The viceroy still further enlarged his resources by the sequestration of the revenues belonging to such ecclesiastics as resided in Rome. By these various expedients the duke of Alva found himself in possession of sufficient funds,{77} for carrying on the war as he desired. He mustered a force of twenty-two, or, as some accounts state, twenty-five thousand men. Of these three thousand only were Spanish veterans, five thousand were Germans, and the remainder Italians, chiefly from the Abruzzi,—for the most part raw recruits, on whom little reliance was to be placed. He had besides seven hundred men-at-arms and fifteen hundred light horse. His army, therefore, though, as far as the Italians were concerned, inferior in discipline to that of his antagonist, was greatly superior in numbers.[163]

In a council of war that was called, some were of opinion that the viceroy should act on the defensive, and await the approach of the enemy in the neighborhood of the capital. But Alva looked on this as a timid course, arguing distrust in himself, and likely to infuse distrust into his followers. He determined to march at once against the enemy, and prevent his gaining a permanent foothold in the kingdom.

Pescara, on the Adriatic, was appointed as the place of rendezvous for the army, and Alva quitted the city of Naples for that place on the eleventh of April, 1557. Here he concentrated his whole strength, and received his artillery and military stores, which were brought to him by water. Having reviewed his troops, he began his march to the north. On reaching Rio Umano, he detached a strong body of troops to get possession of Giulia Nuova, a town of some importance lately seized by the enemy. Alva supposed, and it seems correctly, that the French commander had secured this as a good place of retreat in case of his failure before Civitella, since its position was such as would enable him readily to keep up his communications with the sea. The French garrison sallied out against the Spaniards, but were driven back with loss; and, as Alva's troops followed in their rear, the enemy fled in confusion through the streets of the city, and left it in the hands of the victors. In this commodious position, the viceroy for the present took up his quarters.

On the approach of the Spanish army, the duke of Guise saw the necessity of bringing his operations against Civitella to a decisive issue. He accordingly, as a last effort, prepared for a general assault. But, although it was conducted with great spirit, it was repulsed with still greater by the garrison; and the French commander, deeply mortified at his repeated failures, saw the necessity of abandoning the siege. He could not effect even this without sustaining some loss from the brave defenders of Civitella, who sallied out on his rear, as he drew off his discomfited troops to the neighboring valley of Nireto. Thus ended the siege of Civitella, which, by the confidence it gave to the loyal Neapolitans throughout the country as well as by the leisure it afforded to Alva for mustering his resources, may be said to have decided the fate of the war. The siege lasted twenty-two days, during fourteen of which the guns from the four batteries of the French had played incessantly on the beleaguered city. The viceroy was filled with admiration at the heroic conduct of the inhabitants; and, in token of respect for it, granted some important immunities, to be enjoyed for ever by the citizens of Civitella. The women, too, came in for their share of the honors, as whoever married a maiden of Civitella was to be allowed the same immunities, from whatever part of the country he might come.[164]

The two armies were now quartered within a few miles of each other. Yet no demonstration was made, on either side, of bringing matters to the issue of{78} a battle. This was foreign to Alva's policy, and was not to be expected from Guise, so inferior in strength to his antagonist. On the viceroy's quitting Giulia Nuova, however, to occupy a position somewhat nearer the French quarters, Guise did not deem it prudent to remain there any longer, but, breaking up his camp, retreated, with his whole army, across the Tronto, and, without further delay, evacuated the kingdom of Naples.

The Spanish general made no attempt to pursue, or even to molest his adversary in his retreat. For this he has been severely criticized, more particularly as the passage of a river offers many points of advantage to an assailant. But, in truth, Alva never resorted to fighting when he could gain his end without it. In an appeal to arms, however favorable may be the odds, there must always be some doubt as to the result. But the odds here were not so decisively on the side of the Spaniards as they appeared. The duke of Guise carried off his battalions in admirable order, protecting his rear with the flower of his infantry and with his cavalry, in which last he was much superior to his enemy. Thus the parts of the hostile armies likely to have been brought into immediate conflict would have afforded no certain assurance of success to the Spaniards. Alva's object had been, not so much to defeat the French as to defend Naples. This he had now achieved, with but little loss; and rather than incur the risk of greater, he was willing, in the words of an old proverb, to make a bridge of silver for the flying foe.[165] In the words of Alva himself, "he had no idea of staking the kingdom of Naples against the embroidered coat of the duke of Guise."[166]

