Count-Duke of Olivares
The Count-Duke of Olivares ran the Spanish monarchy for twenty-two years for a king who let him, understood better than anyone that Castile could not carry the empire alone, tried to make the other kingdoms pay their share, and lost Portugal and Catalonia in the same year for the attempt. He was born in Rome in 1587, the son of the Spanish ambassador, a Guzmán of the great Andalusian house, and attached himself to the household of the heir, who became Philip IV in 1621 at sixteen and handed him the government. He was enormous, tireless, melancholy and read everything. Velázquez painted him on a rearing horse and then, older, as a man carrying a weight. His programme was reform: a purge of the previous ministers, sumptuary laws, a bank that failed, schools for nobles, and the Union of Arms of 1626, which asked Aragon, Valencia, Catalonia, Portugal, Naples and the rest to keep a fixed number of soldiers for the common defence, since Castile was bankrupt from doing it for everyone. The kingdoms said their laws forbade it. The Thirty Years' War, the resumed war with the Dutch in 1621 and the war with France from 1635 ate the money faster than any reform, and in 1640 the bill came due. Catalonia rose in June when he quartered Castilian troops on it, killed the viceroy, and gave itself to Louis XIII, and Portugal rose in December when he ordered its nobles to serve against the Catalans, and the Duke of Braganza was king within a day. The court turned on him. Philip dismissed him in January 1643, the one decision of the reign the king took alone, and he went to his estates at Loeches and then Toro, where he wrote a defence, went mad, and died in July 1645. The Buen Retiro palace and its collection of paintings were his idea, and the Prado is partly what remains of it.
- Lived: 1587 CE – 1645 CE
- Nationality: Spanish
- Roles: statesman, minister
