Chapter III: Preface (3)

In the meanwhile Lisbon was gradually settling down. People who had been hiding in churches and cellars for the last ten days crept out, nearly all under the impression that the Spaniards had all been murdered, and that King Antonio had come to his own again. Dire was their {70} disappointment when they found that they were not the only people who had skulked in hiding, and that none of all the city had dared to strike the blow that would have made Portugal free again. So they patiently bent their neck to the yoke and cheered his Highness the Archduke at the top of their voices as he went in state to the cathedral to hear a solemn _Te Deum_ of victory.

The Spaniards did their best to follow up the enemy. The ships in the Tagus were fitted out to watch Cascaes and follow the English fleet, doing all the damage they could, and Don Pedro de Guzman was sent to cut off the English garrison left at Peniche. They urged the horses, says the Spanish diarist, until they were ready to drop, but arrived too late to stop the embarkation, except of about 200 men, who were put to death.

On the 8th of June the English fleet set sail, pursued and harassed by the galleys from Lisbon in nearly a dead calm. Three of our ships were taken or sunk and one burned, by her captain, Minshaw, after a desperate resistance. A wind sprang up, however, and the Spanish galleys were left behind; but soon the fleet got scattered, the men died, and were thrown overboard by the hundred from scurvy, starvation, and wounds; but, notwithstanding all, after sailing ostensibly for the Azores, Drake turned back again and, picking up twenty-five of his ships which had been separated from him, sailed up the bay and attacked Vigo. He had only 2,000 men fit to fight: sickness and privation had thinned them down to that, but with those few men, finding Vigo deserted, the English burnt and wasted the town and all the villages around. {71} "A verie pleasant rich valley but wee burnt it all, houses and corne, so as the countrey was spoyled seven or eight miles in length." Then they decided to drop down to the isle of Bayona, and there put the pick of the men and stores on twenty of the best ships for Drake to take to the Azores, whilst the rest returned to England. But for some reason Drake broke the agreement and passed Bayona without even calling, and the thirty ships that were awaiting him there were left to their fate. Beset with tempest and pestilence, without a commander, it was decided by those on board to make the best of their way to England, in terrible distress as they were for provisions and water. After ten days' voyage they arrived at Plymouth on the 2nd of July, and found that Drake had already arrived there with the Queen's ships, having abandoned his voyage to the Azores. Most of the remaining ships had sought other ports in preference, in order to sell their prizes without having to share the proceeds with others.

Such of the soldiers as came to Plymouth were sent grumbling home with five shillings each for their wages and the arms they bore. The English chronicler thinks that this was "verie good pay, considering they were victualled all the time." Such, however, was not the opinion of the unfortunate men themselves, who had not been allowed to loot as much as they thought fit in Portugal. They said that if they had been permitted to march as through an enemy's country, they would have come back the richest army that ever returned to England. Not more than 5,000 of them ever came home; but their story was so dismal a one that {72} all England rang with reprobation of the bad management and parsimony that had brought the expedition to so inglorious a conclusion.

The first and third objects of the expedition--namely, the burning of the Spanish fleet and the capture of St. Michaels--were never even attempted, but the second object was very nearly being attained, and the restoration of Dom Antonio, practically as a vassal of England, might have been effected a dozen times over if the Portuguese in Lisbon had not been an utterly terrified set of poltroons. On various occasions, when Count de Fuentes and his troops were outside, a few dozen daring men might have seized the gates and have turned the tide in Antonio's favour. It was not to be, however, and the poor King wandered a poverty-stricken fugitive yet for a few years before he died, but his desperate struggle for sovereignty ended with the ignominious failure of the English attempt to avenge a great national injury by a joint-stock enterprise.

[1] For the sake of uniformity, throughout this narrative the dates are given in the "old style," then used in England, ten days earlier than the dates cited by the Spanish and Portuguese authorities.

[2] Venetian Calendar of State Papers.

[3] Ibid.

[4] In a subscription reprint of sixty copies of this tract published in 1881 under the editorship of the Rev. Alexander Grosart, the authorship appears to be ascribed, I know not on what grounds, to a certain Robert Pricket who served probably as a gentleman volunteer and follower of the Earl of Essex. He had seen previous service in the Netherlands, and was the author of several poetical works, one being a panegyric on the Earl of Essex. The tract is entitled "_A True Coppie of a Discourse_, written by a gentleman employed in the late voiage of Spaine and Portingale. Sent to his particular friend and by him published for the better satisfaction of all such as having been seduced by particular report have entered into conceipts tending to the discredit of the enterprise and Actors of the same. At London. Printed for Thomas Woodcock, dwelling in Paules Churchyard, at the sign of the blacke Beare 1589."

[5] It is called "Relacion de lo subcedido del armada enemiga del reyno de Inglaterra a este de Portugal con la retirada a su tierra, este año de 1589." MS. Gayangos Library. Transcript in possession of the author.

[6] "Memoria do successo da vinda dos Ingreses ao reino de Portugal." Biblioteca National, Lisbon. Pombalina, 196, fol. 271. Transcribed by the author.

