The Prince of Parma having drawn up his whole army before the gates of Ghent, there was some desultory fighting between light-armed troops on either side, who skirmished in front of their respective armies, while Alençon looked on from the walls. On both sides men were slain, and the engagement ended without advantage[124] to either party. Alençon retired with his people to Antwerp.
The garrison of Lier have commenced a kind of fortification at the monastery of St. Bernard, which will be a thorn in the side of the citizens of Antwerp if they succeed in finishing it. Probably Alençon will employ all his strength to prevent its completion.
From Scotland also we have news of disturbances, that the Regent[125] has been put to death, d’Aubigny is besieged, and the young King himself deprived of his liberty, and that all this has been done in the name of the Estates. This news is accompanied by sundry canards, viz. that the King of Spain has promised his second daughter to the young King on condition of his raising war against the Queen of England, and that this has given such deep offence to the Duke of Savoy that he is completely estranged from Philip, and altogether in the French interest, intending to marry the sister of Henry of Navarre.
Your Imperial Majesty will see in the document I enclose evidence touching some plot against Alençon and Orange. I can add nothing to the contents of the document, except that the Salceda[126] who is mentioned in it is a prisoner here. How it will end I cannot guess, but I suspect he is kept till the King returns.
The King has left Lyons to join his wife at Bourbon-les-Bains.
August 15, 1582.
LETTER VII.
The Prince of Parma has checked the progress of Alençon’s reinforcements by encamping at Arras. They are obliged, therefore, to make a détour to Calais, so as to reach their destination by sea. Alençon has divided the army which he already had in the Netherlands into garrisons for different places. Thus he has quartered some in Brussels, some in Mechlin, some in Vilvorde, and some also in Gelderland and Friesland.
The Spanish Ambassador having sent one of his people with despatches to the Prince of Parma, the man had but just left the first stage, when he fell in with some horsemen, whose names I do not know, and was compelled to surrender his papers. As the man was a Netherlander, he was allowed to escape unharmed. The horsemen told him, with many a threat, that if he had been a Spaniard he would not have got off so easily, but would have paid with his life for the butchery of their kinsmen in the Azores.