Chapter XXV
At nightfall on Tuesday, the 16th of September, 1578, D. John suddenly felt the intense cold of fever and general lassitude. The fever lasted all night, and the next day, although still unwell, and with a bad headache, he got up at his usual time, heard Mass, did his business, held a council, and visited several quarters. This was at the camp of Tirlemont, where D. John had moved the royal troops after the famous battle of Mechlin, the last at which he commanded, and at which he did such valiant deeds. The plague was decimating the camp of the rebels, and although the infection had not penetrated to that of D. John, his soldiers suffered from diarrhæa, especially the Germans, who were intemperate in what they ate, and not careful about what they drank. This, with reason, worried D. John, and he took infinite precautions to avoid the contagion, inspecting everything himself, making daily rounds, visiting the sick in their huts, helping and cheering them, and striving, above all, that none died without receiving the Viaticum, which he usually accompanied. This matter of the Sacraments, as being transcendental and eternal, he had committed to his then confessor, the Franciscan Fr. Francisco de Orantes, in order that he might urge and watch over the many ecclesiastics in the camp, because D. John, who always had taken much care of the spiritual welfare of his troops, had in these latter days, according to Vander Hammen and Cabrera de Córdoba, made his camp into a real convent of monks.
It was feared, therefore, that this sudden illness of D. John was the forerunner of the plague, and this fear was strengthened when the same symptoms showed themselves in three or four gentlemen of his household, of those who attended him most closely, among them the venerable Gabrio Cervelloni, who was already seventy, and was then, by D. John’s orders, making a fort on the heights of Bouges, in front of the camp at Tirlemont, and scarcely a league from Namur. Alarm was ended on the fourth day, seeing that the fever and other ills left D. John. But the next day, which was a Saturday, he suddenly grew worse, and while the other invalids went on getting better and became convalescent, he showed other symptoms of a strange illness, palpitations which made him get up in bed, tremblings of the hands, arms, tongue and eyes, and red spots showed themselves, others livid and almost blue, with black, rough heads.
Then another suspicion spread through the camp, which historians of old have transmitted to us, and which the fresh facts and discoveries of modern ones make probable. They said that D. John had been poisoned during his recovery, and Vander Hammen goes so far as to point to the hand which was the instrument of the crime. “This made his household suspect,” he says, “that he was poisoned, and that Doctor Ramirez had given him something in his broth.” And in the diary of D. John’s illness, kept by his doctor, the original of which Porreño inserts in his life of the hero of Lepanto, these words are to be read: “With some suspicion, the antidote for poison was used, sometimes externally, sometimes internally.”
Public opinion, not only in the camp, but wherever the news reached, at once pointed to the Queen of England or the Prince of Orange as authors of the suspected crime. Ratcliffe’s recent attempt and the various defeated ones of Orange justified this bad opinion, and the application of the judicial principle “cui prodest” fits like a glove either the heretic Queen or the apostate Prince.
But nobody could then suspect that the sinister “cui prodest” suits the Secretary Antonio Pérez better than anyone else, because nobody yet knew that he, more than anyone, was interested in the disappearance from the world’s stage of D. John. It must have been a nightmare for Antonio Pérez, even to dream that D. John might return to Spain, knowing, or at least suspecting, the crimes, infamies and artifices of which he had been the victim. And once put on the scent, investigating, proving, becoming certain, with his right and terrible thirst for justice, in a single interview with the King, his brother, he could bring everything to light, and sink Antonio Pérez in that abyss of infamy and iniquity in which the hand of God buried him later. It is, therefore, very probable that Antonio Pérez, believing at last that D. John of Austria would return to Spain, would try to keep him away for ever with “the broth of Doctor Ramirez,” or by some similar means; and it is the general opinion at present that if D. John’s death were caused by crime (although it is not sufficiently proved), it might be as justly attributed to the Queen of England, or the Prince of Orange as to the secretary Antonio Pérez; all three were capable of it, and for divers reasons all three gained great advantages by the death of the conqueror of Lepanto.
