CHAPTER XVI
CHARLES III
The Bourbon Kings of Spain – Character of Charles III – Spanish Ministries – O'Reilly – The Hat and Cloak Riot – Cowardice of Charles – Tricking the monarch – The Decree of Suppression – Grief of the Pope – His death – Disapproval in France by the Encyclopedists – The Royal Secret – Simultaneousness of the Suppression – Wanderings of the Exiles – Pignatelli – Expulsion by Tanucci.
Spain had begun to deteriorate in the seventeenth century; it lost all of its European dependencies in the eighteenth, and in the beginning of the nineteenth was stripped of almost every one of its rich and powerful colonies in America. During two-thirds of that period, it was governed by foreigners, none of whom had any claim to consideration, much less respect. Until 1700 it owed allegiance to the house of Austria; after that, the French Bourbons hurried it to its ruin.
Its first Bourbon king, Philip V, had already, in 1713, succeeded in losing Sicily, Milan, Sardinia, the Netherlands, Gibraltar, and the Island of Minorca; that is one-half of its European possessions. Meantime, Catalonia was in rebellion. But little else could be expected from such a ruler. He was not only constitutionally indolent, but apparently mentally defective. His queen kept him in seclusion, and he did nothing but at her dictation; he was professedly devout, but was racked by ridiculous scruples; "outwardly pious," says Schoell, quoting Saint-Simon, "but heedless of the fundamental principles of religion; he was timid and hence sporadically stubborn; and when not in temper, he was easily led. He was without imagination, except that he was continually dreaming of conquering Europe, although he never left Madrid; he was satisfied with the gloomiest existence, and his only amusement was shooting at game, which his servants drove into the brush for him to kill." His conscience often smote him for the sin he said he had committed when he renounced his claim to the throne of France; and, in consequence, he made a vow to lay aside the Spanish crown until what time he should be summoned by England to be King of France. To help him keep his vow, he built the palace of San Ildefonso, which cost the nation 45,000,000 pesos. He appointed his son Louis, a lad of 17, to reign in his stead, and the boy, of course, did nothing but enjoy himself, and died of small-pox in six months' time, having first gone through the ridiculous farce of making his father his heir. Philip then began to doubt whether he could resume his duties as king after having vowed to relinquish them. Besides being thus troubled with scruples, he was in constant dread of catching the disease which carried off his son; he died of apoplexy, July 9, 1764 at the age of 53.
Ferdinand VI, who succeeded him, was as indolent as his father, and with less talent and strength of will; he was afflicted with melancholia, and like his father was haunted by the fear of death. He took no part in the government of the kingdom, but spent most of his time listening to the warblings of the male-soprano, Farinelli, who was so adored by the king that he was sometimes consulted on state affairs. The queen was another of his idols, and when she died, he shut himself in, saw no one, would eat next to nothing; never changed his linen; let his hair and beard grow, and never went to bed. An hour or two in a chair was all he allowed himself for rest. He died at the end of the year, leaving a private fortune of 72,000,000 francs. He was only forty-seven years old. Like the king, the queen was dominated by fear, not however of death, but of poverty. To guard against that contingency she hoarded all the money she could get; accepted whatever presents were offered; and let it be known that the easiest way to win her favor was to have something to give. It is gravely said that though she was very corpulent she was extravagantly fond of dancing.
Ferdinand VI was succeeded by his brother Charles III, who had been King of Naples for twenty-four years. He had six sons, the eldest of whom, Philip Anthony was then twelve years of age, but a hopeless imbecile. The right of succession, therefore, devolved on his second son. The third, who was then eight years old, was to succeed to the crown of Naples, and was left in the hands of Tanucci to be trained for his future office. As Tanucci was a bitter enemy of Christianity, this act of Charles, who had a Jesuit confessor and was regarded as a pious man, would imply that he also was mentally deficient. Like his forebears, he was haunted by a fear of death, a weakness that revealed itself in all his political acts, notably in the suppression of the Society. That was one of the reasons why, long after France and Portugal would have willingly ended the fight with the expulsion of the Jesuits, the supposedly pious Charles persisted until he had wrung the Brief of Suppression from the unwilling hands of Clement XIV.
