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Count-Duke of Olivares
Count-Duke of Olivares | |
|---|---|
| File:Count-Duke of Olivares.jpg Gaspar de Guzmán, Count-Duke of Olivares, on Horseback (c. 1634), painting by Diego Velázquez on display in the Museo del Prado. | |
| Born | Gaspar de Guzmán y Pimentel Ribera y Velasco de Tovar 6 January 1587 |
| Died | 22 July 1645 (aged 58) |
Resting place | Monastery of the Immaculate Conception |
| Title | Sumiller de Corps Valido of King Philip IV of Spain Count of Olivares, Duke of Sanlúcar la Mayor, Marquis of Eliche, Count of Arzarcóllar and Prince of Aracena |
| Term | 25 January 1622 – 23 January 1643 |
| Spouse | Inés de Zúñiga y Velasco |
| Children | see Issue |
| Parents |
|
| Family | House of Olivares |
Gaspar de Guzmán y Pimentel Ribera y Velasco de Tovar, known as the Count-Duke of Olivares (Rome, 6 January 1587 – Toro, 22 July 1645), was a Spanish noble and politician, 3rd Count of Olivares, 1st Duke of Sanlúcar la Mayor, 1st Marquis of Eliche, 1st Count of Arzarcóllar, 1st Prince of Aracena and valido of King Philip IV of Spain.
Biography
Gaspar de Guzmán y Pimentel was born in Rome, where his father, Enrique de Guzmán, 2nd Count of Olivares, was ambassador of Spain to the Holy See.
He lived in Italy until the age of twelve, since his father was successively Viceroy of Sicily and of Naples. As the third[1] son of the House of Olivares, a junior branch of the powerful House of Medina Sidonia, he was destined for an ecclesiastical career. At the age of fourteen he was sent to study Canon law at the University of Salamanca.
However, the successive deaths of his two elder brothers made him heir to the title, so that in 1604 he had to abandon his studies in order to accompany his father at the court of King Philip III of Spain, where the latter had been appointed a member of the Council of State and chief accountant of Accounts.
When his father died in 1607, he inherited the entailed estate (mayorazgo) of Olivares and concentrated on courting his cousin, Inés de Zúñiga y Velasco, whom he would marry that same year, with the aim of obtaining the title of Grandee of Spain, since she was the daughter of the 5th Count of Monterrey. Having failed in this aim, he withdrew to Seville to administer his domains, where he spent eight years and bought the jurisdiction of the town of Bollullos de la Mitación.
Rise to power
In 1615 Gaspar de Guzmán succeeded in getting Francisco de Sandoval, Duke of Lerma, to appoint him gentleman of the bedchamber to Prince Philip, the future Philip IV of Spain, with which he returned to the Court.
From that post he intervened in the power struggles between the King's valido, the Duke of Lerma, and his son, Cristóbal Gómez de Sandoval, Duke of Uceda, supporting the latter. Upon the fall of the former, in 1618, Olivares found himself part of the winning faction. From that position, he undertook the creation of an alternative center of power, relying on his uncle Baltasar de Zúñiga y Velasco, who had been summoned to court in 1617 by the Duke of Uceda, at Olivares's suggestion.
Olivares, an intelligent man of great influence, managed to win the favor of the future Philip IV of Spain, so that when the latter acceded to the throne in 1621, he named him favorite in place of the Duke of Uceda, and Olivares's faction triumphed. On 10 April of that year, the King granted Olivares the title of Grandee of Spain, using the conventional formula "Count of Olivares, cover yourself." Finally, he took charge of the government as valido upon the death of his uncle in 1622.
As regards the policy to be followed in New Spain, he sent the Marquis of Gelves, a man already old for the time but accustomed to obeying, to put his reformist project into practice.
From 1622 his offices at Court were sumiller de Corps and caballerizo mayor (Master of the Horse), which guaranteed him constant access to the person of the King, both inside the palace and when he went out hunting, and even with the obligation of sleeping in his chambers. From 1636 he was also camarero mayor (Chief Chamberlain). Besides other dignities and offices, he became grand commander of the Order of Alcántara, alcaide of the Royal Alcázar of Seville, Grand Chancellor of the Indies, general of the Spanish Cavalry, general treasurer of the Crown of Aragon and lieutenant general. He had a seat in the Cortes of Castile.
