The foreign transactions of this reign are too unimportant to be detailed. In revenge for the maritime hostilities of the English, an expedition was sent to Ireland to raise the inhabitants against the government; but it was annihilated at Kinsale. In the Low Countries the war continued with little glory to the archduke Albert until 1609, when the independence of the Seven United Provinces was acknowledged by treaty. With France there was continued peace, which, in 1612, was strengthened by the double marriage of the prince of the Asturias with Isabella de Bourbon, and of Louis XIII with the infanta Anne [Anne of Austria], eldest daughter of the Spanish monarch. With the Venetians, Turks, and Moors of Africa there were some engagements, but nothing decisive was the result. Spain still retained the duchy of Milan, the kingdom of Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia, and the fortresses on the African coast.
Philip died March 31st, 1621. Besides his heir, and Anne, queen of France, he left children—Maria, queen of Hungary, Don Carlos and Don Ferdinand, who entered the church, and attained the dignity of cardinal. His character needs no description: it was chiefly distinguished for helpless imbecility, for dissipation, and idleness.[c]
CAUSES OF SPAIN’S RAPID DECLINE
[1598-1621 A.D.]
The rapid conquest of the Palatinate by the Spanish army, under the marquis Spinola, and the decisive battle of Prague, which the emperor gained by means of the treasures of Spain, brightened the last days of Philip III with a transient lustre. But the constitutional melancholy inherent in the Castilian line—the taint of the blood of Juana—predominated over all the excitement of victory and its exhilarating consequences. The gloom which had overcast the mind of the king could not be dispelled by the most brilliant successes; and those triumphs which, towards the close of his reign, diffused universal joy throughout Spain, conveyed no gladness to the breast of its desponding monarch.
At the accession of Philip IV, the Spanish monarchy had much declined from that supremacy which it had so long held among the nations. Its territory indeed was but little diminished, and if power could be measured by extent of dominion, Spain was still the most potent kingdom in Europe. But its energy was in a great measure spent, and its resources were nearly drained.
In every country there is an epoch of exhaustion as well as of excitement; and in the political constitution, not less than in the bodily frame, the period of depression quickly follows on that of excitation. The growth of the Spanish monarchy had been rapid and gigantic—more so, perhaps, than that of any sovereignty, except the Grecian Empire of Alexander. But its sudden increase of power had been somewhat forced and premature. It was produced by the matrimonial alliances of its sovereigns, by accidental discoveries which opened as if by miracle the gates of dominion, and by the pre-eminent talents of a few individuals, who, within a short compass of time, rose in constellation on Spain—Ferdinand the Catholic, with his illustrious queen Isabella, Gonsalvo de Cordova, Cardinal Ximenes, and the emperor Charles. Its progress in power was not accompanied by a corresponding expansion of intellect, or advancement in knowledge. The time of its supremacy was consequently brief, and the decay which it suffered during the short reign of Philip III was more swift than any recorded in the history of the decline or fall of empires.
But though Spain had thus sunk in the space of a few years, the causes of its depression may be traced through a much longer period, and may even be found in the era of its augmentation and prosperity. Spain had not enjoyed but abused her strength; and if the maxim be just, that an immeasurable ambition is the ruin of nations, never was country better entitled to destruction. As early as the reign of Charles V, the kingdom had been emptied both of men and treasure to support foreign wars.
The discovery of America and its mines ought naturally to have given fresh vigour to industry and commerce; and it undoubtedly promoted them for a time. But, borne away by political events, energy was diverted from domestic industry, the truest source of national wealth and greatness, to foreign colonisation and adventure. The discovery of treasures which they believed to be inexhaustible, and the example of immense and rapid fortunes acquired in America and the Indies, produced a contempt of tillage, and even for the manufactures, the profits of which were comparatively inconsiderable and distant. Persons, too, of a certain rank and birth, however poor they might be, were precluded by the prevailing notions from procuring a subsistence by the exercise of the mechanic arts. But in the New World they could, without shame, devote themselves to pursuits which in their own country might not be prosecuted without degradation. Nor did the produce of the mines afford any compensation for the injury they thus occasioned. Expended in chimerical projects of foreign ambition, and schemes to destroy the peace of other nations, the tide of wealth which flowed from the western world into Spain rushed through the land like a torrent, without fertilising it.
The extent, too, of the Spanish empire, and the distance of its various dependencies, was another cause of its decline. In all ages, the ruins of empires have bespoken the evils of overgrown dominion. The improvement of remote possessions is never sufficiently attended to, while on their account the interests of the parent state are frequently neglected. Voiture[e] likens the Spanish monarchy to an enormous and unwieldy vessel, of which the prow was in the Atlantic, and the stern in the Indian Ocean. All the vice-royalties suffered by the inevitable abuses of delegated authority, and were seldom vivified by the presence of their princes. The whole life, indeed, of Charles V had been a continued journey; but the Escorial was the fit habitation of his son, and Philip enjoined to his successors a constant residence in Spain. All the proceedings at Madrid were dilatory, and no provision was ever made for any event which seemed to be at a tolerable distance. Others followed the example of the court, and delay became the sole policy of the prince, the ministry, and the governors of provinces. Whatever institutions were favourable to liberty had been suppressed or undermined in the reign of Charles V, and freedom was at length utterly destroyed by his despotic and bigoted son.