‘Mein lieber lúiß’: Aloys von Harrach and the Diplomacies of Motherhood during the Last Years of Carlos II’s Reign (1698–1701)¹

1 I dedicate this article to Silvia Z. Mitchell. Research was financed by Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (project no. 621970) and by the Ramón y Cajal program of the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (RYC-2014-16033). I have developed this research at the University of Granada. I am grateful to the readers for the comments and criticism, which improved this article. Any remaining errors are exclusively mine. This article has been translated from Spanish by Ruth MacKay.

Abstract

Aloys Thomas Raimund von Harrach (1669–1742) arrived as the imperial ambassador in Madrid in 1698 with the purpose of persuading Carlos II to designate Emperor Leopold I’s second son, Archduke Charles of Austria, as heir to the Spanish Crown. Young and not very experienced for such a complicated embassy, Aloys relied on the inestimable help of his mother, Johanna Theresia von Lamberg, countess of Harrach (1639–1716). Having served with her husband, Ferdinand Bonaventura I von Harrach, who was ambassador from 1673 to 1677, Johanna possessed extensive knowledge of the Madrid court and connections. Based on more than eighty letters Johanna wrote to Aloys during his two-year embassy, this article discusses what I refer to as the diplomacies of motherhood. This never-examined correspondence reveals the influence of a powerful noblewoman at a critical moment in Carlos II’s court, which was dominated by the unresolved question of the succession.

Notes

1 I dedicate this article to Silvia Z. Mitchell. Research was financed by Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (project no. 621970) and by the Ramón y Cajal program of the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (RYC-2014-16033). I have developed this research at the University of Granada. I am grateful to the readers for the comments and criticism, which improved this article. Any remaining errors are exclusively mine. This article has been translated from Spanish by Ruth MacKay.

2 On the concept of ambassadress in early modern Europe, see Laura Oliván-Santaliestra, ‘Gender, Work and Diplomacy in Baroque Spain: The Ambassadorial Couples of the Holy Roman Empire as Arbeitspaare’, Gender and History 29 (2017), pp. 424-6; and Laura Oliván-Santaliestra, ‘Who was the Embajadora? Concept, Treatises and Examples (1580–1674)’, in Roberta Anderson, Suna Suner and Laura Oliván-Santaliestra (eds), Gender and Diplomacy: Women and Men in European and Ottoman Embassies from the 15th to the 18th Century (Vienna, forthcoming).

3 Silvia Z. Mitchell has used the expression ‘politics of motherhood’ to explain the strategies by the Queen Regent Maria Anna of Austria. See Silvia Z. Mitchell, ‘Habsburg Motherhood: The Power of Mariana of Austria, Mother and Regent for Carlos II of Spain’, in Anne Cruz and Maria Galli (eds), Early Modern Habsburg Women (Aldershot, 2014), pp. 175-94, p. 186.

4 Susanne C. Pils, Schreiben über Stadt. Das Wien der Johanna Theresia Harrach (Leipzig, 2002), p. 136; Österreichisches Staatsarchiv (hereafter ÖstA), Allgemeines Verwaltungsarchiv (hereafter AVA), Familien Archiv Harrach (hereafter FA Harrach), Handschrift (hereafter Hs) 116.

5 Bianca Lindorfer, ‘Cosmopolitan Aristocracy and the Diffusion of Baroque Culture’, Ph.D. diss., European University Institute, 2009, p. 78.

6 Johanna Theresia became one of Queen Mariana’s favourite ladies; she left Spain shortly after her marriage to the count of Harrach, who was also her cousin, in 1661. The wedding took place in Madrid: Pils, Schreiben über Stadt, pp. 18-20.

7 Manuel Herrero, El acercamiento hispano-neerlandés (1648–1678) (Madrid, 2000), p. 195.

8 For example, she obtained a post of cuestor togado (prosecutor) for Antonio Calderari (Antonio Álvarez-Ossorio Alvariño, ‘La república de las parentelas: la corte de Madrid y el gobierno del estado de Milán durante el reinado de Carlos II’, Ph.D. diss., Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 1993, p. 260) and helped the duke of Nájera to obtain the post of viceroy of the Indies (Laura Oliván, ‘“La condesa se ha vestido a la española y de incógnito ha ido a visitar a la reina”: Johanna Theresia de Harrach, valida y ‘embajadora’ de Mariana de Austria’, in Gloria Franco Rubio y María de los Ángeles Pérez Samper (eds), Herederas de Clío. Mujeres que han impulsado la historia. Homenaje a María Victoria López-Cordón Cortezo (Sevilla, 2014), pp. 396-7).

9 ÖstA, AVA, FA Harrach, Karton (Kt.) 321 and 322.

