PHILIP II. son of Charles V. and of Isabella of Portugal, who was born at Valladolid on the 21st of May 1527, became king of Naples and Sicily by his father's abdication in 1554. He ascended the throne of Spain on the 17th of January 1556 by the same means. Charles had made a truce with the French, but his son broke it; and having formed an alliance with England, poured into Picardy an army of 40,000 men. The French were cut to pieces at the battle of St. Quintin, which was fought on the 20th of August 1557. That town was taken by assault, and the day on which the breach was mounted Philip appeared armed cap-a-pie in order to animate the soldiers. It was the first and last time that he was observed to wear this military dress. It is well known, indeed, that his terror was so great during the action that he made two vows: one, that he should never again be present in a battle; and the other, to build a magnificent monastery dedicated to St. Lawrence, to whom he attributed the success of his arms, which he executed at Escorial, a village about seven leagues from Madrid. After the engagement, his general, the Duke of Savoy, wanted to kiss his hand; but Philip prevented him, saying, "It is rather my duty to kiss your's, who have the merit of so glorious a victory;" and immediately presented him with the colours taken during the action. The taking of Catelet, Ham, and Noyon, were the only advantages which were derived from a battle which might have proved the ruin of France. When Charles V. was informed of this victory, it is said he asked the person who brought him the intelligence, "if his son was at Paris?" and being answered in the negative, he went away without uttering a single word. The Duke of Guise having had time to
assemble an army, repaired the disgrace of his country by the taking of Calais and Thionville. While he was animating the French, Philip gained a pretty considerable battle against Marshall de Thermes near Gravelines. His army was, on this occasion, commanded by Count Egmont, whom he afterwards caused to be beheaded. The conqueror made no better use of the victory of Gravelines than he had done of that of St. Quintin; but he reaped considerable advantage from the glorious peace of Cateau-Cambresis, the master-piece of his politics. By that treaty, concluded the 13th of April 1559, he gained possession of the strong places of Thionville, Mariembourg, Montmedi, Hesdin, and the county of Charolles. This war, so terrible, and attended with so much cruelty, was terminated, like many others, by a marriage. Philip took for his third wife Elizabeth, daughter of Henry II. who had been promised to Don Carlos.
After these glorious achievements, Philip returned in triumph to Spain, without having drawn a sword. His first care, upon his arrival at Valladolid, was to demand of the grand inquisitor the spectacle of an auto-da-fé. This was immediately granted him; 40 wretches, some of whom were priests or monks, were strangled and burnt, and one of them was burnt alive. Don Carlos de Seza, one of those unfortunate victims, ventured to draw near to the king, and said to him, "How, Sir, can you suffer so many wretches to be committed to the flames? Can you be witness of such barbarity without weeping?" To this Philip coolly replied, "If my own son were suspected of heresy, I would myself give him up to the severity of the inquisition. Such is the horror which I feel when I think of you and your companions, that if an executioner were wanting, I would supply his place myself." On other occasions he conducted himself agreeably to the spirit which had dictated this answer. In a valley of Piedmont, bordering on the country of the Milanese, there were some heretics; and the governor of Milan had orders to put them all to death by the gibbet. The new opinions having found their way into some of the districts of Calabria, he gave orders that the innovators should be put to the sword, with the reservation of 60 of them, of whom 30 were afterwards strangled, and the rest committed to the flames.
This spirit of cruelty, and shameful abuse of his power, had the effect to weaken that power itself. The Flemish, no longer able to bear so hard a yoke, revolted. The revolution began with the fine and large provinces of the continent; but the maritime provinces only obtained their liberty. In 1579 they formed themselves into a republic, under the title of the United Provinces. Philip sent the Duke of Alba to reduce them; but the cruelty of that general only served to exasperate the spirit of the rebels. Never did either party fight with more courage, or with more fury. The Spaniards, at the siege of Haarlem, having thrown into the town the head of a Dutch officer who had been killed in a skirmish, the inhabitants threw to them the heads of eleven Spaniards, with this inscription: "Ten heads for the payment of the tenth penny, and the eleventh for interest." Haarlem having surrendered at discretion, the conquerors caused all the magistrates, all the pastors, and above 1500 citizens, to be hanged.
