Philip III: Did he ruin the Spanish Empire or just speed up its decline?

Philip III: the king who hastened the Empire's decline

Philip III inherited in 1598 an empire worn out by the wars of his father, Philip II. The question is not whether he ruined it, but how much he accelerated its decline. The expulsion of the moriscos, decreed in 1609, was a perfect example: it was sold as an internal security measure, but in practice it meant losing an entire workforce in Valencia and Aragon, with a demographic and productive disaster that the king's own favourite, the Duke of Lerma, had to acknowledge in the face of the flood of memorials he received.

Lerma: corruption and the budget

The Duke of Lerma, Philip III's favourite, is the other central figure. He is accused of greed and venality, although some historians argue that he kept the budget more balanced than in the previous reign. But that "peace" was in reality a policy of concession: tranquillity was bought with favours and war was avoided, but at the cost of mortgaging the future. The problem in Flanders was not the tax rate, but the fact that taxes were always paid by the same people: the commoners, the peasant, the modest cloth maker, while the rich burghers, nobles and clergy enjoyed untouchable tax privileges.

The Netherlands: asset or liability?

Some argue that the Empire should have rid itself of the Netherlands and the Franche-Comté, selling them or giving them away. But that area was the logistical base of Baltic trade and the launching pad for operations against the war in the north. Giving them to Austria would have left the Habsburgs without their main source of funding; selling them to France would have handed Louis XIII the key to Europe's back door. The solution, according to some analyses, would have been to buy peace with the merchants of Antwerp and Amsterdam, who controlled a financial network more valuable than the gold of Potosí.

History cannot be rewritten, but if the reign of Philip III proves anything, it is that decline was not a single act, but an accumulation of decisions. With hindsight, the expulsion of the moriscos and Lerma's policy look like textbook mistakes. Even so, the Empire did not fall during his reign; it was held up by the inertia of a system that was already mortally wounded.