Philip III of Spain - Foreign Policy

Foreign Policy

On his accession, Philip inherited two major conflicts from his father. The first of these, the ongoing and long-running Dutch revolt, represented a serious challenge to Spanish power from the Protestant United Provinces in a crucial part of the Spanish Empire. The second, the Anglo–Spanish War was a newer, and less critical conflict with Protestant England, marked by a Spanish failure to successfully bring its huge military resources to bear on the smaller English military.

Philip's own foreign policy can be divided into three phases. For the first nine years of his reign, he pursued a highly aggressive set of policies, aiming to deliver a 'great victory'. His instructions to Lerma to wage a war of 'blood and iron' on his rebellious subjects in the Netherlands reflects this. After 1609, when it became evident that Spain was financially exhausted and Philip sought a truce with the Dutch, there followed a period of retrenchment; in the background, tensions continued to grow, however, and by 1618 the policies of Philip's 'proconsols' – men like Spinola, Fuentes, Villafranca, Osuna and Bedmar – were increasingly at odds with de Lerma's policy from Madrid. The final period, in which Philip intervened in the Holy Roman Empire to secure the election of Ferdinand II as Emperor and in which preparations were made for renewed conflict with the Dutch, largely occurred after the fall of de Lerma and the rise of a new, more aggressive set of advisors in the Madrid court.