by Henry Kamen
The war also went favourably in Italy where Alba forced the papacy into a peace settlement in September. It was an accord that, for the rest of the century, bound the papacy closely to Spain.101 But it was too early to prepare for peace. In France the duke of Guise, who had just returned from an unsuccessful campaign in Italy, recruited a new army and took the field. He appeared before Calais on New Year's Day 1558. The town, England's last possession on mainland Europe, fell on 10 January. Its loss infuriated the English, and grieved their queen mortally.
Philip was forced to review his strategy. Writing to the duke of Savoy in January, in despatches which show his perfect familiarity with the geography of the Netherlands and northern France,102 the king attempted to control the situation. French forces continued to make attacks across the border. They suffered a further crushing defeat in mid-July 1558, at Gravelines, at the hands of an army commanded by Egmont. Peace talks became inevitable and in October the plenipotentiaries met near Cambrai. On Philip's side they were the prince of Orange, Alba, the bishop of Arras, Ruy Gomez and Viglius, president of the council of State in Brussels. For Henry II they were the Constable, Saint-André, and three others.
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Philip was at Arras when he received on 1 November, All Saints' Day, firm news of his father's death at Yuste.103 The news was expected, but he immediately changed his plans and set off for Brussels. On the way there he was given news that Mary Tudor had died on 17 November. This created a problem of protocol, since he did not wish the ceremonies for the two deaths to be confused. He sent instructions ahead for funeral rites to be held for his queen, to be presided over by Savoy, in his absence. He himself refused to enter Brussels until the city had prepared the funeral ceremonies for the emperor. A formal, glittering service of mourning was held for his father in Brussels on 28 November. The regalia and colour of the knights of the Golden Fleece were dominant. Three days later, he held further ceremonies, for his wife the queen, and for his aunt Mary of Hungary, who had also died in Spain in November.
On New Year's Day 1559, for the first time since the death of his father, the king dined in public in Brussels. Acute differences over policy had never affected the profound and lifelong veneration in which he held the emperor. As seen through the engravings done for Philip by the Dutch painter Heemskerck in 1566, Charles was the prototypical military hero, whose victories over the Lutherans in Germany were on a par with his triumphs over the papacy, over France and over the Turks at Vienna in 1529. Philip came to see in time that military solutions were not always the most effective. But his admiration for his father's prowess in war was absolute and it affected his own character. He accepted the need to be a soldier. His favourite portrait of himself was the full-size one done of him in armour, by Titian which held the place of honour in his chamber in 1553,104 together with one of his father. As a young man, his tastes centred on war and hunting. Well before his English marriage, he had an impressive collection of arquebuses, swords and bows. The campaign at St Quentin fulfilled in some measure his dreams of glory in battle, but it was obvious to observers that he had no real military inclinations. He never attempted to equal the achievements of the emperor. He could continue to venerate his father while in practice adopting a quite different approach to problems. ‘The emperor,’ commented the Venetian ambassador, ‘was inclined to things of war, the king dislikes them. The former threw himself with ardour into great enterprises, the latter avoids them.’105
Philip was also profoundly influenced by the aesthetic tastes of his father. The programme to rebuild (and rethink) the royal palaces in Castile was one that he took over directly. He inherited his father's architects, just as he inherited his artists. The difference was that Charles was never long enough in Spain to give a personal impulse to artistic projects. Philip, by contrast, started where Charles left off. The prince's boundless admiration for Titian arose from the meeting arranged by Charles in Augsburg in 1550. The painter (then aged sixty, but with many years of work ahead of him) immediately captured Philip's imagination. In 1553 his bedroom was dominated by Titian canvases. While adhering to much of what was passed to him by his father, Philip nonetheless branched out into a positive expression of his own preferences.
He always followed scrupulously the advice given by his father in matters of religion and politics; there is no respect in which he ever diverged from the instructions received through Zúñiga. On specific policies, it is true, the two were often poles apart although Philip in later years played down these differences. He always regretted, for example, Charles's need for military alliances with the Lutheran princes. But years later, when referring to these things, he refused to find fault with anything his father had done then.
