The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 53, March, 1862

When Philip II. succeeded to most of his father’s abdicated thrones, there was no diminution of Spanish pretensions, and he became the mightiest sovereign that Europe had known since Charlemagne. Philip’s failure to obtain the Imperial throne was a personal disappointment to both father and son, but it was no loss of real power to the elder branch of the House of Austria. The death of Mary of England, though it prevented Philip from availing himself of the men and money of his wife’s kingdom, was rather beneficial to him, as chief of the Spanish dominion, than otherwise. What could he have done with the haughty, arrogant, self-sufficient islanders, who were as proud as the Castilians themselves, without any of the imperial pretensions of the Castilians to justify their pride, had Mary lived and reigned, while he alone should have ruled? There would have been civil war in England but for Mary’s death, which occurred at a happy time both for her and for her subjects. Philip also lost a portion of his Northern hereditary dominions, because he would have a tyranny established in the Netherlands. But all that he lost in Germany, in the Netherlands, and in Britain was compensated by his easy conquest of Portugal after the extinction of the House of Avis. The Portugal of those times was a very different country from the Portugal of these times. It was not only Portugal and the Algarves that Philip added to the dominions of Spain,—and that alone would have been a great thing, for it would have perfected the Spanish rule of the Peninsula, always a most desirable event in the eyes of Castilians,—but the enormous and wide-spread possessions of Portugal in Africa, in America, and in Asia became subject to the conqueror. Portugal alone was of far more value to Spain than England could have been; but Portugal and her colonies together made a greater prize than England, Holland, and Germany could have made, recollecting how full of “heretics” those countries were, and that the more heretical subjects Philip should have had, the less powerful he would have been. Portugal was as “Faithful” as Spain was “Catholic,” and both titles now belonged to Philip. At that time, Philip’s power, to outward seeming, was at its height. It was not certain that he would lose Holland, and it was certain that he had gained Portugal and all her dependencies. He was absolute master of the Spanish Peninsula, and his will was law over nearly all the Italian Peninsula except that portion of it which was ruled by Venice. He alone of European sovereigns had vast possessions in both Indies, the East and the West. He was monarch of no insignificant part of Africa, and in America he was the Great King, his dominion there being almost as little disputed as was that of Selkirk in his island. He was still master of the best part of the Low Countries, and the Hollanders were regarded as nothing more than his rebellious subjects. He was the sole Western potentate who had lieutenants in the East, who ruled over Indian territories that never had been reached even by the Macedonian Alexander. From his cabinet in Madrid, he fixed the fate of many millions of the first peoples in the world, members of the races most advanced in all the arts of war and of peace. His least whisper could affect the every-day life of men in the principal cities of both hemispheres. He who was sovereign at Madrid and Lisbon, at Naples and Milan, at Brussels and Antwerp, was sovereign also at Mexico and Lima, at Goa and Ormuz.

Philip’s power was by no means to be measured solely by the extent and various character of his dominions. His position, as a great monarch, and as the chief champion of the Catholic cause, made him, at times, master of many European countries over which he could exercise no direct rule. England trembled before him even after the “Armada’s pride” had been rebuked, and Elizabeth came much nearer being vanquished by him than is generally supposed. Nothing but the blockade of Parma’s forces by the Dutch, and the occurrence of storms, saved England from experiencing that sad fate which she has ever been so ready, with cause and without cause, to visit upon other countries. In Ireland the Spanish monarch was more respected than Elizabeth, its nominal ruler, and he was regarded by the Irish not only with reverence as the first of Catholic princes, but also with that affection which men ever feel for the enemies of their enemies. Whoso hates England is sure of Irish affection, and as it is today so was it three hundred years ago, and so will it ever be, unless the very human heart itself shall undergo a complete change. Scotland furnished a Spanish party that might have become formidable to England, had events taken a slightly different turn; and the old Caledonian hatred of Southrons had not been extinguished by the success of the Reform party in both countries. The Scotch Catholics called Philip “the pillar of the Christian commonwealth,” (Totius reipublicæ Christianæ columen,) and sought his assistance to restore the old religion to their country. France was for several years more at the command of Philip than at that of any of its own sovereigns, the weak dregs of the line of Valois. The League would willingly have transferred the French crown to any person whom he might have named to wear it; and perhaps nothing but the sensible decision of Henry IV., that Paris was worth a mass, prevented that crown from passing to some member of the Spanish branch of the House of Austria. In Germany Philip had an influence corresponding to his power, which was all the greater because he was the head of a Germanic house that under him seemed destined to develop an old idea that it should become ruler of the world. If anything marred his strength in that quarter, it was the fact that the junior branch of the Austrian family was at that time inclined to liberalism in politics,—an offence against the purposes and traditions of the whole family of which few members of it have ever been guilty, before or since.