Work as minister
Once installed in power, the Count of Olivares began a frenetic political activity. At home he tried to carry out a broad program of reforms, while abroad he had to face a series of military commitments caused by the resumption of the war with Holland, support for the Austrian Habsburgs and the enmity of France, led by Cardinal Richelieu.
Among the internal reforms, he carried out a campaign against the venality and corruption of the previous reign, removing members of the Lerma and Uceda factions from court and condemning the abuses of the previous reign with exemplary punishments. However, to consolidate his power, he placed his own relatives, friends and clients in key posts, and accumulated titles, revenues and properties for his house.
He also replaced the traditional system of councils with a series of juntas, which covered various branches of public administration (Navy, Salt and Mines, Works and Forests, Cleanliness and Population), or which fulfilled other functions, such as the Junta de Reformación (Reform Board), which watched over the morality of the Court, or the Junta de Ejecución (Executive Board), an executive body for rapid decision-making.
He also tried to introduce a series of mercantilist economic measures, such as incentives for wool and silk manufactures, the promotion of trade and protectionist measures, but these never took hold owing to a lack of vigor and perseverance. However, the most ambitious projects concerned the Treasury and consisted of the abolition of the tax of the millones, the creation of state treasuries (erarios) to finance public works and the end of the massive coinage issues of the previous reign, in order to contain inflation. Nevertheless, all the reforms always ran up against the fundamental fact of the ruin of the economy of the kingdoms of the monarchy and the loss of international credit.
Olivares was concerned with what seemed to him the fundamental problem of the Hispanic Monarchy, which consisted of the diversity of royal prerogatives in each of the kingdoms of the monarchy, an acceptance of the diversity of local laws and customs that was a constant in Burgundian policy. Olivares's political program was set out in what later became known as the Great Memorial[2] which he presented to the King in 1624 and whose content was based on two main concepts: reputation and reform.
In it, a solution diametrically opposed to those tried by previous sovereigns was suggested, introducing legal uniformity in the various kingdoms. To this end, he proposed a plan of reforms aimed at strengthening royal power and the unity of the territories he ruled, with a view to making better use of resources in the service of foreign policy. In his opinion, the effectiveness of the Monarchy's war machine, the mainstay of its hegemony in Europe, depended on the capacity to mobilize the resources of its kingdoms, which required a more executive and centralized administration. This is what was called the Union of Arms, a project to increase the commitment of all the kingdoms of Spain to share with the Crown of Castile the human and financial burdens of the war effort. In this way, the creation of a common reserve of 140,000 men was envisaged, contributed in proportion to their population by all the kingdoms of the monarchy. This measure was interpreted by the territories of the Crown of Aragon (Kingdom of Aragon, Principality of Catalonia, Kingdom of Valencia and Kingdom of Majorca) as one more step in the erosion of their liberties and in their submission to a monarchy that was shifting toward absolutism.[citation needed]
Abroad, although Olivares set aside imperialist and aggressive campaigns, he concentrated on the defense of what had been inherited from the previous century.
The Low Countries and Germany were the theaters in which this struggle for survival was waged. The struggle had already begun in Germany in 1618, with the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648). The Spanish Habsburgs did not take part directly, but sent money and men to their Austrian relatives. These troops helped crush the rebellion in Bohemia and, simultaneously, the Lower Palatinate was invaded. The rebellion of the Catholics of the Valtellina against their Protestant lords of the Grisons League made it possible to station Spanish troops in the valley and protect the Spanish Road between Genoa and the Low Countries, an operation ratified by the Treaty of Monzón in 1626.
With respect to Holland, hostilities with the United Provinces of the Netherlands were resumed when the Twelve Years' Truce, considered ruinous by the Hispanic court, was not extended. At first there were some victories, such as that of Fleurus (1622) or the surrender of Breda (1625).
However, the wars caused growing indebtedness due to a lack of new financial resources, culminating in the bankruptcy of 1627.
