these _carmina non prius audita_ of the Congressional muse, we are sure
they will excite no feeling in our readers but that of pity and
contempt, and that comment upon them is unnecessary. The jealousy of
foreign nations towards the arts and arms of his country, is no new
experience to the travelled Englishman. Still, as the Americans have no
reason to be particularly sore on the subject of our arms, and as they
appropriate our arts, at a very small expense, to themselves, they might
afford, we should think, to let the British lion alone, and glorify
themselves without for ever shaking their fists in the face of that
magnanimous beast. In a political point of view, however, the
deep-seated hostility of this people towards the British government, is
a fact neither to be concealed nor made light of. From a somewhat
extended personal observation, the writer of this is convinced that war
at any time, and in any cause, would be popular with a large majority of
the inhabitants of the United States. It is in vain to oppose to their
opinion the interests of their commerce, and the genius of their
institutions, so unsuited to schemes of warlike aggrandizement. The
government of the United States is in the hands of the mob, which has as
little to lose there as elsewhere, by convulsion of any kind.
We are willing to believe that the person who at present fills the
Presidential chair at Washington, is fully alive to the responsibilities
of his situation, and would gladly allay the storm which himself and his
party have heretofore formed for their own most unworthy purposes. He
knows full well that the dispute is in itself of the most trumpery
nature; that the course of Great Britain has been throughout moderate
and conciliatory to the last degree; that the military and financial
position of the United States is such as to forbid a warlike crisis; and
that, if hostilities were to ensue betwixt Great Britain and his
country, no time could be more favourable to the former than the
present. Yet, with all these inducements to peace, we fear he will find
it impossible to bring matters to a satisfactory termination. But should
an opportunity occur of taking us at disadvantage--should we find
ourselves, for instance, involved in war with any powerful European
nation--we may lay our account to have this envious and vindictive
people on our backs. We are not, therefore, called upon to anticipate
the trial, and to take the course of events into our own hands; but
still less ought we to make any concessions, however trifling, which may
retard, but will eventually exasperate, our difficulties. Much is in our
power on the continent of North America, if we are but true to our own
interests and to those of mankind. We should cherish to the utmost that
affectionate and loyal spirit, which at present so eminently
distinguishes our flourishing colony of Canada; we should look to it,
that such a form of government be established in Mexico as shall at once
heal her own dissensions, and guarantee her against the further
encroachments of her neighbours; and we should invite other European
nations to join with us in informing the populace of the United States,
that they cannot be indulged in the gratification of those predatory
interests, which the public opinion of the age happily denies to the
most compact despotisms and the most powerful empires.
ANTONIO PEREZ.
As often as we revisit the fair city of Brussels, an irresistible
attraction leads us from the heights crowned with its modern palaces,
down among the localities of the valley beneath, the seat and scene of
so many of the old glories of the capital of the Netherlands. On these
occasions our steps unconsciously deviate a little from the direct line
of descent, turning off on the left hand towards the Hotel d'Aremberg.
But it is not to saunter through the elegant interior of this princely
mansion, and linger over exquisite pictures and rare Etruscan vases,
that we then approach it. Our musing eye sees not the actual walls
shining with intolerable whiteness in the fierce summer-sun, but the
towers of an ancient edifice, long ago demolished by the pitiless Alva,
which once, as the Hotel de Cuylembourg, covered the same site. Beneath
its roof the Protestant Confederates, in 1566, drew up their memorable
"Request" to Margaret of Parma; and at one of its windows these
"Beggars," being dismissed with such contumelious scorn from the
presence of the Regent, nobly converted the stigma into a war-cry; and,
with the wallet of the "Gueux" slung across their shoulders, drank out
of wooden porringers a benison on the cause of the emancipation of the
United Provinces. So prompted to think of these stirring times, we are
carried by the steep declivity of a few streets to that magnificent Town
Hall, where, only eleven years before the occurrences in the Hotel
Cuylembourg, Charles V. had resigned into the hands of his son Philip
the sovereignty of an extensive and flourishing empire. All that could
be achieved by the energy of a mind confident of its own force and
clearness--by a strong will wielding enormous resources of power--by
prudence listening to, and able to balance, cautious experience, and
fearless impetuosity--and by consummate skill in the art of government,
had been laboriously and successfully achieved by Charles. To Philip he
transferred the most fertile, delightful, opulent, and industrious
countries of Europe--Spain and the Netherlands, Milan and Naples. His
African possessions included Tunis and Oran, the Cape Verd and Canary
islands. The Moluccas, the Philippine and Sunda islands heaped his
storehouses with the spices, and fruits, and prolific vegetable riches
of the Indian Ocean; while from the New World, the mines of Mexico,
Chili, and Potosi poured into his treasury their tributary floods of
gold. His mighty fleet was still an invincible armada; and his army,
inured to war, and accustomed to victory under heroic captains, upheld
the wide renown of the Spanish infantry. But neither the abilities nor
the auspicious fortunes of Charles were inherited with this vast
dominion by Philip. It is almost a mystery the crumbling away during his
reign of such wealth and such strength. To read the riddle, we must know
Philip. The biography which we shall now hurriedly sketch, of one of his
most eminent favourites and ministers, who was, also, one of the most
remarkable men that ever lived, enables us to see further into the
breast of the gloomy, jealous, and cruel king, than we could hope to do
by the less penetrating light of general history.