The ministers of state who controlled the destinies of Spain at this period are of a species whose like cannot be found in the history of any other nation. They begin with the Italian Alberoni who started life as a farm laborer; then became an ecclesiastic, and ultimately a cardinal. "He was destined to trouble the tranquillity of the world for years," says Schoell. According to Saint-Simon, he prevented the restitution of Gibraltar to Spain which England was willing to grant; he was banned by the Pope; and was subsequently turned out of office, chiefly by the intrigues of two Italian ecclesiastics. The queen's nurse, old Laura Piscatori, also figures in the amazing diplomacy of those days, and is charged with an ambition to be as important as Cardinal Alberoni, who came from her native village. The next prime minister was the Biscayan Grimaldi, whose physical appearance Saint-Simon describes, but which we omit. It will suffice to say that "he was base and supple when it suited his convenience, and he never made a false step in that direction." Following him, came Ripperda, who was born in the Netherlands and educated by the Jesuits at Cologne, but became a Protestant in Holland, and a Catholic in Spain, where he lasted only four months, as minister. He turned Protestant a second time, on his return to Holland, and subsequently led an army of Moors against Spain. It is not known whether he died a Christian or a Mohammedan.
Patino and de la Quadra followed each other in quick succession, one good, the other timid and weak. Enseñada, though skilful, was greedy of money, and was considered the head of the French faction in court. Carvajal is next on the list, and displays the English propensities which were natural to him, for he belonged to the house of Lancaster. Indeed, his policy was entirely pro-English and he was in collusion with Keene, the British ambassador. Wall, an Irishman, then flits across the scene, and has with him two associates: Losada and Squillace, both Italians. When Wall quarrelled with the Pope and the Inquisition, he fell, and then another Grimaldi came to the fore; not a Biscayan, like his namesake, but a Genoese. Squillace, apparently from the Italian branch of the Borgias, was next in order, and then in rapid procession came the Spaniards: Roda, de Alva, Aranda, Roda, Moniño, Campomáñez, either as prime ministers or prominent in the government, and nearly all of them under French influence. Finally, the generalissimo of the army and the most popular man in Spain was an Irishman, Alexander O'Reilly. The native Spaniards counted for little; even the king's bodyguard was made up of Walloons.
O'Reilly was probably not in sympathy with the free-thinking politicians who then ruled the nation, for the reason that he was born in Ireland and had all his life been a soldier. Moreover, he was hated by the Aranda faction and retained his post, at the head of the army, only because the king thought that no one could shield the royal life as well as O'Reilly. He was born in 1735, and when still a youth was sub-lieutenant in the Irish Regiment serving in Spain. In 1757 he fought under his countryman de Lacy in Austria, and then followed the fleur-de-lys in France. He so distinguished himself, that the Maréchal de Broglie recommended him to the King of Spain. There he soon became brigadier and restored the ancient prestige of the Spanish army. He was made a commandant at Havana, and rebuilt its fortifications, and from there went to Louisiana to secure it to the Spanish crown. His only military failure was in Algiers, but that was not due to any lack of wisdom in his plans, but because his fleet did not arrive at the time appointed. Even then, there was no one so highly esteemed as O'Reilly, and when he died at an advanced age in 1794, the people all declared that the disasters which fell on the nation would have been averted if he had lived. He is credited with possessing besides his military ardor a sweet and insinuating disposition which may explain how he could easily win over the mob which so terrified King Charles at Madrid.
Meantime, the sinister Choiseul in France had all the ministers of Spain in his grip, and he then determined to capture the king. He first made him a present of what up to that time, had been the special pride of France; the precedence of its ambassadors in public functions over those of all other countries, the German Empire excepted. Charles naturally took the gift, but apparently failed to fathom its significance. The next move was to get rid of the court confessor; and his majesty was given a confidential letter from Pombal of Portugal accusing Father Ravago of having fomented the insurrection of the Indians of Paraguay, against the Spanish troops at the time of the transfer of that territory. The plot failed, however, for Charles knew Ravago too well, and then something more drastic was resorted to. Squillace was at that time in power and under him occurred the historic riot which, in the course of time, assumed such dimensions in the king's imagination, that it was one of the three or four things, besides his "royal secret," which he urged on the Pope as a reason for suppressing the Society.
