The crisis of the reign, 1576–1577
ALTHOUGH Philip II governed for fifty-five years, his dominions enjoyed complete peace for only six months: between February and August 1577. This interlude came about because, after twenty-five years of continuous war, the king reluctantly authorized a ceasefire with the Ottoman sultan. ‘It is extremely important to conclude this truce,’ he stated: ‘so much so that I do not know how we can survive without it.’ With equal reluctance, the king also accepted that ‘we must make all the concessions required’ to reach a settlement with his rebellious vassals in the Netherlands after four years of ‘the most deadly war that has been seen for many years’.1 Although concluded at much the same time, the two initiatives had very different outcomes. Spanish and Ottoman diplomats repeatedly renewed the truce between their masters, bringing peace to the Mediterranean for the rest of the century; yet although the settlement with the Dutch was called ‘the Perpetual Edict’, after scarcely six months the king renewed the war.
For some time, matters hung in the balance. Philip pursued several initiatives that jeopardized the ceasefire in the Mediterranean (chapter 15), while hostilities resumed in the Netherlands primarily because of the complex relationships among three men: the king’s half-brother Don John of Austria; Don John’s secretary, Juan de Escobedo; and the king’s secretary of state, Antonio Pérez. These three induced Philip to end the agreement he had concluded with the Dutch six months earlier – a decision with deleterious consequences for all concerned. Escobedo lost his life, Pérez his liberty and Don John his honour: all three would die disillusioned and discredited. Philip also paid a high price. He lost the services of three talented servants, but only after their antagonisms had polarized and eventually paralysed his entire government. In addition, Pérez would become the catalyst for the revolt of Aragon against Philip, the ally of his French and English enemies, and the author of savage criticisms of the king that enjoyed wide circulation. Worst of all, Philip lost the most favourable opportunity to end the Dutch Revolt, and plunged the Netherlands into a savage war that lasted for thirty more years without intermission, compromising Spain’s dominant position in western Europe and the North Atlantic. How could a monarch ‘who has already dealt with public affairs for thirty-three years’ (as Philip boasted at this time) make so many errors?2
A tale of two secretaries
Antonio Pérez was born in Madrid in 1540, the illegitimate son of Gonzalo Pérez, the cleric and royal official who soon afterwards became Philip’s personal secretary. Antonio later claimed that his father had ‘taught Philip the signature known throughout the world’, Yo el rey [’I the king’]; and given his humanist education and broad experience of public affairs, Gonzalo no doubt also taught his master many other things. When Philip became king of Spain in 1556 he appointed Gonzalo his secretary of state for foreign affairs, an office he held until his death in 1566, retaining the confidence of his sovereign to the end (chapter 8). Gonzalo also obtained a declaration ‘that he was born in Aragon’, a measure that half a century later would save his son’s life.3
Young Pérez studied in the Venetian Republic and the Netherlands before returning to Spain around 1558 to take courses at the universities of Alcalá and Salamanca. He also learned much from his father, in whose office he worked from at least 1562. The fact that both Philip and Antonio shared the same preceptor may have formed a bond between them, but if so it was not strong enough to secure Antonio’s immediate succession to his father’s post, perhaps because the king disapproved of the young man’s affair with Doña Juana Coello, with whom he had a child before they married in 1567. Antonio also faced the hostility of the duke of Alba, with whom Gonzalo had quarrelled in his last years, and the duke promoted his own protégé Gabriel de Zayas. Although Antonio eventually became secretary of state for Mediterranean affairs, while Zayas handled the affairs of northern Europe, henceforth Pérez was a member of the anti-Alba coalition of courtiers and ministers led by Ruy Gómez de Silva.
Juan de Escobedo, a member of the gentry born about 1530, belonged to the same coalition. In the 1550s he served as the confidential official of the duchess of Francavilla, no doubt thanks to some tie of kinship (the duchess addressed him as ‘my cousin’), and he advised the duchess’s only child, Doña Ana de Mendoza, who married Ruy Gómez. Escobedo served as a trusted messenger between members of the Mendoza clan until 1566, when he became secretary of the royal treasury. Seven years later, Ruy Gómez decided that Escobedo would be more useful as a link with Don John who, as victor of Lepanto and captain-general of the forces of the Holy League, boasted both enormous prestige and an annual budget of over a million ducats. Pérez approved of Escobedo’s appointment as Don John’s secretary, telling the king: ‘I believe he will be more useful at Don John’s side because I see him as a restraining influence,’ adding: ‘I beg Your Majesty to excuse me if I am getting ahead of myself, but I do so because I know something about this matter.’4
This message reveals both Pérez’s self-confidence when advising his master and the friendship between the two secretaries, which a courtier later stated ‘could not have been closer or more firm between two men’. Pérez also forged a close link with Don John, who in 1571 told Pérez how much ‘I wanted to come and kiss His Majesty’s hands, and to spend lots of time with Señor Antonio Pérez’. Three years later, when Philip was considering how to distribute funds for the next Mediterranean campaign, Pérez suggested that he should just ‘remit everything to Señor Don John, and let him allocate it and make the necessary arrangements in all parts’. Whenever he visited Madrid, the king’s brother stayed in Pérez’s sumptuous villa, ‘La Casilla’, on the outskirts of the capital on the current site of Atocha station.5
Escobedo soon became the principal intermediary between Don John and the king. Shortly after the secretary arrived at court in 1575 Philip complained that ‘I am so fed up and tired’ of dealing with Escobedo that ‘we need to get rid of him at once’; and when he eventually left Madrid, Philip informed an Italian ally that Escobedo would tell him about ‘the decision I have taken concerning the matter about which my brother Don John sent him here. I would be very grateful if you would keep it a secret.’6 What was that secret matter that had made the king ‘so fed up and tired’?