[7] Mendoza, writing to Philip from London, August 8, 1582, gives one instance of this amongst several. He says: "The Queen lent Dom Antonio £3,000 when he was here, and I understand she peremptorily demands payment of the sum, taking possession of the diamond which was pledged here for a sum of £5,000 lent by merchants, who offer to relinquish their claim to the Queen, if she will lend them £30,000 free of interest for six years out of the bars brought by Drake, which they will repay in five yearly instalments of £6,000 each. So far as I can learn, this talk of the loan is a mere fiction and a cloak under which the Queen may keep the diamond for the £8,000 on the ground that the merchants advanced the £5,000 by her express order, without which they would not have done so. This plan was invented by Cecil in order to prevent Dom Antonio from getting his diamond back again."

This diamond is probably identical with the celebrated stone given by Charles I. when Prince of Wales to the Count-Duke of Olivares, favourite of Philip IV., when Charles and Buckingham went on their foolish visit to Madrid. A contemporary account (Soto's MS. in the Academy of History, Madrid) describes the diamond as being of the purest water, weighing eight carats and called "the Portuguese," from its having been one of the crown jewels of Portugal. It had a great pearl pendent from it.

[8] See Calendar of Spanish State Papers of Elizabeth, vol. 3, for particulars of them.

[9] The first of these, in 1582, commanded by Strozzi, consisted of 55 ships and 5,000 men. Terceira, which was held for Dom Antonio, welcomed it at once, and in the midst of the rejoicings to celebrate the event the Spanish fleet under Santa Cruz appeared and scattered the French like chaff, Strozzi being killed, Antonio barely escaping, and the fleet almost entirely destroyed. The second expedition in the following year under Aymar de Chastes with 6,000 men was, curiously enough, beaten by Santa Cruz in the same place and under exactly similar circumstances ("Un pretendant portugais du xvi. siècle").

[10] It is a curious co-incidence that this gem was long afterwards carried away from England by another fugitive King, James II., who sold it, as Antonio had done, to provide for his needs. It had formerly belonged to Charles the Bold of Burgundy, the great-grandfather of Philip II.

[11] After the return of the expedition Lopez writes (July 12, 1589) to Walsingham, deeply regretting that the Queen had been induced by his advice to spend so much money to no purpose, and hinting that he had intimated to Dom Antonio that he and his Portuguese were not wanted in England. On the same day he himself craves for help in his need and again asks for a thirty years' monopoly of the import of aniseed and sumach into England. He was executed in 1592, and was in high favour almost up to the day of his arrest. In the Mendoza Papers in the National Archives in Paris, to which I have had access, are documents proving that he made a regular trade of poisoning--or attempting to poison, as he does not seem to have been very successful in the cases recorded.

[12] It is certain from letters of Dom Antonio's friends in London, now in the Archives Nationales (K 1567), that it was not until the end of December that Antonio was confident that the fleet was really intended to aid him.

[13] There is a rough memorandum in Burleigh's writing, September 20, 1588, in the Record Office, setting down the details of the proposed expedition, in which he mentions that four thousand men are to be sent for from Holland, as well as two thousand horsemen volunteers. At the foot of the memorandum Burleigh sets down the "Articles of offers from King Antonio.

"1. To attempt to burn ye shippes in Lysbon and Civill."
"2. To tak Lysbon."
"3. To tak the Hands."

[14] Calendar of State Papers (Domestic). Record Office.

[15] Norris had greatly distinguished himself in Ireland and the Netherlands, notwithstanding Leicester's persistent attempts to ruin him; and, from his conduct there and during this expedition, he would appear to have been brave, but turbulent and of doubtful discretion.

[16] Philip was informed late in December by his spies in England that Drake was to contribute 12,000 crowns, the Earl of Essex 10,000, Norris 8,000, and London Merchants 24,000, and that the Queen had advanced £20,000.

[17] On the eve of departure Norris and Drake officially told the Council that the total number of all sorts was 23,375. Captain Fenner, Drake's vice-admiral, gives the number as 21,000 (Bacon Papers). Captain Baillie, of the _Mary German_, in a letter to Lord Shrewsbury says the landsmen alone were 20,000; whilst Drake himself, in one of his many letters begging for supplies, says, "20,000 men cannot be kept for a trifle."

Camden, the historian, speaks of 12,500 soldiers, and Speed, following Pricket's tract, puts the number of landsmen at 11,000 and mariners at 2,500. There is a letter in the British Museum from one of the Portuguese nobles (Count de Portalegre) to Philip II., in which the army before Lisbon is spoken of as 12,000 men; and the Spanish diarist whose MS. I have mentioned says 16,000 men-at-arms left England and very few sailors. The terrible mortality from sickness, &c., and the comparatively small number that came back made English writers of the time anxious to minimise the disaster by underrating the numbers of the expedition.

[18] English accounts usually say six, but I am inclined to believe the Spanish account is correct, as Drake writes to the Council (Record Office, Domestic Calendar), after the six ships had been appointed, asking for a larger vessel, the Victory, "in respect of the King Dom Antonio."

[19] Venetian Calendar.