It was in the course of the year 1594, that the mother of the great Lord
Bacon wrote bitterly to his brother Anthony--"Tho' I pity your brother,
yet so long as he pities not himself, but keepeth that bloody PEREZ,
yea, as a coach-companion and bed-companion, a proud, profane, costly
fellow, whose being about him I verily fear the Lord God doth mislike,
and doth less bless your brother in credit, and otherwise in his health,
surely I am utterly discouraged, and make conscience further to undo
myself to maintain such wretches as he is, that never loved your
brother but for his own credit, living upon him."
This dark portrait, even from the pencil of maternal anxiety, is not
overcharged with shade. A few words, which could not have been uttered
by the Lady Bacon except as a prophetess, we may add in reference to the
meeting of the famous Englishman and the notorious Spaniard. At that
moment the public life of Francis Bacon was faintly dawning. The future
Minister of State and Chancellor of England had just entered the House
of Commons, and was whining for promotion at the gate of the royal
favourite. The mean subservience of his nature was to be afterwards
developed in its repulsive fulness. His scheming ambition saw itself far
away from the ermine of justice, doomed to be spotted by his corruption.
He had not then betrayed, and brought to the scaffold, and slandered his
benefactor. The power and honours of which he was to be stripped, were
yet to be won. His glory and his shame alike were latent. He was
beginning hazardously a career of brilliant and dismal vicissitudes, to
finish it with a halo of immortal glory blazing round his name.
But such a career along a strange parallelism of circumstances, although
with a gloomier conclusion, Antonio Perez had already run. The
unscrupulous confidant and reckless tool of a crafty and vindictive
tyrant, he had wielded vast personal authority, and guided the movements
of an immense empire.
"Antonio Perez, secretary of state," said one of his
contemporaries, "is a pupil of Ruy Gomez. He is very discreet and
amiable, and possesses much authority and learning. By his
agreeable manners, he goes on tampering and disguising much of the
disgust which people would feel at the king's slowness and sordid
parsimony. Through his hands have passed all the affairs of Italy,
and also those of Flanders, ever since this country has been
governed by Don Juan, who promotes his interests greatly, as do,
still more, the Archbishop of Toledo and the Marquis de Los Valez.
He is so clever and capable that he must become the king's
principal minister. He is thin, of delicate health, rather
extravagant, and fond of his advantages and pleasures. He is
tenacious of being thought much of, and of people offering him
presents."
To gratify, by one dreadful blow, a cruel king and a guilty passion, he
murdered his friend. The depth of his misery soon rivalled and exceeded
the eminence of his prosperity. Hurled from his offices and dignities,
deprived of the very title of nobility, condemned by the civil, and
excommunicated by the ecclesiastical tribunals, cast into prison, loaded
with irons, put to the torture, hunted like a wild beast out of his own
country and many a nook of refuge in other lands, Perez, who had been
"the most powerful personage in the Spanish monarchy," was, when we
first meet him in the company of Bacon, an exile in penury. And so he
died, an impoverished outcast, leaving to posterity a name which befits,
if it cannot adorn, a tale, and may well point a moral.