But this mighty Spanish power came to an end with the monarch in whom it was represented. The sources of Spanish strength had been drying up for a century, but the personal character of the successive monarchs, and vast foreign acquisitions, had disguised the fact from the world. Philip died in 1598, and in reality left his empire but a skeleton to his son, a youth of feeble mind, but under whose rule a change of policy was effected, not, as has been sometimes supposed, from any deep views on the part of the Count-Duke Lerma, but because it was impossible for Spain to maintain the place she had held under Philip II. Even had Philip III. been as able a man as his father, or his grandfather, he could not have preserved the ascendency of Spain,—that country having changed much, and Europe more. Every European nation, with the exception of Turkey,—and the Turks were only encamped in Europe,—had advanced during the sixteenth century, except Spain, which had declined. Thus had she become weak, positively and relatively. Rest was necessary to her, and under the rule of Lerma she obtained it. He supported the peace policy of that old aristocratical party of which Ruy Gomez had been the chief, but which had been hardly heard of in the last twenty years of Philip II.’s reign. That monarch, on his death-bed, regretted that “to his grace in bestowing on him so great a realm, God had not been pleased to add the grace of granting him a successor capable of continuing to rule it”; but had his son been all that the most unreasonable parent could have desired, he could not have pursued his father’s policy. Lerma did but act as he was forced to act. The circumstance that the Catholic Reaction had triumphed was alone sufficient to make a change necessary. Spanish greatness was no longer the leading political interest of the Church, and Rome was at liberty to have some regard to the new powers that were growing up in Europe. Pacific ideas prevailed. Spain ceased to make war in every direction, and husbanded her resources, and began to renew her native strength. The skeleton bequeathed by Philip II. became clothed with flesh, and sinewy. Could this policy have been continued for a generation, Spanish history might have been made to read differently from the melancholy text it now presents. But the process of rehabilitation was not allowed to go on. There had always been a strong party opposed to Lerma, and that statesman’s friendliness to the English and the Dutch made him liable to the charge of favoring heresy,—a charge that was the heaviest that could be brought against any one in the estimation of Philip III., who was as bigoted as his father. The Catholic and warlike policy of Idiaquez, Granvella, and Moura was revived. The two branches of the Austrian family were again brought into the closest alliance, and at a time when the German branch had become even more Catholic than the elder branch. Spain stepped once more into the European arena, and her generals and armies by their abilities and exploits revived recollections of what had been done by Parma and his hosts. Spinola, who was scarcely inferior to Farnese, conquered the Palatinate, and so began the Thirty Years’ War favorably to the Catholic cause. The great victory of Nordlingen, won by the Catholics in 1635, was due to the valor of the Spanish troops in the Imperial army. Spain appeared to be as powerful as at any former period, and the revival of her ascendency might have been expected by those who judged only from external indications of strength. Yet a few years, however, and it was clear to all politicians at least that Spain was far gone into a decline, and that the course of Olivarez had been fatal to her greatness; and the mass of mankind, who judge only from glaring actions, could not fail to appreciate the nature of such events as the defeat of Rocroi and the loss of Portugal, the latter including the loss of all the dependencies of the Portuguese in Africa, America, and India. No historical transaction of the seventeenth century testifies so strongly to the weakness of a first-class power as the Revolution of Portugal. Though Portugal lay at the very door of Spain, that country slipped from her feeble hands, and she never could recover it. Having resumed her encroaching, domineering course before she had fairly recovered her strength, she broke down in less than a quarter of a century, though even then the full extent of her weakness was not generally understood. It is an amusement to read works that were written in the reigns of Philip IV. and Charles II., in which Spain is spoken of as a great power, and to compare the words of their writers with the actual facts of the case. If we were to fix upon any one date as indicating the final breaking down of Austrian Spain, it would be the year 1659, when the treaty of the Pyrenees was made, and when the old rival of France became virtually her vassal. From that time we must date the beginning of that strange interference in Spanish affairs which has formed so much of the public business of France, whereby one of the proudest of peoples have become, as it were, provincials to one of the vainest of peoples. It is true that there were more wars between Austrian Spain and France, but they served only to show that the former had lost the power to contend with her rival, who might look forward to the day when the empire of Philip II. should fall to pieces, and furnish spoil to those strong nations that watch over the beds of sick men in purple.

