Villars writes of Marie Louise at this juncture: ‘She, with her youth and beauty, full of life and vivacity, was not of an age or character disposed to enter into the views and application necessary for her proper conduct. Her bent for liberty and pleasure, the memories of France and all she had left behind her there, had made Spain intolerable to her. The captivity of the palace, the ennui of idleness without amusement, the coarse low manners of the King, the unpleasantness of his person, his sulky humour, which she increased frequently by her lack of amiability towards him, all nourished her aversion and unhappiness. She took interest in nothing, and would take no measure, either for the present or the future; and so, putting aside all that Spain could give her, she only consoled herself with the idea of returning to France. She entertained this idea, encouraged by predictions and chimeras which formed her only amusement, for everything else bored her.’[311]
In her despairing knowledge that she could never hope for happiness in Spain, Marie Louise thus grew reckless. She had no ambition to rule except in the heart of the man she loved; she was not clever enough to succeed in the subtle political intrigues that went on around her; she knew now that motherhood was hardly to be hoped for with such a husband as hers, and her one thought was of the joy of living in France. As the political relations between France and Spain grew constantly more strained and Charles’s detestation of Frenchmen increased, the visits of Mme. Villars to Marie Louise perforce grew rarer, for the suspicious King had got into his head that the French ambassadress was serving as an intermediary in the palace intrigues which were setting everybody by the ears. Marie Louise made matters worse by turning to her widowed nurse Mme. Quantin, and her inferior French maid. Quantin was a greedy, meddlesome woman, of low rank, who put up her influence over the Queen for sale, and soon embroiled matters beyond repair.
The Queen, under the influence of this woman, lost what little discretion and prudence she possessed. The many poor French people in the town, to whom Quantin and the other French maids were known, would congregate beneath their apartments in the palace to gossip of France, tell the news, and perhaps to beg for favours; and Marie Louise would sometimes be imprudent enough to approach the windows and exchange words with her countrymen below. Spaniards who saw it—for jealous eyes watched the Queen always—cried shame upon such a derogation from the dignity of Spanish royalty, and the scandalmongers of the capital already began to whisper that the ‘Frenchwoman,’ who would not play the part properly, and gave no signs of motherhood, might be put aside in favour of another Queen. In the Calle Mayor, a punning verse passed from hand to hand reproaching her for her sterility, and demanding in ribald rhyme that she should either give an heir to Spain, or return whence she came; and thus, as war loomed ever nearer between her two countries, the lot of the unhappy Queen grew darker.
Villars began to see that he had been misled in condemning the hard rule of the Duchess of Terranova, and aiding the Queen to gain the freedom advocated for her by the amiable Mariana. ‘It was a great misfortune for the Queen,’ he wrote, ‘who now abandoned herself without restraint to a dangerous line of conduct, and it is quite a question, judging by results, whether the hard severity of the Duchess of Terranova was not better for her than the weak complaisance of the Duchess of Albuquerque.’[312] The poor misguided girl had not a single friend. Mariana kept away; for things were going admirably from her point of view; and a new alliance between Spain and the empire and other powers, against the threatened encroachments of France, was already being discussed in secret.
The Minister, Medina Celi, had succeeded, by means of Eguia and the King’s confessor, in re-establishing his position by arousing the jealousy of all the three members of the royal family against each other; and he sought further to isolate and discredit Marie Louise by whispering to the King that her friend Mme. Villars was engaged in political intrigue with the Queen to the detriment of Spain. Mme. Villars had been specially authorised to visit the Queen as much as possible, and report fully all she heard for the information of the French government; but it is certain that she had no political mission. Charles, however, was childishly jealous of her because his wife liked her, and he instructed the Marquis de la Fuente, his ambassador in France, to demand the recall of Villars in consequence of his wife’s indiscretion. Louis XIV. knew his kinsman well, and the real reason for his demand: but it was part of his policy just then to reassure the Spanish King, and Villars was sacrificed. In the ambassador’s letter of recall, Louis writes, after saying that Charles had complained of the intrigues of Mme. Villars: ‘It is useless to inform you of all the details ... it will suffice to say that, for many reasons affecting my service, I have not thought fit to refuse the King of Spain this mark of my complaisance, however satisfied I may be of the services you have rendered in the post you occupy.’
