Global Crisis

by Parker, Geoffrey

  Despite these deep-seated problems, Philip IV only lost Portugal because of another miscalculation by Olivares. In November 1640, having relocated most of the Castilian troops in Portugal to Catalonia, the count-duke commanded the duke of Bragança to raise a regiment of his vassals and lead it to the Catalan front in person. The duke, fearful that he would never be allowed to return, pleaded that the responsibilities of his estate precluded his departure; but Olivares ‘replied that this was unacceptable’. Ambassador Hopton saw the danger clearly: if another rebellion materialized in Portugal, he considered it ‘almost certaine that the duke of Braganza shall ingage himselfe herein’. And indeed, on 1 December 1640, it was Bragança's agent in Lisbon who gave the order for the discontented fidalgos (still only 40 in number) and their followers to storm the viceregal palace.57

  Even with the duke's support, the conspirators ran grave risks. The Portuguese capital was the largest city in the Iberian Peninsula, with perhaps 170,000 inhabitants, and it normally boasted a powerful Spanish garrison – but here too, Olivares's earlier policies worked against him. He had withdrawn to the Catalan front all but two of the companies guarding the viceregal palace, and they proved unable to stay the intruders who hunted down Miguel de Vasconcelos and murdered him. Shortly afterwards, one of the fidalgos appeared on the palace balcony and shouted ‘Long live King John IV’ – meaning Bragança – and the crowd immediately took up the cry. To avoid further bloodshed, Vicereine Margaret of Mantua ordered the outnumbered Castilian troops to surrender; and a few days later Bragança arrived in the capital to receive oaths of fealty from his new subjects.

  The Tipping Point

  Olivares flatly refused to believe the first rumours of the coup in Lisbon. ‘We have heard so far of no motive that could have caused it, nor has there been any grievance, tax or other [likely] cause that could have occasioned such an event,’ he told the king. ‘It is possible that a popular tumult might have produced a good deal of what we have heard, but to proclaim a king the same day is not credible.’ When irrefutable confirmation arrived, the count-duke's spirits sagged. ‘In many centuries there cannot have been a more unlucky year than the present one,’ he lamented – but, once again, he exaggerated. The year 1641 would prove even worse.58

  For a few weeks more, Olivares pinned his hopes on a quick victory in Catalonia, where Los Vélez and the royal army continued to advance, meting out exemplary punishment to the towns taken by force. Yet these ‘examples’ failed to intimidate the people of Barcelona. When news of the massacre at Cambrils arrived, crowds hunted down and killed any remaining Castilians they could find; and when they heard of the fall of Tarragona, they murdered three of the surviving royal judges (and some others suspected of collaboration with ‘the enemy’), disfigured them with repeated blows and shots, and then hanged them from the gallows in the city square. Shaken by the rising disorder, Claris persuaded the Junta de Braços to proclaim the Catalan Republic on 16 January 1641; but when, five days later, Los Vélez's troops captured and sacked nearby Martorell, the Junta de Braços gave up their brief bid for independence and recognized Louis XIII as their new ruler. In return, the king agreed that all officers of justice, all clerics and all military governors would henceforth be Catalan; that the Constitutions would prevail; that several unpopular taxes would cease; and that the Inquisition would continue its work with full powers (a special concern of the Catalan leaders). He even graciously agreed that the Catalans could choose another lord if he did not treat them well.

  Duplessis-Besançon, Richelieu's representative, now took charge of military affairs within Barcelona, while the city's clergy (reinforced by those who had retreated from the surrounding villages rather than surrender) organized round-the-clock services and frequent processions to beg the city's patron saints for protection against ‘the regiments of the count-duke’. According to one royalist, ‘the efforts of the most committed friars in their writings and pulpits’ upheld the cause as much as ‘the segadors in the streets’.59 They needed all their persuasive powers when on 24 January 1641 a herald from Los Vélez arrived and threatened that unless the city surrendered at once, it too would be sacked.

