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sent to repress the disturbances, his natural clemency induced him to dea lightly with the vanquished; and this compassion gave rise to calumny and suspicion at the head-quarters of the French court. His traducers represented him as in league with the former duke; and Duguesclin, now old and wearied, was so humiliated on learning that Charles, who owed him so much, had leant ear to these aspersions, that he threw up his command and the Constable's sword in disgust, and made a vow of retiring to Spain, swearing never to resume them. Before quitting, he wrote a letter, equally tender and magnanimous to Charles, asseverating, upon the sword lately relinquished, that he had never swerved from duty; and Charles seems to have relented, or become conscious of his innocence, as emissaries of the highest rank were dispatched to him, entreating that he would resume the distinction and command. With the former request he appears to have complied, but no solicitations could induce him to yield the other. He persisted in his resolutions to join the standard of Henry, his old companion in Spain, and journeyed southwards by gentle stages, with the design of meeting him. Age and fatigue, however, had now debilitated his frame; and finding his end drew nigh he halted at Randam, in order that he might once more breathe the air of war, and assist the Marquis of Sancerre in conducting its siege.

The operations proceeded, inspired by his presence. But camps and courts with him were now alike at an end. Each day increased his debility, and on the 12th of July, 1380, a tender parting with his old sword and comrades took place. The enemy agreed to capitulate next day; but this day witnessed the conclusion of Duguesclin's career; and a scene equally impressive and unprecedented followed. The governor and garrison refused to surrender, on the plea that they had yielded only to Duguesclin, and that he was no longer living. It soon transpired, however, that this arose from no breach of faith or latent perfidy; for the following morn beheld the commander and the whole of his troops sally out in solemn array, to surrender the keys of the city on Duguesclin's tomb, "in order," as they said, "that he might triumph even when dead." His remains were reconducted to the metropolis, and the provinces through which they passed, received them with equal honour; the King finally, as was supposed, paying them the last compliment of all, by ordering their interment in the royal vault of St. Denis, adjoining a tomb designed for himself, amid the sovereigns of France.

The great captains of France testified their sense of his merits, by long refusing the constable's sword, vacant on his demise,-which Clisson, at last, was induced to accept; and posterity has confirmed their judgment. Of the warriors of those ages, indeed, few seem to have equalled, and none surpassed him. Humane, generous, and modest, he recalls to recollection Desaix in later times. He was not merely a soldier, but, like Turenne, a great captain: and if inferior to this celebrated leader in strategy, it was merely because he lived in an earlier era, when the art of war was in its infancy. Beloved by his troops, like those two great generals, he possessed qualities which rendered him an object of respect to contemporaneous foes, and are yet a subject for eulogy. He is one of the few heroes of the period who are now remembered; and that less on account of being one of the first to introduce science into war, substitute able marches, methodic positions, and regular manœuvres, for the previously predominating brute violence, than for the lofty, chivalrous and equitable bearing which marked his conduct.

J. *

III. SPINOLA.

"THERE were but three intuitive conquerors," said Napoleon-" Alexander, Spinola, and Condé." All the others on record had either progressively developed their capacity, or been trained to the art of war. But those at once started into the rank of great commanders, and seemed to have been designed by nature for the distinction.

AMBROISE SPINOLA, the second of this trio, descended from an ancient Italian family which had long been identified with a small town or hamlet of the name on the confines of Montferrat and the Milanese territories; but the branch of it from which he sprang had been established in Genoa since the twelfth or thirteenth century, when Obert de Spinola received the name of Captain or Preserver of Genoese Liberty, in consequence of having quelled a formidable insurrection against it in the year 1270. After that period, however, until the sixteenth century, when, in 1571, Ambroise was born, it was chiefly engaged in commercial pursuits, and one of the most distinguished of those princely mercantile houses which then maintained the rank and opulence of Italy, and carried its fame, in the persons of such families as the Medicis, to a point which no succeeding age perhaps has equalled, and assuredly not surpassed.