Both Villars and his wife disdained to justify themselves by a single word, and the ambassadress left Madrid in the summer of 1681, to the despair of Marie Louise; whilst Villars himself was replaced by another ambassador early in 1682. By this time the empire was at war with France. Louis had captured Strasbourg, and Casale in Savoy on the same day (30th September 1681), and Germany seemed almost at the mercy of the now dominant power in Europe. The imperial ambassador at Madrid, supported strongly by Mariana, was striving his utmost to draw Spain into the great war that seemed inevitable, and Holland and England, jealous of the aggression of France, were for a time apparently willing to join Spain. But the clever diplomacy of Louis diverted the powers from the alliance, except the empire and bankrupt Spain; and the sorely reduced Flemish dominion of Spain was again invaded by French troops. Luxembourg, which belonged to Spain, was besieged, the cities of Dixmunde and Courtrai were captured (November 1683), and with every fresh victory of the French, Louis became more exacting. Finally, when the unfortunate country could resist no longer, the government of Charles was forced to accept the humiliating terms of the Treaty of Ratisbon in June 1684, by which Luxembourg, the well-nigh impregnable fortress, was lost to Spain for ever, whilst Louis also kept Strasbourg, Bovines, Chimay, and Beaumont. Other smaller potentates, like the Elector of Brandenburg and the Regent of Portugal, following the example of the great Louis, hectored Spain into degrading concessions, whilst pestilence swept through the south, floods ruined Spanish Flanders, hurricanes sank the silver fleets, upon which the government of Charles largely depended, corruption lorded over all in stark desolate Spain; and the cretin King, growing more feeble in mind and body, mumbled his prayers, or played childish games with his wife or his dwarfs.
During the war, which further despoiled the land of her adoption, the lot of Marie Louise was truly pitiable. Even before it broke out, and during the period of acrimonious recriminatory claims which followed the recall of Villars, her isolation and impotence and the growing power of Mariana were plainly evident. In the instructions given by Louis XIV. to his new ambassador, Vanguyon,[313] in 1682, the latter is instructed to visit the Queen-Mother first, with all sorts of amiable messages, and Marie Louise is only to be addressed ‘in general terms,’ and asked to do her best to maintain good relations between the two countries. Mariana, indeed, with the imperial ambassador, Mansfeldt, constantly at her side, had by the mere force of circumstances and her own character gradually again become the principal controlling power of the State, and, as usual, she directed her influence not to the benefit of Spain but to the aid of the empire in its secular struggle against the encroachments of France. When the war, as already mentioned, broke out (1683) with France, the underhand intrigues of Mariana and the Austrian faction to discredit Marie Louise and destroy any political influence she might have over her husband, were powerfully aided by the general feeling against everything French; and the young Queen, without a single friend near her, was more sorely beset than ever by her relentless enemies, whilst she, perplexed with intrigues that she did not understand, surrounded by people who would willingly have followed her if she had had wit enough to lead them, threw away her chance by the frivolity and imprudence of her behaviour.[314]
She managed, it is true, by her charm and beauty to keep her husband deeply in love with her in his maudlin fashion, but, weak as he was, she failed to influence him politically.[315] She had already offended Medina Celi and played the game of the Queen-Mother against him—for he had been a friend of Don Juan—by interfering with his appointments for the benefit of her nurse, the widow Quantin; and now, at the very period when Mariana had determined that the prime minister, who had failed to pay her full pension, and who alone stood between her and supreme power, should be dismissed, Marie Louise again foolishly threw her influence with her husband against the oft-threatened minister. Medina Celi, overwhelmed by his unpopularity and the insuperable difficulties of his task, was brusquely dismissed by the King in June 1685; and thenceforward Mariana was supreme. The new minister, the Count of Oropesa, was clever and active, and at first made sweeping financial reforms: but he was really the tool of the Austrian faction, which, before many months had passed, negotiated the League of Augsburg, which bound together Spain, the empire, Sweden, Bavaria and other powers, against the encroachments of Louis XIV.; and again poor, ruined Spain was pledged to enter, if called upon, into the central European war.
