Page:Imperialdictiona03eadi Brandeis Vol3a.pdf/725

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
PHI
667
PHI

bearance reported of him by Plutarch, cannot be all groundless fictions; and when compared with the ordinary type of conquerors he certainly appears superior to them both inhumanity and wisdom. Yet we must not forget that in order to gratify his ambition he caused a vast amount of human suffering, and sold into slavery the unoffending inhabitants of many populous cities.—G.

Philip V., son of Demetrius II., was born 237 b.c. His father died when Philip was but eight years old, leaving the crown to Antigonus his brother, who died 220 b.c., and was succeeded by Philip, then seventeen years of age. The Ætolians and Spartans, presuming on his youth, made war on him immediately on his accession; but Philip, in conjunction with the Achaean league, repelled them successfully, and an advantageous peace was concluded by him, 217 b.c., on condition that each side should keep what they had gained in the struggle. The Roman power was now threatening Greece with subjugation, and Philip wisely concluded an alliance with Hannibal against Rome after the battle of Cannæ. His ambassador, however, fell into the hands of the Romans on his return, who thus forewarned stationed a fleet off Brundisium to watch Philip's movements. He conducted a campaign in Illyria with success, 218 b.c., but suffered the critical period, while Hannibal was still pressing Rome, to slip away neglected. It is probable that he was embarrassed by the affairs of Southern Greece, where the Romans stirred up enemies against him. In 213 b.c. he caused Aratus, his former friend, the chief of the Achæan league, to be poisoned, thus proving himself to have degenerated from a generous prince into a suspicious and cruel tyrant. In 211 b.c., the Ætolians allied themselves with Rome against Philip and the Achæan league, and the war was continued for some years with varying success. In 205 b.c., Philip concluded a peace with Rome and the Ætolians, but he nevertheless sent a strong body of auxiliaries to the assistance of Hannibal at Zama. The ambition of Philip now involved him in a war with Attalus, king of Pergamus, and the Rhodians, and this continued until 200 b.c., when the Romans having finished the war in Africa, again renewed their conflict with Macedon. The consul Flamininus gained a decided victory at Cynocephalæ in Thessaly, 197 b.c., and in the following year peace was concluded on the condition that Philip should abandon all his conquests, withdraw all his garrisons from Greece, pay one thousand talents for the expenses of the war, give up all his fleet, and reduce his army to five thousand men. His son Demetrius and other noble Macedonian youths were carried to Rome as hostages. His power and ambition being thus crushed, Philip indulged more than ever his cruel and tyrannical inclinations. He put to death many of his noblest subjects, and massacred the inhabitants of whole cities which had offended him. He also became suspicious of his son Demetrius, who had been allowed to return from Rome, fearing that he was conspiring with the Romans against him. This jealousy was increased by his elder son Perseus, who hated his brother, and Philip was at length induced to put Demetrius to death. Remorse for this crime soon followed, on discovering the innocence of his son, and Philip died hopeless and desperate 179 b.c. His early years gave some promise of virtue, but the temptations of supreme power soon corrupted his nature, and he became a cruel, debauched, and treacherous prince.—G.

IV.—KINGS OF SPAIN.

Philip I. of Castile, surnamed the Handsome, was the son and heir of Maximilian I., emperor of Germany, by Mary I. of Burgundy, in right of whom he inherited the seventeen provinces of the Netherlands. He was married in 1496 to Joanna, the imbecile daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. On the death of Isabella (1504), the crown descended to Joanna, as "queen proprietor," and Ferdinand took measures to establish his own authority as regent during her incapacity. Philip, however, was not long in asserting his claim, and a futile correspondence took place, intended, on Philip's part, only to cause delay, until he could appear personally in Spain. On their voyage to Spain from Zealand, Philip and Joanna were driven by a storm into Weymouth, and remained some time at the court of Henry VII., who took advantage of the occasion to obtain from his young guest two treaties, neither of which was advantageous or honourable to the latter. At length (28th April, 1506) the royal pair landed at Corunna, and on the 27th June Ferdinand was compelled to swear to an agreement by which the sovereignty of Castile was vested in Philip and Joanna alone, and on the 12th July the usual oaths were taken to Joanna at Valladolid. Philip, whose treatment of his wife had long been scandalous, would have induced the nobles to authorize the confinement of the queen, and to devolve the whole power upon him; and though this was refused, he virtually assumed the government, and began a course of reckless and arbitrary rule, involving an expenditure to which the revenue was wholly unequal. What rendered him, however, still more unpopular was his tacit discouragement of the inquisition. But all hopes and fears were laid at rest by his sudden death from a fever, brought on by too violent exercise, 25th September, 1506—F. M. W.