Don John: the next king of England?
Catholics from all over Europe flocked to Rome in 1575, a Jubilee Year, and a group of English and Irish exiles persuaded Pope Gregory XIII that both kingdoms could be won back for the faith by sending an expeditionary force of 5,000 soldiers from Italy directly to Liverpool under the command of one of their number, Thomas Stukeley. They optimistically claimed that the invasion would provoke a general rising of Catholics (particularly numerous in Lancashire), allowing Mary Stuart to escape from captivity, become queen of England and then marry Don John. Escobedo now went to Rome to make sure that the plan, once again code-named ‘the Enterprise of England’, enjoyed the pope’s complete backing, and then to Madrid to secure 100,000 ducats and the king’s blessing. Philip immediately sent half the subsidy requested but insisted that Stukeley and his men must not launch their venture until after Spanish forces had regained control of the Netherlands.
Late in 1575 Philip also resolved that his brother should replace Requesens as governor-general of the Netherlands, and he began to ponder whether Don John should lead reinforcements up the Spanish Road to continue the war or travel virtually alone with full powers to make peace. He had not reached a conclusion when news arrived of Requesens’s death in March 1576, making the immediate departure of Don John imperative; but now the king worried that his headstrong brother might procrastinate, negotiate, or even refuse to go. He therefore worked with Antonio Pérez to offer an irresistible bribe: if Don John went to Brussels and ended the Dutch Revolt, Philip would do everything possible to place his brother on the English throne.
The king wrote a letter to his brother that described the desperate situation in Flanders and the urgent need to find new solutions. He claimed that he wanted to return to the Netherlands in person to take charge of the situation; but since he must remain in Spain to mobilize the resources needed to sustain the entire Monarchy, and since only a member of the royal family ‘as closely related to me as possible’ could replace him, ‘I have come to the conclusion that there is not, and could not be, anyone other than you’, both ‘because of the gifts God has given you and those you have acquired through experience’. Details of the irresistible bribe appeared in three other letters, all sent to Escobedo and signed by Pérez but in effect co-authored by the king. In the shortest of the three, ‘Pérez’ explained that Escobedo must show the other two to Don John and convince him to go, adding that if he succeeded in this, ‘you will do His Majesty a great service and deserve a signal reward’ – a dangerous promise that would come back to haunt its authors. In a second epistle, ‘Pérez’ required Escobedo to swear Don John to secrecy before delivering the king’s letter to him and emphasized that ‘this is not something that will suffer any argument or bargaining’. He also assured Escobedo that ‘since so much is at stake for His Majesty in this matter, and since he wants to send his brother because he cannot go himself’, Don John ‘must believe that His Majesty will do and provide everything possible to ensure that he succeeds in what he will undertake’: in other words, that Philip would support the Enterprise of England – another dangerous promise that would come back to haunt its authors.7
The third letter to Escobedo was even more remarkable, because it insisted that Don John go directly to Brussels without troops or advisers. ‘I have revised this letter twice,’ Philip informed Pérez, expressly so that his brother ‘cannot turn me down’, and he added a further note of blackmail to the draft with his own hand: Don John ‘will fail in his duty to God if he fails in this’, and also ‘in his duty to his father, who loved those provinces so much and risked so much for them’. Indeed, the late emperor, now ‘in heaven, would surely complain if he fails in this’ (a threat that Pérez would scarcely have made himself!). This letter also stressed that once Don John had reached the Netherlands, he would be well placed to effect the Enterprise of England – and later, perhaps, even more:
I was thinking, sir, that for the English venture that you discussed in Rome [with the pope], it would be no bad thing if Don John happened to be close by and engaged in something so important for His Majesty’s service. In addition, I would like to see Don John hold some major office in which he had full charge of everything, so that His Majesty would see his true worth and the good account of himself that he would give in any task of government without the interference or rivalry of other ministers.
Philip raised no objection to these extravagant statements when he read and corrected the draft for the last time, and on 8 April 1576 the letters left Madrid for Naples, where Don John resided. Philip added in a postscript to his own missive ‘how I wish that the person carrying this dispatch had wings to fly, and you too, so you could get to the Netherlands faster’.8
The king wished in vain: almost three months passed with no reply. Pérez played down the ominous silence from Naples, assuring his master in June that Don John would ‘definitely submit himself to the will of Your Majesty’, largely thanks to his own skill in ‘mobilizing Escobedo’; but Philip proved to be a better prophet when he replied: ‘I cannot help fearing that Don John is about to make some dreadful demands that will be hard to grant, such as wanting lots of money, lots of troops and lots of freedom.’9
The silence ended on 1 July, when Pérez abruptly informed the king that ‘Escobedo has just arrived’ at the palace, having ‘ridden together [with me] from Alcalá, discussing the matters entrusted to him’ by Don John.10 What were these matters? And why did Pérez insist on riding with Escobedo for almost sixty miles – a two-day journey – before informing the king that the long-awaited messages had at last arrived?
