Global Power: Philip II and the Escorial
At around the time when Babur conquered India and the Mughal Empire came into being, the dominating figure in Europe was the Habsburg Prince Charles who had succeeded to the Spanish throne as Charles I in 1516. Three years later he was elected Holy Roman Emperor and became Charles V. As emperor and king of Spain and its European and overseas possessions, Charles was now the most powerful ruler in Christendom, taking precedence, in theory at least, over all the other monarchs of Europe. However, the hold of Christendom was weakening and soon after his accession came that great split in the Catholic Church known as the Reformation.
The most powerful of Charles’s many possessions was Spain and increasingly this became his main source of military strength in his attempt to curb the Reformation and to keep together the unwieldy edifice of Christendom over which he presided. In this he was ultimately unsuccessful and in 1565 the Council of Trent was forced to accept the existence of Protestantism. The centre of Protestantism was in the north of Europe and included some Habsburg possessions, most significantly the northern provinces of the Netherlands.
In 1556 Charles was succeeded on the throne of Spain by his son Philip II. Philip did not become Holy Roman Emperor, but his inheritance included the Netherlands and certain possessions in Italy. A deeply devout man, Philip took it upon himself to be both the leader of the Catholic cause against the Protestants and of Christendom against the Ottoman Empire which had been making considerable advances into the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe. By this time Spain was also in possession of a huge empire in the Americas which was becoming ever more important to the Spanish economy. A great variety of products were transported across the Atlantic to Spain, the most important of which were gold and silver. These became the fundamentals of the great wealth of the country in the sixteenth century.
The other major power involved in overseas exploration was Spain’s close Iberian neighbour, Portugal. Portugal had in fact preceded Spain, leading the way in the previous century. While by the early sixteenth century Spain was looking westwards across the Atlantic, the Portuguese voyagers had much earlier sailed south and eastwards around the coasts of Africa. In 1498 they reached the coast of India by the maritime route. This was a transformational event for the whole relationship between Europe and the rest of the world. Very soon the Portuguese began to trade with India using this new route and so undermined the importance of the historic land route, the Silk Road. By the time of Charles v, Portugal possessed well-established bases around the coasts of Africa and India and was poised to move on to China and Japan. To avoid possible war between the two emerging maritime powers of the Iberian peninsula, in 1494 the Treaty of Tordesillas, brokered by the pope, set a dividing line through the middle of the Atlantic between the spheres of influence of Spain to the west and Portugal to the east.
Growing overseas connections had the effect of making Spanish foreign policy very divided. The country took on two important roles: champion of Christendom in Europe and overlord of vast non-European possessions. These two were brought uneasily together into the official objective of Christianizing the new lands but the tactics and strategy necessary for the two were very different. While in Europe Spain was a land power and used its huge armies to secure a dominating position over the Continent, for the overseas territories it needed a large fleet, of both merchant vessels for trade and naval vessels to protect the trade and territorial acquisitions. This was to become the great problem for Spain throughout the sixteenth century and was basic to the way in which the Spanish empire was governed and, in particular, the places it was governed from.
The capital of Spain on the accession of Charles was the historic city of Toledo. This was situated in a central location on the Meseta, the great plateau at the heart of the country which is surrounded by high mountain ranges. Its location on the river Tagus gave it good communications both to west and east. It had originated as the Roman fortress of Tolentum and subsequently became the Visigothic capital. For many centuries following the defeat of the Visigoths the Iberian peninsula was in the hands of the Moors, an Islamic people who had invaded from North Africa in the eighth century. Their main centre of power was Cordoba in the south and the powerful Emirate of Cordoba gained considerable autonomy in the greater Islamic world.