From then on, military defeats followed one after another, opening the way to the decline of the power of the Spanish Habsburgs in Europe.
The monarchy had lost its good relations with the England of the Stuarts, when the negotiations to marry the Infanta Maria Anna to the Prince of Wales failed.
In Flanders, 's-Hertogenbosch (1629), Maastricht (1632) and Breda (1637) were lost, and the Spanish fleet was defeated by the Dutch fleet at the Battle of the Downs (1639).
In Italy, the second war of the Mantuan succession had been resolved with France's annexation of the Marquisate of Montferrat, through the Treaty of Cherasco in 1631, and the Valtellina was definitively lost in 1639.
In the Empire, the resounding Spanish victory at Nördlingen in 1634, in which the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand of Austria overran the army of Gustaf Horn and Bernard of Saxe-Weimar, gave way to France's entry into the war, which thus entered its decisive phase.
After the victory of Breda, in 1637, Olivares wrote a memorial to the King to defend himself, known as Reformación en tiempo de guerra (Reform in Time of War), the conspiracies of the valido's enemies being by then an open secret. In that document, Olivares justified his management and exonerated himself from the problems besetting the country, arguing that the decisions he had taken in what were by then 15 years of government had been absolutely necessary. In addition, he explained to the Monarch how the opposition groups operated and what they were plotting. With his authoritarian policy, the valido had earned the animosity of a large part of the Church and of the nobility, which felt outraged by a noble of inferior rank, since at that time he was not yet a Grandee of Spain. Time and again they saw their power diminished and their possessions threatened because the Count had set out to put an end to their privileges in order to strengthen the authority of the King.
End
In the period 1627–1635 the Count-Duke of Olivares led a final attempt to impose his reforms by authoritarian means.
The unifying policy remained the only possibility of salvation for the monarchy, since it was necessary for the other kingdoms to contribute to the military burdens that Castile alone could no longer sustain.
However, the resistance was even greater and, together with the military defeats, it undermined the valido's prestige.
After a first upset with the Salt Mutiny of Biscay (1630–1631), discontent within the peninsular kingdoms finally erupted in 1640.
The French occupation of Salses, in Roussillon, with which the war reached Catalonia, was the pretext Olivares found to impose the Union of Arms. However, the recruitment system was declared contrary to the Catalan constitutions by the Catalan Diputació, and the disturbances that arose from the obligation to quarter the troops ended up creating a climate of tension that led to the tragic Corpus of Blood (June 1640) and the Catalan secession, which was not put down until 1652.
In the same way, months later, and for similar reasons (this time the troops were to put down the uprising in Catalonia), the insurrection of Portugal took place in December 1640, which led to its independence and the end of the dynastic union with the rest of the Hispanic kingdoms. The Castilian defeats at Montjuic (June 1641) and Lérida (October 1642) were compounded by the conspiracy of the Duke of Medina Sidonia (in the summer of 1641), whereupon Olivares finally lost all his political credit and was banished on 23 January 1643, something in which the nobility played a part, conveying to the Monarch the news that Olivares had himself paid with favors from women for the public offices and prebends he granted.
He first withdrew to his lordship of Loeches, near Madrid. Even then, the former valido's detractors continued to make accusations against him, until they got the King to banish him farther away, to the city of Toro, in 1643, and to have him tried by the Inquisition in 1644.
He died there in 1645 and is buried in the Monastery of the Immaculate Conception, which he founded in Loeches.
Assessment
The authoritarianism of the Count-Duke of Olivares had not been well received by the subjects of the monarchy, even if such authoritarianism was the consequence of the conviction that the survival of the monarchy required the mobilization for war of all available human and tax resources.
The fall of Olivares did not, however, bring about any cataclysm. Philip IV had governed for twenty-two years with the Count-Duke and governed as many again without him.
Nevertheless, the fall of Olivares definitively brought to light two facts that no sovereign of the House of Habsburg would be able to change. On the one hand, Spanish hegemony among the European powers was about to pass to France. On the other, the crown had seen its efforts to reform the administrative, constitutional and economic order fail, in its aim of facing favorably the changes Europe was undergoing. His efforts proved all the more fruitless because Spanish society, like its European contemporaries, was instinctively reluctant toward anything that meant "novelty."