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In England, meanwhile, changes of enormous importance were taking place.
With Mary's death, Philip's powers and authority in England automatically lapsed. But he was by no means disposed to pull out. Even before Mary was dead Philip's ambassador the duke of Feria was sounding out the possibility of a marriage to Elizabeth (whom Philip had, two years earlier, thought of as a wife for his son Don Carlos). Philip was not put off by her Protestant tendencies. Elizabeth toyed with the idea. In April 1559, when she learned that Philip's peace negotiators were also proposing a marriage alliance with Elizabeth Valois, the queen commented with a smile to Feria that Philip ‘could not have been much in love with her, since he did not have the patience to wait four months’.106 Philip subsequently tried to find her an alternative husband, and broached the idea of the archduke Charles, son of the emperor Ferdinand. The idea was still around as late as 1567. For her part, Elizabeth wanted no link with Spain. But she could surmise that Philip had no intention of turning his back on England. France at that moment had a direct claim to the English throne, through the marriage of the dauphin in April 1558 to Mary Stuart, the next direct heir. It was in Philip's interest to keep England, where Elizabeth's position was still weak and the religious situation unstable, out of the hands of the French.107 He extended his stay in Flanders until he could be certain of a firm peace settlement that would guarantee the security of England. For some time to come, Philip of Spain was to be the protector of the Elizabethan regime, even when the evidence for its Protestantism was plain for everyone to see.
Early in 1559 the peace talks with France were moved to Cateau-Cambrésis. A settlement was urgently needed. ‘I tell you that it is totally impossible for me to sustain the war,’ Philip affirmed in January.108 In moments of leisure, he went hunting in the woods at Binche, ‘excellent country for it, and for the benefit to my health from the exercise and the open air’.109
There was disquieting news from Castile, where the Cortes during that spring petitioned him ‘to return and reside in these realms without delay’.110 Against his advice, his sister and her advisers had sanctioned an ill-fated military expedition into north Africa under the veteran soldier the count of Alcaudete. Philip also had before him reports, dated May 1558, from his sister and from Inquisitor-General Valdés, on the recent discovery of a Protestant group in Valladolid. Valdés was particularly forceful. He was aware that reports unfavourable to him had managed to reach Philip, sent (he said) by ‘some people whose intentions will one day be exposed’. Concerned to ensure his own political survival, he painted an alarming picture of Lutherans active in Seville, Valladolid and Salamanca, Jews active in Murcia, and Moriscos in the throes of discontent. The only remedy, he said, was to put the Inquisition in charge.111 Philip had no other machinery available to handle the situation, and agreed with him about the need for quick action. He wrote off at once, authorising whatever measures might be required. His sister was instructed to set up a committee of lawyers and theologians to advise him on the matter. Writing from St Quentin, he also told Valdés that ‘in nothing could you give me greater satisfaction than in proceeding with all severity against those who have been arrested, in order to check and punish so great an evil’.112 In subsequent months, he followed closely the r
eligious situation in the peninsula, urging his sister in February 1559, for example, to exercise ‘all care and diligence’.113
The emperor, at his retreat in Yuste, was horrified to learn of the appearance within Spain of the very plague which had torn Germany apart. He wrote in May 1558 to Juana, urging her to take the harshest possible measures against the accused, ‘as creators of sedition, upheaval, riots and disturbance in the state … punishing the guilty thoroughly to prevent this thing spreading’. Juana's profoundly religious temperament rose to the challenge. Over the next few months, aided by Valdés, she brought in a number of measures of control, including a stringent new censorship law.
