CHARLES V. OF SPAIN.
A. D. 1540.
Notwithstanding the information afforded by the latest writers on the closing years of the life of Charles V., which were passed in the convent of Yuste,[34] the history of that monarch by Robertson and by other authors who have adopted his views, is still received by many as unimpeachable authority. According to these, Charles V., after his abdication, retired to the convent of St. Yuste, in Estramadura, where he adopted the habit of a monk, withdrew from all interference in the government of his vast empire, occupied himself wholly with mechanism and the construction of clocks and watches, and at length, when his mind had become weakened and worn out, personally rehearsed his own funeral. All this is in fact nothing but a tissue of errors, clearly disproved by existing authentic documents. The love of the marvellous, however, always inherent in the human mind, has fostered the adoption of this romance, to the exclusion of truth and veracity.
The name even of the monastery has been transformed. Sancho Martin, a Spanish gentleman, presented a small piece of land to some monks in 1408; a convent was built upon it which was called Yuste, from a small stream of that name that trickled down the rocks and watered the garden of the monks. It is this stream, the Yuste, that merged its cognomen, even in Spain, into St. Juste or Justo, leading one to suppose that the monastery was dedicated to a saint of that name.
Charles V. did not live with the monks, as is commonly asserted; he never wore the habit of the order; and he never ceased to wield the imperial sceptre de facto and to control the affairs of the state. He had, moreover, a residence built for himself, detached from the convent but communicating by passages with the cloister and the church.
Except in Titian’s portrait the Emperor was never seen in the habit of St. Jerome. He always retained his secular dress, which was a single black doublet, exchanged during periods of illness and déshabille, for rich wadded silk dressing-gowns, of which he possessed no less than sixteen in his wardrobe, if we may believe the inventory made after his death. In his letters to intimate correspondents we continually find the following observation: “I shall never become a monk, notwithstanding my respect for the children of St. Jérome.”
Far from adopting an appearance of poverty, or limiting his attendants to twelve in number, as Sandoval and Robertson have asserted, the household of the Emperor consisted of more than fifty individuals, the chief of whom was the major-domo, Luis Quijada. Their annual salaries amounted to above 10,000 florins, equal to £. 4,400 of the present day.
The profusion of plate taken by the Emperor to the monastery was employed generally for the wants of the establishment, and for his personal use. The dishes and ornaments of his table, the accessories of his dressing-table, which betokened the recherché nature of his toilet, the vases, ewers, basins, and bottles of every shape and size in his chamber, utensils of all sorts for his kitchen, his cellar, his pantry and his medicine chest, were made of solid silver, and weighed upwards of 1,500 marks.
All these details, which are derived from authentic documents in the archives of Simancas, bring Charles V. before us in his convent of Yuste in a very different light from that in which we have usually seen him. Neither must we picture to ourselves the convent in Estramadura as the gloomy and solitary residence it had been up to this time. It now became a centre of life and action. Couriers were continually arriving and departing. Every fresh event was immediately reported to the Emperor, whose opinion and whose commands were received and acted upon in all important matters. He was the umpire in every dispute, and all candidates for favours applied to him. In spite of the gout with which he was continually afflicted, he spent whole hours in reading despatches; in fact he was almost as much immersed in public affairs in his retreat, as he had been while actually on the throne. Although he had delegated all official authority, he retained the habit of command, and was emperor to the last.
