Philip as usual accepted his mentor's recommendation. The two Infantes, fully informed by Olivares' enemies of the reason for taking them away from Madrid, had to accompany their brother to the east, the Queen remaining behind as Regent. Philip and his brothers, with a large following of the minister's kin and friends, left Madrid on 12th April 1632, the two young Princes being almost without attendants. Fernando's reduced household were sent ahead to Barcelona, and the Infante cried out aloud that this meant that he was not to return to Madrid, and that the whole journey to Catalonia had been got up solely to get him away from Court for good. The Princes, indeed, were almost in open revolt against Olivares; and it was noticed that they travelled with loaded pistols at their saddle-bows, a thing never seen before. After a stay of a week in Valencia, where Cortes were convoked and swore allegiance to the little Prince Baltasar Carlos, the whole Court moved on to Barcelona, where the great struggle for money was expected, for the stout Catalans were determined now that they would make a stand against the encroachments of Olivares on their liberties. The Viceroy, the Duke of Cardona, met the King at Murviedro, and warned him that the Catalans were in a dangerous mood. They objected to vote any more money, objected to a royal Prince for a Viceroy,—it was the duty of the King himself, they said, to come to them, and remain whilst the Cortes were in session, and they would not be contented unless the King stayed at least four months with them. All along the road the King and his favourite found the people scowling, and at Tortosa they broke out in subversive cries because he only stayed a few hours in the town.
At Barcelona the King found the Cortes of Catalonia more recalcitrant than ever, opposing endless difficulties to everything proposed, and advancing all sorts of old claims with regard to ceremonial and ancient privilege, each one of which had to be discussed interminably.[[43]] At last the ordinary supply was voted without increase, and the Infante Fernando was accepted by the Catalans as Governor with a sufficiently ill grace. Fernando himself was furious, and protested to his brother and Olivares hotly that he was being isolated in the interests of the latter, without the chance of distinction and elevation that he would have gained in Flanders. But he was at last reconciled by mingled flattery, cajolery, and appeals to duty, and remained as Governor to continue the Cortes, closely surrounded by mentors in the interests of Olivares.[[44]] Lerida had refused to send members to the Barcelona Cortes at all, and as Philip approached the city on his way home it was given out that he intended to punish it for its disobedience. Terrified, the city fathers came to meet the King and pray for pardon, which, only with difficulty and a complete submission, was partially accorded to them. When the Court arrived at Almadrones, two or three days' journey from Madrid, they were met by Antonio Moscoso, with an ostentatious train of followers and servants, on his way to join the Infante Fernando at Barcelona. This could never be allowed, and the King's confessor ordered Moscoso to return to Madrid at once. He appealed and wept in vain at the humiliation of such a return; but was told that the King's orders must be obeyed without reply. When he went to kiss Philip's hand, the King, immovable as a statue, drily asked, "When are you leaving?" "I must speak to the Count-Duke first, your Majesty," replied Moscoso. "You will be too late," said Philip, "for he was going to rest at once, and would not awake till ten at night, in order to set out on the road from twelve to one."[[45]] So Moscoso was fain to turn back with a heavy heart, explaining by the way to Olivares that the Infante had sent for him, and he meant no harm. But though Olivares tried to lay the whole of the responsibility upon the King, this insult rankled deeply in the breast of the Infante Fernando, and was one more mark for vengeance scored up by the enemies of the minister. An indignant and formal complaint was made to the King by his brother, and in order to ensure its attention it was handed to Philip by his wife, much to the dismay of Olivares, who knew now that Isabel of Bourbon was the head of his foes, and that he could not dispose of her as he had done of the Infante.
Death of Don Carlos
As soon as Philip returned to Madrid, at the end of June 1632, the occasion was celebrated by another great auto-de-fé in the Plaza Mayor, where the King and Queen with the Infante Carlos sat in their balcony from eight in the morning (3rd July 1632) till late in the afternoon, witnessing the indictment, the preaching of prosy sermons, and the reading of legal documents, reciting the errors and heresies of the poor wretches who stood upon the high scaffold in the midst of the square, dressed in sambenitos. The ghastly rejoicing, such as it was, soon turned to mourning. The Infante Carlos had fallen ill on the way home from Barcelona, but had partially recovered on his arrival at Madrid. The summer was the most oppressive that had been experienced for years, and the young Infante—he was only twenty-five—fell ill of fever in Madrid, and died in a few days;[[46]] and Olivares had one less difficulty to contend with, though the amiable, unambitious young man was of himself inoffensive.
France and Spain
Nor was it long before the other Infante was removed from the path of Olivares. The old Infanta Isabel ended at last her strenuous life in 1633, and Fernando was sent by way of Italy to the States of Flanders to govern the fatal dominion for Spain once more, to Spain's ultimate undoing. Fernando was able and ambitious. From Milan he was to lead a large Spanish force to Flanders. But affairs had gone ill with the imperial cause. Gustavus Adolphus, it is true, had fallen; but in the fight at which he fell he had beaten Wallenstein, with the loss of 12,000 men on the imperialist side. On the appeal of the Emperor, Fernando turned aside, and a critical moment when the imperialists were delivering the attack he arrived before the Protestant city of Nördlingen (September 1634). His presence turned the scale, for a relieving force of Swedes was just approaching, and the ensuing battle, one of the most decisive in the Thirty Years' War, was a crushing defeat to the Swedes and the Protestants. The Cardinal Infante passed on his way triumphant to his new governship, crowned by the laurels of victory and the plaudits of his countrymen. But his active intervention in the war with Spanish Government troops changed the aspect of the war. The Swedes were no longer the leaders of a federation of Protestants against a federation of Catholics. It was clear to Richelieu that unless with the whole force of France he threw himself into the fray against the house of Austria, not only Protestantism in Germany would suffer—for that indeed he cared nothing, but the vital interests of France. And so it happened that when the Cardinal Infante was entering Brussels in pompous triumph, Richelieu had already heavily subsidised the Dutch for an active renewal of their war against him; and within a few months, early in 1635, Spain herself was in the grip of a great national struggle with France, a struggle which extended as time went on from her Flanders dominions to her Italian possession, and from the Franche Comté to the sacred soil of Spain itself.
[[1]] See letters from Madrid to Eugene Field in the Monastery of Timoleague, etc., in Record Office, S.P. Spain 34, 1627.
[[2]] Scaglia to Carlisle. Record Office, S.P. Spain 34, MS., 19th January, 1628.
[[3]] Rubens to Carlisle. Record Office, S.P. Spain 34, MS., January 1628, etc.
[[4]] A good specimen of his style is seen in his reply to a letter from Scaglia early in April 1629 (Record Office, S.P. Spain 34, MS.), asking for an audience at the desire of Lord Carlisle, in order to tell Olivares how much Carlisle esteems him. "I will give this audience to your lordship very willingly to-night (writes Olivares), and it will give me most particular pleasure to talk about the Earl of Carlisle, of whom I am the most affectionate servitor, and have been so all through the worst tribulations; although when he was here I always considered him a friend of France.... The differences that have taken place between us are all owing to French intrigue."