The story of the riot is as follows: Squillace was very energetic in developing the material resources of the kingdom, but always with an eye to his personal and pecuniary profit. He promoted public works; established monopolies even in food stuffs; loaded the people with taxes; and being intensely anti-clerical, was very active in curtailing ecclesiastical privileges. The people and clergy meekly submitted, but something happened which brought Squillace's career to an end; though it had much more serious consequences than that. It scarcely seems credible, but the incident became one of the serious events of the time. Though none suspected it, the whole thing had been deliberately planned, and was the initial step in the plot to expel the Jesuits from Spain. Squillace objected or pretended to object to the kind of dress especially affected by the people of Madrid: a slouched sombrero and an all-enveloping cloak; and he gave orders to change it. Naturally, this exasperated the people, for although they had patiently submitted to the imposition of taxes; the creation of oppressive monopolies; the curtailment of ancient rights and privileges, etc., the audacity of a foreigner interfering with the cut of their garments brought about a popular upheaval. On March 26, 1766, the mob stormed the residence of Squillace, and he ignominiously took to flight. All night long, the excited crowds swarmed through the streets shouting, "Down with Squillace." On the following morning, they surrounded the palace of the king himself and he, in alarm, called for O'Reilly to quell the disturbance. When it was represented to his majesty that it might entail bloodshed, he deprecated that and hurriedly left Madrid. Had he shown himself to the people, they would have done him no harm, for reverence for royalty was still deep in the popular heart, and the age of royal assassinations had not yet come. But the king was not a hero, and he thrust his subaltern into what he fancied was a post of danger. Thereupon, unarmed and unattended, O'Reilly faced the excited mob.
Delighted by his trust in them, they greeted him with cheers, but demanded a redress of their grievances. Unfortunately, while he was keeping them in good humor, the Walloons, who were guarding another gate of the palace, got into an altercation with some of the rioters. Hot words were exchanged, shots were fired and several persons were killed. The whole scene changed instantly, and the capital would have been drenched in blood, and perhaps Charles would have been dethroned, had not a number of Jesuits headed by the saintly Pignatelli, hurried through the crowd and held the rioters in check. Finally, when a placard was affixed to the palace walls, granting all their demands, the mob dispersed, cheering for the Jesuits – a fatal cry for those whom it was meant to honor. They were accused of provoking the riot; and, from that moment, the king's hatred for the Society began. It was made more acute by the consciousness of his own cowardice. Thus, a farce was to introduce a tragedy. Ten years afterwards, the Duke of Alva, a descendant of the old tyrant of the Netherlands, confessed that it was he, who had planned the sombrero and cloak riot to discredit the Jesuits (de Murr, "Journal," ix, 222).
Towards the end of January 1767, another episode in this curious history presents itself. Like the affair of the riot it seems to be taken from a novel, but unfortunately it is not so. Its setting is the principal Jesuit residence at Madrid. The provincial and the community are at dinner, when a lay-brother enters with a package of letters, which he places before the provincial. It is not the usual way of delivering such communications in the Society, but the story is told by de Ravignan in "Clément XIII et Clément XIV" (I, 186), and he is quoting from Father Casseda, who is described as "a Jesuit Father of eminence and worthy of belief." The package was handed back to the brother, along with the keys of the provincial's room, where it was left. Immediately afterwards, an officer of the court arrived, searched the room and extracted one of the letters, said to be from Father Ricci, the General of the Jesuits, who among other things, declared that the king was an illegitimate son and was to be superseded by his brother, Don Luis. That such a letter was really written, is vouched for by several historians: Coxe, Ranke, Schoell, Adam, Sismondi, Darras, and others; and it is generally admitted to have been the work of Choiseul in France though he covered up his tracks so adroitly that no documentary evidence can be adduced to prove it against him. His intermediary was a certain Abbé Beliardy an attaché of the French embassy in Madrid.
