While Gonsalvo made this innovation in the arms and tactics, he paid equal attention to the formation of a suitable character in his soldiery. The circumstances in which he was placed at Barleta, and on the Garigliano, imperatively demanded this. Without food, clothes, or pay, without the chance even of retrieving his desperate condition by venturing a blow at the enemy, the Spanish soldier was required to remain passive. To do this demanded, patience, abstinence, strict subordination, and a degree of resolution far higher than that required to combat obstacles, however formidable in themselves, where active exertion, which tasks the utmost energies of the soldier, renews his spirits and raises them to a contempt of danger. It was calling on him, in short, to begin with achieving that most difficult of all victories, the victory over himself.
All this the Spanish commander effected. He infused into his men a portion of his own invincible energy. He inspired a love of his person, which led them to emulate his example, and a confidence in his genius and resources, which supported them under all their privations by a firm reliance on a fortunate issue. His manners were distinguished by a graceful courtesy, less encumbered with etiquette than was usual with persons of his high rank in Castile. He knew well the proud and independent feelings of the Spanish soldier; and, far from annoying him by unnecessary restraints, showed the most liberal indulgence at all times. But his kindness was tempered with severity, which displayed itself, on such occasions as required interposition, in a manner that rarely failed to repress everything like insubordination. The reader will readily recall an example of this in the mutiny before Tarento; and it was doubtless by the assertion of similar power, that he was so long able to keep in check his German mercenaries, distinguished above the troops of every other nation by their habitual license and contempt of authority.
While Gonsalvo relied so freely on the hardy constitution and patient habits of the Spaniards, he trusted no less to the deficiency of these qualities in the French, who, possessing little of the artificial character formed under the stern training of later times, resembled their Gaulish ancestors in the facility with which they were discouraged by unexpected obstacles, and the difficulty with which they could be brought to rally. [28] In this he did not miscalculate. The French infantry, drawn from the militia of the country, hastily collected and soon to be disbanded, and the independent nobility and gentry who composed the cavalry service, were alike difficult to be brought within the strict curb of military rule. The severe trials, which steeled the souls, and gave sinewy strength to the constitutions, of the Spanish soldiers, impaired those of their enemies, introduced divisions into their councils, and relaxed the whole tone of discipline. Gonsalvo watched the operation of all this, and, coolly waiting the moment when his weary and disheartened adversary should be thrown off his guard, collected all his strength for a decisive blow, by which to terminate the action. Such was the history of those memorable campaigns, which closed with the brilliant victories of Cerignola and the Garigliano.
In a review of his military conduct, we must not overlook his politic deportment towards the Italians, altogether the reverse of the careless and insolent bearing of the French. He availed himself liberally of their superior science, showing great deference, and confiding the most important trusts, to their officers. [29] Far from the reserve usually shown to foreigners, he appeared insensible to national distinctions, and ardently embraced them as companions in arms, embarked in a common cause with himself. In their tourney with the French before Barleta, to which the whole nation attached such importance as a vindication of national honor, they were entirely supported by Gonsalvo, who furnished them with arms, secured a fair field of fight, and shared the triumph of the victors as that of his own countrymen,—paying those delicate attentions, which cost far less, indeed, but to an honorable mind are of greater value, than more substantial benefits. He conciliated the good-will of the Italian states by various important services; of the Venetians, by his gallant defence of their possessions in the Levant; of the people of Rome, by delivering them from the pirates of Ostia; while he succeeded, notwithstanding the excesses of his soldiery, in captivating the giddy Neapolitans to such a degree, by his affable manners and splendid style of life, as seemed to efface from their minds every recollection of the last and most popular of their monarchs, the unfortunate Frederic.
The distance of Gonsalvo's theatre of operations from his own country, apparently most discouraging, proved extremely favorable to his purposes. The troops, cut off from retreat by a wide sea and an impassable mountain barrier, had no alternative but to conquer or to die. Their long continuance in the field without disbanding gave them all the stern, inflexible qualities of a standing army; and, as they served through so many successive campaigns under the banner of the same leader, they were drilled in a system of tactics far steadier and more uniform than could be acquired under a variety of commanders, however able. Under these circumstances, which so well fitted them for receiving impressions, the Spanish army was gradually moulded into the form determined by the will of its great chief.
