Infanta Ana, was betrothed in Madrid by proxy to the boy King of France, Louis XIII., and young Philip, Prince of Asturias, became the affianced husband of Isabel of Bourbon, the elder daughter of Henry IV., the great Béarnais. Of the lavish splendour that accompanied the betrothals in Madrid this is not the place to speak,[29] but when Lerma's fall was at last approaching, engineered by his own son the Duke of Uceda, in 1615, King Philip III. and his pompous Court travelled north in an interminable cavalcade to exchange the brides on the frontier.

Philip's betrothal

Prince Philip remained at the ancient Castilian capital of Burgos, whilst the dark-eyed young beauty who was destined to be his wife rode, surrounded by Spanish nobles, from the little frontier stream through San Sebastian and Vittoria to meet her eleven year old bridegroom. The boy and his father rode a league or two out of Burgos to greet the girl, who it was fondly hoped would cement France and Spain together for the fulfilment of the impossible old dream of Christian unity dictated from Madrid; and eye-witnesses tell that the pale little milksop Prince, with his lank sandy hair and his red hanging under-lip, gazed speechless in admiration of the pretty bright-eyed child, in unbecoming Spanish dress, who was destined to be the companion of his youth and prime. The next day Burgos was in a blaze of splendour to welcome the future Queen, who rode on her white palfrey and her silver sidesaddle through the narrow frowning streets to the glorious cathedral; and then, from city to city, through stark Castile, the little bride, smiling and happy, and her pale boy bridegroom, followed by the most splendid Court in Christendom, slowly made their way to the crowning triumph of the capital.[30]

In the gorgeous crowd of courtiers that accompanied the King on his long journey to and from the French frontier, intrigue and falsity were rife. The Duke of Lerma's favourite, Calderon, had languished in a dungeon already for five years, and the spoilt favourite himself knew that his fall had been plotted long since by his son and the powerful clerical clique that swayed the timorous soul of Philip III. But Lerma was making a brave fight for his dignity and vast wealth. Philip III. was kind and tender-hearted, and the habit of subjection to his favourite was hard to break, so that his enemies had to tread warily. Their plan was to place gradually around the King and his heir nobles whom Lerma had failed to satisfy with sufficient bribes. One of them was a young man of twenty-eight, perhaps the most forceful of them all, Caspar de Guzman, Count of Olivares, son of that proud minister of Philip II. who had bullied and hoodwinked Sixtus V. into supporting the Armada in 1588. For years Caspar de Guzman, and his father before him, had fruitlessly besought Lerma to convert their peerage of Castile into a grandeeship of Spain; and on the journey to France with the King, the Count, though his branch of the great Guzman house was less rich than noble, had striven to show by the splendour of his train that if he was not a grandee he was magnificent enough to be one.[31]

Philip III. loved lavishness, especially to dazzle the French at this juncture, and was easily persuaded by Lerma's false son to make the Count of Olivares a gentleman of the chamber to the Prince. At first young Philip disliked his masterful attendant, whose imperious manner and stern looks frightened the sensitive boy; but gradually, as the latter grew older and more curious, the address and cleverness of Olivares asserted their influence over the weaker spirit of the Prince. Olivares was supposed by Uceda to be acting entirely in his interest, and had persuaded the latter to give him complete control of the Prince's household, which he took care to pack with friends pledged to himself. When Lerma was finally dismissed with a cardinal's hat and all his riches, young Philip was anxious to know why so great a minister had been disgraced. Olivares was always ready to enlighten the lad, and would spend long periods chatting with him alone as the Prince lay in bed, or as he was riding. In answer to Philip's questions about Lerma, he impressed upon him the insolence of favourites generally, their noxious public influence, their evil effect upon monarchs, and much more to the same purport, pointed at Uceda the new minister quite as much as at his fallen father. The sufferings of the people were described vividly to the sympathising boy, who was told of the vast plunder held by Lerma and his family from the national resources, and the noble task awaiting a monarch who would govern his realm himself and redress the wrongs of his subjects. Young Philip's youthful ambition was aroused, and thenceforward he listened to his mentor eagerly; whilst he ostentatiously frowned in public upon the Duke of Uceda.[32]

Results of Lerma's rule

Spain, notwithstanding the change of favourites, went from bad to worse. The vast sums spent by the King upon the building of new convents and in sumptuous shows were still wrung from the humblest classes, who alone did any profitable work, and in vain was the sainted image of the Virgin of Atocha carried in regal state through the streets of the capital, in the hope of averting widespread famine. Lerma at least, in his long ministry, had managed to conceal from the indolent King the utter ruin that threatened; but the ineptitude of the new favourites made the misery patent even to him. The knowledge overwhelmed his feeble spirit, and his long spells of despair were but rarely relieved now by the frivolities that formerly delighted him. Ill and failing as he was, and his poor spirit broken, he prayed the Council of Castile to tell him the truth as to the condition of his people, and to suggest remedies for their ills. The report, which reached him in February 1619, finally opened his eyes, now that it was too late, to the appalling results of his rule; and, stricken with panic fear that he would be damned eternally for his life-long neglect of duty, the poor King broke down utterly. He knew that his strength was ebbing, and forgiveness for himself was his first thought, and then to pray that his son might do better than he had done.

To distract him, his favourites persuaded him to make a royal progress to Portugal, with all the old lavish splendour, to witness the taking of the oath by the Portuguese Cortes to young Philip as heir to the throne. For months the cities of Portugal were the scene of prodigal pomp and devotion, that once more drove out of the muddled brain of the King all thought of the misery he had left behind him in Castile; and as he sat, on the 14th July 1619, under his gold and silken canopy in his palace at Lisbon, dressed in white taffeta and gold, and surrounded by the nobles of Portugal and Spain, it seemed as if the lying fable that made him personally the master of boundless wealth must be true, and that his stark and ruined realm was overflowing with happy abundance.[