10 Pils, Schreiben über Stadt, p. 147.

11 Adalberto de Baviera, Mariana de Neoburgo (Madrid, 1938), p. 180, and Adalberto de Baviera and Gabriel Maura y Gamazo (eds), Documentos inéditos referentes a las postrimerías de la Casa de Austria, 2 vols (Madrid, 2004), vol. 1, p. 577.

12 Antonio Domínguez Ortiz (ed.), Testamento de Felipe IV (Madrid, 1982), Clause 12, pp. 20-3.

13 This will has not survived, or has not been located, but it is cited in Baviera, Mariana, p. 161.

14 Baviera, Mariana, p. 164; Luis Ribot, El arte de gobernar: Estudios sobre la España de los Austrias (Madrid, 2006), p. 236; Luis Ribot, Orígenes políticos del testamento de Carlos II: La gestación del cambio dinástico en España (Madrid, 2010), p. 27; Lucien Bély, Les relations internationales en Europe XVIIe–XVIIIe siècles (Paris, 1992), p. 356.

15 Gabriel Maura, Vida y reinado de Carlos II (Madrid, 1942), p. 469.

16 Juan Antonio de Vera y Zúñiga, El Enbaxador (Sevilla, 1620), fol. 119v.

17 Baviera, Mariana, p. 179.

18 Ana Álvarez, La fabricación de un imaginario: Los embajadores de Luis XIV y España (Madrid, 2008), p. 92.

19 Ribot, El arte de gobernar, p. 238; Ribot, Orígenes políticos, p. 38.

20 The ambassador’s pseudonym was Bernardo Bravo; his complete name is unknown; Baviera, Mariana, p. 194.

21 Ribot, El arte de gobernar, p. 237.

22 ÖstA, AVA, FA Harrach, Kt. 208, letter from Ferdinand Bonaventura von Harrach to Leopold I, s.d. (c. 1697).

23 ÖstA, AVA, FA Harrach, Kt. 79.

24 Grace E. Coolidge, Guardianship, Gender, and the Nobility in Early Modern Spain (Aldershot, 2011).

25 Coolidge calculates that among the Spanish nobility (from 1400 to 1800) about eighty percent of the guardianships were exercised by women; she has persuasively shown that noblemen preferred their wives and female relatives for the task rather than other men; see Coolidge, Guardianship, p. 21.

26 Laura Oliván-Santaliestra, ‘Cartas para Johanna: una aproximación a la red epistolar de la condesa de Harrach (1661–1700)’, in Bernardo García, Katrin Keller and Andrea Sommer-Mathis (eds), In Their Own Hand: Personal Letters in Habsburg Dynastic Network (Iberoamericana Vervuert, forthcoming, 2019).

27 I have retained the original German script of the seventeenth century.

28 Baviera, Mariana, p. 216.

29 María Victoria López-Cordón Cortezo, ‘Mujeres en la vida de Carlos II’, in Luis Ribot (ed.), Carlos II: El rey y su entorno (Madrid, 2009), pp, 135-7; Leticia de Frutos, ‘Maria Mancini y la corte de Madrid: entre Austrias y Borbones (1674–1702)’, in Roberto Quirós Rosado and Cristina Bravo Lozano (eds), Los hilos de Penélope: lealtad y fidelidades en la Monarquía de España, 1648–1714 (Madrid, 2015), pp. 241-56.

30 Baviera, Mariana, p. 180.

31 Baviera, Mariana, p. 207.

32 Álvarez, La fabricación, p. 127.

33 Álvarez, La fabricación, p. 390, n. 75.

34 Álvarez, La fabricación, p. 390, n. 76; Blandinières to Torcy, 20 August 1698. Archives diplomatiques du ministère des Affaires étrangères (hereafter AAE) Paris, Correspondance Politique (hereafter CP) Espagne, 79, fol. 336r.

35 Ribot, Orígenes políticos, p. 49.

36 Álvarez, La fabricación, p.390, n77.

37 ÖstA, AVA, FA Harrach, Kt. 79, Johanna Theresia to Luis, 6 May 1698.

38 ÖstA, AVA, FA Harrach, Kt. 79, Johanna Theresia to Luis, 9 September 1698.

39 Baviera, Mariana, p. 222.

40 Although this treaty is usually considered the first, in reality it was the second after the treaty signed in 1668 between the Emperor and Louis XIV; Ribot, Orígenes políticos, p. 4 and Ribot, El arte de gobernar, p. 235.

41 Lucien Bély, Les relations internationales, p. 377 and Luis Ribot, ‘Los tratados de reparto de la Monarquía de España: Entre los derechos hereditarios y el equilibrio europeo’, in Luis Ribot and José M. Iñurritegui (eds), Europa y los tratados de reparto de la Monarquía de España, 1668 – 1700 (Madrid, 2016), pp. 29-54, p. 44; Julio Arroyo Vozmediano, ‘Segundo Tratado de Reparto. 11 de octubre de 1698’, in Ibid., p. 301.

