The Court of Philip IV.: Spain in Decadence

by Martin A. S. Hume

Philip and the Valencians

But in the meanwhile a much more serious conflict had taken place between the King and the offended Cortes of Valencia at Monzon. There for weeks the King was kept waiting. The clergy and popular estates were bribed and frightened into promising to vote the amount demanded; but, deaf to the King's anger and the violent threats of Olivares, the landed gentlemen's estate obstinately stood out. The expulsion of the Moriscos, their best tenants, they said, had ruined them, and they could not pay. Philip, in a formal document, almost raved at their obstinacy, and on one occasion said that there could not have been loyal gentlemen amongst them, or they would have stabbed a particularly bold speaker who advocated resistance. It was necessary that the three estates should vote together, and that the decision should be unanimous; and at length, in the face of open threats, the vote was cast as the King demanded, with the exception that one member, Don Francisco Millan, obstinately held out. He ought to be garroted, said one of Philip's secretaries, and at the alarmed persuasion of his colleagues he gave way. But then other difficulties were raised. The estates could not agree amongst themselves as to their shares of the vote, but after much wrangling promised to contribute in material, but not in money, one half as much as the Aragonese paid. This did not suit Philip, and fresh trouble, more acute than ever, arose. The Cortes asked the King to stay in Monzon twelve days more, whilst the Cortes remained in legislative session; to which request the King replied by a haughty intimation that he should leave next day, and that the matter of the vote of supply must be settled within half an hour, which, taking out his watch, he told the deputation had already begun. This message fell like a thunderbolt upon the Cortes, which had not yet even discussed any legislation. Some were for defiance, and an immediate dissolution of the assembly without voting or discussion on any subject. All night long they sat, considering this grave crisis in their national history, and at six in the morning a messenger from the King entered the chamber, and told the members that his Majesty had decided to punish them by abolishing their famous right of nemine discrepante, by which no vote of supply could be enforced unless it was unanimous. In future, he said, a bare majority would suffice, and he was leaving for Barcelona at once.

This was illegal and unconstitutional, and the Valencians never forgave it, but, rather than enter then upon the new path of open rebellion—up to that time an unheard-of thing in Spain since the loss of Castilian legislative power at Villalar a hundred years before—the Cortes of Valencia gave way, and at the stern order of the King voted the supply unconditionally and unanimously; after which the members were expelled the chamber, and sooner or later an armed struggle between the regal Castilian power and the Parliament of Valencia was rendered inevitable. This was the first result of Olivares' attempt to override sentiment and ancient constitutional rights.

Philip and the Catalans

Far more serious in the long run was the conflict in the stubborn Cortes of Catalonia. Even before the King made his splendid state entry into Barcelona, the dissensions amongst the nobles in immediate attendance upon him had come at last to an open quarrel. The proud nobles of ancient title looked down upon the new grandeeship of Olivares, and his insolence had deeply wounded them. The matter came to a head upon a trivial point. The King's coach had been occupied by Philip and his brother Carlos, Olivares, as first minister and lord chamberlain, the Admiral of Castile as the senior official grandee by hereditary right, with the Marquis of Heliche, Olivares' young son-in-law, and the Marquis of Carpio, another relative of the Count-Duke and acting master of the horse. The party was to pass the night before entering Barcelona at the house of the Duke of Cardona, the proudest of Catalan nobles; and when they were setting out in the morning the King called for his host Cardona to accompany him in his coach. The Admiral of Castile, determined not to be ousted, pushing forward, took his place in the coach and refused to move or make way for Cardona; whereupon the King, in a rage, rebuked the admiral roughly. To make matters worse, the admiral and his friends at once threw the blame upon Olivares, and the latter, feigning an attack of gout, sulked and ostentatiously absented himself from the solemnities of Holy Week in Barcelona. The King thereupon appointed young Heliche to replace his father-in-law at court, and consequently to take precedence of the admiral. This was too much, and the proud noble gave the King a bit of his mind about his favourite, and ended by flinging his key, the insignia of office as chamberlain, upon the table, resigned his Court appointment, and went off to Madrid in a towering rage, there to be placed under arrest and to suffer all sorts of investigations and humiliations.[[29]]

After the splendours and plausibilities of Barcelona,[[30]] the change to the hard-fisted Cortes at Lerida was a shock to the King and his minister. There was no hesitation in the demand of the Catalan Cortes that they must be heard before they would vote anything at all, and they were more inclined to ask the King to repay them what they had advanced to him than to grant him more money. The tone of Philip towards them at first was supplicatory, for they were rich, strong, and united. Mildness, however, was wasted upon the Catalans, and the private meetings of the members and other signs of resistance were considered to be dangerous. Olivares began to threaten, and gave them three days to pass the vote, but the Catalans were still unmoved. Then the Count-Duke, in a panic of fear, suddenly and without notice hurried Philip back to Madrid (May 1626). The Catalans, when he was gone, frightened in their turn, voted what was asked for, but all grace in the act was gone, and a deep chasm thenceforward existed between the eastern realms and the King's favourite in a hurry, who had tried to undermine their ancient liberties.

The independent parliaments

Philip from Madrid tried to appease the Aragonese by voluntarily reducing the contribution they had at length voted; but the result of his journey left not only resentment in the hearts of his non-Castilian subjects, but led to outrageous raids of angry Castilian soldiery into Aragon, and aroused in the King himself a bitter feeling towards the peoples who had been the first to challenge the despotic supremacy which Olivares had taught him was his divine birthright. Philip, indeed, like his immediate predecessors on the throne, was saturated with the idea of his divinely delegated authority. To oppose his will was not disloyalty alone, but impiety, and it was naturally difficult for him to understand that this view, which was generally held by his Castilian subjects, whose kingly traditions were sacerdotal, could not be shared by peoples whose institutions were based upon a purely elective military monarchy, and feudalism modified by a representative democracy. How the anger rankled in his breast is seen in the long exculpatory document which I have several times quoted, which on his return to Madrid he addressed to the Council of Castile.[[31]] In the course of the document, whilst showing how he, personally, has striven to improve matters, he rates them, and indeed almost everybody, for so imperfectly seconding his efforts. But the hardness of his eastern subjects was evidently that which touched him most.

"Anything is better," he says, "than to burden more heavily these poor unhappy vassals of Castile, who, by their love, their efforts, and their sufferings have made us masters of the rest of what we possess, and still preserve it for us, as the head and part principal of our commonwealth. I would far rather take burdens from these poor people than impose further sacrifices upon them, and when I think of what they have to pay, and also the trouble and annoyance they have to submit to in the collection of it, in good truth I would rather beg for charity from door to door, if I could, to provide for the funds necessary for the national defence, than deal so harshly with such vassals as these.... I grieve in my very soul to see such good subjects suffer so much from the faults of my ministers. If my own life-blood would remedy it I would cheerfully give it. And yet, though you (the Council of Castile) know how this cuts me to the heart, and though I reproach you, you propose no remedy.... I tried the Cortes of Aragon, running, as you well know, serious risk, and incurring great trouble and inconvenience, solely for the purpose of alleviating the pressure upon these Castilian subjects, and I am directing my efforts in the same way with my other realms, so that some day I hope we may be able to lighten the taxes in Castile. God knows, I yearn for the coming of that day more than to conquer Constantinople."