According to Carayon (XV Opp., 16-23) and Boero ("Pignatelli" Appendix) there is a second scene in this melodrama. Two Fathers are leaving Madrid for Rome. A sealed package is entrusted to them, purporting to be from the papal ambassador in Spain. On the road they are held up and searched; the package is opened, and a letter is found in it reflecting on the king's legitimacy. Precisely at the same moment, the trick of the refectory letter was being played in the Jesuit residence at Madrid, and thus a connection was established. With this scrap of paper and the "cloak and sombrero riot" at their disposal, the plotters concluded that they had ample material to carry out their scheme, and the next chapter shows Aranda, the prime minister, Roda, Moniño and Campomáñez meeting frequently in an old abandoned mansion in the country. With them was a number of boys, probably pages about the court, who were employed in copying a pile of documents whose import they were too unsophisticated to understand. Older amanuenses might have betrayed the secret.
The chain of evidence was finally completed, and these grave statesmen then presented themselves before his majesty and, with evidence in hand, proved to him the undoubted iniquity of the religious order which up to that moment he had so implicitly trusted. He fell into the trap, and a series of cabinet meetings ensued in which information previously gathered or invented about every Jesuit in France was discussed. The result was that on January 29, 1767 a proposal was drawn up by Campomáñez and laid before his majesty to expel the Society from Spain, and advising him, first, to impose absolute silence on all his subjects with regard to the affair, to such an extent that no one should say or publish anything either for or against the measure, without a special permission of the government; secondly, to withhold all knowledge of the affair, even from the controller of the press and his subordinates; and finally to arrange that whatever action was taken, should proceed directly from the president and ministers of the extraordinary council.
The advice was assented to by the king, and a decree was issued in virtue of which silence was passed on 6,000 Spanish subjects who not only had no trial but who were absolutely unaware that there was any charge against them. They had been as a body irreproachable for two hundred years, had reflected more glory, and won more territory for Spain than had ever been gained by its armies. They were men of holy lives, often of great distinction in every branch of learning; some of them belonged to the noblest families of the realm; and yet they were all to be thrown out in the world at a moment's notice, though not a judge on the bench, not a priest or a bishop, not even the Pope had been apprised of the cause of it, and, as we have seen, it was forbidden even to speak of the act. A more outrageous abuse of authority could not possibly be conceived.
It was arranged that on the coming second of April, 1767, a statement should be made throughout Europe by which the world would be informed: first, that for the necessary preservation of peace, and for other equally just and necessary reasons (though the world is not to be told what they are), the Jesuits are expelled from the king's dominions, and all their goods confiscated; secondly, that the motive will forever remain buried in the royal heart; thirdly, that all the other religious congregations in Spain are most estimable and are not to be molested. The decree was signed by Charles and countersigned by Aranda and then sent out. The ambassador at Rome was ordered to hand it to the Pope and withdraw without saying a word. The despatches to the civil and military authorities in both worlds were enclosed in double envelopes and sealed with three seals. On the inner cover appeared the ominous words, as from a pirate addressing his crew: "Under pain of death this package is not to be opened until April 2, 1767, at the setting sun." The letter read as follows: "I invest you with all my authority and all my royal power to descend immediately with arms on the Jesuit establishments in your district; to seize the occupants and to lead them as prisoners to the port indicated inside of 24 hours. At the moment of seizure, you will seal the archives of the house and all private papers and permit no one to carry anything but his prayer-book and the linen strictly necessary for the voyage. If after your embarcation there is left behind a single Jesuit either sick or dying in your department, you shall be punished with death."
"I, the King."
The motive that prompted Charles to keep the secret of this amazing proceeding "shut up in his royal heart" has been usually ascribed to his intense resentment at the suspicion cast on his legitimacy, and his fear that even the mention of it would lead people to conclude that there was some foundation for the charge. Davila, quoted by Pollen in "The Month" (August, 1902), finds another explanation.
