Post mortem: Essays, historical and medical

by C. MacLaurin

The Emperor Charles V

THAT extraordinary phenomenon which, being neither Holy, nor Roman, nor yet strictly speaking an Empire, was yet called the Holy Roman Empire, began when Charlemagne crossed the Alps to rescue the reigning Pope from the Lombards in A.D. 800. The Pope crowned him Roman Emperor of the West, a title which had been extinct since the time of Odoacer more than three hundred years before. The revival of the resplendent title caused the unhappy people of the Dark Ages to think for a moment in their misery that the mighty days of Augustus and Marcus Aurelius had returned; it seemed to add the power of God to the romance of ages and the brute power of kings. During the next two centuries the peoples of France and Germany gradually evolved into two separate nations, but it was impossible for men to forget the great brooding power which had given the Pax Romana to the world, and its hallowed memory survived more beneficent than possibly it really was; it appeared to their imaginations that if it were possible to unite the sanctity of the Pope with the organizing power of Rome the blessed times might again return when a man might reap in peace what he had sown in peace, and the long agony of the Dark Ages might be lifted from mankind. When Henry the Fowler had welded the Germans into a people with a powerful king the time appeared to have arisen, and his son Otto was crowned Holy Roman Emperor. He was not Emperor of Germany, nor German Emperor; he was Holy Roman Emperor of the German people, wielding power, partly derived from the religious power of the Pope, and partly from the military resources of whatever fiefs he might hold; and this enormous and loosely knit organization persisted until 1806—nearly seven hundred years from the time of Otto, and more than 1,000 years after the time of Charlemagne.

This mediæval Roman Empire was founded on sentiment; it took its power from blessed—and probably distorted—memories of a golden age, when one mighty Imperator really did rule the civilized world with a strong and autocratic hand. It was a pathetic attempt to put back the hands of the clock. It bespoke the misery through which mankind was passing in the attempt to combine feudalism with justice. When the mediæval Emperor was not fighting with the Pope he was generally fighting with his presumed subjects; occasionally he tried to defend Europe from the Turks. He might have justified his existence by defending Constantinople in 1453, by which he would have averted the greatest disaster that has ever befallen Europe. He missed that opportunity, and the mediæval Empire, though it survived that extraordinary calamity, yet continued ramshackle, feeble, and mediævally glorious until long past the Protestant Reformation. Being Roman, of course it was anti-Lutheran, and devoted its lumbering energies to the destruction of the Protestants. No Holy Roman Emperor ever rivalled the greatness of Charles V, in whose frame shone all the romance and glamour of centuries. How vast was his power is shown when we consider that he ruled over the Netherlands, Burgundy, Spain, Austria, much of what is now Germany, and Italy; and he was not a man to be contented with a nominal rule.

He was born in Ghent in 1500 to Philip, Duke of Burgundy, and Juana, who is commonly known as “Crazy Jane”; it is now generally believed that she was insane, though the Spaniards shrank from imputing insanity to a queen. From his father he inherited the principalities of the Netherlands and Burgundy; from his mother he inherited the kingships of Spain, Naples, and the Spanish colonies. When his grandfather, the Hapsburg Emperor Maximilian, died, Charles was elected Emperor in 1519; the other candidate was Francis I of France. The electors were the seven Kurfursten of Germany, and Charles bribed the harder of the two. What power on earth could summon before a magistrate the kings of France and Spain on a charge of improperly influencing the vote of a German princelet? Once having attained to the title of Roman Emperor, added to the enormous military power of King of Spain, Charles immediately became the greatest man in the world. He was strong, cautious, athletic, brave, and immeasurably sagacious; his reputation for wisdom long survived him.

Francis did not forgive him his victory, and for the next quarter of a century—until 1544—Europe resounded with the rival cries of the two monarchs, unhappy Italy being usually the actual scene of battle. At Pavia in 1525 Francis had to say “All is lost save honour”—the precise definition of “honour” in Francis’s mind being something very different from what it is to-day. Francis was captured and haled to Madrid to meet his grim conqueror, who kept him in prison until he consented to marry Charles’s favourite sister Eleanor of Austria, and to join with him in an alliance against the heretics. This Eleanor was a gentle and beautiful lady whom Charles treated with true brotherly contempt; yet she loved him. As soon as Francis was out of prison he forgot that he was married, and made love to every pretty girl that came his way.

Francis being safely out of the way, Charles turned to the great aim of his life—to reconcile Protestants with Catholics throughout his colossal Empire. He was a strong Catholic, and displayed immense energy in the reconciliation. According to Gibbon, who quotes the learned Grotius,[6] he burned 100,000 Netherlanders, and Gibbon dolefully remarks that this one Holy Roman Emperor slew more Christians than all the pagan Roman Emperors put together. Charles appears to have grown gradually into the habit of persecution; he began comparatively mildly, and it was not till 1550 that he began to see that there was really nothing else to do with these dull and obstinate Lutherans but to burn them. He could not understand it. He was sure he was right, and yet the more Netherlanders he burned the fewer seemed to attend mass. Moreover, it was impossible to believe that those things the miscreant Luther had said about the immoral conduct of the monks could be true; once upon a time he had met the fellow, and had him in his power; why had he not burned him once and for all and saved the world from this miserable holocaust which had now become necessary through the man’s pestilential teaching? So Charles went on with his conciliation, driven by conscience—the most terrible spur that can be applied to the flanks of a righteous man. No doubt Torquemada acted from conscience, and Robespierre; possibly even Nero could have raked up some sort of a conscientious motive for all he did—the love of pure art, perhaps. “Qualis artifex pereo!” said he in one of those terse untranslatable Latin phrases when he was summoning up his courage to fall upon his sword in the high Roman manner; surely there spoke the artist: “How artistically I die!”

The activities of Charles were so enormous that it is impossible in this short sketch even to mention them all. Besides his conquest of Francis and, through him, Italy, he saved Europe from the Turk. To Francis’s eternal dishonour he had made an alliance with the last great Turkish Sultan, Solyman the Magnificent. The baleful power which had conquered Constantinople less than a century before seemed to be sweeping on to spread its abominations over Western Europe; and history finds it difficult to forgive Francis for assisting its latest conqueror. Men remembered how Constantine Palæologus had fallen amidst smoke and carnage in his empurpled blazonry, heroic to the last; they forgot that the destruction of 1453 was probably the direct result of the Venetian and French attack under Dandolo in 1204, from which Constantinople never recovered. In talking of the “Terrible Turk” they forgot that Dandolo and his Venetians and Frenchmen had committed atrocities quite as terrible as the Turks’ during those days and nights when Constantinople was given over to rapine; and now the brilliant Francis appeared to be carrying on Dandolo’s war against civilization. So when Charles stepped forward as the great hero of Europe, and drove the Turks down the Danube with an army under his own leadership he was hailed as the saviour of Christendom; it is to this that he owes a good deal of his glory, and he nobly prepared the world for the still greater victory of Lepanto to be won by his son Don John of Austria.

Moreover, it was during his reign that the great American conquests of the Spanish armies occurred, and the name of Fernando Cortes attained to eternal glory; and the Portuguese voyager Maghellan made those wonderful discoveries which have so profoundly influenced the course of history. There had been no man so great and energetic as Charles since Charlemagne; since him his only rival for almost super-human energy has been Napoleon.

That pathetic and unhappy queen whom we call “Bloody Mary” had been betrothed to Charles for diplomatic reasons when she was an infant, but he had broken off the engagement and ultimately married Isabella of Portugal, whose fair face is immortalized by Titian in the portrait that still hangs in the Prado, Madrid. Auburn of hair, with blue eyes and delicate features, she looks the very type of what we used to call the tubercular diathesis; and there can be no doubt that Charles really loved her. Before he married her he had had an illegitimate daughter by a Flemish girl; ten years after she died Barbara Blomberg, a flighty German, bore him a son, the famous Don John of Austria. But while Isabella lived no scandal attached to his name. Unhappily his only legitimate son was Philip, afterwards Philip II of Spain.

When Mary came to the throne she was intensely unhappy. During the dreadful years that preceded the divorce of Catherine of Aragon, Charles had strongly supported Catherine’s cause; and Mary did not forget his aid when she found herself a monarch, lonely and friendless. She let him know that she would be quite prepared to marry him if he would take her.[7] Probably Charles was terrified by the advances of the plain-faced old maid, but the opportunity of strengthening the Catholic cause was too good to miss. The house of Austria was always famous for its matrimonial skill; the hexameter pasquinade went:

“Bella gerant alii—tu, felix Austria, nube!”
(“Others wage war for a throne—you, happy Austria, marry!”)

