The Year after the Armada, and Other Historical Studies

by Martin A. S. Hume

First of all the child was to be well taught in religion and morality; secondly, on no account was he to learn who he was, and if his attendants have already told him incautiously he is to be allowed to forget it, and "neither by word nor behaviour is he to be made to think that he is not an ordinary person;" thirdly, he is to be taught polite learning and languages, particularly Italian and French, to dance, fence, and play tennis, and, when he is a little older, to ride. He is to be treated familiarly and without ceremony, and, "in short, to be educated and brought up with the virtues and nobleness of royalty, and the study, modesty, knowledge, and temperance of a private person." Don Juan is to send a weekly report to the Count-Duke through his secretary Carreras, but to take care that this is done with the utmost secrecy, and on no account is the child to be shown to any one without a written order. As secrecy is of the first importance 500 (ducats) a month only are ordered to be paid, besides the doctor's fees, and Don Juan is to devise some means for the secret payment of this sum. A coach is to be secretly got ready to meet the Count-Duke and the child on the night and at the place which may be appointed for the delivery; and then, after another urgent injunction of secrecy and care of the child's religious instruction, and a fervent prayer that God will give to the little one "all the happiness, spiritual and temporal, which He will see is necessary and good for the realm," the proud favourite signs himself simply Caspar de Guzman.

The hidalgo of Salamanca appears to have been quite overwhelmed at the honour done him by the charge of so important a person, and his ceremonious and verbose letter of thanks to the Count-Duke needed hardly to be prefaced by the prayer that his patron will not attribute his laconic speech to the proverbial taciturnity of his countrymen, but rather to his confusion at the greatness of the honour done him by his Majesty, for which words are inadequate to express his gratitude. His only thanks can be his faithful fulfilment of orders. He begs that the doctor who has had the care of the little one may be sent to Salamanca with him in order to consult with Don Juan's doctor, and ascertain whether he is fit to undertake so important a charge, and if not he will approach cautiously a doctor in Vitoria, named Trevino, of whom he hears good accounts. The woman who accompanies the child shall stay with him some short time, although the good hidalgo is evidently rather doubtful of this arrangement, as he adds that if she should find the horizon of their dull country life too confined for her after Madrid, or begins to kick against the discipline, other arrangements will have to be made. All care shall be taken to prevent the boy from learning who he is, and if it should get wind efforts shall be made to silence it, but the task will be a difficult one. The child shall be so reared, please God, that he shall not become abject or servile (which is most important to a royal personage), or licentious and headstrong; and the good hidalgo thereupon breaks out into a mild pedantic little joke by quoting a Latin proverb, to the effect that, to attain so great an object as this, one must be prepared to eat salt and acrid food, which, he says, will be easy for him to do, "as we all live on salt bacon and hung beef in my province." This does not sound very promising, nor does his description of the water they have to drink, which he says is bad to drink raw, particularly in the summer, and needs cinnamon or other spice to correct it. The doctor, he says, will advise whether they had better boil it with mastic or some other drug. The correspondence shall be sent weekly through "my nephew, Don Alonso Ibarra Isassi, the eldest of the lads I took to Madrid with me. He is a good, prudent, and modest lad, and a correspondence between us as uncle and nephew will arouse no suspicion." As for the 500 ducats a month payment, the good hidalgo says his cheeks burn with shame as he writes or even thinks about them; "but if your Excellency should deign to order them to be paid to me they might be sent without attracting notice through the treasury at Vitoria or Burgos."

So the little child is sent to Salamanca, and with him goes the ponderously learned Dr. Cristobal Nuñez, who wraps up the simplest facts in the most complicated and pedantic technical phraseology, and, what is far more troublesome for the present purpose, writes a shockingly bad hand. His first document is a microscopic report of the constitution and temperament of the child, and the simple history of his baby ailments. The description is most curious; and, if any doubt existed as to his paternity, every trait indicates the character and appearance of a son of the sovereign race of Austria. "He is," says the learned doctor, "of melancholic, choleric temperament, wilful and passionate, but playful when he is pleased, and respectful to those he thinks his superiors. He is of sound constitution, being the offspring of young and healthy parents; possesses superior intelligence for his age; a wonderful memory, which gives great hope if he be well trained. He is slow of speech, and expresses himself with great difficulty, stuttering and lisping; and is so backward on his feet that he has only just learnt to walk. His person is so perfect and beautiful, that the mind of a sculptor never imagined anything better; he has a lovely, fair, red and white complexion, and full grey eyes. He is grave and thoughtful—not dull or sad, but full of childish humour; quick to laugh and quick to cry. He is," says the doctor, "high of spirit, courageous, and pugnacious, impatient of contradiction; and, if his speech be not at once understood, he flies into such ungovernable rage as to make it dangerous to thwart him, and he should rather be coaxed to obedience than forced."