The state of decay in which the first Bourbon king of Spain found his inheritance, in 1701, is well known. The War of the Succession soon followed, and Spain was shorn of some of her most magnificent foreign possessions. All that she had held in Flanders was lost,—and so were Naples, and Sicily, and Sardinia, and the Milanese, and other lands that had been ruled, and wellnigh ruined, by the Austro-Burgundian kings. The English had Gibraltar, and were holding Minorca also. Bourbon Spain was not to be Austrian Spain,—that was clear. But this trimming and pruning of the Peninsular monarchy were very useful to it; and Spain, having been ploughed up by the sword for twelve successive years, was in condition to yield something beyond what it had produced since the death of Philip II. Accordingly, under the ascendency of the Italian Alberoni, Spain became rapidly powerful; and could that remarkable statesman have confined his labors to affairs purely Spanish in their character and purpose, that country might have taken, and have continued to hold, the first place in Europe. He, however, with all his talents, was intellectually deficient in some important respects, and so all his schemes came to nought, and he fell. He tried to effect too much, and though fully sensible of the necessity of peace to Spain, he plunged into war. He did, in fact, what the rulers of Spain are doing to-day: he sought to restore the old Castilian influence by engaging the country in wars that would have been foolish, even if they had not been unjust, when he should have continued to direct all his attention to its internal affairs. Had he been at the head of any other than a Spanish ministry, Alberoni would probably have borne himself rationally; but there is something in the politics of Spain that affects even the wisest of heads, often turning them, as it were, and rendering their owners the strangest of caricatures. It is sometimes said that the most Irish of the people of Ireland are those who have come latest into the green island, there being something in its air and soil that soon converts the stranger into a true Hibernian in all moral respects; but the remark is more applicable to Spain than to Ireland, as in the former country foreign statesmen have more than once made Spanish policy ridiculous by taking that one step which separates that quality from the sublime. What in the person of a Castilian is at the worst but Quixotic becomes in the foreigner, or man of foreign descent, the merest burlesque upon statesmanship.

