CHAPTER IX

The temporary healing of the breach between Philip II and Prince Charles was ended by all this, and it widened again when the latter saw that the King was beginning to delay and put obstacles in the way of his projected marriage with the Archduchess Ana. D. Philip's reasons, however, for so doing could not have been better or more conscientious. Up till now the Prince's unfitness for marriage had only been a rumour, more or less explained, to which his looks and conduct gave an appearance of truth.

At this time circumstances occurred which made patent what previously had only been conjectured.

From that time D. Carlos began a strange life, which offered grave suspicions; he spent large sums of money, no one knew how; he went out alone every night, wearing a false beard, and with an arquebus in his hand, to all the houses of ill fame in Madrid; he came back sometimes without his shirt, at other times he had the one he was wearing burnt in his presence; in short, everything in him showed a strange intemperance, in whose muddy depths, perchance, may be found the key of the mystery which surrounds his imprisonment and death.

Because it is really extraordinary that in all the very intimate letters which Philip II, on the imprisonment of D. Carlos, wrote to the Pope, to the Dowager Queen of Portugal, Do?a Catalina, the Prince's grandmother, to the Emperor Maximilian and the Empress Maria, who were to have been his father- and mother-in-law, and to the great Duque de Alba, he hastens to clear his son from all suspicion of heresy, rebellion, disrespect to his person, or other such crimes which would justify his rigorous measures, and only makes an attempt to do this in all of them by repeating almost identically the same sentence: "In excesses which result from his nature and particular condition, which cannot be repeated for the decency of the case and the honour and estimation of the Prince."

At last D. Carlos, despairing of governing Flanders by his father's leave, and also fearing that his father was breaking off his marriage with Do?a Ana, determined to fly from Spain and go to Italy, and from thence to Flanders or Germany, as the circumstances should dictate. The most necessary thing for this was money, and he sent his attendants, Garci álvarez Osorio and Juan Martinez de la Cuadra, therefore, to borrow 600,000 ducats from among the merchants of Toledo, Medina del Campo, Valladolid and Burgos. But the credit of D. Carlos was very bad on those markets, because they all knew him to be as free in borrowing as he was faithless in paying, and the efforts of Osorio and de la Cuadra only produced a few thousand ducats.

Nothing daunted by this, D. Carlos sent Garci álvarez Osorio to Seville with twelve blank letters of credit, of which the text was: "The Prince. Garci álvarez, my attendant, who will give you this, will speak to you, and will ask you, in my name, for certain sums of money to be lent for a pressing and urgent necessity; I beg and charge you much to do it; on the one hand you will perform your obligations as vassal, on the other you will give me great pleasure. In all that concerns payment I rely on the said Osorio, that what he settles I accept as settled. Madrid, 1st of December, 1567."

And in his own hand: "In this you will please me much. I, the Prince."

He wrote at the same time to many of the Grandees of Spain, saying that he had to go on a journey of great importance, and hoping that they would accompany him and give him their aid.

These requests were answered in very different ways; some, like the Duques de Sesa, Medina de Rioseco, and the Marqués de Pescara, answered, without suspecting anything wrong, that, unconditionally, they would follow him; others, more suspicious, said that they would lend their aid to anything that was not against religion or the service of the King; and a few, like the Admiral, knowing better how the land lay, secretly sent the Prince's letter to the King, begging him to read and study it.

Meanwhile Garci álvarez Osorio returned from his journey to Seville, where he had made many good and quick negotiations on behalf of D. Carlos, who, seeing the money, thought that everything was settled, and began to make his final arrangements.

He wrote a long letter to the King, his father, full of bitter and offensive complaints, throwing on him the responsibility for his conduct, and also to the Pope, to his grandmother Queen Catalina, to all the Princes of Christendom, Grandees, Chancellors, Courts, and cities of the kingdom, explaining his flight, and attributing it to his father's tyranny and hatred.

All these letters were to have been sent to their destinations after the flight had become an accomplished fact, and meanwhile D. Carlos kept them in a steel casket inlaid with gold, which he locked up in his writing-table.

One thing which D. Carlos judged essential, as it was, he had not done; this was to consult D. John of Austria. Two months before, at the beginning of October, the King had sent for D. John to the Escorial, and had at last granted him the command of the Mediterranean galleys, as he had promised.

It was in one of these galleys, now anchored at Cartagena, that D. Carlos intended to go to Italy, and it was this indispensable help, added to the great prestige that D. John enjoyed among the nobles at Court and all over the kingdom, which made D. Carlos think, this time very rationally, that the success of his project perhaps depended on D. John's yes or no. So, on Christmas Eve, he called his uncle, and was closeted with him for two long hours in his room, unfolding his plans, begging D. John's help, and in return making him great offers.