Charles, in his dilemma, turned to his son Philip, who nobly responded to the call of duty. Of him Gibbon might have said that “he sighed as a lover, but obeyed as a son” if he had not said it concerning himself; and Philip broke off his engagement to the Infanta of Portugal, and married the fair English bride himself.

Charles was still the greatest and most romantic figure in Europe—a mighty conqueror and famous Emperor; any woman would have preferred him to his mean-spirited son; and Mary was grateful to him for powerful support during years of anguish. She obeyed his wishes, and took the son instead of the father.

Queen Mary’s sad life deserves a word of sympathetic study. With her mother she had passed through years of hideous suffering, culminating in her being forced by her father to declare herself a bastard—probably the most utterly brutal act of Henry’s reign. She had seen the fruits of ungovernable sexuality in the fate of her enemy Anne Boleyn; added to her plain face this probably caused her to repress her own sex-complex; finally she married the wretched young creature Philip, who, having stirred her sexual passions, left her to pursue his tortuous policy in Spain. All the time, as I read the story, she was really desirous of Charles, his brilliant father. Love-sick for Charles; love-sick for Philip, to whom she had a lawful right set at naught by leagues of sea; love-sick for any man whom her pride would allow her to possess—and I do not hint a word against her virtue—she is not a creature to scorn; she is rather to be pitied. Her father had been a man of strong passions and violent deeds; from him she had inherited that tendency to early degeneration of the cardiovascular system which led to her death from dropsy at the early age of forty-two; and her repressed sex-complex led her into the ways of a ruthless religious persecution, probably increased by the object-lesson set her by her hero. From this repressed sex-complex also sprang her fierce desire for a child, though the historians commonly attribute this emotion to a desire for some one to carry on her hatred of the Protestants. I remember the case of a young woman who was a violent Labour politician; unfortunately it became necessary for her to lose her uterus because of a fibroid tumour. She professed to be frantically sorry because she could no longer bear a son to go into Parliament to fight the battle of the proletariat against the wicked capitalist; but once in a moment of weakness she confessed that what she had really wanted was not a bouncing young politician, but merely a dear little baby to be her own child. Probably some such motive weighed with Mary. People laughed at her because she used to mistake any abdominal swelling, or even the normal diminution of menstruation that occurs with middle age, for a sign of pregnancy[8]; but possibly if she had married Charles instead of Philip, and had lived happily with him as his wife, she would not have given her people occasion to call her “Bloody Mary.” She is the saddest figure in English history. From her earliest infancy she had been taught to look forward to a marriage with the wonderful man who to her mind—and to the world’s—typified the noblest qualities of humanity—courage, bravery, rich and profound wisdom, learning and love of the beautiful in art and music and literature; friend and admirer of Titian and gallant helper of her mother. Her disappointment must have been terrible when she found him snatched from her grasp and saw herself condemned either to a life of old maidenhood or to a loveless marriage with a mean religious fanatic twelve years younger than herself. The mentality which led Mary to persecute the English Protestants contained the same qualities as had led Joan of Arc to her career of unrivalled heroism, and to-day leads an old maid to keep parrots. When an old maid undresses it is said that she puts a cover over the parrot’s cage lest the bird should see her nakedness; that is a phase of the same mentality as Mary’s and Joan’s. Loneliness, sadness, suppressed longing for the unattainable—it is cruel to laugh at an old maid.

But Charles was to show himself mortal. He had always been a colossal eater, and had never spared himself either in the field or at the table. One has to pay for these things; if a man wishes to be a great leader and to undertake great responsibilities he must be content to forswear carnal delights and eat sparingly; and it is hardly an exaggeration to say that it is less harmful to drink too much than to eat too much. At the age of thirty Charles began to suffer from “gout”—whatever it was that they called gout in those days. At the age of fifty he began to lose his teeth—apparently from pyorrhœa. Possibly his “gout” may have really been the result of focal infection from his septic teeth. At fifty his gout “flew to his head,” and threatened him with sudden death. When he was fifty-two he suddenly became pale and thin, and it was noticed that his hair was rapidly turning grey. Clearly his enormous gluttony was beginning to result in arterio-sclerosis, and at fifty-four it was reported to his enemy the Sultan that Charles had lost the use of an arm and a leg. Sir William Stirling-Maxwell thought that this report was the exaggeration of an enemy; but it is quite possible that Charles really suffered from that annoying condition known as “intermittent claudication,” which is such a nuisance to both patient and doctor in cases of arterio-sclerosis. In these attacks there may be temporary paralysis and loss of the power of speech. The cause of them is not quite clear, because they seldom prove fatal; but it is supposed that there is spasm of some small artery in the brain, or perhaps a transitory dropsy of some motor area. Charles’s speech became indistinct, so that towards the end of his life it was difficult to understand what he meant. It has generally been supposed that this was due to his underhung lower jaw and loss of teeth; but it is equally probable that dropsy of the speech-centre may have been at the root of the trouble, such as is so frequently observed in arterio-sclerosis or its congener chronic Bright’s disease, and is also often caused by over-strain and over-eating. He began to feel the cold intensely, and sat shivering even under the warmest wraps; he said himself that the cold seemed to be in his bones. Probably there was some spasm of the arterioles, such as is often seen in arterio-sclerosis.

By this time, what with the failure of his plans against the Protestants and his wretched health, he had made up his mind to resign the burden of Empire, and to seek repose in some warmer climate, where he could rest in the congenial atmosphere of a monastery. No Roman Emperor had voluntarily resigned the greatest position in the world since Diocletian in A.D. 305; curiously enough he too had been a persecutor, so that his reign is known among the hagiographers as “the age of martyrs.”

Charles called together a great meeting at the Castle of Caudenburg in Brussels in 1556. All the great ones of the Empire were there, and the Knights of the Golden Fleece, an order which still vies for greatness with our own order of the Garter; possibly it may now even excel that order, because it is unlikely that it will ever again be conferred by an Austrian Emperor. Like the Garter, it had “no damned pretence of merit about it.” If you were entitled to wear the chain and insignia of the Golden Fleece, you were a man of very noble birth. Yet, like the Order of the Thistle, the Fleece may yet be revived, and may recover its ancient splendour. On the right of the Emperor sat his son Philip, just returned, a not-impetuous bridegroom, from marrying Mary of England. On his left he leant painfully and short of breath upon the shoulder of William the Silent, who was soon to become of some little note in the world. It was a strange group: the great, bold Emperor whose course was so nearly run; the mean little king-consort of England; and the noble patriot statesman who was soon to drag Philip’s name in the dust of ignominy. Charles spoke at some length, recounting how he had won many victories and suffered many defeats, yet, though so constantly at war, he had always striven for peace; how he had crossed the Mediterranean many times against the Turk, and had made forty long journeys and many short ones to see for himself the troubles of his subjects. He insisted proudly that he had never done any man a cruelty or an injustice. He burst into tears and sat down, showing the emotionalism that so often attends upon high blood-pressure; and the crowd, seeing the great soldier weep, wept with him. Eleanor gave him a cordial to drink, and he resumed, saying that at last he had found the trials of Empire more than his health would allow him to sustain. He had decided to abdicate in favour of his beloved son Philip. It was given to few monarchs to die and yet to live—to see his own glory continued in the glory which he expected for his son. It seems to have been a really touching and dramatic scene, causing an immense sensation throughout Europe. If there were ever an indispensable man it would have appeared at that time to be the Emperor Charles V; the world quaked in apprehension.

It was some time before Charles could carry out his design, but ultimately he went, by a long and dangerous journey, to the place of his retirement, Yuste, in Estremadura, Northern Spain, where there slept a little monastery of followers of St. Jerome; why he—a Fleming—should have picked on this lonely and inaccessible place is not known. With him went a little band of attendants, chief among whom was his stout old chamberlain, Don Luis Quixada, of whom we shall hear more when we come to consider Don John of Austria. This Quixada seems to have been a fine type of Spanish grandee, loyal and faithful; a merry grandee also, who added sound sense to jocund playfulness. Note well the name; we shall meet it again to some purpose.