The house of Spinola was one of the most considerable of these for wealth, and Ambroise was destined to maintain its consequence, when his elder brother, Frederick, led away by a thirst for glory, suddenly exchanged the pursuit of wealth for war. In the midst of these pacific avocations, indeed, the family of Spinola appear always to have retained their old, or martial, predilections. The grandame of our hero had been noted for a romantic attachment to Louis the Twelfth of France, for whose cause she sacrificed fortune, and ultimately life; and by a like impulse his elder brother was now led to embark the riches of the house in equipping six galleys for the service of Philip the Third of Spain. His success was so great, that he speedily communicated his ardour to Ambroise, although the latter had now passed his thirtieth year, and been remarkable for no characteristic beyond devotion to the study of a few ancient classics. The art of war, however, had engaged his attention so far as it can be inculcated by theories; and hence, when he joined, he was not ignorant of its principles, though utterly unacquainted with its practice. Between them, the brothers raised and equipped a force of nine thousand men-a circumstance which may impress us with an idea of their wealth, as it must have cost them at least £80,000 of our present money, equal to at least thrice the amount in that day—and with the command of it, in two divisions, Ambroise, in May 1602, set out from Milan to support the cause of Philip in the Netherlands. The Spanish king's affairs were then all but desperate. The States of Holland, long in revolt, had reduced his arms to extremity, and his troops were on the point of disbanding, or joining the enemy, when Spinola (as we shall henceforth name Ambroise) arrived, by a rapid and able march through Italy, Switzerland, and Franche-Compté, at the head-quarters of the Archduke Albert. He immediately engaged to pay the troops for three years-a debt apparently never repaid-and thus at once became the master of a considerable Spanish army, opposed to Prince Maurice of Nassau, who, in behalf of the States, had arrived with the force of VOL. V., NO. XXI.

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twenty-four thousand men to raise the siege of Ostend, which, for more than a year, had been invested by the troops of Spain. Spinola, by the ability of his arrangements, prevented the accomplishment of this object; but he could not interrupt him from assailing and taking Gavre, in Brabant, though, by the rapidity of his movements and the variety of his manœuvres, he precluded him, with forces far superior, from reaping any other decisive advantage.

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Yet defeat, or at least a check, on the whole, characterised the first action of Spinola, and affairs looked still more inauspicious when he took his position around Ostend. All the troops of the Spanish king, except Spinola's, were there openly in mutiny, and intelligence about the same time arrived that his brother Frederick had been slain in a naval engagement. Philip, on learning the catastrophe, offered the post of Grand Admiral to Spinola; but, though great commands by sea and land were then held in common, Spinola seems to have discerned their incompatibility, and he accordingly refused it. He received instead the appointment of General-in-Chief of the Spanish forces in the Netherlands, with special instructions to complete the siege of Ostend, which had now been protracted to such a period as to compromise the reputation of Spain, and excite the astonishment of Europe. The task, however, was not easy. The city, strong by position, was rendered almost impregnable by art, and one of the most courageous garrisons on record defended the walls. Murmurs, too, broke out amongst the Spaniards at Spinola's elevation, and it was only by the summary process of breaking at once two hundred officers, that he quelled a mutiny which might have been fatal to his power. He at the same time, from his own resources, discharged the arrears of the soldiers; and having thus, by his firmness and liberality, quelled the revolt, he led the troops to the beleaguered city; and they ever afterwards followed him with the same devotion as his own adherents. With vehemence unprecedented the operations were renewed, and, in spite of strenuous efforts by the Prince of Nassau, who arrived with a large force to interrupt him, the city at last was taken on the 14th of September, 1604, after having stood for three years a siege which had proved fatal to a hundred and thirty thousand men, and given rise to an expenditure of eight hundred thousand shots, many of them so large and unintermittent that their discharge is said to have been heard in London.

During the course of this siege, or immediately after it Spinola fought no less than fifteen actions with the enemy, in all of which he was victorious; but into the details of these it would be vain now to follow him. On their conclusion he was summoned by Philip to the Court of Madrid; and, proceeding by Paris, obtained a distinguished reception from a congenial hero, Henry the Fourth, who then sat on the throne of France. Henry, however, was not negligent of either his own or his country's interest amidst all his romance. He was already secretly dallying with the Dutch, and the next year he surmised might see him arrayed in their alliance against Spain. With much shrewdness, therefore, he now endeavoured to ascertain Spinola's designs; inferring -but as it proved, erroneously that the great leader would disclose the very opposite of what he intended to practice. Spinola, with penetration deeper still, detected and baffled the manoeuvre. With apparent simplicity, but calculation profound, he luminously developed the great features of his next

