A Short History of Spain Part 7

The one thing which gives historic importance to the reign of Carlos II. is that it marks the close--the ignominious close--of the great Hapsburg dynasty in Spain. And if the death of Carlos, in 1700, was a melancholy event, it is because with it the scepter so magnificently wielded by Ferdinand and Isabella pa.s.sed to the keeping of the House of Bourbon, whose Spanish descendants have, excepting for two brief intervals, ruled Spain ever since.

CHAPTER XX.

The last century had wrought great changes in European conditions.

"The Holy Roman Empire," after a thirty-years' war with Protestantism, was shattered, and the Emperor of Germany was no longer the head of Europe. Protestant England had sternly executed Charles I., and then in the person of James II. had swept the last of the Catholic House of Stuart out of her kingdom. France, on the foundation laid by Richelieu, had developed into a powerful despotism, which her King, Louis XIV., was making magnificent at home and feared abroad.

For Spain it had been a century of steady decline, with loss of territory, power, and prestige. No longer great in herself, she was regarded by her ambitious neighbor, Louis XIV., as only a make-weight in the supremacy in Europe upon which he was determined. He had been ravaging the enfeebled German Empire, and now a friendly fate opened a peaceful door through which he might make Spain contribute to his greatness.

Carlos II. died (1700) without an heir. There was a vacant throne in Spain to which--on account of Louis' marriage, years before, with the Spanish Princess Maria Theresa--his grandson Philip had now the most valid claim. The other claimant, Archduke Karl, son of Leopold, Emperor of Germany, in addition to having a less direct hereditary descent, was unacceptable to the Spanish people, who had no desire to be ruled again by an occupant of the Imperial throne of Germany.

So, as Louis wished it, and the Spanish people also wished it, there was only one obstacle to his design; that was a promise made at the time of his marriage that he would never claim that throne for himself or his heirs. But when the Pope, after "prayerful deliberation,"

absolved him from that promise the way was clear. This grandson, just seventeen years old, was proclaimed Philip V., King of Spain, and Louis in the fullness of his heart exclaimed, "The Pyrenees have ceased to exist!"

Perhaps it would have been better for the King if he had not made that dramatic exclamation. A man who could remove mountains to make a path for his ambitions might also drain seas! England took warning. She had been quietly bearing his insults for a long time, and not till he had impertinently threatened to place upon her throne the Pretender, the exiled son of James II., had she joined the coalition against the French King. But now she sent more armies, and a great captain to re-enforce Prince Eugene, who was fighting this battle for the Archduke Karl and for Europe.

But Louis had reached the summit. He was to go no higher than he had climbed when he uttered that vain boast. Philip V. was acknowledged King in 1702, and in 1704 _Blenheim_ had been fought and won by Marlborough, and the decline of the _Grand Monarque_ had commenced.

The war against him by a combined Europe now became the war of the "Spanish Succession." England and Holland united with Emperor Leopold to curb his limitless ambition. The purpose of the war of the "Spanish Succession" was, ostensibly, to place the Austrian Archduke upon the throne of Spain; its real purpose was to check the alarming ascendancy of Louis XIV. in Europe.

It lasted for years, the poor young King and Queen being driven from one city to another, while the Austrian Archduke was at Madrid striving to reign over a people who would not recognize him.

Spain was being made the sport of three nations in pursuance of their own ambitious ends. Her land was being ravaged by foreign armies, recruited from three of her own disaffected provinces; while a young King with whom she was well satisfied was peremptorily ordered to make way for one Austria, England, and Holland preferred. It was a humiliating proof of the decline in national spirit, and the old Castilian pride must have sorely degenerated for such things to be possible.

Finally, after Louis XIV. had once more given solemn oath that the crowns of France and Spain should never be united, the "Peace of Utrecht" was signed (1713). But the provisions of the treaty were momentous for Spain. She was at one stroke of the pen stripped of half her possessions in Europe. Philip V. was acknowledged King of Spain and the Indies. But Sicily, with its regal t.i.tle, was ceded to the Duke of Savoy; Milan, Naples, Sardinia, and the Netherlands went to Karl, now Emperor Charles VI. of Germany; while Minorca and Gibraltar pa.s.sed to the keeping of England.

No one felt unmixed satisfaction, except perhaps England. The Archduke had failed to get his throne, and to wear the double crown like Charles V. Louis had carried his point. He had succeeded in keeping the kingdom for his grandson. But that kingdom was dismembered, and had shrunk to insignificant proportions in Europe, while England, most fortunate of all, had carried off the key to the Mediterranean. That little rocky promontory of Gibraltar was potentially of more value than all the rest!