Until the advent of a new dynasty, no minister would dare to promote reforms as radical as those advocated by Olivares. Because of his failure, the Count-Duke had discredited many aspects of the policy with which he was associated. However, his reformist measures, from his repopulation plans to those for fiscal reform, reappeared in one form or another during the great movement of Bourbon reformism of the 18th century.
Olivares is perhaps remembered today more for his presence in the arts than for his political side. He supported the young painter Velázquez, of Andalusian origins like himself, in gaining access to the court of Madrid. Velázquez painted several portraits of Olivares, such as the equestrian one in the Museo del Prado and several full-length ones preserved in various countries. An effigy of Olivares, based on a portrait by Velázquez and enhanced with a border by Rubens, was engraved by Paulus Pontius.
On the other hand, historians[by whom?] say that it was Olivares, and not King Philip IV of Spain, who promoted the construction of the Buen Retiro Palace in Madrid, a vast project that revolutionized the sphere of painting in the city, thanks to the massive commissions and purchases made to decorate this new palace. It is said that Olivares proposed the great work to distract the King and enjoy greater freedom in his tasks of government.
Be that as it may, the complex, now partly occupied by the present-day Retiro Park, was created on the estate that the Count-Duke gave to Philip IV and that originally extended as far as the present-day Paseo del Prado and the present-day Plaza de Cibeles.[3]
Issue
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Gaspar de Guzmán y Pimentel married Inés de Zúñiga y Velasco (1584–1647), and they had a daughter:
- María de Guzmán y Zúñiga (1609–1626), 2nd Marchioness of Heliche, married to Ramiro Núñez de Guzmán (1612–1668), Duke of Medina de las Torres.
Olivares had a son from his relationship in 1612 with a lady of the court:
- Julián Guzmán or Julián de Valcárcel, Julianillo el jacarero, who, when he was publicly acknowledged as a son by the Count-Duke, already twenty-eight years old, received the name of Enrique Felípez de Guzmán (1613–1646), Marquis of Mairena and Count of Loeches. Secretly married to Leonor de Unzueta and unmarried through his father's influence, he was married again, to Juana de Velasco y Tovar, daughter of the Constable of Castile,[4] from which marriage was born:
- Gaspar de Guzmán y Fernández de Velasco (1646–1648).
Titles, orders and offices
Titles
- 3rd Count of Olivares,[5] with Grandeeship of Spain from 12 April 1621[Note 1][6]
- 1st Duke of Sanlúcar la Mayor[5]
- 1st Marquis of Heliche
- 1st Count of Arzarcóllar
- 1st Prince of Aracena
The 3rd Count of Olivares began to be called Count-Duke of Olivares from the time he was granted the Duchy of Sanlúcar in 1625. On his death, the title of Count of Olivares was separated from that of Duke of Sanlúcar. By Royal Order of 1882 it was declared that the County of Olivares is to be understood under the denomination of County-Duchy of Olivares[7].
Orders
Order of Alcántara
Offices
- Sumiller de Corps[5]
- Caballerizo mayor[5]
- Councillor of State[5]
- Captain General of Cavalry[5]
- Grand Chancellor of the Indies[5]
- Perpetual alcaide of the Royal Alcázar of Seville[5]
- Alguacil mayor of the Casa de Contratación of Seville[5]
Filmography
- Jean Murat plays Duke Olivares in the film La kermesse heroica directed by Jacques Feyder.
- Javier Cámara plays the Count-Duke in the film Alatriste directed by Agustín Díaz Yanes.
- Javier Gurruchaga plays the Count-Duke in the film El rey pasmado directed by Imanol Uribe.
- Gary Piquer plays the Count-Duke in the television series Las aventuras del Capitán Alatriste.
Notes
- ↑ This favor was granted to him by the young King Philip IV, while he was still in retreat at the Monastery of San Jerónimo owing to the recent death of his father.
References
- ↑ "At noon on the day of the Three Kings in the year 1587, Gaspar de Guzmán, the future count-duke, was born in Rome, third of the children of the Counts of Olivares and second of those living..." El conde-duque de Olivares (la pasión de mandar), p. 22.