Charles was mistaken in supposing that he could find rest at Yuste; the world would not let him rest. He had been a figure too overwhelming. He spent his days in reading dispatches from all who were in trouble and fancied that the great man could pluck them from the toils. Chief of his suppliants was his son Philip, who found the mantle that had seemed to sit so easily on his father’s mighty shoulders intolerably heavy when he came to wear it himself. To the man who is strong in his wisdom and resolution difficulties disappear when they are boldly faced. Philip was timorous, poor-spirited, pedantic, and procrastinating. He constantly appealed to his father for advice, and Charles responded in letters which seem to show, in their evidence of annoyance, the irritability that goes with a high blood-pressure. An epidemic of Reformation was breaking out in Spain, however sterile might seem the soil of that nation for Protestantism to flourish. It is not quite clear why no serious move towards the Reformed Religion ever took place among the Spaniards. It is probable that the ancient faith had thrust its roots too deeply into their hearts during the centuries of struggle against the Moors. In the minds of the Spanish people it had been the Church which had inspired their ancestors—not the kings; and they were not going to desert the old religion now that they saw it attacked by the Germans. Moreover, the fierce repression which was practised by the Spanish Inquisition must have had its effect. Lecky formed the opinion that no new idea could survive in the teeth of really determined persecution; and the history of religion in Spain and France seems to bear him out.

However, the old war-horse in his retirement snuffed the battle and the joyous smell of the burnings, and stoutly urged on the Inquisitors, at whatever cost to his own quiet. Spain remained diligently Roman Catholic at the orders of the Holy Roman Emperor and his son Philip; and at this moment, when Charles was so urgently longing for peace and retirement, English Mary, his cousin and daughter-in-law, in whose interests he had loyally braved God, man, and Pope, lost Calais; the French, under the Duke of Guise, took it from her. She might well grieve and say the name would be found written on her heart; she but echoed the feelings of her beloved Emperor. For weeks he mumbled with toothless jaws the agony of his soul over this crowning misfortune, and from this he never really recovered. Already how had the times changed since the Spanish infantry had overrun Europe at his command!

But he could do nothing; he had abdicated. That iron hand was now so crippled with gout that it could hardly even open an envelope, had to sign its letters with a seal, and constantly held a tiny chafing-dish to keep itself warm. Charles sat shivering and helpless, wrapped in a great eiderdown cloak even in midsummer; his eyes fell on the portrait of his beloved wife and of that plain Mary who had wished to marry him, and on several favourite pictures by Titian. He listened to the singing of the friars, and was resentful of the slightest wrong note, for he had an exceedingly acute musical ear. The good fathers, in their attempts to entertain him, brought famous preachers to preach to him; he listened dutifully—he, whose lightest word had once shaken Europe, but who now could hardly mumble in a slurring voice! And in spite of the protests of Quixada he heroically sat down to eat himself to death. It has been said that marriage for an old man is merely a pleasant way of committing suicide; it is doubtful whether Charles enjoyed his chosen method of self-poisoning, for he had lost the sense of taste, and no food could be too richly seasoned for his tired palate. Vast quantities of beef, mutton, venison, ham, and highly flavoured sausages went past those toothless jaws, washed down by the richest wines, the heaviest beers; the local hidalgoes quickly discovered that to reach the Emperor’s heart all they had to do was to appeal to his stomach, so they poured in upon him every kind of rich dainty, to the despair of Quixada, who did his best to protect his master. “Really,” said he, “kings seem to think that their stomachs are not made like other men’s!”

He sometimes used to go riding, but one day, when he was mounting his pony, he was suddenly seized with an attack of giddiness so severe that he nearly fell into the arms of Quixada, so that the Emperor, who had once upon a time been the beau ideal of a light cavalryman, had to toil about heavily on foot in the woods, and to strive to hold his gun steadily enough to shoot a wood-pigeon.

He spent his spare time watching men lay out for him new parterres and planting trees; man began with a garden, and in sickness and sorrow ends with one. The Earth-Mother is the one friend that never deserts us.

For some time he took a daily dose of senna, which was probably the best thing he could have taken in the absence of Epsom salts, but nothing could get rid of the enormous amount of rich food that poured down his gullet. He was always thinking of death, and there seems to be little doubt that he really did rehearse his own funeral. He held a great and solemn procession, catafalque and all, and, kneeling in front of the altar, handed to the officiating friar a taper, which was symbolical of his own soul. He then sat during the afternoon in the hot sun, and it was thought that he caught a feverish chill, for he took to his bed and never left it alive; for hours he held the portrait of Isabella in his hands, recalling her fresh young beauty; he clasped to his bosom the crucifix which he had taken from her dead fingers just before they had become stiff. Then came the fatal headache and vomiting which so often usher in the close of chronic Bright’s disease. We are told that he lay unconscious, holding his wife’s crucifix, till he said: “Lord, I am coming to Thee!” His hand relaxed—was the motor-centre becoming œdematous?—and a bishop held the crucifix before his dying eyes. Charles sighed, “Aye—Jesus!” and died. Whether or no he died so soon after saying these things as the good friar would have us believe, it is certain that his end was edifying and pious, and such as he would have wished.

The great interest of Charles V to a doctor, now that the questions over which he struggled so fiercely are settled, is that we can seldom trace so well in any historical character the course of the disease from which he died. If Charles had been content to live on milky food and drink less it is probable that he would have lived for years; he might have yielded to the constant entreaties of his friends and resumed the imperial crown; he might have taken into his strong hands the guidance of Spain and the Netherlands that was overwhelming Philip; his calm good sense might have averted the rising flood that ultimately led to the revolt of the Netherlands; possibly he might even have averted the Spanish Armada, though it seems improbable that he could have lived thirty years. But Spain might have avoided that arrogant behaviour which has since that day caused so many of her troubles; with the substitution of Philip for Charles at that critical time she took a wrong turning from which she has never since recovered.

The death of Charles V caused an extraordinary sensation in Europe—even greater than the sensation caused by his abdication. Immense memorial services were held all over the Empire; people wondered how they were ever to recover from the loss. Stout old Quixada said boldly that Charles V was the greatest man that ever had been or ever would be in the world. If we differ from him, at all events his opinion helps us to appreciate the extraordinary impression that Charles had made upon his time, and it is now generally agreed that he was the greatest man of the sixteenth century, which was so prodigal of remarkable men. Possibly William the Silent might be thought still greater; but he was much less resplendent; he lacked the knightly glamour that surrounded the head of the Holy Roman Emperor; he wore no Golden Fleece; no storied centuries fluttered over his head. Yet, if we come to seek a cause for this immense impression, it is not easy to find. There is no doubt that he was a stout defender of the old religion at a time when it sorely needed defenders, and to that extent Romance broods over his memory—the romance of things that are old. He was a man of remarkable energy, and a great soldier at a time when soldiering was not distinguished by genius. He appears to have had great personal charm, though I can find few sayings attributed to him by which we can judge the source of that charm. There is nothing in his history like the gay insouciance, the constant little personal letters to friends, of Henri Quatre; things with Charles V seem to have been rather serious and legal than friendly. He was fond of simple joys, like watchmaking, and he got a remarkable clockmaker, one Torriano, to accompany him to Yuste to amuse his last months. He left behind him a great many watches, and naturally the story grew that he had said: “If I cannot even get my watches to agree, how can I expect my subjects to follow one religion?” But it is probable that this pretty story is quite apocryphal; it is certainly very unlike Charles’s strongly religious—not to say bigoted—character. He was proud and autocratic, yet could unbend, and the friars of Yuste found him a good friend. The boys of the neighbouring village used to rob his orchard, much to the disgust of the Emperor; he set the police on their track, but died before the case came up for trial. After his death it was found that he had left instructions that the fines which he expected to receive from the naughty little ragamuffins were to be given to the poor of their village. Among these naughty little boys was probably young Don John of Austria, whom Quixada had brought to see his supposed father; and it is said that Charles acknowledged him before he died.

Lastly, Charles had the inestimable advantage of being depicted by one of the greatest artists of all time. It is impossible to look upon his sad and thoughtful face, as drawn by the great Titian, without sympathy. The strong, if underhung, jaw which he bequeathed to his descendants and is still to be seen in King Alfonso of Spain; the wide-set and thoughtful eyes; the care-worn furrowed brow; the expression of energy and calm wisdom: all these belonged to a great man.

Two hundred years after he died, when his body had long been removed to the Escorial where it now lies in solemn company with the bodies of many other Spanish monarchs, a strange fate allowed a visiting Scotsman to view it. Even after that great lapse of time it was, though mummified, little affected by decay; there were still on his winding-sheet the sprigs of thyme which his friends had placed there; and the grave and stately features as painted by Titian were still vividly recognizable.

We should be quite within the bounds of reason in saying that Charles V was the greatest man between Charlemagne and Napoleon. He was less knightly than Charlemagne—probably because we know more about him; he had no Austerlitz nor Jena to his credit—nor any Moscow; but in devouring energy and vastness of conception there was little to choose between the three. Charlemagne left behind him the Holy Roman Empire with its enormous mediæval significance, whereas Napoleon and Charles V left comparatively little or nothing. He was the heroic defender of a losing cause, and wears the romantic halo that such heroes wear; yet whatever halo of chivalry, romance, and religious fervour surrounds his name, it is difficult to forget that he deliberately ate himself to death. An ignoble end.