[20] The Venetian ambassador at Madrid, in his account to the Doge of the events at Corunna, says that Drake's booty from that place consisted of "6,000 salted oxen, fifteen thousand jars of biscuit, 6,000 barrels of powder and 3,000 hogsheads of wine; all of it provision for the Armada which went so unsuccessfully last year, or else to furnish a new Armada according to the design which they entertain. This plunder will prove of the greatest service to the English ... and here the news has caused much chagrin; and it is hidden or minimised as much as possible."

[21] It was said in Madrid that these two thousand peasants had only six muskets amongst them.--_Venetian Calendar of State Papers_.

[22] "She dowteth not but they have thoroughly weighed the heinousness of the offence lately committed by Sir Roger Williams in forsaking the army with one of her principal ships. If they have not already inflicted punishment of death upon him he is to be deprived of all command and kept in safe custody at their perils. If the Earl of Essex has joined the fleet they are to send him home instantly. If they do not they shall truly answer for the same at their smart, for as we have authority to rule so we look to be obeyed and these be no childish actions."--_State Papers_ (_Domestic_), May 4, 1589.

The draft of this letter, deeply scored by the Queen's own hand, was submitted to Walsingham by Windebanke, the Secretary of the Signet, and the minister said that although the letter was as mild as could be expected "under the circumstances," he much feared that any proceedings against one so beloved as Sir Roger Williams would breed mutiny. And so apparently thought the generals, for they took no notice of the Queen's commands.

The Queen wrote another outspoken letter to the generals on the 20th of May, in which she says they were perverting the object of their expedition; which was to burn the King of Spain's navy and restore Dom Antonio, and then proceed to the Azores. Corunna, she says, is of little importance and the risk great, and she commands them to fulfil her orders at once. Do not, she says, suffer yourselves to be transported with an haviour of vainglory which will obfuscate the eyes of your judgment.

Secretary Windebanke, writing to Heneage at the same time, says the Queen is strangely set against the expedition, and is intensely incensed at the fruitless attack on Corunna. "She thinks they went to places for their own profit rather than for her service."--_State Papers_ (_Domestic_).

[23] The bitter jest in Madrid at the time was that, whereas with the Armada the year before there went an army with no commander, there was now a commander with no army.

[24] Contarini to the Doge. Venetian Calendar of State Papers.

[25] A letter in the collection of the Marquis of Salisbury at Hatfield curiously illustrates the not altogether happy relations that existed between the English invaders and the pretender's friends. The letter is dated the 27th of May, and is from General Norris to Captain George (Burton?), whom he had left in charge at Peniche, complaining that "the King is aggrieved that you do take upon you to give the word since he hath appointed a Governor. And in truth it is not reason but the Governor should have the pre-eminence and therefore henceforward fail not to let him have that honour." This is a sample of the frequent complaints that the English did not treat Antonio quite as a king expected to be treated in his own realm. The fact was that Antonio had been too long a suppliant and a fugitive dependent largely upon Elizabeth's caprices for the English to regard him otherwise than as a tool for their own ends.

[26] Venetian Calendar of State Papers.

[27] This is more likely to be true than the assertion of my Portuguese that Antonio could get nothing to eat. The great body of the people were unquestionably in his favour, but had no leaders and would not fight.

[28] If the Earl of Essex was rash and headstrong, he was also chivalrous. Pricket (or Wingfield) says: "Hee for money hired men to carrie sick and hurt upon pikes (for want of waggons) and hee (whose true virtue and nobilitie, as it dooth in all other his actions appear so did it very much in this) threw his owne stuffe, I mean apparell and necessaries from his owne carriages, and let them be left by the way, to put hurt and sick men upon them in this march."

[29] Essex started for England on the 16th of June, two days after his brother, on receipt of letters direct from the Queen, brought by a ship with stores from England. Williams was very desirous of accompanying him, but the generals refused to let him go, as they doubtless wished him to have the benefit of the favourite's mollifying influence with the Queen for some weeks before he arrived in England.