But be this as it may, it is certain that from the first moment of his relapse D. John understood that he was dying, and that his hoped-for end was coming to him—
... que non ha dolor
Del home que sea grande ni cuytado.18
He therefore made ready to receive death with perfect, manly courage, with the dignity of a Prince and the humility of a Christian, and his first arrangement was that he should be conveyed to the fort which Gabrio Cervelloni was then making a league away. He ordered himself to be carried on a stretcher by his servants, without order or arrangement, to prevent the soldiers having the grief of saying good-bye to him, and to cause no one alarm or trouble. There remained inside the surrounding wall of the fort the only part yet finished, a hut, or rather a pigeon house, where D. Bernardino de Zúñiga, D. John’s Captain of Infantry, lodged, and there he ordered himself to be taken to disturb no one. “There was only,” says Vander Hammen, “a pigeon house to make him a chamber.” They cleared out the young pigeons, cleaned it, hung a few coverings on the ceilings and wall to exclude the light, and over them some pieces of cloth, which they sprinkled with perfumed waters, and made a wooden staircase for mounting to it. The father confessor Fr. Francisco de Orantes writes to Philip II: “He died in a hut, as poorly as a soldier. I assure Y.M. there was nothing but a cock-loft over a farm-yard, in order that in this he should imitate the poverty of Christ.”
All this took place on Saturday, the 20th, and on Sunday, the 21st, very early in the morning, D. John ordered his confessor, Fray Francisco de Orantes, to be called, and with great humility and with much sorrow for his sins he made a general confession of his life, with the eagerness and fervour of one who is preparing to die; and although the doctors still held out hopes of saving his life, and tried to dissuade him, he asked for the Viaticum, and received it with great devotion and fervour, at a mass celebrated in his room by the Jesuit Juan Fernández. Then he sent for all his Field-Marshals to his miserable retreat, also the Councillors of State and other personages attached to the army, and before them solemnly resigned the command and gave the baton to Alexander Farnese, Prince of Parma, who was present, kneeling at the foot of the bed, and so overcome and afflicted because of his great love for D. John, that he buried his forehead in the bed-clothes, and the Count de Mansfeld had to lift him up and comfort him. It was an extraordinary thing, which moved and brought tears to the eyes of all those veterans, to see that thunderbolt of war, Alexander Farnese, daring and brave and of indomitable courage, afflicted and overcome like a weak woman on receiving the supreme command from the hands of his dying friend and kinsman.
Then he directed his confessor Fr. Francisco de Orantes to declare before them all what D. John had already told him privately. That he left no will, because he possessed nothing which was not his Lord and Master the King’s. That he commended his body and soul to the King; his soul in order that the King should order suffrages to be made for the great need there was; his body that it might be buried near that of his Lord and father the Emperor, by which he should consider his services were repaid. But if this were not so, then that they should give him burial in the monastery of Our Lady of Montserrat. Item, he begged the King to look after his mother and brother. Item, to look after his servants, pay them and reward them, because he died so poor that he could not do so. “As to my personal debts and bills,” he said at the end, “they are very few and are very clear.”
He said this with great firmness, taking leave of them all with his hand, and himself taking leave of the things of earth to think and speak of nothing beyond those of heaven.
He, however, retained Father Juan Fernández, and showing him a little manuscript book which he kept under his pillow, said these were the prayers which he recited every day, without ever missing one in his life, and as the dreadful pain in his head troubled his sight, so that he could not read, begged the father, for the love of God and for the love of him, to do him the favour of reciting them in his name. Much moved, the father promised, and, according to his own testimony, it took him a good hour to recite those prayers which the devout Prince said “every day of his life,” in the midst of the fatigues of war, the occupations of Governor, and, most difficult of all, in the midst of the dissipations of worldly pleasures. The little book was all in D. John’s writing. It began with the baby prayers he had learnt in his childhood from Doña Magdalena de Ulloa; then followed various pious exercises, and it ended with several prayers composed by D. John himself, according as he had been inspired in the course of his life, by his difficulties, his sorrows, hopes and joys, and his warm effusions of thanksgiving. In short, it was an index, showing his attitude towards God in all the events of his life, which the grateful heart of D. John daily remembered, and which only the holy Father Juan Fernández had the happiness of knowing.
It was this father who, a few months later, under the command of Alexander Farnese, performed the extraordinary deed of heroism, at the same time an act of incredible charity, in the trench of Maestricht, which we have told in another place. D. John had known him in Luxemburg, on his first arrival, and astonished at his holiness, prudence and learning, and profoundly struck by his untiring zeal for the welfare of the soldiers, attached him at once to the army, and took him everywhere; and although he was not D. John’s official confessor, he confessed to him often, and consulted him privately in all difficult matters. During D. John’s short last illness, together with Fr. Francisco de Orantes, he assisted him all the time, and when D. John’s dreadful headache and delirium left him, the father sustained him with spiritual talks which maintained the sick man in his peace and resignation, and gave the Jesuit the ineffable comfort that the just experience before the marvels of Divine Grace.