Such was the beginning of the dynasty of the Bourbon in Spain. Philip was succeeded, upon his death in 1746, by his son Ferdinand VI., who also died, in 1759, and was succeeded by his brother, Philip's second son, who was known as Carlos III. When we try to praise these princes of the wretched Bourbon line, it is by mention of the evil they have refrained from doing rather than the good they have done. So Carlos III. is said to have done less harm to Spain than his predecessors. He established libraries and academies of science and of arts, and ruled like a kind-hearted gentleman, without the vices of his recent predecessors. His severity toward the Jesuits and their forcible expulsion from Spain, in 1767, are said to have been caused by personal resentment on account of some slanderous rumors regarding his birth, which were traced to them.

CHAPTER XXI.

But the fate of Spain was not now in the hands of her Kings. Were they good or evil she was destined henceforth to drift in the currents of _circ.u.mstance_, that sternest of masters, to whom her Kings as well as her people would be obliged helplessly to bow. All that she now possessed outside the borders of her own kingdom was the West Indies, her colonies in America, North and South, and the Philippines, that archipelago of a thousand isles in the southern Pacific, where Magellan was slain by the savage inhabitants after he had discovered it (1520).

Mexico and Peru had proved to be inexhaustible sources of wealth, and when the gold and silver diminished, the Viceroys in these and the other colonies could compel the people to wring rich products out of the soil, enough to supply Spain's necessities. The inhabitants of these colonies, composed of the aboriginal races with an admixture of Spanish, had been treated as slaves and drudges for so many centuries that they never dreamed of resistance, nor questioned the justice of a fate which condemned them always to toil for Spain.

In the North the feeble colony planted in 1620 had expanded into thirteen vigorous English colonies. France, too, had been colonizing in America, and had drawn her frontier line from the mouth of the Mississippi to Canada. In 1755 a collision occurred between England and France over their American boundaries. By the year 1759, France had lost Quebec and every one of her strongholds, and she formed an alliance with Spain in a last effort to save her vanishing possessions in America.

Spain's punishment for this interference was swift. England promptly dispatched ships to Havana and to the Philippines; and when we read of the Anglo-Saxon capturing Havana and the adjacent islands on one side of the globe, and the City of Manila and fourteen of the Philippines on the other, in the midsummer of 1762, it has a slightly familiar sound. And when the old record further says, the "conquest in the West Indies cost many precious lives, more of whom were destroyed by the climate than by the enemy," and still again, "the capture of Manila was conducted with marvelous celerity and judgment," we begin to wonder whether we are reading the dispatches of the a.s.sociated Press in 1898, or history!

In the treaty which followed these victories, upon condition of England's returning Havana, and all the conquered territory excepting a portion of the West India Islands, Spain ceded to her the peninsula of Florida; while France, who was obliged to give to England all her territory east of the Mississippi, gave to Spain in return for her services the city of New Orleans, and all her territory west of the great river. This territory was retroceded to France by Spain in the year 1800, by the "Treaty of Madrid," and in 1803 was purchased by America from Napoleon, under the t.i.tle of "Louisiana."

There was a growing irritation in the Spanish heart against England.

She was crowding Spain out of North America, had insinuated herself into the West India Islands, and she was mistress of Gibraltar. So it was with no little satisfaction that they saw her involved in a serious quarrel with her American colonies, at a time when a stubborn and incompetent Hanoverian King was doing his best to destroy her.

The hour seemed auspicious for recovering Gibraltar, and also to drive England out of the West Indies. The alliance with France had become a permanent one, and was known as a _family compact_ between the Bourbon cousins Louis XV. and Carlos III. France had at this time rather distracting conditions at home; but she was thirsting for revenge at the loss of her rich American possessions, and besides, a sentimental interest in the brave people who had proclaimed their independence from the mother country, and were fighting to maintain it, began to manifest itself. It was fanned, no doubt, by a desire for England's humiliation; but it a.s.sumed a form too chivalric and too generous for Americans ever to discredit by unfriendly a.n.a.lysis of motive. Spain cared little for the cause of the colonies; but she was quite willing to help them by worrying and diverting the energies of England. So she invested Gibraltar. A garrison of only a handful of men astonished Europe by the bravery of its defense. Gibraltar was not taken by the Bourbon allies, neither were the English driven out of the West Indies. But it was a satisfaction to Spain to see her humbled by her victorious colonies!

So Carlos III. had indirectly a.s.sisted in the establishment of a republic on the confines of his Mexican Empire; apparently unconscious of the contagion in the word _independence_. But he quickly learned this to his sorrow. The story of the revolted and freed colonies sped on the wings of the wind. And in Peru a brave descendant of the Incas arose as a Deliverer. He led sixty thousand men into a vain fight for liberty. Of course the effort failed, but a spirit had been awakened which might be smothered, but never extinguished.

Carlos III. died in 1788 and was succeeded by his son Carlos IV.

