[1070] Mendoza, Comentarios, II, chaps. i-iii. There is a French translation of this work by Loumier (Soc. de l’histoire de Belge), 2 vols., 1860.
[1071] “The duke arrived in the Low Countries offending none in his passage nor being himself offended by any one, though the French appeared in arms upon the marches of Burgundy and Colonel Tavannes by command from the French king with 4,000 foot and some troops were defence of course of the borders, ‘costed’ the Spanish army. Indeed I do not think that ever army marched so far and kept stricter rules of discipline, so that from Italy even to the Low Countries, not only no towns but not any cottage was forced or injured.”—Strada, VI, 31.
The only instance of plundering seems to have been in the case of the property of the prince of Orange in Burgundy (C. S. P. For., 1562, August 7, 1567). This discipline is all the more remarkable, considering the fact that there were fifteen hundred women with the army. “Lon a sceu le passaige du duc d’Albe et de sa trouppe; quon dict estre de six mille espaignolz et quinze cens femmes.”—Guyon to M. de Gordes, July 11, 1567. Cited by the duc d’Aumale, Histoire des princes de Condé, I, Appendix XVI.
[1072] Poulet, II, 183, December 25, 1566.
[1073] Morillon to Granvella, April 7, 1566: “Pas ce boult veult l’on gaigner le magistrat des villes et le peuple: que ne sera si facille comme l’on pense.”—Poulet, I, 203. The following is explicit: “Et dict encores plus que, s’il se fust joinct à la première lighe des seigneurs, la religion fust bien avant venue, car de là, dict-il, ‘tanquam ex fonte emanasse has undas,’ et que le Roy le doibt entendri ainse et y pourveoir avant toutte euvre, puisque de celle là est née la seconde de la religion.”—Poulet, II, 75. Cf. 118: “la première lighe et la secunde engendrée d’icelle.”—Granvella to Viglius, November 23, 1566. As late as May 9, 1567, it is called “la gentille ligue” (Poulet, II, 434). Granvella, in a letter to Philip in 1563, attributed the formation of the association to Count Hoorne (Papiers d’état du cardinal de Granvelle, VIII, 12). Noircarmes, who was better informed, makes Brederode the moving spirit of it (Poulet, II, 613, 614).
The Gueux even had a branch organization, though one historically different in origin, in Franche Comté, in the Confrérie de Ste. Barbe. The seigneurs of the house of Rye enjoyed high civil and ecclesiastical station in both Burgundies in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Marc and Claude François of Rye, father and son, were rivals and political enemies of the Perrenots—the family of Granvella and Chantonnay—and regarded them as upstarts. The Confrérie de Ste. Barbe was organized by them in Franche Comté on lines similar to the Gueux and had dealings with the latter—the members even wearing their emblem. Cardinal Granvella accused the seigneurs of Rye of aiming to establish Protestantism, in Franche Comté from Flanders. This probably was true but in a less degree. Protestant agitation was a means to an end, not an end in itself, it seems to me. If otherwise, such a catholic title for the association is very singular. On the Confrérie de Ste. Barbe consult Poulet, I, 29; II, 44, 141. I am somewhat inclined to think that Tavanne’s Confraternity of the Holy Spirit in ducal Burgundy may not impossibly have been influenced by the Confrérie de Ste. Barbe in the adjoining county of Burgundy, for Tavannes had a long political conflict with the Parlement of Dôle in Franche-Comté (see Collection Godefroy, CCLVII, Nos. 22, 23), and was familiar with things there.
[1074] Poulet, I, 223.
[1075] Ibid., II, 269. This revised form of the Gueux in which Calvinism is interjected is often alluded to as the “second league” in the letters which pass between Granvella and the provost Morillon, e. g., ibid., 280, 437, 600.
[1076] Poulet, II, 42.
[1077] For some examples see ibid., 183.