The "bloody" Perez was the natural son of Gonzalo Perez, who was for a
long time Secretary of State to Charles V. and Philip II. Of his mother
nothing is known. The conjectures of scandal are heightened and
perplexed by the fact that he was ennobled when a child, and that,
amidst all the denunciations of his overbearing behaviour and
insufferable arrogance, he is never reproached with the baseness of his
maternal lineage. Legitimated in infancy by an imperial diploma, Antonio
was literally a courtier and politician from his cradle.
"Being of a quick understanding, an insinuating character, and a
devotedness which knew neither bounds nor scruples, full of
expedients, a nervous and elegant writer, and expeditious in
business, he had gained the favour of Philip II., who had gradually
given him almost his entire confidence. He was, with Cayas, one of
the two secretaries of the council of state, and was charged
principally with the _despacho universal_; that is, with the
counter-sign and the conduct of the diplomatic correspondence and
the royal commands. Philip imparted to him his most secret designs,
initiated him into his private thoughts; and it was Perez who, in
deciphering the despatches, separated the points to be communicated
to the council of state for their opinion, from those which the
king reserved for his exclusive deliberation. Such high favour had
intoxicated him. He affected even towards the Duke of Alva, when
they met in the king's apartments at dinner, a silence and a
haughtiness which revealed at once the arrogance of enmity and the
infatuation of fortune. So little moderation in prosperity, coupled
with the most luxurious habits, a passion for gaming, a craving
appetite for pleasures, and excessive expenses, which reduced him
to receive from every hand, excited against him both envy and
animosity in the austere and factious court of Philip II.; and, on
the first opportunity, inevitably prepared his downfal. This event,
too, he himself hastened by serving too well the distrustful
passions of Philip, and, perhaps, even by exciting them beyond
measure against two men of his own party, Don Juan of Austria and
his secretary Escovedo."
It is impossible to imagine that the character of Philip was not
fathomed by Perez. The peril of his position, as the depositary of the
innermost secrets of the king, could not have escaped his acute mind.
The treachery of his daily services, to which, in the words we have
quoted, allusion is made, must have perpetually reminded him how
probably he was preparing for himself the ruin which before his own eyes
had struck and destroyed more than one of his predecessors. At the same
time, the bent of his disposition carried him readily enough into
intrigue, deceit, and cool remorseless villany. He was not retarded by
any scruple, or abashed by any principle. But he did not lack sagacity.
The power which he loved and abused was acquired and retained easily,
because the exercise of his talents had always been quite in harmony
with the natural flexion of his mind. In the conduct of public affairs,
Philip never had a minister who more dexterously conformed reasons and
actions of policy to the will, or prejudices, or passions of the
sovereign. All the extravagance, and even towards so terrible an enemy
as Alva, all the insolence of Perez, could hardly have shaken his
security. From what he knew, and what he had done, Philip, it is true,
might at any moment be tempted to work his downfal, if not his death;
but, in consequence of that very knowledge and his very deeds, the value
of such an adviser and such a tool was almost sure to protract and avert
his doom. The disgrace and misfortune, therefore, of Perez, however
enveloped afterwards in the mantle of political delinquency, are to be
traced to more strictly personal causes. It is a curious, interesting,
and horrible story.
