The Year after the Armada, and Other Historical Studies

by Martin A. S. Hume

For this not very chivalrous victory Julian was overwhelmed with honours, the French king, we are told, casting a gold chain round his neck worth more than 700 crowns, whilst the Dauphin gave him a surcoat stamped with gold, worth more than the King's chain; and King Henry of England, when the Spanish officers returned to England, extended special favour to Julian Romero, upon whom he settled a life pension of 600 ducats, which was a larger sum than any of his fellows, except Colonel Gamboa, who got a thousand. In any case it was only paid for a few years.

If the behaviour of the combatants in the duel lacked the chivalry we are apt to expect, still less magnanimous was the treatment of the Spanish officers towards their companies. When the peace was concluded and Julian's duel fought, orders came from England that the troops were to be dismissed, and the mercenary captains were to repair to London. The latter portion of this order was concealed from the soldiers, who were told by Colonel Gamboa that, as they were all dismissed from the English service, they would march together and offer their services elsewhere. He thereupon led them across the frontier into the Emperor's Flemish dominions, and then with the captains gave the men the slip, and left them to shift for themselves. The captains hung about the Court in London all the summer and autumn (1546), quarrelling, gaming, and swaggering, and Julian Romero, less refined and more hot-headed than the rest, well nigh got into serious trouble. His friend who tells the story, evidently at first hand, says that he had been "showing off" very much more than his means or his pay would warrant, and he had borrowed money to such an extent that he hardly dared to walk out publicly. One of his pressing creditors was a Milanese called Baptist Baron, who after much trouble managed to get him arrested for a debt of 200 ducats. Julian was furious with rage at the idea of being haled off to jail, and persuaded the catchpole who had him in custody to take him to Colonel Gamboa's house, in hope that he would pay the money.

"No sooner had he arrived there, than he launched into loud complaints and began to say unreasonable things, amongst others, that anybody who would serve heretics must be a great big knave; and he swore that he would have no more of it, but would go with only a pike on his shoulder and four ducats (a month) pay to serve elsewhere; and he said a good many other things that had much better have been omitted, for certainly no good came of them."

Gamboa made himself responsible for the money, but Julian's loose talk about heretics was dangerous, and the colonel, whose subsequent behaviour to the other captains shows him to have been a bad-hearted man, seems to have done nothing to shield his subordinate from the consequences of his indiscretion. Gamboa was himself accused at first of treason by the Privy Council, for allowing such talk in his house without punishment. He declared that he was deaf, and did not hear what Julian had said, "which," says the narrator (almost certainly the "merchant" Guaras), "was the truth, as he was in his chamber at the time." "The Council presently sent for Julian and rated him soundly, to which Julian replied: 'Gentlemen, I have said nothing for which I should be so maltreated.' 'Well,' they answered, 'you said this, that, and the other, and there are witnesses who heard you.' But Julian denied it, and they called a merchant who was present in the house of the colonel and had heard everything that had passed. Before this merchant went before the Council, Gamboa spoke to him and begged him to accuse Julian as much as he could, so that they should take away his pay from him; but the merchant, seeing the malice of Gamboa, said, 'Señor Gamboa, I am no mischief-maker to do harm where I can do good,' and he would not speak to Gamboa any more. The lords then sent for the merchant; all the captains as well as Julian being present, and, as the merchant was going in, Gamboa said to him aloud, so that all should hear, 'Señor, I beseech you to favour Julian as much as you can; for good or evil to him depends upon what you say.' Good God! how artfully Gamboa said that, when not three hours before he had begged him earnestly to accuse him and get his income taken away. But Julian and the other captains thought that Gamboa was favourable to him." The "merchant's" evidence does not seem to have palliated the case against Julian, but that perhaps was because "they made him place his hands upon the Gospels, and he swore to tell the truth." He said that Julian was in a rage at being arrested, and shouted out some coarse expressions about the King and Council not caring much for him, and that he would rather serve elsewhere for four ducats than here for a mint of money. "Then," said the lords, "didst thou not hear him say that he would come with a pike on his shoulder to fight against such heretics?" To which the merchant replied that the soldiers were making so much noise that he did not hear well what was said. The end of the matter was that, just as the Council were going to sentence Julian to punishment and dismissal, Paget put in a good word for him, and got him off with a severe wigging and a threat to punish him severely if he let his tongue run too loosely again; "whereupon Julian made no answer but made a very low bow, and then they told him to go, and if any one was sorry he was not dismissed it was Gamboa."