Another error propagated by Robertson and several subsequent writers is, that the intellect of Charles V. deteriorated until he became a mere second-rate amateur of clocks and watches, and that Torriano, who held the title of watchmaker to the Emperor, worked with his master at the trade. The truth is, that Charles V. had a great natural taste for the exact sciences, which is corroborated by the variety of mathematical instruments enumerated in the inventory of his effects taken after his death. Torriano, far from being a mere clockmaker, was a first-rate engineer and mathematician, and was called by the historian Strada the Archimedes of his age. His mechanical inventions gained him a reputation for sorcery among the monks of Yuste. With regard to the reported collection of clocks, we only find mention of four or five in the long inventory. The Emperor was a very exact observer of time, but no contemporary writer has authorised us to suppose that he took especial pleasure in amassing a variety of watches and time-pieces.[35]
Let us now examine the account given by Sandoval and Robertson of the famous funeral ceremony of the 31st August 1558. The Scotch historian, with a sublime indifference to facts, informs us that Charles V., in the last six months of his life, fell into the lowest depths of superstition. He describes him as seeking no other society but that of the monks; as continually occupied in singing hymns with them from the missal; as inflicting on himself the discipline of the scourge, and lastly, as desiring to rehearse his own obsequies. A desire which could only have originated in an enfeebled and diseased brain. Such are the events contained in the introduction to Robertson’s romance. He goes on to say that: “The chapel was hung with black, and the blaze of hundreds of waxlights was scarcely sufficient to dispel the darkness. The brethren, in their conventual dress, and all the Emperor’s household clad in deep mourning, gathered round a huge catafalque shrouded also in black, which had been raised in the centre of the chapel. The service for the burial of the dead was then performed, and was accompanied by the dismal wail of the monks’ prayers interceding for the departed soul, that it might be received into the mansion of the blessed. The sorrowing attendants were melted to tears at this representation of their master’s death, or they were touched, it may be, with compassion by this pitiable display of his weakness. Charles, muffled in a dark mantle, and bearing a lighted candle in his hand, mingled with his household, the spectator of his own obsequies; and the doleful ceremony was concluded by his placing the taper in the hands of the priest in sign of his surrendering up his soul to the Almighty.”
Such is the account given by Robertson, and it has been still further embellished by later writers. Not only have they represented Charles V. as assisting at his own funeral, but they have extended him in his coffin like a corpse. In that position he is reported to have joined the monks in chanting the prayers for the dead. Another writer (Count Victor Duhamel, Histoire constitutionelle de la Monarchie Espagnole) goes still further: “After the service,” says he, “they left the emperor alone in the church. He then arose like a spectre out of his bier, wrapped in a winding-sheet, and prostrated himself at the foot of the altar. This ceremony was succeeded by fearful delirium caused by an attack of fever. The Emperor,” he continues, “at length regained his cell, where he expired the following morning.”
Here the horrible and the absurd seem to vie with one another. But these descriptions are in complete contradiction with the strength of mind really displayed by Charles V. in his last moments; and are moreover contrary to his character, his habits, and mode of life, and with his sentiments as a man and as a Christian on the solemnity of death, and the gravity of the burial service. His dependants, who never left his side, and who have transmitted the minutest details of his life, would surely have been cognizant of these imputed eccentricities, and would doubtless have alluded to them. But their testimony, on the contrary, contradicts everything told by the monks, and their records differ materially in regard to dates.
In the first place, how can we give credence to the ceremony itself?—a ceremony reserved only for the dead by the Roman-catholic church, and never performed for the living? A council held at Toulouse in the beginning of the 14th century pronounced, that the church considered an anticipated funeral to be an act of censurable superstition, and prohibited any priest under pain of excommunication, from taking part in it. This circumstance would perhaps be insufficient to cast a doubt upon the obsequies of Charles V., if it stood alone, but it is supported by others. The greater number of the incidents related by the monks are improbable or false. The Hieronymite chroniclers allege that Charles V. expended on this ceremony two thousand crowns which he had saved up. Now a forcible objection arises to the employment of so enormous a sum for so simple a service. Only a very small part of it could have been used in obsequies which were without pomp and needed scarcely any outlay. It is more probable, on the contrary, as Sandoval affirms (Vida del Emperador Carlos V. en Yuste), that it was from this sum that the expenses of the real funeral were drawn, the solemn services of which lasted nine days. Moreover, the physical strength of the Emperor, which was on the wane, could not have borne the fatigue of any such mock display. On the 15th August he was carried to the church, and received the sacrament sitting. It was only on the 24th that he was free from gout: the eruption on his legs succeeded the gout: and he was quite unfit to present himself before the altar on the 29th. On the 31st August, the day that has been selected for these obsequies, he was confined for twenty hours to his room by illness. If all these impossibilities and improbabilities do not settle the question, it remains to be explained why neither the major-domo, nor the Emperor’s secretary, nor his physician, who mention in their letters all the ordinary incidents of his religious life, especially when they bear some reference to the state of his health, do not speak of so extraordinary a ceremonial?—why, remembering the funeral service of the Empress on the anniversary of the 1st May, they make no mention of the sham funeral that the emperor had devised for himself?—why, after stating that he had been carried to church on the 15th of August, where he received the sacrament sitting, they are entirely silent respecting the absurd obsequies of the 31st, to which their master would undoubtedly have summoned them, and which were so immediately followed by his death? But they are even more than silent, they indirectly deny all the alleged circumstances. Their narrative is at complete variance with that of the monks.
