Master of Shadows (30 page)

Châteauneuf was the public face of French diplomacy in London, but behind closed doors overtures were being made by another emissary, a shadowy figure named Furston who brought an offer directly from Richelieu. In a clandestine meeting, he informed Weston that France was secretly plotting to “attack the king of Spain from all sides.” The plan called for a simultaneous assault on Spain’s forces in Germany, Italy, and the Low Countries. France wanted England to join in this fight with a coordinated naval attack on the Iberian coast, to be undertaken in cooperation with the Dutch navy. In return for its support, England would receive
“carte blanche”
from France. The Palatinate would surely be recovered, in its entirety. Weston was offered an enormous personal bribe to rally his support.

It was an ambitious plan, but it didn’t find traction with either Weston or his sovereign. Cottington informed Rubens of Charles’s reaction: “The king simply laughed at it and said he was well
acquainted with the wiles and tricks of the Cardinal Richelieu, and that he would prefer to make an alliance with Spain against France than the other way around.” If there had been any hope for such an adventure, Châteauneuf bungled it by grievously overstepping the bounds of diplomatic protocol, in the process terminally alienating the king to the French cause. In his zeal to conclude an alliance with England (and to prevent Spain from doing the same), he had become insistent that Charles call Parliament to session so it could weigh in on the matter. This was a desperate wedge move, one intended, in Rubens’s words, to “gain the good will of the people,” and in so doing force the king’s hand. The Puritan-led Parliament was categorically opposed to any deal with Catholic Spain, and that body assuredly would have supported a French alliance over that offered by Rubens.

The Frenchman’s gambit, however, was doomed from the outset. Châteauneuf might have known from recent history that appeals to Parliament would not sit well with the king, who had disbanded the body just a few months earlier. Charles was intransigent when it came to questions of his own authority. Moreover, it was considered entirely inappropriate for a visiting diplomat to interfere in the internal affairs of his host country. In a letter back to Madrid, Rubens happily notified Olivares that Châteauneuf had undermined his own cause with his “insolence.”

While the French contingent was stumbling, Rubens was making significant headway. At the beginning of July, he convinced Charles to name the ambassador he would send to Madrid to finalize negotiations, and also to set a date for this ambassador’s departure. The selection naturally fell to Cottington, and the chosen day was August 1. The only stipulation from the English was that Spain reciprocate with its own ambassador, and that Charles be assured that the two countries could reach acceptable terms. To be absolutely clear on this front,
Rubens asked that Charles put down his terms in writing, so that he might forward them on to Madrid.

In the long course of the Anglo-Spanish negotiation, both sides had been resistant to that request, always afraid it might be used against them. Gerbier, after the failed summit in Holland, had all but broken off discussions with the complaint that Rubens “had brought nothing in black and white, and all that he said was only in words.” But now, thanks to Rubens’s persistence, Charles acceded. On the principal subject under discussion, the restitution of the Palatinate, he was willing to settle only for the return of the Spanish garrisons, with the pledge that Philip merely intercede in good faith with his Habsburg allies regarding their respective claims. Cottington was stunned. “A miracle has been wrought in obtaining this document from the king of England,” he told Rubens.

Charles understood just what a coup this was for the painter, and how potentially dangerous it would be for him if word of the agreement were to become public. Opposition to Catholic Spain within England was rabid. Precautionary measures were therefore required before the terms outlined in what the parties were now calling “The Document” could be disclosed. With that in mind, the king absolutely forbade Rubens to show the letter to anyone but his handlers overseas. (He also told Rubens that he would never have given such a letter to Richelieu.) The language of “The Document” was also somewhat less than straightforward. In an accompanying cover letter to Olivares, Rubens had to explain that Charles was “unwilling to express himself as clearly in writing as he had done orally.” Nevertheless, it was all there—the count-duke would just have to read between the lines. For the sake of security, Rubens only sent a ciphered copy. He retained the original on his person in London.

A month later, he followed up with another letter to Olivares. “I consider this peace to be of such consequence that it seems to me
the connecting knot in the chain of confederations of Europe,” he wrote. Rubens had the vision to see, as the French diplomat François de Callières would later write, that the “necessary ties and commerces” between European states bound them together into a single, intertwined unit. “I admit that for our King the peace with the Hollanders would be most important,” Rubens wrote, “but I doubt that this will ever come to pass without the intervention of the King of England.”

Rubens may justifiably have considered himself a diplomatic miracle worker, but his handlers in Spain, and the count-duke in particular, were not initially pleased with his performance. The painter had discharged his responsibilities with an alacrity foreign to the terminally diffident Spanish crown. Even before learning that Rubens had secured the secret document from the English king, Olivares had dispatched a brusque letter admonishing Rubens for exceeding the authority he had been granted in Madrid. Rubens responded with a spirited defense of his actions in which he claimed that he had served merely as an honest intermediary, and that he had—against considerable opposition—convinced Charles to choose peace with Spain over peace with France. In addition, he had seen to it that Charles name a sympathetic ambassador, that a date be set for that ambassador’s departure, and that he be provided with instructions that would be considered acceptable in Madrid. “I do not feel that I have employed my time badly since I have been here,” he told Olivares, “or that I have overstepped in any way the terms of my commission.” Enclosed with his apologia were letters of support from both Weston and Cottington that praised his performance. In all, Rubens made a convincing argument. In August, his response was read before the Council of State at the Real Alcázar. It was enough to satisfy their concerns. In the minutes to that meeting it was noted that the council gave Rubens “approbation and thanks for what he has done and written, and for
the tact with which he has acted.” So informed, Rubens told Olivares that those kind words were “to be attributed not so much to any ability of mine, as to the goodness and the generous disposition of Your Excellency in appreciating even the slightest talent in others.” In paint or print, the artist knew how to lay the praise on thick.

