Spain's Road to Empire

by Henry Kamen

  The momentous and tragic events in the Netherlands lie beyond the range of our story, but it is crucial to recognize that they determined for one hundred years the destinies of Spain. The operation undertaken by Alba in 1567 was intended to be a limited one, but it soon exploded in the face of the Spanish government and turned into a predicament that demanded further intervention and yet further intervention. The special tribunal set up in Brussels, officially called the Council of Troubles but soon nicknamed the Council of Blood, carried out in 1567 a swift programme of arrests, confiscations and executions directed against ‘rebels’, regardless of religion, whether Calvinist or Catholic. At this stage it was still possible to withdraw after the job was done. Those who had helped to advise Philip, such as Cardinal Granvelle and a friar called Villavicencio, who had lived and taught in the Netherlands, were convinced of it. Villavicencio insisted that Alba's task was now complete. The situation, he insisted to the king, could not be resolved with an army. Nor must force be used against the Netherlanders, for that would unite them all against Spain. They would fight to defend what was theirs. Spaniards could not be allowed to govern in the country, ‘for they neither know the language nor understand the laws and customs’. The only solution was for the king to go there at once.105 It was one of the tragedies of this complex situation, that Philip ignored the policy advice and simply sent the documents on to Alba. And Alba, as the general on the spot, made decisions that Netherlanders and even Spaniards disagreed with and regretted.

  Among the leading nobles who escaped Alba's clutches was William of Orange. When news came of Alba's departure from Spain, Orange opportunely took refuge in Germany. In the course of 1568 Orange sponsored invasions by several small forces, which entered from France and from Germany. All were defeated. Captured prisoners gave details of Orange's links with Protestants in several countries. The invasions could not fall to affect the fate of the distinguished prisoners in Alba's hands. On 5 June 1568 in the public square of Brussels, the counts of Egmont and Homes, unswerving Catholics who always protested their loyalty to Philip II, were beheaded for high treason. The executions shocked and alienated opinion throughout Europe. They also helped to prepare Netherlanders of all opinions and faiths for the inevitable: a struggle to free themselves from the terror of Alba and the heavy hand of Spain.

  Long familiarity with the theme has allowed us to fall into the illusion that the so-called ‘Dutch’ revolt (it was never limited to the Dutch, but included all Netherlanders) was a revolt against Spain. In constitutional terms, this could not happen, for the Netherlands were a sovereign state and not subject to Spain. Their resistance was directed, more precisely, against their ruler the Spanish king, his ministers and his system of government. There were, however, immensely important consequences for Spaniards, forced by the conflict to increase dramatically their levels of expenditure on war. It became necessary to call for help from the resources of the nascent empire.

  The entire year 1568 turned into a nightmare for the king. Since January that year he was suffering severe depression as a result of the imprisonment, which he himself had ordered, of his son and heir Don Carlos. The alarming crisis in Brussels, and the execution of Egmont and Homes, occurred in the middle of this situation. Just over a month after the executions, in the middle of July Don Carlos was taken ill and died unexpectedly. It was a loss that profoundly shook the king and, possibly even more important, left him without an heir to the throne. The king's personal calamities were not yet over. In September his young wife, Elizabeth Valois, whom he had married in 1559 as part of the peace agreement with France in the treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis, died in childbirth at the age of twenty-two. His grief was profound, ‘to suffer so great a loss after that of the prince my son. But I accept to the best of my ability the divine will which ordains as it pleases.’ International events, meanwhile, were reaching flash point. There were protests throughout Europe over the death of Egmont, and dark rumours (which circulated even in Madrid) that Philip had murdered his own son. Two incidents brought relations between England and Spain to a virtual rupture. First, in September 1568 there was a clash between ships under John Hawkins and Spanish vessels in the harbour of San Juan de Ulúa in Mexico (see Chapter 6). Then in November came the provocative seizure by Queen Elizabeth of Spanish pay-ships taking silver to Flanders for the duke of Alba's troops; they took refuge from a storm in the Channel and the English impounded them. The most critical problem occurred on the king's own doorstep, within his kingdoms of Spain, when on Christmas Eve 1568 the Moriscos of Granada rose in rebellion.

