Spain and the Thirty Years’ War

In 1620, following the defeat of Frederick V (the elector palatine, or prince, from the Rhineland who had accepted the crown of Bohemia when it was offered to him in 1618) and the Bohemians, Spanish troops from the Netherlands entered the “Winter King’s” hereditary dominions of the Rhenish Palatinate. Militarily, Spain was now in a favourable position to restart the war with the United Provinces at the expiration of the truce in 1621. The decision to do so was, however, taken on more general grounds. The Dutch had used the truce only to capture the carrying trade with Spain of western Europe and the Baltic, Zúñiga argued. On the oceans they had never observed the truce but continued their piracies against Spanish and Portuguese shipping. If they were allowed to continue, first the Indies would be lost, then the rest of Flanders, Italy, and, finally, Spain itself, for it would have lost the dominions that had made it great. These were very different grounds for resuming the war from those habitually advanced by Philip II. Little was said about religion or even the king’s authority, while the protection of the overseas empire had become the central consideration in Spanish relations with the Dutch rebels. Olivares dismissed the counterarguments of the Council of Finance. The young king, content to be told that he was not responsible for the debts of his predecessors, piously declared his intention not to burden his subjects any further. Yet neither he nor his ministers could foresee that a recent slump in silver shipments from America was not a temporary setback but heralded a rapid, long-term decline. The Dutch were equally anxious for war—partly, at least, because of the vain hope that the Belgians would rebel against Spain and join the United Provinces.

Having decided on war, Olivares pursued a perfectly consistent strategy: communications between Spain and the Spanish Netherlands were to be kept open at all costs, and the Dutch were to be hit wherever they were most vulnerable. The first objective led Spain to build up a naval force in the Spanish Netherlands (Belgium) that preyed on Dutch shipping in the North Sea and, on the diplomatic front, to cultivate the friendship of James I of England and even to contemplate the restoration of Frederick V to the Palatinate and the marriage of Philip IV’s devoutly Roman Catholic sister to the heretic prince of Wales (later Charles I). It led to very close cooperation with the Austrian branch of the Habsburgs and the need to fight for the control of the Valtellina. The second objective, which followed the advance of the imperial armies under Albrecht Wallenstein (an adventurer who made himself indispensable to the Habsburgs as a military organizer) to the Baltic, led to grandiose schemes of building an imperial Spanish fleet in the Baltic with Hanseatic (the Hanse towns on the Baltic were independent mercantile organizations) and Danish help in order to destroy the Dutch Baltic trade and with it the economic prosperity of the republic.

However rational and limited these aims and plans seemed in Spain, in the rest of Europe they appeared to show only too clearly the limitless ambitions of the house of Austria. The now habitual talk in Spanish court and military circles of restoring Spain’s greatness did not help to persuade Europe otherwise. Spinola’s and Wallenstein’s victories in the mid-1620s convinced the Spanish Council of State that victory against the Dutch was possible and blinded them to the danger of raising up new and more powerful enemies. Thus, they let the last chances of a favourable peace slip away. Yet, despite enormous sums sent annually from Castile to Flanders, the Spanish armies could not break Dutch resistance. They could not even supply their own provisions and ammunition without the covert help of Dutch merchants, who, in their turn, argued that this trade with the mortal enemy brought in the money needed to pay for the troops fighting this enemy. From 1630, when Sweden and France actively intervened in the war, Spain rapidly lost the initiative. The war was fought on a global scale, in central Europe and from the Philippines to Brazil. Spanish armies could still win tactical victories in Italy and Germany, but the number and seriousness of Spanish reverses, especially at sea, were now steadily mounting.

The government of Olivares

Olivares was undoubtedly the most able politician directing the Spanish government since Cardinal Granvelle. The Catholic Monarchs, the emperor, and Philip II had kept the high nobility, to a greater or lesser degree, out of the central government. Lerma had reversed this policy, and Olivares could not go back on this position, although he bitterly lamented the incompetence of his fellow aristocrats and sharply reduced the overgenerous flow of royal patronage to them. He could—and did—develop a system of committees (juntas) of experts within the councils, which took over a great deal of government business and made its administration more efficient.