On the retreat of the French, Alva laid siege at once to two or three places, of no great note, in the capture of which he and his lieutenants were guilty of the most deliberate cruelty; though, in the judgment of the chronicler, it was not cruelty, but a wholesome severity, designed as a warning to such petty places not to defy the royal authority.[167] Soon after this, Alva himself crossed the Tronto, and took up a position not far removed from the French, who lay in the neighborhood of Ascoli. Although the two armies were but a few miles asunder, there was no attempt at hostilities, with the exception of a skirmish in which but a small number on either side were engaged, and which terminated in favor of the Spaniards. This state of things was at length ended by a summons from the pope to the French commander to draw nearer to Rome, as he needed his presence for the protection of the capital. The duke, glad, no doubt, of so honorable an apology for his retreat, and satisfied with having so long held his ground against a force superior to his own, fell back, in good order, upon Tivoli, which, as it commanded the great avenues to Rome on the east, and afforded good accommodations for his troops, he made his head quarters for the present. The manner in which the duke of Alva adhered to the plan of defensive operations settled at the beginning of the campaign, and that, too, under circumstances which would have tempted most men to depart from such a plan, is a remarkable proof of his perseverance and inflexible spirit. It proves, moreover, the empire which he held over the minds of his followers, that, under such circumstances, he could maintain implicit obedience to his orders.

The cause of the pope's alarm was the rapid successes of Alva's confederate,{79} Mark Antony Colonna, who had defeated the papal levies, and taken one place after another in the Campagna, till the Romans began to tremble for their capital. Colonna was now occupied with the siege of Segni, a place of considerable importance; and the duke of Alva, relieved of the presence of the French, resolved to march to his support. He accordingly recrossed the Tronto, and, passing through the Neapolitan territory, halted for some days at Sora. He then traversed the frontier, but had not penetrated far into the Campagna when he received tidings of the fall of Segni. That strong place, after a gallant defence, had been taken by storm. All the usual atrocities were perpetrated by the brutal soldiery. Even the sanctity of the convents did not save them from pollution. It was in vain that Colonna interfered to prevent these excesses. The voice of authority was little heeded in the tempest of passion.—It mattered little, in that age, into whose hands a captured city fell; Germans, French, Italians, it was all the same. The wretched town, so lately flourishing, it might be, in all the pride of luxury and wealth, was claimed as the fair spoil of the victors. It was their prize-money, which served in default of payment of their long arrears,—usually long in those days; and it was a mode of payment as convenient for the general as for his soldiers.[168]

The fall of Segni caused the greatest consternation in the capital. The next thing, it was said, would be to assault the capital itself. Paul the Fourth, incapable of fear, was filled with impotent fury. "They have taken Segni," he said in a conclave of the cardinals; "they have murdered the people, destroyed their property, fired their dwellings. Worse than this, they will next pillage Palliano. Even this will not fill up the measure of their cruelty. They will sack the city of Rome itself; nor will they respect even my person. But, for myself, I long to be with Christ, and await without fear the crown of martyrdom."[169] Paul the Fourth, after having brought this tempest upon Italy, began to consider himself a martyr!

Yet even in this extremity, though urged on all sides to make concessions, he would abate nothing of his haughty tone. He insisted, as a sine qua non, that Alva should forthwith leave the Roman territory and restore his conquests. When these conditions were reported to the duke, he coolly remarked, that "his holiness seemed to be under the mistake of supposing that his own army was before Naples, instead of the Spanish army being at the gates of Rome."[170]

After the surrender of Segni, Alva effected a junction with the Italian forces, and marched to the town of Colona, in the Campagna, where for the present he quartered his army. Here he formed the plan of an enterprise, the adventurous character of which it seems difficult to reconcile with his habitual caution. This was a night assault on Rome. He did not communicate his whole purpose to his officers, but simply ordered them to prepare to march on the following night, the twenty-sixth of August, against a neighboring city, the name of which he did not disclose. It was a wealthy place, he said, but he was most anxious that no violence should be offered to the inhabitants, in either their persons or property. The soldiers should be forbidden{80} even to enter the dwellings; but he promised that the loss of booty should be compensated by increase of pay. The men were to go lightly armed, without baggage, and with their shirts over their mail, affording the best means of recognizing one another in the dark.

The night was obscure, but unfortunately a driving storm of rain set in, which did such damage to the roads as greatly to impede the march, and the dawn was nigh at hand when the troops reached the place of destination. To their great surprise, they then understood that the object of attack was Rome itself.