Don John of Austria, Cervantes,
and Don Quixote

TWO great alliances, of which you will read nothing in ordinary history-books, have pre-eminently influenced mankind. The first was between the Priest and the Woman, and seems to have begun in Neolithic times, when Woman was looked upon as a witch with some uncanny power of bewitching honest men and somehow bringing forth useless brats for no earthly reason that could be discovered. From this alliance grew the worship of Motherhood, and hence many more modern religions. When, on Sundays, you see ranks of men in stiff collars sitting in church though they would much rather be playing tennis, you know that they are expiating in misery the spankings inflicted by their Neolithic ancestors perhaps 10,000 years ago: their wives have driven them to church, and Woman, as usual, has had the last word.

But the other alliance, that between Man and Horse, has been a more terrible affair altogether, and has led to Chivalry, the cult of the Man on the Horse, of the Aristocrat, of the Rich Man. Though the Romans had a savage aristocracy they never had Chivalry, probably because they never feared the cavalryman. The Roman legion, in its open order, could face any cavalry, because the legionary knew that the man by his side would not run away; if he, being a misbegotten son of fear, did so, then the man behind him would take advantage of the plungings of the horse to drive his javelin into the silly animal while he himself would use his sword upon the rider. It was left for the Gran Catalan Company of Spain and the Scots under Wallace and Bruce to prove in mediæval times that the infantryman would beat the cavalryman.

The Romans never adopted the artificial rules of Chivalry; it was the business of the legions to win battles—to make money over the business if they could, but first and foremost to win battles. They had no ideas about the “point of honour” which has cost so many a man his life. The main thing was that the legions must not run away; it was for the enemy to do the running. To the Romans it never seems to have occurred that Woman was a creature to be sentimentally worshipped, or that it really mattered very much whether you spoke of a brace of grouse or a couple, of a mob of hounds or a pack; but to the Knight of Chivalry these were vital matters.

With Charlemagne and his Franks a new civilization came into full flower; and Chivalry—the “worship of God and the ladies,” to quote Gibbon’s ironic phrase—swayed the minds of Northern Europe for centuries.

Chivalry has been much misunderstood in modern times. We probably see Chaucer’s “varry parfit gentil knight” as poets and idealists would have us see him and not as he really was. There was no sentimentality about your knight. “Gentle” did not mean “kind”; it meant really “son of a landowner.” A knight had to do things in the manner considered fashionable by his class; he had to call things precisely by the names taught him by some older knight—his tutor and university combined; the slightest slip and he would be considered as the mediæval equivalent of our “bounder”; he had to wear the proper clothes at the proper time, and to obey certain arbitrary—often quite artificial—“manners and rules of good society,” or he would be considered lacking in “good form”; he must recognize the rights of the rich as against the poor, but it did not follow that he should recognize any rights of the poor as against the rich. Even Bayard, knight sans peur et sans reproche, would probably have seemed a most offensive fellow to a twentieth-century gentleman if he, with his modern ideas, could have met the Chevalier; and the sensation caused by the kindly conduct of Sir Philip Sidney in handing his drink of water to a wounded soldier at Zutphen shows how rare such a thing must have been. It was done a thousand times in the late war, and nobody thought anything about it. To the extent of the sensation of Zutphen Chivalry had debased mankind; the evil that it did lived after it. It did good in teaching the world manners and a certain standard of honourable conduct; it did not teach morality, or real religion, or real kindness. These things were left for the poor to teach the rich.

This unsentimental harangue leads us to “the last knight of Europe”—Don John of Austria, around whose name there still shines a glamour of romance like the sound of a trumpet. About nine years after the death of the Empress Isabel, Charles V went a-wandering, still disconsolate, through his mighty empire. He was sad and lonely, for it was about the time when the arterio-sclerosis which was to kill him began to depress his spirits. At Ratisbon, where he lay preparing for the great campaign which was to end in the glorious victory of Muhlburg, they brought to him to cheer him up a sweet singer and pretty girl named Barbara Blomberg, daughter of a noble family. She sang to the Emperor to such purpose that he became her lover, and in due course Don John was born. By this time Charles had discovered that his pretty nightingale was a petulant, extravagant, sensual young woman, by no means the sort of mother a wise man would select to bring up his son; so he took the boy from her care and sent him to a poor Spanish family near Madrid. Whatever Charles V did in his private life seems to have borne the stamp of wisdom and kindness, however little we may agree with some of his public actions. Probably Barbara did not object; it must have been rather alarming for the flighty young person to have the tremendous personality of the great Emperor constantly overlooking her folly; she married a man named Kugel, ruined him by her extravagance, and died penniless save for an annuity of 200 florins left her by the Emperor in his will. I read a touch of sentimentality into Charles’s character. It is difficult to wonder more at his memory of his old light-of-love in his will, or at his accurate and uncomplimentary estimate of her value. Probably he was rather ashamed of some of his memories; so far as I can find out there were not many such, and he wished to hush up the whole incident. Probably Barbara was not worth much more than 200 florins per annum.

Still keeping secret the parentage of the child, whom he called Jeronimo after his favourite saint, Charles handed him over to the care of his steward, Don Luis de Quixada, asking that Maddalena his wife should regard Jeronimo as her own son. Quixada had not been married very long, and naturally Maddalena wondered whence came this cheery little boy of which Quixada seemed so fond; nor would he gratify her curiosity, but hushed her with dark sayings; she kissed the baby in public, but wept in secret for jealousy of the wicked female who had evidently borne a son in secret to her husband before he had married his lawful wife. One night the castle caught fire, and Quixada, flower of Spain’s chivalry though he was, rescued the child before he returned to save Maddalena. It is wrong to call him a “grandee of Spain,” for “grandee” is a title much the same as our “duke”; had he been a grandee I understand that his true name would have been “Señor Don Quixada, duca e grandi de España.” One would think that this action would have added fuel to Maddalena’s jealousy, but she believed her husband when he told her that Jeronimo was a child of such surpassing importance to the world that it had been necessary for a Quixada to save him even before he saved his wife, and quite probably she then, for the first time, began to suspect his real parentage. Charles V was then the great Catholic hero, and the whole Catholic world was weeping for his abdication. So Maddalena developed a strong love for Jeronimo, which died only with herself. She lived for a great many years and bore no children; Jeronimo remained to her as her only son. He always looked upon her as his mother, and throughout his life wrote to her letters which are still delightful to read; whatever duty he had, in whatever part of the world, he always found time to write to Maddalena in the midst of it, and, like a real mother, she kept the letters.

It is said that Charles when dying kissed Jeronimo and called him son; he certainly provided for him in his will. After his death Quixada at first tried to keep the matter secret, but afterwards sent him to live at the Court with his brother Philip II, who treated him as he treated everybody else but Charles V—“the one wise and strong man whom he never suspected, never betrayed, and never undervalued,” as Stirling-Maxwell says. Jeronimo was then openly acknowledged by Philip as Charles’s natural son, being called Don John of Austria. Philip’s own son, a youth of small intelligence, who afterwards died under restraint—Philip was of course accused of poisoning him—once called him bâtarde et fils de putaine—bastard and strumpet’s son. The curly-headed little boy kept his hands by his side and quietly replied, “Possibly so; but at any rate I had a better father than you!” Even by that time he had begun to see that his mother was no saint, and could tell between a great man and a little. Philip could never forgive Don John for being a gallant youth such as his father had hoped that Philip would be and was not; and Don John, conscious of his mighty ancestry, ardently longed to be a real gallant King of Romance, such as his father had hoped Philip would become. Charles, in his will, had expressed a hope that he would be a monk, and Philip actively fought for this, though Charles had left the decision to Don John’s own wishes. In Philip’s eyes no doubt a gay and bold younger brother would be less dangerous to the State—i.e. to Philip—as a monk than as a soldier; yet is it not possible that Philip only thought he was loyally helping to follow out his father’s wishes? He was generally a “slave of duty,” though his slavery often led him into tortuous courses. The Church is a great leveller, and religion is a pacifying and amaranthine repast. But no monkish cowl would suit Don John; his locks were fair and hyacinthine, and no tonsure should degrade them. After a struggle Philip yielded, and Don John was sent in command of the galleys against the Algerian pirates. He did well, and next year he commanded the land forces against the rebel Moriscoes of Granada. Here, in his very first battle, he lost his foster-father and mentor, Quixada, who died a knightly death in rallying the army when it meditated flight. A true knight of Spain, this Quixada, from the time when he took the little son of imperial majesty under his care till the time when he gave up his life lest that little son, now become a radiant young man, should suffer dishonour by his army running away. All Spain, from Philip downward, mourned the death of this most valiant gentleman, which is another thing that makes me think that Philip’s conduct towards Don John was not quite so black as it has been painted. He could certainly recognize worth when it did not conflict with his own interests—that is to say, with the interests of Spain as he saw them. Quixada’s action in concealing the parentage of Don John from his wife was just the sort of loyal and unwise thing that might have been expected from a chivalrous knight, using the word “chivalrous” as it is commonly understood to-day; a dangerous thing, for many a woman would not have had sufficient faith in her husband to believe him when he suddenly produced an unexplained and charming little boy soon after he was married. Maddalena de Ulloa acted like an angel; Don Quixada acted like—Don Quixote! Now we see why I asked you particularly to note the name when we first came across it in the essay on Charles V. Whence did Cervantes get the idea for Don Quixote if not from the foster-father of Don John?

