John of Austria

Spanish military leader

• Born: April 7, 1629
• Birthplace: Madrid, Spain
• Died: September 17, 1679
• Place of death: Madrid, Spain

Through military and political endeavors, John of Austria attempted to sustain the power of the Spanish realm and its Habsburg Dynasty in the midst of its declining hegemony in Europe and around the world.

Early Life

John of Austria was the son of noted actress Maria Calderón (La Calderona), a mistress of King Philip IV . Even though Calderón had been intimate with other lovers, Philip recognized his paternity of John. John, thereby, entered the vastly powerful Habsburg family of the king and received the education of a prince. He matured into a handsome and vibrant young man, was given an independent income, and attracted a faithful following. As an illegitimate son, he could not inherit the throne and become the Habsburg ruler. Fate, however, made him a principal defender of the family’s realms.

Life’s Work

The Habsburgs, whose ancestral realm lay in south-central Europe, in Austria, and in neighboring territories, ruled over vast territories throughout Europe. The family also ruled in the Netherlands and in southern Italy and Sicily. Most important were its dynastic holdings on the Iberian Peninsula. As the monarchs, beginning in the sixteenth century, of the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, they presided over the birth of modern Spain. Eventually, they also ruled Portugal. These kingdoms had pioneered vast and wealthy discoveries in the Americas and Asia, which provided the Habsburgs with unprecedented wealth.

By the seventeenth century, however, this wealth was declining, which weakened the dynasty’s ability to maintain a hold on its European territories. This decline had begun under King Philip III , the predecessor of John’s father. As an older though illegitimate son of Philip IV, John was fated to have a military career. He would have to confront ever increasing rebellions against Habsburg rule with ever decreasing resources from the dynastic territories.

To meet the huge expenses of maintaining a vast realm while confronting the reality of diminishing wealth from overseas colonies, the Habsburgs had recourse to raising old taxes and creating new ones. Opposition to oppressive Habsburg policy grew under Philip IV, and John was given responsibilities for suppressing rebellion and maintaining order.

Provoked by a new tax on fruit, a mob took power in Naples in 1647, led by fisherman Tommaso Aniello, popularly referred to as Masaniello. Together with the local Habsburg administrators and military forces, the young John helped to suppress this rebellion. The following year, though still a teenager, John was appointed viceroy of Sicily. This island had been under the rule of Aragon, making it inheritable by the Habsburgs when they took over the monarchy of Spain. John continued Spanish policy for Sicily, which was to obtain maximum tax revenue from the island while allowing its local aristocracy to assume all necessary powers to suppress any opposition.

The most important region of Aragon was Catalonia, its trade centered in the rich Mediterranean port of Barcelona. Since 1640, both Catalonia and Portugal had been in revolt against Spanish rule. Portugal had reestablished its own monarchy under the Braganza Dynasty and its head, King John IV . Catalonia’s strategy to free itself from Spain was to establish an alliance with France and its king, Louis XIII , naming him the count of Catalonia.

The Catalan uprising was steadily suppressed, however, by Castile, because the French alliance proved unreliable. Louis XIII died in 1643 and was succeeded by an unsteady regency: his five-year-old successor, Louis XIV , who was too young to rule. John was sent to wipe out the last stages of the Catalan rebellion during 1651-1652.

In 1656, John was appointed governor of the Spanish Netherlands in the middle of the Franco-Spanish Wars (1635-1659). This war was ultimately won by the French and sealed the fate of Spain as a defunct power in Europe. Near Dunkirk in 1658, in the Battle of the Dunes (June 14), an alliance of French and English forces, led by the canny French general, Henri de La Tour d’Auvergne, viscount de Turenne, defeated John’s Spanish forces. The following year, in the Treaty of the Pyrenees, the national boundaries of France were extended to border Spain through the Pyrenees mountains. Spain also ceded to France its territory of Flanders, in the Spanish Netherlands.