"Charles III," he says, "had become an extravagant regalist, and was convinced by his Voltairean ministers, mostly by Tanucci, whom he had left in charge of his son at Naples, that in all things the Church should be subject to the State. It was on that account that he kept the reasons for the expulsion of the Jesuits 'buried in his royal heart.' The sole cause of this act was his change of policy; a true reason of state such as, on some occasions, covers grave acts of injustice – for it must be always a grave injustice to charge a religious society with having conspired against the fundamental institutions of a country, and yet not be able to point out in any way the object and plan of so dark a conspiracy. If such be the case," continues Davila, "it is easy to understand why his majesty could not reveal this 'secret of his royal heart' even to the Pope, or perhaps least of all to him, for it would be a painful avowal that his Catholic Majesty was a yoke-fellow with the Voltaireans of Europe whose avowed purpose was to destroy the Church."
Clement XIII was overwhelmed with grief when he read the king's decree and wrote to him as follows: "Of all the blows I have received during the nine unhappy years of my pontificate the worst is that of which your majesty informs me in your last letter, telling me of your resolution to expel from all your vast dominions the religious of the Society of Jesus. So you too, do this, my son, Tu quoque fili mi. Our beloved Charles III, the Catholic King, is the one who is to fill up the chalice of our woe and to bring down to the grave our old age bathed in tears and overwhelmed with grief. The very religious, the very pious King of Spain, Charles III, is going to give the support of his arm, that powerful arm which God has given him to increase his own honor and that of God and the Church, to destroy to its very foundation, an order so useful and so dear to the Church, an order which owes its origin and its splendor to those saintly heroes whom God has deigned to choose in the Spanish nation to extend His greater glory throughout the world. It is you who are going to deprive your kingdom and your people of all the help and all the spiritual blessings which the religious of that Society have heaped on it by their preaching, their missions, their catechisms, their spiritual exercises, the administration of the sacraments, the education of youth in letters and piety, the worship of God, and the honor of the Church.
"Ah! Sire! our soul cannot bear the thought of that awful ruin. And what cuts us to the heart still deeper perhaps is to see the wise, just King Charles III, that prince whose conscience was so delicate and whose intentions were so right; who lest he might compromise his eternal salvation, would never consent to have the meanest of his subjects suffer the slightest injury in their private concerns without having their case previously and legitimately tried and every condition of the law complied with, is now vowing to total destruction, by depriving of its honor, its country, its property, which was legitimately acquired, and its establishments, which were rightfully owned, that whole body of religious who were dedicated to the service of God and the neighbor, and all that without examining them, without hearing them, without permitting them to defend themselves. Sire! this act of yours is grave; and if perchance it is not sufficiently justified in the eyes of Almighty God, the Sovereign Judge of all creatures, the approval of those who have advised you in this matter will avail nothing, nor will the plaudits of those whose principles have prompted you to do this. As for us, plunged as we are in inexpressible grief, we avow to your majesty that we fear and tremble for the salvation of your soul which is so dear to us.
"Your Majesty tells us that you have been compelled to adopt these measures by the duty of maintaining peace in your states, – implying we presume that this trouble has been provoked by some individual belonging to the Society of Jesus. But, even if it were true, Sire, why not punish the guilty without making the innocent suffer? The body, the Institute, the spirit of the Society of Jesus, we declare it in the presence of God and of man, is absolutely innocent of all crime, and not only innocent, but pious, useful, holy in its object, in its laws, in its maxims. It matters not that its enemies have endeavored to prove the contrary; all calm and impartial minds will abhor such accusers as discredited liars who contradict themselves in whatever they say. You may tell me that it is now an accomplished fact; that the royal edict has been promulgated and you may ask what will the world say if I retract? Should you not rather ask, Sire, what will God say? Let me tell you what the world will say. It will say what it said of Assuerus when he revoked his edict to butcher the Hebrews. It accorded him the eternal praise of being a just king who knew how to conquer himself. Ah! Sire, what a chance to win a like glory for yourself. We offer to your majesty the supplications not only of your royal spouse, who from heaven recalls to you the love she had for the Society of Jesus, but much more so, to the Sacred Spouse of Jesus Christ, the Holy Church, which cannot contemplate, without weeping, the total and imminent extinction of the Society of Jesus, which until this very hour has rendered to her such great assistance and such signal services. Permit, then, that this matter be regularly discussed; let justice and truth be allowed to act, and they will scatter the clouds that have arisen from prejudice and suspicion. Listen to the counsels of those who are doctors in Israel; the bishops, the religious, in a cause that involves the interests of the State, the honor of the Church, the salvation of souls, your own conscience and your eternal salvation."