Two years later he got the real chance of his life. The Turks, having recovered from the shock inflicted on them by Charles V, captured Cyprus and seemed about to conquer all the little republics of the Adriatic. The Pope, Pius V, organized the “Holy League” between Spain and Venice, between the most fiercely monarchical of countries and the most republican of cities; and Don John was appointed Admiral-in-chief of the combined fleets of the “Last Crusade,” as the enterprise is called from its mingled gallantry and apparent unity and idealism. For the last time men stood spellbound as Christendom attacked Mohammed.

Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far,

And Don John of Austria is going to the war,

sings Chesterton in Lepanto, one of the most stirring battle-poems since the Iliad.

Sudden and still—hurrah!

Bolt from Iberia!

Don John of Austria

Is gone by Alcalar.

It is difficult for us nowadays to realize the terror of the Turks that possessed Europe in the sixteenth century; mothers quieted their children by the dreadful name, and escaped sailors recounted indescribable horrors in every little seaport from Albania to Scotland. Many thousands of Christian slaves laboured at the oars of the war-galleys, not, as is generally thought, as hostages that these galleys might not be sunk. They were the private property of the captains, who treated their own property better than they treated the property of the Grand Turk. Thus, it was not the worst fate for a Christian galley-slave to serve in the galley of his owner. He would not be exposed to reckless sinking at any rate; if the galley sank, it would be because the owner could not help it. Nor would he be likely to be impaled upon a red-hot poker or thrown upon butchers’ hooks, as might happen to the slave of the Sultan. So it would seem that some unnecessary pity has been spilt upon the slaves of the galleys. Their lot might have been worse, to put things in their most favourable light.

King Philip’s in his closet with the Fleece about his neck,

(Don John of Austria is armed upon the deck.)

Christian captives sick and sunless, all a labouring race repines

Like a race in sunken cities, like a nation in the mines.

(“But Don John of Austria has burst the battle line!”)

Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop,

Purpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate’s sloop.

Vivat Hispania!

Domino gloria!

Don John of Austria

Has set his people free!

This “last crusade” culminated in the great battle of Lepanto, in 1571, where the Turks lost about 35,000 men and their whole battle fleet except forty galleys which crawled home disabled. There was a good deal of discussion about the action of an Italian galley under Doria, but Cervantes, in Don Quixote, seems to have been quite satisfied with it. No such wonderful battle was fought at sea until the Nile itself, which is the most perfect of all sea-fights.

The sensation throughout Europe was indescribable. Everything helped to make the victory romantic—the gallant young bastard admiral compared with the unattractive king under whom he served, the sudden relief from terrible danger, and the victory of Christ over Mahound, so dramatic and complete, all combined to stir the pulses of Christendom as they had never been stirred before—even in the earlier Crusades when the very tomb of Christ was the point under dispute. Men said that Mahound, when he heard the guns of Don John, wept upon the knees of his houris in his Paradise; black Azrael, the angel of death, had turned traitor upon his worshippers.

This glorious victory was won largely by the extraordinary daring and inspiring personality of the Emperor’s bastard, who now, at the summit of human glory, saw himself condemned to retire into the position of a subject. The rest of the life of the “man who would be king” is the record of thwarted ambition and disappointed hopes. Spain and Venice quarrelled, and Lepanto was not followed up; Philip lost the chance of retrieving 1453 and of changing the history of Europe in Spain’s favour ever since. Christian set once more to killing Christian in the old melancholy way; Venice made peace with the Sultan, and Don John set about carving out a kingdom for himself. In dreams he saw himself monarch of Albania, or of the Morea; and in body he actually recaptured Tunis, once so gloriously held by his father. But Philip would not support him and he had to retire. Cervantes, in Don Quixote, evidently thinks Philip quite right. Tunis was a “sponge for extravagance, and a moth for expense; and as for holding it as a monument to Charles V, why, what monument was necessary to glory so eternal?” Don John returned home without a kingdom to his brother, who no doubt let him see that he was becoming rather a nuisance with his expensive dreams. In 1576 he was placated by an appointment as Governor-General to the Netherlands, where he quickly found himself confronted by a much greater, though less romantic, man than himself. William of Orange was now the unquestioned leader of the revolt of the Dutch against the Roman Catholic power of Philip, and when Don John reached the Netherlands he found himself Governor with no subjects. After fruitless negotiations he retired, a very ill man, to Namur; he had become thin and pale, and lost his vivacity. His heart was not in his task. He was meditating the extraordinary “empresa de Inglaterra”—the “enterprise of England”—which now seems to us so fantastic. The Spanish army was to evacuate the Netherlands and to be rapidly ferried across to Yorkshire; by a lightning stroke it was to release Mary Queen of Scots, that romantic Queen, and marry her to Don John, the romantic victor of Lepanto; Elizabeth was to be slain, and the Pope was to bless the union of romance with romance. But Elizabeth would have taken a deal of slaying. One cannot help surmising that Don John may have dreamed this fantasy because he had been educated by Quixada; it was a dream that might have passed through the addled brain of Don Quixote himself. The victor of Lepanto should better have understood the mighty power of the sea; the galleys which had done so well in the Mediterranean would have been worse than useless in the North, where the storms are a worse enemy than the Turks.

But Philip, either through timidity, or jealousy, or wisdom, would have none of it; after long delay he sent an important force to the Netherlands under the command of Don John’s cousin, Alexander Farnese, Prince of Parma, the greatest general Spain ever produced. Don John abandoned his dreams to fall with this army upon the Protestants at Gemblours, where he, or Farnese—opinions differ—won a really great victory, the last that was to honour his name.

A curious incident in this campaign was that the Spaniards were attacked by a small Scottish force at a place called Rejnements. The Scotsmen began, more Scotorum, by singing a psalm. Having thus prepared the way spiritually, they prepared it physically by casting off their clothes, and to the horror of the modest Spaniards attacked naked with considerable success. Many of us, no doubt, remember how the Highlanders in the late war were said to have stained their bodies with coffee or Condy’s fluid and, under cover of a Birnam’s wood composed of branches of trees, emulated the bold Malcolm and Macduff by creeping upon the Germans attired mainly in their boots and identity disks; a sparse costume in which to appear before nursing sisters should they be wounded. I had the honour of operating upon one hefty gentleman who reached the C.C.S. in this attire, sheltered from the bitter cold by blankets supplied by considerate Australians in the field ambulance. We from a southern land considered the habit more suitable for the hardy Scot than for ourselves; though we remembered that an Australian surgeon at Gallipoli, finding that his dressings had run short, tore his raiment into strips and, when the need came, charged the Turks berserk attired in the costume of Adam before the Fall. But we did not remember that gallant Scotsmen had done something similar in 1578. No doubt the sight of a large man, dressed in cannibal costume and dancing horribly on the parapet while he poured forth a string of uncouth Doric imprecations, led to the tale that the British Army was employing African natives to devour the astonished Bosche.

Don John could not follow up the victory of Gemblours. He had neither money nor sufficient men; the few short months remaining to him were spent in imploring aid from his brother. Philip did nothing; possibly he was jealous of Don John; possibly he was fully occupied over the miserable affair of Antonio Perez and the Princess of Eboli. One would like to think that he had lucid intervals in which he recognized the insensate folly of the whole business; but like his father he was spurred on by his conscience. In addition to the other troubles of Don John his army began to waste away with pestilence, no doubt, it being now autumn, with typhoid, that curse of armies before the recent discovery of T.A.B. inoculation. Don John fell sick, in September, 1578, of a fever, but, his doctors considering the illness trifling, continued to work. One Italian, indeed, said that he would die, whereas another sick man, believed to be in articulo mortis, would recover. The guess proved right, and when Don John died the Italian surgeon’s fortune was made. Thus easily are some reputations gained in our profession; it is easier to make a reputation than to keep it.