For the moment Louis was not prepared to meet all Europe in arms, and his views with regard to Spain had become somewhat changed. It was by this time evident that Marie Louise would bear no child to her degenerate husband, and Mariana and Mansfeldt were already preparing to put forward the claims to the succession of the children of the Empress (the Infanta Margaret, daughter of Mariana), whilst Louis XIV., making light, as he always did, of the renunciation signed by Maria Theresa on her marriage (already referred to), was determined to show that his own son, the Dauphin, had the best right to be King of Spain if Charles II. died without issue. When, therefore, the new French ambassador, Feuquière, went to Spain early in 1685, he was instructed to talk seriously, and in secret, to Marie Louise on the subject.[316] He was to tell her that she would be wise to desist from all political intrigue directed to the change of personnel of the government, and so to gain the goodwill of the ministers and obtain a firmer hold over the King. This advice came too late, for she had foolishly connived at Medina Celi’s fall before Feuquières could deliver his message. This, however, was only the first step; and in the following year Father Verjus was sent to Madrid with money and instructions to aid Feuquière in gaining friends and forming a party under the ægis of Marie Louise to push the claims of the Dauphin to the Spanish succession.
In the meantime the Austrian party, under Mariana, were having their own way unchecked. Marie Louise was their sole stumbling-block, for the King would never willingly lose sight of her, notwithstanding her follies, of which her enemies made the most; and at the instance of Mariana and her Austrian backers a dastardly series of plots was formed for ruining the young Queen in the eyes of her husband. We get the first hint of them from a letter dated 12th April 1685 in the curious informal correspondence addressed by the Duke of Montalto in Madrid to the Spanish ambassador in London, Pedro Ronquillo, both of them partisans of Mariana: ‘A case of no little scandalousness has happened in the palace,’ he wrote. ‘You know, of course, that Mme. Quantin is the favourite of our Queen, and that M. Viremont, a Frenchman who takes care of the Queen’s saddle horses, is also well liked by her Majesty. By these means this man introduced himself so much into the palace with the Quantin woman, that, although she wears the dress of a duenna, and is neither young nor at all handsome, there was a talk of their getting married. Everybody laughed at such a courtship; but the matter went so far and the connection was so close, for both of them are cunning enough to get out when they liked, and perhaps he may have found means to enter her chamber in the palace, that the woman was recently taken out of the palace to the house of Donna Ana de Aguirre, who is in high favour with the Queen, and it is said that this Quantin woman gave birth to a boy there the other day.[317] This scandal has caused no end of murmuring and satires, so shameless some of them as to be incredible. What is quite as incredible is the irresolution of the King. Up to the present time nothing has been done, either to the man or the woman, and Viremont continues in his employment as if nothing had happened. They are married now; but if I had my way they should be burned. Yesterday the Quantin woman went to pay her respects to the Queen with as much effrontery as if she had not behaved thus. You can see by this the state the palace is in.’[318]
We can supplement this narrative from other sources. The French widow was the only person of her own tongue and country near Marie Louise, and, though she had been a dangerous companion, the poor Queen clung desperately to her. As soon as the rumour of her marriage spread the outcry for her punishment and expulsion was raised by the enemies of Marie Louise, and the Queen herself was attacked in dozens of spiteful couplets as having connived at immorality in her own apartments. The outraged Queen threw herself at her husband’s feet in an agony of tears, and implored him not to expel the only French woman-servant upon whom she could depend. Charles, moved by his wife’s tears, allowed Quantin to remain in Madrid, though not to sleep in the palace, and refused to believe the stories told him that Marie Louise had knowingly been a party to the irregularity of her servant.
