The World полностью

Nothing like Arch-Sleepyhead, Maximilian grew up into an athletic gallant with a taste for what he called ‘being naked with women’, adding, ‘I have danced, tilted lances, paid court to ladies. Mostly I have laughed heartily.’ This tireless extrovert galloped across Europe to claim the hand of the greatest heiress of the day, Marie the Rich, duchess of Burgundy that encompassed the Low Countries.

Maximilian’s marriage made the Habsburgs, producing the essential son, Philip. Mary loved hunting even when pregnant, but she was fatally thrown. Maximilian was bereft, yet his vision of a universal Christian emperor and Hausmachtpolitik – family power – was irrepressible. ‘After serving God,’ he said, ‘I place the advancement of my dynasty above all things.’ Among his many schemes of family promotion, he decided after the death of his wife that he should be pope and started to bribe cardinals, promising his daughter Margaret that he would ‘never again pursue naked women’ and signing off, ‘Maxi, your good father, future pope’. It was not to be, but this multifaceted empire demanded perennial wars, with the German Hercules fearlessly modelling his exquisite gold-trimmed armour.^* The struggle between Habsburgs and Valois, Germany and France, for the strategic Burgundian borderlands would extend into the twentieth century, but it began now. Maximilian fought France, he fought in Italy and in Germany – seventeen campaigns altogether. But war requires money, not just courage. There were many soldiers but only one Fugger the Rich.

Always broke, the kaiser depended on Jacob Fugger, a dour red-headed banker from Augsburg, who started in textiles but then persuaded the king of Hungary to leverage his silver mines: Fugger paid a sum to market the silver. Focusing on the Habsburgs, he gave loans to Arch-Sleepyhead during his dark days and then helped Maximilian pay off more loans using his copper mines. Fugger’s handling of Maximilian made him probably the richest commoner in Europe, the first millionaire. Yet Hercules’ greatest success was a double splicing of his children Philip and Margaret to Isabella’s Juana and Juan. Such marriages sacrificed royal children – this was especially true for daughters, who were sent abroad to marry foreign strangers, never to see their parents again and most likely to perish in childbirth – for the sake of power that was also a biological gamble.

If Philip had failed to produce children and Juan had succeeded, the Spaniards could claim Austria. Instead the Infante Juan, Isabella’s ‘Angel’, was said to be so attracted to Margaret that he exhausted himself sexually, dying after six months, supposedly of excessive fornication but more likely of smallpox.^* Isabella was poleaxed by the loss of Angel.

His sister’s marriage was almost too successful, but in a different way. Juana, well-educated, red-haired like her mother, was obsessional and free-thinking. As a girl, she challenged Catholicism. Her mother ‘treated’ her refusal to take confession with torture, prescribing la cuerda, being suspended with weights hanging off her legs and arms. It did not work. Now living in Bruges, Juana watched Philip strut from ‘from banquet to banquet, lady to lady’, and was outraged by his promiscuity. He in turn was infuriated by her criticism. Juana clung pathetically to her four female African slaves, who shared her bed.^* When she gave birth to a girl, Philip snapped, ‘As this one is a girl, put her in the archduchess’s accounts; when God gives us a son, put him in mine.’ More pregnancies followed. For the birth of the heir, Charles, Juana was at a ball when her waters broke and the baby was born in a Ghent latrine, though brought up in Burgundy; a second son, Ferdinand, was raised in Spain.

Juana and Philip were now heirs to Spain as well as to Austria and Burgundy. A trip to Spain was overdue, but when the young couple arrived Isabella’s attempts to force Philip to follow her anti-French policy angered him. Fearing that her mother wanted to break up her marriage, Juana collapsed under the stress. ‘She sleeps poorly, eats little, she is sad and very thin,’ warned the doctors, as the infanta camped outside on the ramparts, refusing to come in. The destructive clash of state and family was being driven, not by cold-hearted statesmen, but by a woman: Isabella. Philip returned to Burgundy, but when Juana joined him she was so jealous she scratched one of his girlfriends with scissors. Now she only trusted her slaves.

‘I’m not happy with the slaves,’ he ordered. ‘Expel them.’

Juana exploded, threatening to kill his messenger and refusing to eat. Philip locked himself in his rooms. She banged on the doors.

‘If you don’t do what I say,’ warned Philip, ‘I’ll leave you.’‘I’ll let myself die’, she cried, ‘rather than do anything you ask.’

‘Then do whatever you want!’ he shouted, convinced she was insane.