When we look at the amount offered at the disposal of Gonsalvo, it appears so paltry, especially compared with the gigantic apparatus of later wars, that it may well suggest disparaging ideas of the whole contest. To judge correctly, we must direct our eyes to the result. With this insignificant force, we shall then see the kingdom of Naples conquered, and the best generals and armies of France annihilated; an important innovation effected in military science; the art of mining, if not invented, carried to unprecedented perfection; a thorough reform introduced in the arms and discipline of the Spanish soldier; and the organization completed of that valiant infantry, which is honestly eulogized by a French writer, as irresistible in attack, and impossible to rout; [30] and which carried the banners of Spain victorious, for more than a century, over the most distant parts of Europe.
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The brilliant qualities and achievements of Gonzalo de Cordova have naturally made him a popular theme both for history and romance. Various biographies of him have appeared in the different European languages, though none, I believe, hitherto in English. The authority of principal reference in these pages is the Life which Paolo Giovio has incorporated in his great work, "Vitae Illustrium Virorum," which I have elsewhere noticed. This Life of Gonsalvo is not exempt from the prejudices, nor from the minor inaccuracies, which may be charged on most of this author's productions; but these are abundantly compensated by the stores of novel and interesting details which Giovio's familiarity with the principal actors of the time enabled him to throw into his work, and by the skilful arrangement. of his narrative, so disposed as, without studied effort, to bring into light the prominent qualities of his hero. Every page bears the marks of that "golden pen," which the politic Italian reserved for his favorites; and, while this obvious partiality may put the reader somewhat on his guard, it gives an interest to the work, inferior to none other of his agreeable compositions.
The most imposing of the Spanish memoirs of Gonsalvo, in bulk at least, is the "Chrónica del Gran Capitan," Alcala de Henares, 1584. Nic. Antonio doubts whether the author were Pulgar, who wrote the "History of the Catholic Kings," of such frequent reference in the Granadine wars', or another Pulgar del Salar, as he is called, who received the honors of knighthood from King Ferdinand for his valorous exploits against the Moors. (See Bibliotheca Uova, tom. i. p. 387.) With regard to the first Pulgar, there is no reason to suppose that he lived into the sixteenth century; and, as to the second, the work composed by him, so far from being the one in question, was a compendium, bearing the title of "Sumario de los Hechos del Gran Capitan," printed as early as 1527, at Seville, (See the editor's prologue to Pulgar's "Chrónica de los Reyes Católicos," ed Valencia, 1780.) Its author, therefore, remains in obscurity. He sustains no great damage on the score of reputation, however, from this circumstance; as his work is but an indifferent specimen of the rich old Spanish chronicle, exhibiting most of its characteristic blemishes, with a very small admixture of its beauties. The long and prosy narrative is overloaded with the most frivolous details, trumpeted forth in a strain of glorification, which sometimes disfigures more meritorious compositions in the Castilian. Nothing like discrimination of character, of course, is to be looked for in the unvarying swell of panegyric, which claims for its subject all the extravagant flights of a hero of romance. With these deductions, however, and a liberal allowance, consequently, for the nationality of the work, it has considerable value as a record of events, too recent in their occurrence to be seriously defaced by those deeper stains of error, which are so apt to settle on the weather-beaten monuments of antiquity. It has accordingly formed a principal source of the "Vida del Gran Capitan," introduced by Quintana in the first volume of his "Españoles Célebres," printed at Madrid, in 1807. This memoir, in which the incidents are selected with discernment, displays the usual freedom and vivacity of its poetic author. It does not bring the general politics of the period under review, but will not be found deficient in particulars having immediate connection with the personal history of its subject; and, on the whole, exhibits in an agreeable and compendious form whatever is of most interest or importance for the general reader.
The French have also a "Histoire de Gonsalve de Cordoue," composed by Father Duponcet, a Jesuit, in two vols. 12mo, Paris, 1714. Though an ambitious, it is a bungling performance, most unskilfully put together, and contains quite as much of what its hero did not do, as of what he did. The prolixity of the narrative is not even relieved by the piquancy of style, which forms something like a substitute for thought in many of the lower order of French historians. It is less to history, however, than to romance, that the French public is indebted for its conceptions of the character of Gonsalvo de Cordova, as depicted by the gaudy pencil of Florian, in that highly poetic coloring, which is more attractive to the majority of readers than the cold and sober delineations of truth.