The Madness of Kings by Vivian Green

Author:Vivian Green
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2017-12-30T05:00:00+00:00

‘Of the five Habsburg kings’, Marañon later wrote incisively, ‘Charles V inspires enthusiasm, Philip II respect, Philip III indifference, Philip IV sympathy and Carlos II pity.’

Yet when on 6 November 1675 Charles came of age, momentarily and rather surprisingly he showed a flash of energy, even a will of his own, which may indicate that with better training he might have showed gumption. Obviously resentful of his mother’s dominating will, secretly he penned a letter to his half-brother, Don Juan (whom his mother and the council had now decided to send as viceroy to Sicily) requesting him to come to Madrid to help in the government. ‘On the sixth (November)’, the king wrote, ‘I enter into the government of my kingdoms. I need your person at my side to help me, and rid me of the Queen my mother. On Wednesday the 6th at 10.45 you will be in my antechamber.’ When, two days before, on 4 November, the king was presented with a decree which would have prolonged the powers of the queen mother and the governing junta, on the grounds of his own incapacity, the king actually refused to sign the document. On Don Juan’s arrival at the palace, he was cheered by the mob and accompanied the king to the Mass and Te Deum. Did the palace revolution signify that the youthful monarch would become king indeed?

Far from it; it was to be the shortest day of dupes in history. After the religious service Charles paid a visit to his mother with whom he stayed for two hours. Emerging in great distress, tears welling down his cheeks, once and for all Charles’s act of rebellion was at an end. ‘Don Fernando Valenzuela’, Sir William Godolphin reported, ‘whispered me in the Ear and said all this Stir will come to nothing.6

The king’s efforts to untie the apron strings which bound him to his mother had failed and he once more became thoroughly dependent upon her. He could not resist the pressures which she brought to bear upon him. Henceforth the king was to be a negative factor in his own government, rarely attending council meetings or giving orders on his own initiative. In fact the foundations of the queen mother’s government were less than rock-solid, even though Don Valenzuela was in the saddle again, appointed captain-general of Granada and the obvious ‘prime minister’. If the king himself acquiesced, many of the grandees denounced the favours Valenzuela enjoyed, and complained of the incompetence of his government. While Valenzuela might appear to hold all the cards, it was the king’s half-brother, Don Juan, who remained the joker in the pack. A group of grandees demanded Don Juan’s return (his own signature was actually the eleventh on the petition) and the dismissal of Valenzuela. On Christmas Day 1676 the unpopular minister fled to the royal apartments in the Escorial, but was later arrested and banished.

Don Juan’s return to power was greeted warmly by his half-brother the king as well as by most of the grandees.

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