For nearly three weeks Don John struggled to work, encouraged by his physicians; there came a day, towards the end of September, when he, being already much wasted by his illness, was seized by a most violent pain and immediately had to go to bed. He became delirious, and babbled of battle-fields and trumpet-calls; he gave orders to imaginary lines of battle; he became unconscious. After two days of muttering delirium he awakened, and, as he was thought to be in extremis, took extreme unction. Next day the dying flicker continued, and he heard the priest say mass; though his sight had failed and he could not see, he had himself raised in the bed, feebly turned his head towards the elevation of the Host and adored the body of Christ with his last glimmer of consciousness. He then fell back unconscious, and sank into a state of coma, from which he never rallied. In all, he had been ill about twenty-four days.

These events could be easily explained on the supposition that this young man’s brave life was terminated by that curse of young soldiers—ruptured typhoid ulcer in ambulatory typhoid fever. His army was dwindling with pestilence; he himself walked about feeling feverish and “seedy” and losing weight rapidly for a fortnight; he was just at the typhoid age, in the typhoid time of the year, and in typhoid conditions; his ulcer burst, causing peritonitis; the tremendous shock of the rupture, together with the toxæmia, drove him delirious and then unconscious; being a very strong young man he woke up again as the first shock passed away; as the shock passed into definite peritonitis unconsciousness returned, and he was fortunate in being able to hear his last mass before he died. I see no flaw in this reasoning.

The rest of the story is rather quaint. By next spring Philip had given orders for the embalmed body to be brought to Spain, and it was considered rather mean of him that the body of his brother was to be brought on mule-back. But Philip was at his wits’ end for money to prosecute the war, and no doubt he himself looked upon his “meanness” as a wise economy. The body was exhumed, cut into three pieces—apparently by disjointing it at the hips—and stuffed into three leather bags which were slung on mule-back in a pack-saddle. When it came within a few miles of the Escorial it was put together again, laid upon a bier, and given a noble funeral in a death-chamber next to that which had been reserved for the great Emperor his father. There I believe it still lies, the winds of the Escorial laughing at its dreams of chivalrous glory.

Philip, suspicious of everybody and everything, had given orders that, should Don John die, his confessor was to keep an accurate record of the circumstances; and it is from the report of this priest that the above account has been drawn by Stirling-Maxwell, so we can look upon it as authoritative. Philip was accused of poisoning him, and for a moment this supposition was borne out by the extreme redness of the intestines; but this is much more easily explained by the peritonitis. Again, Philip’s enemies have said that Don John died of a broken heart, because the priest reported that one side of his heart was dry and empty; but this too is quite natural if we suppose that the last act of Don John’s life was for his heart to pump its blood into his arteries, as so often happens in death. Young men do not die of broken hearts; “Men have died and worms have eaten them—but not for love!” as Rosalind says in her sweet cynicism. In elderly men with high blood-pressures it is quite possible that grief and worry may actually cause the heart to burst, and to that extent novelists are right in speaking of a “broken heart.” Otherwise the disease, or casualty, is unknown to medicine. No amount of worry, or absence of worry, would have had any effect upon Don John’s typhoid ulcer.

Besides the suspicion of poisoning, Don John was rumoured to have died of the “French disease,” even the name of the lady being mentioned. While he was certainly no more moral than any other gay and handsome young prince of his time, there is not the slightest reason for supposing the rumour to have been anything but folly. Syphilis does not kill a man as Don John died, while ambulatory typhoid fever most assuredly does. Therefore the lady in question must remain without her glory so far as this book is concerned, though her name has survived, and not only in Spanish.

Don John was a handsome young man, graceful and strong. There are many contemporary portraits of him, perhaps the best being a magnificent statue at Messina, which he saved from the Turks at Lepanto. He had frank blue eyes and yellow curls, and a very great charm of manner; but he was liable to attacks of violent pride which estranged his friends. He was the darling of the ladies, and was esteemed the flower of chivalry in his day; but William of Orange warned his Netherlanders not to be deceived by his appearance; in his view Philip had sent a monster of cruelty no less savage than himself. But William was prejudiced, and Don John is still one of the great romantic figures of history. It is difficult to speculate reasonably on what might have happened if he had not died. It has been thought that he might have led the Armada, in which case that most badly-managed expedition would at least have been well led, and no doubt England would have had a more determined struggle; but it seems to me more likely that Don John and Philip would have quarrelled, and that Fortune would have been even less kind to Spain than she was. Those who love Spain must be on the whole rather glad that Don John died before he had been able to cause more trouble than he did. It is difficult to agree entirely with those who would put the blame entirely on Philip for the troubles between him and Don John, or would interpret every act of Philip to his detriment. The whole story might be equally interpreted as the effort of a most conscientious and narrow-minded man endeavouring to follow out what he thought to be his father’s wishes and at the same time to keep a wild young brother from kicking over the traces. Compare Butler’s, The Way of All Flesh.

But the real interest to us of Don John is in his relations with Cervantes.

Cervantes on his galley puts his sword into its sheath

(Don John of Austria rides homewards with a wreath),

And he sees across a weary land a winding road in Spain

Up which a lean and foolish knight rides slowly up in vain.

And it will be a sad world indeed when Don Quixote at last reaches the top of that winding road and men cease to love him.

At Lepanto Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (please pronounce the “a’s” separately) was about twenty-five years of age, and was lying below deck sick of a fever. When he heard the roar of the guns of Don John he sprang from his bed and rushed on deck in spite of the orders of his captain; he was put in charge of a boat’s crew of twelve men and went through the thick of the fighting. Every man in Don John’s fleet was fired with his religious enthusiasm, and Cervantes’ courage was only an index of the wild fervour that distinguished the Christians on that most bloody day. He was wounded in the left hand, “for the greater glory of the right,” as he himself quaintly says, and never again could he move the fingers of the injured hand; no doubt the tendon sheaths had become septic, and he was lucky to have kept the hand at all. It has been sapiently remarked that the world would have had a great loss if it had been the right hand; but healthy people who lose the right hand can easily learn to write with the left. Cervantes remained in the fleet for some years until, on his way home, he was captured by Algerian pirates; put to the service of a Christian renegade—a man who had turned Mussulman to save his life or from still less worthy motive—Cervantes made several attempts to escape, but these were unsuccessful, and he remained in captivity for some years until his family had scraped up enough to ransom him. In Don Quixote there is a good deal about the renegadoes, and much of the well-known story of the “escaped Moor” is probably autobiographical; from these hints we gather that the renegadoes were not quite so bad as has been generally thought, or else that Cervantes was far too big-minded a man to believe unnecessary evil about anybody.

Back in Spain, he went into the army for two years, until, in 1582, he gave up soldiering and took to literature. He found the pen “a good stick but a bad crutch,” and in 1585 returned to the public service as deputy-purveyor of the fleet. In 1594 he became collectors of revenues in Granada, and in 1597 he became short in his accounts and fell into jail. There he seems to have begun Don Quixote; he somehow obtained security for the repayment of the missing money, was released penniless into a suspicious world, and published the first part of Don Quixote in 1605. It was enormously well received, and from that day to this has remained one of the most successful of all books. Ten years later he found that dishonest publishers were issuing spurious second parts, so he sat himself down to write a genuine sequel. This differs from most sequels in that it is better than the original; it is wiser, mellower, less ironical; Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are still more lovable than they were before, and one imagines that Cervantes must have spent the whole ten years in collecting—or inventing—the wonderful proverbs so wisely uttered by the squire.

Though Cervantes wrote many plays he is now remembered mainly by his one very great romance, which is read lovingly in every language of every part of the world, so that the epithet “Quixotic” is applied everywhere to whatsoever is both gallant and foolish; an epithet which reflects the mixture of affection and pity in which the old Don is universally held, and is more often considered to be a compliment than the reverse. Curiously enough, women seldom seem to like Don Quixote; only the other day a brilliant young woman graduate told me that she thought he was a “silly old fool!” That was all she could see in him; but he is universally now thought to represent the pathos of the man who is born out of his time. As has been so well said, “This book is not meant for laughter—it is meant for tears.” I can do no more than advise everybody to get a thin-paper copy and let it live in the pocket for some months, reading it at odd moments; it is the wisest and wittiest book ever published. “Blessed be the man who invented sleep,” is a typical piece of Panzan philosophy with which most wise men will agree.