A few weeks after this the trouble with Scotland broke out again, and the captains were ordered to raise a fresh force of Spanish men-at-arms. This was not easily done at short notice, and Julian and his fellow Spanish officers frankly said that they could not get together men who would do them credit in the time specified, and they had no confidence in Burgundians and others who could be quickly recruited. Gamboa, however, made no difficulty about it; but to the great disgust of the Spaniards raised a regiment of Burgundians, whom he led to Scotland to take part in the siege of Haddington. On Gamboa's coming south for the winter this regiment, under its ensign, Perez, deserted en masse to the enemy, for which desertion Perez was hanged when the place was captured; but in the meanwhile the circumstance still further widened the breach between Gamboa and the other Spanish officers. The King died, at the beginning of the year 1547, and by the time Somerset was leaving London for his short and triumphant campaign in Scotland, plenty of Spanish and Italian mercenaries had joined the standards of our captains. They confessedly turned the tide of victory to the English side at the battle of Pinkie by a dashing flank charge under Gamboa, and a few days afterwards, at the burning of Leith, they again greatly distinguished themselves. Julian, of course, was in the thick of it, and his friend asserts that he was made an English knight after Pinkie. I can find no confirmation of this, although the English authorities show that after the burning of Leith the Protector knighted, amongst others, on the 28th of September, 1547. Sir Peter Gamboa, Pero Negro, Alonso de Villa Sirga, and Cristobal Diaz.

Julian remained in Scotland during the campaigns of 1548-9, and took part in the relief of Haddington; but Gamboa in the latter year was dismissed in consequence of his unpopularity with the other Spaniards and an accusation of peculation made against him. Of Julian Romero we hear in all parts. He and Pero Negro were in charge at Droughty Ferry, near Dundee, and a few of their men made a dash one day at a French general who was strolling a short distance from his lines, and captured him in the face of his own troops before he could be rescued. The French complained especially of Julian's and Pero Negro's celerity of movement, by which they were able to give them the slip, encumbered as the French were by the unscientific methods of their Scotch allies.[[2]] Warwick had the help of a considerable body of Spaniards, and almost certainly of Julian Romero, in his defeat of Kett's rebellion in the autumn of 1549; certainly in the winter of that year when Warwick, with the prestige of his victories upon him, thought he was strong enough to strike a final blow at the Protector, Julian was one of the foreign captains he took with him to overawe Somerset at his levee, and to demand of him in their name rich rewards for their services in Scotland and elsewhere. As soon as Warwick had got rid of Somerset he changed his tone. England was no longer a fit place for Catholics. The King, Edward VI., was known to be dying, and the next heiress was a papist and half a Spaniard, against whom the Spanish officers could not be trusted to fight in favour of Northumberland's Protestant protegée. So they were dismissed, those that were left of them, and are thenceforward swallowed up in the unfathomable abyss of the dead past; all except Julian Romero, who was reserved for greater things.

There was no lack of demand for the services of such men, for the Emperor, his natural sovereign, was at war with the French once more, and less than two years after he left England we hear of Romero again. Sir John Mason, writing to the English Council on the 7th of July, 1554,[[3]] reports that Julian with five standards of Spaniards and others was holding out against the French in the castle of Dinant. He is, Sir John says, unlikely to be taken; but if he be, all the Liege country must soon follow. A week afterwards Dr. Wotton writes to Queen Mary[[4]] an account of the fall of Dinant, and says: "The town and castle of Dinant have been taken, the former surrendered by composition without loss of goods, the latter, wherein were some Spaniards with Captain Julian, who formerly served in England, made a gallant resistance, but at last held parliament and yielded, the soldiers departing with their swords by their side."

