God's Playthings 15

God's Playthings 15

Swiftly and desperately he ran across the lawns and groves, up the

winding steps to the terraces before the palace, beating the twilight

with his outstretched hands as if it was an obstacle in his way.

 

Stumbling and breathless, he gained the painted corridors that were lit

with a hasty blaze of wax light. Women were running to and fro, and he

saw a priest carrying the Holy Eucharist cross a distant door.

 

One of these women he stopped.

 

“The Duchess—” he began, panting.

 

She laid her finger on her lip.

 

“They carried her in from the garden an hour ago; they bled and

plastered her, but she died–before she could swallow the wafer–(hush!

she was not thinking of holy things, Orsini!)–ten minutes ago—”

 

 

 

 

THE CAMP OUTSIDE NAMUR

 

DON JUAN OF AUSTRIA

 

“Sa Majesté ne résout rien; du moins, on me tient ignorant de

ses intentions. Je pousse des cris, mais en vain. Il est clair

qu’on nous laisse ici pour y languir jusqu’à notre dernier

soupir.”

 

_Don Juan to Mendoza_, _September 16th, 1578_,

from “The Camp” outside Namur.

 

“Nos vies sont en jeu et tout que nous demandons, c’est de les

perdre avec honneur.”

 

_Don Juan to Philip II._, _September 20th, 1578_,

from “The Camp” outside Namur.

 

 

The Imperial Army, composed of Germans, Walloons and Spanish regiments,

was encamped outside Namur, at the juncture of the Sambre and Meuse,

where Charles V. had been entrenched when pressed by the forces of

Henri II.

 

The Commander of the Army was the son of Charles V., Don Juan of

Austria, the hero of Christendom armed against the infidel, the victor

of Lepanto, the conqueror of Tunis, blessed by the Pope, a brilliant

name in Europe, half-brother of the great King Philip and son of a

servant girl, near the throne, of the blood royal, but barred for ever

from it, a prince yet linked with peasants; he had blazed very brightly

over Europe, the King had flattered him, had caressed him and used him.

 

By the King’s favour he had swept over Italy, Sicily, Africa, a

conqueror, almost within touch of a throne; by the King’s favour he had

been sent to crush the rebel heretics who were rising against the might

of Spain in the Low Countries.

 

And now the King was silent; it seemed as if he meant to abandon Don

Juan. Antonio Perez was always at the King’s ear, and he hated Don

Juan; Escovedo, the Prince’s Secretary and favourite, was assassinated

in the streets of Madrid by order of Perez.

 

When Don Juan heard this news he thought that there was no better end

preparing for him and that Perez meant his ruin; the King did not

answer his letters, and his glory broke like a bubble.

 

He had been too great, too beloved, too popular; Philip tolerated no

rivals.

 

And now he began to be unfortunate; the Prince William of Orange, one

time page to Don Juan’s father and now the Captain of Heretics, marched

against him with a powerful army; the Duc D’Anjou joined the cause of

the rebels, and the Queen of England, Elizabeth Tudor, at last decided

to send succours to the rebellious provinces.

 

The forces met; the day of Rynemants was almost a defeat for Don Juan.

 

A haunted, hunted feeling began to possess him; in the brilliant south

everything had been right with him; here, in the cursed Low Countries,

every step he took seemed a step nearer his grave.

 

The death of Escovedo weighed on him day and night.

 

And the King would not write.

 

Don Juan began to fear and hate his second-in-command, the Prince of

Parma, Alessandro Farnese, a man of his own age, but his nephew, for

Farnese’s mother was Margaret, daughter of Charles V.

 

This man was in the confidence of the King; Don Juan knew and feared

that fact. He began to dread the sight of the dark Italian face; the

figure of Farnese seemed to him like that of a spy–or executioner.

 

When he had fought Boussu at Rynemants he had been ill; when he had

held the useless conference with the English envoys he had scarcely

been able to hold himself on his horse, and when he returned to the

camp on the heights of Bouges outside Namur he fell to his knees as he

dismounted and could not rise for the weight of his armour.

 

They carried him to the quarter of the regiment of Figueroa and lodged

him in a pigeon-house or place for fowls belonging to a Flemish farm

the Spanish guns had demolished.