Don John received the letters signed by Philip and Pérez at the beginning of May, and after brooding over his options for almost three weeks, he accepted his appointment as governor-general of the Netherlands. Nevertheless, as his brother had feared, before leaving Naples Don John dictated two sets of instructions for Escobedo, filled with demands to present to the king, some of them political (full powers, lots of money) and others personal (rewards for supporters; recognition of his daughter Juana as legitimate; and so on). Escobedo must also impress upon Philip the need for Don John to come to Spain and discuss in person the exact nature of his mission in the Netherlands and later in England. While he awaited the king’s answer, Don John travelled to Vigevano, a town in Lombardy close to the border with Savoy. For a while, according to a Tuscan spy, everything suggested that ‘he was about to travel to the Netherlands’, but in July ‘all talk of war turned into celebrations and tournaments’, and Don John rode to Milan. Now, the spy observed, ‘although letters from the court of Spain insist that he will go to the Netherlands, at present we see no sign of it here’. He speculated that Don John would not leave until he received news from Escobedo that his brother had granted all his demands.11 Although correct, the spy had uncovered only part of the story.
On 16 April 1576, one week after signing the letters (extensively revised by the king) intended to convince Escobedo that Don John must leave immediately for the Netherlands, Pérez wrote to provide his colleague with more details on his recent dispatches, ‘all of which, except this one, His Majesty has seen’. This letter was both secret and subversive. Pérez began by revealing ‘that everything that may have seemed to you insistent and harsh’ in the letters of 8 April ‘was added by the king in his own hand to the drafts that I had prepared’. But, Pérez continued:
In my opinion, when it comes to obeying and leaving for Lombardy, and to sacrificing himself to duty, Don John should obey and leave and sacrifice himself to the will of his brother, saying that he has no other intention. Once he has done that, he should specify, inform and request the things that seem to him necessary for the success of the venture.
For ‘Lombardy’ – not for the Netherlands! Pérez advised this dramatic departure from the king’s plan because if, when Don John reached Lombardy, ‘the Low Countries are lost, or if the path to peace is blocked’, the mere fact that he had left Naples as ordered would earn the king’s confidence and gratitude; whereas if, by the time he got there, ‘it seems that the arrival of Don John in the Netherlands in person’ could save the situation, continuing on his journey would be ‘a great service to God, to the Crown, and to his brother, and would win credit for himself’. In addition, ‘as the world turns, you and your master would not be in a bad place for your own purposes and those of your friends’. Pérez’s filled his letter with a conspiratorial ‘we’:
Whatever may happen, in my opinion we must immediately obey and leave; and having done that let [Don John] respond, or ask, or advise whatever he wants, although let it all be for the advancement of the venture, not for personal items. For the rest, we may hope that Time will provide us with a thousand possible courses of action.12
Clearly, Pérez’s instruction that Don John should sabotage Philip’s plan for the salvation of his Monarchy by waiting in Lombardy instead of going to the Netherlands amounted to treason; and that no doubt explains why, when he learned that Escobedo had arrived in Spain, Pérez intercepted him at Alcalá and rode with him for two days ‘discussing the matters entrusted to him’ by Don John until they reached the Escorial on 1 July 1576: he needed to make sure that Escobedo would not reveal the contents of his secret letter and that Don John had followed his advice and remained in Lombardy. Presumably Escobedo gave an affirmative response on both matters. The situation changed six weeks later, when at dawn on 12 August Don John suddenly left Milan for Genoa, where he had assembled a small galley squadron ready to ‘carry him to Spain on some business of importance to the king our lord and the well-being of Christendom’. Ten days later he arrived at Barcelona, and immediately set out for the Escorial.13
The reason for this act of naked disobedience to the king’s orders emerged only after Don John’s death, when the Spanish ambassador in Rome asked the cardinal of Como, the pope’s secretary of state, ‘to share with me a secret, now that the people to whom he might have promised confidentiality are dead. I asked “What dealings and information did the late Don John have with His Holiness and with him”’ concerning the Enterprise of England? The cardinal’s reply contained sensational revelations: that he had written some ‘very long letters’ on behalf of the pope urging Don John to undertake the Enterprise; that Escobedo had gone to Rome, where Gregory ‘had talked to him about it’; and that the cardinal had later written a letter to Don John on behalf of the pope when he went to Spain in 1576, tasking him with proposing the ‘venture’ to Philip. That letter, the cardinal repeated, ‘exhorted [Don John] to go and propose the Enterprise to His Majesty in person, even though he lacked permission to go’ to Spain. That is why Don John suddenly disobeyed his brother.14
Discord between the sons of Charles V
Don John’s arrival at court took Philip completely by surprise. He had worked hard on a raft of concessions that he planned to entrust to a messenger who would arrive in the Netherlands at the same time as Don John. Once Escobedo confirmed that Don John would accepted appointment, Philip dispatched the messenger to Brussels with letters informing all his ministers that his brother would serve as the new governor-general, followed by his instructions for discharging this task and letters urging neighbouring sovereigns to maintain ‘the same good relations and amity’ with his brother as with his predecessors.15 No sooner had he signed these letters than Philip learned that Don John was in Barcelona instead of in Brussels. Unable to conceal his rage, the king immediately scribbled the following message:
Brother: Last night Escobedo gave me your letter and the news that you had arrived in Barcelona. I cannot refrain from telling you that much as I want and would like to see you and have you here, in view of the present situation and state of affairs, your decision has caused me such anxiety that it has removed a good deal of the pleasure that I would otherwise have felt.16
News of Don John’s disobedience reached the king at much the same time as alarming news from Brussels. ‘Developments in the Netherlands,’ Philip complained on 29 August to Cardinal Quiroga, ‘have made me so concerned and even anxious that I cannot always take care of other matters as I would like.’ He sought advice on the quickest way to get his brother to Brussels, ‘because if he returns the way he came, it will involve major delays. I was thinking that he could travel overland, under an assumed name, travelling at speed with just two or three others.’ Quiroga opined that unless Don John left at once, with full powers to grant the Dutch all they demanded, ‘they will create a republic with such advantages and with so much liberty that it would hardly be worth being their sovereign’. He suggested that the king should announce that his brother would travel via Italy in order to distract attention while he travelled through France ‘at top speed, in disguise’. Quiroga continued perceptively (and prophetically) that ‘although this will be very difficult, with each day’s delay things [in the Netherlands] are going from bad to worse, so that all the effort and expense will have been in vain’. The king accepted this sombre logic. For optimal ‘secrecy and dissimulation’, Don John should leave court to visit Doña Magdalena de Ulloa, who had raised him, ‘as he has always done when he has returned to these kingdoms from abroad’, and from her house near Valladolid his brother could slip away to the Netherlands unobserved. And then, Philip concluded optimistically, ‘his mission cannot go wrong, with God’s help, and may He guide it, since it is done for His service’.17 Philip wrote these words on 1 September 1576. Later that day, at the Escorial, the two sons of Charles V were reunited.