  Duplessis-Besançon later remarked in his memoirs, ‘In war, the least circumstance, difficult to assess [at the time], often produces major effects’, and indeed, on the very day that Los Vélez issued his summons, a ship arrived in Barcelona bearing two envoys from John IV of Portugal with an offer of alliance. This gave the Catalans new ‘vigour and strength’, and thousands of men and women flocked to join the city's defenders.60 Just as Los Vélez's troops tried to capture the hill of Monjuich, from which they could bombard the city, Duplessis-Besançon rushed in 2,000 reinforcements. They turned the tide. The royal assault failed and many royal soldiers (especially the Portuguese) deserted as they retreated. Los Vélez soon lacked sufficient men to mount a formal siege. In addition, the marquis had relied on finding supplies in Barcelona: without them, he had to fall back, pursued by French troops.

  Olivares nevertheless drew consolation from the sudden death of Pau Claris, probably poisoned by royal agents, and began to contemplate diverting resources from the Catalan to the Portuguese front.61 As he pointed out to Philip, ‘unless action is taken immediately against Portugal, there will be no chance of recovering that kingdom for many years, since each day's delay will make the enterprise more difficult'; but, once again, circumstances beyond his control thwarted him. The count-duke had planned to use the silver aboard the 1640 treasure ships from the Americas as security for loans to fund the 1641 campaign, but none arrived: although the viceroy of Mexico had amassed over 750,000 ducats to send to Spain, he decided to hold the entire shipment back ‘because of so many rumours of enemies’. With no silver to offer, Spain found few bankers willing to lend.62

  As Olivares had feared, Spanish inaction allowed John IV to consolidate his control over Portugal. The Cortes ‘acclaimed’ him as their new king and, after he abolished the hated regalian rights newly imposed by Madrid, they voted new taxes (including a property tax – the very imposition that had provoked the revolt of Évora three years before). They also presented a list of ‘grievances’ for redress, including improved administration of justice, punishment of corrupt public officials, and better government control over the bankers who collected the taxes assigned to repay their loans. Other grievances revealed deep social divisions. The nobles and representatives of the towns in the Cortes begged the king to limit the number of clerics (Portugal boasted 30,000 seculars and 25,000 regulars); to limit the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts; and to levy more taxes on the Church. The towns called for the closure of all universities and colleges for five years (save only for Coimbra), because they produced more clerics and lawyers than the kingdom needed; while the towns and the clergy wanted strong measures against the New Christians (none should be admitted to university or allowed to become doctors, lawyers, priests or public officials). The Cortes thus focused on individual groups and sought to return to ‘normal times’ because ‘it is not wise to innovate’: they showed little awareness of national issues or collective interests.63

  Olivares tried to exploit these social divisions by supporting a conspiracy hatched by a group of Portuguese prelates, nobles and New Christian bankers to assassinate John IV and restore Madrid's control. They failed, however, and the new king executed most of the noble conspirators. He also suspended the prelates and appropriated the revenues of their sees, and allowed the Inquisition to persecute the New Christian merchants. He also sponsored sermons and printed propaganda against Castile, while his agents concluded treaties with France, Sweden, Britain – and, most important of all, the Dutch Republic, which in August 1641 sent a fleet to defend Lisbon. Bragança would not become a ‘Winter King’ like Frederick of the Palatinate (see chapter 8 above).

  The Fall of Olivares

  Olivares enjoyed no respite. Instead, news arrived of sedition in another previously loyal part of the Monarchy, the kingdom of Ara
gon, and suspicion fell principally on the viceroy: the duke of Nochera, a Neapolitan. In 1639 Nochera had warned about the discontent in Aragon caused by recruiting, taxation and the loss of trade with France; the following year he sent a defeatist letter urging the king to conciliate the Catalans ‘or they will be like Hydra, where instead of one you find seven'; now he offered his services as intermediary between the two sides. Olivares interpreted this as treason and ordered the duke's arrest. He died in prison.64