In 1623 and 1624 Olivares presented to the king and Council of State a number of memorandums that were nothing less than plans for a far-reaching reform of government and society on the lines advocated by the arbitristas. Like them, Olivares saw the need to change mental attitudes; in particular, he recognized the need for restraints on the aristocratic love of splendour and display, the need to appreciate the dignity of work and productive economic activity, and the need to end the economically harmful and morally indefensible mania for limpieza de sangre (Olivares himself, through his grandmother, was of converso ancestry). On the more immediately practical level, Olivares’s memorandums were concerned principally with finance, for, with an annual expenditure of eight million ducats, there was a deficit of four million. The count-duke proposed the abolition of some of the most harmful taxes, the millones and the alcabala, and their substitution by simpler and more-equitable taxes. Finally, he argued that Castile should not be expected to continue to bear nearly the entire cost of the war. Like Granvelle, Olivares recognized that the king’s non-Castilian dominions could be expected to share in the burdens of empire only if they could also enjoy its advantages—the honours, commands, and control over policy that had been all but completely reserved to the Castilians.

None of these plans was put into practice. The Spaniards were unwilling to change their mode of life and their ingrained beliefs at the behest of a royal favourite. Olivares did manage to arrange loans with a consortium of Portuguese Marrano (Christianized Jews) businessmen, but he was bitterly attacked for this action. The court itself gaily abandoned a short-lived austerity in the celebrations that followed the arrival of the prince of Wales in his romantic but abortive quest for a Spanish bride (1623). The financial reforms foundered on the opposition of vested interests to taxation by the Cortes and on the opposition of the whole Castilian ruling class to the plan for the decentralization of the empire. Just as had happened to Granvelle’s proposals, there was not even any serious discussion of Olivares’s plan. In the 1560s the result of this failure had left Philip II with no alternative but Alba’s policy of repression, which caused the revolt of the Netherlands; in the 1620s it left Olivares with no alternative but his Union of Arms, which caused the revolts of Catalonia and Portugal. The Union of Arms was a scheme for the creation of a reserve army of 140,000 men that was to be paid for by the dominions of the Spanish empire in proportion to their estimated resources. But the non-Castilian dominions disliked this proposal because it infringed on their liberties. They also distrusted Castilian intentions—and with good reason, for in 1625 Olivares had advised the king in a secret memorandum to “secretly plan and work to reduce these kingdoms of which Spain is composed to the style and laws of Castile.”

The revolt of Catalonia

Apart from Portugal, Catalonia was the state with the greatest degree of autonomy. Its medieval form of government had not been changed since Ferdinand the Catholic had settled it in 1486. Its countryside, especially on the French border, was infested with smugglers and bandits and riven by local feuds. Its taxes were administered by the Diputació, a self-perpetuating and corrupt committee of the Catalan Corts that functioned during the long intervals between the meetings of that body. The viceroys, hemmed in on all sides by local privileges and without control over the finances of the province, were virtually powerless. In 1626 Philip IV summoned the Cortes of the realms of the Crown of Aragon. Aragon and Valencia reluctantly voted some money but refused conscription of troops. Catalonia refused everything. Nevertheless, Olivares published the royal decree for the Union of Arms. Subsequently relations between Madrid and Catalonia deteriorated rapidly.

As the costs of warfare mounted, the government resumed the inflationary minting of vellón coinage and had to declare yet another moratorium on its debts, in 1627. In 1628 the vellón coins were withdrawn, causing a collapse of prices and a recession. In the 1630s new taxes were instituted in Castile along with outright confiscations from private individuals, both of income from government annuities and of American silver imported in commercial transactions. Not surprisingly, Madrid was becoming obsessed with what it considered to be the injustice of Catalonia’s immunity from taxation. In 1639 Olivares opened a campaign against southern France from Catalonia. It had no rational strategic objective except to pitchfork Catalonia into the war. If the Catalans had to defend their country, Olivares argued, they would have to support the army.

Olivares’s logic was lost on the Catalans. The peasants, urged on by their clergy, refused to support the troops. During the winter the soldiers were quartered in the countryside. Soon there were clashes with the population, then riots and open rebellion. Too late, Olivares attempted to draw back and appease the Catalans. On June 7 the mob murdered the viceroy in Barcelona. The higher nobility and the urban aristocracies were still anxious for an accommodation, but the countryside was now completely out of control. The Diputació, which was the only remaining legal authority, was led by a strong-minded cleric named Pau Claris, canon of Urgel, located west of Barcelona, who was unwilling to make concessions. In the autumn of 1640 Olivares scraped together the last available troops and sent them against the Catalan rebels. Claris countered by transferring Catalan allegiance to the king of France, “as in the time of Charlemagne” (January 1641). French troops now entered Catalonia, and only after French forces withdrew with the renewed outbreak of the French civil wars (the Fronde) were the Castilians able to reconquer Catalonia (1652). The Catalan upper classes were relieved, for they had found the French even less congenial masters than the Castilians. Not repeating its previous mistakes, Madrid fully restored the liberties and privileges of Catalonia.

