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),