‘FOR GOD, ALL DIFFICULTIES MUST BE OVERCOME’
Valladolid, Capital of Spain, 1601
FELIPE III, King of Spain, King of Portugal, and emperor of the greatest dominion the world had ever known, gazed with satisfaction on his royal bride as she ate and drank at table.
Queen Margaret never reached for a cup herself, which was how it should be. Instead, if she wanted to drink, she would sign discreetly to the most senior of the three ladies-in-waiting who stood by her table, each with a napkin draped precisely over their shoulder. The first lady made a signal to the second lady. The second signed to the third. The third lady signed to the mayordomo or steward, who signed to a page, who in turn signalled the wish to a lowly servant. Together the page and servant left the room to fetch a capped goblet on a golden tray. The page gave it to the mayordomo, who inspected it before allowing the page to present it to the first lady. Kneeling before the Queen, the first lady would pour a little of the liquid into the cover of the goblet and taste it via a napkin – she must never touch it with her lips – before offering the goblet and tray to her royal mistress. After the Queen had supped, the goblet was removed by the same elaborate route.
Six people to enable one woman to sip a drink. Yes, this was how it should be. It was the way things worked in Felipe’s Spain, a country where the lavish opulence and overstaffing at the royal court stood in stark contrast to the grinding poverty of many of Felipe’s overtaxed subjects.
Felipe was just three years out of his teens. His Queen, the Austrian daughter of the Archduke Charles, was only sixteen. Yet together they ruled over a vast empire that stretched from Peru to the Philippines.
Almost three years before, while aged just twenty, Felipe had inherited the world’s first global superpower. He owned Spain, Portugal, parts of Italy, parts of North Africa, a piece of Asia, and by proxy a chunk of Europe’s Low Countries. A century beforehand, the world’s biggest empire had belonged to the Incas in South America. Spanning five thousand kilometres and ruling twelve million people, it was bigger than China’s or Turkey’s. Spain had swallowed it whole and added it to its territories.
However, decay had set in and was spreading rapidly. Felipe was well aware that he had inherited a basket-case economy. There was no industry to speak of. Nobody had seriously tried to bring farming methods out of the dark ages. Harvests had failed and famine was becoming a permanent way of life. Corruption and jobbery were rampant. One in ten people claimed noble status and refused to pay taxes. So did the hundreds of thousands of clerics who held 20 percent of the land. Just five years earlier, Spain had declared itself bankrupt for the third time, but that hadn’t stopped Felipe’s father, Felipe II, from splashing out millions of ducats on his splendid new palace at El Escorial.
For ordinary Spanish citizens, it was difficult to believe that Spain was taking in a fortune in gold and silver from its American colonies. Ships would arrive in Seville, their timbers groaning under the weight of New World bullion: 35 million ducats’ worth in one year alone; historians now estimate that in the course of three hundred years the Spanish treasure fleets brought home the equivalent of ten trillion US dollars today. But the money all went on lavish cathedrals and unwinnable wars. And the sheer size of the cargoes made them less valuable. Ridiculously, Spain had to degrade its own coins using cheap metal imported from elsewhere in Europe. As one writer lamented: ‘Spain is poor because she is rich.’
The image of the monarchy had hit an embarrassing new low when royal officials were despatched to beg door-to-door, asking householders to donate small saleable items. And yet Spain still continued its triumphal procession across the world stage, acknowledged as the richest, most powerful and most expansive empire in history. Spain was still Spain – the big dog of the global backyard. It dominated the world culturally, linguistically, financially and (it liked to think) militarily. Broke it might have been, but, for the moment at least, the rich bankers of Genoa were still ready to back Spain with loans, even though they knew that most of the cash would go to gilded palaces and costly religious conflicts. They had invested too much already, and the empire was too big to fail.
The twenty-three-year-old to whom all this wealth and power had been bequeathed was an unimposing figure: contemporary portraits show him as a pale, rusty-haired youth whose arrogantly tilted head seems to compensate for an inner nervousness. His goatee beard hides a sharp chin, both nearly smothered by an enormous ruff. He is cultivating an extravagant military moustache.
Felipe came across as an eccentric figure: amiable enough, pious to the extreme, but incapable of making his own decisions. Old Felipe II had gone to such lengths to subdue and mould his son’s personality that the boy had been left with little identity he could call his own.
When it had been time to choose a wife for his son, the elder Felipe presented him with portraits of three equally acceptable sisters and instructed him to select the one he found most attractive. Young Felipe, terrified of the responsibility, said he would leave the choice up to his father. No doubt heaving an exasperated sigh, Felipe II pointed out that choosing a lifetime bedmate was a highly personal matter.
—I have no choice, his son stammered. Whoever seems most beautiful to Your Majesty will look the most beautiful to me.
On his deathbed the elder Felipe had fretted that his son would be too easily influenced by others. ‘Ah, I fear they will rule him,’ he predicted.