{73}

_JULIAN ROMERO--SWASHBUCKLER._

{75}

_JULIAN ROMERO--SWASHBUCKLER._

In a slumberous street in old Madrid, called anciently the Calle de Cantaranas, but now inappropriately named after Lope de Vega, there stands a venerable convent of barefooted Trinitarian nuns. The fortress-like red walls with the tiny grated windows looking upon the street, the quaint, sad tranquillity which hangs around the place, are only such as mark hundreds of other like retreats in Madrid and elsewhere; and yet to this particular convent many reverent steps are bent from all quarters of the earth, for here lie the bones of the "maimed one of Lepanto," the author of "Don Quixote." He died only a few yards away, in his house in the Calle de Leon, and was quietly laid to rest in the convent, where one of his own daughters was a nun. The very fact of his burial there was almost forgotten--was indeed for many years disputed, until proved beyond possibility of doubt not long since--and when the fury for destroying religious foundations seized the rulers of Madrid after the revolution of 1868, the convent was marked down for destruction {76} like so many others of its kind. And destroyed it would have been but for the pious zeal of the good "setenton," Mesonero Romanos, most beloved of Madrid antiquarians, who woke up the Academy of History, and brought such pressure to bear upon the Government as to save the sepulchre of Cervantes from profanation for all future time, and thus enabled the great author, after he had lain in his grave for two and a half centuries, to repay his debt to the Trinitarian fathers who rescued him from his galling slavery in the hands of the infidel. A stone tablet is now fixed in the wall of the convent setting forth the fact of his sepulture there in 1616, and the foundation of the community a few years previously by Doña Juana Gaitan, daughter of General Julian Romero. The name of the latter awakens no responsive echoes in Spanish minds. I have before me, indeed, a recently published Spanish historical work which ascribes his very existence to a wrong period. With the exception of a few particulars of his later life given in a local history of Cuenca by Father Muñoz, no Spanish writer has ever been at the trouble of tracing what little may be known of his stirring career. And yet the man in his day was the very prototype of those indomitable adventurers, lusting for blood and gold, who, the sword in one hand and the cross in the other, hunted down to death the Indians of one hemisphere and the "heretics" of the other. Keen, cruel, Alba had no more ruthless instrument for his fell work than "Captain Julian," upon whom and Sancho de Avila the hatred of the persecuted Flemings was mainly concentrated. In the course of my somewhat out-of-the-track studies I have found the {77} name of Julian Romero constantly cropping up, and so many personal traits of him have appeared, that by carefully piecing them together a more complete account may be formed of the life and character of this typical swashbuckler than of, perhaps, any of his fellows. His life, too, offers some interest to Englishmen, for he swaggered and ruffled in London many a time and oft, and was one of those Spanish mercenaries who, in the reigns of Henry VIII. and Edward VI., fought so bravely against the French and Scots and quelled by their ferocity the risings of Kett in Norfolk and Arundell in the West Country. Practically nothing whatever was known of the lives--hardly indeed the existence--of the Spanish mercenaries in England until the recent publication of the anonymous "Spanish Chronicle of Henry VIII.,"[1] which I now attribute to Antonio de Guaras, a leading Spanish merchant in London, whom I know to have been on close terms of intimacy with the Spanish soldiers, and particularly with Julian Romero, whose early adventures in England are evidently related at first hand in the Chronicle.

Of all the turbulent soldiers of fortune who quarrelled, intrigued, and triumphed in England, and whose adventures are so minutely told in the Chronicle, only one was heard of in after life. The general, Sir Peter Gamboa, was murdered with Captain Sir Alonso de Villa Sirga in St. Sepulchre's churchyard, hard by Newgate, one wet winter's night in 1551, by Captain Guevara, who was incontinently hanged in Smithfield. Sir {78} Pero Negro died of the sweating sickness in one of the crowded lanes of old London city. Juan de Haro was killed by the English for attempted desertion with his company to the French enemy before Boulogne; others fell in the Flemish wars, and only the rash and boastful "Captain Julian" lived to become Alba's trusted henchman, and to hand his name down to the execration of generations of Flemings as one of the prime movers of the "Spanish Fury" in Antwerp. So great was the fame of his ferocity that the panic mongers, who were for ever sending to Elizabeth and Cecil intelligence of the dreadful vengeance which was to fall upon England at the hands of King Philip, could invent nothing more terror-striking than their constantly repeated dread that Julian Romero was to swoop down upon the coast and serve English Protestants in the same way as he had treated those of the Netherlands. He had, indeed, as will be shown in his own words at various periods of his life--now for the first time brought together--all the vices and virtues of his class and time. Vain and boastful, bigoted and cruel, he was nevertheless true to his salt, faithful, brave, and steadfast; of that stern, self-sacrificing stuff by which alone empires may be won or despotism defended. He was born at Huelamo, in the province of Cuenca, of very humble folk, for even when he was in high command and on terms of close intimacy with nobles and ministers, he was never given the nobiliary address of Don, which was enjoyed by the most remote and out-at-elbows representative of the hidalgo class. He was not much of a scholar either, for his signature which exists at Simancas is the only part of his letters in {79} his own hand, and is painfully traced in great bold straight lines, like a row of halberds.