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The final peace between the Habsburgs and France was signed on 3 April 1559, in the little village of Cateau-Cambrésis. It was one of the decisive treaties of western history. It satisfied France, which kept Calais and three key fortresses in the Rhineland and immeasurably strengthened Spain, which was confirmed in its domination of Italy. The duke of Savoy was restored to his duchy, and given the hand in marriage of the king of France's sister Marguerite. Peace returned to Europe. The enmity between the Valois of France and the Habsburgs was laid to rest. Friendship between France and Spain was sealed by Philip agreeing to marry Elizabeth Valois, eldest daughter of Henry II and Catherine de’ Medici. His ambassadors to the peace negotiations, Alba, William of Orange, and Lamoral of Egmont, arrived in Paris on 15 June 1559, bringing with them a gift of a jewel to formalise the marriage proposal. Precisely seven days later a magnificent proxy wedding was celebrated in Notre Dame cathedral, with Alba standing in for the king.
The marriage celebrations in Paris were, suddenly, interrupted by an unprecedented disaster.
As part of the festivities, a tournament was held at the French court on 30 June. The forty-year-old king, Henry II, armoured and on horseback, took on his challengers. During a joust the lance of a young captain of the Scots Guard, the count of Montgomery, accidentally plunged through the king's visor into his right eye. He was immediately attended to by his surgeons, but lapsed into unconsciousness and died on 10 July. His fifteen-year-old son François, married to the Scottish Mary Stuart, was proclaimed king. Mary, daughter of a sister of the duke of Guise, was in her own right also queen of Scotland.
Philip, then in Ghent, was informed of the accident and on 24 July he ordered special services to be held for the late king. He was shocked by the death, but he hoped that the peace treaty would not be called in question by France's new rulers. He then made his final arrangements to leave for Spain. ‘It is unbelievable,’ reported a French diplomat, ‘how this prince bestirs himself and urges on his affairs so as not to be left with any obstacle to delay him’ returning home. He set himself a departure date of 8 August, ‘expressing, whenever he spoke of it, a singular warmth and desire to be in the land of his birth’.114
The homesickness was genuine, and aggravated by fears for his own health (‘I have not been very well recently’).115 But there were other serious matters. Apart from the news about heresy in Spain, his principal worry was the military debt, which he preferred not to resolve by taxing the Netherlands. As he explained to Perrenot in June,
I am hard pressed to go and seek a remedy for these problems, and the further away the remedy appears the greater my haste to go and seek it, since I am disappointed at not being able to find it here. Were I to stay, nothing would be gained. The best thing is for all of us to seek a solution, as I shall to the best of my ability, and if it cannot be found here I shall go to seek it in Spain.116
From 29 July into the opening days of August he presided over the chapter of the Order of the Golden Fleece. ‘I feel shattered,’117 he commented after a tense session with the knights, who included Egmont and Orange. On 7 August he opened the session of the States General of the Netherlands in Ghent, and explained to delegates the motives for his departure.
Though a satisfactory peace had been concluded, Philip was aware that he was leaving many matters in the Netherlands unresolved. The States General wanted him to withdraw the Spanish troops, which were an expense for them. The debts of the government remained to be covered. Above all, there was the increase in heresy, which nobody seemed capable of dealing with. Philip, in line perhaps with the caution he had displayed in England over the same question, refrained from any firm attitude on the last matter. He was aware that a bloodbath of heretics, of proportions unsurpassed in the Spain he knew, had recently taken place in the Netherlands. Viglius, president of the council of State in Brussels, estimated in 1556 (with considerable accuracy) that some 1,300 heretics had been ‘burned, hanged or drowned’ in the provinces. Precisely because of this, Viglius felt that some sort of toleration was inevitable.118 Philip had the facts before him. As yet there was no indication of how he might deal with the problem.
He left the government in the hands of his half-sister Margaret of Parma. Aged thirty-seven in 1559, she was the illegitimate daughter of Charles by a Flemish girl. In the 1530s the emperor had sent her off to Italy to marry first a Medici prince and then a Farnese, the duke of Parma. She came back to her home country thoroughly Italianised. In appearance she was almost masculine. She walked like a man and her enemies made unkind remarks about the thick growth of hair on her upper lip.119 But they respected, for the moment, her firm handling of the political situation in Brussels.
