Don John of Austria.
There are few characters upon the historic page more full in promise and yet futile in attainment than Don John of Austria. The idol of all Europe, the knight sans peur et sans reproche, the hero of Lepanto—at the age of twenty-four; he died seven years later in comparative obscurity; a rude hut hastily erected to receive the dying commander served as his last resting place upon earth.
As Don John lay in the agony of death, a terrific storm suddenly broke over the camp; and as in the case of Napoleon under somewhat similar circumstances, Don John partly arose, muttered incoherently of battle and victory, then sank back and died. Did the rattle of the storm suggest the din of battle? Or did vague visions of another storm arise associatively in memory? History relates that tho’ that battle Sunday, Oct. 7, 1571, was a day of ideal autumn brightness, yet when the strife was fairly over and the battered galleys with their dead and wounded and sorely wearied men were heavily entering port, a storm suddenly arose: the skies darkened ominously, lightning flashed from the lowering clouds, thunder reverberated, and torrential rains poured down. For twenty-four hours the storm continued. Was nature indignantly weeping over the errors and sufferings of her children? Was she striving to wash out from old ocean—the rugged, primal, favorite work of her hands—those awful stains of blood?
As Don John had hastened to port under the gathering storm he gave orders that the Moslem galleys rendered worthless by the battle should be stripped of everything of value and then set on fire. And so it was that when safe in port the Christian conquerors looking out thro’ the storm saw the burning ships. They luridly lit up the darkness and blazed wildly down to the waves—mutely eloquent witnesses of the horror and desolation of war.
Did the dulling senses of the hero of Lepanto see that scene, hear that storm—as the winds raged round his temporary shelter and death in blasting splendor closed over all? Or did the fair “castles in Spain” rise again spectrally with light upon them from beyond the grave as the dreamer of royal dreams sank down to the real? That wonderful African empire so near, so far: that beauteous bride, Mary Queen of Scots, liberated, released, restored by his own good sword; wooed and won and with her the throne of that imperious usurper Elizabeth Tudor: that smile of pontiffs, that commendation of Catholic Europe, that proud praise from the lips of his father’s son, Philip II. of Spain—as he, the hero of Lepanto, the champion of Christendom, returned fresh-laureled from new combats and victories, a king, a crowned lover, an Emperor—Dreams!
“Take, fortune, whatever you choose
You gave and may take again;
I’ve nothing ’twould pain me to lose,
For I own no more castles in Spain.”
Don John is buried in the Escorial. His name and fame are inseparably associated with the decisive victory of the Cross over the Crescent off the entrance to the gulf Lepanto.
An admirable painting of this battle The Victory of the League by Titian still adorns the walls of the Museo, Madrid.
The petition Mary, Help of Christians inserted on this occasion in the litany of Loretto bears evidence even today of the gratitude felt by Pius V. and with him all Christendom for deliverance from the unspeakable Turk.
The historian Ranke speaking of the effects of this battle says: “The Turks lost all their old confidence after the battle of Lepanto. They had no equal to oppose to Don John of Austria. The day of Lepanto broke down the Ottoman supremacy.”
[Chapter XI.]
THE INVINCIBLE ARMADA
Spain’s proudly invincible Armada left Lisbon, May 20, 1588 with one hundred and forty ships and thirty thousand four hundred and ninety-seven men; fifty-three shattered vessels, and ten thousand men, vincible and humbled, returned to port Santander, Sept. 13, 1588. This disaster led to the decadence of Spain as a maritime power, and indirectly to the decline of Spanish dominance both in the old and in the new world.
The effects of any great event are not immediately discernible nor are its causes ever fully revealed. When Philip II. of Spain received with courteous equanimity his defeated admiral, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, and to his words,
“And you see here, great King,
All that remains of the Armada’s might
And of the flower of Spain.”
made answer,
“God rules above us!
I sent you to contend with men and not
With rocks and storms. You’re welcome to Madrid.”—Schiller.
did the great King see then either the causes or the consequences of the vincibility of his Invincible Armada!
The character of Philip II. is portrayed upon the historic page in colors of sharp contrast. To the Spaniards he was their Solomon, their “prudent king”; to Motley and the Netherlands he was “the demon of the South.”
Philip II. was the finished product of his age and nation. Pride, intolerance, absolutism combined with excellent administrative ability, deep tho’ narrow religious convictions, and rigorous sincerity, characterized both the man and the monarch. To a victim of an Auto da Fe he said with stern truthfulness, “If my own son were guilty like you I should lead him with my own hands to the stake.”
As to Philip’s really having delivered his son, Don Carlos, into the hands of the Grand Inquisitor as tragically told in Schiller’s “Don Carlos”, well that is drama, not history. But when a noted name and its suggested personality—for good or for evil and unfortunately less frequently for good than for evil—are once fascinatingly fixed in drama or story or song, not all the tomes of contradictory evidence, not all the living archives of dead centuries, not Truth itself, can shatter the crystal charm or make it cease shining. Alexander the Great, world conqueror; Socrates, the Wise; Plato, poet-philosopher; Aristotle, master of them that know; Julius Cæsar, deplored of all nations; Mark Anthony, Cleopatra’s lover; Nero, monster; Caligula-Commodus-Heliogabalus, crowned madmen; Marcus Aurelius, Emperor-philosopher; Charlemagne, the Good; Louis IX., the Saint; Louis XI., hypocrite; John of England, child murderer; Richard III., deformed devil; Henry VIII., wife-killer; Machiavelli, serpent-sophist; Louis XIV., despot, Arbiter Elegantiarum; Elizabeth, Good Queen Bess; Mary, Queen of Scots, the lovely unfortunate; Philip II. of Spain, bigot: thus are they fixed in the charmed circle of literature and thus shall they glitter forever.
Is history itself any more reliable than drama? As to facts, Yes; as to motives, intentions, cumulative causes, results, all round truth, No. “Histories are as perfect as the historian is wise, and is gifted with an eye and a soul,” says the astute Carlyle; and every honest author feels at deepest heart the truth of these words. The soft art of omission is known to every artist of the pen. And condemnation euphemistically balanced by excusing comment may, in one artistic sentence, satisfy at once a writer’s conscience, his subjectivity, and the claims of his peculiar environment. Can any one doubt that it was thus Macaulay wrote his brilliant history of England? And even granted almost the impossible—that an historian be ruggedly truthful and fearlessly sincere; he is not thereby rendered wise, nor is he necessarily gifted with an eye and a soul.
So in colors of sharp contrast upon the historic page will Philip II. ever be portrayed; but both can’t be right. Perhaps tho’ they may be as sundered extremes of a prismatic ray which, when complementary coloring shall have been added, will become white light.