The memorable struggle of the Netherlands against the domination of
Spain was at its height. The flames kindled by the ferocity of Alva had
not been extinguished by his milder but far less able successor, the
Grand Commander Requesens, who sank under the harassing pressure of the
difficulties which encompassed him. Upon his death, the Spanish court,
alive to the momentous issues of the contest, invoked the services of
one of the most celebrated men of the age. Don John of Austria, who
saved Europe and Christianity at the Gulf of Lepanto, and had repeatedly
humbled the Crescent in its proudest fortresses, was chosen to crush the
rebellious Flemings. The appointment was hardly made, when clouds of
distrust began to roll over the spirit of Philip. The ambition of his
brother was known and troublesome to him, as he had baffled but two
years before a project which Don John took little pains to conceal, and
even induced the Pope to recommend, of converting his conquest of Tunis
into an independent sovereignty for himself. Believing these alarming
aspirations to be prompted by the Secretary Juan de Soto, whom Ruy Gomez
had placed near his brother, Philip removed Soto and substituted
ESCOVEDO, on whose fidelity he relied, and who received secret
instructions to divert, as far as possible, the dreams of Don John from
sceptres and thrones. But a faithless master taught faithlessness to his
servants. Escovedo, neglecting the counsels of Philip, entered cordially
into the views and schemes of Don John, until the sagacious vigilance of
Antonio Perez startled the jealousy of the Spanish monarch by the
disclosure, that Don John intended, and was actually preparing to win
and wear the crown of England. Such a prospect, there can be no doubt,
tore his sullen soul with bitter recollections, and made him resolve,
more sternly than ever, that the haughty island should groan beneath no
yoke but his own. The mere subjugation of England by Spanish arms, and
the occupation of its throne by a Spaniard, not himself, were
insufficient to glut the hatred, and avenge the insulted majesty of
Philip. For his own hands and his own purposes he reserved the task; and
at a later period, the wreck of the Armada strewed the shores of Britain
with memorials of his gigantic and innocuous malignity. Dissembling,
however, his displeasure, he permitted Don John to expect, when the
Netherlands had been pacified, his approval of the invasion of England.
"At the same time, to become acquainted with all his brother's
designs, and watch the intrigues of Escovedo, he authorized Perez,
who was the confidant of the one and the friend of the other, to
correspond with them, to enter into their views, to appear to gain
his favour for them, to speak even very freely of him, in order to
throw them the more off their guard, and afterwards to betray their
secrets to him. Perez sought, or, at the very least, accepted this
odious part. He acted it, as he himself relates, with a shameless
devotion to the king, and a studied perfidy towards Don Juan and
Escovedo. He wrote letters to them, which were even submitted to
the inspection of Philip, and in which he did not always speak
respectfully of that prince; he afterwards communicated to Philip
the bold despatches of Escovedo, and the effusions of Don Juan's
restless and desponding ambition. In forwarding to the king a
letter from Escovedo, he at once boasts, and clears himself of this
disloyal artifice. 'Sire,' says he, 'it is thus one must listen and
answer for the good of your service; people are held much better
thus at sword's length; and one can better do with them whatever is
conducive to the interest of your affairs. But let your majesty use
good precaution in reading these papers; for, if my artifice is
discovered, I shall no longer be good for any thing; and shall have
to discontinue the game. Moreover, I know very well that, for my
duty and conscience, I am doing, in all this, nothing but what I
ought; and I need no other theology than my own to comprehend it.'
The king answers--'Trust, in every thing, to my circumspection. My
theology understands the thing just as yours does, and considers
not only that you are doing your duty, but that you would have been
remiss towards God and man, had you not done so, in order to
enlighten my understanding, as completely as is necessary, against
human deceits and upon the things of this world, at which I am
truly alarmed."
The laurels of the conqueror of the Turks drooped and withered in
Flanders.
"This young and glorious captain found, in the provinces
confederated at Ghent, an incurable distrust both of the Spaniards
and himself. The profound and skilful policy of the Prince of
Orange raised obstacles against him which he could not surmount. In
spite of the moderate conditions which he offered to the assembled
States-General, he was received by them much less as a pacificator
than as an enemy. They refused to authorize the departure of the
Spanish troops by sea, fearing they might be employed against the
provinces of Holland and Zealand, and they required that they
should repair to Italy by land. Don Juan saw his designs upon
England, on this side, vanishing. Without authority, money, or any
means of establishing the domination of the king, his brother, and
of supporting his own renown, he took a disgust to a position which
offered him no issue. Accustomed, hitherto, to rapid and brilliant
enterprises, he desponded at his impotency; and already a prey to
gnawing cares, which were leading him slowly to the tomb, he
demanded his recall."
