Philip III and the Pax Hispanica, 1598-1621: The Failure of Grand Strategy (Yale Historical Publications)

351 Pages·2000·18.814 MB·English

by  Paul C. Allen

Yale Historical Publications
Map of the Low Countries
and the
Pax Hispanica,
1598-1621
The Failure of Grand Strategy
PAUL C. ALLEN
Yale University Press New Haven & London
Published under the direction of the Department of History of Yale University
with assistance from the income of the Frederick John Kingsbury Memorial
Fund.
Copyright © 2000 by Yale University.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations,
in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the
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Designed by James J. Johnson and set in Bembo Roman and Shelly Volante
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Printed in the United States of America by Lightning Source
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Allen, Paul C, 1964-
Philip III and the Pax Hispanica, 1598-1621 : the failure of grand strategy /
Paul C. Allen.
p. cm. — (Yale historical publications)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-300-07682-7 (alk. paper)
ISBN-is: 978-0-300-07682-0
i. Spain—Politics and government—1598-1621. 2. Spain—Foreign
relations—Europe. 3. Spain—Foreign relations—1598-1621. 4. Spain-
Foreign relations—Treaties. 5. Europe—Foreign relations—Spain.
6. Philip III, King of Spain, 1578-1621. 7. Peace. I. Title. II. Series.
DPI83.A45 2000
946'.05i — dc2i 99-40557
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of
the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council
on Library Resources.
Contents
Preface vii
Acknowledgments xiii
Notes on Terminology, Dates, and Currency xv
INTRODUCTION
The Making of Strategy at the Court of Philip III
i
CHAPTER I
The Failure of the Habsburgs' "Bid for Mastery"
12
CHAPTER 2
Setbacks
30
CHAPTER 3
Strategic Overstretch: Saluzzo, Ostend, and Kinsale
55
CHAPTER 4
"Driblets like Sips of Broth": In Search of the Elusive Cure-Ail
77
CHAPTER 5
The English Succession and the Hope for a Settlement
99
vi CONTENTS
CHAPTER 6
The Policy of Rapprochement
us
CHAPTER 7
"Blood and Fire": Spinola's Invasion of the Dutch Provinces
141
CHAPTER 8
Exhaustion
156
CHAPTER 9
Warrior Diplomacy
172
CHAPTER 10
The Search for the Advantage:
Negotiation of the Twelve Years' Truce
203
CONCLUSION
The Pax Hispanica in Northwestern Europe
234
Abbreviations 245
Notes 247
Bibliography 311
Index 325
Preface
The Treaty of the Truce of Flanders made of late between Philip
the Third King of Spain, together with the Arch-Dukes, Albertus and
Isabella, and the States General of the United Provinces of these
Countreys, may doubtlesly be numbered amongst the most memorable
affairs of our time. If we consider the time therein imploy'd, it was above
two years; if the Princes who intervened therein, all the chiefest of Europe
had therein their share; if the difficulties which were to be overcome,
these were never any greater met withall in any negotiation: and lastly,
if we will consider the effects which ensued thereupon, nothing
could be of more importance to the publick affairs of Christendom,
then the 12 years cessation of those arms, which had so long troubled
almost whole Europe with the bitter Wars of Flanders.
— CARDINAL GUIDO BENTIVOGLIO
Historical Relations
n 9 April 1609, in the once great commercial city of Antwerp,
o
commissioners from Spain, the Spanish Netherlands, and the
_ United Provinces formally concluded a truce that would end
the fighting between the Habsburgs and their rebellious Dutch subjects
for a period of twelve years. This settlement had been reached only after
more than a decade of diplomatic maneuvering involving not only the
Spanish Habsburgs and the Dutch but also the English and the French.
The Twelve Years' Truce, as the treaty is known to posterity, repre-
sented the final act in the implementation of the so-called Pax Hispanica
(Spanish Peace), whose beginnings had been laid with the Franco-Spanish
Treaty of Vervins in 1598, and consolidated with the Anglo-Spanish
Treaty of London in 1604. Although these three treaties constituted the
most significant diplomatic activity of the age and ushered in the age of
high-profile peace conferences, scholars have devoted little attention to
Vlll PREFACE
this decade-long period of peacemaking (1598-1609). Instead, modern
historians have limited their discussions of the period to brief accounts
in broad historical surveys of the Eighty Years' War and of the rise of the
Dutch Republic.1
Yet the idea that wars could be terminated by means of long-term
negotiation and bargaining was a seminal development in the field of
international relations and one that proved less than easy. In a remarkable
turn of events, Spain, the dominant European power, made peace with
three of its enemies, even though no clear victor had emerged in any of
the conflicts. Because they could not quite understand this, contempo-
raries viewed this Spanish peacemaking not as the sign of the decline of
the Spanish empire that historians have considered it to be but rather as a
subtle device to gain even more power over its rivals. This residual element
of distrust concerning why any government would choose to end a con-
flict made early-modern war termination a complicated matter dependent
upon much more than the mere desire for peace. That the belligerents did
make peace in 1598,1604, and 1609 despite this distrust was therefore an
extraordinary achievement.
For while people today tend to regard peace as an ideal goal to be at-
tained merely for the intrinsic benefits it brings to humankind, it was not
always so. Foreign-policy makers around the turn of the seventeenth cen-
tury viewed peace very differently. Although they theoretically subscribed
to the medieval universalist concept of peace as something beneficial to
all Christendom, in practice they regarded it as merely another compo-
nent of strategy, a continuation of war by other means. As such, minis-
ters looked upon peace as something both militarily useful, if promoted
by oneself, and dangerous, if promoted by one's rival. Their concept was
analogous to Ambrose Bierce's cynical definition of peace as "a period of