How Charles could resist this appeal, which is among the most admirable and eloquent state papers ever given to the world, is incomprehensible. But he did. He merely replied to the Pope: "To spare the world a great scandal, I shall ever preserve as a secret in my heart the abominable plot which has necessitated this rigor. Your Holiness ought to believe my word, the safety of my life exacts of me a profound silence."
Not satisfied with writing to the king himself, the Pope also pleaded with the greatest prelate in the realm, the Archbishop of Tarragona as follows: "What has come over you? How does it happen that, in an instant, the Society of Jesus has departed so far from the rules of its pious Institute, that our dear Son in Jesus Christ, Charles III, the Catholic King, can consider himself authorized to expel from his realm all the Regular Clerks of the Society? This is a mystery we cannot explain; only a year ago, the numberless letters addressed to us by the Spanish episcopacy afforded us some consolation in the deep grief that affected us when these same religious were expelled from France. Those letters informed us that the Fathers in your country gave an example of every virtue, and that the bishops and their dioceses received the most powerful support by their pious and useful labours. And now, behold, in an instant, there come dreadful charges against them and we are asked to believe that all these Fathers or almost all have committed some terrible crime; nay the king himself, so well known for his equity, is so convinced of it, that he feels obliged to treat the members of that Institute with a rigor hitherto unheard of."
Addressing himself personally to the king's confessor he says: "We write to you, my dear son, that you may lay this before the prince who has taken you for his guide, and we charge you to speak in our name and in virtue of the obligations which the duty of your office imposes, and the authority it bestows on you. As for us, we do not refuse to employ measures of the severest and most rigorous justice against those members of the Society of Jesus who have incurred the just anger of the king, and to employ all our power to destroy and to root out the thorns and briars which may have sprung up in a soil hitherto so pure and fertile. As for you, it is part of your sacred ministry to consider with fear and trembling as you kneel at the feet of the image of Jesus Christ, to compel the king to consider the incalculable ruin that religion will suffer, especially in pagan lands, if the numberless Christian missions which are now so flourishing, are abandoned and left without pastors." Evidently the confessor could do nothing with his royal penitent.
This mad act of Charles did not please some of his friends in France. Thus, on May 4, 1767, D'Alembert wrote to Voltaire: "What do you think of the edict of Charles III, who expels the Jesuits so abruptly? Persuaded as I am that he had good and sufficient reason, do you not think he ought to have made them known and not to 'shut them up in his royal heart?' Do you not think he ought to have allowed the Jesuits to justify themselves, especially as every one is sure they could not? Do you not think, moreover, that it would be very unjust to make them all die of starvation, if a single lay-brother who perhaps is cutting cabbage in the kitchen should say a word, one way or the other in their favor? And what do you think of the compliments which the King of Spain addresses to the other monks and priests, and curés and sacristans of his realm, who are not in my opinion less dangerous than the Jesuits, except that they are more stupid and vile? Finally, does it not seem to you that he could act with more common sense in carrying out what after all, is a reasonable measure?"
In spite of the royal order enjoining silence on his subjects high and low, there was a great deal of feeling manifested at the outrage. Roda, an agent of the ministry at Madrid, tried to conceal it and wrote to the Spanish Embassy at Rome on April 15, 1767: "There is not much agitation here. Some rich people, some women and other simpletons are very much excited about it, and are writing a great deal of their affection for the Jesuits, but that is due to their blindness. You would be astounded to find how numerous they are. But papers discovered in the archives and libraries, garrets and cellars, furnish sufficient matter to justify the act. They reveal more than people here suspect." And yet not one of these incriminating documents "found in archives and libraries and garrets and cellars" was ever produced.