Alberoni’s fall did not imply the fall of Spain. The renewal of vigor that she had gained under his direction was sufficiently great to carry her well through more than seventy years, during which she stood on an equal footing with France, the Empire, and Great Britain, and for most of the time was the superior of Russia and Prussia, whose European greatness did not begin until the second half of the eighteenth century had become somewhat advanced. It is difficult for the men of to-day to understand that Spain was really a great power under the Bourbon kings, down to the first years of the French Revolution. We have seen her, until very recently, a country of little more European account than Portugal; and that she should, but eighty years since, have treated with England as equal with equal, after having assisted at the work of England’s humiliation, it is hard to comprehend. But such was the fact. Several of the Spanish statesmen of the last Century were very superior men, the kingdom itself was strong, and the Indies did not experience any disturbances calculated seriously to embarrass the mother-country. Then the close union that was brought about between France and Spain, in the early days of Charles III. and the last days of Louis XV., had no unimportant effect on the fortunes of Spain. The Pacte de Famille was one of the greatest political transactions of those days. It was effected just a hundred years ago, and but for the occurrence of the French Revolution it would have proved most fruitful of remarkable events. Had it never been made, it may well be doubted if the American Revolution could have been a successful movement. That Revolution France was bound to support, both by interest and by sentiment; and the Family-Compact enabled her to take Spain on to the side of America, where it is evident that her interests scarcely could have taken her; and Spain’s aid, which was liberally afforded, was necessary to the success of our ancestors. That it was possible thus to place Spain was owing to one of those displays of English insolence that have made the islanders abhorred by the rulers and the ruled of almost every land. “Charles III. of Spain,” says Macaulay, “had early conceived a deadly hatred of England. Twenty years before, when he was King of the Two Sicilies, he had been eager to join the coalition against Maria Theresa. But an English fleet had suddenly appeared in the Bay of Naples. An English captain had landed, had proceeded to the palace, had laid a watch on the table, and had told his Majesty that within an hour a treaty of neutrality must be signed, or a bombardment would commence. The treaty was signed; the squadron sailed out of the bay twenty-four hours after it had sailed in; and from that day the ruling passion of the humbled prince was aversion to the English name. He was at length in a situation in which he might hope to gratify that passion. He had recently become King of Spain and the Indies. He saw, with envy and apprehension, the triumphs of our navy, and the rapid extension of our colonial empire. He was a Bourbon, and sympathized with the distress of the house from which he sprang. He was a Spaniard; and no Spaniard could bear to see Gibraltar and Minorca in the possession of a foreign power. Impelled by such feelings, Charles concluded a secret treaty with France. By this treaty, known as the Family-Compact, the two powers bound themselves, not in express words, but by the clearest implication, to make war on England in common.” Such was the origin of an alliance that changed the fate of America, and which might have done as much for Europe but for the fall of the French Bourbons. The statesmen of England, with that short-sightedness which is the badge of all their tribe, were nursing the power of Russia, at an enormous expense, in order that, at a still greater expense, their grandsons might attempt the bridling of that power, in which they succeeded about as well as did Doria in bridling the horses of St. Mark. The partition of Poland showed what Europe had most to fear, and French statesmen were preparing for the Northern blast, while those of England, according to one of their own number, who was a Secretary of State, spoke of it as something indeed inconsistent with national equity and public honor, and therefore engaging their master’s disapprobation, but as not so immediately interesting as to deserve his interposition. Time, however, would have brought England right, from regard to her own safety, and she would have united herself with France, Spain, and Naples to resist Russian encroachments; and Austria, it may be assumed, would have gone with the West and the South against the North, for her statesmen had the sagacity to see that the partition of Poland was adverse to their country’s interests, and the part they had in that most iniquitous of modern transactions was taken rather from fear than from ambition. They could not prevent a robbery, and so they aided in it, and shared in the spoil. But the revolutionary storm came, and broke up the old European system. Passional politics took the place of diplomacy, and party-spirit usurped that of patriotism. It was the age of the Reformation repeated, and men could hail the defeats of their own country with joy, because their country and their party were on opposite sides in the grand struggle which opinions were making for supremacy.

In that storm Spain broke down, but not until she had exhibited considerable power in war, first with France, and then as the ally of France. Her navy was honorably distinguished, though unfortunate, at St. Vincent and Trafalgar, and elsewhere, showing that Spanish valor was not extinct. Napoleon I., unequal to bearing well the good-fortune that had been made complete at Tilsit, and maddened by the success of England in her piratical attack on Denmark, resolved to add Spain to his empire, virtually, if not in terms. He was not content with having her as one of his most useful and submissive dependencies, whose resources were at his command as thoroughly as were those of Belgium and Lombardy, but must needs insist upon having her throne at his disposal. Human folly never perpetrated a grosser blunder than this, and he established that “Spanish ulcer” which undermined the strength of the most magnificent empire that the world had seen for ten centuries; for, if his empire was in some respects inferior to that of Philip II., in others it was superior to the Castilian dominion. Out of his action in the Peninsula grew the Peninsular War, which was to the Spain of our age what the Succession War had been to the Spain of a century earlier. That country was prepared by it for another revival, which came at last, but which also came slowly. Had Ferdinand VII. been a wise and truthful man, or had there been Spanish statesmen capable of governing both monarch and monarchy, the days of Alberoni would have been repeated before 1820. But there was neither an honest monarch nor a great statesman in the kingdom, and Spain daily became weaker and more contemptible. Her colonial empire disappeared, with a few exceptions, such as Cuba and the Philippines. The sun ceased to shine constantly on that empire which had been warmed by his beams through three centuries, and transferred that honor to England. Spanish politics became the world’s scorn; and a French army, acting as the police of the Holy Alliance, crossed the Pyrenees, and made Ferdinand VII. once more an absolute king. After his death, a civil war raged for a long time between the Christinos and the Carlists, parties which took their names from the Queen-Mother and from Don Carlos, who claimed to be the legitimate King of the Spains. At length that war was brought to an end, and the throne of Isabella II. appears to be as well established as was that of Isabella I.