This was to some extent a defeat for the Queen-Mother and her friends; but the scandal laid a foundation of distrust, upon which further attack might be based. This is how the Duke of Montalto speaks of the King’s concession to his wife. ‘I don’t know whether the Quantin affair is true or not; but it is publicly stated, and is the most dreadful scandal that ever happened in the palace. Medina, Oropesa and the Confessor, all urged the King to take some step, but to no purpose, for he preferred to give way to the tears and prayers of the Queen, rather than uphold the decency of his own household. So she has triumphed to such an extent that this woman, having married the rogue Viremont, has positively been brought by the Queen into the palace again to serve her, and goes home to her husband every night! Cases of this sort are surely enough to drive one crazy, and to banish all hope of better times. Since I have told you the story I must now tell you the sequel. As soon as they were married the woman went ostentatiously to the palace to salute the King, which he placidly allowed. The fine pair have now gone to Aranjuez with the Court, like people of quality, in one of the royal coaches. Medina Celi has thrown up everything and gone away in disgust. It is all the King’s fault, and such goings on as these will expose to the world our master’s tyranny and incapacity.’[319]
The further blow at the Queen was silently planned whilst the Court was at the spring palace of Aranjuez, where it usually stayed until Corpus Christi day. On the 12th May Charles fell suddenly ill, and much was made of the matter. Although, after bleeding, he was quite well on the third day, it was decided that he must immediately return to the capital. ‘What must be well borne in mind in all this’ (wrote an enemy of Marie Louise) ‘is that the Queen wanted to prefer her own pleasure to the health of her husband; for it was almost impossible to persuade her to come to Madrid. She said that the illness was nothing, and wished to keep the King there till Corpus Christi, notwithstanding the heat and danger. When she was not allowed to have her own way, she was cross and ill-humoured; as was clear when the King was confined to his bed, for she did not even go to see him. This is the more strange, as when the Quantin woman was to be bled she must needs go and visit her without ceremony. Neither I nor any one else can understand the strange things that are going on in that house.’[320]
This was written at the end of May; and some three weeks afterwards the plot ripened. A Frenchman named Vilaine, who is called by some authorities a discharged groom of Marie Louise, and by the Duke of Montalto the wax-chandler of the Queen-Mother, denounced Quantin and her husband for having plotted, with the knowledge of the Queen, to poison King Charles. The accused persons were at once arrested, and a carefully prepared hue and cry was raised against all Frenchmen. Many foreigners were attacked and some killed in the streets; the French embassy had to be surrounded by troops, and the whole Court was in a panic. Charles was a coward and miserably weak, but he stood by his wife as well as he knew how at this period of trial. Marie Louise, indignant and outraged at what she knew was a vile plot against her, demanded that the accusers should also be arrested; but before this could be done, Quantin and her husband, the French maids and others, were put to the torture; and the poor woman, with both arms broken and her lower limbs crippled for life, still maintained her innocence and would confess nothing.
The Queen’s few Spanish friends were put into close confinement. No evidence whatever could be wrung from any of the accused to support the charge against them: but the Council of Castile, packed now with the Queen-Mother’s partisans, still continued to regard the matter as a serious menace to the King’s life, and frightened poor Charles nearly out of what small wits nature had given him. In a French news letter of the time (19th August 1685) the political aim of the proceedings is exposed. ‘The Council of Spain desires to involve the Queen in the accusations, because they fear her influence over the King, and he has not sufficient strength to resist the ministers who propose to appoint commissaries for the Queen. She has written to her father, saying that she has no French person now near her, nor any one else whom she could trust. She is, she says, in daily fear of being poisoned, and she refuses to eat what they provide for her, which has cast her into great weakness. She will only eat with the King and from his dishes. Vilaine, they say, is to be rewarded and sent to an employment in the Canaries. The French ambassador is not allowed to speak with the Queen; and the Venetian ambassador was nearly murdered, because they thought he was French. When the King is with the Queen the ministers are all in the wrong, but when they are with him he changes his mind.’[321]
Quantin and all the French people about the palace were expelled the country, when no atom of proof could be found against them, and Charles, apparently alarmed at the threats of Louis XIV., that if any harm came to Marie Louise he would avenge her by war in Spain itself, was emphatic in his repudiation of any suspicion on his part against his wife. He assured Feuquières that he regarded his wife’s interests as his own, and never believed for a moment in her guilt: and he assured the Duke of Orleans that, not only did he not know that the accused French people had been tortured, but that when he asked for a copy of the whole of the proceedings in the case, his Council had assured him that the records had all been burnt. In vain, however, did the French government insist upon the punishment of the accusers. The King might promise and strive, but there were others stronger than he; and Vilaine was spirited away and rewarded.
Another news letter in the same French collection as that justed quoted does not hesitate, a few months afterwards, when the whole matter was known, to say: ‘Although the Quantin affair is now a thing of the past, it is nevertheless worth recording that the Count of Mansfeldt, the imperial ambassador and his wife, to please the Queen-Mother, originated the accusation against the woman. She was made to suffer the cruel tortures she did in order to injure the young Queen, who was so outraged at it, and the King as well, that the imperial ambassador is forbidden the palace, except on the business of his embassy.’