  Granada was a conquered area since the 1490s but it was still a sensitive frontier, where Muslim vessels from the Mediterranean maintained contact with the resident population and came ashore almost at will. Like the peoples of the New World, the citizens of the former emirate did not accept the Christian empire imposed on them. Since 1492 the rulers of Spain had pursued an equivocal policy of repression and toleration towards the conquered. Decrees of 1500 and 1526, in Castile and Aragon respectively, forced all Muslims to convert to Christianity, making them Moriscos. The Inquisition was established in Granada in 1526, and began to prosecute Moriscos for not observing their new religion. In many parts of the peninsula, above all where Moriscos were subjects of the nobility, there was by contrast an effective tolerance of the practice of Islam. Numbering about three hundred thousand in the 1560s (some four per cent of Spain's population), the Moriscos lived mainly in the southern half of the peninsula. Most cherished Spain as their home but resented their inferior status. The majority remained practising Muslims and looked for help to their co-religionists in Africa and the Ottoman empire. It was an explosive situation that bred constant violence. Disaffected Moriscos in Valencia and Granada were active as bandits. The rebellion that broke out in 1568 drew its support primarily from the villages of the Alpujarra region, rather than from the population of the city of Granada. Numbering only four thousand at the beginning, by the summer of 1569 the rebels amounted to perhaps thirty thousand. With Spain's crack troops away in Flanders, the threat to internal security was serious.

  Two independent forces under the marquises of Mondéjar and Los Vélez carried out an energetic repression from January 15 69. But support for the rebels among the Moriscos increased. Muslims in North Africa sent arms and volunteers. Because quarrels among the Christian commanders hindered efficiency, in April 1569 the king decided to put the campaign under the overall command of his half-brother Don Juan of Austria. By now it was no longer a question of mere rebellion. Virtually the entire population of the kingdom of Granada was up in arms, in a ferocious war in which little mercy was shown. There was a real risk that the conflict would also bring in the large Morisco populations of Valencia and Aragon. Just across the straits, in North Africa the Turkish governor of Algiers, Uluj Ali, chose this moment (January 1570) to seize the city of Tunis.106

  From January 1570 Don Juan succeeded in imposing his strategy on the military campaign. There were massacres on both sides. Particularly notable was the resistance put up in February 1570 by the town of Galera. When it fell, all its 2,500 inhabitants, women and children included, were slaughtered; the town was razed and salt poured over it. Slowly and brutally, the cruel war drew to its close. On 20 May the rebel leader came to the prince's camp and signed a peace agreement. Resistance continued everywhere, above all in the Alpujarra area. But by the summer of 1570 the revolt was effectively over. Help from Muslims abroad – there were four thousand Turks and Berbers fighting with the rebels in spring 1570 – was not enough to keep it going. What turned the tide was the mass import of arms from Italy, a valuable help since the Spanish troops had few of their own. Guns and powder in quantity came from the factories in Milan.107 By November, reported an official, ‘it's all over’.

  It had been the most brutal war to be fought on European soil during that century. Luis de Requesens reported having killed thousands during the mopping-up. ‘I have become ruthless with these people… An i
nfinite number has been put to the sword.’ The deaths were not, for all that, the only terrible aspect of the war. In the late summer the king's council, under Cardinal Espinosa, made the decision to expel a part of the Muslim population of Granada to other parts of Spain. The operation began on 1 November 1570. Over the subsequent months a total of probably eighty thousand Moriscos, men, women and children, were forcibly expelled for ever from their homes, and distributed through parts of Castile where their presence was till then unknown. Very many died of their hardships during the march. Don Juan, watching the exiles, could not repress his pity. It was, he wrote to the king's chief minister Ruy Gómez, ‘the saddest sight in the world, for at the time they set out there was so much rain, wind and snow that mothers had to abandon their children by the wayside and wives their husbands… It cannot be denied that the saddest sight one can imagine is to see the depopulation of a kingdom.’108

  The war in Granada was brought to an end in good time to be able to confront a yet more massive threat from the combined forces of the Islamic Mediterranean. Since early 1566 the intelligence services of the West had not ceased to convey alarming news of Turkish naval activity in the Mediterranean and military movements on the Hungarian frontier. It was feared that the aged Ottoman ruler, Suleiman the Magnificent, hoped to make one last great drive against Christian Europe. Spanish energies were concentrated on the problems in the Netherlands and later in Granada, and could not cope with the threat from yet another front. Andrea Doria continued in a state of vigilance. The Turkish navy, meanwhile, carried out extensive attacks in the eastern Mediterranean, in waters over which the republic of Venice could not afford to lose control. In the summer of 1570 the Turks occupied most of the island of Cyprus. Venice, supported by the pope, appealed for a general alliance of Italian states against the apparently unstoppable menace. Such an alliance, however, could not come about without the participation of the state that controlled half Italy, namely Spain.