Like all his forbears, he is described as a great eater, and very fond of sweets; and it is not surprising to learn that he has all his short life suffered from over-eating and indigestion, and for long past has had quartan ague. The drastic remedies of the times were endured by the child, the doctor says, "without weeping, as if he knew they were for his good"; but the learned medico confesses that all his own prescriptions had done the babe less good than what he describes as an old wife's remedy of anointing the stomach and spine with ointment and saffron.

The child's usual mode of life is carefully described. Between eight and nine in the morning he had a fowl's liver and a little loaf, or else some bread or cake sopped in broth, or bread and jam and a cup of water. At twelve o'clock broth with sippets of bread or half of the breast of a fowl, or sometimes some forcemeat balls, as he likes a change, and demands it. When he gets tired of this he may have a little loin of mutton or the leg of a fowl. He is also very fond of a piece of bacon between two slices of bread, and of quince marmalade, jams, and sweets. At five o'clock he "packs his wallet," as the doctor calls it, by a meal of bread and jam, and a cup of water. He is put to bed at nine o'clock, and sleeps with his nurse. The learned Don Cristobal then enters into a most verbose disquisition as to the fitness of the locality chosen for the temperament of the child, and arrives at the conclusion that the choice has been a wise one, although the roundabout method of argument founded on wise talk about blood and humours and vapours and the like seems rather beside the mark to a modern reader. The sum of it all is, however, that Don Juan de Isassi's house stands healthily, if somewhat bleakly, on high ground about three bow-shots from the town, and joining the great convent of the Suceso, the house itself being a good one, surrounded by its own grounds.

Thus far the doctor has only spoken of the constitution and past management of his late charge; but the next document, which bears the same date as the preceding one (June 18, 1630), lays down an elaborate plan for the future rearing of the child. He recommends that he should be allowed to play after his early supper, and not be sent to sleep before nine at night, unless he feels sleepy. He is to be woke at eight, if he is not already awake, and is to be given his light breakfast of a fowl's liver and cake, a rasher of bacon and bread and broth, or a roasted egg. At eleven or twelve he is to dine on forcemeat balls, made of two parts chicken, one part mutton, and one part bacon, with a little pie or broth with sippets. Sometimes, instead of force-meat balls, he may have the leg of a fowl, which, if he likes it, will be enough for him, with a little bread soaked in broth, or he may have a mouthful of mutton with chicken broth. It will be well, says the courtly doctor, that the gentleman himself should be consulted occasionally as to whether he preferred the fowl or the sausages, or roast or boiled food. He is to sleep about an hour and a half after dinner, and play in the afternoon; but great care must be taken to keep him out of the sun, and his early supper may be as heretofore, only somewhat later; a biscuit or two with jam, a small egg, such as the fowls of the province lay, or sippets in broth. A curious and somewhat elaborate little dish is recommended for occasional breakfast or supper. "Take," says the doctor, "a half-dozen almonds or melon seeds, and press the juice from them, which mix with a little barley-cream and some good broth. This must be boiled, and sugar and sponge-cake worked into it until it is a smooth paste, which may be served with half a beaten egg over it, and will make a nice light supper." It will be good to excite the appetite by variety, and as the child gets older he may sometimes be given coarser food, and trout or other fresh fish. He must drink fresh spring water boiled with viper-grass, or mixed with cinnamon, according to the weather. He is always to have some fruit for dessert, unless it disagrees with him; but much care must be taken to guard him from excess; and he is to be specially sparing in drinking. Full common-sense directions are given with regard to his dress, and if he needs medicine his food must be reduced by one half, and a decoction of mallow and camomile, honey and oil administered. Red Alexandria honey is also recommended, quinces, oil of wormwood, and a variety of other remedies for simple ailments.

