As for the once powerful minister who had gone into obscurity broken-hearted, none was so poor as to do him reverence, few magnanimous enough to give him a good word. Those who had beslavered him with adulation were the first now to load him with ignominy; even the Constable of Castile, who had so willingly married his daughter to Olivares' base son, now stripped of all his honour, claimed that young Guzman's earlier marriage had been valid after all. When it was pointed out to the Constable that this would leave his daughter dishonoured, he replied: "I would rather see my daughter a bawd and free, than an honest woman and Guzman's wife."[[45]]
The many scathing attacks published upon Olivares and his administration, provoked by his fall, found but one able, though imprudently frank, answer, which was called Nicandra,[[46]] and is ascribed to Ahumada, the Prince's tutor, and to that staunch friend of Velazquez and of the Count-Duke, Francisco de Rioja; but now that the dust of the convulsion has cleared away, we see that it was Olivares' methods rather than his principles that were the cause of the disasters of his rule. The foreign policy which he represented was not his alone, but was the policy of the immense majority of his countrymen at the time; and if it had not brought him into antagonism with the provincial and autonomous traditions of the outer realms of the Peninsula, the principal factor of his fall would not have existed. The vast wealth which it was said he had heaped upon himself, amounting, so his enemies asserted, to the enormous total of 400,000 ducats a year, was not accumulated for personal gratification or greed, as had been the case with Lerma, nor were the sums he obtained larger than were appropriated by his great rival Richelieu. He lived very quietly, almost humbly, giving the whole of his time to work, and spent his revenues largely in the entertainment and convenience of the King.
From Loeches he soon, with the King's permission, retired to Toro, far away from Court. Even there, divested of his dignities and power, the envy and hate of his enemies pursued him. More than once in the two years that followed his retreat the King seemed inclined to recall his old minister. But watchful eyes and jealous heart always frustrated such an idea, if it was entertained. Many a time, in fear of such a calamity to them, the nobles, especially those of Aragon, urged the King to punish with death a man who had thus betrayed his confidence; but Philip was neither cruel nor unjust, and naturally drew back from such a course as this. Once it seemed as if the enemies of Olivares had almost succeeded; for in reply to an address from the ex-minister upon public affairs, in which the latter offered his services again, the King wrote from Saragossa: "In short, Count, I must reign, and my son must be crowned King of Aragon. This is difficult unless I deliver your head to my subjects, who demand it unanimously, and I cannot oppose them any further."
The end of Olivares
Alas! the head of Olivares was useless to them or to anyone else thenceforward, for the letter sent him raving mad, and he died on the 22nd July 1645, only two years and a half after his disgrace. Thenceforward Philip, for good or for evil, stands alone. What is done he does, and no powerful minister is interposed as a shield between him and the responsibility for his acts. "Philip the Great" meant well, but he had yet to learn the lesson that broke his heart: that good intentions alone are not sufficient to ensure success; and that the despairing struggles of one conscience-haunted man are powerless to save a nation that has lost its faith in itself, and its dependence upon labour as a means to salvation.
[[1]] She ended by utterly wearing out her welcome, and disgusting everybody in Madrid by her pride and rapacity and the turbulence of her followers, and before she left she was supplanted by another great French lady, the Duchess of Chevreuse, who came to Madrid from London as an emissary of Marie de Medici, and was received with great distinction, much to the Princess of Carignano's anger. Needless to say that nothing came of either of the intrigues, and that Richelieu kept his hand firmly on the helm until he died in 1642.
[[2]] These two series of festivities, which together lasted about a month, certainly mark the high-water mark of the splendour of the Buen Retiro. Full descriptions of parts of them have been published by Mesonero Romanes in El Antiguo Madrid, by Morel Fatio in L'Espagne au XVI. et XVII. Siècle, and by at least three contemporary writers—Mendez Silva, Andrés Sanchez del Espejo, and the Newsletters in Rodriguez Villa's Corte y Monarquia de España, etc.
[[3]] The contents of the King's apartment, given by Strada to Philip, "with a very precious reliquary," was valued at 20,000 ducats. But this splendid gift did not save Strada from a fine of 200 ducats a few weeks afterwards, for having addressed Camporedondo, the senior member of the Council of Finance as "Lordship" whereas by the pragmatic he was only allowed to be addressed as "Worship." The house Strada lived in was one he rented from Spinola his fellow-Genoese. As an instance of the prevailing corruption it may be mentioned that Strada paid 300 ducats to the author of the official account of these festivities for the favourable references to him in it.
[[4]] The Newsletters say that there were 7000 wax lights, which alone cost over 8000 ducats, the cost of this one day's feast being 300,000 ducats—afterwards increased to 500,000 ducats. This enormous expenditure shocked everybody who thought about the matter. "The gossips," says the Newsletter, "assert that this great event, which had no other end than pastime and pleasure, which indeed was pure ostentation was to show our friend Cardinal Richelieu that there is plenty more money left in the world to punish his King." But many persons who dared in the subsequent carnival to blame this waste found themselves in the dungeons a few days afterwards; and several priests who preached before Olivares at St. Geronimo in the ensuing Lenten retreat, and ventured to denounce such wicked extravagance, were banished from Court. Rodriguez Villa's Newsletters have much to say about this.
[[5]] Aston to Coke, 20th and 25th February 1637.—Record Office, S.P. Spain MSS. 38. This part of the entertainments had been arranged and paid for by Philip's state secretary and confidential friend, Geronimo de Villanueva, Marquis of Villalba, of whom we shall hear later. On the following Tuesday the regular public carnival took place, and the licence appears to have been shocking in the extreme. In one of the cars a donkey was represented as dying in bed, with pretended priests and friars mocking the most sacred mysteries around him, whilst the supposed doctors were going through indecent antics. One masker was covered with habits of knighthood, crosses, and noble insignia, with the significant motto, "For Sale." Rodriguez Villa.