- ↑ The authorship of the Great Memorial, as well as its date of composition, are still disputed; see Rivero Rodríguez, Manuel (2012). "El "Gran Memorial" de 1624, dudas, problemas textuales y contextuales de un documento atribuido al conde duque de Olivares" (PDF). Libros de la Corte.es (in español) (4). Madrid: IULCE-UAM: 48–71. ISSN 1989-6425. OCLC 806746177. Retrieved 29 November 2014..
- ↑ Aparisi Laporta, Luis Miguel (2007). Ayuntamiento de Madrid (ed.). El plano de Pedro Teixeira, trescientos cincuenta años después (in español). p. 118.
- ↑ Elliott, pp. 599–600 and 611. Many of the satires written against Olivares allude to the late acknowledgment of Julián as the son of the Count-Duke, to his desire to have a male heir and to the tangle of the marriage, and the brothers Manuel and Antonio Machado devoted a drama, Desdichas de la fortuna o Julianillo Valcárcel, to the change of fortune and difficult adaptation to the court of a man who until then had led an adventurous life.
- ↑ 5.00 5.01 5.02 5.03 5.04 5.05 5.06 5.07 5.08 5.09 5.10 de Vera y Figueroa, Juan Antonio. Fragmentos históricos de la vida de Gaspar Felipe de Guzmán, Comendador mayor de Alcántara, Conde de Olivares, Duque de Sanlúcar la Mayor… por Juan Antonio de Vera y Fuigueroa, Conde de la Roca... - Vera y Figueroa, Juan Antonio de, Conde de la Roca - Manuscrito - entre 1601 y 1700? (in español).
- ↑ Torquemada, Gerónimo Gascón de (1 January 1991). Gaçeta y nuevas de la Corte de España desde el año 1600 en adelante (in español). RAMHG. ISBN 9788460078555. Retrieved 26 April 2017.
- ↑ MARAÑÓN, Gregorio, El Conde-Duque de Olivares: la pasión de mandar, Espasa-Calpe, 1945, p. 476, "[...] A recent author rightly draws attention to the impropriety of calling Don Gaspar de Guzmán 'Count-Duke of Olivares', since he was Count of Olivares and Duke of Sanlúcar. But his own contemporaries did so, and it is not worth changing, for a heraldic detail, the magnificent popular reality of this name. When the two titles were separated — Olivares, in Haro, and Sanlúcar, in Leganés — the reason for the name 'Count-Duke' disappeared, until by Royal Order of 13 January 1882 the denomination of 'Count-Duke of Olivares' was officially confirmed to the 16th Duke of Alba [...]".
Bibliography
- Benigno, F. La sombra del Rey. Validos y luchas políticas en la España del siglo XVII. Ed. Alianza, 1994.
- Chamorro, Eduardo (1989), Yo, conde-Duque de Olivares. El arte de lo imposible, published by Planeta DeAgostini, 1992. ISBN 84-395-5407-9
- Elliott, John H.. El Conde-Duque de Olivares. ISBN 84-397-0248-5
- Elliott, John H. et al. El mundo de los validos. Ed. Taurus, Madrid, 2000.
- Historia de la caída del Conde-Duque de Olivares : (manuscrito del siglo XVII) / Prologue by Antonio Domínguez Ortiz. Málaga: Algazara, 1992. Colección Silencios de la Historia, 1. ISBN 84-87999-08-5.
- Gil Martínez, Francisco (2015). "Las hechuras del Conde Duque de Olivares. La alta administración de la monarquía desde el análisis de redes" (pdf). Cuadernos de Historia Moderna (in español). 40. Madrid: Complutense University of Madrid: 63–88. doi:10.5209/rev_CHMO.2015.v40.49163. ISSN 0214-4018. Retrieved 30 October 2015.
- Marañón, Gregorio (1936), El Conde-Duque de Olivares. La pasión de mandar, reissued by Espasa, Madrid, 2006. ISBN 84-670-2285-X
- Tomás y Valiente, Francisco, Los validos de la Monarquía hispánica en el siglo XVII. Ed. Siglo XXI, 1982.
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