Don John’s presence at court gave him an important advantage, and he lost no time in making the ‘dreadful demands’ that his brother had feared (page 232 above). Margaret of Parma had encouraged him ‘to speak freely to His Majesty about everything, and reveal to him the naked truth about the current situation’ because, ‘as you have already discovered yourself on past occasions, once you leave you will not to be able to achieve either by letter or by intermediaries the same things that you can achieve easily now in person and in direct conversation’. Don John took heed, and refused to leave the court unless his brother guaranteed adequate funds to execute both of his missions: the pacification of the Netherlands and the invasion of England.18
Philip did his best to raise money but, not surprisingly, the bankers affected by the Default Decree refused to make new loans unless the king agreed to honour the old ones. ‘I don’t believe we will ever reach a conclusion,’ the king lamented to Mateo Vázquez, whom he charged with drawing up a General Settlement (Medio General) with his bankers, ‘and that we will pass the rest of our lives in the shadow of this business’.19 Nicolas Ormanetto, the papal nuncio, who had worked with Philip when he was king of England, seized this moment to insinuate that placing Don John on Elizabeth’s throne would solve all Philip’s problems; but the king remained cautious. ‘No one desires more than me to see this matter take effect’, he replied,
because of the benefit that the conversion of that kingdom would bring for God’s service and for the well-being of Christendom. When and how to undertake such a venture, however, depends on events in the Netherlands and on many other things and important matters like this require very careful evaluation.
Philip promised to continue to think about possible solutions ‘although I see many difficulties’. The constant delays caused him ‘so much grief and anxiety’ that ‘I don’t know how I endure them.’20
Finally, on 18 October 1576, Don John declared himself satisfied. A paper written in the king’s hand, apparently notes for the final meeting between the two brothers, listed the concessions that Philip was now prepared to make. To facilitate the attack on England, Philip authorized his brother to grant the Dutch demand that all foreign troops be withdrawn from the Netherlands, provided the Spanish veterans could leave by sea (which would permit Don John to lead them against England). The king also conceded that ‘we must forget everything that has happened in the recent disorders, and take no account of what is past’. Furthermore, if Don John found upon his arrival in the Netherlands ‘that affairs are in such a desperate state that [the Dutch] insist on getting everything they want, and will not accept anything less’, then ‘since we must extinguish this fire and avoid making those people absolutely desperate, you may concede everything that may be necessary to reach a settlement’. Philip struck only one note of caution: he rather pompously urged his brother ‘to proceed with caution in love affairs, and do not thus cause offence to the [Dutch] elite’. Although the king was ready to sacrifice his sovereignty, he did not want any more illegitimate nieces or nephews.21
Don John now set out for Brussels, travelling somewhat ignominiously (as his brother demanded) through France disguised as a servant, with a single companion. He still harboured doubts that his brother would keep all his promises, and in his last letter written on Spanish soil he reminded the king: ‘Now, sire, I may face a situation in which I have to respond with my own blood, if necessary, and so I now ask Your Majesty once more to do what I have asked: which is to send money, money and more money, because without that it would have been better not to have invested so much.’22 Escobedo remained at court to maintain the pressure on the king.
Don John’s fears proved well founded: his departure from the court freed the king from the threat of blackmail, and now he callously changed his plans. On 11 November 1576 – scarcely three weeks after his brother’s departure – he entrusted to Escobedo a set of tortuous and confusing instructions for Don John written in his own hand. The king conceded that ‘this is the best opportunity we could expect to take the queen of England at a disadvantage, to withdraw my troops from the Netherlands without losing face and to perform a great service to Our Lord by regaining that whole kingdom for the Catholic faith’. Nevertheless he worried about ‘the danger of beginning this venture without a sound foundation or the assurance of a favourable outcome, the difficulties that might arise in achieving success and the risks that might arise of stirring up Christendom and the whole world’. Therefore, he continued, ‘under no circumstances can the Enterprise [of England] begin until the Netherlands are entirely pacified and peaceful so that there is no chance of any trouble there, however slight’, because ‘you can easily appreciate what a great error it would be to leave our own dominions in danger in order to try and gain others’. In addition, Don John must ascertain how much support he would receive from English Catholics, ‘because no kingdom exists, however weak or small, that can be taken, or should be assaulted, without some help from within’. Finally, and most remarkably, the king stated ‘You already know that the queen [Elizabeth] is in the habit of maintaining relations and contact with the people she believes she might marry; and perhaps by some devious means she may harbour some thoughts about you on this subject and open some communication. If this should occur, it seems to me that you should not avoid it but rather let it develop as much as she wants’ in order to disguise with ‘greater dissimulation’ the planned invasion and conquest.23
Escobedo, with whom Philip discussed these instructions, warned that they ‘will be so unwelcome that I am dreading my arrival, fearing that Don John will become so desperate when he sees what I have brought that he may take a catastrophic decision’.24 He was right. When Don John read the documents brought by his secretary – so different from what he had been promised while at court – he concluded that his brother had faked enthusiasm for the Enterprise of England from the start solely to persuade him to leave Naples for the Netherlands. Feeling cruelly deceived, he now began to seek alternative strategies to achieve his personal goals.