There is yet another document from the doctor giving some further rules, apparently in answer to special questions. In it he again learnedly describes the child's constitution, his weak stomach and aptness to catch cold, inherited from his parents, his tendency to hydrocephalus, and his almost continuous series of ailments since he was born, which, says the medico, would have killed him but for his strong constitution. From seven years old he was to eat fish and other Lenten fare, and at twelve years must be taught to fast. Above all, he is not to be brought up delicately or coddled, but encouraged to run and romp. Great care must be taken that he is not exposed to the cold, but he must be well wrapped up even in summer. Drugs are to be given sparingly, if at all: mallow, camomile, sweet almonds, black sugar or honey if wanted; but he is not to be constantly dosed with red honey and other things as children usually are, and if he is really ill he is not to be lowered or bled much; by which it will be seen that Dr. Cristobal Nuñez, pedantic as he was, differed somewhat from the usual type of sangrados of the time. All this was between the 1st and 18th of June, 1630, and it is to be supposed that the poor babe of the house of Austria lived his little life in and around the "Casa Solariega" of the Salamancan hidalgo for the next few years, although no record remains of it here.

The next document of the series is a letter, elated nearly four years afterwards, March 17, 1634, from the Secretary of State, Geronimo Villanueva, to Don Juan Isassi Ydiaquez, saying that his Majesty had received with the deepest grief the news of the death of Don Francisco Fernando, who showed such bright promise for his tender years, and his Majesty highly appreciates all the care that has been taken of his education. The body is to be brought with the utmost secrecy in a coach to the royal monastery of St. Lorenzo (the Escurial), where it is to be buried, and advice is to be sent by confidential special messenger to Madrid when the corpse should arrive, in order that one of the King's stewards may be there to receive it. All the other arrangements for the burial are made. The four years had apparently not been unprofitable ones to the hidalgo, as the next time his name appears he is a knight of Santiago and lord of the town of Ameyo, as well as of the castles of Isassi and Orbea. The date of the document is April 15, 1634, and again it is a notarial deed attested by the prothonotary of the kingdom, Don Geronimo Villanueva, setting forth that Don Juan Isassi Ydiaquez delivered the body of Don Francisco Fernando, son of his Catholic Majesty Philip IV., whom God had taken to himself, to the Marquis of Torres, the Bishop of Avila, and other nobles appointed by the King to receive it. The delivery was made in the porch of the cathedral, and we are told that the corpse was dressed in a red gown, bordered with gold, and lay in a coffin of black velvet. The coffin, which had been borne by Don Juan Isassi and his servant to the porch, was thence carried to the great hall of the monastery by certain of the King's gentlemen-in-waiting, and after the religious ceremonies had been performed, was taken to the vault by the monks of the Order and laid to rest. And so ended a little life which, like that of his half-brother Baltasar, if it had been spared, might have stayed the decay of the Spanish branch of the House of Austria. It is true that Don John of Austria survived, and for a short time snatched his poor brother, Charles the Bewitched, from the clutches of his foolish mother and her low-born favourite, Valenzuela, but who knows whether the strong, masterful spirit of the baby of four whom it was dangerous to thwart might not, if he had grown to manhood, have done more than his younger brother to keep the reins of power when once he grasped them. Poor trembling, white-faced Charles the Bewitched, with his leaden eyes and monstrous projecting jaw, a senile dodderer at thirty, wanted a strong, masterful spirit like this to hold him up and shield him from the vultures that fought over the carcase before the poor creature was dead.

But it was not to be, and the forgotten babe of the sovereign house was put with so many other princely corpses in that horrible "rotting place of princes," off the black marble stair of the regal pantheon of the Escurial, where, not so very many years ago, I saw a ghastly heap of princely and semi-princely skulls and leg-bones gathered up as they had fallen from the rotting coffins to the floor. There, all undistinguished from the others, probably enough rests still, his very name never published, and his short existence hardly known till now, Don Francis Ferdinand of Austria, one of the last male members of the Spanish branch of the sovereign house, which in four generations descended from the highest pinnacle of human greatness to contempt, disgrace, decrepitude and decay.

[[1]] The Gentleman's Magazine, September, 1892.