During all those unhappy years, Spain had, to use the common phrase, been making progress. Foreign war and civil war, and political convulsions of every kind, had been eminently useful to her. The Arachne webs and dust of ages had been blown away by the cannon of France and England. Old ideas were exploded. Young Spain had displaced Old Spain. A generation had grown up who had no sympathy with the antique world. In spite of repeated invasions, and almost unbroken bad government, and colonial losses such as no other country ever had experienced, the material power of Spain had vastly advanced between 1808 and 1850. Since 1850 the Spaniards have been prosperous people, and every year has seen their power increased; and they are now demanding for their country admission into the list of the Great Powers of Europe. They have formed a numerous army, and a navy that is more than respectable. They are constructing railways, and encouraging business in all its forms. The public revenue is equal to about ninety millions of our money, which would liberally provide for every expenditure that the Government ought to make, but which cannot meet the wants of that Government, because the Spanish statesmen of 1862 are as unwise as were any of their predecessors, most of whom treated the dollar as if it contained twelve dimes. “To spend half a crown out of sixpence a day” requires the possession of as much ingenuity as would, if rationally employed, serve to convert the sixpence into a crown; but Spain rarely permits common sense to govern her action, and prefers debt to prosperity, when she can fairly make her choice between the two. As to her public morality, a very little observation proves that she is not an iota more merciful or consistent now than she was when she banished the Moriscos. At the very time when she is engaged in making war on Mexico because of alleged wrongs received at the hands of that country, she refuses to pay her own debts, thus placing herself on the level of Mississippi, which can raise money to aid in warring against the Union, and yet will not liquidate its bonds, which are held by the English allies of American rebels. This does not promise much for the future of Spain, and she may find her armies brought to a stand in Mexico from the want of money; and thus will be repeated the blunder of the sixteenth century, when the victories of the Spaniards in the Low Countries were made fruitless because their sovereign was unable to pay his soldiers, and so they became mutineers at the very time when it was most requisite that their loyalty should be perfect, in order that the Castilian ascendency might be entirely restored. Spain walks in a circle, and she repeats the follies of her past with a pertinacity that would seem to indicate, that, while she has forgotten everything, she has learned nothing.