Mariana’s friends looked upon it in a very different light. Whilst still the accusation was hanging over Marie Louise, Montalto wrote to Ronquillo in London: ‘Quantin and her husband, and all the Frenchmen in the Queen’s stable, with her bob-tailed horses, have all been packed off to France. They were a lot of rascals, and the cost of her stable was a calamity. They were all guilty, but as none of them would confess under torture, they could not be further proceeded against. People are talking very scandalously about such shameful laxity. Quantin’s young niece[322] was sent out of the palace late at night, so that not a single French person should remain. But the Queen’s tears and prayers soon fetched her back. This is perfectly odious and disgraceful, and one can only have contempt of so easy going a King, who will not let even justice take its course if his wife says nay.’ A few weeks afterwards, the same courtier says: ‘The Queen is still implacable at the loss of her Quantins, and the King so excessively loving (not to call it by another name) of his wife, that all his concessions to her, which ought to make her more submissive to him, makes her humour worse, and the temper that God gave her causes no end of trouble as it is; for it is the most extravagant ever seen.’[323]
The French servants of the Queen, her only solace, all except the girl Duperroy, had been sent away; but still Marie Louise personally had held her place in the King’s affection. No sooner, however, had the Quantin affair fallen a little into the background, than another stab more wicked still was aimed at the Queen by the same hands out of the darkness. There was a foolish, vain, French exon of the guard, the Chevalier Saint Chamans, who had commanded Marie Louise’s escort when she travelled to the Spanish frontier. As was not unusual in the French Court at the time, Saint Chamans was pleased to profess a far-off amorous worship of the lovely Princess; and it is quite probable that during his attendance upon her, she may have smiled in raillery at his silly languishing airs. In any case, the talk of his adoration reached Madrid; and in the autumn of 1685, some miscreant in the capital of Spain wrote two letters as from the Queen in a forged hand imitating hers, to Saint Chamans, containing expressions to the highest degree compromising of her honour. Saint Chamans, like the love-lorn fool that he was, showed the letters to his chums, and Louis XIV. soon learnt of their existence, and what is more extraordinary, believed them to be genuine. In sorrow and severe reprobation, he wrote to Feuquières, directing him to show the letters to the Queen, which he did in September.
Marie Louise, outraged at the mere suspicion, and indignant at so cruel a hoax, rose for once majestic and dignified in her wrath. She scribbled a burning repudiation of the letters which she handed to Feuquières for ciphered transmission to the King of France.[324] ‘It will not be difficult for your Majesty to imagine the affliction in which I am, at knowing that you suspect a person such as I of so unworthy a thing as this. I cannot avoid expressing my justified sorrow at seeing that your Majesty does not esteem at its true worth, as you should, conduct which is most regular, and which certainly is not of the easiest.... but as I am so unhappy as to have people near me here perfidious and abominable enough to use every effort to ruin me by pernicious inventions, I am not surprised that they should exert all their ingenuity to deprive me of the esteem of your Majesty.... Believe me, nothing is more false than that which you have thought of me, and my despair to see that your Majesty doubts for a moment my good behaviour, makes me, in this, stand apart from your counsel, and be myself alone; and I cannot think of the injustice your Majesty has done me without being beside myself with sorrow. Alas! I had made light of all my grief, believing that your Majesty, at least, thought well of me: but I see now I am marked for unhappiness, since your Majesty believes a thing of me which makes me shudder even to think of.... I am so jealous of my honour, and I love it so much, that I shall never do anything to stain it: and life itself is not so insupportable to me, either, that I should seek thus to lose it.... If I were in a more tranquil state, I should supplicate your Majesty to have pity upon this poor realm for my sake; but I dare not, though I think you will be good enough to recollect that I have the honour to be your niece, and that all my happiness depends upon you.... Believe me, too, when I say that I am prouder of being born a princess of your blood, than of the rank I hold in the world’: and so on, for several pages, the wronged and outraged Queen eloquently protests her innocence.
Thenceforward Marie Louise, though entirely without political influence—for the Austrian faction and the Queen-Mother were in that respect all-powerful—was unassailable in the affections of the poor man she had married. Her disregard of the ordinary Spanish etiquette, the free and easy bonhomie of her demeanour, and the indulgence of her caprices increased as she felt more secure in the love of her husband; but she made no other use of her influence over him. No better series of pictures of the life in her palace can be found than in the vitriolic references to Marie Louise and her husband in letters already quoted of the Duke of Montalto. On the 30th August 1685, he writes that for months the Queen had not gone out in public, in which, he says, she was wise, particularly when the anti-French riots were taking place, as the mob might have attacked her. ‘They say again that she is pregnant, but there is not much belief in it, as the same thing has happened several times before. She had got up a very grand comedy for St. Louis’ day; but it had to be deferred, because of this pregnancy rumour, and not even the usual comedies in the palace were given for the same reason.’