In one of these conversations D. John told P. Juan Fernández of his firm determination, taken four months beforehand, if God spared his life in Flanders, to retire for ever from the world to the hermitage of Montserrat, there to serve “that Lord who could and would do much more for him than his brother D. Philip.” A bitter phrase this, which without, as some have thought, censuring Philip (because there would be none in supposing greater power and love in the King of heaven than in the most powerful and saintly King on earth), still reveals the profound disillusionment which had taken hold of the victor of Lepanto, for the last four months, that is to say since the death of Escovedo.
The illness gained ground rapidly; each day, even each hour, produced some new, strange and painful symptom. At times he was seized with fainting fits, in which he appeared to have drawn his last breath, at others with delirium of wild things and of war, in which he always imagined himself commanding in a battle, and from which he was only drawn by the names of Jesus and Mary, which Fathers Orantes and Fernández invoked in his hearing. On the 30th D. John felt so weak that he again desired to receive the Viaticum, and charged Fr. Francisco de Orantes to give him extreme unction in time, whenever he judged that the moment had come. At nightfall that day the confessor thought that the time had arrived, and administered the last Sacrament to him, which D. John received with great devotion and perfect consciousness, in the presence of all the Field-Marshals and other personages who were crowded into the narrow precincts.
No one slept that night in fort or camp, and continually messengers went to and fro, bearers of sad news. At dawn Father Juan Fernández said mass at the bedside, thinking D. John unconscious, as his eyes were already closed; but being told by the confessor that the Host was being raised, he quickly took off his cap and did reverence. At nine o’clock he seemed somewhat to revive, and then he was taken with a fresh delirium, in which, with extraordinary strength, he began to get angry with the soldiers, commanding in a battle, giving orders to the battalions, calling the captains by name, sending horses flying, reproving them at times because they allowed themselves to be cut off by the enemy, calling others to victory with eyes, hands and voice, always clamouring for the Marqués de Santa Cruz, whom he called “D. Álvaro, my friend,” his guide, master, and his right hand.
“Jesus! Jesus! Mary!” implored the confessor. “Jesus! Jesus! Mary!” at last repeated D. John of Austria, and, repeating these holy names, became gradually calmer, until he sank into a profound lethargy, forerunner, doubtless, of death, with his eyes shut, his body inert, with the Crucifix of the Moors on his breast, where P. Juan Fernández had placed it, the only sign of life being his difficult, uneven breathing.
They all knelt, believing that the supreme moment had come, and the two priests began to recite by turns the prayers for the dying. Suddenly, about eleven o’clock, D. John gave a great sigh, and they heard him distinctly articulate in a weak but clear, sweet, plaintive voice, like a child calling to its mother, “Aunt! Aunt! My lady Aunt!”
And this was all. For two hours the lethargy lasted, and at half-past one, without effort, trouble, or any violence, he gasped twice, and the soul of “That John sent by God” fled to His bosom to render account of the mission which had been confided to him.
Had he really fulfilled it? Was the mission of D. John of Austria to drown in the waters of Lepanto the great power of the Turk, threat to the faith of Christ and to the liberty of Europe, or did the mission also extend to conquering the kingdom of England, and bringing back that great people to the fold of the Catholic Church, as Christ’s two Vicars Pius V and Gregory XIII wished and thought?
If it were so, D. John of Austria can well liquidate his debt before the Divine Tribunal, giving for only answer those words of Christ to St. Theresa, which so alarmingly show the fearful reach of human free will: “Theresa! I wished it, but men did not wish it.”
Eusebio Nieremberg, in his life of the P. Juan Fernández, relates this strange circumstance relative to D. John of Austria:
“A few days later (after D. John’s death) he appeared to the father, who was at one of the colleges, and said, ‘Father Juan Fernández, why have you forgotten friends?’ ‘I have not forgotten, my lord, but what have I got to do?’ Then he told him that he must help him with his suffrages and do certain things. The servant of God did all he asked with much celerity and earnestness, saying masses and prayers and doing penances for him, and making others do the same. At the end of a few days he appeared again, shining and glorious, saying that he was in heaven and was very grateful for the good works they had done for him.”
Don John was buried first in the Cathedral at Namur, but the following spring his body (except his intestines) was conveyed to Spain by orders of Philip II and buried with much pomp in the Escorial. The story of the body being cut in pieces at the joints and placed in three leather bags on the pack saddle of a horse for the journey, is too well known not to be mentioned here. Sir William Stirling Maxwell says that it was to avoid “expense and the troublesome questions which were in those days likely to arise between the clergy and magistracy of the towns through which a royal corpse was publicly carried.” (Translator.)
The End
Footnotes
1. The Quixadas are called
Brave and very loyal;
Blazons
Without number and much esteemed
They carry for arms.
