FELIPE II
King of Spain
Born: 21 May 1527, Valladolid, Spain
Died: 13 Sep 1598, El Escorial Palace, Madrid, Spain
Buried: El Escorial Palace, Madrid, Spain
Father: Carlos V (Holy Roman Emperor) (b. 1519 - d. 1556)
Mother: Isabella De Portugal
Married 1: Maria De Portugal 13 Nov 1543, Salamanca, Spain
Children:
1. Don Carlos De HABSBURG
Married 2: MARY I TUDOR (Queen of England) 25 Jul 1554, Winchester Cathedral, Hampshire, England
Married 3: Elisabeth De VALOIS (Princess of France) (b. 2 Apr 1545 - d. 3 Oct 1568) 31 Jan 1560, Guadalajara, Spain
Children:
2. Dau. De HABSBURG (twin) (b. 1564)
3. Dau. De HABSBURG (twin) (b. 1564)
4. Isabel Clara Eugenia De HABSBURG
5. Catalina Micaela De HABSBURG
6. Dau. De HABSBURG (b. 1568)
Married 4: Anna De HABSBURG (Archduchess of Austria) (b. 2 Nov 1549 - d. 26 Oct 1580) 12 Nov 1570, Segovia, Spain
Children:
6. Ferdinand De HABSBURG (b. 1571)
7. Edward De HABSBURG (b. 1575)
8. Felipe III De HABSBURG (King of Spain) (b. 14 Apr 1578)
9. Mary De HABSBURG
See him at The King Gallery
King of Spain, only son of the Emperor Carlos V, and Isabella of Portugal, b. at Valladolid, 21 May 1527; d. at the Escorial, 13 Sep 1598. He was carefully educated in the sciences, learned French and Latin, though he never spoke anything but Castilian, and also showed much interest in architecture and music. In 1543 he married his cousin, Maria of Portugal, who died at the birth of Don Carlos (1535). He was appointed regent of Spain with a council by Carlos V.
Felipe received the Duchy of Milan from his father in 1540 and, on the occasion of his marriage in 1554 to Mary Tudor, Queen of England , who was eleven years his senior, the Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily.
Felipe never cared for Mary, indeed, he said while on his way to his marriage, "I am going to a crusade, not to a marriage feast". He was fueled by a religious desire to father a Catholic heir who would keep England within the Roman Catholic sphere. Mary, by now a middle-aged spinster, certainly did care for her new husband, and even managed to convince herself that she was pregnant at one point, but it was not to be. He was not king, indeed the only way the English Parliament would countenance the marriage was if Felipe was expressly forbidden from ruling.This political marriage gave Spain an indirect influence on affairs of England, recently restored to Catholicism; but in 1555 Felipe was summoned to the Low Countries. At a solemn conference held at Brussels, 22 Oct 1555, Carlos V ceded to Felipe the Low Countries, the crowns of Castille, Aragon, and Sicily, on 16 Jan., 1556, and the countship of Burgundy on the tenth of Jun. He even thought of securing for him the imperial crown, but the opposition of his brother Ferdinand caused him to abandon that project. Having become King, Felipe, devoted to Catholicism, defended the Faith throughout the world and opposed the progress of heresy, and these two things are the key to his whole reign. He did both by means of absolutism. His reign began unpleasantly for a Catholic sovereign, and Mary's death in 1558 severed the connection between the two countries.
Felipe was unwilling to let his precarious grasp on England slip away completely; he proposed marriage to Elizabeth. Elizabeth was a master at procrastination, and playing the game of politics. She kept communication open with Felipe, and protested her friendship, but never accepted the marriage proposal.
He had signed with France the Treaty of Vaucelles (5 Feb., 1556), but it was soon broken by France, which joined Paul IV against him. Like Julius II this Pope longed to drive the foreigners out of Italy.Felipe had two wars on his hands at the same time, in Italy and in the Low Countries. In Italy the Duke of Alva, Viceroy of Naples, defeated the Duke of Guise and reduced the Pope to such distress that he was forced to make peace. Felipe granted this on the most favourable terms and the Duke of Alva was even obliged to ask the pope's pardon for having invaded the Pontifical States. In the Low Countries Felipe defeated the French at Saint Quentin (1557) and Gravelines (1558) and afterwards signed the Peace of Cateau-Cambresis (3 Apr, 1559), which was sealed by his marriage with Isabel De Valois, daughter of Henry II, who gave him two daughters, Isabel Clara Eugenia and Catalina. Peace concluded, Felipe, who had been detained in the Low Countries, returned to Spain. For more than forty years he directed from the Prince of Orange decided to proclaim Felipe's his cabinet the affairs of the monarchy. He resided alternately at Madrid which he made the capital of the kingdom and in villégiatures, the most famous of which is the Escorial, which he built in fulfillment of a vow made at the time of the battle of Saint Quentin.