Although Don John’s resentment did not lack justification, it never seems to have crossed his mind that his own delays – first in Naples, then in Lombardy and finally in Spain – had undermined the Enterprise. By the time he arrived in Luxemburg on 3 November, the royal army in the Netherlands had disintegrated: of the 60,000 men whom Requesens had commanded in March, scarcely 11,000 remained, most of them mutinous. Worse still, the day after his arrival the Spanish mutineers in Aalst captured Antwerp, which they proceeded to sack: they destroyed more than a thousand houses and killed more than 8,000 citizens. This tragedy, soon known as ‘the Spanish Fury’, unleashed the ‘general revolution’ predicted by Requesens. Four days later, the States-General ratified and published the Pacification of Ghent, which brought the fighting to an end. They then sent delegates to secure approval of the agreement from Don John and, through him, from the king
Don John was well aware that he lacked the necessary skills for such a delicate situation. As he confessed to his cousin (and former governor-general of the Low Countries), Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy, those who have to ‘deal with people so committed to being insolent and impertinent’ needed ‘the spirit of an angel. Therefore I, who am less like an angel than most, suffer more than others.’ Instead of cultivating ‘the spirit of an angel’, however, Don John concentrated all his energies on the Enterprise of England, for which he mobilized the pope, the English and Irish exiles, the French Catholics, Juan de Escobedo and Antonio Pérez.25
The two secretaries were involved from the start. While Don John was still at court, Philip complained that ‘Escobedo is pushing hard in this matter [England], and I asked him to write down for me what he thought about it’. ‘I see many difficulties,’ he continued, ‘even though Escobedo still thinks it will all be very easy.’ Once Don John left for the Netherlands, Escobedo and Pérez became virtually the sole intermediaries between the king and his brother. When Quiroga, the councillor on whose advice Philip had previously relied heavily, asked the king for details about Don John’s mission in the Netherlands, the reply was concise and dismissive: ‘Antonio Pérez will tell you.’26 Some years later, a courtier asserted that
His Majesty trusted Pérez so much that he decided with him all the great secrets of state that monarchs have to resolve, and he sought and valued his opinion in all things … And because the person whom Don John of Austria most esteemed, and to whom he entrusted his affairs, was the same Antonio Pérez, he knew so much that he could maintain the balance between the two royal personages, each of whom trusted what he told them about what the other one wanted. He was thus able to serve in the role of double agent.27
And, indeed, an important change in Philip’s administrative system at this time made it easy for the secretary to serve ‘in the role of a double agent’ if he chose.
Among the concessions Don John demanded before he agreed to leave court was that Pérez and not Zayas handle his Spanish correspondence with his brother. As the king later explained: ‘I did not agree to this through lack of confidence in Zayas, but because my brother demanded it so insistently, saying that he did not want to accept his appointment without this concession. Therefore I was forced to make it.’ Not satisfied with this change, once he arrived in the Netherlands Don John questioned whether ‘Your Majesty should allow my letters to be read by the council [of State]’ at all; and without awaiting the answer, he demanded that ‘they should be seen and discussed’ by only two people: Pérez and Don Pedro Fajardo, marquis of Los Vélez, who had been at university with Pérez and like him supported Ruy Gómez de Silva against the duke of Alba. Philip accepted this suggestion too. Although he himself suggested one change – ‘you might add the Inquisitor-General’ (Quiroga) – he immediately added: ‘You do whatever is best, Antonio Pérez’.28
Pérez welcomed the suggestion, and for the next eight months the letters received from Don John in the royal archives are endorsed ‘Seen by the two [Visto por los Dos]’ – that is, by Quiroga and Los Vélez. Since the letters that ‘the two’ saw depended exclusively on Pérez, whose officials deciphered all incoming letters from northern Europe, the three ministers served as Philip’s sole sounding board on Netherlands affairs. In the words of an astute ambassador, ‘they are everything, and everybody else is window-dressing’.29
It is now almost impossible to disentangle the respective roles of the king, his brother, Pérez and ‘the two’. To begin with, Philip communicated some crucial decisions in meetings alone with Pérez that left little or no archival trace: as the king wrote just after he received some letters from Don John, deciphered by Pérez, ‘Let us talk about this, because it is something better spoken than written about.’ Moreover, Don John omitted some important details because ‘they should not be written down in a letter that must travel by such a long and dangerous route’.30 Finally, many of the secrets committed to paper were later deliberately destroyed. In 1576, in 1579 and again in 1590, Pérez burned a large number of letters, including those exchanged with Don John; the king also regularly burned confidential letters once he had read them. Don John did the same: he once warned a trusted correspondent, ‘for greater security, I am in the habit of destroying your letters once I have replied to them’ because ‘in the end, papers are papers’. When he died, according to an executor of his testament, ‘burning his papers and portraits caused great sorrow’, but ‘that is what he ordered so that is what we did’.31 Despite these gaps in the surviving evidence, it is obvious that by allowing Pérez alone to handle his correspondence with his brother, Philip set himself up to be deceived. Henceforth the secretary opened, deciphered and summarized all letters received from Don John – even those ‘to be placed in the king’s hands’; and Pérez alone drafted all the consultas from ‘the two’ as well as the royal rescripts.