The Spanish historian Sandoval blames Romero for his capture and the loss of Dinant, which he attributes to his want of prudence in going out to parley, "but rarely indeed do both valour and prudence reside in one person, although this captain afterwards proved that he possessed both qualities; for he became one of the most famous soldiers of our time." Romero seems first to have attracted general public notice by his bravery and dash at the great battle of St. Quintin in 1557, and in the contemporary poem called "La Araucana" he is mentioned as one of the most conspicuous heroes of the storming of the town, in command of a regiment of Spaniards, Germans, and Walloons. For the ten years that followed the peace of 1558 the centre of war was changed, and the almost constant struggles between Philip II. and the Turks kept Italy and Sicily full of Spanish soldiers. Romero during most of the time was quartered in the Milanese, whilst not before the enemy; and in the meanwhile had been promoted to the rank of Maestre de Campo (colonel), but in 1567 Philip took the fatal decision of grappling in a duel to the death with a closer and more dangerous power than the Turk—namely, that of Protestantism and national freedom in his own Netherlands dominions. The humble remonstrance of the Flemish nobles and Egmont's visit to Madrid had convinced the stealthy bigot that, if he insisted upon ruling his Flemish dominions according to Spanish methods, he could only do it by the ruthless power of the sword. His kindly and popular sister, Margaret of Parma, Flemish to the heart as she was, had already shown signs of sympathy with the demands of her countrymen, and was an unfit instrument for Philip's new plans. There was no one but hard-hearted old Alba who could be trusted to carry them out to the bitter end with the needful cat-like cruelty. So early in 1567 the Spanish troops from Milan and Naples, the Italians from Savoy and Parma, the veterans who for years had been fighting the infidel in the Mediterranean, were set in motion to join the Duke of Alba. Julian Romero was at the time in command of the regiment of Sicily stationed in Milan under the fourth Duke of Alburquerque, the son of Henry VIII's military dry-nurse at Boulogne; and he, like the rest of them, led his men to Brussels. The Flemish nobles were lulled into a feeling of false security. Kindly messages came from Philip in Madrid. He himself would come and set all things right. Alba and his son flattered the shallow Egmont, and courted the distrustful Horn, whose brother Montigny was kept at Madrid by specious excuses, and the smiling mask was kept over Alba's grim face till all was ready.

Egmont had readily accepted that fateful invitation to dinner for the 9th of September, and even Horn had been persuaded to leave the security of his own country for the same purpose, when late on the night of the 8th a Spanish officer of apparently high rank came secretly to his (Egmont's) house in disguise and significantly warned him to escape at once, whilst there was yet time. To the last day of her life the Countess of Egmont was confident that this officer was Julian Romero;[[5]] but, whoever he was, Egmont neglected the warning and went to the feast next day. Sancho de Avila posted troops in all the streets leading to the house, to the wonder of the townsfolk, and on the stairs of the Hotel itself were stationed 200 stalwart harquebussiers under Colonel Julian Romero, who himself stood at the door of the room in which the treacherous arrest was to be effected.[[6]] At the given moment Sancho de Avila laid hands on Egmont, whilst Romero stood by and overawed any attempt of the Flemings at resistance.

At 11 o'clock in the morning of the 6th of June of the following year, the day that the Counts were to die, Julian it was who went to Egmont's chamber to conduct him to the scaffold on the great square in Brussels. He wished to tie the Count's hands, but the noble refused to be thus degraded. During Egmont's last few moments he turned in bitter anguish to Julian Romero and asked him earnestly whether the sentence was irrevocable, and whether a pardon might not, even now, be granted to him. Romero appeared to think that the Count's courage was failing him, and only answered by a contemptuous shrug of his shoulders and a negative sign; whereupon Egmont gnashed his teeth in silent rage and went to his death.[[7]]