Alva halted at a short distance from the city, in a meadow, and sent forward a small party to reconnoitre the capital, which seemed to slumber in quiet. But, on a nearer approach, the Spaniards saw a great light, as if occasioned by a multitude of torches, that seemed glancing to and fro within the walls, inferring some great stir among the inhabitants of that quarter. Soon after this, a few horsemen were seen to issue from one of the gates, and ride off in the direction of the French camp at Tivoli. The duke, on receiving the report, was satisfied that the Romans had, in some way or other, got notice of his design; that the horsemen had gone to give the alarm to the French in Tivoli; and that he should soon find himself between two enemies. Not relishing this critical position, he at once abandoned his design, and made a rapid countermarch on the place he had left the preceding evening.

In his conjectures the duke was partly in the right and partly in the wrong. The lights which were seen glancing within the town were owing to the watchfulness of Caraffa, who, from some apprehensions of an attack, in consequence of information he had received of preparations in the Spanish camp, was patrolling this quarter before daybreak to see that all was safe; but the horsemen who left the gates at that early hour in the direction of the French camp were far from thinking that hostile battalions lay within gunshot of their walls.[171]

Such is the account we have of this strange affair. Some historians assert that it was not the duke's design to attack Rome, but only to make a feint, and, by the panic which he would create, to afford the pope a good pretext for terminating the war. In support of this, it is said that he told his son Ferdinand, just before his departure, that he feared it would be impossible to prevent the troops from sacking the city, if they once set foot in it.[172] Other accounts state that it was no feint, but a surprise meditated in good earnest, and defeated only by the apparition of the lights and the seeming state of preparation in which the place was found. Indeed, one writer asserts that he saw the scaling-ladders, brought by a corps of two hundred arquebusiers, who were appointed to the service of mounting the walls.[173]

The Venetian minister, Navagero, assures us that Alva's avowed purpose was to secure the person of his holiness, which, he thought, must bring the war at once to a close. The duke's uncle, the cardinal of Sangiacomo, had warned his nephew, according to the same authority, not to incur the fate of their countrymen who had served under the Constable de Bourbon, at the sack of Rome, all of whom, sooner or later, had come to a miserable end.[174]

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This warning may have made some impression on the mind of Alva, who, however inflexible by nature, had conscientious scruples of his own, and was, no doubt, accessible, as others of his time, to arguments founded on superstition.

We cannot but admit that the whole affair,—the preparations for the assault, the counsel to the officers, and the sudden retreat on suspicion of a discovery,—all look very much like earnest. It is quite possible that the duke, as the Venetian asserts, may have intended nothing beyond the seizure of the pope. But that the matter would have stopped there, no one will believe. Once fairly within the walls, even the authority of Alva would have been impotent to restrain the licence of the soldiery; and the same scenes might have been acted over again as at the taking of Rome under the Constable de Bourbon, or on the capture of the ancient capital by the Goths.

When the Romans, on the following morning, learned the peril they had been in during the night, and that the enemy had been prowling round, like wolves about a sheepfold, ready to rush in upon their sleeping victims, the whole city was seized with a panic. All the horrors of the sack by the Constable de Bourbon rose up to their imaginations,—or rather memories, for many there were who were old enough to remember that terrible day. They loudly clamored for peace before it was too late; and they pressed the demand in a manner which showed that the mood of the people was a dangerous one. Strozzi, the most distinguished of the Italian captains, plainly told the pope that he had no choice but to come to terms with the enemy at once.[175]

Paul was made more sensible of this by finding now, in his greatest need, the very arm withdrawn from him on which he most leaned for support. Tidings had reached the French camp of the decisive victory gained by the Spaniards at St. Quentin, and they were followed by a summons from the king to the duke of Guise, to return with his army, as speedily as possible, for the protection of Paris. The duke, who was probably not unwilling to close a campaign which had been so barren of laurels to the French, declared that "no chains were strong enough to keep him in Italy." He at once repaired to the Vatican, and there laid before his holiness the commands of his master. The case was so pressing, that Paul could not in reason oppose the duke's departure. But he seldom took counsel of reason, and in a burst of passion exclaimed to Guise, "Go, then; and take with you the consciousness of having done little for your king, still less for the Church, and nothing for your own honor."[176]