All that remained of Christian Iberia was a small coastal stretch in the far north which was divided into a number of petty kingdoms. The eventual Reconquista, the Christian re-conquest, was led by Castile which was successful in conquering the central areas of the Meseta. Toledo was recovered in 1085 and in time became the kingdom’s capital. In 1479, following the unification of the Crown of Castile with that of its smaller neighbour, Aragon, Toledo was accepted as the first capital of the newly united Spain. The Moors still occupied Granada in the southern mountains and were not finally dislodged from there until the fateful year 1492. In that same year Columbus crossed the Atlantic and so began that process of discovery which within fifty years resulted in the greater part of this ‘New World’ coming into the possession of Spain. As capital of Castile, Toledo had been the centre of power of a landlocked state which had thought entirely in terms of land power. It had a huge army that had been almost permanently on a war footing during the long centuries of the Reconquista.
As a result of this history, Castile considered itself the leading state of the Iberian peninsula and its capital the natural centre of power of the new Spain which came into being around it. Toledo was soon transformed into a splendid city with high defensive walls, an impressive stronghold, the Alhambra (the residence of the monarch) and a magnificent cathedral.
A problem soon arose out of this. Since the time of the Reconquista the Castilian cities had gained considerable rights of their own. These fueros gave them the right to build their own walls, to bear arms, to hold markets and to establish city institutions. This resulted in increasing conflict with the monarchs who now wished to assert their total power and this conflict came to a head during the reign of Charles. To guard their fueros the cities established their own organization, the Junta de Tordesillas, and united together as the comunidad.1 The capital, Toledo, was one of the most vocal in asserting its rights and this did not endear it to the monarch. In the conflict that followed, the Spanish army was employed to smash the comunidades and this it proceeded to do with vigour. Among the last to resist was the capital itself but by 1522 all resistance had come to an end. Charles was able to assert his total control over Castile, putting his own governors in charge of the cities and adopting increasingly centralist policies. These included challenging the regional assemblies, the Cortes, which, like the cities, had accrued considerable powers over the centuries.2
While Charles was mainly concerned with wider European affairs and spent little time in Spain during his long reign, his son Philip was king of Spain exclusively and throughout his reign the country was his main place of residence. However, he increasingly found Toledo, despite its long history as the principal centre of power in the Iberian peninsula, unsatisfactory as his capital. It retained the memory of the lost fueros and the revolt of the comunidades and failed to show the solid support that he needed and expected. Philip, like his father, was in no sense a democrat and was as lacking in sympathy for the aspirations of the cities or the regions as his father had been. In 1560, after only two years, he moved the capital 70 km north to the site of the hitherto small and insignificant town of Madrid. This was also in the Meseta but was less well located as a centre for the effective exercise of power, being on the small Manzanares river which, despite being a tributary of the Tajo, was not navigable. Philip, however, hoped that it did not possess the traditions of fueros so strongly associated with the old capital. There he began building his own new capital city centred on a splendid square, the Plaza Major, which was intended among other things for the holding of great state and religious ceremonies. He also built a royal palace to be his principal residence and centre of government. However, it was not long before Madrid soon also proved unsatisfactory in the eyes of Philip. There were rumblings of discontent among the populace reminiscent of Toledo. The fact was that Charles and his son Philip did not find cities congenial. They displayed too much desire for freedom and self-government that had been encapsulated in the fueros. This was something to which the authoritarian Habsburgs were never going to consent.
Despite its free cities, Castile had been basically a rural state ruled by the grandees, the great rural aristocracy. From them came the military traditions that had kept the country almost permanently on a war footing. It was in the rural areas also that the belief in autocracy, strict Catholicism and loyalty to the monarch were at their strongest. Cities on the other hand had a tendency to be subversive and always seemed to be making demands for greater rights. As a result Philip came to the conclusion that his centre of power had to be separate and more associated with the country than the city. Only in such an environment would he be able to exercise the total power that he craved and to fulfil what he believed to be his divine mission unimpeded by irritants like fueros. He saw this mission as being the re-establishment of the unity of Christendom and the defence of the Christian lands against the danger posed by the Ottoman Empire.
