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Updated: June 9, 2025
We did not hear what was happening in the Cabinets of Europe, under that miserable disguise of the Archduke's assassination, until the closing days of July. Consequently, we reeled under the danger that threatened us, and were not at first capable of comprehending the cause and the measure of it.
Most of the officers were of opinion that the Spanish force was not a large one, and that it was a mere feint to induce the Dutch to abandon the siege of Nieuport and return to Ostend. Sir Francis Vere maintained that it was the main body of the archduke's army, and advised Maurice to march back at once with his whole force to attack the enemy before they had time to take the forts.
Your late master, the Melek Richard, has fallen into the power of his enemies; he is now a prisoner of the Archduke's on many charges: first, the killing of your brother Eudo, Count of Saint-Pol; but that is a very trifling affair, which occurred, moreover, in fair battle. Next, they accuse him falsely, as you know of the death of Montferrat. We may have our own opinion about that.
I must mention here that it had been impressed on the Emperor on all sides that the Archduke's friends and trusted men were working against him; a version of affairs which to a certain degree he obviously believed, owing to his numerous disputes with Franz Ferdinand. On Stürgkh mentioning my name as a candidate for the Herrenhaus, the Emperor hesitated a moment and then said: "Ah, yes.
As for M. de Beaufort, Don Gabriel de Toledo told me that he offered Madame de Montbazon 20,000 crowns down and 6,000 crowns a year if she could persuade him into the Archduke's measures. He did not forget the other generals. M. d'Elbeuf was gained at an easy rate, and Marechal de La Mothe was buoyed up with the hopes of being accommodated with the Duchy of Cardonne.
The world would see, and would never have forgiven a statesman in the position of Barneveld, had he accepted a bald agreement from a subordinate like the Archduke, a perfectly insignificant personage in the great drama then enacting, and given up guarantees both from the Archduke's master and from the two great allies of the Republic.
Prompt payment was made every week. Obedience was implicit; mutiny, such as was of periodical recurrence in the archduke's army, entirely unknown. The slightest theft was punished with the gallows, and there was therefore no thieving. The most accurate and critical observers confessed, almost against their will, that no army in Europe could compare with the troops of the States.
The insurance companies have long paid the claims upon the Archduke's premiums for his life, and that fact alone is almost as desirable an evidence as a death-certificate to his heir.
The "New Beggars," as the Walloons were called, who had so recently surrendered the forts of Crevecoeur and St. Andrew, and gone over from the archduke's service to the army of the States, were included in this division, and were as eager to do credit to their new chief as were the mutineers in the archduke's army to merit the approbation of their sovereign.
The English nobles, in good faith, urged the archduke's suit, and said that Dudley was plotting to kill his wife and marry the queen; but they and the Spanish ambassador were outwitted at every point by Elizabeth's diplomacy, and through 1559 and 1560 all the rivals were kept between hope and fear.
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