Negotiations were now opened for an accommodation between the belligerents, at the town of Cavi. Cardinal Caraffa appeared in behalf of his uncle, the pope, and the duke of Alva for the Spaniards. Through the mediation of Venice, the terms of the treaty were finally settled, on the fourteenth of September, although the inflexible pontiff still insisted on concessions nearly as extravagant as those he had demanded before. It was stipulated in a preliminary article, that the duke of Alva should publicly ask pardon, and receive absolution, for having borne arms against the holy see. "Sooner than surrender this point," said Paul, "I would see the whole world perish; and this, not so much for my own sake as for the honor of Jesus Christ."[177]

It was provided by the treaty, that the Spanish troops should be immediately{82} withdrawn from the territory of the Church, that all the places taken from the Church should be at once restored, and that the French army should be allowed a free passage to their own country. Philip did not take so good care of his allies as Paul did of his. Colonna, who had done the cause such good service, was not even reinstated in the possessions of which the pope had deprived him. But a secret article provided that his claims should be determined hereafter by the joint arbitration of the pontiff and the king of Spain.[178]

The treaty was, in truth, one which, as Alva bitterly remarked, "seemed to have been dictated by the vanquished rather than by the victor." It came hard to the duke to execute it, especially the clause relating to himself. "Were I the king," said he haughtily, "his holiness should send one of his nephews to Brussels, to sue for my pardon, instead of my general's suing for his."[179] But Alva had no power to consult his own will in the matter. The orders from Philip were peremptory, to come to some terms, if possible, with the pope. Philip had long since made up his own mind, that neither profit nor honor was to be derived from a war with the Church,—a war not only repugnant to his own feelings, but which placed him in a false position, and one most prejudicial to his political interests.

The news of peace filled the Romans with a joy great in proportion to their former consternation. Nor was this joy much diminished by a calamity which at any other time would have thrown the city into mourning. The Tiber, swollen by the autumnal rains, rose above its banks, sweeping away houses and trees in its fury, drowning men and cattle, and breaking down a large piece of the wall that surrounded the city. It was well that this accident had not occurred a few days earlier, when the enemy was at the gates.[180]

On the twenty-seventh of September, 1557, the duke of Alva made his public entrance into Rome. He was escorted by the papal guard, dressed in its gay uniform. It was joined by the other troops in the city, who, on this holiday service, did as well as better soldiers. On entering the gates, the concourse was swelled by thousands of citizens, who made the air ring with their acclamations, as they saluted the Spanish general with the titles of Defender and Liberator of the capital. The epithets might be thought an indifferent compliment to their own government. In this state the procession moved along, like the triumph of a conqueror returned from his victorious campaigns to receive the wreath of laurel in the capitol.

On reaching the Vatican, the Spanish commander fell on his knees before the pope, and asked his pardon for the offence of bearing arms against the Church. Paul, soothed by this show of concession, readily granted absolution. He paid the duke the distinguished honor of giving him a seat at his own table; while he complimented the duchess by sending her the consecrated golden rose, reserved only for royal persons and illustrious champions of the Church.[181]{83}

Yet the haughty spirit of Alva saw in all this more of humiliation than of triumph. His conscience, like that of his master, was greatly relieved by being discharged from the responsibilities of such a war. But he had also a military conscience, which seemed to be quite as much scandalized by the conditions of the peace. He longed to be once more at Naples, where the state of things imperatively required his presence. When he returned there, he found abundant occupation in reforming the abuses which had grown out of the late confusion, and especially in restoring, as far as possible, the shattered condition of the finances,—a task hardly less difficult than that of driving out the French from Naples.[182]

Thus ended the war with Paul the Fourth,—a war into which that pontiff had plunged without preparation, which he had conducted without judgment, and terminated without honor. Indeed, it brought little honor to any of the parties concerned in it, but, on the other hand, a full measure of those calamities which always follow in the train of war.

The French met with the same fate which uniformly befell them, when, lured by the phantom of military glory, they crossed the Alps to lay waste the garden of Italy,—in the words of their own proverb, "the grave of the French." The duke of Guise, after a vexatious campaign, in which it was his greatest glory that he had sustained no actual defeat, thought himself fortunate in being allowed a free passage, with the shattered remnant of his troops, back to his own country. Naples, besides the injuries she had sustained on her borders, was burdened with a debt which continued to press heavily for generations to come. Nor were her troubles ended by the peace. In the spring of the following year, 1558, a Turkish squadron appeared off Calabria; and, running down the coast, the Moslems made a landing on several points, sacked some of the principal towns, butchered the inhabitants, or swept them off into hopeless slavery.[183] Such were some of the blessed fruits of the alliance between the grand seignior and the head of the Catholic Church. Solyman had come into the league at the invitation of the Christian princes. But it was not found so easy to lay the spirit of mischief as it had been to raise it.

