Henry Kamen, in his Philip the Great, attempts gamely to resurrect Philip's reputation after several hundred years of Anglo-American scholars painting him as a dour, paranoid fanatic. In some ways, he succeeds - Philip's early reading of chivalric romances and love of medieval jousting tournaments, and his absolute love of his daughters and at least one of his wives are all very good and humanizing.

In less personal areas, the ground is harder going, however. The Netherlands conflict in particular, where Kamen informs us that Philip's persistent insistance in waging war instead of granting basic religious liberties was NOT based in Philip's religious fanaticism, but rather in the fact that he thought that freedom of religion led to freedom of thought, which might cause people to question his absolute authority. So, he wasn't a fanatic, he just really and honestly didn't want people to be free - which isssss.... better, I guess?

Overall, I think it's hard not to consider Philip a monumental failure as a ruler. He inherited a Spain that, in spite of American silver, was Always out of money. He faced this with industry, forming councils and actually listening to them, zipping from cortes to cortes wrangling money from each independent little fiefdom. And if it stopped there, we would all say hear hear well done Philip, but it's what he DID with that money... incessantly waging war with the Netherlands instead of Going There Himself like he continually promised and never did and granting basic freedom of thought, which he ended up having to do anyway. Authorizing the attempted assassination of Elizabeth (which failed) and William the Silent (which didn't). Throwing his full support behind the Spanish Inquisition - attending autos da fe whenever one was passing through town. Some say that his addition of Portugal to his empire was a mighty success, except for the fact that, at the time, the Habsburgs were so omnipresent that the move put the entire continent on their guard against him, and was also used by Drake as propaganda fodder for his raids against the Spanish coast. The monumental lapse of judgement of the Spanish Armada - even if it hadn't been destroyed by Drake and storm, the chances of the land army doing anything near what Philip thought it might do were astoundingly slim. So, bankruptcy in the service of oppression, international suspicion, total loss of military prestige, religious and intellectual tyranny at home (even as he abstractly granted the principle of these freedoms to people so long as they didn't live in his own kingdom), and as against that we have that he liked parties more than we usually think he did. Oh, and he was pretty okay against the Turks.

- Dolby von Luckner

This video from Muppet Treasure Island expounds on pirates in general and, in one verse, Sir Francis Drake in particular.

--Geoff