[82] The character of these apostilles, always confused, wordy, and awkward, was sometimes very ludicrous; nor did it improve after his thirty or forty years’ daily practice in making them. Thus, when he received a letter from France in 1589, narrating the assassination of Henry III, and stating that “the manner in which he had been killed was that a Jacobin monk had given him a pistol-shot in the head” (la façon que l’on dit qu’il a etté tué, sa etté par un Jacobin qui luy a donné d’un cou de pistolle dans la tayte), he scrawled the following luminous comment upon the margin. Underlining the word pistolle, he observed, “this is perhaps some kind of knife; and as for ‘tayte,’ it can be nothing else but head, which is not tayte, but tête, or teyte, as you very well know.”—Gachard.[d] It is obvious that a person who made such wonderful commentaries as this, and was hard at work eight or nine hours a day for forty years, would leave a prodigious quantity of unpublished matter at his death.
[83] “Nelle piaceri delle donne è incontinente, prendendo dilettatione d’andare in maschera la notte et nei tempi de negotii gravi,” etc.—Badovaro.[e]
[84] [“Alva on his knees asked pardon for bearing arms against the church.”[g]]
[85] [Watson,[h] like some other Protestant historians, very gently alludes to these scenes. This is highly disingenuous. Nor are the Catholics less to blame; they exaggerate as much as their rivals conceal. The truth is to be gained from neither: it may with difficulty be extracted from both.]
[86] [The dates generally accepted differ by some months from Mariana’s: May 19th, 1588, the Armada sails from Lisbon; soon after dispersed by a storm. July 19th, 1588, enters channel off Cornwall.]
[87] [English historians pass very gently over the failure of this expedition. Some do not even condescend to notice it. According to Hume,[k] the English lost more than six thousand of their eighteen thousand men, a loss of over 30 per cent.]
[88] [Army after army of Christians were hurled upon them with the openly avowed object of massacre—not war. Women and children, as well as men, were slaughtered in cold blood. How many thousands fell in the attacks and inevitable reprisals it is impossible now to say. Six thousand helpless women and children fugitives were sacrificed in one day by the marquis de los Velez, but still the churchmen were not satisfied. In the council chamber and the cathedral they cried for blood, and ever more blood—just as the same men did for the blood of Flemish heretics at the hands of their chief Alva. In vain the civil governors, and even soldiers, advocated some moderation, some mercy. Deza the inquisitor and Espinosa the cardinal in their purple robes knew no mercy for those who denied their sacred right to impose a doctrine upon other men.[j]]
[89] [He was unskilfully treated by the doctors, ghastly superstitions were resorted to instead of proper surgical treatment, and he lay unconscious, blind, and partially paralysed, until an Italian surgeon trepanned him, and he then apparently recovered.[k]]
[90] [But as Prescott[o] points out, Carlos was confined in a stifling prison, suffering from high fever. The ice-water treatment was favoured then by certain physicians as it is now universally.]
[91] [The accusation was made by the arch-liar Antonio Perez, and Prince William of Orange[l] declared that there was proof at Paris that Philip murdered both his son and his wife; but the accusation is now generally counted as pure malice.]