During the miserable reign of this miserable King, France caught the infection from the free inst.i.tutions in America. The Republic she had helped to create was fatal to monarchy in her own land. A revolution accompanied by unparalleled horrors swept away the whole tyrannous system of centuries and left the country a trembling wreck--but free.

The dream of a republic was brief. Napoleon gathered the imperfectly organized government into his own hands, then by successive and rapid steps arose to Imperial power. France was an Empire, and adoringly submitted to the man who swiftly made her great and feared in Europe.

She had another Charlemagne, who was bringing to his feet Kings and Princes, and annexing half of Europe to his empire!

Spain, all unconscious of his designs, and perhaps thinking this invincible man might help her to get back Gibraltar and to drive the English out of the West Indies, joined him in 1804 in a war against Great Britain; and the following year the combined fleets of France and Spain were annihilated by Lord Nelson off Cape Trafalgar. Family dissensions in the Spanish royal household at this time were opportune for Napoleon's designs. Carlos and his son Ferdinand were engaged in an unseemly quarrel. Carlos appealed to Napoleon regarding the treasonable conduct and threats of his son. Nothing could have better suited the purposes of the Emperor. The fox had been invited to be umpire! French troops poured into Spain. Carlos, under protest, resigned in favor of his son, who was proclaimed Ferdinand VII.

(1807). The young King was then invited to meet the Emperor for consultation at Bayonne. He found himself a prisoner in France, and to Joseph Bonaparte, brother of the Emperor, was transferred the Crown of Spain.

The nation seemed paralyzed by the swiftness and the audacity of these overturnings. But soon popular indignation found expression. Juntas were formed. The one at Seville, calling itself the Supreme Junta, proclaimed an alliance with Great Britain; its purpose being the expulsion of the French from their kingdom.

Spain was in a state of chaos. Joseph was not without Spanish adherents, and there was no leader, no legitimate head to give const.i.tutional stamp to the acts of the protesting people, who without the usual formalities convoked the Cortes. But while they were groping after reforms, and while Lord Wellington was driving back the French, Napoleon had met his reverse at Moscow, and a "War of Liberation" had commenced in Germany.

The grasp upon the Spanish throne relaxed. The captive King had permission to return, and the reign of Joseph was ended by his ignominious flight from the kingdom, with one gold-piece in his pocket (1814).

CHAPTER XXII.

The decade between 1804 and 1814 had been very barren in external benefits to Spain, with her King held in "honorable captivity" in France, and the obscure Joseph abjectly striving to please not his subjects, but his august brother Napoleon. But in this time of chaos, when there was no Bourbon King, no long-established despotism to stifle popular sentiment, the unsuspected fact developed that Spain had caught the infection of freedom.

[Ill.u.s.tration: From the painting by C. Alvarez Dumont.

Heroic Combat in the Pulpit of the Church of St.

Augustine, Saragossa, 1809.]

When, as we have seen, the Cortes a.s.sumed all the functions of a government, that body (in 1812) drew up a new Const.i.tution for Spain.

So completely did this remodel the whole administration, that the most despotic monarchy in Europe was transformed into the one most severely limited.

Great was the surprise of Ferdinand VII. when, in 1814, he came to the throne of his ejected father Carlos IV., to find himself called upon to reign under a Const.i.tution which made Spain almost as free as a republic. He promulgated a decree declaring the Cortes illegal and rescinding all its acts, the Const.i.tution of 1812 included. Then when he had re-established the Inquisition, which had been abolished by the Cortes, when he had publicly burned the impertinent Const.i.tution, and quenched conspiracies here and there, he settled himself for a comfortable reign after the good old arbitrary fashion.

The Napoleonic empire having been effaced by a combined Europe, Ferdinand's Bourbon cousins were in the same way restoring the excellent methods of their fathers in France.

But there was a spirit in the air which was not favorable to the peace of Kings. On the American coast there stood "Liberty Enlightening the World!" A growing, prosperous republic was a shining example of what might be done by a brave resistance to oppression and a determined spirit of independence.

The pestilential leaven of freedom had been at work while monarchies slept in security. Ferdinand discovered that not only was there a seditious sentiment in his own kingdom, but every one of his American colonies was in open rebellion, and some were even daring to set up free governments in imitation of the United States.

Not only was Ferdinand's sovereignty threatened, but the very principle of monarchy itself was endangered.

Russia, Austria, and Prussia formed themselves into a league for the preservation of what they were pleased to call "The Divine Right of Kings." It was the attack upon this sacred principle, which was the germ of all this mischievous talk about freedom. They called their league "The Holy Alliance," and what they proposed to do was to _stamp out free inst.i.tutions in the germ_.

In pursuance of this purpose, in 1819 there appeared at Cadiz a large fleet, a.s.sembled for the subjugation of Spanish America.