On the 24th October of the same year, he records the removal of the Court to the Retiro: ‘which place the Queen is very fond of, because there she can enjoy her country sports, and especially ride about on horseback every afternoon. In order to have her horses nearer to her, she has had a place made for them near the large pond, where she goes every morning to visit them.’ A little later he remarks that everything in the palace is going to the dogs. ‘There is neither firmness nor stability enough to correct these follies of the Queen.’ In April 1686, the same writer says: ‘Things are in the greatest embarrassment for the government, owing to the fancies and caprices of the Queen; for nothing is done by any other rule than her whim.’ It appears that the presence of the Queen’s Spanish friend Señora Aguirre, who had been exiled at the time of the Quantin affair, was much desired by Marie Louise, and the latter demanded her return of the prime minister, Oropesa. He temporised for a time, but when she ordered him peremptorily to advise the King to recall the lady, he refused. ‘Well,’ said the Queen, ‘do not oppose it if the King suggests it.’ ‘Yes I will,’ replied the minister: whereupon Marie Louise went with tears and blandishments to her husband, and begged for the favour. For a time he held out; but at last gave way to the extent of ordering a decree of recall to be drafted and discussed. Oropesa protested, and Charles cancelled the decree. Another passionate outburst from the Queen followed, and in the end she had her way. ‘The coming of this woman (Aguirre) will be worse than all the devils together; worse than Quantin. Judge what a state we are in with this irresolution of our master. The advice of ministers and decisions of tribunals, all are powerless before the will of this woman (the Queen).’
The caprices of Marie Louise soon reached the ears of her uncle Louis, and he did, in May 1686, what he ought to have done years before, namely, to send a French lady of great position and experience, dependent upon him, to advise the Queen and keep her in the right way. The lady was a descendant of the royal house, the Countess of Soissons, and her mission was, if possible, to induce Marie Louise to turn her influence to political account for the benefit of France. Her task was almost hopeless from the first, and she failed, though she tried hard for a time; and in the last few weeks of the Queen’s life, when too late, was of some service to French interests.
‘The Queen’ (writes Montalto in May 1586) ‘is in the full force of her madness, dominating the King completely by cries and threats. He has not an atom of resolution, and no application at all. The day upon which the great council was held, when he would not attend, he went on muleback to the wild beast cages at the Retiro, and there he had the animals caught and counted, thinking more of this frivolity than if it had been some heroic action. This government of ours is nothing more than a boy’s school with the master away. No one respects anything, and each person does as he likes, whilst the Queen follows her whim or the last suggestion.’ On another occasion, when the Marquis of Los Velez was giving a representation of a sacred auto on a holy day, Montalto records that ‘the Queen witnessed the show from a balcony in the passage, when she behaved herself so unrestrainedly as to shock people; and the actions of this lady really give rise to the idea that she is not in her right mind.’
The unfortunate woman kept apparently on friendly, but not cordial, terms with Mariana, who smilingly let her go her own way without remonstrance; and there was now no check whatever upon her strange vagaries, for the King grew more feeble-minded than ever, and was as clay in her hands. ‘The Queen’s levity approaches light-headedness,’ wrote Montalto in the summer of 1687. ‘She was lately ill with fever, owing to the rubbish she is always eating. Nobody can control her, and she looks consumptive. Those of us who are not much attached to her are not sorry to see her afflicted.’ Utterly reckless in her mode of life the unhappy woman, though still but twenty-five years of age, was already losing her health and beauty. In July Montalto reports that ‘the Queen still continues in her extravagant conduct, and no amendment can now be expected. She is dreadfully thin and languid, and will take no remedies but those prescribed by her own caprice and distrust. As for the King, I say nothing, for I have already said so much, though not half enough.’