In the winter of 1534 every village in Spain resounded with the drum-beat of the recruiters, who were seeking soldiers for the Emperor's great expedition against the Moors, which was to start from Barcelona in the spring. Spanish hearts were all aflame with wondrous stories of fortune and adventure. The excitement, the freedom, the idleness, and the possible gains of a soldier's life had seized upon the imagination of Spanish youth; and the turbulent spirit of war-like adventure in far countries was, for the next century at least, to be the dominant note of the national character. Julian must have been a mere boy, but he joined the standard, so he wrote forty years afterwards, at Christmas, 1534, as a foot-soldier, and, with a pike on his shoulder, started on his life of adventure. There was no one to record the doings and sufferings of the humble man-at-arms in those stirring days, and beyond the fact that he drifted from Spain to Tunis, from Tunis to Italy, and thence to Flanders and France, always in the midst of the fighting in the Emperor's wars, nothing is known for the next ten years of Julian Romero's service. In the beginning of 1544 Henry VIII. had arranged to enter into alliance with the Emperor to jointly attack the King of France, and the probability is that if they had together marched upon Paris promptly, they would have had France at their mercy. But other counsels prevailed, and, whilst Charles operated in Picardy and French Flanders, Henry sent the Duke of Norfolk and his brilliant son, Surrey, with an army of 15,000 men, {80} to besiege Montreuil. The King's brother-in-law, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, at the same time with a large force "sat down before" Boulogne, and, on the 14th of July, great Harry himself landed at his good town of Calais to take the supreme command of his army before Boulogne. He was accompanied by a brilliant train of courtiers and soldiers, and took with him as his chief military adviser a great Spanish noble, Beltran de la Cueva, third Duke of Alburquerque, whose important share in the reduction of the town has been almost entirely ignored by English historians. Besides the 200 Spanish soldiers who followed the Duke, there were already three Spanish captains in Henry's service, each with a company of his countrymen, to the aggregate number of about 260 men, all of them seasoned veterans in the Continental wars; and these, together with the less experienced English levies, succeeded in capturing the town of Boulogne on the 15th of September. It appears that a breach had been made in the walls three weeks before, and the Spaniards begged Henry to let them take the place by assault. He told them that he would rather waste 10,000 pounds of powder than that a single one of his Spaniards should be sacrificed, "whereupon they blushed for mere shame." But as usual Henry had his own way, and the town surrendered; "_the Frenchmen_," says Wriothesley, "_departing out of the towne with as much goodes as they might carye, both men and women, besyde that the waggons caryed; and the King his Majestie entered the said towne the 18th September with greate tryumphe, and the 20th day a solempne procession was kept with Te Deum songe for the Victory of the King his Majestie {81} and many fyers made in the citye and in every part of the realme. The last day of September the King his Majestie landed at Dover at midnight_." The reason for Henry's hurried return was his desire to retain all the credit for his victory without waiting for the probable reverse. Charles V. had come to terms with the French, and when he had sent word to his English ally that he was negotiating, Henry arrogantly said that the Emperor might make peace if he pleased, but he, Henry, would suit himself in the matter. But when he found the whole French army turned against him he hurriedly raised the siege of Montreuil, put all his forces into Boulogne under Lord Grey, and got back to England as fast as he could, whilst his laurels were yet green. All through the next year the French siege of Boulogne went on, the three companies of Spanish mercenaries, steady old soldiers as they were, being the mainstay of the defence. They complained bitterly of the raw Englishmen's habit of killing the prisoners instead of holding them to ransom, and on one occasion were near mutiny because their prisoners were murdered. "How now," said Captain Salablanca to Lord Grey, "do you think we are in the King's service for the wretched four ducats a month we earn? Not so my lord; we serve with the hope of taking prisoners and getting ransom. Your men have even now killed a gentleman of mine for whom I should have got at least five or six thousand crowns ransom." Whatever their object may have been in serving the schismatic king, Henry thought very highly of them, and when in the year 1545 he was about to send Warwick to attack the Scots, an opportunity {82} occurred for him to engage some more, he gladly seized it. Charles V. had disbanded a large proportion of his army after the peace of Crespi was concluded, and had embarked them for Spain with orders that, under pain of death, they were to take service with no other sovereign. A ship with 800 or 1,000 of these disbanded soldiers on their way home anchored in the Downs, and the warriors being, we are told, "already tired of the sea," they sent an offer of their services to the King of England. The captain of the vessel, however, would not wait for the answer to reach them, but on his putting into Plymouth the whole of them landed and entered the English service. They were promptly sent off to Warwick's army in Scotland under an experienced old soldier of their number called Pedro Gamboa, who was made colonel, with power to create his own captains. Julian Romero landed with this force in some subordinate capacity, but on his arrival in Scotland received his first English commission as captain, from Gamboa. This was in the summer of 1545, and when the winter came the troops were put into quarters, whilst Gamboa and his newly fledged captains came to London to air their finery at Henry's Court. The King made much of them, and in the early spring of 1546, a temporary peace having been patched up with Scotland, ordered them to take their companies to the French coast between Calais and Boulogne, where the English were erecting a fort. Whilst Gamboa, Julian Romero, and the other new captains, had been ruffling at Court, receiving grants and attentions from the King, the three or four old Spanish commanders with their companies, who had {83} been long in Henry's service, had been enduring hard fare and rough service, and obtaining but little loot at Boulogne; so that on the arrival in France of the new men, straight from Court favour, a very bitter feeling was shown towards them. One of the old captains, Cristobal Mora, deserted bodily with his men to the enemy, and another one, Juan de Haro, was killed in attempting to do so. It may therefore well be supposed that when peace was made in June, 1546, and the compatriots met again on neutral ground, there was a good deal of thumb-biting and recrimination. Mora was flouted in the streets by his fellow-countrymen for having disgraced the mercenary creed by deserting his paymaster before the enemy; whilst he retorted by accusing Gamboa and his friends of disobeying their natural sovereign the Emperor in taking service under an excommunicated heretic. Events came to a head at last by the deserting captain, Cristobal de Mora, sending a challenge from Montreuil to Colonel Gamboa in Calais in July. Either for some reason of disparity of age or rank between the two, or else out of mere hot-headed combativeness on the part of Julian Romero, the latter accepted the challenge for his chief, and has left upon record an extremely minute description of the fight. Sir Henry Knyvett went off to obtain the King of England's permission, which was gladly given, and "a thousand broad angels sent to Julian to put himself in order withal." The King of France ordered the erection of lists at Montreuil, where the wage of battle should be decided, and when all was ready Julian Romero, in the full pomp of war, started on his road from Calais {84} to Montreuil, attended by a great company of English and Spanish gentlemen to see the fun. The following is the account given by Julian's friend.