42 Archivo Histórico Nacional (hereafter AHN) Estado leg. 2451, exp. 37, cited in Baviera, Mariana, pp. 225-6.

43 Ribot, El arte de gobernar, p. 242.

44 Ibid., p. 231.

45 Baviera, Mariana, p. 227. Rocío Martínez López is writing about this matter in her doctoral dissertation at the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (Madrid).

46 Maura, Vida y reinado, p. 482.

47 Ibid., p. 510.

48 Ibid., p. 543.

49 Ribot, El arte de gobernar, p. 242.

50 Maura, Vida y reinado, p. 713.

51 Ribot, El arte de gobernar, p. 242.

52 Ibid.

53 Ribot, 'Análisis del reinado', in La transición del siglo XVII al XVIII: entre la decadencia y la reconstrucción, Pere Molas (ed.) (Madrid, 1993), p. 132.

54 Teófanes Egido, ‘El motín madrileño de 1699’, Investigaciones históricas 2 (1980), pp. 253-94.

55 Ribot, El arte de gobernar, p. 245.

56 Ibid, pp. 246-7; Ribot, Orígenes políticos, p. 245.

57 Ribot, El arte de gobernar, p. 248.

58 Baviera, Mariana, p. 240.

59 ÖstA, AVA, FA Harrach, Kt. 79, Johanna Theresia to Luis, 17 June 1699.

60 ÖstA, AVA, FA Harrach, Kt. 79, Johanna Theresia to Luis, 30 June 1699.

61 Baviera and Maura, Documentos inéditos, vol. 2, p. 1,069.

62 Baviera and Maura, Documentos inéditos, vol. 2, p. 1,076.

63 Baviera and Maura, Documentos inéditos, vol. 2, pp. 1,072-3.

64 Baviera and Maura, Documentos inéditos, vol. 2, pp. 1,098-99; Quirós Rosado, ‘De mercedes y beneficios’, pp. 223 and 237.

65 Baviera y and Maura, Documentos inéditos, vol. 2, p. 1,075.

66 ÖstA, AVA, FA Harrach, Kt. 341, copy of a letter from the king of Spain to the Emperor, 11 September 1699.

67 It is not clear who the Cardinal in question was since Johanna Theresia von Harrach did not specify the name in the letter. ÖstA, AVA, FA Harrach, Kt. 79, Johanna Theresia to Luis, 21 September [1699].

68 Baviera and Maura, Documentos inéditos, vol. 2, p. 1,171; Baviera, Mariana, p. 242.

69 ÖstA, AVA, FA Harrach, Kt. 79, Johanna Theresia to Luis, December 1699.

70 Ibid.

71 Baviera and Maura, Documentos inéditos, vol. 2, p. 1,125.

72 Leticia de Frutos, ‘Una madama francesa a la fuga: Maria Mancini y la corte de Madrid entre Austrias y Borbones (1674–1700)’, in Los hilos de Penélope, p. 248.

73 ÖstA, AVA, FA Harrach, Kt. 79, Johanna Theresia to Luis, December 1699.

74 Dr. van Geelen said it was 8,000; Baviera and Maura, Documentos inéditos, vol. 2, p. 1,130.

75 ÖstA, AVA, FA Harrach, Kt. 79, Johanna Theresia to Luis, 15 December 1699.

76 Ibid.

77 ÖstA, AVA, FA Harrach, Kt. 79, Johanna Theresia to Luis, 8 February and 6 April 1700.

78 ÖstA, AVA, FA Harrach, Kt. 79, Johanna Theresia to Luis, 6 April 1700.

79 ÖstA, AVA, FA Harrach, Kt. 79, Johanna Theresia to Luis, 9 March 1700.

80 Antonio Martínez de Salazar, Colección de Memorias y Noticias del Gobierno general y político del Consejo (Madrid, 2002, first edition 1764), p. 19 cited by Sara Granda, ‘El Presidente del Consejo de Castilla y el Generalato de la Suprema’, Revista de la Inquisición 15 (2011), pp. 27-83, p. 30.

81 Baviera and Maura, Documentos inéditos, vol. 2, p. 1,124. The ‘duke of Moles’ was actually the duke of Parete but he was often referred to by his surname, Moles.

82 ÖstA, AVA, FA Harrach, Kt. 79, Johanna Theresia to Luis, 9 March 1700.

