Doubtless no one could wisely complain, but many had reason to do so, for few great people with art collections escaped spoliation, and the other palaces were to a great extent denuded of their treasures, for the purpose of cramming the Buen Retiro with rarities. Some of the nobles, like the Auditor Tejada, were artful enough to have copies made of their best pictures, and sent the copies as originals to the Buen Retiro. But, as in his case, this was bitterly resented by Olivares if it was found out. The Marquis of Leganés, the nephew of the Count-Duke, had a superb collection of pictures and articles of vertu brought from Flanders and Italy; but when he was called upon to disgorge, his wife stepped in and claimed the whole collection as her dowry, and the Marquis was let off with the present of a piece of tapestry. The chapel was fitted up at the expense of the President of the Council of Castile; the Infante Fernando continued to send beautiful objects, many of them spoils of war from Flanders; Olivares' brother-in-law Monterey had to surrender much of the vast store of pictures he had collected at Naples; and all the painters in Madrid were kept busy copying or designing canvasses for the new palace,[[18]] under the direction of the King's painter, Don Diego Velazquez, who, having returned from his long visit to Rome, was now, and had been for the last three years, again working indefatigably in his studio in the old Alcazar.
This, indeed, was the period when the great artist produced some of the best of his work, such as the Surrender of Breda (the Lanzas), the portraits of the child Prince Baltasar Carlos, the fine portrait of Olivares reproduced in this book, and the famous equestrian portrait of Philip himself. In the midst of all the growing national trouble, this in many respects was the most brilliant and perhaps the happiest time of Philip's reign, so far as he personally was concerned. His habits were fixed and his pleasures keen. His fits of contrition were frequent, it is true; but they were always banished by fresh pleasures or amours contrived by Olivares. The King intermittently attended to State business himself; but the interminable discussions and reports by the various Councils upon every subject made the despatch of business peculiarly irksome and tedious. The Spanish system of a consultative and deliberative bureaucracy, indeed, seemed specially devised to disgust anyone but a patient laborious plodder like Philip II. His grandson, impatient of detail and quick of apprehension, loathed the dull pompous discussions of the Councils, and not unnaturally was content to hear a summary of results from Olivares, whose final decision he always confirmed.
Philip's domestic life
Philip's domestic life at this time had every reason to be happy, though the growing tension between his wife and Olivares had to some extent estranged them, and the Queen was, under the influence of the minister, somewhat ostentatiously excluded from public business, not unnaturally to her annoyance. She was, however, a good wife, and shared Philip's frequent pleasures gaily, whilst in devotion of the peculiar Spanish type she was even more emphatic than he. She had a woman's reason for her dislike of Olivares, as well as the political objections to him which were the ultimate cause of his fall. It has already been mentioned that in pursuance of his system of doing everybody's work, the minister had taken under his care the management of the King's affairs of gallantry, and the results thereof. This, of course, was perfectly well known to the Queen, and the satirical poets who wrote so copiously of frailty in high places took care to publish the fact. Even Hopton, when in a gossiping mood, referred to it more than once. Speaking of the skits that were current about Olivares and the new palace, he wrote: "He (Olivares) hath had likewise some harsh words with the Admiral for speaking to the King in disparagement of his new house; and the Queen hath had her little saying to him also, for some opinion she had of some secret pleasures there brought to the King."