Philip II. was born on the 21st of May, 1527, and was the only legitimate son of the Emperor Charles V. and Isabella of Portugal. He entered on the government of the Netherlands in 1555, and succeeded to the Spanish throne on the abdication of his father in January, 1556. He thus became at the age of twenty-nine the sovereign of the most extensive and powerful monarchy that christendom had ever known. The pride of his subjects boasted that the sun never set upon his dominions. In Europe, besides Spain and the Netherlands, his inheritance included the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, with Milan and other Italian provinces; in Africa, Oran, Tunis, and other important stations on the north, and the Cape de Verde islands and the Canaries on the western coast; in Asia, the archipelago of the Philippines and several of the Spice islands; and in America, Mexico and Peru, with the archipelago of the West Indies. His revenue far exceeded that of any other monarch of his time, his navy was more numerous than that of any other country, and he had in his service the ablest generals and the best troops of the age. In his empire "the arts of war and the arts of peace flourished with equal splendour, and he had at his disposal the gold of Mexico and Peru, the infantry of Spain, the industry of Flanders, the science, the taste, and the statecraft of Italy." But ere long the despotic, cruel, and bigoted policy of Philip cast a dark cloud over the dominions so peaceful and prosperous at his accession. A long series of mortifying disasters befel his arms. His ambitious schemes were completely defeated, and at his death he left the Spanish monarchy enfeebled, depressed, and mutilated in its possessions. The great object of Philip's anxiety, the rule and standard of his policy at home and abroad, was the punishment and extirpation of heresy, and the maintenance of the Romish faith. His father had on his death-bed commanded him in the most peremptory terms to "pursue and chastise heretics without regard to the prayers, the rank, and condition of any man," and most unflinchingly did he obey his father's injunctions. During the first four or five years of his reign, however, his ruthless policy was not fully inaugurated, as he was completely occupied with his French and Italian wars. Two years before his accession to the throne he had married as his second wife Mary, queen of England, and this alliance enabled him to engage that kingdom with his own in the war against France. The English auxiliaries did good service at the celebrated battle of St. Quentin (10th August, 1557), in which the French were totally defeated. The town of St. Quentin was soon after taken, and after a series of signal disasters the French monarch, Henry III., was fain to conclude the inglorious peace of Chateau Cambresis in 1559, and to promise in marriage to the Infant Don Carlos the Princess Elizabeth, who some months afterwards was espoused to Philip, himself left a second time a widower in 1558, by the death of Queen Mary. It was stipulated at the same time that the kings of Spain and France should maintain the catholic religion, and use all means to extirpate heresy in their dominions. Shortly after the conclusion of this treaty Philip returned from Flanders to Spain, and set himself at once to carry out this policy of repression with a thorough and relentless determination. Only six weeks after his arrival an auto-da-fe was held to celebrate his successes, at which fourteen persons were consigned to the stake. Philip was present and manifested his cordial approbation of the horrible proceedings; and when one of the victims, a Florentine gentleman named Don Carlos di Seso, who had long been a favourite of Charles V., exclaimed—"Can your majesty attend in person to see your innocent subjects burned before your eyes?" "If it were my own son," was Philip's merciless reply, "I would bring the wood to burn him, an he were such a wretch as thou art." His conduct on this occasion may be regarded as a fair specimen of his whole reign. "I would sacrifice a hundred thousand lives if I had them," he said, "rather than submit to a single change in matters of religion." In his Spanish and Italian