2.
From the house of Roland
Which is a very important house
With great labour and trouble
Came a very fine gallant
To Castille from his France.
3. Zapirón is the feline hero of Lope de Vega’s “Gatomaquia” (Translator’s note).
4.
They are boys, prodigal of mirth,
Each one following his own will,
They make light of vice,
A glory of mischief,
A grandeur of folly,
In short—boys will be boys.
5.
To the King property and life
Belong; but honour
Is the patrimony of the soul
And the soul is God’s alone.
6. “The Meninas, which are a set of ladies of the nature of ladies of honour in that (the Spanish) Court, children in years, but higher in degree (being many of them daughters and heirs to Grandees of Spain) than ordinary ladies of honour attending likewise that queen.”—From Heathcote MSS., page 236. Vide the 1907 edition of “Memoirs of Ann Lady Fanshawe” (Translator’s note).
7. According to tradition it was from this doorway that Philip II, muffled up to his eyes, witnessed the arrest of the Princess de Évoli in the night of July 28, 1579.
8. Doña Magdalena de Ulloa brought up the child with the greatest care and secrecy until Doña Ana was seven years old, when she placed her in the convent of Augustins at Madrigal, with the intention that she should become a nun, as, in fact, she did, no one suspecting the name and rank of her ancestors. After D. John’s death, in order that the King might help and protect her, Alexander Farnese divulged the fact of her existence. Philip granted her the surname of Austria and to be addressed as Excellency, but her name and rank were not known until the tragic event occurred to which we alluded in the text, which was as follows:
About the year 1590 or 1591 a Portuguese Augustin monk, named Fr. Miguel de los Santos, arrived in Madrid. He was a wild, scheming man, who had been exiled from his country as a supporter of plots and revolts in favour of the Prior of Crato, D. Antonio, then claiming the throne of Portugal. He was appointed vicar of the Augustin nuns at Madrigal, and for this reason used to confess and see much of Doña Ana de Austria, who, besides being very young then, seems to have been also very simple. At that time there was a shepherd named Gabriel Espinosa, who the monk thought bore a great resemblance to the King of Portugal, D. Sebastian, who had been killed shortly before at the battle of Alcárzarquiver in Africa. All these circumstances suggested an intrigue to Fr. Miguel, which, daring and absurd as it was, made much stir in Portugal and also in Castille. He persuaded the shepherd to pretend that he was the King, who by a miracle had escaped from the famous defeat, promising him by this deception to place him on the throne of Portugal. The first person he made to believe his story was Doña Ana, pretending that God had revealed to him that she was destined to share the throne of the spurious D. Sebastian. The simple Doña Ana fell into the trap, and, convinced that the shepherd was King Sebastian and she chosen by heaven to be his spouse, she sent rich jewels to Espinosa and established an “amoroso-politica” correspondence with him, which still exists in the archives of Sinmancas. The friar used these letters to obtain deluded partisans for the sham king, and so many did he thus gather in Portugal as well as Castille, and so much did the farce grow, that Espinosa was at last arrested in Valladolid on suspicion and tried with the monk and Doña Ana. Espinosa was condemned to be dragged from prison, put in a basket and hanged in the square of Madrigal, quartered, and put on the highway and his head placed in an iron cage. Fr. Miguel de los Santos, after being degraded, was given over to the secular law and was hanged in the square of Madrigal on the 19th of October, 1595. As to Doña Ana, she was ordered to be transferred to the convent of Augustins at Aviles, rigorous seclusion in her cell for four years, and to fast on bread and water during this time every Friday, to lose her right to be an abbess and to be addressed as Excellency. This sentence was, however, shortly afterwards remitted, and she was transferred to las Huelgas at Burgos, where she was elected perpetual abbess. The licentiate Baltasar Porreño dedicated his life of D. John of Austria to her about the years 1620 to 1625.
9. He alludes to the dreadful storm that the twenty-four galleys under the command of Luis de Requesens encountered for three days on leaving the port of Marseilles; some were lost, others dispersed and went, disabled, to Sardinia. It was impossible for the Knight Commander to fulfil D. John’s orders. Gian Antonio Doria was then instructed to come from Naples with his galleys and D. Álvaro de Bazán to bring his from Sardinia; but it was too late, and meanwhile the Moors could receive provisions and reinforcements of soldiers, Turks and Berbers.
10. The remains of Luis Quijada were translated two years later with much pomp to the church of S. Luis at Villagarcia by Doña Magdalena de Ulloa, where she also now rests near the high altar. The figure of his tomb no longer exists, but the inscription still does, which says that he is buried under the altar and that he died “as he would have wished, fighting against the infidel, 25 Feb., 1570” (note abridged by Translator).