Philip. The Duke of Alba, being at length recalled, the grand commander of the Requesnes was sent in his place, and after his death Don John of Austria; but neither of those generals could restore tranquillity in the Low Countries. To this son of Charles V. succeeded a grandson no less illustrious, namely, Alexander Farnese duke of Parma, the greatest man of his time; but he could neither prevent the independence of the United Provinces, nor the progress of that republic which arose under his own eye. It was then that Philip, always at his ease in Spain, instead of coming to reduce the rebels in Flanders, proscribed the Prince of Orange, and set 25,000 crowns upon his head. William, superior to Philip, dissuaded to make use of that kind of vengeance, and trusted to his sword for his preservation.
In the mean time the king of Spain succeeded to the crown of Portugal, to which he had a right by his mother Isabella. This kingdom was subjected to him by the Duke of Alba, in the space of three weeks, in the year 1580. Antony, prior of Crato, being proclaimed king by the populace of Lisbon, had the resolution to come to an engagement; but he was vanquished, pursued, and obliged to fly for his life.
A cowardly assassin, Balthazar Gerard, by a pistol-shot killed the Prince of Orange, and thereby delivered Philip from his most implacable enemy. Philip was charged with this crime, it is believed without reason; though, when the news was communicated to him, he was imprudent enough to exclaim, "If this blow had been given two years ago, the Catholic religion and I would have gained a great deal by it."
This murder had not the effect to restore to Philip the Seven United Provinces. That republic, already powerful by sea, assailed England against him. Philip having resolved to distress Elizabeth, fitted out, in 1588, a fleet called the Invincible. It consisted of 150 large ships, on which were counted 2650 pieces of cannon, 8000 seamen, 20,000 soldiers, and all the flower of the Spanish nobility. This fleet, commanded by the Duke of Medina Sidonia, sailed from Lisbon when the season was too far advanced; and being overtaken by a violent storm, a great part of it was dispersed. Twelve ships, driven upon the coast of England, were captured by the English fleet, which consisted of 100 ships; 50 were wrecked on the coasts of France, Scotland, Ireland, Holland, and Denmark. Such was the success of the Invincible. See ARMADA.
This enterprise, which cost Spain 40 millions of ducats, 20,000 men, and 100 ships, was productive only of disgrace. Philip supported this misfortune with an heroic resolution. When one of his courtiers told him, with an air of consternation, what had happened, he coolly replied, "I sent to fight the English, and not the winds. God's will be done." The day after Philip ordered the bishops to return thanks to God for having preserved some remains of his fleet; and he wrote thus to the pope: "Holy father, as long as I remain master of the fountain-head, I shall not much regard the loss of a rivulet. I will thank the Supreme Disposer of empires, who has given me the power of easily repairing a disaster which my enemies must attribute solely to the elements which have fought for them."
At the same time that Philip attacked England, he was encouraging in France the Holy League; the ob. Vol. XIV. Part II.
ject of which was to overturn the throne and divide the state. The leaguers conferred upon him the title of Protector of their association; which he eagerly accepted, from a persuasion that their exertions would soon conduct him, or one of his family, to the throne of France. He thought himself so sure of his prey, that when speaking of the principal cities in France, he used to say, "My fine city of Paris, my fine city of Orleans," in the same manner as he would have spoken of Madrid and Seville. What was the result of all those intrigues? Henry IV. embraced the Catholic religion, and by his abjuration of Protestantism made his rival lose France in a quarter of an hour.
Philip, at length, worn out by the debaucheries of his youth, and by the toils of government, drew near his last hour. A slow fever, the most painful gout, and a complication of other disorders, could not disengage him from business, nor draw from him the least complaint. "What!" said he to the physicians who hesitated about letting blood of him; "What! are you afraid of drawing a few drops of blood from the veins of a king who has made whole rivers of it flow from heretics?" At last, exhausted by a complication of distempers, which he bore with an heroic patience, and being eaten up of lice, he expired the 13th of September 1598, aged 72 years, after a reign of 43 years and eight months. During the last 50 days of his illness he showed a great sense of religion, and had his eyes almost always fixed towards heaven.
