The Year after the Armada, and Other Historical Studies

by Martin A. S. Hume

The pallid little milksop in black velvet, with his lank, tow-coloured hair and his great underhung chin, who will simper for ever on the canvas of Carreño, had grown to be a man—a poor feeble anæmic old man of thirty-seven,[[2]] the last of his race, to whom fastings and feastings, the ceremonies of the Church, and the nostrums of the empirics had been equally powerless in providing a successor for the crumbling empire of his fathers. The strong spirits upon whom he had leant in his youth and early manhood had passed away. His imperious mother, who reigned so long and unworthily in his name, had died of cancer only a year or two ago. His virile brother, Don Juan José of Austria, in whom the worn-out blood of the imperial race had been quickened by the brighter but baser blood of his actress mother, had been poisoned. His beloved first wife, the beautiful Marie Louise of Orleans, had faded away in the sepulchral gloom of that dreary Court, and his new German wife, Marie Anne of Neuberg, with her imperious violence, frightened him out of what little wit he had left by her advocacy of new ideas. For new ideas to that poor brain were the inventions of the very Devil himself. He had been drilled for years into the knowledge that the claims of his French kinsmen to his inheritance were just; and, though for years past all the diplomatists of Europe had been plotting and planning for one or the other claimant with varying success, all that poor Charles the Bewitched himself wanted was to be left alone in peace whilst he lived, and that one of his French cousins should succeed him when he died. There was not much chance of either wish being fulfilled from the time that England and the Austrian faction juggled Marie Anne of Neuberg into the palace as Charles' second wife. She made short work of all the courtiers and ministers who favoured the French succession—they had one after the other either to come round to her side or go. Most of the best of them—not that any of them were very good—sulked in their own provinces awaiting events, whilst others still plotted in the capital.

In the meantime the Queen and her camarilla were all-powerful. After various weak and futile explosions, the smashing of crockery and breaking of furniture and the like, the poor King, for the sake of peace, let her have her own way, and ostensibly favoured the claims of the Austrian Archduke to his inheritance. But like most semi-idiots he could not relax his grasp on an idea of which he had once become possessed, and though he was surrounded day and night by the Queen's creatures, and was content that they should have their way whilst he was well, he no sooner fell into one of his periodical fits of deadly sickness than, with all the terror and dread of death, and constant fear of poison and witchcraft upon him, he yearned for the presence of those who had been with him in earlier and happier days, before the German Queen and her base blood-suckers had come to disturb his tranquillity.

The story of the strange and obscure Court intrigue which resulted in the gaining by the French faction of the upper hand in the palace during the critical time preceding Charles's death, has often and variously been told, mostly with an ignorant or wilful distortion of events. M. Morel-Fatio has shown how Victor Hugo has deliberately falsified the character of the Queen Marie Anne of Neuberg, in order that he might make use of the local colour furnished by the Countess d'Aulnoy's letters written from Spain fifteen years before the period represented by the dramatist;[[3]] and many other writers, French and English, who have been attracted by the romantic elements of the witchcraft story, have surrounded it with a cloud of fictitious persons and incidents which makes it difficult now to distinguish between history and romance. Every writer on the subject, so far as I know, moreover, has stopped short at the story of the exorcism itself, whereas it really developed into a great struggle of many years' duration between the Grand Inquisitor on the one hand and the Council of Inquisitors on the other, in which, curiously enough, the latter body championed the cause of legal process as against the arbitrary power assumed by its own chief.

There is in the British Museum[[4]] a full manuscript account from day to day of the whole transaction from beginning to end, written at the time by one of the clerks or secretaries in the Inquisition, who, although he avows himself a partisan of the French faction and of the King's confessor, Froilan Diaz, around whom all the storm raged, declares that he has set down the unvarnished truth of the whole complicated business, in order that people may know after his death what really happened, and how much they "owe to his Sacred Majesty Philip V. for preserving the privileges of the holy tribunal of the Inquisition, or, what is the same, our holy faith." By the aid of this set of documents, and another set in the Museum (part of which has been published in Spanish), the story, which is well worth preserving, may be reconstructed, and the hitherto unrelated particulars of the actual exorcism rescued from oblivion.