In 1656, John, the rebellious king of Portugal, died. Confronting its losses along the Pyrenees, Spain at this time set its sights on regaining the kingdom along its western border. John was given charge of the assault. In 1663, he advanced into Portugal as far as Évora, occupied it, and then moved farther into the country. However, John had overextended himself, and, as he tried to return to his base, the Portuguese pursued him, defeating the Spanish in the Battle of Ameixal. Two years later, he confronted and was defeated by Portuguese forces in the Battle of Montes Claros. The Portuguese were led by the skilled German general Friedrich Hermann Schomberg , who was sponsored by the English and French governments. The ineffectiveness of John’s campaign in Portugal was confirmed by the Treaty of Lisbon (1668), whereby Spain recognized the independence of Portugal.

The final phase in the life of John occurred in Spain and within the confines of Spanish court politics. With the death of Philip IV in 1665, the stepbrother of John became King Charles II. This sibling was not yet five years old when their father died. Moreover, Charles was physically feeble and mentally disabled, so that his mother, Queen Mother Mariana de Austria, ruled in his stead. She was consumed with jealousy, foreboding, and loathing before the powerful general, aristocrat, and stepbrother, John.

Because the Queen Mother’s loyalties and power base lay more in Austria than in Spain, John had her exiled in 1677. He then assumed the reins of the Spanish government. The following year, Spain was forced by the Treaty of Nijmegen to cede the region of Franche-Comté (Burgundy) to France, a territory in northern Europe that the Habsburgs had occupied since the previous century. In 1679, John died. Mariana returned and continued to rule for her son, Charles II. He had no heirs, so upon his death in 1700, the Spanish Habsburg dynasty ended. The Bourbons of France, archenemies of Spain, inherited the Spanish throne.

John of Austria was a dashing military figure who recalled his namesake, the first John of Austria. The earlier John was an illegitimate son of the first Spanish Habsburg monarch and the legendary hero of the Battle of Lepanto (1571). However, unlike his predecessor, who waged war at the zenith of Habsburg power in Europe, John the Younger struggled in the waning shadows of John the Elder’s earlier brilliance.

Significance

John of Austria was a military and political figure of late Habsburg Spain engaged in trying to maintain the regime’s withering grasp over its extended dynastic holdings in Europe. He was caught in a historical geopolitical quandary that was essentially without solution. He was a key military and administrative member of a declining dynasty ruling over a widely dispersed realm in Europe with ever decreasing financial and military resources. The dynasty’s position was contested globally by rising Dutch and English naval powers. On the Continent, it was defeated and then absorbed by the steady ascendancy in Europe of the military might of the French Bourbon Dynasty and its most powerful monarch, Louis XIV.

Bibliography

Brown, Jonathan, and John H. Elliott. A Palace for a King: The Buen Retiro and the Court of Philip IV. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003. With extensive illustrations, this work examines the environment in which John matured, exploring the architectural and stylistic details of the palace built by Philip IV on the outskirts of Madrid beginning in the 1630’s.

Corteguera, Luis R. For the Common Good: Popular Politics in Barcelona, 1580-1640. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2002. This work examines the sociopolitical conditions of Catalonia within the context of the Iberian Peninsula, conditions that led to rebellion against Habsburg rule. The rebellion was suppressed by John and other Spanish leaders.

Elliott, John H. Imperial Spain, 1469-1716. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1964. The author places the life of John within the context of the history, economy, society, and politics of the Habsburg Dynasty and of its successor, the Bourbon Dynasty.

Lynch, John. The Hispanic World in Crisis and Change, 1598-1700. Oxford, England: Blackwell, 1992. A revised edition of volume 2 of Spain Under the Habsburgs, by a noted English historian. Lynch places the life of John within the context of Spanish imperial decline in seventeenth century Spain.

Stradling, R. A. Philip IV and the Government of Spain, 1621-1665. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988. An authoritative analysis of the philosophical and political assumptions, ambitions, policies, and practices of government of the father of John, King Philip IV.