After Isabel death, he married again a royal cousin, Ana of Austria, who gave him four children. She was the mother of the future Felipe III.
Felipe had three enemies to contend with abroad, Islam, England, and France. Islam was master of the Mediterranean, being in possession of the Balkan Peninsula, Asia Minor, Egypt, all the coast of northern Africa (Tunis, Algiers, Morocco); it had just conquered the Island of Cyprus and laid siege to the Island of Malta (1505), which had valiantly repulsed the assault. Dragut, the Ottoman admiral, was the terror of the Mediterranean. On several occasions Felipe had fought against the Mussulman peril, meeting alternately with success and defeat. He therefore eagerly joined the Holy League organized by Pius V to resist Islam, and which Venice consented to join. The fleet of the League, commanded by Don Juan, brother of Felipe II, inflicted on the Turkish fleet the terrible defeat of Lepanto (7 Oct., 1571), the results of which would have been greater had Venice not proved false and if Pius V had not died in 1572. Nevertheless, the Turkish domination of the Mediterranean was ended and in 1578 Felipe concluded a treaty with the Turks which lasted till the end of his reign. Relations of intimacy with England had ceased at the death of Mary Tudor.
Felipe attempted to renew them by his chimerical project of marriage with Elizabeth, who had not yet become the cruel persecutor of Catholicism. When she constituted herself the protectress of Protestant interests throughout the world and did all in her power to encourage the revolt of the Low Countries, Felipe thought of contending with her in her own country by espousing the cause of Mary Stuart, but Elizabeth did away with the latter in 1587, and furnished relief to the Low Countries against Felipe, who thereupon armed an immense fleet, the Spanish Armada against England. But being led by an incompetent commander it accomplished nothing and was almost wholly destroyed by storms (1588). This was an irreparable disaster which inaugurated Spain's naval decline. The English corsairs could with impunity pillage her colonies and under Drake even her own coast; in 1596 the Earl of Essex pillaged the flourishing town of Cadiz, and the sceptre of the seas passed from Spain to England.
From 1559 Felipe II had been at peace with France, and had contented himself with urging it to crush out heresy. French intervention in favour of the Low Countries did not cause him to change his attitude, but when at the death of Henry III in 1589 the Protestant Henry of Bourbon became heir to the throne of France, Felipe II allied himself with the Guises, who were at the head of the League, supplied them with money and men, and on several occasions sent to their relief his great general Alexander Farnese. He even dreamed of obtaining the crown of France for his daughter Isabel, but this daring project was not realized. The conversion of Henry IV (1593) to Catholicism removed the last obstacle to his accession to the French throne. Apparently Felipe II failed to grasp the situation, since he continued for two years more the war against Henry IV, but his fruitless efforts were finally terminated in 1595 by the absolution of Henry IV by Clement VIII.
No sovereign has been the object of such diverse judgments. While the Spaniards regarded him as their Solomon and called him "the prudent King" (el rey prudente), to Protestants he was the "demon of the south" (dćmon meridianus) and most cruel of tyrants. This was because, having constituted himself the defender of Catholicism throughout the world, he encountered innumerable enemies, not to mention such adversaries as Antonio Perez and William of Orange who maligned him so as to justify their treason. Subsequently poets (Schiller in his "Don Carlos"), romance-writers, and publicists repeated these calumnies. As a matter of fact Felipe II joined great qualities to great faults. He was industrious, tenacious, devoted to study, serious, simple-mannered, generous to those who served him, the friend and patron of arts. He was a dutiful son, a loving husband and father, whose family worshipped him. His piety was fervent, he had a boundless devotion to the Catholic Faith and was, moreover, a zealous lover of Justice. His stoical strength in adversity and the courage with which he endured the sufferings of his last illness are worthy of admiration.
On the other hand he was cold, suspicious, secretive, scrupulous to excess, indecisive and procrastinating, little disposed to clemency or forgetfulness of wrongs. His religion was austere and sombre. He could not understand opposition to heresy except by force. Imbued with ideas of absolutism, as were all the rulers of his time, he was led into acts disapproved by the moral law. His cabinet policy, always behind-hand with regard to events and ill-informed concerning the true situation, explains his failures to a great extent. To sum up we may cite the opinion of Baumstark: "He was a sinner, as we all are, but he was also a King and a Christian King in the full sense of the term".