Captain John Smith | Page 7

"Duke of Mercury" in Hungary), Duke of Lorraine, was
allied with the Guises in the League, and had the design of holding
Bretagne under Spanish protection. However, fortune was against him
and he submitted to Henry in February, 1598, with no good grace.
Looking about for an opportunity to distinguish himself, he offered his

services to the Emperor Rudolph to fight the Turks, and it is said led an
army of his French followers, numbering 15,000, in 1601, to Hungary,
to raise the siege of Coniza, which was beleaguered by Ibrahim Pasha
with 60,000 men.
Chance of fighting and pay failing in France by reason of the peace, he
enrolled himself under the banner of one of the roving and fighting
captains of the time, who sold their swords in the best market, and went
over into the Low Countries, where he hacked and hewed away at his
fellow-men, all in the way of business, for three or four years. At the
end of that time he bethought himself that he had not delivered his
letters to Scotland. He embarked at Aucusan for Leith, and seems to
have been shipwrecked, and detained by illness in the "holy isle" in
Northumberland, near Barwick. On his recovery he delivered his letters,
and received kind treatment from the Scots; but as he had no money,
which was needed to make his way as a courtier, he returned to
Willoughby.
The family of Smith is so "ancient" that the historians of the county of
Lincoln do not allude to it, and only devote a brief paragraph to the
great John himself. Willoughby must have been a dull place to him
after his adventures, but he says he was glutted with company, and
retired into a woody pasture, surrounded by forests, a good ways from
any town, and there built himself a pavilion of boughs--less substantial
than the cabin of Thoreau at Walden Pond--and there he heroically
slept in his clothes, studied Machiavelli's "Art of War," read "Marcus
Aurelius," and exercised on his horse with lance and ring. This solitary
conduct got him the name of a hermit, whose food was thought to be
more of venison than anything else, but in fact his men kept him
supplied with provisions. When John had indulged in this ostentatious
seclusion for a time, he allowed himself to be drawn out of it by the
charming discourse of a noble Italian named Theodore Palaloga, who
just then was Rider to Henry, Earl of Lincoln, and went to stay with
him at Tattershall. This was an ancient town, with a castle, which
belonged to the Earls of Lincoln, and was situated on the River Bane,
only fourteen miles from Boston, a name that at once establishes a
connection between Smith's native county and our own country, for it is
nearly as certain that St. Botolph founded a monastery at Boston,
Lincoln, in the year 654, as it is that he founded a club afterwards in

Boston, Massachusetts.
Whatever were the pleasures of Tattershall, they could not long content
the restless Smith, who soon set out again for the Netherlands in search
of adventures.
The life of Smith, as it is related by himself, reads like that of a
belligerent tramp, but it was not uncommon in his day, nor is it in ours,
whenever America produces soldiers of fortune who are ready, for a
compensation, to take up the quarrels of Egyptians or Chinese, or go
wherever there is fighting and booty. Smith could now handle arms and
ride a horse, and longed to go against the Turks, whose anti-Christian
contests filled his soul with lamentations; and besides he was tired of
seeing Christians slaughter each other. Like most heroes, he had a vivid
imagination that made him credulous, and in the Netherlands he fell
into the toils of three French gallants, one of whom pretended to be a
great lord, attended by his gentlemen, who persuaded him to
accompany them to the "Duchess of Mercury," whose lord was then a
general of Rodolphus of Hungary, whose favor they could command.
Embarking with these arrant cheats, the vessel reached the coast of
Picardy, where his comrades contrived to take ashore their own
baggage and Smith's trunk, containing his money and goodly apparel,
leaving him on board. When the captain, who was in the plot, was
enabled to land Smith the next day, the noble lords had disappeared
with the luggage, and Smith, who had only a single piece of gold in his
pocket, was obliged to sell his cloak to pay his passage.
Thus stripped, he roamed about Normandy in a forlorn condition,
occasionally entertained by honorable persons who had heard of his
misfortunes, and seeking always means of continuing his travels,
wandering from port to port on the chance of