About two o’clock on the morning of the 21st September 1558, the Emperor perceived that his life was slowly ebbing away and that death was near. Feeling his own pulse, he shook his head as much as to say: “It is all over.” He then begged the monks, says Quijada, in a letter to Vasquez of the 21st September, to recite the litanies by his bedside, and the prayers for the dying. The archbishop, at his request, gave him the crucifix which had been embraced by the empress in her last hours; he carried it to his lips, pressed it twice to his breast and said: “The moment has come!” Shortly after he again pronounced the name of Jesus and expired breathing two or three sighs.
“So passed away,” wrote Quijada, with mingled grief and admiration, “the greatest man that ever was or ever will be.” The inconsolable major-domo adds: “I cannot persuade myself that he is dead.” And he continually entered the chamber of his master, fell on his knees by his bedside, and with many tears kissed over and over again his cold inanimate hands.
THE INVENTOR OF THE
STEAM-ENGINE.
A. D. 1625.
The biography of Salomon de Caus and the account of his labours and his discoveries were scarcely known until the year 1828, when a learned French scholar, Arago, published for the first time in L’Annuaire du Bureau des Longitudes, a remarkable article upon the history of the steam-engine.
In it he cites the work of Salomon de Caus entitled Les raisons des forces mouvantes avec diverses machines, &c., which was first published at Frankfort in 1615 and reprinted at Paris in 1624. M. Arago draws from it the conclusion that De Caus was the original inventor of the steam-engine. Six years later there appeared in the Musée des Familles, a letter from the celebrated Marion Delorme, supposed to have been written on the 3rd February 1641 to her lover Cinq-Mars. It is as follows:
“My dear d’Effiat,[36] Whilst you are forgetting me at Narbonne and giving yourself up to the pleasures of the court and the delight of thwarting the cardinal, I, pursuant to the wishes you have expressed, am doing the honours to your English lord, the Marquis of Worcester, and I am taking him, or rather he is taking me, from sight to sight, always choosing the dullest and the saddest; speaking little, listening with great attention, and fixing upon those whom he questions two large blue eyes which seem to penetrate to the very depths of their understanding. Moreover, he is never satisfied with the explanations that are given him, and scarcely ever sees things from the point of view in which they are represented. As an instance of this I will mention the visit we made together to Bicêtre, where he thinks he has discovered in a maniac a man of genius. If the man were not raging mad I really believe that your Marquis would have demanded his freedom, that he might take him with him to London and listen to his ravings from morning till night.
“As we were crossing the court-yard of the asylum, I more dead than alive from fright, a hideous face appeared behind the large grating and began to call out in a crazy voice. ‘I am not mad; I have made a great discovery that will enrich any country that will carry it out.’ ‘What is this discovery?’ said I to the person who was shewing us over the asylum. ‘Ah!’ said he, shrugging his shoulders, ‘it is something very simple, but you would never guess it. It is the employment of the steam of boiling water.’ At this I burst out laughing. ‘This man,’ resumed the warder, ‘is called Salomon de Caus. He came from Normandy four years ago to present a memoir to the king upon the marvellous effects that might be produced from his invention. To listen to him, you might make use of steam to move a theatre, to propel carriages, and in fact to perform endless miracles.’ The Cardinal dismissed this fool without giving him a hearing. Salomon de Caus, not at all discouraged, took upon himself to follow my lord cardinal everywhere, who, tired of finding him incessantly at his heels, and importuned by his follies, ordered him to Bicêtre, where he has been confined for three years and a half, and where, as you have just heard, he cries out to every visitor, that he is not mad, and that he has made a wonderful discovery. He has even written a book on this subject which is in my possession.’
“My Lord Worcester, who all this time appeared to be in deep thought, asked to see the book, and after having read a few pages, said, ‘This man is not mad, and in my country, instead of being shut up in a lunatic asylum he would be laden with wealth. Take me to him, I wish to question him. He was conducted to his cell, but came back looking grave and sad. ‘Now he is quite mad,’ said he, ‘it is you who have made him so; misfortune and confinement have completely destroyed his reason; but when you put him into that cell you enclosed in it the greatest genius of your epoch.’ Thereupon we took our leave, and since then he speaks of no one but Salomon de Caus.[37] Adieu my dear and loyal Henry; return soon, and do not be so happy where you are, as to forget that a little love must be left for me. Marion Delorme.”