  The Holy League signed between Spain, the papacy and Venice on 20 May 1571 stipulated that the allies would raise and maintain for six months a standing force of around two hundred galleys and over fifty thousand men. Apart from an unspecified amount that the pope would contribute, Spain (and its territories) would pay three-fifths of the costs and Venice two-fifths. When the naval forces eventually assembled at their rendezvous in Messina in the summer of 1571, they totalled 203 galleys, the greatest assembly of ships ever concentrated in the waters of Western Europe.109 The direct Spanish contribution to this impressive force was limited to fourteen galleys, under Alvaro de Bazán. The other sixty-three galleys sailing under Spanish command were all Italian: they included thirty from Naples, ten from Sicily, eleven Genoese ships under Gian Andrea Doria, and other small contingents including three galleys sent by Savoy and three by Malta. The pope sent twelve galleys, under Marcantonio Colonna, and Venice one hundred and six. The fleet of the Holy League was in every sense an Italian and above all a Venetian fleet, with Spain relying heavily on its Italian allies for support. Naples and Sicily alone contributed over half the galleys and more than a third of the costs. By contrast, Spain supplied the highest proportion of men. Of the twenty-eight thousand soldiers who accompanied the fleet, Spain contributed just under a third, around 8,500 men in four tercios under their commanders Lope de Figueroa, Pedro de Padilla, Diego Enríquez and Miguel de Moncada. There were in addition around five thousand German troops, and the rest were mostly Italian (including three thousand sent and paid by the pope). Besides the soldiers, the Christian fleet also had 13,000 sailors and 43,500 rowers. The immense fleet took a long time to assemble, and at the end of August the agreed commander, Don Juan of Austria, twenty-four years old and in the prime of his career, arrived in Messina to take up his post.

  The armada left Messina on 16 September, heading for Corfu.110 At sunrise on 7 October it came upon the enemy fleet, at the entrance to the Gulf of Lepanto, off the Greek coast. The vessels of the two combatants covered the sea as far as the eye could see, the broad-bottomed Christian galleys occupying so much space on the water that some had to wait in the rear. The centre of the Christian battle array consisted of sixty-two galleys commanded by Don Juan; each of his two wings was made up of fifty-three galleys.111 The Ottoman fleet, with an estimated 208 galleys and 25,000 soldiers, was almost evenly matched, though without the superior cannon and arquebuses on the Christian side. It was perhaps the most remarkable land battle ever to have been fought at sea, as the infantry fought from one galley to the next, backed by firepower. The balance of carnage at the end of the day also had few parallels in European history.112 Both sides recognized immediately that it was a Christian victory, but the casualties gave no reason for rejoicing. The Christians lost fifteen galleys, nearly eight thousand dead and eight thousand wounded. The Turks lost 15 galleys destroyed, a further 190 were captured, and their casualties included 30,000 dead and 8,000 prisoners; in addition, 12,000 Christian rowers were freed from their ships.

  Venetians and other Italians never wavered from the belief that the victory had been an Italian one. Their historians went so far as to criticize Spain for its failure at Lepanto: the failure, that is, to exploit the Italian victory by going on to reconquer Greece.113 Though repeatedly celebrated as Spain's most memorable military feat, more than any other victory of the age of empire Lepanto demonstrated clearly that in war as in peace the power of Spain depended on its allies. Historians have looked with care at who actually paid for what in this great naval expedition, but have been reluctant to break away from the common assumption that Spain was the great contributor. The stark reality was that Spain could not pay its share, and the Italians came to the rescue. The Italian states made a fundamental contribution in supplying the armaments, equipment and victuals for the expedition. They also paid out of their own resources for the ships and men they supplied. The papacy made the most important contribution of all, by allowing Philip II to raise special Church revenues that helped to defray the expense of the campaign. The total costs that fell on the Castilian exchequer have been calculated at five million ducats. Of this sum, the government sent only sixty thousand ducats in silver. The rest was paid by Genoese bankers, who issued credit (in the form of ‘bills of exchange’) to cover the money, which they hoped to recoup later with adequate interest charges.114

