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One of them, formerly her ally, the Duke de Montellano, president of Castile, excited the suspicion of this mistrustful woman. She manifested towards him, from the moment of her return, a haughty coldness. She dreaded to see in a post of such eminence a man placed by his birth amongst her worst enemies. Montellano, offended at her attitude towards him, tendered his resignation.
The strife was fierce; but the resources of Madame des Ursins were equal to the emergency. The Duke de Montellano, president of the Council of Castille, counterbalanced the authority, until then unlimited, of Porto-Carrero; the auditorship of finance, which had always appertained to the prime minister, being taken from him.
It is not strange that these old-fashioned ideas should be found in Spain, where, in spite of much ignorance and superstition, the lower classes are deeply religious in the best sense of the word, and distinguished for their patriotism and intense love for their homes. Antonio de Trueba, the subject of this sketch, was born in 1821 at Montellano, a little village in Biscay.
In the council, the party of Madame des Ursins, leaning on the assent of Berwick, overcame the opposition of Montellano and the friends of the old system; and the pragmatic sanction, or constitution of Castile, became the sole law of Spain. The victory of Almanza was, in fact, the last service rendered to Philip V. by his native country.
The accord at least apparent, which the preponderance of Madame des Ursins had maintained among the members of the despacho by the intervention of the Duke de Montellano, her creature, was abruptly broken up, and the Austrian party gathered strength from the effect of that disorder and that universal dissolution.
Collection of M. Geffroy, p. 457. The Archbishop of Seville, Arias, who was of the same politics, was shortly afterwards sent back to his diocese. The Duke de Montellano replaced him in the presidency of Castile, and a Papal brief, obtained some months after his disgrace, enjoined him not to quit Seville again.
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