William Hickling Prescott

“ Charles, who understood the character of Zuñiga, wrote to his son to honor and to cherish him. "If he deals plainly with you," he said, "it is for the love he bears you. If he were to flatter you, and be only solicitous of ministering to your wishes, he would be like all the rest of the world, and you would have no one near to tell you the truth;—and a worse thing cannot happen to any man, old or young; but most of all to the young, from their want of experience to discern truth from error." ”

“ On the morning of the eighth, at early dawn, the sentinels on the ramparts of Mazarquivir descried the fleet like a dark speck on the distant waters. As it drew nearer, and the rising sun, glancing on the flag of Castile, showed that the long-promised succor was at hand, the exhausted garrison, almost on the brink of despair, gave themselves up to a delirium of joy. They embraced one another, like men rescued from a terrible fate, and, with swelling hearts, offered up thanksgivings to the Almighty for their deliverance. ”

“ Thus, in the morning of life, at little more than twenty-three years of age, perished Carlos, prince of Asturias. No one of his time came into the world under so brilliant auspices; for he was heir to the noblest empire in Christendom; and the Spaniards, as they discerned in his childhood some of the germs of future greatness in his character, looked confidently forward to the day when he should rival the glory of his grandfather, Charles the Fifth. But he was born under an evil star, which counteracted all the gifts of fortune, and turned them into a curse. ”

“ The sounds of war died away before they reached the foot of the Pyrenees. Spain, it is true, sent forth her sons, from time to time, to serve under the banners of Charles; and it was in that school that was perfected the admirable system of discipline and tactics which, begun by the Great Captain, made the Spanish infantry the most redoubtable in Europe. But the great body of the people felt little interest in the success of these distant enterprises, where success brought them no good. Not that the mind of Spain was inactive, or oppressed with the lethargy which stole over it in a later age. ”

“ Whatever doubts had been entertained were dispelled by these last despatches, which came like a hurricane, sweeping away the mists that had so long blinded the eyes of men, and laying open the policy of the crown, clear as day, to the dullest apprehension. The people passed to the extremity of despair. The Spanish Inquisition, with its train of horrors, seemed to be already in the midst of them. They called to mind all the tales of woe they had heard of it. They recounted the atrocities perpetrated by the Spaniards in the New World, which, however erroneously, they charged on the Holy Office. ”

“ But the amount of suffering from such a persecution is not to be estimated merely by the number of those who have actually suffered death, when the fear of death hung like a naked sword over every man's head. Alva had expressed to Philip the wish that every man, as he lay down at night, or as he rose in the morning, "might feel that his house, at any hour, might fall and crush him!" ”

“ Since your majesty holds the sword which God has given to you, with the divine power over our lives, let it be drawn from the scabbard, and plunged in the blood of the heretics, if you do not wish that the blood of Jesus Christ, shed by these barbarians, and the blood of the innocent Catholics whom they have oppressed, should cry aloud to Heaven for vengeance on the sacred head of your majesty!... The holy king David showed no pity for the enemies of God. He slew them, sparing neither man nor woman. ”

“ Charles recommended Granvelle to his son as every way deserving of his confidence. Granvelle knew that the best recommendation—the only effectual one—must come from himself. He studied carefully the character of his new sovereign, and showed a wonderful flexibility in conforming to his humors. The ambitious minister proved himself no stranger to those arts by which great minds, as well as little ones, sometimes condescend to push their fortunes in a court.
Yet, in truth, Granvelle did not always do violence to his own inclinations in conforming to those of Philip. ”

“ Never was there a persecution which did its work more thoroughly. The blood of the martyr is commonly said to be the seed of the church. But the storm of persecution fell as heavily on the Spanish Protestants as it did on the Albigenses in the thirteenth century; blighting every living thing, so that no germ remained for future harvests. Spain might now boast that the stain of heresy no longer defiled the hem of her garment. ”

“ Paul the Fourth was fond of contemplating himself as seated in the chair of the Innocents and the Gregories, and like them setting his pontifical foot on the necks of princes. His natural arrogance was probably not diminished by the concessions which Philip the Second had thought proper to make to him at the close of the Roman war.
Philip, far from taking umbrage at the swelling tone of this apostolical mandate, followed it up, in the same year, by a monstrous edict, borrowed from one in the Netherlands, which condemned all who bought, sold, or read prohibited works to be burned alive. ”

“ Science looks to perpetual change. It turns to the past to gather warning, as well as instruction, for the future. Its province is to remove old abuses, to explode old errors, to unfold new truths. Its condition, in short, is that of progress. But in Spain, everything not only looked to the past, but rested on the past. Old abuses gathered respect from their antiquity. Reform was innovation, and innovation was a crime. Far from progress, all was stationary. The hand of the Inquisition drew the line which said, "No further!" This was the limit of human intelligence in Spain. ”