11. His little daughter.
12. “I got without knowing how a small cut in my ankle; but one ought to feel nothing considering such happy events.”
Letter from D. John to the Prior Hernando de Toledo about the battle of Lepanto. From the Alba archives.
13. Pius V having just died.
14. Reformer of the Calendar (Translator).
15. Margarita of Parma carefully educated her niece, and kept her until the death of D. John. When this happened she did all she could to influence Philip II to recognise the child; but all she could obtain from the King was an order that Doña Juana should enter the convent of St. Clara at Naples, with a nun of noble birth to look after her and four nuns to wait on her. For this he obtained a brief from the Pope, and was always careful to commend the person of Doña Juana to the Viceroys of Naples. This lady was very bright and intelligent: she spoke several languages and wrote books in Latin which she dedicated to the King and his son, afterwards Philip III. When he came to the throne, persuaded that she had no vocation, he tried to arrange a marriage for her and at last succeeded in 1603, wedding her to Francisco Branciforte, eldest son of the Prince of Butera. Philip III gave her a dower of 60,000 ducats and an income of 3000 for pin-money. Doña Juana died at Naples on February 7th, 1630, when she was fifty-six, leaving an only daughter called Margarita, after the Duchess of Parma. This Margarita Branciforte, D. John’s only grandchild, married Federico Colonna, Duke de Patrano and Constable of Naples.
16. These keys are still in the possession of his descendant the Marqués de Santa Cruz.
17. “Sir. With greater sorrow than I know how to express I have heard of the unhappy death of the secretary Escovedo, for which I cannot be consoled or ever shall be, as Y.M. has lost such a servant as I know; and I, that Y. M. knows; and though I sorrow over this as I do, above all I feel it that at the end of many years and services he should have ended by such an unworthy death, for having served his King with such faithfulness and love without other consideration or practices, such as are now in use. And though it is wrong to judge anyone hastily, I do not think I am falling into this sin now, as I mention no one; but I hold as a fact what I say, and as a man who has had so much opportunity, and who knows the frankness with which Escovedo treated Y.M.’s service, I fear where it may have come from. But, after all, I am not certain, or, not knowing, I will only say, by the love of Our Lord, I beg Y.M., with all the earnestness possible, that you will not permit such an offence to be committed in your city, or allow so great a one to be done to me, without using all possible diligence to ascertain whence it comes, and to punish it with the rigour it deserves. And although I believe that Y.M. will have already done so very thoroughly, and will have done so, being such a Christian and justice-observing Prince, all the same, I wish to beg you that, as a gentleman, I may defend, and allow to be defended, the honour of one who deserved it as much as Escovedo, and this because I am the more bound, as with good reason I can imagine myself to have been the cause of his death, for that which Y.M. knows better than another. Do not take it amiss if I beg not only to remember, and urge, as I shall do by each courier, about what concerns the deceased, until justice is done and his services remunerated; even if I should overlook the rest, that as a gentleman I must do.
“Again I pray Y.M., as humbly and earnestly as I am able, that it will be your pleasure to send me an answer to all these things, as I confess to Y.M. that nothing could happen to worry me more than his death has done, until everything relating to the deceased is settled.
“I do not know how he has left his affairs, so I can enter into no details, but I beg Y.M. to remember Escovedo’s purpose, which was that of honour, and the sincerity with which he served you, and of the small comfort he leaves in his house, and do all the favours to those who remain in it that they deserve, especially to the eldest son, of those offices and emoluments which the father held, that Pedro Escovedo deserves them, and will go on deserving them more and more, if he is employed and favoured, Y.M. knows better than anyone. And because I think, according to what he was obliged to spend and the little he had, he may have left some debts which might pain his soul, and his children and wife here below, I will also beg Y.M. to order them to be favoured by the wherewithal to pay them. Although I chiefly beg that, being left like a father to the said eldest son, you will do me this signal favour of giving him in all everything his father enjoyed, because as to the debts I can easily pay the most of the food and dress, and what are obliged to be paid, which is the least I can do for the repose of him who worked for me till death, as he did, to help to enable me to do the best for Y. M.’s service in whatever passed through his hands, which he did, as I have claimed and shall claim all my life. Consider, Y. M., if these obligations deserve that he should have these offices, and if I can be confident that you will do this favour, that I ask in all that I beg, and shall beg for continually, until the justice and favour that the blood and services of the deceased cry out for, are gained.”
18. ... Which has no pain
For the great man, nor anxiety.