Though there were Spaniards in the Netherlands council of State on whom Philip could count directly, he preferred to put his confidence for the moment in the bishop of Arras. Thanks to Philip's support, Antoine Perrenot in 1561 received a cardinalate from the pope. He retained the see of Arras, but was from then on known as cardinal Granvelle. When he got back to Spain, it was through Granvelle that Philip introduced his most important measures. This increased tensions between the great nobles and the cardinal.
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The Venetian ambassadors observed Philip closely during these years, spoke frequently to him, and have left us a vivid – though not always reliable – impression of his appearance and character.120 His medium height, fair complexion and hair, large blue eyes, the thick lower lip and short pointed beard, appear in their reports exactly as in the superb portrait by Antonis Mor, painted at this time.121 ‘He suffers from stomach and digestive disorders and for that reason has begun recently on the advice of his doctors to make frequent outings.’ The problem was that he ‘eats excessively of certain foods, above all sweets and pastries’. ‘His habit is to partake only of highly nutritious food, and he abstains from fish, fruit and similar aliments, which have a tendency to produce ill humours.’ (It is true that he avoided fish, but fruit and salad appeared regularly in his menus.) His general demeanour was quiet. ‘His habits of life are of a tranquil character’, and he was almost ‘melancholic’. On the other hand, he was much given to night life. ‘He is dissipated with women, likes to go in disguise at night, and enjoys all types of gaming.’
His conduct to others, by contrast, could not be faulted. His rigid manner in Italy on the first journey was a thing of the past. ‘He tends more to gentleness than anger, and displays a special courtesy to ambassadors and other persons … He frequently tells amusing witticisms and enjoys listening to jokes. But at meal-time though the buffoons are admitted to his presence he does not give himself to laughter so much as in his own rooms, where the merriment is unconfined.’
Those who had political dealings with him found him formidable. He perused all the memorials and petitions he received. In audiences, ‘he pays great attention to what is said to him, but normally does not look at the person who is speaking to him, and keeps his eyes down, raising them only to look from side to side’. (It was a manner he had acquired with experience.) ‘He replies succinctly and promptly to all questions.’ When discussing serious business he abhorred vagueness and generalities. In Brussels he gave audiences after breakfast and lunch. Before supper every evening he went through correspondence with Gonzalo Pérez and in the course of the day he consulted regularly
with other secretaries and councillors.
Although his time of life is apt to engender an insatiable desire to govern, his efforts are directed not to increase his possessions by war but to preserve them by peace … Although he resembles his father in his features, he is dissimilar in many respects … The emperor governed entirely according to his own views, but the king governs according to the views of others, and he has no esteem for any nation except the Spanish. He consorts only with Spaniards, and with these only he takes counsel and governs.122
On the whole, the Venetian reports then and later give a fair picture of Philip's subdued character. But they are tainted throughout by a barely concealed hostility to things Spanish, and often lapse into wilful distortion. They have been used sometimes as evidence for the image of a timid, diffident king, crippled by a feeling of inferiority before the imposing personality of his father.123 But it is an image for which no basis can be found in the letters of other ambassadors or in contemporary reports.
For Philip it had been a successful absence, perhaps much more than the visit ten years before. ‘He looketh for long time to live in rest for any wars with France,’ the English envoy wrote home. ‘As for Italy, he counteth them all at his beck. The pope he now feareth not … So as (it is said) upon his getting into Spain he mindeth not to return unto these parts.’124
Philip's anxiety to leave did not arise from any disdain for the Netherlands. In the north he was ill at ease in many respects, but he also came to know and cherish the culture. He valued the humanist environment, and specifically selected as tutor for his son the philosopher Sebastián Fox Morcillo, then a professor at Louvain. (Fox's appointment remained valid even though the king probably knew that his brother Francisco was one of those arrested for heresy in Spain in those weeks.)125 Above all, he was captivated by the artistic creativity of the north. His first journey had been decisive in determining his tastes; the second confirmed his preference for things Flemish.126