Philip took great trouble in the selection of the site for his centre of power. It had to be isolated and to be in impressive and evocative surroundings. It also had to have ample stone for building, be in a central location and have good communications. Madrid, although it was no longer destined to be the centre of ultimate power in the state, was nevertheless to retain its role as the official capital and the main place of government. Too much had been done there for it to be completely abandoned. It was essential therefore that the new centre of power be close to Madrid and have good and rapid communications with the city. After much searching, a suitable site was found. This was El Escorial, a name derived from scoriae, meaning refuse from old mines on hillsides. It was in the foothills of the Sierra de Guadarrama, an impressive range of mountains reaching heights of 2,500 metres in the vicinity. This range divided the Meseta into two, the north centring on the old kingdom of Leon and the south centring on the great dry plains of La Mancha. There was ample water and stone and good and easy communications to Madrid just 40 km away. There were also adequate communications to the north using the passes through the Sierra. The architect chosen was Juan Bautista de Toledo and, following his death, Juan de Herrera. Work began in 1563 and took twenty years to complete.
However, by then events were moving fast and, besides its growing European possessions, which stretched along a great north–south axis from the Netherlands to Italy, Spain had accrued ever larger overseas possessions. In 1581 Philip inherited the throne of Portugal, unifying virtually the whole of the Iberian peninsula and adding the considerable Portuguese overseas possessions to his own. The result was the creation of a massive empire stretching from the Americas eastwards via Africa to India. This was the first global power and its management began to take up more and more of the monarch’s time. Of course, there still remained the other great mission of reuniting a divided Christendom.
In order to accomplish these twin objectives, Philip moved his headquarters away from the Meseta to Lisbon, the Portuguese capital, where he stayed for some years. The move from a continental capital to a maritime one reflected a huge change in the priorities of the Spanish state. From Lisbon he supervised the building of an enormous fleet which was essential for the protection of Spanish convoys as they crossed the Atlantic. They were bringing silver and gold from the New World which were fundamental requirements for the continuation of Philip’s great mission. Also from Lisbon he engaged in the biggest naval project of his reign, the building of the great Armada which was intended for the subjugation of the Protestant north, in particular the Netherlands and England. Lisbon proved to be the ideal place for the supervision of this work and it might have been thought that it would remain the permanent capital of the vast Spanish empire. However, this was not to be, and in 1584 Philip returned to the now largely completed Escorial which was to be his home and seat of power for most of the remaining years of his reign.
The Monasterio del Escorial, built by Philip II north of Madrid to be both the centre of power of the Spanish Empire and a place of religious observance.
The full name of the enormous edifice was the Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo del Escorial. The fact that it was called a monastery, indeed the ‘royal’ monastery, tells us much about the mindset of Philip and the deeply religious nature of the whole Spanish imperial enterprise. However, the building was actually a combination of many things, including royal palace, seat of government, basilica, monastery, library and royal mausoleum.
The grand entrance to the Escorial was a huge and magnificent door around which were eight Doric columns. This led to a central courtyard, the Patio de los Reyes, and immediately in front of this was the impressive basilica which was at the centre of the whole project. This had a very large nave and was capped by a gigantic cupola which was one of the dominating features of the whole structure. The interior of the basilica had 40 altars and at its centre was a magnificent decorated altarpiece. To the right of the Patio was the Monasterio de San Lorenzo, dedicated to the saint who was one of the most venerated martyrs of the Christian Church. The monks who occupied this from 1571 belonged to the Hieronymite order. It was in a monastery at Yuste belonging to this order that Charles V had spent his final years and Philip therefore considered it appropriate that this should be the order chosen for his new monastery-palace. On the main staircase are a number of frescos, the most striking of which is Luca Giordano’s St Lawrence in Glory, Adored by Charles V and Philip II (1692–4) in the vault. Depicted in scenes below are the Battle of Saint-Quentin and the building of the Escorial. In the front of the building near to the great door is Philip’s library which contains a fine collection of books, mostly religious, and which links the secular part of the building with the monastery. The secular parts to the left include the royal palace, the personal quarters of Philip and the government offices. The huge Royal Pantheon housed the marble coffins of the monarchs of Spain. The first to be interred was Charles V, whose remains were moved there in a great ceremony in which both Church and state were represented.
