CHAPTER IX. THE REIGN OF PHILIP II
[1556-1598 A.D.]
Philip II had received the investiture of Milan and the crown of Naples, previously to his marriage with Mary Tudor. The imperial crown he had been obliged, much against his will, to forego. The archduchy of Austria, with the hereditary German dependencies of his father’s family, had been transferred by the emperor to his brother Ferdinand, on the occasion of the marriage of that prince with Anna, only sister of King Louis of Hungary. Ten years afterwards Ferdinand was elected king of the Romans, and steadily refused all the entreaties afterwards made to him in behalf of Philip to resign his crown, and his succession to the empire, in favour of his nephew. With these diminutions, Philip had now received all the dominions of his father. He was king of all the Spanish kingdoms and of both the Sicilies. He was titular king of England, France, and Jerusalem. He was “absolute dominator” in Asia, Africa, and America; he was duke of Milan and of both Burgundies, and hereditary sovereign of the seventeen Netherlands.
Thus the provinces had received a new master. A man of foreign birth and breeding, not speaking a word of their language, nor of any language which the mass of the inhabitants understood, was now placed in supreme authority over them, because he represented, through the females, the “good” Philip of Burgundy, who a century before had possessed himself, by inheritance, purchase, force, or fraud, of the sovereignty in most of those provinces. It is necessary to say an introductory word or two concerning the previous history of the man to whose hands the destiny of so many millions was now entrusted.
He was born in May, 1527, and was now, therefore, twenty-eight years of age. At the age of sixteen he had been united to his cousin Maria of Portugal, daughter of João III and of the emperor’s sister, Doña Catalina. Within two years (1545) he became father of the celebrated and ill-starred Don Carlos, and a widower. In 1548, he had made his first appearance in the Netherlands. He came thither to receive homage in the various provinces as their future sovereign, and to exchange oaths of mutual fidelity with them all. Andrea Doria, with a fleet of fifty ships, had brought him to Genoa, whence he had passed to Milan, where he was received with great rejoicing. At Trent he was met by Duke Maurice of Saxony, who warmly begged his intercession with the emperor in behalf of the imprisoned landgraf of Hesse. This boon Philip was graciously pleased to promise, and to keep the pledge as sacredly as most of the vows plighted by him during this memorable year. The duke of Aerschot met him in Germany with a regiment of cavalry and escorted him to Brussels. A summer was spent in great festivities, the cities of the Netherlands vying with each other in magnificent celebrations of the ceremonies, by which Philip successively swore allegiance to the various constitutions and charters of the provinces, and received their oaths of future fealty in return.
His oath to support all the constitutions and privileges was without reservation, while his father and grandfather had only sworn to maintain the charters granted or confirmed by Philip and Charles of Burgundy. Suspicion was disarmed by these indiscriminate concessions, which had been resolved upon by the unscrupulous Charles to conciliate the good will of the people. The light-hearted Flemings, Brabantines, and Walloons received him with open arms. Yet icy was the deportment with which Philip received these demonstrations of affection, and haughty the glance with which he looked down upon these exhibitions of civic hilarity, as from the height of a grim and inaccessible tower. The impression made upon the Netherlanders was anything but favourable, and when he had fully learned the futility of the projects on the empire which it was so difficult both for his father and himself to resign, he returned to the more congenial soil of Spain.
PHILIP’S MARRIAGE WITH MARY TUDOR
[1544-1554 A.D.]