  Just as the military and financial contribution to Lepanto was one shared between all the allies, so the victory belonged to all. In Rome, reported a cardinal, ‘we are mad with delight, and above all the pope, who we really thought without exaggeration would die of joy, for the old saint has not slept these two nights’.115 The exultant Pope Pius V offered to crown Philip II as Emperor of the East personally if he could recover Constantinople.116 The prominent political role of the Spanish monarchy served to concentrate the hopes of the West on Spain. The feverish excitement of those days is clearly reflected in the letters of congratulation that were directed to the Spanish court, to Don Juan of Austria and to the other main participants. When in addition the queen of Spain gave birth, shortly after, to Prince Ferdinand, it seemed as if heaven had deliberately combined the two events. Philip II said expressly to the papal nuncio that he hoped his son would be the new defender of Christendom.117 The birth fulfilled prophetic hopes that had long existed in Castile, over the mythical role of a liberator who would bear the name Ferdinand.118 A majestic painting by Titian, done shortly after, combines the two events as one. But the messianic enthusiasm after Lepanto also nurtured pipe dreams. In Portugal the Jesuits encouraged young King Sebastian in his plans to carry the war against Islam into the heart of Africa. When he received a somewhat confused version of the news of the victory, a Jesuit in Cochin China believed that Don Juan had liberated the Holy Land. The Christian victory, it seemed, might lead to the defeat of Islam in the Mediterranean and the liberation of the Holy Places.

  The impetus continued. Don Juan re-conquered Tunis in 1573, with a force of 15 5 galleys contributed by the Italian states of the
empire and by Spain. His force, which consisted of twenty-seven thousand men, two-thirds Italians and Germans, one third Spaniards, sailed from Messina on the exact day 7 October, in a clear attempt to capitalize on the triumph of the preceding year. There was no resistance from the town, which was nevertheless sacked.119 The victory was short-lived. In September 1574 a massive Turkish fleet of over 230 vessels and 40,000 men recaptured the city. The fortress of La Goletta, which overlooked the city and was manned by a Spanish garrison, had surrendered a fortnight before. The loss was bitterly criticized in both Spain and Italy. ‘I cannot but lament’, observed Spain's ambassador in Rome, Juan de Zúñiga, ‘that all that has been spent this year has been to no avail.’ The pope blamed Spanish incompetence. He asked Don Juan, who passed through Rome in November, to express his concern to the king. Zúñiga bluntly blamed ‘the way they manage things in the council in Spain’.

  Despite the continuing commitment to the Mediterranean, in the 1570s Spain was sucked relentlessly into the maelstrom of the Netherlands. Don Juan wished to maintain a strong Spanish presence in the inland sea, but Philip II thought differently. The king was still unable to go to Brussels in person. ‘There's nothing in this life I wish more’, he commented, ‘than to see my subjects there, but it is not possible for now to absent myself from here, because of the war against the Turk.’120 Alba continued to have a free hand. His proposal to impose a new tax, the ‘tenth penny’, aroused universal protest and fortified the opposition of those, both Catholic and Protestant, who wished to set their country free from foreign occupation. In April 1572, Flemish naval freebooters known as the ‘Sea Beggars’ were turned out from England, where they had taken refuge from Alba, and returned to seize the port of Brill, which became a base for patriotic resistance against Spain. The rapid success of the largely Calvinist Beggars in winning the northern provinces and electing William of Orange as their leader, opened the second and most decisive phase of the revolt of the Netherlands. In France the influential voice of Admiral Coligny, the Huguenot leader who was now prominent in the royal council, called for French intervention in support of the Netherlands rebels. The massacre of St Bartholomew's eve in August 1572, engineered by the queen mother, Catherine de' Medici, for domestic reasons, conveniently removed Coligny and with him the threat from the French Protestants, thousands of whom were set upon and murdered.