campaign; and Henry, when in conjunction with the Dutch, was afterwards defeated by supposing the Spanish leader would pursue a course diametrically opposed, had the magnanimity to declare that "Other generals deceived by falsehood, but Spinola, by adhering to truth." On his arrival at Madrid, Spinola was received with caresses, but the condition of affairs was too critical for him to be long allowed inactive. Early in 1605, accordingly, having again been appointed Generalissimo in the Netherlands, he started for Brussels, and, with forty thousand men, took the field against Maurice of Nassau, who had made several conquests, and laid siege to Ghent in his absence. The Dutch prince was compelled to relinquish the town, and Spinola thence making his way into the Low Countries, by the ability of his manœuvres and rapidity of his marches, in a few weeks overturned all the arrangements resulting from the victories of his opponent. Over-Yasel was over-run, Linghen taken, and Rhinberg reduced, before Maurice, celebrated also for the promptitude of his operations, could come up; and at last, when he did arrive in presence of his redoubtable foe, a series of brilliant, but now unimportant, actions occurred, which, at the present day, it were idle to trace. Three years were spent in this species of strife, momentous to contemporaries, but by posterity forgotten. The Dutchman on the whole prevailed, yet not by the success of his arms; for Spinola, though deserted by his court, from whom, during greater part of the period, he had received neither supplies nor reinforcements, was in a position more formidable than ever, when the Spanish government, after twenty years of struggle, at last terminated the conflict with its rebellious provinces at the moment when it seemed on the eve of crushing them. Spinola was appointed principal negociator, and now, for the first time, came into pacific contact with his redoubted opponent. The prince received him, with great distinction, half-a-league from the Hague, and conducted him to head quarters amid the acclamations of the people; although, it may be remarked, the taciturn Dutchman could not be induced to acknowledge either inferiority or equality, his complacent answer to an inquiry, "Who is the first general in Europe?" being, "Spinola is the second." After a protracted negociation, the treaty acknowledging the independence of Holland was finally signed on the 9th of April, 1609; and Spinola, on its completion, set out for Madrid, where he was received with apparent cordiality by the king, but almost open murmurs by the court, though he had spent twothirds of his fortune, and incurred debt to the amount of two million of crowns in their service.

A long interval of inaction succeeded. The pride of the old Castilian court, though she had concluded a connection with her republican insurgents, could not stoop to acknowledge it as peace: it was by the term "twelve years' truce," that the agreement was known; and both parties, it was understood, were to resume hostilities on its expiring. This, by many, was considered but a salvo for mortified Spanish haughtiness; and Spinola supposing that the struggle was over, sought another field in Europe, for the exercise of his arms. But it there presented no opportunity for display. The struggles of Henry the Fourth were over, and those of Gustavus, of Sweden, had not yet begun. England was ruled by the cowardly James, and the dissensions in Germany, though impending, had not yet been produced by the inordinate ambition of his

son-in-law, the Prince Palatine. The republic of Genoa was the only power that offered Spinola employment; but he declined it,-aware not only of the ingratitude generally experienced by greatness in the place of its nativity, but also again panting for distinction in arms, and confident that the ambition of the house of Austria would at no distant day again demand his services.

His anticipations were confirmed. Immediately on the expiring of the twelve years' truce in 1621, (April 10,) Isabella, the widow of Philip the Third, summoned him to her aid, and despatched a body of troops under his command, to annoy her late subjects in the Netherlands. The states, it must be owned, had afforded cause for hostility; having, in the interval, formed relations with France and England, with all the craft and promptitude which characterised the republican vigour. But their arrangements had not been completed, when Spinola burst in. Reide accordingly surrendered to his summons: St. Julier's was taken after a brief assault; and his lieutenant Velasco despatched to invest Berg-op-Zoom. The Prince of Nassau, however, approaching with superior forces, prevented the latter operation from being carried into effect, and the future movements of Spinola were nullified or impeded by orders from Madrid, where the court, adopting that policy which, if it has sometimes restrained the ambition, has more frequently marred the success of its generals, had come to the resolution of directing manoeuvres from head-quarters. Spinola's movements, therefore, were henceforth as interrupted as those of modern arch-dukes, by the Aulic council of Vienna. A march, before he could venture to make it, was late; an operation was frequently ordered when premature. The minister Olivarez, for instance, now ordered him to lay siege to Breda; and when Spinola represented that the command was impolitic, a despatch from Philip the Fourth, the new sovereign, brought him the peremptory instructions: "Marquis, take Breda. I, the King." The order was obeyed: and its execution added fresh lustre to his reputation: but a long time elapsed before he could subdue the obstinate courage of the Dutch, and though he, in the interval, defeated the Prince of Nassau, with the loss of ten thousand men, and by baffling his design upon Antwerp, caused him to die of chagrin, he himself was recalled by a court intrigue, and in 1627 removed from his command.

In his return to Madrid, Spinola again passed through the headquarters of the French court, and witnessed the siege of Rochelle, then exciting the attention of Europe. Louis the Thirteenth and Richelieu, in person, had arrived to subvert this famed seat of Protestantism, and its overthrow was in no sligl.t degree owing to the advice which Spinola gave the ambitious Cardinal. "Shut the port and open the hand," was his reply, when asked for an opinion by the martial priest; and Richelieu, rightly interpreting it, constructed that celebrated sea-wall, and displayed that liberality to his troops, which enabled him, at last, to bring the memorable siege to a close. But Spinola had, in the interval, arrived at Madrid, and given umbrage to its court by refusing to undertake the city's relief. I have seen the enemy's plans," he said; "their preparations were imparted to me in confidence ;" and the honour of a soldier, he considered, precluded him from taking part in the design, which the Spanish government had formed for the annoyance of the French.

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It did not, however, prevent him from acting against them in Italy,

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