The most powerful person at Court next to the Queen was Father Matilla, the King's confessor, whose hand was everywhere, and who said on one occasion that he would much rather make bishops than be one. Then came the other members of the Queen's camarilla, an obscure country lawyer who had been created Count Adanero, and Minister of Finance and the Indies, who provided the crew with money to their hearts' content, and squandered and muddled away the national resources, whilst all Spain was groaning under impossible imposts; Madame Berlips, a German woman who had an extraordinary influence over the Queen, and an insatiable greed; two Italian monks, and a mutilated musician of the Royal Chapel. There were two great nobles also who, after several periods of disgrace and hesitation, had at last thrown themselves on to the Queen's side—the Admiral of Castile and Count Oropesa, the ostensibly responsible ministers; but these practically only carried out the designs of the Queen's camarilla, and were content with the appearance and profits of power without its exercise. The populace, as may be imagined, were in deadly opposition to the Queen and her foreign surroundings, and were strongly in favour of one of the younger French princes whom they might adopt and make a Spaniard of, as they never could hope to do with a German archduke, and thus, as they thought, avoid the threatened partition of their country.[[5]] This was the position of things in March, 1698, when the King, who had partly recovered from his previous attack eighteen months before, was again taken ill.[[6]] He was dragged out by the Queen to totter and stagger in religious processions, was made to go through the ceremonial forms of his position, nodding and babbling incoherently to ministers and ambassadors whom he was obliged to receive, and at last, weary and sick to death, haunted by an unquiet conscience and with the appalling fear of hourly poison, he sent word by a trusty messenger to the wise, crafty old minister of his mother, Cardinal Portocarrero, who had been banished from the Court by the Queen, that he wished to see him.

The Cardinal needed no two invitations, but posted off to the palace. He had still plenty of friends of various ranks, notwithstanding the Queen, and amongst them was Count de Benavente, the Gentleman of the Bedchamber. By him he was conducted at night to the King's bed-side, after the Queen had retired, and heard the heart-broken recital of the monarch's troubles. The King told him he was ill and unhappy and in trouble about his soul's health. He was conscious of a struggle going on within him between his knowledge of the right thing to do and his incapacity to do it, and this left him no peace or happiness. The people who surrounded him were distasteful to him, his confessor, Matilla, gave him no real consolation, and he ascribed much of his own illness and misery to the bad management and ceaseless worry he had to endure from those who had the direction of affairs. The King unburdened himself to the Cardinal in his lisping, mumbling fashion, his utterance broken with sobs and tears, but sufficiently plainly for Portocarrero to see that if he and his friends acted boldly, swiftly, and secretly they might again become predominant and dispose of the splendid inheritance of Spain and the Indies. He said some consoling, soothing words to the King, and promised him that steps should be taken to insure him tranquillity, and then he took his leave. The interview took place in the ancient Alcazar, which stood on the site of the present royal palace in Madrid, for poor Carlos had no spirits for the new Buen Retiro Palace, where his father had been so gay and splendid. It was nearly eleven o'clock at night, but as soon as the Cardinal got back to his own house he summoned his friends to a private conference. They were all of them courtiers in disgrace with the Queen, and most of them extremely popular with the mob in Madrid. There was Count Monterey, mild and temporising, with his hesitating speech and his irritating "hems and hahs"; there was the Marquis of Leganes, a hot-headed soldier, rash and pugnacious; Don Francisco Ronquillo, ambitious, intriguing, and bold, who, with his brother, was the idol of the "chulos" of the capital; Don Juan Antonio Urraca, honest, uncouth, and boorish; and, above all, quiet, wise, and prudent Don Sebastian de Cotes, a close friend of the Cardinal's. First, Monterey was invited to give his opinion as to what should be done, but he dwelt mainly upon the danger to them all presented from the King's infirmity of purpose; and how one minister after the other who had for a moment succeeded in persuading him to make a stand, had been disgraced and banished the moment the Queen got access to her husband and twisted him round her finger, as she could. He had no desire to take risks, apparently, and could recommend nothing but that the Cardinal Archbishop should keep his footing in the palace, and gradually work upon the King's mind. Leganes scoffed at such timid counsels; where the disease was so violent as this a strong remedy must be adopted. This should be the immediate banishment, and, if necessary, the imprisonment of the Admiral of Castile, the principal minister. He (Leganes) had plenty of arms at home, and had hundreds of men in Madrid who would serve him, with experienced officers to command them, and could soon make short work of the Admiral and his train of poets and buffoons. Ronquillo went further still. He said that was all very well, but at the same time they must seize the Queen and shut her up at the Huelgas de Burgos. Monterey called him a fool, and said such an act would be the death of the King and would ruin them all before he could alter his will; and the two nobles rushed at each other to fight out the question on the spot before the Archbishop himself. When they were separated the Cardinal no doubt thought it was time to do something practical, and asked his friend Cotes his opinion. Cotes was prosy enough, but practical. He said of course Portocarrero could easily get the King to sign any decree he liked, but the Queen could more easily still get him to revoke it; and, although it would be well to strike at the Queen herself, he did not know who would dare to do it. But after all she could only influence him by mundane means; the confessor, Matilla, whom the King hated and feared, and flouted only yesterday, must be got rid of, and the Queen would lose her principal instrument. This was approved of, but no one could suggest a fitting successor except Ronquillo—who, of course, had a nominee of his own!—who was promptly vetoed. Each of the others doubtless had one too, but thought best to press his claims privately. So it was left to the Archbishop to choose a new successor and gain the King's consent to his appointment. The choice fell upon a certain Froilan Diaz, professor of theology at the University of Alcalá. One of his recommendations was that he was near enough to the capital to be brought thither quickly, before the affair got wind, and no sooner did the Ronquillos learn that Cotes had recommended him to the Archbishop than they sent a mounted messenger post-haste to Alcalá to inform Father Froilan of his coming greatness, and claim for themselves the credit of his appointment.