  Some nobles in Castile also became restless. Although many of them privately disapproved of the expensive yet unsuccessful policies pursued by Olivares, they made no headway because they lacked a constitutional forum for expressing their grievances (the aristocracy no longer attended the Cortes). According to one of them, ‘We grandees are to blame for what has happened to us, because each of us gloated over the harm done to the others. If we had joined together as we should have done, this would not happen’.65 Nevertheless, two ‘grandees’ took matters into their own hands. Early in 1641, Olivares ordered the duke of Medina Sidonia, together with his relative and neighbour the marquis of Ayamonte, to initiate secret talks to see whether John IV (married to the duke's sister) might be reconciled with Madrid. Instead, the two nobles sought Portuguese support to ‘turn Andalusia into a republic’ with Medina at its head. King John offered to send a flotilla from Lisbon to Cádiz, where it would burn the Spanish warships in the harbour and seize the treasure fleet expected from America. Evidence of the plot reached Madrid only a few days before the Portuguese ships arrived off Cádiz, and Olivares reacted both punctually and forcefully. When Medina Sidonia ignored a direct summons to come to court, an envoy arrived with a vial of poison and orders either to bring the duke to Madrid or ‘to send him to meet his Maker’. Realizing that the game was up, Medina complied and threw himself (literally) at the king's feet, unchivalrously blaming everything on Ayamonte.66

  These events – the first aristocratic plots in Castile for 150 years – took place amid another spate of climatic disasters. In spring 1641 a prolonged drought threatened the harvests of Castile; and in August 1642 a tornado struck the city of Burgos with such force that it destroyed the nave of the cathedral, ‘lifting beams, boxes and other pieces of wood as if they were feathers’. This natural disaster seemed so remarkable that the king sent hundreds of letters to his subjects in Spain and America soliciting contributions for the cathedral's repair. The years 1640–3 saw the highest precipitation ever recorded in Andalucía, and in January 1642 the Guadalquivir burst its banks, flooding Seville.67

  The government added to the misery through desperate measures to find money for the wars with Catalonia and Portugal – especially through another devaluation of the currency of Castile, calling in all copper coins and re-stamping them at triple their value. The king also tried to ascertain the number of his Castilian vassals in preparation for levying yet another tax and, since he still lacked census data, he collected data on the number of ‘bulls of the crusade’ distributed by the Church each year (in theory one to each family). He found that the number of households had declined from 4.3 million in the 1630s to 3.8 million in 1643. As Arthur Hopton, the British ambassador in Madrid, reported to his government:

  Concerning the state of this kingdom, I could never have imagined to have seen it as it is now, for the people begin to fail, and those that remain, by a continuance of bad success, and by their heavy burdens, are quite out of heart … The greatest mischief of all is that the king of Spain knows little of all this, and the count-duke is so wilful as he will break rather than bend.68

  King Philip was not quite as ignorant of the public affairs of his Monarchy as Hopton supposed, however. He fully comprehended the first consulta announcing the Portuguese rebellion, because his rescript is stained with his tears (Plate 12); and in spring 1642 he finally emulated his brother-in-law Louis XIII and joined his troops in Aragon. It did little good: he failed to recapture Lleida (Lérida, the last barrier to a march on Madrid), while the French forced the surrender of Perpignan, the second city of Catalonia – which, as the British ambassador in Paris observed, was ‘the most important and considerable action the French have accomplished since the beginning of this last war’, because it allowed them to advance to the Ebro.69

  Philip returned to Madrid disconsolately, to find that almost all his nobles had boycotted his court: on Christmas Day, only one man sat in the pews reserved for the grandees – the son of the murdered count of Santa Coloma. Criticisms of the count-duke now became more public, with special venom reserved for the Buen Retiro palace, which Olivares had built for his master on the outskirts of Madrid using tax revenues. Many saw the palace as a symbol of his misguided policies: even its name – ‘Retreat’ – served as a stick with which to beat the minister as his armies retreated on all fronts. A French cartoon of 1642, ‘The plundered Spaniard’, memorably portrayed the situation: it showed four ‘bandits’ (one French, one Portuguese, one Dutch and one Catalan) robbing a Spanish traveller of his clothes, with the loss of Breda, Salces, Catalonia, Portugal, Thionville and Perpignan in the background – all disasters that occurred in the last five years of Olivares's ministry.