"Well when they arrived in France and the day being come the seconds and umpires saw that each one had equal arms. They were to fight on horseback and each one had a sword, and both rapiers and daggers, and their corselets were open at the back with great holes big enough for two fists to go in on both pieces. This scheme was invented by the French because Mora had one of the best and quickest horses in France, and as they were not to fight with the lance, Mora thought, with the fleetness of his horse, he would be able to wound Julian in the back with his rapier, and so vanquish him.

"When the umpires had seen the arms were equal they gave the signal for the trumpets to sound, and the opponents at once closed with one another, and, at the first blows with the swords, Julian's sword fell from his hands and he seized his rapier. Mora was not backward and threw away his sword for his rapier; and, as he had such an active horse, he went circling round Julian so as to wound him in the back. But Julian was no sluggard, and when Mora saw he could not do this, he decided to kill Julian's horse, which he did with a thrust in the chest; and a few moments afterwards it fell to the ground. At that moment Julian, thinking to do the same for Mora, attacked him with that object; but Mora was too quick with his horse for Julian to wound it, and the rapier fell from Julian's hand, almost at the moment that his horse dropped {85} under him; and as he felt his horse was going to fall he leapt quickly off his back and Mora had not time to ride him down, thanks to the horse which was on the ground. Julian to escape being ridden down, and finding himself armed only with his dagger, was forced to shield himself behind his fallen horse, whilst Mora went round and round and Julian dodged behind the horse. This went on for more than three hours, and at last Mora cried out, 'Surrender, Julian! I do not want to kill thee!' but Julian did not answer a word. There was hardly an hour of daylight left, and Julian would be vanquished at sunset. And, as he saw that Mora was strutting about waiting for the sun to go down, Julian kept wide awake and, watching his opportunity, dropped on one knee behind his prostrate horse and with his dagger cut the straps of his spurs, which he threw away. Seeing his rapier not far from him he made a dash to regain it, and succeeded before Mora could ride him down.

"The gentleman who was acting as Julian's second, seeing how things were going, was very downcast and wished he never had come and said to the Spanish captains: 'Gentlemen, our man is losing.' Then said Captain Cristobal Diaz, 'What, sir! the day is not yet done and I still hope to God that Julian will come off the victor.' 'Do you not see, sir,' said the other, 'that Mora is only flourishing about waiting for sundown?' As they were chatting thus, they saw how Julian had snatched up his rapier again, and how Mora was attacking him. Julian had just time to deal a thrust at Mora's horse, which, feeling itself wounded began to prance, and its rider, fearing that it would fall {86} with him underneath it, determined to get a short distance away and dismount. Julian, however, being on foot and light, without his spurs, went running after him, and when he was trying to dismount, embraced him in such a manner as to bring him to the ground, and with his dagger cut the ties of his helmet. Mora then surrendered at once, and Julian took his arm, and with the sword of his enemy in his hand, led him three times round the field that all might see how he had surrendered."

For this not very chivalrous victory Julian was overwhelmed with honours, the French king, we are told, casting a gold chain round his neck worth more than 700 crowns, whilst the Dauphin gave him a surcoat stamped with gold, worth more than the King's chain; and King Henry of England, when the Spanish officers returned to England, extended special favour to Julian Romero, upon whom he settled a life pension of 600 ducats, which was a larger sum than any of his fellows, except Colonel Gamboa, who got a thousand. In any case it was only paid for a few years.

If the behaviour of the combatants in the duel lacked the chivalry we are apt to expect, still less magnanimous was the treatment of the Spanish officers towards their companies. When the peace was concluded and Julian's duel fought, orders came from England that the troops were to be dismissed, and the mercenary captains were to repair to London. The latter portion of this order was concealed from the soldiers, who were told by Colonel Gamboa that, as they were all dismissed from the English service, they would march together and offer their services elsewhere. He {87} thereupon led them across the frontier into the Emperor's Flemish dominions, and then with the captains gave the men the slip, and left them to shift for themselves. The captains hung about the Court in London all the summer and autumn (1546), quarrelling, gaming, and swaggering, and Julian Romero, less refined and more hot-headed than the rest, well nigh got into serious trouble. His friend who tells the story, evidently at first hand, says that he had been "showing off" very much more than his means or his pay would warrant, and he had borrowed money to such an extent that he hardly dared to walk out publicly. One of his pressing creditors was a Milanese called Baptist Baron, who after much trouble managed to get him arrested for a debt of 200 ducats. Julian was furious with rage at the idea of being haled off to jail, and persuaded the catchpole who had him in custody to take him to Colonel Gamboa's house, in hope that he would pay the money.