83 Baviera and Maura, Documentos inéditos, vol. 2, p. 1,136; Baviera, Mariana, p. 256.

84 Baviera and Maura, Documentos inéditos, vol. 2, p. 1,158.

85 Ibid. pp. 1,153 and 1,156.

86 ÖstA, AVA, FA Harrach, Kt. 79, Johanna Theresia to Luis, 9 March 1700.

87 Ibid.

88 Baviera y Maura, Documentos inéditos, vol. 2, p. 1,169.

89 Valentina Kozák, ‘Mariana de Neoburgo’, p. 67.

90 The Countess had bought the estate in 1699; Baviera, Mariana, p. 259.

91 Quirós Rosado, ‘De mercedes y beneficios’, pp. 239-40.

92 This is the Third Partition Treaty when counting the one that took place in 1668.

93 Baviera, Mariana, p. 248.

94 Ribot, ‘Los tratados de reparto’, p. 49; Julio Arroyo Vozmediano, ‘Tercer Tratado de Reparto. 3 de marzo de 1700’, in Ribot y Iñuritegui (eds), Europa y los tratados de reparto, p. 301.

95 Baviera, Mariana, p. 291.

96 Ibid, p. 294.

97 Ibid, p. 291.

98 ÖstA, AVA, FA Harrach, Kt. 79, Johanna Theresia to Luis, 1 June 1700.

99 Ibid.

100 Ibid. See also María Amparo López Arandia, ‘El confesionario regio en la España del siglo XVII’, Obradoiro 19 (2010), pp. 249-78, p. 260.

101 ÖstA, AVA, FA Harrach, Kt. 79, Johanna to Luis, 15 June 1700.

102 Ibid.

103 Baviera, Mariana, p. 294; ÖstA, AVA, FA Harrach, Kt. 79, Johanna Theresia to Luis, 13 July 1700.

104 ÖstA, AVA, FA Harrach, Kt. 79, Johanna Theresia to Luis, 30 June 1700.

105 ÖstA, AVA, FA Harrach, Kt. 79, Johanna Theresia to Luis, 13 July 1700.

106 ÖstA, AVA, FA Harrach, Kt. 79, Johanna Theresia to Luis, 13 July 1700.

107 Baviera, Mariana, p. 295.

108 Ibid., p. 296.

109 Baviera and Maura, Documentos inéditos, vol. 2, p. 1,283.

110 Ribot, El arte de gobernar, pp. 252-3.

111 Baviera and Maura, Documentos inéditos, vol. 2, pp. 295 and 297. He had a good relationship with Ubilla: ÖstA, AVA, FA Harrach, Kt. 103, Johanna Theresia to Luis.

112 ÖstA, AVA, FA Harrach, Kt. 79, Johanna Theresia to Luis, 23 August 1700.

113 Ibid.

114 Ibid.

115 Ribot, Orígenes políticos, pp. 121 and 144; Antonio Ramón Peña Izquierdo, ‘El Cardinal Portocarrero y la sucesión de España’, in José Manuel de Bernardo Ares (ed.), El Cardenal Portocarrero y su tiempo (1635–1709) (Valencia, 2013), pp. 335-43.

116 Baviera and Maura, Documentos inéditos, vol. 2, p. 1,350.

117 ÖstA, AVA, FA Harrach, Kt. 79, Johanna Theresia to Luis, 30 November 1700.

118 ÖstA, AVA, FA Harrach, Kt. 208, Leopold I to Ferdinand Bonaventura n/d 1697.

119 Baviera and Maura, Documentos inéditos, vol. 1, p. 749 and vol.2, p. 1,084; ÖstA, AVA, FA Harrach, Kt. 321, Berlepsch to Johanna Theresia n/d 1697.

120 A woman is referred in the letters as ‘La Caräffin’, meaning someone from the Carafa family, although I have been unable to identify her. The ‘Caräffin’ was well informed, giving the Countess a great deal of news; ÖstA, AVA, FA Harrach, Kt. 79, Johanna Theresia to Luis, 6 April 1700.

121 ÖStA, AVA, FA Harrach 73.6, Luis to Ferdinand Bonaventura, 1 November 1700; for Luis’s letter to his mother, see above.

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Laura Olivan-Santaliestra

Laura Oliván Santaliestra is currently Ramón y Cajal Research Fellow at the University of Granada. Her research focuses on power, image, diplomacy and culture of women at the European Courts in the seventeenth century. From 2014 to 2016 she was Intra-European (IEF) Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow and worked on the project ‘Imperial Ambassadresses between the Courts of Madrid and Vienna (1650–1700): Diplomacy, Sociability and Culture’. She is the author of numerous publications; her most recent article ‘Gender, Work and Diplomacy in Baroque Spain: The Ambassadorial Couples of the Holy Roman Empire as Arbeitspaare’ has been published in the journal Gender & History.