 

No one knew what illness ailed him; some spoke of the plague, some of

the Dutch fever, others said he had worn himself out with the fatigues

of war and the delights of Italy.

 

The fever increased on him; he wrote to Mendoza, the Spanish agent at

Genoa; he wrote to Andrea D’Aria, his companion in arms of Lepanto; he

wrote to the King. But with little hope, for he felt himself abandoned.

 

Monseigneur François D’Anjou, brother of the King of France, was

at Mons and had taken on himself the title of Defender of the Low

Countries against the Spanish Tyranny; Don Juan had only eighteen

thousand men, of which six thousand were Spanish, old, tried troops,

and the rest merely Walloon and German mercenaries of doubtful loyalty.

 

They had scarcely any artillery and but little powder.

 

The plague appeared in the camp, numbers of the small army sickened and

died.

 

There came news that the English were sailing for Flushing and that

William of Orange was advancing on Namur.

 

Don Juan of Austria lay in the pigeon-house, prostrate with fever, sad

and silent.

 

It was the end of September; day after day was sunny, with a

honey-coloured peaceful light resting on the camp, on the two rivers,

on the fortifications of Namur; the windmills stood motionless in the

stagnant air; the few willows by the river turned from grey-green to

dull amber and shook their long leaves on the soft, muddy bank; the

horizon was veiled in mist, yellow, soft and mournful; at night the

moon rose pale gold through languid dusky vapours; in the morning the

sun rose, glimmering through melancholy mists, and above the camp hung,

day and night, the fumes of the plague, of fever, the exhalations of

decay and sickness, the close odours of death.

 

Juan of Austria loathed this place as passionately as he had loved

Naples and Sicily; the plain with the two rivers embracing the frowning

town of Namur seemed to him hateful as some roadway to Hell; he dreaded

the warm moist nights, the long misty days, the veiled Northern skies,

the flat, distant melancholy horizon, and he hated these things more

because he sometimes felt that he would never see any other skies or

fields but these, never see any moon or sun rise over any town but this

high battlemented fortress of Namur.

 

He was trapped, abandoned, forgotten; the hero of Lepanto, the

conqueror of Tunis, was left to die miserably in this vile

swamp–forsaken!

 

He resolved, when the fever left his mind clear, that he would not die,

that he would live to face Philip in the Escurial and demand an account

for this–and for other things.

 

On September 28th he confessed, on the 28th he received the communion.

 

His confessor, Francisco Orantes, told him that he was dying, but he

laughed that away.

 

In the evening of that day he fell into a delirium and for two days

tossed unconscious, in great torments, talking continually of wars, of

soldiers, of conquests and arms.

 

On the first of October the fever abated and he seemed much recovered;

he fell into a little sleep about the dawn, and when it was fully light

he woke and sent for the Prince of Parma.

 

When that general came, Juan of Austria raised himself on his elbow and

looked at him with a searching kind of eagerness, and Farnese stood

arrested, in the poor doorway, glaring at the sick man.

 

The pigeon-house, in which Don Juan lay, was the size of a small tent,

of clay with niches in the walls for the birds; part of the tiled roof

and a portion of one wall had gone, and through this the early, misty

Northern sunlight streamed, for the canvas that had been dragged over

the aperture was drawn away to admit the air.

 

On the rough mud floor a carpet of arras had been flung; there were a

couple of camp chairs of steel and leather; a pile of armour, helmet,

greaves, cuirass, cruises, vambraces, damascened in black and gold and

hung with scarlet straps, was in one corner; above swung a lantern and

a crucifix.

 

Facing the entrance the Emperor’s son lay on a pile of rich cloaks

and garments embroidered with a thousand colours in a thousand shapes

of fantasy; two cloth of gold cushions served to support his head and

gleamed incongruously against the dull clay wall.

 

He was himself swathed to the breast in a mantle of black and orange,

and covering his lower limbs was a robe of crimson samite lined with

fox’s fur.

 

The fine ruffled shirt he wore had been torn in his delirious struggles and showed his throat and the gaunt lines of his shoulders.