The Unseen World and Other Essays [96]
days at Yuste. But the beastly Philip would make himself sick with a surfeit of underdone pork.
Whatever may be said of the father, we can hardly go far wrong in ascribing the instincts of a murderer to the son. He not only burned heretics, but he burned them with an air of enjoyment and self-complacency. His nuptials with Elizabeth of France were celebrated by a vast auto-da-fe. He studied murder as a fine art, and was as skilful in private assassinations as Cellini was in engraving on gems. The secret execution of Montigny, never brought to light until the present century, was a veritable chef d'oeuvre of this sort. The cases of Escobedo and Antonio Perez may also be cited in point. Dark suspicions hung around the premature death of Don John of Austria, his too brilliant and popular half-brother. He planned the murder of William the Silent, and rewarded the assassin with an annuity furnished by the revenues of the victim's confiscated estates. He kept a staff of ruffians constantly in service for the purpose of taking off Elizabeth, Henry IV., Prince Maurice, Olden-Barneveldt, and St. Aldegonde. He instructed Alva to execute sentence of death upon the whole population of the Netherlands. He is partly responsible for the martyrdoms of Ridley and Latimer, and the judicial murder of Cranmer. He first conceived the idea of the wholesale massacre of St. Bartholomew, many years before Catharine de' Medici carried it into operation. His ingratitude was as dangerous as his revengeful fanaticism. Those who had best served his interests were the least likely to escape the consequences of his jealousy. He destroyed Egmont, who had won for him the splendid victories of St. Quentin and Gravelines; and "with minute and artistic treachery" he plotted "the disgrace and ruin" of Farnese, "the man who was his near blood-relation, and who had served him most faithfully from earliest youth." Contemporary opinion even held him accountable for the obscure deaths of his wife Elizabeth and his son Carlos; but M. Gachard has shown that this suspicion is unfounded. Philip appears perhaps to better advantage in his domestic than in his political relations. Yet he was addicted to vulgar and miscellaneous incontinence; toward the close of his life he seriously contemplated marrying his own daughter Isabella; and he ended by taking for his fourth wife his niece, Anne of Austria, who became the mother of his half-idiotic son and successor. We know of no royal family, unless it may be the Claudians of Rome, in which the transmission of moral and intellectual qualities is more thoroughly illustrated than in this Burgundian race which for two centuries held the sceptre of Spain. The son Philip and the grandmother Isabella are both needful in order to comprehend the strange mixture of good and evil in Charles. But the descendants of Philip--two generations of idiocy, and a third of utter impotence--are a sufficient commentary upon the organization and character of their progenitor.
Such was the man who for two generations had been considered the bulwark of the Catholic Church; who, having been at the bottom of nearly all the villany that had been wrought in Europe for half a century, was yet able to declare upon his death-bed that "in all his life he had never consciously done wrong to any one." At a ripe old age he died of a fearful disease. Under the influence of a typhus fever, supervening upon gout, he had begun to decompose while yet alive. "His sufferings," says Mr. Motley, "were horrible, but no saint could have manifested in them more gentle resignation or angelic patience. He moralized on the condition to which the greatest princes might thus be brought at last by the hand of God, and bade the Prince observe well his father's present condition, in order that when he too should be laid thus low, he might likewise be sustained by a conscience void of offence." What more is needed to complete the disgusting picture? Philip was fanatical up to the point where fanaticism borders upon hypocrisy. He was possessed with a "great moral idea," the idea
Whatever may be said of the father, we can hardly go far wrong in ascribing the instincts of a murderer to the son. He not only burned heretics, but he burned them with an air of enjoyment and self-complacency. His nuptials with Elizabeth of France were celebrated by a vast auto-da-fe. He studied murder as a fine art, and was as skilful in private assassinations as Cellini was in engraving on gems. The secret execution of Montigny, never brought to light until the present century, was a veritable chef d'oeuvre of this sort. The cases of Escobedo and Antonio Perez may also be cited in point. Dark suspicions hung around the premature death of Don John of Austria, his too brilliant and popular half-brother. He planned the murder of William the Silent, and rewarded the assassin with an annuity furnished by the revenues of the victim's confiscated estates. He kept a staff of ruffians constantly in service for the purpose of taking off Elizabeth, Henry IV., Prince Maurice, Olden-Barneveldt, and St. Aldegonde. He instructed Alva to execute sentence of death upon the whole population of the Netherlands. He is partly responsible for the martyrdoms of Ridley and Latimer, and the judicial murder of Cranmer. He first conceived the idea of the wholesale massacre of St. Bartholomew, many years before Catharine de' Medici carried it into operation. His ingratitude was as dangerous as his revengeful fanaticism. Those who had best served his interests were the least likely to escape the consequences of his jealousy. He destroyed Egmont, who had won for him the splendid victories of St. Quentin and Gravelines; and "with minute and artistic treachery" he plotted "the disgrace and ruin" of Farnese, "the man who was his near blood-relation, and who had served him most faithfully from earliest youth." Contemporary opinion even held him accountable for the obscure deaths of his wife Elizabeth and his son Carlos; but M. Gachard has shown that this suspicion is unfounded. Philip appears perhaps to better advantage in his domestic than in his political relations. Yet he was addicted to vulgar and miscellaneous incontinence; toward the close of his life he seriously contemplated marrying his own daughter Isabella; and he ended by taking for his fourth wife his niece, Anne of Austria, who became the mother of his half-idiotic son and successor. We know of no royal family, unless it may be the Claudians of Rome, in which the transmission of moral and intellectual qualities is more thoroughly illustrated than in this Burgundian race which for two centuries held the sceptre of Spain. The son Philip and the grandmother Isabella are both needful in order to comprehend the strange mixture of good and evil in Charles. But the descendants of Philip--two generations of idiocy, and a third of utter impotence--are a sufficient commentary upon the organization and character of their progenitor.
Such was the man who for two generations had been considered the bulwark of the Catholic Church; who, having been at the bottom of nearly all the villany that had been wrought in Europe for half a century, was yet able to declare upon his death-bed that "in all his life he had never consciously done wrong to any one." At a ripe old age he died of a fearful disease. Under the influence of a typhus fever, supervening upon gout, he had begun to decompose while yet alive. "His sufferings," says Mr. Motley, "were horrible, but no saint could have manifested in them more gentle resignation or angelic patience. He moralized on the condition to which the greatest princes might thus be brought at last by the hand of God, and bade the Prince observe well his father's present condition, in order that when he too should be laid thus low, he might likewise be sustained by a conscience void of offence." What more is needed to complete the disgusting picture? Philip was fanatical up to the point where fanaticism borders upon hypocrisy. He was possessed with a "great moral idea," the idea