The weight of the war, however, fell, as was just, most heavily on the author of it. Paul, from his palace of the Vatican, could trace the march of the enemy by the smoking ruins of the Campagna. He saw his towns sacked, his troops scattered, his very capital menaced, his subjects driven by ruinous taxes to the verge of rebellion. Even peace, when it did come, secured to him none of the objects for which he had contended, while he had the humiliating consciousness that he owed this peace, not to his own arms, but to the forbearance—or the superstition of his enemies. One lesson he might have learned,—that the thunders of the Vatican could no longer strike terror into the hearts of princes, as in the days of the Crusades.

In this war Paul had called in the French to aid him in driving out the Spaniards. The French, he said, might easily be dislodged hereafter; "but the Spaniards were like dog-grass, which is sure to strike root wherever it is cast."—This was the last great effort that was made to overturn the Spanish{84} power in Naples; and the sceptre of that kingdom continued to be transmitted in the dynasty of Castile, with as little opposition as that of any other portion of its broad empire.

Being thus relieved of his military labors, Paul set about those great reforms, the expectation of which had been the chief inducement to his election. But first he gave a singular proof of self-command, in the reforms which he introduced into his own family. Previously to his election, no one, as we have seen, had declaimed more loudly than Paul against nepotism,—the besetting sin of his predecessors, who, most of them old men and without children, naturally sought a substitute for these in their nephews and those nearest of kin. Paul's partiality for his nephews was made the more conspicuous by the profligacy of their characters. Yet the real bond which held the parties together was hatred of the Spaniards. When peace came, and this bond of union was dissolved, Paul readily opened his ears to the accusations against his kinsmen. Convinced at length of their unworthiness, and of the flagrant manner in which they had abused his confidence, he deprived the Caraffas of all their offices, and banished them to the farthest part of his dominions. By the sterner sentence of his successor, two of the brothers, the duke and the cardinal, perished by the hand of the public executioner.[184]

After giving this proof of mastery over his own feelings, Paul addressed himself to those reforms which had engaged his attention in early life. He tried to enforce a stricter discipline and greater regard for morals, both in the religious orders and the secular clergy. Above all, he directed his efforts against the Protestant heresy, which had begun to show itself in the head of Christendom, as it had long since done in the extremities. The course he adopted was perfectly characteristic. Scorning the milder methods of argument and persuasion, he resorted wholly to persecution. The Inquisition, he declared, was the true battery with which to assail the defences of the heretic. He suited the action so well to the word, that in a short time the prisons of the Holy Office were filled with the accused. In the general distrust no one felt himself safe; and a panic was created, scarcely less than that felt by the inhabitants when the Spaniards were at their gates.

Happily, their fears were dispelled by the death of Paul, which took place suddenly, from a fever, on the eighteenth of August, 1559, in the eighty-third year of his age, and fifth of his pontificate. Before the breath was out of his body, the populace rose en masse, broke open the prisons of the Inquisition, and liberated all who were confined there. They next attacked the house of the grand-inquisitor, which they burned to the ground; and that functionary narrowly escaped with his life. They tore down the scutcheons, bearing the arms of the family of Caraffa, which were affixed to the public edifices. They wasted their rage on the senseless statue of the pope, which they overturned, and, breaking off the head, rolled it, amidst the groans and execrations of the by-standers, into the Tiber. Such was the fate of the reformer, who, in his reforms, showed no touch of humanity, no sympathy with the sufferings of his species.[185]

Yet, with all its defects, there is something in the character of Paul the Fourth that may challenge our admiration. His project—renewing that of Julius the Second—of driving out the barbarians from Italy, was nobly conceived, though impracticable. "Whatever others may feel, I at least will have some care for my country," he once said to the Venetian ambassador.

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"If my voice is unheeded, it will at least be a consolation to me to reflect, that it has been raised in such a cause; and that it will one day be said that an old Italian, on the verge of the grave, who might be thought to have nothing better to do than to give himself up to repose, and weep over his sins, had his soul filled with this lofty design."[186]

CHAPTER VII.

