For twenty years the administration was really directed by
his favourite the count of Olivares (q.v.) and duke of San
Lucar, known as the “Conde Duque,” the count-duke.
Olivares was far more able and honest than
Lerma. But he could only keep his place by supplyingPhilip IV.,
1621–1665.
his master with the means of dissipation and by conforming to
his dynastic sentiments. The truce concluded in 1609 with
Holland ended in 1621, and was not renewed. The commercial
classes, particularly in Portugal, complained that it subjected
them to Dutch competition. War was renewed, and the Dutch
invaded Brazil. As their fleets made it dangerous to send troops
by sea to Flanders, Spain had to secure a safe road overland.
Therefore she endeavoured to obtain full control of the Valtellina,
the valley leading from Lombardy to Tirol, and from thence
to the German ecclesiastical states, which allowed a free passage
to the Spanish troops. War with France ensued. The failure
of the treaty of marriage with England (see Charles I. and
Buckingham, First Duke of) led to war, for the English court
was offended by the Spanish refusal to aid in the restoration of the
count palatine, son-in-law of James I., to his dominions. In
Flanders the town of Breda was taken after a famous siege.
The French conducted their campaign badly. The Dutch were
expelled from Bahia in Brazil, which they had seized. An
English attack on Cadiz in 1625 was repulsed. His flatterers
called the king Philip the Great. A few years later it began to
be a standing jest that he was great in the sense that
a pit is great: the more that is taken from it the greater it
grows. By 1640 the feebleness of the monarchy was so notorious
that it began to fall to pieces. In that year Portugal fell away
without needing to strike a blow. Then followed the revolt
of Naples (see Masaniello) and of the Catalans, who were
bitterly angered by the excesses of the troops sent to operate
against the French in Roussillon. They called in the French, and
the Spanish government was compelled to neglect Portugal.
Olivares, who was denounced by the nation as the cause of all its
misfortunes, was dismissed, and the king made a brief effort
to rule for himself. But he soon fell back under the control of
less capable favourites than Olivares. In 1643 the prestige
of the Spanish infantry was ruined by the battle of Rocroy.
At the peace of Münster, which ended the Thirty Years’ War in
1648, Spain was cynically thrown over by the German Habsburgs
for whom she had sacrificed so much. Aided by the disorders
of the minority of Louis XIV., she struggled on till the peace of
the Pyrenees in 1659, by which Roussillon was ceded to France.
An attempt was now made to subdue Portugal, but the battle
of Montesclaros in 1665 proved the futility of the effort. The
news of the disaster was followed by the death of the king on the
17th of September 1665. Catalonia was saved by the reaction
produced in it by the excesses of the French troops, and in
Naples the revolt had collapsed. But Portugal was lost forever,
and the final judgment on the time may be passed in the
words of Olivares, who complained that he could find “no
men” in Spain. He meant no men fit for high command. The
intellect and character of the nation had been rendered childish.
During the whole of the reign of Charles II. (1665–1700),
the son of the second marriage of Philip IV.
with his niece Mariana of Austria, the Spanish
monarchy was an inert mass, which Louis XIV. treated as
raw material to be cut into at his discretion, and was savedCharles II.,
1665–1700.
from dismemberment only by the intervention of England
and Holland. The wars of 1667–68, ended by the peace of
Aix-la-Chapelle, those of 1672–78, ended by the peace of
Nijmwegen, those of 1683–84, ended by the peace of Ratisbon,
and the war of the League of Augsburg, 1689–96, were some
of them fought wholly, and all of them partly, because the
French king wished to obtain one or another portion of the
dominions of the Spanish Habsburgs. But Spain took a
subordinate and often a merely passive part in these wars.
The king was imbecile. During his minority the government
was directed by his mother and her successive favourites,
the German Jesuit Nithard and the Granadine adventurer
Fernando de Valenzuela. In 1677 the king’s bastard brother,
the younger Don John of Austria, defeated the queen’s faction,
which was entirely Austrian in sentiment, and obtained power
for a short time. By him the king was married in 1679 to Marie
Louise of Orleans, in the interest of France. When she died in
1689, he was married by the Austrian party to Mariana of Neuburg.
At last the French party, which hoped to save their
monarchy from partition by securing the support of France,
persuaded the dying king to leave his kingdom by will to the
duke of Anjou, the grandson of Louis XIV., and of Maria Teresa,
daughter of Philip IV. by his first marriage. On the death of
Charles II., on the 1st of November 1700, the duke of Anjou was
proclaimed king.
The Bourbon Dynasty.—The decision of Louis XIV. to accept
the inheritance left to his grandson by Charles II. led to a final
struggle between him and the other powers of western war of
Europe (see Spanish Succession, War of the),
which was terminated in 1713 by the peace ofWar of Spanish Succession.
Utrecht. The part taken by Spain in the actual
struggle was mainly a passive one, and it ended for her .with the
loss of Gibraltar and the island of Minorca, which remained in
the hands of England, and of all her dominions in Italy and
Flanders. Another and a very serious consequence was that
England secured the Asiento (q.v.), or contract, which gave her
the monopoly of the slave trade with the Spanish colonies, as
well as the right to establish “factories”—that is to say commercial
agencies—in several Central and South American ports,
and to send one cargo of manufactured goods yearly in a ship
of 500 tons to New Carthagena. In internal affairs the years
of the war were of capital importance in Spanish
history. The general political and administrative
nullity of the Spaniards of this generation led toPhilip V.,
1700–1746.
the assumption of all real power by the French or Italian
servants and advisers of the king. Under their direction
important financial and administrative reforms were begun.
The opposition which these innovations produced encouraged
the separatist tendencies of the eastern portion of the
Peninsula. Philip V. was forced to reduce Aragon, Catalonia
and Valencia by arms. Barcelona was only taken in 1714,
the year after the signing of the treaty of Utrecht. The
local privileges of these once independent kingdoms, which had
with rare exceptions been respected by the Austrian kings, were
swept away. Their disappearance greatly promoted the work
of national unification, and was a gain, since they had long
ceased to serve any really useful purpose. The removal of
internal custom-houses, and the opening of the trade with
America, hitherto confined to Seville and to the dominions of the
crown of Castile, to all Spaniards, were considerable boons. The
main agents in introducing and promoting these changes were
the French ambassadors, a very able French treasury official—Jean
Orry, seigneur de Vignory (1652–1719)—and the lady
known as the princess des Ursins (q.v.), the chief lady-in-waiting.
Her maiden name was Anne Marie de la Trémoille, and she was the
widow of Flavio Orsini, duke of Bracciano. Until 1714 she
was the power behind the throne in Spain. On the death of
Philip V.’s first wife Maria Louisa Gabriella of Savoy, in 1714,
the king was married at once to Elizabeth Farnese of Parma, who
expelled Mme des Ursins, obtained complete control Queen
over her husband, and used her whole influence to Elizabeth
drag Spain into a series of adventures in order to Farnese ana
obtain Italian dominions for her sons. Her first agent
was the Italian priest Alberoni (q.v.), whose favour lasted from
1714 to 1719. Alberoni could not, and perhaps did not, sincerely
wish to prevent the queen and king from plunging into an attempt
to recover Sardinia and Sicily, which provoked the armed intervention
of France and England and led to the destruction of
the rising Spanish navy off Cape Passaro (see Torrington, George Byng, Viscount).
In 1731 Elizabeth secured the
succession of her eldest son, Charles, afterwards Charles III.
of Spain, to the duchy of Parma, by arrangement with England
and the Empire. Apart from the Italian intrigues, the most
important foreign affairs of the reign were connected with the
relations of Spain with England. A feeble attempt to regain