The Escorial was intended as a multipurpose building, but as such it also demonstrated the unity of purpose of the monarch. The secular purposes of empire were fused together with the religious mission to form a degree of unity greater than that of most imperial buildings where, despite religion being used to underpin imperial ambitions, Church and state are usually set apart in separate buildings. This unity of purpose is also embedded in the nature of the building, which had a profound effect on all who saw it. For any foreign missions or ambassadors who might have been in doubt, the Escorial was an uncompromising statement of the self-proclaimed mission of the Spanish monarchy. ‘Its rigid geometrical design’, wrote Calvert, ‘looks at us with petrifying effect.’3 The austere and even menacing exterior sent a clear message about what could now be expected from Spain and from the religion it sought to uphold. Castile has been called ‘the redoubt of the true faith’ and certainly the Escorial had all the appearance of being a great redoubt, thus in many ways reflecting the Castilian mentality as well as that of Philip himself.
The building also fitted perfectly into its surroundings. The bleak and bare centre of the Meseta was a world away from the softer and richer lands of the Iberian periphery. This had nurtured a religious vision which was more austere than that found in most other parts of Christendom. Calvert, in his classic work on the Escorial, put this succinctly:
This tabernacle in the wilderness is a symbol of the mind of Spain in the days of her power, the manifestation of her profound faith, and a tribute to the seriousness and quietism which were the ideals of one of the most remarkable and complex of her rulers. We feel the very stones of the building reveal the nature of Philip, the king who would be saint, the ambitious patriot who longed for power.
Calvert went on to assert that, ‘The building instructs us in the temper of a memorable age, profound in faith, zealous in patriotism and conspicuous in martial valour.’4
The overall building style of the Escorial has been called ‘desornamentado’, which can be translated as ‘unadorned’. It also represented a decisive move away from the Renaissance style and a return to the classical. This was described by Elliott as ‘the cold symmetry of a constricting classicism, imperial, dignified and aloof’, and ‘a fitting symbol of … the triumph of authoritarian kingship over the disruptive forces’.5 The ‘disruptive forces’ which Elliott had in mind were the Reformation together with the demands for more rights made by the Cortes and the persisting legacy of the comunidades. The massive symbol in the foothills of the Guadarrama was firm and square, the geometrical design asserting the unity of form and purpose that Philip sought to impose on his country. It was from there that Philip conducted the massive operations on land and sea which were aimed at realizing his dreams. In this bleak and formidable refuge he was, as Braudel put it, ‘a spider sitting motionless at the centre of his web’.6
One could hardly imagine a greater contrast than that between the Escorial and the vibrant commercial city of Lisbon which would certainly have been the natural centre for those maritime operations so essential for the realization of Philip’s mission. However, the Portuguese capital was also a world away from the monarch’s bleak religious vision. He no doubt sensed this and hastened to return to the far more congenial surroundings of his monastery-palace deep in the heart of the Meseta.
Unfortunately for Philip, this sanctuary was not the best place from which to run a global empire. Those beliefs and values which the Escorial symbolized were never to be achieved and the dreams of Philip, no doubt fostered by the nature of the Escorial and its surroundings, did not come to fruition. The Armada proved a disaster and the aim of bringing England back to the faith proved not only a failure but also a complete humiliation for Spain. In addition to this, the European possessions remained restive and ever less willing to accept Spanish rule. Nowhere was this more so than the Netherlands, the seven northern provinces of which declared their independence as the United Provinces in 1579. With the English privateers increasingly harassing his treasure fleets and successive attempts to bring the Netherlands to heel proving unsuccessful, Philip’s final years, spent mostly in the Escorial, were indeed gloomy ones. Confined to his small and simple bed chamber, the monarch died in his great monastery-palace in 1598 at a time when both the European and global pre-eminence of Spain were beginning to slip away. He was interred alongside his father in the great vault beneath the building he had constructed to symbolize his self-proclaimed mission.