This third revival of Spain has been attended with a liberal exhibition of the same follies which we know it was her custom to display after preceding revivals. Instead of attending to her internal affairs, which demanded all her attention and the use of all her means, she has plunged into the great sea of foreign politics, with the view, it should seem, of being admitted formally into the list of leading European Powers. That she should desire a first place is by no means discreditable to her; but her manner of seeking it is to the last degree childish, and unworthy of a country that has had so much experience. That place which she seeks can never long be denied to any European nation which is really strong, and modern strength does not consist merely in great fleets and armies, to be employed in attacking the weak, and in promoting a system of intervention in the affairs of foreign countries. Such, however, is not the opinion of Spanish statesmen, if they are to be judged by their actions. No sooner did Spain begin to feel her strength, than she determined to make other countries feel it, in a very disagreeable fashion. She directed her attention to Italy, and nothing but a salutary dread of Napoleon III prevented her from becoming the champion of all the tyrants and abuses of that country. It was at one time supposed that she meant to revive her pretensions to territorial rule in the Italian Peninsula, and to contend for the restoration of the state of things which there ended with the ending of the Austro-Burgundian rule of the Spanish Empire in 1700; and though it would have been preposterous to have thought such pretensions possible in the case of any other country,—as preposterous as it would be to suppose England capable of thinking of the restoration of her power over the United States,—yet it was perfectly reasonable to believe that Spain would revive claims that were barred by the lapse of one hundred and fifty years. No statute of limitations is known to her, and what she has held once she thinks herself entitled to reclaim on any day through all time. Weakness may prevent her from enforcing her title, but that title never becomes weak. What is ridiculous in the eyes of the statesmen of Paris and London is eminently commonplace in those of the statesmen of Madrid, who are the most industrious of builders, Châteaux en Espagne employing their energies. Although it is more than two centuries since Portugal threw off the Spanish yoke, they have never yet given up the hope in Spain of adding that spirited little kingdom to the Peninsular monarchy. They would absorb it, as so many other kingdoms have been absorbed by the power that has issued its decrees from Madrid and Valladolid. The attack made by Spain on Morocco was a silly affair, and was resolved upon only to convince the world that Spain could make war abroad, a point in which the world felt but small interest, as at that time it was not thought that the Spaniards would seriously endeavor to regain their old American possessions. That what had been lost through one class of errors would be sought through resort to another class of errors, it entered not the minds of men to conceive. They would as soon have thought of Spain making a demand on Holland, with the view of restoring in that country the rule that was lost there in the days of Alva and Parma, as of her entering upon a war for a second conquest of Mexico. Nor would they have been astonished by the breaking out of such a war, had it not been for the breaking down of the American Republic. America’s calamity was Spain’s opportunity. She had been successful in her crusade against the modern Moors, because bad government had unfitted those Mussulmans to make effectual resistance to her well-led and well-appointed armies, which were supported by well-equipped ships. Then, flushed with victory, and beholding America in convulsions, she resolved to direct her energies against Mexico, where, unfortunately, bad government had done its work even more perfectly than it had been done in Morocco. The Spaniards are a brave and a spirited people, but their conduct in St. Domingo and their attack on Mexico cannot be cited as evidence of their bravery and spirit. They never would have dared to move against the Mexicans, if our condition had remained what it was but eighteen months ago; and yet they had just as good cause to assail them in the summer of 1860 as they now have in the winter of 1862. All the grounds of complaint that they have against Mexico were in existence then,—but we heard of no modern Spanish Armada at that time, and might then as rationally have expected to see a French fleet in the St. Lawrence as a Spanish fleet in the Mexican Gulf. The American sword was then sharp, and the American shield broad, and so Spain stayed her chivalrous hand. Her conduct is as bad as was our own, when we “picked a quarrel” with Mexico, and bestowed upon her weak back the blows we should have visited on the stout shoulders of England. Our Mexican contest was the effect of our fear of a stronger adversary. We had brought the Oregon question to such a point that it was difficult to avoid war with Great Britain. The West had been cheated by the cry for “the whole of Oregon,” and the men who had got up that cry were afraid to face the people whom they had deceived by the light of common day; and so we had the Mexican War improvised, to distract public attention from the lame and impotent manner in which we had settled the Oregon question. Having kissed the Briton’s boot, it became necessary to soothe our exasperated feelings by applying our own boot to the person of the Aztec. The man having been too much for us, we were bound to give the boy a sound beating, and that beating he received. True, we had cause of quarrel with Mexico, which we had long overlooked, and which had seldom moved us to anger, and never to the point of falling foul, until we had become excessively angry both with the English and ourselves; and equally true is it that Spain has some reason to make Mexico feel the weight of her arm, now that it has become strong again,—but, imitating our prudence, she has chosen her own time for calling Mexico to account. All chivalrous nations are partial to this form of shabbiness; and though we are told that honor is the distinction of a monarchy, we see that under the Spanish monarchy its requirements can be dispensed with when a gain can be secured by walking in the path of dishonor.