The shrewd old King had anticipated this problem and had recruited a group of reliable advisors to guide him. But it was too late. Felipe junior was already putty in the hands of the ambitious and deeply corrupt Don Francisco de Sandoval, a member of one of Spain’s most prominent families. Sandoval – better known as the Duke of Lerma – had groomed the youngster for years. As soon as the courtiers brought him his first papers to sign, the new King gave a bored wave of the hand that signified that they should all be passed over to Lerma.
The simple gesture heralded a seismic shift in Spanish politics. For the next two decades, Lerma would hold undisputed sway as the real monarch of Spain. Felipe didn’t mind. ‘[He] has helped me sustain the weight of state affairs,’ Felipe wrote to the once powerful Council of State. ‘I order that you obey the Duke in all matters.’
The Council of State was no longer allowed to approach the King directly – everything had to be filtered through Lerma. Although he loved reading and approving the paperwork, Felipe was happy to let the Duke take the decisions. This allowed the new King to devote himself to his favourite pastime: spending money.
He was very, very good at it. Within a few months he had granted more knighthoods than Felipe II had dispensed in a decade. For his own wedding to Margaret, he had embarked upon an outrageously expensive grand tour throughout Europe. Freed from the boring business of actual kingly rule, Felipe’s life was enjoyably devoted to hunting, travelling and holding lavish parties. Yet he was also extremely devout. He would spend hours in prayer and ritual, and agonised over the fate of his fellow Catholics in Northern Europe. Pious and yet hedonistic, Felipe was half priest, half party animal.
As his confidence increased, Felipe began to change personality. He assumed an air of brusque arrogance. Observers in England worried that he was becoming dangerously ‘headstrong’. However, attitude meant nothing without action. Felipe feared that he was still regarded as a weak and ineffective king, a shadow of his powerful father. He needed a grand gesture, a major success to show the world that he should be taken seriously.
And as he scanned the international horizon for a suitable setting, his eye settled inexorably upon Ireland.
It was not a new idea. The concept of using Ireland as ‘the King of Spain’s bridge into England’ had been around for a long time. A famous prophesy predicted that ‘he that England will win, through Ireland must come in’. Even the Great Armada of 1588 had been originally due to attack Ireland, before the plans were changed.
The old King had been keen on the idea, in theory. Irish expatriates and clerical zealots like the Franciscan Mateo de Oviedo had convinced Felipe II that he had a realistic chance of ousting the English from their first colony. Oviedo, a fifty-four-year-old theologian from Segovia, was regarded as an expert on Ireland’s confusing politics. He had made several trips there and had forged close contacts with the insurgent leaders. However, his enthusiasm for their cause often blinded him to the complex realities of a dirty war, and his impatient attitude – and his belief that God would solve all practical problems – often created serious friction between him and the military commanders.
The problem for the Irish was that they weren’t the only faction lobbying for Spanish intervention. The Scots Catholics were pushing for an invasion of Scotland. And many English Catholics wanted to place Felipe II’s daughter, the Infanta Isabella, on the throne when Elizabeth died.
By 1596 the Spanish navy had been rebuilt to its former glory. When the English Earl of Essex made a pre-emptive strike on the Spanish port of Cadiz, Felipe II responded by sending two more armadas north in 1596 and 1597. The first, bound for Ireland, was smashed apart by storms with the loss of three thousand men. The second, featuring Don Juan del Águila as land commander, was driven home by relentless headwinds.
A year later, the old king, Felipe II, was on his deathbed when he heard news which lent his pain-racked face a fleeting smile of satisfaction. Irish insurgent forces had defeated the English at the Yellow Ford in Armagh. The Irish – for so long dismissed as opportunistic woodland raiders – had shown that they could defeat their ancient enemy on equal terms. With Spanish help, anything was now possible.
By the turn of the century, Spain had assembled an awe-inspiring fleet of 35 galleons, 70 other ships and 25,000 men. A new king was on the throne, and the Spanish were back in the game.
Felipe III had sworn to honour his father’s promises to help the Irish earls, and Hugh O’Neill had promised to yield up the crown of Ireland in exchange for his support. Encouraged by Oviedo, and eager to demonstrate his strength, the new king began to demand action. In the summer of 1600 he ordered the immediate assembly of a strong army and a substantial fleet to invade Ireland. His Council of State agreed, but asked where bankrupt Spain would find the money. Felipe, however, was determined to establish his reputation. ‘This is the first great enterprise the King has undertaken since his coming to the Crown,’ George Carew would remark later. ‘He feels himself bound in honour to see the enterprise through.’
Felipe dismissed any objection. ‘As the expedition is so entirely for the glory of God,’ he wrote, ‘all difficulties must be overcome … I will sacrifice what I need for my own person so that it may go this year.’