Having thus created an ideal environment for ‘groupthink’ (chapter 4), Don John, Escobedo and Pérez took several critical decisions to facilitate the invasion of England despite the king’s misgivings. In the Netherlands, Don John and his secretary arranged a ceasefire with the States-General in December 1576, and when the news arrived in Madrid, Pérez immediately did his best to convince his master that he must ‘conclude matters on the best conditions possible, and quickly’. Shortly afterwards he repeated with the same certitude: ‘what Don John and the service of Your Majesty need is to win back those provinces through a peace’.32 It was not so easy.
The States-General contained over 200 deputies and they were seldom of the same mind. As Don John put it: ‘Not only is it impossible to know from one hour to the next what will happen, but they link items of business together so that just when you think about announcing that something has been decided, they spend days discussing how to put the decision into effect.’ He concluded angrily, ‘The only thing they all agree on is to die in order to get what they want.’ Escobedo went further, warning the king that some deputies wanted to ‘form a republic, recognizing no superior’, so that ‘war is inevitable. Securing provisions and making preparations immediately would save a lot of time and money.’33 He attached a budget suggesting that the war would cost 500,000 ducats each month.
Did Don John and Escobedo really believe that ‘war is inevitable’ or had they sent their pessimistic predictions and alarming budgets as a ploy to persuade Philip to make peace in the Netherlands and thus clear the way for the invasion of England? Whatever their intention, the prospect of renewing hostilities prompted the king to send an express letter in triplicate forbidding it: ‘I must insist, brother, that you avoid a breach and that you accommodate yourself to time and necessity, which are the best guides you can have in such a difficult and desperate business.’34 Two weeks later, Philip complained to Pérez that ‘nothing my brother does is appropriate’, because he and Escobedo ‘still want war, and try to bring it on’. Should they succeed, he wailed, ‘it will not be possible to provide what they need – and if we did, it would not leave enough to oppose the Ottoman fleet or to do anything else’. Then, almost in mid-sentence, the king changed his mind, recalling with approval the scorched-earth strategy proposed by Alba and Requesens as the best means to force the Dutch to negotiate. ‘The only remedy I can see is that my brother gather as many German infantry and cavalry, together with the Spaniards who are already there (since we cannot send him any more), and let them destroy the country. What they get in plunder will be their wages. That’s how we will reach an agreement’ with the Dutch. He ordered Pérez to run this suggestion past ‘the two’, adding that ‘Although this policy is not at all what I want, it would be better to retain provinces even though they have been ravaged than to lose them intact.’35
This unexpected suggestion stunned Pérez and ‘the two’, and they rejected it firmly, stressing ‘the need to make the best deal we can, and the impossibility of making war, and the great danger that would ensue for both the Netherlands and for Italy if Your Majesty begins hostilities’. The king backed away partially, but not entirely, from his draconian plan to destroy what he could not keep: ‘If the States-General want war and not peace, we cannot avoid it. In that case, seeing that we lack the means to make war as we have done so far, we will have to proceed as I have said’ – that is to carry out a scorched-earth policy. Now Pérez weighed in. ‘We must charge Don John to procure a settlement by any human means possible,’ the secretary insisted and, for greater effect, he invoked an alarming domino theory. If war broke out again in the Netherlands, ‘I greatly fear that all its neighbours and all Germany will rise up against Your Majesty’s forces’; moreover, the king should remember ‘the great dangers that may arise both here and in Italy’. Indeed, he continued relentlessly, ‘we should fear that even these realms may weary of being bled white for such a lost cause’. The moral was clear: ‘It is necessary to avoid a breach and instead persevere with the talks.’ The king crumbled under this verbal spanking: ‘All this is well said and well argued,’ he conceded. ‘I just wish it was not true.’36
Philip therefore instructed his brother (as Pérez and ‘the two’ had urged) to avoid resuming hostilities at all costs. ‘I do not know how we could provide as much’ as 500,000 ducats a month in the Netherlands, he wrote, ‘even if we had nothing else to fund except that; and since war on such a scale is out of the question, because everything has been spent and exhausted, it is imperative that our policy coincides with our power’. Don John must make peace on the best terms available.37
As it happened, the king wrestled with his conscience in vain; the decision had already been taken. On the same day that he, Pérez and ‘the two’ debated their options in Madrid, Don John signed an agreement with the States-General known as the Perpetual Edict, which confirmed the Pacification of Ghent, and he ordered Escobedo to raise enough money to persuade the Spanish mutineers to leave the Netherlands within a month, as the edict required. Fearing that once the veterans had left the Dutch would not obey him, he also begged Philip to let him return to Spain. According to an indiscreet letter to Margaret, ‘I told him that unless I received permission, there is nothing I would not do, including just leaving everything and going there, even if it is to be punished’ and that ‘my patience will last only until August or September’.38
The Perpetual Edict contained one surprising clause: Don John agreed that the Spanish veterans would leave by land, not by sea, thus depriving him of the vital instrument for conquering England. This critical concession reflected the arrival at his small court of a group of Anglo-Irish exiles, including the ubiquitous Thomas Stukeley. Together they discussed alternative strategies for deposing Elizabeth Tudor in favour of Don John, and Stukeley convinced him that even if the Spanish troops left by land, he could conquer England with the 5,000 soldiers raised in Italy, for whom the pope would provide wages and a fleet to bring them to the Channel, where Don John would join them. As soon as the Perpetual Edict had been signed Stukeley left for Rome, taking with him letters of commitment signed by Don John, and copies of Don John’s letters to both Philip and Pérez begging them to provide support for Stukeley’s venture. Gregory XIII confirmed in writing that ‘he greatly desired that Your Highness should lead the Enterprise’ and begged him ‘to begin to think about’ a suitable strategy ‘so that His Holiness can also prepare everything that he is obliged to do in full confidence of success’. He also ordered Nuncio Ormanetto to obtain Philip’s consent for this plan and sent a special envoy to the Netherlands to handle the distribution of papal funds for the Enterprise.39
Just like the ambitious and deceptive plans of Roberto Ridolfi a few years before (chapter 11), this project rested on flawed foundations. Stukeley lacked the resources to recruit and maintain 5,000 soldiers, still less a fleet to carry them from Italy to Ireland or England. And if the papal force did reach its destination, even Ormanetto recognized that ‘success depends principally on an uprising by the Catholics of England whenever they see our fleet’, but no one had arranged for such an uprising.40 Finally, to imagine that Don John could secretly leave the Netherlands at a moment’s notice to join Stukeley’s adventurers when they arrived from Italy was pure fantasy.