The success obtained by this fictitious letter was immense and lasting. The anecdote became very popular, and was copied into standard works, represented in engravings, chased on silver goblets, &c. At length some incredulous critics examined more closely into the matter, and found that not only had Salomon de Caus never been confined in a lunatic asylum, but that he had held the appointment of engineer and architect to Louis XIII. up to the time of his death, in 1630, while Marion Delorme is asserted to have visited Bicêtre in 1641!!
On tracing this hoax to its source, we find that M. Henri Berthoud, a literary man of some repute and a constant contributor to the Musée des Familles, confesses that the letter imputed to Marion, was in fact written by himself. The editor of this journal had requested Gavarni to furnish him with a drawing for a tale in which a madman was introduced looking through the bars of his cell. The drawing was executed and engraved, but arrived too late; and the tale, which could not wait, appeared without the illustration. However, as the wood-engraving was effective, and moreover was paid for, the editor was unwilling that it should be useless. Berthoud was therefore commissioned to look for a subject and to invent a story to which the engraving might be applied.
Strangely enough, the world refused to believe in M. Berthoud’s confession, so great a hold had the anecdote taken on the public mind; and a Paris newspaper went so far even as to declare that the original autograph of this letter was to be seen in a library in Normandy! M. Berthoud wrote again denying its existence, and offered a million of francs to any one who would produce the said letter.
From that time the affair was no more spoken of, and Salomon de Caus was allowed to remain in undisputed possession of his fame as having been the first to point out the use of steam in his work Les raisons des forces mouvantes. He had previously been employed as engineer to Henry Prince of Wales,[38] son of James I., and he published in London a folio volume, “La perspective, avec les raisons des ombres et miroirs.”
In his dedication of another work to the queen of England in 1614, we find some allusion made to the construction of hydraulic machines. On his return to France he, as we said before, was appointed engineer to Louis XIII., and was doubtless encouraged by Cardinal Richelieu, that great patron of arts and letters.
In the castle of Heidelberg we find another instance of the difficulty that exists in uprooting an historical error. There is in the Galerie des Antiquités of this castle a portrait on wood of Salomon de Caus. Above this portrait is exhibited a folio volume of this author, the Hortus Palatinus, Francofurti 1620, apud Joh. Theod. de Bry, with plates. A manuscript note that accompanies this volume, mentions that the letter of Marion Delorme describing the madman of Bicêtre was extracted from the Gazette de France of 3rd March 1834.
Is it not singular that Heidelberg still remains in ignorance of the truth respecting this absurd story, and that the extract from the Gazette de France is still permitted to mislead the public?
As recently also as the 30th September 1865, at a banquet given at Limoges, M. le Vicomte de la Guéronnière, a senator and a man of letters, who presided, made a speech which was reproduced in the Moniteur and in which he repeats the anecdote of Salomon de Caus and Bicêtre. The newspaper L’Intermédiaire, in its 45th number, of the 10th November 1865, designates this persistence in error as inept and stupid.
The works of de Caus were held in high estimation among learned men during the whole of the 17th century. He had however been anticipated in the discovery of the application of the power of steam for propelling large bodies.
On the 17th of April 1543, the Spaniard Don Blasco de Garay, launched a steam-vessel at Barcelona in the presence of the Emperor Charles V. It was an old ship of 200 tons called La sanctissima Trinidada, which had been fitted up for the experiment, and which moved at the rate of ten miles an hour. The inventor of this first steam-vessel was looked upon as a mere enthusiast whose imagination had run wild, and his only encouragement was a donation of 200,000 marevedis from his sovereign. The Emperor Charles no more dreamt of using a discovery which at that time would have placed the whole of Europe at his feet, than did Napoleon I., three centuries later, when the ingenious Fulton suggested to him the application of steam to navigation. It is well known that Fulton was not even permitted to make an essay of this new propelling force in presence of the French Emperor.
So then we must date the fact of the introduction of steam navigation as far back as 1543; anterior to Salomon de Caus in 1615, to the Marquis of Worcester in 1663, to captain Savary in 1693, to Dr. Papin in 1696, and to Fulton and others, who all lay claim to the original idea.
But we may be wrong after all in denying originality to these men, for we have no proof that either of them had any knowledge of the discoveries of his predecessors.
It was not until the 18th of March 1816, that the first steam-vessel appeared in France, making her entrance into the seaport of Havre. She was the Eliza, which had left Newhaven in England on the previous day.