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!