He despatched his confidential minister, Ruy Gomez, to Spain, for supplies both of men and money; instructing him to visit his father, Charles the Fifth, and, after acquainting him with the state of affairs, to solicit his aid in raising the necessary funds.[187]

Philip had it much at heart to bring England into the war. During his stay in the Low Countries, he was in constant communication with the English cabinet, and took a lively interest in the government of the kingdom. The minutes of the privy council were regularly sent to him, and as regularly returned with his remarks, in his own handwriting, on the margin. In this way he discussed and freely criticized every measure of importance; and, on one occasion, we find him requiring that nothing of moment should be brought before parliament until it had first been submitted to him.[188]

In March, 1557, Philip paid a second visit to England, where he was received by his fond queen in the most tender and affectionate manner. In her letters she had constantly importuned him to return to her. On that barren eminence which placed her above the reach of friendship, Mary was dependent{86} on her husband for sympathy and support. But if the channel of her affections was narrow, it was deep.

Philip found no difficulty in obtaining the queen's consent to his wishes with respect to the war with France. She was induced to this, not merely by her habitual deference to her husband, but by natural feelings of resentment at the policy of Henry the Second. She had put up with affronts, more than once, from the French ambassador, in her own court; and her throne had been menaced by repeated conspiracies, which, if not organized, had been secretly encouraged by France. Still, it was not easy to bring the English nation to this way of thinking. It had been a particular proviso of the marriage treaty, that England should not be made a party to the war against France; and subsequent events had tended to sharpen the feeling of jealousy rather towards the Spaniards than towards the French.

The attempted insurrection of Stafford, who crossed over from the shores of France at this time, did for Philip what possibly neither his own arguments nor the authority of Mary could have done. It was the last of the long series of indignities which had been heaped on the country from the same quarter; and parliament now admitted that it was no longer consistent with its honor to keep terms with a power which persisted in fomenting conspiracies to overturn the government and plunge the nation into civil war. On the seventh of June, a herald was despatched, with the formality of ancient and somewhat obsolete usages, to proclaim war against the French king in the presence of his court and in his capital. This was done in such a bold tone of defiance, that the hot old constable, Montmorency, whose mode of proceeding, as we have seen, was apt to be summary, strongly urged his master to hang up the envoy on the spot.[189]

The state of affairs imperatively demanded Philip's presence in the Netherlands, and, after a residence of less than four months in London, he bade a final adieu to his disconsolate queen, whose excessive fondness may have been as little to his taste as the coldness of her subjects.

Nothing could be more forlorn than the condition of Mary. Her health wasting under a disease that cheated her with illusory hopes, which made her ridiculous in the eyes of the world; her throne, her very life, continually menaced by conspiracies, to some of which even her own sister was supposed to be privy; her spirits affected by the consciousness of the decline of her popularity under the gloomy system of persecution into which she had been led by her ghostly advisers; without friends, without children, almost it might be said without a husband,—she was alone in the world, more to be commiserated than the meanest subject in her dominions. She has had little commiseration, however, from Protestant writers, who paint her in the odious colors of a fanatic. This has been compensated, it may be thought, by the Roman Catholic historians, who have invested the English queen with all the glories of the saint and the martyr. Experience may convince us that public acts do not always furnish a safe criterion of private character,—especially when these acts are connected with religion. In the Catholic Church the individual might seem to be relieved, in some measure, of his moral responsibility, by the system of discipline which intrusts his conscience to the keeping of his spiritual advisers. If the lights of the present day allow no man to plead so humiliating an apology, this was not the case in the first half of the sixteenth century,—the age of Mary,—when the Reformation had not yet diffused that spirit of independence in religious speculation, which, in some{87} degree at least, has now found its way to the darkest corner of Christendom.

A larger examination of contemporary documents, especially of the queen's own correspondence, justifies the inference, that, with all the infirmities of a temper soured by disease, and by the difficulties of her position, she possessed many of the good qualities of her illustrious progenitors, Katharine of Aragon and Isabella of Castile; the same conjugal tenderness and devotion, the same courage in times of danger, the same earnest desire, misguided as she was, to do her duty,—and, unfortunately, the same bigotry. It was, indeed, most unfortunate, in Mary's case, as in that of the Catholic queen, that this bigotry, from their position as independent sovereigns, should have been attended with such fatal consequences as have left an indelible blot on the history of their reigns.[190]

