Another foolish fray over punctilious trifles took place on the following day between the Count of Salazar and one of the gentlemen in attendance on the Princess of Carignano, a Milanese Spanish subject who bore an Italian title of Count de Pozo. The Spanish nobles always sneered at Italian titles; and Salazar shied at calling Pozo "Lordship." The latter had retaliated by calling Salazar himself "Worship" instead of "Lordship," and when he met him in the Calle Mayor had neglected to bow to him. Worse still, when they met again in the passage of the Buen Retiro palace leading to the Count-Duke's apartment, Salazar doffed his hat, and Pozo neglected to return the salute. In a moment Salazar turned back, and, snatching off Pozo's wide-brimmed felt hat, gave the owner a tremendous buffet on the face with it. In a moment swords flew from scabbards, and the two angry nobles grappled; but they, too, were separated, Salazar taking refuge in the German embassy, whilst Pozo fled into hiding. The "discourses" in this case decided that Salazar was in the wrong; but he had many friends, and held a perfect levee in the German embassy, closely isolated from suspicious visitors, to prevent a hostile message reaching him that would need his going out to fight. But by a trick one of the pages of the Princess of Carignano obtained admission, and handed him a challenge from Pozo. When the antagonists met next morning at the place appointed, on the outskirts of the town, they were both arrested; and even then the two alcaldes who arrested them had a violent quarrel as to which of them should take Salazar.
These, and several other scandals of the sort, all happened within the space of a fortnight; and it is little wonder that the Royal Council, at the instance of Olivares, discussed the matter and reported to the King that something must be done. The step decided upon was very Spanish. All the old fire-eaters and officers of experience were fighting under the Cardinal Infante in Flanders, and to them the whole subject was referred for consideration and report; "after which a very strict pragmatic will be drawn up and published forbidding duels under heavy penalties, and even making them cases for the Inquisition, or at least that the principals and their descendants should be degraded. Either of these two courses would touch Spaniards deeply." Needless to say that, long before the report from Flanders came to Madrid, if it ever came, these good resolves were forgotten, and the affrays of noble ruffians disgraced Madrid uninterruptedly as before.
Nearing the crisis
Philip and his minister, indeed, had plenty of other things of greater moment to occupy them than this. From the first we have seen that Olivares recognised the absolute need for fiscal unity and equality of sacrifice from all Spain if the old dream of supremacy was to be enforced and France humiliated. Portugal, Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia, naturally jealous of ancient rights which each successive ruler had sworn to respect, were determined to resist any attack by the favourite upon their autonomy. I have on many occasions pointed out that the main explanation of the past, and problem of the future, of Spanish history is the intensely local and regional character of the patriotism of the people. In our times the rapid means of intercommunication between the parts, and the existence of a unified administrative system for two centuries, have in some directions rendered this feeling less conspicuous than it was; though in others, and particularly in Catalonia and the Basque Provinces, it is still strong and clamant. But in the time of Olivares the sentiment was absolutely unimpaired. Philip II., even after the rising against him in Aragon, had done little really to injure the ancient fueros, whilst in Portugal he had gone to the very extreme of prudence in recognising the separate national rights of his new subjects. Any attack, or even threat, therefore, on the part of a new and much hated minister like Olivares upon this, the strongest racial and traditional sentiment of the most active and enterprising communities in the Peninsula, was certain to lead to conflict.
The need for money, nevertheless, was pressing, and however statesmanlike the aim of the minister may have been if its execution had been gentle and cautious extending over many years, it became the height of rashness when forced to an immediate issue. Olivares was very far from being foolish or naturally rash, and when his policy was first explained to Philip, soon after his accession, he did not disguise that his object was difficult to attain, and must be a work of time.[[19]] But when once he had embraced the policy which forced upon Spain costly wars abroad, defeat and ruin for himself was the only alternative to the dangerous plan of making the autonomous realms pay their share of the cost of wars undertaken by the King, and of the rampant waste amongst the decadent crowd in Madrid that had already bled Castile to exhaustion.
Portuguese autonomy
For some years the Portuguese had been justly irritated by the giving to Spaniards of administrative offices in Portugal, and by the contemptuous way in which Olivares habitually received representations or remonstrances as to the injuries suffered by Portuguese subjects in consequence of the union with Castile. The principal instruments of the Count-Duke in his attempts to rule Portugal on Castilian lines were two creatures of his—Miguel Vasconcellos and Diego Suarez, both Portuguese of obscure origin, who had practically superseded the Duchess of Mantua, Philip's nominal figurehead, who was personally not unpopular. In 1637, at an attempt to impose a tax on all property in Portugal for Spanish purposes, risings took place in the Algarves and Evora, and protests loud and deep came from other Portuguese cities. Madrid at once announced that the King himself would go with a large force and conquer his realm of Portugal; but though this was untrue, the Duke of Medina Sidonia marched into the Algarves with a Spanish force, whilst another threatened the north of Portugal, and the Portuguese, unready as yet for the conflict, were cowed by the threat. But the injury rankled deeply, and when, in the following year 1638, Olivares summoned to Madrid the Portuguese archbishops, seven nobles and three Jesuit priests, to discuss the closer unity of the two countries—an assembly which coincided with the imposition of a new illegal tax upon the Portuguese as a punishment for the risings—Portuguese nobles and people alike knew that unless they were to be enslaved by Castile they must needs fight for their national existence.
Thenceforward the great conspiracy that was to bring independence to Portugal never ceased until victory crowned the attempt. The Duke of Braganza, the Portuguese pretender with the best right to the throne, was prodigiously rich and over cautious, but his virile Spanish Guzman wife was eager and ambitious; whilst her wealthy brother, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, head of the Guzmans, silently helped forward the scheme which would make his sister a Queen, and afford him, the most powerful vassal of the Castilian crown, a precedent for the creation of an independent principality for himself in Andalucia, free from the weak and corrupt bureaucracy led by his cousin Olivares in Madrid.
In the meanwhile the war with France had taken a new aspect. The much vaunted Spanish invasion of France through Bayonne under the Duke of Nocera had turned out a ridiculous fiasco, and it was soon evident that Richelieu meant to make an effort to revenge the attempt by an invasion of Spain, as well as to retrieve the reverses he had sustained elsewhere in the previous year. Anna of Austria, the Queen Mother of France, did her best privately to persuade her brother and Olivares to terms of peace acceptable to her son; and she sent to Madrid for the purpose, in the summer of 1637, a Minorite friar, who had many interviews with Olivares on the subject. But the war had now entered into a phase which involved the personal rivalry of two all-powerful statesmen, as well as the prestige of two great nations, so that it had to be fought to a finish. The blinded courtiers in Madrid, moreover, openly scoffed at the idea of making peace with France until Spain had asserted its incontestable superiority;[[20]] and all that the Minorite friar took back with him to France was the little finger of Saint Isidore the Husbandman, the patron of Madrid, which was secretly cut from the body of the saint in his church in the Calle de Toledo at midnight, to be sent as a venerated relic to Philip's sister Anna in Paris.[[21]]
Spain invaded