But when we have done sentimentalizing over the hidden meaning that undoubtedly underlies Don Quixote, we must not forget that it is extraordinarily funny even to a modern mind. The law that the humour of one generation is merely grotesque to the next does not seem to apply to Don Quixote; and I dare swear that the picture of the mad old Don, brought home from the inn of Maritornes, looking so stately in a cage upon a bullock-wagon, guarded by troopers of the Holy Brotherhood, and escorted by the priest and the barber, with the distracted Sancho Panza buzzing about wondering what has become of his promised Governorship, is absolutely the funniest thing in all literature; all the funnier because the springs of our laughter flow from the fount of our tears.

Now I cannot help thinking that when Cervantes began to write Don Quixote in prison, feeling bitter and sore against a world which had imprisoned him, and stiffened his hand for him, and condemned him to poverty and imprisonment, he must have had in his mind the story of the young bastard of Imperial Majesty who had risen to such heights of glory over Lepanto. It is not contended that Don Quixote was consciously intended to be a characterizature of Don Quixada or Don John, though his real name was Alonzo Quixana or Quixada, Don Quixote being a nom de guerre born of his frenzy; but I find it hard to believe that Cervantes had not heard of the foolish loyalty of Quixada in the matter of Jeronimo, or of the romantic dreams of Don John. It would seem that in these two incidents we find the true seeds of Don Quixote. It is not true that “Cervantes laughed Spain’s chivalry away.” Chivalry, meaning the social order of the true crusades, had long been dead even in Spain, the most conservative of nations. What really laughed Spain’s chivalry away was the gay and joyous laugh of Don John himself, who would have plunged her into a great war for a dream. The man who seriously thought of dashing across the North Sea to marry Mary Queen of Scots would have been quite capable of tilting at windmills. In his inmost heart Cervantes must have seen his folly.

The death of Don Quixote is probably the most generally famous in literature, vying with that of Colonel Newcome, though more impressive because it is less sentimental. Cervantes had begun by rather jeering at his old Don, and subjecting him to uncalled-for cudgellings and humiliations; he then fell in love with the brave old lunatic, as everybody else has fallen in love with him ever since, and by the time that he came to die had drawn him as a really noble and beautiful character, who shows all the pathos of the idealist who is born out of his time. The death of Don Quixote is, except the death of one other Idealist, the most affecting death in all literature; the pathos is secured by means similarly restrained. The Bachelor Samson Carrasco, in his determination to cure Don Quixote of his knight-errant folly, had dressed himself up as “The Knight of the White Moon,” and vowed that there was another lady more fair than Dulcinea del Toboso. At that blasphemy Don Quixote naturally flew to arms and challenged the insolent knight. By that time Rosinante was but old bones, so the Bachelor, being well-mounted on a young charger, overthrew the old horse and his brave old rider, and Don Quixote came to grass with a terrible fall. Then the Bachelor made Don Quixote vow that he would cease from his knight-errantry for a whole year, by which time it was hoped that he would be cured. They lifted his visor and found the old man “pale and sweating”; evidently Cervantes had seen some old man suffering from shock, and described what he saw in three words. From this humiliation Don Quixote never really recovered. He reached home and formed the mad idea of turning shepherd with Sancho and the Bachelor, and living out his penance in the fields. But Death saw otherwise, and the old man answered his call before he could do as he wished. He was seized with a violent fever that confined him to his room for six days; finally he slept calmly for some hours, and again awakened, only to fall into one attack of syncope after another until he died; the sanguine assurance of Sancho Panza that Dulcinea had been successfully disenchanted could not save him. Like most idealists he died a sad and disappointed man, certain of one thing only—that he was out of touch with the majority of mankind.

Cervantes was far too great an artist to kill his old hero by some such folly as “brain fever”—which nonsense I guess to have been typhoid. I believe that in describing the death of Don Quixote he was thinking of some old man whom he had seen crawl home to die after a severe physical shock, disappointed and disillusioned in a world of practical youth in which there is no room for romantic old age—probably some kind old man whom he himself had loved. These old men usually die of hypostatic pneumonia, which has been called the “natural end of man,” and is probably the real broken heart of popular medicine. The old man, after a severe shock, is affected by a weakened circulation; the lungs are attacked by a slow inflammation, and he dies, usually in a few days, in much the same way as died Don Quixote. Cervantes did not know that these old men die from inflammation of the lungs; no doubt he observed the way they die, and immortalized his memories in the death of Don Quixote. I have written this to point out Cervantes’ great powers of observation. He would probably have made a good doctor in our day.

This theory of Don Quixote, that at its roots lie memories of Don John and Don Quixada, is in no way inconsistent with Cervantes’ own statement that he wrote the book to ridicule the romances of Chivalry which were so vitiating the literary taste of seventeenth-century Spain; at the back of his mind probably lay his own memories of foolish and gallant things, quite worthy of affectionate ridicule such as he has lavished on his knight-errant.

Philip II and the Arterio-Sclerosis
of Statesmen

WHEN the Empress Isabel was pregnant with the child which was to be Philip II, she bethought her of the glory that was hers in bearing offspring to a man so famous as the Roman Emperor, and she made up her mind that she would comport herself as became a Roman Empress. When, therefore, her relations and midwives during the confinement implored her to cry out or she would die, the proud Empress answered, “Die I may; but call out I will not!” and thus Philip arrived into the world sombre son of a stoical mother and heroic father. Doubtless she thought that she would show a courage equal to his father’s, hoping that the son would then prove not unworthy. Though she was very beautiful, as Titian’s famous portrait shows, she seems to have been a gloomy and austere woman, and Charles, being absent so long from her side at his wars, had to leave Philip’s education mainly to her. His part consisted of many affectionate letters full of good and proud advice. Yet Philip grew up to be a merry little golden-haired boy enough, who rode about the streets of Toledo in a go-cart amidst the crowds that we are told pressed to see the Emperor’s son. The calamity of his life was that Charles had bequeathed to him the kingdom of the Netherlands. Charles himself was essentially a Fleming, who got on exceedingly well with his brother Flemings, Reformation or no Reformation; they were quite prepared to admit that the great man might have some good reason for his religious persecution, peculiar though it no doubt seemed. But Philip was a foreigner; and a foreigner of the race of Torquemada who, so they heard, had so strengthened the Inquisition less than a century before that now it was really not safe to think aloud in matters of religion. So the Dutch rose in revolt under William of Orange, and the Dutch Republic came into being. Philip was only able to save the southern Netherlands from the wreck, which ultimately formed the kingdom of Belgium. Philip always thought that if he could only get England on his side the pacification of the Netherlands would be easy; so, at the earnest request of Charles, he married Mary Tudor, a woman twelve years older than himself, a marriage which turned out unhappily from every point of view, and has wrongly coloured our general opinion of Philip’s character. The unfortunate attempt to conquer England by the Armada, a fleet badly equipped and absurdly led, has also led us to despise both him and his Spaniards, whence came the general English schoolboy idea that the Spanish were a nation of braggarts ruled by a murderous fool, whose only thirst was for Protestant gore. But this idea was very far from being true. Philip was no fool; he was an exceedingly learned, conscientious, hard-working, careful, and painstaking bureaucrat, who might have done very well indeed had he been left the kingdom of Spain alone; but had no power of attracting foreigners to his point of view. He always did his best according to his lights; and if his policy sometimes appears tortuous to us, that is simply because we forget that it was then thought perfectly right for kings to do tortuous things for the sake of their people, just as to-day party leaders sometimes do extraordinarily wicked things for the sake of what they consider the principles of their party. Unfortunately for Philip he often failed in his efforts; and the man who fails is always in the wrong.

He was constantly at war, sometimes unsuccessfully, often victoriously. Unlike Charles he did not lead his armies in person, but sat at home and prayed, read the crystal, and organized. After the great battle of St. Quentin, in which he defeated the French, he vowed to erect a mighty church to the glory of St. Lawrence which should excel every other building in the world; and for thirty years the whole available wealth of Spain and the Indies was poured out on the erection of the Escorial, which the Spaniards look upon as the eighth wonder of the world, and who is to say that they are wrong? Situated about twenty miles from Madrid, in a bleak and desolate mountain range, it reflects extraordinarily well the character of the man who made it. Under one almost incredible roof it combines a palace, a university, a monastery, a church, and a mausoleum. The weight of its keys alone is measured in scores of pounds; the number of its windows and its doors is counted in hundreds; it contains the greatest works of many very great artists, and the tombs of Charles V and his descendants. It stands in lonely grandeur swept by constant bitter winds, a fit monument for a lonely and morose king. Its architecture is Doric, and stern as its own granite.

