and rarely punished; but the killing of Villa Mediana in the circumstances related set tongues wagging in a way that had not been equalled since that luckless secretary of Don Juan of Austria, Escovedo, had been assassinated nearly fifty years before by the secret orders of Philip II. As if by common consent, all fingers pointed at young King Philip as the instigator of the crime.[[11]] It was asserted that the man who struck the blow was one Alonso Mateo, a crossbowman of the King; but though hundreds affirmed it, neither he nor any other was ever prosecuted for the crime, and the immortal Lope de Vega, who firmly believed that the young Sovereign connived at the murder of the Duke of Lemos, the former minister of his father, in November 1622, only interpreted the general belief in the capital, if it was indeed he who wrote that whoever struck the fatal blow at Villa Mediana, "the impulse that guided it was sovereign."
Whilst murders such as this were of frequent occurrence in the capital, whilst war was looming daily closer, whilst industry lay ruined and the fields unproductive, whilst poverty and famine stalked unchecked through the land, the nobles and officials dependent upon the Court grew richer in plunder and more insolent in ostentation, notwithstanding the sumptuary decrees and the frantic efforts of Philip and Olivares to impose strict economy in one direction, as a counterbalance to lavish squandering in others. Almost any pretext was good enough for Philip to seize for a wasteful show. In after-times people blamed Olivares for purposely leading the lad into these frivolous extravagances, with the set object of diverting him from his duty; but I am inclined to believe that this view is an unjust one as regards the beginning of the reign. Olivares, of course, wished to please and flatter his master; but whilst he worked like a giant himself, and behind a perfect multitude of boards and juntas contrived to keep in his own hands supreme control of national affairs, he unquestionably urged Philip again and again to apply himself diligently to work and to spend less time in pleasure.[[12]]
Devotions and diversions