At the beginning of the seventeenth century his son and successor, Philip III, faced a much changed European and world scene. He was forced to accept the independence of the United Provinces, and the Thirty Years War, which began in 1618, signalled the end of attempts to re-establish the unity of Christendom. One of the main characteristics of the ‘Westphalian’ Europe that came into being after the treaty in 1648 was its division into nation-states. Portugal regained its independence in 1640 and by this time Spain had many rivals in its quest for overseas empire. The other provinces of Spain, led by Aragon, never really accepted the dominance of Castile and the flame of freedom was kept alive there over the centuries.
These great changes also marked the end of the relatively brief period during which the Escorial was Spain’s main centre of power. Philip’s successors returned to Madrid and, after less than half a century, the huge monolith in the foothills of the Guadarrama was forsaken. It was left as a stark monument to the power of Spain and its self-proclaimed mission during the ‘Golden Age’ in the sixteenth century. While the other features, notably the monastery and the magnificent library, remained, all that was left of the monarchy that built it was the Royal Pantheon where all future Spanish monarchs were interred. In this way the Escorial became more a symbol of the past than it was of the present and a grim and austere reminder of ambitions and failures. Many centuries later, Hilaire Belloc described it interestingly:
I salute it: the supreme monument of human permanence in stone; the supreme symbol of majesty … In time it must be gone as must, for that matter, the pyramids; but it seems to me that works of this mighty sort are like dents inflicted on the armour of time.7
As the first global power in the sixteenth century, Spain naturally needed to look out to the surrounding oceans and for this Lisbon was the most obvious choice for a capital. However, the monarchy of Philip II had felt far more at ease in landlocked Castile, home of the Reconquista and of an uncompromising view both of Christianity and of royal power. This had meant more attention being paid to building a powerful army, the much feared tercios, than on developing a really effective naval power as Portugal had done. Considering this landlocked mentality, the defeat of the Armada by England can be seen as an almost inevitable consequence. In effect, when it came to it, Spain rejected the surrounding seas and persisted in looking inwards to a kind of mythical greater Castile. It took as its central mission a strange continuation of the Reconquista on a grand scale with the objective of bringing the whole of Europe forcibly within its orbit. The Escorial fitted well with this objective, having more in common with the castles and strongholds of Castile than with the new commercial world arising around it.
In the end the attempt by the first power of the modern age to put Europe into a straitjacket proved a complete failure. In this respect, Philip was much more like Aurangzeb than Akbar. He had Aurangzeb’s stern frugality and uncompromising attitude to his mission and the imperial and religious dreams of both met the same fate at the hands of those who refused to accept them. Yet while Aurangzeb left scarcely any legacy in stone, this was certainly not the case with Philip. The Escorial is a stark reminder both of power and of its fragility and of the ultimate futility of attempts to impede mankind’s natural desire for freedom.
Most importantly, significant changes were taking place in Europe which rendered Spain’s attempt to dominate the Continent quite unrealistic. In a sonnet addressed to Philip II the poet Hernando de Acuña looked forward to the imminent arrival of the promised day on which there would be but one shepherd and one flock in the world, and ‘one monarch, one empire, and one sword’. By the time of Philip’s death such an outcome was looking ever more improbable.8 As a consequence of the commercial and economic developments of the previous century, a major shift in geopolitical power had taken place on the Continent. After 2,000 years, during which the Mediterranean had been the main centre of power, this centre was now moving to northern Europe. The power which next emerged to a position of dominance in Europe very much reflected this fundamental change.