Nevertheless, when Ormanetto mentioned the pope’s invasion plan to Philip during an audience in April 1577, ‘I found him constant and firm in his commitment to the Enterprise because he finds himself in a position to undertake it with a reasonable chance of success’.41 Ormanetto did not yet know that one of Philip’s secret agents in Istanbul had concluded a one-year ceasefire in the Mediterranean war with the Ottoman sultan; nor yet that, in the Netherlands, Escobedo had raised enough money to persuade the Spanish veterans to return to Italy. This permitted Don John to enter Brussels where, on 5 May 1577, he took the oath as governor-general, reiterating his promise to fulfil all the conditions of the Perpetual Edict. In return, the States of every province except Holland and Zeeland recognized Philip as their sovereign once more. Despite all the delays and missteps, it seemed as if Don John had successfully concluded the first part of his mission.
In his anxiety to become the next king of England, however, Don John (like Pérez and Escobedo) had overlooked a capital fact: just like him, the States-General had signed the Perpetual Edict without full consultation. Although William of Orange and his followers in Holland and Zeeland had ratified the Pacification of Ghent, they were not represented in the States-General’s negotiations with Don John. They had therefore been unable to insist that the settlement guarantee the religious and political freedom for which they had fought – and so they rejected the Perpetual Edict. Philip identified this fatal flaw as soon as he read the text. For a moment it slipped his mind – ‘I was thinking of something else to write to you about the Netherlands, and now I can’t remember it,’ he apologized to Pérez – but ‘now I remember what I forgot: that, if I understand this correctly, we should not say “the ratification of the agreement with the prince of Orange”, but only “between my brother and the States-General”.’42 In an attempt to persuade Orange to accept the Perpetual Edict, Don John sent negotiators to the town of Geertruidenberg to discuss with the prince and his associates their conditions for signing the Perpetual Edict and demobilizing their armed forces. The Netherlands would then be ‘entirely pacified and peaceful, so that there is no chance of any trouble there, however slight’, just as the king wanted, but Orange informed Don John’s representatives, ‘To tell you the truth, we can see that you wish to extirpate us and we do not wish to be extirpated.’43 He declared that he would settle for nothing less than full religious freedom, guaranteed by foreign rulers.
The prince’s intransigence reflected a strange circumstance: his agents had intercepted and deciphered all the letters sent by Don John and Escobedo to Philip and Pérez, and then shared them with Queen Elizabeth. They therefore knew Don John’s true aims, as expressed in his decoded letters. ‘If I deal and have dealt with the affairs of England,’ he explained to his brother in May 1577, ‘the main reason is because I can see that nothing is more important to the service of Your Majesty than to reduce that kingdom to the obedience of the pope and entrust it to a person who will serve you – like me.’44 This and other letters revealed that the new governor-general was prepared to accept any terms for a settlement in the Netherlands, however outrageous, in order to clear the way for the Enterprise. His only alternative would be to resume the war – something that Orange now knew Philip would never condone. Therefore, supported by Queen Elizabeth, he made extreme demands, confident that he would get them – but in this he made a grave error: he reckoned without his rival’s penchant for unilateral action.
After the failure of the talks at Geertruidenberg, Don John resolved to declare war on Orange and his allies, calculating that this would not only force Philip to recall him to Spain but also distract Elizabeth while Stukeley and his soldiers landed in England and liberated Mary Stuart. Don John therefore left Brussels and persuaded the papal agent to use the money he had brought from Rome for the Enterprise to raise German troops instead. He also summoned the recently departed Spanish regiments to return; sent letters to the pope and to the king’s ministers in Italy explaining his new plan and asking for their support; and dispatched Escobedo to court, with orders to secure either the return of foreign troops or permission for him to return to Spain so that he could join Stukeley’s expedition. Escobedo arrived in his native land for the last time on 21 July 1577. Three days later, without awaiting his brother’s approval, Don John unilaterally declared war on Orange and the States-General.
