The funeral obsequies were performed, according to the royal orders, with all due solemnity. The vicar and beneficiaries of the church of St. Saviour officiated on the occasion. The servants of the deceased were clad in mourning,—a token of respect recommended by Philip, who remarked, the servants were so few, that mourning might as well be given to them;[1262] and he was willing to take charge of this and the other expenses of the funeral, provided Montigny had not left money sufficient for the purpose. The place selected for his burial was a vault under one of the chapels of the building; and a decent monument indicated the spot where reposed the ashes of the last of the envoys who came from Flanders on the ill-starred mission to Madrid.[1263]
Such is a true account of this tragical affair, as derived from the king's own letters and those of his agents. Far different was the story put in circulation at the time. On the seventeenth of October, the day after Montigny's death, despatches were received at court from Peralta, the alcayde of the fortress. They stated that, after writing his former letter, his prisoner's fever had so much increased, that he had called in the aid of a physician; and as the symptoms became more alarming, the latter had entered into a consultation with the medical adviser of the late regent, Joanna, so that nothing that human skill could afford should be wanting to the patient. He grew rapidly worse, however, and as, happily, Father Hernando del Castillo, of Valladolid, chanced to be then in Simancas, he came and administered the last consolations of religion to the dying man. Having done all that a good Christian at such a time should do, Montigny expired early on the morning of the sixteenth, manifesting at the last so Catholic a spirit, that good hopes might be entertained of his salvation.[1264]
This hypocritical epistle, it is hardly necessary to say, like the one that preceded it, had been manufactured at Madrid. Nor was it altogether devoid of truth. The physician of the place, named Viana, had been called in; and it was found necessary to intrust him with the secret. Every day he paid his visit to the castle, and every day returned with more alarming accounts of the condition of the patient; and thus the minds of the community were prepared for the fatal termination of his disorder. Not that, after all, this was unattended with suspicions of foul play in the matter, as people reflected how opportune was the occurrence of such an event. But suspicions were not proof. The secret was too well guarded for any one to penetrate the veil of mystery; and the few who were behind that veil loved their lives too well to raise it.
Despatches written in cipher, and containing a full and true account of the affair, were sent to the duke of Alva. The two letters of Peralta, which indeed were intended for the meridian of Brussels rather than of Madrid, were forwarded with them. The duke was told to show them incidentally, as it were, without obtruding them on any one's notice,[1265] that Montigny's friends in the Netherlands might be satisfied of their truth.[{390}]
In his own private communication to Alva, Philip, in mentioning the orthodox spirit manifested by his victim in his last moments, shows that with the satisfaction which he usually expressed on such occasions was mingled some degree of scepticism. "If his inner man," he writes of Montigny, "was penetrated with as Christian a spirit as he exhibited in the outer, and as the friar who confessed him has reported, God, we may presume, will have mercy on his soul."[1266] In the original draft of the letter, as prepared by the king's secretary, it is further added: "Yet, after all, who can tell but this was a delusion of Satan, who, as we know, never deserts the heretic in his dying hour." This sentence—as appears from the manuscript still preserved in Simancas—was struck out by Philip, with the remark in his own hand, "Omit this, as we should think no evil of the dead!"[1267]
Notwithstanding this magnanimous sentiment, Philip lost no time in publishing Montigny to the world as a traitor, and demanding the confiscation of his estates. The Council of Blood learned a good lesson from the Holy Inquisition, which took care that even Death should not defraud it of its victims. Proceedings were instituted against the memory of Montigny, as had before been done against the memory of the marquis of Bergen.[1268] On the twenty-second of March, 1571, the duke of Alva pronounced sentence, condemning the memory of Florence de Montmorency, lord of Montigny, as guilty of high treason, and confiscating his goods and estates to the use of the crown; "it having come to his knowledge," the instrument went on to say, "that the said Montigny had deceased by natural death in the fortress of Simancas, where he had of late been held a prisoner!"[1269]
The proceedings of the Council of Blood against Montigny were characterized, as I have already said, by greater effrontery and a more flagrant contempt of the common forms of justice than were usually to be met with even in that tribunal. A bare statement of the facts is sufficient. The party accused was put on his trial—if trial it can be called—in one country, while he was held in close custody in another. The court before which he was tried—or rather the jury, for the council seems to have exercised more of the powers of a jury than of a judge—was on this occasion a packed body, selected to suit the purposes of the prosecution. Its sentence, instead of being publicly pronounced, was confided only to the party interested to obtain it,—the king. Even the sentence itself was not the one carried into effect; but another was substituted in its place, and a public execution was supplanted by a midnight assassination. It would be an abuse of language to dignify such a proceeding with the title of a judicial murder.
NOTICE OF GACHARD.
Yet Philip showed no misgivings as to his own course in the matter. He had made up his mind as to the guilt of Montigny. He had been false to his king and false to his religion; offences which death only could expiate. Still we find Philip resorting to a secret execution, although Alva, as we have seen, had supposed that sentence was to be executed on Montigny in the[{391}] same open manner as it had been on the other victims of the bloody tribunal. But the king shrunk from exposing a deed to the public eye, which, independently of its atrocity in other respects, involved so flagrant a violation of good faith towards the party who had come, at his sovereign's own desire, on a public mission to Madrid. With this regard to the opinions of his own age, it may seem strange that Philip should not have endeavored to efface every vestige of his connection with the act, by destroying the records which established it. On the contrary, he not only took care that such records should be made, but caused them, and all other evidence of the affair, to be permanently preserved in the national archives. There they lay for the inspection of posterity, which was one day to sit in judgment on his conduct.