No character was ever drawn by different historians in more opposite colours than that of Philip; and yet, considering the length and activity of his reign, there is none which it should seem would be more easy to ascertain. From the facts recorded in history, we cannot doubt that he possessed, in an eminent degree, penetration, vigilance, and a capacity for government. His eyes were continually open upon every part of his extensive dominions. He entered into every branch of administration; watched over the conduct of his ministers with unwearied attention; and in his choice both of them and of his generals discovered a considerable share of sagacity. He had at all times a composed and settled countenance, and never appeared to be either elated or depressed. His temper was the most imperious, and his looks and demeanor were haughty and severe; yet among his Spanish subjects he was of easy access; listened patiently to their representations and complaints; and where his ambition and bigotry did not interfere, was generally willing to redress their grievances. When we have said thus much in his praise, we have said all that truth requires or truth permits. It is indeed impossible to suppose that he was insincere in his zeal for religion. But as the religion was of the most corrupt kind, it served to increase the natural depravity of his disposition; and not only allowed, but even prompted, him to commit the most odious and shocking crimes. Although a prince in the bigotted age of Philip might be persuaded that the interest of religion would be advanced by falsehood and persecution; yet it might be expected, that, in a virtuous prince, the sentiments of honour and humanity would on some occasions triumph over the dictates of superstition; but of this triumph there occurs not a single instance in the reign of Philip; who without hesitation violated his most sacred obligations
gations as often as religion afforded him a pretence, and under that pretence exercised for many years the most unrelenting cruelty without reluctance or remorse. His ambition, which was exorbitant; his resentment, which was implacable; his arbitrary temper, which would submit to no controul—concurred with his bigotted zeal for the Catholic religion, and carried the sanguinary spirit, which that religion was calculated to inspire, to a greater height in Philip than it ever attained in any other prince of that or of any former or succeeding age.
Though of a small size, he had an agreeable person. His countenance was grave, his air tranquil, and one could not discover from his looks either joy in prosperity or chagrin in adversity. The wars against Holland, France, and England, cost Philip 564 millions of ducats; but America furnished him with more than the half of that sum. His revenues, after the junction of Portugal, are said to have amounted to 25 millions of ducats, of which he only laid out 100,000 for the support of his own household. Philip was very jealous of outward respect; he was unwilling that any should speak to him but upon their knees. The duke of Alba having one day entered this prince's cabinet without being introduced, he received the following harsh salutation, accompanied with a stormy countenance: "An impudence like this of yours would deserve the hatchet." If he thought only how to make himself be feared, he succeeded in doing so; for few princes have been more dreaded, more abhorred, or have caused more blood to flow, than Philip II. of Spain. He had successively, if not all at once, war to maintain against Turkey, France, England, Holland, and almost all the Protestants of the empire, without having a single ally, not even the branch of his own house in Germany. Notwithstanding so many millions employed against the enemies of Spain, Philip found in his economy and his resources where with to build 30 citadels, 64 fortified places, 9 sea-ports, 25 arsenals, and as many palaces, without including the escurial. His debts amounted to 140 millions of ducats, of which, after having paid seven millions of interest, the greatest part was due to the Genoese. Moreover, he had sold or alienated a capital stock of 100 millions of ducats in Italy. He made a law, fixing the majority of the kings of Spain at 14 years of age. He affected to be more than commonly devout; he eat often at the refectory with the monks; he never entered their churches without kissing all the reliques; he caressed knead his bread with the water of a fountain which was thought to possess a miraculous virtue; he boasted of never having danced, and of never wearing breeches after the Grecian fashion. Grave and solemn in all his actions, he drove from his presence a woman who had smiled while he was blowing his nose. One great event of his domestic life is the death of his son Don Carlos. The manner of this prince's death is not certainly known. His body, which lies in the monument of the escurial, is there separated from his head; but it is pretended that the head is separated only because the leaden coffin which contains the body is too small. The particulars of his crime are as little known as the manner in which it was committed. There is no evidence, nor is there any probability, that Philip would have caused him to be con-
demned by the inquisition. All that we know of the matter is, that in 1568 his father, having discovered that he had some correspondence with the Hollanders his enemies, arrested him himself in his own room. He wrote at the same time to Pope Pius V. in order to give him an account of his son's imprisonment; and in his letter to this pontiff, the 20th of January 1568, he says, "that from his earliest years the strength of a wicked nature has filled in Don Carlos every paternal instruction." It was Philip II. who caused to be printed at Anvers, between 1569 and 1572, in 8 vols folio, the fine Polyglot Bible, which bears his name; and it was he who subjected the islands afterwards called the Philippines. He married successively, 1st, Mary daughter of John III. king of Portugal; 2dly, Mary daughter of Henry VIII. and queen of England; 3dly, Elizabeth of France, daughter of Henry II.; 4thly, Anne, daughter of the Emperor Maximilian II. Don Carlos was the son of his first wife, and Philip III. of the last.