“ The heart of the stoutest warrior might well have faltered as he saw the rents each day growing wider and wider, as if gaping to give entrance to the fierce multitude that was swarming at the gates.
In this extremity, with the garrison wasted by the constant firing of the enemy, worn down by excessive toil, many of the knights wounded, all of them harassed by long-protracted vigils, it was natural that the greater part should feel that they had done all that duty required of them, and that, without loss of honor, they might retire from a post that was no longer tenable. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Having made himself master of Tripoli, he issued out, with his galleys, from that stronghold, fell on the defenceless merchantman, ravaged the coasts, engaged boldly in fight with the Christian squadrons, and made his name as terrible, throughout the Mediterranean, as that of Barbarossa had been in the time of Charles the Fifth.
The people of the southern provinces, smarting under their sufferings, had more than once besought Philip to send an expedition against Tripoli, and, if possible, break up this den of thieves, and rid the Mediterranean of the formidable corsair. ”

“ The favorite of the prince is rarely the favorite of the people. But no minister had ever been so unpopular as Granvelle in the Netherlands. He was hated by the nobles for his sudden elevation to power, and for the servile means, as they thought, by which he had risen to it. The people hated him, because he used that power for the ruin of their liberties. No administration—none certainly, if we except that of the iron Alva—was more odious to the nation. ”

“ The queen occupies an important place in that rich gallery of portraits in which Brantôme has endeavored to perpetuate the features of his contemporaries. In no one of them has he traced the lineaments with a more tender and delicate hand. Even the breath of scandal has had no power to dim the purity of their expression. Of all that illustrious company which the artist has brought in review before the eyes of posterity, there is no one to whom he has so truly rendered the homage of the heart, as to Elizabeth of France. ”

“ Venus, under the form of the duke of Alva,—as effectual a disguise as could be imagined,—takes her seat in the royal council, and implores Philip to admit France to terms, and to accept the hand of Isabella as the pledge of peace between the nations. Philip graciously relents; peace is proclaimed; the marriage between the parties is solemnized, with the proper Christian rites; and Venus appears, in her own proper shape, to bless the nuptials! ”

“ Amazed at the resistance which he met with from this handful of warriors, Mustapha felt that, if he would stop the waste of life in his followers, he must defer the possession of the place for one day longer. Stunned as his enemies must be by the blow he had now dealt, it would be beyond the powers of nature for them to stand another assault. He accordingly again gave the signal for retreat; and the victors again raised the shout—a feeble shout—of triumph; while the banner of the order, floating from the ramparts, proclaimed that St. Elmo was still in the hands of the Christians! ”

“ Thus reduced to extremity, the brave Sandé was not reduced to despair. Calling his men together, he told them that liberty was of more value than life. Anything was better than to surrender to such an enemy. And he proposed to them to sally from the fortress that very night, and cut their way, if possible, through the Turkish army, or fall in the attempt. The Spaniards heartily responded to the call of their heroic leader. They felt, like him, that the doom of slavery was more terrible than death. ”

“ The truth seems to be, that Alva was a man of an arrogant nature, an inflexible will, and of the most narrow and limited views. His doctrine of implicit obedience went as far as that of Philip himself. In enforcing it, he disdained the milder methods of argument or conciliation. It was on force, brute force alone, that he relied. He was bred a soldier, early accustomed to the stern discipline of the camp. The only law he recognized was martial law; his only argument, the sword. No agent could have been fitter to execute the designs of a despotic prince. ”

“ By this ingenious chain of reasoning, all were made responsible for the acts of violence; but the chief responsibility lay on the heads of the great nobles, on whom all in the last resort depended. It was against them that the public indignation should be directed, not against the meaner offenders, over whom alone the sword of justice had been hitherto suspended. But the king should dissemble his sentiments until he was in condition to call these great vassals to account for their misdeeds. All joined in beseeching Philip to defer no longer his visit to Flanders ”

“ They had brought from home the aversion for the Spaniards which had been festering there since the queen's marriage. The sturdy islanders were not at all pleased with serving under Philip. They were fighting, not the battles of England, they said, but of Spain. Every new conquest was adding to the power of a monarch far too powerful already. They had done enough, and insisted on being allowed to return to their own country. The king, who dreaded nothing so much as a rupture between his English and his Spanish subjects, to which he saw the state of things rapidly tending, was fain to consent. ”

“ It would be impossible that any departure from a national standard should be long tolerated in Spain, where the language, the manners, the dress, the usages of the country, were much the same as they had been for generations,—as they continued to be for generations, long after Cervantes held up the mirror of fiction, to reflect the traits of the national existence more vividly than is permitted to the page of the chronicler. In the rude romances of the fourteenth and the fifteenth century, the Castilian of the sixteenth might see his way of life depicted with tolerable accuracy. ”

“ When raised to the see of Arras, Granvelle was but twenty-five years old. It is rare that the mitre has descended on a man of a more ambitious spirit. Yet Granvelle was not averse to the good things of the world, nor altogether insensible to its pomps and vanities. He affected great state in his manner of living, and thus necessity, no less than taste, led him to covet the possession of wealth as well as of power. He obtained both; and his fortunes were rapidly advancing when, by the abdication of his royal master, the sceptre passed into the hands of Philip the Second. ”