"No sooner had he arrived there, than he launched into loud complaints and began to say unreasonable things, amongst others, that anybody who would serve heretics must be a great big knave; and he swore that he would have no more of it, but would go with only a pike on his shoulder and four ducats (a month) pay to serve elsewhere; and he said a good many other things that had much better have been omitted, for certainly no good came of them."

Gamboa made himself responsible for the money, but Julian's loose talk about heretics was dangerous, and the colonel, whose subsequent behaviour to the other captains shows him to have been a bad-hearted {88} man, seems to have done nothing to shield his subordinate from the consequences of his indiscretion. Gamboa was himself accused at first of treason by the Privy Council, for allowing such talk in his house without punishment. He declared that he was deaf, and did not hear what Julian had said, "which," says the narrator (almost certainly the "merchant" Guaras), "was the truth, as he was in his chamber at the time." "The Council presently sent for Julian and rated him soundly, to which Julian replied: 'Gentlemen, I have said nothing for which I should be so maltreated.' 'Well,' they answered, 'you said this, that, and the other, and there are witnesses who heard you.' But Julian denied it, and they called a merchant who was present in the house of the colonel and had heard everything that had passed. Before this merchant went before the Council, Gamboa spoke to him and begged him to accuse Julian as much as he could, so that they should take away his pay from him; but the merchant, seeing the malice of Gamboa, said, 'Señor Gamboa, I am no mischief-maker to do harm where I can do good,' and he would not speak to Gamboa any more. The lords then sent for the merchant; all the captains as well as Julian being present, and, as the merchant was going in, Gamboa said to him aloud, so that all should hear, 'Señor, I beseech you to favour Julian as much as you can; for good or evil to him depends upon what you say.' Good God! how artfully Gamboa said that, when not three hours before he had begged him earnestly to accuse him and get his income taken away. But Julian and the other captains thought that Gamboa was favourable to him." The "merchant's" evidence {89} does not seem to have palliated the case against Julian, but that perhaps was because "they made him place his hands upon the Gospels, and he swore to tell the truth." He said that Julian was in a rage at being arrested, and shouted out some coarse expressions about the King and Council not caring much for him, and that he would rather serve elsewhere for four ducats than here for a mint of money. "Then," said the lords, "didst thou not hear him say that he would come with a pike on his shoulder to fight against such heretics?" To which the merchant replied that the soldiers were making so much noise that he did not hear well what was said. The end of the matter was that, just as the Council were going to sentence Julian to punishment and dismissal, Paget put in a good word for him, and got him off with a severe wigging and a threat to punish him severely if he let his tongue run too loosely again; "whereupon Julian made no answer but made a very low bow, and then they told him to go, and if any one was sorry he was not dismissed it was Gamboa."

A few weeks after this the trouble with Scotland broke out again, and the captains were ordered to raise a fresh force of Spanish men-at-arms. This was not easily done at short notice, and Julian and his fellow Spanish officers frankly said that they could not get together men who would do them credit in the time specified, and they had no confidence in Burgundians and others who could be quickly recruited. Gamboa, however, made no difficulty about it; but to the great disgust of the Spaniards raised a regiment of Burgundians, whom he led to Scotland to take part in the siege of {90} Haddington. On Gamboa's coming south for the winter this regiment, under its ensign, Perez, deserted _en masse_ to the enemy, for which desertion Perez was hanged when the place was captured; but in the meanwhile the circumstance still further widened the breach between Gamboa and the other Spanish officers. The King died, at the beginning of the year 1547, and by the time Somerset was leaving London for his short and triumphant campaign in Scotland, plenty of Spanish and Italian mercenaries had joined the standards of our captains. They confessedly turned the tide of victory to the English side at the battle of Pinkie by a dashing flank charge under Gamboa, and a few days afterwards, at the burning of Leith, they again greatly distinguished themselves. Julian, of course, was in the thick of it, and his friend asserts that he was made an English knight after Pinkie. I can find no confirmation of this, although the English authorities show that after the burning of Leith the Protector knighted, amongst others, on the 28th of September, 1547. Sir Peter Gamboa, Pero Negro, Alonso de Villa Sirga, and Cristobal Diaz.

Julian remained in Scotland during the campaigns of 1548-9, and took part in the relief of Haddington; but Gamboa in the latter year was dismissed in consequence of his unpopularity with the other Spaniards and an accusation of peculation made against him. Of Julian Romero we hear in all parts. He and Pero Negro were in charge at Droughty Ferry, near Dundee, and a few of their men made a dash one day at a French general who was strolling a short distance from his lines, and captured him in the face of his own troops before he could be {91} rescued. The French complained especially of Julian's and Pero Negro's celerity of movement, by which they were able to give them the slip, encumbered as the French were by the unscientific methods of their Scotch allies.[2] Warwick had the help of a considerable body of Spaniards, and almost certainly of Julian Romero, in his defeat of Kett's rebellion in the autumn of 1549; certainly in the winter of that year when Warwick, with the prestige of his victories upon him, thought he was strong enough to strike a final blow at the Protector, Julian was one of the foreign captains he took with him to overawe Somerset at his levee, and to demand of him in their name rich rewards for their services in Scotland and elsewhere. As soon as Warwick had got rid of Somerset he changed his tone. England was no longer a fit place for Catholics. The King, Edward VI., was known to be dying, and the next heiress was a papist and half a Spaniard, against whom the Spanish officers could not be trusted to fight in favour of Northumberland's Protestant _protegée_. So they were dismissed, those that were left of them, and are thenceforward swallowed up in the unfathomable abyss of the dead past; all except Julian Romero, who was reserved for greater things.

