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480 Miguel José Deyá Bauzá

the play was written. In 1711 Madrid had just been occupied definitively
by troops of the French candidate to the Spanish throne, Philip de
Bourbon, later Philip V.
Having used these historical arguments to exalt the Emperor, the play
returns to the its moral theme, projecting Charles V’s superiority through
the order he gives to his troops to refrain from looting and other excesses,
although we do know that excesses were actually committed . The play
34
continues to highlight also the moral and military superiority of the
Spaniards on the battlefield by attributing to them the demand that they
should be allocated the most dangerous tasks on the one hand, while
renouncing plunder on the other. Whereas the first of these might well be
true, it is very unlikely that any of them abstained from plundering. This
may be simply a touch of literary license .
35
Two aspects in the description of the taking of La Goleta by the
imperial troops should be noted as they are crucial to the messages
the play is attempting to convey. In the first place, it again portrays
the Spaniards as lions, an identification that can be found in the
contemporary chronicle of Sandoval, albeit more briefly. Here, as in
many other aspects, the play follows a popular pattern in Spanish
Baroque theatre: the exaltation of the values that Spaniards attribute
to themselves, in this instance, their bravery . The second, and more
36
important aim is to present a narrative of the battle that emphasises
the importance of the emperor. It stresses that the assault was going
badly for the Christians until the Emperor took his place at the head
of the Spanish troops. Thus the turning point in the armed struggle,
the success of this part of the enterprise is clearly attributed to the
Emperor’s presence on the battlefield. The second act ends with the

34 For a selection of different accounts demonstrating how and why plundering was
authorized see M.Á. Bunes Ibarra, La conquista cit., pp. 20ff. For a vision of the defeated
(enemy) see A. Gafsi, À propos des traces et des images de Charles Quint en Tunisie in
M.J. Rubiera (ed.), Carlos V. Los moriscos y el Islam, Sociedad Estatal para la
Conmemoración de los Centenarios de Felipe II y Carlos V, Madrid, 2001, p. 271. In
fact, Paul Achard and other authors consider the looting of Tunis as a typical example
of that sort of military campaign. D. Nordman, Tempête cit., p. 253.
35 Many contemporary sources and recent research state that quite the opposite
happened, although some sources from that period or a little later point out that the
Spaniards were more interested in the booty and blame the Germans in particular for
the massacres: D. Nordman, Tempête cit., p. 253. Chronicles written by Germans who
participated in the campaign, such as that of Niklaus Guldin assert quite the opposite,
R. González Cuerva, La aportación cit., p. 43; R. González Cuerva, M.Á. Bunes Ibarra,
Túnez 1535 cit., p. 130. See also the semi-official chronicle of Perrenin in Ivi, pp. 98 and
14, which consists of seven dispatches sent by the Imperial Chancellery.
36 The author puts the following words in the Emperor’s mouth: «My lions from Spain/do
not fear impossible tasks» (p. 22). P. de Sandoval, Historia cit., vol. II, p. 571. J.A. Maravall,
Teatro y literatura en la sociedad barroca, Crítica, Madrid, 1972, p. 23 refers to «la exaltación
de los valores que se atribuye la particular comunidad de los españoles».

Mediterranea - ricerche storiche - Anno XVII - Agosto 2020
ISSN 1824-3010 (stampa) ISSN 1828-230X (online)