To enforce his complaints, Don John sent Escovedo to Spain. Redress was
not granted, and his messenger never returned to him. The deadly
correspondence between Perez and himself--the outpourings of an ardent
and daring temper, swelling with lofty designs, and pining beneath an
apparently irremediable inaction, into the ears of a frigid and false
winnower of unguarded words and earnest feelings--was continued
unremittingly. M. Mignet, it seems to us, shows very satisfactorily,
that Perez, in his abominable office of an unjust interpreter of the
wishes and intentions of Don John, drugged Philip copiously with
calumnious reports and unwarrantable insinuations. Be that as it may,
we are inclined to believe, among other matters of a very different
complexion, that, without repugnance on the part of Philip, there was a
tossing about for a time, in the lottery of events, a marriage between
Don John and our beautiful and unfortunate Mary. There is a pleasure and
a grace sometimes in idle speculation; but to the leisure of a happier
fancy than ours we commit the picture of the consequences of an union
between the heroic Don John and the lovely Queen of Scotland. "_Money,
more money, and Escovedo_," became at length, in his perplexity and
anguish, the importunate clamour of the governor of the Netherlands.
Then it was, _as Perez tells us_, that Philip and his obsequious
counsellors meditated on the course best fitted for what was evidently a
serious conjecture. Then it was, we learn from the same authority, that
the king determined ON THE DEATH OF ESCOVEDO.
"They took a review of the various schemes that had been planned in
favour of Prince Don Juan, ever since his residence in Italy,
without the king having any communication or perfect knowledge of
them; they called to mind the grievous disappointment experienced
by the authors of these projects, at the expedition to England not
taking place according to their first idea; the attempt they made a
second time, for the same object, with his Holiness, when they were
in Flanders, and always without giving the king any account; the
design of deserting the government of Flanders, when once the
expedition to England was abandoned; the secret understandings
formed in France without the king's knowledge; the resolution they
had formed, to prefer going as adventurers into France, with six
thousand foot and one thousand horse, to filling the highest
offices; lastly, the very strong language with which the prince, in
his letters, expressed his grief and despair. The result of all
this seemed, that there was reason to fear some great resolution,
and the execution of some great blow or other which might trouble
the public peace, and the tranquility of his majesty's states, and,
moreover, that Prince Don Juan might himself be ruined, if they let
the secretary, Escovedo, remain any longer with him."
What a gap there is in the whole truth in this story, on which Perez
subsequently built his defence, we shall now briefly explain. With one
considerable exception, historians concur in their belief of the amours
of Perez with the Princess of Eboli. Ranke, who is satisfied with the
political explanation given by Perez of the murder of Escovedo,
discredits the notion of Perez being a lover of the princess, because
she was old, and blind of one eye, and because his own wife, Dona Juana
Coello, evinced towards him, throughout his trial, the most devoted and
constant affection.
"The last reason," says our author, with perfect truth, "goes for
nothing." The love of woman buries her wrongs without a tear. "As to the
objection," M. Mignet proceeds to remark, "derived from the age and
appearance of the Princess of Eboli, it has not much foundation either.
All contemporary writers agree in praising her beauty (_hermosura_.)
Born in 1540, she married Ruy Gomez at the age of thirteen, and was only
thirty-eight years old at the present period. She was not one-eyed, but
she squinted. There was nothing in her person to prevent the intimacy
which Ranke discredits, but which numerous testimonies place beyond any
doubt. I quote only the most important, waiving the presents which Perez
had received from the princess, and which he was condemned to give back
by a decree of justice."
It is too late now, we join M. Mignet in believing, to doubt or even to
decry the personal charms of the Princess of Eboli, which the misty
delirium of the poet may have magnified, or the expedient boldness of
the romancer too voluptuously emblazoned, but which more than one grave
annalist has calmly commemorated.[4] We shall not, however, venture to
decide the nice question which oscillates between an obliquity and a
loss of vision. The Spanish word "tuerto" means, ordinarily, "blind of
one eye." And there is an answer which M. Mignet probably considers
apocryphal, as he does not allude to it, said to have been made by Perez
to Henry IV. of France, who expressed surprise that he should be so much
the slave of a woman that had but one eye. "Sire," replied the
ingeniously gallant Perez, "she set the world on fire with that; if she
had preserved both, she would have consumed it." It is of little
consequence. Any slight physical blemish or imperfection was more than
counterbalanced by the wit and accomplishments of this seductive woman,
whose enchantments, like those of Ninon de l'Enclos, defied the
impairing inroads of old age.