On his return to Brussels, Philip busied himself with preparations for the campaign. He employed the remittances from Spain to subsidize a large body of German mercenaries. Germany was the country which furnished, at this time, more soldiers of fortune than any other; men who served indifferently under the banner that would pay them best. They were not exclusively made up of infantry, like the Swiss, but, besides pikemen,—lanzknechts,—they maintained a stout array of cavalry, reiters, as they were called,—"riders,"—who, together with the cuirass and other defensive armor, carried pistols, probably of rude workmanship, but which made them formidable from the weapon being little known in that day. They were, indeed, the most dreaded troops of their time. The men-at-arms, encumbered with their unwieldy lances, were drawn up in line, and required an open plain to manœuvre to advantage, being easily discomposed by obstacles; and once broken, they could hardly rally. But the reiters, each with five or six pistols in his belt, were formed into columns of considerable depth, the size of their weapons allowing them to go through all the evolutions of light cavalry, in which they were perfectly drilled. Philip's cavalry was further strengthened by a fine corps of Burgundian lances, and by a great number of nobles and cavaliers from Spain, who had come to gather laurels in the fields of France, under the eye of their young sovereign. The flower of his infantry, too, was drawn from Spain; men who, independently of the indifference to danger, and wonderful endurance, which made the Spanish soldier inferior to none of the time, were animated by that loyalty to the cause which foreign mercenaries could not feel. In addition to these, the king expected, and soon after received, a reinforcement of eight thousand English under the earl of Pembroke. They might well fight bravely on the soil where the arms of England had won two of the most memorable victories in her history.

The whole force, exclusive of the English, amounted to thirty-five thousand foot and twelve thousand horse, besides a good train of battering artillery.[191] The command of this army was given to Emanuel Philibert, prince of Piedmont,{88} better known by his title of duke of Savoy. No man had a larger stake in the contest, for he had been stripped of his dominions by the French, and his recovery of them depended on the issue of the war. He was at this time but twenty-nine years of age; but he had had large experience in military affairs, and had been intrusted by Charles the Fifth, who had early discerned his capacity, with important commands. His whole life may be said to have trained him for the profession of arms. He had no taste for effeminate pleasures, but amused himself, in seasons of leisure, with the hardy exercise of the chase. He strengthened his constitution, naturally not very robust, by living as much as possible in the open air. Even when conversing, or dictating to his secretaries, he preferred to do so walking in his garden. He was indifferent to fatigue. After hunting all day he would seem to require no rest, and in a campaign had been known, like the knights-errant of old, to eat, drink, and sleep in his armor for thirty days together.

He was temperate in his habits, eating little, and drinking water. He was punctual in attention to business, was sparing of his words, and, as one may gather from the piquant style of his letters, had a keen insight into character, looking below the surface of men's actions into their motives.[192]

His education had not been neglected. He spoke several languages fluently, and, though not a great reader, was fond of histories. He was much devoted to mathematical science, which served him in his profession, and he was reputed an excellent engineer.[193] In person the duke was of the middle size; well-made, except that he was somewhat bow-legged. His complexion was fair, his hair light, and his deportment very agreeable.

Such is the portrait of Emanuel Philibert, to whom Philip now intrusted the command of his forces, and whose pretensions he warmly supported as the suitor of Elizabeth of England. There was none more worthy of the royal maiden. But the duke was a Catholic; and Elizabeth, moreover, had seen the odium which her sister had incurred by her marriage with a foreign sovereign. Philip, who would have used some constraint in the matter, pressed it with such earnestness on the queen as proved how much importance he attached to the connection. Mary's conduct on the occasion was greatly to her credit; and, while she deprecated the displeasure of her lord, she honestly told him that she could not in conscience do violence to the inclinations of her sister.[194]

The plan of the campaign, as determined by Philip's cabinet,[195] was that the duke should immediately besiege some one of the great towns on the northern borders of Picardy, which in a manner commanded the entrance into the Netherlands. Rocroy was the first selected. But the garrison, who were well provided with ammunition, kept within their defences, and maintained so lively a cannonade on the Spaniards, that the duke, finding the siege was likely to consume more time than it was worth, broke up his camp, and resolved to march against St. Quentin. This was an old frontier town of Picardy, important in time of peace as an entrepôt for the trade that was carried on between France and the Low Countries. It formed a convenient place of deposit, at the present period, for such booty as marauding parties from time to time brought back from Flanders. It was well protected by its{89} natural situation, and the fortifications had been originally strong; but, as in many of the frontier towns, they had been of late years much neglected.

Before beginning operations against St. Quentin, the duke of Savoy, in order to throw the enemy off his guard, and prevent his introducing supplies into the town, presented himself before Guise, and made a show of laying siege to that place. After this demonstration he resumed his march, and suddenly sat down before St. Quentin, investing it with his whole army.