But the royal cutbacks never happened, the money never materialised and it was to be another thirteen months before Felipe’s command was obeyed.
At the dining table, Queen Margaret returned her husband’s gaze with genuine fondness. Despite their arranged marriage, the couple had developed a true affection for each other. Yet she was increasingly finding that a third person was coming between them.
The Duke of Lerma saw Margaret’s ability to influence the King as a direct challenge to his own power. He had good reason to worry. Margaret was young, but she was astute and resolute. ‘She is capable of great things,’ reported the Venetians. ‘She would govern in a different manner to the King if she could.’
Margaret represented the interests of the powerful Austrian branch of the Habsburg family (Felipe was also a Habsburg) and was backed by two redoubtable female relatives. One was Margaret’s beloved aunt, the elderly Empress Maria, who was also the aunt (and grandmother) of Felipe III. The other was Maria’s daughter, a cloistered nun called Margaret of the Cross. This formidable female troika worked ingeniously to undermine Lerma’s control of the King. Margaret talked politics to him in the marital bedroom, and the other two pleaded their cases during Felipe’s frequent religious visits to their convent in Madrid. In effect, the convent had become an alternative royal court.
While Lerma pushed the King in one direction, the three women deftly steered him in the other. One major difference in opinion was the plight of the Catholics in England, Ireland and the Netherlands. Lerma was a realist: his instincts were to disengage. If Spain’s interests lay in making peace, religion would take second place. The women, all zealots, saw their mission as a holy crusade. The devout Felipe was not hard to persuade.
Lerma hit back, and hit back hard. At one stage he took Queen Margaret aside.
—You are forbidden to talk to the King about matters of state, he instructed. Especially in the bedroom, when you are alone.
Margaret had bristled. She was a royal Habsburg, not used to being ordered around by a mere Sandoval.
—And if I disobey?
—You will find that urgent duties will take the King away from you for increasingly lengthy periods of time.
He sacked Margaret’s Austrian servants and replaced them with his spies. Then he persuaded Felipe to move the royal court from Madrid to faraway Valladolid. The pretext was the unhealthy air – the real reason was the unhealthy political atmosphere in the convent.
This made the Queen even more determined. Pale and ascetic, Margaret would spend hours in prayer. One of her most fervent prayers was that the suffering Catholic subjects of the English Jezebel should be saved from persecution. She had to persuade Felipe to send them help. She owed it to them – and to God.
The Duke of Lerma stared thoughtfully at the report on his desk. It was just a despatch on the logistics of troop movements to the Netherlands, but to Lerma it was more than that. Much more.
It was August 1601 and everything had just changed. By sheer serendipity, a mere stroke of chance, the Spanish invasion of Ireland had become possible. It might be the way to keep the female troika happy and to satisfy his own aims at the same time. The cold war at court could finally be brought to an end.
Lerma stared at the despatch, but what he was really looking at was a redrawn map of Europe as it might appear a decade from now.
Spain was mired in a horrendously expensive religious conflict in the Low Countries – a war it could never win. All Lerma’s instincts told him to get out. Spain had quite enough on its plate protecting its interests in the Atlantic, America and the Mediterranean. Peace with England would pave the way to peace in the Netherlands; it would also end the relentless privateering raids that were disrupting the Spanish bullion fleets.
Taking the long view, Lerma understood that the bad blood between Spain and England was a temporary phenomenon. For centuries, the two countries had been intuitive allies, regularly cementing their friendship with royal marriages. Just a generation earlier, Elizabeth’s half-sister Mary Tudor, then Queen of England, had married Felipe II, father of Spain’s current monarch. Spain’s fingerprints were all over modern England. Felipe II, as consort King of England, had built up Henry VIII’s decaying navy – which, ironically, had later gone on to defeat his own Great Armada. And how many people in Ireland realised that King’s County – which the Irish called Offaly – had been named for the Spaniard Felipe II rather than after an English monarch?
Lerma had already put out some feelers towards peace, but the English terms had been too high. A Spanish presence in Ireland would mean that Lerma could negotiate from a position of greater strength. Crucially, it would also enable Spain to act swiftly to establish a Catholic successor when Elizabeth died. It would also divert English troops from the Netherlands, and the cost would force Elizabeth closer to bankruptcy. And finally it could all be depicted (as so many invasions are) as a humanitarian intervention to protect a persecuted underclass.
Lerma turned his attention back to his report. Yes, a new window of opportunity had opened. A shift in the ever-changing allegiances in mainland Europe had meant that a fleet of ships waiting in Lisbon to carry soldiers to the Netherlands were no longer needed. The vessels were now free for other use. At last the time was ripe. Through good fortune, the stars were now lined up: Lerma, the King, the Queen, the Irish earls, and churchmen like Oviedo would all get exactly what they wanted.
The new armada would soon sail out of Lisbon … and into history.