Whatever may have been the sum of Philip's infidelities, and it cannot be denied that they were numerous, they were never more than temporary and vulgar intrigues, which, whilst they would naturally annoy his wife, did not threaten her permanent influence or interfere with her continuous marital life with her husband. With monotonous regularity almost every year the Queen gave birth to a child, usually a girl, whose advent was an excuse for the customary series of costly festivities so often described in earlier pages, festivities that in most cases lasted almost as long as the life of the child whose advent they greeted; for all the infants up to this time (1634) had died except the sturdy, promising little Baltasar Carlos, who was idolised by his father and mother, and, so far as the oppressive etiquette of the Court would allow, was petted by the whole Court. The little Prince who was born in 1629, had early developed a love for horsemanship and field sports, and as a baby horseman, hunter, or soldier, he is presented to the life again and again by Velazquez. From Flanders his admiring uncle Fernando sent him many presents, beautiful armour and weapons in miniature, which now adorn the rich Armeria in Madrid, martial toys, and above all in 1633 what afterwards became the Prince's favourite steed, a "little devil of a stallion pony," as the Infante calls him, that had to be lashed liberally before Baltasar Carlos was allowed to mount him.[[19]]
The Portuguese problem
The limited number of his near relatives had become a source of embarrassment to Philip. Of his two brothers, one, Carlos, had died, and the other, the Infante Cardinal Fernando, was in Flanders fighting and working heroically. There were no other Spanish relatives, but the heir Baltasar Carlos and the beautiful illegitimate son Juan, now growing into a handsome, clever lad in the secluded castle of Ocaña, whilst the German archdukes had drifted farther and farther from Spain, as had the Savoy Princes. It had always been the policy of the house of Austria to keep the Spanish nobles powerless in the Peninsula. They might command Spanish armies abroad and act as viceroys across the seas, but were never to be trusted with executive power in the realms of Spain; and it had become increasingly difficult, now that the nobles of the outer realms had grown distrustful of Olivares, to find men of the respective provinces who were of sufficient rank and could be trusted to govern the non-Castilian territories in the name of the King. The principal difficulty was in Portugal, where the widest autonomy, and every possible guarantee against Spanish oppression, had been granted by Philip II. But, as we have seen, the tendency for a long time past, and especially under Olivares, had been to curtail the rights enjoyed by Portugal since the union of the crowns.
The promise that none but Portuguese should rule in the country had been disregarded almost from the first in the appointment of Viceroys. The Austrian nephew, the Archduke Albert, had reigned under Philip II.; and Moura, the wise half-Portuguese minister of Philip II., had ruled Portugal for years under his son. But to appoint a Portuguese noble now, with Olivares' known policy, would have been highly dangerous, and the Portuguese would hardly have stood a Spanish noble, even if Philip had dared to appoint one. The policy of conciliation that Philip II. had adopted had left the house of Braganza, which had a better claim to the Portuguese crown than Philip, richer and more powerful than most sovereigns. The reigning Duke of Braganza had married a sister of the Spanish Duke of Medina Sidonia, the head of the Guzmans, of which house Olivares was a cadet; and in normal circumstances Braganza might have been the ideal man for Viceroy. But the circumstances were not normal. The deepest discontent reigned in the country at the ruin that had befallen its trade in consequence of its union with Spain, and especially at the new taxation for Spanish objects proposed at the bidding of Olivares; and a subject so powerful and so popular as Braganza was naturally suspect. The difficulty was met at the end of 1634 by going somewhat far afield for a ruler of Portugal. The younger daughter of Philip II., the Infanta Catharine, had married Carlo Emmanuele, Duke of Savoy, in 1585; and one of their daughters, Princess Margaret, the widowed and dispossessed Duchess of Mantua, a first cousin of Philip, was brought to Spain to govern Portugal,—the idea being that, as she was a lady and a foreigner, she would be a safe and obedient instrument in the hands of Olivares. In November 1634 she entered Madrid in great state, and at the bull-fights and other festivities held to celebrate her coming she sat by the side of Philip and his Queen, which the Madrileños thought a great and unusual honour, accorded in order to give her higher prestige and authority before she set out for her fateful government, a figurehead for Olivares' attempts against Portuguese autonomy.
Catalonia
Catalonia was more uneasy even than Portugal. There had been a talk all the summer of the King's going thither to ask for more money, and the Catalans were in anger at the very idea. So great was the ill-feeling, that the Viceroy, the Duke of Cardona, a humble servant of Olivares, thought it safer to keep out of the way of his subjects; and the Castilian soldiers were daggers-drawn with the people, in whose houses they were billeted, in defiance of the Catalonian constitution.