There was no lack of demand for the services of such men, for the Emperor, his natural sovereign, was at war with the French once more, and less than two years after he left England we hear of Romero again. Sir John Mason, writing to {92} the English Council on the 7th of July, 1554,[3] reports that Julian with five standards of Spaniards and others was holding out against the French in the castle of Dinant. He is, Sir John says, unlikely to be taken; but if he be, all the Liege country must soon follow. A week afterwards Dr. Wotton writes to Queen Mary[4] an account of the fall of Dinant, and says: "The town and castle of Dinant have been taken, the former surrendered by composition without loss of goods, the latter, wherein were some Spaniards with Captain Julian, who formerly served in England, made a gallant resistance, but at last held parliament and yielded, the soldiers departing with their swords by their side."

The Spanish historian Sandoval blames Romero for his capture and the loss of Dinant, which he attributes to his want of prudence in going out to parley, "but rarely indeed do both valour and prudence reside in one person, although this captain afterwards proved that he possessed both qualities; for he became one of the most famous soldiers of our time." Romero seems first to have attracted general public notice by his bravery and dash at the great battle of St. Quintin in 1557, and in the contemporary poem called "La Araucana" he is mentioned as one of the most conspicuous heroes of the storming of the town, in command of a regiment of Spaniards, Germans, and Walloons. For the ten years that followed the peace of 1558 the centre of war was changed, and the almost constant struggles between Philip II. and the Turks kept Italy and Sicily full of Spanish soldiers. Romero {93} during most of the time was quartered in the Milanese, whilst not before the enemy; and in the meanwhile had been promoted to the rank of Maestre de Campo (colonel), but in 1567 Philip took the fatal decision of grappling in a duel to the death with a closer and more dangerous power than the Turk--namely, that of Protestantism and national freedom in his own Netherlands dominions. The humble remonstrance of the Flemish nobles and Egmont's visit to Madrid had convinced the stealthy bigot that, if he insisted upon ruling his Flemish dominions according to Spanish methods, he could only do it by the ruthless power of the sword. His kindly and popular sister, Margaret of Parma, Flemish to the heart as she was, had already shown signs of sympathy with the demands of her countrymen, and was an unfit instrument for Philip's new plans. There was no one but hard-hearted old Alba who could be trusted to carry them out to the bitter end with the needful cat-like cruelty. So early in 1567 the Spanish troops from Milan and Naples, the Italians from Savoy and Parma, the veterans who for years had been fighting the infidel in the Mediterranean, were set in motion to join the Duke of Alba. Julian Romero was at the time in command of the regiment of Sicily stationed in Milan under the fourth Duke of Alburquerque, the son of Henry VIII's military dry-nurse at Boulogne; and he, like the rest of them, led his men to Brussels. The Flemish nobles were lulled into a feeling of false security. Kindly messages came from Philip in Madrid. He himself would come and set all things right. Alba and his son flattered the shallow Egmont, and {94} courted the distrustful Horn, whose brother Montigny was kept at Madrid by specious excuses, and the smiling mask was kept over Alba's grim face till all was ready.

Egmont had readily accepted that fateful invitation to dinner for the 9th of September, and even Horn had been persuaded to leave the security of his own country for the same purpose, when late on the night of the 8th a Spanish officer of apparently high rank came secretly to his (Egmont's) house in disguise and significantly warned him to escape at once, whilst there was yet time. To the last day of her life the Countess of Egmont was confident that this officer was Julian Romero;[5] but, whoever he was, Egmont neglected the warning and went to the feast next day. Sancho de Avila posted troops in all the streets leading to the house, to the wonder of the townsfolk, and on the stairs of the Hotel itself were stationed 200 stalwart harquebussiers under Colonel Julian Romero, who himself stood at the door of the room in which the treacherous arrest was to be effected.[6] At the given moment Sancho de Avila laid hands on Egmont, whilst Romero stood by and overawed any attempt of the Flemings at resistance.

At 11 o'clock in the morning of the 6th of June of the following year, the day that the Counts were to die, Julian it was who went to Egmont's chamber to conduct him to the scaffold on the great square in Brussels. He wished to tie {95} the Count's hands, but the noble refused to be thus degraded. During Egmont's last few moments he turned in bitter anguish to Julian Romero and asked him earnestly whether the sentence was irrevocable, and whether a pardon might not, even now, be granted to him. Romero appeared to think that the Count's courage was failing him, and only answered by a contemptuous shrug of his shoulders and a negative sign; whereupon Egmont gnashed his teeth in silent rage and went to his death.[7]