cheating between two periods of fighting."2
Indeed, many ministers of state believed that peace could actually be
a destructive force in a world in which conflict was endemic. So dan-
gerous did these seventeenth-century statesmen consider peace that they
called negotiators "peacemongers," a word that carried all the reprobation
of the modern equivalent, "warmongers."3 It was this distrust of peace
that inspired Sir Thomas Edmondes's remark regarding the impending
treaty negotiations with the Dutch: "Those which better know what ad-
vantage Princes do win upon a people by that degree of their coming
once to taste of the benefits of a truce, will not believe that the States will
PREFACE IX
commit such an incongruity against reason of state."4 And it was fear of
the dangers of peace that underlay the complaint of the great Irish rebel
leader Hugh O'Neill, earl of Tyrone, that English desires for peace were
an underhanded way to weaken the force of the Irish rebellion and its
Spanish supporters. "The English themselves," he fumed, "using the name
of peace as a deception, teach us this manner of feigned friendship and
of destruction by peace."5 In other words, peace made one's enemy weak
and oneself strong. The idea was to proffer the laurels of peace to your
opponents and persuade them to abandon their military pursuits for a
time, while simultaneously maintaining your own military establishment,
thereby weakening them seriously in the event of a future engagement.
This was the clearly stated goal of the strategy formulated by Spanish
ministers toward their rivals in the first decade of the reign of Philip III.
Contrary to the widespread belief among modern historians of the reign
—most notably expressed by Jonathan Israel in The Dutch Republic and the
Hispanic World— Spanish ministers under Philip III did not want perma-
nent peace (paz). In accordance with their view of peace as an extension
of strategy, from the outset they sought a /wiiW peace—a long-term truce
(tregua)—to weaken their opponents and give Spanish arms and finances
time to recover before the resumption of war. The reasons for this were
clear. In a meeting in 1600 concerning opening negotiations for a truce
with their rebellious Dutch subjects, the Council of State, Philip Ill's chief
policy-making body, suggested that such a course of action would have
two effects essential for the eventual defeat of the rebels: "One, that it
would divert the rebels from arms and undermine the authority of those
who by their guidance hold the government of the provinces in tyranny;
and two, that, should the natives once begin to enjoy the advantages of
quietude and of commerce that would follow, it would be much easier to
reduce them to their true obedience." Or, in the more succinct words of
Juan de Idiaquez, one of Philip's foremost councilors: "With the armis-
tice we assure ourselves against [the] danger [of having to withdraw our
troops], give ourselves time to breathe after such excessive expenses and
travails, and weaken the rebels militarily while they attend to the rewards
of trade and commerce."7
The Spanish peace strategy was designed, then, to lull their opponents
into a false sense of security, while simultaneously allowing the monarquia
espanola (the Spanish monarchy—the collection of territories ruled indi-
vidually by the king) to rejuvenate and stockpile its military resources.
X PREFACE
And their contemporaries recognized this fact. William Camden, in his re-
nowned history of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, believed that the motive
behind Spanish desires for peace was the hope that "the English would by
little and little neglect their shipping and navigations, when [until] they
could no longer increase their wealth with the spoiles of the Spaniards,
and at the length whilest they slept securely in peace, discontinuing their
following of the warres by sea and land, they might be surprized at un-
awares." Philip's decision to resume the war against the Dutch at the end
of the Twelve Years' Truce in 1621 and Spain's subsequent involvement in
wars with England and France were not, therefore, the product of the
failure of the Spanish peace policy but were rather conscious decisions to
carry out the grand strategy that the king and his ministers had conceived
at the beginning of the century. This strategy had always entailed seek-
ing a final victory over the Dutch rebels, insuring the continuing vitality
of the Catholic faith in Protestant territories, and maintaining Spanish
preponderance on the continent. The difference was that now war was
merely one means to those ends; peace, albeit temporary, was another.8
To be sure, the strategy of the Pax Hispanica was one forced upon
Philip III and his advisers by the circumstances in which the Spanish mon-
archy found itself at the close of the sixteenth century. Economically ex-
hausted by more than a hundred years of empire building, and facing in-
creasingly powerful enemies willing and able to strike at it in all parts of
the globe, the monarchy had to begin adjusting its strategies to fit its cir-
cumstances. This it would do, but in a way that I believe set it apart from
the other countries of western Europe and that may have contributed to
its loss of predominance on the continent.
No detailed treatment of Spanish grand strategy in northwestern Eu-
rope during the initiation of the Pax Hispanica has been attempted using
Spanish sources.9 The most comprehensive account of the period is in
the fourth book of John Lothrop Motley's magisterial History of the United
Netherlands (1867). But lacking direct access to the major Spanish archives,
Motley depended on contemporary secondary works on the history of the
Dutch revolt for much of his analysis of Spanish policy making. Others
have followed in his stead. Jonathan Israel's new history, The Dutch Re-
public: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall, 1477-1806 (Oxford, 1995), likewise relies
almost entirely on non-Spanish sources for the discussion of the period of
peacemaking after the accession of Philip III. Accordingly, little is known
about who formulated Spanish grand strategy, on what criteria it was