Photo Anderson

DON FERNANDO ALVAREZ DE TOLEDO, THIRD DUQUE DE ALBA,
CALLED THE "GRAN DUQUE"

By Titian. Belonging to the Duque de Berwick y de Alba. Palacio de Lirio, Madrid

THIRD DUQUE DE ALBA, AGED 61

Gulliermo Key. Belonging to the Duque de Berwick y de Alba
Palacio de Liria, Madrid

According to D. Carlos, D. John could hope for nothing from the King but stingy rewards, limited ever by his envy, avarice and tyrannical deeds; he, on the other hand, would give D. John all a king's best friend could hope for, and he then offered, as if he owned them, the States of Milan or the Kingdom of Naples. D. John looked at him up and down, amazed, without knowing whether to wonder more at the blackness of the treason or the absurdity of the design. He understood, however, how useless and dangerous it would be to contradict D. Carlos openly, or to throw in his teeth, as he deserved, all the contempt and horror which his plan inspired.

So he chose a side attack, making D. Carlos see how difficult and dangerous an undertaking it was, the dreadful consequences to which it might lead in Flanders and Italy, and even among the restless Spanish Moors, the bad example of a son rising against his father, and the grave risk there was of discovery, so many people having been told by D. Carlos. The Prince had an answer for everything.

Everything, according to him, had been thought of and arranged, and it only remained for Garci álvarez Osorio to exchange for money some letters of exchange he had brought from Seville, and for him, D. John, as General of the Sea, to give him a safe conduct, putting at the disposal of D. Carlos one of the galleys in Cartagena, and then to come with the rest to join D. Carlos in that part of Italy which he should designate.

This determined D. John. Seeing, as a Christian, a brother of the King, and as an honourable gentleman, that there was only one way of stopping such disasters, and in order to adopt it, he asked D. Carlos to give him twenty-four hours in which to think the matter over. This the Prince conceded reluctantly, as it was, according to him, necessary to profit by the absence of the King, who had gone to the Escorial three days before, and was to return to Madrid for the Feast of the Epiphany.

Very early the next day D. John started for the Escorial, where, as a loyal prince and an honourable gentleman, he told his brother the absurd plans and mischievous intentions of D. Carlos, to whom he explained his audience as a command from the King, who had sent for him to give him urgent orders about the galleys at Cartagena.

D. Carlos had no suspicions and continued his preparations, until the situation was complicated by a notable incident, very characteristic of the time. That year (1567) the general Jubilee granted by Pius V, in honour of his elevation to the Pontificate, was being celebrated, and to gain it he fixed the 28th of December, the Feast of the Holy Innocents.

On the 27th D. Carlos went late to the convent of St. Jerónimo to confess and to gain the Jubilee the next day. It was already eight o'clock, and he went in a coach, with a very small retinue. It should be noted that the official and usual confessor of D. Carlos was Fr. Diego de Chaves, and that on that day he asked for some other brother.

The result was that this confessor would not give the Prince absolution, because he said that he harboured the mortal sin of hatred of a man, and that this hate would not end until he had killed him.

The brother, as we have said, refused absolution. The Prince said, "Father, make up your mind quickly." To which the friar answered, "Your Highness must consult the theologians."

D. Carlos got up very much put out, and sent his coach to Atocha to bring theologians, and fourteen came, as many as the coach, which was small, would hold, two by two. "And then," says the account of one of the Prince's attendants, who was there that night, "he sent to Madrid for Alvarado the Augustin, and for Trinitario, and the Prince disputed with each, and persisted that they should absolve him, even for killing a man who was on bad terms with him. And as all said they could not, they resolved, for the sake of the people, to give him an unconsecrated wafer at communion."

"Here all the theologians became upset, as other very deep things happened which I do not tell you. And as they were all there, and the negotiations were going so badly, the Prior of Atocha took the Prince apart, and with skill began to confess him and ask him the rank of the man that he wished to kill, and he answered that he was of high rank; but he could not drag the name from him (the Prince). The Prior deceived him by saying, 'Sir, say who it is that it will be possible to absolve you, according to your Highness's wish.' And then he said that it was the King, his father, whom he was on bad terms with and had to kill. The Prior very quietly said, 'Alone? or who do you think will help you?'

"In the end he remained without absolution or gaining the Jubilee, on account of his obstinacy. And all this ended at two o'clock in the night, and all the brothers left, very sad, especially his confessor, who went the next day to the Palace and to H.M., and told him at the Escorial all that had passed."