[17] Garcilasso de la Vega alludes to these military exploits of the duke, in his second eclogue.
"Con mas ilustre nombre los arneses
de los fieros Franceses abollava."
Obras, ed. de Herrera, p. 505.
[18] Such was the power of the old duke of Najara, that he brought into the field on this occasion 1100 horse and 3000 foot, raised and equipped on his own estates. Peter Martyr, Opus Epist., epist. 507.
[19] Mémoires de Bayard, chap. 55, 56.—Fleurange, Mémoires, chap. 33.— Lebrija, De Bello Navariensi, lib. 1, cap. 8, 9.—Abarca, Reyes de Aragon, tom. ii. rey 30, cap. 21.—Carbajal, Anales, MS., año 1512.
Jean and Catharine d'Albret passed the remainder of their days in their territories on the French side of the Pyrenees. They made one more faint and fruitless attempt to recover their dominions during the regency of Cardinal Ximenes. (Carbajal, Anales, MS., cap. 12.) Broken in spirits, their health gradually declined, and neither of them long survived the loss of their crown. Jean died June 23d, 1517, and Catharine followed on the 12th of February of the next year;—happy, at least, that, as misfortune had no power to divide them in life, so they were not long separated by death. (Histoire du Royaume de Navarre, p. 643.—Aleson, Annales de Navarra, tom. v. lib. 35, cap. 20, 21.) Their bodies sleep side by side in the cathedral church of Lescar, in their own dominions of Bearne; and their fate is justly noticed by the Spanish historians as one of the most striking examples of that stern decree, by which the sins of the fathers are visited on the children to the third and fourth generation.
[20] Flassan, Diplomatie Française, tom. i. p 296.—Rymer, Foedera, tom. xiii. pp. 350-352.—Guicciardini, Istoria, tom. vi. lib. 11, p82, lib. 12, p. 168.—Mariana, Hist. de España, tom. ii. lib. 30, cap 22.—"Fu cosa ridicola," says Guicciardini in relation to this truce, "che nei medesimi giorni, che la si bandiva solennemente per tutta. Ja Spagna, venne en araldo a significargli in nome del Re d'Ingbilterra gli apparati potentissimi, che ei faceva per assaltare la Francia, e a sollecitare che egli medesimamente movesse, secondo che aveva promesso, la guerra dalla parte di Spagna." Istoria, tom. vi. lib. 12, p. 84.
[21] Francesco Vettori, the Florentine ambassador at the papal court, writes to Machiavelli, that he lay awake two hours that night speculating on the real motives of the Catholic king in making this truce, which, regarded simply as a matter of policy, he condemns in toto. He accompanies this with various predictions respecting the consequences likely to result from it. These consequences never occurred, however; and the failure of his predictions may be received as the best refutation of his arguments. Machiavelli, Opere, Lett. Famigl. Aprile 21 1513.
[22] Guicciardini, Istoria, tom. vi. lib. II, pp. 81, 82.—Machiavelli, Opere, ubi supra.—Peter Martyr, Opus Epist., epist. 538.
On the 5th of April a treaty was concluded at Mechlin, in the names of Ferdinand, the king of England, the emperor, and the pope. (Rymer, Foedera, tom. xiii. pp. 354-358.) The Castilian envoy, Don Luis Carroz, was not present at Mechlin, but it was ratified and solemnly sworn to by him, on behalf of his sovereign, in London, April 18th. (Ibid., tom. xiii. p. 363.) By this treaty, Spain agreed to attack France in Guienne, while the other powers were to cooperate by a descent on other quarters. (See also Dumont, Corps Diplomatique, tom. iv. part. 1, no 79.) This was in direct contradiction of the treaty signed only five days before at Orthès, and if made with the privity of King Ferdinand, must be allowed to be a gratuitous display of perfidy, not easily matched in that age. As such, of course, it is stigmatized by the French historians, that is the later ones, for I find no comment on it in contemporary writers. (See Rapin, History of England, translated by Tindal, (London, 1785-9,) vol. ii. pp. 93, 94. Sismondi, Hist. des Français, tom. xv. p. 626.) Ferdinand, when applied to by Henry VIII. to ratify the acts of his minister, in the following summer, refused, on the ground that the latter had transcended his powers. (Herbert, Life of Henry VIII., p. 29.) The Spanish writers are silent. His assertion derives some probability from the tenor of one of the articles, which provides, that in case he refuses to confirm the treaty, it shall still be binding between England and the emperor; language which, as it anticipates, may seem to authorize, such a contingency.
Public treaties have, for obvious reasons, been generally received as the surest basis for history. One might well doubt this, who attempts to reconcile the multifarious discrepancies and contradictions in those of the period under review. The science of diplomacy, as then practised, was a mere game of finesse and falsehood, in which the more solemn the protestations of the parties, the more ground for distrusting their sincerity.