Bernardino de Mendoza
Bernardino de Mendoza was a notable Spanish military officer, diplomat, and writer born into the influential Mendoza family in the late 16th century. He studied at the University of Alcalá, where he earned degrees in arts and philosophy, and began his military career with campaigns in North Africa and Malta. Mendoza's diplomatic career took off as he served as an ambassador to England, where he was involved in various plots against Queen Elizabeth I, reflecting the tense religious and political climate of the time. His operations included attempts to support the Catholic cause and undermine Protestant influences, showcasing his skills in espionage and negotiation.
Mendoza also participated in significant military campaigns in Flanders and later contributed to the Spanish Armada's logistical efforts. He authored several influential works on military theory, including "Theorica y practica de guerra," which became highly regarded in military scholarship. Despite his achievements, his career was marred by political failures and health issues that ultimately led to his retirement. Bernardino de Mendoza's legacy embodies the complexity of Renaissance politics, marked by ambition, strategic acumen, and profound involvement in the military and diplomatic spheres of his era.
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Subject Terms
Bernardino de Mendoza
Spanish diplomat
- Born: February 21, 1541
- Birthplace: Guadalajara, Spain
- Died: August 3, 1604
- Place of death: Madrid, Spain
Bernardino de Mendoza was head of Spanish diplomatic and intelligence services at the court of England’s Queen Elizabeth I and later at the French court of King Henry III. He was involved in the Throckmorton and the Babington plots to overthrow Elizabeth, and he played a prominent role supporting the Catholic League during the French Wars of Religion. Bernardino also wrote one of the most important treatises on the theory and practice of war.
Early Life
Bernardino de Mendoza (behr-nahr-DEE-noh day MAYN-doh-zah) was the tenth son of Alonso Suárez de Mendoza and Doña Juana Jiménez de Cisneros, counts of Coruña and vice-counts of Torija. He belonged to a small branch of the powerful Mendoza family, which had acquired enormous wealth and influence in Castile since the late 1300’s.
Bernardino studied at the prestigious University of Alcalá and graduated in June, 1556, with a degree in arts and philosophy. In October of the same year, he received his master’s degree and was elected fellow of the College of San Ildefonso, where he spent some time with the future government and military elites of Spain.
He began his military career in 1563-1564, participating in campaigns against the Berbers in North Africa. He also took part in the defense of Malta against the Turks in 1565, fighting under the command of Don Juan of Austria, brother of King Philip II of Spain. In 1567, he accompanied the duke of Alva to Flanders to fight the Protestant rebels, and he distinguished himself as a cavalry captain in the battles of Mook, Mons, and Nijmegen and in the Siege of Haarlem.
In 1574, he received his first serious diplomatic mission and traveled to England to obtain the promise of refuge and succor in English ports for the planned Spanish armada against the Dutch rebels. His mission was successful and, as a reward for his services, he was inducted into the prestigious military order of Santiago and was appointed resident ambassador to the English court in 1578.
Life’s Work
Bernardino de Mendoza’s talents as a military officer were matched only by his abilities as a spy and a diplomat. Much of what he accomplished militarily reflects the aggressiveness he had displayed in the battlefields of North Africa and Flanders. Since his arrival in England, Bernardino had fought and plotted indefatigably in defense of his master, King Philip II, and the Catholic cause. The essence of his mission was to prevent Queen Elizabeth I from helping the Dutch rebels and to protect and give support to the English Catholics in whatever manner he could.
Bernardino realized that the policy of coexistence that had informed Spanish-English relations in the first half of the sixteenth century was reaching an end and that a more aggressive approach was needed in order to stop the troublesome and defiant English Tudor monarchy. Spanish ships were suffering from constant harassment and attacks at the hands of English privateers in the high seas, and the religious persecution and repression of Catholic subjects of the queen convinced Bernardino that the policy of coexistence was ending.
In 1583, one of these Catholic subjects, Francis Throckmorton, convinced Bernardino to take part in a plot to murder Elizabeth IIII21IIII and enthrone her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots, with the help of a French invading army. The plot was discovered, and the confession obtained from Throckmorton left no doubt as to Bernardino’s involvement. In January, 1584, Bernardino was declared persona non grata (unwelcome) by the English authorities and was ordered to leave the country immediately. He departed with the defiant retort, “Bernardino de Mendoza was not born to disturb countries, but to conquer them.”