Peace or war?
Philip’s initial response to this staggering act of disobedience was to send express messengers to his ministers in Italy forbidding them to comply with Don John’s orders: ‘For the present do not do this, even if my brother has ordered it, because that is what my service requires. I do not wish the Netherlanders to see Spanish troops and bankers arriving, because of the fears and suspicions this might cause.’ Philip also dictated a long and bitter rebuke to his brother. Don John must not forget that the king wanted ‘those provinces to be won over by peaceful means’ and ‘to avoid a breach and open war with them. We must not station foreign troops in the Netherlands again because of the unequivocal evidence from the past that this does not work.’ Therefore, the king thundered, whatever the situation in the Netherlands, ‘I will decide what is best in light of the affairs of my other kingdoms, and the resources and funds at my disposal’.45
The king wrote this clear admonishment on 28 August 1577, but in the course of the following week he made one of the most remarkable and fateful U-turns of his long reign. The change began three days later, when Philip signed a series of letters ordering his ministers in Italy to place the Spanish veterans on standby, ready to return to the Netherlands as soon as they received further orders from him. He also ordered his ministers to debate the current situation in the Netherlands – but this time, instead of consulting just ‘the two’, he sought the opinion of the full council of State. Quiroga made a final bid to secure approval for the Enterprise of England – ‘I hold it certain that the root of all these evils is the queen of England; and that if she had to concentrate on keeping her own house in order, she could not make trouble elsewhere’ – but the rest of the council recommended an immediate resumption of hostilities in the Netherlands.46
The king realized that he would not be able to mount a full-scale campaign against the Dutch if he also had to fight in the Mediterranean, and so he sent a secret agent back to Istanbul with orders to prolong the truce. Confident that the sultan would agree, on 11 September Philip signed orders for the Spanish veterans in Italy to return – but he did so with a caveat. ‘Make sure that everyone understands’, he commanded his brother, ‘that this decision is not intended to change anything agreed and settled’ in the Pacification of Ghent, ‘but rather that your intention is to respect and fulfil all the promises you have made.’47
Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, the States-General defied Don John and invited their colleagues from Holland and Zeeland to join them in Brussels. The prince of Orange entered the capital from which he had fled a decade before, where (Don John reported angrily and perhaps enviously) ‘he was welcomed as if he were the messiah, and at his suggestion they have sent envoys to me with new demands that are totally unreasonable.’ Don John interpreted this to mean ‘that they want neither peace, nor God nor king’, but for the time being he followed his brother’s orders and conceded each of the new demands. On 21 September he retreated to Luxemburg, the only province that remained loyal to the king. That same month, in France, Catholic and Protestant leaders signed the peace of Bergerac, which ended their civil war and opened the way for an armed invasion of the Netherlands by the French Protestants. While ‘in this labyrinth’, Don John learned of Philip’s decision to send back the Spanish troops and resume the war. The news, he said, ‘has resurrected me from the dead’ and he lost no time in raising troops wherever he could find them. He even asked the leader of the French Catholics, the duke of Guise, to release any Spanish volunteers who had served him during the civil war, and also to let him recruit a regiment of French infantry.48
According to Pérez’s later recollection, news of ‘the envoys sent by Don John to the duke of Guise, and the secret talks in his private chamber’ about raising a French regiment to serve in the Netherlands, only reached the king indirectly – making him ‘very suspicious’ because neither Don John nor Escobedo ‘mentioned it or anything else about it’.49 With troops under his command again, Don John became even more unreasonable, demanding that his brother provide one million ducats in cash, with regular instalments to follow, adding rather rudely ‘remember, Your Majesty: I want the same funding that you provided to the duke of Alba and those who succeeded him, especially considering that the need is much greater now.’ He also urged Escobedo, still at court, to maintain the pressure on his brother. Meanwhile his ally Quiroga informed the king that discontented vassals in Sicily ‘have dared to say that the Dutch have shown them the way’ to secure concessions from their sovereign, and Quiroga insisted that the Enterprise of England was more necessary than ever ‘for the good of Christendom and so that the wicked will be punished as an example to the world’. Once again the king rejected the idea, because ‘it now involves even greater difficulties, and so we need to examine it very closely. So you must give this much thought. I am doing (and will do) the same.’50
Escobedo and Quiroga fared better with their other mission from Don John. The arrival of a fleet bearing unprecedented quantities of silver from America enabled the king to sign a General Settlement in December 1577 with the bankers affected by the Default Decree. Philip acknowledged that he owed almost 15 million ducats on the loans contracted between 1560 and 1575; and he sold church lands (with the pope’s permission) and assigned bonds equivalent to two-thirds of this total. The bankers, for their part, accepted this haircut and agreed to provide loans worth five million ducats to Don John and Spain’s other commanders abroad in regular instalments. The king still insisted that his policy towards the Dutch had not changed. As he explained in a letter dated 24 January 1578: ‘My intention is not to punish or ruin [the Netherlands], but rather to make them obey God and me. When they fulfil these two conditions, as I have promised, hostilities will cease and matters will return to the same state as under the late emperor, with forgiveness for all past deeds.’51 But one week later, Don John and his improvised army routed the Dutch and advanced on Brussels, forcing Orange and his allies to flee. The victor once again dreamed of making an advantageous peace in the Netherlands as a prelude to invading England, and he demanded that Philip send Escobedo back with instructions authorizing the necessary steps and enough money to achieve his ambitious goals. Instead, Philip authorized Antonio Pérez to murder Escobedo.