A few days afterwards, in the afternoon, the King lay in bed languidly listening to the music which was being played in the outer chamber, with which his own room communicated by an open door. The outer room, as usual, was crowded with courtiers, and in the deep recess of a window stood the confessor, Matilla, chatting with a friend, alert and watchful of all that passed. Suddenly Count de Benavente entered with a stout, fresh-coloured ecclesiastic, quiet and modest of mien and unknown to all. They walked across the presence chamber without announcement, and entered the King's chamber, shutting the door behind them. Matilla's face grew longer and his eyes wider as he saw this, and he knew instinctively that his day was over. Turning to his friend, he said, "Good-bye; this is beginning where it ought to have left off," and with that he left the palace, and went with the conviction of disaster to his monastery of the Rosario. They had all known for some days that something had been brewing. Spies had dogged every footstep of the Archbishop and those who attended the midnight meeting at his house, but they had left out of account the King's own Gentleman of the Bedchamber, Count de Benavente, who had arranged the whole affair. It is true that when the Queen had, as usual, entered the King's bedroom that day, at eleven o'clock, to see him dine, he had told her in a whisper, unable to retain his secret, that he had changed his confessor. She, astounded and disconcerted at the news, pretended to approve of the change—anything, she said, to give tranquillity to her dear Carlos. But when she could leave, she flew with all speed to her room, summoned the Admiral and the camarilla, and told them they were undone. Panic reigned supreme, the general idea being that Matilla himself had betrayed them. In any case they saw that he was past praying for, so they threw him overboard, and decided to try to save themselves, and see if, in time, they could not buy over the new confessor.

The only man of them who kept his head was a great ecclesiastic, a brother of the Admiral of Aragon, and of a member of the Council of the Inquisition, one Folch de Cardona, Commissary-General of the Order of San Francisco, who was subsequently to play an important part in the tragi-comedy. When Matilla learnt that the Queen and her friends had known of the change an hour or two before it happened he broke down. "Oh, for that hour!" he exclaimed; "in it I would have set it all right." Divested of all his offices, dismissed from his inquisitorship, with a pension of 2,000 ducats, he died within a week of poison or a broken heart, and he disappears from the scene.

In his place stands Froilan Diaz, a simple-minded tool of the courtiers who had appointed him. He did not look very terrible, even to the panic-stricken Queen and her friends, and they decided to make the best of him, and try to confine the changes to the confessorship. Henceforward Froilan Diaz was a man to be courted and flattered. Honours and wealth were lavished on him, and for a year no great change was made in the palace or outside; but under the surface intrigue was busy, both at the King's bedside and in the haunts of the Madrid mob. At the end of a year the latter element made short work of the ministers and the Queen's gang and drove the lot of them out, to be replaced by Arias, the Ronquillos, and the French party; but with this revolt the present study has nothing to do.