STORY OF KING PHILIP II OF SPAIN
FOR three hundred years a bitter controversy has raged around the actions of Philip II. of Spain.
The first of the great misfortunes of Spain was an
{3} event which at the time looked full of bright promise, namely, the marriage of Juana, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabel, to Philip of Austria, son of the Emperor Maximilian
Juana, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabel l
Philip of Austria, son of the Emperor Maximilian
But the vast and scattered territories of Charles V. cursed Spain with a foreign policy in every corner of Europe. In his Austrian dominions the emperor was the outpost of Christianity against the Turk, the bulwark which restrained the Moslem flood from swamping eastern Europe. His galleys were those which were to keep the Mediterranean a Christian sea. Flanders and the Franche Comté gave him a long flat frontier conterminous with France, whose jealous eyes had been fixed covetously for centuries on the fine harbours and flourishing towns
Philip II was the offspring of the forced within the Hapsburg dynasty, both his parents being grandchildren of cunning, avaricious Ferdinand, and of Isabel the , whose undoubted genius was accompanied by high-strung religious exaltation, which would now be considered neurotic. Her daughter, Juana the Mad, Philip’s grandmother, passed a long lifetime in melancholy torpor. In Charles V. the tainted blood was mingled with the gross appetites
{5} and heavy frames of the burly Hapsburgs. The strength and power of resistance inherited from them enabled him, until middle age only, to second his vast mental power with his indomitable bodily energy. But no sooner Philip II of early manhood gone than he too sank into despairing lethargy and religious mysticism.
Empress Isabel
Philip’s mother, the Empress Isabel, came from the same stock, and was the offspring of several generations of consanguineous marriages. The curse which afflicted Philip’s progenitors, and was transmitted with augmented horror to his descendants, could not be expected to pass over Philip himself; and the explanation of his attitude towards the political events of his time must often be sought in the hereditary gloom which fell upon him, and in the unshakable belief that he was in some sort a junior partner with Providence, specially destined to link his mundane fortunes with the higher interests of religion. His slow laboriousness, his indomitable patience, his marble serenity, all seem to have been imitated, perhaps unconsciously, from the relentless, resistless action of divine forces
Villadolid Spain birthplace of King Philip II
Philip was born at the house of Don Bernardino de Pimentel, near the church of St. Paul in Valladolid, on May 21, 1527. His mother was profoundly impressed with the great destiny awaiting her offspring, and thought that any manifestation of pain or weakness during her labour might detract from the dignity of the occasion. One of her Portuguese ladies, fearing that this effort of self-control on the part of the empress would add to her sufferings, begged her to give natural vent to her feelings. “Silence!” said the empress In the midst of the rejoicings that heralded his birth news came to Valladolid that the emperor’s Spanish and German troops had assaulted and sacked Rome, and that Pope Clement VII. was surrounded by infuriated soldiery, a prisoner in his own castle of St. Angelo. In the long rivalry which Charles had sustained with the French king, Francis I., who had competed with him for the imperial crown, one of the main factors was the dread of the entire domination of Italy by Spain, by virtue of the suzerainty of the empire over the country. The excitable and unstable pontiff, Clement VII., thought that his own interests were threatened, and made common cause with Francis. The emperor’s troops were commanded by Charles de Montpensier, Duke of Bourbon
In April 1528, when Philip was eleven months old, he received the oath of allegiance as heir to the crown from the Cortes of Castile, and from that time until the return of his father to Spain in 1533 the royal infant remained under the care of his mother and one of her Portuguese ladies, Doña Leonor de Mascarenhas, to whom Philip in after-life was devotedly attached. He was even then a preternaturally grave and silent child, with a fair pink-and-white skin, fine yellow hair, and full blue lymphatic eyes, rather too close together. It is no uncommon thing for princes to be represented as prodigies, but Philip seems, in truth, to have been really an extraordinary infant, and exhibited great aptitude for certain studies, especially mathematics. Charles on his arrival in Spain decided to give to his heir a separate household and masters who should prepare him for the duties of his future position. A list was made of the principal priestly professors of the Spanish universities, which was gradually reduced by elimination to three names. These were submitted to the empress for her choice, and she selected Dr. Juan Martinez Pedernales (which name = flints, he ingeniously Latinised into Siliceo), a professor of Salamanca, who was appointed tutor to the prince, with a salary of 100,000 maravedis a year. The emperor probably knew little of the character of his son’s tutor. He had intended in the previous year to appoint to the post a really eminent scholar, the famous Viglius, but did not do so. WhateveR
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At the age of twelve Philip lost his mother, and two years afterwards, in 1541, his political instruction may be said to have commenced. The emperor, although still in the prime of life, was already tired of the world. His great expedition to Algiers, from which he had hoped so much, had brought him nothing but disaster and disappointment, and he arrived in Spain in deep depression. A letter supposed to have been written to him at the time by Philip, full of religious and moral consolation for his trouble, is quoted by Cabrera de Cordoba
On the occasion of Charles’s own marriage, the dowry from the wealthy royal family of Portugal had provided him at a critical juncture with money to carry on the war with France; and now again, with his exchequer chronically empty, and the demands upon it for warlike purposes more pressing than ever, the emperor sought to tap the rich stream of the Portuguese Indies by wedding his son to Princess Maria, daughter of John III. and of Charles’s sister Catharine, another consanguineous marriage of which added the renewed struggle with France, in which he was to have the assistance of the English king. The emperor’s intercourse with his son during his stay in Spain had convinced him of Philip’s precocity in statesmanship, and so he determined to leave in his hands the regency of Spain in his absence
This was one of the most important junctures of Philip’s life. He was barely sixteen years old, and was thus early to be entrusted with Charles’s secret system of government,
In November 1543 the Portuguese princess crossed the frontier to marry Philip. She was of the same height and age as her bridegroom, a plump bright little creature; but he was already grave and reserved, short and dapper, but erect and well made, of graceful and pleasant mien. But for all his gravity he was still a boy, and could not resist the temptation of going out in disguise to meet her, and mixing in her train
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