And so, through the summer, matters went from bad to worse. There was no guidance from the King, no stability or prudence from the Queen, and Spain drifted helpless towards the whirlpool of civil war that was soon to engulf her. The only care of old Mariana was to watch over the interests of her own kin in their claims to the succession to the Spanish crown, and paralyse the promotion of the French pretensions. Writing from the palace on the 29th August 1687, Montalto says: ‘It is impossible to exaggerate the terrible state of things here. This palace is boiling over with disorder and scandalous stories to such an extent as to be simply a mass of confusion. The Queen is so extravagant in her conduct, and has so strange a character, that I dare not write, even in cypher, what is going on. The King knows, but remedies nothing. It seems as if God had endowed him neither with force nor application for anything; and the same wretched laxity is seen in the government of the realm. He gives no more than a quarter of an hour to business in the day, and the whole of the rest of his time is spent in such trifles as running backwards and forwards through these saloons, and from balcony to balcony, like a child of six, and his conversation would match about the same age. The Queen is dreadfully ill and thin, and has quarrelled with the Queen-Mother.’
Months later, in May 1688, when the war between France and the empire was recommencing, and Spain was once more arming for a conflict not primarily her own, Montalto wrote, in more despondent spirit than ever, of the condition of affairs in Madrid. ‘Yesterday it was my turn for duty at the Retiro. I used to like it, but now I dread the day that takes me there. Of course I know even when I am not there what is going on with our master; but it is very shocking to see it close, and, so to speak, face to face. The neglect everywhere is quite terrible. The King’s great business whilst I was there was to see the matting taken up in the rooms, and to count the pins and other trifles of that sort. The Queen blurts out whatever comes uppermost, and indulges to the full in her craze for riding on horseback, prancing about indecorously over the neighbourhood. She has again had her ladies mounted, knowing that the King hates to see it. She has her way and, dead against his will, she insists upon acting the principal boy’s part in a comedy they are rehearsing. As usual, she will do as she likes. There are constant tourneys and balls because she insists upon them, and there is no influence or reason that can keep her within bounds. The Queen-Mother pays great attention to her, but is cruelly slighted by her.’
A week later, the same writer continues in a similar strain, saying that the Queen had insisted upon the comedy being written specially for her to take the boy’s part: but she had fallen ill and the performance had been postponed. ‘The King is totally opposed to this prank; but of course she has her way. She has had a magnificent theatre constructed at the Retiro, with lavish ornaments, etc., for the ladies, in which she has wasted thousands of ducats, and yet there is not a real for urgent needs. The King is a cypher, and allows things to be done before him of which he entirely disapproves. I positively dread my turn of duty, for I see the King does nothing but run about like an imp, and if he goes into the garden it is only to pick strawberries and count them.’
A week or so later Marie Louise had recovered her health, and the long-prepared comedy was played with great brilliancy. The King went to the full rehearsal two days before the public performance; and although shocked and annoyed by his wife’s caprice in playing a male part, had not strength of will enough to forbid it. When, however, the piece was represented publicly, and all the principal ladies in Madrid, with the gentlemen of the household, were present to praise and applaud, poor, unstable Charles was so charmed with his wife, even on the stage, that he testified his delight at her performance, and the entertainment was repeated again and again during the summer.
Once more at this time there was a belief that the Queen was pregnant, and the hopes of the French party ran high, though they were soon seen to be fallacious as before. Montalto, reporting the matter to Ronquillo, says that the Queen had explained, in answer to an inquiry of her father, the Duke of Orleans, that the reason for her lack of issue was not the impotence of the King but his excessive concupiscence, ‘which,’ says the writer, ‘I do not understand, though the effect is plain.’
In the autumn of 1688 Marie Louise fell ill of smallpox in the palace of Madrid; and in her enfeebled state of health the disease was held to be dangerous. She was a bad patient, self-willed in her rejection of the remedies prescribed to her by the only physician she would receive, a Florentine doctor she had known in Paris in attendance upon the Balbeses. The King was to have started for the Escorial at the time his wife was attacked by the malady, and was obliged to delay his departure, though fear of contagion kept him away from the invalid. Montalto reports, with characteristic ill-nature: ‘The King seems sorry; but he is more sorry at having to postpone his journey to the Escorial. For although his feeling towards his wife appears to be affection, I maintain that it is more fear of her than anything else.’ Before she was fit to be moved the Queen insisted upon being carried in a Sedan chair to the Retiro to pass her period of convalescence there, first visiting the church of the Atocha, whilst Charles departed to spend a month at the Escorial.