RUBENS CONSIDERED HIS WORK
done and wished to return home, but he was once again compelled to stay by his English counterparts. He had, perhaps, been premature in advertising the success of his mission. Cottington’s departure remained contingent on Spain’s reciprocating with an ambassador of its own, and on Madrid’s willingness to accept the terms outlined in “The Document.” But by the time that text made it all the way to the count-duke’s desk in Madrid, Cottington’s scheduled departure date of August 1 had come and gone, and Charles was becoming impatient for a reply. Cottington was rescheduled to leave a month later, but even that plan was scuttled as Rubens awaited word from Madrid. Finally, at the end of August, he learned that Don Carlos Coloma had been appointed Spanish ambassador to England. That was enough to temporarily alleviate the fears of his negotiating partners, but there was a caveat: Coloma was presently in command of the Spanish army in Flanders, a position he had inherited when Spinola left for Madrid the previous year. Now, with the Prince of Orange on the offensive and ’s Hertogenbosch still under siege, he was in no position to leave his post.

Rubens used the delay to his advantage. When Joachimi, the Dutch envoy, sought an audience with Charles to request a subsidy for the Dutch military campaign against Spain, the artist-diplomat made sure Charles refused the appeal. Rubens was well armed to make a case before Charles against support for the Dutch. “All the
kings and princes of Europe, in the interests of self-preservation, ought to conspire to bring them down,” he noted. In the span of a few decades, the nascent Dutch republic had become a maritime superpower, its tentacles reaching clear around the globe. Dutch naval power and colonial expansion posed a serious international threat, and not just to Spain. Charles was especially vulnerable, given the close alliance between the Dutch and members of the Puritan opposition in his own country. Rubens played on the English king’s fears of insurrection, warning him that the Dutch were well placed to make a run at his crown, and soon. Now was the time to press them, before it was too late. Charles, he argued, should “employ his authority to induce the Hollanders to some reasonable accord with Spain, and if they refuse, threaten to abandon them entirely, or even aid our king against them.”

Rubens was prescient in this regard. In 1688, a Dutch invasion force linked up with English partisans to force Charles’s son, James II, from his throne. The “Glorious Revolution” left William III, great-grandson of William the Silent, as the new English king. For the moment, however, Rubens did not realize that just as he was making his case against an Anglo-Dutch treaty, Spain was achingly close to signing its own treaty with the Dutch, and without recourse to any outside intervention. This development had been precipitated by a shift on the ground in the Low Countries. A Spanish offensive into the Dutch heartland had pushed the Dutch back to the bargaining table at Roosendaal, and the negotiating parties had agreed on the principal terms of a truce. Those conditions, and whether they should be accepted, became the subject of intense debate—known as the
groote werck
, or “great affair”—that would occupy the Dutch political leadership into the New Year and in the months that followed.

Rubens, meanwhile, had managed another coup. Already, he
had blocked Richelieu’s scheme to have France join forces with England to wage a multipronged war against Spain. Working in tandem with Cottington, he had actually turned that very idea back on its creator. Rubens happily informed Olivares that Cottington, as Charles’s ambassador, would now travel to Madrid with full authority to make an offensive alliance with Spain
against
France. This was accomplished despite the fact that Charles had recently formalized the nonaggression pact with France that had necessitated Châteauneuf’s trip to London. Neither the French nor the English were particularly enthusiastic about that accord, which they had formally agreed to back in April. At the banquet celebrating it, at Windsor Castle, Charles didn’t even break out the best royal dishes. The next day, word arrived that French naval units in the Caribbean had taken by force seven English vessels and an island owned by the Earl of Carlisle. So much for the armistice.

WITH HIS PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITIES
filled and nothing left for him but to await the arrival of Coloma, Rubens finally had an opportunity to take some pleasure in his time in England. As a moneyed widower with a reputation for genius and the king’s ear, he must have made an alluring target for the unattached women at court. Rubens wasn’t known for indulging in pleasures of the flesh, except on canvas, but as Callières would write in his primer on diplomatic conduct, if the “opportunity of conversing with the ladies” should present itself, the ambassador “ought not neglect to get them on his side by entering into their pleasures, and endeavoring to render himself worthy of their esteem.” Of course, Callières was French.

Rubens, at least in public, led a respectable life. In late September he traveled to Cambridge, where he received a tour of the colleges
and an honorary master’s degree from the university chancellor. A budding Anglophile, he described England as “a spectacle worthy of the interest of every gentleman, not only for the beauty of the countryside and the charm of the nation; not only for the splendor of the outward culture, which seems to be extreme, as of a people rich and happy in the lap of peace, but also for the incredible quantity of excellent pictures, statues, and ancient inscriptions which are to be found in this court.” It should come as no surprise that he liked all of that artwork: he had either owned or created a good deal of it, especially the works he found at York House. Rubens was particularly impressed by the collection of antique marbles assembled by Thomas Howard, the Earl of Arundel. The artist claimed he had “never seen anything in the world more rare.” He visited the earl’s house on the Strand, also known for its luxurious garden, several times. It didn’t hurt that Howard was also a Rubens client. The portrait Rubens had made of the earl’s wife, Aletheia Talbot (with her dog, her midget, her jester, and Dudley Carleton), was one of the prizes of the Howard collection. Before Rubens left London, he completed a bust-length portrait of the bearded earl dressed in a suit of armor to serve as a complement.