The revolt of Portugal

The revolt of Catalonia gave the Portuguese their opportunity. The lower classes and the clergy had always hated the Castilians, and the Portuguese aristocracy and the commercial classes—previously content with the patronage and the economic opportunities that the union with Spain had provided—had become dissatisfied during the preceding 20 years. They resented the introduction of Castilians into their government (1634), the ineffectiveness of Spanish naval support in the defense of Brazil against the Dutch, and the growing reaction of the Spanish colonies against Portuguese economic penetration during this period of contracting economic activity. Rather than allow themselves to be sent to fight the Catalan rebels, the Portuguese nobility seized power in Lisbon and proclaimed the duque de Bragança as King John IV of Portugal (December 1640). Madrid, with an aristocratic conspiracy in Andalusia on its hands (1641), no longer had the means to react.

The last years of Philip IV

The disasters on Spain’s periphery were matched by continued mismanagement of Spanish finances at the centre. Once more the government tampered with the vellón coinage and then reversed course into a sudden and catastrophic deflation (1641–42). In January 1643 the Castilian grandees were finally able to force Philip IV to dismiss Olivares. The king now decided to run his own government. He dissolved the juntas, and the councils resumed their authority. Soon control of the government slipped into the hands of Olivares’s nephew, Luis Méndez de Haro, a clever but colourless politician with neither his uncle’s imperial vision nor his panache.

The defeats continued. In 1643 the French king’s cousin, Louis II de Bourbon (the Great Condé), broke the Spanish tercios and their reputation for invincibility at the Battle of Rocroi in northeastern France. Popular revolutions broke out in Naples and Palermo (Sicily) in 1647, and soon both cities were controlled by revolutionary governments. The excessive taxation, imposed for Spain’s war effort, had precipitated the rebellion, at least in Naples. The Spanish monarchy, wrote the Venetian ambassador to Madrid at the time,

resembled that great colossus that during an earthquake had collapsed in a few moments while everyone hurried along to enrich himself with the fragments.

In fact, Spain survived and even managed to hold on to much of its empire. The revolts of Naples and Sicily, directed as much against the local nobility as against Spain, were suppressed in 1648. When the emperor conceded French claims to Alsace and the Rhine bridgeheads, the “Spanish Road” to the Netherlands was irrevocably cut, and the close alliance between the Spanish and the Austrian branches of the house of Habsburg came to an end. With Portugal in revolt and Brazil no longer an issue between the Dutch and the Spaniards, Philip IV drew the only possible conclusion from this situation and rapidly came to terms with the United Provinces, recognizing their full independence and agreeing to stop overseas trade on the Schelde, a river emptying into the North Sea west of Antwerp (Treaty of Münster, January 1648). But Philip IV had not changed his basic policy. He wanted to have his hands free for a final effort against France, even after Catalonia had surrendered. Once again the temporary weakness of France during the Fronde confirmed the Spanish court in its disastrous military policy. Haro passed up the chance of concluding a very favourable peace in 1656.

The war dragged on, with England joining France, capturing Jamaica, and contributing to the Spanish defeat in the Battle of the Dunes on the northern coast of France (1658). The Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659) cost Spain Artois (now northernmost France), Roussillon, and part of Cerdagne. More important than these relatively minor territorial losses was the realization throughout Europe that Spain’s pretensions to hegemony had definitely and irremediably failed. The Spaniards themselves were slow to admit it. Philip IV had made concessions to France in order, once again, to have his hands free against the last unforgiven enemy, Portugal. There was no longer any rational basis for his hopes of success. All schemes for financial and tax reforms were still being blocked by vested interests, and the government again had declared bankruptcies in 1647 and 1653. Once more the Council of Finance issued a debased coinage to pay for the Portuguese campaign. But the Portuguese routed the last Spanish armies at Ameixial (1663) and at Villaviciosa on the northern coast of Spain (1665). Spain finally formally recognized Portugal’s independence in 1668.