Left alone in her solitary convalescence, Marie Louise appears to have developed a more devout spirit than had previously characterised her, and at the same time lost her desire to live. During the period of low vitality which followed her illness one of her ladies begged her to summon a famous saintly man, to pray for her prompt restoration to strength. ‘No, no,’ she replied, ‘I will not do so. It would be folly indeed to ask for life which matters so little.’ When, at this juncture, the representatives of the town of Madrid offered to build a new church as a votive offering for her restoration to health, she was no less emphatic. If the money of the suffering subjects was to be spent upon the building she would not allow it to be done.
She had, indeed, little left to live for. Wedded to the fribble we have described, and with enemies of herself and her dear France everywhere around her, she must have felt powerless to cope with the adverse influences opposed to her. All the love she had to give was given long ago, before she was called upon to make the great renunciation which had been made in vain. So long as youth and sensuous vitality had remained to her she had sought in reckless enjoyment to stifle the horror of the loveless life to which she was condemned: but when the capacity for bodily gratification was gone, Marie Louise lost her desire to live.
Spain was trembling upon the brink of a great war with France, and during the winter succeeding the Queen’s illness Count Rebenac was in Madrid with what amounted to an ultimatum to Spain to abandon the league of Augsburg, formed to crush the ambition of Louis. Rebenac often saw the Queen, and coached by him and by the Countess of Soissons, she endeavoured, now that matters had gone too far, to employ her hold upon her husband in a political direction, and to frustrate the policy of the Queen-Mother in keeping Spain in offensive and defensive alliance with the Emperor. Her influence upon Charles was great, and he began to incline to the side of the French against his mother. Marie Louise pointed out to him the awful condition of destitution in which his country lay, and painted in moving words the horrors of a war in which Spain had all to lose and could not hope to gain. Charles was gentle and tender-hearted, hating to see or hear of suffering, and Rebenac reported early in February 1689 that the efforts of the Queen had been effectual, and that he had great hopes of the success of his mission.[325]
It was a great crisis, for a withdrawal of Spain at this point from the alliance would have meant the predominance of France in Europe thenceforward, and the defeat of the Austrian party in Spain. Mariana and her friends were strong and determined; the King was weak and unstable. Only the life of a languid woman, tired of the struggle, stood between them and victory, and Marie Louise herself seems to have had a prophetic knowledge that such an obstacle would not be allowed to frustrate plans so deeply laid. As usual with Spanish sovereigns, the Queen went every week to worship at the shrine of the Virgin of Atocha, and on Tuesday the 9th February 1689, when she took leave of the prior of the convent church, she told him that she should meet him no more on earth. That night after her light repast of milk and honey the Queen was seized with convulsions, violent pains and vomiting; a colic it was called, which brought her to the lowest extremity of weakness. From the first she knew that she was doomed and made no effort. In the intervals of the burning agony she suffered, her confessor asked her if there was anything that troubled her. ‘I am in peace, Father,’ she replied, ‘and am very glad to die.’ She lingered in pain until the early hours of the 12th February; and then the most beautiful and ill-fated princess of the house of Bourbon breathed her last, a martyr, if ever one lived, upon the altar of her country; but a martyr sacrificed in vain, for she was immolated, not by her own will, but by the will of others.
All that Marie Louise asked of life was love, and that was the one thing denied to her. The Spanish people, who had sometimes been cruel to her because she was a foreigner, were shocked by her untimely death: but before the pompous procession which bore the body of Marie Louise to its last resting-place in the inferior mausoleum in the Escorial reserved for sterile Queens, whispers ran through Spain and France that it was no colic that had cut short the life of Marie Louise, but poison administered in the interests of Mariana and the Austrian faction. No proof has ever been adduced that this was the case, for evidence in such a matter would naturally not be easily obtainable;[326] but the death of the Queen, at the very crisis when, by her aid, the King had been turned to the side of France, seems in all the circumstances to have been too providential to her enemies to have been entirely accidental. At any rate it was effectual in changing the whole aspect of affairs immediately; and before the mourning for Marie Louise had lost its freshness, the French ambassador was on his way home unsuccessful, Spain was again at war with France, and negotiations were being actively carried on to find a German wife for the wretched crétin who wore the crown of Spain.