The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1576-77 | Page 3

picturesque career, for his life was never destined to know the commonplace. He now commenced his education, in company with his two nephews, the Duchess Margaret's son, and Don Carlos, Prince-royal of Spain. They were all of the same age, but the superiority of Don John was soon recognized. It was not difficult to surpass the limping, malicious, Carlos, either in physical graces or intellectual accomplishments; but the graceful; urbane, and chivalrous Alexander, destined afterwards to such wide celebrity, was a more formidable rival, yet even the professed panegyrist of the Farnese family, exalts the son of Barbara Blomberg over the grandson of Margaret Van Geest.
Still destined for the clerical profession, Don John, at the age of eighteen, to avoid compliance with Philip's commands, made his escape to Barcelona. It was his intention to join the Maltese expedition. Recalled peremptorily by Philip, he was for a short time in disgrace; but afterwards made his peace with the monarch by denouncing some of the mischievous schemes of Don Carlos. Between the Prince-royal and the imperial bastard, there had always been a deep animosity, the Infante having on one occasion saluted him with the most vigorous and offensive appellation which his illegitimate birth could suggest. "Base-born or not," returned Don John, "at any rate I had a better father than yours." The words were probably reported to Philip and doubtless rankled in his breast, but nothing appeared on the surface, and the youth rose rapidly in favor. In his twenty-third year, he was appointed to the command of the famous campaign against the insurgent Moors of Granada. Here he reaped his first laurels, and acquired great military celebrity. It is difficult to be dazzled by such glory. He commenced his operations by the expulsion of nearly all the Moorish inhabitants of Granada, bed- ridden men, women, and children, together, and the cruelty inflicted, the sufferings patiently endured in that memorable deportation, were enormous. But few of the many thousand exiles survived the horrid march, those who were so unfortunate as to do so being sold into slavery by their captors. Still a few Moors held out in their mountain fastnesses, and two years long the rebellion of this handful made head against the, power of Spain. Had their envoys to the Porte succeeded in their negotiation, the throne of Philip might have trembled; but Selim hated the Republic of Venice as much as he loved the wine of Cyprus. While the Moors were gasping out their last breath in Granada and Ronda, the Turks had wrested the island of Venus from the grasp of the haughty Republic Fainagosta had fallen; thousands of Venetians had been butchered with a ferocity which even Christians could not have surpassed; the famous General Bragadino had been flayed; stuffed, and sent hanging on the yard- arm of a frigate; to Constantinople, as a present to the Commander of the Faithful; and the mortgage of Catherine Cornaro, to the exclusion of her husband's bastards, had been thus definitely cancelled. With such practical enjoyments, Selim was indifferent to the splendid but shadowy vision of the Occidental caliphate--yet the revolt of the Moors was only terminated, after the departure of Don John, by the Duke of Arcos.
The war which the Sultan had avoided in the West, came to seek him in the East. To lift the Crucifix against the Crescent, at the head of the powerful but quarrelsome alliance between Venice, Spain, and Rome, Don John arrived at Naples. He brought with him more than a hundred ships and twenty-three thousand men, as the Spanish contingent:--Three months long the hostile fleets had been cruising in the same waters without an encounter; three more were wasted in barren manoeuvres. Neither Mussulman nor Christian had much inclination for the conflict, the Turk fearing the consequences of a defeat, by which gains already secured might be forfeited; the allies being appalled at the possibility of their own triumph. Nevertheless, the Ottomans manoeuvred themselves at last into the gulf of Lepanto, the Christians manoeuvred themselves towards its mouth as the foe was coming forth again. The conflict thus rendered inevitable, both Turk and Christian became equally eager for the fray, equally confident of, victory. Six hundred vessels of war met face to face. Rarely in history had so gorgeous a scene of martial array been witnessed. An October sun gilded the thousand beauties of an Ionian landscape. Athens and Corinth were behind the combatants, the mountains of Alexander's Macedon rose in the distance; the rock of Sappho and the heights of Actium, were before their eyes. Since the day when the world had been lost and won beneath that famous promontory, no such combat as the one now approaching had been fought upon the waves. The chivalrous young commander despatched energetic messages to his