  So many defeats and humiliations fatally undermined Olivares's position. On 16 January 1643 his secretary noted: ‘My master is utterly worn out and broken, but even with the water over his head, he keeps swimming,’ adding ‘[t]he storm is great, but God is above all, and one single event can change everything for the better’.70 Perhaps he imagined that news of the death of Olivares's nemesis, Cardinal Richelieu, which had just become known in Madrid, would ‘change everything'; but if so, he erred. The following day Philip gave his Favourite and chief minister of almost 22 years permission to retire.

  The fall of Olivares led to a long-overdue reappraisal of the Monarchy's strategic priorities. As early as July 1641 one minister had warned the Favourite that 'Seeking to arrange the affairs of Spain must come before the conservation of other provinces, because if the war lasts long there, we shall lose them all, whereas once Catalonia and Portugal are regained, everything can be maintained and we can recover what has been lost [elsewhere].‘71 As usual, the count-duke paid no attention, but two weeks after his fall, the king and his Council of State together reviewed imperial priorities and concluded that less money should go to Germany, Italy and the Netherlands until all enemy forces had been expelled from Spanish soil, and that the war in Catalonia must take precedence over recovering Portugal. Philip therefore ordered his commanders in all theatres except Catalonia to assume a defensive conciliatory posture. He also opened peace talks with both France and the Dutch, and instructed don Francisco de Melo, governor-general of the Spanish Netherlands, to forward personal letters to his sister Anne, now the regent of France, with orders to ‘deploy every seemly and feasible means to secure a treaty’.72

  Melo was a career diplomat who had gained his exalted office by default: he was the senior Spanish minister in Brussels in 1641 when smallpox claimed Philip's brother the Cardinal-Infante – but he reassured the king that his relative lack of military experience did not matter, because nowadays ‘a mere doctor of philosophy’ could lead an army to victory. The following year he vindicated this arrogant view by using a portion of his troops to hold the Dutch at bay while he led the rest to victory over a French army in battle and captured five French towns.73 Melo's success seems to have weakened the peace initiative. When the Council of State met early in 1643 in the presence of the king to discuss whether or not to open peace talks with France, the count of Oñate (another career diplomat) argued:

  When the situation and developments are favourable, it is desirable for Your Majesty to bring relief to your vassals through peace, and when they are unfavourable, it seems essential; but it must always be done while maintaining the ruler's reputation and dignity as much as possible, especially a ruler to whom God has given as many kingdoms and possessions as Your Majesty; because otherwise, when we make peace, it will be neither sure nor respe
cted.

  Of course Oñate professed that he did not oppose negotiations in the long run; he only opposed them at this juncture: ‘We should leave a little time for Time,’ he quipped.74 Melo agreed and invaded France again, laying siege to the heavily fortified town of Rocroi. This time a relief force arrived promptly, drove off his weak cavalry, and then attacked the Spanish infantry until they either died or surrendered. ‘To tell the truth,’ Melo admitted sheepishly after the fiasco, ‘we used to regard war here as a pastime; but the profession [of arms] is serious and it gains and loses empires.‘75

  Although the battle of Rocroi did not destroy ‘the empire on which the sun never set’, it certainly transformed its strategic vision. The king, now 38 years old, sought consolation in spiritualism, summoning men and women renowned for their prophetic powers from all his dominions to give advice on what he should do next, culminating in a ‘summit’ of prophets in October 1643; and for the next 25 years Philip wrote a holograph letter once every two weeks to one of the spirit mediums, Sor María de Ágreda, begging her to erect a barrier of prayer against his enemies that might take the place of the human resources he lacked.76 Philip's ministers also hoped that God ‘would give Your Majesty's armed forces the results that reflect the justice of your cause’ – but in view of ‘the variety of events and accidents that normally occur in wars’, they recommended that Spain should concentrate its resources on fighting the Dutch and the Catalans, requiring Italy to fund the other wars of the Monarchy, as well as paying for its own defence.77