During his stay in England, Bernardino developed an extensive network of informants and contacts and created very sophisticated methods for encoding and transmitting messages to his king. This experience would serve him well in his next diplomatic mission, at the French court of Henry III. At the time of Mendoza’s arrival, Henry was a dissolute and corrupt king who found himself in a difficult political situation. In 1584, his younger brother Francis, duke of Anjou, had suddenly died, which made Henry of Navarre, a Huguenot prince, the new heir apparent to the throne. Navarre looked for support with the Dutch Protestants and, at the same time, the French Catholic League rallied around the powerful aristocrat Henry I of Lorraine, duke of Guise, whom they saw as a stronger and more reliable leader than their own king. Henry I was able to obtain the favor of Philip II, who gave precise instructions to his ambassador to offer military and financial support to the league. Although Bernardino had been busy with the internal affairs of the French court, he kept in touch with his English contacts and managed to contribute to the Babington plot in 1586 another failed attempt to murder Queen Elizabeth and put her Catholic cousin on the English throne.
Bernardino also provided logistic assistance to the Spanish Armada and persuaded Henry I and the Catholic League to enter Paris and overthrow Henry III. Henry I was murdered by Henry III in 1588, and the Armada project became a monumental fiasco that weakened Spanish policy all over the Continent. In 1590, Henry of Navarre laid siege to Paris, and Bernardino helped the Parisians with food and with fortifying the walls of the city.
By this time, he had lost his eyesight completely from chronic glaucoma, a condition that he started to suffer during his years as ambassador at Elizabeth’s court. Consumed by the pain of disease and the grief of political failure, he retired from his post and went back to Madrid in 1591. He bought a house next to a convent and died on August 3, 1604. His body was buried in the church of his native Torija, next to a Latin inscription that reads “Nec timeas nec potes” (neither fear nor wish).
Bernardino’s role as a schemer and a diplomat has secured him a place in the history of early modern politics and espionage. The range of his talents, however, was much broader. He was a prolific writer and an accomplished military scholar. His Theorica y practica de guerra (1595; Theorique and Practise of Warre , 1597; theory and practice of war) was one of the most popular and respected books on warfare of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (it was translated into Italian in 1596 and then into French and English in 1597). He also wrote Comentarios de Don Bernardino de Mendoça de lo sucedido en las guerras de los Payses Baxos (1591; commentaries of Don Bernardino de Mendoza on the events of the wars in the low countries), which he dedicated to the French Catholics. Finally, in the year of his death, he sent to the press a translation of Los seys libros de la politica o doctrina civil (1604; Sixe Bookes of Politickes or Civil Doctrine, 1970), a 1594 text by the Dutch Humanist scholar Justus Lipsius, one of the most eminent political thinkers of the Renaissance.
Significance
Bernardino de Mendoza’s career as a soldier, diplomat, and writer exemplifies the diverse profile identified commonly with the figure of the Renaissance man. He also epitomizes, along with Niccolò Machiavelli, Francis Walsingham, and Cardinal Richelieu (Armand-Jean du Plessis), the image of the ruthless Renaissance politician who will stop at nothing in service to his country. His rise to military and political prominence was the result of talent, self-determination, and powerful family connections.
He was a shrewd diplomat and spy, but his views of political reality were clouded by intransigence and his staunch religious zeal. As a writer, his greatest contribution was the understanding of war as a global and state-sponsored enterprise, which he approached in a scientific and almost managerial fashion.
Bibliography
Jensen, De Lamar. Diplomacy and Dogmatism: Bernardino de Mendoza and the French Catholic League. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964. Still the best scholarly study on Bernardino. The book focuses primarily on Bernardino’s mission in France, but it also offers a good summary of his endeavors at Elizabeth I’s court.
Morel-Fatio, Alfred. “Bernardino de Mendoza, sa vie, son œvre.” Bulletin Hispanique (1906). The first modern biography of Bernardino, by an authoritative scholar, which gathers most of the data collected by nineteenth century scholars.
Oman, Charles. History of the Art of War in the Sixteenth Century. Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 1999. Discusses in detail the military and historical background of Bernardino’s work and explains their practical and theoretical significance in the context of sixteenth century warfare.