his decease. Those suspicions have been never set at rest, and never
proved. Two Englishmen, Ratcliff and Gray by name, had been arrested and
executed on a charge of having been employed by Secretary Walsingham to
assassinate the Governor. The charge was doubtless an infamous
falsehood; but had Philip, who was suspected of being the real criminal,
really compassed the death of his brother, it was none the less probable
that an innocent victim or two would be executed, to save appearances.
Now that time has unveiled to us many mysteries, now that we have learned
from Philip's own lips and those of his accomplices the exact manner in
which Montigny and Escovedo were put to death, the world will hardly be
very charitable with regard to other imputations. It was vehemently
suspected that Don John had been murdered by the command of Philip; but
no such fact was ever proved.
The body, when opened that it might be embalmed, was supposed to offer
evidence of poison. The heart was dry, the other internal organs were
likewise so desiccated as to crumble when touched, and the general color
of the interior was of a blackish brown, as if it had been singed.
Various persona were mentioned as the probable criminals; various motives
assigned for the commission of the deed. Nevertheless, it must be
admitted that there were causes, which were undisputed, for his death,
sufficient to render a search for the more mysterious ones comparatively
superfluous. A disorder called the pest was raging in his camp, and had
carried off a thousand of his soldiers within a few days, while his
mental sufferings had been acute enough to turn his heart to ashes.
Disappointed, tormented by friend and foe, suspected, insulted, broken
spirited, it was not strange that he should prove an easy victim to a
pestilent disorder before which many stronger men were daily falling.
On the third day after his decease, the funeral rites were celebrated.
A dispute between the Spaniards, Germans, and Netherlanders in the army
arose, each claiming precedence in the ceremony, on account of superior
national propinquity to the illustrious deceased. All were, in truth,
equally near to him, for different reasons, and it was arranged that all
should share equally in the obsequies. The corpse disembowelled and
embalmed, was laid upon a couch of state. The hero was clad in complete
armor; his swords helmet, and steel gauntlets lying at his feet, a
coronet, blazing with precious stones, upon his head, the jewelled chain
and insignia of the Golden Fleece about his neck, and perfumed gloves
upon his hands. Thus royally and martially arrayed, he was placed upon
his bier and borne forth from the house where he had died, by the
gentlemen of his bedchamber. From them he was received by the colonels
of the regiments stationed next his own quarters. These chiefs, followed
by their troops with inverted arms and mined drums, escorted the body to
the next station, where it was received by the commanding officers of
other national regiments, to be again transmitted to those of the third.
Thus by soldiers of the three nations, it was successively conducted to
the gates of Namur, where it was received by the civic authorities. The
pall-bearers, old Peter Ernest Mansfeld, Ottavio Gonzaga, the Marquis de
Villa Franca, and the Count de Reux, then bore it to the church, where it
was deposited until the royal orders should be received from Spain. The
heart of the hero was permanently buried beneath the pavement of the
little church, and a monumental inscription, prepared by Alexander
Farnese, still indicates the spot where that lion heart returned to dust.
It had been Don John's dying request to Philip that his remains might be
buried in the Escorial by the side of his imperial father, and the prayer
being granted, the royal order in due time arrived for the transportation
of the corpse to Spain. Permission had been asked and given for the
passage of a small number of Spanish troops through France. The thrifty
king had, however, made no allusion to the fact that those soldiers were
to bear with them the mortal remains of Lepanto's hero, for he was
disposed to save the expense which a public transportation of the body
and the exchange of pompous courtesies with the authorities of every town
upon the long journey would occasion. The corpse was accordingly divided
into three parts, and packed in three separate bags; and thus the
different portions, to save weight, being suspended at the saddle-bows of
different troopers, the body of the conqueror was conveyed to its distant
resting-place.
"Expende Hannibalem: quot libras in duce summo
Invenies?". . . . . . . . . .
Thus irreverently, almost blasphemously, the disjointed relics of the
great warrior were hurried through France; France, which the romantic
Saracen slave had traversed but two short years before, filled with high
hopes, and pursuing extravagant visions. It has been recorded by classic
historians, that the different fragments, after their arrival in Spain,
were re-united, and fastened together with wire; that the body was then
stuffed, attired in magnificent habiliments, placed upon its feet, and
supported by a martial staff, and that thus prepared for a royal
interview, the mortal remains of Don John were presented to his Most
Catholic Majesty. Philip is said to have manifested emotion at sight of
the hideous spectre--for hideous and spectral, despite of jewels,
balsams, and brocades, must have been that unburied corpse, aping life in
attitude and vestment, but standing there only to assert its privilege of
descending into the tomb. The claim was granted, and Don John of Austria
at last found repose by the side of his imperial father.
A sufficient estimate of his character has been apparent in the course of
the narrative. Dying before he had quite completed his thirty-third
year, he excites pity and admiration almost as much as censure. His
military career was a blaze of glory. Commanding in the Moorish wars at
twenty-three, and in the Turkish campaigns at twenty-six, he had achieved
a matchless renown before he had emerged from early youth; but his sun
was destined to go down at noon. He found neither splendor nor power in
the Netherlands, where he was deserted by his king and crushed by the
superior genius of the Prince of Orange. Although he vindicated his
martial skill at Gemblours, the victory was fruitless. It was but the
solitary sprig of the tiger from his jungle, and after that striking
conflict his life was ended in darkness and obscurity. Possessing
military genius of a high order, with extraordinary personal bravery,
he was the last of the paladins and the crusaders. His accomplishments
were also considerable, and he spoke Italian, German, French, and Spanish
with fluency. His beauty was remarkable; his personal fascinations
acknowledged by either sex; but as a commander of men, excepting upon the
battle-field, he possessed little genius. His ambition was the ambition
of a knight-errant, an adventurer, a Norman pirate; it was a personal and
tawdry ambition. Vague and contradictory dreams of crowns, of royal
marriages, of extemporized dynasties, floated ever before him; but he was
himself always the hero of his own romance. He sought a throne in Africa
or in Britain; he dreamed of espousing Mary of Scotland at the expense of
Elizabeth, and was even thought to aspire secretly to the hand of the
great English Queen herself. Thus, crusader and bigot as he was, he was
willing to be reconciled with heresy, if heresy could furnish him with a
throne.
It is superfluous to state that he was no match, by mental endowments,
for William of Orange; but even had he been so, the moral standard by
which each measured himself placed the Conqueror far below the Father
of a people. It must be admitted that Don John is entitled to but small
credit for his political achievements in the Netherlands. He was
incapable of perceiving that the great contest between the Reformation
and the Inquisition could never be amicably arranged in those provinces,
and that the character of William of Orange was neither to be softened
by royal smiles, nor perverted by appeals to sordid interests. It would
have been perhaps impossible for him, with his education and temperament,
to have embraced what seems to us the right cause, but it ought, at
least, to have been in his power to read the character of his antagonist,
and to estimate his own position with something like accuracy. He may be
forgiven that he did not succeed in reconciling hostile parties, when his
only plan to accomplish such a purpose was the extermination of the most
considerable faction; but although it was not to be expected that he
would look on the provinces with the eyes of William the Silent,
he might have comprehended that the Netherland chieftain was neither
to be purchased nor cajoled. The only system by which the two religions
could live together in peace had been discovered by the Prince; but
toleration, in the eyes of Catholics, and of many Protestants, was still
thought the deadliest heresy of all.
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