PHILIP IV (SPAIN) (1605–1665)

PHILIP IV (SPAIN) (1605–1665), king of Spain (1621–1665). Philip, his father Philip III (1578–1621), and his son Charles II (1661–1700) are sometimes known as the "minor Habsburgs" to differentiate them from their sixteenth-century predecessors. Studies have shown that the seventeenth-century Spanish monarchs did not deserve the pejorative term, though the reevaluation is due less to their abilities than to the events of their reigns, which have been the subject of important works of revisionist history.

Philip IV came to power as war between Spain and the rebellious Dutch recommenced after the expiration of a truce. In 1618 Spain had been drawn into what became the Thirty Years' War, and in 1628 it became ensnared in the so-called War of the Mantuan Succession, which turned out to be expensive and useless as it angered Spain's natural allies and gave a victory to France. There were a few early military triumphs, among them the 1624 surrender of Breda by the Dutch and the king's brother's victory over the Swedes at the 1634 Battle of Nördlingen, immortalized respectively by Diego Rodríguez de Silva Velázquez and Peter Paul Rubens. In 1635 Spain and France declared mutual war, which ended in 1659 with the Treaty of the Pyrenees (which included a double marriage that eventually served to hand the Spanish crown to the Bourbons). Philip also oversaw the increasingly futile war with the Dutch, which ended with the 1648 Treaty of Münster and the independence of the United Provinces. In 1640 he endured rebellions by both Catalonia and Portugal. The former ended unsuccessfully for the Catalans in 1652; the latter ended in 1668, after the king's death, with the independence of Portugal.

Domestically Spain in the seventeenth century underwent a deep economic crisis. Demographic recession and dislocation, repeated epidemics, crop failures, industrial stagnation, and high taxation in Castile, all linked to the continual warfare, contributed to the famed "decline of Spain" which, though more nuanced than often depicted, was nonetheless indisputable and has become emblematic of Philip's reign.

Philip is best known for the men who surrounded him. Like his father, Philip had advisers who often were accused by jealous noblemen of usurping the throne. The greatest of these favorites was Gaspar de Guzmán, the count-duke of Olivares (1587–1645), whose rival and counterpart across the Pyrenees was Cardinal Richelieu (1585–1642) of the court of Louis XIII (ruled 1610–1643). Olivares trained and cultivated the young king, seeing in him the possibility of restoring Spain's fortune and reputation. Though Philip has been dismissed as a monarch who essentially abdicated, his correspondence shows he was not a puppet. He shared with the powerful Olivares a frantic desire not only to triumph on Europe's battlefields but to reform Spain from within, the latter desire fueled by the former. Philip spent his entire reign not only waging war on multiple fronts but balancing the competing interests of his vassals—the aristocracy, the cities, and the commoners—all of whom he was forced to negotiate with to obtain revenues to raise and maintain the military.

Philip's reign coincided with the Siglo de Oro, the golden age of Spanish art and literature. The king was an important patron of literature, the theater, and the fine arts. Chief among the era's painters was Velázquez (1599–1660), whom Olivares engaged in an important public relations campaign. Velázquez created a magnificent series of equestrian portraits of the royal family (now housed in Madrid's Prado Museum) for the Buen Retiro palace in Madrid, which J. H. Elliott has called "a gigantic exercise in self-projection" that ultimately backfired because of the court's isolation (Elliott, 1989, p. 187). The playwright, poet, and satirist Francisco de Quevedo (1580–1645) was another great figure enlisted for propaganda purposes, though the relationship ended badly. Quevedo eventually was banished for championing the king over Olivares, whom he regarded as a tyrant.

Olivares fell from power in 1643, and his system of government was dismantled. That year Philip met and came under the influence of Sor María de Jesús de Agreda (1602–1665), a mystic with whom he corresponded for the rest of his life, receiving spiritual and political advice. Philip also acquired a new favorite, Olivares's nephew Luis de Haro (1598–1661), who presided over Spain's gradual disengagement from the European and peninsular conflicts. Spain's humiliations, for which Philip felt responsible, made the king's last years melancholy ones. Of equal concern was the absence of an heir. His first wife, Isabel of Bourbon, who died in 1644, had one son, who died in 1646 at the age of seventeen. Philip then married his niece, Mariana of Austria, whose second son, Charles, inherited the throne upon Philip's death in 1665. The frail four-year-old Charles was the last of the Spanish Habsburgs.

PHILIP IV (SPAIN) (1605–1665)

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