Meanwhile the French had been anxiously watching the movements of their adversary. Their forces were assembled on several points in Picardy and Champagne. The principal corps was under the command of the duke of Nevers, governor of the latter province, a nobleman of distinguished gallantry, and who had seen some active service. He now joined his forces to those under Montmorency, the constable of France, who occupied a central position in Picardy, and who now took the command, for which his rash and impetuous temper but indifferently qualified him. As soon as the object of the Spaniards was known, it was resolved to reinforce the garrison of St. Quentin, which otherwise, it was understood, could not hold out a week. This perilous duty was assumed by Gaspard de Coligni, admiral of France.[196] This personage, the head of an ancient and honored house, was one of the most remarkable men of his time. His name had gained a mournful celebrity in the page of history, as that of the chief martyr in the massacre of St. Bartholomew. He embraced the doctrines of Calvin, and by his austere manners and the purity of his life well illustrated the doctrines he embraced. The decent order of his household, and their scrupulous attention to the services of religion, formed a striking contrast to the licentious conduct of too many of the Catholics, who, however, were as prompt as Coligni to do battle in defence of their faith. In early life he was the gay companion of the duke of Guise.[197] But as the Calvinists, or Huguenots, were driven by persecution to an independent and even hostile position, the two friends, widely separated by opinion and by interest, were changed into mortal foes. That hour had not yet come. But the heresy that was soon to shake France to its centre was silently working under ground.

As the admiral was well instructed in military affairs, and was possessed of an intrepid spirit and great fertility of resource, he was precisely the person to undertake the difficult office of defending St. Quentin. As governor of Picardy he felt this to be his duty. Without loss of time, he put himself at the head of some ten or twelve hundred men, horse and foot, and used such despatch that he succeeded in entering the place before it had been entirely invested. He had the mortification, however, to be followed only by seven hundred of his men, the remainder having failed through fatigue, or mistaken the path.

The admiral found the place in even worse condition than he had expected. The fortifications were much dilapidated; and in many parts of the wall the masonry was of so flimsy a character, that it must have fallen before the first{90} discharge of the enemy's cannon. The town was victualled for three weeks, and the magazines were tolerably well supplied with ammunition. But there were not fifty arquebuses fit for use.

St. Quentin stands on a gentle eminence, protected on one side by marshes, or rather a morass of great extent, through which flows the river Somme, or a branch of it. On the same side of the river with St. Quentin lay the army of the besiegers, with their glittering lines extending to the very verge of the morass. A broad ditch defended the outer wall. But this ditch was commanded by the houses of the suburbs, which had already been taken possession of by the besiegers. There was, moreover, a thick plantation of trees close to the town, which would afford an effectual screen for the approach of an enemy.

One of the admiral's first acts was to cause a sortie to be made. The ditch was crossed, and some of the houses were burned to the ground. The trees on the banks were then levelled, and the approach to the town was laid open. Every preparation was made for a protracted defence. The exact quantity of provision was ascertained, and the rations were assigned for each man's daily consumption. As the supplies were inadequate to support the increased population for any length of time, Coligni ordered that all except those actively engaged in the defence of the place should leave it without delay. Many, under one pretext or another, contrived to remain, and share the fortunes of the garrison. But by this regulation he got rid of seven hundred useless persons, who, if they had staid, must have been the victims of famine; and "their dead bodies," the admiral coolly remarked, "would have bred a pestilence among the soldiers."[198]

He assigned to his men their several posts, talked boldly of maintaining himself against all the troops of Spain, and by his cheerful tone endeavored to inspire a confidence in others which he was far from feeling himself. From one of the highest towers he surveyed the surrounding country, tried to ascertain the most practicable fords in the morass, and sent intelligence to Montmorency, that, without relief, the garrison could not hold out more than a few days.[199]

That commander, soon after the admiral's departure, had marched his army to the neighborhood of St. Quentin, and established it in the towns of La Fère and Ham, together with the adjoining villages, so as to watch the movements of the Spaniards, and coöperate, as occasion served, with the besieged. He at once determined to strengthen the garrison, if possible, by a reinforcement of two thousand men under Dandelot, a younger brother of the admiral, and not inferior to him in audacity and enterprise. But the expedition miserably failed. Through the treachery or the ignorance of the guide, the party mistook the path, came on one of the enemy's outposts, and, disconcerted by the accident, were thrown into confusion, and many of them cut to pieces or drowned in the morass. Their leader, with the remainder, succeeded, under cover of the night, in making his way back to La Fère.