The character of Philip II has been described repeatedly, in England mainly by his enemies, who have laid too much stress on his cruelty and bigotry. Though he was fiercely religious, yet he loved art and wrote poetry; though he would burn a heretic as blithely as any man, yet he was a kind husband to his four wives, whom he married one after the other for political reasons; though he was gloomy and austere, yet he loved music, and was moved almost to tears by the sound of the nightingale in the summer evenings of Spain. His people loved him and affectionately called him “Philip the prudent”; they forgave him his mistakes, for they knew that he worked always for the ancient religion which they loved, and for the glory of Spain.

Unlike Charles his father, he was austere in his mode of life, and always had a doctor at his side at meals lest he should forget his gout. He was a martyr to that most distressing complaint, no doubt inherited from his father. He lived abstemiously, but took too little exercise; it would have been better for his health—and probably for the world—had he followed his armies on horseback like Charles, even if he had recognized that he was no great general.

His death, at the age of seventy-two, was proud and sombre, as befitted the son of the Empress Isabel, who had scorned to cry when he was born. We can understand a good deal about Philip if we consider him as spiritually the son of that proud sombre woman rather than of his glorious and energetic father. In June, 1598, he was attacked by an unusually severe attack of gout which so crippled him that he could hardly move. He was carried from Madrid to the Escorial in a litter, and was put to bed in a little room opening off the church so that he could hear the friars at their orisons. Soon he began to suffer from “malignant tumours” all over his legs, which ulcerated, and became intensely painful, so that he could not bear even a wet cloth to be laid upon them or to have the ulcers dressed. So he lay for fifty-three days suffering frightful tortures, but never uttering a word of complaint, even as his mother had borne him in silence for the sake of the great man who had begotten him. As the ulcers could not be dressed, they naturally became covered with vermin and smelled horribly. Stoical in his agony, he called his son before him, apologizing for doing so, but it was necessary. “I want,” he said, “to show you how even the greatest monarchies must end. The crown is slipping from my head, and will soon rest upon yours. In a few days I shall be nothing but a corpse swathed in its winding-sheet, girdled with a rope.” He showed no sign of emotionalism, but retained his self-control to the last; after he had said farewell to his son he considered that he had left the world, and devoted the last few days of his life to the offices of the church. The monks in the church wanted to cease the continual dirges and services, but he insisted that they should go on, saying: “The nearer I get to the fountain, the more thirsty I become!”

These seem to have been his last words; he appears to have retained consciousness as long as may be.

Let us reason together and try if we can make head or tail of this extraordinary illness. The first certain fact about Philip II is that he long suffered from gout, apparently the real old-fashioned gout in the feet. In the well-known picture of him receiving a deputation of Netherlanders, as he sits in his tall hat beneath a crucifix, it is perfectly evident that he is suffering tortures from gout and wearing a large loosely fitting slipper. These unfortunate gentlemen seem to have selected a most unpropitious moment to ask favours, for there is no ailment that so warps the temper as gout. When a man suffers from gout over a period of years it is only a matter of time till his arteries and kidneys go wrong and he gets arterio-sclerosis. We may take it, therefore, as certain that at the age of seventy-two Philip had sclerosed arteries and probably chronic Bright’s disease like his father before him. Gout, Bright’s disease, and high blood-pressure, are all strongly hereditary, as every insurance doctor knows; that is to say, the son of a father who has died of one of these three is more likely than not to die ultimately of some cognate disease of arteries or kidneys or heart, all grouped together under the name of cardio-vascular-renal disease.

But what about the “malignant tumours”? “Malignant tumour” to-day means cancer of one sort or another, and assuredly it was not cancer that killed Philip. Probably the word “tumour” simply meant “swelling.” Now, what could these painful swellings have been which ulcerated and smelt so horribly? Why not gangrene? Ordinary senile gangrene, such as occurs in arterio-sclerosis, neither causes swellings, nor is it painful, nor does it smell nor become verminous; but diabetic gangrene does all these things. Diabetes in elderly people may go on for many years undiscovered unless the urine be chemically examined, and may only cause symptoms when the arterio-sclerosis which generally complicates it gives results, such as sudden death from heart-failure, or diabetic gangrene. Thus a very famous Australian statesman, who had been known to have sugar in his urine for many years, was one morning found dead in his bath, evidently due to the high blood-pressure consequent on diabetic arterio-sclerosis.

Diabetic gangrene often begins in some small area of injured skin, such as might readily occur in a foot tortured with gout; it ulcerates, is exceedingly painful, and possessed of a stench quite peculiar to its horrid self. It does not confine itself to one foot, or to one area of a leg, but suddenly appears in an apparently healthy portion, having surreptitiously worked its way along beneath the skin; its first sign is often a painful swelling which ulcerates. The patient dies either from toxæmia due to the gangrene, or from diabetic coma; and fifty-three days is not an unlikely period for the torture to continue. On the whole it would seem that diabetic gangrene appearing in a man who has arterio-sclerosis is a probable explanation of Philip’s death. The really interesting part of this historical diagnosis is the way in which it explains his treatment of the Netherlands. What justice could they have received from a man tortured and rendered petulant with gout and gloomy with diabetes?

Charles V had taken no care of himself, but had gone roaring and fighting and guzzling and drinking all over Europe; Philip had led a very quiet, studious, and abstemious life, and therefore he lived nearly twenty years longer than his father. Possibly when he came to suffer the torments of his death he may have thought the years not worth his self-denial: possibly he may have regretted that he did not have a good time when he was young, but this is not likely, for he was a very conscientious man.

When Philip lay dying he held in his hand the common little crucifix that his mother and father had adored when they too had died; his friends buried it upon his breast when they came to inter him in the Escorial, where it still lies with him in a coffin made of the timbers of the Cinco Chagas, not the least glorious of his fighting galleys.

Arterio-sclerosis, high blood-pressure, hyperpiesis, and chronic Bright’s disease—all more or less names for the same thing, or at any rate for cognate disorders—form one of the great tragedies of the world. They attack the very men whom we can least spare; they are essentially the diseases of statesmen. Although these diseases have been attributed to many causes—that is to say, we do not really know their true cause—it is certain that worry has a great deal to do with them. If a man be content to live the life of a cabbage, eat little, and drink no alcohol, it is probable that he will not suffer from high blood-pressure; but if he is determined to work hard, live well, and yet struggle furiously, then his arteries and kidneys inevitably go wrong and he is not likely to stand the strain for many years. Unless a politician has an iron nerve and preternaturally calm nature, or unless he is fortunate enough to be carried off by pneumonia, then he is almost certain to die of high blood-pressure if he persists in his politics. I could name a dozen able politicians who have fallen victims to their political anxieties. The latest, so far as I know, was Mr. John Storey, Premier of New South Wales, who died of high blood-pressure in 1921; before him I remember several able men whom the furious politics of that State claimed as victims. In England Lord Beaconsfield seems to have died of high blood-pressure, and so did Mr. Joseph Chamberlain. Mr. Gladstone was less fortunate, in that he died of cancer. He must have possessed a calm mind to go through his furious strugglings without his kidneys or blood-vessels giving way; that, and his singularly temperate and happy home-life, preserved him from the usual fate of statesmen.

Charles V differed from Mr. Gladstone because he habitually ate far too much, and could never properly relax his mental tension. His arterio-sclerosis had many results on history. It was probably responsible for his extreme fits of depression, in one of which it pleased Fate that he should meet Barbara Blomberg. If he had not been extraordinarily depressed and unhappy, owing to his arterio-sclerosis, he would probably not have troubled about her, and there would have been no Don John of Austria. If he had not had arterio-sclerosis he would probably not have abdicated in 1556, when he should have had many years of wise and useful activities before him. If his judgment had not been warped by his illness he would probably never have appointed Philip II to be his successor as King of the Netherlands; he would have seen that the Dutch were not the sort of people to be ruled by an alien. And if there had been no Don John it is possible that there would have been no Don Quixote. Once again, if Philip had not been eternally preoccupied with his senseless struggle against the Dutch, it is probable that he would have undertaken his real duty—to protect Europe from the Turk. When one considers how the lives of Charles and his sons might have been altered had his arteries been carrying a lower blood-tension, it rather tends to alter the philosophy of history to a medical man.

Again, when we consider that the destinies of nations are commonly held in the hands of elderly gentlemen whose blood-pressures tend to be too high owing to their fierce political activities, it is not too much to say that arterio-sclerosis is one of the greatest tragedies that afflict the human race. Every politician should have his blood-pressure tested and his urine examined about once a quarter, and if it should show signs of rising he should undoubtedly take a long rest until it falls again; it is not fair that the lives of millions should depend upon the judgment of a man whose mind is warped by arterio-sclerosis.