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He remained at Rome, and we can only imagine him as busy among the official workshops of the State, writing letters, scraping together money for the troops, struggling in vain to raise levies, amid a crowd of hopeless, doubting, disheartened Senators, whom he still kept together by his eloquence as Republicans, though each was eager to escape.
And I found that these six kindred spirits had managed to get themselves told off to amuse me while I waited that day, so that they might hear of the fighting. So we laughed and rode out, and I thought no more of Guthlac and his brethren till the time came when I remembered them gladly. All day long during that week came pouring in the Dorset levies in answer to the bishop's summons.
Three hundred of the men were told off to man the ships. The Indian confederates arrived punctually: fifty thousand Tlascalans, and a vast number of levies from the other tribes. The army was divided into three corps. One was to take up its post, under Alvarado, at Tlacopan.
The case was different, however, when the press-gang was abroad, when prayers and excuses were alike disregarded, and we were forced into the service, like native levies impelled toward the foe less by the inherent righteousness of the cause than by the indisputable rifles of their white allies. This was unpardonable and altogether detestable.
This was the climax of his magnificence, for there were gathered all the sovereigns and princes who were his allies and who furnished the levies that swelled his Grand Army to six hundred thousand men. Here Marie Louise, like her husband, felt to the full the intoxication of supreme power.
"'Should they still come on I would shut myself up in the Tower, which has a good garrison, and where you may well hold out against all the rascaldom of the country until your barons can raise their levies and come to your assistance. Still, it may well be, your Majesty, that these fellows will think better of it, and may, after all, disperse again to their homes.
"Fourthly, all commissions issued into the tribes by the Parliament, or by the chancery, are to be directed to the phylarch, or some of that troop, and executed by the same respectively. "Fifthly, in the case of levies of money the Parliament shall tax the phylarchs, the phylarchs shall tax the hundreds, the hundreds the parishes, and the parishes shall levy it upon themselves.
Are we still to allow any further delay while the ambassadors are on their road to him? and while they are coming back again? and the time spent in waiting for them will make men doubt about the war. And while the fact of the war is in doubt, how can men possibly be zealous about the levies for the army?
Have you not heard that the cohorts at Brundisium are composed of invalids? The forces which you now behold, have been recruited by levies lately made in Hither Spain, and the greater part from the colonies beyond the Po; moreover, the flower of the forces perished in the two engagements at Dyrrachium."
Notwithstanding all these enormous expenditures the business interests of the country continued prosperous, and the fact that so large a reduction had been made in internal taxes gave promise that within a comparatively short period the Government would be able to remove all levies that were in any degree oppressive or even vexatious to private interests.
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